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

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 74 77
Rank change year-on-year -15 +3 +56
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,128 977 1,220
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.92% 3.11% 2.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.34% 3.49% 3.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 734 566 791
10th Percentile £175 £356 £319
25th Percentile £312 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £668
90th Percentile £775 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 21 72
10th Percentile £26.43 £30.78 £28.21
25th Percentile £28.44 £33.75 £42.19
Median hourly rate £33.50 £43.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.09% -21.82% +4.76%
75th Percentile £64.75 £53.75 £66.44
90th Percentile £72.30 £71.00 £74.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -10.67% -31.82% +4.76%

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 33,770 28,023 38,738
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.35% 89.09% 87.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,366 17,006 25,501
10th Percentile £305 £308 £300
25th Percentile £406 £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 £721 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £499 £500
% change year-on-year -3.86% -0.15% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,033 877 2,012
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £16.75
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.96
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -9.61% +10.63%
75th Percentile £58.00 £62.50 £62.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.71 £30.78 £36.50
% change year-on-year -19.72% -15.67% +35.86%

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 30 January 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 30 January 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 30 January 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 -11 994 £475 -13.64% 858
UK excluding London +10 558 £400 -20.00% 696
London -34 465 £538 -6.52% 296
Work from Home -16 280 £463 -19.57% 422
North of England +44 193 £367 -30.14% 117
South East +19 136 £318 -36.50% 279
Yorkshire +28 104 £476 -4.80% 33
Midlands -30 95 £500 +21.21% 78
North West +20 86 £350 -33.33% 63
West Midlands -24 67 £525 +5.00% 50
South West +6 57 £500 -23.08% 63
Scotland -2 43 £596 +25.42% 40
East of England -36 33 £475 -15.10% 102
East Midlands -17 28 £447 +25.56% 28
Wales -8 13 £160 -44.83% 24
Northern Ireland -5 4 - - 11
North East -13 4 £207 -59.71% 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 62 (5.50%) Confluence
2 37 (3.28%) SharePoint
3 36 (3.19%) Apache Spark
4 21 (1.86%) Microsoft Exchange
5 15 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
6 14 (1.24%) Apache
7 7 (0.62%) Jupyter
7 7 (0.62%) nginx
8 5 (0.44%) Skype for Business
8 5 (0.44%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.35%) GeoServer
9 4 (0.35%) IIS
9 4 (0.35%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 4 (0.35%) SAS
10 3 (0.27%) Ethereum
10 3 (0.27%) Hyperledger
10 3 (0.27%) Luigi
10 3 (0.27%) Palantir Foundry
11 2 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
Applications
1 38 (3.37%) Microsoft Office
2 24 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.89%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.53%) Simulink
6 5 (0.44%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.089%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.089%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 24 (2.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.35%) Payment Gateway
3 4 (0.35%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.18%) Maximo
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.18%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.18%) SAP CX
5 2 (0.18%) SAP FS
5 2 (0.18%) SAP Travel Management
5 2 (0.18%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.089%) ION Anvil
6 1 (0.089%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.089%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.089%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 289 (25.62%) Azure
2 204 (18.09%) AWS
3 118 (10.46%) GCP
4 71 (6.29%) GitHub
4 71 (6.29%) Power Platform
5 60 (5.32%) Serverless
6 56 (4.96%) Microsoft 365
7 47 (4.17%) SaaS
8 43 (3.81%) Azure DevOps
