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 9 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 75 71
Rank change year-on-year -16 -4 +59
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,114 951 1,255
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.86% 3.08% 2.78%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.28% 3.44% 3.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 717 535 807
10th Percentile £175 £342 £320
25th Percentile £309 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.14% -2.27% -8.33%
75th Percentile £650 £663 £675
90th Percentile £775 £800 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 24 73
10th Percentile £26.48 £30.78 £26.35
25th Percentile £31.81 £33.75 £42.50
Median hourly rate £34.25 £47.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.89% -13.64% +4.76%
75th Percentile £65.00 £59.25 £67.02
90th Percentile £70.50 £69.95 £74.75
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 33,920 27,613 39,240
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.99% 89.40% 87.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,498 16,798 25,769
10th Percentile £306 £306 £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 £638
90th Percentile £718 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £497 £500
% change year-on-year -3.92% -0.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,057 854 2,142
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.66 £34.36
Median % change year-on-year -22.98% -4.95% +5.71%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £60.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.81% -9.26% +11.93%

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 9 February 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 9 February 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 9 February 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 -11 981 £475 -12.84% 727
UK excluding London +2 553 £400 -20.00% 561
London -32 457 £550 -4.35% 300
Work from Home -8 275 £500 -13.04% 380
North of England +39 189 £363 -30.86% 91
South East +14 133 £350 -30.00% 224
Yorkshire +20 100 £525 +2.44% 20
Midlands -23 92 £500 +9.59% 78
North West +23 85 £328 -37.62% 53
West Midlands -32 66 £525 +5.00% 56
South West +9 59 £520 -20.00% 52
Scotland +2 41 £605 +26.17% 34
East of England -36 37 £528 -12.08% 71
East Midlands -19 26 £447 +25.56% 22
Wales -11 14 £160 -44.35% 17
North East -13 5 £207 -64.09% 18
Northern Ireland -6 4 - - 7

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 61 (5.48%) Confluence
2 39 (3.50%) Apache Spark
3 36 (3.23%) SharePoint
4 21 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
5 16 (1.44%) Apache
5 16 (1.44%) Apache Airflow
6 7 (0.63%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.45%) Skype for Business
7 5 (0.45%) Smallworld
8 4 (0.36%) GeoServer
8 4 (0.36%) IIS
8 4 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.36%) SAS
9 3 (0.27%) Ethereum
9 3 (0.27%) Hyperledger
9 3 (0.27%) Palantir Foundry
10 2 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.18%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.090%) SAP Portal
Applications
1 38 (3.41%) Microsoft Office
2 21 (1.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.81%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.45%) Simulink
6 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.090%) Oracle Smart View
7 1 (0.090%) Trello
Business Applications
1 24 (2.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
4 4 (0.36%) SAP ERP
5 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.18%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.18%) SAP CX
6 2 (0.18%) SAP FS
6 2 (0.18%) SAP Travel Management
6 2 (0.18%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.090%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.090%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 1 (0.090%) JDE EnterpriseOne
7 1 (0.090%) Maximo
7 1 (0.090%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.090%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 302 (27.11%) Azure
2 201 (18.04%) AWS
3 125 (11.22%) GCP
4 64 (5.75%) Power Platform
5 63 (5.66%) GitHub
6 57 (5.12%) Microsoft 365
7 54 (4.85%) Serverless
8 46 (4.13%) SaaS
9 42 (3.77%) Azure DevOps
10 29 (2.60%) Entra ID
