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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 121 63 63
Rank change year-on-year -58 0 +41
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,045 1,080 1,357
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.12% 3.72% 3.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.50% 4.09% 3.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 601 598 820
10th Percentile £178 £247 £313
25th Percentile £220 £380 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.60% -2.14% -6.87%
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 37 103
10th Percentile £28.50 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £49.19 £28.41 £38.75
Median hourly rate £80.71 £37.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +115.21% -31.82% -
75th Percentile £88.00 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile - £84.98 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.00 £41.25 £55.00
% change year-on-year +101.21% -25.00% +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 41,843 26,418 36,777
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.72% 90.98% 85.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,135 16,804 23,539
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 2,505 1,141 2,540
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.76 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.36% -23.95% +1.39%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.78 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +82.03% -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 6 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 6 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 6 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 -43 935 £475 -8.74% 1,244
UK excluding London -42 558 £400 -15.79% 748
London -61 404 £550 -8.56% 605
Work from Home -67 229 £500 -9.09% 609
South East -4 216 £215 -55.26% 247
North of England -26 139 £400 -21.95% 139
Yorkshire -10 83 £525 +22.38% 29
Midlands -70 70 £450 +50.00% 88
North West -40 55 £350 -34.82% 76
West Midlands -66 54 £450 +50.00% 51
South West -40 45 £469 +95.42% 76
Scotland -29 38 £640 +21.90% 48
East of England -35 38 £280 -56.92% 116
East Midlands -38 15 £525 +67.73% 37
Northern Ireland +12 8 £350 -41.67% 36
Wales -36 7 £450 +28.11% 17
North East -29 2 £125 -73.68% 34

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 (4.98%) Confluence
2 39 (3.73%) Apache Spark
3 26 (2.49%) SharePoint
4 23 (2.20%) Apache
5 22 (2.11%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (0.96%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.57%) IIS
8 5 (0.48%) SAS
9 4 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 3 (0.29%) Camunda
10 3 (0.29%) CMS
10 3 (0.29%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.29%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.19%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.19%) nginx
11 2 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.19%) WebSphere
12 1 (0.096%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.096%) Apache Solr
Applications
1 32 (3.06%) Microsoft Office
2 24 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.53%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.24%) 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 (2.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.48%) Payment Gateway
3 4 (0.38%) Aladdin
3 4 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
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
1 307 (29.38%) Azure
2 194 (18.56%) AWS
3 86 (8.23%) GCP
4 65 (6.22%) Power Platform
5 53 (5.07%) Microsoft 365
6 49 (4.69%) SaaS
7 47 (4.50%) GitHub
8 46 (4.40%) Entra ID
9 36 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
10 21 (2.01%) GitHub Actions
10 21 (2.01%) Snowflake
11 19 (1.82%) Serverless
12 18 (1.72%) PowerApps
13 16 (1.53%) AWS CloudFormation
13 16 (1.53%) Azure AKS
13 16 (1.53%) IaaS
