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

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 101 68 68
Rank change year-on-year -33 0 +48
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,083 1,043 1,282
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.33% 3.53% 2.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.75% 3.89% 3.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 639 584 789
10th Percentile £177 £250 £320
25th Percentile £313 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £663 £675 £650
90th Percentile £778 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -3.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 32 92
10th Percentile £26.86 £27.21 £22.39
25th Percentile £51.81 £30.78 £41.25
Median hourly rate £83.00 £43.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +89.71% -20.45% +1.97%
75th Percentile £88.00 £64.31 £65.00
90th Percentile - £82.25 £74.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.00 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +121.33% -31.82% +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 39,397 26,809 37,691
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.78% 90.76% 86.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,864 17,328 24,353
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £739 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,354 1,060 2,429
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.83 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £29.07 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.60% -16.94% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £71.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £28.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +48.41% -20.00% -6.17%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 -36 954 £495 -5.71% 607
UK excluding London -37 555 £400 -20.00% 478
London -41 433 £548 -8.75% 226
Work from Home -52 243 £517 -6.00% 753
South East -10 189 £400 -20.00% 192
North of England -28 138 £375 -31.19% 84
Midlands -52 80 £456 +60.65% 71
Yorkshire -11 72 £507 +31.35% 30
North West -27 64 £352 -38.33% 35
West Midlands -55 60 £450 +87.89% 42
South West -40 47 £477 +28.05% 36
East of England -25 45 £400 -38.46% 59
Scotland 0 39 £610 +16.19% 20
East Midlands -35 19 £505 +41.85% 29
Wales -23 15 £160 -44.83% 5
Northern Ireland +4 7 £350 -41.67% 25
North East -19 3 £170 -70.39% 19

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 47 (4.34%) Confluence
2 40 (3.69%) Apache Spark
3 28 (2.59%) SharePoint
4 19 (1.75%) Apache
5 18 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
5 18 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (0.37%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 3 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.28%) CMS
7 3 (0.28%) IIS
7 3 (0.28%) Jupyter
7 3 (0.28%) SAS
8 2 (0.18%) nginx
8 2 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
8 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.092%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.092%) Apache Solr
9 1 (0.092%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 39 (3.60%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (1.11%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.55%) Navisworks
5 6 (0.55%) Revit
6 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.37%) Simulink
7 3 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.18%) Trello
Business Applications
1 23 (2.12%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.46%) Aladdin
3 5 (0.46%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
4 3 (0.28%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.18%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.092%) Actimize
6 1 (0.092%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.092%) Maximo
6 1 (0.092%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.092%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.092%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.092%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 313 (28.90%) Azure
2 190 (17.54%) AWS
3 89 (8.22%) GCP
4 71 (6.56%) Power Platform
5 57 (5.26%) Microsoft 365
5 57 (5.26%) SaaS
6 55 (5.08%) GitHub
7 43 (3.97%) Entra ID
8 42 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
9 24 (2.22%) Serverless
10 23 (2.12%) AWS CloudFormation
10 23 (2.12%) Snowflake
