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

 6 months to
20 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 64 62
Rank change year-on-year -61 -2 +41
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,023 1,116 1,395
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.02% 3.74% 3.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.38% 4.11% 3.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 582 618 830
10th Percentile £178 £247 £315
25th Percentile £218 £364 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.25% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £650 £663 £650
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £450 £513
% change year-on-year -11.11% -12.20% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 38 105
10th Percentile £26.65 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £39.25 £28.56 £38.75
Median hourly rate £75.00 £37.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +100.00% -31.82% -
75th Percentile £88.00 £68.44 £65.00
90th Percentile - £84.47 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £82.00 £41.25 £55.00
% change year-on-year +98.79% -25.00% +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 42,996 27,186 37,276
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.90% 91.05% 84.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,808 17,251 23,716
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.19% -4.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £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 2,575 1,262 2,618
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.73
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.82 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +72.39% -32.00% +7.05%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.19 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +17.29%

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 20 June 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 20 June 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 20 June 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 -57 916 £475 -7.32% 691
UK excluding London -54 543 £400 -11.11% 507
London -62 403 £550 -8.33% 283
Work from Home -75 231 £500 -9.09% 273
South East -15 219 £215 -55.61% 190
North of England -38 132 £400 -15.79% 94
Yorkshire -11 78 £525 +46.65% 16
Midlands -77 65 £450 +46.82% 77
North West -47 53 £350 -26.32% 55
West Midlands -69 51 £450 +50.00% 46
East of England -40 40 £308 -52.69% 56
South West -51 38 £469 +95.42% 59
Scotland -30 36 £650 +30.00% 20
East Midlands -34 13 £528 +62.18% 31
Wales -30 9 £530 +82.76% 9
Northern Ireland +7 7 £350 -41.67% 20
North East -38 2 £125 -73.68% 23

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 46 (4.50%) Confluence
2 35 (3.42%) Apache Spark
3 28 (2.74%) SharePoint
4 22 (2.15%) Apache Airflow
5 21 (2.05%) Apache
6 9 (0.88%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.59%) IIS
8 5 (0.49%) SAS
9 3 (0.29%) Camunda
9 3 (0.29%) CMS
9 3 (0.29%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.20%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.20%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.20%) nginx
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.098%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.098%) Tomcat
Applications
1 36 (3.52%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (2.54%) Microsoft Excel
3 17 (1.66%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.68%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.68%) Revit
6 4 (0.39%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.20%) Simulink
8 2 (0.20%) Trello
9 1 (0.098%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.098%) Sketch
9 1 (0.098%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 20 (1.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.39%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
3 3 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.20%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.20%) Workfront
5 1 (0.098%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.098%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.098%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.098%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
5 1 (0.098%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.098%) SAP SM
5 1 (0.098%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.098%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.098%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 305 (29.81%) Azure
2 192 (18.77%) AWS
3 90 (8.80%) GCP
