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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 118 64 62
Rank change year-on-year -54 -2 +44
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,052 1,057 1,341
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.14% 3.66% 3.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.53% 4.02% 3.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 611 590 812
10th Percentile £178 £249 £313
25th Percentile £220 £386 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £509 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.63% -3.10% -7.08%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £650
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -15.79% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 33 103
10th Percentile £27.09 £25.25 £21.35
25th Percentile £41.71 £29.00 £38.75
Median hourly rate £80.71 £37.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +115.21% -31.82% +1.04%
75th Percentile £88.00 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile - £82.82 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.00 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +121.33% -31.82% +10.00%

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 41,610 26,282 36,757
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.67% 91.03% 85.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,026 16,812 23,631
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,481 1,100 2,513
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.30 £27.97 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.26% -23.38% -1.35%
75th Percentile £67.84 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.88 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

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 30 May 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 30 May 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 30 May 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 -43 942 £475 -9.52% 924
UK excluding London -44 564 £400 -15.79% 597
London -51 406 £550 -8.33% 441
Work from Home -66 230 £500 -9.09% 345
South East -11 217 £215 -55.26% 208
North of England -25 136 £400 -21.95% 110
Yorkshire -11 80 £525 +22.38% 23
Midlands -67 75 £463 +57.31% 67
West Midlands -69 57 £450 +54.11% 39
North West -40 55 £350 -34.82% 63
South West -44 47 £469 +34.00% 62
Scotland -18 39 £610 +16.19% 39
East of England -37 38 £280 -56.92% 83
East Midlands -34 17 £525 +74.71% 28
Northern Ireland +12 8 £350 -41.67% 28
Wales -34 7 £370 +27.59% 13
North East -27 2 £125 -73.68% 24

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 53 (5.04%) Confluence
2 39 (3.71%) Apache Spark
3 28 (2.66%) SharePoint
4 23 (2.19%) Apache
5 21 (2.00%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (0.95%) Microsoft Exchange
7 5 (0.48%) IIS
8 4 (0.38%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.38%) SAS
9 3 (0.29%) Camunda
9 3 (0.29%) CMS
9 3 (0.29%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.19%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.19%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.19%) nginx
10 2 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.19%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.095%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.095%) Appian
Applications
1 34 (3.23%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (2.09%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.52%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.67%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.67%) Revit
6 3 (0.29%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.19%) Simulink
7 2 (0.19%) Trello
8 1 (0.095%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.095%) Sketch
8 1 (0.095%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 23 (2.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.48%) Payment Gateway
3 4 (0.38%) Aladdin
3 4 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.19%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.19%) Workfront
6 1 (0.095%) Actimize
6 1 (0.095%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.095%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.095%) SAP Retail
6 1 (0.095%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.095%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.095%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 302 (28.71%) Azure
2 192 (18.25%) AWS
3 82 (7.79%) GCP
4 62 (5.89%) Power Platform
