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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 85 73 78
Rank change year-on-year -12 +5 +57
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,102 991 1,177
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.96% 3.17% 2.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.37% 3.56% 3.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 721 572 779
10th Percentile £175 £356 £324
25th Percentile £313 £450 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £650 £676 £675
90th Percentile £756 £834 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 24 47
10th Percentile £26.35 £28.66 £25.58
25th Percentile £30.13 £33.75 £42.50
Median hourly rate £33.50 £44.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.86% -20.00% +4.76%
75th Percentile £60.13 £53.75 £67.26
90th Percentile £75.50 £67.93 £75.00
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 32,673 27,807 37,942
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.64% 88.90% 87.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,708 16,856 25,065
10th Percentile £305 £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 £645
90th Percentile £720 £743 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,982 890 1,770
10th Percentile £14.55 £15.62 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £17.16
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -14.47% +16.92%
75th Percentile £57.25 £62.50 £63.29
90th Percentile £69.25 £75.00 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.41 £30.88 £40.13
% change year-on-year -20.96% -23.05% +54.33%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -9 983 £475 -13.64% 1,325
UK excluding London +9 545 £400 -20.00% 1,148
London -36 462 £536 -7.59% 324
Work from Home -8 271 £472 -17.91% 621
North of England +42 188 £359 -31.62% 186
South East +22 132 £318 -36.50% 435
Yorkshire +28 102 £475 -9.52% 67
Midlands -20 96 £505 +26.25% 131
North West +19 84 £350 -33.33% 86
West Midlands -21 66 £525 +5.00% 55
South West +19 58 £500 -23.95% 128
Scotland -4 38 £537 +11.99% 49
East of England -37 32 £405 -21.97% 175
East Midlands -15 30 £450 +26.40% 72
Wales -8 13 £160 -44.35% 50
Northern Ireland -4 4 - - 26
North East -13 3 £216 -57.95% 35

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 58 (5.26%) Confluence
2 39 (3.54%) SharePoint
3 30 (2.72%) Apache Spark
4 20 (1.81%) Microsoft Exchange
5 13 (1.18%) Apache
6 12 (1.09%) Apache Airflow
7 7 (0.64%) Jupyter
7 7 (0.64%) nginx
8 5 (0.45%) IIS
8 5 (0.45%) Skype for Business
8 5 (0.45%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.36%) GeoServer
9 4 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 4 (0.36%) SAS
10 3 (0.27%) Ethereum
10 3 (0.27%) Hyperledger
10 3 (0.27%) Luigi
11 2 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
Applications
1 45 (4.08%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (2.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.82%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.54%) Simulink
6 5 (0.45%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.091%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.091%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 21 (1.91%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.36%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.27%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.18%) Maximo
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle EBS R12
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
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 Travel Management
6 1 (0.091%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.091%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 277 (25.14%) Azure
2 201 (18.24%) AWS
3 115 (10.44%) GCP
4 73 (6.62%) GitHub
5 70 (6.35%) Power Platform
6 61 (5.54%) Serverless
7 51 (4.63%) Microsoft 365
8 44 (3.99%) SaaS
9 41 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
10 33 (2.99%) GitHub Actions
11 26 (2.36%) Entra ID
12 21 (1.91%) Azure Data Factory
12 21 (1.91%) IaaS
13 20 (1.81%) Cloud Computing
14 19 (1.72%) Power Automate
