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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 122 65 62
Rank change year-on-year -57 -3 +41
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,039 1,087 1,385
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.09% 3.71% 3.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.47% 4.08% 3.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 593 599 832
10th Percentile £178 £248 £313
25th Percentile £220 £380 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.73% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £650
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £475 £513
% change year-on-year -15.79% -7.32% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 38 103
10th Percentile £28.50 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £50.94 £28.56 £38.75
Median hourly rate £81.50 £37.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +117.33% -31.82% -
75th Percentile £88.00 £68.44 £65.00
90th Percentile - £84.47 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.00 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +121.33% -31.82% +7.32%

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 42,104 26,621 36,920
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.75% 90.94% 85.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,283 16,896 23,594
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £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 2,537 1,167 2,565
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.85% -24.66% +1.67%
75th Percentile £67.89 £56.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -48 929 £475 -9.52% 759
UK excluding London -42 556 £400 -15.79% 561
London -55 403 £550 -8.33% 306
Work from Home -74 227 £500 -9.09% 876
South East -8 219 £215 -55.61% 201
North of England -26 138 £400 -21.95% 108
Yorkshire -6 82 £525 +22.38% 27
Midlands -74 69 £473 +57.50% 76
North West -35 55 £350 -34.82% 59
West Midlands -68 53 £450 +50.00% 39
South West -48 42 £469 +95.42% 53
Scotland -28 38 £640 +21.90% 31
East of England -38 38 £280 -56.92% 76
East Midlands -42 15 £545 +74.12% 37
Northern Ireland +10 8 £350 -41.67% 19
Wales -31 7 £450 +28.11% 14
North East -28 2 £125 -73.68% 22

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 52 (5.00%) Confluence
2 38 (3.66%) Apache Spark
3 26 (2.50%) SharePoint
4 23 (2.21%) Apache
5 22 (2.12%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (0.96%) Microsoft Exchange
7 5 (0.48%) IIS
7 5 (0.48%) SAS
8 4 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
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 Workflow
10 2 (0.19%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.096%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.096%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 32 (3.08%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (2.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.54%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.25%) 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 23 (2.21%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.48%) Payment Gateway
3 4 (0.38%) Aladdin
4 3 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.19%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.19%) Workfront
6 1 (0.096%) Actimize
6 1 (0.096%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
6 1 (0.096%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.096%) SAP Retail
6 1 (0.096%) SAP SM
6 1 (0.096%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.096%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 306 (29.45%) Azure
2 191 (18.38%) AWS
3 85 (8.18%) GCP
4 66 (6.35%) Power Platform
5 53 (5.10%) Microsoft 365
6 49 (4.72%) SaaS
7 48 (4.62%) Entra ID
8 46 (4.43%) GitHub
9 36 (3.46%) Azure DevOps
10 22 (2.12%) Snowflake
11 20 (1.92%) GitHub Actions
11 20 (1.92%) Serverless
12 19 (1.83%) PowerApps
13 16 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
14 15 (1.44%) IaaS
15 14 (1.35%) Azure AKS
16 13 (1.25%) Azure Data Factory
16 13 (1.25%) Power Automate
17 12 (1.15%) Azure AI
17 12 (1.15%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 35 (3.37%) Firewall
2 30 (2.89%) TCP/IP
3 29 (2.79%) DNS
4 28 (2.69%) Network Security
