Computer Science Contract Job Trends in the South East

Computer Science
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring Computer Science skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 7 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 92 95
Rank change year-on-year +22 +3 +51
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 134 72 111
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.07% 2.08% 2.26%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.64% 2.35% 2.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 96 43 67
10th Percentile £170 £246 £207
25th Percentile £183 £450 £285
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £313 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -37.35% +11.11% -14.29%
75th Percentile £509 £556 £588
90th Percentile £655 £641 £638
England median daily rate £475 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -17.39% +4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 17
10th Percentile £75.40 - £42.93
25th Percentile £82.00 £27.75 £50.00
Median hourly rate £89.63 £28.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +214.49% -50.43% +180.90%
75th Percentile - £29.25 £73.75
90th Percentile - - £78.50
England median hourly rate £49.00 £52.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year -6.67% -8.70% +6.48%

All Process & Methodology Skills
South East

Computer Science falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 3,678 3,062 4,371
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 84.22% 88.57% 89.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,421 1,896 2,793
10th Percentile £222 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £405 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £515
Median % change year-on-year -2.01% -0.92% +1.48%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £615
90th Percentile £688 £675 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 118 249
10th Percentile £14.90 £19.77 £16.90
25th Percentile £17.09 £25.99 £26.00
Median hourly rate £23.00 £43.94 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -47.66% -20.11% +28.87%
75th Percentile £53.75 £62.92 £66.25
90th Percentile £76.00 £74.91 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +27.14%

Computer Science
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Computer Science relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Computer Science job vacancy trend in the South East

Computer Science
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Computer Science.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Computer Science

Computer Science
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Computer Science in the South East over the 6 months to 7 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Computer Science in the South East

Computer Science
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Computer Science.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Computer Science

Computer Science
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Computer Science within the South East region over the 6 months to 7 January 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
Thames Valley +23 58 £413 -19.90% 123
Berkshire +11 35 £413 -18.32% 79
Hampshire +4 28 £223 -61.30% 42
Surrey -19 19 £320 -36.00% 32
Buckinghamshire +16 16 £423 -23.18% 19
West Sussex -2 11 £276 -53.96% 13
Kent - 11 £205 - 29
Oxfordshire -8 7 £450 -35.71% 25
East Sussex +8 5 £463 +15.63% 15
Home Counties - 1 - -
Computer Science
England

