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

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 65 61
Rank change year-on-year -66 -4 +38
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,034 1,129 1,381
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.03% 3.73% 3.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.39% 4.10% 3.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 590 627 823
10th Percentile £178 £240 £315
25th Percentile £218 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year -2.75% -5.66% -3.64%
75th Percentile £650 £663 £653
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £393 £450 £517
% change year-on-year -12.64% -12.96% -1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 38 106
10th Percentile £26.25 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £38.50 £28.56 £38.75
Median hourly rate £75.00 £30.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +145.90% -44.55% -
75th Percentile £88.00 £66.44 £65.00
90th Percentile - £84.47 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.75 £30.32 £55.00
% change year-on-year +169.62% -44.87% +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 43,249 27,546 37,029
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.99% 91.07% 85.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,953 17,432 23,598
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -4.33% -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 2,594 1,315 2,564
10th Percentile £14.81 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.44 £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 £53.95 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.71 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +82.48% -35.31% +17.65%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -53 924 £475 -7.32% 797
UK excluding London -53 554 £393 -12.64% 513
London -55 403 £550 -8.33% 387
Work from Home -75 237 £500 -9.09% 285
South East -7 226 £215 -55.26% 180
North of England -30 131 £400 -15.79% 94
Yorkshire 0 77 £525 +22.38% 14
Midlands -79 67 £450 +46.82% 89
North West -46 53 £350 -26.32% 54
West Midlands -68 52 £450 +50.00% 49
East of England -33 41 £308 -52.69% 55
Scotland -31 38 £630 +26.00% 21
South West -54 38 £469 +95.42% 60
East Midlands -26 14 £528 +56.30% 40
Wales -29 9 £530 +82.76% 9
Northern Ireland +9 7 £350 -41.67% 25
North East -34 2 £125 -73.68% 26

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 (4.45%) Confluence
2 36 (3.48%) Apache Spark
3 28 (2.71%) SharePoint
4 22 (2.13%) Apache Airflow
5 21 (2.03%) 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%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.097%) Apache Solr
Applications
1 36 (3.48%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (2.51%) Microsoft Excel
3 17 (1.64%) 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 19 (1.84%) 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
1 314 (30.37%) Azure
2 197 (19.05%) AWS
3 95 (9.19%) GCP
4 71 (6.87%) Power Platform
5 56 (5.42%) Microsoft 365
6 51 (4.93%) Entra ID
7 45 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
7 45 (4.35%) SaaS
8 43 (4.16%) GitHub
9 25 (2.42%) Snowflake
10 24 (2.32%) Serverless
11 22 (2.13%) PowerApps
12 20 (1.93%) GitHub Actions
13 18 (1.74%) AWS CloudFormation
14 15 (1.45%) Azure AKS
14 15 (1.45%) Power Automate
15 14 (1.35%) Azure Data Factory
16 13 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
16 13 (1.26%) IaaS
17 12 (1.16%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 35 (3.38%) Firewall
2 31 (3.00%) Network Security
3 24 (2.32%) DNS
3 24 (2.32%) 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
10 5 (0.48%) LTE
