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 22 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 76 71
Rank change year-on-year -16 -5 +56
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,123 936 1,259
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.75% 3.04% 2.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.18% 3.39% 3.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 709 533 800
10th Percentile £176 £319 £313
25th Percentile £312 £438 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.55% -3.64% -6.78%
75th Percentile £653 £675 £653
90th Percentile £775 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 25 73
10th Percentile £26.40 £29.07 £23.60
25th Percentile £30.69 £33.75 £42.50
Median hourly rate £37.50 £43.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.79% -21.82% +4.76%
75th Percentile £68.88 £60.75 £67.02
90th Percentile £82.55 £77.75 £74.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.25 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -3.33% -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 35,362 27,619 38,854
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.73% 89.84% 87.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,416 17,059 25,415
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.34% -1.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,120 859 2,186
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.96 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.77 £32.81 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.46% -6.26% -
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.30 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.81% -9.26% -

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 22 February 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 22 February 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 22 February 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 -15 984 £476 -10.37% 725
UK excluding London +1 572 £400 -20.00% 570
London -30 441 £553 -2.98% 288
Work from Home -9 275 £500 -11.11% 358
North of England +35 191 £368 -30.00% 101
South East +21 148 £365 -27.00% 202
Yorkshire +10 101 £525 +5.00% 26
Midlands -37 90 £500 +25.00% 86
North West +17 86 £325 -40.69% 56
West Midlands -48 66 £525 +5.00% 57
South West 0 60 £500 -10.11% 66
Scotland -1 40 £610 +16.19% 38
East of England -31 40 £505 -19.20% 68
East Midlands -22 24 £447 +25.56% 29
Wales -12 15 £160 -44.35% 14
North East -19 5 £207 -64.09% 21
Northern Ireland -5 4 - - 7

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 63 (5.61%) Confluence
2 42 (3.74%) Apache Spark
3 33 (2.94%) SharePoint
4 21 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
5 18 (1.60%) Apache
6 15 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
7 6 (0.53%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.45%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.45%) Skype for Business
8 5 (0.45%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.36%) GeoServer
9 4 (0.36%) IIS
9 4 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
9 4 (0.36%) SAS
10 3 (0.27%) Ethereum
10 3 (0.27%) Hyperledger
11 2 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.18%) nginx
11 2 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
Applications
1 37 (3.29%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (1.42%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.45%) Simulink
6 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.089%) Oracle Smart View
7 1 (0.089%) Trello
Business Applications
1 23 (2.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
4 4 (0.36%) SAP ERP
5 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.18%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.18%) SAP FS
6 2 (0.18%) SAP Travel Management
6 2 (0.18%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.089%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.089%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 1 (0.089%) Maximo
7 1 (0.089%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.089%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.089%) SAP PM
7 1 (0.089%) SAP SM
Cloud Services
1 307 (27.34%) Azure
2 213 (18.97%) AWS
3 128 (11.40%) GCP
4 70 (6.23%) GitHub
5 62 (5.52%) Power Platform
6 55 (4.90%) Serverless
7 54 (4.81%) Microsoft 365
