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

6 months to
2 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 79 72 80
Rank change year-on-year -7 +8 +50
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,141 1,042 1,188
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.08% 3.17% 2.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.49% 3.59% 3.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 734 613 792
10th Percentile £176 £356 £331
25th Percentile £313 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £638 £688 £695
90th Percentile £750 £850 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 28 36
10th Percentile £26.75 £29.87 £33.91
25th Percentile £33.50 £33.75 £50.00
Median hourly rate £49.00 £51.25 £58.75
Median % change year-on-year -4.39% -12.77% +8.80%
75th Percentile £67.00 £62.75 £69.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.48 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.25 £37.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year -3.33% -34.78% +15.00%

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 32,669 29,037 38,027
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.09% 88.41% 87.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,654 17,656 25,324
10th Percentile £304 £306 £306
25th Percentile £406 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £722 £738 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,016 941 1,546
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.79
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -25.79% +25.12%
75th Percentile £53.75 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.40 £74.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.79 £30.78 £45.00
% change year-on-year -22.72% -31.60% +43.91%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 -7 1,013 £475 -17.39% 763
UK excluding London +10 567 £400 -20.00% 564
London -34 473 £552 -8.08% 287
Work from Home -6 292 £450 -21.74% 367
North of England +49 189 £375 -28.57% 109
South East +29 134 £318 -36.50% 210
Yorkshire +25 100 £461 -9.99% 36
Midlands -12 100 £475 -5.00% 65
North West +12 87 £352 -32.95% 47
West Midlands -24 68 £500 -4.76% 33
South West +12 57 £425 -37.04% 60
Scotland +10 45 £450 -5.26% 30
East of England -29 41 £415 -17.00% 87
East Midlands -6 32 £447 +25.56% 32
Wales -2 11 £160 -60.00% 11
Northern Ireland -11 4 - - 9
North East -9 3 £216 -57.95% 27

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 57 (5.00%) Confluence
2 43 (3.77%) SharePoint
3 30 (2.63%) Apache Spark
4 21 (1.84%) Microsoft Exchange
5 13 (1.14%) Apache
6 12 (1.05%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (0.70%) Jupyter
8 7 (0.61%) IIS
8 7 (0.61%) nginx
9 5 (0.44%) Skype for Business
9 5 (0.44%) Smallworld
10 4 (0.35%) GeoServer
10 4 (0.35%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 4 (0.35%) SAS
11 3 (0.26%) Ethereum
11 3 (0.26%) Hyperledger
11 3 (0.26%) Luigi
11 3 (0.26%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 2 (0.18%) OpenStack
Applications
1 44 (3.86%) Microsoft Office
2 23 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.44%) Chatbot
4 5 (0.44%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.44%) Simulink
5 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.088%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 24 (2.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.35%) SAP ERP
3 4 (0.35%) Workday HCM
4 3 (0.26%) Aladdin
4 3 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.26%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.18%) Maximo
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle EBS R12
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 MDG
5 2 (0.18%) SAP PLM
5 2 (0.18%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 273 (23.93%) Azure
2 219 (19.19%) AWS
3 123 (10.78%) GCP
4 75 (6.57%) GitHub
5 71 (6.22%) Power Platform
6 67 (5.87%) Serverless
7 46 (4.03%) Microsoft 365
8 39 (3.42%) SaaS
9 36 (3.16%) Azure DevOps
10 32 (2.80%) GitHub Actions
11 25 (2.19%) Entra ID
12 20 (1.75%) Azure Data Factory
12 20 (1.75%) Cloud Computing
13 19 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
