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 27 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 66 61
Rank change year-on-year -65 -5 +29
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,091 1,227 1,337
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.07% 3.72% 3.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.43% 4.12% 3.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 612 684 817
10th Percentile £177 £194 £325
25th Percentile £202 £356 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.09% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £622 £650 £688
90th Percentile £750 £775 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £365 £425 £517
% change year-on-year -14.12% -17.79% -1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 125 48 77
10th Percentile £25.73 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £41.25
Median hourly rate £70.00 £54.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.44% -0.91% -11.29%
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 £55.00
% change year-on-year +21.64% +21.82% -8.33%

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 44,856 29,798 34,328
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.96% 90.42% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,798 18,719 22,071
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,670 1,616 2,026
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £13.56
25th Percentile £20.02 £17.33 £17.55
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.38 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.38 £68.75 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.82 £40.00
% change year-on-year +84.59% -40.46% -

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 27 July 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 27 July 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 27 July 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 -52 989 £450 -10.00% 1,098
UK excluding London -51 590 £365 -14.12% 556
London -58 430 £530 -11.70% 638
Work from Home -77 245 £500 -9.09% 362
South East -6 242 £350 -26.32% 201
North of England -46 139 £379 -15.83% 97
Midlands -59 84 £312 -1.26% 80
Yorkshire -14 74 £475 +22.27% 24
West Midlands -56 57 £402 +86.98% 47
North West -61 54 £220 -53.68% 46
East of England -25 48 £215 -66.92% 85
South West -68 34 £435 +94.62% 57
Scotland -35 32 £423 -11.05% 20
East Midlands -23 26 £275 -38.48% 33
North East -34 12 £195 -57.84% 27
Northern Ireland - 7 £350 - 20
Wales -23 6 £530 +17.78% 11

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 38 (3.48%) Confluence
2 34 (3.12%) Apache Spark
3 31 (2.84%) SharePoint
4 23 (2.11%) Apache Airflow
5 22 (2.02%) Apache
6 10 (0.92%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.55%) IIS
8 5 (0.46%) SAS
9 4 (0.37%) Camunda
9 4 (0.37%) CMS
10 3 (0.27%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.27%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.18%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.18%) nginx
11 2 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.092%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.092%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.092%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 1 (0.092%) Tomcat
Applications
1 42 (3.85%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (2.93%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 13 (1.19%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.64%) Navisworks
4 7 (0.64%) Revit
5 6 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.46%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.46%) Trello
7 2 (0.18%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.18%) CPLEX
7 2 (0.18%) Sketch
8 1 (0.092%) Simulink
8 1 (0.092%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 16 (1.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.46%) Aladdin
3 3 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
3 3 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.27%) Primavera
3 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
3 3 (0.27%) Workday HCM
4 2 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.18%) Infor M3
4 2 (0.18%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.18%) Workfront
5 1 (0.092%) Finacle
5 1 (0.092%) Misys Equation
5 1 (0.092%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.092%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
5 1 (0.092%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.092%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.092%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 313 (28.69%) Azure
2 197 (18.06%) AWS
3 107 (9.81%) GCP
4 75 (6.87%) Power Platform
