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

6 months to
12 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 127 64 61
Rank change year-on-year -63 -3 +35
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,089 1,213 1,387
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.06% 3.71% 3.23%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.41% 4.11% 3.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 615 686 837
10th Percentile £178 £214 £320
25th Percentile £208 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £766 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £393 £450 £517
% change year-on-year -12.64% -12.96% -1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 120 44 101
10th Percentile £25.75 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.00 £38.75
Median hourly rate £68.25 £44.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +52.51% -18.64% -8.33%
75th Percentile £87.16 £67.13 £66.25
90th Percentile £88.00 £82.99 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.50 £62.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +30.40% +13.64% +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 45,103 29,546 36,633
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.18% 90.46% 85.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,058 18,631 23,390
10th Percentile £325 £300 £303
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.40% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £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 2,673 1,507 2,455
10th Percentile £14.85 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.50 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -4.70%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.63 £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% -2.91%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -49 974 £455 -9.04% 1,022
UK excluding London -50 585 £393 -12.64% 606
London -59 430 £525 -10.62% 543
Work from Home -73 245 £500 -9.09% 334
South East -15 234 £275 -43.59% 196
North of England -41 138 £400 -14.45% 120
Midlands -58 78 £429 +43.00% 92
Yorkshire -12 75 £525 +30.35% 21
West Midlands -68 55 £450 +58.45% 49
North West -54 54 £220 -53.68% 62
East of England -33 44 £308 -47.39% 76
Scotland -39 40 £615 +23.00% 25
South West -59 38 £469 +95.42% 66
East Midlands -25 22 £287 -18.38% 42
North East -31 10 £195 -57.84% 37
Wales -26 9 £530 +23.47% 9
Northern Ireland +11 7 £350 -41.67% 38

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 (4.50%) Confluence
2 37 (3.40%) Apache Spark
3 29 (2.66%) SharePoint
4 24 (2.20%) Apache
4 24 (2.20%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (0.83%) Microsoft Exchange
6 6 (0.55%) IIS
7 5 (0.46%) SAS
8 4 (0.37%) CMS
9 3 (0.28%) Camunda
9 3 (0.28%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.28%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.18%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.18%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.18%) nginx
11 1 (0.092%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.092%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.092%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 1 (0.092%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.092%) Tomcat
Applications
1 40 (3.67%) Microsoft Office
2 29 (2.66%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.65%) MS Visio
4 14 (1.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.64%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.64%) Revit
6 4 (0.37%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
7 3 (0.28%) Trello
8 2 (0.18%) Simulink
9 1 (0.092%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.092%) Sketch
9 1 (0.092%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 18 (1.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.46%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.46%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
3 3 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.18%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.18%) Workfront
5 1 (0.092%) Maximo
5 1 (0.092%) Misys Equation
5 1 (0.092%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.092%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.092%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
5 1 (0.092%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.092%) SAP PM
5 1 (0.092%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.092%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.092%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 327 (30.03%) Azure
