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 19 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 76 71 80
Rank change year-on-year -5 +9 +50
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,170 1,084 1,215
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.18% 3.17% 2.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.60% 3.60% 3.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 751 655 814
10th Percentile £175 £350 £343
25th Percentile £312 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -14.08% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £638 £700 £700
90th Percentile £750 £850 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 29 32
10th Percentile £26.75 £27.60 £33.34
25th Percentile £33.50 £34.13 £50.00
Median hourly rate £41.50 £50.50 £59.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.82% -14.41% +8.76%
75th Percentile £67.00 £60.75 £69.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.25 £79.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £37.50 £56.25
% change year-on-year -10.67% -33.33% +7.14%

All Process and 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 32,537 30,122 39,072
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.36% 88.11% 88.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,461 18,405 26,081
10th Percentile £300 £306 £308
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.60% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,095 985 1,517
10th Percentile £14.57 £15.62 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.52 £20.50 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.33
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -24.99% +23.80%
75th Percentile £50.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -27.69% -26.97% +39.06%

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 19 December 2025.

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 19 December 2025.

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 19 December 2025. 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 -7 1,034 £475 -17.39% 1,924
UK excluding London +15 576 £400 -20.00% 1,754
London -32 491 £541 -9.79% 374
Work from Home -4 301 £450 -21.74% 824
North of England +35 191 £380 -27.71% 351
South East +22 135 £321 -35.75% 469
Midlands -18 100 £475 -5.00% 317
Yorkshire +27 98 £461 -16.13% 142
North West +18 90 £358 -31.81% 172
West Midlands -18 68 £500 -13.04% 161
South West +9 57 £425 -38.18% 198
East of England -26 47 £425 -15.00% 297
Scotland +8 46 £450 -5.26% 104
East Midlands -4 32 £447 +25.56% 140
Wales +7 11 £160 -67.55% 37
North East -8 4 £333 -35.07% 39
Northern Ireland -9 4 - - 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 58 (4.96%) Confluence
2 44 (3.76%) SharePoint
3 32 (2.74%) Apache Spark
4 22 (1.88%) Microsoft Exchange
5 13 (1.11%) Apache
5 13 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.68%) Jupyter
7 7 (0.60%) IIS
7 7 (0.60%) nginx
8 5 (0.43%) Skype for Business
8 5 (0.43%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.34%) GeoServer
9 4 (0.34%) SAS
10 3 (0.26%) Ethereum
10 3 (0.26%) Hyperledger
10 3 (0.26%) Luigi
10 3 (0.26%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.17%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 54 (4.62%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (2.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.43%) Chatbot
4 5 (0.43%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.43%) Simulink
5 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.085%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 24 (2.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.34%) Aladdin
3 4 (0.34%) SAP ERP
3 4 (0.34%) Workday HCM
4 3 (0.26%) Bloomberg AIM
4 3 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.26%) SAP MDG
4 3 (0.26%) SAP PLM
4 3 (0.26%) Temenos T24
5 2 (0.17%) Maximo
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle EBS R12
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.17%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.17%) SAP CX
5 2 (0.17%) SAP FS
5 2 (0.17%) SAP GRC
5 2 (0.17%) SAP Travel Management
5 2 (0.17%) SAP VC
Cloud Services
1 282 (24.10%) Azure
2 231 (19.74%) AWS
3 131 (11.20%) GCP
4 77 (6.58%) GitHub
5 73 (6.24%) Power Platform
6 71 (6.07%) Serverless
