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

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 94 70 74
Rank change year-on-year -24 +4 +54
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,186 965 1,231
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.71% 3.29% 2.78%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.15% 3.64% 3.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 740 568 770
10th Percentile £175 £295 £315
25th Percentile £304 £411 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.10% -4.55% -5.98%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £655
90th Percentile £775 £800 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 30 86
10th Percentile £26.75 £26.93 £23.00
25th Percentile £59.13 £31.52 £42.50
Median hourly rate £83.00 £43.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +89.71% -20.45% +4.76%
75th Percentile £88.00 £66.44 £65.94
90th Percentile - £82.32 £74.38
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 37,710 26,528 38,308
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.02% 90.44% 86.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,926 17,086 24,905
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 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.28% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,216 926 2,329
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.25 £12.98
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.32 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -6.71% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.51 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.72 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £31.76 £31.25
% change year-on-year -10.26% +1.63% -10.71%

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 21 March 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 21 March 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 21 March 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 -20 1,047 £475 -9.52% 856
UK excluding London -8 614 £400 -20.00% 646
London -32 459 £550 -8.33% 335
Work from Home -18 279 £523 -6.15% 317
South East +3 193 £360 -28.00% 235
North of England +16 187 £375 -30.17% 126
Yorkshire +7 95 £525 +14.88% 40
Midlands -33 90 £469 +70.45% 83
North West +5 88 £325 -43.06% 64
West Midlands -44 66 £475 +143.59% 50
South West -24 54 £500 -4.76% 54
East of England -21 45 £340 -47.69% 101
Scotland +3 37 £610 +19.02% 39
East Midlands -22 24 £447 +25.56% 33
Wales -16 15 £160 -44.35% 21
Northern Ireland -2 5 £369 -38.54% 8
North East -14 5 £207 -64.09% 22

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 71 (5.99%) Confluence
2 43 (3.63%) Apache Spark
3 34 (2.87%) SharePoint
4 19 (1.60%) Apache
4 19 (1.60%) Microsoft Exchange
5 14 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.51%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.42%) Smallworld
8 4 (0.34%) GeoServer
8 4 (0.34%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.25%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 3 (0.25%) Ethereum
9 3 (0.25%) Hyperledger
9 3 (0.25%) IIS
9 3 (0.25%) SAS
10 2 (0.17%) CMS
10 2 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.17%) WebSphere
Applications
1 34 (2.87%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (1.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (1.01%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.42%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.34%) Simulink
7 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 22 (1.85%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.42%) Payment Gateway
4 4 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 4 (0.34%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.17%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.084%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.084%) Maximo
6 1 (0.084%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.084%) Oracle HRMS
6 1 (0.084%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.084%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.084%) SAP SM
6 1 (0.084%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.084%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 331 (27.91%) Azure
2 211 (17.79%) AWS
3 122 (10.29%) GCP
4 70 (5.90%) GitHub
5 67 (5.65%) Power Platform
6 53 (4.47%) Microsoft 365
7 51 (4.30%) SaaS
8 44 (3.71%) Azure DevOps
8 44 (3.71%) Serverless
9 42 (3.54%) Entra ID
