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

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 133 64 62
Rank change year-on-year -69 -2 +30
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,083 1,226 1,353
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.05% 3.75% 3.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.41% 4.15% 3.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 602 684 823
10th Percentile £177 £194 £325
25th Percentile £203 £356 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.60% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £625 £650 £675
90th Percentile £755 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £375 £423 £517
% change year-on-year -11.24% -18.28% -1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 125 48 82
10th Percentile £25.73 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £41.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £54.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.44% -0.91% -11.29%
75th Percentile £87.16 £69.10 £65.94
90th Percentile £88.00 £88.00 £72.28
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.50 £67.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +21.64% +21.82% -8.33%

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 44,871 29,543 34,928
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.02% 90.39% 85.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,803 18,563 22,435
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.46%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,660 1,589 2,131
10th Percentile £14.85 £14.20 £13.46
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.44 £17.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -6.98%
75th Percentile £68.13 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £69.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.34 £40.00
% change year-on-year +82.83% -39.15% -1.95%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -56 981 £453 -9.40% 1,284
UK excluding London -51 585 £375 -11.24% 665
London -66 426 £535 -10.86% 745
Work from Home -81 245 £500 -9.09% 439
South East -7 242 £350 -26.32% 219
North of England -45 138 £379 -15.83% 113
Midlands -59 83 £325 +3.83% 104
Yorkshire -12 74 £500 +28.70% 27
West Midlands -67 56 £416 +93.26% 57
North West -58 53 £220 -53.68% 59
East of England -27 46 £215 -66.92% 92
South West -69 34 £435 +81.04% 70
Scotland -42 31 £425 -9.96% 30
East Midlands -21 26 £275 -36.56% 47
North East -29 12 £195 -57.84% 27
Northern Ireland - 7 £350 - 39
Wales -25 6 £530 +15.09% 13

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 39 (3.60%) Confluence
2 34 (3.14%) Apache Spark
3 31 (2.86%) SharePoint
4 23 (2.12%) Apache Airflow
5 22 (2.03%) Apache
6 10 (0.92%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.55%) IIS
8 5 (0.46%) SAS
9 4 (0.37%) Camunda
9 4 (0.37%) CMS
10 3 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.28%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.18%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.18%) nginx
11 2 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.092%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.092%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.092%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 1 (0.092%) Tomcat
Applications
1 42 (3.88%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (2.95%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 13 (1.20%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.65%) Navisworks
4 7 (0.65%) Revit
5 6 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.46%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.37%) Trello
8 2 (0.18%) Adobe XD
8 2 (0.18%) CPLEX
8 2 (0.18%) Sketch
9 1 (0.092%) Simulink
9 1 (0.092%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 16 (1.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.46%) Aladdin
3 3 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
3 3 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.28%) Primavera
3 3 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
3 3 (0.28%) Workday HCM
4 2 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.18%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.18%) Workfront
5 1 (0.092%) Finacle
5 1 (0.092%) Infor M3
5 1 (0.092%) Misys Equation
5 1 (0.092%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.092%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
5 1 (0.092%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.092%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.092%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 308 (28.44%) Azure
