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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 66 63
Rank change year-on-year -63 -3 +26
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,094 1,228 1,315
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.07% 3.74% 3.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.43% 4.14% 3.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 611 686 807
10th Percentile £177 £188 £325
25th Percentile £202 £355 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £453 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.40% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £610 £650 £682
90th Percentile £760 £775 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £375 £420 £513
% change year-on-year -10.71% -18.05% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 125 49 67
10th Percentile £25.73 £25.00 £20.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £38.75
Median hourly rate £75.00 £54.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +37.61% +3.81% -15.32%
75th Percentile £87.16 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £88.00 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.50 £67.00 £55.63
% change year-on-year +21.64% +20.45% -7.29%

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 45,002 29,684 34,056
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.96% 90.46% 85.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,855 18,648 21,888
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,714 1,621 1,980
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £13.69
25th Percentile £19.89 £17.33 £17.74
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.57 £40.33
% change year-on-year +86.55% -41.56% -

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -54 996 £450 -10.00% 1,198
UK excluding London -47 590 £375 -10.71% 565
London -63 433 £525 -12.50% 726
Work from Home -87 246 £500 -9.09% 399
South East -8 244 £350 -26.32% 181
North of England -47 141 £400 -11.11% 105
Midlands -65 86 £312 -0.16% 93
Yorkshire -15 76 £450 +15.83% 25
West Midlands -68 59 £402 +86.98% 48
North West -65 54 £292 -38.53% 57
East of England -24 47 £215 -62.77% 86
South West -65 33 £469 +127.12% 58
Scotland -50 28 £400 -15.79% 24
East Midlands -22 26 £275 -36.56% 45
North East -39 12 £195 -57.84% 24
Northern Ireland - 7 £350 - 21
Wales -25 6 £530 +17.78% 10

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 (3.47%) Confluence
2 30 (2.74%) SharePoint
3 29 (2.65%) Apache Spark
4 20 (1.83%) Apache Airflow
5 19 (1.74%) Apache
6 9 (0.82%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.55%) IIS
8 5 (0.46%) SAS
9 4 (0.37%) CMS
10 3 (0.27%) Camunda
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 (0.091%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.091%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.091%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 1 (0.091%) Tomcat
Applications
1 44 (4.02%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (2.93%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (1.28%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.64%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.64%) Revit
6 6 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.46%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.46%) Trello
8 2 (0.18%) Adobe XD
8 2 (0.18%) CPLEX
8 2 (0.18%) Sketch
9 1 (0.091%) Simulink
9 1 (0.091%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 14 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.46%) Aladdin
3 4 (0.37%) Workday HCM
4 3 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.27%) Primavera
4 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.18%) Infor M3
5 2 (0.18%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 2 (0.18%) Workfront
6 1 (0.091%) Finacle
6 1 (0.091%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.091%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.091%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
6 1 (0.091%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.091%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.091%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 310 (28.34%) Azure
2 193 (17.64%) AWS
3 107 (9.78%) GCP
4 78 (7.13%) Power Platform
5 67 (6.12%) Entra ID
6 59 (5.39%) Microsoft 365
7 50 (4.57%) GitHub
8 49 (4.48%) SaaS
9 45 (4.11%) Azure DevOps
10 33 (3.02%) Snowflake
11 29 (2.65%) Serverless
12 22 (2.01%) PowerApps
13 21 (1.92%) GitHub Actions
