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

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 126 63 61
Rank change year-on-year -63 -2 +37
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,080 1,214 1,385
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.05% 3.71% 3.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.41% 4.11% 3.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 610 686 833
10th Percentile £178 £214 £319
25th Percentile £208 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.10% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £636 £650 £675
90th Percentile £763 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £388 £450 £517
% change year-on-year -13.89% -12.96% -1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 120 45 100
10th Percentile £25.75 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £38.75
Median hourly rate £68.25 £45.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +51.67% -18.18% -8.33%
75th Percentile £87.16 £67.50 £66.25
90th Percentile £88.00 £82.98 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.50 £63.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +28.35% +15.45% +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 44,845 29,559 36,499
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.12% 90.45% 85.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,888 18,632 23,279
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.81% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £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 2,665 1,513 2,446
10th Percentile £14.90 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.61 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -4.70%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +82.48% -35.31% +0.51%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 -48 966 £453 -9.40% 1,105
UK excluding London -53 579 £388 -13.89% 663
London -64 427 £525 -10.62% 628
Work from Home -83 242 £500 -9.09% 364
South East -16 233 £275 -43.59% 194
North of England -43 136 £397 -15.11% 109
Midlands -63 77 £416 +38.50% 96
Yorkshire -16 73 £525 +30.35% 23
North West -59 54 £220 -53.68% 56
West Midlands -73 54 £440 +54.75% 52
East of England -31 44 £308 -47.39% 77
Scotland -41 39 £615 +23.00% 18
South West -58 35 £435 +81.04% 141
East Midlands -24 22 £287 -18.38% 44
North East -30 10 £195 -57.84% 30
Wales -25 9 £530 +23.47% 9
Northern Ireland +8 7 £350 -41.67% 38

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 49 (4.54%) Confluence
2 37 (3.43%) Apache Spark
3 29 (2.69%) SharePoint
4 24 (2.22%) Apache Airflow
5 23 (2.13%) Apache
6 9 (0.83%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.56%) IIS
8 5 (0.46%) SAS
9 4 (0.37%) CMS
10 3 (0.28%) Camunda
10 3 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.28%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.19%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.19%) nginx
12 1 (0.093%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.093%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.093%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 1 (0.093%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.093%) Tomcat
Applications
1 40 (3.70%) Microsoft Office
2 29 (2.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.67%) MS Visio
4 14 (1.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.65%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.65%) Revit
6 4 (0.37%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
7 3 (0.28%) Trello
8 2 (0.19%) Simulink
9 1 (0.093%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.093%) Sketch
9 1 (0.093%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 18 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.46%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.46%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
3 3 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.19%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.19%) Workfront
5 1 (0.093%) Maximo
5 1 (0.093%) Misys Equation
5 1 (0.093%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.093%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.093%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
5 1 (0.093%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.093%) SAP PM
5 1 (0.093%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.093%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.093%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 323 (29.91%) Azure
2 201 (18.61%) AWS
3 104 (9.63%) GCP
4 75 (6.94%) Power Platform
