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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 126 62 60
Rank change year-on-year -64 -2 +42
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,018 1,123 1,391
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.02% 3.78% 3.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.39% 4.16% 3.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 584 625 828
10th Percentile £178 £250 £315
25th Percentile £218 £375 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.51% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £650
90th Percentile £762 £775 £782
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £475 £513
% change year-on-year -15.79% -7.32% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 39 104
10th Percentile £27.32 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £42.97 £28.71 £38.75
Median hourly rate £77.46 £37.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +106.55% -31.82% -
75th Percentile £88.00 £68.13 £65.00
90th Percentile - £83.97 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.00 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +121.33% -31.82% +10.00%

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 42,679 27,009 37,072
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 91.00% 85.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,607 17,137 23,609
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £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 2,567 1,242 2,598
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.87 £16.03
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.27 £37.34
Median % change year-on-year +67.37% -29.66% +6.69%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +76.94% -34.02% +17.29%

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 17 June 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 17 June 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 17 June 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 -56 911 £475 -8.57% 1,792
UK excluding London -54 544 £400 -15.79% 1,721
London -62 396 £550 -8.33% 519
Work from Home -75 229 £500 -9.09% 1,455
South East -9 218 £215 -55.84% 419
North of England -33 132 £400 -18.70% 315
Yorkshire -5 80 £525 +22.38% 102
Midlands -79 67 £473 +57.50% 205
North West -46 51 £350 -31.17% 148
West Midlands -64 51 £450 +50.00% 101
East of England -33 39 £400 -38.46% 255
Scotland -33 38 £640 +21.90% 180
South West -53 38 £469 +95.42% 145
East Midlands -35 15 £545 +74.12% 104
Wales -29 8 £530 +82.76% 99
Northern Ireland +9 7 £350 -41.67% 137
North East -35 2 £125 -73.68% 65

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 46 (4.52%) Confluence
2 34 (3.34%) Apache Spark
3 26 (2.55%) SharePoint
4 21 (2.06%) Apache Airflow
5 20 (1.96%) Apache
6 9 (0.88%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.59%) IIS
8 5 (0.49%) SAS
9 3 (0.29%) Camunda
9 3 (0.29%) CMS
9 3 (0.29%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.20%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.20%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.20%) nginx
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.098%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.098%) Apache Solr
Applications
1 33 (3.24%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (2.46%) Microsoft Excel
3 17 (1.67%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.69%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.69%) Revit
6 4 (0.39%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.20%) Simulink
8 2 (0.20%) Trello
9 1 (0.098%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.098%) Sketch
9 1 (0.098%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 21 (2.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.39%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
3 3 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.20%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.20%) Workfront
5 1 (0.098%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.098%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.098%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
5 1 (0.098%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.098%) SAP SM
5 1 (0.098%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.098%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.098%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 301 (29.57%) Azure
2 187 (18.37%) AWS
3 86 (8.45%) GCP
4 69 (6.78%) Power Platform