13 19 (1.67%) Power Automate
13 19 (1.67%) PowerApps
13 19 (1.67%) Snowflake
14 17 (1.49%) Amazon S3
14 17 (1.49%) Azure Machine Learning
15 16 (1.40%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 48 (4.21%) Firewall
2 38 (3.33%) DNS
3 22 (1.93%) HTTP
4 20 (1.75%) Network Security
4 20 (1.75%) TCP/IP
5 18 (1.58%) DHCP
6 17 (1.49%) VPN
7 16 (1.40%) SSH
8 15 (1.31%) Wireless
9 13 (1.14%) Skype
10 11 (0.96%) VoIP
11 9 (0.79%) BGP
11 9 (0.79%) Cisco IOS
11 9 (0.79%) Internet
12 8 (0.70%) LAN
12 8 (0.70%) WAN
13 7 (0.61%) IPv4
13 7 (0.61%) Unified Communications
13 7 (0.61%) VLAN
14 6 (0.53%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (6.05%) PostgreSQL
2 64 (5.61%) NoSQL
3 58 (5.08%) Relational Database
4 51 (4.47%) Power BI
5 43 (3.77%) Data Warehouse
6 42 (3.68%) SQL Server
7 33 (2.89%) MySQL
8 29 (2.54%) Big Data
9 27 (2.37%) Tableau
10 15 (1.31%) MongoDB
11 14 (1.23%) Elasticsearch
12 12 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
12 12 (1.05%) Redis
13 11 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 10 (0.88%) Metadata
14 10 (0.88%) RDBMS
15 9 (0.79%) Data Lake
15 9 (0.79%) Hadoop
16 8 (0.70%) Apache Cassandra
17 7 (0.61%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 107 (9.38%) JIRA
2 92 (8.06%) Git
3 86 (7.54%) Jenkins
4 82 (7.19%) GitLab
5 27 (2.37%) Liquibase
6 19 (1.67%) Postman
7 18 (1.58%) Artifactory
8 15 (1.31%) Selenium
8 15 (1.31%) Visual Studio
9 11 (0.96%) Cypress.io
9 11 (0.96%) JUnit
10 9 (0.79%) CircleCI
11 8 (0.70%) Bitbucket
12 7 (0.61%) Cucumber
12 7 (0.61%) MLflow
12 7 (0.61%) SonarQube
13 6 (0.53%) Appium
13 6 (0.53%) Jaeger
13 6 (0.53%) TeamCity
14 5 (0.44%) Gradle
General
1 535 (46.89%) Social Skills
2 287 (25.15%) Finance
3 255 (22.35%) Analytical Skills
4 124 (10.87%) Banking
5 67 (5.87%) Public Sector
6 42 (3.68%) Marketing
7 41 (3.59%) Financial Institution
8 34 (2.98%) Legal
9 33 (2.89%) Organisational Skills
10 32 (2.80%) Front Office
11 31 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
12 29 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
13 28 (2.45%) Investment Banking
14 27 (2.37%) Telecoms
15 26 (2.28%) Manufacturing
15 26 (2.28%) Presentation Skills
16 24 (2.10%) Electronics
17 14 (1.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 11 (0.96%) Military
18 11 (0.96%) Retail
Job Titles
1 211 (18.49%) Developer
2 100 (8.76%) Analyst
3 96 (8.41%) Architect
4 86 (7.54%) Senior
5 76 (6.66%) Lead
6 58 (5.08%) Software Engineer
7 38 (3.33%) Solutions Architect
8 31 (2.72%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 31 (2.72%) Data Scientist
9 29 (2.54%) Senior Developer
10 28 (2.45%) Java Developer
11 27 (2.37%) Business Analyst
11 27 (2.37%) Consultant
12 26 (2.28%) Python Engineer
13 25 (2.19%) AWS Engineer
14 24 (2.10%) IT Support
14 24 (2.10%) Python Developer
15 23 (2.02%) Data Engineer
16 22 (1.93%) Technical Support
17 21 (1.84%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (11.31%) REST
2 80 (7.01%) RESTful
3 68 (5.96%) .NET
4 59 (5.17%) HTML
5 51 (4.47%) React
6 48 (4.21%) Elastic Stack
7 46 (4.03%) CSS
8 45 (3.94%) Middleware
9 44 (3.86%) Kafka
10 43 (3.77%) JSON
11 41 (3.59%) XML
12 40 (3.51%) Node.js
13 38 (3.33%) OAuth
14 37 (3.24%) SOAP
15 33 (2.89%) TensorFlow
16 32 (2.80%) PyTorch
17 30 (2.63%) LangChain
18 29 (2.54%) AngularJS
19 26 (2.28%) Spring
20 24 (2.10%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 120 (10.52%) Management Information System
2 94 (8.24%) Algorithms
3 87 (7.62%) Cloud Native
4 65 (5.70%) Distributed Systems
5 56 (4.91%) Data Structures
6 48 (4.21%) Product Ownership
7 36 (3.16%) Public Cloud
8 35 (3.07%) Data Protection Act
9 28 (2.45%) Equities
10 27 (2.37%) Security Posture
11 23 (2.02%) Derivative
12 22 (1.93%) Mobile App
13 21 (1.84%) Enterprise Software
13 21 (1.84%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 20 (1.75%) Data Centre
14 20 (1.75%) Onboarding
14 20 (1.75%) Virtual Team
15 19 (1.67%) AI Agents
16 18 (1.58%) Distributed Computing
16 18 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 174 (15.25%) Linux
2 120 (10.52%) Windows
3 62 (5.43%) Unix
4 28 (2.45%) Android
5 26 (2.28%) Windows Server
