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 27 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 400 297 190
Rank change year-on-year -103 -107 +76
Contract jobs citing C 208 266 549
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.50% 0.87% 1.24%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.67% 2.57% 4.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 68 104 210
10th Percentile £68 £274 £325
25th Percentile £413 £400 £441
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -6.54% -10.83%
75th Percentile £578 £625 £595
90th Percentile £641 £810 £701
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £466 £537
% change year-on-year +3.22% -13.13% -2.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 83 39 193
10th Percentile £60.00 £58.71 £46.25
25th Percentile £65.00 £61.63 £56.65
Median hourly rate £67.50 £67.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year - +3.85% +13.04%
75th Percentile £70.00 £85.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.75 £95.00 £89.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.00 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -0.74% +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 12,434 10,364 12,980
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.94% 33.83% 29.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,293 6,688 9,179
10th Percentile £353 £355 £350
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -5.36%
75th Percentile £606 £638 £650
90th Percentile £715 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £483 £500
% change year-on-year -0.26% -3.50% -1.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 479 236 496
10th Percentile £41.25 £21.63 £35.00
25th Percentile £53.64 £35.56 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -5.51%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £69.62
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.97% +1.99% -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 27 February 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 27 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for C in the UK

C
Top 16 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 27 February 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 -110 193 £500 -4.31% 297
UK excluding London -65 158 £481 +3.22% 283
East of England -5 66 £525 +31.25% 58
Work from Home -43 58 £449 -10.30% 113
South West -11 54 £259 -56.10% 48
London -93 42 £475 -20.83% 45
South East -47 15 £500 +5.26% 86
North of England -65 8 £550 - 37
Scotland +10 7 £65 -77.19% 33
Northern Ireland -1 5 £425 -
North West -27 5 £550 - 17
Midlands -58 3 £550 +228.36% 32
East Midlands -28 2 £525 +213.43% 18
Yorkshire -68 2 £531 - 10
West Midlands -50 1 £575 - 14
North East - 1 £625 - 10

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 3 (1.44%) Confluence
2 1 (0.48%) Apache
2 1 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.48%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (4.33%) Simulink
2 3 (1.44%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.44%) Stateflow
3 2 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (2.40%) BASE24
1 5 (2.40%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.96%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.48%) Actimize
3 1 (0.48%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.48%) Loan IQ
3 1 (0.48%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 14 (6.73%) AWS
1 14 (6.73%) Azure
2 10 (4.81%) GitHub
3 6 (2.88%) GCP
4 4 (1.92%) Azure DevOps
4 4 (1.92%) Power Platform
5 3 (1.44%) Amazon S3
6 2 (0.96%) Amazon EKS
6 2 (0.96%) AWS CloudFormation
6 2 (0.96%) Azure Monitor
6 2 (0.96%) Cloud Computing
6 2 (0.96%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (0.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (0.48%) AWS CloudTrail
