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 16 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 95 71 71
Rank change year-on-year -24 0 +55
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,182 964 1,242
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.74% 3.26% 2.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.19% 3.61% 3.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 738 573 779
10th Percentile £175 £300 £315
25th Percentile £300 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -7.81% -2.42% -6.84%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £668
90th Percentile £766 £820 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 28 85
10th Percentile £26.75 £26.80 £23.00
25th Percentile £55.75 £30.78 £42.50
Median hourly rate £82.00 £42.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +91.81% -22.27% +4.76%
75th Percentile £88.00 £64.31 £66.25
90th Percentile - £82.46 £74.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.00 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +121.33% -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 37,084 26,717 38,494
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.01% 90.37% 86.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,485 17,170 25,048
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £723 £745 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,212 916 2,333
10th Percentile £14.83 £15.26 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.02
Median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.79 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.36 £31.76 £31.50
% change year-on-year -13.85% +0.83% -10.00%

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 16 March 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 16 March 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 16 March 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 -17 1,045 £475 -9.95% 826
UK excluding London -4 613 £400 -20.00% 615
London -30 456 £550 -8.33% 336
Work from Home -20 279 £500 -11.11% 331
South East +6 194 £355 -29.00% 208
North of England +15 188 £363 -32.90% 125
Yorkshire +10 97 £525 +5.00% 43
Midlands -35 90 £469 +31.67% 84
North West -3 87 £273 -50.54% 63
West Midlands -48 65 £475 +143.59% 46
South West -23 55 £493 -8.37% 71
East of England -32 43 £403 -38.08% 72
Scotland 0 36 £610 +16.19% 50
East Midlands -16 25 £447 +23.65% 38
Wales -14 15 £160 -44.35% 17
North East -10 5 £207 -64.09% 19
Northern Ireland -3 4 £369 -38.54% 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 70 (5.92%) Confluence
2 43 (3.64%) Apache Spark
3 33 (2.79%) SharePoint
4 18 (1.52%) Apache
4 18 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
5 14 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.51%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.42%) Smallworld
8 4 (0.34%) GeoServer
8 4 (0.34%) IIS
8 4 (0.34%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.25%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 3 (0.25%) Ethereum
9 3 (0.25%) Hyperledger
10 2 (0.17%) CMS
10 2 (0.17%) nginx
10 2 (0.17%) SAS
10 2 (0.17%) WebSphere
Applications
1 35 (2.96%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (1.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 17 (1.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.93%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.42%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.42%) Simulink
6 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.17%) Trello
7 1 (0.085%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 23 (1.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.42%) Payment Gateway
4 4 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 4 (0.34%) SAP ERP
5 3 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.17%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.17%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.17%) SAP FS
6 2 (0.17%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.085%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.085%) Maximo
7 1 (0.085%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.085%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.085%) SAP PM
7 1 (0.085%) SAP SM
7 1 (0.085%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 329 (27.83%) Azure
2 210 (17.77%) AWS
3 120 (10.15%) GCP
4 72 (6.09%) GitHub
5 70 (5.92%) Power Platform
6 53 (4.48%) Microsoft 365
7 48 (4.06%) SaaS
