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 26 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 191 146 150
Rank change year-on-year -45 +4 +149
Contract jobs citing Computer Science Degree 611 584 707
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.47% 1.90% 1.61%
As % of the Qualifications category 4.33% 6.39% 5.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 397 355 479
10th Percentile £217 £309 £300
25th Percentile £358 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.69% -11.00%
75th Percentile £650 £639 £645
90th Percentile £764 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - +4.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 6 33
10th Percentile £24.27 £34.46 £29.30
25th Percentile - £42.18 £38.75
Median hourly rate £33.50 £47.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.84% -13.18% +2.33%
75th Percentile £36.88 £53.75 £66.25
90th Percentile £82.20 £56.25 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £27.00 £56.14
% change year-on-year +24.07% -51.91% -6.82%

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 14,122 9,141 13,295
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.08% 29.79% 30.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,321 5,618 8,200
10th Percentile £331 £290 £288
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.58% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £650
90th Percentile £720 £716 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £505 £530
% change year-on-year -0.99% -4.72% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,031 444 961
10th Percentile £16.09 £20.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £24.18 £20.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -5.88% -10.90%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.25 £64.50
90th Percentile £81.00 £81.77 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £46.71 £44.50
% change year-on-year -46.16% +4.97% -1.11%

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 26 February 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 26 February 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 26 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
England -46 543 £500 -4.76% 214
UK excluding London -24 313 £475 -5.00% 142
London -51 241 £525 -3.45% 93
Work from Home -30 168 £430 -18.19% 126
North of England -7 102 £450 -21.74% 21
South East -5 82 £419 -16.25% 46
Midlands -46 58 £525 +16.67% 29
Yorkshire -21 57 £525 +5.00% 6
West Midlands -46 47 £525 -8.70% 20
North West -9 45 £367 -47.61% 11
South West -1 34 £535 -14.06% 16
Scotland +4 22 £592 +18.30% 13
East of England -26 21 £600 +33.33% 19
East Midlands -26 11 £505 +41.85% 9
Wales -13 6 £358 +28.83% 1
Northern Ireland -5 1 - - 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 37 (6.06%) Confluence
2 22 (3.60%) SharePoint
3 19 (3.11%) Apache Spark
4 11 (1.80%) Apache
5 6 (0.98%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.82%) Microsoft Exchange
6 5 (0.82%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 4 (0.65%) GeoServer
7 4 (0.65%) Smallworld
8 3 (0.49%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 3 (0.49%) Ethereum
8 3 (0.49%) Hyperledger
8 3 (0.49%) IIS
9 2 (0.33%) CMS
9 2 (0.33%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.33%) SAS
9 2 (0.33%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.16%) Oracle Service Bus
10 1 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 17 (2.78%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (0.82%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.33%) Trello
5 1 (0.16%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 9 (1.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.82%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.49%) SAP ERP
3 3 (0.49%) SAP S/4HANA
4 2 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.33%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.33%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.33%) SAP Travel Management
4 2 (0.33%) Workday HCM
5 1 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 1 (0.16%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.16%) Maximo
5 1 (0.16%) Misys Equation
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.16%) SAP BPC
