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 27 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 57 109
Rank change year-on-year -4 +52 +1
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 178 106 104
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.28% 3.60% 1.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.97% 3.92% 2.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 92 52 59
10th Percentile £183 £413 £253
25th Percentile £200 £463 £311
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +11.11% -14.29%
75th Percentile £593 £538 £575
90th Percentile £678 £650 £638
England median daily rate £495 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -5.71% -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 1 9
10th Percentile £44.95 - £56.80
25th Percentile £80.75 £20.85 -
Median hourly rate £84.00 £21.90 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +283.56% -66.31% +226.47%
75th Percentile £88.00 £22.95 £67.02
90th Percentile - - £68.75
England median hourly rate £83.00 £53.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +55.14% -2.73% +4.76%

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 4,479 2,703 4,862
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 82.61% 91.91% 86.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,929 1,747 2,873
10th Percentile £281 £254 £213
25th Percentile £410 £404 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £510 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.20% +2.00% -0.45%
75th Percentile £610 £613 £615
90th Percentile £700 £675 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 396 156 411
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.20 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.78 £19.56 £18.26
Median hourly rate £37.00 £32.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.85% -23.53% -5.56%
75th Percentile £80.12 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £76.86
England median hourly rate £35.91 £32.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +10.49% -1.52% -12.00%

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 27 March 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Computer Science in the South East over the 6 months to 27 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Computer Science in the South East

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 27 March 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 +20 98 £413 -17.50% 64
Berkshire +13 71 £208 -58.50% 24
Hampshire -17 29 £600 +14.29% 34
Buckinghamshire - 19 £582 - 17
Kent +2 17 £205 -39.26% 12
West Sussex -6 12 £275 -21.43% 4
Surrey -25 12 £500 - 19
Oxfordshire -7 8 £550 -21.43% 23
East Sussex -12 5 £565 - 12
Home Counties - 4 - -
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 5 (2.81%) Confluence
2 4 (2.25%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.69%) Apache
4 2 (1.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 2 (1.12%) CMS
5 1 (0.56%) Apache Pulsar
5 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 5 (2.81%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (2.25%) SAP ERP
2 2 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.56%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 25 (14.04%) Azure
2 21 (11.80%) AWS
3 12 (6.74%) GCP
4 11 (6.18%) GitHub
4 11 (6.18%) GitHub Actions
5 5 (2.81%) Power Platform
6 3 (1.69%) Amazon EKS
6 3 (1.69%) AWS CloudFormation
6 3 (1.69%) Entra ID
7 2 (1.12%) Amazon EC2
7 2 (1.12%) Amazon ECS
7 2 (1.12%) Amazon S3
7 2 (1.12%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (1.12%) IaaS
7 2 (1.12%) Power Automate
7 2 (1.12%) PowerApps
7 2 (1.12%) SaaS
7 2 (1.12%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 1 (0.56%) Azure AKS
