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

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 386 277 188
Rank change year-on-year -109 -89 +82
Contract jobs citing C 214 270 570
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.55% 0.86% 1.28%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.81% 2.57% 4.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 65 94 222
10th Percentile £68 £400 £325
25th Percentile £382 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £534 £535
Median % change year-on-year -11.01% -0.23% -10.83%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £609
90th Percentile £650 £810 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £537
% change year-on-year -5.00% -6.85% -2.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 39 193
10th Percentile £60.00 £57.53 £46.25
25th Percentile £65.00 £62.00 £56.65
Median hourly rate £67.50 £68.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.74% +4.62% +13.04%
75th Percentile £70.00 £85.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.25 £95.00 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.00 £68.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -1.47% +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 11,798 10,518 13,164
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.52% 33.44% 29.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,813 6,655 9,327
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.57% -2.33% -4.87%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £721 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.63% -2.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 442 245 504
10th Percentile £39.64 £21.25 £35.51
25th Percentile £52.50 £35.75 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £69.62
90th Percentile £76.25 £85.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -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 30 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 30 January 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 30 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 -105 193 £488 -8.67% 496
UK excluding London -43 165 £475 -5.00% 519
East of England 0 63 £463 -3.90% 82
South West -9 60 £475 -20.17% 105
Work from Home -37 57 £442 -14.95% 193
London -77 39 £488 -18.75% 47
Scotland +14 13 £283 - 52
North of England -60 12 £475 +18.75% 62
North West -17 9 £463 +15.63% 25
South East -49 9 £500 +6.10% 160
Northern Ireland +2 5 £425 - 5
Midlands -55 3 £575 +76.65% 58
East Midlands -27 2 - - 42
Yorkshire -58 2 £531 - 28
West Midlands -41 1 £575 - 15
North East - 1 £625 - 9

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 (1.87%) Confluence
2 1 (0.47%) Apache
2 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.47%) nginx
2 1 (0.47%) SharePoint
Applications
1 12 (5.61%) Simulink
2 8 (3.74%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (2.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (2.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (2.34%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 5 (2.34%) BASE24
1 5 (2.34%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.93%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.47%) Actimize
3 1 (0.47%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.47%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 17 (7.94%) AWS
2 16 (7.48%) GitHub
3 15 (7.01%) Azure
4 8 (3.74%) GCP
5 4 (1.87%) Amazon EKS
5 4 (1.87%) Amazon S3
6 3 (1.40%) Amazon ECS
6 3 (1.40%) AWS CloudFormation
6 3 (1.40%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (1.40%) Serverless
7 2 (0.93%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (0.93%) Cloud Computing
7 2 (0.93%) Dynamics 365
7 2 (0.93%) Power Platform