4 70 (6.84%) Power Platform
5 56 (5.47%) Microsoft 365
6 50 (4.89%) Entra ID
7 46 (4.50%) SaaS
8 42 (4.11%) Azure DevOps
8 42 (4.11%) GitHub
9 24 (2.35%) Snowflake
10 22 (2.15%) Serverless
11 21 (2.05%) PowerApps
12 20 (1.96%) GitHub Actions
13 16 (1.56%) AWS CloudFormation
14 15 (1.47%) Power Automate
15 14 (1.37%) Azure AKS
16 13 (1.27%) Azure Data Factory
17 12 (1.17%) AWS Lambda
17 12 (1.17%) IaaS
18 11 (1.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 34 (3.32%) Firewall
2 32 (3.13%) Network Security
3 25 (2.44%) DNS
3 25 (2.44%) TCP/IP
4 13 (1.27%) BGP
4 13 (1.27%) WAN
5 12 (1.17%) SSH
5 12 (1.17%) VPN
6 10 (0.98%) HTTPS
6 10 (0.98%) LAN
6 10 (0.98%) OSPF
7 9 (0.88%) 3GPP
8 8 (0.78%) VLAN
8 8 (0.78%) Wireless
9 6 (0.59%) DHCP
9 6 (0.59%) LTE
10 5 (0.49%) MPLS
10 5 (0.49%) RTP
10 5 (0.49%) SAN
10 5 (0.49%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (5.67%) Power BI
2 51 (4.99%) SQL Server
3 48 (4.69%) Relational Database
4 46 (4.50%) PostgreSQL
5 37 (3.62%) Data Warehouse
6 32 (3.13%) Big Data
7 31 (3.03%) Metadata
8 25 (2.44%) MongoDB
8 25 (2.44%) NoSQL
9 21 (2.05%) Hadoop
10 20 (1.96%) MySQL
11 19 (1.86%) Tableau
12 17 (1.66%) Data Lake
13 11 (1.08%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (1.08%) Snowflake Schema
14 10 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 9 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
15 9 (0.88%) Redis
16 8 (0.78%) Data Mining
16 8 (0.78%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 77 (7.53%) Git
2 58 (5.67%) JIRA
3 39 (3.81%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.32%) GitLab
5 28 (2.74%) Rational DOORS
6 12 (1.17%) Selenium
7 11 (1.08%) Gradle
8 9 (0.88%) JUnit
9 8 (0.78%) MLflow
9 8 (0.78%) TeamCity
10 7 (0.68%) Maven
10 7 (0.68%) Postman
10 7 (0.68%) Visual Studio
11 6 (0.59%) Bitbucket
11 6 (0.59%) CircleCI
11 6 (0.59%) Cucumber
11 6 (0.59%) Cypress.io
11 6 (0.59%) REST Assured
12 5 (0.49%) Jaeger
12 5 (0.49%) SonarQube
General
1 412 (40.27%) Social Skills
2 237 (23.17%) Finance
3 216 (21.11%) Analytical Skills
4 88 (8.60%) Banking
5 63 (6.16%) Public Sector
6 57 (5.57%) Aerospace
7 53 (5.18%) Documentation Skills
8 32 (3.13%) Marketing
8 32 (3.13%) Telecoms
9 30 (2.93%) Organisational Skills
10 28 (2.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 28 (2.74%) Presentation Skills
11 26 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
12 25 (2.44%) Front Office
12 25 (2.44%) Legal
13 19 (1.86%) Manufacturing
14 16 (1.56%) Retail
15 15 (1.47%) Law
15 15 (1.47%) Publishing
16 12 (1.17%) Military
Job Titles
1 114 (11.14%) Developer
2 110 (10.75%) Architect
3 86 (8.41%) Analyst
4 81 (7.92%) Lead
4 81 (7.92%) Senior
5 38 (3.71%) Software Engineer
6 36 (3.52%) Product Manager
7 34 (3.32%) Delivery Manager
8 33 (3.23%) Solutions Architect
9 31 (3.03%) Data Scientist
10 29 (2.83%) Data Engineer
11 28 (2.74%) Product Delivery Manager
12 26 (2.54%) Technical Support
13 22 (2.15%) Junior
13 22 (2.15%) Python Developer
13 22 (2.15%) Security Engineer
13 22 (2.15%) Systems Delivery Manager
13 22 (2.15%) Systems Manager
14 21 (2.05%) Project Manager
15 20 (1.96%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (8.21%) REST
2 57 (5.57%) React
3 52 (5.08%) .NET
4 43 (4.20%) Kafka
5 40 (3.91%) Middleware
6 35 (3.42%) RESTful
7 31 (3.03%) Spring Boot
8 30 (2.93%) Spring
9 29 (2.83%) OAuth
10 22 (2.15%) AngularJS
11 21 (2.05%) JSON
12 19 (1.86%) PyTorch
12 19 (1.86%) SAML
12 19 (1.86%) SOAP
13 18 (1.76%) Web Services
14 17 (1.66%) HTML
14 17 (1.66%) OAuth2
14 17 (1.66%) OpenID
15 16 (1.56%) LDAP
15 16 (1.56%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 101 (9.87%) Management Information System
2 83 (8.11%) Product Ownership
3 80 (7.82%) Onboarding
4 72 (7.04%) Algorithms
5 64 (6.26%) Cloud Native
6 53 (5.18%) Data Structures
7 50 (4.89%) Distributed Systems
8 26 (2.54%) Derivative
8 26 (2.54%) Virtual Team
9 23 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
10 22 (2.15%) AI Agents
10 22 (2.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 21 (2.05%) Equities
12 19 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
12 19 (1.86%) Taxonomies
13 18 (1.76%) Analytical Mindset
14 16 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
14 16 (1.56%) Fixed Income
15 15 (1.47%) Security Posture
16 14 (1.37%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 133 (13.00%) Windows
2 116 (11.34%) Linux
3 42 (4.11%) Unix
4 22 (2.15%) Android
5 20 (1.96%) Windows 10
6 19 (1.86%) Windows Server
7 17 (1.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (1.37%) Apple iOS