11 22 (2.03%) Azure Data Factory
11 22 (2.03%) GitHub Actions
11 22 (2.03%) IaaS
12 18 (1.66%) PowerApps
13 17 (1.57%) Azure AKS
13 17 (1.57%) Power Automate
14 16 (1.48%) Azure Machine Learning
15 13 (1.20%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 42 (3.88%) Firewall
2 28 (2.59%) TCP/IP
3 27 (2.49%) DNS
4 20 (1.85%) Network Security
5 16 (1.48%) WAN
6 13 (1.20%) BGP
6 13 (1.20%) HTTP
6 13 (1.20%) LAN
7 10 (0.92%) Cisco IOS
7 10 (0.92%) OSPF
8 9 (0.83%) HTTPS
8 9 (0.83%) SSH
9 8 (0.74%) Skype
10 7 (0.65%) 3GPP
10 7 (0.65%) SAN
10 7 (0.65%) VLAN
10 7 (0.65%) VPN
10 7 (0.65%) Wireless
11 6 (0.55%) IPv4
11 6 (0.55%) LTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (4.99%) PostgreSQL
2 52 (4.80%) Relational Database
3 51 (4.71%) Power BI
3 51 (4.71%) SQL Server
4 42 (3.88%) Data Warehouse
5 37 (3.42%) Big Data
6 31 (2.86%) MySQL
7 29 (2.68%) NoSQL
8 26 (2.40%) Metadata
9 22 (2.03%) Hadoop
10 21 (1.94%) Tableau
11 20 (1.85%) MongoDB
12 15 (1.39%) Data Lake
13 14 (1.29%) Elasticsearch
14 12 (1.11%) Redis
14 12 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 10 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
16 9 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
16 9 (0.83%) Star Schema
17 7 (0.65%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 86 (7.94%) Git
2 69 (6.37%) JIRA
3 40 (3.69%) Jenkins
4 37 (3.42%) GitLab
5 28 (2.59%) Rational DOORS
6 13 (1.20%) Selenium
7 12 (1.11%) MLflow
8 10 (0.92%) Postman
9 9 (0.83%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.74%) Cypress.io
10 8 (0.74%) Gradle
10 8 (0.74%) TeamCity
11 7 (0.65%) CircleCI
11 7 (0.65%) JUnit
12 6 (0.55%) Bitbucket
13 5 (0.46%) Artifactory
14 4 (0.37%) Maven
14 4 (0.37%) SonarQube
14 4 (0.37%) Subversion
14 4 (0.37%) Visual Studio
General
1 449 (41.46%) Social Skills
2 257 (23.73%) Finance
3 230 (21.24%) Analytical Skills
4 97 (8.96%) Banking
5 75 (6.93%) Public Sector
6 52 (4.80%) Documentation Skills
7 51 (4.71%) Aerospace
8 47 (4.34%) Marketing
9 38 (3.51%) Telecoms
10 34 (3.14%) Legal
11 33 (3.05%) Presentation Skills
12 32 (2.95%) Influencing Skills
13 27 (2.49%) Organisational Skills
14 25 (2.31%) Electronics
15 24 (2.22%) Front Office
15 24 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 23 (2.12%) Manufacturing
17 20 (1.85%) Investment Banking
18 18 (1.66%) Financial Institution
19 16 (1.48%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 133 (12.28%) Developer
2 111 (10.25%) Architect
3 93 (8.59%) Lead
4 84 (7.76%) Analyst
5 74 (6.83%) Senior
6 39 (3.60%) Software Engineer
7 37 (3.42%) Delivery Manager
7 37 (3.42%) Solutions Architect
8 36 (3.32%) Data Scientist
9 35 (3.23%) Product Manager
10 31 (2.86%) Technical Support
11 29 (2.68%) Data Engineer
12 28 (2.59%) Product Delivery Manager
13 26 (2.40%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 25 (2.31%) Java Developer
14 25 (2.31%) Python Developer
15 23 (2.12%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 22 (2.03%) Security Engineer
16 22 (2.03%) Systems Delivery Manager
16 22 (2.03%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (7.85%) REST
2 59 (5.45%) .NET
3 53 (4.89%) React
4 44 (4.06%) Kafka
4 44 (4.06%) RESTful
5 41 (3.79%) Middleware
6 35 (3.23%) PyTorch
6 35 (3.23%) Spring Boot
7 32 (2.95%) JSON
8 31 (2.86%) OAuth
8 31 (2.86%) Spring
9 30 (2.77%) XML
10 29 (2.68%) TensorFlow
11 26 (2.40%) SOAP
12 22 (2.03%) Elastic Stack
12 22 (2.03%) HTML
13 21 (1.94%) LangChain
14 20 (1.85%) Pandas
15 17 (1.57%) AngularJS
15 17 (1.57%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 117 (10.80%) Management Information System
2 83 (7.66%) Algorithms
3 77 (7.11%) Product Ownership
4 72 (6.65%) Cloud Native
4 72 (6.65%) Onboarding
5 60 (5.54%) Data Structures
6 46 (4.25%) Distributed Systems
7 32 (2.95%) Virtual Team
8 26 (2.40%) Equities
9 25 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
10 24 (2.22%) AI Agents
11 21 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
12 20 (1.85%) Analytical Mindset
12 20 (1.85%) Taxonomies
13 19 (1.75%) Derivative
13 19 (1.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 19 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
14 17 (1.57%) Cyberattack
14 17 (1.57%) Security Operations Centre
15 16 (1.48%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 144 (13.30%) Linux
2 127 (11.73%) Windows
3 48 (4.43%) Unix
4 24 (2.22%) Android
