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 1 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 128 65 60
Rank change year-on-year -63 -5 +38
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,043 1,141 1,390
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.03% 3.71% 3.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.39% 4.08% 3.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 597 637 832
10th Percentile £178 £234 £315
25th Percentile £218 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -5.66% -3.64%
75th Percentile £640 £663 £672
90th Percentile £771 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £393 £455 £515
% change year-on-year -13.64% -11.70% -1.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 38 106
10th Percentile £26.25 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £35.00 £28.56 £38.75
Median hourly rate £72.22 £30.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +136.79% -44.55% -
75th Percentile £88.00 £66.44 £65.94
90th Percentile - £84.47 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.50 £30.32 £55.00
% change year-on-year +168.80% -44.87% -

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 43,674 27,949 36,811
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.97% 90.88% 85.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,163 17,650 23,450
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £414 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.79% -4.57% -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £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 2,623 1,373 2,554
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.81%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.86 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +75.84% -34.42% +8.91%

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 1 July 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 1 July 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 1 July 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 -53 932 £475 -7.77% 1,165
UK excluding London -49 566 £393 -13.64% 702
London -64 402 £543 -9.58% 595
Work from Home -73 236 £500 -9.09% 476
South East -8 230 £225 -53.61% 217
North of England -36 133 £400 -15.79% 124
Yorkshire -1 78 £525 +22.38% 21
Midlands -69 71 £449 +49.50% 108
North West -46 53 £350 -26.32% 69
West Midlands -60 52 £450 +54.11% 58
East of England -27 42 £308 -52.69% 93
Scotland -24 39 £630 +26.00% 39
South West -53 38 £469 +95.42% 74
East Midlands -25 18 £447 +32.44% 50
Wales -26 9 £530 +50.89% 37
Northern Ireland +8 7 £350 -41.67% 24
North East -34 3 £160 -66.32% 34

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 47 (4.51%) Confluence
2 36 (3.45%) Apache Spark
3 28 (2.68%) SharePoint
4 23 (2.21%) Apache Airflow
5 22 (2.11%) Apache
6 9 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.58%) IIS
8 5 (0.48%) SAS
9 3 (0.29%) Camunda
9 3 (0.29%) CMS
9 3 (0.29%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.29%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.19%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.19%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.19%) nginx
11 1 (0.096%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.096%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.096%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 1 (0.096%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.096%) Tomcat
Applications
1 37 (3.55%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (2.49%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.73%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.67%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.67%) Revit
6 4 (0.38%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.19%) Simulink
8 2 (0.19%) Trello
9 1 (0.096%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.096%) Sketch
9 1 (0.096%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 19 (1.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.38%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
3 2 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.19%) NetSuite
3 2 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
3 2 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.19%) Workfront
4 1 (0.096%) Misys Equation
4 1 (0.096%) Misys Midas
4 1 (0.096%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.096%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
4 1 (0.096%) SAP PLM
4 1 (0.096%) SAP PM
4 1 (0.096%) SAP SM
4 1 (0.096%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.096%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.096%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 316 (30.30%) Azure
