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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 130 63 61
Rank change year-on-year -67 -2 +36
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,078 1,208 1,398
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.05% 3.73% 3.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.40% 4.13% 3.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 608 681 844
10th Percentile £178 £203 £320
25th Percentile £214 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -7.02% -2.23%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £769 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £393 £450 £517
% change year-on-year -12.64% -12.96% -1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 43 103
10th Percentile £25.95 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £38.75
Median hourly rate £69.00 £44.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +55.06% -19.09% -4.35%
75th Percentile £87.16 £67.00 £66.64
90th Percentile £88.00 £82.37 £74.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.50 £61.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +32.52% +11.82% -

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 44,833 29,276 36,875
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.19% 90.47% 85.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,910 18,456 23,540
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.48% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,660 1,489 2,488
10th Percentile £14.95 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.44 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.45% -35.31% -3.62%

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 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 10 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 10 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 -47 963 £463 -7.50% 1,110
UK excluding London -51 578 £393 -12.64% 717
London -61 426 £525 -10.62% 577
Work from Home -77 243 £500 -9.09% 344
South East -8 231 £229 -53.08% 195
North of England -51 136 £400 -15.57% 106
Midlands -68 76 £429 +43.00% 87
Yorkshire -8 75 £525 +26.13% 19
North West -51 53 £292 -38.53% 57
West Midlands -73 53 £450 +58.45% 44
East of England -43 44 £308 -47.39% 82
Scotland -33 40 £615 +23.00% 24
South West -56 38 £469 +95.42% 198
East Midlands -24 22 £287 -18.38% 42
Wales -25 9 £530 +28.48% 8
North East -34 9 £195 -57.84% 30
Northern Ireland +10 7 £350 -41.67% 33

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 49 (4.55%) Confluence
2 37 (3.43%) Apache Spark
3 29 (2.69%) SharePoint
4 24 (2.23%) Apache
4 24 (2.23%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (0.83%) Microsoft Exchange
6 6 (0.56%) IIS
7 5 (0.46%) SAS
8 4 (0.37%) CMS
9 3 (0.28%) Camunda
9 3 (0.28%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.28%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.19%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.19%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.19%) nginx
11 1 (0.093%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.093%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.093%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 1 (0.093%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.093%) Tomcat
Applications
1 40 (3.71%) Microsoft Office
2 28 (2.60%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.67%) MS Visio
4 14 (1.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.65%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.65%) Revit
6 4 (0.37%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.19%) Simulink
7 2 (0.19%) Trello
8 1 (0.093%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.093%) Sketch
8 1 (0.093%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 17 (1.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.46%) Payment Gateway
3 4 (0.37%) Aladdin
4 3 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.19%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.19%) Workfront
6 1 (0.093%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.093%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.093%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.093%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
6 1 (0.093%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.093%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.093%) SAP Retail
6 1 (0.093%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.093%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.093%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 322 (29.87%) Azure
