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

6 months to
10 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 76 73
Rank change year-on-year -15 -3 +60
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,126 942 1,253
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.86% 3.07% 2.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.29% 3.43% 3.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 724 528 801
10th Percentile £176 £344 £320
25th Percentile £312 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.84% -2.27% -7.17%
75th Percentile £650 £664 £675
90th Percentile £775 £800 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £510 £500
% change year-on-year -21.57% +2.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 22 72
10th Percentile £26.28 £30.78 £26.18
25th Percentile £27.03 £33.75 £42.50
Median hourly rate £33.50 £44.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.86% -20.00% +4.76%
75th Percentile £64.75 £60.25 £67.14
90th Percentile £69.40 £70.65 £74.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -10.67% -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 34,251 27,445 39,124
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.02% 89.42% 87.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,718 16,700 25,680
10th Percentile £306 £306 £300
25th Percentile £406 £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 £716 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.50% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,071 843 2,128
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -1.71% +1.74%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.12
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.08 £35.00
% change year-on-year -19.08% -11.20% +10.55%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -5 991 £476 -13.06% 724
UK excluding London +1 559 £400 -21.57% 568
London -33 461 £550 -4.35% 296
Work from Home -17 277 £500 -13.04% 341
North of England +38 191 £367 -30.14% 88
South East +17 136 £360 -28.00% 230
Yorkshire +24 102 £525 +2.44% 21
Midlands -31 92 £500 +9.59% 85
North West +14 85 £328 -37.62% 49
West Midlands -31 66 £525 +5.00% 61
South West +11 59 £520 -20.00% 50
Scotland +2 41 £605 +25.00% 34
East of England -30 38 £550 -12.00% 71
East Midlands -23 26 £447 +25.56% 24
Wales -14 14 £160 -44.35% 17
North East -10 5 £207 -64.09% 18
Northern Ireland -5 4 - - 8

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 65 (5.77%) Confluence
2 39 (3.46%) Apache Spark
3 36 (3.20%) SharePoint
4 21 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
5 16 (1.42%) Apache
5 16 (1.42%) Apache Airflow
6 7 (0.62%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.44%) Skype for Business
7 5 (0.44%) Smallworld
8 4 (0.36%) GeoServer
8 4 (0.36%) IIS
8 4 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.36%) SAS
9 3 (0.27%) Ethereum
9 3 (0.27%) Hyperledger
9 3 (0.27%) Palantir Foundry
10 2 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.18%) nginx
10 2 (0.18%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
Applications
1 38 (3.37%) Microsoft Office
2 21 (1.87%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.80%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.44%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.44%) Simulink
6 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.089%) Oracle Smart View
7 1 (0.089%) Trello
Business Applications
1 24 (2.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.44%) Payment Gateway
4 4 (0.36%) SAP ERP
5 3 (0.27%) 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 CX
6 2 (0.18%) SAP FS
6 2 (0.18%) SAP Travel Management
6 2 (0.18%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.089%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.089%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 1 (0.089%) Maximo
7 1 (0.089%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.089%) SAP PM
7 1 (0.089%) SAP SM
Cloud Services
1 308 (27.35%) Azure
2 204 (18.12%) AWS
3 128 (11.37%) GCP
4 68 (6.04%) GitHub
5 66 (5.86%) Power Platform
6 57 (5.06%) Microsoft 365
7 54 (4.80%) Serverless
8 46 (4.09%) SaaS
9 42 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
10 32 (2.84%) Entra ID
11 30 (2.66%) GitHub Actions
12 21 (1.87%) IaaS
13 20 (1.78%) Azure Data Factory
14 19 (1.69%) Power Automate
