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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 64 63
Rank change year-on-year -65 -1 +25
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,100 1,246 1,313
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.06% 3.79% 3.36%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.43% 4.19% 3.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 617 704 810
10th Percentile £178 £184 £325
25th Percentile £201 £355 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £453 £495 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.48% -10.00% -
75th Percentile £620 £650 £689
90th Percentile £750 £775 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £380 £420 £515
% change year-on-year -9.52% -18.41% -1.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 127 47 66
10th Percentile £25.43 £25.00 £20.68
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £37.50
Median hourly rate £75.00 £54.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +37.61% +3.81% -15.32%
75th Percentile £87.16 £69.46 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £88.00 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.50 £67.00 £55.63
% change year-on-year +21.64% +20.45% -7.29%

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 45,262 29,771 33,475
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.91% 90.46% 85.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,917 18,660 21,435
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,788 1,660 1,878
10th Percentile £14.46 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.30 £18.15
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.63% -5.12%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £64.13
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.30 £40.94
% change year-on-year +88.67% -43.09% +3.38%

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 August 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 6 August 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 6 August 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 -52 1,007 £452 -9.70% 1,827
UK excluding London -51 594 £380 -9.52% 772
London -66 437 £525 -12.50% 1,155
South East -6 249 £375 -16.67% 228
Work from Home -89 239 £500 -4.76% 684
North of England -49 139 £401 -10.29% 139
Midlands -57 91 £275 -16.35% 109
Yorkshire -14 76 £450 +25.70% 39
West Midlands -59 62 £375 +28.42% 52
North West -66 53 £377 -20.63% 62
East of England -27 48 £215 -52.22% 139
South West -75 31 £477 +121.09% 80
East Midlands -16 28 £253 -41.75% 57
Scotland -42 26 £400 -15.52% 48
North East -35 11 £195 -57.84% 39
Northern Ireland - 7 £350 - 21
Wales -19 5 £530 +17.78% 19

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 37 (3.36%) Confluence
2 30 (2.73%) SharePoint
3 26 (2.36%) Apache Spark
4 19 (1.73%) Apache Airflow
5 17 (1.55%) Apache
6 9 (0.82%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.55%) IIS
8 5 (0.45%) SAS
9 4 (0.36%) CMS
9 4 (0.36%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.27%) Camunda
10 3 (0.27%) Jupyter
11 2 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.18%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.18%) nginx
11 2 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.091%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.091%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.091%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 1 (0.091%) Tomcat
Applications
1 45 (4.09%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (2.91%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (1.36%) MS Visio
4 14 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.64%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.64%) Revit
6 5 (0.45%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.45%) Trello
7 2 (0.18%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.18%) CPLEX
7 2 (0.18%) Sketch
8 1 (0.091%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 13 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.45%) Aladdin
3 4 (0.36%) Workday HCM
4 3 (0.27%) Infor M3
4 3 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.27%) Primavera
4 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.18%) Actimize
5 2 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.18%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.18%) Workfront
6 1 (0.091%) Finacle
6 1 (0.091%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.091%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.091%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.091%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
6 1 (0.091%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.091%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 301 (27.36%) Azure
