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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 74 100
Rank change year-on-year +13 +26 +23
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 155 86 112
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.16% 2.74% 2.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.79% 3.01% 2.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 95 47 68
10th Percentile £183 £355 £263
25th Percentile £204 £456 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £500 £463
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +8.11% -11.90%
75th Percentile £561 £531 £578
90th Percentile £678 £650 £638
England median daily rate £485 £532 £550
% change year-on-year -8.80% -3.31% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 0 9
10th Percentile £26.75 - £54.00
25th Percentile £41.69 - £55.00
Median hourly rate £81.75 - £65.00
75th Percentile £85.50 - £67.02
90th Percentile £88.00 - £68.75
England median hourly rate £39.50 £52.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -24.76% -4.55% +5.77%

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 4,093 2,857 4,785
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 83.55% 91.10% 87.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,695 1,772 2,902
10th Percentile £260 £250 £213
25th Percentile £402 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £600 £613 £613
90th Percentile £694 £675 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 354 110 359
10th Percentile £14.50 £17.28 £13.25
25th Percentile £17.02 £24.18 £19.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.69 £45.21
Median % change year-on-year -41.09% -5.57% +0.47%
75th Percentile £66.88 £62.50 £62.54
90th Percentile £84.35 £75.05 £76.53
England median hourly rate £28.50 £35.00 £34.23
% change year-on-year -18.57% +2.25% -2.20%

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 +16 75 £400 -20.00% 43
Berkshire +4 50 £364 -27.25% 24
Hampshire -8 27 £550 -4.35% 31
Buckinghamshire - 18 £473 - 8
West Sussex -3 15 £275 -21.43% 3
Kent +4 14 £205 -18.00% 11
Surrey -19 14 £463 -7.50% 8
Oxfordshire -10 7 £500 -28.57% 15
East Sussex -1 6 £360 -10.00% 2
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 (4.52%) Confluence
2 5 (3.23%) Smallworld
3 4 (2.58%) GeoServer
4 3 (1.94%) Apache
4 3 (1.94%) Apache Spark
5 2 (1.29%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 2 (1.29%) CMS
5 2 (1.29%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.65%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.65%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (1.94%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (2.58%) SAP ERP
2 2 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.65%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.65%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 28 (18.06%) Azure
2 20 (12.90%) AWS
3 13 (8.39%) GitHub
3 13 (8.39%) GitHub Actions
4 10 (6.45%) GCP
5 4 (2.58%) Entra ID
5 4 (2.58%) Power Platform
6 3 (1.94%) Amazon EKS
6 3 (1.94%) AWS CloudFormation
7 2 (1.29%) Amazon EC2
7 2 (1.29%) Amazon ECS
7 2 (1.29%) Amazon S3
7 2 (1.29%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (1.29%) IaaS
7 2 (1.29%) PowerApps
7 2 (1.29%) SaaS
7 2 (1.29%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 1 (0.65%) Amazon SageMaker
8 1 (0.65%) Kong
8 1 (0.65%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 5 (3.23%) DNS
1 5 (3.23%) Firewall
1 5 (3.23%) Network Security
1 5 (3.23%) TCP/IP
2 3 (1.94%) LAN
