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

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 71 82
Rank change year-on-year -13 +11 +54
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,095 998 1,174
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.96% 3.17% 2.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.38% 3.57% 3.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 718 579 783
10th Percentile £174 £356 £325
25th Percentile £313 £450 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £752 £834 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 24 45
10th Percentile £26.33 £28.66 £29.58
25th Percentile £28.44 £33.75 £42.50
Median hourly rate £33.50 £44.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.86% -20.00% +4.76%
75th Percentile £57.81 £53.75 £67.50
90th Percentile £76.63 £67.93 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -10.67% -31.82% +4.76%

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 32,398 27,994 37,832
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.63% 88.92% 87.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,495 16,988 25,007
10th Percentile £305 £307 £300
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £645
90th Percentile £723 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,977 897 1,738
10th Percentile £14.52 £15.62 £14.02
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.94 £17.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £38.85
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -16.34% +19.54%
75th Percentile £57.00 £62.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £69.25 £74.92 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £30.83 £40.28
% change year-on-year -22.15% -23.46% +54.90%

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 19 January 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 19 January 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 19 January 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 -11 977 £475 -13.64% 1,719
UK excluding London +3 541 £400 -20.00% 1,588
London -36 459 £536 -7.67% 325
Work from Home -19 270 £469 -18.43% 858
North of England +48 187 £358 -31.81% 258
South East +27 131 £318 -36.50% 552
Yorkshire +32 102 £475 -9.52% 102
Midlands -19 96 £505 +12.22% 179
North West +15 83 £350 -33.33% 107
West Midlands -23 66 £525 +5.00% 74
South West +17 58 £500 -23.95% 189
Scotland -6 37 £537 +11.99% 59
East of England -36 31 £405 -21.97% 271
East Midlands -12 30 £450 +26.40% 103
Wales -8 13 £160 -44.35% 86
Northern Ireland -7 4 - - 43
North East -15 3 £216 -57.95% 52

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 58 (5.30%) Confluence
2 39 (3.56%) SharePoint
3 30 (2.74%) Apache Spark
4 20 (1.83%) Microsoft Exchange
5 13 (1.19%) Apache
6 12 (1.10%) Apache Airflow
7 7 (0.64%) Jupyter
7 7 (0.64%) nginx
8 5 (0.46%) IIS
8 5 (0.46%) Skype for Business
8 5 (0.46%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.37%) GeoServer
9 4 (0.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 4 (0.37%) SAS
10 3 (0.27%) Ethereum
10 3 (0.27%) Hyperledger
10 3 (0.27%) Luigi
11 2 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
Applications
1 45 (4.11%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.82%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.46%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.46%) Simulink
6 1 (0.091%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.091%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 21 (1.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.37%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.27%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.18%) Maximo
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle EBS R12
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.18%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.18%) SAP CX
5 2 (0.18%) SAP FS
5 2 (0.18%) SAP Travel Management
6 1 (0.091%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.091%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 275 (25.11%) Azure
2 198 (18.08%) AWS
3 113 (10.32%) GCP
4 72 (6.58%) GitHub
5 70 (6.39%) Power Platform
6 60 (5.48%) Serverless
7 51 (4.66%) Microsoft 365
8 44 (4.02%) SaaS
