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 15 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 410 340 189
Rank change year-on-year -70 -151 +62
Contract jobs citing C 219 182 542
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 0.62% 1.24%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.71% 1.82% 4.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 66 80 227
10th Percentile £345 £274 £325
25th Percentile £413 £398 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -6.54% -6.96%
75th Percentile £550 £625 £588
90th Percentile £632 £676 £706
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £464 £538
% change year-on-year +7.82% -13.80% +7.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 39 188
10th Percentile £60.00 £54.40 £46.25
25th Percentile £65.00 £61.00 £59.75
Median hourly rate £67.50 £72.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.90% +11.54% +13.04%
75th Percentile £70.00 £85.00 £70.00
90th Percentile - £91.00 £88.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £72.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -6.90% +11.54% -

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 12,822 9,993 12,735
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.96% 34.11% 29.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,525 6,745 9,051
10th Percentile £352 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £418 £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 £713 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £488
% change year-on-year -0.42% -2.15% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 550 242 473
10th Percentile £41.94 £22.55 £30.75
25th Percentile £55.00 £35.00 £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 £68.38 £68.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £77.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% -

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 15 April 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 15 April 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 15 April 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 -71 209 £500 - 388
UK excluding London -21 167 £500 +7.82% 393
Work from Home -8 73 £468 -6.50% 114
East of England +2 70 £525 +27.27% 79
South West 0 49 £463 -21.61% 61
London -74 47 £461 -13.02% 42
South East -33 29 £500 - 119
North of England -65 7 £613 - 43
Midlands -62 5 £525 +213.43% 54
Northern Ireland - 5 £425 - 4
West Midlands - 4 £488 - 25
North West - 3 £450 - 20
Scotland -5 2 - - 29
North East -18 2 £625 - 2
Yorkshire -53 2 £613 - 21
Wales -11 1 £460 -12.38% 12
East Midlands -34 1 £525 +213.43% 29

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 (1.83%) Confluence
2 2 (0.91%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 2 (0.91%) Oracle Workflow
3 1 (0.46%) Apache
3 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.46%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (4.11%) Simulink
2 4 (1.83%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (2.28%) BASE24
1 5 (2.28%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (1.37%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.46%) Actimize
3 1 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.46%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.46%) Loan IQ
3 1 (0.46%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 13 (5.94%) AWS
1 13 (5.94%) Azure
2 9 (4.11%) GitHub
3 6 (2.74%) Azure DevOps
3 6 (2.74%) Power Platform
4 4 (1.83%) GCP
5 3 (1.37%) Amazon S3
5 3 (1.37%) AWS CloudFormation
5 3 (1.37%) Dynamics 365
6 2 (0.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 2 (0.91%) Amazon EKS
6 2 (0.91%) AWS IoT
6 2 (0.91%) Azure Monitor
6 2 (0.91%) GitHub Actions
6 2 (0.91%) GitHub Copilot
6 2 (0.91%) IaaS
