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

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 127 61 62
Rank change year-on-year -66 +1 +37
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,031 1,120 1,381
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.03% 3.72% 3.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.38% 4.08% 3.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 586 625 823
10th Percentile £178 £240 £315
25th Percentile £218 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.95% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £650 £663 £650
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £390 £450 £515
% change year-on-year -13.33% -12.58% -1.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 36 105
10th Percentile £26.25 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £38.50 £28.37 £38.75
Median hourly rate £75.00 £30.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +145.90% -44.55% -
75th Percentile £88.00 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile - £85.48 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.75 £33.91 £55.00
% change year-on-year +141.08% -38.35% +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 43,238 27,425 37,092
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.97% 91.06% 85.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,959 17,371 23,647
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.78% -3.81% -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 2,600 1,291 2,584
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.65
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.70 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £54.88 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £71.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.04 £38.12
% change year-on-year +79.73% -34.32% +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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -53 921 £475 -6.63% 527
UK excluding London -50 553 £390 -13.33% 432
London -63 402 £550 -8.33% 172
Work from Home -71 235 £500 -9.09% 206
South East -13 224 £215 -55.26% 159
North of England -36 133 £400 -15.79% 89
Yorkshire -6 79 £525 +22.38% 13
Midlands -79 66 £450 +50.00% 82
North West -41 53 £350 -26.32% 51
West Midlands -67 51 £450 +50.00% 43
East of England -32 41 £308 -52.69% 42
Scotland -30 38 £630 +26.00% 13
South West -66 38 £469 +95.42% 51
East Midlands -33 14 £528 +62.18% 39
Wales -27 9 £530 +82.76% 7
Northern Ireland +7 7 £350 -41.67% 6
North East -38 2 £125 -73.68% 25

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 (4.46%) Confluence
2 36 (3.49%) Apache Spark
3 28 (2.72%) SharePoint
4 22 (2.13%) Apache Airflow
5 21 (2.04%) Apache
6 9 (0.87%) 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
9 3 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.19%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.19%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.19%) nginx
10 2 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.19%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.097%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.097%) Tomcat
Applications
1 36 (3.49%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (2.52%) Microsoft Excel
3 17 (1.65%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.26%) 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 (0.19%) Simulink
8 2 (0.19%) Trello
9 1 (0.097%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.097%) Sketch
9 1 (0.097%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 20 (1.94%) 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 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.19%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.19%) Workfront
5 1 (0.097%) Misys Equation
5 1 (0.097%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.097%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.097%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.097%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
5 1 (0.097%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.097%) SAP SM
5 1 (0.097%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.097%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 313 (30.36%) Azure
2 196 (19.01%) AWS
3 93 (9.02%) GCP
4 71 (6.89%) Power Platform
5 56 (5.43%) Microsoft 365
6 52 (5.04%) Entra ID
7 46 (4.46%) SaaS
8 44 (4.27%) Azure DevOps
9 42 (4.07%) GitHub
10 24 (2.33%) Snowflake
11 23 (2.23%) Serverless