8 1 (0.47%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (0.47%) Amazon GuardDuty
8 1 (0.47%) ChatGPT
8 1 (0.47%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (0.47%) GitHub Copilot
8 1 (0.47%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 16 (7.48%) Ethernet
2 8 (3.74%) RS-232
3 6 (2.80%) SpaceWire
4 5 (2.34%) Network Security
4 5 (2.34%) TCP/IP
5 4 (1.87%) 3GPP
5 4 (1.87%) Bluetooth
6 3 (1.40%) Modbus
6 3 (1.40%) MVNO
6 3 (1.40%) RS-485
6 3 (1.40%) SMPP
6 3 (1.40%) SMS
6 3 (1.40%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.93%) HTTP
7 2 (0.93%) SSL
7 2 (0.93%) VSAN
7 2 (0.93%) Wireless
8 1 (0.47%) 5G NR
8 1 (0.47%) Firewall
8 1 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (5.14%) Oracle Database
2 7 (3.27%) NonStop SQL
3 5 (2.34%) OLTP
4 3 (1.40%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.93%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.47%) Metadata
6 1 (0.47%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.47%) MySQL
6 1 (0.47%) Oracle Exadata
6 1 (0.47%) Power BI
6 1 (0.47%) SQL Server
6 1 (0.47%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 1 (0.47%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 27 (12.62%) Rational DOORS
2 18 (8.41%) Git
3 13 (6.07%) JIRA
4 12 (5.61%) Rational Rhapsody
5 11 (5.14%) Jenkins
6 9 (4.21%) ClearCase
7 8 (3.74%) GitLab
7 8 (3.74%) PVCS
8 5 (2.34%) Rational Team Concert
9 4 (1.87%) Artifactory
9 4 (1.87%) Visual Studio
9 4 (1.87%) Xcode
10 3 (1.40%) Gradle
10 3 (1.40%) KGDB
11 2 (0.93%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.93%) Selenium
11 2 (0.93%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.93%) Subversion
12 1 (0.47%) NUnit
12 1 (0.47%) Oracle Forms
General
1 34 (15.89%) Social Skills
2 32 (14.95%) Electronics
3 24 (11.21%) Aerospace
4 23 (10.75%) Finance
5 21 (9.81%) Analytical Skills
6 14 (6.54%) Documentation Skills
7 12 (5.61%) Law
7 12 (5.61%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.67%) Banking
9 7 (3.27%) Military
9 7 (3.27%) Telecoms
10 5 (2.34%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.87%) Automotive
11 4 (1.87%) Aviation
12 3 (1.40%) Financial Institution
12 3 (1.40%) Games
13 2 (0.93%) Avionics
13 2 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.93%) Marketing
13 2 (0.93%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 77 (35.98%) Software Engineer
2 55 (25.70%) Embedded Engineer
3 41 (19.16%) Embedded Software Engineer
4 37 (17.29%) Developer
5 26 (12.15%) C Software Engineer
6 22 (10.28%) C++ Software Engineer
7 20 (9.35%) C/C++ Software Engineer
8 18 (8.41%) Embedded C Engineer
8 18 (8.41%) Embedded C Software Engineer
9 13 (6.07%) Support Engineer
10 12 (5.61%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
10 12 (5.61%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
10 12 (5.61%) Embedded C/C++ Software Engineer
10 12 (5.61%) Embedded C++ Engineer
10 12 (5.61%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
10 12 (5.61%) Product Engineer
10 12 (5.61%) Products Support Engineer
10 12 (5.61%) Senior
10 12 (5.61%) Software Support Engineer
11 11 (5.14%) FPGA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (8.41%) Middleware
2 11 (5.14%) HTML
3 9 (4.21%) Yocto
4 8 (3.74%) CSS
5 7 (3.27%) Flash
6 6 (2.80%) Node.js
6 6 (2.80%) REST
7 4 (1.87%) AngularJS
7 4 (1.87%) React
7 4 (1.87%) RESTful
8 3 (1.40%) Electron
8 3 (1.40%) JNI
8 3 (1.40%) OpenEmbedded
9 2 (0.93%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (0.93%) JSON
9 2 (0.93%) Kafka
9 2 (0.93%) OpenID
9 2 (0.93%) OpenMP
9 2 (0.93%) Qt
9 2 (0.93%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 34 (15.89%) FPGA
2 29 (13.55%) Embedded Systems
3 17 (7.94%) VHDL
4 14 (6.54%) PCIe
5 7 (3.27%) Tandem
6 6 (2.80%) CAN bus
6 6 (2.80%) Verilog
7 5 (2.34%) EMV
