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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 417 336 185
Rank change year-on-year -81 -151 +66
Contract jobs citing C 220 178 546
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 0.61% 1.24%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.70% 1.79% 4.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 69 78 232
10th Percentile £337 £269 £325
25th Percentile £413 £393 £447
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -6.54% -10.83%
75th Percentile £550 £625 £588
90th Percentile £628 £703 £706
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £464 £538
% change year-on-year +6.47% -13.80% +7.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 38 187
10th Percentile £60.00 £56.75 £46.25
25th Percentile £65.00 £62.00 £57.50
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 £70.38 £91.50 £86.50
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 12,924 9,956 12,842
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 28.18% 34.08% 29.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,607 6,723 9,121
10th Percentile £354 £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 £476 £476 £489
% change year-on-year - -2.66% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 545 240 479
10th Percentile £41.94 £22.50 £31.13
25th Percentile £55.00 £35.00 £46.22
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £67.38
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £61.60
% change year-on-year +1.56% +3.90% -1.44%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -45 210 £500 - 451
UK excluding London -38 167 £494 +6.47% 448
Work from Home -16 73 £468 -6.50% 117
East of England -3 70 £525 +27.27% 88
South West -1 49 £450 -23.73% 80
London -82 48 £461 -13.02% 43
South East -34 28 £500 - 129
North of England -71 8 £531 - 58
Northern Ireland +2 5 £425 - 7
Midlands -64 5 £525 +213.43% 66
West Midlands - 4 £488 - 33
Yorkshire -53 3 £531 - 29
North West - 3 £450 - 20
Scotland -2 2 - - 22
North East - 2 £625 - 9
Wales -13 1 £460 -12.38% 12
East Midlands -37 1 £525 +213.43% 33

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 (1.82%) Confluence
2 2 (0.91%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 2 (0.91%) Oracle Workflow
3 1 (0.45%) Apache
3 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.45%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (4.09%) Simulink
2 4 (1.82%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (2.27%) BASE24
1 5 (2.27%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (1.36%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.45%) Actimize
3 1 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.45%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.45%) Loan IQ
3 1 (0.45%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 15 (6.82%) AWS
1 15 (6.82%) Azure
2 9 (4.09%) GitHub
3 6 (2.73%) Azure DevOps
3 6 (2.73%) Power Platform
4 5 (2.27%) GCP
5 3 (1.36%) Amazon S3
5 3 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
5 3 (1.36%) 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 (0.45%) Amazon Kinesis
7 1 (0.45%) AWS CloudTrail
7 1 (0.45%) Google Drive
7 1 (0.45%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 23 (10.45%) Ethernet
2 10 (4.55%) Wireless
3 8 (3.64%) Software-Defined Radio
4 7 (3.18%) TCP/IP
5 6 (2.73%) 3GPP
5 6 (2.73%) Modbus
5 6 (2.73%) RS-232
5 6 (2.73%) RS-485