5 58 (5.37%) Microsoft 365
6 55 (5.09%) Entra ID
7 48 (4.44%) GitHub
8 47 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
9 43 (3.98%) SaaS
10 28 (2.59%) Serverless
10 28 (2.59%) Snowflake
11 23 (2.13%) GitHub Actions
12 22 (2.04%) PowerApps
13 18 (1.67%) AWS CloudFormation
14 17 (1.57%) Azure AKS
15 15 (1.39%) Azure Data Factory
15 15 (1.39%) Power Automate
16 14 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
16 14 (1.30%) Azure Service Bus
17 13 (1.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 35 (3.24%) Firewall
2 33 (3.06%) Network Security
3 27 (2.50%) DNS
4 25 (2.31%) TCP/IP
5 22 (2.04%) VPN
6 18 (1.67%) WAN
7 15 (1.39%) BGP
7 15 (1.39%) LAN
8 12 (1.11%) OSPF
8 12 (1.11%) SSH
9 11 (1.02%) VLAN
10 10 (0.93%) HTTPS
10 10 (0.93%) Wireless
11 7 (0.65%) 3GPP
11 7 (0.65%) Cisco ASA
11 7 (0.65%) DHCP
11 7 (0.65%) MPLS
11 7 (0.65%) Wireshark
12 6 (0.56%) Cisco Nexus
12 6 (0.56%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (5.65%) Power BI
2 55 (5.09%) SQL Server
3 54 (5.00%) PostgreSQL
4 52 (4.81%) Relational Database
5 36 (3.33%) Data Warehouse
6 34 (3.15%) Big Data
6 34 (3.15%) Metadata
7 28 (2.59%) MongoDB
8 26 (2.41%) NoSQL
9 22 (2.04%) MySQL
10 19 (1.76%) Data Lake
10 19 (1.76%) Hadoop
11 18 (1.67%) Tableau
12 12 (1.11%) Azure SQL Database
13 11 (1.02%) Elasticsearch
14 10 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
14 10 (0.93%) Data Mining
14 10 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
15 8 (0.74%) Redis
15 8 (0.74%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 87 (8.06%) Git
2 61 (5.65%) JIRA
3 41 (3.80%) Jenkins
4 35 (3.24%) GitLab
5 30 (2.78%) Rational DOORS
6 14 (1.30%) Selenium
7 11 (1.02%) JUnit
8 10 (0.93%) Gradle
9 9 (0.83%) MLflow
10 8 (0.74%) Postman
10 8 (0.74%) TeamCity
11 7 (0.65%) Bitbucket
11 7 (0.65%) Maven
11 7 (0.65%) REST Assured
11 7 (0.65%) SpecFlow
12 6 (0.56%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.56%) Sonatype Nexus
13 5 (0.46%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.46%) SonarQube
13 5 (0.46%) Vite
General
1 441 (40.83%) Social Skills
2 243 (22.50%) Finance
3 228 (21.11%) Analytical Skills
4 90 (8.33%) Banking
5 70 (6.48%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.09%) Aerospace
7 54 (5.00%) Documentation Skills
8 37 (3.43%) Organisational Skills
9 35 (3.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 31 (2.87%) Marketing
11 30 (2.78%) Telecoms
12 28 (2.59%) Influencing Skills
13 25 (2.31%) Front Office
14 24 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
15 23 (2.13%) Manufacturing
16 21 (1.94%) Legal
17 17 (1.57%) Retail
18 16 (1.48%) Law
19 14 (1.30%) Publishing
20 13 (1.20%) Military
Job Titles
1 130 (12.04%) Developer
2 114 (10.56%) Architect
3 100 (9.26%) Senior
4 84 (7.78%) Lead
5 82 (7.59%) Analyst
6 38 (3.52%) Software Engineer
7 37 (3.43%) Product Manager
8 34 (3.15%) Data Engineer
8 34 (3.15%) Delivery Manager
9 31 (2.87%) Data Scientist
10 30 (2.78%) Solutions Architect
11 28 (2.59%) Product Delivery Manager
12 25 (2.31%) Junior
12 25 (2.31%) Python Developer
12 25 (2.31%) Security Engineer
13 24 (2.22%) Java Developer
14 23 (2.13%) Technical Support
15 22 (2.04%) IT Support
15 22 (2.04%) Systems Delivery Manager
15 22 (2.04%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (7.96%) REST
2 64 (5.93%) React
3 59 (5.46%) .NET
4 43 (3.98%) Kafka
4 43 (3.98%) RESTful
5 36 (3.33%) Spring
6 33 (3.06%) Spring Boot
7 31 (2.87%) Middleware
8 27 (2.50%) OAuth
9 25 (2.31%) AngularJS
10 24 (2.22%) PyTorch
11 22 (2.04%) HTML
12 21 (1.94%) JSON
13 20 (1.85%) CSS
14 19 (1.76%) SAML
15 18 (1.67%) OAuth2
15 18 (1.67%) OpenID
15 18 (1.67%) SOAP
15 18 (1.67%) Web Services
16 17 (1.57%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 99 (9.17%) Management Information System
2 85 (7.87%) Product Ownership
3 82 (7.59%) Onboarding
4 77 (7.13%) Algorithms
4 77 (7.13%) Cloud Native
5 56 (5.19%) Data Structures
6 50 (4.63%) Distributed Systems
7 28 (2.59%) Virtual Team
8 26 (2.41%) AI Agents
8 26 (2.41%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 25 (2.31%) Derivative
9 25 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
10 20 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
11 19 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
11 19 (1.76%) Equities
12 17 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
12 17 (1.57%) Fixed Income
13 15 (1.39%) Data Centre
13 15 (1.39%) Operational Technology
13 15 (1.39%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 129 (11.94%) Windows
2 107 (9.91%) Linux
3 39 (3.61%) Unix
4 21 (1.94%) Android