2 196 (18.79%) AWS
3 96 (9.20%) GCP
4 72 (6.90%) Power Platform
5 58 (5.56%) Microsoft 365
6 52 (4.99%) Entra ID
7 46 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
8 45 (4.31%) GitHub
9 44 (4.22%) SaaS
10 28 (2.68%) Snowflake
11 26 (2.49%) Serverless
12 22 (2.11%) PowerApps
13 21 (2.01%) GitHub Actions
14 18 (1.73%) AWS CloudFormation
15 16 (1.53%) Azure AKS
16 15 (1.44%) Azure Data Factory
16 15 (1.44%) Power Automate
17 13 (1.25%) AWS Lambda
18 12 (1.15%) dbt
18 12 (1.15%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 36 (3.45%) Firewall
2 33 (3.16%) Network Security
3 26 (2.49%) DNS
4 25 (2.40%) TCP/IP
5 19 (1.82%) VPN
6 16 (1.53%) WAN
7 15 (1.44%) BGP
8 13 (1.25%) LAN
9 12 (1.15%) OSPF
9 12 (1.15%) SSH
10 10 (0.96%) HTTPS
10 10 (0.96%) VLAN
10 10 (0.96%) Wireless
11 8 (0.77%) 3GPP
12 7 (0.67%) Cisco ASA
12 7 (0.67%) MPLS
13 6 (0.58%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.58%) DHCP
13 6 (0.58%) IPsec
14 5 (0.48%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (5.66%) Power BI
2 51 (4.89%) PostgreSQL
2 51 (4.89%) SQL Server
3 50 (4.79%) Relational Database
4 36 (3.45%) Data Warehouse
5 33 (3.16%) Big Data
6 32 (3.07%) Metadata
7 28 (2.68%) NoSQL
8 27 (2.59%) MongoDB
9 23 (2.21%) MySQL
10 20 (1.92%) Hadoop
11 19 (1.82%) Data Lake
12 18 (1.73%) Tableau
13 10 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
13 10 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
14 9 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
14 9 (0.86%) Elasticsearch
15 8 (0.77%) Data Mining
15 8 (0.77%) Redis
15 8 (0.77%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 82 (7.86%) Git
2 58 (5.56%) JIRA
3 40 (3.84%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.26%) GitLab
5 28 (2.68%) Rational DOORS
6 14 (1.34%) Selenium
7 11 (1.05%) JUnit
8 10 (0.96%) Gradle
9 8 (0.77%) MLflow
9 8 (0.77%) Postman
9 8 (0.77%) TeamCity
10 7 (0.67%) Cypress.io
10 7 (0.67%) Maven
10 7 (0.67%) REST Assured
11 6 (0.58%) Bitbucket
11 6 (0.58%) Visual Studio
12 5 (0.48%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.48%) Flyway
12 5 (0.48%) SonarQube
12 5 (0.48%) Vite
General
1 422 (40.46%) Social Skills
2 238 (22.82%) Finance
3 221 (21.19%) Analytical Skills
4 90 (8.63%) Banking
5 68 (6.52%) Public Sector
6 56 (5.37%) Aerospace
7 54 (5.18%) Documentation Skills
8 32 (3.07%) Organisational Skills
8 32 (3.07%) Telecoms
9 31 (2.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 31 (2.97%) Marketing
10 28 (2.68%) Influencing Skills
11 26 (2.49%) Presentation Skills
12 25 (2.40%) Front Office
13 21 (2.01%) Legal
14 20 (1.92%) Manufacturing
15 16 (1.53%) Law
15 16 (1.53%) Retail
16 14 (1.34%) Publishing
17 12 (1.15%) Military
Job Titles
1 120 (11.51%) Developer
2 113 (10.83%) Architect
3 86 (8.25%) Senior
4 81 (7.77%) Lead
5 80 (7.67%) Analyst
6 37 (3.55%) Software Engineer
7 36 (3.45%) Product Manager
8 34 (3.26%) Delivery Manager
9 33 (3.16%) Data Engineer
10 32 (3.07%) Solutions Architect
11 31 (2.97%) Data Scientist
12 28 (2.68%) Product Delivery Manager
13 25 (2.40%) Technical Support
14 24 (2.30%) Security Engineer
15 22 (2.11%) IT Support
15 22 (2.11%) Junior
15 22 (2.11%) Python Developer
15 22 (2.11%) Systems Delivery Manager
15 22 (2.11%) Systems Manager
16 21 (2.01%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 83 (7.96%) REST
2 62 (5.94%) React
3 55 (5.27%) .NET
4 43 (4.12%) Kafka
5 38 (3.64%) RESTful
6 36 (3.45%) Middleware
7 34 (3.26%) Spring
7 34 (3.26%) Spring Boot
8 27 (2.59%) OAuth
9 24 (2.30%) AngularJS
10 21 (2.01%) HTML
10 21 (2.01%) JSON
11 19 (1.82%) CSS
11 19 (1.82%) PyTorch
11 19 (1.82%) SAML
12 18 (1.73%) SOAP
12 18 (1.73%) Web Services
13 17 (1.63%) OAuth2
13 17 (1.63%) OpenID
14 16 (1.53%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 100 (9.59%) Management Information System
2 85 (8.15%) Product Ownership
3 82 (7.86%) Onboarding
4 72 (6.90%) Algorithms
5 71 (6.81%) Cloud Native
6 53 (5.08%) Data Structures
7 48 (4.60%) Distributed Systems
8 26 (2.49%) Virtual Team
9 24 (2.30%) Derivative
10 22 (2.11%) Self-Motivation
11 21 (2.01%) AI Agents
11 21 (2.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 20 (1.92%) Equities
13 17 (1.63%) Analytical Mindset
13 17 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
13 17 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
13 17 (1.63%) Taxonomies
14 16 (1.53%) Data Centre
14 16 (1.53%) Fixed Income
14 16 (1.53%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 129 (12.37%) Windows
2 111 (10.64%) Linux
3 41 (3.93%) Unix
4 21 (2.01%) Android
5 20 (1.92%) Windows 10