2 200 (18.55%) AWS
3 101 (9.37%) GCP
4 74 (6.86%) Power Platform
5 59 (5.47%) Microsoft 365
6 54 (5.01%) Entra ID
7 48 (4.45%) Azure DevOps
8 47 (4.36%) GitHub
9 41 (3.80%) SaaS
10 28 (2.60%) Serverless
10 28 (2.60%) Snowflake
11 22 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
11 22 (2.04%) PowerApps
12 18 (1.67%) AWS CloudFormation
13 17 (1.58%) Azure AKS
14 16 (1.48%) Azure Data Factory
15 15 (1.39%) Power Automate
16 14 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
16 14 (1.30%) Azure Service Bus
17 13 (1.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 34 (3.15%) Firewall
2 33 (3.06%) Network Security
3 27 (2.50%) DNS
4 25 (2.32%) TCP/IP
5 22 (2.04%) VPN
6 18 (1.67%) WAN
7 15 (1.39%) BGP
7 15 (1.39%) LAN
8 12 (1.11%) OSPF
8 12 (1.11%) SSH
9 11 (1.02%) VLAN
10 10 (0.93%) HTTPS
10 10 (0.93%) Wireless
11 7 (0.65%) 3GPP
11 7 (0.65%) Cisco ASA
11 7 (0.65%) DHCP
11 7 (0.65%) MPLS
12 6 (0.56%) Cisco Nexus
12 6 (0.56%) IPsec
12 6 (0.56%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (5.57%) Power BI
2 55 (5.10%) SQL Server
3 53 (4.92%) PostgreSQL
4 52 (4.82%) Relational Database
5 37 (3.43%) Data Warehouse
6 34 (3.15%) Big Data
6 34 (3.15%) Metadata
7 28 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 27 (2.50%) MongoDB
9 22 (2.04%) MySQL
10 19 (1.76%) Data Lake
10 19 (1.76%) Hadoop
11 18 (1.67%) Tableau
12 12 (1.11%) Azure SQL Database
13 10 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
13 10 (0.93%) Data Mining
13 10 (0.93%) Elasticsearch
13 10 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
14 8 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 8 (0.74%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 87 (8.07%) Git
2 60 (5.57%) JIRA
3 41 (3.80%) Jenkins
4 35 (3.25%) GitLab
5 29 (2.69%) Rational DOORS
6 14 (1.30%) Selenium
7 11 (1.02%) JUnit
8 10 (0.93%) Gradle
9 9 (0.83%) MLflow
10 8 (0.74%) Postman
10 8 (0.74%) TeamCity
11 7 (0.65%) Maven
11 7 (0.65%) REST Assured
11 7 (0.65%) SpecFlow
12 6 (0.56%) Bitbucket
12 6 (0.56%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.56%) Sonatype Nexus
13 5 (0.46%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.46%) SonarQube
13 5 (0.46%) Visual Studio
General
1 436 (40.45%) Social Skills
2 244 (22.63%) Finance
3 226 (20.96%) Analytical Skills
4 90 (8.35%) Banking
5 69 (6.40%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.10%) Aerospace
7 53 (4.92%) Documentation Skills
8 37 (3.43%) Organisational Skills
9 34 (3.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 31 (2.88%) Marketing
11 30 (2.78%) Influencing Skills
11 30 (2.78%) Telecoms
12 25 (2.32%) Front Office
13 23 (2.13%) Manufacturing
13 23 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
14 20 (1.86%) Legal
15 17 (1.58%) Retail
16 16 (1.48%) Law
17 14 (1.30%) Publishing
18 13 (1.21%) Military
Job Titles
1 131 (12.15%) Developer
2 113 (10.48%) Architect
3 99 (9.18%) Senior
4 84 (7.79%) Lead
5 81 (7.51%) Analyst
6 38 (3.53%) Software Engineer
7 37 (3.43%) Product Manager
8 34 (3.15%) Data Engineer
8 34 (3.15%) Delivery Manager
9 31 (2.88%) Data Scientist
10 30 (2.78%) Solutions Architect
11 28 (2.60%) Product Delivery Manager
12 25 (2.32%) Python Developer
13 24 (2.23%) Java Developer
13 24 (2.23%) Junior
13 24 (2.23%) Security Engineer
13 24 (2.23%) Technical Support
14 22 (2.04%) IT Support
14 22 (2.04%) Systems Delivery Manager
14 22 (2.04%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (7.88%) REST
2 64 (5.94%) React
3 59 (5.47%) .NET
4 43 (3.99%) Kafka
4 43 (3.99%) RESTful
5 35 (3.25%) Spring
6 33 (3.06%) Spring Boot
7 31 (2.88%) Middleware
8 27 (2.50%) OAuth
9 25 (2.32%) AngularJS
10 24 (2.23%) PyTorch
11 22 (2.04%) HTML
12 21 (1.95%) JSON
13 20 (1.86%) CSS
14 19 (1.76%) SAML
15 18 (1.67%) OAuth2
15 18 (1.67%) OpenID
15 18 (1.67%) SOAP
15 18 (1.67%) Web Services
16 17 (1.58%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 98 (9.09%) Management Information System
2 88 (8.16%) Product Ownership
3 82 (7.61%) Onboarding
4 77 (7.14%) Algorithms
4 77 (7.14%) Cloud Native
5 55 (5.10%) Data Structures
6 50 (4.64%) Distributed Systems
7 26 (2.41%) AI Agents
7 26 (2.41%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 26 (2.41%) Virtual Team
8 25 (2.32%) Derivative
8 25 (2.32%) Self-Motivation
9 20 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
10 19 (1.76%) Equities
11 18 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
11 18 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
12 16 (1.48%) Fixed Income
13 15 (1.39%) Data Centre
13 15 (1.39%) Security Posture
14 14 (1.30%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 130 (12.06%) Windows
