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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 128 63 60
Rank change year-on-year -65 -3 +36
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,073 1,204 1,385
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.04% 3.71% 3.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.40% 4.10% 3.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 603 678 835
10th Percentile £178 £218 £319
25th Percentile £217 £363 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £631 £650 £675
90th Percentile £760 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £390 £450 £519
% change year-on-year -13.33% -13.21% -1.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 44 100
10th Percentile £25.72 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £38.75
Median hourly rate £68.25 £48.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.72% -11.82% -8.33%
75th Percentile £87.16 £67.50 £66.25
90th Percentile £88.00 £82.99 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.50 £64.75 £55.00
% change year-on-year +25.87% +17.73% -

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 44,765 29,340 36,482
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.08% 90.42% 85.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,853 18,476 23,295
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £418 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £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 2,647 1,521 2,449
10th Percentile £14.94 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.61 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -4.70%
75th Percentile £68.50 £52.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.70 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.25 £24.64 £38.12
% change year-on-year +83.64% -35.36% -0.99%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -54 962 £457 -8.68% 1,387
UK excluding London -52 578 £390 -13.33% 1,097
London -59 422 £525 -12.50% 522
Work from Home -83 241 £500 -9.09% 863
South East -9 233 £254 -47.27% 300
North of England -46 136 £400 -14.45% 225
Midlands -64 77 £402 +25.63% 162
Yorkshire -19 72 £525 +30.35% 74
North West -52 55 £364 -23.37% 103
West Midlands -72 54 £440 +46.50% 80
East of England -31 45 £400 -38.46% 141
Scotland -35 39 £615 +23.00% 83
South West -59 35 £435 +81.04% 110
East Midlands -24 22 £275 -30.11% 82
North East -35 10 £195 -57.84% 48
Wales -23 7 £530 +23.47% 42
Northern Ireland - 7 £350 - 57

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 49 (4.57%) Confluence
2 36 (3.36%) Apache Spark
3 29 (2.70%) SharePoint
4 24 (2.24%) Apache Airflow
5 23 (2.14%) Apache
6 9 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.56%) IIS
8 5 (0.47%) SAS
9 4 (0.37%) CMS
10 3 (0.28%) Camunda
10 3 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.28%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.19%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.19%) nginx
11 2 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.093%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.093%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.093%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 1 (0.093%) Tomcat
Applications
1 42 (3.91%) Microsoft Office
2 31 (2.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 17 (1.58%) MS Visio
4 16 (1.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.65%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.65%) Revit
6 4 (0.37%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
7 3 (0.28%) Trello
8 2 (0.19%) Simulink
9 1 (0.093%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.093%) Sketch
9 1 (0.093%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 18 (1.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.47%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.19%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.19%) Workfront
5 1 (0.093%) Maximo
5 1 (0.093%) Misys Equation
5 1 (0.093%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.093%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.093%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
5 1 (0.093%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.093%) SAP PM
5 1 (0.093%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.093%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.093%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 315 (29.36%) Azure
2 197 (18.36%) AWS
3 99 (9.23%) GCP
4 75 (6.99%) Power Platform
5 56 (5.22%) Microsoft 365
6 55 (5.13%) Entra ID
7 46 (4.29%) GitHub