9 32 (2.84%) GitHub Actions
10 29 (2.57%) Entra ID
11 22 (1.95%) IaaS
12 20 (1.77%) Azure Data Factory
12 20 (1.77%) Cloud Computing
12 20 (1.77%) Power Automate
12 20 (1.77%) PowerApps
13 18 (1.60%) Azure Machine Learning
13 18 (1.60%) Snowflake
14 17 (1.51%) AWS Lambda
15 16 (1.42%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 46 (4.08%) Firewall
2 35 (3.10%) DNS
3 24 (2.13%) Network Security
4 22 (1.95%) TCP/IP
5 20 (1.77%) HTTP
6 14 (1.24%) DHCP
7 13 (1.15%) Skype
8 12 (1.06%) BGP
8 12 (1.06%) Wireless
9 11 (0.98%) LAN
9 11 (0.98%) SSH
9 11 (0.98%) WAN
10 10 (0.89%) VLAN
10 10 (0.89%) VoIP
10 10 (0.89%) VPN
11 9 (0.80%) Cisco IOS
11 9 (0.80%) Internet
11 9 (0.80%) OSPF
12 7 (0.62%) IPv4
12 7 (0.62%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 67 (5.94%) PostgreSQL
2 60 (5.32%) NoSQL
3 54 (4.79%) Relational Database
4 51 (4.52%) Power BI
5 45 (3.99%) Data Warehouse
6 41 (3.63%) SQL Server
7 40 (3.55%) MySQL
8 33 (2.93%) Big Data
9 26 (2.30%) Tableau
10 19 (1.68%) Elasticsearch
11 15 (1.33%) Metadata
12 14 (1.24%) Hadoop
12 14 (1.24%) MongoDB
13 12 (1.06%) Data Lake
13 12 (1.06%) Redis
14 9 (0.80%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 8 (0.71%) Apache Cassandra
15 8 (0.71%) KDB
15 8 (0.71%) Kdb+
15 8 (0.71%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 91 (8.07%) JIRA
2 89 (7.89%) Git
3 69 (6.12%) Jenkins
4 60 (5.32%) GitLab
5 22 (1.95%) Liquibase
6 18 (1.60%) Postman
7 13 (1.15%) Selenium
8 10 (0.89%) JUnit
9 9 (0.80%) Jaeger
9 9 (0.80%) MLflow
10 8 (0.71%) Bitbucket
10 8 (0.71%) CircleCI
10 8 (0.71%) Visual Studio
11 7 (0.62%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.53%) Appium
12 6 (0.53%) Artifactory
12 6 (0.53%) XCUITest
13 5 (0.44%) Charles Proxy
13 5 (0.44%) PyCharm
13 5 (0.44%) SonarQube
General
1 520 (46.10%) Social Skills
2 294 (26.06%) Finance
3 263 (23.32%) Analytical Skills
4 115 (10.20%) Banking
5 70 (6.21%) Public Sector
6 41 (3.63%) Financial Institution
6 41 (3.63%) Marketing
7 39 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
8 35 (3.10%) Organisational Skills
9 34 (3.01%) Legal
10 32 (2.84%) Presentation Skills
11 31 (2.75%) Telecoms
12 29 (2.57%) Front Office
12 29 (2.57%) Influencing Skills
13 26 (2.30%) Electronics
14 24 (2.13%) Manufacturing
15 23 (2.04%) Investment Banking
16 15 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 15 (1.33%) Military
17 13 (1.15%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 204 (18.09%) Developer
2 97 (8.60%) Analyst
3 96 (8.51%) Architect
4 84 (7.45%) Lead
5 81 (7.18%) Senior
6 53 (4.70%) Software Engineer
7 42 (3.72%) Solutions Architect
8 31 (2.75%) Data Scientist
9 29 (2.57%) Technical Support
10 28 (2.48%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 28 (2.48%) Python Developer
11 26 (2.30%) Business Analyst
11 26 (2.30%) IT Support
12 25 (2.22%) Senior Developer
13 24 (2.13%) Consultant
14 23 (2.04%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 22 (1.95%) Java Developer
15 22 (1.95%) Site Engineer
16 21 (1.86%) Data Engineer
17 20 (1.77%) Machine Learning Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 116 (10.28%) REST
2 78 (6.91%) RESTful
3 60 (5.32%) .NET
4 49 (4.34%) HTML
5 46 (4.08%) Elastic Stack
6 43 (3.81%) Middleware
6 43 (3.81%) React
7 41 (3.63%) JSON
7 41 (3.63%) OAuth
8 38 (3.37%) XML
9 36 (3.19%) Kafka
9 36 (3.19%) SOAP
10 33 (2.93%) CSS
11 31 (2.75%) TensorFlow
12 30 (2.66%) Node.js
12 30 (2.66%) PyTorch
13 27 (2.39%) LangChain
14 22 (1.95%) Spring
15 21 (1.86%) Spring Boot
16 19 (1.68%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 133 (11.79%) Management Information System
2 90 (7.98%) Cloud Native
3 84 (7.45%) Algorithms
4 53 (4.70%) Distributed Systems
5 48 (4.26%) Product Ownership
6 45 (3.99%) Data Structures
7 31 (2.75%) Data Protection Act
7 31 (2.75%) Equities
7 31 (2.75%) Onboarding
8 30 (2.66%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.30%) Security Posture
10 23 (2.04%) Derivative
10 23 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
10 23 (2.04%) Virtual Team
11 22 (1.95%) Mobile App
12 21 (1.86%) Data Centre
12 21 (1.86%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 20 (1.77%) AI Agents
13 20 (1.77%) Distributed Computing
14 19 (1.68%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 173 (15.34%) Linux
2 125 (11.08%) Windows
3 63 (5.59%) Unix
4 28 (2.48%) Android
