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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 64 62
Rank change year-on-year -61 -2 +36
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,073 1,201 1,406
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.04% 3.72% 3.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.40% 4.11% 3.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 603 673 846
10th Percentile £178 £207 £323
25th Percentile £206 £363 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £544
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -8.09% -1.09%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £769 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £388 £450 £523
% change year-on-year -13.89% -13.88% -0.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 120 43 105
10th Percentile £25.98 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £38.75
Median hourly rate £68.25 £44.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.37% -19.09% -4.35%
75th Percentile £87.16 £67.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £88.00 £82.37 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.50 £61.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +32.52% +11.82% -

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 44,694 29,246 37,042
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.15% 90.54% 85.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,812 18,436 23,663
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,657 1,477 2,496
10th Percentile £14.94 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.45% -35.31% -3.62%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -53 960 £455 -9.04% 867
UK excluding London -49 577 £388 -13.89% 545
London -66 423 £525 -11.73% 428
Work from Home -77 243 £500 -9.09% 311
South East -6 231 £225 -54.08% 183
North of England -45 136 £400 -15.57% 93
Midlands -67 77 £429 +43.00% 90
Yorkshire -10 75 £525 +26.13% 18
West Midlands -69 54 £450 +58.45% 46
North West -51 53 £292 -38.53% 46
East of England -34 43 £308 -52.69% 73
Scotland -29 39 £630 +26.00% 17
South West -58 38 £469 +95.42% 62
East Midlands -23 22 £287 -18.38% 43
Wales -26 9 £530 +28.48% 9
North East -29 9 £195 -57.84% 29
Northern Ireland +12 7 £350 -41.67% 31

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 49 (4.57%) Confluence
2 37 (3.45%) Apache Spark
3 29 (2.70%) SharePoint
4 24 (2.24%) Apache
4 24 (2.24%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
6 6 (0.56%) IIS
7 5 (0.47%) SAS
8 4 (0.37%) CMS
9 3 (0.28%) Camunda
9 3 (0.28%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.28%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.19%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.19%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.19%) nginx
11 1 (0.093%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.093%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.093%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 1 (0.093%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.093%) Tomcat
Applications
1 40 (3.73%) Microsoft Office
2 28 (2.61%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.68%) MS Visio
4 14 (1.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.65%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.65%) Revit
6 4 (0.37%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.19%) Simulink
7 2 (0.19%) Trello
8 1 (0.093%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.093%) Sketch
8 1 (0.093%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 18 (1.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
3 4 (0.37%) Aladdin
4 3 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.19%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.19%) Workfront
6 1 (0.093%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.093%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.093%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.093%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
6 1 (0.093%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.093%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.093%) SAP Retail
6 1 (0.093%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.093%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.093%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 319 (29.73%) Azure
2 198 (18.45%) AWS
3 100 (9.32%) GCP
4 74 (6.90%) Power Platform
5 58 (5.41%) Microsoft 365
6 53 (4.94%) Entra ID
7 47 (4.38%) Azure DevOps
7 47 (4.38%) GitHub
