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 8 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 113 64 67
Rank change year-on-year -49 +3 +42
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,034 1,051 1,315
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.18% 3.61% 3.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.58% 3.97% 3.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 608 587 804
10th Percentile £178 £250 £319
25th Percentile £297 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.57% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £651
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £483 £500
% change year-on-year -17.10% -3.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 95 31 95
10th Percentile £29.66 £26.25 £22.60
25th Percentile £51.25 £29.07 £41.75
Median hourly rate £82.00 £42.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +92.94% -22.73% +2.10%
75th Percentile £88.00 £65.38 £65.00
90th Percentile - £82.25 £75.00
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 40,077 26,470 37,223
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.45% 90.96% 86.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,204 17,026 23,967
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +1.77% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,387 1,075 2,431
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.38 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.35 £37.50
% change year-on-year +60.88% -27.07% +7.14%

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 8 May 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 8 May 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 8 May 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 -37 914 £475 -9.52% 808
UK excluding London -40 534 £400 -17.10% 517
London -48 409 £525 -12.50% 368
Work from Home -59 233 £500 -9.09% 313
South East -17 194 £275 -45.00% 205
North of England -23 131 £381 -28.34% 99
Yorkshire -5 74 £507 +31.35% 31
Midlands -72 72 £463 +85.00% 78
North West -29 56 £354 -35.75% 45
West Midlands -58 55 £450 +130.77% 46
East of England -30 42 £340 -47.69% 53
South West -52 41 £469 +26.76% 49
Scotland -17 40 £610 +16.19% 31
East Midlands -33 16 £525 +110.00% 30
Wales -27 10 £160 -44.83% 10
Northern Ireland +8 7 £350 -41.67% 3
North East -21 2 £125 -78.26% 25

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 46 (4.45%) Confluence
2 40 (3.87%) Apache Spark
3 24 (2.32%) SharePoint
4 21 (2.03%) Apache
5 17 (1.64%) Apache Airflow
6 13 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
7 5 (0.48%) IIS
8 4 (0.39%) CMS
8 4 (0.39%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 3 (0.29%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 3 (0.29%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.29%) SAS
10 2 (0.19%) nginx
10 2 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
10 2 (0.19%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.097%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.097%) Oracle Service Bus
11 1 (0.097%) Tomcat
Applications
1 32 (3.09%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (1.74%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (1.35%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.68%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.68%) Revit
6 4 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
7 3 (0.29%) Simulink
8 2 (0.19%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.19%) Trello
Business Applications
1 21 (2.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.48%) Aladdin
3 5 (0.48%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.19%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.19%) Workfront
6 1 (0.097%) Actimize
6 1 (0.097%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.097%) Maximo
6 1 (0.097%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.097%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.097%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.097%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 299 (28.92%) Azure
2 188 (18.18%) AWS
3 78 (7.54%) GCP
4 61 (5.90%) Power Platform
5 55 (5.32%) SaaS
6 53 (5.13%) Microsoft 365
7 52 (5.03%) GitHub
8 39 (3.77%) Entra ID
9 38 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
10 22 (2.13%) AWS CloudFormation
