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 13 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 130 64 61
Rank change year-on-year -66 -3 +24
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,102 1,256 1,306
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.07% 3.81% 3.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.44% 4.21% 3.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 618 714 815
10th Percentile £177 £184 £326
25th Percentile £200 £351 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £492 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.54% -10.55% -
75th Percentile £615 £650 £688
90th Percentile £752 £775 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £375 £413 £520
% change year-on-year -9.09% -20.67% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 127 49 66
10th Percentile £25.45 £25.00 £20.68
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £41.50
Median hourly rate £75.00 £54.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +37.61% +3.81% -15.32%
75th Percentile £87.16 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £88.00 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.50 £67.00 £55.63
% change year-on-year +21.64% +20.45% -7.29%

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 45,250 29,801 33,299
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 90.48% 85.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,843 18,616 21,279
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £423 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,819 1,703 1,838
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.75 £17.31 £18.50
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -39.40% -1.55%
75th Percentile £68.00 £47.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.38 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.50
% change year-on-year +93.36% -46.51% +13.33%

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 13 August 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 13 August 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 13 August 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 -55 1,008 £450 -10.00% 3,777
UK excluding London -55 594 £375 -9.09% 1,445
London -67 436 £530 -11.31% 2,605
South East -6 244 £363 -14.71% 395
Work from Home -91 243 £500 - 1,244
North of England -40 143 £400 -5.33% 272
Midlands -55 92 £253 -21.09% 152
Yorkshire -9 75 £450 +25.70% 70
West Midlands -46 63 £275 -5.82% 79
North West -55 58 £379 -20.26% 133
East of England -25 49 £215 -52.22% 250
South West -67 30 £477 +130.99% 141
East Midlands -25 28 £253 -39.88% 73
Scotland -51 27 £400 -17.95% 161
North East -37 11 £195 -57.84% 71
Northern Ireland - 7 £350 - 50
Wales -21 4 £530 +14.59% 39

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 37 (3.36%) Confluence
2 30 (2.72%) SharePoint
3 25 (2.27%) Apache Spark
4 19 (1.72%) Apache Airflow
5 17 (1.54%) Apache
6 9 (0.82%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.54%) IIS
8 5 (0.45%) SAS
9 4 (0.36%) CMS
9 4 (0.36%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.27%) Camunda
10 3 (0.27%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.18%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.091%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.091%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.091%) nginx
12 1 (0.091%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 46 (4.17%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (2.90%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.45%) MS Visio
4 14 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.64%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.64%) Revit
6 5 (0.45%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.45%) Trello
7 2 (0.18%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.18%) CPLEX
7 2 (0.18%) Sketch
8 1 (0.091%) Simulink
8 1 (0.091%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 13 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.45%) Aladdin
3 4 (0.36%) Infor M3
3 4 (0.36%) Workday HCM
4 3 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.27%) Primavera
4 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.18%) Actimize
5 2 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.18%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.18%) Workfront
6 1 (0.091%) Finacle
6 1 (0.091%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.091%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.091%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.091%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.091%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 296 (26.86%) Azure