14 19 (1.72%) PowerApps
14 19 (1.72%) Snowflake
15 18 (1.63%) AWS Lambda
16 17 (1.54%) Azure Machine Learning
17 15 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 43 (3.90%) Firewall
2 33 (2.99%) DNS
3 22 (2.00%) Network Security
4 21 (1.91%) HTTP
5 18 (1.63%) TCP/IP
6 14 (1.27%) DHCP
7 13 (1.18%) Skype
7 13 (1.18%) SSH
8 12 (1.09%) Wireless
9 11 (1.00%) VPN
10 10 (0.91%) VoIP
11 9 (0.82%) BGP
11 9 (0.82%) Cisco IOS
11 9 (0.82%) Internet
11 9 (0.82%) LAN
11 9 (0.82%) WAN
12 8 (0.73%) VLAN
13 7 (0.64%) IPv4
13 7 (0.64%) Unified Communications
14 6 (0.54%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (5.72%) PostgreSQL
2 60 (5.44%) NoSQL
3 55 (4.99%) Relational Database
4 50 (4.54%) Power BI
5 41 (3.72%) Data Warehouse
6 37 (3.36%) SQL Server
7 36 (3.27%) MySQL
8 28 (2.54%) Big Data
9 27 (2.45%) Tableau
10 18 (1.63%) Elasticsearch
11 15 (1.36%) MongoDB
12 11 (1.00%) Redis
13 10 (0.91%) Metadata
14 9 (0.82%) Hadoop
14 9 (0.82%) RDBMS
15 8 (0.73%) Apache Cassandra
15 8 (0.73%) Data Lake
15 8 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 7 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
16 7 (0.64%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 90 (8.17%) JIRA
2 88 (7.99%) Git
3 70 (6.35%) Jenkins
4 60 (5.44%) GitLab
5 22 (2.00%) Liquibase
6 16 (1.45%) Postman
7 13 (1.18%) Selenium
8 10 (0.91%) JUnit
9 9 (0.82%) CircleCI
10 8 (0.73%) Artifactory
10 8 (0.73%) Bitbucket
10 8 (0.73%) Cypress.io
10 8 (0.73%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.73%) Visual Studio
11 7 (0.64%) MLflow
11 7 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 6 (0.54%) Appium
12 6 (0.54%) XCUITest
13 5 (0.45%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.45%) Gradle
General
1 505 (45.83%) Social Skills
2 285 (25.86%) Finance
3 256 (23.23%) Analytical Skills
4 116 (10.53%) Banking
5 68 (6.17%) Public Sector
6 41 (3.72%) Financial Institution
7 39 (3.54%) Marketing
8 34 (3.09%) Documentation Skills
8 34 (3.09%) Legal
9 33 (2.99%) Organisational Skills
10 32 (2.90%) Influencing Skills
11 31 (2.81%) Telecoms
12 30 (2.72%) Presentation Skills
13 29 (2.63%) Front Office
14 26 (2.36%) Electronics
15 24 (2.18%) Investment Banking
15 24 (2.18%) Manufacturing
16 14 (1.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 13 (1.18%) Military
18 12 (1.09%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 199 (18.06%) Developer
2 96 (8.71%) Analyst
3 87 (7.89%) Architect
4 80 (7.26%) Senior
5 79 (7.17%) Lead
6 52 (4.72%) Software Engineer
7 38 (3.45%) Solutions Architect
8 30 (2.72%) Data Scientist
9 29 (2.63%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 27 (2.45%) Business Analyst
10 27 (2.45%) Technical Support
11 26 (2.36%) IT Support
11 26 (2.36%) Python Developer
11 26 (2.36%) Senior Developer
12 23 (2.09%) Java Developer
12 23 (2.09%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 22 (2.00%) Site Engineer
14 21 (1.91%) Consultant
14 21 (1.91%) Data Engineer
15 20 (1.81%) Machine Learning Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 114 (10.34%) REST
2 76 (6.90%) RESTful
3 58 (5.26%) .NET
4 52 (4.72%) HTML
5 46 (4.17%) Elastic Stack
6 44 (3.99%) React
7 40 (3.63%) JSON
7 40 (3.63%) OAuth
8 39 (3.54%) XML
9 38 (3.45%) Middleware
10 37 (3.36%) CSS
11 35 (3.18%) Kafka
12 32 (2.90%) SOAP
13 30 (2.72%) TensorFlow
14 29 (2.63%) Node.js
14 29 (2.63%) PyTorch
15 27 (2.45%) LangChain
16 24 (2.18%) Spring
17 21 (1.91%) Spring Boot
18 19 (1.72%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 118 (10.71%) Management Information System
2 85 (7.71%) Cloud Native
3 83 (7.53%) Algorithms
4 50 (4.54%) Distributed Systems
5 48 (4.36%) Product Ownership
6 46 (4.17%) Data Structures
7 31 (2.81%) Data Protection Act
7 31 (2.81%) Public Cloud
8 28 (2.54%) Onboarding
9 27 (2.45%) Equities
10 25 (2.27%) Security Posture
11 23 (2.09%) Derivative
12 22 (2.00%) Mobile App
12 22 (2.00%) Virtual Team
13 20 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
14 19 (1.72%) AI Agents
14 19 (1.72%) Data Centre
14 19 (1.72%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 17 (1.54%) Distributed Computing