Computer Science
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 6 (4.48%) Confluence
2 5 (3.73%) Smallworld
3 4 (2.99%) Apache
3 4 (2.99%) GeoServer
4 3 (2.24%) Apache Spark
5 2 (1.49%) Microsoft Exchange
5 2 (1.49%) nginx
6 1 (0.75%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.75%) CMS
6 1 (0.75%) Gunicorn
6 1 (0.75%) IIS
6 1 (0.75%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.75%) Tomcat
Applications
1 2 (1.49%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (2.99%) SAP ERP
2 2 (1.49%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.75%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 21 (15.67%) Azure
2 18 (13.43%) AWS
3 11 (8.21%) GitHub
4 9 (6.72%) GitHub Actions
5 6 (4.48%) GCP
6 3 (2.24%) Amazon ECS
6 3 (2.24%) Amazon S3
6 3 (2.24%) AWS CloudFormation
6 3 (2.24%) IaaS
6 3 (2.24%) SaaS
7 2 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
7 2 (1.49%) Amazon EKS
7 2 (1.49%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (1.49%) Power Platform
8 1 (0.75%) Amazon SageMaker
8 1 (0.75%) Amazon SQS
8 1 (0.75%) AWS Lambda
8 1 (0.75%) Microsoft 365
8 1 (0.75%) PowerApps
8 1 (0.75%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 7 (5.22%) DNS
1 7 (5.22%) Firewall
1 7 (5.22%) TCP/IP
1 7 (5.22%) Wireless
2 6 (4.48%) Network Security
2 6 (4.48%) VPN
3 4 (2.99%) DHCP
4 3 (2.24%) VoIP
5 2 (1.49%) Internet
5 2 (1.49%) LAN
5 2 (1.49%) WAN
6 1 (0.75%) BGP
6 1 (0.75%) Cisco IOS
6 1 (0.75%) Intranet
6 1 (0.75%) IPsec
6 1 (0.75%) MGCP
6 1 (0.75%) OSPF
6 1 (0.75%) SCCP
6 1 (0.75%) Telepresence
6 1 (0.75%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (11.19%) Relational Database
2 10 (7.46%) MySQL
2 10 (7.46%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (3.73%) Apache Cassandra
3 5 (3.73%) Big Data
3 5 (3.73%) Couchbase
3 5 (3.73%) Data Warehouse
3 5 (3.73%) GIS
3 5 (3.73%) NoSQL
4 4 (2.99%) Geospatial Data
4 4 (2.99%) QGIS
4 4 (2.99%) SQL Server
5 3 (2.24%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (2.24%) Hadoop
5 3 (2.24%) Metadata
6 2 (1.49%) Power BI
6 2 (1.49%) Redis
7 1 (0.75%) Amazon Athena
7 1 (0.75%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.75%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 16 (11.94%) Git
2 12 (8.96%) JIRA
3 7 (5.22%) GitLab
3 7 (5.22%) Jenkins
4 4 (2.99%) Visual Studio
5 3 (2.24%) CircleCI
5 3 (2.24%) Gradle
5 3 (2.24%) JUnit
6 2 (1.49%) Cypress.io
6 2 (1.49%) Selenium
7 1 (0.75%) Appium
7 1 (0.75%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.75%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.75%) Subversion
7 1 (0.75%) WebDriver
General
1 53 (39.55%) Social Skills
2 39 (29.10%) Analytical Skills
3 6 (4.48%) Aerospace
4 5 (3.73%) Finance
4 5 (3.73%) Organisational Skills
4 5 (3.73%) Public Sector
5 4 (2.99%) Influencing Skills
5 4 (2.99%) Manufacturing
5 4 (2.99%) Military
6 3 (2.24%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (2.24%) Legal
7 2 (1.49%) Electronics
8 1 (0.75%) Advertising
8 1 (0.75%) Digital Healthcare
8 1 (0.75%) Law
8 1 (0.75%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 23 (17.16%) Developer
2 11 (8.21%) Senior
3 10 (7.46%) Technical Support
4 9 (6.72%) Analyst
5 7 (5.22%) Architect
5 7 (5.22%) Senior Developer
6 5 (3.73%) Android Developer
6 5 (3.73%) Lead
7 4 (2.99%) Data Scientist
7 4 (2.99%) Delivery Manager
7 4 (2.99%) Informatica Developer
7 4 (2.99%) Network Engineer
7 4 (2.99%) Service Delivery Manager
7 4 (2.99%) Service Manager
7 4 (2.99%) SOC Analyst
8 3 (2.24%) Android Engineer
8 3 (2.24%) IT Analyst
8 3 (2.24%) Principal Developer
8 3 (2.24%) Software Developer
8 3 (2.24%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (9.70%) REST
2 6 (4.48%) HTML
2 6 (4.48%) Kafka
2 6 (4.48%) RabbitMQ
3 5 (3.73%) RESTful
4 4 (2.99%) CSS
4 4 (2.99%) Pandas
4 4 (2.99%) scikit-learn
5 3 (2.24%) Android Jetpack
5 3 (2.24%) Dagger
5 3 (2.24%) Jetpack Compose
5 3 (2.24%) Material Design
5 3 (2.24%) Node.js
5 3 (2.24%) NumPy