12 22 (2.13%) PowerApps
13 20 (1.94%) GitHub Actions
14 17 (1.65%) AWS CloudFormation
15 15 (1.45%) Azure AKS
15 15 (1.45%) Power Automate
16 14 (1.36%) Azure Data Factory
17 13 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
17 13 (1.26%) IaaS
18 12 (1.16%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 36 (3.49%) Firewall
2 31 (3.01%) Network Security
3 24 (2.33%) DNS
3 24 (2.33%) TCP/IP
4 15 (1.45%) BGP
4 15 (1.45%) VPN
4 15 (1.45%) WAN
5 12 (1.16%) LAN
5 12 (1.16%) OSPF
5 12 (1.16%) SSH
6 10 (0.97%) HTTPS
6 10 (0.97%) VLAN
7 9 (0.87%) 3GPP
7 9 (0.87%) Wireless
8 7 (0.68%) MPLS
9 6 (0.58%) Cisco ASA
9 6 (0.58%) DHCP
9 6 (0.58%) IPsec
9 6 (0.58%) LTE
10 5 (0.48%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (5.63%) Power BI
2 51 (4.95%) SQL Server
3 48 (4.66%) PostgreSQL
3 48 (4.66%) Relational Database
4 36 (3.49%) Data Warehouse
5 33 (3.20%) Big Data
6 32 (3.10%) Metadata
7 26 (2.52%) NoSQL
8 25 (2.42%) MongoDB
9 22 (2.13%) MySQL
10 21 (2.04%) Hadoop
11 18 (1.75%) Data Lake
11 18 (1.75%) Tableau
12 10 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
12 10 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
12 10 (0.97%) Snowflake Schema
13 9 (0.87%) Redis
13 9 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 8 (0.78%) Data Mining
14 8 (0.78%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 80 (7.76%) Git
2 59 (5.72%) JIRA
3 40 (3.88%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.30%) GitLab
5 28 (2.72%) Rational DOORS
6 14 (1.36%) Selenium
7 10 (0.97%) Gradle
8 9 (0.87%) JUnit
9 8 (0.78%) MLflow
9 8 (0.78%) Postman
9 8 (0.78%) TeamCity
10 7 (0.68%) Cypress.io
10 7 (0.68%) Maven
10 7 (0.68%) REST Assured
10 7 (0.68%) Visual Studio
11 6 (0.58%) Bitbucket
11 6 (0.58%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.48%) Flyway
12 5 (0.48%) SonarQube
12 5 (0.48%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 420 (40.74%) Social Skills
2 238 (23.08%) Finance
3 220 (21.34%) Analytical Skills
4 89 (8.63%) Banking
5 65 (6.30%) Public Sector
6 57 (5.53%) Aerospace
7 54 (5.24%) Documentation Skills
8 35 (3.39%) Telecoms
9 32 (3.10%) Organisational Skills
10 31 (3.01%) Marketing
11 30 (2.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 29 (2.81%) Presentation Skills
13 28 (2.72%) Influencing Skills
14 25 (2.42%) Front Office
15 23 (2.23%) Legal
16 20 (1.94%) Manufacturing
17 16 (1.55%) Law
17 16 (1.55%) Retail
18 15 (1.45%) Publishing
19 12 (1.16%) Military
Job Titles
1 113 (10.96%) Developer
2 110 (10.67%) Architect
3 84 (8.15%) Senior
4 83 (8.05%) Lead
5 82 (7.95%) Analyst
6 38 (3.69%) Software Engineer
7 36 (3.49%) Product Manager
8 34 (3.30%) Delivery Manager
9 32 (3.10%) Solutions Architect
10 31 (3.01%) Data Scientist
11 29 (2.81%) Data Engineer
12 28 (2.72%) Product Delivery Manager
13 26 (2.52%) Technical Support
14 22 (2.13%) Junior
14 22 (2.13%) Security Engineer
14 22 (2.13%) Systems Delivery Manager
14 22 (2.13%) Systems Manager
15 21 (2.04%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 21 (2.04%) Python Developer
16 20 (1.94%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 83 (8.05%) REST
2 60 (5.82%) React
3 54 (5.24%) .NET
4 44 (4.27%) Kafka
5 40 (3.88%) Middleware
6 37 (3.59%) RESTful
7 32 (3.10%) Spring Boot
8 31 (3.01%) Spring
9 29 (2.81%) OAuth
10 22 (2.13%) AngularJS
11 21 (2.04%) JSON
12 20 (1.94%) SOAP
13 19 (1.84%) HTML
13 19 (1.84%) PyTorch
13 19 (1.84%) SAML
14 18 (1.75%) Web Services
15 17 (1.65%) CSS
15 17 (1.65%) OAuth2
15 17 (1.65%) OpenID
16 16 (1.55%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 102 (9.89%) Management Information System
2 83 (8.05%) Product Ownership
3 81 (7.86%) Onboarding
4 71 (6.89%) Algorithms
5 67 (6.50%) Cloud Native
6 53 (5.14%) Data Structures
7 50 (4.85%) Distributed Systems
8 26 (2.52%) Derivative
8 26 (2.52%) Virtual Team
9 23 (2.23%) AI Agents
9 23 (2.23%) Self-Motivation
10 22 (2.13%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 20 (1.94%) Equities
12 18 (1.75%) Analytical Mindset
12 18 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
12 18 (1.75%) Taxonomies
13 17 (1.65%) Data Centre
13 17 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
14 16 (1.55%) Fixed Income
15 15 (1.45%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 130 (12.61%) Windows
2 114 (11.06%) Linux
3 41 (3.98%) Unix
4 21 (2.04%) Android
5 20 (1.94%) Windows 10
6 19 (1.84%) Windows Server
7 18 (1.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (1.36%) Apple iOS
