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

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 62 59
Rank change year-on-year -63 -3 +45
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,034 1,100 1,393
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.07% 3.75% 3.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.44% 4.12% 3.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 597 607 837
10th Percentile £178 £250 £314
25th Percentile £220 £380 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.34% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £650
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £474 £513
% change year-on-year -15.52% -7.61% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 103 37 103
10th Percentile £28.50 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £48.38 £29.00 £38.75
Median hourly rate £79.91 £37.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +113.09% -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 42,291 26,731 37,187
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.76% 91.01% 85.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,385 16,984 23,772
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £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 2,541 1,182 2,587
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.28 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.14% -25.26% +1.39%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £61.16
90th Percentile £81.25 £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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -54 925 £475 -8.70% 750
UK excluding London -47 552 £400 -15.52% 563
London -63 405 £550 -8.33% 290
Work from Home -73 226 £500 -9.09% 430
South East -6 220 £215 -55.61% 215
North of England -37 136 £400 -17.95% 98
Yorkshire +2 82 £525 +22.38% 25
Midlands -80 68 £473 +57.50% 75
North West -49 53 £350 -33.33% 51
West Midlands -68 52 £450 +50.00% 39
Scotland -30 40 £640 +21.90% 30
East of England -31 38 £280 -56.92% 78
South West -49 38 £469 +95.42% 56
East Midlands -43 15 £545 +74.12% 36
Northern Ireland +11 8 £350 -41.67% 17
Wales -29 7 £450 +28.11% 12
North East -31 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 50 (4.84%) Confluence
2 38 (3.68%) Apache Spark
3 26 (2.51%) SharePoint
4 22 (2.13%) Apache Airflow
5 20 (1.93%) Apache
6 10 (0.97%) Microsoft Exchange
7 5 (0.48%) IIS
7 5 (0.48%) SAS
8 4 (0.39%) 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 (0.097%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.097%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 32 (3.09%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (2.42%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.55%) 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 23 (2.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.48%) Payment Gateway
3 4 (0.39%) 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 (0.097%) Actimize
6 1 (0.097%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
6 1 (0.097%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.097%) SAP Retail
6 1 (0.097%) SAP SM
6 1 (0.097%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.097%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 304 (29.40%) Azure
2 189 (18.28%) AWS
3 85 (8.22%) GCP
4 67 (6.48%) Power Platform
5 54 (5.22%) Microsoft 365
6 51 (4.93%) SaaS
7 48 (4.64%) Entra ID
8 46 (4.45%) GitHub
9 39 (3.77%) Azure DevOps
10 22 (2.13%) Snowflake
11 21 (2.03%) GitHub Actions
11 21 (2.03%) Serverless
12 20 (1.93%) PowerApps
13 16 (1.55%) AWS CloudFormation
14 15 (1.45%) IaaS
15 14 (1.35%) Azure AKS
15 14 (1.35%) Power Automate
16 13 (1.26%) Azure Data Factory
17 12 (1.16%) Azure AI
17 12 (1.16%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 35 (3.38%) Firewall
2 30 (2.90%) TCP/IP
3 29 (2.80%) DNS
3 29 (2.80%) Network Security
4 15 (1.45%) WAN
5 13 (1.26%) BGP
5 13 (1.26%) SSH
6 12 (1.16%) LAN
