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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 433 369 199
Rank change year-on-year -64 -170 +30
Contract jobs citing C 220 192 516
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.42% 0.59% 1.21%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.55% 1.78% 3.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 71 79 237
10th Percentile £327 £274 £390
25th Percentile £406 £375 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -6.54% -2.73%
75th Percentile £550 £600 £588
90th Percentile £646 £676 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £400 £538
% change year-on-year +18.50% -25.65% +7.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 35 156
10th Percentile £51.85 £52.00 £46.25
25th Percentile £63.75 £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 £74.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £77.50 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 £68.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - +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 14,155 10,767 13,141
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.90% 33.18% 30.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,201 7,257 9,267
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.14% -3.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.05% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 539 266 519
10th Percentile £34.01 £27.45 £31.25
25th Percentile £52.25 £35.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £80.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.25 £65.00
% change year-on-year +2.77% -2.69% +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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -64 210 £481 -8.33% 327
UK excluding London -39 175 £474 +18.50% 290
Work from Home -54 63 £500 -2.44% 158
East of England -5 59 £613 +53.13% 65
South East -16 57 £494 -3.66% 82
London -91 38 £500 -14.68% 66
South West -26 29 £450 -18.18% 44
Midlands -39 21 £462 +515.33% 27
West Midlands -45 20 £450 - 8
North of England -76 5 £625 +66.67% 50
Scotland -21 2 - - 7
North East -38 2 £625 - 8
North West -46 2 - - 26
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 13
East Midlands -15 1 £525 +600.00% 19
Yorkshire -56 1 - - 16
Wales - 1 £460 - 7

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 (2.27%) Tuxedo
2 2 (0.91%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 2 (0.91%) Oracle Workflow
2 2 (0.91%) WebSphere
3 1 (0.45%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.45%) ColdFusion
3 1 (0.45%) Confluence
Applications
1 10 (4.55%) Simulink
2 4 (1.82%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (1.36%) BASE24
1 3 (1.36%) Teamcenter
2 2 (0.91%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.45%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.45%) Loan IQ
3 1 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 16 (7.27%) AWS
2 15 (6.82%) Azure
3 10 (4.55%) GitHub
4 7 (3.18%) Azure DevOps
4 7 (3.18%) GitHub Copilot
5 6 (2.73%) Power Platform
6 4 (1.82%) GCP
6 4 (1.82%) SaaS
7 3 (1.36%) Amazon S3
7 3 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
8 2 (0.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 2 (0.91%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (0.91%) AWS IoT
8 2 (0.91%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (0.91%) Azure Monitor
8 2 (0.91%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (0.91%) Entra ID
8 2 (0.91%) OCI
8 2 (0.91%) Serverless