2 3 (1.94%) SSH
2 3 (1.94%) VoIP
2 3 (1.94%) WAN
2 3 (1.94%) Wireless
3 2 (1.29%) BGP
3 2 (1.29%) Internet
3 2 (1.29%) IPsec
3 2 (1.29%) OSPF
3 2 (1.29%) Structured Cabling
4 1 (0.65%) 5G
4 1 (0.65%) MGCP
4 1 (0.65%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.65%) SCCP
4 1 (0.65%) Telepresence
4 1 (0.65%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (7.74%) Relational Database
2 9 (5.81%) MySQL
3 8 (5.16%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (4.52%) SQL Server
5 5 (3.23%) Apache Cassandra
5 5 (3.23%) Big Data
5 5 (3.23%) Couchbase
5 5 (3.23%) Data Warehouse
5 5 (3.23%) GIS
5 5 (3.23%) NoSQL
6 4 (2.58%) Geospatial Data
6 4 (2.58%) Power BI
6 4 (2.58%) QGIS
7 3 (1.94%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.94%) Metadata
8 2 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (1.29%) Tableau
9 1 (0.65%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.65%) RDBMS
9 1 (0.65%) Redis
Development Applications
1 13 (8.39%) Git
2 8 (5.16%) Jenkins
2 8 (5.16%) JIRA
3 7 (4.52%) CircleCI
3 7 (4.52%) GitLab
3 7 (4.52%) Gradle
4 6 (3.87%) Rational DOORS
5 5 (3.23%) JUnit
6 3 (1.94%) Visual Studio
7 2 (1.29%) Cypress.io
7 2 (1.29%) Selenium
8 1 (0.65%) Appium
8 1 (0.65%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.65%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.65%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.65%) Maven
8 1 (0.65%) MLflow
8 1 (0.65%) WebDriver
8 1 (0.65%) XCTest
8 1 (0.65%) XCUITest
General
1 55 (35.48%) Social Skills
2 34 (21.94%) Analytical Skills
3 16 (10.32%) Aerospace
4 11 (7.10%) Public Sector
5 8 (5.16%) Documentation Skills
6 7 (4.52%) Finance
6 7 (4.52%) Manufacturing
7 6 (3.87%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (3.23%) Military
9 4 (2.58%) Marketing
10 2 (1.29%) Electronics
10 2 (1.29%) Law
10 2 (1.29%) Legal
10 2 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.65%) Advertising
11 1 (0.65%) Avionics
11 1 (0.65%) Banking
11 1 (0.65%) Humanities
11 1 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.65%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 19 (12.26%) Developer
2 11 (7.10%) Analyst
2 11 (7.10%) Architect
2 11 (7.10%) Senior
3 9 (5.81%) Delivery Manager
3 9 (5.81%) Product Manager
3 9 (5.81%) Technical Support
4 7 (4.52%) Senior Developer
5 6 (3.87%) Lead
5 6 (3.87%) Product Delivery Manager
6 5 (3.23%) Android Engineer
6 5 (3.23%) Software Engineer
7 4 (2.58%) Consultant
7 4 (2.58%) Data Scientist
7 4 (2.58%) Informatica Developer
7 4 (2.58%) SOC Analyst
8 3 (1.94%) IT Analyst
8 3 (1.94%) Software Developer
8 3 (1.94%) Systems Manager
8 3 (1.94%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (10.32%) REST
2 7 (4.52%) Kafka
2 7 (4.52%) RAML
3 6 (3.87%) RabbitMQ
4 5 (3.23%) Android Jetpack
4 5 (3.23%) Dagger
4 5 (3.23%) Jetpack Compose
4 5 (3.23%) OkHttp
4 5 (3.23%) React
4 5 (3.23%) RxJava
4 5 (3.23%) WireMock
5 3 (1.94%) HTML
5 3 (1.94%) Node.js
5 3 (1.94%) Pandas
5 3 (1.94%) scikit-learn
5 3 (1.94%) Web Services
6 2 (1.29%) CSS
6 2 (1.29%) JSR 170
6 2 (1.29%) RESTful
6 2 (1.29%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 14 (9.03%) Management Information System
2 10 (6.45%) Product Ownership
2 10 (6.45%) Virtual Team
3 8 (5.16%) Algorithms
4 7 (4.52%) Data Protection Act
4 7 (4.52%) Legacy Code
5 6 (3.87%) Cloud Native
5 6 (3.87%) Onboarding
6 5 (3.23%) Cyberattack
6 5 (3.23%) Security Operations Centre
7 4 (2.58%) AI Agents
7 4 (2.58%) Analytical Mindset
7 4 (2.58%) Data Centre
