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 14 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 72 67 80
Rank change year-on-year -5 +13 +52
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,233 1,181 1,273
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.47% 3.22% 2.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.86% 3.73% 3.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 765 698 857
10th Percentile £175 £334 £346
25th Percentile £315 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £638 £700 £675
90th Percentile £750 £850 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £405 £504 £500
% change year-on-year -19.60% +0.75% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 37 33
10th Percentile £26.75 £20.12 £28.46
25th Percentile £29.00 £27.75 £50.00
Median hourly rate £34.25 £50.50 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.18% -16.53% +10.50%
75th Percentile £67.00 £68.00 £72.00
90th Percentile £86.50 £70.25 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £51.25 £60.00
% change year-on-year -34.63% -14.58% +31.51%

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 31,960 31,635 41,181
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.93% 86.21% 88.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,027 19,055 27,781
10th Percentile £295 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,098 1,126 1,593
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.12 £18.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -19.54% +24.29%
75th Percentile £44.40 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £73.53 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £33.00 £43.90
% change year-on-year -31.42% -24.83% +48.81%

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 14 November 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 14 November 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 14 November 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 -2 1,079 £475 -13.64% 1,872
UK excluding London +10 589 £405 -19.60% 980
London -16 534 £550 -5.58% 990
Work from Home -1 318 £492 -10.55% 896
North of England +4 184 £390 -26.07% 162
South East +45 138 £370 -26.00% 367
Midlands -8 106 £475 -17.39% 132
North West -4 91 £358 -32.83% 94
Yorkshire +13 90 £450 -14.29% 39
West Midlands -23 68 £500 -13.04% 86
South West +10 57 £375 -46.43% 79
East of England -11 54 £478 +6.11% 145
Scotland +7 52 £450 -3.74% 67
East Midlands +5 38 £447 +25.56% 45
Wales 0 10 £165 -72.22% 22
North East -16 4 £333 -21.71% 30
Northern Ireland -9 3 - - 28

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 51 (4.14%) Confluence
2 44 (3.57%) SharePoint
3 42 (3.41%) Apache Spark
4 24 (1.95%) Microsoft Exchange
5 12 (0.97%) Apache Airflow
6 11 (0.89%) Apache
7 8 (0.65%) Jupyter
8 7 (0.57%) nginx
9 6 (0.49%) IIS
10 5 (0.41%) Skype for Business
10 5 (0.41%) Smallworld
11 4 (0.32%) GeoServer
11 4 (0.32%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.24%) Ethereum
12 3 (0.24%) Hyperledger
12 3 (0.24%) Luigi
12 3 (0.24%) Moodle
12 3 (0.24%) SAS
12 3 (0.24%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.16%) Camunda
Applications
1 62 (5.03%) Microsoft Office
2 29 (2.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.57%) Simulink
5 6 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.41%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.081%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.081%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.081%) InDesign
7 1 (0.081%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.081%) Oracle Smart View
7 1 (0.081%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.081%) Sketch
7 1 (0.081%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 29 (2.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (0.57%) FLEXCUBE
2 7 (0.57%) Oracle BPM
3 6 (0.49%) SAP PLM
3 6 (0.49%) Workday HCM
4 5 (0.41%) SAP MDG
5 4 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.32%) SAP VC
6 3 (0.24%) Aladdin
6 3 (0.24%) Bloomberg AIM
6 3 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 2 (0.16%) Actimize
7 2 (0.16%) Endur
7 2 (0.16%) Oracle EBS R12
7 2 (0.16%) SAP FS
7 2 (0.16%) SAP GRC
7 2 (0.16%) SAP Travel Management
