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 1 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 437 366 192
Rank change year-on-year -71 -174 +37
Contract jobs citing C 222 170 542
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.43% 0.55% 1.26%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.60% 1.64% 4.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 66 72 241
10th Percentile £316 £274 £388
25th Percentile £413 £366 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £474 £496 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.44% -7.29% -2.73%
75th Percentile £547 £638 £588
90th Percentile £644 £681 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £400 £538
% change year-on-year +18.25% -25.65% +2.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 33 169
10th Percentile £59.84 £54.40 £46.25
25th Percentile £65.00 £59.00 £56.65
Median hourly rate £67.50 £68.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.74% +4.62% +8.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.33 £83.50 £85.00
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 13,838 10,381 13,183
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.92% 33.75% 30.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,976 7,005 9,251
10th Percentile £358 £350 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £625 £650
90th Percentile £720 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 548 251 540
10th Percentile £34.09 £26.32 £31.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £34.62 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.65 £80.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.84% -4.62% +4.00%

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 1 July 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 1 July 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 1 July 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 -48 211 £481 -10.88% 476
UK excluding London -10 176 £473 +18.25% 410
Work from Home -26 69 £500 +5.26% 155
East of England +3 59 £613 +53.13% 91
South East -19 51 £494 -1.25% 124
London -96 38 £500 -18.37% 83
South West -14 36 £450 -21.74% 76
Midlands -43 20 £462 +515.33% 44
West Midlands -34 19 £450 - 19
North of England -76 5 £625 +66.67% 55
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 4
Scotland -17 2 - - 16
North East -31 2 £625 - 11
North West -41 2 - - 31
East Midlands -15 1 £525 +600.00% 25
Yorkshire -50 1 - - 13
Wales - 1 £460 - 6

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 5 (2.25%) Tuxedo
2 2 (0.90%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 2 (0.90%) Oracle Workflow
2 2 (0.90%) WebSphere
3 1 (0.45%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.45%) ColdFusion
3 1 (0.45%) Confluence
Applications
1 9 (4.05%) Simulink
2 4 (1.80%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 4 (1.80%) BASE24
2 3 (1.35%) Teamcenter
3 2 (0.90%) Oracle Retail
3 2 (0.90%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.45%) Dynamics NAV
4 1 (0.45%) Loan IQ
Cloud Services
1 15 (6.76%) AWS
2 13 (5.86%) Azure
3 8 (3.60%) GitHub
4 6 (2.70%) Azure DevOps
4 6 (2.70%) Power Platform
5 5 (2.25%) GitHub Copilot
6 4 (1.80%) GCP
6 4 (1.80%) SaaS
7 3 (1.35%) Amazon S3
7 3 (1.35%) GitHub Actions
8 2 (0.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 2 (0.90%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (0.90%) AWS IoT
8 2 (0.90%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (0.90%) Azure Monitor
8 2 (0.90%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (0.90%) OCI
8 2 (0.90%) Serverless
9 1 (0.45%) AWS CloudTrail
9 1 (0.45%) Google Drive
Communications & Networking
1 18 (8.11%) Ethernet