5 54 (5.13%) Microsoft 365
6 48 (4.56%) SaaS
7 47 (4.47%) GitHub
8 45 (4.28%) Entra ID
9 34 (3.23%) Azure DevOps
10 21 (2.00%) Snowflake
11 20 (1.90%) GitHub Actions
12 19 (1.81%) AWS CloudFormation
13 18 (1.71%) Serverless
14 17 (1.62%) Azure AKS
14 17 (1.62%) IaaS
15 16 (1.52%) PowerApps
16 13 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
16 13 (1.24%) PaaS
17 12 (1.14%) Azure Service Bus
17 12 (1.14%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 37 (3.52%) Firewall
2 30 (2.85%) TCP/IP
3 29 (2.76%) DNS
4 28 (2.66%) Network Security
5 15 (1.43%) WAN
6 13 (1.24%) BGP
7 12 (1.14%) LAN
7 12 (1.14%) SSH
8 10 (0.95%) OSPF
9 9 (0.86%) 3GPP
9 9 (0.86%) VPN
9 9 (0.86%) Wireless
10 8 (0.76%) HTTPS
11 7 (0.67%) SAN
11 7 (0.67%) VLAN
12 6 (0.57%) DHCP
12 6 (0.57%) LTE
13 5 (0.48%) RTP
13 5 (0.48%) Wireshark
14 4 (0.38%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (4.85%) Power BI
2 50 (4.75%) SQL Server
3 49 (4.66%) Relational Database
4 47 (4.47%) PostgreSQL
5 39 (3.71%) Data Warehouse
6 34 (3.23%) Big Data
7 27 (2.57%) Metadata
8 26 (2.47%) NoSQL
9 23 (2.19%) MongoDB
10 22 (2.09%) MySQL
11 21 (2.00%) Hadoop
12 19 (1.81%) Tableau
13 15 (1.43%) Elasticsearch
14 14 (1.33%) Data Lake
15 10 (0.95%) Redis
15 10 (0.95%) Snowflake Schema
15 10 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 9 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
17 8 (0.76%) Power Query
18 7 (0.67%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 74 (7.03%) Git
2 67 (6.37%) JIRA
3 36 (3.42%) GitLab
4 35 (3.33%) Jenkins
5 28 (2.66%) Rational DOORS
6 12 (1.14%) Gradle
7 11 (1.05%) JUnit
7 11 (1.05%) Selenium
8 10 (0.95%) TeamCity
9 9 (0.86%) Jaeger
9 9 (0.86%) MLflow
10 7 (0.67%) CircleCI
10 7 (0.67%) Maven
10 7 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 6 (0.57%) Cypress.io
11 6 (0.57%) Postman
12 5 (0.48%) Artifactory
12 5 (0.48%) Flyway
13 4 (0.38%) Bitbucket
13 4 (0.38%) Cucumber
General
1 425 (40.40%) Social Skills
2 239 (22.72%) Finance
3 212 (20.15%) Analytical Skills
4 93 (8.84%) Banking
5 61 (5.80%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.23%) Aerospace
7 49 (4.66%) Documentation Skills
8 32 (3.04%) Marketing
8 32 (3.04%) Telecoms
9 31 (2.95%) Presentation Skills
10 29 (2.76%) Legal
10 29 (2.76%) Organisational Skills
11 28 (2.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 25 (2.38%) Front Office
12 25 (2.38%) Influencing Skills
13 19 (1.81%) Manufacturing
14 16 (1.52%) Investment Banking
14 16 (1.52%) Publishing
15 15 (1.43%) Financial Institution
15 15 (1.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 111 (10.55%) Architect
2 107 (10.17%) Developer
3 91 (8.65%) Analyst
4 87 (8.27%) Lead
5 85 (8.08%) Senior
6 41 (3.90%) Software Engineer
7 37 (3.52%) Delivery Manager
8 35 (3.33%) Product Manager
9 33 (3.14%) Solutions Architect
10 31 (2.95%) Data Scientist
11 30 (2.85%) Technical Support
12 28 (2.66%) Data Engineer
12 28 (2.66%) Product Delivery Manager
13 24 (2.28%) Python Developer
14 23 (2.19%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 23 (2.19%) Junior
14 23 (2.19%) Security Engineer
15 22 (2.09%) Systems Delivery Manager
15 22 (2.09%) Systems Manager
16 19 (1.81%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (8.46%) REST
2 57 (5.42%) React
3 53 (5.04%) .NET
4 46 (4.37%) Kafka
5 45 (4.28%) Middleware
6 35 (3.33%) RESTful
7 34 (3.23%) Spring Boot
8 29 (2.76%) Spring
9 27 (2.57%) PyTorch
10 23 (2.19%) AngularJS
10 23 (2.19%) OAuth
11 22 (2.09%) SOAP
12 21 (2.00%) TensorFlow
13 20 (1.90%) Elastic Stack
13 20 (1.90%) JSON
14 19 (1.81%) HTML
15 18 (1.71%) CSS
15 18 (1.71%) XML
16 17 (1.62%) Pandas
17 16 (1.52%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 100 (9.51%) Management Information System
2 78 (7.41%) Product Ownership
3 76 (7.22%) Onboarding
4 71 (6.75%) Algorithms
5 68 (6.46%) Cloud Native
6 52 (4.94%) Data Structures
7 51 (4.85%) Distributed Systems
8 30 (2.85%) Virtual Team
9 26 (2.47%) Derivative
10 25 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
11 22 (2.09%) Equities
12 20 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
12 20 (1.90%) Taxonomies
13 19 (1.81%) AI Agents
13 19 (1.81%) Analytical Mindset
13 19 (1.81%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 18 (1.71%) Security Operations Centre
15 17 (1.62%) Cyberattack
16 16 (1.52%) Robotics
17 14 (1.33%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 133 (12.64%) Windows
2 132 (12.55%) Linux
3 45 (4.28%) Unix
4 24 (2.28%) Android
5 20 (1.90%) Windows 10