7 5 (2.34%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (1.87%) Algorithms
8 4 (1.87%) Device Driver
8 4 (1.87%) Distributed Systems
8 4 (1.87%) IoT
8 4 (1.87%) Mobile App
9 3 (1.40%) Cloud Native
9 3 (1.40%) CUDA
9 3 (1.40%) Data Centre
9 3 (1.40%) Hedge funds
9 3 (1.40%) Java Card
9 3 (1.40%) Mobile Banking
Operating Systems
1 61 (28.50%) Linux
2 17 (7.94%) Windows
3 13 (6.07%) Ubuntu
4 8 (3.74%) Embedded Linux
4 8 (3.74%) FreeRTOS
5 4 (1.87%) Android
5 4 (1.87%) Apple iOS
5 4 (1.87%) Unix
6 3 (1.40%) CentOS
6 3 (1.40%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.47%) Debian
7 1 (0.47%) OpenVMS
7 1 (0.47%) Robot Operating System
7 1 (0.47%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 110 (51.40%) Software Engineering
2 40 (18.69%) Validation
3 30 (14.02%) Problem-Solving
4 28 (13.08%) CI/CD
5 17 (7.94%) Agile
5 17 (7.94%) Workflow
6 16 (7.48%) Unit Testing
7 15 (7.01%) Containerisation
7 15 (7.01%) Software Testing
8 14 (6.54%) DevOps
8 14 (6.54%) Signal Processing
8 14 (6.54%) Test Automation
9 13 (6.07%) AI
9 13 (6.07%) Systems Engineering
10 12 (5.61%) Mathematics
10 12 (5.61%) UML
11 11 (5.14%) Requirements Analysis
12 10 (4.67%) Embedded Software Development
12 10 (4.67%) FPGA Design
13 9 (4.21%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 122 (57.01%) C++
2 54 (25.23%) Python
3 38 (17.76%) Java
4 31 (14.49%) Ada
5 27 (12.62%) Embedded C
6 26 (12.15%) JavaScript
7 22 (10.28%) Shell Script
7 22 (10.28%) SQL
8 17 (7.94%) Embedded C++
9 16 (7.48%) MATLAB
10 12 (5.61%) Bash
11 9 (4.21%) C#
12 8 (3.74%) Fortran
13 7 (3.27%) Rust
14 6 (2.80%) Perl
14 6 (2.80%) PL/SQL
14 6 (2.80%) SystemVerilog
15 5 (2.34%) COBOL
15 5 (2.34%) ProC
16 4 (1.87%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 69 (32.24%) Security Cleared
2 55 (25.70%) SC Cleared
3 21 (9.81%) Degree
4 8 (3.74%) DV Cleared
5 4 (1.87%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.40%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (0.93%) ISTQB
7 2 (0.93%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.93%) PhD
7 2 (0.93%) Postgraduate
8 1 (0.47%) CCNA
8 1 (0.47%) CCSAS
8 1 (0.47%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (0.47%) GPEN
8 1 (0.47%) GWAPT
8 1 (0.47%) GXPN
8 1 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (0.47%) OSCE
8 1 (0.47%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (9.81%) Def Stans
2 13 (6.07%) MISRA
3 11 (5.14%) DO-178B
4 10 (4.67%) IEC 61508
5 9 (4.21%) QA
6 5 (2.34%) ISO 26262
6 5 (2.34%) ISO 8583
7 4 (1.87%) PCI DSS
8 3 (1.40%) IEC 62304
8 3 (1.40%) MISRA C
9 2 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 2 (0.93%) MIL-STD-1553
9 2 (0.93%) Software Quality Assurance
10 1 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.47%) AUTOSAR
10 1 (0.47%) DICOM
10 1 (0.47%) HL7
10 1 (0.47%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.47%) MiFID
10 1 (0.47%) NIST
System Software
1 24 (11.21%) Firmware
2 17 (7.94%) Docker
3 12 (5.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (4.21%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (2.34%) Embedded Firmware
6 2 (0.93%) vCloud
6 2 (0.93%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.93%) vSphere
7 1 (0.47%) KVM
Systems Management
1 11 (5.14%) Kubernetes
2 8 (3.74%) Terraform
3 3 (1.40%) Ansible
3 3 (1.40%) Prometheus
4 2 (0.93%) Grafana
4 2 (0.93%) Podman
5 1 (0.47%) Functional Safety
Vendors
1 18 (8.41%) Oracle
2 16 (7.48%) Red Hat
3 13 (6.07%) IBM
4 12 (5.61%) VMware
5 9 (4.21%) NetApp
6 8 (3.74%) ANSYS
6 8 (3.74%) MathWorks
7 7 (3.27%) HP
7 7 (3.27%) Intel
8 6 (2.80%) Microsoft
9 5 (2.34%) Microsemi
9 5 (2.34%) Xilinx
10 4 (1.87%) Cisco
11 3 (1.40%) Atlassian
11 3 (1.40%) Thales
12 2 (0.93%) Dell
12 2 (0.93%) SAP
12 2 (0.93%) Siemens
13 1 (0.47%) Salesforce
13 1 (0.47%) Veritas