2 191 (17.36%) AWS
3 102 (9.27%) GCP
4 78 (7.09%) Power Platform
5 68 (6.18%) Entra ID
6 57 (5.18%) Microsoft 365
7 54 (4.91%) GitHub
8 48 (4.36%) SaaS
9 44 (4.00%) Azure DevOps
10 35 (3.18%) Snowflake
11 28 (2.55%) Serverless
12 22 (2.00%) GitHub Actions
12 22 (2.00%) PowerApps
13 16 (1.45%) Azure Data Factory
13 16 (1.45%) Microsoft Copilot
14 15 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
14 15 (1.36%) Power Automate
15 13 (1.18%) Azure AKS
15 13 (1.18%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 13 (1.18%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 43 (3.91%) Firewall
2 36 (3.27%) DNS
3 32 (2.91%) Network Security
4 31 (2.82%) VPN
5 25 (2.27%) TCP/IP
6 18 (1.64%) SSH
6 18 (1.64%) WAN
7 16 (1.45%) DHCP
8 14 (1.27%) LAN
9 12 (1.09%) Wireless
10 11 (1.00%) BGP
11 10 (0.91%) VLAN
12 8 (0.73%) HTTP
12 8 (0.73%) HTTPS
12 8 (0.73%) MPLS
12 8 (0.73%) OSPF
12 8 (0.73%) Wireshark
13 7 (0.64%) 3GPP
13 7 (0.64%) Cisco ASA
13 7 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (5.73%) Power BI
2 54 (4.91%) Relational Database
3 49 (4.45%) SQL Server
4 47 (4.27%) PostgreSQL
5 31 (2.82%) Data Warehouse
5 31 (2.82%) Metadata
6 30 (2.73%) MongoDB
7 28 (2.55%) NoSQL
8 25 (2.27%) Big Data
9 16 (1.45%) Tableau
10 15 (1.36%) Data Mining
11 14 (1.27%) MySQL
12 13 (1.18%) Redis
13 11 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
13 11 (1.00%) Elasticsearch
14 10 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
14 10 (0.91%) Data Lake
15 9 (0.82%) Hadoop
15 9 (0.82%) Oracle Database
15 9 (0.82%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 91 (8.27%) Git
2 50 (4.55%) JIRA
3 41 (3.73%) Jenkins
4 39 (3.55%) GitLab
5 32 (2.91%) Rational DOORS
6 15 (1.36%) Selenium
7 12 (1.09%) JUnit
8 11 (1.00%) Bitbucket
8 11 (1.00%) Gradle
9 9 (0.82%) TeamCity
10 8 (0.73%) Maven
10 8 (0.73%) SpecFlow
11 7 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
12 6 (0.55%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.55%) MLflow
12 6 (0.55%) REST Assured
12 6 (0.55%) SonarQube
12 6 (0.55%) Team Foundation Server
12 6 (0.55%) Visual Studio
13 5 (0.45%) Cucumber
General
1 443 (40.27%) Social Skills
2 244 (22.18%) Analytical Skills
3 228 (20.73%) Finance
4 89 (8.09%) Banking
5 64 (5.82%) Public Sector
6 63 (5.73%) Aerospace
7 49 (4.45%) Documentation Skills
8 39 (3.55%) Organisational Skills
9 37 (3.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 34 (3.09%) Telecoms
11 32 (2.91%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (2.55%) Manufacturing
13 27 (2.45%) Marketing
14 26 (2.36%) Legal
15 24 (2.18%) Front Office
16 19 (1.73%) Presentation Skills
17 16 (1.45%) Law
17 16 (1.45%) Military
17 16 (1.45%) Retail
18 12 (1.09%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 129 (11.73%) Developer
2 111 (10.09%) Senior
3 103 (9.36%) Architect
4 77 (7.00%) Lead
5 75 (6.82%) Analyst
6 40 (3.64%) Product Manager
7 39 (3.55%) Data Engineer
8 37 (3.36%) Software Engineer
9 34 (3.09%) Delivery Manager
10 31 (2.82%) Product Delivery Manager
11 29 (2.64%) Data Scientist
12 26 (2.36%) Junior
13 25 (2.27%) Solutions Architect
14 24 (2.18%) IT Support
14 24 (2.18%) Senior Developer
15 23 (2.09%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 23 (2.09%) Java Developer
15 23 (2.09%) Python Developer
15 23 (2.09%) Security Engineer
16 22 (2.00%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 91 (8.27%) REST
2 56 (5.09%) React
3 55 (5.00%) .NET
4 38 (3.45%) Kafka
5 37 (3.36%) RESTful
6 30 (2.73%) Spring
7 28 (2.55%) CSS
7 28 (2.55%) OAuth
8 27 (2.45%) HTML
9 24 (2.18%) AngularJS
9 24 (2.18%) PyTorch
10 23 (2.09%) Middleware
10 23 (2.09%) SAML
10 23 (2.09%) Spring Boot
11 21 (1.91%) JSON
11 21 (1.91%) OAuth2
11 21 (1.91%) OpenID
11 21 (1.91%) Web Services
12 19 (1.73%) TensorFlow
13 18 (1.64%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 100 (9.09%) Management Information System
2 91 (8.27%) Product Ownership
3 83 (7.55%) Algorithms
4 82 (7.45%) Onboarding
5 67 (6.09%) Cloud Native
6 66 (6.00%) Data Structures
7 49 (4.45%) Distributed Systems
8 31 (2.82%) AI Agents
9 27 (2.45%) Virtual Team
10 25 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
11 24 (2.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 23 (2.09%) Derivative
13 18 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
13 18 (1.64%) Hybrid Cloud
14 17 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
14 17 (1.55%) Fixed Income
14 17 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
15 16 (1.45%) Operational Technology
16 15 (1.36%) Data Centre
17 14 (1.27%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 129 (11.73%) Windows
