C Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

C
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring C skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 23 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 242 187 122
Rank change year-on-year -55 -65 +98
Contract jobs citing C 161 175 394
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.88% 1.18% 2.03%
As % of the Programming Languages category 3.45% 4.40% 7.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 45 51 151
10th Percentile £68 £400 £338
25th Percentile £375 £406 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -5.66% -3.64%
75th Percentile £550 £588 £588
90th Percentile £619 £625 £706
UK median daily rate £500 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -6.98% -2.27% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 44 138
10th Percentile £52.00 £52.95 £52.00
25th Percentile £65.00 £61.25 £62.50
Median hourly rate £67.00 £67.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.74% +3.85% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £85.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.13 £95.00 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year - +3.85% +13.04%

All Programming Languages
UK excluding London

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 in the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 4,665 3,980 4,951
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 25.50% 26.95% 25.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,013 2,396 3,399
10th Percentile £315 £332 £325
25th Percentile £400 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -3.85%
75th Percentile £569 £575 £600
90th Percentile £644 £663 £675
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% -3.34%
Number of hourly rates quoted 297 188 313
10th Percentile £41.25 £21.25 £37.72
25th Percentile £52.50 £46.18 £48.47
Median hourly rate £65.00 £63.87 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.77% -1.73% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.00 £83.99
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -

C
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing C relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

C job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

C
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing C.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing C

C
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing C in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 23 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for C in the UK excluding London

C
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing C.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing C

C
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing C in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 23 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for C in the UK excluding London

C
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

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 excluding London region over the 6 months to 23 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
East of England -6 68 £475 -11.63% 183
South West -11 48 £500 -0.20% 135
Scotland +17 16 £438 - 54
North of England -42 14 £475 -13.64% 147
South East -39 11 £500 +6.10% 251
North West -23 9 £463 +15.63% 69
Yorkshire -42 5 £500 -28.57% 56
Midlands -44 3 £575 +48.39% 127
East Midlands -17 2 - - 62
Northern Ireland -5 1 £425 - 10
West Midlands -34 1 £575 +48.39% 57
C
UK