9 1 (0.45%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 16 (7.27%) Ethernet
1 16 (7.27%) Software-Defined Radio
1 16 (7.27%) Wireless
2 6 (2.73%) TCP/IP
3 5 (2.27%) DNS
4 4 (1.82%) RS-232
4 4 (1.82%) RS-485
4 4 (1.82%) Wireshark
5 3 (1.36%) Bluetooth
5 3 (1.36%) Internet
5 3 (1.36%) Modbus
5 3 (1.36%) MQTT
5 3 (1.36%) RS-422
5 3 (1.36%) SpaceWire
5 3 (1.36%) VXLAN
6 2 (0.91%) 3GPP
6 2 (0.91%) 4G
6 2 (0.91%) ATM
6 2 (0.91%) Radio Access Network
6 2 (0.91%) VoLTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (4.55%) Ingres
2 7 (3.18%) SQL Server
3 6 (2.73%) Power BI
3 6 (2.73%) Relational Database
4 4 (1.82%) NoSQL
4 4 (1.82%) RDBMS
5 3 (1.36%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (1.36%) MongoDB
5 3 (1.36%) NonStop SQL
5 3 (1.36%) Oracle Database
5 3 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (1.36%) Tableau
6 2 (0.91%) SQLPlus
7 1 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
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%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 23 (10.45%) Rational DOORS
2 20 (9.09%) Git
3 11 (5.00%) Rational Rhapsody
4 7 (3.18%) JIRA
5 6 (2.73%) GitLab
6 5 (2.27%) Oracle Forms
6 5 (2.27%) Team Foundation Server
6 5 (2.27%) Visual Studio
7 3 (1.36%) Jenkins
8 2 (0.91%) CMake
8 2 (0.91%) Subversion
9 1 (0.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.45%) ER Studio
9 1 (0.45%) ERwin
9 1 (0.45%) git-flow
9 1 (0.45%) GoogleTest
9 1 (0.45%) JMeter
9 1 (0.45%) LoadRunner
9 1 (0.45%) Postman
9 1 (0.45%) PowerDesigner
General
1 52 (23.64%) Social Skills
2 32 (14.55%) Aerospace
3 25 (11.36%) Electronics
4 22 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (8.18%) Law
6 14 (6.36%) Documentation Skills
7 13 (5.91%) Manufacturing
8 11 (5.00%) Finance
9 9 (4.09%) Public Sector
10 7 (3.18%) Automotive
10 7 (3.18%) Banking
11 4 (1.82%) Avionics
12 3 (1.36%) Military
13 2 (0.91%) Games
13 2 (0.91%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.91%) Japanese Language
13 2 (0.91%) Retail
14 1 (0.45%) Korean Language
14 1 (0.45%) Polish Language
14 1 (0.45%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 77 (35.00%) Software Engineer
2 52 (23.64%) Embedded Engineer
3 37 (16.82%) Embedded Software Engineer
4 31 (14.09%) Developer
5 22 (10.00%) Senior
6 15 (6.82%) C++ Software Engineer
7 12 (5.45%) Software Developer
8 11 (5.00%) C Software Engineer
8 11 (5.00%) C/C++ Software Engineer
9 10 (4.55%) Lead
10 9 (4.09%) Test Leader
11 8 (3.64%) DSP Engineer
11 8 (3.64%) DSP Software Engineer
11 8 (3.64%) Senior Developer
12 6 (2.73%) Analyst
12 6 (2.73%) C Developer
12 6 (2.73%) Test Engineer
13 5 (2.27%) FPGA Engineer
13 5 (2.27%) Linux Developer
13 5 (2.27%) Senior C Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (5.45%) Yocto
2 11 (5.00%) .NET
3 6 (2.73%) WinForms
4 5 (2.27%) JSON
4 5 (2.27%) REST
5 4 (1.82%) LDAP
5 4 (1.82%) XML
6 3 (1.36%) ADO
6 3 (1.36%) COM
6 3 (1.36%) Itk
6 3 (1.36%) Kafka
6 3 (1.36%) Middleware
6 3 (1.36%) ODBC
6 3 (1.36%) Qt
6 3 (1.36%) Web Services
7 2 (0.91%) ARM Templates
7 2 (0.91%) FastAPI
7 2 (0.91%) HTML5
7 2 (0.91%) QML
7 2 (0.91%) WebSphere MQ
Miscellaneous
1 30 (13.64%) Embedded Systems
2 25 (11.36%) FPGA
3 13 (5.91%) PCIe
3 13 (5.91%) RISC-V
4 10 (4.55%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (4.09%) Device Driver
5 9 (4.09%) Verilog
5 9 (4.09%) VHDL
6 6 (2.73%) MicroBlaze
7 5 (2.27%) Algorithms
8 4 (1.82%) Cyber Threat
8 4 (1.82%) IoT
9 3 (1.36%) ARM Cortex
9 3 (1.36%) Cloud Native
9 3 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
9 3 (1.36%) Low-Code
9 3 (1.36%) Tandem
