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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 456 373 218
Rank change year-on-year -83 -155 -2
Contract jobs citing C 228 187 432
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.42% 0.57% 1.13%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.60% 1.73% 3.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 68 68 201
10th Percentile £336 £370 £400
25th Percentile £400 £423 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £474 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -9.71% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £646 £638 £625
90th Percentile £704 £677 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £500 £538
% change year-on-year -10.00% -7.06% +2.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 34 83
10th Percentile £51.93 £41.25 £44.79
25th Percentile £65.00 £52.44 £59.38
Median hourly rate £70.00 £68.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% +0.74% +3.85%
75th Percentile - £73.75 £73.44
90th Percentile £70.13 £87.50 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% +7.69%

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 14,245 10,791 12,230
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.06% 32.76% 31.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,249 7,144 8,276
10th Percentile £363 £343 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.40% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 542 293 341
10th Percentile £27.75 £29.00 £27.00
25th Percentile £48.16 £37.77 £46.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.03 £80.00 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +0.78% -0.77% -

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 17 September 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 17 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for C in the UK

C
Top 14 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 17 September 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 -72 217 £473 -13.45% 1,312
UK excluding London -50 175 £450 -10.00% 926
Work from Home -32 72 £500 -4.76% 449
South East -20 58 £450 -10.00% 252
East of England -15 55 £700 +30.23% 268
London -102 44 £500 -14.68% 391
South West -41 31 £450 -20.88% 161
Midlands -31 20 £450 - 91
West Midlands -33 20 £450 - 46
North of England -87 7 £410 -4.09% 75
Scotland -33 5 - - 73
Yorkshire -46 3 £400 -20.00% 19
North West -49 3 £420 +10.53% 45
North East -41 1 - - 14

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 (2.19%) Tuxedo
2 3 (1.32%) WebSphere
3 2 (0.88%) Confluence
3 2 (0.88%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 2 (0.88%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (0.44%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.44%) ColdFusion
Applications
1 10 (4.39%) Simulink
2 3 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.88%) BASE24
1 2 (0.88%) Oracle Retail
1 2 (0.88%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.44%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 17 (7.46%) AWS
2 14 (6.14%) Azure
3 12 (5.26%) GitHub
4 9 (3.95%) GitHub Copilot
5 7 (3.07%) Azure DevOps
5 7 (3.07%) IaaS
6 4 (1.75%) Datadog
6 4 (1.75%) GitHub Actions
7 3 (1.32%) Microsoft Copilot
7 3 (1.32%) SaaS
8 2 (0.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 2 (0.88%) Amazon S3
8 2 (0.88%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (0.88%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (0.88%) Azure AI
8 2 (0.88%) Copilot Studio
8 2 (0.88%) Entra ID
8 2 (0.88%) GCP
8 2 (0.88%) Microsoft 365
8 2 (0.88%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 21 (9.21%) Software-Defined Radio
1 21 (9.21%) Wireless
