Computer Science Contract Job Trends

Computer Science
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Computer Science skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 20 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 90 77 72
Rank change year-on-year -13 -5 +56
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,135 936 1,249
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.78% 3.03% 2.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.20% 3.38% 3.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 715 526 796
10th Percentile £176 £319 £314
25th Percentile £311 £436 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.52% -4.55% -7.17%
75th Percentile £650 £674 £663
90th Percentile £775 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 23 73
10th Percentile £26.38 £30.78 £23.60
25th Percentile £29.29 £33.75 £42.50
Median hourly rate £36.25 £45.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.44% -18.18% +5.77%
75th Percentile £68.75 £62.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £82.63 £80.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -6.67% -31.82% +10.00%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 35,472 27,688 38,644
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.86% 89.76% 87.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,461 17,051 25,269
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.84% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,140 862 2,156
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.64 £32.50 £34.77
Median % change year-on-year -21.12% -6.52% -0.67%
75th Percentile £60.25 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £30.45 £35.00
% change year-on-year -17.41% -13.00% -

Computer Science
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Computer Science job vacancy trend in the UK

Computer Science
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Computer Science
Daily Rate Histogram

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

Daily rate histogram for Computer Science in the UK

Computer Science
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Computer Science
Hourly Rate Histogram

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

Hourly rate histogram for Computer Science in the UK

Computer Science
Top 17 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 within the UK over the 6 months to 20 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 -11 995 £475 -10.17% 1,693
UK excluding London +1 574 £400 -20.00% 1,310
London -31 451 £550 - 615
Work from Home -17 278 £500 -10.19% 747
North of England +35 190 £367 -30.14% 229
South East +17 148 £365 -27.00% 415
Yorkshire +13 100 £525 +5.00% 80
Midlands -34 90 £500 +25.00% 157
North West +16 86 £325 -40.37% 115
West Midlands -36 66 £525 +5.00% 88
South West +12 62 £520 -10.54% 160
Scotland +2 41 £610 +16.19% 98
East of England -34 40 £505 -19.20% 200
East Midlands -21 24 £447 +25.56% 66
Wales -9 15 £160 -44.35% 54
North East -14 5 £207 -64.09% 36
Northern Ireland -4 4 - - 24