2 194 (17.91%) AWS
3 103 (9.51%) GCP
4 75 (6.93%) Power Platform
5 63 (5.82%) Entra ID
6 56 (5.17%) Microsoft 365
7 47 (4.34%) SaaS
8 45 (4.16%) GitHub
9 43 (3.97%) Azure DevOps
10 31 (2.86%) Snowflake
11 28 (2.59%) Serverless
12 22 (2.03%) PowerApps
13 20 (1.85%) GitHub Actions
14 18 (1.66%) Azure AKS
15 15 (1.39%) Microsoft Copilot
15 15 (1.39%) Power Automate
16 14 (1.29%) AWS Lambda
16 14 (1.29%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 14 (1.29%) Azure Data Factory
17 13 (1.20%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 38 (3.51%) Firewall
2 31 (2.86%) Network Security
3 27 (2.49%) DNS
3 27 (2.49%) VPN
4 22 (2.03%) TCP/IP
5 16 (1.48%) WAN
6 14 (1.29%) SSH
7 13 (1.20%) LAN
8 12 (1.11%) BGP
8 12 (1.11%) DHCP
9 10 (0.92%) VLAN
9 10 (0.92%) Wireless
10 9 (0.83%) HTTPS
10 9 (0.83%) OSPF
11 8 (0.74%) Wireshark
12 7 (0.65%) 3GPP
12 7 (0.65%) Cisco ASA
12 7 (0.65%) MPLS
13 6 (0.55%) Intrusion Detection
13 6 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (5.54%) Power BI
2 54 (4.99%) SQL Server
3 52 (4.80%) Relational Database
4 49 (4.52%) PostgreSQL
5 35 (3.23%) Data Warehouse
6 34 (3.14%) Metadata
7 32 (2.95%) Big Data
8 27 (2.49%) MongoDB
9 24 (2.22%) NoSQL
10 17 (1.57%) MySQL
11 16 (1.48%) Data Lake
11 16 (1.48%) Hadoop
11 16 (1.48%) Tableau
12 12 (1.11%) Data Mining
13 11 (1.02%) Azure SQL Database
14 10 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
14 10 (0.92%) Elasticsearch
14 10 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
15 9 (0.83%) Redis
16 8 (0.74%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 85 (7.85%) Git
2 51 (4.71%) JIRA
3 39 (3.60%) Jenkins
4 33 (3.05%) GitLab
5 31 (2.86%) Rational DOORS
6 13 (1.20%) Selenium
7 12 (1.11%) JUnit
8 11 (1.02%) Gradle
9 8 (0.74%) Maven
9 8 (0.74%) MLflow
9 8 (0.74%) SpecFlow
9 8 (0.74%) TeamCity
10 7 (0.65%) Bitbucket
11 6 (0.55%) Cypress.io
11 6 (0.55%) REST Assured
11 6 (0.55%) SonarQube
11 6 (0.55%) Sonatype Nexus
12 5 (0.46%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.46%) Team Foundation Server
12 5 (0.46%) Visual Studio
General
1 429 (39.61%) Social Skills
2 235 (21.70%) Finance
3 231 (21.33%) Analytical Skills
4 94 (8.68%) Banking
5 66 (6.09%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.08%) Aerospace
7 53 (4.89%) Documentation Skills
8 37 (3.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 37 (3.42%) Organisational Skills
9 30 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
10 29 (2.68%) Telecoms
11 28 (2.59%) Marketing
12 23 (2.12%) Legal
12 23 (2.12%) Manufacturing
13 22 (2.03%) Front Office
14 20 (1.85%) Presentation Skills
15 16 (1.48%) Law
16 15 (1.39%) Military
16 15 (1.39%) Retail
17 13 (1.20%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 125 (11.54%) Developer
2 113 (10.43%) Architect
3 108 (9.97%) Senior
4 81 (7.48%) Lead
5 77 (7.11%) Analyst
6 38 (3.51%) Data Engineer
6 38 (3.51%) Software Engineer
7 37 (3.42%) Product Manager
8 34 (3.14%) Delivery Manager
9 33 (3.05%) Data Scientist
10 28 (2.59%) Product Delivery Manager
10 28 (2.59%) Solutions Architect
11 25 (2.31%) Junior
12 24 (2.22%) IT Support
12 24 (2.22%) Java Developer
13 23 (2.12%) Python Developer
14 22 (2.03%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 22 (2.03%) Security Engineer
14 22 (2.03%) Systems Delivery Manager
14 22 (2.03%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (7.94%) REST
2 60 (5.54%) React
3 54 (4.99%) .NET
4 43 (3.97%) Kafka
5 36 (3.32%) RESTful
5 36 (3.32%) Spring
6 32 (2.95%) Spring Boot
7 27 (2.49%) Middleware
8 26 (2.40%) OAuth
9 25 (2.31%) AngularJS
10 24 (2.22%) PyTorch
11 22 (2.03%) CSS
12 21 (1.94%) HTML
12 21 (1.94%) JSON
13 20 (1.85%) Web Services
14 19 (1.75%) SAML
15 18 (1.66%) OAuth2
15 18 (1.66%) OpenID
15 18 (1.66%) TensorFlow
16 17 (1.57%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 99 (9.14%) Management Information System
2 88 (8.13%) Product Ownership
3 83 (7.66%) Onboarding
4 81 (7.48%) Algorithms
5 72 (6.65%) Cloud Native
6 58 (5.36%) Data Structures
7 49 (4.52%) Distributed Systems
8 29 (2.68%) AI Agents
9 27 (2.49%) Virtual Team
10 26 (2.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 25 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
12 23 (2.12%) Derivative
13 20 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
14 17 (1.57%) Fixed Income
15 16 (1.48%) Analytical Mindset
16 15 (1.39%) Data Centre
16 15 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
16 15 (1.39%) Equities
16 15 (1.39%) Hybrid Cloud
16 15 (1.39%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 126 (11.63%) Windows
2 105 (9.70%) Linux
3 32 (2.95%) Unix
