Software Engineering Contract Job Trends in Manchester

Software Engineering
North West > Manchester

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Manchester requiring Software Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 20 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 26 41
Rank change year-on-year +2 +15 +18
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 149 71 47
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 7.58% 6.94% 3.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.12% 7.79% 4.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 76 41 22
10th Percentile £403 £375 £414
25th Percentile £450 £400 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £650 £588 £638
90th Percentile £731 £700 £718
North West median daily rate £540 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +8.00% - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 4 7
10th Percentile £62.45 £71.05 -
25th Percentile £62.94 £72.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £80.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.50% +46.82% -13.73%
75th Percentile £75.75 £90.31 £71.69
90th Percentile £77.00 £93.13 £72.92
North West median hourly rate £65.00 £70.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -7.14% +51.58% -

All Process & Methodology Skills
Manchester

Software Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in Manchester.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,633 911 1,036
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 83.10% 89.05% 86.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 974 581 651
10th Percentile £310 £305 £350
25th Percentile £401 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £588 £600
90th Percentile £688 £669 £713
North West median daily rate £500 £454 £500
% change year-on-year +10.25% -9.30% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 59 47
10th Percentile £21.00 £17.26 £15.97
25th Percentile £29.96 £19.07 £24.43
Median hourly rate £50.00 £22.63 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +120.95% -35.34% +79.49%
75th Percentile £75.00 £57.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.50 £75.50 £87.00
North West median hourly rate £45.00 £27.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -22.86% +14.20%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in Manchester

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Software Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester.

Software Engineering job vacancy trend in Manchester

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Software Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in Manchester

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in Manchester over the 6 months to 20 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in Manchester

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Software Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram in Manchester

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineering in Manchester over the 6 months to 20 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineering in Manchester

Software Engineering
Contract Job Locations in Manchester

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Software Engineering within the Manchester region over the 6 months to 20 August 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Bury - 6 £744 -
Stockport - 1 - - 4
Bolton - 1 - -
Software Engineering
North West

