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

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 130 65 61
Rank change year-on-year -65 -4 +27
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,095 1,226 1,345
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.07% 3.75% 3.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.43% 4.14% 3.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 612 683 820
10th Percentile £175 £193 £325
25th Percentile £203 £356 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.60% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £625 £650 £676
90th Percentile £755 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £375 £425 £517
% change year-on-year -11.76% -17.79% -1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 125 48 80
10th Percentile £25.73 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £42.00
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 £65.31
90th Percentile £88.00 £88.00 £70.48
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 45,072 29,587 34,698
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.08% 90.43% 85.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,942 18,578 22,301
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
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 2,665 1,596 2,086
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.02 £17.33 £17.31
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 £82.80 £68.75 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +83.17% -40.00% -1.45%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -56 991 £453 -9.40% 1,102
UK excluding London -52 590 £375 -11.76% 578
London -56 433 £530 -11.70% 638
Work from Home -80 247 £500 -9.09% 382
South East -9 242 £350 -26.32% 207
North of England -52 140 £390 -13.28% 96
Midlands -58 83 £325 +2.69% 83
Yorkshire -15 76 £500 +28.70% 24
West Midlands -60 56 £416 +93.26% 45
North West -66 53 £292 -38.53% 48
East of England -27 47 £215 -66.92% 79
South West -62 34 £435 +94.62% 57
Scotland -46 33 £425 -10.53% 21
East Midlands -25 26 £275 -38.48% 38
North East -36 12 £195 -57.84% 24
Northern Ireland - 7 £350 - 36
Wales -24 6 £530 +15.09% 13

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 39 (3.56%) Confluence
2 34 (3.11%) Apache Spark
3 31 (2.83%) SharePoint
4 23 (2.10%) Apache Airflow
5 22 (2.01%) Apache
6 10 (0.91%) 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 (0.091%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.091%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.091%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 1 (0.091%) Tomcat
Applications
1 42 (3.84%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (2.92%) 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
7 4 (0.37%) 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 16 (1.46%) 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%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.18%) Workfront
5 1 (0.091%) Finacle
5 1 (0.091%) Infor M3
5 1 (0.091%) Misys Equation
5 1 (0.091%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.091%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.091%) SAP SM
5 1 (0.091%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.091%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 311 (28.40%) Azure
2 197 (17.99%) AWS
3 106 (9.68%) GCP
4 75 (6.85%) Power Platform
5 63 (5.75%) Entra ID
6 56 (5.11%) Microsoft 365
7 47 (4.29%) SaaS
8 45 (4.11%) GitHub
9 43 (3.93%) Azure DevOps
10 31 (2.83%) Snowflake
11 30 (2.74%) Serverless
12 22 (2.01%) PowerApps
13 20 (1.83%) GitHub Actions
14 18 (1.64%) Azure AKS
15 16 (1.46%) AWS Lambda
16 15 (1.37%) Microsoft Copilot
16 15 (1.37%) Power Automate
17 14 (1.28%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 14 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
