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

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 100 69 76
Rank change year-on-year -31 +7 +48
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,143 965 1,220
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.57% 3.32% 2.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.00% 3.67% 3.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 703 566 757
10th Percentile £177 £284 £315
25th Percentile £313 £401 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -5.17%
75th Percentile £653 £675 £663
90th Percentile £775 £800 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 31 86
10th Percentile £26.75 £27.00 £22.66
25th Percentile £55.00 £30.78 £41.56
Median hourly rate £83.00 £43.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +93.02% -21.82% +4.76%
75th Percentile £88.00 £65.38 £65.94
90th Percentile - £82.25 £74.38
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 38,117 26,296 38,255
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.75% 90.49% 86.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,146 17,083 24,839
10th Percentile £313 £308 £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 £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,236 956 2,346
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.12 £12.84
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.47 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% - -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.94 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.35 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.25 £31.64 £31.80
% change year-on-year -1.23% -0.50% -11.67%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -30 1,005 £495 -5.71% 826
UK excluding London -17 579 £400 -20.00% 618
London -32 453 £550 -8.33% 330
Work from Home -18 277 £525 -6.67% 306
North of England +12 179 £381 -30.18% 115
South East -12 178 £400 -20.00% 227
Yorkshire +7 95 £525 +26.81% 35
Midlands -52 84 £475 +77.90% 84
North West -4 81 £330 -44.12% 59
West Midlands -41 65 £475 +143.59% 51
South West -26 50 £477 -9.14% 56
East of England -26 44 £280 -56.92% 91
Scotland -2 36 £610 +22.00% 34
East Midlands -28 19 £339 -4.92% 33
Wales -23 15 £160 -44.35% 19
Northern Ireland -3 5 £369 -38.54% 9
North East -10 4 £216 -62.52% 21

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 66 (5.77%) Confluence
2 44 (3.85%) Apache Spark
3 29 (2.54%) SharePoint
4 20 (1.75%) Apache
5 17 (1.49%) Microsoft Exchange
6 16 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
7 6 (0.52%) Jupyter
8 4 (0.35%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.35%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 3 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 3 (0.26%) Ethereum
9 3 (0.26%) Hyperledger
9 3 (0.26%) IIS
9 3 (0.26%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.26%) SAS
10 2 (0.17%) CMS
10 2 (0.17%) nginx
10 2 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.17%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.087%) Apache Solr
Applications
1 32 (2.80%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (1.05%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.52%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.35%) Simulink
7 3 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 22 (1.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.44%) Payment Gateway
4 4 (0.35%) Aladdin
4 4 (0.35%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.087%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.087%) Maximo
6 1 (0.087%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.087%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.087%) Oracle HRMS
6 1 (0.087%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.087%) SAP SM
6 1 (0.087%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 320 (28.00%) Azure
2 207 (18.11%) AWS
3 118 (10.32%) GCP
4 68 (5.95%) Power Platform
5 59 (5.16%) GitHub
6 51 (4.46%) SaaS
7 50 (4.37%) Microsoft 365
8 44 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
8 44 (3.85%) Serverless
9 37 (3.24%) Entra ID
10 25 (2.19%) GitHub Actions
11 24 (2.10%) Snowflake
12 23 (2.01%) IaaS
13 20 (1.75%) Azure Data Factory
14 19 (1.66%) AWS CloudFormation
14 19 (1.66%) Azure Machine Learning
14 19 (1.66%) Cloud Computing