7 4 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
7 4 (2.58%) Mobile App
8 3 (1.94%) Data Structures
9 2 (1.29%) Mixed Reality
9 2 (1.29%) Replication
9 2 (1.29%) Security Posture
9 2 (1.29%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 26 (16.77%) Linux
2 25 (16.13%) Windows
3 13 (8.39%) Unix
4 7 (4.52%) Android
5 4 (2.58%) Windows Server
6 3 (1.94%) Apple iOS
7 2 (1.29%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.65%) Kali Linux
8 1 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (26.45%) Agile
2 40 (25.81%) Problem-Solving
3 20 (12.90%) DevOps
4 18 (11.61%) AI
4 18 (11.61%) CI/CD
5 17 (10.97%) Continuous Improvement
6 16 (10.32%) Cybersecurity
6 16 (10.32%) Software Engineering
7 15 (9.68%) Migration
8 14 (9.03%) Continuous Integration
9 13 (8.39%) Analytics
9 13 (8.39%) Data Science
9 13 (8.39%) Systems Engineering
10 12 (7.74%) Data Governance
10 12 (7.74%) Machine Learning
10 12 (7.74%) Mathematics
10 12 (7.74%) Open Source
10 12 (7.74%) Process Improvement
11 11 (7.10%) Software Testing
11 11 (7.10%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 37 (23.87%) Python
2 19 (12.26%) SQL
3 18 (11.61%) Java
4 16 (10.32%) JavaScript
5 9 (5.81%) Perl
6 8 (5.16%) PowerShell
7 7 (4.52%) Go
7 7 (4.52%) Kotlin
8 4 (2.58%) Shell Script
9 3 (1.94%) Bash
9 3 (1.94%) C#
10 1 (0.65%) Ada
10 1 (0.65%) Assembly Language
10 1 (0.65%) C
10 1 (0.65%) C++
10 1 (0.65%) MATLAB
10 1 (0.65%) R
10 1 (0.65%) Swift
10 1 (0.65%) Tcl
10 1 (0.65%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 124 (80.00%) Degree
2 83 (53.55%) Computer Science Degree
3 43 (27.74%) Security Cleared
4 28 (18.06%) SC Cleared
5 12 (7.74%) Master's Degree
6 11 (7.10%) DBS Check
7 6 (3.87%) DV Cleared
8 5 (3.23%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (3.23%) CompTIA CySA+
8 5 (3.23%) CompTIA Security+
9 4 (2.58%) CCNP
9 4 (2.58%) CISSP
10 3 (1.94%) AWS Certification
10 3 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.94%) CCNA
10 3 (1.94%) PMI Certification
10 3 (1.94%) PMP
11 2 (1.29%) Azure Certification
11 2 (1.29%) PhD
12 1 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (7.10%) Data Quality
2 10 (6.45%) QA
3 7 (4.52%) GDPR
3 7 (4.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 6 (3.87%) NIST
5 3 (1.94%) DO-254
5 3 (1.94%) IEC 61508
5 3 (1.94%) ISO 26262
6 2 (1.29%) HIPAA
6 2 (1.29%) ISO/IEC 19770
6 2 (1.29%) NCSC
6 2 (1.29%) PMO
7 1 (0.65%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.65%) Def Stans
7 1 (0.65%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.65%) JSP 440
7 1 (0.65%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.65%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 13 (8.39%) Docker
2 5 (3.23%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.29%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 11 (7.10%) Kubernetes
2 8 (5.16%) Terraform
3 4 (2.58%) Ansible
3 4 (2.58%) Grafana
4 2 (1.29%) Prometheus
4 2 (1.29%) Puppet
5 1 (0.65%) FortiGate
5 1 (0.65%) Istio
5 1 (0.65%) Kubeflow
5 1 (0.65%) linkerd
5 1 (0.65%) Nessus
5 1 (0.65%) Nmap
Vendors
1 14 (9.03%) Oracle
2 12 (7.74%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.52%) Splunk
4 6 (3.87%) Atlassian
4 6 (3.87%) SAP
5 5 (3.23%) Cisco
5 5 (3.23%) ServiceNow
6 4 (2.58%) BeyondTrust
6 4 (2.58%) CyberArk
6 4 (2.58%) ESRI
6 4 (2.58%) Informatica
6 4 (2.58%) Intergraph
7 3 (1.94%) Google
7 3 (1.94%) IBM
7 3 (1.94%) Palo Alto
7 3 (1.94%) Snow
8 2 (1.29%) Adobe
8 2 (1.29%) Aruba
8 2 (1.29%) CheckPoint
8 2 (1.29%) PagerDuty