9 41 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
10 32 (2.92%) GitHub Actions
11 26 (2.37%) Entra ID
12 21 (1.92%) Azure Data Factory
12 21 (1.92%) IaaS
13 20 (1.83%) Cloud Computing
14 19 (1.74%) Power Automate
14 19 (1.74%) PowerApps
14 19 (1.74%) Snowflake
15 17 (1.55%) AWS Lambda
15 17 (1.55%) Azure Machine Learning
16 15 (1.37%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 43 (3.93%) Firewall
2 33 (3.01%) DNS
3 22 (2.01%) Network Security
4 21 (1.92%) HTTP
5 18 (1.64%) TCP/IP
6 14 (1.28%) DHCP
7 13 (1.19%) Skype
7 13 (1.19%) SSH
8 12 (1.10%) Wireless
9 11 (1.00%) VPN
10 10 (0.91%) VoIP
11 9 (0.82%) BGP
11 9 (0.82%) Cisco IOS
11 9 (0.82%) Internet
11 9 (0.82%) LAN
11 9 (0.82%) WAN
12 8 (0.73%) VLAN
13 7 (0.64%) IPv4
13 7 (0.64%) Unified Communications
14 6 (0.55%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (5.57%) PostgreSQL
2 60 (5.48%) NoSQL
3 55 (5.02%) Relational Database
4 50 (4.57%) Power BI
5 41 (3.74%) Data Warehouse
6 37 (3.38%) SQL Server
7 36 (3.29%) MySQL
8 28 (2.56%) Big Data
9 27 (2.47%) Tableau
10 18 (1.64%) Elasticsearch
11 13 (1.19%) MongoDB
12 10 (0.91%) Metadata
12 10 (0.91%) Redis
13 9 (0.82%) Hadoop
13 9 (0.82%) RDBMS
14 8 (0.73%) Apache Cassandra
14 8 (0.73%) Data Lake
14 8 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 7 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
15 7 (0.64%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 90 (8.22%) JIRA
2 87 (7.95%) Git
3 70 (6.39%) Jenkins
4 60 (5.48%) GitLab
5 22 (2.01%) Liquibase
6 16 (1.46%) Postman
7 13 (1.19%) Selenium
8 10 (0.91%) JUnit
9 8 (0.73%) Artifactory
9 8 (0.73%) Bitbucket
9 8 (0.73%) CircleCI
9 8 (0.73%) Cypress.io
9 8 (0.73%) Jaeger
9 8 (0.73%) Visual Studio
10 7 (0.64%) MLflow
10 7 (0.64%) SonarQube
11 6 (0.55%) Appium
12 5 (0.46%) Charles Proxy
12 5 (0.46%) PyCharm
12 5 (0.46%) TeamCity
General
1 502 (45.84%) Social Skills
2 283 (25.84%) Finance
3 256 (23.38%) Analytical Skills
4 116 (10.59%) Banking
5 67 (6.12%) Public Sector
6 41 (3.74%) Financial Institution
7 39 (3.56%) Marketing
8 34 (3.11%) Documentation Skills
8 34 (3.11%) Legal
9 33 (3.01%) Organisational Skills
10 32 (2.92%) Influencing Skills
11 31 (2.83%) Telecoms
12 30 (2.74%) Presentation Skills
13 28 (2.56%) Front Office
14 25 (2.28%) Electronics
15 24 (2.19%) Investment Banking
15 24 (2.19%) Manufacturing
16 14 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 13 (1.19%) Military
18 12 (1.10%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 194 (17.72%) Developer
2 96 (8.77%) Analyst
3 87 (7.95%) Architect
4 80 (7.31%) Senior
5 79 (7.21%) Lead
6 52 (4.75%) Software Engineer
7 38 (3.47%) Solutions Architect
8 30 (2.74%) Data Scientist
9 29 (2.65%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 27 (2.47%) Business Analyst
10 27 (2.47%) Technical Support
11 26 (2.37%) IT Support
11 26 (2.37%) Senior Developer
12 25 (2.28%) Python Developer
13 23 (2.10%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 22 (2.01%) Java Developer
14 22 (2.01%) Site Engineer
15 21 (1.92%) Consultant
15 21 (1.92%) Data Engineer
16 20 (1.83%) Machine Learning Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (10.32%) REST
2 74 (6.76%) RESTful
3 58 (5.30%) .NET
4 51 (4.66%) HTML
5 45 (4.11%) Elastic Stack
6 41 (3.74%) React
7 40 (3.65%) JSON
8 39 (3.56%) OAuth
8 39 (3.56%) XML
9 38 (3.47%) Middleware
10 37 (3.38%) CSS
11 35 (3.20%) Kafka
12 32 (2.92%) SOAP
13 30 (2.74%) TensorFlow
14 29 (2.65%) PyTorch
15 28 (2.56%) Node.js
16 27 (2.47%) LangChain
17 23 (2.10%) Spring
18 20 (1.83%) Spring Boot
19 19 (1.74%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 117 (10.68%) Management Information System
2 84 (7.67%) Cloud Native
3 82 (7.49%) Algorithms
4 50 (4.57%) Distributed Systems
5 48 (4.38%) Product Ownership
6 46 (4.20%) Data Structures
7 31 (2.83%) Public Cloud
8 30 (2.74%) Data Protection Act
9 28 (2.56%) Onboarding
10 25 (2.28%) Equities
10 25 (2.28%) Security Posture
11 22 (2.01%) Derivative
11 22 (2.01%) Mobile App
12 20 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
12 20 (1.83%) Virtual Team
13 19 (1.74%) AI Agents
13 19 (1.74%) Data Centre
14 18 (1.64%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 17 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
