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 22 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 73 78
Rank change year-on-year -15 +5 +55
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,111 998 1,170
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.94% 3.15% 2.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.35% 3.54% 3.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 729 577 767
10th Percentile £175 £354 £325
25th Percentile £313 £450 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £775 £834 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 24 55
10th Percentile £26.38 £28.66 £29.58
25th Percentile £26.75 £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 £59.06 £53.75 £66.25
90th Percentile £74.38 £67.93 £73.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -10.67% -31.82% +4.76%

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 33,128 28,199 37,720
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.64% 88.95% 87.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,004 17,123 24,892
10th Percentile £305 £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 £645
90th Percentile £720 £743 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,016 901 1,818
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £17.08
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -13.33% +17.19%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.65 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £30.78 £40.00
% change year-on-year -22.03% -23.05% +53.85%

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 22 January 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 22 January 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 22 January 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 -8 990 £475 -13.64% 1,164
UK excluding London -4 549 £400 -20.00% 1,003
London -40 464 £541 -5.87% 310
Work from Home -10 274 £472 -17.91% 597
North of England +36 190 £375 -28.57% 157
South East +15 133 £321 -35.75% 398
Yorkshire +24 103 £475 -9.52% 50
Midlands -26 98 £500 +25.00% 105
North West +16 85 £352 -32.95% 76
West Midlands -28 68 £525 +5.00% 51
South West +11 57 £500 -23.95% 108
Scotland -10 38 £537 +13.05% 49
East of England -38 32 £405 -21.97% 150
East Midlands -10 30 £447 +25.56% 50
Wales -8 13 £160 -44.83% 42
Northern Ireland -8 4 - - 23
North East -14 3 £216 -57.95% 33

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 61 (5.49%) Confluence
2 40 (3.60%) SharePoint
3 32 (2.88%) Apache Spark
4 20 (1.80%) Microsoft Exchange
5 12 (1.08%) Apache
5 12 (1.08%) Apache Airflow
6 7 (0.63%) Jupyter
6 7 (0.63%) nginx
7 5 (0.45%) IIS
7 5 (0.45%) Skype for Business
7 5 (0.45%) Smallworld
8 4 (0.36%) GeoServer
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%) Luigi
10 2 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.18%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
Applications
1 41 (3.69%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.90%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.54%) Simulink
6 5 (0.45%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.090%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.090%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 21 (1.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.99%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.36%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.27%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.18%) Maximo
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle EBS R12
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.18%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.18%) SAP CX
5 2 (0.18%) SAP FS
5 2 (0.18%) SAP Travel Management
6 1 (0.090%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 284 (25.56%) Azure
2 205 (18.45%) AWS
3 118 (10.62%) GCP
4 73 (6.57%) GitHub
5 70 (6.30%) Power Platform
6 61 (5.49%) Serverless
7 53 (4.77%) Microsoft 365
8 45 (4.05%) SaaS
9 42 (3.78%) Azure DevOps
10 33 (2.97%) GitHub Actions
11 28 (2.52%) Entra ID
12 21 (1.89%) Azure Data Factory
12 21 (1.89%) IaaS
13 20 (1.80%) Cloud Computing
14 19 (1.71%) Power Automate
14 19 (1.71%) PowerApps