8 46 (4.10%) SaaS
9 43 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
10 34 (3.03%) Entra ID
11 31 (2.76%) GitHub Actions
12 21 (1.87%) IaaS
13 19 (1.69%) Azure Data Factory
14 18 (1.60%) PowerApps
15 17 (1.51%) AWS CloudFormation
15 17 (1.51%) Cloud Computing
15 17 (1.51%) Power Automate
16 16 (1.42%) Azure Machine Learning
16 16 (1.42%) Snowflake
17 14 (1.25%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 48 (4.27%) Firewall
2 34 (3.03%) DNS
3 25 (2.23%) Network Security
4 23 (2.05%) TCP/IP
5 18 (1.60%) HTTP
6 14 (1.25%) DHCP
6 14 (1.25%) SSH
7 13 (1.16%) Skype
8 12 (1.07%) BGP
8 12 (1.07%) Wireless
9 11 (0.98%) LAN
9 11 (0.98%) WAN
10 10 (0.89%) VLAN
10 10 (0.89%) VPN
11 9 (0.80%) Cisco IOS
11 9 (0.80%) OSPF
11 9 (0.80%) VoIP
12 7 (0.62%) HTTPS
12 7 (0.62%) IPv4
12 7 (0.62%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 77 (6.86%) PostgreSQL
2 62 (5.52%) NoSQL
3 42 (3.74%) Data Warehouse
3 42 (3.74%) Power BI
3 42 (3.74%) Relational Database
4 41 (3.65%) SQL Server
5 39 (3.47%) Big Data
6 38 (3.38%) MySQL
7 22 (1.96%) Tableau
8 21 (1.87%) Hadoop
9 20 (1.78%) Elasticsearch
10 18 (1.60%) Metadata
11 17 (1.51%) Data Lake
11 17 (1.51%) MongoDB
12 10 (0.89%) Redis
13 9 (0.80%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 8 (0.71%) RDBMS
15 7 (0.62%) Apache Cassandra
15 7 (0.62%) KDB
15 7 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 89 (7.93%) Git
2 83 (7.39%) JIRA
3 68 (6.06%) Jenkins
4 64 (5.70%) GitLab
5 22 (1.96%) Liquibase
6 14 (1.25%) Postman
7 12 (1.07%) Selenium
8 10 (0.89%) MLflow
9 9 (0.80%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.71%) CircleCI
10 8 (0.71%) Gradle
10 8 (0.71%) Visual Studio
11 7 (0.62%) Bitbucket
11 7 (0.62%) JUnit
12 6 (0.53%) Cypress.io
13 5 (0.45%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.45%) PyCharm
14 4 (0.36%) Artifactory
14 4 (0.36%) Hardhat
14 4 (0.36%) XCUITest
General
1 525 (46.75%) Social Skills
2 293 (26.09%) Finance
3 249 (22.17%) Analytical Skills
4 119 (10.60%) Banking
5 71 (6.32%) Public Sector
6 43 (3.83%) Documentation Skills
6 43 (3.83%) Marketing
7 38 (3.38%) Financial Institution
7 38 (3.38%) Organisational Skills
8 35 (3.12%) Presentation Skills
9 33 (2.94%) Legal
10 32 (2.85%) Influencing Skills
11 28 (2.49%) Telecoms
12 27 (2.40%) Front Office
13 25 (2.23%) Electronics
14 24 (2.14%) Manufacturing
15 21 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 19 (1.69%) Investment Banking
17 15 (1.34%) Military
18 14 (1.25%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 175 (15.58%) Developer
2 109 (9.71%) Architect
3 90 (8.01%) Analyst
4 89 (7.93%) Lead
5 85 (7.57%) Senior
6 56 (4.99%) Software Engineer
7 45 (4.01%) Solutions Architect
8 37 (3.29%) Data Scientist
9 29 (2.58%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 29 (2.58%) Technical Support
10 27 (2.40%) Python Developer
11 26 (2.32%) Consultant
12 25 (2.23%) Java Developer
13 23 (2.05%) Business Analyst
13 23 (2.05%) Cloud Engineer
13 23 (2.05%) Data Engineer
13 23 (2.05%) IT Support
13 23 (2.05%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 22 (1.96%) Site Engineer
15 21 (1.87%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 109 (9.71%) REST
2 67 (5.97%) RESTful
3 57 (5.08%) React
4 54 (4.81%) .NET
5 48 (4.27%) Elastic Stack
6 43 (3.83%) Middleware
7 42 (3.74%) Kafka
8 38 (3.38%) HTML
9 35 (3.12%) PyTorch
10 34 (3.03%) JSON
10 34 (3.03%) TensorFlow
11 33 (2.94%) OAuth
12 31 (2.76%) XML
13 30 (2.67%) Spring
14 29 (2.58%) CSS
14 29 (2.58%) Node.js
14 29 (2.58%) SOAP
14 29 (2.58%) Spring Boot
15 23 (2.05%) LangChain
16 20 (1.78%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 128 (11.40%) Management Information System
2 98 (8.73%) Cloud Native
3 89 (7.93%) Algorithms
4 62 (5.52%) Distributed Systems
5 48 (4.27%) Data Structures
6 47 (4.19%) Product Ownership
7 43 (3.83%) Onboarding
8 31 (2.76%) Data Protection Act
9 30 (2.67%) Equities
9 30 (2.67%) Public Cloud
10 27 (2.40%) Security Posture
11 26 (2.32%) Virtual Team
12 22 (1.96%) Derivative
12 22 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
12 22 (1.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 21 (1.87%) AI Agents
13 21 (1.87%) Distributed Computing
14 19 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
14 19 (1.69%) Data Centre
