C Contract Job Trends

C
UK

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

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 410 317 188
Rank change year-on-year -93 -129 +61
Contract jobs citing C 206 213 552
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.47% 0.73% 1.25%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.63% 2.14% 4.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 68 87 220
10th Percentile £300 £272 £325
25th Percentile £413 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £500 £528
Median % change year-on-year -1.25% -5.21% -12.08%
75th Percentile £550 £625 £588
90th Percentile £629 £782 £706
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £471 £535
% change year-on-year +2.12% -11.92% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 41 186
10th Percentile £61.25 £57.50 £46.25
25th Percentile £65.00 £62.00 £57.88
Median hourly rate £67.50 £68.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.74% +4.62% +13.04%
75th Percentile £70.00 £85.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.88 £95.00 £88.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £68.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -0.74% +4.62% -

All Programming Languages
UK

C falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 12,617 9,972 12,901
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.01% 34.08% 29.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,405 6,625 9,134
10th Percentile £352 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £715 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £484 £485
% change year-on-year -1.76% -0.31% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 492 245 486
10th Percentile £41.94 £22.00 £30.94
25th Percentile £54.55 £31.64 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £67.29
90th Percentile £77.00 £85.00 £74.10
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £61.60
% change year-on-year +1.97% +3.48% -5.23%

C
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing C relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

C job vacancy trend in the UK

C
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing C.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing C

C
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing C over the 6 months to 20 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for C in the UK

C
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing C.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing C

C
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing C over the 6 months to 20 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for C in the UK

C
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing C within the UK over the 6 months to 20 March 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
England -85 193 £500 - 454
UK excluding London -36 160 £481 +2.12% 460
East of England +1 67 £525 +27.27% 84
Work from Home -30 63 £475 -5.00% 119
South West -3 52 £450 -24.37% 80
London -83 42 £500 -13.87% 40
South East -56 20 £500 - 134
North of England -70 7 £531 - 65
Scotland +2 6 £65 -77.19% 27
Northern Ireland 0 5 £425 - 7
North West -31 3 £450 - 21
Yorkshire -60 3 £531 - 32
Midlands -66 2 £550 +228.36% 67
Wales -10 1 £460 -12.38% 12
East Midlands -40 1 £525 +213.43% 36
North East - 1 £625 - 12
West Midlands - 1 £575 - 32

