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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 63 62
Rank change year-on-year -66 -1 +37
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,045 1,133 1,391
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.04% 3.70% 3.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.40% 4.07% 3.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 596 630 833
10th Percentile £178 £239 £315
25th Percentile £218 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -5.66% -3.64%
75th Percentile £641 £663 £672
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £393 £450 £515
% change year-on-year -12.64% -12.58% -1.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 38 106
10th Percentile £26.25 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £35.00 £28.56 £38.75
Median hourly rate £72.22 £30.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +136.79% -44.55% -
75th Percentile £88.00 £66.44 £65.94
90th Percentile - £84.47 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.50 £30.32 £55.00
% change year-on-year +168.80% -44.87% +4.76%

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 43,613 27,816 36,814
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.98% 90.91% 85.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,139 17,565 23,448
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £414 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.18% -4.00% -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 2,612 1,364 2,554
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.49 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +4.17%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.95 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.00% -34.42% +8.91%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 -53 935 £475 -5.94% 696
UK excluding London -51 564 £393 -12.64% 458
London -59 406 £550 -8.33% 326
Work from Home -71 237 £500 -9.09% 254
South East -8 230 £225 -52.88% 161
North of England -36 133 £400 -15.79% 84
Yorkshire -2 78 £525 +22.38% 15
Midlands -76 70 £450 +50.00% 79
North West -51 53 £350 -26.32% 45
West Midlands -65 52 £450 +54.11% 45
East of England -32 42 £308 -52.69% 51
Scotland -33 38 £630 +26.00% 16
South West -49 38 £469 +95.42% 53
East Midlands -29 17 £447 +32.44% 34
Wales -26 9 £530 +50.89% 9
Northern Ireland +8 7 £350 -41.67% 21
North East -36 3 £160 -66.32% 24

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 47 (4.50%) Confluence
2 37 (3.54%) Apache Spark
3 28 (2.68%) SharePoint
4 23 (2.20%) Apache Airflow
5 22 (2.11%) Apache
6 9 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.57%) IIS
8 5 (0.48%) SAS
9 3 (0.29%) Camunda
9 3 (0.29%) CMS
9 3 (0.29%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.29%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.19%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.19%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.19%) nginx
10 2 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.096%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.096%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.096%) Tomcat
Applications
1 37 (3.54%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (2.49%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.72%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.67%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.67%) Revit
6 4 (0.38%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.19%) Simulink
8 2 (0.19%) Trello
9 1 (0.096%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.096%) Sketch
9 1 (0.096%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 19 (1.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.38%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
3 3 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.19%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.19%) Workfront
5 1 (0.096%) Misys Equation
5 1 (0.096%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.096%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.096%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.096%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.096%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.096%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
5 1 (0.096%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.096%) SAP SM
5 1 (0.096%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.096%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 317 (30.33%) Azure
2 197 (18.85%) AWS
3 97 (9.28%) GCP
4 72 (6.89%) Power Platform