15 17 (1.49%) Power Automate
15 17 (1.49%) PowerApps
16 16 (1.40%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 49 (4.29%) Firewall
2 33 (2.89%) DNS
3 29 (2.54%) TCP/IP
4 19 (1.66%) Network Security
5 18 (1.57%) BGP
5 18 (1.57%) WAN
6 16 (1.40%) HTTP
7 15 (1.31%) LAN
8 14 (1.22%) VLAN
9 12 (1.05%) OSPF
9 12 (1.05%) SSH
9 12 (1.05%) VPN
10 11 (0.96%) Wireless
11 10 (0.87%) IPv4
12 9 (0.79%) Cisco IOS
12 9 (0.79%) DHCP
12 9 (0.79%) HTTPS
13 8 (0.70%) Skype
14 7 (0.61%) SAN
14 7 (0.61%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (6.65%) PostgreSQL
2 55 (4.81%) Relational Database
3 50 (4.37%) NoSQL
4 48 (4.20%) Power BI
5 45 (3.94%) SQL Server
6 43 (3.76%) Data Warehouse
7 40 (3.50%) Big Data
8 35 (3.06%) MySQL
9 24 (2.10%) Hadoop
9 24 (2.10%) Tableau
10 20 (1.75%) Metadata
10 20 (1.75%) MongoDB
11 16 (1.40%) Data Lake
11 16 (1.40%) Elasticsearch
12 12 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 10 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
13 10 (0.87%) Redis
13 10 (0.87%) Snowflake Schema
14 8 (0.70%) Star Schema
15 7 (0.61%) KDB
Development Applications
1 93 (8.14%) Git
2 90 (7.87%) JIRA
3 65 (5.69%) Jenkins
4 54 (4.72%) GitLab
5 28 (2.45%) Rational DOORS
6 12 (1.05%) MLflow
6 12 (1.05%) Postman
7 11 (0.96%) Selenium
8 10 (0.87%) Liquibase
9 9 (0.79%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.70%) Bitbucket
10 8 (0.70%) Gradle
11 7 (0.61%) CircleCI
12 6 (0.52%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.52%) JUnit
13 5 (0.44%) Artifactory
13 5 (0.44%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.44%) Maven
13 5 (0.44%) PyCharm
13 5 (0.44%) Visual Studio
General
1 485 (42.43%) Social Skills
2 287 (25.11%) Finance
3 243 (21.26%) Analytical Skills
4 113 (9.89%) Banking
5 72 (6.30%) Public Sector
6 50 (4.37%) Aerospace
7 47 (4.11%) Documentation Skills
8 46 (4.02%) Marketing
9 37 (3.24%) Influencing Skills
10 36 (3.15%) Legal
10 36 (3.15%) Presentation Skills
11 35 (3.06%) Telecoms
12 32 (2.80%) Financial Institution
13 28 (2.45%) Front Office
14 27 (2.36%) Electronics
15 23 (2.01%) Manufacturing
16 22 (1.92%) Organisational Skills
17 21 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 21 (1.84%) Investment Banking
18 18 (1.57%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 148 (12.95%) Developer
2 110 (9.62%) Architect
3 100 (8.75%) Lead
4 93 (8.14%) Analyst
5 81 (7.09%) Senior
6 47 (4.11%) Software Engineer
7 42 (3.67%) Solutions Architect
8 40 (3.50%) Data Scientist
9 38 (3.32%) Delivery Manager
10 35 (3.06%) Product Manager
11 32 (2.80%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 29 (2.54%) Python Developer
13 28 (2.45%) Product Delivery Manager
13 28 (2.45%) Technical Support
14 27 (2.36%) Business Analyst
15 25 (2.19%) Consultant
16 24 (2.10%) Data Engineer
16 24 (2.10%) Java Developer
17 23 (2.01%) Cloud Engineer
18 22 (1.92%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (9.27%) REST
2 61 (5.34%) RESTful
3 55 (4.81%) .NET
4 51 (4.46%) React
5 44 (3.85%) Kafka
6 40 (3.50%) Middleware
7 37 (3.24%) Elastic Stack
7 37 (3.24%) PyTorch
8 34 (2.97%) TensorFlow
9 33 (2.89%) Spring Boot
10 32 (2.80%) JSON
11 31 (2.71%) XML
12 29 (2.54%) OAuth
12 29 (2.54%) Spring
13 25 (2.19%) SOAP
14 24 (2.10%) HTML
15 23 (2.01%) Pandas
16 22 (1.92%) LangChain
17 19 (1.66%) Node.js
18 17 (1.49%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 116 (10.15%) Management Information System
2 93 (8.14%) Algorithms
3 87 (7.61%) Cloud Native
4 83 (7.26%) Product Ownership
5 65 (5.69%) Data Structures
6 58 (5.07%) Distributed Systems
6 58 (5.07%) Onboarding
7 34 (2.97%) Virtual Team
8 32 (2.80%) Equities
9 25 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
10 24 (2.10%) AI Agents
11 23 (2.01%) Derivative
11 23 (2.01%) Distributed Computing
12 22 (1.92%) Data Centre
12 22 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
13 21 (1.84%) Analytical Mindset
14 20 (1.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 20 (1.75%) Public Cloud
15 19 (1.66%) Taxonomies
16 17 (1.49%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 155 (13.56%) Linux
2 123 (10.76%) Windows
3 49 (4.29%) Unix
4 24 (2.10%) Android
5 20 (1.75%) Mac OS
6 19 (1.66%) Windows Server