C
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 (1.46%) Confluence
2 1 (0.49%) Apache
2 1 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.49%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (4.37%) Simulink
2 2 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.49%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 5 (2.43%) BASE24
1 5 (2.43%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.49%) Actimize
2 1 (0.49%) Dynamics NAV
2 1 (0.49%) Loan IQ
2 1 (0.49%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.49%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 12 (5.83%) AWS
1 12 (5.83%) Azure
2 9 (4.37%) GitHub
3 5 (2.43%) Azure DevOps
3 5 (2.43%) GCP
3 5 (2.43%) Power Platform
4 3 (1.46%) Amazon S3
4 3 (1.46%) AWS CloudFormation
5 2 (0.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 2 (0.97%) Amazon EKS
5 2 (0.97%) Azure Monitor
5 2 (0.97%) Dynamics 365
5 2 (0.97%) GitHub Actions
5 2 (0.97%) IaaS
6 1 (0.49%) Amazon ECS
6 1 (0.49%) Amazon GuardDuty
6 1 (0.49%) Azure Storage
6 1 (0.49%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 1 (0.49%) Power Automate
6 1 (0.49%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 19 (9.22%) Ethernet
2 7 (3.40%) RS-232
3 6 (2.91%) 3GPP
3 6 (2.91%) Modbus
3 6 (2.91%) RS-485
4 5 (2.43%) TCP/IP
5 4 (1.94%) Network Security
6 3 (1.46%) 5G
6 3 (1.46%) 5G NR
6 3 (1.46%) Bluetooth
6 3 (1.46%) LTE
6 3 (1.46%) MVNO
6 3 (1.46%) RS-422
6 3 (1.46%) SMPP
6 3 (1.46%) SMS
7 2 (0.97%) DNS
7 2 (0.97%) HTTP
7 2 (0.97%) Microwave Backhaul
7 2 (0.97%) MPLS
7 2 (0.97%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (2.91%) NonStop SQL
2 5 (2.43%) OLTP
3 4 (1.94%) Power BI
4 3 (1.46%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.97%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.97%) Metadata
5 2 (0.97%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.97%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.97%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.97%) SQL Server
5 2 (0.97%) Tableau
6 1 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (0.49%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.49%) Apache Hudi
6 1 (0.49%) Apache Iceberg
6 1 (0.49%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.49%) Hadoop
6 1 (0.49%) MySQL
6 1 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 1 (0.49%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 24 (11.65%) Rational DOORS
2 19 (9.22%) Git
3 15 (7.28%) Rational Rhapsody
4 14 (6.80%) JIRA
5 8 (3.88%) PVCS
6 7 (3.40%) GitLab
6 7 (3.40%) Visual Studio
7 3 (1.46%) Jenkins
8 2 (0.97%) JMeter
8 2 (0.97%) Selenium
8 2 (0.97%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.49%) Crashlytics
9 1 (0.49%) ER Studio
9 1 (0.49%) fastlane
9 1 (0.49%) Polyspace
9 1 (0.49%) Postman
9 1 (0.49%) Rational Team Concert
9 1 (0.49%) XCTest
9 1 (0.49%) XCUITest
General
1 34 (16.50%) Electronics
2 32 (15.53%) Social Skills
3 20 (9.71%) Aerospace
3 20 (9.71%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (8.25%) Finance
5 12 (5.83%) Documentation Skills
5 12 (5.83%) Law
6 8 (3.88%) Manufacturing
7 7 (3.40%) Banking
7 7 (3.40%) Public Sector
8 5 (2.43%) Automotive
9 3 (1.46%) Games
9 3 (1.46%) Military
9 3 (1.46%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.97%) Avionics
10 2 (0.97%) Publishing
11 1 (0.49%) Health Technology
11 1 (0.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.49%) Local Government
11 1 (0.49%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 77 (37.38%) Software Engineer
2 66 (32.04%) Embedded Engineer
3 44 (21.36%) Embedded Software Engineer
4 32 (15.53%) Developer
5 27 (13.11%) C Software Engineer
6 23 (11.17%) C++ Software Engineer
7 21 (10.19%) C/C++ Software Engineer
8 19 (9.22%) Embedded C Engineer
8 19 (9.22%) Embedded C Software Engineer
9 13 (6.31%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
9 13 (6.31%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
9 13 (6.31%) Embedded C/C++ Software Engineer
9 13 (6.31%) Embedded C++ Engineer
9 13 (6.31%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
10 10 (4.85%) Lead
10 10 (4.85%) Senior
10 10 (4.85%) Software Developer
10 10 (4.85%) Validation Engineer
11 9 (4.37%) FPGA Engineer
12 7 (3.40%) C++ Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (6.31%) Middleware
2 7 (3.40%) .NET
2 7 (3.40%) Yocto
3 6 (2.91%) Flash
