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

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 95 72 72
Rank change year-on-year -23 0 +51
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,143 962 1,243
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.69% 3.25% 2.78%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.13% 3.60% 3.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 712 563 774
10th Percentile £177 £305 £313
25th Percentile £313 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.37% -8.86%
75th Percentile £651 £675 £661
90th Percentile £775 £825 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 27 85
10th Percentile £26.75 £26.73 £23.00
25th Percentile £33.50 £30.78 £42.50
Median hourly rate £69.44 £42.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.39% -22.73% +4.76%
75th Percentile £88.00 £62.00 £66.25
90th Percentile - £82.25 £74.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £80.75 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +115.33% -31.82% +10.00%

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 36,537 26,694 38,745
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.12% 90.29% 86.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,174 17,018 25,183
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.28% -1.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,160 902 2,347
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.51 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.89% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £77.10 £71.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.55 £31.76 £31.80
% change year-on-year -16.40% -0.13% -9.14%

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 10 March 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 10 March 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 10 March 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 -17 1,009 £484 -7.81% 922
UK excluding London -12 587 £400 -20.00% 695
London -32 446 £553 -7.83% 202
Work from Home -23 268 £523 -7.11% 378
North of England +23 184 £371 -30.87% 132
South East +11 173 £400 -20.00% 215
Yorkshire +12 94 £525 +5.00% 53
Midlands -42 87 £475 +33.43% 110
North West +5 86 £330 -40.11% 62
West Midlands -46 64 £495 +153.85% 57
South West -11 61 £500 -9.09% 80
East of England -40 39 £475 -25.49% 89
Scotland -4 36 £610 +16.19% 53
East Midlands -20 23 £447 +25.56% 51
Wales -12 15 £160 -44.35% 28
North East -12 5 £207 -64.09% 18
Northern Ireland -5 4 £369 -34.44% 4

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 67 (5.86%) Confluence
2 41 (3.59%) Apache Spark
3 34 (2.97%) SharePoint
4 19 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
5 18 (1.57%) Apache
6 13 (1.14%) Apache Airflow
7 6 (0.52%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.44%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.35%) GeoServer
9 4 (0.35%) IIS
9 4 (0.35%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 4 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
10 3 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 3 (0.26%) Ethereum
10 3 (0.26%) Hyperledger
10 3 (0.26%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.17%) CMS
11 2 (0.17%) SAS
11 2 (0.17%) Skype for Business
11 2 (0.17%) WebSphere
Applications
1 35 (3.06%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.79%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.44%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.44%) Simulink
6 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.17%) Trello
7 1 (0.087%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 21 (1.84%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.44%) Payment Gateway
4 4 (0.35%) Aladdin
4 4 (0.35%) SAP ERP
5 3 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.17%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.17%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.17%) SAP FS
6 2 (0.17%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.087%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.087%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 1 (0.087%) Maximo
7 1 (0.087%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.087%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.087%) SAP PM
7 1 (0.087%) SAP SM
Cloud Services
1 320 (28.00%) Azure
2 205 (17.94%) AWS
3 119 (10.41%) GCP
4 71 (6.21%) GitHub
5 66 (5.77%) Power Platform