14 19 (1.71%) Snowflake
15 18 (1.62%) AWS Lambda
16 17 (1.53%) Azure Machine Learning
17 16 (1.44%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 44 (3.96%) Firewall
2 33 (2.97%) DNS
3 22 (1.98%) Network Security
4 21 (1.89%) HTTP
5 19 (1.71%) TCP/IP
6 14 (1.26%) DHCP
6 14 (1.26%) SSH
7 13 (1.17%) Skype
8 12 (1.08%) Wireless
9 11 (0.99%) BGP
9 11 (0.99%) LAN
9 11 (0.99%) VPN
9 11 (0.99%) WAN
10 10 (0.90%) VoIP
11 9 (0.81%) Cisco IOS
11 9 (0.81%) Internet
11 9 (0.81%) VLAN
12 8 (0.72%) OSPF
13 7 (0.63%) IPv4
13 7 (0.63%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (5.76%) PostgreSQL
2 61 (5.49%) NoSQL
3 55 (4.95%) Relational Database
4 50 (4.50%) Power BI
5 44 (3.96%) Data Warehouse
6 38 (3.42%) SQL Server
7 37 (3.33%) MySQL
8 29 (2.61%) Big Data
9 26 (2.34%) Tableau
10 19 (1.71%) Elasticsearch
11 15 (1.35%) MongoDB
12 12 (1.08%) Metadata
13 11 (0.99%) Hadoop
13 11 (0.99%) Redis
14 9 (0.81%) Data Lake
14 9 (0.81%) RDBMS
15 8 (0.72%) Apache Cassandra
15 8 (0.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 7 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
16 7 (0.63%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 91 (8.19%) JIRA
2 89 (8.01%) Git
3 70 (6.30%) Jenkins
4 60 (5.40%) GitLab
5 22 (1.98%) Liquibase
6 18 (1.62%) Postman
7 14 (1.26%) Selenium
8 10 (0.90%) JUnit
9 9 (0.81%) CircleCI
10 8 (0.72%) Bitbucket
10 8 (0.72%) Cypress.io
10 8 (0.72%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.72%) MLflow
10 8 (0.72%) Visual Studio
11 7 (0.63%) Artifactory
12 6 (0.54%) Appium
12 6 (0.54%) SonarQube
12 6 (0.54%) XCUITest
13 5 (0.45%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.45%) Gradle
General
1 512 (46.08%) Social Skills
2 289 (26.01%) Finance
3 258 (23.22%) Analytical Skills
4 114 (10.26%) Banking
5 70 (6.30%) Public Sector
6 40 (3.60%) Financial Institution
7 39 (3.51%) Marketing
8 35 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
9 34 (3.06%) Legal
9 34 (3.06%) Organisational Skills
10 31 (2.79%) Presentation Skills
10 31 (2.79%) Telecoms
11 29 (2.61%) Front Office
11 29 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
12 26 (2.34%) Electronics
13 24 (2.16%) Investment Banking
13 24 (2.16%) Manufacturing
14 15 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 14 (1.26%) Military
16 12 (1.08%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 203 (18.27%) Developer
2 95 (8.55%) Analyst
3 89 (8.01%) Architect
4 82 (7.38%) Senior
5 81 (7.29%) Lead
6 52 (4.68%) Software Engineer
7 39 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
8 30 (2.70%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 29 (2.61%) Data Scientist
10 28 (2.52%) Technical Support
11 27 (2.43%) Python Developer
12 26 (2.34%) IT Support
12 26 (2.34%) Senior Developer
13 25 (2.25%) Business Analyst
14 23 (2.07%) Java Developer
14 23 (2.07%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 22 (1.98%) Site Engineer
16 21 (1.89%) Consultant
16 21 (1.89%) Data Engineer
17 20 (1.80%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 115 (10.35%) REST
2 78 (7.02%) RESTful
3 57 (5.13%) .NET
4 52 (4.68%) HTML
5 46 (4.14%) Elastic Stack
6 44 (3.96%) React
7 42 (3.78%) JSON
8 41 (3.69%) OAuth
9 39 (3.51%) Middleware
10 37 (3.33%) XML
11 36 (3.24%) CSS
12 35 (3.15%) Kafka
13 34 (3.06%) SOAP
14 30 (2.70%) Node.js
14 30 (2.70%) PyTorch
14 30 (2.70%) TensorFlow
15 28 (2.52%) LangChain
16 24 (2.16%) Spring
17 21 (1.89%) Spring Boot
18 20 (1.80%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 123 (11.07%) Management Information System
2 88 (7.92%) Cloud Native
3 82 (7.38%) Algorithms
4 52 (4.68%) Distributed Systems
5 50 (4.50%) Product Ownership
6 45 (4.05%) Data Structures
7 31 (2.79%) Data Protection Act
7 31 (2.79%) Public Cloud
8 29 (2.61%) Onboarding
9 28 (2.52%) Equities
10 26 (2.34%) Security Posture
11 23 (2.07%) Derivative
12 22 (1.98%) Mobile App
12 22 (1.98%) Virtual Team
13 21 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
14 20 (1.80%) AI Agents
14 20 (1.80%) Data Centre
15 19 (1.71%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 18 (1.62%) Distributed Computing
16 18 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 164 (14.76%) Linux
