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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 64 61
Rank change year-on-year -61 -3 +37
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,030 1,116 1,377
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.02% 3.72% 3.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.38% 4.08% 3.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 589 622 819
10th Percentile £178 £241 £315
25th Percentile £218 £364 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.60% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £650 £663 £650
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £388 £450 £515
% change year-on-year -13.89% -12.58% -1.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 37 105
10th Percentile £26.25 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £38.50 £28.41 £38.75
Median hourly rate £75.00 £30.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +145.90% -44.55% -
75th Percentile £88.00 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile - £84.98 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.75 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +118.00% -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 43,234 27,342 36,961
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.93% 91.04% 85.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,976 17,315 23,545
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.09% -4.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £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 2,595 1,301 2,587
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.65
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.79 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.08 £38.12
% change year-on-year +77.47% -34.22% +17.29%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -51 920 £475 -7.54% 737
UK excluding London -54 548 £388 -13.89% 474
London -60 404 £550 -8.33% 356
Work from Home -77 233 £500 -9.09% 276
South East -9 221 £215 -55.61% 168
North of England -40 132 £400 -15.79% 94
Yorkshire -4 78 £525 +22.38% 17
Midlands -72 65 £450 +50.00% 74
North West -51 53 £350 -26.32% 50
West Midlands -67 51 £450 +50.00% 41
East of England -31 41 £308 -52.69% 50
Scotland -33 38 £630 +26.00% 16
South West -53 38 £469 +95.42% 55
East Midlands -34 13 £528 +62.18% 33
Wales -29 9 £530 +82.76% 8
Northern Ireland +6 7 £350 -41.67% 27
North East -38 2 £125 -73.68% 27

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 46 (4.47%) Confluence
2 36 (3.50%) Apache Spark
3 28 (2.72%) SharePoint
4 22 (2.14%) Apache Airflow
5 21 (2.04%) Apache
6 9 (0.87%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.58%) IIS
8 5 (0.49%) SAS
9 3 (0.29%) Camunda
9 3 (0.29%) CMS
9 3 (0.29%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.19%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.19%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.19%) nginx
10 2 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.19%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.097%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.097%) Tomcat
Applications
1 36 (3.50%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (2.52%) Microsoft Excel
3 17 (1.65%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.68%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.68%) Revit
6 4 (0.39%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.19%) Simulink
8 2 (0.19%) Trello
9 1 (0.097%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.097%) Sketch
9 1 (0.097%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 20 (1.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.39%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.39%) 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%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.19%) Workfront
5 1 (0.097%) Misys Equation
5 1 (0.097%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.097%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.097%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.097%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
5 1 (0.097%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.097%) SAP SM
5 1 (0.097%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.097%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 311 (30.19%) Azure
2 195 (18.93%) AWS
3 92 (8.93%) GCP
4 70 (6.80%) Power Platform
5 56 (5.44%) Microsoft 365
6 50 (4.85%) Entra ID