10 2 (0.91%) Data Centre
10 2 (0.91%) Legacy Applications
10 2 (0.91%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 67 (30.45%) Linux
2 18 (8.18%) Embedded Linux
3 14 (6.36%) Windows
4 12 (5.45%) FreeRTOS
5 7 (3.18%) Unix
6 4 (1.82%) 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
1 116 (52.73%) Software Engineering
2 43 (19.55%) Problem-Solving
3 39 (17.73%) Agile
4 34 (15.45%) Test Automation
5 33 (15.00%) Validation
6 24 (10.91%) CI/CD
7 21 (9.55%) DevOps
7 21 (9.55%) Signal Processing
8 20 (9.09%) Data Management
8 20 (9.09%) Software Testing
9 19 (8.64%) Embedded Software Development
9 19 (8.64%) Workflow
10 18 (8.18%) Digital Signal Processing
11 16 (7.27%) Migration
12 15 (6.82%) Verification and Validation
13 14 (6.36%) Workflow Management
14 13 (5.91%) Systems Engineering
14 13 (5.91%) TDD
14 13 (5.91%) Technical Leadership
14 13 (5.91%) UML
Programming Languages
1 112 (50.91%) C++
2 56 (25.45%) Python
3 37 (16.82%) SQL
4 35 (15.91%) Ada
5 25 (11.36%) Embedded C
6 19 (8.64%) PL/SQL
7 17 (7.73%) Java
8 16 (7.27%) MATLAB
9 14 (6.36%) ProC
10 11 (5.00%) C#
11 10 (4.55%) Bash
12 7 (3.18%) Embedded C++
13 6 (2.73%) Shell Script
13 6 (2.73%) SystemVerilog
13 6 (2.73%) VB
14 5 (2.27%) Rust
14 5 (2.27%) VB6
15 4 (1.82%) PowerShell
16 3 (1.36%) JavaScript
17 2 (0.91%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 67 (30.45%) Security Cleared
2 48 (21.82%) SC Cleared
3 19 (8.64%) Degree
4 11 (5.00%) DV Cleared
5 8 (3.64%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (0.91%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.45%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.45%) CCNA
7 1 (0.45%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (0.45%) CompTIA CySA+
7 1 (0.45%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.45%) GCIA
7 1 (0.45%) GCIH
7 1 (0.45%) GIAC
7 1 (0.45%) ISTQB
7 1 (0.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
7 1 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 1 (0.45%) PhD
7 1 (0.45%) Six Sigma Black Belt
7 1 (0.45%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (8.64%) Def Stans
2 17 (7.73%) QA
3 11 (5.00%) MISRA
4 9 (4.09%) DO-178B
5 3 (1.36%) MIL-STD-1553
6 2 (0.91%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.91%) ISO 15022
6 2 (0.91%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.91%) ISO 26262
6 2 (0.91%) ISO 8583
6 2 (0.91%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.45%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.45%) IEC 61508
7 1 (0.45%) IFRS
7 1 (0.45%) IFRS 9
7 1 (0.45%) MISRA C
7 1 (0.45%) NCSC
7 1 (0.45%) NIST
7 1 (0.45%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.45%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 23 (10.45%) Firmware
2 15 (6.82%) Docker
3 9 (4.09%) Embedded Firmware
4 6 (2.73%) Active Directory
4 6 (2.73%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (2.27%) VMware Infrastructure
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
7 1 (0.45%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.45%) Squid
Systems Management
1 11 (5.00%) Terraform
2 9 (4.09%) Kubernetes
3 5 (2.27%) 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 (10.91%) Oracle
2 9 (4.09%) IBM
2 9 (4.09%) Xilinx
3 8 (3.64%) Intel
4 6 (2.73%) Cisco
5 5 (2.27%) Microsemi
5 5 (2.27%) Microsoft
5 5 (2.27%) VMware
6 4 (1.82%) HP
6 4 (1.82%) Lauterbach
6 4 (1.82%) MathWorks
6 4 (1.82%) SAP
7 3 (1.36%) Actian
7 3 (1.36%) Google
8 2 (0.91%) Dell
8 2 (0.91%) Perforce
8 2 (0.91%) QNX
8 2 (0.91%) Sitecore
9 1 (0.45%) Infoblox
9 1 (0.45%) Trend Micro