2 188 (17.06%) AWS
3 105 (9.53%) GCP
4 76 (6.90%) Power Platform
5 65 (5.90%) Entra ID
6 58 (5.26%) Microsoft 365
7 52 (4.72%) SaaS
8 45 (4.08%) GitHub
9 41 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
10 36 (3.27%) Snowflake
11 30 (2.72%) Serverless
12 22 (2.00%) PowerApps
13 18 (1.63%) GitHub Actions
14 16 (1.45%) AWS Lambda
14 16 (1.45%) Azure Data Factory
14 16 (1.45%) Microsoft Copilot
15 15 (1.36%) Power Automate
16 13 (1.18%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 13 (1.18%) dbt
16 13 (1.18%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 43 (3.90%) Firewall
2 39 (3.54%) DNS
3 32 (2.90%) Network Security
3 32 (2.90%) VPN
4 26 (2.36%) TCP/IP
5 19 (1.72%) WAN
6 17 (1.54%) DHCP
7 16 (1.45%) SSH
8 15 (1.36%) LAN
9 13 (1.18%) Wireless
10 11 (1.00%) BGP
11 10 (0.91%) VLAN
12 9 (0.82%) HTTP
13 8 (0.73%) HTTPS
13 8 (0.73%) MPLS
13 8 (0.73%) OSPF
13 8 (0.73%) Wireshark
14 7 (0.64%) 3GPP
14 7 (0.64%) Cisco ASA
14 7 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (5.72%) Power BI
2 54 (4.90%) Relational Database
3 45 (4.08%) SQL Server
4 44 (3.99%) PostgreSQL
5 32 (2.90%) Data Warehouse
5 32 (2.90%) Metadata
6 26 (2.36%) MongoDB
7 24 (2.18%) Big Data
7 24 (2.18%) NoSQL
8 18 (1.63%) Tableau
9 15 (1.36%) Data Mining
10 14 (1.27%) MySQL
11 13 (1.18%) Redis
12 11 (1.00%) Elasticsearch
12 11 (1.00%) Oracle Database
13 10 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
13 10 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
14 9 (0.82%) Data Lake
14 9 (0.82%) Snowflake Schema
15 8 (0.73%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 90 (8.17%) Git
2 48 (4.36%) JIRA
3 38 (3.45%) Jenkins
4 37 (3.36%) GitLab
5 32 (2.90%) Rational DOORS
6 17 (1.54%) Selenium
7 11 (1.00%) Bitbucket
8 10 (0.91%) JUnit
9 9 (0.82%) TeamCity
10 8 (0.73%) SonarQube
10 8 (0.73%) SpecFlow
11 7 (0.64%) Gradle
11 7 (0.64%) Maven
11 7 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
12 6 (0.54%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.54%) Postman
12 6 (0.54%) REST Assured
12 6 (0.54%) Team Foundation Server
12 6 (0.54%) Visual Studio
13 5 (0.45%) MLflow
General
1 450 (40.83%) Social Skills
2 253 (22.96%) Analytical Skills
3 229 (20.78%) Finance
4 87 (7.89%) Banking
5 64 (5.81%) Aerospace
6 63 (5.72%) Public Sector
7 46 (4.17%) Documentation Skills
8 36 (3.27%) Organisational Skills
8 36 (3.27%) Telecoms
9 35 (3.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 31 (2.81%) Influencing Skills
11 29 (2.63%) Manufacturing
12 27 (2.45%) Front Office
12 27 (2.45%) Legal
12 27 (2.45%) Marketing
13 19 (1.72%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (1.54%) Law
15 16 (1.45%) Military
16 15 (1.36%) Retail
17 13 (1.18%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 129 (11.71%) Developer
2 106 (9.62%) Senior
3 95 (8.62%) Architect
4 80 (7.26%) Lead
5 77 (6.99%) Analyst
6 41 (3.72%) Product Manager
7 39 (3.54%) Data Engineer
8 35 (3.18%) Delivery Manager
9 33 (2.99%) Software Engineer
10 31 (2.81%) Product Delivery Manager
11 26 (2.36%) IT Support
12 25 (2.27%) Data Scientist
12 25 (2.27%) Junior
13 24 (2.18%) Senior Developer
13 24 (2.18%) Solutions Architect
14 23 (2.09%) Python Developer
15 22 (2.00%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 22 (2.00%) Security Engineer
15 22 (2.00%) Systems Delivery Manager
15 22 (2.00%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 91 (8.26%) REST
2 56 (5.08%) .NET
3 51 (4.63%) React
4 43 (3.90%) Kafka
5 37 (3.36%) RESTful
6 31 (2.81%) OAuth
7 29 (2.63%) CSS
7 29 (2.63%) HTML
8 28 (2.54%) Spring
9 24 (2.18%) Middleware
9 24 (2.18%) OAuth2
9 24 (2.18%) OpenID
9 24 (2.18%) SAML
9 24 (2.18%) Web Services
10 23 (2.09%) Spring Boot
11 22 (2.00%) JSON
11 22 (2.00%) SOAP
12 21 (1.91%) AngularJS
13 19 (1.72%) PyTorch
14 17 (1.54%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 96 (8.71%) Management Information System
2 88 (7.99%) Product Ownership
3 85 (7.71%) Algorithms
4 74 (6.72%) Onboarding
5 68 (6.17%) Data Structures
6 67 (6.08%) Cloud Native
7 51 (4.63%) Distributed Systems
8 31 (2.81%) AI Agents
9 26 (2.36%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 26 (2.36%) Self-Motivation
10 25 (2.27%) Virtual Team
11 23 (2.09%) Derivative
12 19 (1.72%) Hybrid Cloud
13 17 (1.54%) Analytical Mindset
13 17 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
13 17 (1.54%) Fixed Income
13 17 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
14 16 (1.45%) Operational Technology
15 15 (1.36%) Data Centre