7 12 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 10 (0.87%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.79%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.44%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.44%) VMS
11 4 (0.35%) Debian
12 3 (0.26%) Rocky
13 2 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.087%) CentOS
14 1 (0.087%) Embedded Linux
14 1 (0.087%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.087%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 357 (31.23%) Problem-Solving
2 312 (27.30%) Agile
3 253 (22.13%) AI
4 232 (20.30%) CI/CD
5 228 (19.95%) DevOps
6 200 (17.50%) Software Engineering
7 158 (13.82%) Continuous Improvement
8 145 (12.69%) Microservices
9 138 (12.07%) Machine Learning
10 133 (11.64%) Cybersecurity
11 131 (11.46%) Analytics
12 126 (11.02%) Containerisation
13 123 (10.76%) Stakeholder Management
14 119 (10.41%) Data Science
15 111 (9.71%) Data Modelling
16 108 (9.45%) Mathematics
17 106 (9.27%) Decision-Making
18 103 (9.01%) Data Governance
18 103 (9.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 93 (8.14%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 345 (30.18%) Python
2 209 (18.29%) SQL
3 138 (12.07%) Java
4 74 (6.47%) JavaScript
5 57 (4.99%) PowerShell
6 54 (4.72%) C#
7 46 (4.02%) TypeScript
8 41 (3.59%) Bash
9 40 (3.50%) Go
10 39 (3.41%) C++
11 22 (1.92%) R
12 17 (1.49%) Perl
13 14 (1.22%) Rust
14 12 (1.05%) Shell Script
15 11 (0.96%) Kotlin
16 8 (0.70%) C
16 8 (0.70%) Scala
17 7 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 5 (0.44%) Bicep
18 5 (0.44%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 951 (83.20%) Degree
2 581 (50.83%) Computer Science Degree
3 209 (18.29%) Master's Degree
4 200 (17.50%) Security Cleared
5 115 (10.06%) SC Cleared
6 73 (6.39%) CISSP
7 57 (4.99%) PhD
8 50 (4.37%) CISM
9 40 (3.50%) Azure Certification
9 40 (3.50%) DBS Check
10 32 (2.80%) PMI Certification
10 32 (2.80%) TOGAF Certification
11 29 (2.54%) DV Cleared
12 28 (2.45%) AWS Certification
12 28 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
13 27 (2.36%) PMP
14 26 (2.27%) CompTIA Security+
15 24 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
15 24 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
16 18 (1.57%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (5.86%) QA
2 53 (4.64%) Data Quality
3 51 (4.46%) GDPR
4 49 (4.29%) NIST
5 46 (4.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 21 (1.84%) PCI DSS
7 15 (1.31%) Accessibility
8 11 (0.96%) GRC
8 11 (0.96%) NCSC
8 11 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 9 (0.79%) NIST 800
10 7 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
10 7 (0.61%) DO-254
10 7 (0.61%) PSD2
10 7 (0.61%) SLA
11 6 (0.52%) COBIT
12 5 (0.44%) Government Security Classifications
12 5 (0.44%) HIPAA
12 5 (0.44%) ISO 20022
12 5 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 144 (12.60%) Docker
2 59 (5.16%) Active Directory
3 21 (1.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (1.14%) Firmware
5 6 (0.52%) Hyper-V
5 6 (0.52%) VMware NSX
6 3 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.17%) Ceph
7 2 (0.17%) KVM
7 2 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.17%) vSphere
8 1 (0.087%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.087%) HDFS
8 1 (0.087%) PowerHA
8 1 (0.087%) Squid
Systems Management
1 153 (13.39%) Kubernetes
2 92 (8.05%) Terraform
3 64 (5.60%) Ansible
4 51 (4.46%) Grafana
5 44 (3.85%) Prometheus
6 22 (1.92%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (1.31%) Puppet
7 15 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
8 12 (1.05%) Kibana
9 9 (0.79%) Kiali
10 6 (0.52%) SCCM
11 5 (0.44%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.35%) Control-M
12 4 (0.35%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.35%) SCOM
13 3 (0.26%) Foglight
13 3 (0.26%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.26%) PowerCLI
13 3 (0.26%) vCenter Server
14 2 (0.17%) vRealize
Vendors
1 187 (16.36%) Microsoft
2 69 (6.04%) Splunk
3 58 (5.07%) Oracle
4 57 (4.99%) Google
5 47 (4.11%) Databricks
6 46 (4.02%) SAP
7 38 (3.32%) IBM
8 29 (2.54%) ServiceNow
9 25 (2.19%) BiZZdesign
10 24 (2.10%) VMware
11 23 (2.01%) Cisco
12 19 (1.66%) Informatica
13 18 (1.57%) Salesforce
14 17 (1.49%) Palo Alto
15 15 (1.31%) Okta
16 14 (1.22%) Foundry
17 12 (1.05%) CheckPoint
17 12 (1.05%) MuleSoft
17 12 (1.05%) OpenAI
17 12 (1.05%) Software AG