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 2 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 206 145 148
Rank change year-on-year -61 +3 +136
Contract jobs citing Computer Science Degree 582 560 736
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.30% 1.93% 1.66%
As % of the Qualifications category 3.89% 6.28% 5.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 366 355 488
10th Percentile £204 £306 £304
25th Percentile £358 £400 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -8.33%
75th Percentile £650 £663 £638
90th Percentile £775 £796 £758
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 8 37
10th Percentile £20.50 £37.44 £27.05
25th Percentile £25.73 £42.73 £38.75
Median hourly rate £37.50 £55.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -31.82% - -
75th Percentile £82.50 £67.81 £66.25
90th Percentile £178.75 £73.01 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £59.75 £54.98 £56.25
% change year-on-year +8.68% -2.26% -14.12%

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 14,960 8,916 13,542
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.42% 30.68% 30.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,900 5,679 8,415
10th Percentile £340 £295 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,089 487 1,010
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.51 £13.83
25th Percentile £20.50 £24.18 £17.72
Median hourly rate £36.70 £43.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.65% +14.67% -28.57%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.76 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.12 £50.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -27.77% +33.33% -23.47%

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 2 April 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 2 April 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 2 April 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 -57 514 £500 -4.76% 336
UK excluding London -68 271 £475 -5.00% 234
London -36 257 £512 -14.67% 145
Work from Home -39 152 £425 -18.66% 157
North of England -38 84 £401 -30.26% 40
South East -48 70 £413 -17.50% 107
Midlands -54 52 £525 +16.67% 25
North West -20 42 £360 -48.02% 24
Yorkshire -36 42 £525 +5.00% 12
West Midlands -53 42 £475 - 9
South West -21 24 £500 +29.03% 16
East of England -27 21 £550 -8.33% 42
Scotland +4 20 £601 +26.47% 5
East Midlands -34 10 £545 +21.92% 16
Wales -22 6 £358 +28.83% 10
Northern Ireland -1 3 - - 2

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 29 (4.98%) Confluence
2 21 (3.61%) SharePoint
3 19 (3.26%) Apache Spark
4 13 (2.23%) Apache
5 7 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (0.69%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 3 (0.52%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.52%) SAS
8 2 (0.34%) CMS
8 2 (0.34%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.34%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.17%) Apache Pulsar
9 1 (0.17%) Camunda
9 1 (0.17%) IIS
9 1 (0.17%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.17%) Oracle Service Bus
9 1 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 15 (2.58%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (1.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (1.03%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.34%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.34%) Trello
Business Applications
1 8 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.86%) Payment Gateway
3 4 (0.69%) Aladdin
4 3 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (0.52%) Oracle Receivables
4 3 (0.52%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.34%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.17%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.17%) Maximo
6 1 (0.17%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle HRMS
6 1 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.17%) Temenos T24
6 1 (0.17%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 211 (36.25%) Azure
2 159 (27.32%) AWS
3 85 (14.60%) GCP
4 41 (7.04%) Power Platform
5 39 (6.70%) GitHub