8 1 (0.56%) Kong
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.81%) DNS
1 5 (2.81%) Firewall
1 5 (2.81%) Network Security
1 5 (2.81%) TCP/IP
2 3 (1.69%) LAN
2 3 (1.69%) SSH
2 3 (1.69%) WAN
3 2 (1.12%) BGP
3 2 (1.12%) Internet
3 2 (1.12%) IPsec
3 2 (1.12%) OSPF
3 2 (1.12%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (1.12%) Wireless
4 1 (0.56%) Intranet
4 1 (0.56%) MGCP
4 1 (0.56%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.56%) SCCP
4 1 (0.56%) Telepresence
4 1 (0.56%) VoIP
4 1 (0.56%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (6.74%) Relational Database
2 9 (5.06%) MySQL
3 7 (3.93%) SQL Server
4 6 (3.37%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (2.81%) Big Data
5 5 (2.81%) Power BI
6 4 (2.25%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.69%) Apache Cassandra
7 3 (1.69%) Couchbase
7 3 (1.69%) NoSQL
8 2 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (1.12%) Tableau
9 1 (0.56%) Data Mining
9 1 (0.56%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.56%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.56%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 28 (15.73%) Rational DOORS
2 12 (6.74%) Git
3 7 (3.93%) CircleCI
3 7 (3.93%) GitLab
3 7 (3.93%) Gradle
3 7 (3.93%) Jenkins
4 6 (3.37%) JIRA
5 5 (2.81%) JUnit
6 2 (1.12%) Cypress.io
6 2 (1.12%) Selenium
6 2 (1.12%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.56%) Appium
7 1 (0.56%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.56%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.56%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.56%) Maven
7 1 (0.56%) MLflow
7 1 (0.56%) WebDriver
7 1 (0.56%) XCTest
7 1 (0.56%) XCUITest
General
1 50 (28.09%) Social Skills
2 48 (26.97%) Aerospace
3 26 (14.61%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (6.74%) Public Sector
5 11 (6.18%) Finance
6 9 (5.06%) Influencing Skills
6 9 (5.06%) Manufacturing
7 8 (4.49%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (2.25%) Marketing
8 4 (2.25%) Military
9 3 (1.69%) Avionics
9 3 (1.69%) Electronics
9 3 (1.69%) Law
9 3 (1.69%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (1.12%) Legal
10 2 (1.12%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.56%) Banking
11 1 (0.56%) Humanities
11 1 (0.56%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 32 (17.98%) Product Manager
2 30 (16.85%) Delivery Manager
3 28 (15.73%) Product Delivery Manager
4 22 (12.36%) Systems Delivery Manager
4 22 (12.36%) Systems Manager
5 13 (7.30%) Lead
6 11 (6.18%) Developer
7 10 (5.62%) Architect
7 10 (5.62%) Senior
8 9 (5.06%) Analyst
8 9 (5.06%) Technical Support
9 6 (3.37%) Engineering Manager
10 5 (2.81%) Android Engineer
10 5 (2.81%) Consultant
10 5 (2.81%) Designer
10 5 (2.81%) Service Designer
10 5 (2.81%) Software Engineer
11 4 (2.25%) Data Scientist
11 4 (2.25%) Security Architect
11 4 (2.25%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.30%) REST
2 7 (3.93%) RAML
3 6 (3.37%) Android Jetpack
4 5 (2.81%) Dagger
4 5 (2.81%) Jetpack Compose
4 5 (2.81%) Kafka
4 5 (2.81%) OkHttp
4 5 (2.81%) React
4 5 (2.81%) RxJava
4 5 (2.81%) WireMock
5 4 (2.25%) RabbitMQ
6 3 (1.69%) Web Services
7 2 (1.12%) CSS
7 2 (1.12%) CSS3
7 2 (1.12%) HTML
7 2 (1.12%) JSR 170
7 2 (1.12%) Matplotlib
7 2 (1.12%) Node.js
7 2 (1.12%) RESTful
7 2 (1.12%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 37 (20.79%) Product Ownership
2 23 (12.92%) Data Structures
3 15 (8.43%) Virtual Team
4 14 (7.87%) Management Information System
5 11 (6.18%) Onboarding
6 7 (3.93%) Algorithms
6 7 (3.93%) Data Protection Act
6 7 (3.93%) Legacy Code
7 6 (3.37%) Cloud Native
8 5 (2.81%) Cyberattack
8 5 (2.81%) Security Operations Centre
9 4 (2.25%) AI Agents