6 4 (1.82%) Network Security
7 3 (1.36%) 5G
7 3 (1.36%) 5G NR
7 3 (1.36%) DNS
7 3 (1.36%) LTE
7 3 (1.36%) MQTT
7 3 (1.36%) MVNO
7 3 (1.36%) RS-422
7 3 (1.36%) SMPP
7 3 (1.36%) SMS
7 3 (1.36%) SpaceWire
7 3 (1.36%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (2.73%) NonStop SQL
2 5 (2.27%) OLTP
2 5 (2.27%) Power BI
3 4 (1.82%) SQL Server
4 3 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (1.36%) 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 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.45%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.45%) Apache Hudi
6 1 (0.45%) Apache Iceberg
6 1 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (0.45%) Hadoop
6 1 (0.45%) Oracle Exadata
6 1 (0.45%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 1 (0.45%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 28 (12.73%) Rational DOORS
2 22 (10.00%) Git
3 17 (7.73%) JIRA
3 17 (7.73%) Rational Rhapsody
4 8 (3.64%) GitLab
4 8 (3.64%) PVCS
5 7 (3.18%) Visual Studio
6 3 (1.36%) Subversion
7 2 (0.91%) Jenkins
7 2 (0.91%) JMeter
7 2 (0.91%) Selenium
8 1 (0.45%) Appium
8 1 (0.45%) Crashlytics
8 1 (0.45%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.45%) ER Studio
8 1 (0.45%) fastlane
8 1 (0.45%) MSTest
8 1 (0.45%) Postman
8 1 (0.45%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.45%) SonarQube
General
1 41 (18.64%) Social Skills
2 31 (14.09%) Electronics
3 26 (11.82%) Aerospace
4 19 (8.64%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (8.18%) Finance
6 13 (5.91%) Documentation Skills
7 11 (5.00%) Law
8 10 (4.55%) Manufacturing
9 7 (3.18%) Banking
9 7 (3.18%) Public Sector
10 4 (1.82%) Automotive
10 4 (1.82%) Avionics
10 4 (1.82%) Games
11 3 (1.36%) Military
11 3 (1.36%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.91%) Japanese Language
12 2 (0.91%) Publishing
13 1 (0.45%) Korean Language
13 1 (0.45%) Local Government
13 1 (0.45%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 84 (38.18%) Software Engineer
2 71 (32.27%) Embedded Engineer
3 48 (21.82%) Embedded Software Engineer
4 35 (15.91%) Developer
5 27 (12.27%) C Software Engineer
6 23 (10.45%) C++ Software Engineer
7 21 (9.55%) C/C++ Software Engineer
8 19 (8.64%) Embedded C Engineer
8 19 (8.64%) Embedded C Software Engineer
9 13 (5.91%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
9 13 (5.91%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
9 13 (5.91%) Embedded C/C++ Software Engineer
9 13 (5.91%) Embedded C++ Engineer
9 13 (5.91%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
9 13 (5.91%) Senior
10 12 (5.45%) Lead
11 10 (4.55%) Software Developer
11 10 (4.55%) Validation Engineer
12 9 (4.09%) FPGA Engineer
12 9 (4.09%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (5.00%) Yocto
2 9 (4.09%) Middleware
3 7 (3.18%) .NET
4 6 (2.73%) WinForms
5 5 (2.27%) HTML
6 3 (1.36%) ARM Templates
6 3 (1.36%) Flash
6 3 (1.36%) Itk
6 3 (1.36%) Kafka
6 3 (1.36%) REST
7 2 (0.91%) HTML5
7 2 (0.91%) JSON
7 2 (0.91%) Qt
8 1 (0.45%) CSS
8 1 (0.45%) GStreamer
8 1 (0.45%) J2EE
8 1 (0.45%) SciPy
8 1 (0.45%) WCF
8 1 (0.45%) Web Services
8 1 (0.45%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 39 (17.73%) Embedded Systems
2 35 (15.91%) FPGA
3 19 (8.64%) PCIe
4 15 (6.82%) VHDL
5 8 (3.64%) Algorithms
5 8 (3.64%) Verilog
6 7 (3.18%) IoT
7 6 (2.73%) Device Driver
7 6 (2.73%) Tandem
8 5 (2.27%) Data Centre
8 5 (2.27%) EMV