3 6 (2.91%) WinForms
4 3 (1.46%) ARM Templates
4 3 (1.46%) HTML
4 3 (1.46%) JSON
4 3 (1.46%) Kafka
5 2 (0.97%) Protocol Buffers
5 2 (0.97%) Qt
5 2 (0.97%) REST
5 2 (0.97%) RESTful
5 2 (0.97%) WebSockets
6 1 (0.49%) GStreamer
6 1 (0.49%) Microsoft Graph
6 1 (0.49%) NumPy
6 1 (0.49%) OpenID
6 1 (0.49%) SciPy
6 1 (0.49%) WebAssembly
Miscellaneous
1 35 (16.99%) Embedded Systems
2 32 (15.53%) FPGA
3 16 (7.77%) VHDL
4 15 (7.28%) PCIe
5 6 (2.91%) Tandem
5 6 (2.91%) Verilog
6 5 (2.43%) Algorithms
6 5 (2.43%) EMV
7 4 (1.94%) Cloud Native
7 4 (1.94%) Data Centre
7 4 (1.94%) IoT
8 3 (1.46%) CUDA
8 3 (1.46%) Cyber Threat
8 3 (1.46%) Java Card
8 3 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.97%) CAN bus
9 2 (0.97%) Data Structures
9 2 (0.97%) Distributed Systems
9 2 (0.97%) Legacy Code
9 2 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 46 (22.33%) Linux
2 11 (5.34%) Embedded Linux
2 11 (5.34%) Windows
3 8 (3.88%) FreeRTOS
4 7 (3.40%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.97%) Unix
6 1 (0.49%) Android
6 1 (0.49%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.49%) Debian
6 1 (0.49%) OpenVMS
6 1 (0.49%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 111 (53.88%) Software Engineering
2 42 (20.39%) Validation
3 31 (15.05%) Problem-Solving
4 29 (14.08%) CI/CD
5 28 (13.59%) Test Automation
6 21 (10.19%) Workflow
7 19 (9.22%) Unit Testing
8 18 (8.74%) DevOps
9 16 (7.77%) Embedded Software Development
9 16 (7.77%) Requirements Analysis
9 16 (7.77%) Software Testing
10 15 (7.28%) Signal Processing
11 14 (6.80%) Agile
11 14 (6.80%) Verification and Validation
12 13 (6.31%) Workflow Management
13 11 (5.34%) AI
13 11 (5.34%) Containerisation
13 11 (5.34%) Performance Tuning
13 11 (5.34%) SDLC
13 11 (5.34%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 116 (56.31%) C++
2 45 (21.84%) Python
3 34 (16.50%) Embedded C
4 25 (12.14%) Ada
5 23 (11.17%) SQL
6 20 (9.71%) Embedded C++
7 15 (7.28%) MATLAB
8 13 (6.31%) Java
9 11 (5.34%) JavaScript
9 11 (5.34%) Shell Script
10 9 (4.37%) Bash
11 8 (3.88%) PL/SQL
11 8 (3.88%) Rust
12 7 (3.40%) C#
13 6 (2.91%) SystemVerilog
14 5 (2.43%) COBOL
14 5 (2.43%) ProC
15 2 (0.97%) Fortran
15 2 (0.97%) Go
15 2 (0.97%) Perl
Qualifications
1 61 (29.61%) Security Cleared
2 47 (22.82%) SC Cleared
3 11 (5.34%) Degree
4 7 (3.40%) BPSS Clearance
4 7 (3.40%) DV Cleared
5 3 (1.46%) ISTQB
6 2 (0.97%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (0.97%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 1 (0.49%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.49%) CCNA
7 1 (0.49%) CCSAS
7 1 (0.49%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (0.49%) GPEN
7 1 (0.49%) GWAPT
7 1 (0.49%) GXPN
7 1 (0.49%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
7 1 (0.49%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.49%) OSCE
7 1 (0.49%) OSCP
7 1 (0.49%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (12.14%) Def Stans
2 12 (5.83%) MISRA
3 11 (5.34%) DO-178B
4 8 (3.88%) QA
5 6 (2.91%) IEC 61508
6 5 (2.43%) ISO 8583
7 4 (1.94%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.97%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.97%) MIL-STD-1553
8 2 (0.97%) MISRA C
9 1 (0.49%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.49%) AUTOSAR
9 1 (0.49%) DICOM
9 1 (0.49%) HL7
9 1 (0.49%) IFRS
9 1 (0.49%) IFRS 9
9 1 (0.49%) ISO 26262
9 1 (0.49%) MiFID
9 1 (0.49%) NIST
System Software
1 22 (10.68%) Firmware
2 14 (6.80%) Docker
3 11 (5.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (4.85%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (1.46%) Embedded Firmware
6 2 (0.97%) vCloud
6 2 (0.97%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.97%) vSphere
7 1 (0.49%) FreeRADIUS
Systems Management
1 12 (5.83%) Kubernetes
2 9 (4.37%) Terraform
3 3 (1.46%) Ansible
4 2 (0.97%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.49%) Functional Safety
5 1 (0.49%) Grafana
5 1 (0.49%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 12 (5.83%) IBM
2 11 (5.34%) VMware
3 8 (3.88%) ANSYS
3 8 (3.88%) Oracle
4 7 (3.40%) HP
4 7 (3.40%) Intel
4 7 (3.40%) Xilinx
5 6 (2.91%) Microsoft
5 6 (2.91%) Red Hat
6 5 (2.43%) Microsemi
7 4 (1.94%) Cisco
7 4 (1.94%) MathWorks
8 3 (1.46%) Lauterbach
8 3 (1.46%) SAP
8 3 (1.46%) Thales
9 2 (0.97%) Dell
10 1 (0.49%) Databricks
10 1 (0.49%) Google
10 1 (0.49%) OutSystems
10 1 (0.49%) QNX