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 5 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 47 79
Rank change year-on-year -7 +32 +10
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 250 153 120
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.75% 4.39% 2.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.63% 4.87% 2.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 136 63 70
10th Percentile £182 £183 £203
25th Percentile £189 £288 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £381 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year -15.28% - -10.00%
75th Percentile £582 £523 £566
90th Percentile £625 £598 £626
England median daily rate £460 £500 £550
% change year-on-year -8.09% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 69 5 9
10th Percentile £51.25 £40.91 £19.29
25th Percentile £77.46 £71.00 £27.75
Median hourly rate £84.00 £89.63 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.28% +37.89% +8.33%
75th Percentile £88.00 - -
90th Percentile - - £68.00
England median hourly rate £75.00 £58.75 £55.00
% change year-on-year +27.66% +6.82% -11.29%

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 5,396 3,141 4,113
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.98% 90.08% 82.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,338 1,957 2,488
10th Percentile £280 £250 £255
25th Percentile £414 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% +0.31%
75th Percentile £613 £600 £638
90th Percentile £702 £675 £700
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 573 287 327
10th Percentile £15.23 £13.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £26.00 £15.13 £26.03
Median hourly rate £57.79 £21.58 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +167.83% -62.38% +14.70%
75th Percentile £80.00 £50.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £74.25 £76.91
England median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +78.93% -40.82% -

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 5 August 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 5 August 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 5 August 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 +19 147 £558 +17.37% 99
Berkshire +24 92 £488 +2.63% 41
Surrey +3 38 £209 -42.74% 26
Oxfordshire 0 33 £550 - 37
Hampshire -35 30 £530 +8.16% 45
Buckinghamshire -19 22 £593 +12.95% 22
Kent +18 19 £215 -49.34% 10
West Sussex -26 10 £300 +5.63% 14
East Sussex -12 2 £461 +139.03% 7
Middlesex - 2 £334 - 3
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 3 (1.20%) Confluence
1 3 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (0.80%) Apache Spark
2 2 (0.80%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.40%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.40%) CMS
Applications
1 15 (6.00%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (3.60%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (2.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (1.20%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.40%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 3 (1.20%) Primavera
1 3 (1.20%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.40%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 54 (21.60%) Azure
2 25 (10.00%) Entra ID
3 24 (9.60%) AWS
4 16 (6.40%) GCP
5 14 (5.60%) SaaS
6 8 (3.20%) Power Platform
7 6 (2.40%) Microsoft 365
8 5 (2.00%) GitHub
9 4 (1.60%) Azure Data Factory
10 3 (1.20%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 3 (1.20%) Azure Monitor
10 3 (1.20%) Azure Sentinel
10 3 (1.20%) GitHub Actions
10 3 (1.20%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
10 3 (1.20%) Sauce Labs
10 3 (1.20%) Snowflake
10 3 (1.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 2 (0.80%) Power Automate