2 202 (18.55%) AWS
3 104 (9.55%) GCP
4 76 (6.98%) Power Platform
5 59 (5.42%) Microsoft 365
6 55 (5.05%) Entra ID
7 49 (4.50%) GitHub
8 48 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
9 43 (3.95%) SaaS
10 28 (2.57%) Serverless
10 28 (2.57%) Snowflake
11 23 (2.11%) GitHub Actions
12 22 (2.02%) PowerApps
13 18 (1.65%) AWS CloudFormation
14 17 (1.56%) Azure AKS
15 16 (1.47%) Azure Data Factory
16 15 (1.38%) Power Automate
17 14 (1.29%) AWS Lambda
17 14 (1.29%) Azure Service Bus
18 13 (1.19%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 35 (3.21%) Firewall
2 33 (3.03%) Network Security
3 27 (2.48%) DNS
4 25 (2.30%) TCP/IP
5 22 (2.02%) VPN
6 18 (1.65%) WAN
7 15 (1.38%) BGP
7 15 (1.38%) LAN
8 12 (1.10%) OSPF
8 12 (1.10%) SSH
9 11 (1.01%) VLAN
10 10 (0.92%) HTTPS
10 10 (0.92%) Wireless
11 7 (0.64%) 3GPP
11 7 (0.64%) Cisco ASA
11 7 (0.64%) DHCP
11 7 (0.64%) MPLS
11 7 (0.64%) Wireshark
12 6 (0.55%) Cisco Nexus
12 6 (0.55%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 62 (5.69%) Power BI
2 56 (5.14%) SQL Server
3 54 (4.96%) PostgreSQL
4 52 (4.78%) Relational Database
5 37 (3.40%) Data Warehouse
6 34 (3.12%) Big Data
6 34 (3.12%) Metadata
7 28 (2.57%) MongoDB
7 28 (2.57%) NoSQL
8 22 (2.02%) MySQL
9 19 (1.74%) Data Lake
9 19 (1.74%) Hadoop
10 18 (1.65%) Tableau
11 12 (1.10%) Azure SQL Database
12 11 (1.01%) Elasticsearch
13 10 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
13 10 (0.92%) Data Mining
13 10 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
14 8 (0.73%) Redis
14 8 (0.73%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 88 (8.08%) Git
2 61 (5.60%) JIRA
3 41 (3.76%) Jenkins
4 36 (3.31%) GitLab
5 30 (2.75%) Rational DOORS
6 14 (1.29%) Selenium
7 11 (1.01%) JUnit
8 10 (0.92%) Gradle
9 9 (0.83%) MLflow
10 8 (0.73%) Postman
10 8 (0.73%) TeamCity
11 7 (0.64%) Bitbucket
11 7 (0.64%) Maven
11 7 (0.64%) REST Assured
11 7 (0.64%) SpecFlow
12 6 (0.55%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.55%) Sonatype Nexus
13 5 (0.46%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.46%) Visual Studio
13 5 (0.46%) Vite
General
1 443 (40.68%) Social Skills
2 248 (22.77%) Finance
3 231 (21.21%) Analytical Skills
4 92 (8.45%) Banking
5 70 (6.43%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.05%) Aerospace
7 54 (4.96%) Documentation Skills
8 38 (3.49%) Organisational Skills
9 35 (3.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 31 (2.85%) Marketing
11 30 (2.75%) Influencing Skills
11 30 (2.75%) Telecoms
12 25 (2.30%) Front Office
13 24 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
14 23 (2.11%) Manufacturing
15 21 (1.93%) Legal
16 17 (1.56%) Retail
17 16 (1.47%) Law
18 14 (1.29%) Military
18 14 (1.29%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 131 (12.03%) Developer
2 114 (10.47%) Architect
3 100 (9.18%) Senior
4 84 (7.71%) Lead
5 83 (7.62%) Analyst
6 39 (3.58%) Software Engineer
7 37 (3.40%) Product Manager
8 34 (3.12%) Data Engineer
8 34 (3.12%) Delivery Manager
9 31 (2.85%) Data Scientist
10 30 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
11 28 (2.57%) Product Delivery Manager
12 25 (2.30%) Junior
12 25 (2.30%) Python Developer
12 25 (2.30%) Security Engineer
13 24 (2.20%) Java Developer
13 24 (2.20%) Technical Support
14 22 (2.02%) IT Support
14 22 (2.02%) Systems Delivery Manager
14 22 (2.02%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (7.90%) REST
2 64 (5.88%) React
3 60 (5.51%) .NET
4 43 (3.95%) Kafka
4 43 (3.95%) RESTful
5 36 (3.31%) Spring
6 33 (3.03%) Spring Boot
7 31 (2.85%) Middleware
8 27 (2.48%) OAuth
9 25 (2.30%) AngularJS
10 24 (2.20%) PyTorch
11 22 (2.02%) HTML
12 21 (1.93%) JSON
13 20 (1.84%) CSS
14 19 (1.74%) SAML
15 18 (1.65%) OAuth2
15 18 (1.65%) OpenID
15 18 (1.65%) SOAP
15 18 (1.65%) Web Services
16 17 (1.56%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 101 (9.27%) Management Information System
2 88 (8.08%) Product Ownership
3 83 (7.62%) Onboarding
4 77 (7.07%) Algorithms
4 77 (7.07%) Cloud Native
5 56 (5.14%) Data Structures
6 50 (4.59%) Distributed Systems
7 28 (2.57%) Virtual Team
8 26 (2.39%) AI Agents
8 26 (2.39%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 25 (2.30%) Derivative
9 25 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
10 20 (1.84%) Enterprise Software
11 19 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
11 19 (1.74%) Equities
12 18 (1.65%) Analytical Mindset
13 17 (1.56%) Fixed Income
