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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 63 62
Rank change year-on-year -66 -1 +25
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,099 1,252 1,301
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.06% 3.78% 3.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.43% 4.17% 3.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 613 709 815
10th Percentile £178 £184 £325
25th Percentile £200 £355 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £495 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% -10.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £650 £688
90th Percentile £754 £775 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £376 £420 £520
% change year-on-year -10.48% -19.23% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 126 47 66
10th Percentile £25.38 £25.00 £20.68
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £41.50
Median hourly rate £75.00 £52.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +42.86% - -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 45,268 29,990 33,185
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.86% 90.46% 85.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,853 18,764 21,291
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% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £729 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,826 1,696 1,837
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.89 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -3.67%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £42.50
% change year-on-year +94.26% -46.75% +13.33%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -53 1,004 £450 -10.00% 2,116
UK excluding London -49 596 £376 -10.48% 833
London -70 433 £525 -12.50% 1,383
South East -6 247 £363 -17.14% 260
Work from Home -79 241 £500 - 662
North of England -44 140 £400 -5.88% 138
Midlands -53 92 £275 -18.52% 110
Yorkshire -10 76 £450 +25.70% 37
West Midlands -53 63 £350 +16.67% 53
North West -55 54 £379 -20.26% 61
East of England -22 49 £215 -52.22% 161
South West -73 31 £477 +121.09% 80
East Midlands -20 28 £253 -41.75% 57
Scotland -50 27 £400 -15.79% 56
North East -37 11 £195 -57.84% 41
Northern Ireland - 7 £350 - 21
Wales -24 5 £530 +14.59% 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 34 (3.09%) Confluence
2 28 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 26 (2.37%) 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%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.091%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.091%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.091%) Oracle Service Bus
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%) Simulink
8 1 (0.091%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 13 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.45%) Aladdin
3 4 (0.36%) Infor M3
3 4 (0.36%) Workday HCM
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 ERP
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%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.091%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.091%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 294 (26.75%) Azure
2 189 (17.20%) AWS
3 101 (9.19%) GCP
4 76 (6.92%) Power Platform
5 65 (5.91%) Entra ID
6 57 (5.19%) Microsoft 365
7 50 (4.55%) SaaS
8 49 (4.46%) GitHub
9 44 (4.00%) Azure DevOps
10 35 (3.18%) Snowflake
11 29 (2.64%) Serverless
12 22 (2.00%) PowerApps
13 21 (1.91%) GitHub Actions
14 16 (1.46%) AWS Lambda
14 16 (1.46%) Azure Data Factory
14 16 (1.46%) Microsoft Copilot
15 15 (1.36%) Power Automate
16 13 (1.18%) Azure AKS
16 13 (1.18%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 13 (1.18%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 42 (3.82%) Firewall
2 38 (3.46%) DNS
3 32 (2.91%) VPN
4 31 (2.82%) Network Security
5 26 (2.37%) TCP/IP
6 18 (1.64%) WAN
7 17 (1.55%) DHCP
8 16 (1.46%) SSH
9 14 (1.27%) LAN
10 13 (1.18%) Wireless