5 23 (2.04%) Windows Server
6 20 (1.77%) Mac OS
7 19 (1.68%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.89%) Windows 10
9 6 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 3 (0.27%) VMS
11 2 (0.18%) Debian
11 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.18%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.089%) Embedded Linux
12 1 (0.089%) Kali Linux
12 1 (0.089%) Rocky
12 1 (0.089%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 387 (34.31%) Problem-Solving
2 307 (27.22%) Agile
3 242 (21.45%) DevOps
4 221 (19.59%) CI/CD
5 203 (18.00%) AI
6 187 (16.58%) Software Engineering
7 155 (13.74%) Microservices
8 142 (12.59%) Containerisation
9 129 (11.44%) Cybersecurity
10 124 (10.99%) Analytics
10 124 (10.99%) Machine Learning
11 113 (10.02%) Data Modelling
12 112 (9.93%) Stakeholder Management
13 111 (9.84%) Data Science
14 110 (9.75%) Continuous Improvement
15 103 (9.13%) Mathematics
16 91 (8.07%) Data Governance
16 91 (8.07%) Decision-Making
17 84 (7.45%) Validation
18 83 (7.36%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 363 (32.18%) Python
2 206 (18.26%) SQL
3 151 (13.39%) Java
4 107 (9.49%) JavaScript
5 59 (5.23%) PowerShell
6 58 (5.14%) TypeScript
7 54 (4.79%) C#
8 52 (4.61%) Go
9 49 (4.34%) Bash
9 49 (4.34%) C++
10 24 (2.13%) Perl
11 19 (1.68%) R
12 16 (1.42%) Kotlin
13 15 (1.33%) Shell Script
14 14 (1.24%) Rust
15 10 (0.89%) MATLAB
15 10 (0.89%) Ruby
16 9 (0.80%) C
16 9 (0.80%) Swift
17 8 (0.71%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 928 (82.27%) Degree
2 617 (54.70%) Computer Science Degree
3 234 (20.74%) Master's Degree
4 144 (12.77%) Security Cleared
5 105 (9.31%) SC Cleared
6 68 (6.03%) CISSP
7 52 (4.61%) PhD
8 50 (4.43%) DBS Check
9 47 (4.17%) CISM
10 41 (3.63%) Azure Certification
11 34 (3.01%) Microsoft Certification
12 31 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
13 30 (2.66%) AWS Certification
13 30 (2.66%) TOGAF Certification
14 28 (2.48%) Cisco Certification
15 27 (2.39%) DV Cleared
16 26 (2.30%) PMI Certification
17 21 (1.86%) CompTIA Security+
18 19 (1.68%) ITIL Certification
18 19 (1.68%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (6.29%) QA
2 59 (5.23%) GDPR
3 51 (4.52%) Data Quality
4 43 (3.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 31 (2.75%) NIST
6 18 (1.60%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.51%) GRC
8 14 (1.24%) Accessibility
9 11 (0.98%) Def Stans
10 8 (0.71%) HIPAA
10 8 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.62%) PSD2
12 6 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
12 6 (0.53%) DO-254
12 6 (0.53%) SLA
13 5 (0.44%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 4 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
14 4 (0.35%) ISO 20022
14 4 (0.35%) NCSC
14 4 (0.35%) Solvency II
System Software
1 166 (14.72%) Docker
2 54 (4.79%) Active Directory
3 23 (2.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.89%) Firmware
5 6 (0.53%) VMware NSX
6 5 (0.44%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 5 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
7 4 (0.35%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.18%) KVM
8 2 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.089%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.089%) HDFS
9 1 (0.089%) PowerHA
9 1 (0.089%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 158 (14.01%) Kubernetes
2 96 (8.51%) Terraform
3 67 (5.94%) Ansible
4 54 (4.79%) Grafana
5 42 (3.72%) Prometheus
6 22 (1.95%) Puppet
7 15 (1.33%) Kibana
7 15 (1.33%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (1.24%) SCCM
9 13 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
10 9 (0.80%) Kiali
11 7 (0.62%) Argo
12 6 (0.53%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.53%) WSUS
13 4 (0.35%) QRadar
13 4 (0.35%) SCOM
14 3 (0.27%) Control-M
14 3 (0.27%) CSIRT
15 2 (0.18%) Knative
15 2 (0.18%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 185 (16.40%) Microsoft
2 93 (8.24%) Splunk
3 60 (5.32%) Google
3 60 (5.32%) Oracle
4 54 (4.79%) SAP
5 36 (3.19%) Databricks
6 30 (2.66%) Cisco
6 30 (2.66%) Salesforce
7 27 (2.39%) VMware
8 25 (2.22%) ServiceNow
9 21 (1.86%) BiZZdesign
10 20 (1.77%) Informatica
11 18 (1.60%) IBM
12 14 (1.24%) MuleSoft
12 14 (1.24%) OpenAI
12 14 (1.24%) Palo Alto
12 14 (1.24%) Red Hat
13 11 (0.98%) Foundry
13 11 (0.98%) Okta
13 11 (0.98%) Software AG