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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 63 61
Rank change year-on-year -66 -2 +34
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,074 1,204 1,384
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.04% 3.71% 3.25%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.40% 4.10% 3.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 606 674 834
10th Percentile £178 £203 £319
25th Percentile £208 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.60% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £625 £655 £675
90th Percentile £760 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £388 £447 £517
% change year-on-year -13.31% -13.54% -1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 47 98
10th Percentile £25.78 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £39.38
Median hourly rate £69.22 £54.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.01% -0.91% -8.33%
75th Percentile £87.16 £69.46 £66.25
90th Percentile £88.00 £88.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.50 £67.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +21.64% +21.82% -

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 44,779 29,366 36,386
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.09% 90.39% 85.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,858 18,449 23,259
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £419 £405 £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 2,648 1,547 2,431
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.22 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.21 £17.45 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.29%
75th Percentile £68.50 £52.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.65 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.34 £38.12
% change year-on-year +84.88% -36.15% -3.74%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -51 966 £453 -9.40% 855
UK excluding London -49 583 £388 -13.31% 530
London -59 418 £525 -12.50% 425
Work from Home -83 242 £500 -9.09% 299
South East -9 238 £294 -38.48% 182
North of England -51 135 £400 -14.45% 88
Midlands -68 81 £393 +22.66% 85
Yorkshire -17 71 £525 +30.35% 20
West Midlands -62 56 £429 +46.92% 43
North West -59 55 £364 -23.37% 42
East of England -30 45 £400 -38.46% 74
Scotland -35 36 £525 +7.69% 13
South West -55 35 £435 +81.04% 61
East Midlands -22 24 £275 -34.52% 42
North East -34 10 £195 -57.84% 26
Wales -19 7 £530 +18.83% 7
Northern Ireland - 7 £350 - 36

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 (4.38%) Confluence
2 35 (3.26%) Apache Spark
3 30 (2.79%) SharePoint
4 24 (2.23%) Apache Airflow
5 23 (2.14%) Apache
6 9 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.56%) IIS
8 5 (0.47%) SAS
9 4 (0.37%) Camunda
9 4 (0.37%) CMS
10 3 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.28%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.19%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.19%) nginx
11 2 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.093%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.093%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.093%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 1 (0.093%) Tomcat
Applications
1 43 (4.00%) Microsoft Office
2 30 (2.79%) Microsoft Excel
3 17 (1.58%) MS Visio
4 14 (1.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.65%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.65%) Revit
6 5 (0.47%) Microsoft Project
7 4 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.28%) Trello
9 2 (0.19%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.19%) Simulink
9 2 (0.19%) Sketch
10 1 (0.093%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 18 (1.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.47%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.19%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.19%) Primavera
4 2 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.19%) Workfront
5 1 (0.093%) Maximo
5 1 (0.093%) Misys Equation
5 1 (0.093%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.093%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.093%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
5 1 (0.093%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.093%) SAP SM
5 1 (0.093%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.093%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 310 (28.86%) Azure
2 196 (18.25%) AWS
3 99 (9.22%) GCP
4 75 (6.98%) Power Platform