14 13 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
14 13 (1.24%) PaaS
15 12 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
15 12 (1.15%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 36 (3.44%) Firewall
2 30 (2.87%) TCP/IP
3 29 (2.78%) DNS
4 28 (2.68%) Network Security
5 15 (1.44%) WAN
6 13 (1.24%) BGP
6 13 (1.24%) SSH
7 12 (1.15%) LAN
8 10 (0.96%) OSPF
9 9 (0.86%) 3GPP
9 9 (0.86%) HTTPS
9 9 (0.86%) VPN
9 9 (0.86%) Wireless
10 7 (0.67%) SAN
10 7 (0.67%) VLAN
11 6 (0.57%) DHCP
11 6 (0.57%) LTE
12 5 (0.48%) RTP
12 5 (0.48%) Wireshark
13 4 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (4.98%) Power BI
2 50 (4.78%) SQL Server
3 49 (4.69%) Relational Database
4 45 (4.31%) PostgreSQL
5 39 (3.73%) Data Warehouse
6 35 (3.35%) Big Data
7 28 (2.68%) Metadata
8 25 (2.39%) NoSQL
9 23 (2.20%) MongoDB
10 22 (2.11%) MySQL
11 21 (2.01%) Hadoop
12 18 (1.72%) Tableau
13 14 (1.34%) Data Lake
14 13 (1.24%) Elasticsearch
15 10 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
15 10 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 9 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
16 9 (0.86%) Redis
17 7 (0.67%) Power Query
17 7 (0.67%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 73 (6.99%) Git
2 64 (6.12%) JIRA
3 38 (3.64%) Jenkins
4 37 (3.54%) GitLab
5 28 (2.68%) Rational DOORS
6 13 (1.24%) Selenium
7 12 (1.15%) Gradle
8 11 (1.05%) JUnit
9 10 (0.96%) TeamCity
10 9 (0.86%) Jaeger
11 8 (0.77%) Cypress.io
11 8 (0.77%) MLflow
12 7 (0.67%) CircleCI
12 7 (0.67%) Maven
12 7 (0.67%) Postman
12 7 (0.67%) SonarQube
13 5 (0.48%) Artifactory
13 5 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.48%) Flyway
13 5 (0.48%) REST Assured
General
1 425 (40.67%) Social Skills
2 238 (22.78%) Finance
3 213 (20.38%) Analytical Skills
4 95 (9.09%) Banking
5 65 (6.22%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.26%) Aerospace
7 52 (4.98%) Documentation Skills
8 33 (3.16%) Marketing
9 31 (2.97%) Telecoms
10 30 (2.87%) Presentation Skills
11 29 (2.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 29 (2.78%) Legal
11 29 (2.78%) Organisational Skills
12 25 (2.39%) Front Office
12 25 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
13 19 (1.82%) Manufacturing
14 16 (1.53%) Investment Banking
14 16 (1.53%) Law
14 16 (1.53%) Publishing
14 16 (1.53%) Retail
Job Titles
1 111 (10.62%) Architect
2 108 (10.33%) Developer
3 91 (8.71%) Analyst
4 88 (8.42%) Lead
5 87 (8.33%) Senior
6 41 (3.92%) Software Engineer
7 35 (3.35%) Delivery Manager
7 35 (3.35%) Product Manager
8 31 (2.97%) Data Scientist
8 31 (2.97%) Solutions Architect
9 29 (2.78%) Technical Support
10 28 (2.68%) Data Engineer
10 28 (2.68%) Product Delivery Manager
11 23 (2.20%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 23 (2.20%) Junior
11 23 (2.20%) Python Developer
11 23 (2.20%) Security Engineer
12 22 (2.11%) Systems Delivery Manager
12 22 (2.11%) Systems Manager
13 20 (1.91%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 91 (8.71%) REST
2 57 (5.45%) React
3 53 (5.07%) .NET
4 46 (4.40%) Kafka
5 43 (4.11%) Middleware
6 35 (3.35%) RESTful
7 34 (3.25%) Spring Boot
8 29 (2.78%) Spring
9 24 (2.30%) AngularJS
9 24 (2.30%) OAuth
9 24 (2.30%) PyTorch
10 21 (2.01%) JSON
10 21 (2.01%) SOAP
11 19 (1.82%) Elastic Stack
11 19 (1.82%) HTML
11 19 (1.82%) TensorFlow
12 18 (1.72%) CSS
12 18 (1.72%) XML
13 17 (1.63%) Web Services
14 16 (1.53%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 100 (9.57%) Management Information System
2 79 (7.56%) Product Ownership
3 78 (7.46%) Onboarding
4 70 (6.70%) Algorithms
5 67 (6.41%) Cloud Native
6 51 (4.88%) Data Structures
6 51 (4.88%) Distributed Systems
7 29 (2.78%) Virtual Team
8 25 (2.39%) Derivative
8 25 (2.39%) Self-Motivation
9 21 (2.01%) Equities
10 20 (1.91%) AI Agents
10 20 (1.91%) Analytical Mindset
10 20 (1.91%) Data Protection Act
10 20 (1.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 20 (1.91%) Taxonomies
11 18 (1.72%) Security Operations Centre