18 13 (1.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 40 (3.65%) Firewall
2 31 (2.83%) Network Security
3 29 (2.65%) DNS
4 27 (2.47%) VPN
5 22 (2.01%) TCP/IP
6 16 (1.46%) WAN
7 14 (1.28%) SSH
8 13 (1.19%) LAN
9 12 (1.10%) BGP
9 12 (1.10%) DHCP
10 10 (0.91%) VLAN
10 10 (0.91%) 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 (5.48%) Power BI
2 54 (4.93%) SQL Server
3 52 (4.75%) Relational Database
4 51 (4.66%) PostgreSQL
5 35 (3.20%) Data Warehouse
6 34 (3.11%) Metadata
7 32 (2.92%) Big Data
8 27 (2.47%) MongoDB
9 24 (2.19%) NoSQL
10 17 (1.55%) MySQL
11 16 (1.46%) Data Lake
11 16 (1.46%) Hadoop
11 16 (1.46%) Tableau
12 12 (1.10%) Data Mining
13 11 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
14 10 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
14 10 (0.91%) Elasticsearch
14 10 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
15 9 (0.82%) Redis
16 8 (0.73%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 85 (7.76%) Git
2 51 (4.66%) JIRA
3 39 (3.56%) Jenkins
4 33 (3.01%) GitLab
5 31 (2.83%) Rational DOORS
6 13 (1.19%) Selenium
7 12 (1.10%) JUnit
8 11 (1.00%) Gradle
9 9 (0.82%) 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
12 5 (0.46%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.46%) Flyway
12 5 (0.46%) Postman
General
1 436 (39.82%) Social Skills
2 236 (21.55%) Finance
3 233 (21.28%) Analytical Skills
4 94 (8.58%) Banking
5 66 (6.03%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.02%) Aerospace
7 53 (4.84%) Documentation Skills
8 38 (3.47%) Organisational Skills
9 37 (3.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 30 (2.74%) Influencing Skills
11 29 (2.65%) Telecoms
12 28 (2.56%) Marketing
13 24 (2.19%) Legal
14 23 (2.10%) Manufacturing
15 22 (2.01%) Front Office
16 20 (1.83%) Presentation Skills
17 16 (1.46%) Law
18 15 (1.37%) Military
18 15 (1.37%) Retail
19 13 (1.19%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 127 (11.60%) Developer
2 113 (10.32%) Architect
3 110 (10.05%) Senior
4 82 (7.49%) Lead
5 77 (7.03%) Analyst
6 38 (3.47%) Data Engineer
6 38 (3.47%) Software Engineer
7 37 (3.38%) Product Manager
8 34 (3.11%) Delivery Manager
9 33 (3.01%) Data Scientist
10 28 (2.56%) Product Delivery Manager
10 28 (2.56%) Solutions Architect
11 25 (2.28%) Junior
12 24 (2.19%) IT Support
12 24 (2.19%) Java Developer
13 23 (2.10%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
13 23 (2.10%) Python Developer
14 22 (2.01%) Security Engineer
14 22 (2.01%) Systems Delivery Manager
14 22 (2.01%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (7.95%) REST
2 62 (5.66%) React
3 54 (4.93%) .NET
4 45 (4.11%) Kafka
5 36 (3.29%) RESTful
5 36 (3.29%) Spring
6 32 (2.92%) Spring Boot
7 28 (2.56%) OAuth
8 27 (2.47%) Middleware
9 25 (2.28%) AngularJS
9 25 (2.28%) PyTorch
10 23 (2.10%) CSS
11 22 (2.01%) HTML
12 21 (1.92%) JSON
12 21 (1.92%) SAML
13 20 (1.83%) OAuth2
13 20 (1.83%) OpenID
13 20 (1.83%) Web Services
14 19 (1.74%) TensorFlow
15 17 (1.55%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 99 (9.04%) Management Information System
2 88 (8.04%) Product Ownership
3 86 (7.85%) Algorithms
4 83 (7.58%) Onboarding
5 73 (6.67%) Cloud Native
6 62 (5.66%) Data Structures
7 53 (4.84%) Distributed Systems
8 30 (2.74%) AI Agents
9 27 (2.47%) Virtual Team
10 26 (2.37%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 25 (2.28%) Self-Motivation
12 23 (2.10%) Derivative
13 20 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
14 17 (1.55%) Fixed Income
15 16 (1.46%) Analytical Mindset
16 15 (1.37%) Data Centre
16 15 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
16 15 (1.37%) Hybrid Cloud
16 15 (1.37%) Operational Technology
16 15 (1.37%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 126 (11.51%) Windows
2 105 (9.59%) Linux
3 32 (2.92%) Unix
4 24 (2.19%) Windows Server
5 21 (1.92%) Android
