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 31 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 133 66 63
Rank change year-on-year -67 -3 +25
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,103 1,226 1,313
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.08% 3.74% 3.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.45% 4.13% 3.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 617 689 805
10th Percentile £176 £185 £325
25th Percentile £201 £355 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £600 £650 £684
90th Percentile £757 £775 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £370 £420 £513
% change year-on-year -12.02% -18.05% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 128 49 67
10th Percentile £25.74 £25.00 £20.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £38.75
Median hourly rate £72.50 £54.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.03% +3.81% -15.32%
75th Percentile £87.16 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £88.00 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £80.75 £67.00 £55.63
% change year-on-year +20.52% +20.45% -7.29%

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 45,107 29,668 33,959
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.95% 90.46% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,893 18,635 21,816
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £736 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,744 1,629 1,969
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £13.69
25th Percentile £19.66 £17.35 £17.72
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £40.33
% change year-on-year +83.17% -40.48% +0.81%

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 31 July 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 31 July 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 31 July 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 -52 1,004 £450 -10.00% 1,191
UK excluding London -45 599 £370 -12.02% 555
London -61 432 £525 -12.50% 720
South East -9 248 £350 -26.32% 188
Work from Home -82 245 £500 -8.26% 377
North of England -48 141 £400 -11.11% 102
Midlands -55 89 £275 -12.14% 86
Yorkshire -19 76 £450 +17.19% 26
West Midlands -64 60 £384 +78.49% 43
North West -64 54 £292 -38.53% 48
East of England -25 49 £215 -62.77% 90
South West -70 33 £469 +127.12% 51
East Midlands -22 28 £253 -41.75% 43
Scotland -45 28 £400 -15.79% 20
North East -37 12 £195 -57.84% 29
Northern Ireland - 7 £350 - 20
Wales -25 6 £530 +17.78% 11

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 38 (3.45%) Confluence
2 30 (2.72%) SharePoint
3 29 (2.63%) Apache Spark
4 20 (1.81%) Apache Airflow
5 19 (1.72%) Apache
6 9 (0.82%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.54%) IIS
8 5 (0.45%) SAS
9 4 (0.36%) CMS
10 3 (0.27%) Camunda
10 3 (0.27%) Jupyter
11 2 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.18%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.18%) nginx
11 2 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.091%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.091%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.091%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 1 (0.091%) Tomcat
Applications
1 45 (4.08%) Microsoft Office
2 33 (2.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 14 (1.27%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.63%) Navisworks
4 7 (0.63%) Revit
5 6 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.45%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.45%) Trello
7 2 (0.18%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.18%) CPLEX
7 2 (0.18%) Sketch
8 1 (0.091%) Simulink
8 1 (0.091%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 13 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.45%) Aladdin
3 4 (0.36%) Workday HCM
4 3 (0.27%) Infor M3
4 3 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.27%) Primavera
4 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.18%) Actimize
5 2 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.18%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 2 (0.18%) Workfront
6 1 (0.091%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.091%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.091%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
6 1 (0.091%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.091%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.091%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 310 (28.11%) Azure
2 193 (17.50%) AWS
3 106 (9.61%) GCP
4 78 (7.07%) Power Platform
5 67 (6.07%) Entra ID
6 58 (5.26%) Microsoft 365
7 51 (4.62%) GitHub
8 49 (4.44%) SaaS
