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

 6 months to
5 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 121 64 63
Rank change year-on-year -57 -1 +39
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,039 1,072 1,344
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.12% 3.70% 3.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.50% 4.07% 3.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 598 596 814
10th Percentile £178 £250 £313
25th Percentile £218 £383 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.54% -2.14% -7.08%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £650
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £475 £513
% change year-on-year -15.79% -7.32% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 34 103
10th Percentile £28.50 £25.38 £21.25
25th Percentile £49.19 £29.00 £38.75
Median hourly rate £80.71 £41.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +96.84% -25.45% +1.04%
75th Percentile £88.00 £68.44 £65.00
90th Percentile - £86.49 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.00 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +121.33% -31.82% +7.32%

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 41,594 26,332 36,644
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.70% 91.01% 85.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,970 16,762 23,491
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £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 2,502 1,133 2,525
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.53 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.68% -24.58% +1.39%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.25 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.29 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.09% -34.02% +8.91%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 -45 930 £475 -9.13% 1,287
UK excluding London -49 557 £400 -15.79% 774
London -54 401 £550 -8.33% 627
Work from Home -62 227 £500 -9.09% 837
South East -8 215 £215 -55.26% 254
North of England -24 139 £400 -20.00% 143
Yorkshire 0 83 £525 +22.38% 32
Midlands -68 69 £450 +50.00% 93
North West -34 55 £350 -34.09% 79
West Midlands -64 53 £450 +50.00% 56
South West -44 46 £435 +17.43% 80
Scotland -23 38 £640 +21.90% 49
East of England -36 38 £280 -56.92% 113
East Midlands -38 15 £525 +67.73% 37
Northern Ireland +12 8 £350 -41.67% 42
Wales -36 7 £450 +28.11% 18
North East -31 2 £125 -73.68% 32

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 52 (5.00%) Confluence
2 39 (3.75%) Apache Spark
3 26 (2.50%) SharePoint
4 23 (2.21%) Apache
5 21 (2.02%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (0.96%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.58%) IIS
8 4 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.38%) SAS
9 3 (0.29%) Camunda
9 3 (0.29%) CMS
9 3 (0.29%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.29%) OpenStack
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 (0.096%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.096%) Appian
Applications
1 32 (3.08%) Microsoft Office
2 23 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.54%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.67%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.67%) Revit
6 3 (0.29%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.19%) Simulink
7 2 (0.19%) Trello
8 1 (0.096%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.096%) Sketch
8 1 (0.096%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 23 (2.21%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.48%) Payment Gateway
3 4 (0.38%) Aladdin
3 4 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.19%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.19%) Workfront
6 1 (0.096%) Actimize
6 1 (0.096%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.096%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.096%) SAP Retail
6 1 (0.096%) SAP SM
6 1 (0.096%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.096%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 303 (29.16%) Azure
2 191 (18.38%) AWS
3 84 (8.08%) GCP
4 63 (6.06%) Power Platform
5 53 (5.10%) Microsoft 365
6 49 (4.72%) SaaS
7 47 (4.52%) GitHub
8 46 (4.43%) Entra ID
