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 1 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 383 268 201
Rank change year-on-year -115 -67 +78
Contract jobs citing C 203 329 549
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.91% 1.20%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.80% 2.83% 3.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 70 126 243
10th Percentile £68 £400 £325
25th Percentile £405 £454 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% -3.64% -8.33%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £652 £810 £783
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 47 147
10th Percentile £52.00 £51.15 £51.75
25th Percentile £64.25 £60.13 £57.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.85% - +13.04%
75th Percentile £73.75 £85.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.63 £95.00 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year - +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 11,264 11,612 14,115
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.52% 32.27% 30.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,433 7,429 10,054
10th Percentile £345 £350 £360
25th Percentile £413 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 331 290 430
10th Percentile £31.25 £22.00 £31.48
25th Percentile £50.00 £40.06 £47.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.18
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% +4.69% -1.63%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.38 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 1 December 2025.

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 1 December 2025.

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 1 December 2025. 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 -120 180 £500 -5.21% 369
UK excluding London -81 147 £500 - 384
East of England -7 59 £475 -11.63% 111
South West -19 44 £500 -0.20% 74
Work from Home -46 44 £475 -5.00% 187
London -44 43 £559 -1.32% 26
Scotland +15 17 £438 -48.53% 27
North of England -46 13 £475 +5.67% 41
South East -41 11 £500 +6.95% 122
North West -23 8 £463 +4.17% 19
Yorkshire -39 5 £500 -28.57% 12
Midlands -38 3 - - 40
East Midlands - 2 - - 18
West Midlands -30 1 - - 22

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 16 (7.88%) WebLogic
2 15 (7.39%) WebSphere
3 4 (1.97%) Confluence
4 2 (0.99%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.49%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.49%) nginx
5 1 (0.49%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.49%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 13 (6.40%) Simulink
2 9 (4.43%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (2.96%) Stateflow
4 5 (2.46%) Microsoft Excel
4 5 (2.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.99%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.49%) Actimize
2 1 (0.49%) Dynamics NAV
Cloud Services
1 24 (11.82%) AWS
2 21 (10.34%) Azure
3 17 (8.37%) GitHub
4 12 (5.91%) GCP
5 5 (2.46%) OpenShift
6 4 (1.97%) Amazon S3
7 3 (1.48%) Amazon ECS
7 3 (1.48%) Amazon EKS
7 3 (1.48%) AWS CloudFormation
7 3 (1.48%) AWS Lambda
7 3 (1.48%) IaaS
7 3 (1.48%) Serverless
8 2 (0.99%) Cloud Computing
8 2 (0.99%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (0.99%) npm
8 2 (0.99%) PaaS
8 2 (0.99%) SaaS
9 1 (0.49%) Amazon EC2
9 1 (0.49%) Amazon Kinesis
9 1 (0.49%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 9 (4.43%) Ethernet
2 7 (3.45%) RS-232
3 5 (2.46%) SpaceWire
