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 16 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 251 169 126
Rank change year-on-year -82 -43 +92
Contract jobs citing C 144 217 413
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.83% 1.30% 1.97%
As % of the Programming Languages category 3.11% 5.05% 7.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 46 69 169
10th Percentile £68 £396 £370
25th Percentile £375 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.41% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £550 £625 £588
90th Percentile £628 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £538 £540
% change year-on-year -6.98% -0.46% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 42 136
10th Percentile £48.78 £52.65 £51.75
25th Percentile £61.25 £57.91 £57.50
Median hourly rate £67.75 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.23% - -
75th Percentile £73.75 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.25 £95.00 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £68.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.62% - +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 4,637 4,295 5,369
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 26.78% 25.82% 25.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,004 2,562 3,719
10th Percentile £313 £325 £325
25th Percentile £400 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -2.91%
75th Percentile £569 £580 £600
90th Percentile £638 £656 £675
UK median daily rate £508 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 240 218 342
10th Percentile £41.13 £23.75 £34.58
25th Percentile £52.50 £46.18 £48.32
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year - +4.17% -

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 16 November 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 16 November 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 16 November 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 -11 54 £475 -5.00% 176
South West -22 42 £525 +1.11% 114
Scotland +8 17 £438 -48.53% 42
North of England -41 17 £450 -11.76% 56
North West -25 12 £415 -14.87% 26
South East -40 11 £500 -4.31% 284
Yorkshire -42 5 £500 -1.96% 21
Midlands -38 3 - - 61
East Midlands - 2 - - 36
West Midlands -30 1 - - 25
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 16 (11.11%) WebLogic
2 15 (10.42%) WebSphere
3 2 (1.39%) Confluence
3 2 (1.39%) nginx
4 1 (0.69%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 13 (9.03%) Simulink
2 8 (5.56%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (4.17%) Stateflow
4 5 (3.47%) Microsoft Excel
4 5 (3.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (1.39%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 9 (6.25%) GitHub
2 8 (5.56%) AWS
3 7 (4.86%) Azure
4 5 (3.47%) GCP
5 3 (2.08%) Amazon ECS
5 3 (2.08%) Amazon EKS
5 3 (2.08%) Amazon S3
5 3 (2.08%) AWS CloudFormation
5 3 (2.08%) AWS Lambda
5 3 (2.08%) OpenShift
5 3 (2.08%) Serverless
6 2 (1.39%) npm
7 1 (0.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (0.69%) Amazon EC2
7 1 (0.69%) Amazon GuardDuty
7 1 (0.69%) AWS CloudTrail
7 1 (0.69%) ChatGPT
7 1 (0.69%) Cloud Computing
7 1 (0.69%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (0.69%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (3.47%) RS-232
1 5 (3.47%) SpaceWire
2 4 (2.78%) Ethernet
3 3 (2.08%) HTTP
4 2 (1.39%) AMQP
5 1 (0.69%) 3GPP
5 1 (0.69%) 5G
5 1 (0.69%) 5G NR
5 1 (0.69%) Bluetooth
5 1 (0.69%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.69%) Internet
5 1 (0.69%) LTE
5 1 (0.69%) MQTT
5 1 (0.69%) Network Security
5 1 (0.69%) NFC
5 1 (0.69%) SSL
5 1 (0.69%) UWB
5 1 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.69%) Wireless
5 1 (0.69%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (5.56%) Oracle Database
2 3 (2.08%) MongoDB
2 3 (2.08%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (1.39%) InfluxDB
3 2 (1.39%) RDBMS
3 2 (1.39%) Relational Database
4 1 (0.69%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 17 (11.81%) Git
1 17 (11.81%) Rational DOORS
2 15 (10.42%) Jenkins
3 8 (5.56%) ClearCase
3 8 (5.56%) Gradle
4 7 (4.86%) Xcode
5 6 (4.17%) JIRA
5 6 (4.17%) Rational Team Concert
6 5 (3.47%) GitLab
7 4 (2.78%) Artifactory
7 4 (2.78%) Rational Rhapsody
8 3 (2.08%) Bitbucket
9 2 (1.39%) Maven
9 2 (1.39%) PVCS
9 2 (1.39%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.69%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.69%) CMake
10 1 (0.69%) NUnit
10 1 (0.69%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.69%) Subversion
General
1 24 (16.67%) Social Skills
2 21 (14.58%) Electronics
3 20 (13.89%) Aerospace
4 11 (7.64%) Law
5 9 (6.25%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (4.86%) Banking