5 20 (1.85%) Windows Server
6 19 (1.76%) Windows 10
7 17 (1.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (1.30%) Apple iOS
9 12 (1.11%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.74%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.46%) VMS
12 3 (0.28%) Debian
12 3 (0.28%) Rocky
13 2 (0.19%) Solaris
13 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
13 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.093%) Embedded Linux
14 1 (0.093%) MVS
14 1 (0.093%) OpenVMS
14 1 (0.093%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 323 (29.91%) Problem-Solving
2 279 (25.83%) Agile
3 244 (22.59%) AI
4 201 (18.61%) CI/CD
5 186 (17.22%) Software Engineering
6 181 (16.76%) Continuous Improvement
7 172 (15.93%) DevOps
8 146 (13.52%) Analytics
9 125 (11.57%) Cybersecurity
10 122 (11.30%) Stakeholder Management
11 120 (11.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 113 (10.46%) Machine Learning
13 107 (9.91%) ITIL
14 105 (9.72%) Microservices
15 104 (9.63%) Mathematics
16 98 (9.07%) Data Science
17 96 (8.89%) Decision-Making
18 93 (8.61%) Containerisation
19 91 (8.43%) Roadmaps
20 87 (8.06%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 298 (27.59%) Python
2 217 (20.09%) SQL
3 139 (12.87%) Java
4 68 (6.30%) JavaScript
5 61 (5.65%) C#
6 52 (4.81%) PowerShell
7 37 (3.43%) TypeScript
8 24 (2.22%) Bash
9 22 (2.04%) C++
10 20 (1.85%) R
11 13 (1.20%) Shell Script
12 12 (1.11%) Go
13 9 (0.83%) Kotlin
14 8 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 8 (0.74%) Perl
15 7 (0.65%) Bicep
15 7 (0.65%) C
15 7 (0.65%) Scala
16 4 (0.37%) Ada
16 4 (0.37%) Rust
Qualifications
1 845 (78.24%) Degree
2 505 (46.76%) Computer Science Degree
3 201 (18.61%) Security Cleared
4 141 (13.06%) Master's Degree
5 124 (11.48%) SC Cleared
6 58 (5.37%) CISSP
7 43 (3.98%) Azure Certification
8 38 (3.52%) CISM
8 38 (3.52%) Microsoft Certification
9 34 (3.15%) PhD
10 30 (2.78%) TOGAF Certification
11 29 (2.69%) AWS Certification
11 29 (2.69%) DBS Check
12 26 (2.41%) PMI Certification
13 25 (2.31%) DV Cleared
14 24 (2.22%) Cisco Certification
14 24 (2.22%) PMP
15 22 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
16 18 (1.67%) CISA
17 16 (1.48%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (6.11%) Data Quality
1 66 (6.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 65 (6.02%) NIST
3 54 (5.00%) QA
4 33 (3.06%) GDPR
5 18 (1.67%) Accessibility
5 18 (1.67%) PCI DSS
6 17 (1.57%) GRC
7 13 (1.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 12 (1.11%) NCSC
9 11 (1.02%) HIPAA
9 11 (1.02%) SLA
10 10 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 10 (0.93%) NIST 800
11 7 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 6 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
13 5 (0.46%) COBIT
13 5 (0.46%) Government Security Classifications
13 5 (0.46%) ITGC
13 5 (0.46%) PSD2
System Software
1 96 (8.89%) Docker
2 79 (7.31%) Active Directory
3 19 (1.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.83%) Firmware
5 8 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.65%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.56%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.37%) vSphere
9 3 (0.28%) VMware Workstation
10 2 (0.19%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.19%) Ceph
10 2 (0.19%) Squid
10 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.093%) ACF2
11 1 (0.093%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 1 (0.093%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.093%) HDFS
11 1 (0.093%) RACF
Systems Management
1 119 (11.02%) Kubernetes
2 58 (5.37%) Terraform
3 36 (3.33%) Ansible
4 27 (2.50%) Microsoft Intune
5 26 (2.41%) Prometheus
6 24 (2.22%) Grafana
7 13 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.37%) Kubeflow
9 3 (0.28%) Cisco CUCM
9 3 (0.28%) Foglight
9 3 (0.28%) HP ALM
9 3 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.28%) Puppet
9 3 (0.28%) SCCM
9 3 (0.28%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.19%) AirWatch
10 2 (0.19%) Consul
10 2 (0.19%) Network Intrusion Detection System
10 2 (0.19%) PowerCLI
10 2 (0.19%) vRealize
Vendors
1 195 (18.06%) Microsoft
2 69 (6.39%) Oracle
3 51 (4.72%) Databricks
4 46 (4.26%) Google
5 38 (3.52%) IBM
6 34 (3.15%) ServiceNow
7 31 (2.87%) SAP
8 28 (2.59%) VMware
9 25 (2.31%) Splunk
10 22 (2.04%) Cisco
11 18 (1.67%) CyberArk
12 17 (1.57%) BeyondTrust
13 15 (1.39%) Palo Alto
14 14 (1.30%) BiZZdesign
14 14 (1.30%) Informatica
14 14 (1.30%) Okta
14 14 (1.30%) Salesforce
15 11 (1.02%) CheckPoint
15 11 (1.02%) Foundry
16 9 (0.83%) Citrix