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 19 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 392 271 190
Rank change year-on-year -121 -81 +89
Contract jobs citing C 200 278 553
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.54% 0.88% 1.28%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.77% 2.66% 4.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 61 98 218
10th Percentile £68 £400 £325
25th Percentile £382 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £539 £536
Median % change year-on-year -7.19% +0.61% -10.75%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £637
90th Percentile £650 £810 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £536
% change year-on-year -5.00% -6.63% -2.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 45 176
10th Percentile £58.75 £53.10 £47.50
25th Percentile £65.00 £61.25 £57.29
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 £76.25 £95.00 £90.00
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 11,321 10,443 13,046
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.62% 33.17% 30.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,520 6,621 9,228
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% -3.17%
75th Percentile £615 £644 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £494 £500
% change year-on-year -2.23% -1.20% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 412 246 446
10th Percentile £36.03 £21.25 £35.25
25th Percentile £52.50 £35.19 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +3.31% -3.97%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -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 19 January 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 19 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for C in the UK

C
Top 15 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 19 January 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 -113 182 £500 -7.19% 608
UK excluding London -54 153 £475 -5.00% 635
South West -7 57 £475 -20.17% 118
East of England -6 56 £500 -6.98% 112
Work from Home -31 53 £438 -19.17% 247
London -69 38 £510 -15.00% 54
Scotland +18 13 £283 - 45
North of England -44 12 £463 +15.63% 83
North West -21 9 £463 +15.63% 35
South East -44 9 £500 +6.10% 194
Northern Ireland -2 3 £425 - 13
Midlands -42 3 £575 +121.15% 65
Yorkshire -47 3 £531 - 35
East Midlands -23 2 - - 48
West Midlands -38 1 £575 - 17

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 4 (2.00%) Confluence
2 2 (1.00%) WebLogic
2 2 (1.00%) WebSphere
3 1 (0.50%) Apache
3 1 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.50%) nginx
3 1 (0.50%) SharePoint
Applications
1 12 (6.00%) Simulink
2 8 (4.00%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (2.50%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (2.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (2.50%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 5 (2.50%) BASE24
1 5 (2.50%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (1.00%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.50%) Actimize
3 1 (0.50%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 17 (8.50%) AWS
1 17 (8.50%) GitHub
2 16 (8.00%) Azure
3 8 (4.00%) GCP
4 4 (2.00%) Amazon EKS
4 4 (2.00%) Amazon S3
5 3 (1.50%) Amazon ECS
5 3 (1.50%) AWS CloudFormation
5 3 (1.50%) AWS Lambda
5 3 (1.50%) Serverless
6 2 (1.00%) Azure DevOps
6 2 (1.00%) Cloud Computing
7 1 (0.50%) Amazon EC2
7 1 (0.50%) Amazon Kinesis
7 1 (0.50%) Datadog
7 1 (0.50%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (0.50%) IaaS
7 1 (0.50%) Microsoft 365