8 45 (4.19%) Azure DevOps
9 41 (3.82%) SaaS
10 28 (2.61%) Serverless
10 28 (2.61%) Snowflake
11 23 (2.14%) GitHub Actions
12 22 (2.05%) PowerApps
13 17 (1.58%) Azure AKS
14 15 (1.40%) AWS CloudFormation
14 15 (1.40%) Azure Data Factory
14 15 (1.40%) Power Automate
15 14 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
15 14 (1.30%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 13 (1.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 34 (3.17%) Firewall
2 33 (3.08%) Network Security
3 27 (2.52%) DNS
4 24 (2.24%) TCP/IP
5 23 (2.14%) VPN
6 18 (1.68%) WAN
7 15 (1.40%) LAN
8 14 (1.30%) BGP
9 12 (1.12%) SSH
10 11 (1.03%) OSPF
11 10 (0.93%) HTTPS
11 10 (0.93%) VLAN
11 10 (0.93%) Wireless
12 7 (0.65%) 3GPP
12 7 (0.65%) Cisco ASA
12 7 (0.65%) DHCP
12 7 (0.65%) MPLS
12 7 (0.65%) Wireshark
13 6 (0.56%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.56%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (5.68%) Power BI
2 53 (4.94%) PostgreSQL
2 53 (4.94%) SQL Server
3 52 (4.85%) Relational Database
4 36 (3.36%) Data Warehouse
5 33 (3.08%) Big Data
5 33 (3.08%) Metadata
6 28 (2.61%) MongoDB
7 25 (2.33%) NoSQL
8 21 (1.96%) MySQL
9 19 (1.77%) Data Lake
10 18 (1.68%) Hadoop
11 17 (1.58%) Tableau
12 11 (1.03%) Azure SQL Database
12 11 (1.03%) Elasticsearch
13 10 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
13 10 (0.93%) Data Mining
13 10 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
14 8 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 8 (0.75%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 86 (8.01%) Git
2 61 (5.68%) JIRA
3 41 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 35 (3.26%) GitLab
5 30 (2.80%) Rational DOORS
6 14 (1.30%) Selenium
7 11 (1.03%) JUnit
8 10 (0.93%) Gradle
9 9 (0.84%) MLflow
10 8 (0.75%) Postman
10 8 (0.75%) SpecFlow
10 8 (0.75%) TeamCity
11 7 (0.65%) Maven
11 7 (0.65%) REST Assured
12 6 (0.56%) Bitbucket
12 6 (0.56%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.56%) Sonatype Nexus
13 5 (0.47%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.47%) Flyway
13 5 (0.47%) SonarQube
General
1 438 (40.82%) Social Skills
2 244 (22.74%) Finance
3 225 (20.97%) Analytical Skills
4 92 (8.57%) Banking
5 69 (6.43%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.13%) Aerospace
7 54 (5.03%) Documentation Skills
8 36 (3.36%) Organisational Skills
9 35 (3.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 29 (2.70%) Influencing Skills
10 29 (2.70%) Marketing
11 28 (2.61%) Telecoms
12 25 (2.33%) Front Office
13 23 (2.14%) Manufacturing
14 22 (2.05%) Legal
14 22 (2.05%) Presentation Skills
15 16 (1.49%) Law
15 16 (1.49%) Retail
16 14 (1.30%) Publishing
17 12 (1.12%) Military
Job Titles
1 132 (12.30%) Developer
2 113 (10.53%) Architect
3 102 (9.51%) Senior
4 85 (7.92%) Analyst
5 81 (7.55%) Lead
6 37 (3.45%) Product Manager
6 37 (3.45%) Software Engineer
7 35 (3.26%) Delivery Manager
8 34 (3.17%) Data Engineer
9 32 (2.98%) Data Scientist
10 30 (2.80%) Solutions Architect
11 28 (2.61%) Product Delivery Manager
12 25 (2.33%) Junior
12 25 (2.33%) Python Developer
13 24 (2.24%) Java Developer
14 23 (2.14%) Security Engineer
15 22 (2.05%) Full-Stack Developer
15 22 (2.05%) IT Support
15 22 (2.05%) Systems Delivery Manager
15 22 (2.05%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (8.11%) REST
2 64 (5.96%) React
3 56 (5.22%) .NET
4 43 (4.01%) Kafka
5 41 (3.82%) RESTful
6 36 (3.36%) Spring
7 33 (3.08%) Spring Boot
8 30 (2.80%) Middleware
9 26 (2.42%) OAuth
10 25 (2.33%) AngularJS
11 24 (2.24%) PyTorch
12 21 (1.96%) HTML
12 21 (1.96%) JSON
13 19 (1.77%) CSS
14 18 (1.68%) SAML
14 18 (1.68%) SOAP
14 18 (1.68%) Web Services
15 17 (1.58%) OAuth2
15 17 (1.58%) OpenID
15 17 (1.58%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 99 (9.23%) Management Information System
2 86 (8.01%) Product Ownership
3 79 (7.36%) Onboarding
4 77 (7.18%) Algorithms
4 77 (7.18%) Cloud Native
5 56 (5.22%) Data Structures
6 50 (4.66%) Distributed Systems
7 29 (2.70%) Virtual Team
8 26 (2.42%) AI Agents
8 26 (2.42%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 25 (2.33%) Derivative
9 25 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
10 21 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
11 19 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
11 19 (1.77%) Equities
12 17 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
12 17 (1.58%) Fixed Income
13 15 (1.40%) Data Centre
13 15 (1.40%) Operational Technology
13 15 (1.40%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 127 (11.84%) Windows
2 107 (9.97%) Linux
3 39 (3.63%) Unix