4 24 (2.22%) Windows Server
5 21 (1.94%) Android
6 18 (1.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (1.48%) Windows 10
8 12 (1.11%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.83%) Mac OS
9 9 (0.83%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.46%) VMS
11 3 (0.28%) Debian
11 3 (0.28%) 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 (0.092%) CentOS
13 1 (0.092%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.092%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 313 (28.90%) Problem-Solving
2 269 (24.84%) Agile
3 237 (21.88%) AI
4 195 (18.01%) CI/CD
5 189 (17.45%) Continuous Improvement
6 182 (16.81%) Software Engineering
7 164 (15.14%) DevOps
8 153 (14.13%) Analytics
9 125 (11.54%) Cybersecurity
10 123 (11.36%) Stakeholder Management
11 118 (10.90%) Machine Learning
11 118 (10.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 111 (10.25%) ITIL
12 111 (10.25%) Mathematics
13 101 (9.33%) Data Science
14 95 (8.77%) Decision-Making
15 93 (8.59%) Microservices
15 93 (8.59%) Roadmaps
16 84 (7.76%) Mentoring
17 83 (7.66%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 294 (27.15%) Python
2 212 (19.58%) SQL
3 134 (12.37%) Java
4 66 (6.09%) JavaScript
5 61 (5.63%) C#
5 61 (5.63%) PowerShell
6 36 (3.32%) TypeScript
7 29 (2.68%) Bash
8 22 (2.03%) C++
9 18 (1.66%) R
10 13 (1.20%) Bicep
11 10 (0.92%) Kotlin
11 10 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 9 (0.83%) C
13 8 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 7 (0.65%) Go
15 6 (0.55%) Perl
16 5 (0.46%) Scala
17 4 (0.37%) Ada
17 4 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 831 (76.73%) Degree
2 473 (43.67%) Computer Science Degree
3 208 (19.21%) Security Cleared
4 133 (12.28%) Master's Degree
5 127 (11.73%) SC Cleared
6 50 (4.62%) CISSP
7 44 (4.06%) Azure Certification
8 40 (3.69%) PhD
9 39 (3.60%) Microsoft Certification
10 33 (3.05%) DBS Check
11 30 (2.77%) CISM
12 29 (2.68%) PMI Certification
13 28 (2.59%) AWS Certification
13 28 (2.59%) DV Cleared
13 28 (2.59%) PMP
14 24 (2.22%) TOGAF Certification
15 23 (2.12%) Cisco Certification
16 19 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
16 19 (1.75%) CISA
17 16 (1.48%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (6.28%) Data Quality
2 66 (6.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 59 (5.45%) NIST
4 55 (5.08%) QA
5 32 (2.95%) GDPR
6 18 (1.66%) Accessibility
7 15 (1.39%) GRC
8 13 (1.20%) PCI DSS
8 13 (1.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 13 (1.20%) SLA
9 12 (1.11%) NCSC
10 10 (0.92%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 10 (0.92%) NIST 800
11 7 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 6 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
13 5 (0.46%) COBIT
13 5 (0.46%) Government Security Classifications
13 5 (0.46%) ISO 20022
13 5 (0.46%) ITGC
System Software
1 87 (8.03%) Docker
2 79 (7.29%) Active Directory
3 19 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.83%) Firmware
4 9 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.65%) Hyper-V
6 6 (0.55%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.37%) vSphere
8 3 (0.28%) ACF2
8 3 (0.28%) RACF
8 3 (0.28%) VMware Workstation
9 2 (0.18%) Ceph
9 2 (0.18%) Embedded Firmware
9 2 (0.18%) Squid
9 2 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.092%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 1 (0.092%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.092%) HDFS
10 1 (0.092%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 105 (9.70%) Kubernetes
2 55 (5.08%) Terraform
3 36 (3.32%) Ansible
4 26 (2.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (2.31%) Prometheus
6 22 (2.03%) Grafana
7 14 (1.29%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.65%) SCCM
9 4 (0.37%) Kubeflow
10 3 (0.28%) Cisco CUCM
10 3 (0.28%) Foglight
10 3 (0.28%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.28%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.18%) CASB
11 2 (0.18%) Consul
11 2 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.18%) Network Intrusion Detection System
11 2 (0.18%) PowerCLI
11 2 (0.18%) vRealize
11 2 (0.18%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 199 (18.37%) Microsoft
2 63 (5.82%) Oracle
3 49 (4.52%) Databricks
4 42 (3.88%) Google
5 41 (3.79%) IBM
6 37 (3.42%) ServiceNow
7 31 (2.86%) SAP
8 29 (2.68%) VMware
9 21 (1.94%) Cisco
9 21 (1.94%) CyberArk
10 18 (1.66%) BeyondTrust
10 18 (1.66%) Splunk
11 13 (1.20%) Informatica
12 12 (1.11%) Palo Alto
12 12 (1.11%) Salesforce
13 11 (1.02%) Okta
14 10 (0.92%) Foundry
15 9 (0.83%) Apple
15 9 (0.83%) Citrix
15 9 (0.83%) Red Hat