7 1 (0.50%) OpenShift
7 1 (0.50%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 16 (8.00%) Ethernet
2 8 (4.00%) RS-232
3 5 (2.50%) Network Security
4 4 (2.00%) 3GPP
4 4 (2.00%) SpaceWire
4 4 (2.00%) TCP/IP
5 3 (1.50%) Modbus
5 3 (1.50%) MVNO
5 3 (1.50%) RS-485
5 3 (1.50%) SMPP
5 3 (1.50%) SMS
6 2 (1.00%) Bluetooth
6 2 (1.00%) HTTP
6 2 (1.00%) SSL
6 2 (1.00%) Wireless
7 1 (0.50%) Firewall
7 1 (0.50%) Internet
7 1 (0.50%) LTE
7 1 (0.50%) UWB
7 1 (0.50%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (5.00%) Oracle Database
2 7 (3.50%) NonStop SQL
3 5 (2.50%) OLTP
4 3 (1.50%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (1.00%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.50%) Big Data
6 1 (0.50%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.50%) HPCC
6 1 (0.50%) Metadata
6 1 (0.50%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.50%) MySQL
6 1 (0.50%) Oracle Exadata
6 1 (0.50%) SQL Server
6 1 (0.50%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 22 (11.00%) Rational DOORS
2 17 (8.50%) Git
3 13 (6.50%) JIRA
4 11 (5.50%) Jenkins
5 9 (4.50%) ClearCase
5 9 (4.50%) GitLab
6 8 (4.00%) PVCS
7 7 (3.50%) Rational Rhapsody
8 5 (2.50%) Rational Team Concert
9 4 (2.00%) Artifactory
9 4 (2.00%) Gradle
9 4 (2.00%) Visual Studio
9 4 (2.00%) Xcode
10 3 (1.50%) KGDB
11 2 (1.00%) Bitbucket
11 2 (1.00%) Selenium
11 2 (1.00%) SonarQube
11 2 (1.00%) Subversion
12 1 (0.50%) Maven
12 1 (0.50%) NUnit
General
1 28 (14.00%) Electronics
1 28 (14.00%) Social Skills
2 22 (11.00%) Finance
3 21 (10.50%) Analytical Skills
4 19 (9.50%) Aerospace
5 12 (6.00%) Public Sector
6 10 (5.00%) Banking
7 9 (4.50%) Law
8 7 (3.50%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (3.50%) Military
8 7 (3.50%) Telecoms
9 4 (2.00%) Aviation
10 3 (1.50%) Financial Institution
10 3 (1.50%) Games
11 2 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (1.00%) Manufacturing
11 2 (1.00%) Marketing
11 2 (1.00%) Publishing
12 1 (0.50%) Health Technology
12 1 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 74 (37.00%) Software Engineer
2 46 (23.00%) Embedded Engineer
3 37 (18.50%) Developer
4 36 (18.00%) Embedded Software Engineer
5 25 (12.50%) C Software Engineer
6 21 (10.50%) C++ Software Engineer
7 19 (9.50%) C/C++ Software Engineer
8 17 (8.50%) Embedded C Engineer
8 17 (8.50%) Embedded C Software Engineer
9 13 (6.50%) Support Engineer
10 12 (6.00%) Product Engineer
10 12 (6.00%) Products Support Engineer
10 12 (6.00%) Software Support Engineer
11 11 (5.50%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
11 11 (5.50%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
11 11 (5.50%) Embedded C/C++ Software Engineer
11 11 (5.50%) Embedded C++ Engineer
11 11 (5.50%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
11 11 (5.50%) FPGA Engineer
11 11 (5.50%) Senior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (10.00%) Middleware
2 14 (7.00%) HTML
3 8 (4.00%) CSS
3 8 (4.00%) Flash
3 8 (4.00%) Node.js
4 7 (3.50%) Yocto
5 6 (3.00%) REST
6 5 (2.50%) React
7 4 (2.00%) .NET
7 4 (2.00%) AngularJS
7 4 (2.00%) RESTful
8 3 (1.50%) Electron
8 3 (1.50%) JNI
8 3 (1.50%) JSON
8 3 (1.50%) OpenEmbedded
8 3 (1.50%) XML
9 2 (1.00%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (1.00%) Kafka
9 2 (1.00%) OpenID
9 2 (1.00%) OpenMP
Miscellaneous
1 32 (16.00%) FPGA
2 28 (14.00%) Embedded Systems
3 18 (9.00%) VHDL
4 12 (6.00%) PCIe
5 7 (3.50%) Tandem
6 6 (3.00%) Verilog
7 5 (2.50%) EMV
7 5 (2.50%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (2.00%) Algorithms
8 4 (2.00%) CAN bus
8 4 (2.00%) CUDA
8 4 (2.00%) Device Driver
