Computer Science Degree Contract Job Trends

Computer Science Degree
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Computer Science Degree qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 20 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 234 144 121
Rank change year-on-year -90 -23 +127
Contract jobs citing Computer Science Degree 502 574 799
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.04% 1.97% 1.88%
As % of the Qualifications category 3.30% 6.35% 6.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 324 345 506
10th Percentile £191 £286 £300
25th Percentile £350 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £677 £650 £643
90th Percentile £784 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £480 £506
% change year-on-year -2.34% -5.19% +1.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 8 40
10th Percentile £25.62 £22.04 £25.70
25th Percentile £33.64 £26.50 £38.75
Median hourly rate £82.00 £55.00 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year +49.09% +2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £178.75 £67.81 £68.13
90th Percentile - £73.01 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £172.50 £26.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year +563.46% -53.78% -6.64%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

Computer Science Degree falls under the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 15,227 9,041 12,797
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.63% 31.00% 30.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,134 5,692 7,977
10th Percentile £350 £281 £306
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £532
Median % change year-on-year - -1.32% -3.27%
75th Percentile £623 £619 £646
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £530
% change year-on-year - -5.66% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,070 515 1,058
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.07 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.57 £17.73
Median hourly rate £47.80 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.45% -6.25% -27.25%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.03 £80.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £36.65 £40.30
% change year-on-year +29.62% -9.07% -19.40%

Computer Science Degree
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Computer Science Degree job vacancy trend in the UK

Computer Science Degree
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Computer Science Degree.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Computer Science Degree

Computer Science Degree
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Computer Science Degree over the 6 months to 20 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Computer Science Degree in the UK

Computer Science Degree
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Computer Science Degree.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Computer Science Degree

Computer Science Degree
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Computer Science Degree over the 6 months to 20 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Computer Science Degree in the UK

Computer Science Degree
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Computer Science Degree within the UK over the 6 months to 20 May 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
England -88 450 £500 -2.91% 378
UK excluding London -72 245 £469 -2.34% 259
London -57 214 £500 -4.76% 169
Work from Home -90 120 £402 -19.60% 161
South East -57 67 £363 -27.50% 105
North of England -54 64 £450 -18.33% 43
Midlands -73 47 £545 +18.74% 37
West Midlands -54 35 £525 -2.33% 22
North West -34 34 £368 -33.30% 18
Yorkshire -46 30 £525 - 17
South West -28 24 £500 +35.14% 28
East of England -22 20 £488 - 27
Scotland -19 16 £610 +28.42% 18
East Midlands -36 11 £545 +21.92% 15
Wales -25 6 £358 +24.35% 6
Northern Ireland 0 3 - - 4