5 15 (1.44%) WAN
6 13 (1.25%) BGP
6 13 (1.25%) SSH
7 12 (1.15%) LAN
8 10 (0.96%) OSPF
9 9 (0.87%) 3GPP
9 9 (0.87%) HTTPS
9 9 (0.87%) VPN
10 8 (0.77%) Wireless
11 7 (0.67%) SAN
11 7 (0.67%) VLAN
12 6 (0.58%) DHCP
12 6 (0.58%) LTE
13 5 (0.48%) RTP
13 5 (0.48%) Wireshark
14 4 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (5.20%) Power BI
2 49 (4.72%) Relational Database
2 49 (4.72%) SQL Server
3 44 (4.23%) PostgreSQL
4 38 (3.66%) Data Warehouse
5 35 (3.37%) Big Data
6 28 (2.69%) Metadata
7 24 (2.31%) NoSQL
8 22 (2.12%) MongoDB
8 22 (2.12%) MySQL
9 21 (2.02%) Hadoop
10 18 (1.73%) Tableau
11 14 (1.35%) Data Lake
12 13 (1.25%) Elasticsearch
13 10 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
13 10 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 9 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
14 9 (0.87%) Redis
15 7 (0.67%) Oracle Database
15 7 (0.67%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 73 (7.03%) Git
2 64 (6.16%) JIRA
3 38 (3.66%) Jenkins
4 37 (3.56%) GitLab
5 28 (2.69%) Rational DOORS
6 13 (1.25%) Selenium
7 12 (1.15%) Gradle
8 11 (1.06%) JUnit
9 9 (0.87%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.77%) Cypress.io
10 8 (0.77%) MLflow
10 8 (0.77%) TeamCity
11 7 (0.67%) CircleCI
11 7 (0.67%) Maven
11 7 (0.67%) Postman
11 7 (0.67%) SonarQube
12 5 (0.48%) Artifactory
12 5 (0.48%) Bitbucket
12 5 (0.48%) Flyway
12 5 (0.48%) REST Assured
General
1 422 (40.62%) Social Skills
2 236 (22.71%) Finance
3 210 (20.21%) Analytical Skills
4 93 (8.95%) Banking
5 64 (6.16%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.29%) Aerospace
7 54 (5.20%) Documentation Skills
8 33 (3.18%) Marketing
9 31 (2.98%) Telecoms
10 30 (2.89%) Presentation Skills
11 29 (2.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 29 (2.79%) Organisational Skills
12 27 (2.60%) Legal
13 25 (2.41%) Influencing Skills
14 23 (2.21%) Front Office
15 20 (1.92%) Manufacturing
16 16 (1.54%) Law
16 16 (1.54%) Publishing
16 16 (1.54%) Retail
17 14 (1.35%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 110 (10.59%) Architect
2 108 (10.39%) Developer
3 92 (8.85%) Analyst
4 88 (8.47%) Senior
5 87 (8.37%) Lead
6 41 (3.95%) Software Engineer
7 35 (3.37%) Delivery Manager
7 35 (3.37%) Product Manager
8 31 (2.98%) Data Scientist
8 31 (2.98%) Solutions Architect
9 28 (2.69%) Data Engineer
9 28 (2.69%) Product Delivery Manager
9 28 (2.69%) Technical Support
10 23 (2.21%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 23 (2.21%) Python Developer
10 23 (2.21%) Security Engineer
11 22 (2.12%) Junior
11 22 (2.12%) Systems Delivery Manager
11 22 (2.12%) Systems Manager
12 20 (1.92%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 90 (8.66%) REST
2 57 (5.49%) React
3 50 (4.81%) .NET
4 45 (4.33%) Kafka
5 43 (4.14%) Middleware
6 34 (3.27%) RESTful
6 34 (3.27%) Spring Boot
7 29 (2.79%) Spring
8 26 (2.50%) OAuth
9 24 (2.31%) AngularJS
9 24 (2.31%) PyTorch
10 21 (2.02%) JSON
11 20 (1.92%) SOAP
12 19 (1.83%) Elastic Stack
12 19 (1.83%) HTML
12 19 (1.83%) TensorFlow
13 18 (1.73%) CSS
13 18 (1.73%) XML
14 17 (1.64%) Web Services
15 16 (1.54%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 101 (9.72%) Management Information System
2 81 (7.80%) Product Ownership
3 79 (7.60%) Onboarding
4 70 (6.74%) Algorithms
5 64 (6.16%) Cloud Native
6 51 (4.91%) Distributed Systems
7 50 (4.81%) Data Structures
8 29 (2.79%) Virtual Team
9 24 (2.31%) Derivative
9 24 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
10 20 (1.92%) AI Agents
10 20 (1.92%) Analytical Mindset
10 20 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
10 20 (1.92%) Equities
10 20 (1.92%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 20 (1.92%) Taxonomies
11 18 (1.73%) Security Operations Centre
12 17 (1.64%) Cyberattack
13 16 (1.54%) Robotics
14 15 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 133 (12.80%) Windows
2 127 (12.22%) Linux
3 44 (4.23%) Unix
4 24 (2.31%) Android
5 19 (1.83%) Windows 10
5 19 (1.83%) Windows Server
6 17 (1.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (1.44%) Apple iOS
8 13 (1.25%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.48%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.38%) Debian
10 4 (0.38%) Rocky
10 4 (0.38%) VMS
