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

6 months to
23 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 258 178 126
Rank change year-on-year -80 -52 +93
Contract jobs citing C 144 213 409
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.82% 1.27% 1.98%
As % of the Programming Languages category 3.09% 4.92% 7.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 43 65 163
10th Percentile £68 £389 £375
25th Percentile £366 £413 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £550 £603 £588
90th Percentile £619 £625 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £530 £540
% change year-on-year -5.66% -1.85% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 44 138
10th Percentile £52.00 £52.95 £51.93
25th Percentile £61.81 £60.69 £58.25
Median hourly rate £67.75 £67.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.37% +3.85% -
75th Percentile £73.75 £85.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.13 £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 4,661 4,330 5,270
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 26.53% 25.91% 25.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,029 2,550 3,643
10th Percentile £313 £325 £325
25th Percentile £400 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.96% -2.10% -2.91%
75th Percentile £566 £580 £600
90th Percentile £638 £659 £675
UK median daily rate £506 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.67% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 249 234 341
10th Percentile £41.25 £21.48 £34.25
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 £78.75
UK median hourly rate £63.50 £63.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +0.79% +5.00% -0.41%

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 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 23 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 23 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 -10 57 £475 -8.43% 106
South West -32 42 £500 -0.20% 77
Scotland +5 17 £438 -48.53% 36
North of England -44 14 £475 -6.86% 36
South East -35 11 £500 +6.95% 123
North West -27 9 £463 -5.13% 17
Yorkshire -33 5 £500 -1.96% 12
Midlands -35 3 - - 43
East Midlands - 2 - - 21
West Midlands -26 1 - - 22
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
4 1 (0.69%) 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 7 (4.86%) AWS
3 6 (4.17%) Azure
4 4 (2.78%) GCP
5 3 (2.08%) Amazon ECS
5 3 (2.08%) Amazon EKS
5 3 (2.08%) Amazon S3
5 3 (2.08%) AWS Lambda
5 3 (2.08%) OpenShift
5 3 (2.08%) Serverless
6 2 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
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 2 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
2 2 (1.39%) InfluxDB
2 2 (1.39%) MongoDB
2 2 (1.39%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (1.39%) RDBMS
2 2 (1.39%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 18 (12.50%) Rational DOORS
2 15 (10.42%) Git
3 12 (8.33%) Jenkins
4 8 (5.56%) ClearCase
5 7 (4.86%) JIRA
6 6 (4.17%) Rational Team Concert
7 5 (3.47%) GitLab
7 5 (3.47%) Gradle
8 4 (2.78%) Artifactory
8 4 (2.78%) Rational Rhapsody
8 4 (2.78%) Xcode
9 3 (2.08%) Bitbucket
9 3 (2.08%) PVCS
10 2 (1.39%) Maven
10 2 (1.39%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.69%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.69%) CMake
11 1 (0.69%) NUnit
11 1 (0.69%) SonarQube
11 1 (0.69%) Subversion
General
1 24 (16.67%) Social Skills
2 23 (15.97%) Electronics
3 20 (13.89%) Aerospace
4 11 (7.64%) Law
5 10 (6.94%) Analytical Skills
6 6 (4.17%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (4.17%) Public Sector
7 5 (3.47%) Aviation
8 4 (2.78%) Banking
8 4 (2.78%) Telecoms
9 3 (2.08%) Manufacturing
9 3 (2.08%) Military
10 2 (1.39%) Finance
10 2 (1.39%) Marketing
11 1 (0.69%) Automotive
11 1 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 43 (29.86%) Software Engineer