10 28 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
11 23 (1.94%) IaaS
11 23 (1.94%) Snowflake
12 20 (1.69%) Azure Data Factory
13 19 (1.60%) AWS CloudFormation
13 19 (1.60%) Azure Machine Learning
13 19 (1.60%) Cloud Computing
14 17 (1.43%) Power Automate
14 17 (1.43%) PowerApps
15 16 (1.35%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 50 (4.22%) Firewall
2 34 (2.87%) DNS
3 28 (2.36%) TCP/IP
4 22 (1.85%) Network Security
5 17 (1.43%) WAN
6 16 (1.35%) BGP
6 16 (1.35%) HTTP
7 15 (1.26%) LAN
7 15 (1.26%) SSH
8 14 (1.18%) VLAN
9 13 (1.10%) Wireless
10 11 (0.93%) OSPF
10 11 (0.93%) VPN
11 10 (0.84%) DHCP
11 10 (0.84%) HTTPS
11 10 (0.84%) IPv4
12 9 (0.76%) Skype
13 8 (0.67%) Cisco IOS
14 7 (0.59%) Internet
14 7 (0.59%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 83 (7.00%) PostgreSQL
2 53 (4.47%) NoSQL
3 50 (4.22%) Power BI
4 47 (3.96%) Relational Database
5 45 (3.79%) Data Warehouse
5 45 (3.79%) SQL Server
6 42 (3.54%) Big Data
7 35 (2.95%) MySQL
8 25 (2.11%) Tableau
9 24 (2.02%) Hadoop
10 20 (1.69%) Metadata
10 20 (1.69%) MongoDB
11 16 (1.35%) Data Lake
11 16 (1.35%) Elasticsearch
12 12 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 11 (0.93%) Redis
14 10 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
15 9 (0.76%) Snowflake Schema
16 8 (0.67%) Star Schema
17 7 (0.59%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 101 (8.52%) Git
2 94 (7.93%) JIRA
3 66 (5.56%) Jenkins
4 58 (4.89%) GitLab
5 28 (2.36%) Rational DOORS
6 12 (1.01%) MLflow
6 12 (1.01%) Postman
7 11 (0.93%) Selenium
8 10 (0.84%) Liquibase
9 9 (0.76%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.67%) Bitbucket
10 8 (0.67%) CircleCI
10 8 (0.67%) Gradle
11 7 (0.59%) JUnit
12 6 (0.51%) Cypress.io
13 5 (0.42%) Artifactory
13 5 (0.42%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.42%) PyCharm
13 5 (0.42%) Visual Studio
14 4 (0.34%) REST Assured
General
1 505 (42.58%) Social Skills
2 288 (24.28%) Finance
3 251 (21.16%) Analytical Skills
4 113 (9.53%) Banking
5 78 (6.58%) Public Sector
6 48 (4.05%) Marketing
7 47 (3.96%) Aerospace
8 46 (3.88%) Documentation Skills
9 39 (3.29%) Legal
10 36 (3.04%) Influencing Skills
10 36 (3.04%) Presentation Skills
11 34 (2.87%) Telecoms
12 32 (2.70%) Financial Institution
13 30 (2.53%) Front Office
14 25 (2.11%) Electronics
14 25 (2.11%) Organisational Skills
15 23 (1.94%) Manufacturing
16 22 (1.85%) Investment Banking
17 21 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 18 (1.52%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 165 (13.91%) Developer
2 114 (9.61%) Architect
3 98 (8.26%) Lead
4 93 (7.84%) Analyst
5 88 (7.42%) Senior
6 48 (4.05%) Software Engineer
7 42 (3.54%) Solutions Architect
8 40 (3.37%) Data Scientist
9 38 (3.20%) Delivery Manager
10 35 (2.95%) Product Manager
11 32 (2.70%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 30 (2.53%) Python Developer
13 28 (2.36%) Product Delivery Manager
13 28 (2.36%) Technical Support
14 27 (2.28%) Business Analyst
15 25 (2.11%) Consultant
16 24 (2.02%) Java Developer
17 23 (1.94%) Cloud Engineer
17 23 (1.94%) Data Engineer
18 22 (1.85%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 104 (8.77%) REST
2 59 (4.97%) React
3 58 (4.89%) RESTful
4 55 (4.64%) .NET
5 47 (3.96%) Kafka
6 41 (3.46%) Middleware
7 37 (3.12%) Elastic Stack
7 37 (3.12%) PyTorch
8 36 (3.04%) TensorFlow
9 35 (2.95%) Spring
10 34 (2.87%) OAuth
11 32 (2.70%) Spring Boot
12 31 (2.61%) JSON
12 31 (2.61%) XML
13 30 (2.53%) HTML
14 27 (2.28%) Node.js
14 27 (2.28%) SOAP
15 23 (1.94%) CSS
15 23 (1.94%) LangChain
16 22 (1.85%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 120 (10.12%) Management Information System
2 96 (8.09%) Algorithms
3 92 (7.76%) Cloud Native
4 84 (7.08%) Product Ownership
5 66 (5.56%) Data Structures
6 59 (4.97%) Onboarding
7 58 (4.89%) Distributed Systems
8 33 (2.78%) Equities
8 33 (2.78%) Virtual Team
9 25 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
10 24 (2.02%) AI Agents
10 24 (2.02%) Derivative
11 23 (1.94%) Data Centre
11 23 (1.94%) Distributed Computing
11 23 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
12 22 (1.85%) Analytical Mindset
13 21 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 20 (1.69%) Public Cloud
15 19 (1.60%) Security Posture
15 19 (1.60%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 156 (13.15%) Linux
2 127 (10.71%) Windows
3 53 (4.47%) Unix
4 25 (2.11%) Android
5 20 (1.69%) Windows Server
6 19 (1.60%) Mac OS