4 21 (1.96%) Android
5 20 (1.86%) Windows Server
6 18 (1.68%) Windows 10
7 17 (1.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (1.30%) Apple iOS
9 11 (1.03%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.75%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.47%) VMS
12 3 (0.28%) Debian
12 3 (0.28%) Rocky
13 2 (0.19%) Solaris
13 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
13 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.093%) CentOS
14 1 (0.093%) Embedded Linux
14 1 (0.093%) OpenVMS
14 1 (0.093%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 317 (29.54%) Problem-Solving
2 277 (25.82%) Agile
3 239 (22.27%) AI
4 194 (18.08%) CI/CD
5 186 (17.33%) Software Engineering
6 185 (17.24%) Continuous Improvement
7 168 (15.66%) DevOps
8 145 (13.51%) Analytics
9 126 (11.74%) Cybersecurity
10 125 (11.65%) Stakeholder Management
11 121 (11.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 114 (10.62%) Machine Learning
13 106 (9.88%) ITIL
13 106 (9.88%) Mathematics
14 99 (9.23%) Microservices
15 98 (9.13%) Data Science
15 98 (9.13%) Decision-Making
16 92 (8.57%) Roadmaps
17 87 (8.11%) Containerisation
18 86 (8.01%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 294 (27.40%) Python
2 214 (19.94%) SQL
3 136 (12.67%) Java
4 67 (6.24%) JavaScript
5 60 (5.59%) C#
6 51 (4.75%) PowerShell
7 37 (3.45%) TypeScript
8 23 (2.14%) Bash
9 21 (1.96%) C++
10 20 (1.86%) R
11 13 (1.21%) Shell Script
12 11 (1.03%) Go
13 9 (0.84%) Kotlin
14 8 (0.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 8 (0.75%) Perl
15 7 (0.65%) Bicep
15 7 (0.65%) C
16 6 (0.56%) Scala
17 4 (0.37%) Ada
17 4 (0.37%) Rust
Qualifications
1 838 (78.10%) Degree
2 492 (45.85%) Computer Science Degree
3 201 (18.73%) Security Cleared
4 139 (12.95%) Master's Degree
5 124 (11.56%) SC Cleared
6 58 (5.41%) CISSP
7 44 (4.10%) Azure Certification
8 40 (3.73%) CISM
9 37 (3.45%) Microsoft Certification
10 34 (3.17%) PhD
11 31 (2.89%) TOGAF Certification
12 29 (2.70%) AWS Certification
12 29 (2.70%) DBS Check
13 28 (2.61%) PMI Certification
14 26 (2.42%) DV Cleared
14 26 (2.42%) PMP
15 23 (2.14%) Cisco Certification
16 22 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
17 19 (1.77%) CISA
18 15 (1.40%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (6.06%) Data Quality
1 65 (6.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 63 (5.87%) NIST
3 54 (5.03%) QA
4 32 (2.98%) GDPR
5 18 (1.68%) Accessibility
6 17 (1.58%) GRC
7 16 (1.49%) PCI DSS
8 13 (1.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (1.12%) NCSC
10 11 (1.03%) SLA
11 10 (0.93%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 10 (0.93%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 6 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
14 5 (0.47%) DO-254
14 5 (0.47%) Government Security Classifications
14 5 (0.47%) ISO 20022
14 5 (0.47%) PSD2
System Software
1 90 (8.39%) Docker
2 75 (6.99%) Active Directory
3 19 (1.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.84%) Firmware
5 8 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.65%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.56%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.37%) vSphere
9 3 (0.28%) VMware Workstation
10 2 (0.19%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.19%) Ceph
10 2 (0.19%) Squid
10 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.093%) ACF2
11 1 (0.093%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 1 (0.093%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.093%) HDFS
11 1 (0.093%) RACF
Systems Management
1 113 (10.53%) Kubernetes
2 54 (5.03%) Terraform
3 35 (3.26%) Ansible
4 26 (2.42%) Prometheus
5 25 (2.33%) Microsoft Intune
6 24 (2.24%) Grafana
7 13 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.37%) Kubeflow
9 3 (0.28%) Cisco CUCM
9 3 (0.28%) Foglight
9 3 (0.28%) HP ALM
9 3 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.28%) Puppet
9 3 (0.28%) SCCM
9 3 (0.28%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.19%) Consul
10 2 (0.19%) Control-M
10 2 (0.19%) Kibana
10 2 (0.19%) Network Intrusion Detection System
10 2 (0.19%) vRealize
Vendors
1 195 (18.17%) Microsoft
2 69 (6.43%) Oracle
3 51 (4.75%) Databricks
4 42 (3.91%) Google
5 38 (3.54%) IBM
6 35 (3.26%) ServiceNow
7 32 (2.98%) SAP
8 28 (2.61%) VMware
9 24 (2.24%) Splunk
10 22 (2.05%) Cisco
11 18 (1.68%) CyberArk
12 17 (1.58%) BeyondTrust
13 14 (1.30%) BiZZdesign
13 14 (1.30%) Informatica
13 14 (1.30%) Palo Alto
14 13 (1.21%) Okta
14 13 (1.21%) Salesforce
15 11 (1.03%) CheckPoint
15 11 (1.03%) Foundry
16 9 (0.84%) Citrix