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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 106 67 67
Rank change year-on-year -39 0 +43
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,071 1,047 1,286
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.28% 3.57% 2.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.70% 3.93% 3.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 628 585 791
10th Percentile £177 £250 £320
25th Percentile £313 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £654 £675 £650
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -20.00% -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 32 94
10th Percentile £28.75 £27.21 £22.53
25th Percentile £53.50 £30.78 £41.50
Median hourly rate £83.00 £43.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +89.71% -20.45% +2.10%
75th Percentile £88.00 £64.31 £65.00
90th Percentile - £82.25 £74.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.00 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +121.33% -31.82% +7.32%

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 39,735 26,655 37,382
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.58% 90.81% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,044 17,231 24,097
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £631 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,400 1,068 2,424
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.98 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.25 £29.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.08% -16.71% -6.27%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £59.44
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.00 £28.00 £35.98
% change year-on-year +50.00% -22.17% -0.07%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 -34 945 £495 -5.71% 909
UK excluding London -38 553 £400 -20.00% 629
London -42 426 £540 -10.03% 427
Work from Home -52 240 £510 -7.27% 471
South East -12 190 £375 -25.00% 240
North of England -28 140 £375 -30.68% 106
Midlands -62 77 £463 +85.00% 85
Yorkshire -18 75 £500 +29.53% 34
North West -22 63 £356 -35.39% 45
West Midlands -58 59 £450 +87.89% 52
South West -46 46 £493 +33.11% 60
East of England -27 43 £400 -38.46% 80
Scotland -13 39 £610 +16.19% 40
East Midlands -38 17 £525 +110.00% 33
Wales -23 15 £160 -44.83% 19
Northern Ireland +7 7 £350 -41.67% 22
North East -23 3 £170 -70.39% 27

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 47 (4.39%) Confluence
2 40 (3.73%) Apache Spark
3 25 (2.33%) SharePoint
4 20 (1.87%) Apache
5 18 (1.68%) Microsoft Exchange
6 17 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
7 4 (0.37%) OpenStack
7 4 (0.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 3 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 3 (0.28%) CMS
8 3 (0.28%) IIS
8 3 (0.28%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.28%) SAS
9 2 (0.19%) nginx
9 2 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.19%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.093%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.093%) Appian
10 1 (0.093%) Camunda
Applications
1 39 (3.64%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (1.68%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (1.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (1.12%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.56%) Navisworks
5 6 (0.56%) Revit
6 4 (0.37%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.37%) Simulink
7 2 (0.19%) Trello
Business Applications
1 23 (2.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.47%) Aladdin
3 5 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (0.28%) 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%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.093%) Actimize
6 1 (0.093%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.093%) Maximo
6 1 (0.093%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.093%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.093%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.093%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 303 (28.29%) Azure
2 184 (17.18%) AWS
3 84 (7.84%) GCP
4 69 (6.44%) Power Platform
5 58 (5.42%) Microsoft 365
6 56 (5.23%) GitHub
6 56 (5.23%) SaaS
7 42 (3.92%) Azure DevOps
7 42 (3.92%) Entra ID
