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

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 95 70 72
Rank change year-on-year -25 +2 +54
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,176 959 1,242
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.72% 3.27% 2.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.16% 3.62% 3.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 732 567 779
10th Percentile £175 £303 £315
25th Percentile £303 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -7.10% -2.42% -7.24%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £668
90th Percentile £775 £800 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 29 85
10th Percentile £26.75 £26.86 £23.00
25th Percentile £56.88 £30.78 £42.50
Median hourly rate £83.00 £43.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +93.02% -21.82% +4.76%
75th Percentile £88.00 £63.25 £66.25
90th Percentile - £82.39 £74.50
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 37,207 26,505 38,501
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.99% 90.41% 86.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,564 17,019 25,049
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £721 £744 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,206 924 2,336
10th Percentile £14.93 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £20.99 £16.05
Median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.52 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.41 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £31.64 £31.50
% change year-on-year -13.08% +0.44% -10.00%

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 18 March 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 18 March 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 18 March 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 -22 1,041 £475 -9.52% 835
UK excluding London -8 610 £400 -20.00% 626
London -30 454 £550 -8.33% 336
Work from Home -22 277 £520 -5.54% 310
South East +5 194 £360 -28.00% 214
North of England +17 186 £368 -30.79% 121
Yorkshire +7 95 £525 +14.88% 41
Midlands -33 92 £463 +29.92% 82
North West +2 87 £273 -50.54% 62
West Midlands -39 67 £475 +143.59% 46
South West -21 54 £500 -6.98% 72
East of England -27 42 £403 -38.08% 81
Scotland +1 35 £610 +16.19% 49
East Midlands -26 25 £447 +21.80% 36
Wales -17 15 £160 -44.35% 18
North East -10 5 £207 -64.09% 18
Northern Ireland -3 4 £369 -38.54% 8

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 70 (5.95%) Confluence
2 43 (3.66%) Apache Spark
3 33 (2.81%) SharePoint
4 19 (1.62%) Apache
4 19 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
5 14 (1.19%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.51%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.43%) Smallworld
8 4 (0.34%) GeoServer
8 4 (0.34%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 3 (0.26%) Ethereum
9 3 (0.26%) Hyperledger
9 3 (0.26%) IIS
10 2 (0.17%) CMS
10 2 (0.17%) nginx
10 2 (0.17%) SAS
10 2 (0.17%) WebSphere
Applications
1 34 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
2 21 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
3 17 (1.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.94%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.43%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.34%) Simulink
7 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 23 (1.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.43%) Payment Gateway
4 4 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 4 (0.34%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.17%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.17%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.17%) SAP FS
5 2 (0.17%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.085%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.085%) Maximo
6 1 (0.085%) Oracle HRMS
6 1 (0.085%) SAP CO
6 1 (0.085%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.085%) SAP SM
6 1 (0.085%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 328 (27.89%) Azure
2 210 (17.86%) AWS
3 120 (10.20%) GCP
4 71 (6.04%) GitHub
5 69 (5.87%) Power Platform
6 52 (4.42%) Microsoft 365
7 49 (4.17%) SaaS
8 44 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
8 44 (3.74%) Serverless
9 41 (3.49%) Entra ID
10 28 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