2 21 (14.58%) Embedded Engineer
3 20 (13.89%) Embedded Software Engineer
4 16 (11.11%) Developer
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%) C Software Engineer
8 10 (6.94%) Digital Design Engineer
8 10 (6.94%) Systems Engineer
9 8 (5.56%) C++ Software Engineer
9 8 (5.56%) Embedded C Engineer
9 8 (5.56%) Embedded C Software Engineer
10 6 (4.17%) Architect
10 6 (4.17%) Security Engineer
11 5 (3.47%) C/C++ Software Engineer
12 4 (2.78%) Principal Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (18.75%) Middleware
2 20 (13.89%) HTML
3 18 (12.50%) Node.js
4 16 (11.11%) .NET
5 10 (6.94%) Flash
6 5 (3.47%) REST
7 4 (2.78%) CSS
7 4 (2.78%) PyTorch
8 3 (2.08%) Google JAX
8 3 (2.08%) JAX
8 3 (2.08%) React
8 3 (2.08%) RESTful
8 3 (2.08%) scikit-learn
8 3 (2.08%) TensorFlow
9 2 (1.39%) JSON
9 2 (1.39%) OpenID
9 2 (1.39%) SOAP
9 2 (1.39%) XML
10 1 (0.69%) OAuth
10 1 (0.69%) OpenMP
Miscellaneous
1 15 (10.42%) Embedded Systems
2 13 (9.03%) FPGA
3 12 (8.33%) VHDL
4 7 (4.86%) Analogue Electronics
4 7 (4.86%) CUDA
5 6 (4.17%) Self-Motivation
6 4 (2.78%) CAN bus
6 4 (2.78%) Mobile App
6 4 (2.78%) Mobile Banking
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%) Contactless
9 1 (0.69%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 39 (27.08%) Linux
2 16 (11.11%) Windows
3 12 (8.33%) Ubuntu
4 6 (4.17%) FreeRTOS
5 5 (3.47%) Android
6 4 (2.78%) Apple iOS
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 66 (45.83%) Software Engineering
2 22 (15.28%) CI/CD
3 18 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
4 16 (11.11%) AI
4 16 (11.11%) Validation
5 15 (10.42%) Agile
5 15 (10.42%) Requirements Gathering
6 14 (9.72%) Signal Processing
7 13 (9.03%) Software Testing
8 12 (8.33%) Mathematics
8 12 (8.33%) UML
9 11 (7.64%) Containerisation
9 11 (7.64%) DevOps
9 11 (7.64%) Systems Engineering
9 11 (7.64%) Unit Testing
10 10 (6.94%) Integration Testing
11 9 (6.25%) Requirements Management
12 8 (5.56%) Machine Learning
12 8 (5.56%) Scrum
12 8 (5.56%) Sensor Fusion
Programming Languages
1 99 (68.75%) C++
2 51 (35.42%) Java
3 42 (29.17%) Python
4 22 (15.28%) Shell Script
5 21 (14.58%) JavaScript
6 20 (13.89%) Ada
7 16 (11.11%) MATLAB
8 15 (10.42%) PHP
9 11 (7.64%) Embedded C
10 10 (6.94%) SQL
11 8 (5.56%) C#
11 8 (5.56%) Fortran
12 7 (4.86%) Bash
13 6 (4.17%) Tcl
14 5 (3.47%) Embedded C++
14 5 (3.47%) Ruby
14 5 (3.47%) Scala
14 5 (3.47%) VBA
15 4 (2.78%) Objective-C
15 4 (2.78%) R
Qualifications
1 58 (40.28%) Security Cleared
2 44 (30.56%) SC Cleared
3 9 (6.25%) Degree
4 8 (5.56%) DV Cleared
5 2 (1.39%) Master's Degree
5 2 (1.39%) PhD
6 1 (0.69%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (6.94%) QA
2 9 (6.25%) MISRA
3 7 (4.86%) Def Stans
4 6 (4.17%) DO-178B
5 5 (3.47%) IEC 61508
5 5 (3.47%) ISO 26262
6 4 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (2.08%) EU AI Act
7 3 (2.08%) GDPR
7 3 (2.08%) IEC 62304
7 3 (2.08%) MISRA C
7 3 (2.08%) NIST
8 1 (0.69%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.69%) AUTOSAR
8 1 (0.69%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 18 (12.50%) Firmware
2 12 (8.33%) Docker
3 4 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (2.08%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (1.39%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 12 (8.33%) Kubernetes
2 6 (4.17%) Ansible
2 6 (4.17%) Terraform
3 3 (2.08%) Grafana
4 2 (1.39%) Podman
5 1 (0.69%) Functional Safety
5 1 (0.69%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.69%) Rsyslog
5 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 5 (3.47%) IBM
7 4 (2.78%) VMware
8 3 (2.08%) ANSYS
8 3 (2.08%) Atlassian
9 2 (1.39%) Microsoft
9 2 (1.39%) SAP
9 2 (1.39%) Siemens
10 1 (0.69%) Intel
10 1 (0.69%) QNX
10 1 (0.69%) ServiceNow
10 1 (0.69%) Sitecore
10 1 (0.69%) Splunk
10 1 (0.69%) Trillium
10 1 (0.69%) webMethods
10 1 (0.69%) Xamarin