7 6 (4.17%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (4.17%) Public Sector
8 5 (3.47%) Aviation
9 4 (2.78%) Telecoms
10 3 (2.08%) Manufacturing
10 3 (2.08%) Military
11 2 (1.39%) Finance
11 2 (1.39%) Marketing
12 1 (0.69%) Automotive
12 1 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 40 (27.78%) Software Engineer
2 19 (13.19%) Developer
3 18 (12.50%) Embedded Engineer
4 17 (11.81%) Embedded Software Engineer
5 15 (10.42%) Consultant
5 15 (10.42%) Support Engineer
6 12 (8.33%) Product Engineer
6 12 (8.33%) Products Support Engineer
6 12 (8.33%) Software Support Engineer
7 11 (7.64%) Design Engineer
8 10 (6.94%) Digital Design Engineer
8 10 (6.94%) Systems Engineer
9 8 (5.56%) C Software Engineer
10 7 (4.86%) C++ Software Engineer
11 6 (4.17%) Architect
11 6 (4.17%) Embedded C Engineer
11 6 (4.17%) Embedded C Software Engineer
11 6 (4.17%) iOS Developer
11 6 (4.17%) Security Engineer
12 4 (2.78%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (18.75%) Middleware
2 23 (15.97%) HTML
3 19 (13.19%) Node.js
4 16 (11.11%) .NET
5 10 (6.94%) Flash
6 7 (4.86%) CSS
7 5 (3.47%) REST
8 4 (2.78%) PyTorch
8 4 (2.78%) React
9 3 (2.08%) Google JAX
9 3 (2.08%) JAX
9 3 (2.08%) RESTful
9 3 (2.08%) scikit-learn
9 3 (2.08%) TensorFlow
10 2 (1.39%) AngularJS
10 2 (1.39%) JSON
10 2 (1.39%) OpenID
10 2 (1.39%) SOAP
10 2 (1.39%) Vue
10 2 (1.39%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 14 (9.72%) Embedded Systems
2 13 (9.03%) FPGA
3 12 (8.33%) VHDL
4 7 (4.86%) Analogue Electronics
4 7 (4.86%) CUDA
4 7 (4.86%) Mobile App
4 7 (4.86%) Mobile Banking
5 6 (4.17%) Self-Motivation
6 4 (2.78%) CAN bus
6 4 (2.78%) PCIe
7 3 (2.08%) Algorithms
7 3 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
7 3 (2.08%) Security Posture
7 3 (2.08%) Verilog
8 2 (1.39%) Data Centre
8 2 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
9 1 (0.69%) Acoustics
9 1 (0.69%) Cloud Native
9 1 (0.69%) IoT
9 1 (0.69%) NB-IoT
Operating Systems
1 39 (27.08%) Linux
2 16 (11.11%) Windows
3 12 (8.33%) Ubuntu
4 8 (5.56%) Android
5 7 (4.86%) Apple iOS
6 6 (4.17%) FreeRTOS
7 2 (1.39%) CentOS
7 2 (1.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.69%) OpenVMS
8 1 (0.69%) Unix
8 1 (0.69%) VMS
8 1 (0.69%) VxWorks
8 1 (0.69%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (43.75%) Software Engineering
2 22 (15.28%) CI/CD
3 18 (12.50%) Agile
3 18 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
4 16 (11.11%) AI
5 15 (10.42%) Requirements Gathering
5 15 (10.42%) Validation
6 14 (9.72%) Signal Processing
7 13 (9.03%) Software Testing
7 13 (9.03%) Unit Testing
8 12 (8.33%) Containerisation
8 12 (8.33%) Mathematics
8 12 (8.33%) UML
9 11 (7.64%) DevOps
9 11 (7.64%) Scrum
10 10 (6.94%) Integration Testing
10 10 (6.94%) Systems Engineering
11 9 (6.25%) Requirements Management
11 9 (6.25%) User Experience
12 8 (5.56%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 101 (70.14%) C++
2 55 (38.19%) Java
3 46 (31.94%) Python
4 25 (17.36%) JavaScript
5 22 (15.28%) Shell Script
6 20 (13.89%) Ada
7 16 (11.11%) MATLAB
8 15 (10.42%) PHP
9 11 (7.64%) SQL
10 9 (6.25%) Embedded C
11 8 (5.56%) Bash
11 8 (5.56%) C#
11 8 (5.56%) Fortran
11 8 (5.56%) Ruby
11 8 (5.56%) Scala
12 7 (4.86%) Kotlin
12 7 (4.86%) Objective-C
12 7 (4.86%) Swift
13 6 (4.17%) Tcl
14 5 (3.47%) VBA
Qualifications
1 58 (40.28%) Security Cleared
2 43 (29.86%) SC Cleared
3 9 (6.25%) Degree
3 9 (6.25%) DV Cleared
4 2 (1.39%) Master's Degree
4 2 (1.39%) PhD
5 1 (0.69%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (6.94%) QA
2 8 (5.56%) MISRA
3 6 (4.17%) Def Stans
4 5 (3.47%) DO-178B
4 5 (3.47%) IEC 61508
4 5 (3.47%) ISO 26262
5 4 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (2.08%) EU AI Act
6 3 (2.08%) GDPR
6 3 (2.08%) IEC 62304
6 3 (2.08%) MISRA C
6 3 (2.08%) NIST
7 1 (0.69%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.69%) AUTOSAR
7 1 (0.69%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 17 (11.81%) Firmware
2 13 (9.03%) Docker
3 3 (2.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (1.39%) Embedded Firmware
4 2 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 13 (9.03%) Kubernetes
2 7 (4.86%) Ansible
2 7 (4.86%) Terraform
3 3 (2.08%) Grafana
3 3 (2.08%) Podman
4 1 (0.69%) Functional Safety
4 1 (0.69%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.69%) Rsyslog
4 1 (0.69%) SCOM
Vendors
1 15 (10.42%) Dynatrace
2 13 (9.03%) Red Hat
3 12 (8.33%) Oracle
4 8 (5.56%) NetApp
5 6 (4.17%) MathWorks
6 4 (2.78%) IBM
7 3 (2.08%) Atlassian
7 3 (2.08%) VMware
8 2 (1.39%) ANSYS
8 2 (1.39%) Microsoft
8 2 (1.39%) SAP
8 2 (1.39%) Siemens
9 1 (0.69%) Intel
9 1 (0.69%) QNX
9 1 (0.69%) ServiceNow
9 1 (0.69%) Sitecore
9 1 (0.69%) Splunk
9 1 (0.69%) Trillium
9 1 (0.69%) webMethods
9 1 (0.69%) Xamarin