9 12 (1.16%) Mac OS
10 7 (0.68%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.39%) Debian
11 4 (0.39%) Rocky
11 4 (0.39%) VMS
12 2 (0.19%) Solaris
12 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.097%) CentOS
13 1 (0.097%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.097%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.097%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 309 (29.97%) Problem-Solving
2 274 (26.58%) Agile
3 235 (22.79%) AI
4 189 (18.33%) CI/CD
5 178 (17.26%) Continuous Improvement
6 177 (17.17%) DevOps
7 167 (16.20%) Software Engineering
8 137 (13.29%) Analytics
9 117 (11.35%) Cybersecurity
10 114 (11.06%) Stakeholder Management
11 107 (10.38%) Microservices
12 106 (10.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 101 (9.80%) Machine Learning
14 100 (9.70%) ITIL
15 98 (9.51%) Mathematics
16 97 (9.41%) Decision-Making
17 95 (9.21%) Data Science
18 90 (8.73%) Technical Leadership
19 89 (8.63%) Data Governance
20 86 (8.34%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 288 (27.93%) Python
2 208 (20.17%) SQL
3 125 (12.12%) Java
4 71 (6.89%) JavaScript
5 59 (5.72%) C#
6 47 (4.56%) PowerShell
7 30 (2.91%) TypeScript
8 22 (2.13%) Bash
9 21 (2.04%) C++
10 19 (1.84%) R
11 13 (1.26%) Go
12 11 (1.07%) Shell Script
13 10 (0.97%) Perl
14 9 (0.87%) Rust
15 8 (0.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 8 (0.78%) Kotlin
16 7 (0.68%) Scala
17 4 (0.39%) Ada
17 4 (0.39%) C
18 3 (0.29%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 813 (78.86%) Degree
2 484 (46.94%) Computer Science Degree
3 193 (18.72%) Security Cleared
4 131 (12.71%) Master's Degree
5 119 (11.54%) SC Cleared
6 56 (5.43%) CISSP
7 35 (3.39%) CISM
7 35 (3.39%) Microsoft Certification
8 32 (3.10%) Azure Certification
8 32 (3.10%) PhD
9 28 (2.72%) TOGAF Certification
10 27 (2.62%) PMI Certification
11 26 (2.52%) AWS Certification
12 25 (2.42%) DV Cleared
13 24 (2.33%) PMP
14 23 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
15 22 (2.13%) Cisco Certification
16 20 (1.94%) DBS Check
17 18 (1.75%) CISA
18 15 (1.45%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (6.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 62 (6.01%) NIST
3 61 (5.92%) Data Quality
4 51 (4.95%) QA
5 35 (3.39%) GDPR
6 20 (1.94%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.65%) Accessibility
8 15 (1.45%) GRC
8 15 (1.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (1.16%) NCSC
9 12 (1.16%) SLA
10 10 (0.97%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 10 (0.97%) NIST 800
11 7 (0.68%) COBIT
12 6 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 5 (0.48%) DO-254
13 5 (0.48%) Government Security Classifications
13 5 (0.48%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 94 (9.12%) Docker
2 77 (7.47%) Active Directory
3 20 (1.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.97%) Firmware
5 9 (0.87%) Hyper-V
6 8 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (0.68%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.39%) vSphere
9 3 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
10 2 (0.19%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.19%) Ceph
10 2 (0.19%) KVM
10 2 (0.19%) Squid
10 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.097%) ACF2
11 1 (0.097%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 1 (0.097%) HDFS
11 1 (0.097%) RACF
Systems Management
1 115 (11.15%) Kubernetes
2 55 (5.33%) Terraform
3 40 (3.88%) Ansible
4 30 (2.91%) Prometheus
5 28 (2.72%) Grafana
6 27 (2.62%) Microsoft Intune
7 16 (1.55%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (0.48%) Kiali
8 5 (0.48%) Puppet
9 4 (0.39%) Control-M
9 4 (0.39%) Kibana
9 4 (0.39%) Kubeflow
10 3 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
10 3 (0.29%) Foglight
10 3 (0.29%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
10 3 (0.29%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.19%) AirWatch
11 2 (0.19%) vRealize
11 2 (0.19%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 181 (17.56%) Microsoft
2 68 (6.60%) Oracle
3 49 (4.75%) Databricks
4 37 (3.59%) Google
5 36 (3.49%) IBM
6 32 (3.10%) ServiceNow
7 31 (3.01%) SAP
8 29 (2.81%) Splunk
9 26 (2.52%) VMware
10 18 (1.75%) Cisco
11 17 (1.65%) Okta
12 15 (1.45%) CyberArk
12 15 (1.45%) Informatica
12 15 (1.45%) Palo Alto
13 14 (1.36%) BeyondTrust
13 14 (1.36%) BiZZdesign
14 11 (1.07%) CheckPoint
14 11 (1.07%) Salesforce
15 10 (0.97%) MuleSoft
16 9 (0.87%) Foundry