7 1 (0.46%) AWS CloudTrail
7 1 (0.46%) Firebase
7 1 (0.46%) Google Drive
7 1 (0.46%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 24 (10.96%) Ethernet
2 11 (5.02%) Wireless
3 9 (4.11%) Software-Defined Radio
4 7 (3.20%) TCP/IP
5 6 (2.74%) 3GPP
5 6 (2.74%) Modbus
5 6 (2.74%) RS-232
5 6 (2.74%) RS-485
6 4 (1.83%) Network Security
7 3 (1.37%) 5G NR
7 3 (1.37%) Bluetooth
7 3 (1.37%) DNS
7 3 (1.37%) LTE
7 3 (1.37%) MQTT
7 3 (1.37%) MVNO
7 3 (1.37%) RS-422
7 3 (1.37%) SMPP
7 3 (1.37%) SMS
7 3 (1.37%) SpaceWire
7 3 (1.37%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (2.74%) NonStop SQL
2 5 (2.28%) OLTP
2 5 (2.28%) Power BI
3 4 (1.83%) SQL Server
4 3 (1.37%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (1.37%) Tableau
5 2 (0.91%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.91%) Metadata
5 2 (0.91%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.91%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.91%) Oracle Database
6 1 (0.46%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.46%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.46%) Apache Hudi
6 1 (0.46%) Apache Iceberg
6 1 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (0.46%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.46%) MySQL
6 1 (0.46%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 29 (13.24%) Rational DOORS
2 22 (10.05%) Git
3 17 (7.76%) JIRA
3 17 (7.76%) Rational Rhapsody
4 8 (3.65%) GitLab
4 8 (3.65%) PVCS
5 7 (3.20%) Visual Studio
6 3 (1.37%) Subversion
7 2 (0.91%) Jenkins
7 2 (0.91%) JMeter
7 2 (0.91%) Selenium
8 1 (0.46%) Appium
8 1 (0.46%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.46%) CMake
8 1 (0.46%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.46%) GoogleTest
8 1 (0.46%) MSTest
8 1 (0.46%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.46%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.46%) Xcode
General
1 42 (19.18%) Social Skills
2 30 (13.70%) Electronics
3 25 (11.42%) Aerospace
4 19 (8.68%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (7.76%) Finance
6 13 (5.94%) Documentation Skills
7 12 (5.48%) Law
8 10 (4.57%) Manufacturing
9 7 (3.20%) Banking
10 6 (2.74%) Public Sector
11 4 (1.83%) Automotive
11 4 (1.83%) Avionics
11 4 (1.83%) Games
12 3 (1.37%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.91%) Japanese Language
13 2 (0.91%) Military
13 2 (0.91%) Publishing
14 1 (0.46%) Health Technology
14 1 (0.46%) Korean Language
14 1 (0.46%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 87 (39.73%) Software Engineer
2 74 (33.79%) Embedded Engineer
3 51 (23.29%) Embedded Software Engineer
4 34 (15.53%) Developer
5 27 (12.33%) C Software Engineer
6 23 (10.50%) C++ Software Engineer
7 21 (9.59%) C/C++ Software Engineer
8 19 (8.68%) Embedded C Engineer
8 19 (8.68%) Embedded C Software Engineer
9 13 (5.94%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
9 13 (5.94%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
9 13 (5.94%) Embedded C/C++ Software Engineer
9 13 (5.94%) Embedded C++ Engineer
9 13 (5.94%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
9 13 (5.94%) Senior
10 12 (5.48%) Lead
11 10 (4.57%) Software Developer
11 10 (4.57%) Validation Engineer
12 9 (4.11%) FPGA Engineer
12 9 (4.11%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (5.02%) Yocto
2 8 (3.65%) Middleware
3 7 (3.20%) .NET
4 6 (2.74%) WinForms
5 4 (1.83%) HTML
6 3 (1.37%) ARM Templates
6 3 (1.37%) Itk
6 3 (1.37%) Kafka
6 3 (1.37%) REST
7 2 (0.91%) Flash
7 2 (0.91%) HTML5
7 2 (0.91%) JSON
7 2 (0.91%) Qt
8 1 (0.46%) GStreamer
8 1 (0.46%) J2EE
8 1 (0.46%) NumPy
8 1 (0.46%) SciPy
8 1 (0.46%) WCF
8 1 (0.46%) Web Services
8 1 (0.46%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 38 (17.35%) Embedded Systems
2 35 (15.98%) FPGA
3 20 (9.13%) PCIe