14 18 (1.65%) Azure AKS
15 16 (1.46%) Microsoft Copilot
16 15 (1.37%) AWS Lambda
16 15 (1.37%) Power Automate
17 14 (1.28%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 14 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
18 13 (1.19%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 43 (3.93%) Firewall
2 32 (2.93%) DNS
2 32 (2.93%) Network Security
3 30 (2.74%) VPN
4 22 (2.01%) TCP/IP
5 18 (1.65%) WAN
6 15 (1.37%) DHCP
6 15 (1.37%) SSH
7 14 (1.28%) LAN
8 12 (1.10%) Wireless
9 11 (1.01%) BGP
10 10 (0.91%) VLAN
11 8 (0.73%) HTTPS
11 8 (0.73%) OSPF
11 8 (0.73%) Wireshark
12 7 (0.64%) 3GPP
12 7 (0.64%) Cisco ASA
12 7 (0.64%) Intrusion Detection
12 7 (0.64%) MPLS
12 7 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (5.76%) Power BI
2 53 (4.84%) Relational Database
3 52 (4.75%) SQL Server
4 49 (4.48%) PostgreSQL
5 33 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
6 31 (2.83%) Metadata
7 28 (2.56%) Big Data
8 27 (2.47%) MongoDB
9 23 (2.10%) NoSQL
10 17 (1.55%) Tableau
11 14 (1.28%) MySQL
12 13 (1.19%) Data Lake
12 13 (1.19%) Data Mining
12 13 (1.19%) Hadoop
13 11 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
13 11 (1.01%) Elasticsearch
14 10 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
14 10 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
15 9 (0.82%) Oracle Database
15 9 (0.82%) Redis
Development Applications
1 85 (7.77%) Git
2 51 (4.66%) JIRA
3 39 (3.56%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.11%) GitLab
5 31 (2.83%) Rational DOORS
6 13 (1.19%) Selenium
7 12 (1.10%) JUnit
8 11 (1.01%) Gradle
9 10 (0.91%) Bitbucket
10 9 (0.82%) TeamCity
11 8 (0.73%) Maven
11 8 (0.73%) SpecFlow
12 7 (0.64%) MLflow
12 7 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
13 6 (0.55%) Cypress.io
13 6 (0.55%) REST Assured
13 6 (0.55%) SonarQube
13 6 (0.55%) Team Foundation Server
14 5 (0.46%) Cucumber
14 5 (0.46%) Visual Studio
General
1 442 (40.40%) Social Skills
2 238 (21.76%) Analytical Skills
3 234 (21.39%) Finance
4 93 (8.50%) Banking
5 67 (6.12%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.03%) Aerospace
7 50 (4.57%) Documentation Skills
8 40 (3.66%) Organisational Skills
9 37 (3.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 31 (2.83%) Influencing Skills
11 29 (2.65%) Telecoms
12 27 (2.47%) Marketing
13 25 (2.29%) Legal
14 24 (2.19%) Front Office
15 23 (2.10%) Manufacturing
16 20 (1.83%) Presentation Skills
17 16 (1.46%) Law
17 16 (1.46%) Military
18 15 (1.37%) Retail
19 12 (1.10%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 126 (11.52%) Developer
2 114 (10.42%) Senior
3 106 (9.69%) Architect
4 81 (7.40%) Lead
5 78 (7.13%) Analyst
6 38 (3.47%) Data Engineer
6 38 (3.47%) Software Engineer
7 37 (3.38%) Product Manager
8 33 (3.02%) Delivery Manager
9 30 (2.74%) Data Scientist
10 28 (2.56%) Product Delivery Manager
11 26 (2.38%) Java Developer
11 26 (2.38%) Junior
11 26 (2.38%) Solutions Architect
12 24 (2.19%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 24 (2.19%) IT Support
13 23 (2.10%) Security Engineer
13 23 (2.10%) Senior Developer
14 22 (2.01%) Systems Delivery Manager
14 22 (2.01%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (7.68%) REST
2 62 (5.67%) React
3 53 (4.84%) .NET
4 42 (3.84%) Kafka
5 37 (3.38%) Spring
6 34 (3.11%) RESTful
7 31 (2.83%) Spring Boot
8 29 (2.65%) OAuth
9 26 (2.38%) AngularJS
10 24 (2.19%) CSS
10 24 (2.19%) PyTorch
11 23 (2.10%) HTML
11 23 (2.10%) SAML
12 22 (2.01%) Middleware
12 22 (2.01%) OAuth2
13 21 (1.92%) OpenID
13 21 (1.92%) Web Services
14 20 (1.83%) JSON
15 18 (1.65%) TensorFlow
16 17 (1.55%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 98 (8.96%) Management Information System
2 89 (8.14%) Product Ownership
3 86 (7.86%) Onboarding
4 85 (7.77%) Algorithms
5 72 (6.58%) Cloud Native
6 65 (5.94%) Data Structures
7 52 (4.75%) Distributed Systems
8 31 (2.83%) AI Agents
9 27 (2.47%) Virtual Team
10 26 (2.38%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 25 (2.29%) Self-Motivation
12 23 (2.10%) Derivative
13 18 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
14 17 (1.55%) Fixed Income
14 17 (1.55%) Hybrid Cloud
15 16 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
16 15 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
16 15 (1.37%) Data Centre
16 15 (1.37%) Operational Technology
16 15 (1.37%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 130 (11.88%) Windows
2 102 (9.32%) Linux
3 32 (2.93%) Unix
4 26 (2.38%) Windows Server
