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 6 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 79 67 80
Rank change year-on-year -12 +13 +51
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,183 1,150 1,227
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.25% 3.20% 2.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.65% 3.66% 3.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 754 678 825
10th Percentile £173 £350 £336
25th Percentile £313 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £474 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.86% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £630 £700 £700
90th Percentile £750 £841 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.04% +0.05% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 29 33
10th Percentile £26.40 £27.60 £32.32
25th Percentile £29.00 £41.25 £50.00
Median hourly rate £33.50 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -36.19% -12.50% +10.60%
75th Percentile £66.75 £68.75 £68.00
90th Percentile £81.20 £70.25 £79.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £50.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year -33.00% -13.04% +26.03%

All Process and 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 32,432 31,463 40,054
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.97% 87.43% 88.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,408 19,089 26,807
10th Percentile £300 £309 £312
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,095 1,098 1,556
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.24 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.20 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.75 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.21% -22.94% +21.43%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £74.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -30.37% -23.53% +30.77%

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 6 December 2025.

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 6 December 2025.

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 6 December 2025. 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 -9 1,039 £475 -17.39% 1,432
UK excluding London +8 569 £400 -20.04% 1,203
London -26 509 £536 -10.75% 415
Work from Home -7 309 £475 -14.99% 2,054
North of England +10 188 £375 -28.57% 219
South East +32 133 £360 -28.00% 408
Midlands -13 101 £475 -5.00% 158
Yorkshire +19 93 £450 -14.29% 71
North West +4 92 £358 -32.64% 131
West Midlands -12 69 £500 -13.04% 81
South West +9 53 £425 -39.29% 133
East of England -15 47 £450 -5.26% 204
Scotland +8 46 £450 -4.51% 71
East Midlands 0 32 £447 +25.56% 67
Wales +3 13 £160 -50.39% 24
North East -6 4 £333 -35.07% 18
Northern Ireland -8 3 - - 18