7 1 (0.48%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (0.48%) ChatGPT
7 1 (0.48%) Firebase
7 1 (0.48%) GitHub Copilot
7 1 (0.48%) OneDrive
7 1 (0.48%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 19 (9.13%) Ethernet
2 9 (4.33%) RS-232
3 6 (2.88%) Modbus
3 6 (2.88%) RS-485
3 6 (2.88%) TCP/IP
4 5 (2.40%) 3GPP
5 4 (1.92%) SpaceWire
6 3 (1.44%) Bluetooth
6 3 (1.44%) MVNO
6 3 (1.44%) Network Security
6 3 (1.44%) RS-422
6 3 (1.44%) SMPP
6 3 (1.44%) SMS
7 2 (0.96%) 5G
7 2 (0.96%) DNS
7 2 (0.96%) HTTP
7 2 (0.96%) LTE
7 2 (0.96%) VSAN
7 2 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.96%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (2.88%) NonStop SQL
2 5 (2.40%) OLTP
2 5 (2.40%) Oracle Database
3 3 (1.44%) Elasticsearch
3 3 (1.44%) Power BI
4 2 (0.96%) Data Warehouse
4 2 (0.96%) Metadata
4 2 (0.96%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.96%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (0.96%) SQL Server
5 1 (0.48%) Amazon Athena
5 1 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.48%) Apache Hudi
5 1 (0.48%) Apache Iceberg
5 1 (0.48%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.48%) MySQL
5 1 (0.48%) Oracle Exadata
5 1 (0.48%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 1 (0.48%) SQLite
5 1 (0.48%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 26 (12.50%) Rational DOORS
2 19 (9.13%) Git
3 14 (6.73%) JIRA
4 13 (6.25%) Rational Rhapsody
5 8 (3.85%) PVCS
6 6 (2.88%) GitLab
6 6 (2.88%) Visual Studio
7 4 (1.92%) Jenkins
8 3 (1.44%) Artifactory
8 3 (1.44%) ClearCase
8 3 (1.44%) Rational Team Concert
9 2 (0.96%) Selenium
9 2 (0.96%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.48%) Appium
10 1 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.48%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.48%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.48%) GDB
10 1 (0.48%) MSTest
10 1 (0.48%) Oracle Forms
General
1 34 (16.35%) Electronics
2 28 (13.46%) Social Skills
3 21 (10.10%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (9.62%) Aerospace
4 20 (9.62%) Finance
5 14 (6.73%) Documentation Skills
6 13 (6.25%) Law
7 9 (4.33%) Public Sector
8 6 (2.88%) Banking
9 5 (2.40%) Automotive
9 5 (2.40%) Manufacturing
9 5 (2.40%) Military
10 3 (1.44%) Financial Institution
10 3 (1.44%) Games
10 3 (1.44%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.96%) Aviation
11 2 (0.96%) Avionics
11 2 (0.96%) Publishing
12 1 (0.48%) Health Technology
12 1 (0.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 78 (37.50%) Software Engineer
2 62 (29.81%) Embedded Engineer
3 44 (21.15%) Embedded Software Engineer
4 35 (16.83%) Developer
5 27 (12.98%) C Software Engineer
6 23 (11.06%) C++ Software Engineer
7 21 (10.10%) C/C++ Software Engineer
8 19 (9.13%) Embedded C Engineer
8 19 (9.13%) Embedded C Software Engineer
9 13 (6.25%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
9 13 (6.25%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
9 13 (6.25%) Embedded C/C++ Software Engineer
9 13 (6.25%) Embedded C++ Engineer
9 13 (6.25%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
9 13 (6.25%) Support Engineer
10 12 (5.77%) Product Engineer
10 12 (5.77%) Products Support Engineer
10 12 (5.77%) Software Support Engineer
11 11 (5.29%) Senior
12 10 (4.81%) Validation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (8.65%) Middleware
2 8 (3.85%) Yocto
3 7 (3.37%) Flash
4 6 (2.88%) HTML
5 5 (2.40%) .NET
6 4 (1.92%) CSS
6 4 (1.92%) WinForms
7 3 (1.44%) AngularJS
7 3 (1.44%) ARM Templates
7 3 (1.44%) Electron
7 3 (1.44%) JNI
7 3 (1.44%) JSON
7 3 (1.44%) Kafka
7 3 (1.44%) Node.js
7 3 (1.44%) React
7 3 (1.44%) REST
8 2 (0.96%) Protocol Buffers
8 2 (0.96%) Qt
8 2 (0.96%) RESTful
8 2 (0.96%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 32 (15.38%) FPGA
2 29 (13.94%) Embedded Systems
3 15 (7.21%) PCIe
3 15 (7.21%) VHDL
4 6 (2.88%) Tandem