9 4 (2.25%) Mobile App
10 3 (1.69%) PKI
10 3 (1.69%) Taxonomies
11 2 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (1.12%) Data Centre
11 2 (1.12%) Mixed Reality
11 2 (1.12%) Security Posture
11 2 (1.12%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 25 (14.04%) Windows
2 24 (13.48%) Linux
3 13 (7.30%) Unix
4 7 (3.93%) Android
5 4 (2.25%) Windows Server
6 2 (1.12%) Apple iOS
6 2 (1.12%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.56%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (36.52%) Agile
2 43 (24.16%) Systems Engineering
3 40 (22.47%) Continuous Improvement
4 34 (19.10%) Scaled Agile Framework
5 33 (18.54%) PRINCE2
6 31 (17.42%) Problem-Solving
7 30 (16.85%) Programme Management
8 29 (16.29%) Change Control
9 28 (15.73%) Configuration Management
9 28 (15.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 27 (15.17%) Model-Based Systems Engineering
11 25 (14.04%) Requirements Management
12 23 (12.92%) SysML
12 23 (12.92%) UML
13 22 (12.36%) Cybersecurity
14 21 (11.80%) DoDAF
14 21 (11.80%) Software Engineering
15 20 (11.24%) AI
15 20 (11.24%) CI/CD
16 16 (8.99%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 34 (19.10%) Python
2 17 (9.55%) Java
3 16 (8.99%) SQL
4 15 (8.43%) JavaScript
5 9 (5.06%) Perl
6 8 (4.49%) Kotlin
7 7 (3.93%) PowerShell
8 5 (2.81%) Go
9 3 (1.69%) Bash
9 3 (1.69%) C++
10 2 (1.12%) Ada
10 2 (1.12%) C
10 2 (1.12%) C#
10 2 (1.12%) R
11 1 (0.56%) Bicep
11 1 (0.56%) Objective-C
11 1 (0.56%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.56%) Swift
11 1 (0.56%) Tcl
11 1 (0.56%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 147 (82.58%) Degree
2 81 (45.51%) Security Cleared
3 69 (38.76%) Computer Science Degree
4 33 (18.54%) SC Cleared
5 9 (5.06%) Master's Degree
6 8 (4.49%) DV Cleared
7 7 (3.93%) DBS Check
8 5 (2.81%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (2.81%) CompTIA CySA+
8 5 (2.81%) CompTIA Security+
9 4 (2.25%) CCNP
9 4 (2.25%) CISSP
10 3 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.69%) CCNA
11 2 (1.12%) AWS Certification
11 2 (1.12%) PhD
11 2 (1.12%) PMI Certification
11 2 (1.12%) PMP
12 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.56%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (6.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 11 (6.18%) NIST
3 9 (5.06%) QA
4 7 (3.93%) Data Quality
4 7 (3.93%) NCSC
5 6 (3.37%) NIST 800
6 5 (2.81%) Government Security Classifications
6 5 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 4 (2.25%) GDPR
8 3 (1.69%) Accessibility
8 3 (1.69%) DO-254
8 3 (1.69%) IEC 61508
8 3 (1.69%) ISO 26262
9 1 (0.56%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.56%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.56%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.56%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.56%) PMO
System Software
1 11 (6.18%) Docker
2 5 (2.81%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.12%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 10 (5.62%) Kubernetes
2 8 (4.49%) Terraform
3 5 (2.81%) Grafana
4 4 (2.25%) Ansible
5 3 (1.69%) Prometheus
6 2 (1.12%) Puppet
7 1 (0.56%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.56%) Istio
7 1 (0.56%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.56%) linkerd
7 1 (0.56%) Nessus
7 1 (0.56%) Nmap
Vendors
1 25 (14.04%) IBM
2 13 (7.30%) Oracle
3 11 (6.18%) Microsoft
4 7 (3.93%) Splunk
5 5 (2.81%) SAP
6 4 (2.25%) Atlassian
6 4 (2.25%) BeyondTrust
6 4 (2.25%) Cisco
6 4 (2.25%) CyberArk
6 4 (2.25%) Google
7 3 (1.69%) Palo Alto
7 3 (1.69%) ServiceNow
8 2 (1.12%) Adobe
8 2 (1.12%) Aruba
8 2 (1.12%) CheckPoint
8 2 (1.12%) PagerDuty
9 1 (0.56%) ArcSight
9 1 (0.56%) Fortinet
9 1 (0.56%) Informatica
9 1 (0.56%) Red Hat