2 9 (3.95%) Ethernet
3 4 (1.75%) Bluetooth
3 4 (1.75%) Internet
3 4 (1.75%) TCP/IP
3 4 (1.75%) Wi-Fi
3 4 (1.75%) Wireshark
4 3 (1.32%) DNS
4 3 (1.32%) Firewall
4 3 (1.32%) MQTT
4 3 (1.32%) RS-232
4 3 (1.32%) RS-485
4 3 (1.32%) VXLAN
4 3 (1.32%) WAN
5 2 (0.88%) ATM
5 2 (0.88%) Broadband
5 2 (0.88%) DHCP
5 2 (0.88%) VPN
6 1 (0.44%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (4.39%) Ingres
2 7 (3.07%) SQL Server
3 6 (2.63%) Relational Database
4 4 (1.75%) RDBMS
5 3 (1.32%) NoSQL
5 3 (1.32%) Oracle Database
5 3 (1.32%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.88%) NonStop SQL
6 2 (0.88%) Power BI
6 2 (0.88%) Redis
6 2 (0.88%) SQLPlus
7 1 (0.44%) Big Data
7 1 (0.44%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.44%) KDB
7 1 (0.44%) Kdb+
7 1 (0.44%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.44%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (0.44%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 27 (11.84%) Git
2 22 (9.65%) Rational DOORS
3 16 (7.02%) JIRA
4 13 (5.70%) Rational Rhapsody
5 11 (4.82%) Jenkins
6 7 (3.07%) Team Foundation Server
7 5 (2.19%) Oracle Forms
8 4 (1.75%) CppUnit
8 4 (1.75%) GitLab
8 4 (1.75%) PVCS
9 2 (0.88%) CMake
9 2 (0.88%) PetaLinux
9 2 (0.88%) Subversion
10 1 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.44%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.44%) Eclipse
10 1 (0.44%) git-flow
10 1 (0.44%) PowerBuilder
10 1 (0.44%) Sinon.JS
10 1 (0.44%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 55 (24.12%) Social Skills
2 25 (10.96%) Aerospace
3 22 (9.65%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (7.46%) Electronics
5 14 (6.14%) Law
6 10 (4.39%) Manufacturing
7 8 (3.51%) Finance
8 7 (3.07%) Banking
8 7 (3.07%) Public Sector
9 5 (2.19%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.75%) Military
11 3 (1.32%) Automotive
11 3 (1.32%) Avionics
11 3 (1.32%) Front Office
11 3 (1.32%) Investment Banking
11 3 (1.32%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.88%) Games
12 2 (0.88%) Japanese Language
12 2 (0.88%) Retail
13 1 (0.44%) Korean Language
Job Titles
1 88 (38.60%) Software Engineer
2 53 (23.25%) Embedded Engineer
3 47 (20.61%) Embedded Software Engineer
4 31 (13.60%) Senior
5 30 (13.16%) Developer
6 24 (10.53%) C Software Engineer
7 18 (7.89%) C++ Software Engineer
8 15 (6.58%) Lead
9 13 (5.70%) C/C++ Software Engineer
10 12 (5.26%) Embedded C Engineer
10 12 (5.26%) Embedded C Software Engineer
11 11 (4.82%) Development Engineer
12 10 (4.39%) Linux Engineer
12 10 (4.39%) Senior Developer
12 10 (4.39%) Software Developer
12 10 (4.39%) Software Development Engineer
12 10 (4.39%) Software Team Leader
12 10 (4.39%) Team Leader
13 9 (3.95%) C Developer
13 9 (3.95%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (6.58%) Yocto
2 10 (4.39%) Terraform
3 8 (3.51%) .NET
4 6 (2.63%) LDAP
4 6 (2.63%) OpenTofu
4 6 (2.63%) REST
4 6 (2.63%) XML
5 5 (2.19%) HTML
5 5 (2.19%) JSON
5 5 (2.19%) Middleware
6 4 (1.75%) HTML5
7 3 (1.32%) ADO
7 3 (1.32%) COM
7 3 (1.32%) CSS
7 3 (1.32%) FastAPI
7 3 (1.32%) ODBC
7 3 (1.32%) WebSphere MQ
8 2 (0.88%) Kafka
8 2 (0.88%) QML
8 2 (0.88%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 33 (14.47%) Embedded Systems
2 19 (8.33%) FPGA
3 18 (7.89%) Device Driver
4 17 (7.46%) RISC-V
5 10 (4.39%) Algorithms
5 10 (4.39%) Legacy Systems
5 10 (4.39%) MicroBlaze
6 9 (3.95%) PCIe
6 9 (3.95%) Private Cloud
7 8 (3.51%) Distributed Systems
7 8 (3.51%) Verilog
7 8 (3.51%) VHDL
8 5 (2.19%) Cloud Native
8 5 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (2.19%) IoT
8 5 (2.19%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.75%) AI Agents
9 4 (1.75%) ARM Cortex
9 4 (1.75%) Data Structures