8 4 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
8 4 (2.00%) IoT
8 4 (2.00%) Mobile App
9 3 (1.50%) Analogue Electronics
9 3 (1.50%) Cloud Native
9 3 (1.50%) Data Centre
9 3 (1.50%) Hedge funds
9 3 (1.50%) Mobile Banking
Operating Systems
1 57 (28.50%) Linux
2 17 (8.50%) Windows
3 13 (6.50%) Ubuntu
4 8 (4.00%) FreeRTOS
5 6 (3.00%) Embedded Linux
6 4 (2.00%) Android
6 4 (2.00%) Apple iOS
6 4 (2.00%) Unix
7 3 (1.50%) CentOS
7 3 (1.50%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.50%) Debian
8 1 (0.50%) OpenVMS
8 1 (0.50%) Robot Operating System
8 1 (0.50%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 99 (49.50%) Software Engineering
2 34 (17.00%) Validation
3 28 (14.00%) CI/CD
4 21 (10.50%) Problem-Solving
5 18 (9.00%) Agile
6 17 (8.50%) Unit Testing
7 15 (7.50%) Containerisation
7 15 (7.50%) DevOps
7 15 (7.50%) Signal Processing
7 15 (7.50%) Software Testing
8 13 (6.50%) Mathematics
8 13 (6.50%) Systems Engineering
9 12 (6.00%) AI
9 12 (6.00%) UML
9 12 (6.00%) Workflow
10 11 (5.50%) Requirements Analysis
11 10 (5.00%) FPGA Design
12 9 (4.50%) Code Coverage
12 9 (4.50%) Collaborative Culture
12 9 (4.50%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 116 (58.00%) C++
2 55 (27.50%) Python
3 43 (21.50%) Java
4 26 (13.00%) Embedded C
4 26 (13.00%) JavaScript
5 23 (11.50%) Ada
6 22 (11.00%) Shell Script
6 22 (11.00%) SQL
7 16 (8.00%) Embedded C++
7 16 (8.00%) MATLAB
8 10 (5.00%) Bash
8 10 (5.00%) C#
9 8 (4.00%) Fortran
10 7 (3.50%) Rust
11 6 (3.00%) Perl
11 6 (3.00%) SystemVerilog
12 5 (2.50%) COBOL
12 5 (2.50%) Go
12 5 (2.50%) PL/SQL
13 4 (2.00%) VBA
Qualifications
1 64 (32.00%) Security Cleared
2 51 (25.50%) SC Cleared
3 21 (10.50%) Degree
4 8 (4.00%) DV Cleared
5 4 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.50%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (1.00%) ISTQB
7 2 (1.00%) Master's Degree
7 2 (1.00%) PhD
7 2 (1.00%) Postgraduate
8 1 (0.50%) CCNA
8 1 (0.50%) CCSAS
8 1 (0.50%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (0.50%) GPEN
8 1 (0.50%) GWAPT
8 1 (0.50%) GXPN
8 1 (0.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (0.50%) OSCE
8 1 (0.50%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (7.00%) Def Stans
2 11 (5.50%) MISRA
2 11 (5.50%) QA
3 10 (5.00%) DO-178B
4 9 (4.50%) IEC 61508
5 5 (2.50%) ISO 26262
5 5 (2.50%) ISO 8583
6 4 (2.00%) PCI DSS
7 3 (1.50%) IEC 62304
8 2 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (1.00%) MISRA C
8 2 (1.00%) Software Quality Assurance
9 1 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.50%) AUTOSAR
9 1 (0.50%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.50%) DICOM
9 1 (0.50%) DO-254
9 1 (0.50%) HL7
9 1 (0.50%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 1 (0.50%) MiFID
System Software
1 24 (12.00%) Firmware
2 17 (8.50%) Docker
3 10 (5.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (4.50%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (2.50%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.50%) KVM
Systems Management
1 12 (6.00%) Kubernetes
2 8 (4.00%) Terraform
3 3 (1.50%) Ansible
3 3 (1.50%) Prometheus
4 2 (1.00%) Grafana
4 2 (1.00%) Podman
5 1 (0.50%) Functional Safety
Vendors
1 17 (8.50%) Oracle
2 16 (8.00%) Red Hat
3 13 (6.50%) IBM
4 10 (5.00%) VMware
5 9 (4.50%) NetApp
6 8 (4.00%) ANSYS
6 8 (4.00%) MathWorks
7 7 (3.50%) HP
7 7 (3.50%) Intel
8 6 (3.00%) Microsoft
9 5 (2.50%) Microsemi
9 5 (2.50%) Xilinx
10 3 (1.50%) Atlassian
10 3 (1.50%) Dynatrace
10 3 (1.50%) Thales
11 2 (1.00%) Cisco
11 2 (1.00%) SAP
11 2 (1.00%) Siemens
12 1 (0.50%) QNX
12 1 (0.50%) Veritas