6 53 (4.64%) Microsoft 365
7 47 (4.11%) Azure DevOps
7 47 (4.11%) SaaS
8 44 (3.85%) Serverless
9 40 (3.50%) Entra ID
10 30 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
11 22 (1.92%) IaaS
12 21 (1.84%) Azure Data Factory
13 20 (1.75%) Snowflake
14 18 (1.57%) Azure Machine Learning
15 17 (1.49%) AWS CloudFormation
15 17 (1.49%) Cloud Computing
16 15 (1.31%) Azure AKS
16 15 (1.31%) Power Automate
16 15 (1.31%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 49 (4.29%) Firewall
2 32 (2.80%) DNS
3 27 (2.36%) TCP/IP
4 22 (1.92%) Network Security
5 17 (1.49%) HTTP
6 15 (1.31%) WAN
7 14 (1.22%) LAN
8 13 (1.14%) BGP
8 13 (1.14%) SSH
8 13 (1.14%) VLAN
8 13 (1.14%) Wireless
9 11 (0.96%) DHCP
10 10 (0.87%) IPv4
10 10 (0.87%) Skype
10 10 (0.87%) VPN
11 9 (0.79%) Cisco IOS
11 9 (0.79%) OSPF
12 8 (0.70%) VoIP
13 7 (0.61%) HTTPS
13 7 (0.61%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 81 (7.09%) PostgreSQL
2 54 (4.72%) NoSQL
3 49 (4.29%) Power BI
4 44 (3.85%) Data Warehouse
4 44 (3.85%) Relational Database
5 43 (3.76%) SQL Server
6 38 (3.32%) Big Data
7 35 (3.06%) MySQL
8 24 (2.10%) Tableau
9 21 (1.84%) Hadoop
10 18 (1.57%) Elasticsearch
10 18 (1.57%) Metadata
10 18 (1.57%) MongoDB
11 16 (1.40%) Data Lake
12 11 (0.96%) Redis
13 10 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 9 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
15 8 (0.70%) Snowflake Schema
16 7 (0.61%) RDBMS
16 7 (0.61%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 97 (8.49%) Git
2 90 (7.87%) JIRA
3 65 (5.69%) Jenkins
4 57 (4.99%) GitLab
5 22 (1.92%) Rational DOORS
6 13 (1.14%) Postman
7 12 (1.05%) Liquibase
8 11 (0.96%) MLflow
8 11 (0.96%) Selenium
9 9 (0.79%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.70%) Bitbucket
10 8 (0.70%) CircleCI
10 8 (0.70%) Gradle
11 7 (0.61%) JUnit
12 6 (0.52%) Cypress.io
13 5 (0.44%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.44%) PyCharm
13 5 (0.44%) Visual Studio
14 4 (0.35%) Artifactory
14 4 (0.35%) Hardhat
General
1 517 (45.23%) Social Skills
2 291 (25.46%) Finance
3 247 (21.61%) Analytical Skills
4 115 (10.06%) Banking
5 77 (6.74%) Public Sector
6 45 (3.94%) Marketing
7 43 (3.76%) Documentation Skills
8 38 (3.32%) Legal
9 37 (3.24%) Aerospace
9 37 (3.24%) Influencing Skills
10 36 (3.15%) Presentation Skills
11 33 (2.89%) Financial Institution
12 32 (2.80%) Organisational Skills
13 30 (2.62%) Front Office
14 28 (2.45%) Telecoms
15 26 (2.27%) Electronics
16 23 (2.01%) Manufacturing
17 21 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 21 (1.84%) Investment Banking
18 16 (1.40%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 169 (14.79%) Developer
2 115 (10.06%) Architect
3 92 (8.05%) Lead
4 87 (7.61%) Analyst
5 86 (7.52%) Senior
6 47 (4.11%) Software Engineer
7 45 (3.94%) Solutions Architect
8 38 (3.32%) Data Scientist
9 33 (2.89%) Delivery Manager
10 31 (2.71%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 29 (2.54%) Product Manager
11 29 (2.54%) Python Developer
12 27 (2.36%) Technical Support
13 26 (2.27%) Business Analyst
14 24 (2.10%) Consultant
15 23 (2.01%) Java Developer
16 22 (1.92%) Cloud Engineer
16 22 (1.92%) Product Delivery Manager
17 21 (1.84%) Security Engineer
17 21 (1.84%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 103 (9.01%) REST
2 61 (5.34%) RESTful
3 58 (5.07%) React
4 52 (4.55%) .NET
5 45 (3.94%) Kafka
6 42 (3.67%) Middleware
7 39 (3.41%) Elastic Stack
8 36 (3.15%) PyTorch
9 35 (3.06%) TensorFlow
10 34 (2.97%) HTML
10 34 (2.97%) OAuth
11 33 (2.89%) Spring
12 32 (2.80%) JSON
13 31 (2.71%) XML
14 29 (2.54%) Node.js
14 29 (2.54%) Spring Boot
15 27 (2.36%) CSS
15 27 (2.36%) SOAP
16 24 (2.10%) LangChain
17 21 (1.84%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 125 (10.94%) Management Information System
2 93 (8.14%) Cloud Native
3 89 (7.79%) Algorithms
4 75 (6.56%) Product Ownership
5 61 (5.34%) Data Structures
6 58 (5.07%) Distributed Systems
7 50 (4.37%) Onboarding
8 33 (2.89%) Equities
9 30 (2.62%) Virtual Team
10 27 (2.36%) Data Protection Act
10 27 (2.36%) Security Posture
11 26 (2.27%) Derivative
12 24 (2.10%) AI Agents
13 23 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
14 22 (1.92%) Analytical Mindset
14 22 (1.92%) Data Centre
14 22 (1.92%) Distributed Computing
14 22 (1.92%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 21 (1.84%) Public Cloud
16 18 (1.57%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 153 (13.39%) Linux