11 2 (0.19%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.19%) Solaris
11 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
11 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.096%) CentOS
12 1 (0.096%) Embedded Linux
12 1 (0.096%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 307 (29.55%) Problem-Solving
2 259 (24.93%) Agile
3 229 (22.04%) AI
4 190 (18.29%) CI/CD
5 179 (17.23%) DevOps
6 172 (16.55%) Software Engineering
7 167 (16.07%) Continuous Improvement
8 132 (12.70%) Analytics
9 124 (11.93%) Cybersecurity
10 115 (11.07%) Microservices
11 106 (10.20%) Stakeholder Management
12 103 (9.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 99 (9.53%) Machine Learning
14 96 (9.24%) Decision-Making
14 96 (9.24%) Technical Leadership
15 89 (8.57%) Containerisation
15 89 (8.57%) Data Science
15 89 (8.57%) Mathematics
16 86 (8.28%) Data Governance
16 86 (8.28%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 290 (27.91%) Python
2 208 (20.02%) SQL
3 137 (13.19%) Java
4 68 (6.54%) JavaScript
5 57 (5.49%) C#
6 47 (4.52%) PowerShell
7 32 (3.08%) TypeScript
8 27 (2.60%) C++
9 26 (2.50%) Bash
10 20 (1.92%) R
11 14 (1.35%) Go
12 12 (1.15%) Perl
12 12 (1.15%) Rust
13 11 (1.06%) Shell Script
14 10 (0.96%) Kotlin
15 8 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 6 (0.58%) Scala
17 5 (0.48%) C
18 4 (0.38%) Ada
19 3 (0.29%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 830 (79.88%) Degree
2 502 (48.32%) Computer Science Degree
3 196 (18.86%) Security Cleared
4 139 (13.38%) Master's Degree
5 119 (11.45%) SC Cleared
6 55 (5.29%) CISSP
7 37 (3.56%) CISM
8 31 (2.98%) Azure Certification
9 30 (2.89%) DV Cleared
9 30 (2.89%) PhD
10 29 (2.79%) Microsoft Certification
10 29 (2.79%) TOGAF Certification
11 27 (2.60%) PMI Certification
12 24 (2.31%) AWS Certification
12 24 (2.31%) PMP
13 21 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
13 21 (2.02%) Cisco Certification
13 21 (2.02%) CompTIA Security+
14 19 (1.83%) CISA
14 19 (1.83%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (5.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 61 (5.87%) NIST
2 57 (5.49%) Data Quality
2 57 (5.49%) QA
3 36 (3.46%) GDPR
4 20 (1.92%) PCI DSS
5 19 (1.83%) Accessibility
6 14 (1.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 13 (1.25%) GRC
8 10 (0.96%) NIST 800
8 10 (0.96%) SLA
9 9 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 8 (0.77%) HIPAA
10 8 (0.77%) NCSC
11 7 (0.67%) COBIT
11 7 (0.67%) PSD2
12 6 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 5 (0.48%) Government Security Classifications
13 5 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 100 (9.62%) Docker
2 72 (6.93%) Active Directory
3 20 (1.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (1.15%) Firmware
5 9 (0.87%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.48%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.38%) vSphere
9 3 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
10 2 (0.19%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.19%) Ceph
10 2 (0.19%) KVM
10 2 (0.19%) Squid
10 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.096%) ACF2
11 1 (0.096%) HDFS
11 1 (0.096%) RACF
Systems Management
1 123 (11.84%) Kubernetes
2 56 (5.39%) Terraform
3 45 (4.33%) Ansible
4 33 (3.18%) Prometheus
5 31 (2.98%) Grafana
6 26 (2.50%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (1.64%) Single Sign-On
8 9 (0.87%) Kiali
9 8 (0.77%) Puppet
10 7 (0.67%) Kibana
11 4 (0.38%) Control-M
11 4 (0.38%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
12 3 (0.29%) Foglight
12 3 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
12 3 (0.29%) vCenter Server
13 2 (0.19%) AirWatch
13 2 (0.19%) Network Intrusion Detection System
13 2 (0.19%) vRealize
13 2 (0.19%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 174 (16.75%) Microsoft
2 69 (6.64%) Oracle
3 48 (4.62%) Databricks
4 46 (4.43%) Splunk
5 36 (3.46%) SAP
6 34 (3.27%) Google
6 34 (3.27%) IBM
7 27 (2.60%) ServiceNow
8 24 (2.31%) VMware
9 17 (1.64%) Cisco
9 17 (1.64%) Okta
10 15 (1.44%) BiZZdesign
10 15 (1.44%) Informatica
11 13 (1.25%) CyberArk
11 13 (1.25%) Palo Alto
11 13 (1.25%) Salesforce
12 12 (1.15%) BeyondTrust
12 12 (1.15%) CheckPoint
13 11 (1.06%) MuleSoft
14 9 (0.87%) Foundry