12 17 (1.63%) Cyberattack
13 16 (1.53%) Robotics
14 15 (1.44%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 134 (12.82%) Windows
2 127 (12.15%) Linux
3 43 (4.11%) Unix
4 24 (2.30%) Android
5 20 (1.91%) Windows 10
6 19 (1.82%) Windows Server
7 16 (1.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 15 (1.44%) Apple iOS
9 14 (1.34%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.38%) Debian
11 4 (0.38%) Rocky
11 4 (0.38%) VMS
12 2 (0.19%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.19%) Solaris
12 2 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.096%) CentOS
13 1 (0.096%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.096%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 310 (29.67%) Problem-Solving
2 259 (24.78%) Agile
3 229 (21.91%) AI
4 193 (18.47%) CI/CD
5 182 (17.42%) DevOps
6 175 (16.75%) Software Engineering
7 169 (16.17%) Continuous Improvement
8 130 (12.44%) Analytics
9 123 (11.77%) Cybersecurity
10 117 (11.20%) Microservices
11 107 (10.24%) Stakeholder Management
12 102 (9.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 100 (9.57%) Machine Learning
14 96 (9.19%) Decision-Making
14 96 (9.19%) Technical Leadership
15 91 (8.71%) Containerisation
15 91 (8.71%) Mathematics
16 89 (8.52%) Data Science
17 86 (8.23%) Data Governance
17 86 (8.23%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 289 (27.66%) Python
2 208 (19.90%) SQL
3 137 (13.11%) Java
4 69 (6.60%) JavaScript
5 58 (5.55%) C#
6 46 (4.40%) PowerShell
7 33 (3.16%) TypeScript
8 27 (2.58%) C++
9 26 (2.49%) Bash
10 20 (1.91%) R
11 14 (1.34%) Go
12 12 (1.15%) Perl
12 12 (1.15%) Rust
13 11 (1.05%) Shell Script
14 10 (0.96%) Kotlin
15 8 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 6 (0.57%) Scala
17 5 (0.48%) C
18 4 (0.38%) Ada
19 3 (0.29%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 835 (79.90%) Degree
2 508 (48.61%) Computer Science Degree
3 197 (18.85%) Security Cleared
4 140 (13.40%) Master's Degree
5 119 (11.39%) SC Cleared
6 55 (5.26%) CISSP
7 38 (3.64%) CISM
8 31 (2.97%) Azure Certification
8 31 (2.97%) PhD
9 30 (2.87%) DV Cleared
9 30 (2.87%) TOGAF Certification
10 28 (2.68%) Microsoft Certification
11 27 (2.58%) PMI Certification
12 24 (2.30%) AWS Certification
12 24 (2.30%) PMP
13 21 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
13 21 (2.01%) Cisco Certification
13 21 (2.01%) CompTIA Security+
14 19 (1.82%) CISA
14 19 (1.82%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (5.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 59 (5.65%) NIST
3 57 (5.45%) Data Quality
3 57 (5.45%) QA
4 37 (3.54%) GDPR
5 21 (2.01%) PCI DSS
6 19 (1.82%) Accessibility
7 14 (1.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 13 (1.24%) GRC
9 10 (0.96%) NIST 800
9 10 (0.96%) SLA
10 9 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 8 (0.77%) HIPAA
11 8 (0.77%) NCSC
12 7 (0.67%) COBIT
12 7 (0.67%) PSD2
13 6 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
13 6 (0.57%) ISO 20022
14 5 (0.48%) DO-254
14 5 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 103 (9.86%) Docker
2 70 (6.70%) Active Directory
3 20 (1.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (1.15%) Firmware
5 9 (0.86%) 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
1 127 (12.15%) Kubernetes
2 58 (5.55%) Terraform
3 45 (4.31%) Ansible
4 33 (3.16%) Prometheus
5 32 (3.06%) Grafana
6 26 (2.49%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (1.63%) Single Sign-On
8 9 (0.86%) 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
1 177 (16.94%) Microsoft
2 67 (6.41%) Oracle
3 48 (4.59%) Databricks
4 46 (4.40%) Splunk
5 36 (3.44%) SAP
6 34 (3.25%) Google
6 34 (3.25%) IBM
7 28 (2.68%) ServiceNow
8 24 (2.30%) VMware
9 18 (1.72%) Cisco
10 16 (1.53%) Okta
11 15 (1.44%) BiZZdesign
11 15 (1.44%) Informatica
12 14 (1.34%) Salesforce
13 13 (1.24%) Palo Alto
14 12 (1.15%) CheckPoint
14 12 (1.15%) CyberArk
15 11 (1.05%) BeyondTrust
15 11 (1.05%) MuleSoft
16 9 (0.86%) Foundry