Computer Science Degree
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 25 (4.98%) Confluence
2 20 (3.98%) SharePoint
3 18 (3.59%) Apache Spark
4 16 (3.19%) Apache
5 6 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (0.80%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 3 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.40%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.40%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 1 (0.20%) Apache Pulsar
9 1 (0.20%) Camunda
9 1 (0.20%) CMS
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle Service Bus
9 1 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.20%) SAS
Applications
1 20 (3.98%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.39%) MS Visio
2 7 (1.39%) Navisworks
2 7 (1.39%) Revit
3 6 (1.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.40%) Trello
5 1 (0.20%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (1.00%) Aladdin
1 5 (1.00%) Payment Gateway
2 4 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.60%) Oracle Payables
3 3 (0.60%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.40%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.40%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.40%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.40%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.40%) Workfront
5 1 (0.20%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.20%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 185 (36.85%) Azure
2 124 (24.70%) AWS
3 58 (11.55%) GCP
4 43 (8.57%) Microsoft 365
5 33 (6.57%) Power Platform
6 32 (6.37%) GitHub
7 30 (5.98%) SaaS
8 26 (5.18%) Azure DevOps
9 18 (3.59%) AWS CloudFormation
9 18 (3.59%) IaaS
10 16 (3.19%) Azure AKS
11 15 (2.99%) Serverless
12 14 (2.79%) GitHub Actions
12 14 (2.79%) Snowflake
13 13 (2.59%) Azure Service Bus
13 13 (2.59%) PaaS
14 11 (2.19%) Azure Data Factory
15 10 (1.99%) Entra ID
16 9 (1.79%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 9 (1.79%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 29 (5.78%) TCP/IP
2 21 (4.18%) DNS
3 20 (3.98%) Firewall
4 13 (2.59%) WAN
5 10 (1.99%) LAN
5 10 (1.99%) VPN
6 9 (1.79%) BGP
7 8 (1.59%) Network Security
8 7 (1.39%) DMZ
9 6 (1.20%) OSPF
9 6 (1.20%) Wireless
10 5 (1.00%) SAN
11 4 (0.80%) 3GPP
11 4 (0.80%) HTTPS
11 4 (0.80%) RTP
11 4 (0.80%) Unified Communications
11 4 (0.80%) VLAN
11 4 (0.80%) VXLAN
11 4 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
11 4 (0.80%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (6.18%) Relational Database
2 28 (5.58%) Power BI
3 27 (5.38%) SQL Server
4 26 (5.18%) Data Warehouse
5 21 (4.18%) Big Data
6 20 (3.98%) NoSQL
6 20 (3.98%) PostgreSQL
7 18 (3.59%) MySQL
8 14 (2.79%) Elasticsearch
8 14 (2.79%) Metadata
9 11 (2.19%) Tableau
10 9 (1.79%) MongoDB
10 9 (1.79%) Snowflake Schema
11 8 (1.59%) Hadoop
11 8 (1.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 7 (1.39%) Azure SQL Database
12 7 (1.39%) Redis
13 6 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
13 6 (1.20%) Star Schema
14 5 (1.00%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 51 (10.16%) Git
2 38 (7.57%) JIRA
3 30 (5.98%) GitLab
4 24 (4.78%) Jenkins
5 11 (2.19%) Gradle
6 10 (1.99%) Selenium
7 7 (1.39%) CircleCI
7 7 (1.39%) Cypress.io
7 7 (1.39%) TeamCity
8 6 (1.20%) JUnit
8 6 (1.20%) Postman
8 6 (1.20%) SonarQube
9 5 (1.00%) Maven
10 4 (0.80%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.80%) MLflow
11 3 (0.60%) Android Studio
11 3 (0.60%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.60%) Browser DevTools
11 3 (0.60%) Flyway
11 3 (0.60%) Vite
General
1 249 (49.60%) Social Skills
2 126 (25.10%) Finance
3 124 (24.70%) Analytical Skills
4 61 (12.15%) Banking
5 26 (5.18%) Public Sector
6 25 (4.98%) Presentation Skills
7 20 (3.98%) Front Office
8 18 (3.59%) Telecoms
9 17 (3.39%) Investment Banking
9 17 (3.39%) Legal
10 16 (3.19%) Marketing
10 16 (3.19%) Organisational Skills
11 10 (1.99%) Documentation Skills
12 7 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
13 6 (1.20%) Aviation
13 6 (1.20%) Law
13 6 (1.20%) Retail
14 4 (0.80%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.80%) Back Office
14 4 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 79 (15.74%) Architect
2 63 (12.55%) Developer
3 55 (10.96%) Lead
4 49 (9.76%) Analyst
5 41 (8.17%) Senior
6 31 (6.18%) Technical Support
7 29 (5.78%) Solutions Architect
8 21 (4.18%) Software Engineer
9 18 (3.59%) Integration Architect
10 17 (3.39%) IT Analyst
11 16 (3.19%) Data Engineer
11 16 (3.19%) Support Specialist
11 16 (3.19%) Technical Specialist
12 15 (2.99%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 15 (2.99%) Technical Support Specialist
13 14 (2.79%) SOC Analyst
14 13 (2.59%) Consultant
14 13 (2.59%) IT Support
14 13 (2.59%) Support Analyst
15 12 (2.39%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (11.55%) REST
2 35 (6.97%) React
3 34 (6.77%) .NET
4 30 (5.98%) Middleware
4 30 (5.98%) RESTful
5 23 (4.58%) Spring
6 21 (4.18%) Elastic Stack