6 22 (1.93%) Mac OS
7 17 (1.49%) Apple iOS
8 6 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 6 (0.53%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.35%) VMS
10 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.088%) Debian
11 1 (0.088%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.088%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 383 (33.57%) Problem-Solving
2 328 (28.75%) Agile
3 248 (21.74%) DevOps
4 233 (20.42%) CI/CD
5 187 (16.39%) Software Engineering
6 182 (15.95%) AI
7 153 (13.41%) Microservices
8 145 (12.71%) Containerisation
9 123 (10.78%) Cybersecurity
10 121 (10.60%) Machine Learning
11 114 (9.99%) Analytics
12 109 (9.55%) Stakeholder Management
13 107 (9.38%) Data Science
14 104 (9.11%) Data Modelling
15 103 (9.03%) Mathematics
16 101 (8.85%) Continuous Improvement
17 96 (8.41%) Decision-Making
18 88 (7.71%) Infrastructure as Code
18 88 (7.71%) ITIL
18 88 (7.71%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 379 (33.22%) Python
2 201 (17.62%) SQL
3 160 (14.02%) Java
4 120 (10.52%) JavaScript
5 69 (6.05%) TypeScript
6 68 (5.96%) PowerShell
7 66 (5.78%) C#
8 53 (4.65%) Go
9 52 (4.56%) C++
10 51 (4.47%) Bash
11 23 (2.02%) Perl
12 20 (1.75%) R
13 16 (1.40%) Kotlin
14 12 (1.05%) Shell Script
15 11 (0.96%) Ruby
16 10 (0.88%) Rust
17 9 (0.79%) Apex Code
17 9 (0.79%) C
17 9 (0.79%) MATLAB
18 8 (0.70%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 931 (81.60%) Degree
2 624 (54.69%) Computer Science Degree
3 233 (20.42%) Master's Degree
4 138 (12.09%) Security Cleared
5 101 (8.85%) SC Cleared
6 65 (5.70%) CISSP
7 54 (4.73%) DBS Check
8 50 (4.38%) PhD
9 40 (3.51%) Azure Certification
10 39 (3.42%) AWS Certification
10 39 (3.42%) CISM
11 33 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
12 29 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
12 29 (2.54%) PMI Certification
13 28 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
14 25 (2.19%) DV Cleared
15 23 (2.02%) PMP
16 22 (1.93%) TOGAF Certification
17 19 (1.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 18 (1.58%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 82 (7.19%) QA
2 66 (5.78%) GDPR
3 60 (5.26%) Data Quality
4 43 (3.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 29 (2.54%) NIST
6 17 (1.49%) Accessibility
7 16 (1.40%) GRC
8 12 (1.05%) PCI DSS
9 11 (0.96%) Def Stans
10 8 (0.70%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 8 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials
10 8 (0.70%) SLA
11 7 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 6 (0.53%) HIPAA
13 5 (0.44%) DO-254
14 4 (0.35%) PSD2
15 3 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 3 (0.26%) ISO 19650
15 3 (0.26%) NCSC
15 3 (0.26%) PMO
System Software
1 165 (14.46%) Docker
2 43 (3.77%) Active Directory
3 24 (2.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.70%) Firmware
4 8 (0.70%) VMware NSX
5 5 (0.44%) Microsoft Virtual Server
5 5 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
6 4 (0.35%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.26%) vSphere
8 1 (0.088%) HDFS
8 1 (0.088%) KVM
8 1 (0.088%) PowerHA
Systems Management
1 154 (13.50%) Kubernetes
2 104 (9.11%) Terraform
3 76 (6.66%) Ansible
4 57 (5.00%) Grafana
5 44 (3.86%) Prometheus
6 20 (1.75%) Puppet
7 13 (1.14%) Kibana
7 13 (1.14%) SCCM
8 10 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.61%) Argo
9 7 (0.61%) CSIRT
10 6 (0.53%) Kiali
10 6 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
10 6 (0.53%) QRadar
10 6 (0.53%) WSUS
11 5 (0.44%) Progress Chef
11 5 (0.44%) SCOM
12 4 (0.35%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.26%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.26%) vRealize
Vendors
1 183 (16.04%) Microsoft
2 93 (8.15%) Splunk
3 67 (5.87%) Google
4 53 (4.65%) SAP
5 49 (4.29%) Oracle
6 36 (3.16%) Databricks
7 34 (2.98%) Cisco
7 34 (2.98%) Salesforce
8 31 (2.72%) ServiceNow
9 27 (2.37%) IBM
9 27 (2.37%) VMware
10 17 (1.49%) Red Hat
11 15 (1.31%) Informatica
12 14 (1.23%) Palo Alto
13 13 (1.14%) BiZZdesign
13 13 (1.14%) OpenAI
14 11 (0.96%) Foundry
14 11 (0.96%) MuleSoft
15 10 (0.88%) Fortinet
16 9 (0.79%) Atlassian