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 53 (4.48%) Confluence
2 45 (3.80%) SharePoint
3 32 (2.70%) Apache Spark
4 26 (2.20%) Microsoft Exchange
5 12 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (0.85%) Apache
7 8 (0.68%) Jupyter
8 7 (0.59%) nginx
9 6 (0.51%) IIS
10 5 (0.42%) SAS
10 5 (0.42%) Skype for Business
10 5 (0.42%) Smallworld
11 4 (0.34%) GeoServer
12 3 (0.25%) Ethereum
12 3 (0.25%) Hyperledger
12 3 (0.25%) Luigi
12 3 (0.25%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.17%) Moodle
13 2 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 59 (4.99%) Microsoft Office
2 28 (2.37%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.51%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.42%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.42%) Simulink
6 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.085%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.085%) Oracle Smart View
7 1 (0.085%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 23 (1.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.51%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 4 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
4 4 (0.34%) SAP ERP
5 3 (0.25%) Bloomberg AIM
5 3 (0.25%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.25%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.25%) SAP PLM
5 3 (0.25%) Temenos T24
6 2 (0.17%) Endur
6 2 (0.17%) Maximo
6 2 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
6 2 (0.17%) Oracle EBS R12
6 2 (0.17%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.17%) SAP FS
6 2 (0.17%) SAP GRC
6 2 (0.17%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 276 (23.33%) Azure
2 228 (19.27%) AWS
3 131 (11.07%) GCP
4 72 (6.09%) Power Platform
5 70 (5.92%) GitHub
6 69 (5.83%) Serverless
7 53 (4.48%) Microsoft 365
8 42 (3.55%) Azure DevOps
9 35 (2.96%) SaaS
10 28 (2.37%) Entra ID
11 27 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
12 24 (2.03%) Cloud Computing
13 19 (1.61%) AWS Lambda
13 19 (1.61%) Azure Data Factory
13 19 (1.61%) Power Automate
13 19 (1.61%) PowerApps
13 19 (1.61%) Snowflake
14 18 (1.52%) Amazon S3
15 17 (1.44%) Amazon ECS
15 17 (1.44%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 44 (3.72%) Firewall
2 41 (3.47%) DNS
3 27 (2.28%) DHCP
4 21 (1.78%) HTTP
5 20 (1.69%) Network Security
6 19 (1.61%) Wireless
7 18 (1.52%) VPN
8 16 (1.35%) Cisco IOS
9 15 (1.27%) SSH
10 14 (1.18%) VoIP
11 13 (1.10%) Skype
11 13 (1.10%) TCP/IP
12 12 (1.01%) WAN
13 10 (0.85%) Internet
13 10 (0.85%) LAN
14 9 (0.76%) BGP
14 9 (0.76%) VLAN
15 8 (0.68%) WLAN
16 7 (0.59%) IPv4
16 7 (0.59%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (6.42%) PostgreSQL
2 69 (5.83%) NoSQL
3 59 (4.99%) Relational Database
4 53 (4.48%) Power BI
5 42 (3.55%) Data Warehouse
6 40 (3.38%) SQL Server
7 30 (2.54%) Big Data
7 30 (2.54%) MySQL
7 30 (2.54%) Tableau
8 16 (1.35%) Redis
9 13 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
9 13 (1.10%) MongoDB
10 12 (1.01%) Hadoop
10 12 (1.01%) RDBMS
11 11 (0.93%) Data Lake
11 11 (0.93%) Metadata
12 9 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
12 9 (0.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 7 (0.59%) Apache Cassandra
13 7 (0.59%) KDB
Development Applications
1 110 (9.30%) JIRA
2 97 (8.20%) Git
3 94 (7.95%) Jenkins
4 83 (7.02%) GitLab
5 29 (2.45%) Liquibase
6 23 (1.94%) Postman
7 16 (1.35%) Artifactory
8 15 (1.27%) Selenium
8 15 (1.27%) Visual Studio
9 11 (0.93%) Bitbucket
10 9 (0.76%) Cucumber
10 9 (0.76%) MLflow
11 8 (0.68%) JUnit
12 7 (0.59%) Cypress.io
13 6 (0.51%) Appium
13 6 (0.51%) CircleCI
13 6 (0.51%) IntelliJ
13 6 (0.51%) PyCharm
14 5 (0.42%) SonarQube
14 5 (0.42%) webpack
General
1 565 (47.76%) Social Skills
2 321 (27.13%) Finance
3 261 (22.06%) Analytical Skills
4 129 (10.90%) Banking
5 64 (5.41%) Public Sector
6 42 (3.55%) Financial Institution
6 42 (3.55%) Marketing
7 41 (3.47%) Organisational Skills
8 39 (3.30%) Front Office
9 33 (2.79%) Influencing Skills
9 33 (2.79%) Manufacturing
10 31 (2.62%) Investment Banking
11 30 (2.54%) Legal
11 30 (2.54%) Telecoms
12 25 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
13 24 (2.03%) Presentation Skills
14 22 (1.86%) Electronics
15 18 (1.52%) Retail
16 16 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 13 (1.10%) Military
Job Titles
1 229 (19.36%) Developer
2 108 (9.13%) Analyst
3 96 (8.11%) Architect
4 88 (7.44%) Senior
5 74 (6.26%) Lead
6 62 (5.24%) Software Engineer
7 38 (3.21%) Java Developer
8 37 (3.13%) Data Scientist
9 36 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
10 32 (2.70%) Senior Developer
11 31 (2.62%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 30 (2.54%) Business Analyst
12 30 (2.54%) Python Engineer
13 29 (2.45%) Consultant
14 27 (2.28%) Data Engineer
15 25 (2.11%) IT Support
15 25 (2.11%) Python Developer
16 23 (1.94%) Full-Stack Developer
17 22 (1.86%) AWS Engineer
18 20 (1.69%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 126 (10.65%) REST
2 82 (6.93%) RESTful
3 68 (5.75%) .NET
4 64 (5.41%) HTML
5 52 (4.40%) React
6 49 (4.14%) CSS
7 44 (3.72%) Elastic Stack
7 44 (3.72%) Kafka
8 43 (3.63%) Node.js
9 40 (3.38%) JSON
10 39 (3.30%) SOAP
