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 17 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 391 287 193
Rank change year-on-year -104 -94 +78
Contract jobs citing C 207 260 561
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.51% 0.85% 1.26%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.71% 2.54% 4.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 65 97 208
10th Percentile £68 £396 £325
25th Percentile £400 £456 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% -1.87% -10.83%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £589
90th Percentile £650 £810 £691
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £535
% change year-on-year - -11.21% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 83 37 200
10th Percentile £60.00 £58.42 £46.25
25th Percentile £65.00 £62.00 £56.65
Median hourly rate £66.50 £67.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% +3.85% +13.04%
75th Percentile £70.00 £85.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.75 £95.00 £88.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -1.48% +3.85% -

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 12,127 10,243 13,173
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.16% 33.63% 29.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,063 6,534 9,293
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -5.24%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £716 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £485 £500
% change year-on-year -1.44% -3.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 467 231 509
10th Percentile £40.00 £21.25 £36.13
25th Percentile £52.50 £36.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.14
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +3.92% -7.48%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.97% +1.99% -3.85%

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 17 February 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 17 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for C in the UK

C
Top 16 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 17 February 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 -106 192 £488 -7.14% 338
UK excluding London -65 156 £475 - 355
East of England -2 66 £525 +31.25% 60
South West -10 56 £475 -20.17% 57
Work from Home -59 56 £438 -14.63% 145
London -76 42 £461 -23.17% 48
South East -45 12 £500 +5.26% 104
North of England -62 8 £550 - 39
Scotland +3 7 £65 -77.19% 59
Northern Ireland +2 5 £425 -
North West -27 5 £513 - 18
Yorkshire -55 2 £531 - 13
Midlands -61 2 £575 +76.65% 42
East Midlands -25 1 - - 27
West Midlands -52 1 £575 - 15
North East - 1 £625 - 8

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 (1.45%) Confluence
2 1 (0.48%) Apache
2 1 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.48%) nginx
2 1 (0.48%) SharePoint
Applications
1 11 (5.31%) Simulink
2 4 (1.93%) Stateflow
3 3 (1.45%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (2.42%) BASE24
1 5 (2.42%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.48%) Actimize
2 1 (0.48%) Dynamics NAV
2 1 (0.48%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.48%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 17 (8.21%) Azure
2 16 (7.73%) AWS
3 10 (4.83%) GitHub
4 8 (3.86%) GCP
5 4 (1.93%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (1.45%) AWS CloudFormation
6 3 (1.45%) Power Platform
7 2 (0.97%) Amazon EKS
7 2 (0.97%) Amazon S3
7 2 (0.97%) Azure Monitor
7 2 (0.97%) Cloud Computing
7 2 (0.97%) Dynamics 365
8 1 (0.48%) Amazon ECS
8 1 (0.48%) Amazon GuardDuty
8 1 (0.48%) ChatGPT
8 1 (0.48%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (0.48%) GitHub Copilot
8 1 (0.48%) Power Automate
8 1 (0.48%) Serverless