6 18 (1.71%) Windows Server
7 16 (1.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 15 (1.43%) Apple iOS
9 14 (1.33%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.38%) Debian
11 4 (0.38%) Rocky
11 4 (0.38%) VMS
12 2 (0.19%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.19%) Solaris
12 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.095%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.095%) MVS
13 1 (0.095%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 318 (30.23%) Problem-Solving
2 263 (25.00%) Agile
3 226 (21.48%) AI
4 193 (18.35%) CI/CD
5 182 (17.30%) DevOps
6 178 (16.92%) Software Engineering
7 170 (16.16%) Continuous Improvement
8 132 (12.55%) Analytics
9 123 (11.69%) Cybersecurity
10 117 (11.12%) Microservices
11 103 (9.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 102 (9.70%) Stakeholder Management
13 97 (9.22%) Machine Learning
14 96 (9.13%) Technical Leadership
15 95 (9.03%) Decision-Making
16 94 (8.94%) Containerisation
17 91 (8.65%) Mathematics
18 89 (8.46%) Data Science
19 88 (8.37%) Data Governance
20 87 (8.27%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 289 (27.47%) Python
2 211 (20.06%) SQL
3 136 (12.93%) Java
4 68 (6.46%) JavaScript
5 57 (5.42%) C#
6 47 (4.47%) PowerShell
7 32 (3.04%) TypeScript
8 31 (2.95%) Bash
9 29 (2.76%) C++
10 21 (2.00%) R
11 14 (1.33%) Go
12 13 (1.24%) Perl
13 12 (1.14%) Rust
14 11 (1.05%) Shell Script
15 10 (0.95%) Kotlin
16 9 (0.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 6 (0.57%) Scala
18 5 (0.48%) C
19 4 (0.38%) Ada
20 3 (0.29%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 842 (80.04%) Degree
2 510 (48.48%) Computer Science Degree
3 190 (18.06%) Security Cleared
4 144 (13.69%) Master's Degree
5 113 (10.74%) SC Cleared
6 57 (5.42%) CISSP
7 39 (3.71%) CISM
8 34 (3.23%) PhD
9 32 (3.04%) Azure Certification
10 31 (2.95%) TOGAF Certification
11 29 (2.76%) DV Cleared
12 27 (2.57%) Microsoft Certification
13 26 (2.47%) PMI Certification
14 23 (2.19%) PMP
15 22 (2.09%) AWS Certification
15 22 (2.09%) CompTIA Security+
16 21 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
17 20 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
18 19 (1.81%) CISA
18 19 (1.81%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 56 (5.32%) Data Quality
1 56 (5.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 56 (5.32%) NIST
2 55 (5.23%) QA
3 37 (3.52%) GDPR
4 20 (1.90%) PCI DSS
5 19 (1.81%) Accessibility
6 13 (1.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 12 (1.14%) GRC
8 10 (0.95%) NIST 800
8 10 (0.95%) SLA
9 8 (0.76%) NCSC
10 7 (0.67%) COBIT
10 7 (0.67%) HIPAA
10 7 (0.67%) PSD2
11 6 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.57%) ISO 19650
11 6 (0.57%) ISO 20022
11 6 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 5 (0.48%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 108 (10.27%) Docker
2 68 (6.46%) Active Directory
3 20 (1.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (1.14%) Firmware
5 9 (0.86%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.48%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.38%) vSphere
9 3 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
10 2 (0.19%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.19%) Ceph
10 2 (0.19%) KVM
10 2 (0.19%) Squid
10 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.095%) ACF2
11 1 (0.095%) HDFS
11 1 (0.095%) RACF
Systems Management
1 130 (12.36%) Kubernetes
2 63 (5.99%) Terraform
3 49 (4.66%) Ansible
4 32 (3.04%) Grafana
5 31 (2.95%) Prometheus
6 26 (2.47%) Microsoft Intune
7 16 (1.52%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (0.95%) Puppet
9 9 (0.86%) Kiali
9 9 (0.86%) Kibana
10 4 (0.38%) Control-M
10 4 (0.38%) Kubeflow
11 3 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
11 3 (0.29%) Foglight
11 3 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
11 3 (0.29%) Progress Chef
11 3 (0.29%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.19%) AirWatch
12 2 (0.19%) vRealize
12 2 (0.19%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 177 (16.83%) Microsoft
2 65 (6.18%) Oracle
3 49 (4.66%) Databricks
3 49 (4.66%) Splunk
4 36 (3.42%) Google
4 36 (3.42%) SAP
5 34 (3.23%) IBM
6 29 (2.76%) ServiceNow
7 24 (2.28%) VMware
8 18 (1.71%) Cisco
9 16 (1.52%) BiZZdesign
9 16 (1.52%) Informatica
9 16 (1.52%) Okta
10 13 (1.24%) Palo Alto
10 13 (1.24%) Salesforce
11 12 (1.14%) CheckPoint
12 11 (1.05%) CyberArk
13 10 (0.95%) MuleSoft
13 10 (0.95%) Software AG
14 9 (0.86%) BeyondTrust