5 5 (2.40%) Algorithms
5 5 (2.40%) EMV
6 4 (1.92%) CAN bus
6 4 (1.92%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (1.92%) IoT
6 4 (1.92%) Verilog
7 3 (1.44%) Cloud Native
7 3 (1.44%) CUDA
7 3 (1.44%) Data Centre
7 3 (1.44%) Device Driver
7 3 (1.44%) Hedge funds
7 3 (1.44%) Java Card
7 3 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (0.96%) ASIC
8 2 (0.96%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 53 (25.48%) Linux
2 14 (6.73%) Windows
3 13 (6.25%) Ubuntu
4 9 (4.33%) Embedded Linux
5 8 (3.85%) FreeRTOS
6 5 (2.40%) Unix
7 3 (1.44%) CentOS
7 3 (1.44%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.48%) Android
8 1 (0.48%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.48%) Debian
8 1 (0.48%) OpenVMS
8 1 (0.48%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 114 (54.81%) Software Engineering
2 42 (20.19%) Validation
3 33 (15.87%) Problem-Solving
4 25 (12.02%) CI/CD
5 19 (9.13%) Unit Testing
5 19 (9.13%) Workflow
6 18 (8.65%) Test Automation
7 17 (8.17%) Software Testing
8 16 (7.69%) DevOps
8 16 (7.69%) Requirements Analysis
9 14 (6.73%) Agile
9 14 (6.73%) Embedded Software Development
9 14 (6.73%) Signal Processing
10 13 (6.25%) AI
11 12 (5.77%) SDLC
11 12 (5.77%) Verification and Validation
12 11 (5.29%) Containerisation
12 11 (5.29%) Systems Engineering
12 11 (5.29%) Workflow Management
13 10 (4.81%) FPGA Design
Programming Languages
1 120 (57.69%) C++
2 50 (24.04%) Python
3 32 (15.38%) Ada
4 30 (14.42%) Embedded C
5 22 (10.58%) Java
5 22 (10.58%) SQL
6 20 (9.62%) JavaScript
7 19 (9.13%) Shell Script
8 18 (8.65%) Embedded C++
9 12 (5.77%) MATLAB
10 11 (5.29%) Bash
11 9 (4.33%) C#
12 8 (3.85%) PL/SQL
12 8 (3.85%) Rust
13 6 (2.88%) Fortran
13 6 (2.88%) SystemVerilog
14 5 (2.40%) COBOL
14 5 (2.40%) Perl
14 5 (2.40%) ProC
15 2 (0.96%) VB
Qualifications
1 66 (31.73%) Security Cleared
2 53 (25.48%) SC Cleared
3 16 (7.69%) Degree
4 6 (2.88%) DV Cleared
5 3 (1.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 3 (1.44%) ISTQB
6 2 (0.96%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (0.96%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 2 (0.96%) Master's Degree
6 2 (0.96%) Postgraduate
7 1 (0.48%) CCNA
7 1 (0.48%) CCSAS
7 1 (0.48%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (0.48%) GPEN
7 1 (0.48%) GWAPT
7 1 (0.48%) GXPN
7 1 (0.48%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
7 1 (0.48%) OSCE
7 1 (0.48%) OSCP
7 1 (0.48%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (11.06%) Def Stans
2 12 (5.77%) MISRA
3 11 (5.29%) DO-178B
4 8 (3.85%) IEC 61508
5 6 (2.88%) QA
6 5 (2.40%) ISO 8583
7 4 (1.92%) PCI DSS
8 3 (1.44%) ISO 26262
9 2 (0.96%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.96%) IEC 62304
9 2 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 2 (0.96%) MIL-STD-1553
9 2 (0.96%) MISRA C
9 2 (0.96%) Software Quality Assurance
10 1 (0.48%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.48%) AUTOSAR
10 1 (0.48%) IFRS
10 1 (0.48%) MiFID
10 1 (0.48%) NIST
System Software
1 23 (11.06%) Firmware
2 12 (5.77%) Docker
3 11 (5.29%) Virtual Machines
3 11 (5.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.44%) Embedded Firmware
5 2 (0.96%) vCloud
5 2 (0.96%) VMware NSX
5 2 (0.96%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 10 (4.81%) Kubernetes
2 7 (3.37%) Terraform
3 3 (1.44%) Ansible
4 1 (0.48%) Functional Safety
4 1 (0.48%) HP ALM
4 1 (0.48%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 15 (7.21%) Red Hat
2 13 (6.25%) Oracle
3 12 (5.77%) IBM
4 11 (5.29%) VMware
5 8 (3.85%) ANSYS
6 7 (3.37%) HP
6 7 (3.37%) Intel
7 6 (2.88%) MathWorks
8 5 (2.40%) Microsemi
8 5 (2.40%) Microsoft
8 5 (2.40%) Xilinx
9 4 (1.92%) Cisco
10 3 (1.44%) NetApp
10 3 (1.44%) Thales
11 2 (0.96%) Atlassian
11 2 (0.96%) Dell
12 1 (0.48%) Proofpoint
12 1 (0.48%) Sitecore
12 1 (0.48%) Splunk
12 1 (0.48%) Xamarin