2 17 (7.66%) Software-Defined Radio
3 16 (7.21%) Wireless
4 5 (2.25%) TCP/IP
5 4 (1.80%) DNS
6 3 (1.35%) 3GPP
6 3 (1.35%) Internet
6 3 (1.35%) Modbus
6 3 (1.35%) MQTT
6 3 (1.35%) RS-232
6 3 (1.35%) RS-422
6 3 (1.35%) RS-485
6 3 (1.35%) SpaceWire
6 3 (1.35%) VXLAN
7 2 (0.90%) 5G
7 2 (0.90%) ATM
7 2 (0.90%) Bluetooth
7 2 (0.90%) Microwave Backhaul
7 2 (0.90%) VSAN
7 2 (0.90%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (4.50%) Ingres
2 7 (3.15%) SQL Server
3 6 (2.70%) Power BI
3 6 (2.70%) Relational Database
4 4 (1.80%) NonStop SQL
4 4 (1.80%) NoSQL
4 4 (1.80%) RDBMS
5 3 (1.35%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (1.35%) MongoDB
5 3 (1.35%) Oracle Database
5 3 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (1.35%) Tableau
6 2 (0.90%) SQLPlus
7 1 (0.45%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (0.45%) Big Data
7 1 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.45%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.45%) KDB
7 1 (0.45%) Redis
7 1 (0.45%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 21 (9.46%) Rational DOORS
2 19 (8.56%) Git
3 12 (5.41%) Rational Rhapsody
4 7 (3.15%) JIRA
5 6 (2.70%) GitLab
6 5 (2.25%) Oracle Forms
6 5 (2.25%) Visual Studio
7 4 (1.80%) Team Foundation Server
8 3 (1.35%) Jenkins
9 2 (0.90%) CMake
9 2 (0.90%) Subversion
10 1 (0.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.45%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.45%) ERwin
10 1 (0.45%) git-flow
10 1 (0.45%) GoogleTest
10 1 (0.45%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.45%) PetaLinux
10 1 (0.45%) Postman
10 1 (0.45%) PowerDesigner
General
1 48 (21.62%) Social Skills
2 29 (13.06%) Aerospace
3 22 (9.91%) Analytical Skills
3 22 (9.91%) Electronics
4 16 (7.21%) Law
5 14 (6.31%) Documentation Skills
6 12 (5.41%) Finance
6 12 (5.41%) Manufacturing
7 8 (3.60%) Banking
7 8 (3.60%) Public Sector
8 6 (2.70%) Automotive
9 4 (1.80%) Avionics
10 3 (1.35%) Games
11 2 (0.90%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.90%) Japanese Language
11 2 (0.90%) Retail
12 1 (0.45%) Korean Language
12 1 (0.45%) Military
12 1 (0.45%) Polish Language
12 1 (0.45%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 82 (36.94%) Software Engineer
2 59 (26.58%) Embedded Engineer
3 42 (18.92%) Embedded Software Engineer
4 33 (14.86%) Developer
5 22 (9.91%) Senior
6 19 (8.56%) C++ Software Engineer
7 17 (7.66%) C Software Engineer
7 17 (7.66%) C/C++ Software Engineer
8 12 (5.41%) Software Developer
9 10 (4.50%) Lead
10 9 (4.05%) Test Leader
11 8 (3.60%) DSP Engineer
11 8 (3.60%) DSP Software Engineer
11 8 (3.60%) Senior Developer
12 7 (3.15%) Algorithm Engineer
13 6 (2.70%) C Developer
13 6 (2.70%) FPGA Engineer
13 6 (2.70%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
13 6 (2.70%) Senior Software Engineer
13 6 (2.70%) Validation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (5.86%) Yocto
2 11 (4.95%) .NET
3 6 (2.70%) WinForms
4 5 (2.25%) JSON
4 5 (2.25%) REST
5 4 (1.80%) LDAP
5 4 (1.80%) XML
6 3 (1.35%) ADO
6 3 (1.35%) COM
6 3 (1.35%) Itk
6 3 (1.35%) Kafka
6 3 (1.35%) Middleware
6 3 (1.35%) ODBC
6 3 (1.35%) Qt
7 2 (0.90%) ARM Templates
7 2 (0.90%) FastAPI
7 2 (0.90%) HTML
7 2 (0.90%) HTML5
7 2 (0.90%) QML
7 2 (0.90%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 31 (13.96%) Embedded Systems
1 31 (13.96%) FPGA
2 15 (6.76%) PCIe
3 12 (5.41%) RISC-V
3 12 (5.41%) VHDL
4 10 (4.50%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (4.05%) Algorithms
5 9 (4.05%) Verilog
6 8 (3.60%) Device Driver
7 6 (2.70%) MicroBlaze
8 4 (1.80%) IoT
8 4 (1.80%) Tandem
9 3 (1.35%) ARM Cortex
9 3 (1.35%) Cloud Native
9 3 (1.35%) Cyber Threat
9 3 (1.35%) Data Centre