10 5 (0.48%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (5.61%) Power BI
2 51 (4.93%) SQL Server
3 49 (4.74%) PostgreSQL
4 48 (4.64%) Relational Database
5 36 (3.48%) Data Warehouse
6 33 (3.19%) Big Data
7 32 (3.09%) Metadata
8 27 (2.61%) NoSQL
9 26 (2.51%) MongoDB
10 23 (2.22%) MySQL
11 21 (2.03%) Hadoop
12 18 (1.74%) Data Lake
12 18 (1.74%) Tableau
13 11 (1.06%) Snowflake Schema
14 10 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
14 10 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
15 9 (0.87%) Redis
15 9 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 8 (0.77%) Data Mining
16 8 (0.77%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 81 (7.83%) Git
2 59 (5.71%) JIRA
3 40 (3.87%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.29%) GitLab
5 28 (2.71%) Rational DOORS
6 14 (1.35%) Selenium
7 10 (0.97%) Gradle
7 10 (0.97%) JUnit
8 8 (0.77%) MLflow
8 8 (0.77%) Postman
8 8 (0.77%) TeamCity
9 7 (0.68%) Cypress.io
9 7 (0.68%) Maven
9 7 (0.68%) REST Assured
9 7 (0.68%) Visual Studio
10 6 (0.58%) Bitbucket
10 6 (0.58%) Cucumber
11 5 (0.48%) Flyway
11 5 (0.48%) SonarQube
11 5 (0.48%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 420 (40.62%) Social Skills
2 241 (23.31%) Finance
3 222 (21.47%) Analytical Skills
4 89 (8.61%) Banking
5 65 (6.29%) Public Sector
6 57 (5.51%) Aerospace
7 53 (5.13%) Documentation Skills
8 34 (3.29%) Telecoms
9 32 (3.09%) Organisational Skills
10 31 (3.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 31 (3.00%) Marketing
11 29 (2.80%) Presentation Skills
12 28 (2.71%) Influencing Skills
13 25 (2.42%) Front Office
14 23 (2.22%) Legal
15 20 (1.93%) Manufacturing
16 16 (1.55%) Law
16 16 (1.55%) Retail
17 14 (1.35%) Publishing
18 12 (1.16%) Military
Job Titles
1 116 (11.22%) Developer
2 110 (10.64%) Architect
3 83 (8.03%) Lead
3 83 (8.03%) Senior
4 82 (7.93%) Analyst
5 38 (3.68%) Software Engineer
6 36 (3.48%) Product Manager
7 34 (3.29%) Delivery Manager
8 32 (3.09%) Solutions Architect
9 31 (3.00%) Data Scientist
10 30 (2.90%) Data Engineer
11 28 (2.71%) Product Delivery Manager
12 26 (2.51%) Technical Support
13 24 (2.32%) Security Engineer
14 22 (2.13%) Junior
14 22 (2.13%) Systems Delivery Manager
14 22 (2.13%) Systems Manager
15 21 (2.03%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 21 (2.03%) Python Developer
16 20 (1.93%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (8.12%) REST
2 62 (6.00%) React
3 53 (5.13%) .NET
4 43 (4.16%) Kafka
5 38 (3.68%) Middleware
6 37 (3.58%) RESTful
7 32 (3.09%) Spring
7 32 (3.09%) Spring Boot
8 29 (2.80%) OAuth
9 23 (2.22%) AngularJS
10 22 (2.13%) JSON
11 20 (1.93%) HTML
11 20 (1.93%) SOAP
12 19 (1.84%) PyTorch
12 19 (1.84%) SAML
13 18 (1.74%) CSS
13 18 (1.74%) Web Services
14 17 (1.64%) OAuth2
14 17 (1.64%) OpenID
15 16 (1.55%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 102 (9.86%) Management Information System
2 84 (8.12%) Product Ownership
3 80 (7.74%) Onboarding
4 71 (6.87%) Algorithms
5 68 (6.58%) Cloud Native
6 53 (5.13%) Data Structures
7 49 (4.74%) Distributed Systems
8 27 (2.61%) Virtual Team
9 26 (2.51%) Derivative
10 23 (2.22%) AI Agents
10 23 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
11 22 (2.13%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 20 (1.93%) Equities
13 18 (1.74%) Analytical Mindset
13 18 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
14 17 (1.64%) Data Centre
14 17 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
14 17 (1.64%) Taxonomies
15 16 (1.55%) Fixed Income
16 15 (1.45%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 130 (12.57%) Windows
2 114 (11.03%) Linux
3 41 (3.97%) Unix
4 21 (2.03%) Android
5 20 (1.93%) Windows 10
6 19 (1.84%) Windows Server