7 10 (0.97%) OSPF
8 9 (0.87%) 3GPP
8 9 (0.87%) HTTPS
8 9 (0.87%) VPN
9 8 (0.77%) Wireless
10 7 (0.68%) VLAN
11 6 (0.58%) DHCP
11 6 (0.58%) LTE
12 5 (0.48%) RTP
12 5 (0.48%) SAN
12 5 (0.48%) Wireshark
13 4 (0.39%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (5.32%) Power BI
2 49 (4.74%) Relational Database
2 49 (4.74%) SQL Server
3 44 (4.26%) PostgreSQL
4 38 (3.68%) Data Warehouse
5 35 (3.38%) Big Data
6 28 (2.71%) Metadata
7 24 (2.32%) NoSQL
8 22 (2.13%) MongoDB
8 22 (2.13%) MySQL
9 21 (2.03%) Hadoop
10 18 (1.74%) Tableau
11 14 (1.35%) Data Lake
12 12 (1.16%) Elasticsearch
13 10 (0.97%) Snowflake Schema
13 10 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 9 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
14 9 (0.87%) Redis
15 7 (0.68%) Power Query
15 7 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 73 (7.06%) Git
2 62 (6.00%) JIRA
3 38 (3.68%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.29%) GitLab
5 28 (2.71%) Rational DOORS
6 12 (1.16%) Gradle
6 12 (1.16%) Selenium
7 11 (1.06%) JUnit
8 8 (0.77%) Jaeger
8 8 (0.77%) MLflow
8 8 (0.77%) Postman
8 8 (0.77%) TeamCity
9 7 (0.68%) CircleCI
9 7 (0.68%) Maven
9 7 (0.68%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.58%) Cucumber
10 6 (0.58%) Cypress.io
10 6 (0.58%) REST Assured
11 5 (0.48%) Bitbucket
11 5 (0.48%) Flyway
General
1 420 (40.62%) Social Skills
2 238 (23.02%) Finance
3 213 (20.60%) Analytical Skills
4 92 (8.90%) Banking
5 64 (6.19%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.32%) Aerospace
7 54 (5.22%) Documentation Skills
8 33 (3.19%) Marketing
9 31 (3.00%) Telecoms
10 29 (2.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 29 (2.80%) Organisational Skills
11 28 (2.71%) Presentation Skills
12 27 (2.61%) Legal
13 26 (2.51%) Influencing Skills
14 24 (2.32%) Front Office
15 20 (1.93%) Manufacturing
16 17 (1.64%) Publishing
17 16 (1.55%) Law
17 16 (1.55%) Retail
18 14 (1.35%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 111 (10.74%) Architect
1 111 (10.74%) Developer
2 91 (8.80%) Analyst
3 87 (8.41%) Lead
3 87 (8.41%) Senior
4 40 (3.87%) Software Engineer
5 35 (3.38%) Delivery Manager
5 35 (3.38%) Product Manager
6 33 (3.19%) Solutions Architect
7 31 (3.00%) Data Scientist
8 28 (2.71%) Data Engineer
8 28 (2.71%) Product Delivery Manager
8 28 (2.71%) Technical Support
9 24 (2.32%) Security Engineer
10 23 (2.22%) Python Developer
11 22 (2.13%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 22 (2.13%) Systems Delivery Manager
11 22 (2.13%) Systems Manager
12 21 (2.03%) Junior
13 20 (1.93%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (8.32%) REST
2 56 (5.42%) React
3 51 (4.93%) .NET
4 44 (4.26%) Kafka
5 43 (4.16%) Middleware
6 33 (3.19%) RESTful
6 33 (3.19%) Spring Boot
7 29 (2.80%) Spring
8 26 (2.51%) OAuth
9 24 (2.32%) AngularJS
9 24 (2.32%) PyTorch
10 21 (2.03%) JSON
11 19 (1.84%) HTML
11 19 (1.84%) SOAP
11 19 (1.84%) TensorFlow
12 18 (1.74%) Elastic Stack
12 18 (1.74%) XML
13 17 (1.64%) CSS
14 16 (1.55%) SAML
14 16 (1.55%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 101 (9.77%) Management Information System
2 80 (7.74%) Onboarding
2 80 (7.74%) Product Ownership
3 70 (6.77%) Algorithms
4 63 (6.09%) Cloud Native
5 52 (5.03%) Data Structures
6 50 (4.84%) Distributed Systems
7 29 (2.80%) Virtual Team
8 25 (2.42%) Derivative
9 24 (2.32%) Self-Motivation
10 21 (2.03%) AI Agents
10 21 (2.03%) Equities
10 21 (2.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 20 (1.93%) Analytical Mindset
11 20 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
11 20 (1.93%) Taxonomies
12 18 (1.74%) Security Operations Centre
13 17 (1.64%) Cyberattack
14 16 (1.55%) Robotics
15 15 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 132 (12.77%) Windows
2 127 (12.28%) Linux
3 44 (4.26%) Unix
4 24 (2.32%) Android
5 19 (1.84%) Windows 10
5 19 (1.84%) Windows Server
6 17 (1.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (1.45%) Apple iOS