10 29 (2.60%) GitHub Actions
11 21 (1.89%) IaaS
12 20 (1.80%) Azure Data Factory
13 19 (1.71%) Power Automate
13 19 (1.71%) PowerApps
14 18 (1.62%) Cloud Computing
14 18 (1.62%) Snowflake
15 17 (1.53%) Azure Machine Learning
16 15 (1.35%) AWS CloudFormation
16 15 (1.35%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 45 (4.04%) Firewall
2 35 (3.14%) DNS
3 23 (2.06%) Network Security
3 23 (2.06%) TCP/IP
4 20 (1.80%) HTTP
5 14 (1.26%) DHCP
6 13 (1.17%) Skype
7 12 (1.08%) BGP
7 12 (1.08%) Wireless
8 11 (0.99%) LAN
8 11 (0.99%) WAN
9 10 (0.90%) SSH
9 10 (0.90%) VLAN
9 10 (0.90%) VPN
10 9 (0.81%) Cisco IOS
10 9 (0.81%) OSPF
10 9 (0.81%) VoIP
11 7 (0.63%) HTTPS
11 7 (0.63%) Internet
11 7 (0.63%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (6.73%) PostgreSQL
2 59 (5.30%) NoSQL
3 48 (4.31%) Relational Database
4 46 (4.13%) Data Warehouse
4 46 (4.13%) Power BI
5 41 (3.68%) MySQL
6 39 (3.50%) SQL Server
7 36 (3.23%) Big Data
8 25 (2.24%) Tableau
9 20 (1.80%) Elasticsearch
10 18 (1.62%) Hadoop
10 18 (1.62%) Metadata
11 15 (1.35%) Data Lake
12 14 (1.26%) MongoDB
13 11 (0.99%) Redis
14 8 (0.72%) KDB
14 8 (0.72%) Kdb+
14 8 (0.72%) RDBMS
14 8 (0.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 7 (0.63%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 88 (7.90%) Git
2 84 (7.54%) JIRA
3 66 (5.92%) Jenkins
4 60 (5.39%) GitLab
5 22 (1.97%) Liquibase
6 17 (1.53%) Postman
7 12 (1.08%) Selenium
8 10 (0.90%) MLflow
9 9 (0.81%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.72%) Visual Studio
11 7 (0.63%) Bitbucket
12 6 (0.54%) Appium
12 6 (0.54%) CircleCI
12 6 (0.54%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.54%) XCUITest
13 5 (0.45%) Artifactory
13 5 (0.45%) Charles Proxy
13 5 (0.45%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.45%) Katalon Studio
13 5 (0.45%) PyCharm
General
1 519 (46.59%) Social Skills
2 297 (26.66%) Finance
3 252 (22.62%) Analytical Skills
4 119 (10.68%) Banking
5 67 (6.01%) Public Sector
6 42 (3.77%) Marketing
7 40 (3.59%) Financial Institution
8 39 (3.50%) Documentation Skills
9 37 (3.32%) Organisational Skills
10 33 (2.96%) Presentation Skills
11 31 (2.78%) Influencing Skills
11 31 (2.78%) Legal
12 30 (2.69%) Telecoms
13 29 (2.60%) Front Office
14 25 (2.24%) Electronics
15 23 (2.06%) Manufacturing
16 21 (1.89%) Investment Banking
17 16 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 15 (1.35%) Military
19 13 (1.17%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 189 (16.97%) Developer
2 98 (8.80%) Architect
3 97 (8.71%) Analyst
4 88 (7.90%) Lead
5 83 (7.45%) Senior
6 54 (4.85%) Software Engineer
7 45 (4.04%) Solutions Architect
8 33 (2.96%) Data Scientist
9 31 (2.78%) Technical Support
10 29 (2.60%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 29 (2.60%) Python Developer
11 25 (2.24%) Business Analyst
11 25 (2.24%) Java Developer
12 24 (2.15%) IT Support
13 23 (2.06%) Data Engineer
13 23 (2.06%) Senior Developer
13 23 (2.06%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 22 (1.97%) Consultant
14 22 (1.97%) Site Engineer
15 21 (1.89%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 110 (9.87%) REST
2 69 (6.19%) RESTful
3 55 (4.94%) .NET
4 50 (4.49%) React
5 48 (4.31%) Elastic Stack
6 42 (3.77%) Kafka
7 41 (3.68%) HTML
7 41 (3.68%) Middleware
8 36 (3.23%) OAuth
9 35 (3.14%) JSON
10 32 (2.87%) PyTorch
10 32 (2.87%) XML
11 31 (2.78%) CSS
11 31 (2.78%) TensorFlow
12 30 (2.69%) SOAP
12 30 (2.69%) Spring
13 29 (2.60%) Node.js
13 29 (2.60%) Spring Boot
14 26 (2.33%) LangChain
15 19 (1.71%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 129 (11.58%) Management Information System
2 93 (8.35%) Cloud Native
3 87 (7.81%) Algorithms
4 59 (5.30%) Distributed Systems
5 48 (4.31%) Data Structures
6 44 (3.95%) Product Ownership
7 37 (3.32%) Onboarding
8 30 (2.69%) Data Protection Act
8 30 (2.69%) Equities
8 30 (2.69%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.33%) Security Posture
10 24 (2.15%) Virtual Team
11 23 (2.06%) Derivative
11 23 (2.06%) Enterprise Software
11 23 (2.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 22 (1.97%) Distributed Computing
13 20 (1.80%) AI Agents
13 20 (1.80%) Data Centre
14 19 (1.71%) Mobile App
15 18 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 166 (14.90%) Linux
2 127 (11.40%) Windows