5 58 (5.55%) Microsoft 365
6 52 (4.98%) Entra ID
7 46 (4.40%) Azure DevOps
8 45 (4.31%) GitHub
8 45 (4.31%) SaaS
9 27 (2.58%) Snowflake
10 26 (2.49%) Serverless
11 22 (2.11%) PowerApps
12 21 (2.01%) GitHub Actions
13 18 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
14 16 (1.53%) Azure AKS
15 15 (1.44%) Azure Data Factory
15 15 (1.44%) Power Automate
16 13 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
16 13 (1.24%) IaaS
17 12 (1.15%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 37 (3.54%) Firewall
2 33 (3.16%) Network Security
3 26 (2.49%) DNS
4 25 (2.39%) TCP/IP
5 19 (1.82%) VPN
6 16 (1.53%) WAN
7 15 (1.44%) BGP
8 13 (1.24%) LAN
9 12 (1.15%) OSPF
9 12 (1.15%) SSH
10 10 (0.96%) HTTPS
10 10 (0.96%) VLAN
10 10 (0.96%) Wireless
11 8 (0.77%) 3GPP
12 7 (0.67%) Cisco ASA
12 7 (0.67%) MPLS
13 6 (0.57%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.57%) DHCP
13 6 (0.57%) IPsec
14 5 (0.48%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (5.65%) Power BI
2 52 (4.98%) SQL Server
3 51 (4.88%) PostgreSQL
4 49 (4.69%) Relational Database
5 37 (3.54%) Data Warehouse
6 34 (3.25%) Big Data
7 32 (3.06%) Metadata
8 29 (2.78%) NoSQL
9 27 (2.58%) MongoDB
10 23 (2.20%) MySQL
11 21 (2.01%) Hadoop
12 19 (1.82%) Data Lake
13 18 (1.72%) Tableau
14 11 (1.05%) Snowflake Schema
15 10 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
15 10 (0.96%) Elasticsearch
16 9 (0.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 8 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
17 8 (0.77%) Redis
17 8 (0.77%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 81 (7.75%) Git
2 59 (5.65%) JIRA
3 40 (3.83%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.25%) GitLab
5 28 (2.68%) Rational DOORS
6 15 (1.44%) Selenium
7 11 (1.05%) JUnit
8 10 (0.96%) Gradle
9 8 (0.77%) MLflow
9 8 (0.77%) Postman
9 8 (0.77%) TeamCity
10 7 (0.67%) Cypress.io
10 7 (0.67%) Maven
10 7 (0.67%) REST Assured
11 6 (0.57%) Bitbucket
11 6 (0.57%) Cucumber
11 6 (0.57%) Visual Studio
12 5 (0.48%) Flyway
12 5 (0.48%) SonarQube
12 5 (0.48%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 425 (40.67%) Social Skills
2 240 (22.97%) Finance
3 225 (21.53%) Analytical Skills
4 90 (8.61%) Banking
5 68 (6.51%) Public Sector
6 56 (5.36%) Aerospace
7 54 (5.17%) Documentation Skills
8 33 (3.16%) Telecoms
9 32 (3.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 32 (3.06%) Marketing
9 32 (3.06%) Organisational Skills
10 28 (2.68%) Influencing Skills
11 27 (2.58%) Presentation Skills
12 25 (2.39%) Front Office
13 22 (2.11%) Legal
14 20 (1.91%) Manufacturing
15 16 (1.53%) Law
15 16 (1.53%) Retail
16 14 (1.34%) Publishing
17 12 (1.15%) Military
Job Titles
1 118 (11.29%) Developer
2 113 (10.81%) Architect
3 85 (8.13%) Senior
4 83 (7.94%) Lead
5 81 (7.75%) Analyst
6 37 (3.54%) Software Engineer
7 36 (3.44%) Product Manager
8 34 (3.25%) Delivery Manager
9 33 (3.16%) Data Engineer
10 32 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
11 31 (2.97%) Data Scientist
12 28 (2.68%) Product Delivery Manager
13 25 (2.39%) Technical Support
14 24 (2.30%) Security Engineer
15 22 (2.11%) IT Support
15 22 (2.11%) Junior
15 22 (2.11%) Systems Delivery Manager
15 22 (2.11%) Systems Manager
16 21 (2.01%) Java Developer
16 21 (2.01%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 82 (7.85%) REST
2 62 (5.93%) React
3 54 (5.17%) .NET
4 43 (4.11%) Kafka
5 37 (3.54%) Middleware
5 37 (3.54%) RESTful
6 34 (3.25%) Spring
6 34 (3.25%) Spring Boot
7 27 (2.58%) OAuth
8 24 (2.30%) AngularJS
9 21 (2.01%) HTML
9 21 (2.01%) JSON
10 19 (1.82%) CSS
10 19 (1.82%) PyTorch
10 19 (1.82%) SAML
11 18 (1.72%) SOAP
11 18 (1.72%) Web Services
12 17 (1.63%) OAuth2
12 17 (1.63%) OpenID
13 16 (1.53%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 103 (9.86%) Management Information System
2 85 (8.13%) Product Ownership
3 82 (7.85%) Onboarding
4 72 (6.89%) Algorithms
5 70 (6.70%) Cloud Native
6 52 (4.98%) Data Structures
7 48 (4.59%) Distributed Systems
8 27 (2.58%) Virtual Team
9 24 (2.30%) Derivative
10 23 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
11 22 (2.11%) AI Agents
12 21 (2.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 20 (1.91%) Equities
14 18 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
15 17 (1.63%) Analytical Mindset
15 17 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
15 17 (1.63%) Taxonomies
16 16 (1.53%) Data Centre
16 16 (1.53%) Fixed Income
16 16 (1.53%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 130 (12.44%) Windows
2 113 (10.81%) Linux
3 42 (4.02%) Unix
4 21 (2.01%) Android