10 22 (2.13%) GitHub Actions
11 21 (2.03%) IaaS
11 21 (2.03%) Serverless
12 20 (1.93%) Azure Data Factory
12 20 (1.93%) Snowflake
13 17 (1.64%) Azure AKS
14 14 (1.35%) Azure Machine Learning
15 13 (1.26%) Azure Service Bus
15 13 (1.26%) PaaS
15 13 (1.26%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 41 (3.97%) Firewall
2 29 (2.80%) TCP/IP
3 27 (2.61%) DNS
4 19 (1.84%) Network Security
5 16 (1.55%) WAN
6 14 (1.35%) BGP
7 13 (1.26%) LAN
8 11 (1.06%) OSPF
9 9 (0.87%) HTTP
9 9 (0.87%) HTTPS
9 9 (0.87%) SSH
10 8 (0.77%) 3GPP
10 8 (0.77%) VPN
10 8 (0.77%) Wireless
11 7 (0.68%) SAN
11 7 (0.68%) VLAN
12 6 (0.58%) DHCP
12 6 (0.58%) IPv4
12 6 (0.58%) LTE
13 5 (0.48%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (5.13%) Relational Database
2 49 (4.74%) PostgreSQL
3 48 (4.64%) SQL Server
4 46 (4.45%) Power BI
5 39 (3.77%) Data Warehouse
6 37 (3.58%) Big Data
7 28 (2.71%) MySQL
8 26 (2.51%) NoSQL
9 25 (2.42%) Metadata
10 21 (2.03%) Hadoop
11 20 (1.93%) MongoDB
12 16 (1.55%) Tableau
13 14 (1.35%) Data Lake
13 14 (1.35%) Elasticsearch
14 12 (1.16%) Redis
15 11 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 9 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
16 9 (0.87%) Snowflake Schema
17 8 (0.77%) Power Query
18 7 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 80 (7.74%) Git
2 65 (6.29%) JIRA
3 39 (3.77%) GitLab
4 35 (3.38%) Jenkins
5 28 (2.71%) Rational DOORS
6 12 (1.16%) MLflow
7 11 (1.06%) Selenium
8 10 (0.97%) Gradle
9 9 (0.87%) Jaeger
9 9 (0.87%) TeamCity
10 7 (0.68%) CircleCI
10 7 (0.68%) Cypress.io
10 7 (0.68%) JUnit
10 7 (0.68%) Postman
11 6 (0.58%) Maven
11 6 (0.58%) SonarQube
12 5 (0.48%) Artifactory
12 5 (0.48%) Bitbucket
13 4 (0.39%) Visual Studio
14 3 (0.29%) Eclipse
General
1 423 (40.91%) Social Skills
2 243 (23.50%) Finance
3 209 (20.21%) Analytical Skills
4 95 (9.19%) Banking
5 68 (6.58%) Public Sector
6 52 (5.03%) Documentation Skills
7 51 (4.93%) Aerospace
8 40 (3.87%) Marketing
9 35 (3.38%) Presentation Skills
9 35 (3.38%) Telecoms
10 31 (3.00%) Legal
11 26 (2.51%) Organisational Skills
12 24 (2.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 21 (2.03%) Front Office
13 21 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
14 17 (1.64%) Electronics
14 17 (1.64%) Investment Banking
15 16 (1.55%) Manufacturing
16 15 (1.45%) Financial Institution
16 15 (1.45%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 116 (11.22%) Developer
2 112 (10.83%) Architect
3 84 (8.12%) Lead
4 83 (8.03%) Analyst
5 76 (7.35%) Senior
6 37 (3.58%) Delivery Manager
6 37 (3.58%) Software Engineer
7 35 (3.38%) Product Manager
7 35 (3.38%) Solutions Architect
8 31 (3.00%) Technical Support
9 30 (2.90%) Data Scientist
10 28 (2.71%) Data Engineer
10 28 (2.71%) Product Delivery Manager
11 24 (2.32%) Python Developer
12 23 (2.22%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 22 (2.13%) Java Developer
13 22 (2.13%) Security Engineer
13 22 (2.13%) Systems Delivery Manager
13 22 (2.13%) Systems Manager
14 21 (2.03%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (8.22%) REST
2 57 (5.51%) .NET
3 55 (5.32%) React
4 45 (4.35%) Middleware
5 44 (4.26%) Kafka
6 41 (3.97%) RESTful
7 35 (3.38%) Spring Boot
8 32 (3.09%) PyTorch
9 31 (3.00%) Spring
10 26 (2.51%) SOAP
11 25 (2.42%) OAuth
11 25 (2.42%) XML
12 24 (2.32%) JSON
12 24 (2.32%) TensorFlow
13 21 (2.03%) Elastic Stack
14 20 (1.93%) HTML
14 20 (1.93%) LangChain
15 19 (1.84%) AngularJS
16 17 (1.64%) Pandas
17 16 (1.55%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 102 (9.86%) Management Information System
2 78 (7.54%) Product Ownership
3 76 (7.35%) Onboarding
4 71 (6.87%) Algorithms
5 66 (6.38%) Cloud Native
6 53 (5.13%) Data Structures
7 46 (4.45%) Distributed Systems
8 31 (3.00%) Virtual Team
9 25 (2.42%) AI Agents
10 23 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
11 21 (2.03%) Taxonomies
12 20 (1.93%) Self-Motivation
13 19 (1.84%) Equities
14 18 (1.74%) Analytical Mindset
14 18 (1.74%) Derivative
14 18 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
15 17 (1.64%) Cyberattack
15 17 (1.64%) Security Operations Centre
16 16 (1.55%) Robotics
17 15 (1.45%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 139 (13.44%) Linux
2 128 (12.38%) Windows
3 43 (4.16%) Unix
4 25 (2.42%) Android
5 18 (1.74%) Windows 10
5 18 (1.74%) Windows Server
