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

6 months to
14 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 77 72
Rank change year-on-year -15 -5 +56
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,124 937 1,264
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.80% 3.03% 2.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.22% 3.38% 3.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 718 526 808
10th Percentile £176 £343 £320
25th Percentile £313 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.42% -3.64% -8.33%
75th Percentile £652 £671 £675
90th Percentile £775 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £401 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -19.80% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 22 73
10th Percentile £26.20 £30.78 £23.60
25th Percentile £26.75 £33.75 £42.50
Median hourly rate £33.50 £44.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.86% -20.00% +5.77%
75th Percentile £64.00 £60.25 £67.02
90th Percentile £70.50 £70.65 £74.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -10.67% -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 34,907 27,716 39,026
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.98% 89.51% 87.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,112 17,001 25,591
10th Percentile £310 £306 £300
25th Percentile £409 £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 £480 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -3.03% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,104 852 2,127
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £33.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -2.99% +2.15%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £60.32
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.69
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £30.62 £35.00
% change year-on-year -17.85% -12.53% +7.69%

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 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 14 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 14 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 -8 987 £483 -10.14% 730
UK excluding London +6 565 £401 -19.80% 566
London -28 452 £550 -2.65% 233
Work from Home -13 275 £500 -13.04% 319
North of England +45 191 £368 -30.00% 98
South East +19 140 £363 -27.50% 213
Yorkshire +19 103 £525 +2.44% 26
Midlands -33 93 £503 +11.67% 95
North West +11 84 £330 -38.32% 52
West Midlands -30 67 £525 +5.00% 64
South West +13 60 £520 -16.80% 49
Scotland -2 41 £610 +26.03% 38
East of England -35 37 £528 -15.60% 67
East Midlands -20 26 £447 +25.56% 31
Wales -11 15 £160 -44.35% 16
North East -12 5 £207 -64.09% 22
Northern Ireland -6 4 - - 6

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 (5.60%) Confluence
2 41 (3.65%) Apache Spark
3 35 (3.11%) SharePoint
4 21 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
5 16 (1.42%) Apache
6 15 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
7 7 (0.62%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.44%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.44%) Skype for Business
8 5 (0.44%) 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 18 (1.60%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.44%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.44%) Simulink
6 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.089%) Oracle Smart View
7 1 (0.089%) Trello
Business Applications
1 22 (1.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.44%) 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%) JDE EnterpriseOne
7 1 (0.089%) Maximo
7 1 (0.089%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.089%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.089%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 309 (27.49%) Azure
2 208 (18.51%) AWS
3 128 (11.39%) GCP
4 72 (6.41%) GitHub
5 66 (5.87%) Power Platform
6 57 (5.07%) Microsoft 365
7 54 (4.80%) Serverless
8 46 (4.09%) SaaS
9 44 (3.91%) Azure DevOps
10 33 (2.94%) GitHub Actions
11 32 (2.85%) Entra ID
12 22 (1.96%) IaaS
13 20 (1.78%) Azure Data Factory
14 19 (1.69%) Power Automate
