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

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 472 372 214
Rank change year-on-year -100 -158 +2
Contract jobs citing C 217 184 432
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.40% 0.56% 1.13%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.53% 1.72% 3.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 64 72 208
10th Percentile £331 £375 £400
25th Percentile £400 £425 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £531 £538
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% -1.21% -2.23%
75th Percentile £640 £638 £609
90th Percentile £709 £675 £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 69 33 81
10th Percentile £51.85 £41.25 £44.49
25th Percentile £65.00 £52.00 £57.50
Median hourly rate £68.00 £68.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - +0.74% +3.85%
75th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £75.00
90th Percentile £70.25 £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 14,186 10,727 12,091
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.04% 32.76% 31.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,216 7,109 8,253
10th Percentile £363 £340 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -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 535 295 341
10th Percentile £28.00 £29.00 £27.00
25th Percentile £48.32 £37.23 £46.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.25 £67.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £80.00 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +0.97%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -65 206 £472 -14.27% 802
UK excluding London -46 168 £450 -10.00% 611
Work from Home -53 68 £500 -4.76% 273
South East -21 55 £450 -10.00% 178
East of England -9 53 £700 +30.23% 180
London -103 40 £488 -20.41% 244
South West -44 31 £450 -20.88% 102
West Midlands -27 20 £450 - 23
Midlands -32 20 £450 - 54
Scotland -34 5 - - 47
North of England -77 5 £400 -6.43% 54
Yorkshire -35 2 £400 -20.00% 14
North West -59 2 £420 +10.53% 33
North East -46 1 - - 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 5 (2.30%) Tuxedo
2 3 (1.38%) WebSphere
3 2 (0.92%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 2 (0.92%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (0.46%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.46%) ColdFusion
4 1 (0.46%) Confluence
Applications
1 11 (5.07%) Simulink
2 3 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.92%) BASE24
1 2 (0.92%) Oracle Retail
1 2 (0.92%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 15 (6.91%) AWS
2 11 (5.07%) Azure
3 9 (4.15%) GitHub
4 7 (3.23%) GitHub Copilot
4 7 (3.23%) IaaS
5 6 (2.76%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (1.38%) SaaS
7 2 (0.92%) Amazon S3
7 2 (0.92%) AWS IoT
7 2 (0.92%) AWS Lambda
7 2 (0.92%) Datadog
7 2 (0.92%) Entra ID
7 2 (0.92%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (0.92%) OCI
7 2 (0.92%) Power Platform
7 2 (0.92%) Serverless
8 1 (0.46%) Amazon ECS
8 1 (0.46%) Amazon EKS
8 1 (0.46%) AWS Step Functions
8 1 (0.46%) Cohesity
Communications & Networking
1 21 (9.68%) Software-Defined Radio
1 21 (9.68%) Wireless
2 9 (4.15%) Ethernet
3 4 (1.84%) Bluetooth
3 4 (1.84%) TCP/IP
3 4 (1.84%) Wireshark
4 3 (1.38%) DNS
4 3 (1.38%) Internet
4 3 (1.38%) MQTT
4 3 (1.38%) RS-232
4 3 (1.38%) RS-485
4 3 (1.38%) VXLAN
5 2 (0.92%) ATM
5 2 (0.92%) Firewall
5 2 (0.92%) WAN