7 2 (0.16%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 275 (22.30%) Azure
2 237 (19.22%) AWS
3 135 (10.95%) GCP
4 68 (5.52%) GitHub
4 68 (5.52%) Serverless
5 67 (5.43%) Power Platform
6 52 (4.22%) Microsoft 365
7 43 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
7 43 (3.49%) SaaS
8 29 (2.35%) Entra ID
9 28 (2.27%) Cloud Computing
10 25 (2.03%) GitHub Actions
11 23 (1.87%) Amazon S3
12 21 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
13 17 (1.38%) Amazon ECS
13 17 (1.38%) Snowflake
14 16 (1.30%) Azure Data Factory
14 16 (1.30%) OpenShift
15 15 (1.22%) Azure Logic Apps
15 15 (1.22%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 51 (4.14%) Firewall
2 47 (3.81%) DNS
3 30 (2.43%) DHCP
4 25 (2.03%) Network Security
5 24 (1.95%) VPN
5 24 (1.95%) Wireless
6 19 (1.54%) HTTP
7 18 (1.46%) Cisco IOS
7 18 (1.46%) TCP/IP
8 17 (1.38%) VoIP
9 15 (1.22%) SSH
9 15 (1.22%) WAN
10 14 (1.14%) VLAN
11 12 (0.97%) BGP
11 12 (0.97%) Internet
11 12 (0.97%) LAN
11 12 (0.97%) PuTTY
12 11 (0.89%) WLAN
13 10 (0.81%) Skype
14 9 (0.73%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (6.08%) NoSQL
1 75 (6.08%) PostgreSQL
2 60 (4.87%) Relational Database
3 52 (4.22%) Power BI
4 47 (3.81%) Data Warehouse
5 38 (3.08%) SQL Server
6 29 (2.35%) Big Data
6 29 (2.35%) Tableau
7 26 (2.11%) MySQL
8 18 (1.46%) Redis
9 16 (1.30%) Hadoop
10 14 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
10 14 (1.14%) Data Lake
11 13 (1.05%) MongoDB
11 13 (1.05%) RDBMS
12 11 (0.89%) Metadata
13 10 (0.81%) Amazon Athena
14 8 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
14 8 (0.65%) KDB
14 8 (0.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 105 (8.52%) JIRA
2 100 (8.11%) Jenkins
3 91 (7.38%) Git
4 85 (6.89%) GitLab
5 29 (2.35%) Liquibase
6 23 (1.87%) Postman
7 18 (1.46%) Artifactory
8 14 (1.14%) Visual Studio
9 13 (1.05%) Selenium
10 11 (0.89%) Bitbucket
10 11 (0.89%) JUnit
11 9 (0.73%) Cucumber
12 8 (0.65%) MLflow
13 7 (0.57%) Cypress.io
13 7 (0.57%) IntelliJ
13 7 (0.57%) TeamCity
14 6 (0.49%) Appium
14 6 (0.49%) Gradle
14 6 (0.49%) Subversion
14 6 (0.49%) webpack
General
1 584 (47.36%) Social Skills
2 331 (26.85%) Finance
3 274 (22.22%) Analytical Skills
4 139 (11.27%) Banking
5 55 (4.46%) Organisational Skills
6 52 (4.22%) Public Sector
7 47 (3.81%) Front Office
8 44 (3.57%) Financial Institution
9 39 (3.16%) Marketing
10 38 (3.08%) Investment Banking
11 33 (2.68%) Influencing Skills
11 33 (2.68%) Manufacturing
12 32 (2.60%) Legal
13 27 (2.19%) Telecoms
14 26 (2.11%) Presentation Skills
15 22 (1.78%) Documentation Skills
16 20 (1.62%) Electronics
16 20 (1.62%) Retail
17 19 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 17 (1.38%) Military
Job Titles
1 243 (19.71%) Developer
2 114 (9.25%) Analyst
3 99 (8.03%) Senior
4 94 (7.62%) Architect
5 82 (6.65%) Lead
6 65 (5.27%) Software Engineer
7 42 (3.41%) Java Developer
8 36 (2.92%) Data Scientist
9 35 (2.84%) Senior Developer
10 34 (2.76%) Consultant
11 31 (2.51%) Data Engineer
12 30 (2.43%) Solutions Architect
13 29 (2.35%) Python Developer
14 28 (2.27%) Business Analyst
14 28 (2.27%) Python Engineer
15 27 (2.19%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 23 (1.87%) Full-Stack Developer
16 23 (1.87%) Machine Learning Engineer
17 22 (1.78%) AWS Engineer
17 22 (1.78%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 132 (10.71%) REST
2 79 (6.41%) RESTful
3 65 (5.27%) .NET
3 65 (5.27%) HTML
4 54 (4.38%) Kafka
5 52 (4.22%) CSS
6 50 (4.06%) React
7 44 (3.57%) Node.js
8 41 (3.33%) Elastic Stack
9 38 (3.08%) Middleware
10 37 (3.00%) JSON
11 35 (2.84%) SOAP
11 35 (2.84%) TensorFlow
12 34 (2.76%) Web Services
13 33 (2.68%) OAuth
14 31 (2.51%) AngularJS
14 31 (2.51%) Pandas
14 31 (2.51%) XML
15 30 (2.43%) PyTorch
16 29 (2.35%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 118 (9.57%) Management Information System
2 111 (9.00%) Algorithms
3 84 (6.81%) Cloud Native
4 68 (5.52%) Data Structures
5 64 (5.19%) Distributed Systems
6 58 (4.70%) Product Ownership
7 41 (3.33%) Public Cloud
8 39 (3.16%) Data Protection Act
9 31 (2.51%) Virtual Team
10 30 (2.43%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 28 (2.27%) Derivative
12 27 (2.19%) Mobile App
12 27 (2.19%) Security Posture
13 26 (2.11%) Equities
14 25 (2.03%) Fixed Income