2 127 (11.11%) Windows
3 58 (5.07%) Unix
4 25 (2.19%) Android
5 21 (1.84%) Windows Server
6 18 (1.57%) Mac OS
7 13 (1.14%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.61%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.44%) VMS
11 3 (0.26%) Debian
11 3 (0.26%) Ubuntu
12 2 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.17%) Rocky
13 1 (0.087%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.087%) Kali Linux
13 1 (0.087%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 375 (32.81%) Problem-Solving
2 320 (28.00%) Agile
3 244 (21.35%) AI
4 239 (20.91%) DevOps
5 234 (20.47%) CI/CD
6 191 (16.71%) Software Engineering
7 157 (13.74%) Microservices
8 142 (12.42%) Continuous Improvement
9 139 (12.16%) Analytics
10 138 (12.07%) Machine Learning
11 135 (11.81%) Containerisation
12 130 (11.37%) Cybersecurity
13 120 (10.50%) Stakeholder Management
14 117 (10.24%) Data Science
15 111 (9.71%) Data Modelling
16 108 (9.45%) Data Governance
16 108 (9.45%) Mathematics
17 107 (9.36%) Decision-Making
18 99 (8.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 91 (7.96%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 349 (30.53%) Python
2 204 (17.85%) SQL
3 141 (12.34%) Java
4 91 (7.96%) JavaScript
5 63 (5.51%) PowerShell
6 58 (5.07%) TypeScript
7 49 (4.29%) C#
8 43 (3.76%) Go
9 41 (3.59%) Bash
10 37 (3.24%) C++
11 19 (1.66%) R
12 18 (1.57%) Perl
13 16 (1.40%) Shell Script
14 14 (1.22%) Rust
15 11 (0.96%) Kotlin
16 8 (0.70%) Bicep
17 7 (0.61%) Ruby
17 7 (0.61%) Scala
18 6 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 6 (0.52%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 945 (82.68%) Degree
2 595 (52.06%) Computer Science Degree
3 225 (19.69%) Master's Degree
4 195 (17.06%) Security Cleared
5 122 (10.67%) SC Cleared
6 74 (6.47%) CISSP
7 56 (4.90%) PhD
8 52 (4.55%) CISM
9 51 (4.46%) DBS Check
10 42 (3.67%) Azure Certification
11 36 (3.15%) TOGAF Certification
12 32 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
13 31 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
14 30 (2.62%) PMI Certification
15 29 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
16 27 (2.36%) AWS Certification
16 27 (2.36%) DV Cleared
17 25 (2.19%) PMP
18 22 (1.92%) CompTIA Security+
19 18 (1.57%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (6.12%) QA
2 58 (5.07%) GDPR
3 53 (4.64%) Data Quality
4 51 (4.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 42 (3.67%) NIST
6 22 (1.92%) PCI DSS
7 16 (1.40%) Accessibility
7 16 (1.40%) GRC
8 10 (0.87%) NCSC
9 9 (0.79%) Def Stans
9 9 (0.79%) HIPAA
10 8 (0.70%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.70%) DO-254
10 8 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
11 6 (0.52%) NIST 800
11 6 (0.52%) PSD2
12 5 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.35%) COBIT
13 4 (0.35%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 158 (13.82%) Docker
2 60 (5.25%) Active Directory
3 20 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (1.14%) Firmware
5 6 (0.52%) VMware NSX
6 3 (0.26%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.17%) KVM
7 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Virtual Server
7 2 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.17%) vSphere
8 1 (0.087%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.087%) HDFS
8 1 (0.087%) PowerHA
8 1 (0.087%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 167 (14.61%) Kubernetes
2 90 (7.87%) Terraform
3 59 (5.16%) Ansible
4 49 (4.29%) Grafana
5 40 (3.50%) Prometheus
6 21 (1.84%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (1.49%) Puppet
8 14 (1.22%) Kibana
8 14 (1.22%) Single Sign-On
9 9 (0.79%) Kiali
10 8 (0.70%) Argo
10 8 (0.70%) SCCM
11 5 (0.44%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.35%) SCOM
13 3 (0.26%) Control-M
13 3 (0.26%) Kubeflow
13 3 (0.26%) PowerCLI
13 3 (0.26%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.26%) WSUS
14 2 (0.17%) Foglight
Vendors
1 182 (15.92%) Microsoft
2 73 (6.39%) Splunk
3 60 (5.25%) Google
4 58 (5.07%) Oracle
5 48 (4.20%) SAP
6 46 (4.02%) Databricks
7 36 (3.15%) IBM
8 26 (2.27%) ServiceNow
9 25 (2.19%) BiZZdesign
10 24 (2.10%) Cisco
11 22 (1.92%) Informatica
11 22 (1.92%) VMware
12 21 (1.84%) Salesforce
13 17 (1.49%) Palo Alto
13 17 (1.49%) Red Hat
14 13 (1.14%) CheckPoint
14 13 (1.14%) Okta
15 12 (1.05%) Foundry
15 12 (1.05%) OpenAI
15 12 (1.05%) Software AG