15 17 (1.55%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 163 (14.89%) Linux
2 121 (11.05%) Windows
3 61 (5.57%) Unix
4 28 (2.56%) Android
5 22 (2.01%) Windows Server
6 19 (1.74%) Mac OS
7 17 (1.55%) Apple iOS
8 8 (0.73%) Windows 10
9 7 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.18%) Debian
10 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
10 2 (0.18%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.18%) VMS
11 1 (0.091%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.091%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 370 (33.79%) Problem-Solving
2 302 (27.58%) Agile
3 237 (21.64%) DevOps
4 215 (19.63%) CI/CD
5 189 (17.26%) AI
6 178 (16.26%) Software Engineering
7 144 (13.15%) Microservices
8 135 (12.33%) Containerisation
9 124 (11.32%) Cybersecurity
10 117 (10.68%) Machine Learning
11 113 (10.32%) Analytics
12 106 (9.68%) Continuous Improvement
12 106 (9.68%) Stakeholder Management
13 105 (9.59%) Data Modelling
14 103 (9.41%) Data Science
15 102 (9.32%) Mathematics
16 92 (8.40%) Decision-Making
17 85 (7.76%) Risk Management
18 83 (7.58%) Test Automation
19 82 (7.49%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 360 (32.88%) Python
2 197 (17.99%) SQL
3 143 (13.06%) Java
4 111 (10.14%) JavaScript
5 61 (5.57%) PowerShell
6 58 (5.30%) TypeScript
7 55 (5.02%) C#
8 49 (4.47%) Bash
9 47 (4.29%) Go
10 46 (4.20%) C++
11 24 (2.19%) Perl
12 18 (1.64%) R
13 16 (1.46%) Kotlin
14 13 (1.19%) Rust
15 11 (1.00%) Ruby
15 11 (1.00%) Shell Script
16 9 (0.82%) C
16 9 (0.82%) MATLAB
17 8 (0.73%) Bicep
17 8 (0.73%) Swift
Qualifications
1 903 (82.47%) Degree
2 605 (55.25%) Computer Science Degree
3 218 (19.91%) Master's Degree
4 131 (11.96%) Security Cleared
5 94 (8.58%) SC Cleared
6 66 (6.03%) CISSP
7 51 (4.66%) PhD
8 50 (4.57%) DBS Check
9 44 (4.02%) CISM
10 34 (3.11%) Azure Certification
11 30 (2.74%) Microsoft Certification
12 29 (2.65%) Cisco Certification
12 29 (2.65%) PMI Certification
13 27 (2.47%) AWS Certification
13 27 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
13 27 (2.47%) TOGAF Certification
14 26 (2.37%) DV Cleared
15 22 (2.01%) PMP
16 19 (1.74%) ITIL Certification
17 18 (1.64%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (6.48%) QA
2 57 (5.21%) GDPR
3 50 (4.57%) Data Quality
4 41 (3.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 31 (2.83%) NIST
6 17 (1.55%) GRC
7 15 (1.37%) Accessibility
7 15 (1.37%) PCI DSS
8 11 (1.00%) Def Stans
9 9 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 8 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials
11 6 (0.55%) HIPAA
11 6 (0.55%) SLA
12 5 (0.46%) DO-254
13 4 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 4 (0.37%) PSD2
14 3 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 3 (0.27%) ISO 19650
14 3 (0.27%) NCSC
14 3 (0.27%) PMO
System Software
1 158 (14.43%) Docker
2 48 (4.38%) Active Directory
3 22 (2.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.82%) Firmware
5 6 (0.55%) VMware NSX
6 5 (0.46%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 5 (0.46%) Virtual Servers
7 4 (0.37%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.18%) KVM
8 2 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.091%) HDFS
9 1 (0.091%) PowerHA
9 1 (0.091%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 150 (13.70%) Kubernetes
2 94 (8.58%) Terraform
3 68 (6.21%) Ansible
4 52 (4.75%) Grafana
5 40 (3.65%) Prometheus
6 22 (2.01%) Puppet
7 15 (1.37%) Kibana
8 13 (1.19%) SCCM
9 12 (1.10%) Microsoft Intune
9 12 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.73%) Kiali
11 7 (0.64%) Argo
12 6 (0.55%) CSIRT
12 6 (0.55%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.55%) QRadar
12 6 (0.55%) WSUS
13 4 (0.37%) SCOM
14 3 (0.27%) Control-M
14 3 (0.27%) HP ALM
15 2 (0.18%) Knative
Vendors
1 179 (16.35%) Microsoft
2 90 (8.22%) Splunk
3 57 (5.21%) Google
4 51 (4.66%) Oracle
5 49 (4.47%) SAP
6 34 (3.11%) Databricks
7 30 (2.74%) Cisco
8 28 (2.56%) Salesforce
9 24 (2.19%) ServiceNow
9 24 (2.19%) VMware
10 19 (1.74%) IBM
11 17 (1.55%) BiZZdesign
11 17 (1.55%) Red Hat
12 15 (1.37%) Informatica
13 14 (1.28%) OpenAI
14 13 (1.19%) MuleSoft
15 11 (1.00%) Fortinet
15 11 (1.00%) Foundry
15 11 (1.00%) Palo Alto
16 10 (0.91%) Atlassian