5 21 (1.92%) Android
6 19 (1.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 17 (1.55%) 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 (0.091%) CentOS
13 1 (0.091%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.091%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 322 (29.43%) Problem-Solving
2 270 (24.68%) Agile
3 240 (21.94%) AI
4 202 (18.46%) CI/CD
5 191 (17.46%) Continuous Improvement
6 185 (16.91%) Software Engineering
7 163 (14.90%) DevOps
8 151 (13.80%) Analytics
9 133 (12.16%) Stakeholder Management
10 127 (11.61%) Cybersecurity
11 116 (10.60%) ITIL
12 114 (10.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 111 (10.15%) Machine Learning
14 109 (9.96%) Mathematics
15 99 (9.05%) Decision-Making
16 97 (8.87%) Data Science
17 89 (8.14%) Roadmaps
18 87 (7.95%) Microservices
19 83 (7.59%) Containerisation
19 83 (7.59%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 298 (27.24%) Python
2 210 (19.20%) SQL
3 135 (12.34%) Java
4 70 (6.40%) PowerShell
5 69 (6.31%) JavaScript
6 62 (5.67%) C#
7 39 (3.56%) TypeScript
8 30 (2.74%) Bash
9 22 (2.01%) C++
10 17 (1.55%) R
11 13 (1.19%) Bicep
12 11 (1.01%) Kotlin
13 10 (0.91%) C
14 8 (0.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 8 (0.73%) Shell Script
15 6 (0.55%) Go
15 6 (0.55%) Perl
16 5 (0.46%) Scala
17 4 (0.37%) Apex Code
17 4 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 840 (76.78%) Degree
2 486 (44.42%) Computer Science Degree
3 207 (18.92%) Security Cleared
4 126 (11.52%) SC Cleared
5 125 (11.43%) Master's Degree
6 52 (4.75%) CISSP
7 43 (3.93%) Azure Certification
8 41 (3.75%) Microsoft Certification
9 39 (3.56%) PhD
10 37 (3.38%) DBS Check
11 33 (3.02%) CISM
12 29 (2.65%) PMI Certification
13 28 (2.56%) PMP
14 27 (2.47%) DV Cleared
15 26 (2.38%) AWS Certification
16 24 (2.19%) Cisco Certification
16 24 (2.19%) TOGAF Certification
17 21 (1.92%) CISA
18 19 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
19 18 (1.65%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (6.31%) Data Quality
1 69 (6.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 62 (5.67%) NIST
3 54 (4.94%) QA
4 33 (3.02%) GDPR
5 18 (1.65%) Accessibility
6 15 (1.37%) GRC
7 14 (1.28%) SLA
8 13 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (1.10%) HIPAA
9 12 (1.10%) PCI DSS
10 11 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 11 (1.01%) NCSC
11 10 (0.91%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 5 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
13 5 (0.46%) COBIT
13 5 (0.46%) Government Security Classifications
13 5 (0.46%) ITGC
14 4 (0.37%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 85 (7.77%) Docker
2 83 (7.59%) Active Directory
3 21 (1.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.91%) Firmware
5 9 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.73%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.55%) VMware NSX
8 5 (0.46%) vSphere
9 4 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.27%) ACF2
10 3 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
10 3 (0.27%) RACF
10 3 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
11 2 (0.18%) Ceph
11 2 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.18%) Squid
11 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
12 1 (0.091%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.091%) HDFS
12 1 (0.091%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 107 (9.78%) Kubernetes
2 57 (5.21%) Terraform
3 38 (3.47%) Ansible
4 31 (2.83%) Microsoft Intune
5 24 (2.19%) Prometheus
6 20 (1.83%) Grafana
7 14 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (0.91%) SCCM
9 5 (0.46%) Argo
10 3 (0.27%) Cisco CUCM
10 3 (0.27%) Foglight
10 3 (0.27%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.27%) Kubeflow
10 3 (0.27%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.18%) CASB
11 2 (0.18%) Data Guard
11 2 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.18%) Oracle RMAN
11 2 (0.18%) Puppet
11 2 (0.18%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 202 (18.46%) Microsoft
2 63 (5.76%) Oracle
3 49 (4.48%) Databricks
4 40 (3.66%) IBM
5 39 (3.56%) Google
6 37 (3.38%) ServiceNow
7 31 (2.83%) VMware
8 29 (2.65%) SAP
9 23 (2.10%) CyberArk
10 22 (2.01%) Cisco
11 20 (1.83%) BeyondTrust
12 18 (1.65%) Splunk
13 12 (1.10%) Salesforce
14 11 (1.01%) Palo Alto
15 10 (0.91%) Citrix
15 10 (0.91%) Foundry
15 10 (0.91%) Okta
15 10 (0.91%) Solace
16 9 (0.82%) Informatica
16 9 (0.82%) Red Hat