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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 64 64
Rank change year-on-year -70 0 +24
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,097 1,255 1,304
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.06% 3.81% 3.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.42% 4.21% 3.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 616 715 814
10th Percentile £178 £184 £325
25th Percentile £200 £353 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £492 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.54% -10.55% -
75th Percentile £605 £650 £688
90th Percentile £758 £775 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £375 £420 £520
% change year-on-year -10.71% -19.23% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 127 48 66
10th Percentile £25.45 £25.00 £20.68
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £41.50
Median hourly rate £75.00 £53.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +40.19% +1.90% -15.32%
75th Percentile £87.16 £69.10 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £88.00 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.50 £67.00 £55.63
% change year-on-year +21.64% +20.45% -7.29%

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 45,292 29,826 33,298
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.86% 90.48% 85.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,883 18,657 21,289
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £423 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,827 1,696 1,836
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.80 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.08
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.77% -1.96%
75th Percentile £68.00 £47.66 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.51 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.84 £42.50
% change year-on-year +92.47% -46.26% +17.24%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 12 August 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 -52 1,004 £450 -10.00% 3,879
UK excluding London -52 593 £375 -10.71% 1,478
London -70 434 £525 -12.50% 2,661
South East -8 243 £350 -17.65% 407
Work from Home -94 240 £500 - 1,258
North of England -47 142 £401 -5.65% 273
Midlands -52 93 £275 -18.52% 155
Yorkshire -10 76 £450 +25.70% 72
West Midlands -48 64 £325 +8.33% 84
North West -58 56 £381 -19.89% 134
East of England -24 49 £215 -52.22% 272
South West -70 30 £477 +130.99% 142
East Midlands -18 28 £253 -41.75% 71
Scotland -50 27 £400 -17.95% 159
North East -37 11 £195 -57.84% 69
Northern Ireland - 7 £350 - 48
Wales -20 4 £530 +14.59% 37

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 36 (3.28%) Confluence
2 28 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 25 (2.28%) Apache Spark
4 19 (1.73%) Apache Airflow
5 17 (1.55%) Apache
6 9 (0.82%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.55%) IIS
8 5 (0.46%) SAS
9 4 (0.36%) CMS
9 4 (0.36%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.27%) Camunda
10 3 (0.27%) Jupyter
11 2 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.18%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.091%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.091%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.091%) nginx
12 1 (0.091%) Tomcat
Applications
1 45 (4.10%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (2.92%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.46%) MS Visio
4 14 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.64%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.64%) Revit
6 5 (0.46%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.46%) Trello
7 2 (0.18%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.18%) CPLEX
7 2 (0.18%) Sketch
8 1 (0.091%) Simulink
8 1 (0.091%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 13 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.46%) Aladdin
3 4 (0.36%) Infor M3
3 4 (0.36%) Workday HCM
4 3 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.27%) Primavera
4 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.18%) Actimize
5 2 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.18%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.18%) Workfront
6 1 (0.091%) Finacle
6 1 (0.091%) Maximo
6 1 (0.091%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.091%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.091%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.091%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 295 (26.89%) Azure
2 187 (17.05%) AWS
3 103 (9.39%) GCP