9 35 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
10 21 (2.02%) GitHub Actions
11 20 (1.92%) Snowflake
12 17 (1.64%) PowerApps
12 17 (1.64%) Serverless
13 16 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
13 16 (1.54%) Azure AKS
13 16 (1.54%) IaaS
14 13 (1.25%) Azure Data Factory
14 13 (1.25%) PaaS
15 12 (1.15%) Azure Service Bus
16 11 (1.06%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 36 (3.46%) Firewall
2 30 (2.89%) TCP/IP
3 29 (2.79%) DNS
4 28 (2.69%) Network Security
5 15 (1.44%) WAN
6 13 (1.25%) BGP
6 13 (1.25%) SSH
7 12 (1.15%) LAN
8 10 (0.96%) OSPF
9 9 (0.87%) 3GPP
9 9 (0.87%) HTTPS
9 9 (0.87%) VPN
9 9 (0.87%) Wireless
10 7 (0.67%) SAN
10 7 (0.67%) VLAN
11 6 (0.58%) DHCP
11 6 (0.58%) LTE
12 5 (0.48%) RTP
12 5 (0.48%) Wireshark
13 4 (0.38%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (4.81%) Power BI
2 48 (4.62%) Relational Database
2 48 (4.62%) SQL Server
3 44 (4.23%) PostgreSQL
4 39 (3.75%) Data Warehouse
5 34 (3.27%) Big Data
6 28 (2.69%) Metadata
7 25 (2.41%) NoSQL
8 23 (2.21%) MongoDB
9 21 (2.02%) Hadoop
9 21 (2.02%) MySQL
10 17 (1.64%) Tableau
11 14 (1.35%) Data Lake
12 13 (1.25%) Elasticsearch
13 10 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
13 10 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 9 (0.87%) Redis
15 8 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
16 7 (0.67%) Power Query
16 7 (0.67%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 72 (6.93%) Git
2 64 (6.16%) JIRA
3 36 (3.46%) GitLab
3 36 (3.46%) Jenkins
4 28 (2.69%) Rational DOORS
5 13 (1.25%) Selenium
6 12 (1.15%) Gradle
7 11 (1.06%) JUnit
8 10 (0.96%) TeamCity
9 9 (0.87%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.77%) Cypress.io
10 8 (0.77%) MLflow
11 7 (0.67%) CircleCI
11 7 (0.67%) Maven
11 7 (0.67%) Postman
11 7 (0.67%) SonarQube
12 5 (0.48%) Artifactory
12 5 (0.48%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.48%) Flyway
12 5 (0.48%) REST Assured
General
1 422 (40.62%) Social Skills
2 236 (22.71%) Finance
3 209 (20.12%) Analytical Skills
4 94 (9.05%) Banking
5 63 (6.06%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.29%) Aerospace
7 52 (5.00%) Documentation Skills
8 33 (3.18%) Marketing
9 31 (2.98%) Telecoms
10 30 (2.89%) Presentation Skills
11 29 (2.79%) Legal
11 29 (2.79%) Organisational Skills
12 27 (2.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 25 (2.41%) Front Office
14 24 (2.31%) Influencing Skills
15 19 (1.83%) Manufacturing
16 16 (1.54%) Investment Banking
16 16 (1.54%) Publishing
17 15 (1.44%) Law
17 15 (1.44%) Retail
Job Titles
1 110 (10.59%) Architect
2 106 (10.20%) Developer
3 91 (8.76%) Analyst
4 86 (8.28%) Lead
4 86 (8.28%) Senior
5 41 (3.95%) Software Engineer
6 35 (3.37%) Delivery Manager
6 35 (3.37%) Product Manager
7 31 (2.98%) Solutions Architect
8 29 (2.79%) Data Scientist
8 29 (2.79%) Technical Support
9 28 (2.69%) Data Engineer
9 28 (2.69%) Product Delivery Manager
10 23 (2.21%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 23 (2.21%) Junior
10 23 (2.21%) Python Developer
10 23 (2.21%) Security Engineer
11 22 (2.12%) Systems Delivery Manager
11 22 (2.12%) Systems Manager
12 20 (1.92%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 90 (8.66%) REST
2 56 (5.39%) React
3 52 (5.00%) .NET
4 46 (4.43%) Kafka
5 43 (4.14%) Middleware
6 35 (3.37%) RESTful
7 34 (3.27%) Spring Boot
8 29 (2.79%) Spring
9 24 (2.31%) OAuth
9 24 (2.31%) PyTorch
10 23 (2.21%) AngularJS
11 21 (2.02%) SOAP
12 20 (1.92%) JSON
13 19 (1.83%) TensorFlow
14 18 (1.73%) Elastic Stack
14 18 (1.73%) HTML
14 18 (1.73%) XML
15 17 (1.64%) CSS
15 17 (1.64%) Web Services
16 16 (1.54%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 100 (9.62%) Management Information System
2 79 (7.60%) Product Ownership
3 77 (7.41%) Onboarding
4 69 (6.64%) Algorithms
5 65 (6.26%) Cloud Native
6 51 (4.91%) Data Structures
6 51 (4.91%) Distributed Systems
7 29 (2.79%) Virtual Team
8 25 (2.41%) Derivative
8 25 (2.41%) Self-Motivation
9 21 (2.02%) Equities
10 20 (1.92%) AI Agents
10 20 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
10 20 (1.92%) Taxonomies
11 19 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
11 19 (1.83%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 18 (1.73%) Security Operations Centre
13 17 (1.64%) Cyberattack
14 16 (1.54%) Robotics