14 19 (1.69%) PowerApps
15 18 (1.60%) Cloud Computing
15 18 (1.60%) Snowflake
16 17 (1.51%) Azure Machine Learning
17 15 (1.33%) AWS CloudFormation
17 15 (1.33%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 47 (4.17%) Firewall
2 35 (3.11%) DNS
3 25 (2.22%) Network Security
4 23 (2.04%) TCP/IP
5 20 (1.78%) HTTP
6 14 (1.24%) DHCP
7 13 (1.15%) Skype
8 12 (1.07%) BGP
8 12 (1.07%) SSH
8 12 (1.07%) Wireless
9 11 (0.98%) LAN
9 11 (0.98%) WAN
10 10 (0.89%) VLAN
10 10 (0.89%) VPN
11 9 (0.80%) Cisco IOS
11 9 (0.80%) OSPF
11 9 (0.80%) VoIP
12 7 (0.62%) HTTPS
12 7 (0.62%) Internet
12 7 (0.62%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 79 (7.02%) PostgreSQL
2 61 (5.42%) NoSQL
3 48 (4.26%) Relational Database
4 46 (4.09%) Data Warehouse
4 46 (4.09%) Power BI
5 42 (3.73%) SQL Server
6 41 (3.64%) MySQL
7 36 (3.20%) Big Data
8 25 (2.22%) Tableau
9 20 (1.78%) Elasticsearch
10 18 (1.60%) Hadoop
10 18 (1.60%) Metadata
11 17 (1.51%) Data Lake
12 16 (1.42%) MongoDB
13 11 (0.98%) Redis
14 8 (0.71%) KDB
14 8 (0.71%) Kdb+
14 8 (0.71%) RDBMS
14 8 (0.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 7 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 89 (7.90%) JIRA
2 88 (7.82%) Git
3 68 (6.04%) Jenkins
4 60 (5.33%) GitLab
5 22 (1.95%) Liquibase
6 17 (1.51%) Postman
7 12 (1.07%) Selenium
8 10 (0.89%) MLflow
9 9 (0.80%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.71%) Bitbucket
10 8 (0.71%) Visual Studio
11 7 (0.62%) CircleCI
12 6 (0.53%) Appium
12 6 (0.53%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.53%) JUnit
12 6 (0.53%) XCUITest
13 5 (0.44%) Artifactory
13 5 (0.44%) Charles Proxy
13 5 (0.44%) Gradle
13 5 (0.44%) Katalon Studio
General
1 524 (46.54%) Social Skills
2 303 (26.91%) Finance
3 253 (22.47%) Analytical Skills
4 121 (10.75%) Banking
5 70 (6.22%) Public Sector
6 42 (3.73%) Documentation Skills
6 42 (3.73%) Marketing
7 41 (3.64%) Financial Institution
8 37 (3.29%) Organisational Skills
9 33 (2.93%) Presentation Skills
10 31 (2.75%) Influencing Skills
10 31 (2.75%) Legal
11 30 (2.66%) Telecoms
12 29 (2.58%) Front Office
13 25 (2.22%) Electronics
14 23 (2.04%) Manufacturing
15 21 (1.87%) Investment Banking
16 16 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 15 (1.33%) Military
18 13 (1.15%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 190 (16.87%) Developer
2 102 (9.06%) Architect
3 97 (8.61%) Analyst
4 88 (7.82%) Lead
5 83 (7.37%) Senior
6 54 (4.80%) Software Engineer
7 45 (4.00%) Solutions Architect
8 35 (3.11%) Data Scientist
9 31 (2.75%) Technical Support
10 29 (2.58%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 29 (2.58%) Python Developer
11 25 (2.22%) Business Analyst
11 25 (2.22%) Java Developer
12 24 (2.13%) IT Support
13 23 (2.04%) Consultant
13 23 (2.04%) Data Engineer
13 23 (2.04%) Senior Developer
13 23 (2.04%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 22 (1.95%) Site Engineer
15 21 (1.87%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (9.86%) REST
2 70 (6.22%) RESTful
3 56 (4.97%) .NET
4 53 (4.71%) React
5 48 (4.26%) Elastic Stack
6 42 (3.73%) Kafka
7 41 (3.64%) HTML
7 41 (3.64%) Middleware
8 36 (3.20%) OAuth
9 35 (3.11%) JSON
10 34 (3.02%) PyTorch
11 33 (2.93%) TensorFlow
12 32 (2.84%) XML
13 31 (2.75%) CSS
14 30 (2.66%) SOAP
14 30 (2.66%) Spring
15 29 (2.58%) Node.js
15 29 (2.58%) Spring Boot
16 26 (2.31%) LangChain
17 21 (1.87%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 131 (11.63%) Management Information System
2 93 (8.26%) Cloud Native
3 87 (7.73%) Algorithms
4 59 (5.24%) Distributed Systems
5 48 (4.26%) Data Structures
6 44 (3.91%) Product Ownership
7 40 (3.55%) Onboarding
8 30 (2.66%) Data Protection Act
8 30 (2.66%) Equities
8 30 (2.66%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.31%) Security Posture
10 25 (2.22%) Virtual Team
11 23 (2.04%) Derivative
11 23 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
11 23 (2.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 22 (1.95%) Distributed Computing
13 20 (1.78%) AI Agents
13 20 (1.78%) Data Centre
14 19 (1.69%) Mobile App
15 18 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 173 (15.36%) Linux
2 132 (11.72%) Windows
3 64 (5.68%) Unix
4 25 (2.22%) Android
4 25 (2.22%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.60%) Mac OS
6 15 (1.33%) Apple iOS