11 2 (0.80%) PowerApps
11 2 (0.80%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.60%) DNS
1 9 (3.60%) SSH
2 8 (3.20%) Firewall
2 8 (3.20%) TCP/IP
3 7 (2.80%) Network Security
3 7 (2.80%) VPN
4 5 (2.00%) DHCP
5 4 (1.60%) BGP
5 4 (1.60%) Cisco Nexus
5 4 (1.60%) LAN
5 4 (1.60%) OSPF
5 4 (1.60%) WAN
6 3 (1.20%) BIG-IP
6 3 (1.20%) Cisco ASA
6 3 (1.20%) Cisco Firepower
6 3 (1.20%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
6 3 (1.20%) IPsec
6 3 (1.20%) MPLS
6 3 (1.20%) VLAN
6 3 (1.20%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (6.80%) SQL Server
2 10 (4.00%) Relational Database
3 8 (3.20%) Power BI
4 6 (2.40%) MySQL
5 5 (2.00%) Metadata
6 4 (1.60%) PostgreSQL
7 3 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.20%) Tableau
8 2 (0.80%) Big Data
8 2 (0.80%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.40%) Apache Iceberg
9 1 (0.40%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.40%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 32 (12.80%) Rational DOORS
2 9 (3.60%) Git
3 5 (2.00%) GitLab
4 4 (1.60%) Gradle
4 4 (1.60%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.60%) JIRA
5 3 (1.20%) Android Studio
5 3 (1.20%) Browser DevTools
5 3 (1.20%) CircleCI
5 3 (1.20%) Eclipse
5 3 (1.20%) JUnit
5 3 (1.20%) Xcode
6 2 (0.80%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.40%) Maven
7 1 (0.40%) Octopus Deploy
7 1 (0.40%) Selenium
7 1 (0.40%) TestNG
7 1 (0.40%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 69 (27.60%) Social Skills
2 57 (22.80%) Aerospace
3 40 (16.00%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (14.40%) Public Sector
5 23 (9.20%) Documentation Skills
6 18 (7.20%) Finance
7 14 (5.60%) Military
8 10 (4.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (3.60%) Manufacturing
10 8 (3.20%) Marketing
10 8 (3.20%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (2.80%) Influencing Skills
11 7 (2.80%) Telecoms
12 6 (2.40%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (2.00%) Legal
14 3 (1.20%) Avionics
15 2 (0.80%) Electronics
15 2 (0.80%) Law
16 1 (0.40%) Humanities
16 1 (0.40%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 35 (14.00%) Product Manager
2 31 (12.40%) Delivery Manager
2 31 (12.40%) Product Delivery Manager
3 22 (8.80%) Systems Delivery Manager
3 22 (8.80%) Systems Manager
4 19 (7.60%) Lead
5 16 (6.40%) Senior
6 15 (6.00%) Analyst
6 15 (6.00%) Architect
7 11 (4.40%) Change Manager
7 11 (4.40%) IAM Specialist
8 9 (3.60%) Developer
9 8 (3.20%) Product Owner
9 8 (3.20%) Support Engineer
9 8 (3.20%) Technical Leader
10 7 (2.80%) Technical Architect
10 7 (2.80%) Technical Engineer
10 7 (2.80%) Technical Support
10 7 (2.80%) Technical Support Engineer
11 6 (2.40%) Engineering Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (6.40%) SailPoint
2 15 (6.00%) OAuth
2 15 (6.00%) OpenID
3 13 (5.20%) LDAP
3 13 (5.20%) SAML
3 13 (5.20%) Web Services
4 12 (4.80%) OAuth2
5 10 (4.00%) React
6 8 (3.20%) CSS
7 7 (2.80%) REST
8 5 (2.00%) AngularJS
8 5 (2.00%) GraphQL
8 5 (2.00%) HTML
9 4 (1.60%) .NET
9 4 (1.60%) ARM Templates
9 4 (1.60%) RESTful
10 3 (1.20%) Android Jetpack
10 3 (1.20%) Lightning Web Components
10 3 (1.20%) Middleware
10 3 (1.20%) RAML
Miscellaneous
1 49 (19.60%) Product Ownership
2 32 (12.80%) Management Information System
2 32 (12.80%) Onboarding
3 27 (10.80%) Data Structures
4 12 (4.80%) Virtual Team
5 10 (4.00%) Hybrid Cloud
6 9 (3.60%) Cloud Native
7 7 (2.80%) Algorithms
7 7 (2.80%) Data Centre
7 7 (2.80%) Mobile App
8 4 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.20%) AI Agents
9 3 (1.20%) ARM Cortex
9 3 (1.20%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 3 (1.20%) Driving Licence
9 3 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.20%) Legacy Code