15 14 (1.35%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 133 (12.80%) Windows
2 126 (12.13%) Linux
3 42 (4.04%) Unix
4 24 (2.31%) Android
5 20 (1.92%) Windows 10
6 19 (1.83%) Windows Server
7 16 (1.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 15 (1.44%) Apple iOS
9 14 (1.35%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.38%) Debian
11 4 (0.38%) Rocky
11 4 (0.38%) VMS
12 2 (0.19%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.19%) Solaris
12 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.096%) CentOS
13 1 (0.096%) MVS
13 1 (0.096%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 306 (29.45%) Problem-Solving
2 257 (24.74%) Agile
3 224 (21.56%) AI
4 189 (18.19%) CI/CD
5 177 (17.04%) DevOps
6 174 (16.75%) Software Engineering
7 166 (15.98%) Continuous Improvement
8 128 (12.32%) Analytics
9 122 (11.74%) Cybersecurity
10 115 (11.07%) Microservices
11 104 (10.01%) Stakeholder Management
12 101 (9.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 96 (9.24%) Machine Learning
14 95 (9.14%) Technical Leadership
15 94 (9.05%) Decision-Making
16 89 (8.57%) Mathematics
17 88 (8.47%) Containerisation
18 87 (8.37%) Data Science
19 85 (8.18%) Data Governance
19 85 (8.18%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 284 (27.33%) Python
2 206 (19.83%) SQL
3 135 (12.99%) Java
4 67 (6.45%) JavaScript
5 57 (5.49%) C#
6 45 (4.33%) PowerShell
7 33 (3.18%) TypeScript
8 27 (2.60%) C++
9 25 (2.41%) Bash
10 19 (1.83%) R
11 14 (1.35%) Go
12 12 (1.15%) Perl
12 12 (1.15%) Rust
13 11 (1.06%) Shell Script
14 10 (0.96%) Kotlin
15 8 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 6 (0.58%) Scala
17 5 (0.48%) C
18 4 (0.38%) Ada
19 3 (0.29%) PHP
Qualifications
1 827 (79.60%) Degree
2 503 (48.41%) Computer Science Degree
3 193 (18.58%) Security Cleared
4 139 (13.38%) Master's Degree
5 115 (11.07%) SC Cleared
6 55 (5.29%) CISSP
7 38 (3.66%) CISM
8 31 (2.98%) Azure Certification
8 31 (2.98%) PhD
9 30 (2.89%) DV Cleared
9 30 (2.89%) TOGAF Certification
10 28 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
11 27 (2.60%) PMI Certification
12 24 (2.31%) PMP
13 23 (2.21%) AWS Certification
14 21 (2.02%) Cisco Certification
14 21 (2.02%) CompTIA Security+
15 20 (1.92%) BPSS Clearance
16 19 (1.83%) CISA
16 19 (1.83%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 59 (5.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 58 (5.58%) NIST
3 57 (5.49%) Data Quality
4 55 (5.29%) QA
5 37 (3.56%) GDPR
6 21 (2.02%) PCI DSS
7 19 (1.83%) Accessibility
8 14 (1.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 13 (1.25%) GRC
10 10 (0.96%) NIST 800
10 10 (0.96%) SLA
11 9 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 8 (0.77%) HIPAA
12 8 (0.77%) NCSC
13 7 (0.67%) COBIT
13 7 (0.67%) PSD2
14 6 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
14 6 (0.58%) ISO 20022
15 5 (0.48%) DO-254
15 5 (0.48%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 102 (9.82%) Docker
2 69 (6.64%) Active Directory
3 20 (1.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (1.15%) Firmware
5 9 (0.87%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.48%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.38%) 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 (0.096%) ACF2
11 1 (0.096%) HDFS
11 1 (0.096%) RACF
Systems Management
1 125 (12.03%) Kubernetes
2 57 (5.49%) Terraform
3 44 (4.23%) Ansible
4 31 (2.98%) Grafana
4 31 (2.98%) Prometheus
5 26 (2.50%) Microsoft Intune
6 17 (1.64%) Single Sign-On
7 9 (0.87%) Kiali
8 8 (0.77%) Puppet
9 7 (0.67%) Kibana
10 4 (0.38%) Control-M
10 4 (0.38%) 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 (0.19%) AirWatch
12 2 (0.19%) Network Intrusion Detection System
12 2 (0.19%) vRealize
12 2 (0.19%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 175 (16.84%) Microsoft
2 66 (6.35%) Oracle
3 47 (4.52%) Databricks
4 46 (4.43%) Splunk
5 36 (3.46%) SAP
6 34 (3.27%) Google
6 34 (3.27%) IBM
7 28 (2.69%) ServiceNow
8 24 (2.31%) VMware
9 18 (1.73%) Cisco
10 16 (1.54%) Okta
11 15 (1.44%) BiZZdesign
11 15 (1.44%) Informatica
12 13 (1.25%) Palo Alto
12 13 (1.25%) Salesforce
13 12 (1.15%) CheckPoint
14 11 (1.06%) CyberArk
15 10 (0.96%) BeyondTrust
15 10 (0.96%) MuleSoft
16 9 (0.87%) Foundry
1,502 Computer Science jobs Nationwide