4 14 (6.39%) VHDL
5 8 (3.65%) Algorithms
5 8 (3.65%) Verilog
6 7 (3.20%) IoT
7 6 (2.74%) Device Driver
7 6 (2.74%) Tandem
8 5 (2.28%) Data Centre
8 5 (2.28%) EMV
9 4 (1.83%) Cloud Native
9 4 (1.83%) MicroBlaze
9 4 (1.83%) RISC-V
10 3 (1.37%) Cyber Threat
10 3 (1.37%) Java Card
10 3 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
11 2 (0.91%) Data Structures
11 2 (0.91%) Legacy Code
11 2 (0.91%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 51 (23.29%) Linux
2 17 (7.76%) Embedded Linux
3 13 (5.94%) FreeRTOS
4 11 (5.02%) Windows
5 3 (1.37%) Unix
6 2 (0.91%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.46%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.46%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 119 (54.34%) Software Engineering
2 42 (19.18%) Validation
3 38 (17.35%) Problem-Solving
4 33 (15.07%) Test Automation
5 30 (13.70%) CI/CD
6 28 (12.79%) Workflow
7 19 (8.68%) DevOps
7 19 (8.68%) Signal Processing
8 17 (7.76%) Embedded Software Development
8 17 (7.76%) Unit Testing
9 16 (7.31%) Agile
9 16 (7.31%) Requirements Analysis
9 16 (7.31%) Software Testing
9 16 (7.31%) Verification and Validation
9 16 (7.31%) Workflow Management
10 15 (6.85%) Technical Leadership
11 14 (6.39%) Digital Signal Processing
12 13 (5.94%) UML
13 12 (5.48%) Test Strategy
14 11 (5.02%) Data Acquisition
Programming Languages
1 117 (53.42%) C++
2 52 (23.74%) Python
3 41 (18.72%) Embedded C
4 27 (12.33%) Ada
5 23 (10.50%) SQL
6 21 (9.59%) Embedded C++
7 18 (8.22%) Java
7 18 (8.22%) MATLAB
8 10 (4.57%) Bash
9 7 (3.20%) C#
9 7 (3.20%) PL/SQL
9 7 (3.20%) SystemVerilog
10 6 (2.74%) JavaScript
10 6 (2.74%) Rust
10 6 (2.74%) Shell Script
11 5 (2.28%) COBOL
12 4 (1.83%) ProC
13 2 (0.91%) Perl
13 2 (0.91%) PowerShell
13 2 (0.91%) VB
Qualifications
1 59 (26.94%) Security Cleared
2 45 (20.55%) SC Cleared
3 16 (7.31%) Degree
4 8 (3.65%) BPSS Clearance
4 8 (3.65%) DV Cleared
5 3 (1.37%) ISTQB
6 2 (0.91%) CCNA
6 2 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
6 2 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (0.91%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 1 (0.46%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.46%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
7 1 (0.46%) Six Sigma Black Belt
7 1 (0.46%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (10.05%) Def Stans
2 12 (5.48%) QA
3 7 (3.20%) DO-178B
3 7 (3.20%) MISRA
4 6 (2.74%) IEC 61508
5 5 (2.28%) ISO 8583
6 4 (1.83%) PCI DSS
7 3 (1.37%) Data Quality
7 3 (1.37%) MIL-STD-1553
8 2 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.46%) DICOM
9 1 (0.46%) DO-254
9 1 (0.46%) HL7
9 1 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 1 (0.46%) IFRS
9 1 (0.46%) IFRS 9
9 1 (0.46%) ISO 14001
9 1 (0.46%) ISO 9001
9 1 (0.46%) MiFID
9 1 (0.46%) MISRA C
System Software
1 20 (9.13%) Firmware
2 13 (5.94%) Docker
3 11 (5.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (4.57%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (2.74%) Embedded Firmware
6 2 (0.91%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.91%) vCloud
6 2 (0.91%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.91%) vSphere
7 1 (0.46%) FreeRADIUS
Systems Management
1 9 (4.11%) Kubernetes
2 8 (3.65%) Terraform
3 3 (1.37%) Ansible
4 2 (0.91%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.46%) Grafana
5 1 (0.46%) HP ALM
5 1 (0.46%) Nagios
Vendors
1 15 (6.85%) IBM
2 11 (5.02%) VMware
3 9 (4.11%) Xilinx
4 8 (3.65%) ANSYS
4 8 (3.65%) Cisco
4 8 (3.65%) Intel
4 8 (3.65%) Oracle
5 7 (3.20%) HP
5 7 (3.20%) Microsoft
6 6 (2.74%) MathWorks
7 5 (2.28%) Microsemi
8 4 (1.83%) Lauterbach
8 4 (1.83%) SAP
9 3 (1.37%) Google
9 3 (1.37%) Thales
10 2 (0.91%) Dell
10 2 (0.91%) Perforce
11 1 (0.46%) Citrix
11 1 (0.46%) EMC
11 1 (0.46%) Veritas