5 53 (5.21%) Microsoft 365
6 51 (5.01%) Entra ID
7 50 (4.91%) SaaS
8 45 (4.42%) GitHub
9 39 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
10 22 (2.16%) Snowflake
11 21 (2.06%) GitHub Actions
11 21 (2.06%) Serverless
12 20 (1.96%) PowerApps
13 16 (1.57%) AWS CloudFormation
14 14 (1.38%) Azure AKS
14 14 (1.38%) Power Automate
15 13 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
16 12 (1.18%) IaaS
17 11 (1.08%) AWS Lambda
17 11 (1.08%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 34 (3.34%) Firewall
2 31 (3.05%) Network Security
3 26 (2.55%) DNS
3 26 (2.55%) TCP/IP
4 13 (1.28%) SSH
4 13 (1.28%) WAN
5 12 (1.18%) BGP
6 10 (0.98%) HTTPS
6 10 (0.98%) LAN
7 9 (0.88%) 3GPP
7 9 (0.88%) OSPF
7 9 (0.88%) VPN
8 8 (0.79%) Wireless
9 7 (0.69%) VLAN
10 6 (0.59%) DHCP
10 6 (0.59%) LTE
11 5 (0.49%) RTP
11 5 (0.49%) SAN
11 5 (0.49%) Wireshark
12 4 (0.39%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (5.60%) Power BI
2 49 (4.81%) SQL Server
3 48 (4.72%) Relational Database
4 44 (4.32%) PostgreSQL
5 38 (3.73%) Data Warehouse
6 32 (3.14%) Big Data
7 29 (2.85%) Metadata
8 24 (2.36%) NoSQL
9 23 (2.26%) MongoDB
10 21 (2.06%) Hadoop
10 21 (2.06%) MySQL
11 19 (1.87%) Tableau
12 16 (1.57%) Data Lake
13 11 (1.08%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (1.08%) Snowflake Schema
14 10 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 9 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
15 9 (0.88%) Redis
16 8 (0.79%) Star Schema
17 7 (0.69%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 73 (7.17%) Git
2 58 (5.70%) JIRA
3 38 (3.73%) Jenkins
4 33 (3.24%) GitLab
5 28 (2.75%) Rational DOORS
6 12 (1.18%) Gradle
6 12 (1.18%) Selenium
7 10 (0.98%) JUnit
8 8 (0.79%) MLflow
8 8 (0.79%) TeamCity
9 7 (0.69%) CircleCI
9 7 (0.69%) Maven
9 7 (0.69%) Postman
10 6 (0.59%) Bitbucket
10 6 (0.59%) Cucumber
10 6 (0.59%) Cypress.io
10 6 (0.59%) Jaeger
10 6 (0.59%) REST Assured
11 5 (0.49%) Flyway
11 5 (0.49%) SonarQube
General
1 411 (40.37%) Social Skills
2 234 (22.99%) Finance
3 214 (21.02%) Analytical Skills
4 88 (8.64%) Banking
5 64 (6.29%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.40%) Aerospace
7 53 (5.21%) Documentation Skills
8 34 (3.34%) Marketing
9 31 (3.05%) Telecoms
10 30 (2.95%) Organisational Skills
11 28 (2.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 27 (2.65%) Presentation Skills
13 26 (2.55%) Legal
14 25 (2.46%) Front Office
14 25 (2.46%) Influencing Skills
15 18 (1.77%) Manufacturing
16 17 (1.67%) Publishing
17 16 (1.57%) Retail
18 15 (1.47%) Law
19 12 (1.18%) Military
Job Titles
1 111 (10.90%) Architect
2 108 (10.61%) Developer
3 87 (8.55%) Analyst
4 84 (8.25%) Senior
5 83 (8.15%) Lead
6 38 (3.73%) Software Engineer
7 36 (3.54%) Product Manager
8 35 (3.44%) Solutions Architect
9 34 (3.34%) Delivery Manager
10 30 (2.95%) Data Scientist
11 28 (2.75%) Product Delivery Manager
12 27 (2.65%) Technical Support
13 26 (2.55%) Data Engineer
14 24 (2.36%) Security Engineer
15 22 (2.16%) Systems Delivery Manager
15 22 (2.16%) Systems Manager
16 21 (2.06%) Junior
16 21 (2.06%) Project Manager
16 21 (2.06%) Python Developer
17 20 (1.96%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (8.45%) REST
2 57 (5.60%) React
3 51 (5.01%) .NET
4 43 (4.22%) Kafka
4 43 (4.22%) Middleware
5 33 (3.24%) RESTful
6 31 (3.05%) Spring Boot
7 29 (2.85%) Spring
8 28 (2.75%) OAuth
9 23 (2.26%) AngularJS
10 20 (1.96%) JSON
11 19 (1.87%) HTML
11 19 (1.87%) PyTorch
11 19 (1.87%) SOAP
12 18 (1.77%) SAML
13 17 (1.67%) CSS
13 17 (1.67%) Elastic Stack
14 16 (1.57%) OAuth2
14 16 (1.57%) Web Services
14 16 (1.57%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 100 (9.82%) Management Information System
2 81 (7.96%) Onboarding
2 81 (7.96%) Product Ownership
3 70 (6.88%) Algorithms
4 63 (6.19%) Cloud Native
5 53 (5.21%) Data Structures
6 51 (5.01%) Distributed Systems
7 27 (2.65%) Virtual Team
8 26 (2.55%) Derivative
9 24 (2.36%) Self-Motivation
10 22 (2.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 21 (2.06%) AI Agents
11 21 (2.06%) Equities
12 20 (1.96%) Taxonomies
13 19 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
14 18 (1.77%) Analytical Mindset
15 16 (1.57%) Fixed Income
16 15 (1.47%) Robotics
16 15 (1.47%) Security Posture
17 14 (1.38%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 129 (12.67%) Windows
2 118 (11.59%) Linux
3 42 (4.13%) Unix
4 23 (2.26%) Android
5 20 (1.96%) Windows 10
6 19 (1.87%) Windows Server
7 17 (1.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (1.38%) Apple iOS
