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

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 101 71 72
Rank change year-on-year -30 +1 +49
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,112 974 1,238
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.48% 3.35% 2.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.90% 3.70% 3.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 677 569 770
10th Percentile £176 £269 £315
25th Percentile £325 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -6.38%
75th Percentile £656 £675 £655
90th Percentile £775 £800 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 31 87
10th Percentile £26.75 £27.00 £22.73
25th Percentile £55.75 £30.78 £41.88
Median hourly rate £83.00 £43.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +93.02% -21.82% +4.76%
75th Percentile £88.00 £65.38 £65.63
90th Percentile - £82.25 £74.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.00 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +121.33% -31.82% +22.22%

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 38,381 26,317 38,146
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.55% 90.50% 86.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,335 17,078 24,751
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £635 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,256 968 2,345
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.77
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.12 £15.89
Median hourly rate £35.77 £31.76 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.61% -2.28% -10.41%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £30.62 £31.50
% change year-on-year +14.32% -2.81% -12.50%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -33 978 £500 -5.93% 826
UK excluding London -31 553 £400 -20.00% 618
London -39 451 £550 -8.56% 330
Work from Home -37 262 £520 -7.56% 306
South East -13 173 £400 -20.00% 227
North of England -3 162 £390 -27.91% 115
Yorkshire -5 87 £525 +26.81% 35
Midlands -50 83 £475 +90.00% 84
North West -20 72 £350 -40.73% 59
West Midlands -53 65 £475 +143.59% 51
South West -33 49 £477 -9.14% 56
East of England -34 41 £400 -38.46% 91
Scotland +1 36 £610 +19.02% 34
East Midlands -27 18 £339 -4.92% 33
Wales -19 15 £160 -44.35% 19
Northern Ireland -3 5 £369 -38.54% 9
North East -15 4 £216 -57.95% 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 57 (5.13%) Confluence
2 42 (3.78%) Apache Spark
3 27 (2.43%) SharePoint
4 18 (1.62%) Apache
5 16 (1.44%) Apache Airflow
5 16 (1.44%) Microsoft Exchange
6 6 (0.54%) Jupyter
7 4 (0.36%) OpenStack
7 4 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 3 (0.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 3 (0.27%) Palantir Foundry
8 3 (0.27%) SAS
9 2 (0.18%) CMS
9 2 (0.18%) IIS
9 2 (0.18%) nginx
9 2 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.090%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.090%) Oracle Service Bus
10 1 (0.090%) Tomcat
Applications
1 32 (2.88%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (1.62%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (1.08%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.54%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.36%) Simulink
7 3 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.18%) Trello
9 1 (0.090%) Navisworks
9 1 (0.090%) Revit
Business Applications
1 23 (2.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.45%) Aladdin
3 5 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
4 4 (0.36%) SAP ERP
5 3 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
5 3 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
6 2 (0.18%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.090%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.090%) Maximo
7 1 (0.090%) Oracle HRMS
7 1 (0.090%) SAP PM
7 1 (0.090%) SAP SM
7 1 (0.090%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.090%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 314 (28.24%) Azure
2 206 (18.53%) AWS
3 113 (10.16%) GCP
4 70 (6.29%) Power Platform
5 60 (5.40%) GitHub
6 53 (4.77%) SaaS
7 51 (4.59%) Microsoft 365
8 44 (3.96%) Azure DevOps
9 42 (3.78%) Serverless
10 37 (3.33%) Entra ID
11 25 (2.25%) Snowflake
12 24 (2.16%) GitHub Actions
13 23 (2.07%) IaaS
14 21 (1.89%) AWS CloudFormation
15 20 (1.80%) Azure Data Factory