8 23 (2.15%) AWS CloudFormation
8 23 (2.15%) Serverless
9 22 (2.05%) Azure Data Factory
9 22 (2.05%) GitHub Actions
9 22 (2.05%) IaaS
10 20 (1.87%) Snowflake
11 17 (1.59%) Azure AKS
11 17 (1.59%) Azure Machine Learning
12 16 (1.49%) PowerApps
13 15 (1.40%) Power Automate
14 13 (1.21%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 42 (3.92%) Firewall
2 28 (2.61%) TCP/IP
3 27 (2.52%) DNS
4 20 (1.87%) Network Security
5 16 (1.49%) WAN
6 13 (1.21%) BGP
6 13 (1.21%) HTTP
6 13 (1.21%) LAN
7 10 (0.93%) Cisco IOS
7 10 (0.93%) OSPF
8 9 (0.84%) HTTPS
8 9 (0.84%) SSH
9 8 (0.75%) 3GPP
9 8 (0.75%) Skype
10 7 (0.65%) SAN
10 7 (0.65%) VLAN
10 7 (0.65%) VPN
10 7 (0.65%) Wireless
11 6 (0.56%) IPv4
11 6 (0.56%) LTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (5.04%) PostgreSQL
2 51 (4.76%) Relational Database
2 51 (4.76%) SQL Server
3 49 (4.58%) Power BI
4 41 (3.83%) Data Warehouse
5 37 (3.45%) Big Data
6 30 (2.80%) MySQL
7 28 (2.61%) NoSQL
8 26 (2.43%) Metadata
9 22 (2.05%) Hadoop
10 20 (1.87%) MongoDB
10 20 (1.87%) Tableau
11 14 (1.31%) Data Lake
11 14 (1.31%) Elasticsearch
12 12 (1.12%) Redis
12 12 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 10 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
14 9 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
14 9 (0.84%) Star Schema
15 7 (0.65%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 86 (8.03%) Git
2 69 (6.44%) JIRA
3 39 (3.64%) Jenkins
4 37 (3.45%) GitLab
5 28 (2.61%) Rational DOORS
6 13 (1.21%) MLflow
6 13 (1.21%) Selenium
7 10 (0.93%) Postman
8 9 (0.84%) Jaeger
8 9 (0.84%) TeamCity
9 8 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 8 (0.75%) Gradle
10 7 (0.65%) CircleCI
10 7 (0.65%) JUnit
11 6 (0.56%) Bitbucket
12 5 (0.47%) Artifactory
13 4 (0.37%) Maven
13 4 (0.37%) REST Assured
13 4 (0.37%) SonarQube
13 4 (0.37%) Subversion
General
1 441 (41.18%) Social Skills
2 256 (23.90%) Finance
3 230 (21.48%) Analytical Skills
4 97 (9.06%) Banking
5 72 (6.72%) Public Sector
6 52 (4.86%) Documentation Skills
7 51 (4.76%) Aerospace
8 47 (4.39%) Marketing
9 38 (3.55%) Telecoms
10 33 (3.08%) Legal
10 33 (3.08%) Presentation Skills
11 32 (2.99%) Influencing Skills
12 26 (2.43%) Organisational Skills
13 24 (2.24%) Electronics
13 24 (2.24%) Front Office
14 23 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 22 (2.05%) Manufacturing
16 20 (1.87%) Investment Banking
17 17 (1.59%) Financial Institution
18 16 (1.49%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 130 (12.14%) Developer
2 110 (10.27%) Architect
3 90 (8.40%) Lead
4 83 (7.75%) Analyst
5 74 (6.91%) Senior
6 40 (3.73%) Software Engineer
7 37 (3.45%) Data Scientist
7 37 (3.45%) Delivery Manager
8 36 (3.36%) Solutions Architect
9 35 (3.27%) Product Manager
10 30 (2.80%) Technical Support
11 28 (2.61%) Data Engineer
11 28 (2.61%) Product Delivery Manager
12 25 (2.33%) Java Developer
13 24 (2.24%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
13 24 (2.24%) Python Developer
14 23 (2.15%) Full-Stack Engineer
15 22 (2.05%) Security Engineer
15 22 (2.05%) Systems Delivery Manager
15 22 (2.05%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (7.84%) REST
2 60 (5.60%) .NET
3 53 (4.95%) React
4 44 (4.11%) Kafka
5 43 (4.01%) RESTful
6 42 (3.92%) Middleware
7 35 (3.27%) Spring Boot
8 33 (3.08%) PyTorch
9 31 (2.89%) JSON
9 31 (2.89%) OAuth
9 31 (2.89%) Spring
10 30 (2.80%) XML
11 27 (2.52%) SOAP
11 27 (2.52%) TensorFlow
12 21 (1.96%) Elastic Stack
12 21 (1.96%) LangChain
13 20 (1.87%) HTML
13 20 (1.87%) Pandas
14 17 (1.59%) AngularJS
14 17 (1.59%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 116 (10.83%) Management Information System
2 80 (7.47%) Algorithms
3 78 (7.28%) Product Ownership
4 72 (6.72%) Onboarding
5 71 (6.63%) Cloud Native
6 59 (5.51%) Data Structures
7 45 (4.20%) Distributed Systems
8 32 (2.99%) Virtual Team
9 26 (2.43%) AI Agents
10 25 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
10 25 (2.33%) Equities
11 21 (1.96%) Taxonomies
12 20 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
13 19 (1.77%) Analytical Mindset
13 19 (1.77%) Derivative
13 19 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 19 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
14 17 (1.59%) Cyberattack
14 17 (1.59%) Security Operations Centre