5 1 (0.16%) SAP GTS
Cloud Services
1 213 (34.86%) Azure
2 170 (27.82%) AWS
3 100 (16.37%) GCP
4 50 (8.18%) Serverless
5 46 (7.53%) GitHub
6 39 (6.38%) Power Platform
7 36 (5.89%) Microsoft 365
8 32 (5.24%) Azure DevOps
9 28 (4.58%) SaaS
10 22 (3.60%) GitHub Actions
11 20 (3.27%) IaaS
12 17 (2.78%) AWS CloudFormation
13 14 (2.29%) Amazon S3
13 14 (2.29%) Azure Data Factory
14 13 (2.13%) Azure AKS
14 13 (2.13%) Entra ID
15 12 (1.96%) Amazon ECS
15 12 (1.96%) AWS KMS
15 12 (1.96%) Azure Logic Apps
15 12 (1.96%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 23 (3.76%) TCP/IP
2 22 (3.60%) Firewall
3 21 (3.44%) DNS
4 15 (2.45%) Network Security
5 11 (1.80%) HTTP
5 11 (1.80%) Wireless
6 9 (1.47%) LAN
6 9 (1.47%) VoIP
6 9 (1.47%) WAN
7 8 (1.31%) SSH
8 7 (1.15%) HTTPS
9 6 (0.98%) VPN
10 5 (0.82%) CTI
11 4 (0.65%) SAN
11 4 (0.65%) SSL
11 4 (0.65%) Telepresence
11 4 (0.65%) VLAN
12 3 (0.49%) Internet
12 3 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
13 2 (0.33%) MGCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (9.49%) PostgreSQL
2 49 (8.02%) NoSQL
3 32 (5.24%) Data Warehouse
4 30 (4.91%) SQL Server
5 29 (4.75%) Relational Database
6 28 (4.58%) MySQL
7 27 (4.42%) Power BI
8 24 (3.93%) Big Data
9 20 (3.27%) Elasticsearch
10 14 (2.29%) Tableau
11 11 (1.80%) MongoDB
12 10 (1.64%) Metadata
13 9 (1.47%) Redis
14 8 (1.31%) Azure SQL Database
14 8 (1.31%) Hadoop
14 8 (1.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 7 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
15 7 (1.15%) Apache Cassandra
16 6 (0.98%) Couchbase
16 6 (0.98%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 70 (11.46%) Git
2 56 (9.17%) GitLab
2 56 (9.17%) Jenkins
3 55 (9.00%) JIRA
4 22 (3.60%) Liquibase
5 12 (1.96%) Postman
6 10 (1.64%) Selenium
7 8 (1.31%) CircleCI
7 8 (1.31%) Gradle
8 7 (1.15%) Bitbucket
9 6 (0.98%) Cypress.io
9 6 (0.98%) JUnit
10 4 (0.65%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.65%) Cucumber
10 4 (0.65%) Hardhat
10 4 (0.65%) MLflow
11 3 (0.49%) ERwin
11 3 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 3 (0.49%) SonarQube
11 3 (0.49%) TeamCity
General
1 318 (52.05%) Social Skills
2 180 (29.46%) Finance
3 148 (24.22%) Analytical Skills
4 84 (13.75%) Banking
5 37 (6.06%) Public Sector
6 27 (4.42%) Presentation Skills
7 25 (4.09%) Organisational Skills
8 23 (3.76%) Financial Institution
9 22 (3.60%) Marketing
10 17 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
11 13 (2.13%) Legal
12 12 (1.96%) Front Office
13 10 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (1.64%) Investment Banking
14 9 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
15 8 (1.31%) Manufacturing
15 8 (1.31%) Retail
15 8 (1.31%) Telecoms
16 7 (1.15%) Law
17 6 (0.98%) Military
Job Titles
1 106 (17.35%) Developer
2 75 (12.27%) Architect
3 58 (9.49%) Senior
4 56 (9.17%) Analyst
5 55 (9.00%) Lead
6 41 (6.71%) Software Engineer
7 32 (5.24%) Solutions Architect
8 30 (4.91%) Technical Support
9 23 (3.76%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 22 (3.60%) Cloud Engineer
10 22 (3.60%) Site Engineer
11 18 (2.95%) AWS Engineer
12 17 (2.78%) Consultant
12 17 (2.78%) Data Engineer
12 17 (2.78%) Senior Software Engineer
13 16 (2.62%) Cloud Architect
13 16 (2.62%) SOC Analyst
14 14 (2.29%) Java Developer
14 14 (2.29%) Senior Developer
14 14 (2.29%) Splunk Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 95 (15.55%) REST
2 62 (10.15%) RESTful
3 48 (7.86%) Elastic Stack
4 41 (6.71%) React
5 39 (6.38%) .NET
6 29 (4.75%) HTML
7 27 (4.42%) Spring
8 26 (4.26%) JSON
8 26 (4.26%) Middleware
9 25 (4.09%) SOAP
10 24 (3.93%) OAuth
11 23 (3.76%) CSS
12 22 (3.60%) Node.js
12 22 (3.60%) XML
13 21 (3.44%) Kafka
14 17 (2.78%) AngularJS
14 17 (2.78%) Spring Boot
15 15 (2.45%) JWT
15 15 (2.45%) PyTorch
16 13 (2.13%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 79 (12.93%) Management Information System
2 69 (11.29%) Cloud Native
3 44 (7.20%) Distributed Systems
4 29 (4.75%) Public Cloud
5 27 (4.42%) Product Ownership
6 26 (4.26%) Onboarding
7 24 (3.93%) Algorithms
8 21 (3.44%) Data Protection Act
8 21 (3.44%) Security Posture
9 18 (2.95%) Data Structures
9 18 (2.95%) Enterprise Software
10 17 (2.78%) Virtual Team