15 24 (1.95%) Distributed Computing
16 23 (1.87%) Data Centre
17 22 (1.78%) Onboarding
18 20 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
19 18 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 156 (12.65%) Linux
2 99 (8.03%) Windows
3 56 (4.54%) Unix
4 26 (2.11%) Android
5 24 (1.95%) Windows Server
6 20 (1.62%) Mac OS
7 18 (1.46%) Apple iOS
8 8 (0.65%) Windows 10
9 6 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 3 (0.24%) CentOS
10 3 (0.24%) Ubuntu
10 3 (0.24%) VMS
11 1 (0.081%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 408 (33.09%) Problem-Solving
2 359 (29.12%) Agile
3 240 (19.46%) DevOps
4 210 (17.03%) CI/CD
5 201 (16.30%) Software Engineering
6 160 (12.98%) AI
7 145 (11.76%) Analytics
8 141 (11.44%) Microservices
9 135 (10.95%) Machine Learning
10 132 (10.71%) Containerisation
11 120 (9.73%) Data Science
12 119 (9.65%) Mathematics
13 118 (9.57%) Cybersecurity
14 106 (8.60%) ITIL
15 104 (8.43%) Stakeholder Management
16 99 (8.03%) Change Management
17 97 (7.87%) Decision-Making
17 97 (7.87%) Roadmaps
18 95 (7.70%) Risk Management
19 94 (7.62%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 409 (33.17%) Python
2 233 (18.90%) SQL
3 192 (15.57%) Java
4 125 (10.14%) JavaScript
5 62 (5.03%) C#
5 62 (5.03%) TypeScript
6 60 (4.87%) Go
7 56 (4.54%) C++
8 55 (4.46%) PowerShell
9 41 (3.33%) Bash
10 24 (1.95%) R
11 22 (1.78%) Perl
12 19 (1.54%) Ruby
13 17 (1.38%) Shell Script
14 16 (1.30%) Kotlin
15 12 (0.97%) MATLAB
16 10 (0.81%) ABAP
16 10 (0.81%) C
17 9 (0.73%) PHP
17 9 (0.73%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,000 (81.10%) Degree
2 641 (51.99%) Computer Science Degree
3 232 (18.82%) Master's Degree
4 116 (9.41%) Security Cleared
5 90 (7.30%) SC Cleared
6 80 (6.49%) DBS Check
7 58 (4.70%) CISSP
8 56 (4.54%) PhD
9 46 (3.73%) AWS Certification
9 46 (3.73%) Cisco Certification
10 36 (2.92%) Microsoft Certification
11 35 (2.84%) Azure Certification
11 35 (2.84%) CISM
12 27 (2.19%) CCNA
13 26 (2.11%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 26 (2.11%) CCNP
13 26 (2.11%) PMI Certification
14 23 (1.87%) PMP
15 22 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
16 20 (1.62%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (5.84%) Data Quality
1 72 (5.84%) QA
2 67 (5.43%) GDPR
3 44 (3.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 29 (2.35%) NIST
5 20 (1.62%) GRC
6 19 (1.54%) Accessibility
7 16 (1.30%) SLA
8 15 (1.22%) PCI DSS
9 11 (0.89%) Def Stans
10 9 (0.73%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 8 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
11 8 (0.65%) HIPAA
12 7 (0.57%) COBIT
12 7 (0.57%) DO-254
13 6 (0.49%) NCSC
13 6 (0.49%) PMO
13 6 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 6 (0.49%) SEPA
14 4 (0.32%) MiFID
System Software
1 146 (11.84%) Docker
2 47 (3.81%) Active Directory
3 24 (1.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (0.57%) Firmware
4 7 (0.57%) VMware NSX
5 5 (0.41%) Hyper-V
5 5 (0.41%) Microsoft Virtual Server
5 5 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
6 4 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.32%) vSphere
7 2 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.081%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.081%) HDFS
8 1 (0.081%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 137 (11.11%) Kubernetes
2 88 (7.14%) Terraform
3 72 (5.84%) Ansible
4 52 (4.22%) Grafana
5 42 (3.41%) Prometheus
6 14 (1.14%) SCCM
7 13 (1.05%) Puppet
8 11 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
9 10 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
10 8 (0.65%) QRadar
11 7 (0.57%) Argo
11 7 (0.57%) CSIRT
12 6 (0.49%) Kibana
13 5 (0.41%) WSUS
14 4 (0.32%) Kubeflow
14 4 (0.32%) Kustomize
14 4 (0.32%) vCenter Server
15 3 (0.24%) HP ALM
15 3 (0.24%) SCOM
15 3 (0.24%) vRealize
Vendors
1 189 (15.33%) Microsoft
2 71 (5.76%) Splunk
3 69 (5.60%) Google
4 52 (4.22%) SAP
5 50 (4.06%) Cisco
5 50 (4.06%) Oracle
6 47 (3.81%) ServiceNow
7 34 (2.76%) Salesforce
8 31 (2.51%) VMware
9 28 (2.27%) IBM
10 23 (1.87%) Databricks
11 15 (1.22%) Red Hat
12 14 (1.14%) Palo Alto
13 11 (0.89%) Fortinet
14 10 (0.81%) Atlassian
14 10 (0.81%) BiZZdesign
14 10 (0.81%) Foundry
14 10 (0.81%) Informatica
15 9 (0.73%) CrowdStrike
15 9 (0.73%) SolarWinds