14 19 (1.69%) PowerApps
15 18 (1.60%) Cloud Computing
15 18 (1.60%) Snowflake
16 17 (1.51%) AWS CloudFormation
16 17 (1.51%) Azure Machine Learning
17 14 (1.25%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 48 (4.27%) Firewall
2 35 (3.11%) DNS
3 25 (2.22%) Network Security
4 23 (2.05%) TCP/IP
5 19 (1.69%) 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%) Internet
12 7 (0.62%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 79 (7.03%) PostgreSQL
2 63 (5.60%) NoSQL
3 47 (4.18%) Relational Database
4 46 (4.09%) Power BI
5 44 (3.91%) Data Warehouse
6 43 (3.83%) SQL Server
7 40 (3.56%) MySQL
8 38 (3.38%) Big Data
9 23 (2.05%) Tableau
10 20 (1.78%) Elasticsearch
10 20 (1.78%) Hadoop
11 18 (1.60%) Metadata
12 17 (1.51%) Data Lake
13 16 (1.42%) MongoDB
14 11 (0.98%) Redis
15 8 (0.71%) RDBMS
15 8 (0.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 7 (0.62%) KDB
16 7 (0.62%) OLAP
16 7 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 90 (8.01%) Git
2 86 (7.65%) JIRA
3 71 (6.32%) Jenkins
4 61 (5.43%) GitLab
5 22 (1.96%) Liquibase
6 15 (1.33%) Postman
7 12 (1.07%) Selenium
8 10 (0.89%) MLflow
9 9 (0.80%) CircleCI
9 9 (0.80%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.71%) Bitbucket
10 8 (0.71%) Gradle
10 8 (0.71%) Visual Studio
11 7 (0.62%) JUnit
12 6 (0.53%) Cypress.io
13 5 (0.44%) Appium
13 5 (0.44%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.44%) PyCharm
13 5 (0.44%) XCUITest
14 4 (0.36%) Katalon Studio
General
1 522 (46.44%) Social Skills
2 294 (26.16%) Finance
3 248 (22.06%) Analytical Skills
4 118 (10.50%) Banking
5 71 (6.32%) Public Sector
6 42 (3.74%) Documentation Skills
6 42 (3.74%) Marketing
7 39 (3.47%) Organisational Skills
8 38 (3.38%) Financial Institution
9 33 (2.94%) Presentation Skills
10 32 (2.85%) Influencing Skills
11 31 (2.76%) Legal
12 29 (2.58%) Telecoms
13 28 (2.49%) Front Office
14 25 (2.22%) Electronics
15 23 (2.05%) Manufacturing
16 21 (1.87%) Investment Banking
17 20 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 15 (1.33%) Military
19 13 (1.16%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 186 (16.55%) Developer
2 106 (9.43%) Architect
3 94 (8.36%) Analyst
4 89 (7.92%) Lead
5 85 (7.56%) Senior
6 57 (5.07%) Software Engineer
7 44 (3.91%) Solutions Architect
8 36 (3.20%) Data Scientist
9 31 (2.76%) Technical Support
10 29 (2.58%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 29 (2.58%) Python Developer
11 25 (2.22%) Java Developer
12 24 (2.14%) IT Support
13 23 (2.05%) Business Analyst
13 23 (2.05%) Consultant
13 23 (2.05%) Data Engineer
13 23 (2.05%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 22 (1.96%) Cloud Engineer
14 22 (1.96%) Senior Developer
14 22 (1.96%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (9.88%) REST
2 70 (6.23%) RESTful
3 56 (4.98%) .NET
3 56 (4.98%) React
4 48 (4.27%) Elastic Stack
5 42 (3.74%) Kafka
5 42 (3.74%) Middleware
6 41 (3.65%) HTML
7 35 (3.11%) OAuth
7 35 (3.11%) PyTorch
8 34 (3.02%) JSON
8 34 (3.02%) TensorFlow
9 32 (2.85%) Spring
9 32 (2.85%) XML
10 31 (2.76%) CSS
11 30 (2.67%) SOAP
12 29 (2.58%) Node.js
12 29 (2.58%) Spring Boot
13 26 (2.31%) LangChain
14 21 (1.87%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 130 (11.57%) Management Information System
2 97 (8.63%) Cloud Native
3 88 (7.83%) Algorithms
4 61 (5.43%) Distributed Systems
5 48 (4.27%) Data Structures
6 43 (3.83%) Onboarding
6 43 (3.83%) Product Ownership
7 30 (2.67%) Equities
7 30 (2.67%) Public Cloud
8 28 (2.49%) Data Protection Act
9 26 (2.31%) Security Posture
10 25 (2.22%) Virtual Team
11 24 (2.14%) Enterprise Software
12 22 (1.96%) Derivative
12 22 (1.96%) Distributed Computing
12 22 (1.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 20 (1.78%) AI Agents
13 20 (1.78%) Data Centre
13 20 (1.78%) Mobile App
14 18 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 171 (15.21%) Linux
2 132 (11.74%) Windows
3 64 (5.69%) Unix
4 26 (2.31%) Android
4 26 (2.31%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.60%) Mac OS
6 15 (1.33%) Apple iOS
7 10 (0.89%) Windows 10
8 8 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.44%) VMS