5 20 (1.91%) Windows 10
6 18 (1.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 18 (1.72%) Windows Server
7 14 (1.34%) Apple iOS
8 12 (1.15%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.67%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.48%) VMS
11 4 (0.38%) Debian
11 4 (0.38%) Rocky
12 2 (0.19%) Solaris
12 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.096%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.096%) MVS
13 1 (0.096%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.096%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 313 (29.95%) Problem-Solving
2 280 (26.79%) Agile
3 235 (22.49%) AI
4 192 (18.37%) CI/CD
5 179 (17.13%) Continuous Improvement
6 177 (16.94%) DevOps
7 173 (16.56%) Software Engineering
8 142 (13.59%) Analytics
9 122 (11.67%) Cybersecurity
10 112 (10.72%) Stakeholder Management
11 109 (10.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 106 (10.14%) Microservices
13 104 (9.95%) ITIL
14 103 (9.86%) Machine Learning
15 99 (9.47%) Mathematics
16 97 (9.28%) Decision-Making
17 96 (9.19%) Data Science
18 90 (8.61%) Containerisation
18 90 (8.61%) Data Governance
19 89 (8.52%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 290 (27.75%) Python
2 212 (20.29%) SQL
3 127 (12.15%) Java
4 69 (6.60%) JavaScript
5 59 (5.65%) C#
6 49 (4.69%) PowerShell
7 34 (3.25%) TypeScript
8 24 (2.30%) Bash
9 21 (2.01%) C++
9 21 (2.01%) R
10 13 (1.24%) Go
11 11 (1.05%) Shell Script
12 9 (0.86%) Perl
13 8 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 8 (0.77%) Kotlin
13 8 (0.77%) Scala
14 7 (0.67%) Rust
15 5 (0.48%) Bicep
16 4 (0.38%) Ada
16 4 (0.38%) C
Qualifications
1 824 (78.85%) Degree
2 493 (47.18%) Computer Science Degree
3 199 (19.04%) Security Cleared
4 133 (12.73%) Master's Degree
5 123 (11.77%) SC Cleared
6 59 (5.65%) CISSP
7 37 (3.54%) CISM
7 37 (3.54%) Microsoft Certification
8 34 (3.25%) Azure Certification
9 31 (2.97%) PhD
10 28 (2.68%) TOGAF Certification
11 27 (2.58%) AWS Certification
11 27 (2.58%) PMI Certification
12 25 (2.39%) DV Cleared
13 24 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
13 24 (2.30%) PMP
14 22 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
15 21 (2.01%) DBS Check
16 19 (1.82%) CISA
17 16 (1.53%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (6.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 65 (6.22%) NIST
3 62 (5.93%) Data Quality
4 53 (5.07%) QA
5 38 (3.64%) GDPR
6 20 (1.91%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.63%) Accessibility
7 17 (1.63%) GRC
8 15 (1.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (1.15%) NCSC
9 12 (1.15%) SLA
10 11 (1.05%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 10 (0.96%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.67%) COBIT
12 7 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 6 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
14 5 (0.48%) ISO 20022
14 5 (0.48%) ITGC
14 5 (0.48%) PSD2
System Software
1 97 (9.28%) Docker
2 78 (7.46%) Active Directory
3 19 (1.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.86%) Firmware
5 8 (0.77%) Hyper-V
5 8 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.67%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.38%) vSphere
8 3 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
9 2 (0.19%) BitLocker
9 2 (0.19%) Ceph
9 2 (0.19%) Squid
9 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.096%) ACF2
10 1 (0.096%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 1 (0.096%) HDFS
10 1 (0.096%) KVM
10 1 (0.096%) RACF
Systems Management
1 120 (11.48%) Kubernetes
2 57 (5.45%) Terraform
3 39 (3.73%) Ansible
4 28 (2.68%) Prometheus
5 27 (2.58%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (2.49%) Grafana
7 15 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (0.48%) Puppet
9 4 (0.38%) Kiali
9 4 (0.38%) Kibana
9 4 (0.38%) Kubeflow
10 3 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
10 3 (0.29%) Control-M
10 3 (0.29%) Foglight
10 3 (0.29%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
10 3 (0.29%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.19%) CASB
11 2 (0.19%) SCCM
11 2 (0.19%) vRealize
Vendors
1 184 (17.61%) Microsoft
2 67 (6.41%) Oracle
3 49 (4.69%) Databricks
4 38 (3.64%) Google
5 35 (3.35%) IBM
6 33 (3.16%) ServiceNow
7 31 (2.97%) SAP
8 28 (2.68%) Splunk
9 25 (2.39%) VMware
10 19 (1.82%) Cisco
11 16 (1.53%) CyberArk
11 16 (1.53%) Informatica
11 16 (1.53%) Okta
12 15 (1.44%) BeyondTrust
12 15 (1.44%) Palo Alto
13 14 (1.34%) BiZZdesign
14 12 (1.15%) Salesforce
15 11 (1.05%) CheckPoint
16 9 (0.86%) Citrix
16 9 (0.86%) Foundry