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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 69 59 82
Rank change year-on-year -10 +23 +51
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,174 1,319 1,343
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.56% 3.42% 2.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.94% 4.00% 3.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 649 809 900
10th Percentile £184 £334 £350
25th Percentile £350 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.45% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £638 £688 £700
90th Percentile £750 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £525 £517
% change year-on-year -19.05% +1.55% -1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 47 40
10th Percentile £27.05 £20.12 £27.00
25th Percentile £29.00 £32.00 £47.50
Median hourly rate £35.00 £50.00 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.00% -19.35% +22.77%
75th Percentile £67.00 £62.50 £65.63
90th Percentile £81.80 £70.25 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £53.75 £61.00
% change year-on-year -37.67% -11.89% +92.01%

All Process and 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 29,826 33,000 43,850
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.52% 85.68% 89.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,546 20,284 29,794
10th Percentile £300 £308 £313
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,802 1,460 1,537
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.84 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.00 £18.70
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% - +48.28%
75th Percentile £44.78 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.56 £43.00 £41.90
% change year-on-year -47.53% +2.63% +80.76%

Computer Science
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Computer Science as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Computer Science 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 September 2025.

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 September 2025.

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 September 2025. 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 -7 987 £490 -10.91% 1,652
UK excluding London +19 547 £425 -19.05% 1,145
London -11 501 £550 -4.35% 799
Work from Home -12 318 £480 -12.73% 794
South East +28 130 £400 -11.11% 467
North of England -11 120 £450 -17.28% 238
Midlands +4 101 £447 -22.26% 131
Scotland +27 69 £450 -5.26% 70
West Midlands -4 66 £470 -18.26% 70
North West -17 64 £470 -12.59% 126
South West +37 62 £185 -71.82% 92
East of England +21 58 £505 +6.32% 139
Yorkshire -10 50 £393 -28.55% 83
East Midlands +14 35 £447 +4.44% 59
Wales +3 10 £463 +21.71% 16
North East -8 6 £463 -7.50% 32
Northern Ireland -6 3 - - 13