5 56 (5.21%) Entra ID
6 55 (5.12%) Microsoft 365
7 43 (4.00%) GitHub
7 43 (4.00%) SaaS
8 42 (3.91%) Azure DevOps
9 28 (2.61%) Serverless
9 28 (2.61%) Snowflake
10 22 (2.05%) PowerApps
11 20 (1.86%) GitHub Actions
12 17 (1.58%) Azure AKS
13 15 (1.40%) Power Automate
14 14 (1.30%) AWS CloudFormation
14 14 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
14 14 (1.30%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 14 (1.30%) Azure Data Factory
15 13 (1.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 33 (3.07%) Firewall
2 31 (2.89%) Network Security
3 27 (2.51%) DNS
4 24 (2.23%) TCP/IP
5 23 (2.14%) VPN
6 18 (1.68%) WAN
7 15 (1.40%) LAN
8 14 (1.30%) BGP
9 12 (1.12%) SSH
10 11 (1.02%) OSPF
11 10 (0.93%) HTTPS
11 10 (0.93%) VLAN
11 10 (0.93%) Wireless
12 7 (0.65%) 3GPP
12 7 (0.65%) Cisco ASA
12 7 (0.65%) DHCP
12 7 (0.65%) MPLS
12 7 (0.65%) Wireshark
13 6 (0.56%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.56%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (5.68%) Power BI
2 54 (5.03%) SQL Server
3 53 (4.93%) PostgreSQL
4 52 (4.84%) Relational Database
5 36 (3.35%) Data Warehouse
6 34 (3.17%) Metadata
7 33 (3.07%) Big Data
8 28 (2.61%) MongoDB
9 25 (2.33%) NoSQL
10 21 (1.96%) MySQL
11 18 (1.68%) Data Lake
11 18 (1.68%) Hadoop
12 17 (1.58%) Tableau
13 11 (1.02%) Azure SQL Database
13 11 (1.02%) Elasticsearch
14 10 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
14 10 (0.93%) Data Mining
14 10 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
15 8 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 8 (0.74%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 87 (8.10%) Git
2 59 (5.49%) JIRA
3 40 (3.72%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.17%) GitLab
5 30 (2.79%) Rational DOORS
6 14 (1.30%) Selenium
7 12 (1.12%) JUnit
8 11 (1.02%) Gradle
9 9 (0.84%) MLflow
10 8 (0.74%) Maven
10 8 (0.74%) Postman
10 8 (0.74%) REST Assured
10 8 (0.74%) SpecFlow
10 8 (0.74%) TeamCity
11 7 (0.65%) Sonatype Nexus
12 6 (0.56%) Bitbucket
12 6 (0.56%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.56%) SonarQube
13 5 (0.47%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.47%) Flyway
General
1 436 (40.60%) Social Skills
2 239 (22.25%) Finance
3 229 (21.32%) Analytical Skills
4 93 (8.66%) Banking
5 70 (6.52%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.12%) Aerospace
6 55 (5.12%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (3.35%) Organisational Skills
8 35 (3.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 29 (2.70%) Influencing Skills
9 29 (2.70%) Telecoms
10 28 (2.61%) Marketing
11 25 (2.33%) Front Office
12 23 (2.14%) Manufacturing
13 21 (1.96%) Legal
13 21 (1.96%) Presentation Skills
14 16 (1.49%) Law
14 16 (1.49%) Retail
15 14 (1.30%) Publishing
16 13 (1.21%) Military
Job Titles
1 132 (12.29%) Developer
2 113 (10.52%) Architect
3 100 (9.31%) Senior
4 85 (7.91%) Analyst
5 81 (7.54%) Lead
6 37 (3.45%) Product Manager
6 37 (3.45%) Software Engineer
7 34 (3.17%) Data Engineer
7 34 (3.17%) Delivery Manager
8 31 (2.89%) Data Scientist
9 30 (2.79%) Solutions Architect
10 28 (2.61%) Product Delivery Manager
11 25 (2.33%) Junior
11 25 (2.33%) Python Developer
12 24 (2.23%) Java Developer
13 23 (2.14%) Full-Stack Developer
14 22 (2.05%) IT Support
14 22 (2.05%) Systems Delivery Manager
14 22 (2.05%) Systems Manager
15 21 (1.96%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (8.19%) REST
2 66 (6.15%) React
3 55 (5.12%) .NET
4 43 (4.00%) Kafka
5 41 (3.82%) RESTful
6 36 (3.35%) Spring
7 33 (3.07%) Spring Boot
8 29 (2.70%) Middleware
9 27 (2.51%) OAuth
10 26 (2.42%) AngularJS
11 24 (2.23%) PyTorch
12 23 (2.14%) HTML
13 21 (1.96%) CSS
13 21 (1.96%) JSON
14 19 (1.77%) SAML
14 19 (1.77%) Web Services
15 18 (1.68%) OAuth2
15 18 (1.68%) OpenID
15 18 (1.68%) SOAP
16 17 (1.58%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 101 (9.40%) Management Information System
2 86 (8.01%) Product Ownership
3 78 (7.26%) Onboarding
4 77 (7.17%) Algorithms
5 75 (6.98%) Cloud Native
6 57 (5.31%) Data Structures
7 49 (4.56%) Distributed Systems
8 29 (2.70%) Virtual Team
9 26 (2.42%) AI Agents
9 26 (2.42%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 25 (2.33%) Derivative
10 25 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
11 21 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
12 19 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
12 19 (1.77%) Equities
13 17 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
13 17 (1.58%) Fixed Income
14 16 (1.49%) Operational Technology