9 3 (1.20%) Private Cloud
9 3 (1.20%) Taxonomies
10 2 (0.80%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 33 (13.20%) Windows
2 31 (12.40%) Linux
3 23 (9.20%) Unix
4 16 (6.40%) Windows Server
5 10 (4.00%) Android
6 4 (1.60%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.80%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (32.80%) Agile
2 61 (24.40%) Continuous Improvement
3 54 (21.60%) Change Control
4 50 (20.00%) Systems Engineering
5 46 (18.40%) ITSM
6 45 (18.00%) Problem-Solving
7 41 (16.40%) PRINCE2
7 41 (16.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 40 (16.00%) Cybersecurity
9 36 (14.40%) ITIL
10 35 (14.00%) Scaled Agile Framework
10 35 (14.00%) Stakeholder Management
11 33 (13.20%) Information Security
12 32 (12.80%) Programme Management
13 31 (12.40%) CI/CD
14 29 (11.60%) Requirements Management
14 29 (11.60%) Service Management
14 29 (11.60%) Software Engineering
15 28 (11.20%) Analytics
15 28 (11.20%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 60 (24.00%) Python
2 39 (15.60%) PowerShell
3 21 (8.40%) SQL
4 15 (6.00%) Java
5 12 (4.80%) JavaScript
6 6 (2.40%) Bash
7 5 (2.00%) C
7 5 (2.00%) Kotlin
7 5 (2.00%) Perl
8 4 (1.60%) Bicep
9 3 (1.20%) Apex Code
9 3 (1.20%) C#
9 3 (1.20%) C++
9 3 (1.20%) Lua
9 3 (1.20%) TypeScript
10 2 (0.80%) Ada
10 2 (0.80%) Go
10 2 (0.80%) R
10 2 (0.80%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.40%) X++
Qualifications
1 192 (76.80%) Degree
2 128 (51.20%) Security Cleared
3 67 (26.80%) SC Cleared
4 62 (24.80%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (6.80%) DV Cleared
6 14 (5.60%) Microsoft Certification
7 11 (4.40%) BPSS Clearance
8 10 (4.00%) Master's Degree
8 10 (4.00%) PMI Certification
8 10 (4.00%) PMP
9 9 (3.60%) Azure Certification
10 8 (3.20%) CISSP
11 6 (2.40%) AWS Certification
11 6 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
12 4 (1.60%) CCNP
12 4 (1.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 3 (1.20%) CSPO
13 3 (1.20%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 2 (0.80%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 2 (0.80%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (15.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 35 (14.00%) NIST
3 19 (7.60%) Data Quality
4 10 (4.00%) QA
5 9 (3.60%) NCSC
6 7 (2.80%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 7 (2.80%) NIST 800
7 5 (2.00%) Government Security Classifications
8 4 (1.60%) Accessibility
8 4 (1.60%) DO-254
8 4 (1.60%) IEC 61508
8 4 (1.60%) ISO 26262
9 3 (1.20%) GDPR
9 3 (1.20%) GRC
9 3 (1.20%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 2 (0.80%) ISO 9001
10 2 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.40%) DICOM
11 1 (0.40%) HL7
11 1 (0.40%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 36 (14.40%) Active Directory
2 11 (4.40%) Docker
3 8 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (1.60%) VMware NSX
5 2 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.40%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 10 (4.00%) Kubernetes
2 7 (2.80%) Terraform
3 6 (2.40%) Ansible
3 6 (2.40%) Single Sign-On
4 5 (2.00%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (1.20%) SCCM
6 2 (0.80%) Grafana
6 2 (0.80%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.40%) Argo
7 1 (0.40%) CASB
7 1 (0.40%) Istio
Vendors
1 51 (20.40%) Microsoft
2 29 (11.60%) IBM
3 20 (8.00%) Oracle
4 16 (6.40%) BeyondTrust
4 16 (6.40%) CyberArk
5 12 (4.80%) ServiceNow
6 11 (4.40%) VMware
7 9 (3.60%) Google
8 6 (2.40%) Cisco
9 4 (1.60%) Databricks
9 4 (1.60%) F5
9 4 (1.60%) Palo Alto
9 4 (1.60%) Salesforce
9 4 (1.60%) Splunk
10 3 (1.20%) CrowdStrike
10 3 (1.20%) Dell
10 3 (1.20%) ForgeRock
10 3 (1.20%) Okta
10 3 (1.20%) Ping Identity
10 3 (1.20%) SolarWinds