6 18 (1.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 18 (1.73%) Windows Server
7 14 (1.34%) Apple iOS
8 12 (1.15%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.67%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.48%) VMS
11 4 (0.38%) Debian
11 4 (0.38%) Rocky
12 2 (0.19%) Solaris
12 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.096%) CentOS
13 1 (0.096%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.096%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.096%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 311 (29.82%) Problem-Solving
2 277 (26.56%) Agile
3 233 (22.34%) AI
4 191 (18.31%) CI/CD
5 178 (17.07%) Continuous Improvement
6 176 (16.87%) DevOps
7 174 (16.68%) Software Engineering
8 140 (13.42%) Analytics
9 122 (11.70%) Cybersecurity
10 112 (10.74%) Stakeholder Management
11 110 (10.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 106 (10.16%) Microservices
13 104 (9.97%) ITIL
14 103 (9.88%) Machine Learning
15 100 (9.59%) Mathematics
16 96 (9.20%) Data Science
16 96 (9.20%) Decision-Making
17 89 (8.53%) Containerisation
18 88 (8.44%) Data Governance
19 87 (8.34%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 288 (27.61%) Python
2 211 (20.23%) SQL
3 127 (12.18%) Java
4 69 (6.62%) JavaScript
5 59 (5.66%) C#
6 49 (4.70%) PowerShell
7 34 (3.26%) TypeScript
8 23 (2.21%) Bash
9 22 (2.11%) C++
10 20 (1.92%) R
11 13 (1.25%) Go
12 11 (1.05%) Shell Script
13 9 (0.86%) Perl
14 8 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 8 (0.77%) Kotlin
15 7 (0.67%) Rust
15 7 (0.67%) Scala
16 5 (0.48%) Bicep
17 4 (0.38%) Ada
17 4 (0.38%) C
Qualifications
1 819 (78.52%) Degree
2 490 (46.98%) Computer Science Degree
3 199 (19.08%) Security Cleared
4 132 (12.66%) Master's Degree
5 123 (11.79%) SC Cleared
6 59 (5.66%) CISSP
7 37 (3.55%) CISM
7 37 (3.55%) Microsoft Certification
8 35 (3.36%) Azure Certification
9 31 (2.97%) PhD
10 28 (2.68%) TOGAF Certification
11 27 (2.59%) AWS Certification
12 25 (2.40%) DV Cleared
12 25 (2.40%) PMI Certification
13 24 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
14 23 (2.21%) PMP
15 22 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
15 22 (2.11%) DBS Check
16 19 (1.82%) CISA
17 16 (1.53%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (6.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 65 (6.23%) NIST
3 62 (5.94%) Data Quality
4 53 (5.08%) QA
5 37 (3.55%) GDPR
6 20 (1.92%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.63%) Accessibility
7 17 (1.63%) GRC
8 14 (1.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (1.15%) NCSC
9 12 (1.15%) SLA
10 11 (1.05%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 10 (0.96%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.67%) COBIT
12 7 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 6 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
14 5 (0.48%) Government Security Classifications
14 5 (0.48%) ITGC
14 5 (0.48%) PSD2
System Software
1 95 (9.11%) Docker
2 78 (7.48%) Active Directory
3 19 (1.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.86%) Firmware
5 8 (0.77%) Hyper-V
5 8 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.67%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.38%) vSphere
8 3 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
9 2 (0.19%) BitLocker
9 2 (0.19%) Ceph
9 2 (0.19%) Squid
9 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.096%) ACF2
10 1 (0.096%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 1 (0.096%) HDFS
10 1 (0.096%) KVM
10 1 (0.096%) RACF
Systems Management
1 118 (11.31%) Kubernetes
2 57 (5.47%) Terraform
3 38 (3.64%) Ansible
4 28 (2.68%) Prometheus
5 27 (2.59%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (2.49%) Grafana
7 15 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.38%) Kiali
8 4 (0.38%) Kubeflow
8 4 (0.38%) Puppet
9 3 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
9 3 (0.29%) Foglight
9 3 (0.29%) HP ALM
9 3 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.29%) Kibana
9 3 (0.29%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.19%) AirWatch
10 2 (0.19%) Argo
10 2 (0.19%) CASB
10 2 (0.19%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 184 (17.64%) Microsoft
2 66 (6.33%) Oracle
3 50 (4.79%) Databricks
4 38 (3.64%) Google
5 35 (3.36%) IBM
6 33 (3.16%) ServiceNow
7 30 (2.88%) SAP
8 27 (2.59%) Splunk
9 25 (2.40%) VMware
10 19 (1.82%) Cisco
11 16 (1.53%) CyberArk
11 16 (1.53%) Okta
12 15 (1.44%) BeyondTrust
12 15 (1.44%) Palo Alto
13 14 (1.34%) BiZZdesign
13 14 (1.34%) Informatica
14 12 (1.15%) Salesforce
15 11 (1.05%) CheckPoint
16 9 (0.86%) Citrix
16 9 (0.86%) Foundry