7 52 (4.44%) Microsoft 365
8 43 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
9 37 (3.16%) SaaS
10 30 (2.56%) GitHub Actions
11 23 (1.97%) Entra ID
12 22 (1.88%) Cloud Computing
13 21 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
14 20 (1.71%) Azure Data Factory
14 20 (1.71%) Snowflake
15 19 (1.62%) Power Automate
15 19 (1.62%) PowerApps
16 18 (1.54%) Amazon S3
16 18 (1.54%) Azure Machine Learning
17 17 (1.45%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 46 (3.93%) Firewall
2 42 (3.59%) DNS
3 24 (2.05%) DHCP
4 21 (1.79%) HTTP
5 19 (1.62%) Network Security
5 19 (1.62%) VPN
5 19 (1.62%) Wireless
6 18 (1.54%) TCP/IP
7 16 (1.37%) SSH
8 13 (1.11%) Cisco IOS
8 13 (1.11%) Skype
9 11 (0.94%) VoIP
9 11 (0.94%) WAN
10 10 (0.85%) BGP
10 10 (0.85%) Internet
11 9 (0.77%) LAN
12 8 (0.68%) Unified Communications
12 8 (0.68%) VLAN
13 7 (0.60%) IPv4
13 7 (0.60%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 74 (6.32%) PostgreSQL
2 67 (5.73%) NoSQL
3 61 (5.21%) Relational Database
4 53 (4.53%) Power BI
5 44 (3.76%) SQL Server
6 43 (3.68%) Data Warehouse
7 32 (2.74%) MySQL
8 31 (2.65%) Big Data
9 30 (2.56%) Tableau
10 15 (1.28%) MongoDB
11 13 (1.11%) RDBMS
11 13 (1.11%) Redis
12 12 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
13 11 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (0.94%) Metadata
14 10 (0.85%) Data Lake
14 10 (0.85%) Hadoop
15 8 (0.68%) Apache Cassandra
15 8 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 7 (0.60%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 111 (9.49%) JIRA
2 94 (8.03%) Git
3 90 (7.69%) Jenkins
4 84 (7.18%) GitLab
5 29 (2.48%) Liquibase
6 21 (1.79%) Postman
7 18 (1.54%) Artifactory
8 16 (1.37%) Selenium
9 15 (1.28%) Visual Studio
10 10 (0.85%) Bitbucket
10 10 (0.85%) Cypress.io
10 10 (0.85%) JUnit
11 8 (0.68%) Cucumber
11 8 (0.68%) MLflow
12 7 (0.60%) CircleCI
12 7 (0.60%) SonarQube
13 6 (0.51%) Appium
13 6 (0.51%) IntelliJ
13 6 (0.51%) PyCharm
13 6 (0.51%) TeamCity
General
1 555 (47.44%) Social Skills
2 302 (25.81%) Finance
3 254 (21.71%) Analytical Skills
4 129 (11.03%) Banking
5 65 (5.56%) Public Sector
6 45 (3.85%) Financial Institution
7 38 (3.25%) Marketing
8 35 (2.99%) Front Office
9 34 (2.91%) Organisational Skills
10 32 (2.74%) Influencing Skills
11 31 (2.65%) Legal
12 30 (2.56%) Investment Banking
12 30 (2.56%) Manufacturing
13 27 (2.31%) Telecoms
14 25 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
15 24 (2.05%) Presentation Skills
16 21 (1.79%) Electronics
17 16 (1.37%) Retail
18 15 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 11 (0.94%) Military
Job Titles
1 219 (18.72%) Developer
2 104 (8.89%) Analyst
3 101 (8.63%) Architect
4 89 (7.61%) Senior
5 77 (6.58%) Lead
6 61 (5.21%) Software Engineer
7 37 (3.16%) Solutions Architect
8 33 (2.82%) Java Developer
9 32 (2.74%) Data Scientist
10 31 (2.65%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 30 (2.56%) Business Analyst
11 30 (2.56%) Senior Developer
12 29 (2.48%) Consultant
12 29 (2.48%) Python Engineer
13 25 (2.14%) AWS Engineer
13 25 (2.14%) Data Engineer
13 25 (2.14%) IT Support
14 24 (2.05%) Full-Stack Developer
15 23 (1.97%) Python Developer
16 22 (1.88%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 124 (10.60%) REST
2 81 (6.92%) RESTful
3 68 (5.81%) .NET
4 58 (4.96%) HTML
5 55 (4.70%) React
6 48 (4.10%) Elastic Stack
7 44 (3.76%) CSS
7 44 (3.76%) Kafka
8 41 (3.50%) JSON
8 41 (3.50%) Middleware
8 41 (3.50%) Node.js
9 37 (3.16%) SOAP
9 37 (3.16%) TensorFlow
10 36 (3.08%) OAuth
10 36 (3.08%) PyTorch
10 36 (3.08%) XML
11 31 (2.65%) LangChain
12 29 (2.48%) AngularJS
12 29 (2.48%) Spring
13 24 (2.05%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 112 (9.57%) Management Information System
2 97 (8.29%) Algorithms
3 92 (7.86%) Cloud Native
4 65 (5.56%) Distributed Systems
5 56 (4.79%) Data Structures
6 52 (4.44%) Product Ownership
7 39 (3.33%) Public Cloud
8 34 (2.91%) Data Protection Act
9 27 (2.31%) Equities
10 26 (2.22%) Security Posture
11 23 (1.97%) Derivative
11 23 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
11 23 (1.97%) Mobile App
12 22 (1.88%) Onboarding
12 22 (1.88%) Virtual Team
13 21 (1.79%) Data Centre
13 21 (1.79%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 21 (1.79%) Legacy Systems
14 20 (1.71%) Fixed Income