4 4 (1.97%) TCP/IP
5 3 (1.48%) 3GPP
5 3 (1.48%) Firewall
5 3 (1.48%) HTTP
5 3 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
6 2 (0.99%) AMQP
6 2 (0.99%) Anycast
6 2 (0.99%) BGP
6 2 (0.99%) Bluetooth
6 2 (0.99%) DNS
6 2 (0.99%) Modbus
6 2 (0.99%) Network Security
6 2 (0.99%) Radio Access Network
6 2 (0.99%) RS-485
6 2 (0.99%) Software-Defined Networking
6 2 (0.99%) VXLAN
6 2 (0.99%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (4.43%) Oracle Database
2 3 (1.48%) Big Data
2 3 (1.48%) Data Lake
2 3 (1.48%) Elasticsearch
2 3 (1.48%) HPCC
3 2 (0.99%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (0.99%) InfluxDB
3 2 (0.99%) MongoDB
3 2 (0.99%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (0.99%) RDBMS
3 2 (0.99%) Relational Database
4 1 (0.49%) Data Mining
4 1 (0.49%) Metadata
4 1 (0.49%) NonStop SQL
Development Applications
1 18 (8.87%) Git
1 18 (8.87%) Rational DOORS
2 12 (5.91%) Jenkins
3 9 (4.43%) ClearCase
3 9 (4.43%) GitLab
3 9 (4.43%) JIRA
4 7 (3.45%) Gradle
5 6 (2.96%) Rational Team Concert
6 5 (2.46%) Maven
6 5 (2.46%) Rational Rhapsody
7 4 (1.97%) Artifactory
7 4 (1.97%) Clang
7 4 (1.97%) GCC
7 4 (1.97%) Visual Studio
8 3 (1.48%) Bitbucket
8 3 (1.48%) KGDB
8 3 (1.48%) PVCS
8 3 (1.48%) Xcode
9 2 (0.99%) CMake
10 1 (0.49%) GDB
General
1 34 (16.75%) Social Skills
2 28 (13.79%) Electronics
3 22 (10.84%) Finance
4 20 (9.85%) Aerospace
5 17 (8.37%) Analytical Skills
6 16 (7.88%) Public Sector
7 11 (5.42%) Law
8 10 (4.93%) Telecoms
9 7 (3.45%) Banking
9 7 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (3.45%) Manufacturing
9 7 (3.45%) Military
10 6 (2.96%) Marketing
11 5 (2.46%) Aviation
12 4 (1.97%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.99%) Automotive
13 2 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 1 (0.49%) Back Office
14 1 (0.49%) Investment Banking
14 1 (0.49%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 58 (28.57%) Software Engineer
2 28 (13.79%) Developer
3 26 (12.81%) Embedded Engineer
4 23 (11.33%) Embedded Software Engineer
5 16 (7.88%) Support Engineer
6 15 (7.39%) Consultant
7 13 (6.40%) Architect
7 13 (6.40%) C Software Engineer
8 12 (5.91%) Product Engineer
8 12 (5.91%) Products Support Engineer
8 12 (5.91%) Senior
8 12 (5.91%) Software Support Engineer
9 11 (5.42%) Design Engineer
9 11 (5.42%) Systems Engineer
10 10 (4.93%) C++ Software Engineer
10 10 (4.93%) Digital Design Engineer
11 9 (4.43%) Embedded C Engineer
11 9 (4.43%) Embedded C Software Engineer
12 7 (3.45%) C++ Developer
12 7 (3.45%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (14.29%) Middleware
2 28 (13.79%) HTML
3 21 (10.34%) Node.js
4 17 (8.37%) .NET
5 10 (4.93%) Flash
6 8 (3.94%) CSS
7 7 (3.45%) REST
8 6 (2.96%) JSON
8 6 (2.96%) React
9 5 (2.46%) PyTorch
9 5 (2.46%) XML
10 4 (1.97%) AngularJS
10 4 (1.97%) Google JAX
10 4 (1.97%) JAX
10 4 (1.97%) RESTful
10 4 (1.97%) Spring
10 4 (1.97%) TensorFlow
10 4 (1.97%) Yocto
11 3 (1.48%) JNI
11 3 (1.48%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 21 (10.34%) Embedded Systems
2 19 (9.36%) FPGA
3 13 (6.40%) VHDL
4 7 (3.45%) Analogue Electronics
4 7 (3.45%) CUDA
4 7 (3.45%) Self-Motivation
5 6 (2.96%) Distributed Systems
6 5 (2.46%) PCIe
7 4 (1.97%) Algorithms
7 4 (1.97%) CAN bus
7 4 (1.97%) Cloud Native
7 4 (1.97%) Data Centre
7 4 (1.97%) Device Driver
7 4 (1.97%) Hedge funds
7 4 (1.97%) Verilog
8 3 (1.48%) Mobile App
8 3 (1.48%) Mobile Banking
8 3 (1.48%) Security Posture