15 16 (1.49%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 142 (13.26%) Linux
2 128 (11.95%) Windows
3 46 (4.30%) Unix
4 26 (2.43%) Android
5 23 (2.15%) Mac OS
6 18 (1.68%) Windows Server
7 16 (1.49%) Windows 10
8 12 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 10 (0.93%) Apple iOS
10 6 (0.56%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.47%) Debian
11 5 (0.47%) VMS
12 4 (0.37%) Rocky
13 2 (0.19%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
14 1 (0.093%) CentOS
14 1 (0.093%) Embedded Linux
14 1 (0.093%) MVS
14 1 (0.093%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 347 (32.40%) Problem-Solving
2 287 (26.80%) Agile
3 252 (23.53%) AI
4 212 (19.79%) CI/CD
5 202 (18.86%) DevOps
6 182 (16.99%) Software Engineering
7 161 (15.03%) Continuous Improvement
8 139 (12.98%) Analytics
9 124 (11.58%) Microservices
10 116 (10.83%) Cybersecurity
11 115 (10.74%) Stakeholder Management
12 111 (10.36%) Machine Learning
13 106 (9.90%) Data Science
14 104 (9.71%) Mathematics
15 101 (9.43%) Containerisation
16 99 (9.24%) Data Governance
17 97 (9.06%) Data Modelling
17 97 (9.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 97 (9.06%) Technical Leadership
18 96 (8.96%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 301 (28.10%) Python
2 202 (18.86%) SQL
3 136 (12.70%) Java
4 67 (6.26%) JavaScript
5 61 (5.70%) C#
6 55 (5.14%) PowerShell
7 40 (3.73%) TypeScript
8 33 (3.08%) Bash
9 32 (2.99%) C++
10 22 (2.05%) R
11 15 (1.40%) Go
12 12 (1.12%) Perl
12 12 (1.12%) Rust
12 12 (1.12%) Shell Script
13 10 (0.93%) Kotlin
14 8 (0.75%) Scala
15 7 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 6 (0.56%) C
17 5 (0.47%) Tcl
18 4 (0.37%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 885 (82.63%) Degree
2 549 (51.26%) Computer Science Degree
3 200 (18.67%) Security Cleared
4 163 (15.22%) Master's Degree
5 122 (11.39%) SC Cleared
6 56 (5.23%) CISSP
7 39 (3.64%) PhD
8 38 (3.55%) CISM
9 35 (3.27%) Azure Certification
10 34 (3.17%) Microsoft Certification
11 33 (3.08%) PMI Certification
12 30 (2.80%) TOGAF Certification
13 28 (2.61%) PMP
14 25 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
15 24 (2.24%) CompTIA Security+
15 24 (2.24%) DV Cleared
16 23 (2.15%) AWS Certification
17 19 (1.77%) CISA
17 19 (1.77%) DBS Check
18 17 (1.59%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (6.07%) QA
2 56 (5.23%) NIST
3 53 (4.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 51 (4.76%) Data Quality
5 38 (3.55%) GDPR
6 18 (1.68%) Accessibility
7 16 (1.49%) PCI DSS
8 12 (1.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 10 (0.93%) GRC
9 10 (0.93%) NIST 800
10 8 (0.75%) NCSC
10 8 (0.75%) SLA
11 7 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.65%) COBIT
11 7 (0.65%) DO-254
11 7 (0.65%) PSD2
12 6 (0.56%) ISO 19650
12 6 (0.56%) ISO 20022
12 6 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 5 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 120 (11.20%) Docker
2 75 (7.00%) Active Directory
3 17 (1.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (1.31%) Firmware
5 6 (0.56%) Hyper-V
6 5 (0.47%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.37%) 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 (0.093%) ACF2
9 1 (0.093%) HDFS
9 1 (0.093%) PowerHA
9 1 (0.093%) RACF
9 1 (0.093%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 132 (12.32%) Kubernetes
2 67 (6.26%) Terraform
3 49 (4.58%) Ansible
4 34 (3.17%) Grafana
5 28 (2.61%) Prometheus
6 24 (2.24%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
8 14 (1.31%) Puppet
9 10 (0.93%) Kibana
10 9 (0.84%) Kiali
11 6 (0.56%) SCCM
12 4 (0.37%) Control-M
12 4 (0.37%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.37%) Progress Chef
13 3 (0.28%) Foglight
13 3 (0.28%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
13 3 (0.28%) SCOM
13 3 (0.28%) vCenter Server
14 2 (0.19%) logstash
Vendors
1 198 (18.49%) Microsoft
2 63 (5.88%) Oracle
3 52 (4.86%) Splunk
4 47 (4.39%) Databricks
5 46 (4.30%) SAP
6 40 (3.73%) Google
7 34 (3.17%) IBM
8 31 (2.89%) ServiceNow
9 21 (1.96%) Cisco
9 21 (1.96%) VMware
10 18 (1.68%) BiZZdesign
11 17 (1.59%) Informatica
12 16 (1.49%) Okta
12 16 (1.49%) Salesforce
13 14 (1.31%) Palo Alto
14 13 (1.21%) CheckPoint
14 13 (1.21%) CyberArk
15 12 (1.12%) Foundry
15 12 (1.12%) MuleSoft
15 12 (1.12%) Software AG