8 13 (1.26%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.48%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.39%) Debian
10 4 (0.39%) Rocky
10 4 (0.39%) 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 (0.097%) CentOS
12 1 (0.097%) Embedded Linux
12 1 (0.097%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 307 (29.69%) Problem-Solving
2 261 (25.24%) Agile
3 228 (22.05%) AI
4 185 (17.89%) CI/CD
5 175 (16.92%) DevOps
6 169 (16.34%) Continuous Improvement
7 168 (16.25%) Software Engineering
8 132 (12.77%) Analytics
9 123 (11.90%) Cybersecurity
10 113 (10.93%) Microservices
11 108 (10.44%) Stakeholder Management
12 104 (10.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 100 (9.67%) Machine Learning
14 95 (9.19%) Technical Leadership
15 93 (8.99%) Decision-Making
16 91 (8.80%) Mathematics
17 90 (8.70%) Data Science
18 88 (8.51%) Containerisation
19 85 (8.22%) Data Governance
19 85 (8.22%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 287 (27.76%) Python
2 209 (20.21%) SQL
3 136 (13.15%) Java
4 69 (6.67%) JavaScript
5 60 (5.80%) C#
6 45 (4.35%) PowerShell
7 30 (2.90%) TypeScript
8 27 (2.61%) C++
9 25 (2.42%) Bash
10 20 (1.93%) R
11 14 (1.35%) Go
12 12 (1.16%) Perl
13 11 (1.06%) Rust
13 11 (1.06%) Shell Script
14 10 (0.97%) Kotlin
15 8 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 6 (0.58%) Scala
17 5 (0.48%) C
18 4 (0.39%) Ada
19 3 (0.29%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 823 (79.59%) Degree
2 495 (47.87%) Computer Science Degree
3 193 (18.67%) Security Cleared
4 138 (13.35%) Master's Degree
5 120 (11.61%) SC Cleared
6 55 (5.32%) CISSP
7 37 (3.58%) CISM
8 31 (3.00%) Azure Certification
8 31 (3.00%) PhD
9 30 (2.90%) TOGAF Certification
10 29 (2.80%) Microsoft Certification
11 27 (2.61%) DV Cleared
11 27 (2.61%) PMI Certification
12 24 (2.32%) PMP
13 23 (2.22%) AWS Certification
14 22 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
15 21 (2.03%) Cisco Certification
15 21 (2.03%) CompTIA Security+
16 19 (1.84%) CISA
16 19 (1.84%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 63 (6.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 63 (6.09%) NIST
2 57 (5.51%) Data Quality
3 51 (4.93%) QA
4 37 (3.58%) GDPR
5 20 (1.93%) PCI DSS
6 17 (1.64%) Accessibility
7 14 (1.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 13 (1.26%) GRC
9 10 (0.97%) NIST 800
9 10 (0.97%) SLA
10 9 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 8 (0.77%) HIPAA
11 8 (0.77%) NCSC
12 7 (0.68%) COBIT
12 7 (0.68%) PSD2
13 6 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
13 6 (0.58%) ISO 20022
14 5 (0.48%) Government Security Classifications
14 5 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 98 (9.48%) Docker
2 73 (7.06%) Active Directory
3 20 (1.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.97%) Firmware
5 9 (0.87%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.48%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.39%) 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 (0.097%) ACF2
11 1 (0.097%) HDFS
11 1 (0.097%) RACF
Systems Management
1 118 (11.41%) Kubernetes
2 53 (5.13%) Terraform
3 41 (3.97%) Ansible
4 32 (3.09%) Prometheus
5 30 (2.90%) Grafana
6 26 (2.51%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (1.64%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.77%) Kiali
9 7 (0.68%) Puppet
10 6 (0.58%) Kibana
11 4 (0.39%) Control-M
11 4 (0.39%) 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
1 173 (16.73%) Microsoft
2 69 (6.67%) Oracle
3 48 (4.64%) Databricks
4 42 (4.06%) Splunk
5 36 (3.48%) SAP
6 34 (3.29%) Google
6 34 (3.29%) IBM
7 28 (2.71%) ServiceNow
8 24 (2.32%) VMware
9 17 (1.64%) Cisco
9 17 (1.64%) Okta
10 15 (1.45%) BiZZdesign
10 15 (1.45%) Informatica
11 14 (1.35%) CyberArk
11 14 (1.35%) Palo Alto
12 13 (1.26%) BeyondTrust
12 13 (1.26%) Salesforce
13 12 (1.16%) CheckPoint
14 11 (1.06%) MuleSoft
15 9 (0.87%) Foundry