3 61 (5.48%) Unix
4 22 (1.97%) Android
4 22 (1.97%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.62%) Mac OS
6 13 (1.17%) Apple iOS
7 10 (0.90%) Windows 10
8 6 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.45%) VMS
10 2 (0.18%) Debian
10 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
10 2 (0.18%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.090%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.090%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.090%) Rocky
11 1 (0.090%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 390 (35.01%) Problem-Solving
2 299 (26.84%) Agile
3 237 (21.27%) DevOps
4 219 (19.66%) CI/CD
5 210 (18.85%) AI
6 185 (16.61%) Software Engineering
7 158 (14.18%) Microservices
8 144 (12.93%) Containerisation
9 135 (12.12%) Analytics
10 128 (11.49%) Cybersecurity
11 127 (11.40%) Machine Learning
12 117 (10.50%) Stakeholder Management
13 116 (10.41%) Data Science
14 114 (10.23%) Data Modelling
15 106 (9.52%) Continuous Improvement
16 101 (9.07%) Mathematics
17 98 (8.80%) Decision-Making
18 97 (8.71%) Data Governance
19 90 (8.08%) Infrastructure as Code
20 83 (7.45%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 355 (31.87%) Python
2 208 (18.67%) SQL
3 142 (12.75%) Java
4 104 (9.34%) JavaScript
5 58 (5.21%) TypeScript
6 57 (5.12%) PowerShell
7 52 (4.67%) Go
8 49 (4.40%) C#
9 45 (4.04%) Bash
9 45 (4.04%) C++
10 24 (2.15%) Perl
11 20 (1.80%) R
12 16 (1.44%) Shell Script
13 14 (1.26%) Rust
14 9 (0.81%) Bicep
14 9 (0.81%) C
14 9 (0.81%) Kotlin
15 8 (0.72%) MATLAB
15 8 (0.72%) Ruby
16 7 (0.63%) Scala
Qualifications
1 917 (82.32%) Degree
2 609 (54.67%) Computer Science Degree
3 240 (21.54%) Master's Degree
4 149 (13.38%) Security Cleared
5 110 (9.87%) SC Cleared
6 67 (6.01%) CISSP
7 51 (4.58%) DBS Check
8 50 (4.49%) PhD
9 47 (4.22%) CISM
10 40 (3.59%) Azure Certification
11 34 (3.05%) Microsoft Certification
12 33 (2.96%) BPSS Clearance
13 31 (2.78%) AWS Certification
14 30 (2.69%) TOGAF Certification
15 29 (2.60%) PMI Certification
16 27 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
17 26 (2.33%) DV Cleared
18 22 (1.97%) PMP
19 20 (1.80%) CompTIA Security+
20 19 (1.71%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (6.55%) QA
2 63 (5.66%) GDPR
3 53 (4.76%) Data Quality
4 43 (3.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 27 (2.42%) NIST
6 20 (1.80%) PCI DSS
7 16 (1.44%) Accessibility
7 16 (1.44%) GRC
8 11 (0.99%) Def Stans
9 9 (0.81%) HIPAA
10 8 (0.72%) Cyber Essentials
11 7 (0.63%) PSD2
11 7 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
12 5 (0.45%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 5 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 5 (0.45%) DO-254
12 5 (0.45%) ISO 20022
12 5 (0.45%) SLA
13 4 (0.36%) Solvency II
System Software
1 161 (14.45%) Docker
2 58 (5.21%) Active Directory
3 23 (2.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.81%) Firmware
5 6 (0.54%) VMware NSX
6 5 (0.45%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 5 (0.45%) Virtual Servers
7 4 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.18%) KVM
8 2 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.090%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.090%) HDFS
9 1 (0.090%) PowerHA
9 1 (0.090%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 166 (14.90%) Kubernetes
2 98 (8.80%) Terraform
3 66 (5.92%) Ansible
4 55 (4.94%) Grafana
5 45 (4.04%) Prometheus
6 20 (1.80%) Puppet
7 19 (1.71%) Microsoft Intune
8 16 (1.44%) Kibana
9 14 (1.26%) SCCM
10 13 (1.17%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.81%) Kiali
12 7 (0.63%) Argo
13 6 (0.54%) WSUS
14 5 (0.45%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.36%) QRadar
15 4 (0.36%) SCOM
16 3 (0.27%) Control-M
16 3 (0.27%) CSIRT
17 2 (0.18%) Knative
17 2 (0.18%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 184 (16.52%) Microsoft
2 93 (8.35%) Splunk
3 62 (5.57%) Oracle
4 60 (5.39%) Google
5 53 (4.76%) SAP
6 38 (3.41%) Databricks
7 29 (2.60%) Cisco
8 28 (2.51%) Salesforce
9 27 (2.42%) VMware
10 25 (2.24%) ServiceNow
11 23 (2.06%) Informatica
12 20 (1.80%) BiZZdesign
13 18 (1.62%) IBM
14 14 (1.26%) MuleSoft
14 14 (1.26%) Red Hat
15 13 (1.17%) OpenAI
15 13 (1.17%) Palo Alto
16 12 (1.08%) Software AG
17 11 (0.99%) Foundry
17 11 (0.99%) Okta