7 10 (0.89%) Windows 10
8 8 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.44%) VMS
10 2 (0.18%) Debian
10 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
10 2 (0.18%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.089%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.089%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.089%) Rocky
11 1 (0.089%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 391 (34.72%) Problem-Solving
2 299 (26.55%) Agile
3 237 (21.05%) DevOps
4 220 (19.54%) CI/CD
5 213 (18.92%) AI
6 189 (16.79%) Software Engineering
7 158 (14.03%) Microservices
8 144 (12.79%) Containerisation
9 137 (12.17%) Analytics
10 135 (11.99%) Cybersecurity
11 130 (11.55%) Machine Learning
12 119 (10.57%) Data Science
12 119 (10.57%) Stakeholder Management
13 116 (10.30%) Data Modelling
14 106 (9.41%) Continuous Improvement
15 101 (8.97%) Mathematics
16 98 (8.70%) Decision-Making
17 97 (8.61%) Data Governance
18 90 (7.99%) Infrastructure as Code
19 85 (7.55%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 364 (32.33%) Python
2 210 (18.65%) SQL
3 143 (12.70%) Java
4 107 (9.50%) JavaScript
5 60 (5.33%) PowerShell
6 59 (5.24%) TypeScript
7 52 (4.62%) Go
8 51 (4.53%) C#
9 45 (4.00%) Bash
9 45 (4.00%) C++
10 24 (2.13%) Perl
11 20 (1.78%) R
12 16 (1.42%) Shell Script
13 14 (1.24%) Rust
14 10 (0.89%) Kotlin
15 9 (0.80%) Bicep
15 9 (0.80%) C
16 8 (0.71%) MATLAB
16 8 (0.71%) Ruby
17 7 (0.62%) Scala
Qualifications
1 930 (82.59%) Degree
2 612 (54.35%) Computer Science Degree
3 240 (21.31%) Master's Degree
4 152 (13.50%) Security Cleared
5 112 (9.95%) SC Cleared
6 69 (6.13%) CISSP
7 52 (4.62%) PhD
8 51 (4.53%) DBS Check
9 49 (4.35%) CISM
10 40 (3.55%) Azure Certification
11 35 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
12 34 (3.02%) Microsoft Certification
13 32 (2.84%) TOGAF Certification
14 31 (2.75%) AWS Certification
15 29 (2.58%) PMI Certification
16 27 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
17 26 (2.31%) DV Cleared
18 22 (1.95%) PMP
19 20 (1.78%) CompTIA Security+
20 19 (1.69%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (6.48%) QA
2 63 (5.60%) GDPR
3 53 (4.71%) Data Quality
4 46 (4.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 32 (2.84%) NIST
6 20 (1.78%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.51%) Accessibility
8 16 (1.42%) GRC
9 11 (0.98%) Def Stans
10 9 (0.80%) HIPAA
11 8 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials
12 7 (0.62%) PSD2
12 7 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 5 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
13 5 (0.44%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 5 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 5 (0.44%) DO-254
13 5 (0.44%) ISO 20022
13 5 (0.44%) SLA
14 4 (0.36%) NCSC
System Software
1 161 (14.30%) Docker
2 61 (5.42%) Active Directory
3 23 (2.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.80%) Firmware
5 6 (0.53%) VMware NSX
6 5 (0.44%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 5 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
7 4 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.18%) KVM
8 2 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.089%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.089%) HDFS
9 1 (0.089%) PowerHA
9 1 (0.089%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 167 (14.83%) Kubernetes
2 98 (8.70%) Terraform
3 66 (5.86%) Ansible
4 55 (4.88%) Grafana
5 45 (4.00%) Prometheus
6 20 (1.78%) Puppet
7 19 (1.69%) Microsoft Intune
8 16 (1.42%) Kibana
9 14 (1.24%) SCCM
10 13 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.80%) Kiali
12 7 (0.62%) Argo
13 6 (0.53%) WSUS
14 5 (0.44%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.36%) QRadar
15 4 (0.36%) SCOM
16 3 (0.27%) Control-M
16 3 (0.27%) CSIRT
17 2 (0.18%) Knative
17 2 (0.18%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 185 (16.43%) Microsoft
2 93 (8.26%) Splunk
3 65 (5.77%) Oracle
4 60 (5.33%) Google
5 53 (4.71%) SAP
6 40 (3.55%) Databricks
7 29 (2.58%) Cisco
8 28 (2.49%) Salesforce
9 27 (2.40%) VMware
10 25 (2.22%) ServiceNow
11 24 (2.13%) BiZZdesign
12 23 (2.04%) Informatica
13 18 (1.60%) IBM
14 16 (1.42%) Red Hat
15 14 (1.24%) MuleSoft
16 13 (1.15%) OpenAI
16 13 (1.15%) Palo Alto
17 12 (1.07%) CyberArk
17 12 (1.07%) Fortinet
17 12 (1.07%) Software AG