11 11 (1.00%) BGP
12 10 (0.91%) VLAN
13 9 (0.82%) HTTP
14 8 (0.73%) HTTPS
14 8 (0.73%) MPLS
14 8 (0.73%) OSPF
14 8 (0.73%) Wireshark
15 7 (0.64%) Cisco ASA
15 7 (0.64%) Intrusion Detection
15 7 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (5.73%) Power BI
2 54 (4.91%) Relational Database
3 46 (4.19%) SQL Server
4 44 (4.00%) PostgreSQL
5 31 (2.82%) Data Warehouse
5 31 (2.82%) Metadata
6 26 (2.37%) MongoDB
6 26 (2.37%) NoSQL
7 25 (2.27%) Big Data
8 16 (1.46%) Tableau
9 15 (1.36%) Data Mining
10 14 (1.27%) MySQL
11 13 (1.18%) Redis
12 11 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
12 11 (1.00%) Elasticsearch
13 10 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
14 9 (0.82%) Hadoop
14 9 (0.82%) Oracle Database
14 9 (0.82%) Snowflake Schema
15 8 (0.73%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 91 (8.28%) Git
2 46 (4.19%) JIRA
3 40 (3.64%) Jenkins
4 39 (3.55%) GitLab
5 32 (2.91%) Rational DOORS
6 17 (1.55%) Selenium
7 11 (1.00%) Bitbucket
7 11 (1.00%) JUnit
8 10 (0.91%) Gradle
9 8 (0.73%) Maven
9 8 (0.73%) SpecFlow
9 8 (0.73%) TeamCity
10 7 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
11 6 (0.55%) Cypress.io
11 6 (0.55%) REST Assured
11 6 (0.55%) SonarQube
11 6 (0.55%) Team Foundation Server
11 6 (0.55%) Visual Studio
12 5 (0.45%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.45%) MLflow
General
1 447 (40.67%) Social Skills
2 247 (22.47%) Analytical Skills
3 225 (20.47%) Finance
4 88 (8.01%) Banking
5 64 (5.82%) Public Sector
6 63 (5.73%) Aerospace
7 47 (4.28%) Documentation Skills
8 38 (3.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 37 (3.37%) Organisational Skills
10 34 (3.09%) Telecoms
11 31 (2.82%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (2.55%) Manufacturing
13 27 (2.46%) Legal
13 27 (2.46%) Marketing
14 25 (2.27%) Front Office
15 19 (1.73%) Presentation Skills
16 17 (1.55%) Law
17 16 (1.46%) Military
17 16 (1.46%) Retail
18 13 (1.18%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 128 (11.65%) Developer
2 110 (10.01%) Senior
3 97 (8.83%) Architect
4 78 (7.10%) Lead
5 76 (6.92%) Analyst
6 40 (3.64%) Product Manager
7 38 (3.46%) Data Engineer
8 36 (3.28%) Software Engineer
9 34 (3.09%) Delivery Manager
10 31 (2.82%) Product Delivery Manager
11 26 (2.37%) Data Scientist
11 26 (2.37%) Junior
12 25 (2.27%) IT Support
13 24 (2.18%) Senior Developer
14 23 (2.09%) Python Developer
14 23 (2.09%) Solutions Architect
15 22 (2.00%) Security Engineer
15 22 (2.00%) Systems Delivery Manager
15 22 (2.00%) Systems Manager
16 21 (1.91%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 93 (8.46%) REST
2 54 (4.91%) .NET
3 53 (4.82%) React
4 39 (3.55%) Kafka
5 38 (3.46%) RESTful
6 31 (2.82%) OAuth
7 30 (2.73%) Spring
8 29 (2.64%) CSS
9 27 (2.46%) HTML
10 24 (2.18%) OAuth2
10 24 (2.18%) SAML
11 23 (2.09%) Middleware
11 23 (2.09%) OpenID
11 23 (2.09%) Spring Boot
12 22 (2.00%) JSON
12 22 (2.00%) Web Services
13 21 (1.91%) AngularJS
14 20 (1.82%) PyTorch
14 20 (1.82%) SOAP
15 17 (1.55%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 98 (8.92%) Management Information System
2 91 (8.28%) Product Ownership
3 86 (7.83%) Algorithms
4 77 (7.01%) Onboarding
5 68 (6.19%) Cloud Native
6 67 (6.10%) Data Structures
7 50 (4.55%) Distributed Systems
8 30 (2.73%) AI Agents
9 26 (2.37%) 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%) Legacy Systems
15 16 (1.46%) Fixed Income
15 16 (1.46%) Operational Technology
16 15 (1.36%) Data Centre
16 15 (1.36%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 123 (11.19%) Windows
2 101 (9.19%) Linux
3 30 (2.73%) Unix
4 24 (2.18%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (1.64%) Windows 10
6 17 (1.55%) Android
7 10 (0.91%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.82%) Apple iOS
9 7 (0.64%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.36%) Debian
10 4 (0.36%) Rocky
11 3 (0.27%) 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%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.091%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.091%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 332 (30.21%) Problem-Solving