Computer Science
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 64 (5.64%) Confluence
2 42 (3.70%) Apache Spark
3 34 (3.00%) SharePoint
4 21 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
5 18 (1.59%) Apache
6 15 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
7 6 (0.53%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.44%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.44%) Skype for Business
8 5 (0.44%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.35%) GeoServer
9 4 (0.35%) IIS
9 4 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
9 4 (0.35%) SAS
10 3 (0.26%) Ethereum
10 3 (0.26%) Hyperledger
11 2 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.18%) nginx
11 2 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
Applications
1 38 (3.35%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.44%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.44%) Simulink
6 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.088%) Oracle Smart View
7 1 (0.088%) Trello
Business Applications
1 24 (2.11%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.44%) Payment Gateway
4 4 (0.35%) SAP ERP
5 3 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.18%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.18%) SAP FS
6 2 (0.18%) SAP Travel Management
6 2 (0.18%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.088%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.088%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 1 (0.088%) Maximo
7 1 (0.088%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.088%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.088%) SAP GTS
7 1 (0.088%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 312 (27.49%) Azure
2 212 (18.68%) AWS
3 128 (11.28%) GCP
4 70 (6.17%) GitHub
5 66 (5.81%) Power Platform
6 55 (4.85%) Microsoft 365
6 55 (4.85%) Serverless
7 47 (4.14%) SaaS
8 44 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
9 35 (3.08%) Entra ID
10 31 (2.73%) GitHub Actions
11 21 (1.85%) IaaS
12 19 (1.67%) Azure Data Factory
12 19 (1.67%) Power Automate
12 19 (1.67%) PowerApps
13 17 (1.50%) AWS CloudFormation
13 17 (1.50%) Cloud Computing
14 16 (1.41%) Azure Machine Learning
14 16 (1.41%) Snowflake
15 14 (1.23%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 48 (4.23%) Firewall
2 34 (3.00%) DNS
3 25 (2.20%) Network Security
4 23 (2.03%) TCP/IP
5 18 (1.59%) HTTP
6 14 (1.23%) DHCP
6 14 (1.23%) SSH
7 13 (1.15%) Skype
8 12 (1.06%) BGP
8 12 (1.06%) Wireless
9 11 (0.97%) LAN
9 11 (0.97%) WAN
10 10 (0.88%) VLAN
10 10 (0.88%) VPN
11 9 (0.79%) Cisco IOS
11 9 (0.79%) OSPF
11 9 (0.79%) VoIP
12 7 (0.62%) HTTPS
12 7 (0.62%) Internet
12 7 (0.62%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 79 (6.96%) PostgreSQL
2 63 (5.55%) NoSQL
3 46 (4.05%) Power BI
4 45 (3.96%) Relational Database
5 44 (3.88%) Data Warehouse
6 42 (3.70%) SQL Server
7 39 (3.44%) Big Data
7 39 (3.44%) MySQL
8 24 (2.11%) Tableau
9 21 (1.85%) Hadoop
10 20 (1.76%) Elasticsearch
11 18 (1.59%) Metadata
12 17 (1.50%) Data Lake
12 17 (1.50%) MongoDB
13 10 (0.88%) Redis
14 8 (0.70%) RDBMS
14 8 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 7 (0.62%) KDB
15 7 (0.62%) OLAP
15 7 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 91 (8.02%) Git
2 87 (7.67%) JIRA
3 69 (6.08%) Jenkins
4 63 (5.55%) GitLab
5 22 (1.94%) Liquibase
6 14 (1.23%) Postman
7 12 (1.06%) Selenium
8 10 (0.88%) MLflow
9 9 (0.79%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.70%) Bitbucket
10 8 (0.70%) CircleCI
10 8 (0.70%) Gradle
10 8 (0.70%) Visual Studio
11 7 (0.62%) JUnit
12 6 (0.53%) Cypress.io
13 5 (0.44%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.44%) PyCharm
14 4 (0.35%) Artifactory
14 4 (0.35%) Hardhat
14 4 (0.35%) XCUITest
General
1 528 (46.52%) Social Skills
2 294 (25.90%) Finance
3 251 (22.11%) Analytical Skills
4 122 (10.75%) Banking
5 71 (6.26%) Public Sector
6 44 (3.88%) Marketing
7 43 (3.79%) Documentation Skills
8 38 (3.35%) Financial Institution
8 38 (3.35%) Organisational Skills
9 35 (3.08%) Presentation Skills
10 32 (2.82%) Influencing Skills
10 32 (2.82%) Legal
11 29 (2.56%) Telecoms
12 27 (2.38%) Front Office
13 25 (2.20%) Electronics
14 24 (2.11%) Manufacturing
15 21 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 21 (1.85%) Investment Banking
16 16 (1.41%) Military
17 14 (1.23%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 183 (16.12%) Developer
2 109 (9.60%) Architect
3 93 (8.19%) Analyst
4 89 (7.84%) Lead
5 87 (7.67%) Senior
6 56 (4.93%) Software Engineer
7 45 (3.96%) Solutions Architect
8 37 (3.26%) Data Scientist
9 30 (2.64%) Technical Support
10 29 (2.56%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 29 (2.56%) Python Developer
11 26 (2.29%) Consultant
12 25 (2.20%) Java Developer
13 23 (2.03%) Business Analyst
13 23 (2.03%) Cloud Engineer
13 23 (2.03%) Data Engineer
13 23 (2.03%) IT Support
13 23 (2.03%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 22 (1.94%) Senior Developer
14 22 (1.94%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (9.78%) REST
2 68 (5.99%) RESTful
3 58 (5.11%) React
4 56 (4.93%) .NET
5 48 (4.23%) Elastic Stack
6 43 (3.79%) Middleware
7 42 (3.70%) Kafka
8 40 (3.52%) HTML
9 35 (3.08%) PyTorch
10 34 (3.00%) JSON
10 34 (3.00%) TensorFlow
11 33 (2.91%) OAuth