5 2 (0.92%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.46%) Broadband
6 1 (0.46%) DHCP
6 1 (0.46%) LAN
6 1 (0.46%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (4.61%) Ingres
2 6 (2.76%) Relational Database
2 6 (2.76%) SQL Server
3 4 (1.84%) RDBMS
4 3 (1.38%) NoSQL
4 3 (1.38%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.92%) NonStop SQL
5 2 (0.92%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.92%) Power BI
5 2 (0.92%) Redis
5 2 (0.92%) SQLPlus
6 1 (0.46%) Big Data
6 1 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (0.46%) KDB
6 1 (0.46%) Kdb+
6 1 (0.46%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.46%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.46%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 25 (11.52%) Git
2 21 (9.68%) Rational DOORS
3 13 (5.99%) JIRA
3 13 (5.99%) Rational Rhapsody
4 10 (4.61%) Jenkins
5 7 (3.23%) Team Foundation Server
6 5 (2.30%) Oracle Forms
7 3 (1.38%) GitLab
8 2 (0.92%) CMake
8 2 (0.92%) CppUnit
8 2 (0.92%) PetaLinux
8 2 (0.92%) PVCS
8 2 (0.92%) Subversion
9 1 (0.46%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.46%) Eclipse
9 1 (0.46%) git-flow
9 1 (0.46%) GoogleTest
9 1 (0.46%) Mocha
9 1 (0.46%) Sinon.JS
General
1 54 (24.88%) Social Skills
2 26 (11.98%) Aerospace
3 22 (10.14%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (7.83%) Electronics
5 13 (5.99%) Law
6 10 (4.61%) Manufacturing
7 7 (3.23%) Finance
7 7 (3.23%) Public Sector
8 6 (2.76%) Banking
8 6 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.84%) Military
10 3 (1.38%) Automotive
10 3 (1.38%) Avionics
10 3 (1.38%) Front Office
10 3 (1.38%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.92%) Games
11 2 (0.92%) Japanese Language
11 2 (0.92%) Retail
11 2 (0.92%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.46%) Korean Language
Job Titles
1 86 (39.63%) Software Engineer
2 52 (23.96%) Embedded Engineer
3 45 (20.74%) Embedded Software Engineer
4 28 (12.90%) Senior
5 24 (11.06%) Developer
6 22 (10.14%) C Software Engineer
7 18 (8.29%) C++ Software Engineer
8 15 (6.91%) Lead
9 13 (5.99%) C/C++ Software Engineer
10 10 (4.61%) Embedded C Engineer
10 10 (4.61%) Embedded C Software Engineer
10 10 (4.61%) Linux Engineer
11 9 (4.15%) Development Engineer
11 9 (4.15%) Senior Developer
11 9 (4.15%) Software Team Leader
11 9 (4.15%) Team Leader
12 8 (3.69%) DSP Engineer
12 8 (3.69%) DSP Software Engineer
12 8 (3.69%) Software Developer
12 8 (3.69%) Software Development Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (6.91%) Yocto
2 7 (3.23%) .NET
2 7 (3.23%) Terraform
3 6 (2.76%) REST
4 5 (2.30%) JSON
4 5 (2.30%) Middleware
4 5 (2.30%) XML
5 4 (1.84%) HTML
5 4 (1.84%) LDAP
5 4 (1.84%) OpenTofu
6 3 (1.38%) ADO
6 3 (1.38%) COM
6 3 (1.38%) HTML5
6 3 (1.38%) ODBC
6 3 (1.38%) WebSphere MQ
7 2 (0.92%) CSS
7 2 (0.92%) Kafka
7 2 (0.92%) QML
7 2 (0.92%) Qt
7 2 (0.92%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 34 (15.67%) Embedded Systems
2 20 (9.22%) FPGA
3 18 (8.29%) Device Driver
4 17 (7.83%) RISC-V
5 10 (4.61%) Legacy Systems
5 10 (4.61%) MicroBlaze
6 9 (4.15%) Algorithms
6 9 (4.15%) PCIe
6 9 (4.15%) Verilog
6 9 (4.15%) VHDL
7 8 (3.69%) Private Cloud
8 6 (2.76%) Distributed Systems
9 5 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (2.30%) IoT
9 5 (2.30%) Virtual Team
10 4 (1.84%) ARM Cortex
10 4 (1.84%) Cloud Native
11 3 (1.38%) Data Structures
11 3 (1.38%) Fixed Income
11 3 (1.38%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 73 (33.64%) Linux