7 20 (3.98%) SOAP
8 18 (3.59%) Spring Boot
9 16 (3.19%) XML
10 15 (2.99%) PyTorch
11 14 (2.79%) JSON
12 13 (2.59%) AngularJS
12 13 (2.59%) CSS
12 13 (2.59%) Kafka
12 13 (2.59%) OAuth
13 12 (2.39%) HTML
13 12 (2.39%) Node.js
14 10 (1.99%) PySpark
14 10 (1.99%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 57 (11.35%) Management Information System
2 46 (9.16%) Onboarding
3 41 (8.17%) Cloud Native
4 31 (6.18%) Product Ownership
5 20 (3.98%) Distributed Systems
6 17 (3.39%) Cyberattack
6 17 (3.39%) Security Operations Centre
6 17 (3.39%) Virtual Team
7 16 (3.19%) Algorithms
7 16 (3.19%) Data Protection Act
8 14 (2.79%) AI Agents
8 14 (2.79%) Derivative
9 13 (2.59%) Data Structures
9 13 (2.59%) Self-Motivation
10 12 (2.39%) Enterprise Software
11 10 (1.99%) Security Posture
12 9 (1.79%) Analytical Mindset
12 9 (1.79%) Mobile App
12 9 (1.79%) Robotics
13 8 (1.59%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 91 (18.13%) Windows
2 78 (15.54%) Linux
3 31 (6.18%) Unix
4 17 (3.39%) Android
5 13 (2.59%) Windows 10
6 10 (1.99%) Mac OS
7 9 (1.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 8 (1.59%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.80%) Debian
9 4 (0.80%) Rocky
9 4 (0.80%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.80%) VMS
9 4 (0.80%) Windows Server
10 1 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.20%) MVS
10 1 (0.20%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 495 (98.61%) Computer Science
2 197 (39.24%) Problem-Solving
3 145 (28.88%) Agile
3 145 (28.88%) CI/CD
4 138 (27.49%) DevOps
5 127 (25.30%) AI
6 96 (19.12%) Software Engineering
7 81 (16.14%) Microservices
8 71 (14.14%) Containerisation
9 66 (13.15%) Continuous Improvement
10 65 (12.95%) Analytics
11 64 (12.75%) Technical Leadership
12 62 (12.35%) Data Modelling
13 57 (11.35%) Infrastructure as Code
14 54 (10.76%) Cybersecurity
14 54 (10.76%) ITIL
15 51 (10.16%) Migration
16 50 (9.96%) Stakeholder Management
17 49 (9.76%) Data Governance
17 49 (9.76%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 160 (31.87%) Python
2 112 (22.31%) SQL
3 86 (17.13%) Java
4 50 (9.96%) JavaScript
5 33 (6.57%) C#
6 24 (4.78%) Bash
6 24 (4.78%) PowerShell
6 24 (4.78%) TypeScript
7 14 (2.79%) Go
7 14 (2.79%) Perl
8 12 (2.39%) C++
9 10 (1.99%) Kotlin
10 9 (1.79%) Shell Script
11 7 (1.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 6 (1.20%) R
12 6 (1.20%) Scala
13 3 (0.60%) Bicep
13 3 (0.60%) PHP
13 3 (0.60%) Rust
14 2 (0.40%) C
Qualifications
1 502 (100.00%) Degree
2 91 (18.13%) Master's Degree
3 71 (14.14%) Security Cleared
4 51 (10.16%) SC Cleared
5 24 (4.78%) Azure Certification
6 23 (4.58%) Microsoft Certification
7 22 (4.38%) CISSP
8 19 (3.78%) AWS Certification
8 19 (3.78%) CompTIA Security+
8 19 (3.78%) TOGAF Certification
9 18 (3.59%) Cisco Certification
9 18 (3.59%) DV Cleared
10 17 (3.39%) CompTIA CySA+
11 16 (3.19%) CISM
12 13 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
13 11 (2.19%) PMI Certification
14 10 (1.99%) Network+ Certification
14 10 (1.99%) PMP
15 9 (1.79%) A+ Certification
15 9 (1.79%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (8.57%) QA
2 22 (4.38%) GDPR
3 21 (4.18%) Data Quality
4 16 (3.19%) NIST
5 13 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 13 (2.59%) PCI DSS
6 9 (1.79%) Accessibility
7 7 (1.39%) PSD2
8 5 (1.00%) ISO 20022
9 4 (0.80%) GRC
9 4 (0.80%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.80%) ISO 19650
10 3 (0.60%) DICOM
10 3 (0.60%) GAAP
10 3 (0.60%) IFRS
10 3 (0.60%) ISO 8583
10 3 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.60%) SOC 2
10 3 (0.60%) WCAG
11 2 (0.40%) SLA
System Software
1 82 (16.33%) Docker
2 35 (6.97%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.59%) Firmware
4 5 (1.00%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.40%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.40%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.20%) ACF2
6 1 (0.20%) HDFS
6 1 (0.20%) RACF
6 1 (0.20%) Squid
6 1 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 95 (18.92%) Kubernetes
2 54 (10.76%) Terraform
3 39 (7.77%) Ansible
4 22 (4.38%) Microsoft Intune
5 20 (3.98%) Grafana
6 18 (3.59%) Prometheus
7 11 (2.19%) Puppet
8 10 (1.99%) Kibana
9 4 (0.80%) SCCM
10 3 (0.60%) Cisco CUCM
10 3 (0.60%) Control-M
10 3 (0.60%) Foglight
10 3 (0.60%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.60%) WSUS
11 2 (0.40%) logstash
12 1 (0.20%) CASB
12 1 (0.20%) FortiGate
12 1 (0.20%) HP ALM
12 1 (0.20%) linkerd
12 1 (0.20%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 120 (23.90%) Microsoft
2 42 (8.37%) Splunk
3 41 (8.17%) Oracle
4 22 (4.38%) Google
5 21 (4.18%) Databricks
6 15 (2.99%) ServiceNow
7 13 (2.59%) Salesforce
8 11 (2.19%) Cisco
8 11 (2.19%) SAP
8 11 (2.19%) Software AG
9 9 (1.79%) Palo Alto
10 8 (1.59%) IBM
10 8 (1.59%) MuleSoft
11 7 (1.39%) Autodesk
11 7 (1.39%) Informatica
11 7 (1.39%) VMware
12 6 (1.20%) Apple
12 6 (1.20%) Citrix
13 5 (1.00%) Red Hat
13 5 (1.00%) Veritas