12 32 (2.82%) Spring
13 31 (2.73%) CSS
13 31 (2.73%) XML
14 29 (2.56%) Node.js
14 29 (2.56%) SOAP
14 29 (2.56%) Spring Boot
15 24 (2.11%) LangChain
16 22 (1.94%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 129 (11.37%) Management Information System
2 98 (8.63%) Cloud Native
3 89 (7.84%) Algorithms
4 62 (5.46%) Distributed Systems
5 47 (4.14%) Data Structures
5 47 (4.14%) Product Ownership
6 44 (3.88%) Onboarding
7 32 (2.82%) Data Protection Act
8 30 (2.64%) Equities
8 30 (2.64%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.29%) Security Posture
9 26 (2.29%) Virtual Team
10 23 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
10 23 (2.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 22 (1.94%) Derivative
12 21 (1.85%) AI Agents
12 21 (1.85%) Distributed Computing
13 19 (1.67%) Data Centre
13 19 (1.67%) Mobile App
14 18 (1.59%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 172 (15.15%) Linux
2 131 (11.54%) Windows
3 63 (5.55%) Unix
4 25 (2.20%) Android
4 25 (2.20%) Windows Server
5 19 (1.67%) Mac OS
6 14 (1.23%) Apple iOS
7 9 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 9 (0.79%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.44%) VMS
9 3 (0.26%) Debian
9 3 (0.26%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
10 2 (0.18%) Rocky
11 1 (0.088%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.088%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.088%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 389 (34.27%) Problem-Solving
2 297 (26.17%) Agile
3 245 (21.59%) DevOps
4 230 (20.26%) CI/CD
5 223 (19.65%) AI
6 195 (17.18%) Software Engineering
7 162 (14.27%) Microservices
8 145 (12.78%) Containerisation
9 140 (12.33%) Analytics
10 139 (12.25%) Cybersecurity
11 134 (11.81%) Machine Learning
12 120 (10.57%) Data Science
13 115 (10.13%) Stakeholder Management
14 112 (9.87%) Data Modelling
15 111 (9.78%) Continuous Improvement
16 105 (9.25%) Mathematics
17 102 (8.99%) Data Governance
18 100 (8.81%) Decision-Making
19 96 (8.46%) Infrastructure as Code
20 87 (7.67%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 366 (32.25%) Python
2 208 (18.33%) SQL
3 148 (13.04%) Java
4 105 (9.25%) JavaScript
5 62 (5.46%) PowerShell
6 58 (5.11%) TypeScript
7 53 (4.67%) Go
8 52 (4.58%) C#
9 44 (3.88%) Bash
10 41 (3.61%) C++
11 22 (1.94%) Perl
12 20 (1.76%) R
13 16 (1.41%) Shell Script
14 14 (1.23%) Rust
15 11 (0.97%) Kotlin
16 9 (0.79%) Bicep
17 8 (0.70%) C
17 8 (0.70%) MATLAB
18 7 (0.62%) Ruby
18 7 (0.62%) Scala
Qualifications
1 932 (82.11%) Degree
2 604 (53.22%) Computer Science Degree
3 237 (20.88%) Master's Degree
4 162 (14.27%) Security Cleared
5 120 (10.57%) SC Cleared
6 72 (6.34%) CISSP
7 54 (4.76%) PhD
8 52 (4.58%) CISM
9 50 (4.41%) DBS Check
10 41 (3.61%) Azure Certification
11 36 (3.17%) BPSS Clearance
12 35 (3.08%) Microsoft Certification
12 35 (3.08%) TOGAF Certification
13 31 (2.73%) AWS Certification
14 28 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
15 26 (2.29%) DV Cleared
15 26 (2.29%) PMI Certification
16 22 (1.94%) PMP
17 20 (1.76%) CompTIA Security+
18 19 (1.67%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (6.08%) QA
2 59 (5.20%) GDPR
3 54 (4.76%) Data Quality
4 46 (4.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 34 (3.00%) NIST
6 20 (1.76%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.50%) GRC
8 16 (1.41%) Accessibility
9 11 (0.97%) Def Stans
10 9 (0.79%) HIPAA
11 8 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 6 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
12 6 (0.53%) DO-254
12 6 (0.53%) PSD2
13 5 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 5 (0.44%) NCSC
14 4 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 4 (0.35%) ISO 20022
14 4 (0.35%) Solvency II
System Software
1 163 (14.36%) Docker
2 62 (5.46%) Active Directory
3 22 (1.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.79%) Firmware
5 5 (0.44%) Microsoft Virtual Server
5 5 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
5 5 (0.44%) VMware NSX
6 4 (0.35%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.18%) HDFS
7 2 (0.18%) KVM
7 2 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.088%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.088%) PowerHA
8 1 (0.088%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 171 (15.07%) Kubernetes
2 102 (8.99%) Terraform
3 67 (5.90%) Ansible
4 53 (4.67%) Grafana
5 44 (3.88%) Prometheus
6 20 (1.76%) Puppet
7 18 (1.59%) Microsoft Intune
8 16 (1.41%) Kibana
9 13 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (1.06%) SCCM
11 9 (0.79%) Kiali
12 7 (0.62%) Argo
13 6 (0.53%) WSUS
14 5 (0.44%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.35%) SCOM
16 3 (0.26%) Control-M
17 2 (0.18%) FortiGate
17 2 (0.18%) Knative
17 2 (0.18%) logstash
17 2 (0.18%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 184 (16.21%) Microsoft
2 88 (7.75%) Splunk
3 63 (5.55%) Oracle
4 59 (5.20%) Google
5 53 (4.67%) SAP
6 39 (3.44%) Databricks
7 29 (2.56%) Cisco
8 27 (2.38%) Salesforce
9 25 (2.20%) BiZZdesign
9 25 (2.20%) ServiceNow
9 25 (2.20%) VMware
10 23 (2.03%) Informatica
11 18 (1.59%) IBM
12 17 (1.50%) Red Hat
13 14 (1.23%) MuleSoft
14 13 (1.15%) Palo Alto
14 13 (1.15%) Software AG
15 12 (1.06%) CyberArk
15 12 (1.06%) Foundry
15 12 (1.06%) Okta