2 25 (11.52%) Embedded Linux
3 15 (6.91%) Unix
4 13 (5.99%) FreeRTOS
4 13 (5.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (3.69%) Windows
6 2 (0.92%) Android
7 1 (0.46%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.46%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.46%) VxWorks
7 1 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (54.38%) Software Engineering
2 40 (18.43%) Agile
3 30 (13.82%) Problem-Solving
4 28 (12.90%) Signal Processing
5 26 (11.98%) Validation
6 25 (11.52%) Test Automation
7 22 (10.14%) CI/CD
7 22 (10.14%) Digital Signal Processing
8 21 (9.68%) DevOps
8 21 (9.68%) UML
9 19 (8.76%) Data Management
9 19 (8.76%) Systems Engineering
10 15 (6.91%) Software Testing
10 15 (6.91%) Technical Leadership
11 14 (6.45%) Integration Testing
12 13 (5.99%) Configuration Management
12 13 (5.99%) Migration
12 13 (5.99%) Workflow
13 12 (5.53%) Embedded Software Development
13 12 (5.53%) System Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 122 (56.22%) C++
2 55 (25.35%) Python
3 34 (15.67%) Embedded C
4 28 (12.90%) SQL
5 22 (10.14%) Ada
6 19 (8.76%) Java
7 17 (7.83%) PL/SQL
8 14 (6.45%) MATLAB
8 14 (6.45%) ProC
9 10 (4.61%) C#
10 9 (4.15%) Embedded C++
10 9 (4.15%) Perl
11 7 (3.23%) SystemVerilog
12 6 (2.76%) Rust
13 5 (2.30%) Bash
13 5 (2.30%) JavaScript
13 5 (2.30%) PowerShell
13 5 (2.30%) VB
13 5 (2.30%) VB6
14 4 (1.84%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 58 (26.73%) Security Cleared
2 45 (20.74%) SC Cleared
3 24 (11.06%) Degree
4 9 (4.15%) DV Cleared
5 6 (2.76%) BPSS Clearance
6 5 (2.30%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.92%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.46%) CCNA
8 1 (0.46%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (0.46%) CompTIA CySA+
8 1 (0.46%) GCIA
8 1 (0.46%) GCIH
8 1 (0.46%) GIAC
8 1 (0.46%) PhD
8 1 (0.46%) Six Sigma Black Belt
8 1 (0.46%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (7.83%) QA
2 11 (5.07%) Def Stans
3 9 (4.15%) MISRA
4 8 (3.69%) DO-178B
5 3 (1.38%) ISO 15022
5 3 (1.38%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.92%) ISO 26262
7 1 (0.46%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.46%) ISO 14001
7 1 (0.46%) ISO 8583
7 1 (0.46%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.46%) MIL-STD-1553
7 1 (0.46%) NCSC
7 1 (0.46%) NIST
7 1 (0.46%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.46%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.46%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 31 (14.29%) Firmware
2 17 (7.83%) Embedded Firmware
3 11 (5.07%) Docker
4 7 (3.23%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (2.76%) Active Directory
5 6 (2.76%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.92%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.46%) KVM
7 1 (0.46%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.46%) Squid
Systems Management
1 9 (4.15%) Puppet
2 8 (3.69%) Kubernetes
2 8 (3.69%) Progress Chef
3 3 (1.38%) Ansible
4 2 (0.92%) Salt
5 1 (0.46%) Grafana
5 1 (0.46%) Kibana
5 1 (0.46%) Nagios
5 1 (0.46%) Packer
Vendors
1 24 (11.06%) Oracle
2 13 (5.99%) IBM
3 9 (4.15%) Xilinx
4 8 (3.69%) Red Hat
4 8 (3.69%) SaltStack
5 7 (3.23%) Intel
5 7 (3.23%) VMware
6 5 (2.30%) Microsemi
7 4 (1.84%) Cisco
7 4 (1.84%) MathWorks
8 3 (1.38%) Actian
9 2 (0.92%) Google
9 2 (0.92%) HP
9 2 (0.92%) Lauterbach
9 2 (0.92%) Microsoft
9 2 (0.92%) Perforce
9 2 (0.92%) QNX
9 2 (0.92%) SAP
9 2 (0.92%) Sitecore
9 2 (0.92%) Splunk