16 19 (1.71%) Azure Machine Learning
16 19 (1.71%) Cloud Computing
17 18 (1.62%) Power Automate
17 18 (1.62%) PowerApps
18 16 (1.44%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 50 (4.50%) Firewall
2 32 (2.88%) DNS
3 29 (2.61%) TCP/IP
4 18 (1.62%) BGP
4 18 (1.62%) Network Security
4 18 (1.62%) WAN
5 15 (1.35%) HTTP
5 15 (1.35%) LAN
6 13 (1.17%) VLAN
7 12 (1.08%) OSPF
8 11 (0.99%) VPN
8 11 (0.99%) Wireless
9 10 (0.90%) IPv4
9 10 (0.90%) SSH
10 9 (0.81%) Cisco IOS
10 9 (0.81%) HTTPS
11 8 (0.72%) DHCP
11 8 (0.72%) Skype
12 7 (0.63%) SAN
12 7 (0.63%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (6.74%) PostgreSQL
2 54 (4.86%) Relational Database
3 50 (4.50%) Power BI
4 47 (4.23%) NoSQL
5 45 (4.05%) SQL Server
6 43 (3.87%) Data Warehouse
7 38 (3.42%) Big Data
8 35 (3.15%) MySQL
9 24 (2.16%) Tableau
10 22 (1.98%) Hadoop
11 21 (1.89%) Metadata
12 20 (1.80%) MongoDB
13 16 (1.44%) Data Lake
14 15 (1.35%) Elasticsearch
15 12 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 11 (0.99%) Amazon RDS
16 11 (0.99%) Redis
17 10 (0.90%) Snowflake Schema
18 8 (0.72%) Star Schema
19 7 (0.63%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 89 (8.00%) Git
2 80 (7.19%) JIRA
3 61 (5.49%) Jenkins
4 50 (4.50%) GitLab
5 28 (2.52%) Rational DOORS
6 12 (1.08%) MLflow
6 12 (1.08%) Postman
6 12 (1.08%) Selenium
7 9 (0.81%) Jaeger
7 9 (0.81%) Liquibase
8 8 (0.72%) Gradle
9 7 (0.63%) Bitbucket
9 7 (0.63%) CircleCI
9 7 (0.63%) Cypress.io
10 6 (0.54%) JUnit
11 5 (0.45%) Artifactory
11 5 (0.45%) Maven
11 5 (0.45%) PyCharm
11 5 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 4 (0.36%) REST Assured
General
1 478 (42.99%) Social Skills
2 284 (25.54%) Finance
3 241 (21.67%) Analytical Skills
4 114 (10.25%) Banking
5 71 (6.38%) Public Sector
6 51 (4.59%) Aerospace
7 48 (4.32%) Documentation Skills
8 46 (4.14%) Marketing
9 36 (3.24%) Legal
10 35 (3.15%) Influencing Skills
10 35 (3.15%) Presentation Skills
11 34 (3.06%) Telecoms
12 31 (2.79%) Financial Institution
13 28 (2.52%) Front Office
14 27 (2.43%) Electronics
15 24 (2.16%) Manufacturing
16 23 (2.07%) Investment Banking
16 23 (2.07%) Organisational Skills
17 22 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 19 (1.71%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 142 (12.77%) Developer
2 111 (9.98%) Architect
3 99 (8.90%) Lead
4 88 (7.91%) Analyst
5 82 (7.37%) Senior
6 45 (4.05%) Software Engineer
7 41 (3.69%) Solutions Architect
8 39 (3.51%) Data Scientist
9 38 (3.42%) Delivery Manager
10 35 (3.15%) Product Manager
11 32 (2.88%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 29 (2.61%) Python Developer
12 29 (2.61%) Technical Support
13 28 (2.52%) Product Delivery Manager
14 26 (2.34%) Data Engineer
15 25 (2.25%) Business Analyst
15 25 (2.25%) Consultant
16 23 (2.07%) Java Developer
17 22 (1.98%) Systems Delivery Manager
17 22 (1.98%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 104 (9.35%) REST
2 60 (5.40%) RESTful
3 57 (5.13%) .NET
4 51 (4.59%) React
5 44 (3.96%) Kafka
6 40 (3.60%) Middleware
7 37 (3.33%) Elastic Stack
7 37 (3.33%) PyTorch
8 34 (3.06%) Spring Boot
8 34 (3.06%) TensorFlow
9 32 (2.88%) JSON
10 31 (2.79%) XML
11 30 (2.70%) Spring
12 26 (2.34%) OAuth
12 26 (2.34%) SOAP
13 23 (2.07%) HTML
14 22 (1.98%) LangChain
14 22 (1.98%) Pandas
15 19 (1.71%) Node.js
16 17 (1.53%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 112 (10.07%) Management Information System
2 93 (8.36%) Algorithms
3 86 (7.73%) Cloud Native
4 81 (7.28%) Product Ownership
5 63 (5.67%) Data Structures
6 60 (5.40%) Distributed Systems
6 60 (5.40%) Onboarding
7 34 (3.06%) Virtual Team
8 31 (2.79%) Equities
9 25 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
10 24 (2.16%) AI Agents
11 23 (2.07%) Derivative
12 22 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
13 21 (1.89%) Data Centre
13 21 (1.89%) Distributed Computing
13 21 (1.89%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 20 (1.80%) Taxonomies
15 19 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
16 18 (1.62%) Public Cloud
16 18 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 152 (13.67%) Linux
2 123 (11.06%) Windows
3 46 (4.14%) Unix
4 24 (2.16%) Android
5 22 (1.98%) Mac OS
6 17 (1.53%) Windows Server