5 3 (2.24%) OkHttp
5 3 (2.24%) RAML
5 3 (2.24%) RxJava
5 3 (2.24%) Web Services
5 3 (2.24%) WireMock
5 3 (2.24%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 8 (5.97%) Management Information System
2 6 (4.48%) Algorithms
3 5 (3.73%) Mobile App
3 5 (3.73%) Virtual Team
4 4 (2.99%) Analytical Mindset
4 4 (2.99%) Cloud Native
4 4 (2.99%) Data Centre
4 4 (2.99%) Legacy Systems
4 4 (2.99%) Product Ownership
5 3 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
5 3 (2.24%) Distributed Computing
5 3 (2.24%) Legacy Code
5 3 (2.24%) Security Operations Centre
5 3 (2.24%) Security Posture
6 2 (1.49%) AI Agents
6 2 (1.49%) Cyberattack
6 2 (1.49%) Mixed Reality
6 2 (1.49%) Replication
6 2 (1.49%) Virtual Reality
7 1 (0.75%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 25 (18.66%) Windows
2 22 (16.42%) Linux
3 10 (7.46%) Unix
4 7 (5.22%) Android
4 7 (5.22%) Mac OS
5 4 (2.99%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.75%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.75%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 44 (32.84%) Problem-Solving
2 34 (25.37%) Agile
3 20 (14.93%) DevOps
4 14 (10.45%) Continuous Integration
5 13 (9.70%) CI/CD
5 13 (9.70%) Migration
5 13 (9.70%) Process Improvement
6 12 (8.96%) ITIL
7 11 (8.21%) AI
7 11 (8.21%) Continuous Improvement
7 11 (8.21%) Data Science
7 11 (8.21%) Decision-Making
8 10 (7.46%) Analytics
8 10 (7.46%) Machine Learning
8 10 (7.46%) OO
8 10 (7.46%) OOP
8 10 (7.46%) Software Engineering
9 9 (6.72%) Data Governance
9 9 (6.72%) Mathematics
9 9 (6.72%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 37 (27.61%) Python
2 22 (16.42%) Java
3 20 (14.93%) SQL
4 16 (11.94%) JavaScript
5 10 (7.46%) Perl
6 6 (4.48%) Go
6 6 (4.48%) Kotlin
6 6 (4.48%) PowerShell
7 4 (2.99%) Bash
7 4 (2.99%) C#
7 4 (2.99%) Shell Script
8 3 (2.24%) Objective-C
8 3 (2.24%) Swift
9 2 (1.49%) Ada
9 2 (1.49%) Assembly Language
9 2 (1.49%) C
9 2 (1.49%) MATLAB
10 1 (0.75%) Magik
10 1 (0.75%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 98 (73.13%) Degree
2 75 (55.97%) Computer Science Degree
3 21 (15.67%) Security Cleared
4 16 (11.94%) SC Cleared
5 11 (8.21%) Master's Degree
6 10 (7.46%) DBS Check
7 6 (4.48%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (3.73%) A+ Certification
8 5 (3.73%) CISSP
9 4 (2.99%) DV Cleared
9 4 (2.99%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (2.24%) AWS Certification
10 3 (2.24%) CCNP
11 2 (1.49%) CCNA
11 2 (1.49%) CFCE
11 2 (1.49%) CompTIA Security+
11 2 (1.49%) GCIA
11 2 (1.49%) GCIH
11 2 (1.49%) GIAC
11 2 (1.49%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (8.21%) GDPR
2 9 (6.72%) QA
3 8 (5.97%) Data Quality
4 3 (2.24%) HIPAA
4 3 (2.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 19770
5 2 (1.49%) NIST
5 2 (1.49%) PMO
6 1 (0.75%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.75%) Def Stans
6 1 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 17025
6 1 (0.75%) JSP 440
6 1 (0.75%) NCSC
System Software
1 11 (8.21%) Docker
2 2 (1.49%) Firmware
2 2 (1.49%) VMware ESXi
3 1 (0.75%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.75%) VMware NSX
3 1 (0.75%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 7 (5.22%) Kubernetes
2 5 (3.73%) Terraform
3 4 (2.99%) Ansible
4 2 (1.49%) Grafana
4 2 (1.49%) Puppet
4 2 (1.49%) vCenter Server
5 1 (0.75%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
5 1 (0.75%) FortiGate
5 1 (0.75%) Nessus
5 1 (0.75%) Nmap
5 1 (0.75%) vRealize
5 1 (0.75%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 14 (10.45%) Microsoft
2 12 (8.96%) Oracle
3 8 (5.97%) Cisco
3 8 (5.97%) ServiceNow
4 6 (4.48%) Palo Alto
4 6 (4.48%) SAP
5 5 (3.73%) Atlassian
5 5 (3.73%) CheckPoint
6 4 (2.99%) ESRI
6 4 (2.99%) Informatica
6 4 (2.99%) Intergraph
6 4 (2.99%) Splunk
7 3 (2.24%) Apple
7 3 (2.24%) Google
7 3 (2.24%) Snow
8 2 (1.49%) ArcSight
8 2 (1.49%) LogRhythm
8 2 (1.49%) PagerDuty
9 1 (0.75%) Aruba
9 1 (0.75%) Workday