6 38 (6.53%) Microsoft 365
7 37 (6.36%) Serverless
8 35 (6.01%) Azure DevOps
9 31 (5.33%) SaaS
10 23 (3.95%) IaaS
11 20 (3.44%) AWS CloudFormation
12 16 (2.75%) Azure AKS
12 16 (2.75%) Azure Data Factory
12 16 (2.75%) GitHub Actions
13 14 (2.41%) Entra ID
13 14 (2.41%) PaaS
13 14 (2.41%) Snowflake
14 13 (2.23%) Azure Service Bus
14 13 (2.23%) Power Automate
15 12 (2.06%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 27 (4.64%) TCP/IP
2 23 (3.95%) Firewall
3 21 (3.61%) DNS
4 12 (2.06%) WAN
5 9 (1.55%) HTTP
5 9 (1.55%) LAN
5 9 (1.55%) Network Security
5 9 (1.55%) VPN
6 7 (1.20%) BGP
6 7 (1.20%) HTTPS
6 7 (1.20%) Wireless
7 6 (1.03%) DMZ
7 6 (1.03%) VoIP
8 5 (0.86%) CTI
8 5 (0.86%) SAN
8 5 (0.86%) VLAN
9 4 (0.69%) OSPF
10 3 (0.52%) IPv4
10 3 (0.52%) IPv6
10 3 (0.52%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (8.25%) PostgreSQL
2 37 (6.36%) NoSQL
3 35 (6.01%) Relational Database
4 33 (5.67%) SQL Server
5 32 (5.50%) Power BI
6 31 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
7 24 (4.12%) Big Data
7 24 (4.12%) MySQL
8 15 (2.58%) Elasticsearch
8 15 (2.58%) Tableau
9 11 (1.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 10 (1.72%) Amazon RDS
10 10 (1.72%) Hadoop
11 9 (1.55%) Metadata
12 8 (1.37%) MongoDB
12 8 (1.37%) Redis
12 8 (1.37%) Snowflake Schema
13 7 (1.20%) Star Schema
14 6 (1.03%) Azure SQL Database
15 5 (0.86%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 65 (11.17%) Git
2 47 (8.08%) Jenkins
2 47 (8.08%) JIRA
3 46 (7.90%) GitLab
4 11 (1.89%) Postman
4 11 (1.89%) Selenium
5 9 (1.55%) Liquibase
6 8 (1.37%) Gradle
7 7 (1.20%) Bitbucket
7 7 (1.20%) CircleCI
8 6 (1.03%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.86%) JUnit
10 4 (0.69%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.69%) Cucumber
10 4 (0.69%) MLflow
10 4 (0.69%) REST Assured
10 4 (0.69%) SonarQube
11 3 (0.52%) Flyway
11 3 (0.52%) TeamCity
11 3 (0.52%) Vite
General
1 284 (48.80%) Social Skills
2 166 (28.52%) Finance
3 143 (24.57%) Analytical Skills
4 79 (13.57%) Banking
5 37 (6.36%) Public Sector
6 27 (4.64%) Presentation Skills
7 23 (3.95%) Marketing
8 20 (3.44%) Legal
9 19 (3.26%) Front Office
10 17 (2.92%) Investment Banking
11 16 (2.75%) Organisational Skills
12 15 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
12 15 (2.58%) Financial Institution
13 14 (2.41%) Telecoms
14 10 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
15 9 (1.55%) Law
16 8 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 6 (1.03%) Retail
18 5 (0.86%) Manufacturing
18 5 (0.86%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 86 (14.78%) Developer
2 75 (12.89%) Architect
3 59 (10.14%) Lead
4 55 (9.45%) Analyst
5 45 (7.73%) Senior
6 30 (5.15%) Technical Support
7 29 (4.98%) Solutions Architect
8 28 (4.81%) Software Engineer
9 21 (3.61%) Cloud Engineer
10 19 (3.26%) Consultant
11 18 (3.09%) AWS Engineer
11 18 (3.09%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 17 (2.92%) Site Engineer
13 16 (2.75%) Cloud Architect
13 16 (2.75%) Data Engineer
13 16 (2.75%) SOC Analyst
14 15 (2.58%) Business Analyst
14 15 (2.58%) Java Developer
14 15 (2.58%) Support Specialist
15 14 (2.41%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 83 (14.26%) REST
2 53 (9.11%) RESTful
3 37 (6.36%) .NET
3 37 (6.36%) Elastic Stack
4 32 (5.50%) React
5 26 (4.47%) JSON
5 26 (4.47%) Spring
6 25 (4.30%) Middleware
7 24 (4.12%) SOAP
8 22 (3.78%) OAuth
8 22 (3.78%) XML
9 21 (3.61%) Spring Boot
10 18 (3.09%) HTML
11 17 (2.92%) Kafka
11 17 (2.92%) PyTorch
12 15 (2.58%) JWT
13 14 (2.41%) LangChain
13 14 (2.41%) Node.js
14 13 (2.23%) CSS
14 13 (2.23%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 64 (11.00%) Management Information System
2 53 (9.11%) Cloud Native
3 33 (5.67%) Distributed Systems
3 33 (5.67%) Onboarding
3 33 (5.67%) Product Ownership
4 25 (4.30%) Algorithms
5 19 (3.26%) Data Protection Act
5 19 (3.26%) Enterprise Software
6 18 (3.09%) Virtual Team
7 17 (2.92%) AI Agents
7 17 (2.92%) Cyberattack
7 17 (2.92%) Public Cloud
7 17 (2.92%) Security Operations Centre
8 16 (2.75%) Data Structures
9 13 (2.23%) Derivative
10 12 (2.06%) Security Posture