5 64 (5.87%) Entra ID
6 56 (5.13%) Microsoft 365
7 48 (4.40%) SaaS
8 46 (4.22%) GitHub
9 44 (4.03%) Azure DevOps
10 31 (2.84%) Snowflake
11 29 (2.66%) Serverless
12 22 (2.02%) PowerApps
13 21 (1.92%) GitHub Actions
14 18 (1.65%) Azure AKS
15 15 (1.37%) AWS Lambda
15 15 (1.37%) Microsoft Copilot
15 15 (1.37%) Power Automate
16 14 (1.28%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 14 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
17 13 (1.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 39 (3.57%) Firewall
2 30 (2.75%) Network Security
3 28 (2.57%) DNS
4 27 (2.47%) VPN
5 21 (1.92%) TCP/IP
6 16 (1.47%) WAN
7 14 (1.28%) SSH
8 13 (1.19%) LAN
9 12 (1.10%) BGP
9 12 (1.10%) DHCP
10 10 (0.92%) VLAN
10 10 (0.92%) Wireless
11 9 (0.82%) HTTPS
11 9 (0.82%) OSPF
12 8 (0.73%) Wireshark
13 7 (0.64%) 3GPP
13 7 (0.64%) Cisco ASA
13 7 (0.64%) MPLS
14 6 (0.55%) Intrusion Detection
14 6 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (5.50%) Power BI
2 54 (4.95%) SQL Server
3 52 (4.77%) Relational Database
4 51 (4.67%) PostgreSQL
5 35 (3.21%) Data Warehouse
6 34 (3.12%) Metadata
7 32 (2.93%) Big Data
8 27 (2.47%) MongoDB
9 24 (2.20%) NoSQL
10 17 (1.56%) MySQL
11 16 (1.47%) Data Lake
11 16 (1.47%) Hadoop
11 16 (1.47%) Tableau
12 12 (1.10%) Data Mining
13 11 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
13 11 (1.01%) Elasticsearch
14 10 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
14 10 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
15 9 (0.82%) Redis
16 8 (0.73%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 86 (7.88%) Git
2 51 (4.67%) JIRA
3 39 (3.57%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.12%) GitLab
5 31 (2.84%) Rational DOORS
6 13 (1.19%) Selenium
7 12 (1.10%) JUnit
8 11 (1.01%) Gradle
9 10 (0.92%) Bitbucket
10 8 (0.73%) Maven
10 8 (0.73%) MLflow
10 8 (0.73%) SpecFlow
10 8 (0.73%) TeamCity
11 6 (0.55%) Cypress.io
11 6 (0.55%) REST Assured
11 6 (0.55%) SonarQube
11 6 (0.55%) Sonatype Nexus
11 6 (0.55%) Team Foundation Server
12 5 (0.46%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.46%) Visual Studio
General
1 436 (39.96%) Social Skills
2 232 (21.26%) Finance
3 231 (21.17%) Analytical Skills
4 95 (8.71%) Banking
5 66 (6.05%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.04%) Aerospace
7 53 (4.86%) Documentation Skills
8 39 (3.57%) Organisational Skills
9 37 (3.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 31 (2.84%) Influencing Skills
11 29 (2.66%) Telecoms
12 28 (2.57%) Marketing
13 25 (2.29%) Legal
14 24 (2.20%) Manufacturing
15 22 (2.02%) Front Office
16 20 (1.83%) Presentation Skills
17 16 (1.47%) Law
18 15 (1.37%) Military
18 15 (1.37%) Retail
19 13 (1.19%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 124 (11.37%) Developer
2 113 (10.36%) Architect
3 110 (10.08%) Senior
4 81 (7.42%) Lead
5 76 (6.97%) Analyst
6 39 (3.57%) Software Engineer
7 38 (3.48%) Data Engineer
8 37 (3.39%) Product Manager
9 33 (3.02%) Delivery Manager
10 32 (2.93%) Data Scientist
11 28 (2.57%) Product Delivery Manager
11 28 (2.57%) Solutions Architect
12 26 (2.38%) Junior
13 24 (2.20%) IT Support
13 24 (2.20%) Java Developer
14 23 (2.11%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 22 (2.02%) Security Engineer
15 22 (2.02%) Senior Developer
15 22 (2.02%) Systems Delivery Manager
15 22 (2.02%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (8.07%) REST
2 61 (5.59%) React
3 53 (4.86%) .NET
4 44 (4.03%) Kafka
5 37 (3.39%) Spring
6 34 (3.12%) RESTful
7 31 (2.84%) Spring Boot
8 28 (2.57%) OAuth
9 25 (2.29%) AngularJS
9 25 (2.29%) Middleware
9 25 (2.29%) PyTorch
10 23 (2.11%) CSS
11 22 (2.02%) HTML
11 22 (2.02%) JSON
11 22 (2.02%) SAML
12 21 (1.92%) OAuth2
12 21 (1.92%) Web Services
13 20 (1.83%) OpenID
14 19 (1.74%) TensorFlow
15 18 (1.65%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 98 (8.98%) Management Information System
2 88 (8.07%) Product Ownership
3 86 (7.88%) Algorithms
4 83 (7.61%) Onboarding
5 73 (6.69%) Cloud Native
6 64 (5.87%) Data Structures
7 53 (4.86%) Distributed Systems
8 30 (2.75%) AI Agents
9 27 (2.47%) Virtual Team
10 25 (2.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 25 (2.29%) Self-Motivation
11 23 (2.11%) Derivative
12 20 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
13 17 (1.56%) Fixed Income
14 15 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
14 15 (1.37%) Data Centre
14 15 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
14 15 (1.37%) Hybrid Cloud
14 15 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
14 15 (1.37%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 125 (11.46%) Windows
2 99 (9.07%) Linux
3 30 (2.75%) Unix
4 24 (2.20%) Windows Server
5 21 (1.92%) Android