7 12 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 10 (0.90%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.90%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.45%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.45%) VMS
10 4 (0.36%) Debian
11 3 (0.27%) Rocky
12 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.090%) CentOS
13 1 (0.090%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.090%) Kali Linux
13 1 (0.090%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 351 (31.56%) Problem-Solving
2 307 (27.61%) Agile
3 255 (22.93%) AI
4 230 (20.68%) CI/CD
5 224 (20.14%) DevOps
6 193 (17.36%) Software Engineering
7 157 (14.12%) Continuous Improvement
8 142 (12.77%) Microservices
9 135 (12.14%) Machine Learning
10 132 (11.87%) Analytics
11 129 (11.60%) Cybersecurity
12 124 (11.15%) Containerisation
12 124 (11.15%) Stakeholder Management
13 117 (10.52%) Data Science
14 111 (9.98%) Data Modelling
15 109 (9.80%) Mathematics
16 103 (9.26%) Data Governance
17 101 (9.08%) Decision-Making
18 98 (8.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 92 (8.27%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 339 (30.49%) Python
2 208 (18.71%) SQL
3 136 (12.23%) Java
4 75 (6.74%) JavaScript
5 57 (5.13%) C#
6 55 (4.95%) PowerShell
7 44 (3.96%) TypeScript
8 41 (3.69%) Bash
9 38 (3.42%) C++
10 35 (3.15%) Go
11 22 (1.98%) R
12 17 (1.53%) Perl
13 14 (1.26%) Rust
14 12 (1.08%) Shell Script
15 11 (0.99%) Kotlin
16 8 (0.72%) C
16 8 (0.72%) Scala
17 7 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 5 (0.45%) Bicep
18 5 (0.45%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 934 (83.99%) Degree
2 569 (51.17%) Computer Science Degree
3 199 (17.90%) Master's Degree
3 199 (17.90%) Security Cleared
4 114 (10.25%) SC Cleared
5 69 (6.21%) CISSP
6 53 (4.77%) PhD
7 46 (4.14%) CISM
8 38 (3.42%) Azure Certification
9 32 (2.88%) PMI Certification
10 30 (2.70%) TOGAF Certification
11 29 (2.61%) AWS Certification
12 28 (2.52%) DBS Check
12 28 (2.52%) DV Cleared
13 27 (2.43%) Microsoft Certification
13 27 (2.43%) PMP
14 26 (2.34%) CompTIA Security+
15 24 (2.16%) Cisco Certification
16 23 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
17 18 (1.62%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (5.94%) QA
2 53 (4.77%) Data Quality
3 49 (4.41%) NIST
4 48 (4.32%) GDPR
5 46 (4.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 20 (1.80%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.53%) Accessibility
8 11 (0.99%) GRC
8 11 (0.99%) NCSC
8 11 (0.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 10 (0.90%) NIST 800
10 7 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
10 7 (0.63%) DO-254
10 7 (0.63%) PSD2
10 7 (0.63%) SLA
11 6 (0.54%) COBIT
12 5 (0.45%) Government Security Classifications
12 5 (0.45%) HIPAA
12 5 (0.45%) ISO 20022
12 5 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 137 (12.32%) Docker
2 59 (5.31%) Active Directory
3 20 (1.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (1.17%) Firmware
5 6 (0.54%) Hyper-V
5 6 (0.54%) VMware NSX
6 3 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.18%) BitLocker
7 2 (0.18%) Ceph
7 2 (0.18%) KVM
7 2 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.18%) vSphere
8 1 (0.090%) HDFS
8 1 (0.090%) PowerHA
8 1 (0.090%) Squid
8 1 (0.090%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 146 (13.13%) Kubernetes
2 91 (8.18%) Terraform
3 61 (5.49%) Ansible
4 50 (4.50%) Grafana
5 43 (3.87%) Prometheus
6 23 (2.07%) Microsoft Intune
7 14 (1.26%) Puppet
7 14 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (0.99%) Kibana
9 9 (0.81%) Kiali
10 7 (0.63%) SCCM
11 5 (0.45%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.36%) Control-M
12 4 (0.36%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.36%) SCOM
13 3 (0.27%) Foglight
13 3 (0.27%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
13 3 (0.27%) vCenter Server
14 2 (0.18%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 186 (16.73%) Microsoft
2 66 (5.94%) Splunk
3 59 (5.31%) Oracle
4 53 (4.77%) Google
5 47 (4.23%) Databricks
5 47 (4.23%) SAP
6 36 (3.24%) IBM
7 29 (2.61%) ServiceNow
8 24 (2.16%) VMware
9 22 (1.98%) BiZZdesign
9 22 (1.98%) Cisco
10 18 (1.62%) Informatica
10 18 (1.62%) Salesforce
11 16 (1.44%) Okta
11 16 (1.44%) Palo Alto
12 14 (1.26%) Foundry
13 13 (1.17%) CheckPoint
14 12 (1.08%) MuleSoft
14 12 (1.08%) Software AG
15 11 (0.99%) OpenAI