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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 61 95
Rank change year-on-year +10 +34 +24
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 189 99 116
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.63% 3.32% 2.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.39% 3.61% 2.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 102 52 67
10th Percentile £178 £358 £263
25th Percentile £186 £450 £328
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £355 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -29.00% +11.11% -14.29%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £570
90th Percentile £678 £650 £629
England median daily rate £475 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -9.52% -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 1 11
10th Percentile £36.63 - £55.00
25th Percentile £80.75 £20.85 £56.75
Median hourly rate £86.00 £21.90 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +292.69% -66.31% +226.47%
75th Percentile £88.00 £22.95 £66.01
90th Percentile - - £67.50
England median hourly rate £81.50 £52.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +55.24% -4.55% +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 4,303 2,740 4,881
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 82.73% 91.79% 86.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,820 1,732 2,914
10th Percentile £273 £250 £213
25th Percentile £405 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £506 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.23% +1.25% -1.48%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £612
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 378 136 380
10th Percentile £15.04 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £18.20
Median hourly rate £30.00 £38.75 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.58% +3.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £79.26 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £75.16
England median hourly rate £30.00 £34.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -13.04% +6.15% -9.72%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +29 105 £413 -17.50% 54
Berkshire +23 74 £230 -54.10% 23
Hampshire -18 28 £600 +11.11% 37
Buckinghamshire - 23 £535 - 16
Kent +3 18 £205 -39.26% 10
West Sussex -4 14 £275 -21.43% 5
Surrey -22 14 £463 -7.50% 20
Oxfordshire -13 8 £550 -21.43% 17
East Sussex -8 6 £360 -10.00% 10
Home Counties - 3 - -
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 7 (3.70%) Confluence
2 5 (2.65%) Smallworld
3 4 (2.12%) Apache Spark
3 4 (2.12%) GeoServer
4 3 (1.59%) Apache
5 2 (1.06%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 2 (1.06%) CMS
5 2 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.53%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.53%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (2.12%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (2.12%) SAP ERP
2 2 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.53%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 29 (15.34%) Azure
2 21 (11.11%) AWS
3 13 (6.88%) GitHub
3 13 (6.88%) GitHub Actions
4 11 (5.82%) GCP
5 5 (2.65%) Power Platform
6 4 (2.12%) Entra ID
7 3 (1.59%) Amazon EKS
7 3 (1.59%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.06%) Amazon EC2
8 2 (1.06%) Amazon ECS
8 2 (1.06%) Amazon S3
8 2 (1.06%) Azure DevOps
8 2 (1.06%) IaaS
8 2 (1.06%) PowerApps
8 2 (1.06%) SaaS
8 2 (1.06%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 1 (0.53%) Azure Machine Learning
9 1 (0.53%) Microsoft 365
9 1 (0.53%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.65%) DNS