4 76 (6.93%) Power Platform
5 65 (5.93%) Entra ID
6 58 (5.29%) Microsoft 365
7 51 (4.65%) SaaS
8 46 (4.19%) GitHub
9 42 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
10 36 (3.28%) Snowflake
11 30 (2.73%) Serverless
12 22 (2.01%) PowerApps
13 18 (1.64%) GitHub Actions
14 16 (1.46%) AWS Lambda
14 16 (1.46%) Azure Data Factory
14 16 (1.46%) Microsoft Copilot
15 15 (1.37%) Power Automate
16 13 (1.19%) Azure AKS
16 13 (1.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 13 (1.19%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 43 (3.92%) Firewall
2 38 (3.46%) DNS
3 32 (2.92%) Network Security
3 32 (2.92%) VPN
4 26 (2.37%) TCP/IP
5 19 (1.73%) WAN
6 17 (1.55%) DHCP
7 16 (1.46%) SSH
8 15 (1.37%) LAN
9 13 (1.19%) Wireless
10 11 (1.00%) BGP
11 10 (0.91%) VLAN
12 9 (0.82%) HTTP
13 8 (0.73%) HTTPS
13 8 (0.73%) MPLS
13 8 (0.73%) OSPF
13 8 (0.73%) Wireshark
14 7 (0.64%) Cisco ASA
14 7 (0.64%) Intrusion Detection
14 7 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (5.74%) Power BI
2 54 (4.92%) Relational Database
3 45 (4.10%) SQL Server
4 44 (4.01%) PostgreSQL
5 32 (2.92%) Data Warehouse
5 32 (2.92%) Metadata
6 26 (2.37%) MongoDB
6 26 (2.37%) NoSQL
7 24 (2.19%) Big Data
8 16 (1.46%) Tableau
9 15 (1.37%) Data Mining
10 14 (1.28%) MySQL
11 13 (1.19%) Redis
12 11 (1.00%) Elasticsearch
13 10 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
13 10 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
14 9 (0.82%) Data Lake
14 9 (0.82%) Oracle Database
14 9 (0.82%) Snowflake Schema
15 8 (0.73%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 91 (8.30%) Git
2 47 (4.28%) JIRA
3 39 (3.56%) Jenkins
4 38 (3.46%) GitLab
5 32 (2.92%) Rational DOORS
6 17 (1.55%) Selenium
7 11 (1.00%) Bitbucket
8 10 (0.91%) JUnit
9 9 (0.82%) TeamCity
10 8 (0.73%) SpecFlow
11 7 (0.64%) Gradle
11 7 (0.64%) Maven
11 7 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
12 6 (0.55%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.55%) REST Assured
12 6 (0.55%) SonarQube
12 6 (0.55%) Team Foundation Server
12 6 (0.55%) Visual Studio
13 5 (0.46%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.46%) Flyway
General
1 449 (40.93%) Social Skills
2 248 (22.61%) Analytical Skills
3 228 (20.78%) Finance
4 88 (8.02%) Banking
5 63 (5.74%) Aerospace
6 62 (5.65%) Public Sector
7 46 (4.19%) Documentation Skills
8 37 (3.37%) Organisational Skills
9 36 (3.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 34 (3.10%) Telecoms
11 30 (2.73%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (2.55%) Manufacturing
13 27 (2.46%) Legal
14 26 (2.37%) Front Office
14 26 (2.37%) Marketing
15 19 (1.73%) Presentation Skills
16 17 (1.55%) Law
17 16 (1.46%) Military
18 15 (1.37%) Retail
19 13 (1.19%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 128 (11.67%) Developer
2 107 (9.75%) Senior
3 94 (8.57%) Architect
4 78 (7.11%) Lead
5 77 (7.02%) Analyst
6 40 (3.65%) Product Manager
7 39 (3.56%) Data Engineer
8 34 (3.10%) Delivery Manager
8 34 (3.10%) Software Engineer
9 31 (2.83%) Product Delivery Manager
10 26 (2.37%) Junior
11 25 (2.28%) Data Scientist
11 25 (2.28%) IT Support
12 24 (2.19%) Senior Developer
13 23 (2.10%) Python Developer
13 23 (2.10%) Solutions Architect
14 22 (2.01%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 22 (2.01%) Security Engineer
14 22 (2.01%) Systems Delivery Manager
14 22 (2.01%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 91 (8.30%) REST
2 53 (4.83%) .NET
3 51 (4.65%) React
4 40 (3.65%) Kafka
5 37 (3.37%) RESTful
6 31 (2.83%) OAuth
7 29 (2.64%) CSS
7 29 (2.64%) Spring
8 27 (2.46%) HTML
9 24 (2.19%) OAuth2
9 24 (2.19%) OpenID
9 24 (2.19%) SAML
10 23 (2.10%) Middleware
10 23 (2.10%) Spring Boot
11 22 (2.01%) JSON
11 22 (2.01%) Web Services
12 21 (1.91%) AngularJS
13 20 (1.82%) SOAP
14 19 (1.73%) PyTorch
15 17 (1.55%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 97 (8.84%) Management Information System
2 89 (8.11%) Product Ownership
3 85 (7.75%) Algorithms
4 75 (6.84%) Onboarding
5 68 (6.20%) Cloud Native
5 68 (6.20%) Data Structures
6 52 (4.74%) Distributed Systems
7 31 (2.83%) AI Agents
8 26 (2.37%) Self-Motivation
9 25 (2.28%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 25 (2.28%) Virtual Team
10 23 (2.10%) Derivative
11 19 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
12 17 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
12 17 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
12 17 (1.55%) Fixed Income
12 17 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
13 16 (1.46%) Operational Technology
14 15 (1.37%) Data Centre
15 14 (1.28%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 122 (11.12%) Windows