15 19 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 168 (14.36%) Linux
2 120 (10.26%) Windows
3 62 (5.30%) Unix
4 28 (2.39%) Android
5 25 (2.14%) Mac OS
5 25 (2.14%) Windows Server
6 18 (1.54%) Apple iOS
7 9 (0.77%) Windows 10
8 6 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.34%) VMS
10 2 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.085%) Debian
11 1 (0.085%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.085%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 390 (33.33%) Problem-Solving
2 340 (29.06%) Agile
3 252 (21.54%) DevOps
4 234 (20.00%) CI/CD
5 194 (16.58%) Software Engineering
6 184 (15.73%) AI
7 152 (12.99%) Microservices
8 145 (12.39%) Containerisation
9 128 (10.94%) Machine Learning
10 123 (10.51%) Analytics
10 123 (10.51%) Cybersecurity
11 113 (9.66%) Data Science
12 108 (9.23%) Mathematics
12 108 (9.23%) Stakeholder Management
13 106 (9.06%) Continuous Improvement
14 99 (8.46%) Data Modelling
14 99 (8.46%) Decision-Making
15 95 (8.12%) ITIL
16 91 (7.78%) Change Management
17 90 (7.69%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 394 (33.68%) Python
2 210 (17.95%) SQL
3 171 (14.62%) Java
4 119 (10.17%) JavaScript
5 71 (6.07%) TypeScript
6 69 (5.90%) PowerShell
7 68 (5.81%) C#
8 58 (4.96%) Go
9 53 (4.53%) Bash
10 52 (4.44%) C++
11 23 (1.97%) Perl
12 20 (1.71%) R
13 15 (1.28%) Kotlin
14 13 (1.11%) Ruby
15 12 (1.03%) Shell Script
16 9 (0.77%) Apex Code
16 9 (0.77%) C
16 9 (0.77%) MATLAB
17 8 (0.68%) ABAP
17 8 (0.68%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 954 (81.54%) Degree
2 646 (55.21%) Computer Science Degree
3 237 (20.26%) Master's Degree
4 132 (11.28%) Security Cleared
5 96 (8.21%) SC Cleared
6 59 (5.04%) CISSP
6 59 (5.04%) DBS Check
7 52 (4.44%) PhD
8 41 (3.50%) AWS Certification
8 41 (3.50%) Azure Certification
9 37 (3.16%) Microsoft Certification
10 36 (3.08%) Cisco Certification
11 35 (2.99%) CISM
12 27 (2.31%) PMI Certification
13 25 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
14 23 (1.97%) PMP
15 22 (1.88%) DV Cleared
15 22 (1.88%) TOGAF Certification
16 21 (1.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 21 (1.79%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (6.75%) QA
2 66 (5.64%) GDPR
3 64 (5.47%) Data Quality
4 43 (3.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 26 (2.22%) NIST
6 19 (1.62%) GRC
7 16 (1.37%) Accessibility
8 13 (1.11%) PCI DSS
9 11 (0.94%) Def Stans
9 11 (0.94%) SLA
10 8 (0.68%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 8 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials
11 7 (0.60%) HIPAA
12 5 (0.43%) DO-254
12 5 (0.43%) PMO
12 5 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.34%) COBIT
13 4 (0.34%) PSD2
14 3 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 3 (0.26%) NCSC
System Software
1 164 (14.02%) Docker
2 45 (3.85%) Active Directory
3 25 (2.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (0.60%) Firmware
4 7 (0.60%) VMware NSX
5 5 (0.43%) Microsoft Virtual Server
5 5 (0.43%) Virtual Servers
6 4 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.34%) vSphere
7 3 (0.26%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.085%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.085%) HDFS
9 1 (0.085%) PowerHA
9 1 (0.085%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 153 (13.08%) Kubernetes
2 106 (9.06%) Terraform
3 78 (6.67%) Ansible
4 57 (4.87%) Grafana
5 44 (3.76%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.54%) Puppet
7 16 (1.37%) SCCM
8 11 (0.94%) Kibana
9 9 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
10 7 (0.60%) Argo
10 7 (0.60%) CSIRT
11 6 (0.51%) QRadar
11 6 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
11 6 (0.51%) WSUS
12 5 (0.43%) Progress Chef
12 5 (0.43%) SCOM
13 4 (0.34%) Kiali
13 4 (0.34%) vCenter Server
14 3 (0.26%) HP ALM
14 3 (0.26%) vRealize
Vendors
1 197 (16.84%) Microsoft
2 88 (7.52%) Splunk
3 72 (6.15%) Google
4 51 (4.36%) SAP
5 46 (3.93%) Oracle
6 40 (3.42%) Cisco
7 37 (3.16%) Databricks
8 33 (2.82%) Salesforce
8 33 (2.82%) ServiceNow
9 29 (2.48%) VMware
10 27 (2.31%) IBM
11 17 (1.45%) Red Hat
12 14 (1.20%) Palo Alto
13 13 (1.11%) BiZZdesign
13 13 (1.11%) OpenAI
14 11 (0.94%) Foundry
14 11 (0.94%) Informatica
15 10 (0.85%) CheckPoint
15 10 (0.85%) Fortinet
16 9 (0.77%) CyberArk