11 15 (2.45%) AI Agents
11 15 (2.45%) Cyberattack
11 15 (2.45%) Security Operations Centre
12 12 (1.96%) Analytical Mindset
12 12 (1.96%) Self-Motivation
13 11 (1.80%) Derivative
14 10 (1.64%) Distributed Computing
15 9 (1.47%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 112 (18.33%) Linux
2 95 (15.55%) Windows
3 47 (7.69%) Unix
4 10 (1.64%) Android
5 8 (1.31%) Mac OS
5 8 (1.31%) Windows 10
5 8 (1.31%) Windows Server
6 6 (0.98%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.82%) VMS
8 4 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 2 (0.33%) Debian
9 2 (0.33%) Rocky
9 2 (0.33%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.16%) Kali Linux
10 1 (0.16%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 604 (98.85%) Computer Science
2 261 (42.72%) Problem-Solving
3 213 (34.86%) Agile
4 201 (32.90%) DevOps
5 185 (30.28%) CI/CD
6 124 (20.29%) Microservices
7 116 (18.99%) Containerisation
8 110 (18.00%) Software Engineering
9 103 (16.86%) AI
10 87 (14.24%) Infrastructure as Code
11 81 (13.26%) Analytics
12 69 (11.29%) Data Modelling
13 68 (11.13%) Migration
14 67 (10.97%) Stakeholder Management
15 65 (10.64%) Cybersecurity
16 63 (10.31%) Change Management
17 62 (10.15%) Validation
18 58 (9.49%) Continuous Improvement
18 58 (9.49%) Incident Response
18 58 (9.49%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 224 (36.66%) Python
2 123 (20.13%) SQL
3 105 (17.18%) Java
4 74 (12.11%) JavaScript
5 53 (8.67%) Go
6 42 (6.87%) TypeScript
7 33 (5.40%) C#
8 29 (4.75%) Bash
9 24 (3.93%) PowerShell
10 18 (2.95%) C++
11 17 (2.78%) Perl
12 14 (2.29%) Shell Script
13 8 (1.31%) Kotlin
14 7 (1.15%) Bicep
14 7 (1.15%) R
14 7 (1.15%) Ruby
15 6 (0.98%) Scala
16 5 (0.82%) Rust
17 4 (0.65%) Solidity
18 3 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 611 (100.00%) Degree
2 143 (23.40%) Master's Degree
3 88 (14.40%) Security Cleared
4 62 (10.15%) SC Cleared
5 29 (4.75%) Azure Certification
5 29 (4.75%) BPSS Clearance
6 28 (4.58%) CISSP
7 25 (4.09%) AWS Certification
8 23 (3.76%) Microsoft Certification
9 20 (3.27%) PMI Certification
10 19 (3.11%) CISM
11 18 (2.95%) CompTIA Security+
11 18 (2.95%) DV Cleared
12 17 (2.78%) Cisco Certification
12 17 (2.78%) PMP
13 16 (2.62%) TOGAF Certification
14 15 (2.45%) CompTIA CySA+
15 10 (1.64%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
16 8 (1.31%) CCNA
16 8 (1.31%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 53 (8.67%) QA
2 37 (6.06%) GDPR
3 31 (5.07%) Data Quality
4 24 (3.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 15 (2.45%) PCI DSS
6 14 (2.29%) NIST
7 13 (2.13%) GRC
8 11 (1.80%) Def Stans
9 9 (1.47%) HIPAA
10 6 (0.98%) Accessibility
10 6 (0.98%) PSD2
11 4 (0.65%) ISO 20022
12 3 (0.49%) Basel III
12 3 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
12 3 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 3 (0.49%) IFRS
12 3 (0.49%) NCSC
12 3 (0.49%) NIST 800
12 3 (0.49%) PMO
12 3 (0.49%) WCAG
System Software
1 131 (21.44%) Docker
2 32 (5.24%) Active Directory
3 7 (1.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.98%) Firmware
5 2 (0.33%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.16%) HDFS
6 1 (0.16%) PowerHA
6 1 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.16%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 139 (22.75%) Kubernetes
2 84 (13.75%) Terraform
3 60 (9.82%) Ansible
4 42 (6.87%) Grafana
5 36 (5.89%) Prometheus
6 19 (3.11%) Puppet
7 18 (2.95%) Microsoft Intune
8 16 (2.62%) Kibana
9 7 (1.15%) Argo
10 5 (0.82%) Progress Chef
11 3 (0.49%) Control-M
11 3 (0.49%) SCCM
12 2 (0.33%) FortiGate
12 2 (0.33%) logstash
12 2 (0.33%) Single Sign-On
13 1 (0.16%) Istio
13 1 (0.16%) linkerd
13 1 (0.16%) Packer
13 1 (0.16%) QRadar
13 1 (0.16%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 124 (20.29%) Microsoft
2 71 (11.62%) Splunk
3 49 (8.02%) Oracle
4 38 (6.22%) Google
5 20 (3.27%) Databricks
5 20 (3.27%) SAP
6 18 (2.95%) Salesforce
7 15 (2.45%) IBM
8 14 (2.29%) ServiceNow
9 13 (2.13%) Software AG
10 12 (1.96%) Cisco
10 12 (1.96%) Red Hat
11 11 (1.80%) Informatica
12 10 (1.64%) Atlassian
12 10 (1.64%) MuleSoft
12 10 (1.64%) VMware
13 8 (1.31%) Palo Alto
14 7 (1.15%) Foundry
15 6 (0.98%) Gemalto
15 6 (0.98%) Workday