9 45 (4.08%) Azure DevOps
10 33 (2.99%) Snowflake
11 29 (2.63%) Serverless
12 22 (1.99%) PowerApps
13 21 (1.90%) GitHub Actions
14 18 (1.63%) Azure AKS
15 16 (1.45%) Microsoft Copilot
16 15 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
16 15 (1.36%) Power Automate
17 14 (1.27%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 14 (1.27%) Azure Data Factory
18 13 (1.18%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 43 (3.90%) Firewall
2 32 (2.90%) DNS
2 32 (2.90%) Network Security
3 30 (2.72%) VPN
4 21 (1.90%) TCP/IP
5 18 (1.63%) WAN
6 15 (1.36%) DHCP
6 15 (1.36%) SSH
7 14 (1.27%) LAN
8 12 (1.09%) Wireless
9 11 (1.00%) BGP
10 10 (0.91%) VLAN
11 8 (0.73%) HTTPS
11 8 (0.73%) OSPF
11 8 (0.73%) Wireshark
12 7 (0.63%) 3GPP
12 7 (0.63%) Cisco ASA
12 7 (0.63%) Intrusion Detection
12 7 (0.63%) MPLS
12 7 (0.63%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (5.71%) Power BI
2 52 (4.71%) Relational Database
2 52 (4.71%) SQL Server
3 49 (4.44%) PostgreSQL
4 33 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
5 31 (2.81%) Metadata
6 28 (2.54%) Big Data
7 26 (2.36%) MongoDB
8 25 (2.27%) NoSQL
9 17 (1.54%) Tableau
10 14 (1.27%) MySQL
11 13 (1.18%) Data Lake
11 13 (1.18%) Data Mining
11 13 (1.18%) Hadoop
12 11 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
13 10 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
13 10 (0.91%) Elasticsearch
13 10 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
14 9 (0.82%) Oracle Database
14 9 (0.82%) Redis
Development Applications
1 85 (7.71%) Git
2 51 (4.62%) JIRA
3 40 (3.63%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.08%) GitLab
5 32 (2.90%) Rational DOORS
6 13 (1.18%) Selenium
7 12 (1.09%) JUnit
8 11 (1.00%) Gradle
9 10 (0.91%) Bitbucket
10 9 (0.82%) TeamCity
11 8 (0.73%) Maven
11 8 (0.73%) SpecFlow
12 7 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
13 6 (0.54%) Cypress.io
13 6 (0.54%) MLflow
13 6 (0.54%) REST Assured
13 6 (0.54%) SonarQube
13 6 (0.54%) Team Foundation Server
14 5 (0.45%) Cucumber
14 5 (0.45%) Visual Studio
General
1 441 (39.98%) Social Skills
2 238 (21.58%) Analytical Skills
3 233 (21.12%) Finance
4 91 (8.25%) Banking
5 67 (6.07%) Public Sector
6 59 (5.35%) Aerospace
7 50 (4.53%) Documentation Skills
8 39 (3.54%) Organisational Skills
9 37 (3.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 30 (2.72%) Influencing Skills
11 29 (2.63%) Telecoms
12 27 (2.45%) Legal
12 27 (2.45%) Marketing
13 25 (2.27%) Manufacturing
14 24 (2.18%) Front Office
15 20 (1.81%) Presentation Skills
16 16 (1.45%) Law
16 16 (1.45%) Military
17 15 (1.36%) Retail
18 12 (1.09%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 127 (11.51%) Developer
2 113 (10.24%) Senior
3 107 (9.70%) Architect
4 80 (7.25%) Lead
5 78 (7.07%) Analyst
6 39 (3.54%) Product Manager
7 38 (3.45%) Software Engineer
8 37 (3.35%) Data Engineer
9 35 (3.17%) Delivery Manager
10 30 (2.72%) Data Scientist
10 30 (2.72%) Product Delivery Manager
11 26 (2.36%) Java Developer
11 26 (2.36%) Solutions Architect
12 25 (2.27%) Junior
13 24 (2.18%) IT Support
14 23 (2.09%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 23 (2.09%) Security Engineer
14 23 (2.09%) Senior Developer
15 22 (1.99%) Python Developer
15 22 (1.99%) Systems Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (7.80%) REST
2 62 (5.62%) React
3 54 (4.90%) .NET
4 43 (3.90%) Kafka
5 37 (3.35%) Spring
6 34 (3.08%) RESTful
7 31 (2.81%) Spring Boot
8 29 (2.63%) OAuth
9 26 (2.36%) AngularJS
10 24 (2.18%) CSS
10 24 (2.18%) PyTorch
11 23 (2.09%) HTML
11 23 (2.09%) Middleware
11 23 (2.09%) SAML
12 22 (1.99%) OAuth2
13 21 (1.90%) JSON
13 21 (1.90%) OpenID
13 21 (1.90%) Web Services
14 19 (1.72%) TensorFlow
15 17 (1.54%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 99 (8.98%) Management Information System
2 90 (8.16%) Product Ownership
3 85 (7.71%) Algorithms
3 85 (7.71%) Onboarding
4 72 (6.53%) Cloud Native
5 65 (5.89%) Data Structures
6 51 (4.62%) Distributed Systems
7 31 (2.81%) AI Agents
8 27 (2.45%) Virtual Team
9 26 (2.36%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 25 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
11 23 (2.09%) Derivative
12 18 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
13 17 (1.54%) Fixed Income
13 17 (1.54%) Hybrid Cloud
13 17 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
14 15 (1.36%) Analytical Mindset
14 15 (1.36%) Data Centre
14 15 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
14 15 (1.36%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 130 (11.79%) Windows
2 104 (9.43%) Linux
3 32 (2.90%) Unix
4 26 (2.36%) Windows Server
5 21 (1.90%) Android
6 19 (1.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 17 (1.54%) Windows 10