5 23 (2.12%) Mac OS
6 18 (1.66%) Windows Server
7 16 (1.48%) Windows 10
8 11 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 8 (0.74%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.46%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.46%) VMS
11 4 (0.37%) Debian
12 3 (0.28%) Rocky
13 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.18%) Windows 7
14 1 (0.092%) CentOS
14 1 (0.092%) Embedded Linux
14 1 (0.092%) MVS
14 1 (0.092%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 347 (32.04%) Problem-Solving
2 288 (26.59%) Agile
3 256 (23.64%) AI
4 212 (19.58%) CI/CD
5 205 (18.93%) DevOps
6 179 (16.53%) Software Engineering
7 159 (14.68%) Continuous Improvement
8 139 (12.83%) Analytics
9 124 (11.45%) Microservices
10 117 (10.80%) Stakeholder Management
11 116 (10.71%) Cybersecurity
11 116 (10.71%) Machine Learning
12 106 (9.79%) Data Science
13 104 (9.60%) Data Governance
13 104 (9.60%) Mathematics
14 102 (9.42%) Containerisation
15 98 (9.05%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 97 (8.96%) Decision-Making
17 96 (8.86%) Data Modelling
18 95 (8.77%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 307 (28.35%) Python
2 206 (19.02%) SQL
3 137 (12.65%) Java
4 68 (6.28%) JavaScript
5 60 (5.54%) C#
6 59 (5.45%) PowerShell
7 40 (3.69%) TypeScript
8 37 (3.42%) Bash
9 33 (3.05%) C++
10 22 (2.03%) R
11 15 (1.39%) Go
12 13 (1.20%) Perl
13 12 (1.11%) Rust
13 12 (1.11%) Shell Script
14 10 (0.92%) Kotlin
15 8 (0.74%) Scala
16 7 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 6 (0.55%) C
18 5 (0.46%) Tcl
19 4 (0.37%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 895 (82.64%) Degree
2 554 (51.15%) Computer Science Degree
3 200 (18.47%) Security Cleared
4 165 (15.24%) Master's Degree
5 123 (11.36%) SC Cleared
6 56 (5.17%) CISSP
7 41 (3.79%) PhD
8 38 (3.51%) CISM
9 36 (3.32%) Azure Certification
10 35 (3.23%) Microsoft Certification
11 33 (3.05%) PMI Certification
12 30 (2.77%) TOGAF Certification
13 28 (2.59%) PMP
14 25 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
15 24 (2.22%) AWS Certification
15 24 (2.22%) CompTIA Security+
15 24 (2.22%) DV Cleared
16 22 (2.03%) DBS Check
17 19 (1.75%) CISA
18 17 (1.57%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (6.00%) QA
2 56 (5.17%) NIST
3 53 (4.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 51 (4.71%) Data Quality
5 39 (3.60%) GDPR
6 19 (1.75%) Accessibility
7 16 (1.48%) PCI DSS
8 12 (1.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 10 (0.92%) GRC
9 10 (0.92%) NIST 800
10 8 (0.74%) NCSC
10 8 (0.74%) SLA
11 7 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.65%) COBIT
11 7 (0.65%) DO-254
11 7 (0.65%) PSD2
12 6 (0.55%) ISO 19650
12 6 (0.55%) ISO 20022
12 6 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 5 (0.46%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 120 (11.08%) Docker
2 76 (7.02%) Active Directory
3 17 (1.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (1.29%) Firmware
5 6 (0.55%) Hyper-V
6 5 (0.46%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.37%) vSphere
8 2 (0.18%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.18%) Ceph
8 2 (0.18%) KVM
8 2 (0.18%) Squid
8 2 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.092%) ACF2
9 1 (0.092%) HDFS
9 1 (0.092%) PowerHA
9 1 (0.092%) RACF
9 1 (0.092%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 131 (12.10%) Kubernetes
2 71 (6.56%) Terraform
3 50 (4.62%) Ansible
4 35 (3.23%) Grafana
5 29 (2.68%) Prometheus
6 24 (2.22%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
8 14 (1.29%) Puppet
9 10 (0.92%) Kibana
10 9 (0.83%) Kiali
11 6 (0.55%) SCCM
12 4 (0.37%) Control-M
12 4 (0.37%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.37%) Progress Chef
13 3 (0.28%) Foglight
13 3 (0.28%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
13 3 (0.28%) SCOM
13 3 (0.28%) vCenter Server
14 2 (0.18%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 198 (18.28%) Microsoft
2 64 (5.91%) Oracle
3 53 (4.89%) Splunk
4 48 (4.43%) Databricks
5 47 (4.34%) SAP
6 40 (3.69%) Google
7 34 (3.14%) IBM
8 30 (2.77%) ServiceNow
9 21 (1.94%) Cisco
9 21 (1.94%) VMware
10 18 (1.66%) BiZZdesign
11 17 (1.57%) Informatica
11 17 (1.57%) Salesforce
12 16 (1.48%) Okta
13 14 (1.29%) Palo Alto
14 13 (1.20%) CheckPoint
14 13 (1.20%) CyberArk
15 12 (1.11%) Foundry
15 12 (1.11%) MuleSoft
15 12 (1.11%) Software AG