1 5 (2.65%) Firewall
1 5 (2.65%) Network Security
1 5 (2.65%) TCP/IP
2 3 (1.59%) LAN
2 3 (1.59%) SSH
2 3 (1.59%) VoIP
2 3 (1.59%) WAN
2 3 (1.59%) Wireless
3 2 (1.06%) BGP
3 2 (1.06%) Internet
3 2 (1.06%) IPsec
3 2 (1.06%) OSPF
3 2 (1.06%) Structured Cabling
4 1 (0.53%) 5G
4 1 (0.53%) MGCP
4 1 (0.53%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.53%) SCCP
4 1 (0.53%) Telepresence
4 1 (0.53%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (6.35%) Relational Database
2 9 (4.76%) MySQL
3 8 (4.23%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (3.70%) SQL Server
5 6 (3.17%) Big Data
6 5 (2.65%) Apache Cassandra
6 5 (2.65%) Couchbase
6 5 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
6 5 (2.65%) GIS
6 5 (2.65%) NoSQL
6 5 (2.65%) Power BI
7 4 (2.12%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (2.12%) Hadoop
7 4 (2.12%) QGIS
8 3 (1.59%) Tableau
9 2 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (1.06%) Metadata
10 1 (0.53%) Data Mining
10 1 (0.53%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.53%) Redis
Development Applications
1 26 (13.76%) Rational DOORS
2 13 (6.88%) Git
3 8 (4.23%) Jenkins
3 8 (4.23%) JIRA
4 7 (3.70%) CircleCI
4 7 (3.70%) GitLab
4 7 (3.70%) Gradle
5 5 (2.65%) JUnit
6 2 (1.06%) Cypress.io
6 2 (1.06%) Selenium
6 2 (1.06%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.53%) Appium
7 1 (0.53%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.53%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.53%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.53%) Maven
7 1 (0.53%) MLflow
7 1 (0.53%) WebDriver
7 1 (0.53%) XCTest
7 1 (0.53%) XCUITest
General
1 55 (29.10%) Social Skills
2 41 (21.69%) Aerospace
3 31 (16.40%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (6.35%) Public Sector
5 10 (5.29%) Finance
6 9 (4.76%) Influencing Skills
7 8 (4.23%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (4.23%) Manufacturing
8 6 (3.17%) Military
9 4 (2.12%) Marketing
10 3 (1.59%) Law
10 3 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (1.06%) Electronics
11 2 (1.06%) Legal
11 2 (1.06%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.53%) Advertising
12 1 (0.53%) Avionics
12 1 (0.53%) Banking
12 1 (0.53%) Humanities
12 1 (0.53%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 30 (15.87%) Product Manager
2 29 (15.34%) Delivery Manager
3 26 (13.76%) Product Delivery Manager
4 22 (11.64%) Systems Delivery Manager
4 22 (11.64%) Systems Manager
5 18 (9.52%) Developer
6 12 (6.35%) Senior
7 11 (5.82%) Architect
8 10 (5.29%) Analyst
8 10 (5.29%) Lead
9 9 (4.76%) Technical Support
10 7 (3.70%) Senior Developer
11 5 (2.65%) Android Engineer
11 5 (2.65%) Data Scientist
11 5 (2.65%) Software Engineer
12 4 (2.12%) Consultant
12 4 (2.12%) Engineering Manager
12 4 (2.12%) Service Designer
12 4 (2.12%) SOC Analyst
12 4 (2.12%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (8.47%) REST
2 7 (3.70%) Kafka
2 7 (3.70%) RAML
3 6 (3.17%) RabbitMQ
4 5 (2.65%) Android Jetpack
4 5 (2.65%) Dagger
4 5 (2.65%) Jetpack Compose
4 5 (2.65%) OkHttp
4 5 (2.65%) React
4 5 (2.65%) RxJava
4 5 (2.65%) WireMock
5 3 (1.59%) HTML
5 3 (1.59%) Matplotlib
5 3 (1.59%) Node.js
5 3 (1.59%) Pandas
5 3 (1.59%) PyTorch
5 3 (1.59%) scikit-learn
5 3 (1.59%) TensorFlow
5 3 (1.59%) Web Services
6 2 (1.06%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 34 (17.99%) Product Ownership
2 22 (11.64%) Data Structures
3 14 (7.41%) Management Information System
4 13 (6.88%) Virtual Team
5 10 (5.29%) Onboarding
6 9 (4.76%) Algorithms
7 7 (3.70%) Data Protection Act
7 7 (3.70%) Legacy Code
8 6 (3.17%) Cloud Native
9 5 (2.65%) Cyberattack
9 5 (2.65%) Security Operations Centre