2 101 (9.21%) Linux
3 30 (2.73%) Unix
4 23 (2.10%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (1.64%) Windows 10
6 15 (1.37%) Android
7 10 (0.91%) Ubuntu
8 8 (0.73%) Apple iOS
9 7 (0.64%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.36%) Debian
10 4 (0.36%) Rocky
11 3 (0.27%) VMS
12 2 (0.18%) MVS
12 2 (0.18%) Solaris
12 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.18%) zOS
13 1 (0.091%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.091%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.091%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 331 (30.17%) Problem-Solving
2 270 (24.61%) Agile
3 230 (20.97%) AI
4 200 (18.23%) Continuous Improvement
5 199 (18.14%) CI/CD
6 189 (17.23%) Software Engineering
7 164 (14.95%) DevOps
8 146 (13.31%) Stakeholder Management
9 143 (13.04%) Analytics
10 121 (11.03%) Cybersecurity
11 117 (10.67%) ITIL
12 113 (10.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 111 (10.12%) Mathematics
14 102 (9.30%) Machine Learning
15 92 (8.39%) Roadmaps
16 91 (8.30%) Validation
17 90 (8.20%) Decision-Making
18 87 (7.93%) Data Science
19 82 (7.47%) Mentoring
20 80 (7.29%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 295 (26.89%) Python
2 206 (18.78%) SQL
3 131 (11.94%) Java
4 70 (6.38%) PowerShell
5 67 (6.11%) JavaScript
6 64 (5.83%) C#
7 36 (3.28%) Bash
7 36 (3.28%) TypeScript
8 26 (2.37%) C++
9 15 (1.37%) R
10 13 (1.19%) Bicep
11 10 (0.91%) C
11 10 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 8 (0.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 8 (0.73%) Go
12 8 (0.73%) Kotlin
13 6 (0.55%) Apex Code
13 6 (0.55%) Perl
13 6 (0.55%) PL/SQL
13 6 (0.55%) Scala
Qualifications
1 833 (75.93%) Degree
2 487 (44.39%) Computer Science Degree
3 209 (19.05%) Security Cleared
4 127 (11.58%) SC Cleared
5 117 (10.67%) Master's Degree
6 50 (4.56%) CISSP
7 46 (4.19%) Azure Certification
8 43 (3.92%) Microsoft Certification
9 38 (3.46%) DBS Check
10 35 (3.19%) PhD
11 32 (2.92%) CISM
12 29 (2.64%) PMI Certification
13 28 (2.55%) PMP
14 27 (2.46%) DV Cleared
15 26 (2.37%) AWS Certification
16 24 (2.19%) Cisco Certification
16 24 (2.19%) TOGAF Certification
17 22 (2.01%) CISA
18 17 (1.55%) CEH
19 16 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (6.29%) Data Quality
2 65 (5.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (5.20%) NIST
4 55 (5.01%) QA
5 28 (2.55%) GDPR
6 16 (1.46%) Accessibility
7 15 (1.37%) GRC
8 14 (1.28%) SLA
9 13 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 11 (1.00%) HIPAA
10 11 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 11 (1.00%) NCSC
11 10 (0.91%) NIST 800
12 9 (0.82%) PCI DSS
13 7 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 5 (0.46%) COBIT
14 5 (0.46%) DO-254
14 5 (0.46%) Government Security Classifications
14 5 (0.46%) ITGC
15 4 (0.36%) ISO 26262
System Software
1 84 (7.66%) Docker
2 76 (6.93%) Active Directory
3 22 (2.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.91%) Firmware
5 9 (0.82%) Hyper-V
5 9 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
6 6 (0.55%) VMware NSX
7 5 (0.46%) vSphere
8 3 (0.27%) ACF2
8 3 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
8 3 (0.27%) RACF
8 3 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
9 2 (0.18%) Ceph
9 2 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
9 2 (0.18%) Squid
9 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.091%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 1 (0.091%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.091%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 99 (9.02%) Kubernetes
2 56 (5.10%) Terraform
3 39 (3.56%) Ansible
4 30 (2.73%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (2.28%) Prometheus
6 20 (1.82%) Grafana
7 14 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (1.00%) SCCM
9 6 (0.55%) Argo
10 3 (0.27%) Cisco CUCM
10 3 (0.27%) Foglight
10 3 (0.27%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.27%) Kubeflow
10 3 (0.27%) Puppet
10 3 (0.27%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.18%) CASB
11 2 (0.18%) Consul
11 2 (0.18%) Istio
11 2 (0.18%) vRealize
11 2 (0.18%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 203 (18.51%) Microsoft
2 60 (5.47%) Oracle
3 46 (4.19%) Databricks
4 42 (3.83%) IBM
5 40 (3.65%) Google
6 37 (3.37%) ServiceNow
7 33 (3.01%) VMware
8 28 (2.55%) SAP
9 24 (2.19%) Cisco
10 19 (1.73%) CyberArk
10 19 (1.73%) Splunk
11 17 (1.55%) BeyondTrust
12 15 (1.37%) Salesforce
13 11 (1.00%) Citrix
13 11 (1.00%) Palo Alto
14 10 (0.91%) Okta
15 9 (0.82%) Apple
15 9 (0.82%) Foundry
15 9 (0.82%) Red Hat
15 9 (0.82%) UiPath