7 46 (4.47%) SaaS
8 44 (4.27%) Azure DevOps
9 43 (4.17%) GitHub
10 24 (2.33%) Snowflake
11 23 (2.23%) Serverless
12 21 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
12 21 (2.04%) PowerApps
13 17 (1.65%) AWS CloudFormation
14 15 (1.46%) Power Automate
15 14 (1.36%) Azure AKS
16 13 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
16 13 (1.26%) Azure Data Factory
17 12 (1.17%) IaaS
18 11 (1.07%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 35 (3.40%) Firewall
2 32 (3.11%) Network Security
3 23 (2.23%) DNS
3 23 (2.23%) TCP/IP
4 14 (1.36%) BGP
4 14 (1.36%) VPN
4 14 (1.36%) WAN
5 12 (1.17%) SSH
6 11 (1.07%) LAN
6 11 (1.07%) OSPF
7 10 (0.97%) HTTPS
8 9 (0.87%) 3GPP
8 9 (0.87%) VLAN
8 9 (0.87%) Wireless
9 6 (0.58%) DHCP
9 6 (0.58%) LTE
9 6 (0.58%) MPLS
10 5 (0.49%) IPsec
10 5 (0.49%) RTP
10 5 (0.49%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (5.63%) Power BI
2 51 (4.95%) SQL Server
3 48 (4.66%) Relational Database
4 47 (4.56%) PostgreSQL
5 36 (3.50%) Data Warehouse
6 33 (3.20%) Big Data
7 31 (3.01%) Metadata
8 26 (2.52%) NoSQL
9 25 (2.43%) MongoDB
10 22 (2.14%) MySQL
11 21 (2.04%) Hadoop
12 18 (1.75%) Tableau
13 17 (1.65%) Data Lake
14 10 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
14 10 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
14 10 (0.97%) Snowflake Schema
15 9 (0.87%) Redis
15 9 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 8 (0.78%) Data Mining
16 8 (0.78%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 80 (7.77%) Git
2 59 (5.73%) JIRA
3 40 (3.88%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.30%) GitLab
5 28 (2.72%) Rational DOORS
6 14 (1.36%) Selenium
7 11 (1.07%) Gradle
8 10 (0.97%) JUnit
9 8 (0.78%) MLflow
9 8 (0.78%) Postman
9 8 (0.78%) TeamCity
10 7 (0.68%) Cypress.io
10 7 (0.68%) Maven
10 7 (0.68%) REST Assured
10 7 (0.68%) Visual Studio
11 6 (0.58%) Bitbucket
11 6 (0.58%) CircleCI
11 6 (0.58%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.49%) Flyway
12 5 (0.49%) SonarQube
General
1 420 (40.78%) Social Skills
2 238 (23.11%) Finance
3 220 (21.36%) Analytical Skills
4 90 (8.74%) Banking
5 64 (6.21%) Public Sector
6 57 (5.53%) Aerospace
7 53 (5.15%) Documentation Skills
8 34 (3.30%) Telecoms
9 32 (3.11%) Marketing
10 31 (3.01%) Organisational Skills
11 30 (2.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 30 (2.91%) Presentation Skills
12 27 (2.62%) Influencing Skills
13 25 (2.43%) Front Office
14 24 (2.33%) Legal
15 19 (1.84%) Manufacturing
16 16 (1.55%) Retail
17 15 (1.46%) Law
17 15 (1.46%) Publishing
18 12 (1.17%) Military
Job Titles
1 114 (11.07%) Developer
2 111 (10.78%) Architect
3 83 (8.06%) Analyst
3 83 (8.06%) Senior
4 81 (7.86%) Lead
5 38 (3.69%) Software Engineer
6 36 (3.50%) Product Manager
7 34 (3.30%) Delivery Manager
8 33 (3.20%) Solutions Architect
9 31 (3.01%) Data Scientist
10 29 (2.82%) Data Engineer
11 28 (2.72%) Product Delivery Manager
12 26 (2.52%) Technical Support
13 22 (2.14%) Junior
13 22 (2.14%) Python Developer
13 22 (2.14%) Security Engineer
13 22 (2.14%) Systems Delivery Manager
13 22 (2.14%) Systems Manager
14 20 (1.94%) IT Analyst
14 20 (1.94%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (8.25%) REST
2 60 (5.83%) React
3 54 (5.24%) .NET
4 44 (4.27%) Kafka
5 41 (3.98%) Middleware
6 37 (3.59%) RESTful
7 32 (3.11%) Spring Boot
8 31 (3.01%) Spring
9 29 (2.82%) OAuth
10 22 (2.14%) AngularJS
11 21 (2.04%) JSON
12 20 (1.94%) SOAP
13 19 (1.84%) HTML
13 19 (1.84%) PyTorch
13 19 (1.84%) SAML
14 18 (1.75%) Web Services
15 17 (1.65%) CSS
15 17 (1.65%) OAuth2
15 17 (1.65%) OpenID
16 16 (1.55%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 104 (10.10%) Management Information System
2 84 (8.16%) Product Ownership
3 81 (7.86%) Onboarding
4 72 (6.99%) Algorithms
5 65 (6.31%) Cloud Native
6 54 (5.24%) Data Structures
7 50 (4.85%) Distributed Systems
8 27 (2.62%) Virtual Team
9 26 (2.52%) Derivative
10 23 (2.23%) AI Agents
10 23 (2.23%) Self-Motivation
11 22 (2.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 21 (2.04%) Equities
13 19 (1.84%) Taxonomies
14 18 (1.75%) Analytical Mindset
14 18 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
15 16 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
15 16 (1.55%) Fixed Income
16 15 (1.46%) Data Centre
16 15 (1.46%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 130 (12.62%) Windows
2 114 (11.07%) Linux
3 41 (3.98%) Unix
4 22 (2.14%) Android
5 20 (1.94%) Windows 10
6 19 (1.84%) Windows Server