9 12 (1.18%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.49%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.39%) Debian
11 4 (0.39%) Rocky
11 4 (0.39%) VMS
12 2 (0.20%) Solaris
12 2 (0.20%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.098%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.098%) MVS
13 1 (0.098%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.098%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 305 (29.96%) Problem-Solving
2 261 (25.64%) Agile
3 223 (21.91%) AI
4 184 (18.07%) CI/CD
5 172 (16.90%) Continuous Improvement
6 170 (16.70%) DevOps
7 166 (16.31%) Software Engineering
8 131 (12.87%) Analytics
9 121 (11.89%) Cybersecurity
10 109 (10.71%) Microservices
11 108 (10.61%) Stakeholder Management
12 102 (10.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 95 (9.33%) Machine Learning
14 92 (9.04%) Decision-Making
14 92 (9.04%) Mathematics
14 92 (9.04%) Technical Leadership
15 88 (8.64%) Data Governance
16 87 (8.55%) Data Science
17 86 (8.45%) ITIL
18 85 (8.35%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 278 (27.31%) Python
2 203 (19.94%) SQL
3 125 (12.28%) Java
4 68 (6.68%) JavaScript
5 56 (5.50%) C#
6 44 (4.32%) PowerShell
7 29 (2.85%) TypeScript
8 24 (2.36%) Bash
9 23 (2.26%) C++
10 20 (1.96%) R
11 13 (1.28%) Go
12 11 (1.08%) Perl
12 11 (1.08%) Shell Script
13 10 (0.98%) Kotlin
13 10 (0.98%) Rust
14 8 (0.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 6 (0.59%) Scala
16 5 (0.49%) C
17 4 (0.39%) Ada
18 3 (0.29%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 805 (79.08%) Degree
2 481 (47.25%) Computer Science Degree
3 188 (18.47%) Security Cleared
4 133 (13.06%) Master's Degree
5 117 (11.49%) SC Cleared
6 56 (5.50%) CISSP
7 37 (3.63%) CISM
8 32 (3.14%) Microsoft Certification
9 29 (2.85%) Azure Certification
9 29 (2.85%) PhD
10 28 (2.75%) PMI Certification
10 28 (2.75%) TOGAF Certification
11 25 (2.46%) PMP
12 23 (2.26%) AWS Certification
12 23 (2.26%) DV Cleared
13 22 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
14 19 (1.87%) CISA
14 19 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
14 19 (1.87%) DBS Check
15 17 (1.67%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (6.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 63 (6.19%) NIST
3 58 (5.70%) Data Quality
4 48 (4.72%) QA
5 39 (3.83%) GDPR
6 20 (1.96%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.67%) Accessibility
8 15 (1.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 14 (1.38%) GRC
10 11 (1.08%) SLA
11 10 (0.98%) NIST 800
12 9 (0.88%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 8 (0.79%) NCSC
14 7 (0.69%) COBIT
15 6 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
15 6 (0.59%) ISO 20022
15 6 (0.59%) PSD2
16 5 (0.49%) DO-254
16 5 (0.49%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 94 (9.23%) Docker
2 75 (7.37%) Active Directory
3 20 (1.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.98%) Firmware
5 9 (0.88%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.49%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.39%) vSphere
9 3 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
10 2 (0.20%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.20%) Ceph
10 2 (0.20%) KVM
10 2 (0.20%) Squid
10 2 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.098%) ACF2
11 1 (0.098%) HDFS
11 1 (0.098%) RACF
Systems Management
1 115 (11.30%) Kubernetes
2 51 (5.01%) Terraform
3 39 (3.83%) Ansible
4 30 (2.95%) Prometheus
5 28 (2.75%) Grafana
6 27 (2.65%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (1.67%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (0.59%) Kiali
8 6 (0.59%) Puppet
9 5 (0.49%) Kibana
10 4 (0.39%) Control-M
10 4 (0.39%) Kubeflow
11 3 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
11 3 (0.29%) Foglight
11 3 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
11 3 (0.29%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.20%) Consul
12 2 (0.20%) Network Intrusion Detection System
12 2 (0.20%) PowerCLI
12 2 (0.20%) vRealize
Vendors
1 171 (16.80%) Microsoft
2 67 (6.58%) Oracle
3 45 (4.42%) Databricks
4 36 (3.54%) Splunk
5 34 (3.34%) IBM
6 33 (3.24%) Google
6 33 (3.24%) SAP
7 29 (2.85%) ServiceNow
8 24 (2.36%) VMware
9 18 (1.77%) Okta
10 15 (1.47%) BiZZdesign
10 15 (1.47%) Cisco
10 15 (1.47%) Informatica
11 14 (1.38%) CyberArk
12 13 (1.28%) BeyondTrust
12 13 (1.28%) Salesforce
13 12 (1.18%) Palo Alto
14 11 (1.08%) CheckPoint
14 11 (1.08%) MuleSoft
15 8 (0.79%) Foundry