10 12 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
11 11 (1.89%) Analytical Mindset
12 10 (1.72%) Distributed Computing
13 8 (1.37%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 94 (16.15%) Linux
2 90 (15.46%) Windows
3 34 (5.84%) Unix
4 10 (1.72%) Android
5 9 (1.55%) Mac OS
6 8 (1.37%) Windows 10
7 6 (1.03%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.86%) VMS
9 4 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 3 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.52%) Debian
10 3 (0.52%) Rocky
10 3 (0.52%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.17%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 573 (98.45%) Computer Science
2 230 (39.52%) Problem-Solving
3 191 (32.82%) Agile
4 179 (30.76%) CI/CD
5 178 (30.58%) DevOps
6 126 (21.65%) AI
7 104 (17.87%) Software Engineering
8 102 (17.53%) Microservices
9 91 (15.64%) Containerisation
10 82 (14.09%) Infrastructure as Code
11 81 (13.92%) Analytics
12 70 (12.03%) Data Modelling
13 68 (11.68%) Stakeholder Management
14 65 (11.17%) Continuous Improvement
15 61 (10.48%) Migration
16 58 (9.97%) Cybersecurity
16 58 (9.97%) ETL
16 58 (9.97%) Technical Leadership
17 57 (9.79%) Test Automation
18 54 (9.28%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 199 (34.19%) Python
2 127 (21.82%) SQL
3 97 (16.67%) Java
4 58 (9.97%) JavaScript
5 35 (6.01%) C#
6 34 (5.84%) Go
6 34 (5.84%) TypeScript
7 29 (4.98%) PowerShell
8 26 (4.47%) Bash
9 15 (2.58%) C++
10 14 (2.41%) Perl
11 11 (1.89%) Shell Script
12 10 (1.72%) Kotlin
13 8 (1.37%) R
14 7 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 7 (1.20%) Scala
15 5 (0.86%) Bicep
16 4 (0.69%) Rust
17 3 (0.52%) C
17 3 (0.52%) PHP
Qualifications
1 582 (100.00%) Degree
2 123 (21.13%) Master's Degree
3 82 (14.09%) Security Cleared
4 55 (9.45%) SC Cleared
5 27 (4.64%) Azure Certification
6 26 (4.47%) CISSP
6 26 (4.47%) Microsoft Certification
7 21 (3.61%) AWS Certification
7 21 (3.61%) CompTIA Security+
8 20 (3.44%) DV Cleared
8 20 (3.44%) PMI Certification
9 19 (3.26%) CISM
10 18 (3.09%) BPSS Clearance
11 17 (2.92%) CompTIA CySA+
11 17 (2.92%) PMP
12 14 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
13 13 (2.23%) TOGAF Certification
14 8 (1.37%) PhD
15 7 (1.20%) CCNA
16 6 (1.03%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (8.76%) QA
2 29 (4.98%) GDPR
3 23 (3.95%) Data Quality
4 17 (2.92%) NIST
5 15 (2.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (2.41%) PCI DSS
7 7 (1.20%) PSD2
8 6 (1.03%) Accessibility
9 5 (0.86%) HIPAA
9 5 (0.86%) ISO 20022
10 4 (0.69%) GRC
11 3 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.52%) Basel III
11 3 (0.52%) DICOM
11 3 (0.52%) GAAP
11 3 (0.52%) ISO 8583
11 3 (0.52%) NCSC
11 3 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 3 (0.52%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.52%) WCAG
System Software
1 103 (17.70%) Docker
2 35 (6.01%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.37%) Firmware
4 7 (1.20%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.52%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.17%) HDFS
7 1 (0.17%) PowerHA
7 1 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.17%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 114 (19.59%) Kubernetes
2 76 (13.06%) Terraform
3 51 (8.76%) Ansible
4 39 (6.70%) Grafana
5 33 (5.67%) Prometheus
6 21 (3.61%) Microsoft Intune
7 14 (2.41%) Puppet
8 11 (1.89%) Kibana
9 5 (0.86%) Progress Chef
10 4 (0.69%) SCCM
11 3 (0.52%) Control-M
11 3 (0.52%) Foglight
11 3 (0.52%) WSUS
12 2 (0.34%) logstash
13 1 (0.17%) FortiGate
13 1 (0.17%) HP ALM
13 1 (0.17%) linkerd
13 1 (0.17%) Nessus
13 1 (0.17%) Nmap
13 1 (0.17%) Packer
Vendors
1 131 (22.51%) Microsoft
2 56 (9.62%) Splunk
3 45 (7.73%) Oracle
4 34 (5.84%) Google
5 22 (3.78%) Databricks
6 17 (2.92%) SAP
7 16 (2.75%) ServiceNow
8 15 (2.58%) Salesforce
9 12 (2.06%) Software AG
10 10 (1.72%) IBM
10 10 (1.72%) MuleSoft
11 9 (1.55%) Cisco
11 9 (1.55%) VMware
12 8 (1.37%) Informatica
12 8 (1.37%) Palo Alto
13 7 (1.20%) Citrix
14 6 (1.03%) Atlassian
14 6 (1.03%) Foundry
14 6 (1.03%) Red Hat
15 5 (0.86%) iManage