9 4 (1.82%) Cloud Native
9 4 (1.82%) MicroBlaze
9 4 (1.82%) RISC-V
10 3 (1.36%) CUDA
10 3 (1.36%) Cyber Threat
10 3 (1.36%) Java Card
10 3 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
11 2 (0.91%) CAN bus
11 2 (0.91%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 52 (23.64%) Linux
2 17 (7.73%) Embedded Linux
3 12 (5.45%) FreeRTOS
4 11 (5.00%) Windows
5 3 (1.36%) Ubuntu
5 3 (1.36%) Unix
6 1 (0.45%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.45%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (53.64%) Software Engineering
2 41 (18.64%) Validation
3 38 (17.27%) Problem-Solving
4 33 (15.00%) Test Automation
5 31 (14.09%) CI/CD
6 28 (12.73%) Workflow
7 20 (9.09%) DevOps
8 19 (8.64%) Signal Processing
9 17 (7.73%) Agile
9 17 (7.73%) Embedded Software Development
9 17 (7.73%) Software Testing
9 17 (7.73%) Unit Testing
10 16 (7.27%) Requirements Analysis
10 16 (7.27%) Verification and Validation
10 16 (7.27%) Workflow Management
11 15 (6.82%) Technical Leadership
12 14 (6.36%) Digital Signal Processing
13 12 (5.45%) TDD
13 12 (5.45%) Test Strategy
14 11 (5.00%) AI
Programming Languages
1 120 (54.55%) C++
2 54 (24.55%) Python
3 38 (17.27%) Embedded C
4 27 (12.27%) Ada
5 23 (10.45%) SQL
6 21 (9.55%) Embedded C++
7 20 (9.09%) Java
8 18 (8.18%) MATLAB
9 10 (4.55%) Bash
10 9 (4.09%) JavaScript
11 7 (3.18%) C#
11 7 (3.18%) PL/SQL
11 7 (3.18%) Rust
11 7 (3.18%) Shell Script
11 7 (3.18%) SystemVerilog
12 5 (2.27%) COBOL
13 4 (1.82%) ProC
14 2 (0.91%) Go
14 2 (0.91%) PowerShell
14 2 (0.91%) VB
Qualifications
1 60 (27.27%) Security Cleared
2 46 (20.91%) SC Cleared
3 17 (7.73%) Degree
4 8 (3.64%) BPSS Clearance
4 8 (3.64%) DV Cleared
5 3 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (1.36%) ISTQB
6 2 (0.91%) CCNA
6 2 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
6 2 (0.91%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 1 (0.45%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
7 1 (0.45%) Six Sigma Black Belt
7 1 (0.45%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (10.00%) Def Stans
2 12 (5.45%) QA
3 7 (3.18%) DO-178B
3 7 (3.18%) MISRA
4 6 (2.73%) IEC 61508
5 5 (2.27%) ISO 8583
6 4 (1.82%) PCI DSS
7 3 (1.36%) Data Quality
7 3 (1.36%) MIL-STD-1553
8 2 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.45%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.45%) DO-254
9 1 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 1 (0.45%) IFRS
9 1 (0.45%) IFRS 9
9 1 (0.45%) ISO 14001
9 1 (0.45%) ISO 9001
9 1 (0.45%) MiFID
9 1 (0.45%) MISRA C
9 1 (0.45%) NIST
System Software
1 20 (9.09%) Firmware
2 15 (6.82%) Docker
3 11 (5.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (4.55%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (2.73%) 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 (0.45%) FreeRADIUS
Systems Management
1 11 (5.00%) Kubernetes
2 9 (4.09%) Terraform
3 3 (1.36%) Ansible
4 2 (0.91%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.45%) Grafana
5 1 (0.45%) HP ALM
5 1 (0.45%) Nagios
Vendors
1 15 (6.82%) IBM
2 11 (5.00%) VMware
3 9 (4.09%) Xilinx
4 8 (3.64%) ANSYS
4 8 (3.64%) Cisco
4 8 (3.64%) Intel
4 8 (3.64%) Oracle
5 7 (3.18%) HP
5 7 (3.18%) Microsoft
6 6 (2.73%) MathWorks
7 5 (2.27%) Microsemi
8 4 (1.82%) Lauterbach
8 4 (1.82%) SAP
9 3 (1.36%) Google
9 3 (1.36%) Thales
10 2 (0.91%) Dell
10 2 (0.91%) Perforce
10 2 (0.91%) Red Hat
11 1 (0.45%) Bloomberg
11 1 (0.45%) Salesforce