6 18 (1.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (1.46%) 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%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.091%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 318 (29.04%) Problem-Solving
2 270 (24.66%) Agile
3 238 (21.74%) AI
4 199 (18.17%) CI/CD
5 190 (17.35%) Continuous Improvement
6 187 (17.08%) Software Engineering
7 164 (14.98%) DevOps
8 154 (14.06%) Analytics
9 126 (11.51%) Cybersecurity
9 126 (11.51%) Stakeholder Management
10 119 (10.87%) Machine Learning
11 118 (10.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 112 (10.23%) ITIL
13 111 (10.14%) Mathematics
14 102 (9.32%) Data Science
15 96 (8.77%) Decision-Making
16 93 (8.49%) Microservices
16 93 (8.49%) Roadmaps
17 85 (7.76%) Mentoring
18 84 (7.67%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 296 (27.03%) Python
2 213 (19.45%) SQL
3 136 (12.42%) Java
4 68 (6.21%) JavaScript
5 62 (5.66%) PowerShell
6 61 (5.57%) C#
7 38 (3.47%) TypeScript
8 29 (2.65%) Bash
9 22 (2.01%) C++
10 18 (1.64%) R
11 13 (1.19%) Bicep
12 10 (0.91%) Kotlin
12 10 (0.91%) Shell Script
13 9 (0.82%) C
14 8 (0.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 8 (0.73%) Go
15 6 (0.55%) Perl
16 5 (0.46%) Apex Code
16 5 (0.46%) Scala
17 4 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 841 (76.80%) Degree
2 480 (43.84%) Computer Science Degree
3 208 (19.00%) Security Cleared
4 134 (12.24%) Master's Degree
5 127 (11.60%) SC Cleared
6 50 (4.57%) CISSP
7 44 (4.02%) Azure Certification
8 40 (3.65%) PhD
9 39 (3.56%) Microsoft Certification
10 36 (3.29%) DBS Check
11 31 (2.83%) CISM
12 29 (2.65%) PMI Certification
13 28 (2.56%) AWS Certification
13 28 (2.56%) DV Cleared
13 28 (2.56%) PMP
14 24 (2.19%) TOGAF Certification
15 23 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
16 20 (1.83%) CISA
17 19 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
18 16 (1.46%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (6.21%) Data Quality
2 66 (6.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 59 (5.39%) NIST
4 55 (5.02%) QA
5 32 (2.92%) GDPR
6 18 (1.64%) Accessibility
7 15 (1.37%) GRC
8 13 (1.19%) PCI DSS
8 13 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 13 (1.19%) SLA
9 12 (1.10%) NCSC
10 10 (0.91%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 10 (0.91%) 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 87 (7.95%) Docker
2 79 (7.21%) Active Directory
3 19 (1.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.82%) Firmware
4 9 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.64%) Hyper-V
6 6 (0.55%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.37%) vSphere
8 3 (0.27%) ACF2
8 3 (0.27%) RACF
8 3 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
9 2 (0.18%) Ceph
9 2 (0.18%) Embedded Firmware
9 2 (0.18%) Squid
9 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.091%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 1 (0.091%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.091%) HDFS
10 1 (0.091%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 107 (9.77%) Kubernetes
2 56 (5.11%) Terraform
3 36 (3.29%) Ansible
4 26 (2.37%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (2.28%) Prometheus
6 22 (2.01%) 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%) Consul
11 2 (0.18%) Control-M
11 2 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.18%) Network Intrusion Detection System
11 2 (0.18%) PowerCLI
11 2 (0.18%) vRealize
Vendors
1 199 (18.17%) Microsoft
2 63 (5.75%) Oracle
3 49 (4.47%) Databricks
4 42 (3.84%) Google
5 41 (3.74%) IBM
6 37 (3.38%) ServiceNow
7 31 (2.83%) SAP
8 29 (2.65%) VMware
9 21 (1.92%) Cisco
9 21 (1.92%) CyberArk
10 20 (1.83%) Splunk
11 18 (1.64%) BeyondTrust
12 13 (1.19%) Informatica
12 13 (1.19%) Salesforce
13 12 (1.10%) Palo Alto
14 11 (1.00%) Okta
15 10 (0.91%) Citrix
15 10 (0.91%) Foundry
16 9 (0.82%) Apple
16 9 (0.82%) Red Hat