14 19 (1.69%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 168 (14.96%) Linux
2 130 (11.58%) Windows
3 62 (5.52%) Unix
4 25 (2.23%) Android
4 25 (2.23%) Windows Server
5 19 (1.69%) Mac OS
6 14 (1.25%) Apple iOS
7 9 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 9 (0.80%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.45%) VMS
9 3 (0.27%) Debian
9 3 (0.27%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
10 2 (0.18%) Rocky
11 1 (0.089%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.089%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.089%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 385 (34.28%) Problem-Solving
2 295 (26.27%) Agile
3 244 (21.73%) DevOps
4 229 (20.39%) CI/CD
5 221 (19.68%) AI
6 193 (17.19%) Software Engineering
7 162 (14.43%) Microservices
8 145 (12.91%) Containerisation
9 139 (12.38%) Analytics
10 138 (12.29%) Cybersecurity
11 133 (11.84%) Machine Learning
12 119 (10.60%) Data Science
13 116 (10.33%) Stakeholder Management
14 112 (9.97%) Data Modelling
15 111 (9.88%) Continuous Improvement
16 105 (9.35%) Mathematics
17 102 (9.08%) Data Governance
18 100 (8.90%) Decision-Making
19 96 (8.55%) Infrastructure as Code
20 88 (7.84%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 361 (32.15%) Python
2 203 (18.08%) SQL
3 145 (12.91%) Java
4 101 (8.99%) JavaScript
5 62 (5.52%) PowerShell
6 57 (5.08%) TypeScript
7 53 (4.72%) Go
8 51 (4.54%) C#
9 44 (3.92%) Bash
10 41 (3.65%) C++
11 21 (1.87%) Perl
12 20 (1.78%) R
13 15 (1.34%) Shell Script
14 14 (1.25%) Rust
15 11 (0.98%) Kotlin
16 9 (0.80%) Bicep
17 8 (0.71%) C
17 8 (0.71%) MATLAB
18 7 (0.62%) Ruby
18 7 (0.62%) Scala
Qualifications
1 925 (82.37%) Degree
2 597 (53.16%) Computer Science Degree
3 235 (20.93%) Master's Degree
4 162 (14.43%) Security Cleared
5 121 (10.77%) SC Cleared
6 73 (6.50%) CISSP
7 54 (4.81%) PhD
8 52 (4.63%) CISM
9 50 (4.45%) DBS Check
10 40 (3.56%) Azure Certification
11 35 (3.12%) BPSS Clearance
11 35 (3.12%) Microsoft Certification
11 35 (3.12%) TOGAF Certification
12 31 (2.76%) AWS Certification
13 28 (2.49%) Cisco Certification
14 26 (2.32%) PMI Certification
15 25 (2.23%) DV Cleared
16 22 (1.96%) PMP
17 21 (1.87%) CompTIA Security+
18 20 (1.78%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (6.14%) QA
2 59 (5.25%) GDPR
3 54 (4.81%) Data Quality
4 46 (4.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 35 (3.12%) NIST
6 21 (1.87%) PCI DSS
7 18 (1.60%) GRC
8 16 (1.42%) Accessibility
9 11 (0.98%) Def Stans
10 9 (0.80%) HIPAA
10 9 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.62%) DO-254
12 6 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
12 6 (0.53%) PSD2
13 5 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 5 (0.45%) NCSC
14 4 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 4 (0.36%) ISO 20022
14 4 (0.36%) Solvency II
System Software
1 162 (14.43%) Docker
2 61 (5.43%) Active Directory
3 21 (1.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.80%) Firmware
5 5 (0.45%) Microsoft Virtual Server
5 5 (0.45%) Virtual Servers
5 5 (0.45%) VMware NSX
6 3 (0.27%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.18%) HDFS
7 2 (0.18%) KVM
7 2 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.089%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.089%) PowerHA
8 1 (0.089%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 170 (15.14%) Kubernetes
2 101 (8.99%) Terraform
3 66 (5.88%) Ansible
4 53 (4.72%) Grafana
5 44 (3.92%) Prometheus
6 19 (1.69%) Puppet
7 18 (1.60%) Microsoft Intune
8 16 (1.42%) Kibana
9 13 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (1.07%) SCCM
11 9 (0.80%) Kiali
12 7 (0.62%) Argo
13 6 (0.53%) WSUS
14 5 (0.45%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.36%) SCOM
16 3 (0.27%) Control-M
17 2 (0.18%) FortiGate
17 2 (0.18%) Kubeflow
17 2 (0.18%) logstash
17 2 (0.18%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 179 (15.94%) Microsoft
2 88 (7.84%) Splunk
3 62 (5.52%) Oracle
4 59 (5.25%) Google
5 52 (4.63%) SAP
6 40 (3.56%) Databricks
7 29 (2.58%) Cisco
8 27 (2.40%) ServiceNow
9 25 (2.23%) BiZZdesign
9 25 (2.23%) Salesforce
10 24 (2.14%) VMware
11 23 (2.05%) Informatica
12 18 (1.60%) IBM
13 17 (1.51%) Red Hat
14 14 (1.25%) MuleSoft
15 13 (1.16%) Palo Alto
15 13 (1.16%) Software AG
16 12 (1.07%) CyberArk
16 12 (1.07%) Foundry
16 12 (1.07%) Okta