6 18 (1.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (1.47%) Windows 10
8 12 (1.10%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.82%) Mac OS
9 9 (0.82%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.46%) VMS
11 3 (0.27%) Debian
11 3 (0.27%) Rocky
12 2 (0.18%) MVS
12 2 (0.18%) Solaris
12 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.18%) zOS
13 1 (0.092%) CentOS
13 1 (0.092%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.092%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 318 (29.15%) Problem-Solving
2 270 (24.75%) Agile
3 239 (21.91%) AI
4 201 (18.42%) CI/CD
5 189 (17.32%) Continuous Improvement
6 187 (17.14%) Software Engineering
7 163 (14.94%) DevOps
8 152 (13.93%) Analytics
9 126 (11.55%) Stakeholder Management
10 125 (11.46%) Cybersecurity
11 118 (10.82%) Machine Learning
12 117 (10.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 112 (10.27%) ITIL
14 110 (10.08%) Mathematics
15 101 (9.26%) Data Science
16 96 (8.80%) Decision-Making
17 94 (8.62%) Roadmaps
18 91 (8.34%) Microservices
19 85 (7.79%) Containerisation
20 83 (7.61%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 294 (26.95%) Python
2 213 (19.52%) SQL
3 135 (12.37%) Java
4 68 (6.23%) JavaScript
5 62 (5.68%) PowerShell
6 60 (5.50%) C#
7 38 (3.48%) TypeScript
8 29 (2.66%) Bash
9 21 (1.92%) C++
10 18 (1.65%) R
11 13 (1.19%) Bicep
12 11 (1.01%) Kotlin
13 10 (0.92%) C
13 10 (0.92%) Shell Script
14 8 (0.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 7 (0.64%) Go
16 6 (0.55%) Perl
17 5 (0.46%) Apex Code
17 5 (0.46%) Scala
18 4 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 836 (76.63%) Degree
2 476 (43.63%) Computer Science Degree
3 207 (18.97%) Security Cleared
4 132 (12.10%) Master's Degree
5 125 (11.46%) SC Cleared
6 50 (4.58%) CISSP
7 44 (4.03%) Azure Certification
8 39 (3.57%) Microsoft Certification
8 39 (3.57%) PhD
9 36 (3.30%) DBS Check
10 31 (2.84%) CISM
11 29 (2.66%) PMI Certification
12 28 (2.57%) AWS Certification
12 28 (2.57%) DV Cleared
12 28 (2.57%) PMP
13 24 (2.20%) TOGAF Certification
14 23 (2.11%) Cisco Certification
15 20 (1.83%) CISA
16 18 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
17 16 (1.47%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (6.14%) Data Quality
2 65 (5.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 58 (5.32%) NIST
4 54 (4.95%) QA
5 31 (2.84%) GDPR
6 18 (1.65%) Accessibility
7 15 (1.37%) GRC
8 13 (1.19%) PCI DSS
8 13 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 13 (1.19%) SLA
9 11 (1.01%) NCSC
10 10 (0.92%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 10 (0.92%) NIST 800
11 7 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 6 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
13 5 (0.46%) COBIT
13 5 (0.46%) Government Security Classifications
13 5 (0.46%) ISO 20022
13 5 (0.46%) ITGC
System Software
1 86 (7.88%) Docker
2 79 (7.24%) Active Directory
3 19 (1.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.92%) Firmware
5 9 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.64%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.55%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.37%) vSphere
9 3 (0.27%) ACF2
9 3 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
9 3 (0.27%) RACF
9 3 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
10 2 (0.18%) Ceph
10 2 (0.18%) Squid
10 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.092%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 1 (0.092%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.092%) HDFS
11 1 (0.092%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 107 (9.81%) Kubernetes
2 55 (5.04%) Terraform
3 36 (3.30%) Ansible
4 27 (2.47%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (2.29%) Prometheus
6 21 (1.92%) Grafana
7 14 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.64%) SCCM
9 4 (0.37%) Argo
9 4 (0.37%) Kubeflow
10 3 (0.27%) Cisco CUCM
10 3 (0.27%) Foglight
10 3 (0.27%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.27%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.18%) Control-M
11 2 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.18%) Network Intrusion Detection System
11 2 (0.18%) Puppet
11 2 (0.18%) vRealize
11 2 (0.18%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 200 (18.33%) Microsoft
2 63 (5.77%) Oracle
3 49 (4.49%) Databricks
4 42 (3.85%) Google
5 41 (3.76%) IBM
6 37 (3.39%) ServiceNow
7 31 (2.84%) SAP
8 29 (2.66%) VMware
9 21 (1.92%) Cisco
9 21 (1.92%) CyberArk
10 18 (1.65%) BeyondTrust
10 18 (1.65%) Splunk
11 13 (1.19%) Salesforce
12 12 (1.10%) Informatica
12 12 (1.10%) Palo Alto
13 11 (1.01%) Okta
14 10 (0.92%) Citrix
14 10 (0.92%) Foundry
14 10 (0.92%) Solace
15 9 (0.82%) Red Hat