8 47 (3.98%) Azure DevOps
9 44 (3.72%) Serverless
10 42 (3.55%) Entra ID
11 31 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
12 23 (1.95%) Snowflake
13 22 (1.86%) Azure Data Factory
13 22 (1.86%) IaaS
14 19 (1.61%) Cloud Computing
15 18 (1.52%) AWS CloudFormation
15 18 (1.52%) Azure Machine Learning
16 17 (1.44%) Power Automate
16 17 (1.44%) PowerApps
17 15 (1.27%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 50 (4.23%) Firewall
2 32 (2.71%) DNS
3 28 (2.37%) TCP/IP
4 22 (1.86%) Network Security
5 17 (1.44%) HTTP
6 16 (1.35%) WAN
7 15 (1.27%) BGP
8 14 (1.18%) LAN
9 13 (1.10%) SSH
9 13 (1.10%) VLAN
9 13 (1.10%) Wireless
10 11 (0.93%) VPN
11 10 (0.85%) DHCP
11 10 (0.85%) IPv4
11 10 (0.85%) OSPF
12 9 (0.76%) Cisco IOS
12 9 (0.76%) Skype
13 8 (0.68%) VoIP
14 7 (0.59%) HTTPS
14 7 (0.59%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 80 (6.77%) PostgreSQL
2 54 (4.57%) NoSQL
3 53 (4.48%) Power BI
4 45 (3.81%) Data Warehouse
4 45 (3.81%) Relational Database
5 44 (3.72%) SQL Server
6 41 (3.47%) Big Data
7 35 (2.96%) MySQL
8 26 (2.20%) Tableau
9 23 (1.95%) Hadoop
10 20 (1.69%) Metadata
11 18 (1.52%) MongoDB
12 17 (1.44%) Data Lake
12 17 (1.44%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (0.93%) Redis
13 11 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 10 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
15 8 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
16 7 (0.59%) RDBMS
16 7 (0.59%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 101 (8.54%) Git
2 92 (7.78%) JIRA
3 65 (5.50%) Jenkins
4 57 (4.82%) GitLab
5 28 (2.37%) Rational DOORS
6 12 (1.02%) Postman
7 11 (0.93%) MLflow
7 11 (0.93%) Selenium
8 10 (0.85%) Liquibase
9 9 (0.76%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 8 (0.68%) CircleCI
10 8 (0.68%) Gradle
11 7 (0.59%) JUnit
12 6 (0.51%) Cypress.io
13 5 (0.42%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.42%) PyCharm
13 5 (0.42%) Visual Studio
14 4 (0.34%) Artifactory
14 4 (0.34%) TeamCity
General
1 515 (43.57%) Social Skills
2 291 (24.62%) Finance
3 254 (21.49%) Analytical Skills
4 112 (9.48%) Banking
5 76 (6.43%) Public Sector
6 47 (3.98%) Marketing
7 45 (3.81%) Aerospace
7 45 (3.81%) Documentation Skills
8 40 (3.38%) Legal
9 37 (3.13%) Presentation Skills
10 36 (3.05%) Influencing Skills
11 33 (2.79%) Telecoms
12 32 (2.71%) Financial Institution
13 31 (2.62%) Front Office
14 27 (2.28%) Electronics
15 25 (2.12%) Organisational Skills
16 23 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 23 (1.95%) Manufacturing
17 22 (1.86%) Investment Banking
18 17 (1.44%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 169 (14.30%) Developer
2 115 (9.73%) Architect
3 96 (8.12%) Lead
4 92 (7.78%) Analyst
5 83 (7.02%) Senior
6 45 (3.81%) Software Engineer
7 43 (3.64%) Solutions Architect
8 41 (3.47%) Data Scientist
9 38 (3.21%) Delivery Manager
10 35 (2.96%) Product Manager
11 32 (2.71%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 30 (2.54%) Python Developer
13 28 (2.37%) Business Analyst
13 28 (2.37%) Product Delivery Manager
14 27 (2.28%) Technical Support
15 26 (2.20%) Consultant
16 23 (1.95%) Java Developer
17 22 (1.86%) Security Engineer
17 22 (1.86%) Systems Delivery Manager
17 22 (1.86%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 103 (8.71%) REST
2 60 (5.08%) RESTful
3 59 (4.99%) React
4 54 (4.57%) .NET
5 44 (3.72%) Kafka
6 42 (3.55%) Middleware
7 39 (3.30%) PyTorch
8 38 (3.21%) TensorFlow
9 37 (3.13%) Elastic Stack
10 34 (2.88%) HTML
10 34 (2.88%) OAuth
11 33 (2.79%) Spring
12 32 (2.71%) JSON
13 31 (2.62%) XML
14 29 (2.45%) Node.js
14 29 (2.45%) Spring Boot
15 27 (2.28%) CSS
15 27 (2.28%) SOAP
16 23 (1.95%) LangChain
17 22 (1.86%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 119 (10.07%) Management Information System
2 98 (8.29%) Algorithms
3 95 (8.04%) Cloud Native
4 81 (6.85%) Product Ownership
5 67 (5.67%) Data Structures
6 57 (4.82%) Onboarding
7 56 (4.74%) Distributed Systems
8 34 (2.88%) Equities
9 31 (2.62%) Virtual Team
10 26 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
10 26 (2.20%) Derivative
11 24 (2.03%) AI Agents
11 24 (2.03%) Distributed Computing
12 23 (1.95%) Data Centre
12 23 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
13 22 (1.86%) Analytical Mindset
13 22 (1.86%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 20 (1.69%) Public Cloud
15 19 (1.61%) Security Posture
15 19 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 152 (12.86%) Linux