8 1 (0.48%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 19 (9.18%) Ethernet
2 11 (5.31%) RS-232
3 6 (2.90%) Modbus
3 6 (2.90%) RS-485
3 6 (2.90%) SpaceWire
3 6 (2.90%) TCP/IP
4 4 (1.93%) 3GPP
5 3 (1.45%) Bluetooth
5 3 (1.45%) MVNO
5 3 (1.45%) Network Security
5 3 (1.45%) RS-422
5 3 (1.45%) SMPP
5 3 (1.45%) SMS
6 2 (0.97%) DNS
6 2 (0.97%) HTTP
6 2 (0.97%) VSAN
6 2 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
6 2 (0.97%) Wireless
7 1 (0.48%) Internet
7 1 (0.48%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (2.90%) NonStop SQL
2 5 (2.42%) OLTP
2 5 (2.42%) Oracle Database
3 3 (1.45%) Elasticsearch
4 2 (0.97%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (0.97%) Power BI
5 1 (0.48%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.48%) Hadoop
5 1 (0.48%) Metadata
5 1 (0.48%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.48%) MySQL
5 1 (0.48%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.48%) Oracle Exadata
5 1 (0.48%) SQL Server
5 1 (0.48%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 1 (0.48%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 26 (12.56%) Rational DOORS
2 16 (7.73%) Git
3 13 (6.28%) JIRA
4 11 (5.31%) Rational Rhapsody
5 8 (3.86%) PVCS
6 7 (3.38%) GitLab
7 5 (2.42%) Jenkins
8 4 (1.93%) Rational Team Concert
8 4 (1.93%) Visual Studio
9 3 (1.45%) Artifactory
9 3 (1.45%) ClearCase
10 2 (0.97%) KGDB
10 2 (0.97%) Selenium
10 2 (0.97%) SonarQube
11 1 (0.48%) CircleCI
11 1 (0.48%) Crashlytics
11 1 (0.48%) fastlane
11 1 (0.48%) Polyspace
11 1 (0.48%) XCTest
11 1 (0.48%) XCUITest
General
1 34 (16.43%) Electronics
2 28 (13.53%) Social Skills
3 22 (10.63%) Finance
4 21 (10.14%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (9.66%) Aerospace
6 14 (6.76%) Documentation Skills
6 14 (6.76%) Law
7 10 (4.83%) Public Sector
8 7 (3.38%) Banking
9 6 (2.90%) Military
10 5 (2.42%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.93%) Automotive
11 4 (1.93%) Telecoms
12 3 (1.45%) Aviation
12 3 (1.45%) Financial Institution
12 3 (1.45%) Games
13 2 (0.97%) Avionics
13 2 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.97%) Publishing
14 1 (0.48%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 77 (37.20%) Software Engineer
2 59 (28.50%) Embedded Engineer
3 44 (21.26%) Embedded Software Engineer
4 35 (16.91%) Developer
5 27 (13.04%) C Software Engineer
6 22 (10.63%) C++ Software Engineer
7 21 (10.14%) C/C++ Software Engineer
8 19 (9.18%) Embedded C Engineer
8 19 (9.18%) Embedded C Software Engineer
9 13 (6.28%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
9 13 (6.28%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
9 13 (6.28%) Embedded C/C++ Software Engineer
9 13 (6.28%) Embedded C++ Engineer
9 13 (6.28%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
9 13 (6.28%) Senior
9 13 (6.28%) Support Engineer
10 12 (5.80%) Product Engineer
10 12 (5.80%) Products Support Engineer
10 12 (5.80%) Software Support Engineer
11 10 (4.83%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (8.70%) Middleware
2 8 (3.86%) Yocto
3 7 (3.38%) Flash
3 7 (3.38%) HTML
4 5 (2.42%) CSS
5 4 (1.93%) AngularJS
5 4 (1.93%) Node.js
5 4 (1.93%) React
5 4 (1.93%) REST
6 3 (1.45%) ARM Templates
6 3 (1.45%) Electron
6 3 (1.45%) JNI
6 3 (1.45%) JSON
6 3 (1.45%) Kafka
7 2 (0.97%) OpenID
7 2 (0.97%) OpenMP
7 2 (0.97%) Protocol Buffers
7 2 (0.97%) Qt
7 2 (0.97%) RESTful
7 2 (0.97%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 32 (15.46%) FPGA
2 28 (13.53%) Embedded Systems
3 15 (7.25%) PCIe
3 15 (7.25%) VHDL
4 6 (2.90%) CAN bus
4 6 (2.90%) Tandem
5 5 (2.42%) Algorithms
5 5 (2.42%) EMV
6 4 (1.93%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (1.93%) IoT
6 4 (1.93%) Verilog
7 3 (1.45%) Cloud Native