10 3 (1.32%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 74 (32.46%) Linux
2 24 (10.53%) Embedded Linux
3 15 (6.58%) Unix
4 13 (5.70%) FreeRTOS
4 13 (5.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (3.51%) Windows
6 2 (0.88%) Android
7 1 (0.44%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.44%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.44%) VxWorks
7 1 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 124 (54.39%) Software Engineering
2 42 (18.42%) Agile
3 30 (13.16%) Problem-Solving
4 27 (11.84%) Signal Processing
5 25 (10.96%) CI/CD
5 25 (10.96%) Validation
6 24 (10.53%) Test Automation
7 23 (10.09%) DevOps
8 22 (9.65%) UML
9 21 (9.21%) Data Management
9 21 (9.21%) Digital Signal Processing
10 20 (8.77%) Systems Engineering
11 16 (7.02%) Software Testing
11 16 (7.02%) Technical Leadership
12 15 (6.58%) Integration Testing
13 14 (6.14%) AI
13 14 (6.14%) Configuration Management
14 13 (5.70%) Migration
15 12 (5.26%) System Integration Testing
15 12 (5.26%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 126 (55.26%) C++
2 58 (25.44%) Python
3 34 (14.91%) Embedded C
4 29 (12.72%) SQL
5 21 (9.21%) Ada
5 21 (9.21%) Java
6 17 (7.46%) PL/SQL
7 14 (6.14%) ProC
8 13 (5.70%) MATLAB
9 11 (4.82%) C#
10 9 (3.95%) Perl
11 8 (3.51%) Embedded C++
12 7 (3.07%) JavaScript
12 7 (3.07%) Rust
12 7 (3.07%) SystemVerilog
13 6 (2.63%) PowerShell
14 5 (2.19%) Bash
14 5 (2.19%) VB
14 5 (2.19%) VB6
15 4 (1.75%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 56 (24.56%) Security Cleared
2 43 (18.86%) SC Cleared
3 24 (10.53%) Degree
4 7 (3.07%) DV Cleared
5 5 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (2.19%) Master's Degree
6 2 (0.88%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.44%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.44%) CCNA
7 1 (0.44%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (0.44%) CompTIA CySA+
7 1 (0.44%) GCIA
7 1 (0.44%) GCIH
7 1 (0.44%) GIAC
7 1 (0.44%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 1 (0.44%) PhD
7 1 (0.44%) Six Sigma Black Belt
7 1 (0.44%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (7.89%) QA
2 10 (4.39%) Def Stans
3 9 (3.95%) MISRA
4 8 (3.51%) DO-178B
5 3 (1.32%) ISO 15022
5 3 (1.32%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.88%) ISO 26262
7 1 (0.44%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.44%) ISO 14001
7 1 (0.44%) ISO 8583
7 1 (0.44%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.44%) MIL-STD-1553
7 1 (0.44%) NCSC
7 1 (0.44%) NIST
7 1 (0.44%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.44%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.44%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 31 (13.60%) Firmware
2 17 (7.46%) Embedded Firmware
3 11 (4.82%) Docker
4 9 (3.95%) VMware Infrastructure
5 8 (3.51%) Active Directory
5 8 (3.51%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.88%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.44%) KVM
7 1 (0.44%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.44%) Squid
Systems Management
1 10 (4.39%) Puppet
2 9 (3.95%) Kubernetes
2 9 (3.95%) Progress Chef
3 4 (1.75%) Ansible
4 2 (0.88%) Grafana
4 2 (0.88%) Salt
5 1 (0.44%) Control-M
5 1 (0.44%) Kibana
5 1 (0.44%) Nagios
5 1 (0.44%) Packer
5 1 (0.44%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 26 (11.40%) Oracle
2 13 (5.70%) IBM
3 10 (4.39%) VMware
4 9 (3.95%) SaltStack
5 8 (3.51%) Red Hat
5 8 (3.51%) Xilinx
6 6 (2.63%) Intel
7 5 (2.19%) Microsemi
8 4 (1.75%) Cisco
8 4 (1.75%) MathWorks
8 4 (1.75%) Microsoft
9 3 (1.32%) Actian
9 3 (1.32%) Splunk
10 2 (0.88%) Google
10 2 (0.88%) HP
10 2 (0.88%) OpenAI
10 2 (0.88%) Perforce
10 2 (0.88%) QNX
10 2 (0.88%) Sitecore
11 1 (0.44%) EMC