11 23 (1.96%) IaaS
11 23 (1.96%) Snowflake
12 20 (1.70%) Azure Data Factory
13 19 (1.62%) AWS CloudFormation
13 19 (1.62%) Azure Machine Learning
13 19 (1.62%) Cloud Computing
14 17 (1.45%) Power Automate
14 17 (1.45%) PowerApps
15 16 (1.36%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 50 (4.25%) Firewall
2 32 (2.72%) DNS
3 28 (2.38%) TCP/IP
4 22 (1.87%) Network Security
5 16 (1.36%) HTTP
5 16 (1.36%) WAN
6 15 (1.28%) BGP
7 14 (1.19%) LAN
8 13 (1.11%) SSH
8 13 (1.11%) VLAN
8 13 (1.11%) Wireless
9 11 (0.94%) VPN
10 10 (0.85%) DHCP
10 10 (0.85%) IPv4
10 10 (0.85%) OSPF
11 9 (0.77%) Skype
12 8 (0.68%) Cisco IOS
13 7 (0.60%) HTTPS
13 7 (0.60%) Internet
13 7 (0.60%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 80 (6.80%) PostgreSQL
2 54 (4.59%) NoSQL
3 52 (4.42%) Power BI
4 45 (3.83%) Relational Database
5 44 (3.74%) Data Warehouse
5 44 (3.74%) SQL Server
6 41 (3.49%) Big Data
7 35 (2.98%) MySQL
8 25 (2.13%) Tableau
9 23 (1.96%) Hadoop
10 19 (1.62%) Metadata
11 18 (1.53%) MongoDB
12 17 (1.45%) Elasticsearch
13 16 (1.36%) Data Lake
14 11 (0.94%) Redis
14 11 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 10 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
16 8 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
17 7 (0.60%) Star Schema
17 7 (0.60%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 101 (8.59%) Git
2 92 (7.82%) JIRA
3 65 (5.53%) Jenkins
4 59 (5.02%) GitLab
5 28 (2.38%) Rational DOORS
6 12 (1.02%) MLflow
6 12 (1.02%) Postman
7 11 (0.94%) Selenium
8 10 (0.85%) Liquibase
9 9 (0.77%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 8 (0.68%) CircleCI
10 8 (0.68%) Gradle
11 7 (0.60%) JUnit
12 6 (0.51%) Cypress.io
13 5 (0.43%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.43%) PyCharm
13 5 (0.43%) Visual Studio
14 4 (0.34%) Hardhat
14 4 (0.34%) REST Assured
General
1 511 (43.45%) Social Skills
2 290 (24.66%) Finance
3 251 (21.34%) Analytical Skills
4 111 (9.44%) Banking
5 76 (6.46%) Public Sector
6 47 (4.00%) Marketing
7 45 (3.83%) Aerospace
7 45 (3.83%) Documentation Skills
8 40 (3.40%) Legal
9 37 (3.15%) Presentation Skills
10 36 (3.06%) Influencing Skills
11 33 (2.81%) Telecoms
12 32 (2.72%) Financial Institution
13 31 (2.64%) Front Office
14 25 (2.13%) Electronics
14 25 (2.13%) Organisational Skills
15 23 (1.96%) Manufacturing
16 22 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 22 (1.87%) Investment Banking
17 17 (1.45%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 166 (14.12%) Developer
2 112 (9.52%) Architect
3 96 (8.16%) Lead
4 91 (7.74%) Analyst
5 87 (7.40%) Senior
6 47 (4.00%) Software Engineer
7 42 (3.57%) Solutions Architect
8 40 (3.40%) Data Scientist
9 39 (3.32%) Delivery Manager
10 35 (2.98%) Product Manager
11 32 (2.72%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 29 (2.47%) Python Developer
13 28 (2.38%) Product Delivery Manager
14 27 (2.30%) Business Analyst
14 27 (2.30%) Technical Support
15 25 (2.13%) Consultant
16 23 (1.96%) Cloud Engineer
16 23 (1.96%) Java Developer
17 22 (1.87%) Data Engineer
17 22 (1.87%) Systems Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 102 (8.67%) REST
2 60 (5.10%) React
3 57 (4.85%) RESTful
4 52 (4.42%) .NET
5 46 (3.91%) Kafka
6 42 (3.57%) Middleware
7 38 (3.23%) PyTorch
8 37 (3.15%) Elastic Stack
8 37 (3.15%) TensorFlow
9 35 (2.98%) Spring
10 34 (2.89%) OAuth
11 32 (2.72%) Spring Boot
12 31 (2.64%) HTML
12 31 (2.64%) JSON
12 31 (2.64%) XML
13 29 (2.47%) Node.js
14 27 (2.30%) SOAP
15 24 (2.04%) CSS
16 23 (1.96%) LangChain
17 22 (1.87%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 119 (10.12%) Management Information System
2 95 (8.08%) Algorithms
3 93 (7.91%) Cloud Native
4 83 (7.06%) Product Ownership
5 66 (5.61%) Data Structures
6 57 (4.85%) Onboarding
7 56 (4.76%) Distributed Systems
8 34 (2.89%) Equities
9 32 (2.72%) Virtual Team
10 25 (2.13%) Derivative
11 24 (2.04%) AI Agents
11 24 (2.04%) Data Protection Act
11 24 (2.04%) Distributed Computing
12 23 (1.96%) Data Centre
12 23 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
12 23 (1.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 22 (1.87%) Analytical Mindset
14 20 (1.70%) Public Cloud
15 19 (1.62%) Security Posture
16 18 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 151 (12.84%) Linux
2 126 (10.71%) Windows
3 54 (4.59%) Unix
4 24 (2.04%) Android
5 19 (1.62%) Windows Server