Software Engineering
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Manchester by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 3 (2.01%) Apache
1 3 (2.01%) Apache Spark
1 3 (2.01%) Confluence
2 2 (1.34%) CMS
2 2 (1.34%) SAS
3 1 (0.67%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.67%) Jupyter
3 1 (0.67%) nginx
Cloud Services
1 82 (55.03%) AWS
2 17 (11.41%) Serverless
3 13 (8.72%) Azure
4 10 (6.71%) AWS Lambda
5 9 (6.04%) Anthropic Claude
6 8 (5.37%) Amazon S3
6 8 (5.37%) GCP
6 8 (5.37%) GitHub
6 8 (5.37%) Google Gemini
7 7 (4.70%) GitHub Actions
8 6 (4.03%) Amazon ECS
8 6 (4.03%) Amazon SQS
8 6 (4.03%) GitHub Copilot
9 4 (2.68%) Amazon EKS
9 4 (2.68%) CloudFront
9 4 (2.68%) SaaS
10 3 (2.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 3 (2.01%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 3 (2.01%) AWS CloudFormation
10 3 (2.01%) AWS Fargate
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.01%) Firewall
2 2 (1.34%) VPN
3 1 (0.67%) HTTP
3 1 (0.67%) Network Security
3 1 (0.67%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (6.71%) DynamoDB
1 10 (6.71%) PostgreSQL
2 9 (6.04%) MySQL
3 8 (5.37%) NoSQL
4 4 (2.68%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (2.68%) Relational Database
4 4 (2.68%) SQL Server
4 4 (2.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 2 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (1.34%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (1.34%) Data Vault
6 1 (0.67%) Oracle Database
6 1 (0.67%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 17 (11.41%) Git
2 10 (6.71%) Claude Code
3 5 (3.36%) Cucumber
3 5 (3.36%) JIRA
4 4 (2.68%) JUnit
4 4 (2.68%) Selenium
5 3 (2.01%) Mockito
6 2 (1.34%) Cypress.io
6 2 (1.34%) GitLab
7 1 (0.67%) Gatling
7 1 (0.67%) Gradle
7 1 (0.67%) Jenkins
7 1 (0.67%) JMeter
7 1 (0.67%) Postman
7 1 (0.67%) REST Assured
7 1 (0.67%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.67%) SonarQube
General
1 36 (24.16%) Social Skills
2 15 (10.07%) Finance
2 15 (10.07%) Public Sector
2 15 (10.07%) Retail
3 6 (4.03%) Banking
4 5 (3.36%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (2.68%) Military
6 2 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
6 2 (1.34%) Marketing
7 1 (0.67%) Automotive
7 1 (0.67%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.67%) Health Technology
7 1 (0.67%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 98 (65.77%) Software Engineer
2 35 (23.49%) Senior
3 25 (16.78%) Senior Software Engineer
4 24 (16.11%) Java Engineer
5 23 (15.44%) Java Software Engineer
6 20 (13.42%) Lead
7 17 (11.41%) AWS Engineer
8 16 (10.74%) AWS Software Engineer
9 14 (9.40%) Developer
10 10 (6.71%) Embedded Engineer
10 10 (6.71%) Embedded Software Engineer
11 9 (6.04%) Lead Software Engineer
12 7 (4.70%) Full-Stack Developer
12 7 (4.70%) Python Engineer
13 6 (4.03%) Architect
13 6 (4.03%) Cloud Engineer
13 6 (4.03%) Cloud Software Engineer
13 6 (4.03%) Java Developer
13 6 (4.03%) Migration Engineer
13 6 (4.03%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (26.85%) Spring
2 37 (24.83%) Spring Boot
3 28 (18.79%) React
4 26 (17.45%) Node.js
5 23 (15.44%) Terraform
6 20 (13.42%) REST
7 16 (10.74%) .NET
8 13 (8.72%) Next.js
9 11 (7.38%) Kafka
10 8 (5.37%) AWS CDK
10 8 (5.37%) RESTful
11 5 (3.36%) AngularJS
11 5 (3.36%) CSS
11 5 (3.36%) HTML
11 5 (3.36%) Nunjucks
12 4 (2.68%) Jakarta EE
12 4 (2.68%) MACH
12 4 (2.68%) OAuth
12 4 (2.68%) OpenID
13 3 (2.01%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 44 (29.53%) Cloud Native
2 16 (10.74%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (5.37%) Product Ownership
4 6 (4.03%) Onboarding
5 4 (2.68%) Enterprise Software
6 3 (2.01%) Culture of Ownership
7 2 (1.34%) AI Agents
7 2 (1.34%) Credit Risk
7 2 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (1.34%) Educational Technology
7 2 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (1.34%) Private Cloud
7 2 (1.34%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.67%) Algorithms
8 1 (0.67%) CMDB
8 1 (0.67%) Data Structures
8 1 (0.67%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 1 (0.67%) NHS
8 1 (0.67%) PKI
8 1 (0.67%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 7 (4.70%) Linux
2 2 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.67%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 66 (44.30%) CI/CD
2 52 (34.90%) Agile
3 42 (28.19%) Microservices
4 36 (24.16%) DevOps
5 30 (20.13%) Test Automation
6 29 (19.46%) Infrastructure as Code
7 28 (18.79%) AI
8 27 (18.12%) Event-Driven
8 27 (18.12%) Event-Driven Architecture
9 24 (16.11%) Full-Stack Development
10 22 (14.77%) Continuous Improvement
11 20 (13.42%) Observability
12 17 (11.41%) Code Quality
12 17 (11.41%) SDLC
13 16 (10.74%) Mentoring
14 15 (10.07%) Problem-Solving
14 15 (10.07%) Technical Leadership
15 14 (9.40%) Decision-Making
15 14 (9.40%) Root Cause Analysis
15 14 (9.40%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 59 (39.60%) Java
2 31 (20.81%) TypeScript
3 25 (16.78%) Python
4 22 (14.77%) JavaScript
5 18 (12.08%) SQL
6 10 (6.71%) C#
7 9 (6.04%) Kotlin
8 5 (3.36%) C++
9 4 (2.68%) Rust
10 3 (2.01%) Scala
11 1 (0.67%) Ada
11 1 (0.67%) C
11 1 (0.67%) Go
Qualifications
1 15 (10.07%) Security Cleared
2 10 (6.71%) SC Cleared
3 7 (4.70%) Degree
4 6 (4.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (3.36%) AWS Certification
6 4 (2.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (1.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 1 (0.67%) CEH
8 1 (0.67%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.67%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.67%) SANS
8 1 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (6.71%) QA
2 6 (4.03%) Accessibility
2 6 (4.03%) GDPR
3 4 (2.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 3 (2.01%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.67%) Def Stans
5 1 (0.67%) DO-178B
5 1 (0.67%) MISRA
5 1 (0.67%) NIST
System Software
1 32 (21.48%) Docker
2 1 (0.67%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 31 (20.81%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.67%) Grafana
2 1 (0.67%) Istio
2 1 (0.67%) Network Intrusion Detection System
2 1 (0.67%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 7 (4.70%) Microsoft
2 3 (2.01%) OpenAI
2 3 (2.01%) SAP
3 2 (1.34%) Databricks
3 2 (1.34%) Google
3 2 (1.34%) Informatica
4 1 (0.67%) Adobe
4 1 (0.67%) BiZZdesign
4 1 (0.67%) CheckPoint
4 1 (0.67%) Cisco
4 1 (0.67%) F5
4 1 (0.67%) Intel
4 1 (0.67%) Oracle
4 1 (0.67%) ServiceNow