C
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 15 (9.32%) WebLogic
1 15 (9.32%) WebSphere
2 1 (0.62%) Confluence
2 1 (0.62%) nginx
Applications
1 17 (10.56%) Simulink
2 8 (4.97%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (3.73%) Stateflow
4 5 (3.11%) Microsoft Excel
4 5 (3.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (1.24%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 10 (6.21%) GitHub
2 8 (4.97%) AWS
3 6 (3.73%) Azure
4 4 (2.48%) GCP
5 3 (1.86%) Amazon ECS
5 3 (1.86%) Amazon EKS
5 3 (1.86%) Amazon S3
5 3 (1.86%) AWS Lambda
5 3 (1.86%) Serverless
6 2 (1.24%) AWS CloudFormation
6 2 (1.24%) GitHub Actions
6 2 (1.24%) OpenShift
7 1 (0.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (0.62%) Amazon EC2
7 1 (0.62%) Amazon GuardDuty
7 1 (0.62%) AWS CloudTrail
7 1 (0.62%) ChatGPT
7 1 (0.62%) Firebase
7 1 (0.62%) GitHub Copilot
7 1 (0.62%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 5 (3.11%) RS-232
1 5 (3.11%) SpaceWire
2 4 (2.48%) Ethernet
3 3 (1.86%) HTTP
4 2 (1.24%) SSL
5 1 (0.62%) 3GPP
5 1 (0.62%) 5G
5 1 (0.62%) 5G NR
5 1 (0.62%) AMQP
5 1 (0.62%) Bluetooth
5 1 (0.62%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.62%) Internet
5 1 (0.62%) LTE
5 1 (0.62%) MQTT
5 1 (0.62%) Network Security
5 1 (0.62%) NFC
5 1 (0.62%) UWB
5 1 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.62%) Wireless
5 1 (0.62%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (5.59%) Oracle Database
2 2 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
2 2 (1.24%) MongoDB
2 2 (1.24%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (0.62%) InfluxDB
3 1 (0.62%) RDBMS
3 1 (0.62%) Relational Database
3 1 (0.62%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 21 (13.04%) Rational DOORS
2 16 (9.94%) Git
3 11 (6.83%) Jenkins
4 9 (5.59%) JIRA
5 8 (4.97%) ClearCase
6 6 (3.73%) PVCS
6 6 (3.73%) Rational Team Concert
7 5 (3.11%) GitLab
7 5 (3.11%) Rational Rhapsody
8 4 (2.48%) Artifactory
8 4 (2.48%) Gradle
8 4 (2.48%) Xcode
9 2 (1.24%) Bitbucket
9 2 (1.24%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.62%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.62%) CMake
10 1 (0.62%) Maven
10 1 (0.62%) NUnit
10 1 (0.62%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.62%) Subversion
General
1 29 (18.01%) Electronics
2 25 (15.53%) Social Skills
3 21 (13.04%) Aerospace
4 13 (8.07%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (7.45%) Law
6 6 (3.73%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (3.73%) Public Sector
7 5 (3.11%) Aviation
8 4 (2.48%) Military
8 4 (2.48%) Telecoms
9 3 (1.86%) Banking
9 3 (1.86%) Manufacturing
10 2 (1.24%) Finance
10 2 (1.24%) Marketing
11 1 (0.62%) Automotive
11 1 (0.62%) Games
11 1 (0.62%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 53 (32.92%) Software Engineer
2 30 (18.63%) Embedded Engineer
3 28 (17.39%) Embedded Software Engineer
4 16 (9.94%) Developer
5 15 (9.32%) C Software Engineer
5 15 (9.32%) Consultant
6 14 (8.70%) Support Engineer
7 13 (8.07%) Design Engineer
8 12 (7.45%) Embedded C Engineer
8 12 (7.45%) Embedded C Software Engineer
8 12 (7.45%) Product Engineer
8 12 (7.45%) Products Support Engineer
8 12 (7.45%) Software Support Engineer
9 11 (6.83%) C++ Software Engineer
10 10 (6.21%) Digital Design Engineer
10 10 (6.21%) Systems Engineer
11 9 (5.59%) C/C++ Software Engineer
12 8 (4.97%) FPGA Engineer
13 7 (4.35%) Architect
14 6 (3.73%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (18.63%) Middleware
2 19 (11.80%) HTML
3 18 (11.18%) Node.js
4 16 (9.94%) .NET
5 10 (6.21%) Flash
6 4 (2.48%) PyTorch
6 4 (2.48%) REST
7 3 (1.86%) CSS
7 3 (1.86%) Google JAX
7 3 (1.86%) JAX