16 14 (1.27%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 122 (11.07%) Windows
2 103 (9.35%) Linux
3 31 (2.81%) Unix
4 23 (2.09%) Windows Server
5 19 (1.72%) Windows 10
6 18 (1.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (1.36%) Android
8 10 (0.91%) Ubuntu
9 8 (0.73%) Apple iOS
10 7 (0.64%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.36%) Debian
11 4 (0.36%) Rocky
12 3 (0.27%) VMS
13 2 (0.18%) MVS
13 2 (0.18%) Solaris
13 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.18%) zOS
14 1 (0.091%) CentOS
14 1 (0.091%) Windows 7
14 1 (0.091%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 332 (30.13%) Problem-Solving
2 270 (24.50%) Agile
3 228 (20.69%) AI
4 203 (18.42%) Continuous Improvement
5 198 (17.97%) CI/CD
6 189 (17.15%) Software Engineering
7 162 (14.70%) DevOps
8 148 (13.43%) Stakeholder Management
9 143 (12.98%) Analytics
10 121 (10.98%) Cybersecurity
11 120 (10.89%) ITIL
12 116 (10.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 111 (10.07%) Mathematics
14 102 (9.26%) Machine Learning
15 97 (8.80%) Roadmaps
16 93 (8.44%) Validation
17 90 (8.17%) Decision-Making
18 87 (7.89%) Data Science
19 83 (7.53%) Mentoring
20 82 (7.44%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 295 (26.77%) Python
2 205 (18.60%) SQL
3 131 (11.89%) Java
4 71 (6.44%) PowerShell
5 69 (6.26%) JavaScript
6 65 (5.90%) C#
7 37 (3.36%) TypeScript
8 36 (3.27%) Bash
9 27 (2.45%) C++
10 15 (1.36%) R
11 13 (1.18%) Bicep
12 10 (0.91%) C
12 10 (0.91%) Shell Script
13 8 (0.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 8 (0.73%) Go
13 8 (0.73%) Kotlin
14 6 (0.54%) Apex Code
14 6 (0.54%) Perl
14 6 (0.54%) PL/SQL
14 6 (0.54%) Scala
Qualifications
1 838 (76.04%) Degree
2 484 (43.92%) Computer Science Degree
3 212 (19.24%) Security Cleared
4 130 (11.80%) SC Cleared
5 119 (10.80%) Master's Degree
6 50 (4.54%) CISSP
7 46 (4.17%) Azure Certification
8 44 (3.99%) Microsoft Certification
9 38 (3.45%) DBS Check
10 35 (3.18%) PhD
11 32 (2.90%) CISM
12 28 (2.54%) PMI Certification
13 27 (2.45%) DV Cleared
13 27 (2.45%) PMP
14 26 (2.36%) AWS Certification
15 24 (2.18%) Cisco Certification
15 24 (2.18%) TOGAF Certification
16 22 (2.00%) CISA
17 17 (1.54%) CEH
18 16 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (6.44%) Data Quality
2 65 (5.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (5.17%) NIST
4 55 (4.99%) QA
5 28 (2.54%) GDPR
6 16 (1.45%) Accessibility
7 15 (1.36%) GRC
8 14 (1.27%) SLA
9 12 (1.09%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 11 (1.00%) HIPAA
10 11 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 11 (1.00%) NCSC
11 10 (0.91%) NIST 800
12 9 (0.82%) PCI DSS
13 7 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 5 (0.45%) COBIT
14 5 (0.45%) DO-254
14 5 (0.45%) Government Security Classifications
14 5 (0.45%) ITGC
15 4 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 84 (7.62%) Docker
2 76 (6.90%) Active Directory
3 24 (2.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.91%) Firmware
5 9 (0.82%) Hyper-V
5 9 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
6 6 (0.54%) VMware NSX
7 5 (0.45%) vSphere
8 3 (0.27%) ACF2
8 3 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
8 3 (0.27%) RACF
8 3 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
9 2 (0.18%) Ceph
9 2 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
9 2 (0.18%) Squid
9 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.091%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 1 (0.091%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.091%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 99 (8.98%) Kubernetes
2 55 (4.99%) Terraform
3 39 (3.54%) Ansible
4 29 (2.63%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (2.27%) Prometheus
6 20 (1.81%) Grafana
7 14 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (1.00%) SCCM
9 6 (0.54%) Argo
10 4 (0.36%) Control-M
11 3 (0.27%) Cisco CUCM
11 3 (0.27%) Foglight
11 3 (0.27%) HP ALM
11 3 (0.27%) Kubeflow
11 3 (0.27%) Puppet
11 3 (0.27%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.18%) CASB
12 2 (0.18%) Istio
12 2 (0.18%) vRealize
12 2 (0.18%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 204 (18.51%) Microsoft
2 63 (5.72%) Oracle
3 46 (4.17%) Databricks
3 46 (4.17%) IBM
4 42 (3.81%) Google
5 39 (3.54%) ServiceNow
6 35 (3.18%) VMware
7 32 (2.90%) SAP
8 24 (2.18%) Cisco
9 19 (1.72%) CyberArk
9 19 (1.72%) Splunk
10 17 (1.54%) BeyondTrust
11 16 (1.45%) Salesforce
12 11 (1.00%) Citrix
12 11 (1.00%) Palo Alto
13 10 (0.91%) Okta
14 9 (0.82%) Adobe
14 9 (0.82%) Apple
14 9 (0.82%) Red Hat
14 9 (0.82%) UiPath