11 37 (3.13%) Middleware
11 37 (3.13%) OAuth
12 35 (2.96%) TensorFlow
12 35 (2.96%) XML
13 33 (2.79%) PyTorch
14 31 (2.62%) Web Services
15 30 (2.54%) AngularJS
15 30 (2.54%) Spring
16 29 (2.45%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 113 (9.55%) Management Information System
2 99 (8.37%) Algorithms
3 88 (7.44%) Cloud Native
4 61 (5.16%) Distributed Systems
5 57 (4.82%) Data Structures
6 53 (4.48%) Product Ownership
7 41 (3.47%) Public Cloud
8 36 (3.04%) Data Protection Act
9 28 (2.37%) Security Posture
9 28 (2.37%) Virtual Team
10 27 (2.28%) Mobile App
11 26 (2.20%) Equities
12 25 (2.11%) Derivative
13 24 (2.03%) Data Centre
13 24 (2.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 23 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
15 22 (1.86%) Onboarding
16 21 (1.78%) Fixed Income
17 19 (1.61%) Distributed Computing
17 19 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 156 (13.19%) Linux
2 107 (9.04%) Windows
3 59 (4.99%) Unix
4 26 (2.20%) Android
5 24 (2.03%) Windows Server
6 23 (1.94%) Mac OS
7 17 (1.44%) Apple iOS
8 8 (0.68%) Windows 10
9 6 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 4 (0.34%) VMS
11 2 (0.17%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.085%) CentOS
12 1 (0.085%) Debian
12 1 (0.085%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 391 (33.05%) Problem-Solving
2 357 (30.18%) Agile
3 242 (20.46%) DevOps
4 223 (18.85%) CI/CD
5 191 (16.15%) Software Engineering
6 175 (14.79%) AI
7 145 (12.26%) Microservices
8 141 (11.92%) Containerisation
9 131 (11.07%) Analytics
10 130 (10.99%) Machine Learning
11 117 (9.89%) Cybersecurity
12 116 (9.81%) Data Science
13 115 (9.72%) Mathematics
14 109 (9.21%) Stakeholder Management
15 104 (8.79%) Continuous Improvement
15 104 (8.79%) ITIL
16 97 (8.20%) Change Management
17 96 (8.11%) Decision-Making
18 91 (7.69%) Data Modelling
18 91 (7.69%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 402 (33.98%) Python
2 213 (18.01%) SQL
3 174 (14.71%) Java
4 121 (10.23%) JavaScript
5 65 (5.49%) PowerShell
6 63 (5.33%) TypeScript
7 62 (5.24%) C#
8 59 (4.99%) Go
9 51 (4.31%) Bash
10 49 (4.14%) C++
11 25 (2.11%) R
12 22 (1.86%) Perl
13 17 (1.44%) Ruby
14 14 (1.18%) Kotlin
15 13 (1.10%) Shell Script
16 10 (0.85%) MATLAB
17 9 (0.76%) Apex Code
17 9 (0.76%) C
18 8 (0.68%) ABAP
18 8 (0.68%) Swift
Qualifications
1 960 (81.15%) Degree
2 628 (53.09%) Computer Science Degree
3 233 (19.70%) Master's Degree
4 122 (10.31%) Security Cleared
5 92 (7.78%) SC Cleared
6 68 (5.75%) DBS Check
7 59 (4.99%) CISSP
8 54 (4.56%) PhD
9 42 (3.55%) AWS Certification
10 38 (3.21%) Azure Certification
11 37 (3.13%) Cisco Certification
11 37 (3.13%) Microsoft Certification
12 35 (2.96%) CISM
13 29 (2.45%) PMI Certification
14 26 (2.20%) PMP
15 25 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
16 22 (1.86%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 22 (1.86%) CCNA
17 21 (1.78%) CCNP
18 19 (1.61%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (6.26%) QA
2 68 (5.75%) GDPR
3 66 (5.58%) Data Quality
4 43 (3.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 28 (2.37%) NIST
6 20 (1.69%) GRC
7 17 (1.44%) Accessibility
8 12 (1.01%) PCI DSS
8 12 (1.01%) SLA
9 11 (0.93%) Def Stans
10 9 (0.76%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 8 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials
12 7 (0.59%) COBIT
12 7 (0.59%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.51%) PMO
14 5 (0.42%) DO-254
14 5 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 4 (0.34%) NCSC
15 4 (0.34%) SEPA
16 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
System Software
1 155 (13.10%) Docker
2 50 (4.23%) Active Directory
3 26 (2.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (0.59%) VMware NSX
5 5 (0.42%) Firmware
5 5 (0.42%) Microsoft Virtual Server
5 5 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
6 4 (0.34%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.34%) vSphere
7 2 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.085%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.085%) HDFS
8 1 (0.085%) PowerHA
8 1 (0.085%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 141 (11.92%) Kubernetes
2 97 (8.20%) Terraform
3 75 (6.34%) Ansible
4 53 (4.48%) Grafana
5 41 (3.47%) Prometheus
6 17 (1.44%) Puppet
7 16 (1.35%) SCCM
8 9 (0.76%) Kibana
8 9 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
8 9 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.59%) Argo
9 7 (0.59%) CSIRT
9 7 (0.59%) QRadar
10 6 (0.51%) Progress Chef
10 6 (0.51%) WSUS
11 5 (0.42%) SCOM
12 4 (0.34%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.25%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.25%) Kustomize
13 3 (0.25%) vRealize
Vendors
1 198 (16.74%) Microsoft
2 75 (6.34%) Splunk
3 71 (6.00%) Google
4 51 (4.31%) SAP
5 46 (3.89%) Oracle
6 45 (3.80%) Cisco
7 44 (3.72%) ServiceNow
8 37 (3.13%) Salesforce
9 34 (2.87%) Databricks
10 31 (2.62%) VMware
11 29 (2.45%) IBM
12 14 (1.18%) Red Hat
13 13 (1.10%) Palo Alto
14 12 (1.01%) BiZZdesign
14 12 (1.01%) OpenAI
15 11 (0.93%) Foundry
15 11 (0.93%) Informatica
16 10 (0.85%) CyberArk
17 9 (0.76%) CheckPoint
17 9 (0.76%) Workday