6 18 (1.53%) Mac OS
7 12 (1.02%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.60%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.43%) VMS
11 4 (0.34%) Debian
11 4 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.26%) Rocky
13 2 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.085%) Embedded Linux
14 1 (0.085%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.085%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 374 (31.80%) Problem-Solving
2 324 (27.55%) Agile
3 251 (21.34%) AI
4 237 (20.15%) CI/CD
5 232 (19.73%) DevOps
6 194 (16.50%) Software Engineering
7 153 (13.01%) Continuous Improvement
8 152 (12.93%) Microservices
9 143 (12.16%) Machine Learning
10 140 (11.90%) Analytics
11 134 (11.39%) Containerisation
12 131 (11.14%) Cybersecurity
13 124 (10.54%) Stakeholder Management
14 120 (10.20%) Data Science
15 115 (9.78%) Data Modelling
16 110 (9.35%) Data Governance
16 110 (9.35%) Mathematics
17 109 (9.27%) Decision-Making
18 103 (8.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 95 (8.08%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 357 (30.36%) Python
2 208 (17.69%) SQL
3 142 (12.07%) Java
4 86 (7.31%) JavaScript
5 63 (5.36%) PowerShell
6 58 (4.93%) TypeScript
7 50 (4.25%) C#
8 42 (3.57%) Go
9 40 (3.40%) Bash
10 36 (3.06%) C++
11 22 (1.87%) R
12 17 (1.45%) Perl
13 16 (1.36%) Shell Script
14 14 (1.19%) Rust
15 10 (0.85%) Kotlin
16 8 (0.68%) Scala
17 7 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 7 (0.60%) Ruby
18 5 (0.43%) C
18 5 (0.43%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 958 (81.46%) Degree
2 596 (50.68%) Computer Science Degree
3 214 (18.20%) Master's Degree
4 199 (16.92%) Security Cleared
5 119 (10.12%) SC Cleared
6 76 (6.46%) CISSP
7 57 (4.85%) DBS Check
7 57 (4.85%) PhD
8 51 (4.34%) CISM
9 40 (3.40%) Azure Certification
10 34 (2.89%) TOGAF Certification
11 32 (2.72%) PMI Certification
12 29 (2.47%) Microsoft Certification
13 28 (2.38%) Cisco Certification
13 28 (2.38%) DV Cleared
14 27 (2.30%) PMP
15 25 (2.13%) AWS Certification
16 24 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
17 23 (1.96%) CompTIA Security+
18 18 (1.53%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (5.87%) QA
2 58 (4.93%) Data Quality
2 58 (4.93%) GDPR
3 45 (3.83%) NIST
4 44 (3.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 22 (1.87%) PCI DSS
6 17 (1.45%) Accessibility
7 11 (0.94%) NCSC
8 9 (0.77%) GRC
8 9 (0.77%) HIPAA
8 9 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 8 (0.68%) Actionable Recommendations
9 8 (0.68%) NIST 800
10 7 (0.60%) DO-254
11 6 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
11 6 (0.51%) PSD2
12 5 (0.43%) COBIT
12 5 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 5 (0.43%) Government Security Classifications
12 5 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 156 (13.27%) Docker
2 57 (4.85%) Active Directory
3 19 (1.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (1.02%) Firmware
5 6 (0.51%) VMware NSX
6 3 (0.26%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.17%) KVM
7 2 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.17%) vSphere
8 1 (0.085%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.085%) HDFS
8 1 (0.085%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 1 (0.085%) PowerHA
8 1 (0.085%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 164 (13.95%) Kubernetes
2 90 (7.65%) Terraform
3 59 (5.02%) Ansible
4 50 (4.25%) Grafana
5 41 (3.49%) Prometheus
6 21 (1.79%) Microsoft Intune
7 16 (1.36%) Puppet
7 16 (1.36%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (1.11%) Kibana
9 9 (0.77%) Kiali
10 8 (0.68%) Argo
11 7 (0.60%) SCCM
12 5 (0.43%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.34%) SCOM
14 3 (0.26%) Control-M
14 3 (0.26%) Foglight
14 3 (0.26%) Kubeflow
14 3 (0.26%) PowerCLI
14 3 (0.26%) vCenter Server
15 2 (0.17%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 183 (15.56%) Microsoft
2 70 (5.95%) Splunk
3 63 (5.36%) Google
4 56 (4.76%) Oracle
5 51 (4.34%) SAP
6 49 (4.17%) Databricks
7 41 (3.49%) IBM
8 28 (2.38%) ServiceNow
9 25 (2.13%) BiZZdesign
10 23 (1.96%) Cisco
11 22 (1.87%) Informatica
12 21 (1.79%) VMware
13 19 (1.62%) Salesforce
14 18 (1.53%) Palo Alto
15 17 (1.45%) Red Hat
16 14 (1.19%) Okta
17 13 (1.11%) CheckPoint
18 12 (1.02%) Foundry
18 12 (1.02%) OpenAI
18 12 (1.02%) Software AG