2 107 (9.93%) Linux
3 39 (3.62%) Unix
4 21 (1.95%) Android
5 19 (1.76%) Windows 10
5 19 (1.76%) Windows Server
6 18 (1.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (1.30%) Apple iOS
8 12 (1.11%) Mac OS
9 8 (0.74%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.46%) VMS
11 4 (0.37%) Debian
11 4 (0.37%) Rocky
12 2 (0.19%) Solaris
12 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.093%) CentOS
13 1 (0.093%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.093%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.093%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 321 (29.78%) Problem-Solving
2 280 (25.97%) Agile
3 247 (22.91%) AI
4 202 (18.74%) CI/CD
5 185 (17.16%) Software Engineering
6 180 (16.70%) Continuous Improvement
7 175 (16.23%) DevOps
8 147 (13.64%) Analytics
9 123 (11.41%) Cybersecurity
10 121 (11.22%) Stakeholder Management
11 117 (10.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 113 (10.48%) Machine Learning
13 109 (10.11%) ITIL
14 106 (9.83%) Microservices
15 105 (9.74%) Mathematics
16 99 (9.18%) Data Science
17 94 (8.72%) Containerisation
17 94 (8.72%) Decision-Making
18 91 (8.44%) Roadmaps
19 87 (8.07%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 299 (27.74%) Python
2 218 (20.22%) SQL
3 137 (12.71%) Java
4 69 (6.40%) JavaScript
5 62 (5.75%) C#
6 50 (4.64%) PowerShell
7 36 (3.34%) TypeScript
8 23 (2.13%) Bash
8 23 (2.13%) C++
9 20 (1.86%) R
10 13 (1.21%) Go
10 13 (1.21%) Shell Script
11 8 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 8 (0.74%) Kotlin
11 8 (0.74%) Perl
12 7 (0.65%) Bicep
12 7 (0.65%) Scala
13 6 (0.56%) C
14 4 (0.37%) Ada
14 4 (0.37%) Rust
Qualifications
1 847 (78.57%) Degree
2 506 (46.94%) Computer Science Degree
3 202 (18.74%) Security Cleared
4 142 (13.17%) Master's Degree
5 125 (11.60%) SC Cleared
6 58 (5.38%) CISSP
7 41 (3.80%) Azure Certification
8 38 (3.53%) CISM
9 37 (3.43%) Microsoft Certification
10 35 (3.25%) PhD
11 29 (2.69%) TOGAF Certification
12 28 (2.60%) AWS Certification
12 28 (2.60%) DBS Check
13 26 (2.41%) PMI Certification
14 25 (2.32%) DV Cleared
15 24 (2.23%) Cisco Certification
15 24 (2.23%) PMP
16 21 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
17 19 (1.76%) CISA
18 16 (1.48%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (6.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 64 (5.94%) Data Quality
2 64 (5.94%) NIST
3 53 (4.92%) QA
4 35 (3.25%) GDPR
5 19 (1.76%) PCI DSS
6 18 (1.67%) Accessibility
7 17 (1.58%) GRC
8 13 (1.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (1.11%) NCSC
9 12 (1.11%) SLA
10 11 (1.02%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 10 (0.93%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 6 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
13 6 (0.56%) COBIT
14 5 (0.46%) DO-254
14 5 (0.46%) ITGC
14 5 (0.46%) PSD2
System Software
1 95 (8.81%) Docker
2 79 (7.33%) Active Directory
3 18 (1.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.83%) Firmware
5 8 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.65%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.56%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.37%) vSphere
9 3 (0.28%) VMware Workstation
10 2 (0.19%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.19%) Ceph
10 2 (0.19%) Squid
10 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.093%) ACF2
11 1 (0.093%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 1 (0.093%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.093%) HDFS
11 1 (0.093%) RACF
Systems Management
1 119 (11.04%) Kubernetes
2 58 (5.38%) Terraform
3 36 (3.34%) Ansible
4 28 (2.60%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (2.32%) Prometheus
6 24 (2.23%) Grafana
7 13 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.37%) Kubeflow
9 3 (0.28%) Cisco CUCM
9 3 (0.28%) Foglight
9 3 (0.28%) HP ALM
9 3 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.28%) Puppet
9 3 (0.28%) SCCM
9 3 (0.28%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.19%) AirWatch
10 2 (0.19%) Consul
10 2 (0.19%) Network Intrusion Detection System
10 2 (0.19%) PowerCLI
10 2 (0.19%) vRealize
Vendors
1 193 (17.90%) Microsoft
2 68 (6.31%) Oracle
3 52 (4.82%) Databricks
4 44 (4.08%) Google
5 36 (3.34%) IBM
6 35 (3.25%) ServiceNow
7 30 (2.78%) SAP
8 26 (2.41%) VMware
9 25 (2.32%) Splunk
10 21 (1.95%) Cisco
11 17 (1.58%) CyberArk
12 16 (1.48%) BeyondTrust
13 15 (1.39%) Palo Alto
14 14 (1.30%) BiZZdesign
14 14 (1.30%) Informatica
14 14 (1.30%) Okta
14 14 (1.30%) Salesforce
15 11 (1.02%) CheckPoint
15 11 (1.02%) Foundry
16 9 (0.83%) Citrix