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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 391 279 189
Rank change year-on-year -112 -90 +86
Contract jobs citing C 201 279 529
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.54% 0.88% 1.24%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.76% 2.66% 4.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 61 98 211
10th Percentile £68 £400 £325
25th Percentile £380 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £539 £535
Median % change year-on-year -7.19% +0.70% -10.83%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £638
90th Percentile £650 £810 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £535
% change year-on-year -5.00% -6.54% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 45 162
10th Percentile £58.13 £53.10 £50.13
25th Percentile £65.00 £61.25 £60.69
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 11,445 10,489 12,927
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.78% 32.92% 30.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,608 6,665 9,128
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% -3.08%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.79% -2.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 396 241 422
10th Percentile £37.01 £21.25 £35.05
25th Percentile £52.50 £35.75 £47.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - -0.79%
75th Percentile £68.88 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +3.59% -3.46% -

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -105 182 £500 -7.19% 534
UK excluding London -55 155 £475 -5.00% 540
East of England -8 57 £500 -6.98% 98
South West -12 57 £475 -20.17% 104
Work from Home -41 54 £438 -19.17% 204
London -59 37 £527 -12.25% 54
Scotland +13 14 £65 - 32
North of England -47 12 £463 -15.91% 66
North West -13 9 £463 +15.63% 28
South East -48 9 £500 +6.10% 175
Northern Ireland 0 3 £425 - 11
Midlands -47 3 £575 +121.15% 57
Yorkshire -55 3 £531 -24.11% 27
East Midlands -25 2 - - 41
West Midlands -41 1 £575 - 15

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 (1.99%) 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 13 (6.47%) Simulink
2 8 (3.98%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (2.49%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (2.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (2.49%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 4 (1.99%) BASE24
1 4 (1.99%) 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 (8.46%) AWS
1 17 (8.46%) GitHub
2 16 (7.96%) Azure
3 8 (3.98%) GCP
4 4 (1.99%) Amazon EKS
4 4 (1.99%) Amazon S3
5 3 (1.49%) Amazon ECS
5 3 (1.49%) AWS CloudFormation
5 3 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
5 3 (1.49%) Serverless
6 2 (1.00%) Azure DevOps
6 2 (1.00%) Cloud Computing
7 1 (0.50%) Amazon EC2
7 1 (0.50%) Amazon GuardDuty
7 1 (0.50%) ChatGPT
7 1 (0.50%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (0.50%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (0.50%) GitHub Copilot
7 1 (0.50%) Microsoft 365
7 1 (0.50%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 15 (7.46%) Ethernet
2 8 (3.98%) RS-232
3 5 (2.49%) Network Security
4 4 (1.99%) 3GPP
4 4 (1.99%) SpaceWire
4 4 (1.99%) TCP/IP
5 3 (1.49%) Modbus
5 3 (1.49%) MVNO
5 3 (1.49%) RS-485
5 3 (1.49%) SMPP
5 3 (1.49%) 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%) UWB
7 1 (0.50%) Wi-Fi
7 1 (0.50%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (4.98%) Oracle Database
2 6 (2.99%) NonStop SQL
3 5 (2.49%) OLTP
4 3 (1.49%) 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 (10.95%) Rational DOORS
2 17 (8.46%) Git
3 13 (6.47%) JIRA
4 11 (5.47%) Jenkins
5 9 (4.48%) ClearCase
5 9 (4.48%) GitLab
6 8 (3.98%) PVCS
7 7 (3.48%) Rational Rhapsody
8 5 (2.49%) Rational Team Concert
9 4 (1.99%) Artifactory
9 4 (1.99%) Gradle
9 4 (1.99%) Visual Studio
9 4 (1.99%) Xcode
10 3 (1.49%) 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%) CircleCI
12 1 (0.50%) Crashlytics
General
1 29 (14.43%) Social Skills
2 28 (13.93%) Electronics
3 22 (10.95%) Finance
4 20 (9.95%) Aerospace
4 20 (9.95%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (5.97%) Public Sector
6 10 (4.98%) Law
7 9 (4.48%) Banking
8 7 (3.48%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (3.48%) Military
8 7 (3.48%) Telecoms
9 4 (1.99%) Aviation
10 3 (1.49%) Financial Institution
10 3 (1.49%) 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%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.50%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 75 (37.31%) Software Engineer
2 45 (22.39%) Embedded Engineer