10 2 (0.18%) Debian
10 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
10 2 (0.18%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.089%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.089%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.089%) Rocky
11 1 (0.089%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 388 (34.52%) Problem-Solving
2 295 (26.25%) Agile
3 242 (21.53%) DevOps
4 228 (20.28%) CI/CD
5 220 (19.57%) AI
6 194 (17.26%) Software Engineering
7 162 (14.41%) Microservices
8 145 (12.90%) Containerisation
9 138 (12.28%) Analytics
10 134 (11.92%) Cybersecurity
10 134 (11.92%) Machine Learning
11 118 (10.50%) Data Science
12 115 (10.23%) Stakeholder Management
13 113 (10.05%) Data Modelling
14 105 (9.34%) Continuous Improvement
15 104 (9.25%) Mathematics
16 100 (8.90%) Data Governance
17 99 (8.81%) Decision-Making
18 94 (8.36%) Infrastructure as Code
19 86 (7.65%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 363 (32.30%) Python
2 210 (18.68%) SQL
3 146 (12.99%) Java
4 106 (9.43%) JavaScript
5 59 (5.25%) PowerShell
5 59 (5.25%) TypeScript
6 52 (4.63%) C#
6 52 (4.63%) Go
7 44 (3.91%) Bash
7 44 (3.91%) C++
8 23 (2.05%) Perl
9 19 (1.69%) R
10 16 (1.42%) Shell Script
11 14 (1.25%) Rust
12 12 (1.07%) Kotlin
13 9 (0.80%) Bicep
14 8 (0.71%) C
14 8 (0.71%) MATLAB
14 8 (0.71%) Ruby
14 8 (0.71%) Scala
Qualifications
1 925 (82.30%) Degree
2 610 (54.27%) Computer Science Degree
3 238 (21.17%) Master's Degree
4 154 (13.70%) Security Cleared
5 114 (10.14%) SC Cleared
6 69 (6.14%) CISSP
7 53 (4.72%) PhD
8 51 (4.54%) DBS Check
9 50 (4.45%) CISM
10 39 (3.47%) Azure Certification
11 36 (3.20%) BPSS Clearance
12 33 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
12 33 (2.94%) TOGAF Certification
13 30 (2.67%) AWS Certification
14 28 (2.49%) Cisco Certification
15 26 (2.31%) DV Cleared
16 25 (2.22%) PMI Certification
17 21 (1.87%) PMP
18 20 (1.78%) CompTIA Security+
19 19 (1.69%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (6.23%) QA
2 61 (5.43%) GDPR
3 53 (4.72%) Data Quality
4 47 (4.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 33 (2.94%) NIST
6 20 (1.78%) PCI DSS
7 16 (1.42%) Accessibility
7 16 (1.42%) GRC
8 11 (0.98%) Def Stans
9 9 (0.80%) HIPAA
10 8 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials
12 5 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
12 5 (0.44%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 5 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 5 (0.44%) DO-254
12 5 (0.44%) NCSC
12 5 (0.44%) PSD2
12 5 (0.44%) SLA
13 4 (0.36%) Solvency II
System Software
1 163 (14.50%) Docker
2 62 (5.52%) Active Directory
3 23 (2.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.80%) Firmware
5 6 (0.53%) VMware NSX
6 5 (0.44%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 5 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
7 4 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.18%) HDFS
8 2 (0.18%) KVM
8 2 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.089%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.089%) PowerHA
9 1 (0.089%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 170 (15.12%) Kubernetes
2 100 (8.90%) Terraform
3 66 (5.87%) Ansible
4 55 (4.89%) Grafana
5 45 (4.00%) Prometheus
6 20 (1.78%) Microsoft Intune
6 20 (1.78%) Puppet
7 16 (1.42%) Kibana
8 14 (1.25%) SCCM
9 13 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
10 9 (0.80%) Kiali
11 7 (0.62%) Argo
12 6 (0.53%) WSUS
13 5 (0.44%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.36%) SCOM
15 3 (0.27%) Control-M
16 2 (0.18%) CSIRT
16 2 (0.18%) FortiGate
16 2 (0.18%) logstash
16 2 (0.18%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 184 (16.37%) Microsoft
2 90 (8.01%) Splunk
3 65 (5.78%) Oracle
4 60 (5.34%) Google
5 51 (4.54%) SAP
6 41 (3.65%) Databricks
7 29 (2.58%) Cisco
8 28 (2.49%) Salesforce
9 27 (2.40%) VMware
10 25 (2.22%) BiZZdesign
10 25 (2.22%) ServiceNow
11 23 (2.05%) Informatica
12 18 (1.60%) IBM
13 16 (1.42%) Red Hat
14 14 (1.25%) MuleSoft
15 13 (1.16%) Palo Alto
16 12 (1.07%) CyberArk
16 12 (1.07%) Fortinet
16 12 (1.07%) OpenAI
16 12 (1.07%) Software AG