9 2 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (0.99%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 63 (31.03%) Linux
2 27 (13.30%) Windows
3 13 (6.40%) Ubuntu
4 9 (4.43%) FreeRTOS
4 9 (4.43%) Unix
5 5 (2.46%) CentOS
6 4 (1.97%) Android
7 3 (1.48%) Apple iOS
7 3 (1.48%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.49%) Debian
9 1 (0.49%) OpenVMS
9 1 (0.49%) Robot Operating System
9 1 (0.49%) VMS
9 1 (0.49%) VxWorks
9 1 (0.49%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 88 (43.35%) Software Engineering
2 29 (14.29%) CI/CD
3 26 (12.81%) Problem-Solving
4 22 (10.84%) Agile
5 20 (9.85%) AI
5 20 (9.85%) Validation
6 19 (9.36%) DevOps
7 17 (8.37%) Mathematics
7 17 (8.37%) Software Testing
8 15 (7.39%) Requirements Gathering
9 14 (6.90%) Signal Processing
10 13 (6.40%) Containerisation
10 13 (6.40%) UML
11 12 (5.91%) Systems Engineering
12 11 (5.42%) Data Pipeline
12 11 (5.42%) Machine Learning
12 11 (5.42%) Test Automation
12 11 (5.42%) Unit Testing
13 10 (4.93%) Computer Science
13 10 (4.93%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 135 (66.50%) C++
2 74 (36.45%) Python
3 68 (33.50%) Java
4 28 (13.79%) JavaScript
5 25 (12.32%) Shell Script
6 20 (9.85%) Ada
7 19 (9.36%) SQL
8 16 (7.88%) Embedded C
8 16 (7.88%) MATLAB
9 15 (7.39%) Bash
9 15 (7.39%) PHP
10 13 (6.40%) C#
11 9 (4.43%) Fortran
11 9 (4.43%) Perl
11 9 (4.43%) PowerShell
12 8 (3.94%) Embedded C++
13 7 (3.45%) PL/SQL
14 6 (2.96%) Go
14 6 (2.96%) Tcl
15 5 (2.46%) Rust
Qualifications
1 72 (35.47%) Security Cleared
2 55 (27.09%) SC Cleared
3 17 (8.37%) Degree
4 10 (4.93%) DV Cleared
5 3 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (1.48%) Master's Degree
5 3 (1.48%) PhD
6 2 (0.99%) CCIE
6 2 (0.99%) Cisco Certification
6 2 (0.99%) CISSP
6 2 (0.99%) JNCIE
6 2 (0.99%) Postgraduate
7 1 (0.49%) CCSAS
7 1 (0.49%) GPEN
7 1 (0.49%) GWAPT
7 1 (0.49%) GXPN
7 1 (0.49%) ISTQB
7 1 (0.49%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 1 (0.49%) OSCE
7 1 (0.49%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (6.40%) QA
2 10 (4.93%) MISRA
3 9 (4.43%) Def Stans
4 8 (3.94%) DO-178B
5 6 (2.96%) IEC 61508
6 5 (2.46%) ISO 26262
6 5 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (1.48%) EU AI Act
7 3 (1.48%) GDPR
7 3 (1.48%) IEC 62304
7 3 (1.48%) MISRA C
7 3 (1.48%) NIST
8 2 (0.99%) AUTOSAR
8 2 (0.99%) Software Quality Assurance
9 1 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.49%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.49%) DO-254
9 1 (0.49%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 1 (0.49%) MiFID
System Software
1 25 (12.32%) Firmware
2 21 (10.34%) Docker
3 6 (2.96%) Embedded Firmware
4 5 (2.46%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (1.97%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.99%) Active Directory
7 1 (0.49%) KVM
Systems Management
1 18 (8.87%) Kubernetes
2 11 (5.42%) Terraform
3 8 (3.94%) Ansible
4 4 (1.97%) Grafana
5 2 (0.99%) Podman
5 2 (0.99%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.49%) Functional Safety
6 1 (0.49%) Istio
6 1 (0.49%) Rsyslog
6 1 (0.49%) SCOM
Vendors
1 19 (9.36%) Oracle
2 18 (8.87%) Red Hat
3 15 (7.39%) Dynatrace
4 9 (4.43%) NetApp
5 8 (3.94%) Microsoft
5 8 (3.94%) SAP
6 6 (2.96%) MathWorks
7 5 (2.46%) IBM
7 5 (2.46%) VMware
8 3 (1.48%) ANSYS
8 3 (1.48%) Atlassian
8 3 (1.48%) Cisco
8 3 (1.48%) ServiceNow
9 2 (0.99%) Arista
9 2 (0.99%) HP
9 2 (0.99%) Intel
9 2 (0.99%) Salesforce
9 2 (0.99%) Siemens
9 2 (0.99%) Wind River
10 1 (0.49%) Veritas