7 3 (1.86%) React
7 3 (1.86%) RESTful
7 3 (1.86%) scikit-learn
7 3 (1.86%) TensorFlow
8 2 (1.24%) OpenID
8 2 (1.24%) XML
8 2 (1.24%) Yocto
9 1 (0.62%) Core Data
9 1 (0.62%) Elastic Stack
9 1 (0.62%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 20 (12.42%) Embedded Systems
2 19 (11.80%) FPGA
3 17 (10.56%) VHDL
4 7 (4.35%) Analogue Electronics
4 7 (4.35%) CUDA
4 7 (4.35%) Verilog
5 6 (3.73%) Self-Motivation
6 5 (3.11%) PCIe
7 4 (2.48%) CAN bus
7 4 (2.48%) Mobile App
8 3 (1.86%) Algorithms
8 3 (1.86%) Distributed Systems
8 3 (1.86%) Mobile Banking
8 3 (1.86%) Security Posture
9 2 (1.24%) Data Centre
9 2 (1.24%) Device Driver
10 1 (0.62%) Acoustics
10 1 (0.62%) EMV
10 1 (0.62%) IoT
10 1 (0.62%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 40 (24.84%) Linux
2 16 (9.94%) Windows
3 12 (7.45%) Ubuntu
4 6 (3.73%) FreeRTOS
5 4 (2.48%) Android
5 4 (2.48%) Apple iOS
6 2 (1.24%) Embedded Linux
7 1 (0.62%) CentOS
7 1 (0.62%) OpenVMS
7 1 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.62%) Unix
7 1 (0.62%) VMS
7 1 (0.62%) VxWorks
7 1 (0.62%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 76 (47.20%) Software Engineering
2 22 (13.66%) CI/CD
2 22 (13.66%) Validation
3 19 (11.80%) Problem-Solving
3 19 (11.80%) Signal Processing
4 16 (9.94%) AI
5 15 (9.32%) Requirements Gathering
6 14 (8.70%) Software Testing
6 14 (8.70%) Systems Engineering
6 14 (8.70%) Unit Testing
7 13 (8.07%) Agile
8 12 (7.45%) Mathematics
9 11 (6.83%) Containerisation
9 11 (6.83%) UML
10 10 (6.21%) DevOps
10 10 (6.21%) Integration Testing
10 10 (6.21%) Workflow
11 9 (5.59%) Requirements Management
12 8 (4.97%) Machine Learning
12 8 (4.97%) Sensor Fusion
Programming Languages
1 106 (65.84%) C++
2 49 (30.43%) Java
3 43 (26.71%) Python
4 21 (13.04%) Shell Script
5 20 (12.42%) Ada
5 20 (12.42%) JavaScript
6 17 (10.56%) MATLAB
7 16 (9.94%) Embedded C
8 15 (9.32%) PHP
9 10 (6.21%) SQL
10 8 (4.97%) C#
10 8 (4.97%) Embedded C++
10 8 (4.97%) Fortran
11 6 (3.73%) Bash
11 6 (3.73%) SystemVerilog
11 6 (3.73%) Tcl
12 5 (3.11%) VBA
13 4 (2.48%) R
13 4 (2.48%) Ruby
13 4 (2.48%) Swift
Qualifications
1 61 (37.89%) Security Cleared
2 48 (29.81%) SC Cleared
3 13 (8.07%) Degree
4 7 (4.35%) DV Cleared
5 2 (1.24%) Master's Degree
5 2 (1.24%) PhD
6 1 (0.62%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (0.62%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (7.45%) Def Stans
2 11 (6.83%) MISRA
3 10 (6.21%) QA
4 9 (5.59%) DO-178B
5 7 (4.35%) IEC 61508
6 5 (3.11%) ISO 26262
7 4 (2.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (1.86%) EU AI Act
8 3 (1.86%) GDPR
8 3 (1.86%) IEC 62304
8 3 (1.86%) NIST
9 2 (1.24%) MISRA C
10 1 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.62%) AUTOSAR
10 1 (0.62%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 21 (13.04%) Firmware
2 12 (7.45%) Docker
3 7 (4.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (3.73%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (1.24%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 12 (7.45%) Kubernetes
2 5 (3.11%) Ansible
2 5 (3.11%) Terraform
3 2 (1.24%) Grafana
3 2 (1.24%) Podman
4 1 (0.62%) Functional Safety
4 1 (0.62%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.62%) Rsyslog
4 1 (0.62%) SCOM
Vendors
1 15 (9.32%) Dynatrace
2 13 (8.07%) Red Hat
3 11 (6.83%) Oracle
4 8 (4.97%) IBM
4 8 (4.97%) NetApp
5 7 (4.35%) VMware
6 6 (3.73%) ANSYS
6 6 (3.73%) MathWorks
7 5 (3.11%) Intel
8 4 (2.48%) Microsemi
8 4 (2.48%) Xilinx
9 3 (1.86%) Atlassian
10 2 (1.24%) Microsoft
10 2 (1.24%) SAP
10 2 (1.24%) Siemens
11 1 (0.62%) OpenAI
11 1 (0.62%) QNX
11 1 (0.62%) Sitecore
11 1 (0.62%) Splunk
11 1 (0.62%) Xamarin