9 3 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
9 3 (1.35%) EMV
9 3 (1.35%) Low-Code
10 2 (0.90%) ASIC
Operating Systems
1 62 (27.93%) Linux
2 18 (8.11%) Embedded Linux
3 14 (6.31%) Windows
4 12 (5.41%) FreeRTOS
5 7 (3.15%) Unix
6 4 (1.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.45%) Android
7 1 (0.45%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.45%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (52.70%) Software Engineering
2 44 (19.82%) Problem-Solving
3 36 (16.22%) Agile
3 36 (16.22%) Validation
4 32 (14.41%) Test Automation
5 24 (10.81%) CI/CD
6 23 (10.36%) Workflow
7 22 (9.91%) Signal Processing
8 20 (9.01%) Digital Signal Processing
8 20 (9.01%) Embedded Software Development
9 19 (8.56%) DevOps
10 17 (7.66%) Data Management
10 17 (7.66%) Workflow Management
11 16 (7.21%) Software Testing
12 15 (6.76%) Migration
12 15 (6.76%) Verification and Validation
13 13 (5.86%) Technical Leadership
13 13 (5.86%) UML
14 12 (5.41%) TDD
15 11 (4.95%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 111 (50.00%) C++
2 52 (23.42%) Python
3 38 (17.12%) SQL
4 35 (15.77%) Ada
5 26 (11.71%) Embedded C
6 19 (8.56%) MATLAB
6 19 (8.56%) PL/SQL
7 16 (7.21%) Java
8 14 (6.31%) ProC
9 11 (4.95%) C#
10 10 (4.50%) Bash
11 8 (3.60%) Embedded C++
12 6 (2.70%) Shell Script
12 6 (2.70%) SystemVerilog
12 6 (2.70%) VB
13 5 (2.25%) VB6
14 4 (1.80%) Rust
15 3 (1.35%) COBOL
15 3 (1.35%) JavaScript
16 2 (0.90%) Perl
Qualifications
1 66 (29.73%) Security Cleared
2 48 (21.62%) SC Cleared
3 16 (7.21%) Degree
4 10 (4.50%) DV Cleared
5 8 (3.60%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (0.45%) Azure Certification
6 1 (0.45%) CCNA
6 1 (0.45%) Cisco Certification
6 1 (0.45%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.45%) ISTQB
6 1 (0.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
6 1 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 1 (0.45%) Master's Degree
6 1 (0.45%) PhD
6 1 (0.45%) Six Sigma Black Belt
6 1 (0.45%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (8.56%) Def Stans
2 16 (7.21%) QA
3 10 (4.50%) MISRA
4 8 (3.60%) DO-178B
5 3 (1.35%) ISO 8583
5 3 (1.35%) MIL-STD-1553
5 3 (1.35%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.90%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.90%) IEC 61508
6 2 (0.90%) ISO 15022
6 2 (0.90%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.90%) ISO 26262
7 1 (0.45%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.45%) DO-254
7 1 (0.45%) IFRS
7 1 (0.45%) IFRS 9
7 1 (0.45%) ISO 14001
7 1 (0.45%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.45%) MISRA C
System Software
1 20 (9.01%) Firmware
2 10 (4.50%) Docker
3 6 (2.70%) Embedded Firmware
4 5 (2.25%) Active Directory
5 4 (1.80%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (1.80%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.90%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.90%) vCloud
6 2 (0.90%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.90%) vSphere
7 1 (0.45%) FreeRADIUS
7 1 (0.45%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.45%) Squid
Systems Management
1 11 (4.95%) Terraform
2 9 (4.05%) Kubernetes
3 5 (2.25%) Ansible
4 1 (0.45%) Grafana
4 1 (0.45%) HP ALM
4 1 (0.45%) Nagios
4 1 (0.45%) Packer
4 1 (0.45%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.45%) Puppet
Vendors
1 24 (10.81%) Oracle
2 10 (4.50%) IBM
3 9 (4.05%) Xilinx
4 8 (3.60%) Intel
5 7 (3.15%) MathWorks
6 6 (2.70%) Cisco
7 5 (2.25%) HP
7 5 (2.25%) Microsemi
7 5 (2.25%) Microsoft
8 4 (1.80%) Lauterbach
8 4 (1.80%) SAP
8 4 (1.80%) VMware
9 3 (1.35%) Actian
9 3 (1.35%) Google
10 2 (0.90%) Dell
10 2 (0.90%) Perforce
10 2 (0.90%) QNX
10 2 (0.90%) Sitecore
11 1 (0.45%) Citrix
11 1 (0.45%) EMC