8 12 (1.09%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.82%) Mac OS
9 9 (0.82%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.36%) VMS
11 3 (0.27%) Debian
11 3 (0.27%) Rocky
12 2 (0.18%) MVS
12 2 (0.18%) Solaris
12 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.18%) zOS
13 1 (0.091%) CentOS
13 1 (0.091%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.091%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 323 (29.28%) Problem-Solving
2 271 (24.57%) Agile
3 239 (21.67%) AI
4 203 (18.40%) CI/CD
5 192 (17.41%) Continuous Improvement
6 188 (17.04%) Software Engineering
7 163 (14.78%) DevOps
8 151 (13.69%) Analytics
9 137 (12.42%) Stakeholder Management
10 128 (11.60%) Cybersecurity
11 117 (10.61%) ITIL
12 113 (10.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 110 (9.97%) Machine Learning
14 108 (9.79%) Mathematics
15 99 (8.98%) Decision-Making
16 96 (8.70%) Data Science
17 90 (8.16%) Roadmaps
18 88 (7.98%) Microservices
19 85 (7.71%) Validation
20 83 (7.52%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 298 (27.02%) Python
2 210 (19.04%) SQL
3 135 (12.24%) Java
4 70 (6.35%) PowerShell
5 69 (6.26%) JavaScript
6 62 (5.62%) C#
7 39 (3.54%) TypeScript
8 30 (2.72%) Bash
9 24 (2.18%) C++
10 17 (1.54%) R
11 13 (1.18%) Bicep
12 11 (1.00%) Kotlin
13 10 (0.91%) C
14 8 (0.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 8 (0.73%) Shell Script
15 7 (0.63%) Go
16 6 (0.54%) Perl
17 5 (0.45%) Scala
18 4 (0.36%) Apex Code
18 4 (0.36%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 841 (76.25%) Degree
2 484 (43.88%) Computer Science Degree
3 211 (19.13%) Security Cleared
4 129 (11.70%) SC Cleared
5 123 (11.15%) Master's Degree
6 52 (4.71%) CISSP
7 43 (3.90%) Azure Certification
8 41 (3.72%) Microsoft Certification
9 40 (3.63%) DBS Check
10 39 (3.54%) PhD
11 33 (2.99%) CISM
12 30 (2.72%) PMI Certification
13 29 (2.63%) PMP
14 27 (2.45%) AWS Certification
14 27 (2.45%) DV Cleared
15 24 (2.18%) Cisco Certification
15 24 (2.18%) TOGAF Certification
16 21 (1.90%) CISA
17 20 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
18 18 (1.63%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (6.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 68 (6.17%) Data Quality
3 62 (5.62%) NIST
4 53 (4.81%) QA
5 32 (2.90%) GDPR
6 18 (1.63%) Accessibility
7 15 (1.36%) GRC
8 14 (1.27%) SLA
9 13 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 12 (1.09%) PCI DSS
11 11 (1.00%) HIPAA
11 11 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 11 (1.00%) NCSC
12 10 (0.91%) NIST 800
13 7 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 5 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
14 5 (0.45%) COBIT
14 5 (0.45%) DO-254
14 5 (0.45%) Government Security Classifications
14 5 (0.45%) ITGC
System Software
1 85 (7.71%) Docker
2 82 (7.43%) Active Directory
3 21 (1.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.91%) Firmware
5 9 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.73%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.54%) VMware NSX
8 5 (0.45%) vSphere
9 4 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.27%) ACF2
10 3 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
10 3 (0.27%) RACF
10 3 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
11 2 (0.18%) Ceph
11 2 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.18%) Squid
11 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
12 1 (0.091%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.091%) HDFS
12 1 (0.091%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 105 (9.52%) Kubernetes
2 56 (5.08%) Terraform
3 37 (3.35%) Ansible
4 30 (2.72%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (2.27%) Prometheus
6 21 (1.90%) Grafana
7 14 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (0.91%) SCCM
9 5 (0.45%) Argo
10 3 (0.27%) Cisco CUCM
10 3 (0.27%) Foglight
10 3 (0.27%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.27%) Kubeflow
10 3 (0.27%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.18%) Consul
11 2 (0.18%) Network Intrusion Detection System
11 2 (0.18%) Oracle RMAN
11 2 (0.18%) PowerCLI
11 2 (0.18%) vRealize
11 2 (0.18%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 203 (18.40%) Microsoft
2 64 (5.80%) Oracle
3 48 (4.35%) Databricks
4 42 (3.81%) IBM
5 39 (3.54%) Google
5 39 (3.54%) ServiceNow
6 31 (2.81%) VMware
7 28 (2.54%) SAP
8 23 (2.09%) CyberArk
9 22 (1.99%) Cisco
10 20 (1.81%) BeyondTrust
11 18 (1.63%) Splunk
12 12 (1.09%) Salesforce
13 11 (1.00%) Palo Alto
14 10 (0.91%) Citrix
14 10 (0.91%) Foundry
14 10 (0.91%) Okta
14 10 (0.91%) Solace
15 9 (0.82%) Apple
15 9 (0.82%) Red Hat