7 18 (1.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (1.35%) 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
1 310 (29.98%) Problem-Solving
2 279 (26.98%) Agile
3 235 (22.73%) AI
4 189 (18.28%) CI/CD
5 178 (17.21%) Continuous Improvement
6 177 (17.12%) DevOps
7 170 (16.44%) Software Engineering
8 138 (13.35%) Analytics
9 117 (11.32%) Cybersecurity
10 114 (11.03%) Stakeholder Management
11 108 (10.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 107 (10.35%) Microservices
13 101 (9.77%) ITIL
13 101 (9.77%) Machine Learning
14 99 (9.57%) Mathematics
15 98 (9.48%) Decision-Making
16 95 (9.19%) Data Science
17 89 (8.61%) Technical Leadership
18 88 (8.51%) Containerisation
18 88 (8.51%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 289 (27.95%) Python
2 210 (20.31%) SQL
3 125 (12.09%) Java
4 71 (6.87%) JavaScript
5 58 (5.61%) C#
6 48 (4.64%) PowerShell
7 33 (3.19%) TypeScript
8 23 (2.22%) Bash
9 21 (2.03%) C++
10 19 (1.84%) R
11 13 (1.26%) Go
12 11 (1.06%) Shell Script
13 10 (0.97%) Perl
14 8 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 8 (0.77%) Kotlin
14 8 (0.77%) Rust
15 7 (0.68%) Scala
16 4 (0.39%) Ada
16 4 (0.39%) Bicep
16 4 (0.39%) C
Qualifications
1 816 (78.92%) Degree
2 488 (47.20%) Computer Science Degree
3 195 (18.86%) Security Cleared
4 133 (12.86%) Master's Degree
5 121 (11.70%) SC Cleared
6 57 (5.51%) CISSP
7 36 (3.48%) CISM
8 35 (3.38%) Microsoft Certification
9 32 (3.09%) Azure Certification
9 32 (3.09%) PhD
10 28 (2.71%) TOGAF Certification
11 27 (2.61%) PMI Certification
12 26 (2.51%) AWS Certification
13 25 (2.42%) DV Cleared
14 24 (2.32%) PMP
15 23 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
16 22 (2.13%) Cisco Certification
17 20 (1.93%) DBS Check
18 19 (1.84%) CISA
19 15 (1.45%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (6.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 62 (6.00%) NIST
3 61 (5.90%) Data Quality
4 52 (5.03%) QA
5 36 (3.48%) GDPR
6 20 (1.93%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.64%) Accessibility
8 16 (1.55%) GRC
8 16 (1.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (1.16%) NCSC
9 12 (1.16%) SLA
10 11 (1.06%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 10 (0.97%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.68%) COBIT
12 7 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 6 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
14 5 (0.48%) DO-254
14 5 (0.48%) Government Security Classifications
14 5 (0.48%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 94 (9.09%) Docker
2 77 (7.45%) Active Directory
3 20 (1.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.97%) Firmware
5 9 (0.87%) Hyper-V
6 8 (0.77%) 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
1 116 (11.22%) Kubernetes
2 57 (5.51%) Terraform
3 40 (3.87%) Ansible
4 29 (2.80%) Prometheus
5 27 (2.61%) Grafana
5 27 (2.61%) Microsoft Intune
6 15 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
7 5 (0.48%) Puppet
8 4 (0.39%) Control-M
8 4 (0.39%) Kiali
8 4 (0.39%) Kibana
8 4 (0.39%) Kubeflow
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%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.19%) AirWatch
10 2 (0.19%) SCCM
10 2 (0.19%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 182 (17.60%) Microsoft
2 69 (6.67%) Oracle
3 49 (4.74%) Databricks
4 38 (3.68%) Google
5 36 (3.48%) IBM
6 33 (3.19%) ServiceNow
7 32 (3.09%) SAP
8 28 (2.71%) Splunk
9 26 (2.51%) VMware
10 18 (1.74%) Cisco
11 16 (1.55%) Informatica
11 16 (1.55%) Okta
12 15 (1.45%) CyberArk
12 15 (1.45%) Palo Alto
13 14 (1.35%) BeyondTrust
13 14 (1.35%) BiZZdesign
14 11 (1.06%) CheckPoint
14 11 (1.06%) MuleSoft
14 11 (1.06%) Salesforce
15 9 (0.87%) Foundry