2 128 (10.83%) Windows
3 55 (4.65%) Unix
4 24 (2.03%) Android
5 20 (1.69%) Windows Server
6 18 (1.52%) Mac OS
7 12 (1.02%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.59%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.42%) VMS
11 3 (0.25%) Debian
11 3 (0.25%) Ubuntu
12 2 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.17%) Rocky
13 1 (0.085%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.085%) Kali Linux
13 1 (0.085%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 376 (31.81%) Problem-Solving
2 326 (27.58%) Agile
3 248 (20.98%) AI
4 237 (20.05%) DevOps
5 236 (19.97%) CI/CD
6 192 (16.24%) Software Engineering
7 154 (13.03%) Microservices
8 151 (12.77%) Continuous Improvement
9 144 (12.18%) Analytics
10 143 (12.10%) Machine Learning
11 134 (11.34%) Containerisation
12 133 (11.25%) Cybersecurity
13 124 (10.49%) Stakeholder Management
14 120 (10.15%) Data Science
15 114 (9.64%) Data Governance
15 114 (9.64%) Data Modelling
16 111 (9.39%) Decision-Making
16 111 (9.39%) Mathematics
17 105 (8.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 93 (7.87%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 359 (30.37%) Python
2 210 (17.77%) SQL
3 141 (11.93%) Java
4 91 (7.70%) JavaScript
5 62 (5.25%) PowerShell
6 59 (4.99%) TypeScript
7 49 (4.15%) C#
8 41 (3.47%) Go
9 40 (3.38%) Bash
10 37 (3.13%) C++
11 21 (1.78%) R
12 18 (1.52%) Perl
13 16 (1.35%) Shell Script
14 14 (1.18%) Rust
15 10 (0.85%) Kotlin
16 8 (0.68%) Bicep
16 8 (0.68%) Scala
17 7 (0.59%) Ruby
18 6 (0.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 6 (0.51%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 964 (81.56%) Degree
2 597 (50.51%) Computer Science Degree
3 216 (18.27%) Master's Degree
4 199 (16.84%) Security Cleared
5 118 (9.98%) SC Cleared
6 76 (6.43%) CISSP
7 57 (4.82%) DBS Check
8 56 (4.74%) PhD
9 52 (4.40%) CISM
10 42 (3.55%) Azure Certification
11 34 (2.88%) TOGAF Certification
12 33 (2.79%) PMI Certification
13 30 (2.54%) Microsoft Certification
14 29 (2.45%) DV Cleared
15 28 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
15 28 (2.37%) PMP
16 26 (2.20%) AWS Certification
17 24 (2.03%) BPSS Clearance
18 23 (1.95%) CompTIA Security+
19 18 (1.52%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (5.92%) QA
2 60 (5.08%) GDPR
3 57 (4.82%) Data Quality
4 45 (3.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 45 (3.81%) NIST
5 22 (1.86%) PCI DSS
6 15 (1.27%) Accessibility
7 10 (0.85%) NCSC
8 9 (0.76%) GRC
8 9 (0.76%) HIPAA
8 9 (0.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 8 (0.68%) Actionable Recommendations
9 8 (0.68%) DO-254
9 8 (0.68%) NIST 800
10 6 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
10 6 (0.51%) PSD2
11 5 (0.42%) COBIT
11 5 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 4 (0.34%) Government Security Classifications
12 4 (0.34%) SLA
System Software
1 156 (13.20%) Docker
2 59 (4.99%) Active Directory
3 19 (1.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (1.10%) Firmware
5 6 (0.51%) VMware NSX
6 3 (0.25%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.17%) KVM
7 2 (0.17%) vSphere
8 1 (0.085%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.085%) HDFS
8 1 (0.085%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 1 (0.085%) PowerHA
8 1 (0.085%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.085%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 164 (13.87%) Kubernetes
2 91 (7.70%) Terraform
3 59 (4.99%) Ansible
4 49 (4.15%) Grafana
5 40 (3.38%) Prometheus
6 21 (1.78%) Microsoft Intune
7 16 (1.35%) Puppet
7 16 (1.35%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (1.10%) Kibana
9 9 (0.76%) Kiali
10 8 (0.68%) Argo
11 7 (0.59%) SCCM
12 5 (0.42%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.34%) SCOM
14 3 (0.25%) Control-M
14 3 (0.25%) Foglight
14 3 (0.25%) Kubeflow
14 3 (0.25%) PowerCLI
14 3 (0.25%) vCenter Server
15 2 (0.17%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 186 (15.74%) Microsoft
2 70 (5.92%) Splunk
3 62 (5.25%) Google
4 58 (4.91%) Oracle
5 51 (4.31%) Databricks
6 50 (4.23%) SAP
7 41 (3.47%) IBM
8 27 (2.28%) ServiceNow
9 25 (2.12%) BiZZdesign
10 24 (2.03%) Cisco
11 22 (1.86%) Informatica
12 21 (1.78%) Salesforce
12 21 (1.78%) VMware
13 18 (1.52%) Palo Alto
14 17 (1.44%) Red Hat
15 15 (1.27%) Okta
16 13 (1.10%) CheckPoint
17 12 (1.02%) Foundry
17 12 (1.02%) OpenAI
17 12 (1.02%) Software AG