2 271 (24.66%) Agile
3 232 (21.11%) AI
4 204 (18.56%) CI/CD
5 199 (18.11%) Continuous Improvement
6 188 (17.11%) Software Engineering
7 167 (15.20%) DevOps
8 144 (13.10%) Analytics
9 142 (12.92%) Stakeholder Management
10 121 (11.01%) Cybersecurity
11 116 (10.56%) ITIL
12 114 (10.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 111 (10.10%) Mathematics
14 104 (9.46%) Machine Learning
15 91 (8.28%) Decision-Making
15 91 (8.28%) Validation
16 89 (8.10%) Roadmaps
17 87 (7.92%) Data Science
18 83 (7.55%) Mentoring
19 79 (7.19%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 295 (26.84%) Python
2 206 (18.74%) SQL
3 132 (12.01%) Java
4 71 (6.46%) PowerShell
5 66 (6.01%) JavaScript
6 64 (5.82%) C#
7 36 (3.28%) Bash
7 36 (3.28%) TypeScript
8 25 (2.27%) C++
9 16 (1.46%) R
10 13 (1.18%) Bicep
11 11 (1.00%) Kotlin
12 10 (0.91%) C
12 10 (0.91%) Shell Script
13 8 (0.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 8 (0.73%) Go
14 7 (0.64%) Scala
15 6 (0.55%) Apex Code
15 6 (0.55%) Perl
15 6 (0.55%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 834 (75.89%) Degree
2 492 (44.77%) Computer Science Degree
3 209 (19.02%) Security Cleared
4 127 (11.56%) SC Cleared
5 115 (10.46%) Master's Degree
6 51 (4.64%) CISSP
7 45 (4.09%) Azure Certification
8 42 (3.82%) Microsoft Certification
9 38 (3.46%) DBS Check
10 35 (3.18%) PhD
11 33 (3.00%) CISM
12 28 (2.55%) PMI Certification
13 27 (2.46%) DV Cleared
13 27 (2.46%) PMP
14 26 (2.37%) AWS Certification
15 25 (2.27%) Cisco Certification
16 23 (2.09%) TOGAF Certification
17 22 (2.00%) CISA
18 17 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
19 16 (1.46%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (6.28%) Data Quality
2 67 (6.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 58 (5.28%) NIST
4 56 (5.10%) QA
5 28 (2.55%) GDPR
6 16 (1.46%) Accessibility
7 15 (1.36%) GRC
8 14 (1.27%) SLA
9 13 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 12 (1.09%) NCSC
11 11 (1.00%) HIPAA
11 11 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 10 (0.91%) NIST 800
13 9 (0.82%) PCI DSS
14 7 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 5 (0.45%) COBIT
15 5 (0.45%) DO-254
15 5 (0.45%) Government Security Classifications
15 5 (0.45%) ITGC
16 4 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 86 (7.83%) Docker
2 77 (7.01%) Active Directory
3 22 (2.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.91%) Firmware
5 9 (0.82%) Hyper-V
5 9 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
6 6 (0.55%) VMware NSX
7 5 (0.45%) vSphere
8 3 (0.27%) ACF2
8 3 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
8 3 (0.27%) RACF
8 3 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
9 2 (0.18%) Ceph
9 2 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
9 2 (0.18%) Squid
9 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.091%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 1 (0.091%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.091%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 100 (9.10%) Kubernetes
2 56 (5.10%) Terraform
3 39 (3.55%) Ansible
4 29 (2.64%) Microsoft Intune
5 24 (2.18%) Prometheus
6 19 (1.73%) Grafana
7 14 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (1.00%) SCCM
9 6 (0.55%) 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%) Cisco Prime
11 2 (0.18%) Control-M
11 2 (0.18%) Data Guard
11 2 (0.18%) Oracle RMAN
11 2 (0.18%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 202 (18.38%) Microsoft
2 59 (5.37%) Oracle
3 47 (4.28%) Databricks
4 41 (3.73%) IBM
5 39 (3.55%) Google
6 37 (3.37%) ServiceNow
7 33 (3.00%) VMware
8 28 (2.55%) SAP
9 23 (2.09%) Cisco
10 20 (1.82%) CyberArk
11 18 (1.64%) BeyondTrust
11 18 (1.64%) Splunk
12 15 (1.36%) Salesforce
13 11 (1.00%) Citrix
13 11 (1.00%) Palo Alto
14 10 (0.91%) Foundry
14 10 (0.91%) Okta
15 9 (0.82%) Apple
15 9 (0.82%) Dynatrace
15 9 (0.82%) UiPath