2 110 (10.00%) Linux
3 32 (2.91%) Unix
4 27 (2.45%) Windows Server
5 21 (1.91%) Android
6 20 (1.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 17 (1.55%) Windows 10
8 12 (1.09%) Apple iOS
9 10 (0.91%) Ubuntu
10 8 (0.73%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.36%) Debian
11 4 (0.36%) Rocky
11 4 (0.36%) VMS
12 2 (0.18%) MVS
12 2 (0.18%) Solaris
12 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.18%) zOS
13 1 (0.091%) CentOS
13 1 (0.091%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.091%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 326 (29.64%) Problem-Solving
2 270 (24.55%) Agile
3 236 (21.45%) AI
4 201 (18.27%) CI/CD
5 196 (17.82%) Continuous Improvement
6 189 (17.18%) Software Engineering
7 165 (15.00%) DevOps
8 148 (13.45%) Analytics
9 139 (12.64%) Stakeholder Management
10 128 (11.64%) Cybersecurity
11 117 (10.64%) ITIL
12 114 (10.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 110 (10.00%) Mathematics
14 106 (9.64%) Machine Learning
15 93 (8.45%) Decision-Making
16 91 (8.27%) Data Science
16 91 (8.27%) Validation
17 90 (8.18%) Roadmaps
18 82 (7.45%) Mentoring
19 77 (7.00%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 302 (27.45%) Python
2 208 (18.91%) SQL
3 130 (11.82%) Java
4 73 (6.64%) PowerShell
5 68 (6.18%) JavaScript
6 64 (5.82%) C#
7 37 (3.36%) TypeScript
8 36 (3.27%) Bash
9 24 (2.18%) C++
10 16 (1.45%) R
11 13 (1.18%) Bicep
12 12 (1.09%) Kotlin
13 10 (0.91%) C
13 10 (0.91%) Shell Script
14 8 (0.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 8 (0.73%) Go
15 7 (0.64%) Scala
16 5 (0.45%) Apex Code
16 5 (0.45%) Perl
17 4 (0.36%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 839 (76.27%) Degree
2 487 (44.27%) Computer Science Degree
3 209 (19.00%) Security Cleared
4 126 (11.45%) SC Cleared
5 115 (10.45%) Master's Degree
6 53 (4.82%) CISSP
7 44 (4.00%) Azure Certification
8 42 (3.82%) Microsoft Certification
9 38 (3.45%) DBS Check
9 38 (3.45%) PhD
10 35 (3.18%) CISM
11 27 (2.45%) DV Cleared
11 27 (2.45%) PMI Certification
12 26 (2.36%) AWS Certification
12 26 (2.36%) PMP
13 25 (2.27%) Cisco Certification
13 25 (2.27%) TOGAF Certification
14 22 (2.00%) CISA
15 20 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
16 18 (1.64%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (6.27%) Data Quality
1 69 (6.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 62 (5.64%) NIST
3 53 (4.82%) QA
4 30 (2.73%) GDPR
5 16 (1.45%) Accessibility
6 15 (1.36%) GRC
7 14 (1.27%) SLA
8 13 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 11 (1.00%) HIPAA
9 11 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 11 (1.00%) NCSC
9 11 (1.00%) PCI DSS
10 10 (0.91%) NIST 800
11 7 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 5 (0.45%) COBIT
12 5 (0.45%) Government Security Classifications
12 5 (0.45%) ITGC
13 4 (0.36%) DO-254
13 4 (0.36%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 85 (7.73%) Docker
2 81 (7.36%) Active Directory
3 22 (2.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.82%) Firmware
4 9 (0.82%) Hyper-V
4 9 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.55%) VMware NSX
6 5 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
6 5 (0.45%) vSphere
7 3 (0.27%) ACF2
7 3 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
7 3 (0.27%) RACF
7 3 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
8 2 (0.18%) Ceph
8 2 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.18%) Squid
8 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.091%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.091%) HDFS
9 1 (0.091%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 102 (9.27%) Kubernetes
2 55 (5.00%) Terraform
3 39 (3.55%) Ansible
4 30 (2.73%) Microsoft Intune
5 24 (2.18%) Prometheus
6 19 (1.73%) Grafana
7 14 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (0.91%) SCCM
9 5 (0.45%) Argo
10 3 (0.27%) Cisco CUCM
10 3 (0.27%) Foglight
10 3 (0.27%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.27%) Kubeflow
10 3 (0.27%) Puppet
10 3 (0.27%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.18%) Control-M
11 2 (0.18%) Data Guard
11 2 (0.18%) Oracle RMAN
11 2 (0.18%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.18%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 205 (18.64%) Microsoft
2 60 (5.45%) Oracle
3 50 (4.55%) Databricks
4 42 (3.82%) IBM
5 38 (3.45%) Google
6 37 (3.36%) ServiceNow
7 32 (2.91%) VMware
8 28 (2.55%) SAP
9 23 (2.09%) Cisco
9 23 (2.09%) CyberArk
10 20 (1.82%) BeyondTrust
11 17 (1.55%) Splunk
12 14 (1.27%) Salesforce
13 11 (1.00%) Citrix
13 11 (1.00%) Palo Alto
14 10 (0.91%) Foundry
14 10 (0.91%) Okta
14 10 (0.91%) Red Hat
15 9 (0.82%) Apple
15 9 (0.82%) UiPath