7 12 (1.01%) Apple iOS
8 11 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.59%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.42%) VMS
11 4 (0.34%) Debian
11 4 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.25%) Rocky
13 2 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.084%) Embedded Linux
14 1 (0.084%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.084%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 375 (31.62%) Problem-Solving
2 324 (27.32%) Agile
3 254 (21.42%) AI
4 239 (20.15%) CI/CD
5 234 (19.73%) DevOps
6 197 (16.61%) Software Engineering
7 155 (13.07%) Continuous Improvement
8 151 (12.73%) Microservices
9 142 (11.97%) Machine Learning
10 137 (11.55%) Analytics
11 135 (11.38%) Cybersecurity
12 133 (11.21%) Containerisation
13 122 (10.29%) Stakeholder Management
14 118 (9.95%) Data Science
15 113 (9.53%) Data Modelling
16 111 (9.36%) Mathematics
17 110 (9.27%) Data Governance
18 109 (9.19%) Decision-Making
19 102 (8.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 95 (8.01%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 360 (30.35%) Python
2 209 (17.62%) SQL
3 148 (12.48%) Java
4 84 (7.08%) JavaScript
5 63 (5.31%) PowerShell
6 58 (4.89%) TypeScript
7 51 (4.30%) C#
8 42 (3.54%) Go
9 41 (3.46%) Bash
10 37 (3.12%) C++
11 22 (1.85%) R
12 17 (1.43%) Perl
13 16 (1.35%) Shell Script
14 14 (1.18%) Rust
15 11 (0.93%) Kotlin
16 8 (0.67%) Scala
17 7 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 7 (0.59%) Ruby
18 5 (0.42%) C
18 5 (0.42%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 965 (81.37%) Degree
2 596 (50.25%) Computer Science Degree
3 214 (18.04%) Master's Degree
4 207 (17.45%) Security Cleared
5 123 (10.37%) SC Cleared
6 77 (6.49%) CISSP
7 56 (4.72%) DBS Check
7 56 (4.72%) PhD
8 50 (4.22%) CISM
9 40 (3.37%) Azure Certification
10 34 (2.87%) TOGAF Certification
11 32 (2.70%) PMI Certification
12 30 (2.53%) DV Cleared
12 30 (2.53%) Microsoft Certification
13 28 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
14 27 (2.28%) PMP
15 25 (2.11%) CompTIA Security+
16 24 (2.02%) AWS Certification
16 24 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
17 18 (1.52%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (5.90%) QA
2 58 (4.89%) Data Quality
3 56 (4.72%) GDPR
4 47 (3.96%) NIST
5 46 (3.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 23 (1.94%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.43%) Accessibility
8 11 (0.93%) GRC
8 11 (0.93%) NCSC
9 10 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 9 (0.76%) HIPAA
11 8 (0.67%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.59%) DO-254
12 7 (0.59%) PSD2
13 6 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
14 5 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 5 (0.42%) Government Security Classifications
14 5 (0.42%) ISO 20022
14 5 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 155 (13.07%) Docker
2 59 (4.97%) Active Directory
3 22 (1.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (1.01%) Firmware
5 6 (0.51%) Hyper-V
5 6 (0.51%) VMware NSX
6 3 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.17%) Ceph
7 2 (0.17%) KVM
7 2 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.17%) vSphere
8 1 (0.084%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.084%) HDFS
8 1 (0.084%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 1 (0.084%) PowerHA
8 1 (0.084%) Squid
8 1 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 164 (13.83%) Kubernetes
2 91 (7.67%) Terraform
3 61 (5.14%) Ansible
4 51 (4.30%) Grafana
5 42 (3.54%) Prometheus
6 22 (1.85%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (1.43%) Single Sign-On
8 15 (1.26%) Puppet
9 12 (1.01%) Kibana
10 9 (0.76%) Kiali
11 8 (0.67%) Argo
12 7 (0.59%) SCCM
13 5 (0.42%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.34%) Control-M
14 4 (0.34%) SCOM
15 3 (0.25%) Foglight
15 3 (0.25%) HP ALM
15 3 (0.25%) Kubeflow
15 3 (0.25%) PowerCLI
15 3 (0.25%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 187 (15.77%) Microsoft
2 70 (5.90%) Splunk
3 63 (5.31%) Google
4 60 (5.06%) Oracle
5 50 (4.22%) SAP
6 48 (4.05%) Databricks
7 41 (3.46%) IBM
8 27 (2.28%) ServiceNow
9 25 (2.11%) BiZZdesign
9 25 (2.11%) VMware
10 23 (1.94%) Cisco
11 21 (1.77%) Informatica
12 20 (1.69%) Salesforce
13 18 (1.52%) Palo Alto
13 18 (1.52%) Red Hat
14 15 (1.26%) Okta
15 13 (1.10%) CheckPoint
16 12 (1.01%) Foundry
16 12 (1.01%) OpenAI
16 12 (1.01%) Software AG