8 41 (3.82%) SaaS
9 28 (2.61%) Serverless
9 28 (2.61%) Snowflake
10 22 (2.05%) GitHub Actions
10 22 (2.05%) PowerApps
11 18 (1.68%) AWS CloudFormation
12 17 (1.58%) Azure AKS
13 16 (1.49%) Azure Data Factory
14 15 (1.40%) Power Automate
15 14 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
16 13 (1.21%) Azure Service Bus
16 13 (1.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 33 (3.08%) Firewall
2 32 (2.98%) Network Security
3 26 (2.42%) DNS
4 25 (2.33%) TCP/IP
5 21 (1.96%) VPN
6 18 (1.68%) WAN
7 15 (1.40%) BGP
7 15 (1.40%) LAN
8 12 (1.12%) OSPF
8 12 (1.12%) SSH
9 10 (0.93%) HTTPS
9 10 (0.93%) VLAN
9 10 (0.93%) Wireless
10 7 (0.65%) 3GPP
10 7 (0.65%) Cisco ASA
10 7 (0.65%) MPLS
11 6 (0.56%) Cisco Nexus
11 6 (0.56%) DHCP
11 6 (0.56%) IPsec
11 6 (0.56%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (5.59%) Power BI
2 53 (4.94%) SQL Server
3 52 (4.85%) PostgreSQL
4 51 (4.75%) Relational Database
5 36 (3.36%) Data Warehouse
6 34 (3.17%) Big Data
6 34 (3.17%) Metadata
7 28 (2.61%) NoSQL
8 27 (2.52%) MongoDB
9 23 (2.14%) MySQL
10 19 (1.77%) Data Lake
10 19 (1.77%) Hadoop
11 18 (1.68%) Tableau
12 11 (1.03%) Azure SQL Database
13 10 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
13 10 (0.93%) Data Mining
13 10 (0.93%) Elasticsearch
13 10 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
14 8 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 8 (0.75%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 85 (7.92%) Git
2 60 (5.59%) JIRA
3 41 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.17%) GitLab
5 29 (2.70%) Rational DOORS
6 14 (1.30%) Selenium
7 11 (1.03%) JUnit
8 10 (0.93%) Gradle
9 9 (0.84%) MLflow
10 8 (0.75%) Postman
10 8 (0.75%) TeamCity
11 7 (0.65%) Maven
11 7 (0.65%) REST Assured
12 6 (0.56%) Bitbucket
12 6 (0.56%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.56%) SpecFlow
13 5 (0.47%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.47%) Flyway
13 5 (0.47%) SonarQube
13 5 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 435 (40.54%) Social Skills
2 240 (22.37%) Finance
3 226 (21.06%) Analytical Skills
4 89 (8.29%) Banking
5 68 (6.34%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.13%) Aerospace
7 54 (5.03%) Documentation Skills
8 37 (3.45%) Organisational Skills
9 33 (3.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 31 (2.89%) Marketing
11 30 (2.80%) Telecoms
12 29 (2.70%) Influencing Skills
13 25 (2.33%) Front Office
14 23 (2.14%) Presentation Skills
15 21 (1.96%) Manufacturing
16 20 (1.86%) Legal
17 16 (1.49%) Law
17 16 (1.49%) Retail
18 15 (1.40%) Publishing
19 13 (1.21%) Military
Job Titles
1 128 (11.93%) Developer
2 112 (10.44%) Architect
3 96 (8.95%) Senior
4 81 (7.55%) Analyst
4 81 (7.55%) Lead
5 38 (3.54%) Software Engineer
6 37 (3.45%) Product Manager
7 34 (3.17%) Data Engineer
7 34 (3.17%) Delivery Manager
8 31 (2.89%) Data Scientist
9 30 (2.80%) Solutions Architect
10 28 (2.61%) Product Delivery Manager
11 25 (2.33%) Python Developer
11 25 (2.33%) Technical Support
12 24 (2.24%) Junior
12 24 (2.24%) Security Engineer
13 23 (2.14%) Java Developer
14 22 (2.05%) IT Support
14 22 (2.05%) Systems Delivery Manager
14 22 (2.05%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (7.83%) REST
2 63 (5.87%) React
3 58 (5.41%) .NET
4 43 (4.01%) Kafka
5 40 (3.73%) RESTful
6 35 (3.26%) Spring
7 33 (3.08%) Spring Boot
8 31 (2.89%) Middleware
9 26 (2.42%) OAuth
10 24 (2.24%) AngularJS
10 24 (2.24%) PyTorch
11 21 (1.96%) HTML
11 21 (1.96%) JSON
12 19 (1.77%) CSS
12 19 (1.77%) SAML
13 18 (1.68%) SOAP
13 18 (1.68%) Web Services
14 17 (1.58%) OAuth2
14 17 (1.58%) OpenID
14 17 (1.58%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 99 (9.23%) Management Information System
2 87 (8.11%) Product Ownership
3 83 (7.74%) Onboarding
4 77 (7.18%) Algorithms
5 75 (6.99%) Cloud Native
6 54 (5.03%) Data Structures
7 50 (4.66%) Distributed Systems
8 26 (2.42%) AI Agents
8 26 (2.42%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 25 (2.33%) Derivative
9 25 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
9 25 (2.33%) Virtual Team
10 20 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
11 19 (1.77%) Equities
12 18 (1.68%) Analytical Mindset
13 17 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
14 16 (1.49%) Fixed Income
15 15 (1.40%) Data Centre
15 15 (1.40%) Security Posture
15 15 (1.40%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 130 (12.12%) Windows
2 108 (10.07%) Linux
3 41 (3.82%) Unix
4 21 (1.96%) Android
5 19 (1.77%) Windows 10