3 36 (17.91%) Developer
3 36 (17.91%) Embedded Software Engineer
4 25 (12.44%) C Software Engineer
5 21 (10.45%) C++ Software Engineer
6 19 (9.45%) C/C++ Software Engineer
7 17 (8.46%) Embedded C Engineer
7 17 (8.46%) Embedded C Software Engineer
8 13 (6.47%) Support Engineer
9 12 (5.97%) Product Engineer
9 12 (5.97%) Products Support Engineer
9 12 (5.97%) Software Support Engineer
10 11 (5.47%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
10 11 (5.47%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
10 11 (5.47%) Embedded C/C++ Software Engineer
10 11 (5.47%) Embedded C++ Engineer
10 11 (5.47%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
10 11 (5.47%) FPGA Engineer
10 11 (5.47%) Senior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (9.95%) Middleware
2 14 (6.97%) HTML
3 8 (3.98%) CSS
3 8 (3.98%) Flash
3 8 (3.98%) Node.js
4 7 (3.48%) Yocto
5 6 (2.99%) REST
6 5 (2.49%) React
7 4 (1.99%) .NET
7 4 (1.99%) AngularJS
7 4 (1.99%) RESTful
8 3 (1.49%) Electron
8 3 (1.49%) JNI
8 3 (1.49%) JSON
8 3 (1.49%) OpenEmbedded
8 3 (1.49%) XML
9 2 (1.00%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (1.00%) Kafka
9 2 (1.00%) OpenID
9 2 (1.00%) OpenMP
Miscellaneous
1 31 (15.42%) FPGA
2 28 (13.93%) Embedded Systems
3 18 (8.96%) VHDL
4 11 (5.47%) PCIe
5 6 (2.99%) Self-Motivation
5 6 (2.99%) Tandem
5 6 (2.99%) Verilog
6 4 (1.99%) Algorithms
6 4 (1.99%) CAN bus
6 4 (1.99%) CUDA
6 4 (1.99%) Device Driver
6 4 (1.99%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (1.99%) EMV
6 4 (1.99%) IoT
6 4 (1.99%) Mobile App
7 3 (1.49%) Analogue Electronics
7 3 (1.49%) Cloud Native
7 3 (1.49%) Data Centre
7 3 (1.49%) Hedge funds
7 3 (1.49%) Mobile Banking
Operating Systems
1 58 (28.86%) Linux
2 17 (8.46%) Windows
3 13 (6.47%) Ubuntu
4 8 (3.98%) FreeRTOS
5 6 (2.99%) Embedded Linux
6 4 (1.99%) Android
6 4 (1.99%) Apple iOS
6 4 (1.99%) Unix
7 3 (1.49%) CentOS
7 3 (1.49%) 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
1 101 (50.25%) Software Engineering
2 33 (16.42%) Validation
3 28 (13.93%) CI/CD
4 22 (10.95%) Problem-Solving
5 18 (8.96%) Agile
6 17 (8.46%) Unit Testing
7 16 (7.96%) Software Testing
8 15 (7.46%) Containerisation
8 15 (7.46%) DevOps
8 15 (7.46%) Signal Processing
9 14 (6.97%) Mathematics
10 13 (6.47%) Systems Engineering
11 12 (5.97%) AI
11 12 (5.97%) UML
11 12 (5.97%) Workflow
12 11 (5.47%) Requirements Analysis
13 10 (4.98%) FPGA Design
14 9 (4.48%) Code Coverage
14 9 (4.48%) Collaborative Culture
14 9 (4.48%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 119 (59.20%) C++
2 56 (27.86%) Python
3 43 (21.39%) Java
4 26 (12.94%) Embedded C
4 26 (12.94%) JavaScript
5 23 (11.44%) Ada
6 22 (10.95%) Shell Script
7 21 (10.45%) SQL
8 17 (8.46%) MATLAB
9 16 (7.96%) Embedded C++
10 10 (4.98%) Bash
10 10 (4.98%) C#
11 8 (3.98%) Fortran
12 7 (3.48%) Rust
13 6 (2.99%) Perl
13 6 (2.99%) SystemVerilog
14 5 (2.49%) Go
14 5 (2.49%) PL/SQL
15 4 (1.99%) Swift
15 4 (1.99%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 67 (33.33%) Security Cleared
2 52 (25.87%) SC Cleared
3 21 (10.45%) Degree
4 9 (4.48%) DV Cleared
5 4 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (1.00%) ISTQB
6 2 (1.00%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.00%) PhD
6 2 (1.00%) Postgraduate
7 1 (0.50%) CCNA
7 1 (0.50%) CCSAS
7 1 (0.50%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (0.50%) GPEN
7 1 (0.50%) GWAPT
7 1 (0.50%) GXPN
7 1 (0.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 1 (0.50%) OSCE
7 1 (0.50%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (6.97%) Def Stans
2 11 (5.47%) MISRA
2 11 (5.47%) QA
3 10 (4.98%) DO-178B
4 9 (4.48%) IEC 61508
5 5 (2.49%) ISO 26262
6 4 (1.99%) ISO 8583
7 3 (1.49%) IEC 62304
7 3 (1.49%) PCI DSS
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 (11.94%) Firmware
2 17 (8.46%) Docker
3 10 (4.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (4.48%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (2.49%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.50%) KVM
Systems Management
1 12 (5.97%) Kubernetes
2 8 (3.98%) Terraform
3 3 (1.49%) Ansible
3 3 (1.49%) Prometheus
4 2 (1.00%) Grafana
4 2 (1.00%) Podman
5 1 (0.50%) Functional Safety
Vendors
1 17 (8.46%) Oracle
2 16 (7.96%) Red Hat
3 13 (6.47%) IBM
4 10 (4.98%) VMware
5 9 (4.48%) NetApp
6 8 (3.98%) ANSYS
6 8 (3.98%) MathWorks
7 7 (3.48%) Intel
8 6 (2.99%) HP
8 6 (2.99%) Microsoft
9 5 (2.49%) Microsemi
9 5 (2.49%) Xilinx
10 3 (1.49%) Atlassian
10 3 (1.49%) Dynatrace
10 3 (1.49%) Thales
11 2 (1.00%) Cisco
11 2 (1.00%) SAP
11 2 (1.00%) Siemens
12 1 (0.50%) Salesforce
12 1 (0.50%) Veritas