15 17 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 164 (14.88%) Linux
2 121 (10.98%) Windows
3 63 (5.72%) Unix
4 28 (2.54%) Android
5 22 (2.00%) Windows Server
6 19 (1.72%) Mac OS
7 18 (1.63%) Apple iOS
8 8 (0.73%) Windows 10
9 7 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.18%) Debian
10 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
10 2 (0.18%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.18%) VMS
11 1 (0.091%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.091%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 371 (33.67%) Problem-Solving
2 305 (27.68%) Agile
3 240 (21.78%) DevOps
4 218 (19.78%) CI/CD
5 190 (17.24%) AI
6 181 (16.42%) Software Engineering
7 146 (13.25%) Microservices
8 136 (12.34%) Containerisation
9 124 (11.25%) Cybersecurity
10 118 (10.71%) Machine Learning
11 114 (10.34%) Analytics
12 109 (9.89%) Continuous Improvement
13 106 (9.62%) Stakeholder Management
14 105 (9.53%) Data Modelling
15 103 (9.35%) Data Science
16 102 (9.26%) Mathematics
17 92 (8.35%) Decision-Making
18 85 (7.71%) Risk Management
19 84 (7.62%) Test Automation
20 82 (7.44%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 362 (32.85%) Python
2 198 (17.97%) SQL
3 145 (13.16%) Java
4 112 (10.16%) JavaScript
5 61 (5.54%) PowerShell
6 58 (5.26%) TypeScript
7 55 (4.99%) C#
8 49 (4.45%) Bash
9 48 (4.36%) Go
10 46 (4.17%) C++
11 24 (2.18%) Perl
12 18 (1.63%) R
13 16 (1.45%) Kotlin
14 13 (1.18%) Rust
15 12 (1.09%) Shell Script
16 11 (1.00%) Ruby
17 10 (0.91%) MATLAB
18 9 (0.82%) C
18 9 (0.82%) Swift
19 8 (0.73%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 909 (82.49%) Degree
2 610 (55.35%) Computer Science Degree
3 220 (19.96%) Master's Degree
4 133 (12.07%) Security Cleared
5 95 (8.62%) SC Cleared
6 66 (5.99%) CISSP
7 51 (4.63%) PhD
8 50 (4.54%) DBS Check
9 44 (3.99%) CISM
10 35 (3.18%) Azure Certification
11 30 (2.72%) Microsoft Certification
12 29 (2.63%) Cisco Certification
12 29 (2.63%) PMI Certification
13 28 (2.54%) AWS Certification
14 27 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
14 27 (2.45%) TOGAF Certification
15 26 (2.36%) DV Cleared
16 22 (2.00%) PMP
17 20 (1.81%) ITIL Certification
18 18 (1.63%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (6.44%) QA
2 57 (5.17%) GDPR
3 50 (4.54%) Data Quality
4 41 (3.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 31 (2.81%) NIST
6 17 (1.54%) GRC
7 15 (1.36%) Accessibility
7 15 (1.36%) PCI DSS
8 11 (1.00%) Def Stans
9 9 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 8 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials
11 6 (0.54%) DO-254
11 6 (0.54%) HIPAA
11 6 (0.54%) SLA
12 4 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 4 (0.36%) PSD2
13 3 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 3 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.27%) ISO 19650
13 3 (0.27%) NCSC
System Software
1 161 (14.61%) Docker
2 48 (4.36%) Active Directory
3 22 (2.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.91%) 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 (0.091%) HDFS
9 1 (0.091%) PowerHA
9 1 (0.091%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 152 (13.79%) Kubernetes
2 96 (8.71%) Terraform
3 69 (6.26%) Ansible
4 53 (4.81%) Grafana
5 41 (3.72%) Prometheus
6 22 (2.00%) Puppet
7 15 (1.36%) Kibana
8 13 (1.18%) SCCM
9 12 (1.09%) Microsoft Intune
9 12 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.73%) Kiali
11 7 (0.64%) Argo
12 6 (0.54%) CSIRT
12 6 (0.54%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.54%) QRadar
12 6 (0.54%) WSUS
13 4 (0.36%) SCOM
14 3 (0.27%) Control-M
14 3 (0.27%) HP ALM
15 2 (0.18%) Knative
Vendors
1 179 (16.24%) Microsoft
2 90 (8.17%) Splunk
3 58 (5.26%) Google
4 53 (4.81%) Oracle
5 49 (4.45%) SAP
6 34 (3.09%) Databricks
7 30 (2.72%) Cisco
8 28 (2.54%) Salesforce
9 24 (2.18%) ServiceNow
9 24 (2.18%) VMware
10 20 (1.81%) IBM
11 17 (1.54%) BiZZdesign
11 17 (1.54%) Red Hat
12 15 (1.36%) Informatica
13 14 (1.27%) OpenAI
14 13 (1.18%) MuleSoft
15 11 (1.00%) Fortinet
15 11 (1.00%) Foundry
15 11 (1.00%) Palo Alto
16 10 (0.91%) Atlassian