10 4 (2.12%) AI Agents
10 4 (2.12%) Data Centre
10 4 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (2.12%) Mobile App
11 3 (1.59%) Analytical Mindset
12 2 (1.06%) Distributed Computing
12 2 (1.06%) Mixed Reality
12 2 (1.06%) Taxonomies
12 2 (1.06%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 25 (13.23%) Linux
1 25 (13.23%) Windows
2 13 (6.88%) Unix
3 7 (3.70%) Android
4 4 (2.12%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.59%) Apple iOS
6 2 (1.06%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.53%) Kali Linux
7 1 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 69 (36.51%) Agile
2 38 (20.11%) Continuous Improvement
3 37 (19.58%) Problem-Solving
3 37 (19.58%) Systems Engineering
4 30 (15.87%) Change Control
4 30 (15.87%) Scaled Agile Framework
5 29 (15.34%) PRINCE2
5 29 (15.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 28 (14.81%) Programme Management
7 27 (14.29%) Configuration Management
8 25 (13.23%) Model-Based Systems Engineering
9 24 (12.70%) Requirements Management
10 22 (11.64%) AI
10 22 (11.64%) SysML
10 22 (11.64%) UML
11 21 (11.11%) DoDAF
12 20 (10.58%) Cybersecurity
12 20 (10.58%) DevOps
13 18 (9.52%) CI/CD
13 18 (9.52%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 38 (20.11%) Python
2 20 (10.58%) SQL
3 17 (8.99%) Java
4 16 (8.47%) JavaScript
5 9 (4.76%) Perl
6 8 (4.23%) PowerShell
7 7 (3.70%) Go
7 7 (3.70%) Kotlin
8 4 (2.12%) Shell Script
9 3 (1.59%) Bash
10 2 (1.06%) C#
10 2 (1.06%) R
11 1 (0.53%) Bicep
11 1 (0.53%) C++
11 1 (0.53%) Magik
11 1 (0.53%) Objective-C
11 1 (0.53%) Swift
11 1 (0.53%) Tcl
11 1 (0.53%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 151 (79.89%) Degree
2 82 (43.39%) Computer Science Degree
3 73 (38.62%) Security Cleared
4 32 (16.93%) SC Cleared
5 13 (6.88%) Master's Degree
6 11 (5.82%) DBS Check
7 7 (3.70%) DV Cleared
8 5 (2.65%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (2.65%) CompTIA CySA+
8 5 (2.65%) CompTIA Security+
9 4 (2.12%) CCNP
9 4 (2.12%) CISSP
10 3 (1.59%) AWS Certification
10 3 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.59%) CCNA
10 3 (1.59%) PMI Certification
10 3 (1.59%) PMP
11 2 (1.06%) Azure Certification
11 2 (1.06%) PhD
12 1 (0.53%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (6.88%) Data Quality
2 10 (5.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 10 (5.29%) QA
3 9 (4.76%) NIST
4 7 (3.70%) GDPR
5 6 (3.17%) NCSC
6 4 (2.12%) Government Security Classifications
6 4 (2.12%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 4 (2.12%) NIST 800
7 3 (1.59%) DO-254
7 3 (1.59%) IEC 61508
7 3 (1.59%) ISO 26262
8 2 (1.06%) Accessibility
8 2 (1.06%) HIPAA
8 2 (1.06%) PMO
9 1 (0.53%) Def Stans
9 1 (0.53%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.53%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.53%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 13 (6.88%) Docker
2 5 (2.65%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.06%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 11 (5.82%) Kubernetes
2 8 (4.23%) Terraform
3 4 (2.12%) Ansible
3 4 (2.12%) Grafana
4 2 (1.06%) Prometheus
4 2 (1.06%) Puppet
5 1 (0.53%) FortiGate
5 1 (0.53%) Istio
5 1 (0.53%) Kubeflow
5 1 (0.53%) linkerd
5 1 (0.53%) Nessus
5 1 (0.53%) Nmap
Vendors
1 23 (12.17%) IBM
2 14 (7.41%) Oracle
3 12 (6.35%) Microsoft
4 7 (3.70%) Splunk
5 6 (3.17%) Atlassian
5 6 (3.17%) SAP
6 5 (2.65%) Cisco
7 4 (2.12%) BeyondTrust
7 4 (2.12%) CyberArk
7 4 (2.12%) ESRI
7 4 (2.12%) Informatica
7 4 (2.12%) Intergraph
8 3 (1.59%) Google
8 3 (1.59%) Palo Alto
9 2 (1.06%) Adobe
9 2 (1.06%) Aruba
9 2 (1.06%) CheckPoint
9 2 (1.06%) PagerDuty
9 2 (1.06%) ServiceNow
10 1 (0.53%) LogRhythm