9 12 (1.17%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.49%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.39%) Debian
11 4 (0.39%) Rocky
11 4 (0.39%) VMS
12 2 (0.20%) Solaris
12 2 (0.20%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.098%) CentOS
13 1 (0.098%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.098%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.098%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 305 (29.81%) Problem-Solving
2 266 (26.00%) Agile
3 229 (22.39%) AI
4 184 (17.99%) CI/CD
5 173 (16.91%) Continuous Improvement
6 171 (16.72%) DevOps
7 168 (16.42%) Software Engineering
8 136 (13.29%) Analytics
9 118 (11.53%) Cybersecurity
10 107 (10.46%) Microservices
10 107 (10.46%) Stakeholder Management
11 102 (9.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 98 (9.58%) Machine Learning
13 96 (9.38%) Mathematics
14 93 (9.09%) Data Science
14 93 (9.09%) ITIL
15 92 (8.99%) Decision-Making
16 90 (8.80%) Technical Leadership
17 88 (8.60%) Data Governance
18 86 (8.41%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 286 (27.96%) Python
2 205 (20.04%) SQL
3 123 (12.02%) Java
4 64 (6.26%) JavaScript
5 57 (5.57%) C#
6 46 (4.50%) PowerShell
7 29 (2.83%) TypeScript
8 23 (2.25%) C++
9 22 (2.15%) Bash
10 20 (1.96%) R
11 13 (1.27%) Go
12 11 (1.08%) Shell Script
13 10 (0.98%) Perl
14 9 (0.88%) Kotlin
14 9 (0.88%) Rust
15 8 (0.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 7 (0.68%) Scala
17 5 (0.49%) C
18 4 (0.39%) Ada
19 3 (0.29%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 808 (78.98%) Degree
2 483 (47.21%) Computer Science Degree
3 191 (18.67%) Security Cleared
4 134 (13.10%) Master's Degree
5 121 (11.83%) SC Cleared
6 59 (5.77%) CISSP
7 37 (3.62%) CISM
8 33 (3.23%) Microsoft Certification
9 31 (3.03%) Azure Certification
9 31 (3.03%) PhD
10 28 (2.74%) PMI Certification
10 28 (2.74%) TOGAF Certification
11 25 (2.44%) AWS Certification
11 25 (2.44%) DV Cleared
11 25 (2.44%) PMP
12 22 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
13 20 (1.96%) Cisco Certification
13 20 (1.96%) DBS Check
14 19 (1.86%) CISA
15 15 (1.47%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (6.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 64 (6.26%) NIST
3 61 (5.96%) Data Quality
4 48 (4.69%) QA
5 38 (3.71%) GDPR
6 20 (1.96%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.66%) Accessibility
8 15 (1.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 14 (1.37%) GRC
10 11 (1.08%) SLA
11 10 (0.98%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.98%) NIST 800
12 9 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 9 (0.88%) NCSC
13 7 (0.68%) COBIT
14 6 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
15 5 (0.49%) DO-254
15 5 (0.49%) Government Security Classifications
15 5 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 5 (0.49%) PSD2
System Software
1 94 (9.19%) Docker
2 77 (7.53%) Active Directory
3 21 (2.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.98%) Firmware
5 9 (0.88%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (0.59%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.39%) vSphere
9 3 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
10 2 (0.20%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.20%) Ceph
10 2 (0.20%) KVM
10 2 (0.20%) Squid
10 2 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.098%) ACF2
11 1 (0.098%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 1 (0.098%) HDFS
11 1 (0.098%) RACF
Systems Management
1 114 (11.14%) Kubernetes
2 52 (5.08%) Terraform
3 39 (3.81%) Ansible
4 30 (2.93%) Prometheus
5 28 (2.74%) Grafana
6 27 (2.64%) Microsoft Intune
7 16 (1.56%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (0.59%) Puppet
9 5 (0.49%) Kiali
9 5 (0.49%) Kibana
10 4 (0.39%) Control-M
10 4 (0.39%) Kubeflow
11 3 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
11 3 (0.29%) Foglight
11 3 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
11 3 (0.29%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.20%) Consul
12 2 (0.20%) Network Intrusion Detection System
12 2 (0.20%) PowerCLI
12 2 (0.20%) vRealize
Vendors
1 175 (17.11%) Microsoft
2 67 (6.55%) Oracle
3 47 (4.59%) Databricks
4 35 (3.42%) Google
5 34 (3.32%) IBM
6 33 (3.23%) Splunk
7 31 (3.03%) SAP
8 29 (2.83%) ServiceNow
9 25 (2.44%) VMware
10 17 (1.66%) Okta
11 16 (1.56%) Cisco
11 16 (1.56%) Informatica
12 15 (1.47%) CyberArk
13 14 (1.37%) BeyondTrust
13 14 (1.37%) BiZZdesign
14 13 (1.27%) Palo Alto
15 11 (1.08%) CheckPoint
15 11 (1.08%) Salesforce
16 10 (0.98%) MuleSoft
17 9 (0.88%) Citrix
773 Computer Science jobs Nationwide