2 122 (10.98%) Windows
3 64 (5.76%) Unix
4 28 (2.52%) Android
5 22 (1.98%) Windows Server
6 21 (1.89%) Mac OS
7 19 (1.71%) Apple iOS
8 9 (0.81%) Windows 10
9 7 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 3 (0.27%) VMS
11 2 (0.18%) Debian
11 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.18%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.090%) Kali Linux
12 1 (0.090%) Rocky
12 1 (0.090%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 377 (33.93%) Problem-Solving
2 308 (27.72%) Agile
3 243 (21.87%) DevOps
4 222 (19.98%) CI/CD
5 196 (17.64%) AI
6 182 (16.38%) Software Engineering
7 148 (13.32%) Microservices
8 138 (12.42%) Containerisation
9 126 (11.34%) Cybersecurity
10 119 (10.71%) Machine Learning
11 116 (10.44%) Analytics
12 110 (9.90%) Continuous Improvement
12 110 (9.90%) Stakeholder Management
13 109 (9.81%) Data Modelling
14 104 (9.36%) Data Science
15 103 (9.27%) Mathematics
16 93 (8.37%) Decision-Making
17 85 (7.65%) Test Automation
18 84 (7.56%) ITIL
19 83 (7.47%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 366 (32.94%) Python
2 200 (18.00%) SQL
3 147 (13.23%) Java
4 111 (9.99%) JavaScript
5 61 (5.49%) PowerShell
6 58 (5.22%) TypeScript
7 54 (4.86%) C#
8 50 (4.50%) Go
9 49 (4.41%) Bash
10 46 (4.14%) C++
11 24 (2.16%) Perl
12 18 (1.62%) R
13 16 (1.44%) Kotlin
14 13 (1.17%) Rust
15 12 (1.08%) Shell Script
16 11 (0.99%) Ruby
17 10 (0.90%) MATLAB
18 9 (0.81%) C
18 9 (0.81%) Swift
19 8 (0.72%) Scala
Qualifications
1 917 (82.54%) Degree
2 616 (55.45%) Computer Science Degree
3 223 (20.07%) Master's Degree
4 135 (12.15%) Security Cleared
5 98 (8.82%) SC Cleared
6 68 (6.12%) CISSP
7 51 (4.59%) DBS Check
7 51 (4.59%) PhD
8 46 (4.14%) CISM
9 36 (3.24%) Azure Certification
10 31 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
10 31 (2.79%) Microsoft Certification
11 30 (2.70%) Cisco Certification
12 29 (2.61%) AWS Certification
13 28 (2.52%) PMI Certification
14 27 (2.43%) TOGAF Certification
15 26 (2.34%) DV Cleared
16 21 (1.89%) PMP
17 20 (1.80%) ITIL Certification
18 19 (1.71%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (6.39%) QA
2 59 (5.31%) GDPR
3 47 (4.23%) Data Quality
4 43 (3.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 31 (2.79%) NIST
6 18 (1.62%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.53%) GRC
8 14 (1.26%) Accessibility
9 11 (0.99%) Def Stans
10 9 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 8 (0.72%) Cyber Essentials
11 8 (0.72%) HIPAA
12 6 (0.54%) DO-254
12 6 (0.54%) PSD2
12 6 (0.54%) SLA
13 4 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 3 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 3 (0.27%) ISO 19650
14 3 (0.27%) NCSC
14 3 (0.27%) SOC 2
System Software
1 163 (14.67%) Docker
2 50 (4.50%) Active Directory
3 23 (2.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.90%) Firmware
5 6 (0.54%) VMware NSX
6 5 (0.45%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 5 (0.45%) 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 (0.090%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.090%) HDFS
9 1 (0.090%) PowerHA
9 1 (0.090%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 156 (14.04%) Kubernetes
2 96 (8.64%) Terraform
3 68 (6.12%) Ansible
4 53 (4.77%) Grafana
5 41 (3.69%) Prometheus
6 22 (1.98%) Puppet
7 15 (1.35%) Kibana
8 14 (1.26%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (1.26%) SCCM
9 12 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.72%) Kiali
11 7 (0.63%) Argo
12 6 (0.54%) CSIRT
12 6 (0.54%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.54%) QRadar
12 6 (0.54%) WSUS
13 4 (0.36%) SCOM
14 3 (0.27%) Control-M
15 2 (0.18%) FortiGate
15 2 (0.18%) Knative
Vendors
1 181 (16.29%) Microsoft
2 90 (8.10%) Splunk
3 60 (5.40%) Google
4 55 (4.95%) Oracle
5 50 (4.50%) SAP
6 35 (3.15%) Databricks
7 31 (2.79%) Cisco
8 29 (2.61%) Salesforce
9 25 (2.25%) ServiceNow
9 25 (2.25%) VMware
10 20 (1.80%) IBM
11 18 (1.62%) BiZZdesign
12 16 (1.44%) Red Hat
13 15 (1.35%) Informatica
14 14 (1.26%) OpenAI
15 13 (1.17%) MuleSoft
15 13 (1.17%) Palo Alto
16 11 (0.99%) Fortinet
16 11 (0.99%) Foundry
17 10 (0.90%) Atlassian