15 15 (1.40%) Data Centre
15 15 (1.40%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 126 (11.73%) Windows
2 106 (9.87%) Linux
3 39 (3.63%) Unix
4 21 (1.96%) Android
5 20 (1.86%) Windows Server
6 18 (1.68%) Windows 10
7 17 (1.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (1.30%) Apple iOS
9 11 (1.02%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.74%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.47%) VMS
12 3 (0.28%) Debian
12 3 (0.28%) Rocky
13 2 (0.19%) Solaris
13 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
13 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.093%) CentOS
14 1 (0.093%) Embedded Linux
14 1 (0.093%) OpenVMS
14 1 (0.093%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 319 (29.70%) Problem-Solving
2 278 (25.88%) Agile
3 237 (22.07%) AI
4 192 (17.88%) CI/CD
5 185 (17.23%) Continuous Improvement
6 184 (17.13%) Software Engineering
7 165 (15.36%) DevOps
8 145 (13.50%) Analytics
9 125 (11.64%) Stakeholder Management
10 122 (11.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 121 (11.27%) Cybersecurity
12 112 (10.43%) Machine Learning
13 106 (9.87%) ITIL
14 105 (9.78%) Mathematics
15 98 (9.12%) Decision-Making
16 97 (9.03%) Data Science
16 97 (9.03%) Microservices
17 92 (8.57%) Roadmaps
18 87 (8.10%) Data Governance
19 84 (7.82%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 292 (27.19%) Python
2 212 (19.74%) SQL
3 136 (12.66%) Java
4 69 (6.42%) JavaScript
5 59 (5.49%) C#
6 52 (4.84%) PowerShell
7 37 (3.45%) TypeScript
8 23 (2.14%) Bash
9 21 (1.96%) C++
10 19 (1.77%) R
11 13 (1.21%) Shell Script
12 11 (1.02%) Go
13 9 (0.84%) Kotlin
14 8 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 8 (0.74%) Perl
15 7 (0.65%) Bicep
15 7 (0.65%) C
16 6 (0.56%) Scala
17 4 (0.37%) Ada
18 3 (0.28%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 836 (77.84%) Degree
2 491 (45.72%) Computer Science Degree
3 206 (19.18%) Security Cleared
4 139 (12.94%) Master's Degree
5 127 (11.82%) SC Cleared
6 54 (5.03%) CISSP
7 44 (4.10%) Azure Certification
8 38 (3.54%) Microsoft Certification
9 36 (3.35%) CISM
10 33 (3.07%) PhD
11 29 (2.70%) AWS Certification
11 29 (2.70%) DBS Check
12 28 (2.61%) PMI Certification
12 28 (2.61%) TOGAF Certification
13 26 (2.42%) DV Cleared
13 26 (2.42%) PMP
14 23 (2.14%) Cisco Certification
15 22 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
16 19 (1.77%) CISA
17 15 (1.40%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (6.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 66 (6.15%) Data Quality
3 62 (5.77%) NIST
4 54 (5.03%) QA
5 34 (3.17%) GDPR
6 19 (1.77%) Accessibility
7 16 (1.49%) GRC
7 16 (1.49%) PCI DSS
8 13 (1.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (1.12%) NCSC
10 11 (1.02%) HIPAA
10 11 (1.02%) 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
14 5 (0.47%) DO-254
14 5 (0.47%) ISO 20022
14 5 (0.47%) ITGC
14 5 (0.47%) PSD2
System Software
1 88 (8.19%) Docker
2 75 (6.98%) Active Directory
3 19 (1.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.84%) Firmware
5 8 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.65%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.56%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.37%) vSphere
9 3 (0.28%) VMware Workstation
10 2 (0.19%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.19%) Ceph
10 2 (0.19%) Squid
10 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.093%) ACF2
11 1 (0.093%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 1 (0.093%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.093%) HDFS
11 1 (0.093%) RACF
Systems Management
1 109 (10.15%) Kubernetes
2 53 (4.93%) Terraform
3 35 (3.26%) Ansible
4 25 (2.33%) Prometheus
5 24 (2.23%) Microsoft Intune
6 23 (2.14%) Grafana
7 14 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.37%) Kubeflow
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%) Puppet
9 3 (0.28%) SCCM
9 3 (0.28%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.19%) AirWatch
10 2 (0.19%) CASB
10 2 (0.19%) Control-M
10 2 (0.19%) Kibana
10 2 (0.19%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 195 (18.16%) Microsoft
2 69 (6.42%) Oracle
3 51 (4.75%) Databricks
4 42 (3.91%) Google
5 39 (3.63%) IBM
6 35 (3.26%) ServiceNow
7 32 (2.98%) SAP
8 28 (2.61%) VMware
9 23 (2.14%) Splunk
10 22 (2.05%) Cisco
11 19 (1.77%) CyberArk
12 17 (1.58%) BeyondTrust
13 14 (1.30%) Informatica
13 14 (1.30%) Palo Alto
14 13 (1.21%) Okta
14 13 (1.21%) Salesforce
15 11 (1.02%) BiZZdesign
16 10 (0.93%) CheckPoint
16 10 (0.93%) Foundry
17 9 (0.84%) Citrix