5 19 (1.77%) Windows Server
6 18 (1.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (1.30%) Apple iOS
8 12 (1.12%) Mac OS
9 8 (0.75%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.47%) VMS
11 4 (0.37%) Debian
11 4 (0.37%) Rocky
12 2 (0.19%) Solaris
12 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.093%) CentOS
13 1 (0.093%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.093%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.093%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 319 (29.73%) Problem-Solving
2 278 (25.91%) Agile
3 247 (23.02%) AI
4 199 (18.55%) CI/CD
5 184 (17.15%) Software Engineering
6 178 (16.59%) Continuous Improvement
7 173 (16.12%) DevOps
8 146 (13.61%) Analytics
9 122 (11.37%) Cybersecurity
10 118 (11.00%) Stakeholder Management
11 117 (10.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 113 (10.53%) Machine Learning
13 108 (10.07%) ITIL
14 105 (9.79%) Mathematics
14 105 (9.79%) Microservices
15 99 (9.23%) Data Science
16 94 (8.76%) Containerisation
16 94 (8.76%) Decision-Making
17 91 (8.48%) Roadmaps
18 87 (8.11%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 299 (27.87%) Python
2 217 (20.22%) SQL
3 136 (12.67%) Java
4 69 (6.43%) JavaScript
5 61 (5.68%) C#
6 49 (4.57%) PowerShell
7 36 (3.36%) TypeScript
8 24 (2.24%) Bash
9 22 (2.05%) C++
10 20 (1.86%) R
11 13 (1.21%) Go
12 12 (1.12%) Shell Script
13 9 (0.84%) Perl
14 8 (0.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 8 (0.75%) Kotlin
15 7 (0.65%) Bicep
16 6 (0.56%) Scala
17 5 (0.47%) C
18 4 (0.37%) Ada
18 4 (0.37%) Rust
Qualifications
1 842 (78.47%) Degree
2 504 (46.97%) Computer Science Degree
3 202 (18.83%) Security Cleared
4 140 (13.05%) Master's Degree
5 125 (11.65%) SC Cleared
6 57 (5.31%) CISSP
7 39 (3.63%) Azure Certification
8 37 (3.45%) Microsoft Certification
9 36 (3.36%) CISM
10 35 (3.26%) PhD
11 28 (2.61%) AWS Certification
11 28 (2.61%) DBS Check
11 28 (2.61%) TOGAF Certification
12 26 (2.42%) PMI Certification
13 25 (2.33%) DV Cleared
14 24 (2.24%) Cisco Certification
14 24 (2.24%) PMP
15 21 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
16 18 (1.68%) CISA
17 16 (1.49%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (6.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 64 (5.96%) NIST
3 63 (5.87%) Data Quality
4 52 (4.85%) QA
5 35 (3.26%) GDPR
6 19 (1.77%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.58%) Accessibility
7 17 (1.58%) GRC
8 13 (1.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (1.12%) NCSC
10 11 (1.03%) HIPAA
10 11 (1.03%) SLA
11 10 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 10 (0.93%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 6 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
13 6 (0.56%) COBIT
14 5 (0.47%) DO-254
14 5 (0.47%) Government Security Classifications
14 5 (0.47%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 95 (8.85%) Docker
2 78 (7.27%) Active Directory
3 18 (1.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.75%) Firmware
4 8 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.65%) Hyper-V
6 6 (0.56%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.37%) vSphere
8 3 (0.28%) VMware Workstation
9 2 (0.19%) BitLocker
9 2 (0.19%) Ceph
9 2 (0.19%) Squid
9 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.093%) ACF2
10 1 (0.093%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 1 (0.093%) HDFS
10 1 (0.093%) RACF
Systems Management
1 119 (11.09%) Kubernetes
2 58 (5.41%) Terraform
3 37 (3.45%) Ansible
4 27 (2.52%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (2.33%) Prometheus
6 24 (2.24%) Grafana
7 14 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.37%) Kubeflow
8 4 (0.37%) Puppet
9 3 (0.28%) Cisco CUCM
9 3 (0.28%) Foglight
9 3 (0.28%) HP ALM
9 3 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.28%) Kibana
9 3 (0.28%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.19%) AirWatch
10 2 (0.19%) CASB
10 2 (0.19%) Network Intrusion Detection System
10 2 (0.19%) vRealize
10 2 (0.19%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 191 (17.80%) Microsoft
2 69 (6.43%) Oracle
3 52 (4.85%) Databricks
4 44 (4.10%) Google
5 36 (3.36%) IBM
6 35 (3.26%) ServiceNow
7 31 (2.89%) SAP
8 26 (2.42%) Splunk
9 25 (2.33%) VMware
10 21 (1.96%) Cisco
11 17 (1.58%) CyberArk
12 16 (1.49%) BeyondTrust
13 15 (1.40%) Okta
13 15 (1.40%) Palo Alto
14 14 (1.30%) BiZZdesign
14 14 (1.30%) Informatica
14 14 (1.30%) Salesforce
15 11 (1.03%) CheckPoint
15 11 (1.03%) Foundry
16 9 (0.84%) Citrix