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

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 74 79
Rank change year-on-year -14 +5 +52
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,111 986 1,194
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.92% 3.12% 2.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.34% 3.51% 3.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 728 572 785
10th Percentile £175 £356 £319
25th Percentile £313 £450 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £775 £834 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -20.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 22 58
10th Percentile £26.38 £30.78 £27.23
25th Percentile £26.75 £33.75 £41.56
Median hourly rate £33.50 £44.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.86% -20.00% +4.76%
75th Percentile £59.06 £53.75 £66.25
90th Percentile £74.38 £69.98 £74.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -10.67% -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 33,264 28,130 38,528
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.54% 88.98% 87.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,071 17,089 25,387
10th Percentile £305 £306 £300
25th Percentile £408 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £644
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,016 886 1,898
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.91
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.96 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £36.42
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -10.76% +16.69%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.82 £74.93 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £30.41 £37.50
% change year-on-year -21.08% -18.91% +44.23%

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 January 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 January 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 January 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 -15 985 £475 -13.64% 1,615
UK excluding London +8 551 £400 -20.00% 1,502
London -33 459 £536 -7.67% 313
Work from Home -18 272 £466 -19.00% 759
North of England +42 189 £375 -28.57% 243
South East +26 134 £321 -35.75% 520
Yorkshire +22 102 £475 -9.52% 91
Midlands -26 97 £500 +25.00% 177
North West +15 85 £350 -33.33% 105
West Midlands -35 67 £525 +5.00% 70
South West +10 57 £500 -23.95% 189
Scotland -9 40 £585 +21.90% 64
East of England -35 32 £455 -12.33% 241
East Midlands -14 30 £447 +25.56% 102
Wales -10 14 £160 -44.83% 74
Northern Ireland -7 4 - - 38
North East -14 3 £216 -57.95% 48