7 3 (1.45%) CUDA
7 3 (1.45%) Data Centre
7 3 (1.45%) Device Driver
7 3 (1.45%) Hedge funds
7 3 (1.45%) Java Card
7 3 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (0.97%) Analogue Electronics
8 2 (0.97%) ASIC
Operating Systems
1 55 (26.57%) Linux
2 14 (6.76%) Windows
3 13 (6.28%) Ubuntu
4 8 (3.86%) Embedded Linux
4 8 (3.86%) FreeRTOS
5 4 (1.93%) Unix
6 3 (1.45%) CentOS
6 3 (1.45%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.48%) Android
7 1 (0.48%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.48%) Debian
7 1 (0.48%) OpenVMS
7 1 (0.48%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 111 (53.62%) Software Engineering
2 42 (20.29%) Validation
3 29 (14.01%) Problem-Solving
4 26 (12.56%) CI/CD
5 18 (8.70%) Software Testing
6 17 (8.21%) DevOps
6 17 (8.21%) Test Automation
6 17 (8.21%) Workflow
7 15 (7.25%) Unit Testing
8 14 (6.76%) Containerisation
8 14 (6.76%) Signal Processing
9 13 (6.28%) AI
9 13 (6.28%) Requirements Analysis
10 12 (5.80%) Agile
10 12 (5.80%) Embedded Software Development
10 12 (5.80%) Systems Engineering
11 11 (5.31%) Mathematics
11 11 (5.31%) SDLC
12 10 (4.83%) Performance Tuning
12 10 (4.83%) UML
Programming Languages
1 117 (56.52%) C++
2 52 (25.12%) Python
3 32 (15.46%) Ada
4 29 (14.01%) Embedded C
5 26 (12.56%) Java
6 22 (10.63%) JavaScript
7 20 (9.66%) SQL
8 19 (9.18%) Shell Script
9 18 (8.70%) Embedded C++
10 15 (7.25%) MATLAB
11 14 (6.76%) Bash
12 10 (4.83%) C#
13 9 (4.35%) Rust
14 7 (3.38%) Fortran
14 7 (3.38%) PL/SQL
15 6 (2.90%) SystemVerilog
16 5 (2.42%) COBOL
16 5 (2.42%) Perl
16 5 (2.42%) ProC
17 4 (1.93%) VBA
Qualifications
1 64 (30.92%) Security Cleared
2 52 (25.12%) SC Cleared
3 18 (8.70%) Degree
4 6 (2.90%) DV Cleared
5 3 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
5 3 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (1.45%) ISTQB
6 2 (0.97%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 2 (0.97%) Master's Degree
6 2 (0.97%) Postgraduate
7 1 (0.48%) CCNA
7 1 (0.48%) CCSAS
7 1 (0.48%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (0.48%) GPEN
7 1 (0.48%) GWAPT
7 1 (0.48%) GXPN
7 1 (0.48%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
7 1 (0.48%) OSCE
7 1 (0.48%) OSCP
7 1 (0.48%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (10.14%) Def Stans
2 12 (5.80%) MISRA
3 11 (5.31%) DO-178B
4 9 (4.35%) IEC 61508
5 7 (3.38%) QA
6 5 (2.42%) ISO 8583
7 4 (1.93%) ISO 26262
7 4 (1.93%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.97%) IEC 62304
8 2 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.97%) MIL-STD-1553
8 2 (0.97%) MISRA C
8 2 (0.97%) Software Quality Assurance
9 1 (0.48%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.48%) AUTOSAR
9 1 (0.48%) DO-254
9 1 (0.48%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 1 (0.48%) MiFID
9 1 (0.48%) NIST
System Software
1 23 (11.11%) Firmware
2 15 (7.25%) Docker
3 11 (5.31%) Virtual Machines
3 11 (5.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.45%) Embedded Firmware
5 2 (0.97%) vCloud
5 2 (0.97%) VMware NSX
5 2 (0.97%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 13 (6.28%) Kubernetes
2 10 (4.83%) Terraform
3 5 (2.42%) Ansible
4 2 (0.97%) Podman
4 2 (0.97%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.48%) Functional Safety
5 1 (0.48%) Grafana
5 1 (0.48%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 16 (7.73%) Red Hat
2 12 (5.80%) IBM
2 12 (5.80%) Oracle
3 11 (5.31%) VMware
4 8 (3.86%) ANSYS
5 7 (3.38%) HP
5 7 (3.38%) Intel
5 7 (3.38%) MathWorks
6 5 (2.42%) Microsemi
6 5 (2.42%) Microsoft
6 5 (2.42%) Xilinx
7 4 (1.93%) Cisco
8 3 (1.45%) NetApp
8 3 (1.45%) Thales
9 2 (0.97%) Atlassian
9 2 (0.97%) Dell
9 2 (0.97%) SAP
10 1 (0.48%) Proofpoint
10 1 (0.48%) Sitecore
10 1 (0.48%) Splunk