Computer Science
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 43 (3.66%) Apache Spark
2 35 (2.98%) Confluence
3 31 (2.64%) SharePoint
4 14 (1.19%) Microsoft Exchange
5 13 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
6 11 (0.94%) OpenStack
7 9 (0.77%) Apache
8 8 (0.68%) nginx
9 6 (0.51%) SAS
10 5 (0.43%) CMS
11 4 (0.34%) IIS
11 4 (0.34%) Skype for Business
11 4 (0.34%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.26%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.26%) Luigi
12 3 (0.26%) Moodle
13 2 (0.17%) Camunda
13 2 (0.17%) GemFire
13 2 (0.17%) Oracle Coherence
13 2 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 56 (4.77%) Microsoft Office
2 33 (2.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (1.28%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.68%) Simulink
5 4 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.26%) Trello
7 2 (0.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 2 (0.17%) Sketch
8 1 (0.085%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.085%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.085%) Camtasia
8 1 (0.085%) CANalyzer
8 1 (0.085%) Final Cut Pro
8 1 (0.085%) InDesign
8 1 (0.085%) InVision
8 1 (0.085%) Notion
8 1 (0.085%) Oracle Smart View
8 1 (0.085%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.085%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.085%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 28 (2.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.94%) FLEXCUBE
2 11 (0.94%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.60%) Workday HCM
4 6 (0.51%) SAP PLM
5 5 (0.43%) SAP MDG
6 4 (0.34%) Dynamics CRM
6 4 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
6 4 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
6 4 (0.34%) SAP VC
7 3 (0.26%) Aladdin
7 3 (0.26%) Bloomberg AIM
7 3 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
8 2 (0.17%) Actimize
8 2 (0.17%) NEC Housing
8 2 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.17%) SAP CX
8 2 (0.17%) SAP GRC
8 2 (0.17%) SAP IBP
8 2 (0.17%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 239 (20.36%) Azure
2 223 (18.99%) AWS
3 97 (8.26%) GCP
4 56 (4.77%) GitHub
5 49 (4.17%) Serverless
6 48 (4.09%) Power Platform
7 44 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
8 43 (3.66%) SaaS
9 35 (2.98%) Microsoft 365
10 25 (2.13%) Amazon S3
10 25 (2.13%) Cloud Computing
11 21 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
12 19 (1.62%) Entra ID
12 19 (1.62%) GitHub Actions
13 13 (1.11%) Azure Logic Apps
14 12 (1.02%) Amazon ECS
14 12 (1.02%) Azure Data Factory
14 12 (1.02%) npm
14 12 (1.02%) PaaS
14 12 (1.02%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 62 (5.28%) Firewall
2 51 (4.34%) DNS
3 33 (2.81%) VPN
4 32 (2.73%) TCP/IP
5 29 (2.47%) Network Security
5 29 (2.47%) Wireless
6 28 (2.39%) DHCP
7 18 (1.53%) BGP
7 18 (1.53%) OSPF
8 17 (1.45%) VLAN
9 16 (1.36%) WAN
10 14 (1.19%) HTTP
11 13 (1.11%) Cisco IOS
11 13 (1.11%) LAN
12 12 (1.02%) PuTTY
12 12 (1.02%) SAN
13 11 (0.94%) WLAN
14 10 (0.85%) Internet
14 10 (0.85%) MPLS
14 10 (0.85%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (4.77%) Relational Database
2 51 (4.34%) NoSQL
2 51 (4.34%) PostgreSQL
3 45 (3.83%) Data Warehouse
4 43 (3.66%) Power BI
4 43 (3.66%) SQL Server
5 29 (2.47%) Big Data
6 27 (2.30%) Tableau
7 21 (1.79%) Hadoop
8 19 (1.62%) Redis
9 18 (1.53%) MySQL
10 14 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
10 14 (1.19%) MongoDB
11 11 (0.94%) Amazon Athena
11 11 (0.94%) Data Lake
11 11 (0.94%) KDB
11 11 (0.94%) Metadata
12 10 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
12 10 (0.85%) Power Query
13 9 (0.77%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 100 (8.52%) JIRA
2 86 (7.33%) Jenkins
3 84 (7.16%) Git
4 70 (5.96%) GitLab
5 24 (2.04%) Artifactory
6 23 (1.96%) Postman
7 20 (1.70%) Liquibase
8 15 (1.28%) JUnit
8 15 (1.28%) Selenium
8 15 (1.28%) Visual Studio
9 13 (1.11%) Bitbucket
10 10 (0.85%) TeamCity
11 8 (0.68%) Cucumber
11 8 (0.68%) IntelliJ
12 7 (0.60%) Appium
12 7 (0.60%) Cypress.io
12 7 (0.60%) MLflow
12 7 (0.60%) Subversion
12 7 (0.60%) webpack
13 6 (0.51%) Gradle
General
1 592 (50.43%) Social Skills
2 307 (26.15%) Finance
3 281 (23.94%) Analytical Skills
4 132 (11.24%) Banking
5 98 (8.35%) Organisational Skills
6 48 (4.09%) Front Office
7 46 (3.92%) Public Sector
8 43 (3.66%) Investment Banking
9 40 (3.41%) Marketing
10 34 (2.90%) Financial Institution
11 29 (2.47%) Manufacturing
12 28 (2.39%) Legal
13 25 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 25 (2.13%) Telecoms
14 22 (1.87%) Presentation Skills
15 21 (1.79%) Influencing Skills
16 20 (1.70%) Documentation Skills
16 20 (1.70%) Military
17 19 (1.62%) Retail
18 16 (1.36%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 235 (20.02%) Developer
2 110 (9.37%) Senior
3 103 (8.77%) Analyst
4 80 (6.81%) Architect
5 66 (5.62%) Lead
6 56 (4.77%) Software Engineer
7 54 (4.60%) Java Developer
8 32 (2.73%) Data Engineer
9 31 (2.64%) Consultant
10 29 (2.47%) Data Scientist
11 28 (2.39%) DevOps Engineer
12 27 (2.30%) Python Developer
13 26 (2.21%) Python Engineer
14 25 (2.13%) Senior Developer
14 25 (2.13%) Support Engineer
15 24 (2.04%) Business Analyst
16 23 (1.96%) Solutions Architect
17 22 (1.87%) C# Developer
18 20 (1.70%) Network Engineer
19 19 (1.62%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 101 (8.60%) REST
2 69 (5.88%) .NET
3 67 (5.71%) HTML
4 65 (5.54%) RESTful
5 57 (4.86%) CSS