7 17 (1.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (1.36%) Apple iOS
9 12 (1.17%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.58%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.39%) Debian
11 4 (0.39%) Rocky
11 4 (0.39%) VMS
12 2 (0.19%) Solaris
12 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.097%) CentOS
13 1 (0.097%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.097%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.097%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 311 (30.19%) Problem-Solving
2 271 (26.31%) Agile
3 232 (22.52%) AI
4 187 (18.16%) CI/CD
5 178 (17.28%) Continuous Improvement
6 176 (17.09%) DevOps
7 168 (16.31%) Software Engineering
8 136 (13.20%) Analytics
9 117 (11.36%) Cybersecurity
10 112 (10.87%) Stakeholder Management
11 108 (10.49%) Microservices
12 105 (10.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 100 (9.71%) Machine Learning
14 98 (9.51%) ITIL
15 97 (9.42%) Decision-Making
15 97 (9.42%) Mathematics
16 94 (9.13%) Data Science
17 91 (8.83%) Technical Leadership
18 88 (8.54%) Data Governance
19 85 (8.25%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 288 (27.96%) Python
2 207 (20.10%) SQL
3 125 (12.14%) Java
4 71 (6.89%) JavaScript
5 59 (5.73%) C#
6 47 (4.56%) PowerShell
7 30 (2.91%) TypeScript
8 22 (2.14%) Bash
8 22 (2.14%) C++
9 19 (1.84%) R
10 13 (1.26%) Go
11 11 (1.07%) Shell Script
12 10 (0.97%) Perl
13 9 (0.87%) Kotlin
13 9 (0.87%) Rust
14 8 (0.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 7 (0.68%) Scala
16 4 (0.39%) Ada
16 4 (0.39%) C
17 3 (0.29%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 813 (78.93%) Degree
2 485 (47.09%) Computer Science Degree
3 190 (18.45%) Security Cleared
4 133 (12.91%) Master's Degree
5 118 (11.46%) SC Cleared
6 58 (5.63%) CISSP
7 36 (3.50%) CISM
8 35 (3.40%) Microsoft Certification
9 32 (3.11%) Azure Certification
9 32 (3.11%) PhD
10 28 (2.72%) PMI Certification
10 28 (2.72%) TOGAF Certification
11 26 (2.52%) AWS Certification
12 25 (2.43%) PMP
13 23 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
13 23 (2.23%) DV Cleared
14 21 (2.04%) Cisco Certification
15 20 (1.94%) DBS Check
16 19 (1.84%) CISA
17 15 (1.46%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (6.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 63 (6.12%) NIST
3 61 (5.92%) Data Quality
4 51 (4.95%) QA
5 36 (3.50%) GDPR
6 20 (1.94%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.65%) Accessibility
8 15 (1.46%) GRC
8 15 (1.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (1.17%) SLA
10 10 (0.97%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.97%) NCSC
10 10 (0.97%) NIST 800
11 9 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 7 (0.68%) COBIT
13 6 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
14 5 (0.49%) DO-254
14 5 (0.49%) Government Security Classifications
14 5 (0.49%) ISO 20022
14 5 (0.49%) PSD2
System Software
1 93 (9.03%) Docker
2 77 (7.48%) Active Directory
3 21 (2.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.97%) Firmware
5 9 (0.87%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.68%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.39%) vSphere
8 3 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
9 2 (0.19%) BitLocker
9 2 (0.19%) Ceph
9 2 (0.19%) KVM
9 2 (0.19%) Squid
9 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.097%) ACF2
10 1 (0.097%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 1 (0.097%) HDFS
10 1 (0.097%) RACF
Systems Management
1 114 (11.07%) Kubernetes
2 54 (5.24%) Terraform
3 39 (3.79%) Ansible
4 30 (2.91%) Prometheus
5 28 (2.72%) Grafana
6 27 (2.62%) Microsoft Intune
7 16 (1.55%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (0.49%) Kiali
8 5 (0.49%) Puppet
9 4 (0.39%) Control-M
9 4 (0.39%) Kibana
9 4 (0.39%) Kubeflow
10 3 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
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%) Argo
11 2 (0.19%) SCCM
11 2 (0.19%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 179 (17.38%) Microsoft
2 68 (6.60%) Oracle
3 48 (4.66%) Databricks
4 36 (3.50%) Google
4 36 (3.50%) IBM
5 31 (3.01%) SAP
5 31 (3.01%) ServiceNow
6 29 (2.82%) Splunk
7 26 (2.52%) VMware
8 17 (1.65%) Cisco
8 17 (1.65%) Okta
9 15 (1.46%) CyberArk
9 15 (1.46%) Informatica
10 14 (1.36%) BeyondTrust
10 14 (1.36%) BiZZdesign
10 14 (1.36%) Palo Alto
11 11 (1.07%) CheckPoint
11 11 (1.07%) Salesforce
12 10 (0.97%) MuleSoft
13 9 (0.87%) Citrix