14 15 (1.38%) Data Centre
14 15 (1.38%) Operational Technology
14 15 (1.38%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 131 (12.03%) Windows
2 108 (9.92%) Linux
3 39 (3.58%) Unix
4 21 (1.93%) Android
5 20 (1.84%) Windows Server
6 19 (1.74%) Windows 10
7 18 (1.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (1.29%) Apple iOS
9 12 (1.10%) Mac OS
10 9 (0.83%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.46%) VMS
12 4 (0.37%) Debian
12 4 (0.37%) Rocky
13 2 (0.18%) Solaris
13 2 (0.18%) Windows 7
13 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.092%) CentOS
14 1 (0.092%) Embedded Linux
14 1 (0.092%) OpenVMS
14 1 (0.092%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 327 (30.03%) Problem-Solving
2 283 (25.99%) Agile
3 249 (22.87%) AI
4 205 (18.82%) CI/CD
5 187 (17.17%) Software Engineering
6 182 (16.71%) Continuous Improvement
7 176 (16.16%) DevOps
8 149 (13.68%) Analytics
9 125 (11.48%) Cybersecurity
10 123 (11.29%) Stakeholder Management
11 120 (11.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 114 (10.47%) Machine Learning
13 109 (10.01%) ITIL
14 107 (9.83%) Mathematics
14 107 (9.83%) Microservices
15 100 (9.18%) Data Science
16 96 (8.82%) Decision-Making
17 94 (8.63%) Containerisation
18 92 (8.45%) Roadmaps
19 89 (8.17%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 301 (27.64%) Python
2 220 (20.20%) SQL
3 139 (12.76%) Java
4 69 (6.34%) JavaScript
5 62 (5.69%) C#
6 52 (4.78%) PowerShell
7 37 (3.40%) TypeScript
8 24 (2.20%) Bash
9 23 (2.11%) C++
10 20 (1.84%) R
11 13 (1.19%) Go
11 13 (1.19%) Shell Script
12 9 (0.83%) Kotlin
13 8 (0.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 8 (0.73%) Perl
14 7 (0.64%) Bicep
14 7 (0.64%) C
14 7 (0.64%) Scala
15 4 (0.37%) Ada
15 4 (0.37%) Rust
Qualifications
1 854 (78.42%) Degree
2 510 (46.83%) Computer Science Degree
3 203 (18.64%) Security Cleared
4 143 (13.13%) Master's Degree
5 125 (11.48%) SC Cleared
6 58 (5.33%) CISSP
7 43 (3.95%) Azure Certification
8 38 (3.49%) CISM
8 38 (3.49%) Microsoft Certification
9 35 (3.21%) PhD
10 30 (2.75%) TOGAF Certification
11 29 (2.66%) AWS Certification
11 29 (2.66%) DBS Check
12 26 (2.39%) PMI Certification
13 25 (2.30%) DV Cleared
14 24 (2.20%) Cisco Certification
14 24 (2.20%) PMP
15 22 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
16 19 (1.74%) CISA
17 16 (1.47%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (6.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 66 (6.06%) Data Quality
3 65 (5.97%) NIST
4 54 (4.96%) QA
5 35 (3.21%) GDPR
6 19 (1.74%) PCI DSS
7 18 (1.65%) Accessibility
8 17 (1.56%) GRC
9 14 (1.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 12 (1.10%) NCSC
10 12 (1.10%) SLA
11 11 (1.01%) HIPAA
12 10 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 10 (0.92%) NIST 800
13 7 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 6 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
14 6 (0.55%) COBIT
15 5 (0.46%) Government Security Classifications
15 5 (0.46%) ITGC
15 5 (0.46%) PSD2
System Software
1 97 (8.91%) Docker
2 80 (7.35%) Active Directory
3 19 (1.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.83%) Firmware
5 8 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.64%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.55%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.37%) vSphere
9 3 (0.28%) VMware Workstation
10 2 (0.18%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.18%) Ceph
10 2 (0.18%) Squid
10 2 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.092%) ACF2
11 1 (0.092%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 1 (0.092%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.092%) HDFS
11 1 (0.092%) RACF
Systems Management
1 120 (11.02%) Kubernetes
2 58 (5.33%) Terraform
3 36 (3.31%) Ansible
4 28 (2.57%) Microsoft Intune
5 26 (2.39%) Prometheus
6 24 (2.20%) Grafana
7 13 (1.19%) 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 (0.18%) AirWatch
10 2 (0.18%) Control-M
10 2 (0.18%) Kibana
10 2 (0.18%) vRealize
10 2 (0.18%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 196 (18.00%) Microsoft
2 69 (6.34%) Oracle
3 52 (4.78%) Databricks
4 46 (4.22%) Google
5 38 (3.49%) IBM
6 35 (3.21%) ServiceNow
7 31 (2.85%) SAP
8 28 (2.57%) VMware
9 25 (2.30%) Splunk
10 22 (2.02%) Cisco
11 18 (1.65%) CyberArk
12 17 (1.56%) BeyondTrust
13 15 (1.38%) Palo Alto
14 14 (1.29%) BiZZdesign
14 14 (1.29%) Informatica
14 14 (1.29%) Okta
14 14 (1.29%) Salesforce
15 11 (1.01%) CheckPoint
15 11 (1.01%) Foundry
16 9 (0.83%) Citrix