6 52 (4.43%) Kafka
7 43 (3.66%) Middleware
8 42 (3.58%) React
9 39 (3.32%) Web Services
10 36 (3.07%) SOAP
11 30 (2.56%) AngularJS
11 30 (2.56%) Node.js
12 28 (2.39%) Pandas
12 28 (2.39%) Spring
13 27 (2.30%) JSON
13 27 (2.30%) TensorFlow
13 27 (2.30%) XML
14 25 (2.13%) PyTorch
15 24 (2.04%) .NET Framework
16 22 (1.87%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 114 (9.71%) Management Information System
2 82 (6.98%) Algorithms
3 65 (5.54%) Data Structures
4 64 (5.45%) Cloud Native
5 52 (4.43%) Data Protection Act
6 50 (4.26%) Distributed Systems
7 45 (3.83%) Product Ownership
8 31 (2.64%) Virtual Team
9 29 (2.47%) Enterprise Software
10 28 (2.39%) Security Posture
11 26 (2.21%) Public Cloud
12 24 (2.04%) Fixed Income
13 23 (1.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 19 (1.62%) Derivative
14 19 (1.62%) Mobile App
15 17 (1.45%) Data Centre
16 16 (1.36%) Onboarding
17 15 (1.28%) Analytical Mindset
17 15 (1.28%) Distributed Computing
18 14 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 141 (12.01%) Linux
2 81 (6.90%) Windows
3 37 (3.15%) Unix
4 25 (2.13%) Android
5 24 (2.04%) Windows Server
6 19 (1.62%) Apple iOS
7 17 (1.45%) Mac OS
8 11 (0.94%) Windows 10
9 6 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 4 (0.34%) CentOS
10 4 (0.34%) SUSE
10 4 (0.34%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.17%) AIX
11 2 (0.17%) VMS
12 1 (0.085%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.085%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.085%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 413 (35.18%) Problem-Solving
2 335 (28.53%) Agile
3 227 (19.34%) DevOps
4 187 (15.93%) CI/CD
5 179 (15.25%) Software Engineering
6 123 (10.48%) Analytics
7 111 (9.45%) Microservices
8 106 (9.03%) Project Management
9 105 (8.94%) Data Science
10 99 (8.43%) Machine Learning
11 97 (8.26%) Containerisation
12 96 (8.18%) Mathematics
13 95 (8.09%) Artificial Intelligence
14 94 (8.01%) Roadmaps
15 93 (7.92%) Cybersecurity
16 91 (7.75%) ITIL
17 90 (7.67%) Migration
18 89 (7.58%) Decision-Making
19 85 (7.24%) Scrum
20 82 (6.98%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 347 (29.56%) Python
2 232 (19.76%) SQL
3 212 (18.06%) Java
4 107 (9.11%) JavaScript
5 66 (5.62%) C#
6 55 (4.68%) C++
7 44 (3.75%) PowerShell
8 40 (3.41%) Bash
9 39 (3.32%) TypeScript
10 35 (2.98%) Go
11 28 (2.39%) R
12 22 (1.87%) Perl
13 15 (1.28%) PL/SQL
14 14 (1.19%) Kotlin
14 14 (1.19%) Shell Script
15 13 (1.11%) MATLAB
15 13 (1.11%) Ruby
16 12 (1.02%) Apex Code
17 10 (0.85%) PHP
17 10 (0.85%) Scala
Qualifications
1 962 (81.94%) Degree
2 620 (52.81%) Computer Science Degree
3 178 (15.16%) Master's Degree
4 90 (7.67%) Security Cleared
5 77 (6.56%) DBS Check
6 71 (6.05%) SC Cleared
7 55 (4.68%) AWS Certification
8 44 (3.75%) Azure Certification
9 42 (3.58%) CISSP
10 41 (3.49%) Cisco Certification
11 40 (3.41%) Microsoft Certification
12 39 (3.32%) PhD
13 34 (2.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 29 (2.47%) PMI Certification
15 28 (2.39%) PMP
16 27 (2.30%) CCNA
16 27 (2.30%) CISM
17 26 (2.21%) CCNP
18 19 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
19 17 (1.45%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (5.62%) Data Quality
2 65 (5.54%) QA
3 50 (4.26%) GDPR
4 40 (3.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 25 (2.13%) NIST
6 22 (1.87%) Accessibility
7 18 (1.53%) GRC
8 16 (1.36%) SLA
9 13 (1.11%) PCI DSS
10 11 (0.94%) Def Stans
11 9 (0.77%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 9 (0.77%) SEPA
12 7 (0.60%) COBIT
12 7 (0.60%) DO-254
12 7 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 5 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
13 5 (0.43%) HIPAA
13 5 (0.43%) PMO
13 5 (0.43%) WCAG
14 4 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 110 (9.37%) Docker
2 38 (3.24%) Active Directory
3 18 (1.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.68%) Hyper-V
5 7 (0.60%) Firmware
5 7 (0.60%) vSphere
6 6 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.51%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.34%) BitLocker
7 4 (0.34%) Microsoft Virtual Server
7 4 (0.34%) Virtual Servers
8 3 (0.26%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 2 (0.17%) GridGain
9 2 (0.17%) iptables
9 2 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.085%) GPFS
10 1 (0.085%) HDFS
10 1 (0.085%) NFS
10 1 (0.085%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
10 1 (0.085%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 115 (9.80%) Kubernetes
2 85 (7.24%) Terraform
3 77 (6.56%) Ansible
4 31 (2.64%) Grafana
5 26 (2.21%) Prometheus
6 13 (1.11%) SCCM
7 10 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
7 10 (0.85%) Puppet
8 8 (0.68%) Progress Chef
9 7 (0.60%) Argo
9 7 (0.60%) QRadar
9 7 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (0.51%) CSIRT
10 6 (0.51%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.43%) vRealize
12 4 (0.34%) Kibana
12 4 (0.34%) Kustomize
12 4 (0.34%) WSUS
13 3 (0.26%) Kubeflow
13 3 (0.26%) logstash
Vendors
1 189 (16.10%) Microsoft
2 66 (5.62%) Oracle
3 61 (5.20%) Google
4 57 (4.86%) Cisco
5 56 (4.77%) SAP
6 50 (4.26%) ServiceNow
7 48 (4.09%) Splunk
8 38 (3.24%) Salesforce
9 27 (2.30%) IBM
9 27 (2.30%) VMware
10 17 (1.45%) Databricks
11 16 (1.36%) Palo Alto
12 13 (1.11%) Fortinet
13 12 (1.02%) Apple
14 10 (0.85%) F5
14 10 (0.85%) Juniper
14 10 (0.85%) Remedy
15 9 (0.77%) Meraki
15 9 (0.77%) Workday
16 8 (0.68%) CA Agile Central