6 17 (1.64%) Mac OS
7 15 (1.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (1.26%) Apple iOS
9 6 (0.58%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.48%) Debian
10 5 (0.48%) VMS
11 4 (0.39%) Rocky
12 2 (0.19%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.097%) CentOS
13 1 (0.097%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.097%) MVS
13 1 (0.097%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.097%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 321 (31.04%) Problem-Solving
2 268 (25.92%) Agile
3 237 (22.92%) AI
4 207 (20.02%) CI/CD
5 194 (18.76%) DevOps
6 174 (16.83%) Software Engineering
7 160 (15.47%) Continuous Improvement
8 122 (11.80%) Analytics
8 122 (11.80%) Microservices
9 116 (11.22%) Cybersecurity
10 107 (10.35%) Stakeholder Management
11 104 (10.06%) Machine Learning
12 101 (9.77%) Containerisation
13 97 (9.38%) Decision-Making
13 97 (9.38%) Technical Leadership
14 95 (9.19%) Data Modelling
15 92 (8.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 90 (8.70%) Data Governance
17 89 (8.61%) Data Science
18 87 (8.41%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 289 (27.95%) Python
2 204 (19.73%) SQL
3 134 (12.96%) Java
4 66 (6.38%) JavaScript
5 62 (6.00%) C#
6 52 (5.03%) PowerShell
7 36 (3.48%) TypeScript
8 34 (3.29%) Bash
9 31 (3.00%) C++
10 23 (2.22%) R
11 15 (1.45%) Go
12 14 (1.35%) Perl
13 12 (1.16%) Rust
14 10 (0.97%) Kotlin
14 10 (0.97%) Shell Script
15 9 (0.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 8 (0.77%) Scala
17 6 (0.58%) C
18 4 (0.39%) Tcl
19 3 (0.29%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 843 (81.53%) Degree
2 529 (51.16%) Computer Science Degree
3 195 (18.86%) Security Cleared
4 150 (14.51%) Master's Degree
5 116 (11.22%) SC Cleared
6 54 (5.22%) CISSP
7 37 (3.58%) CISM
8 34 (3.29%) PhD
9 33 (3.19%) Azure Certification
9 33 (3.19%) PMI Certification
10 32 (3.09%) TOGAF Certification
11 29 (2.80%) Microsoft Certification
12 28 (2.71%) PMP
13 27 (2.61%) DV Cleared
14 25 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
15 22 (2.13%) AWS Certification
15 22 (2.13%) CompTIA Security+
16 21 (2.03%) Cisco Certification
17 19 (1.84%) CISA
18 17 (1.64%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (6.00%) QA
2 57 (5.51%) NIST
3 56 (5.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 49 (4.74%) Data Quality
5 39 (3.77%) GDPR
6 18 (1.74%) Accessibility
6 18 (1.74%) PCI DSS
7 13 (1.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 11 (1.06%) GRC
9 10 (0.97%) NIST 800
10 8 (0.77%) NCSC
10 8 (0.77%) SLA
11 7 (0.68%) COBIT
11 7 (0.68%) PSD2
12 6 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.58%) DO-254
12 6 (0.58%) HIPAA
12 6 (0.58%) ISO 19650
12 6 (0.58%) ISO 20022
12 6 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 115 (11.12%) Docker
2 70 (6.77%) Active Directory
3 19 (1.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (1.26%) Firmware
5 7 (0.68%) Hyper-V
6 5 (0.48%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.39%) vSphere
8 2 (0.19%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.19%) Ceph
8 2 (0.19%) KVM
8 2 (0.19%) Squid
8 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.097%) ACF2
9 1 (0.097%) HDFS
9 1 (0.097%) PowerHA
9 1 (0.097%) RACF
9 1 (0.097%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 130 (12.57%) Kubernetes
2 65 (6.29%) Terraform
3 51 (4.93%) Ansible
4 33 (3.19%) Grafana
5 28 (2.71%) Prometheus
6 24 (2.32%) Microsoft Intune
7 16 (1.55%) Single Sign-On
8 14 (1.35%) Puppet
9 10 (0.97%) Kibana
10 9 (0.87%) Kiali
11 6 (0.58%) SCCM
12 4 (0.39%) Control-M
12 4 (0.39%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.39%) Progress Chef
13 3 (0.29%) Foglight
13 3 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
13 3 (0.29%) SCOM
13 3 (0.29%) vCenter Server
14 2 (0.19%) AirWatch
14 2 (0.19%) Cisco CUCM
Vendors
1 189 (18.28%) Microsoft
2 67 (6.48%) Oracle
3 52 (5.03%) Splunk
4 49 (4.74%) Databricks
5 37 (3.58%) SAP
6 34 (3.29%) Google
6 34 (3.29%) IBM
7 31 (3.00%) ServiceNow
8 23 (2.22%) VMware
9 21 (2.03%) Cisco
10 18 (1.74%) Salesforce
11 17 (1.64%) BiZZdesign
12 16 (1.55%) Informatica
13 15 (1.45%) Okta
14 14 (1.35%) Palo Alto
15 13 (1.26%) CheckPoint
15 13 (1.26%) MuleSoft
16 12 (1.16%) CyberArk
16 12 (1.16%) Software AG
17 11 (1.06%) Foundry