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 64 (5.76%) Confluence
2 40 (3.60%) SharePoint
3 32 (2.88%) Apache Spark
4 20 (1.80%) Microsoft Exchange
5 13 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
6 11 (0.99%) Apache
7 7 (0.63%) Jupyter
7 7 (0.63%) nginx
8 5 (0.45%) Skype for Business
8 5 (0.45%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.36%) GeoServer
9 4 (0.36%) IIS
9 4 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 4 (0.36%) SAS
10 3 (0.27%) Ethereum
10 3 (0.27%) Hyperledger
10 3 (0.27%) Luigi
11 2 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
Applications
1 41 (3.69%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.90%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.54%) Simulink
6 5 (0.45%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.090%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.090%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 22 (1.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.99%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.36%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.27%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.18%) Maximo
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle EBS R12
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.18%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.18%) SAP CX
5 2 (0.18%) SAP FS
5 2 (0.18%) SAP Travel Management
6 1 (0.090%) JDE EnterpriseOne
Cloud Services
1 284 (25.56%) Azure
2 201 (18.09%) AWS
3 117 (10.53%) GCP
4 72 (6.48%) GitHub
4 72 (6.48%) Power Platform
5 60 (5.40%) Serverless
6 55 (4.95%) Microsoft 365
7 44 (3.96%) SaaS
8 42 (3.78%) Azure DevOps
9 33 (2.97%) GitHub Actions
10 28 (2.52%) Entra ID
11 21 (1.89%) IaaS
12 20 (1.80%) Azure Data Factory
12 20 (1.80%) Cloud Computing
12 20 (1.80%) Power Automate
12 20 (1.80%) PowerApps
13 18 (1.62%) Snowflake
14 17 (1.53%) AWS Lambda
14 17 (1.53%) Azure Machine Learning
15 15 (1.35%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 45 (4.05%) Firewall
2 34 (3.06%) DNS
3 23 (2.07%) Network Security
4 21 (1.89%) HTTP
5 20 (1.80%) TCP/IP
6 14 (1.26%) DHCP
6 14 (1.26%) SSH
7 13 (1.17%) Skype
8 12 (1.08%) Wireless
9 11 (0.99%) BGP
9 11 (0.99%) LAN
9 11 (0.99%) WAN
10 10 (0.90%) VoIP
10 10 (0.90%) VPN
11 9 (0.81%) Cisco IOS
11 9 (0.81%) Internet
11 9 (0.81%) VLAN
12 8 (0.72%) OSPF
13 7 (0.63%) IPv4
13 7 (0.63%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (5.67%) PostgreSQL
2 60 (5.40%) NoSQL
3 55 (4.95%) Relational Database
4 52 (4.68%) Power BI
5 44 (3.96%) Data Warehouse
6 37 (3.33%) MySQL
6 37 (3.33%) SQL Server
7 29 (2.61%) Big Data
8 27 (2.43%) Tableau
9 19 (1.71%) Elasticsearch
10 13 (1.17%) MongoDB
11 12 (1.08%) Metadata
12 11 (0.99%) Hadoop
12 11 (0.99%) Redis
13 9 (0.81%) Data Lake
13 9 (0.81%) RDBMS
14 8 (0.72%) Apache Cassandra
14 8 (0.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 7 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
15 7 (0.63%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 94 (8.46%) JIRA
2 88 (7.92%) Git
3 71 (6.39%) Jenkins
4 60 (5.40%) GitLab
5 22 (1.98%) Liquibase
6 18 (1.62%) Postman
7 13 (1.17%) Selenium
8 10 (0.90%) JUnit
9 9 (0.81%) CircleCI
10 8 (0.72%) Bitbucket
10 8 (0.72%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.72%) MLflow
10 8 (0.72%) Visual Studio
11 7 (0.63%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.54%) Appium
12 6 (0.54%) Artifactory
12 6 (0.54%) SonarQube
12 6 (0.54%) XCUITest
13 5 (0.45%) Charles Proxy
13 5 (0.45%) PyCharm
General
1 516 (46.44%) Social Skills
2 289 (26.01%) Finance
3 262 (23.58%) Analytical Skills
4 112 (10.08%) Banking
5 71 (6.39%) Public Sector
6 40 (3.60%) Financial Institution
6 40 (3.60%) Marketing
7 35 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (3.15%) Organisational Skills
8 34 (3.06%) Legal
9 32 (2.88%) Telecoms
10 31 (2.79%) Presentation Skills
11 29 (2.61%) Front Office
12 28 (2.52%) Influencing Skills
13 26 (2.34%) Electronics
14 24 (2.16%) Manufacturing
15 23 (2.07%) Investment Banking
16 14 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 14 (1.26%) Military
17 12 (1.08%) Retail
Job Titles
1 198 (17.82%) Developer
2 98 (8.82%) Analyst
3 90 (8.10%) Architect
4 81 (7.29%) Lead
4 81 (7.29%) Senior
5 52 (4.68%) Software Engineer
6 40 (3.60%) Solutions Architect
7 30 (2.70%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 29 (2.61%) Data Scientist
8 29 (2.61%) Technical Support
9 27 (2.43%) Python Developer
10 26 (2.34%) IT Support
11 25 (2.25%) Senior Developer
12 24 (2.16%) Business Analyst
13 23 (2.07%) Consultant
13 23 (2.07%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 22 (1.98%) Site Engineer
15 21 (1.89%) Data Engineer
15 21 (1.89%) Java Developer
16 20 (1.80%) Machine Learning Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (10.17%) REST
2 76 (6.84%) RESTful
3 57 (5.13%) .NET
4 50 (4.50%) HTML
5 46 (4.14%) Elastic Stack
6 43 (3.87%) React
7 40 (3.60%) OAuth
8 39 (3.51%) JSON
9 38 (3.42%) Middleware
10 35 (3.15%) XML
11 34 (3.06%) CSS
11 34 (3.06%) SOAP
12 32 (2.88%) Kafka
13 30 (2.70%) PyTorch
13 30 (2.70%) TensorFlow
14 29 (2.61%) Node.js
15 27 (2.43%) LangChain
16 22 (1.98%) Spring
17 20 (1.80%) Spring Boot
18 19 (1.71%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 128 (11.52%) Management Information System
2 90 (8.10%) Cloud Native
3 82 (7.38%) Algorithms
4 52 (4.68%) Distributed Systems
5 48 (4.32%) Product Ownership
6 45 (4.05%) Data Structures
7 31 (2.79%) Data Protection Act
7 31 (2.79%) Onboarding
8 30 (2.70%) Public Cloud
9 28 (2.52%) Equities
10 26 (2.34%) Security Posture
11 23 (2.07%) Derivative
12 22 (1.98%) Mobile App
12 22 (1.98%) Virtual Team
13 21 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
14 20 (1.80%) AI Agents
14 20 (1.80%) Data Centre
15 19 (1.71%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 18 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
16 18 (1.62%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 165 (14.85%) Linux
2 125 (11.25%) Windows
3 64 (5.76%) Unix
4 28 (2.52%) Android
5 22 (1.98%) Windows Server
6 20 (1.80%) Mac OS
7 19 (1.71%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.90%) Windows 10
9 6 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 3 (0.27%) VMS
11 2 (0.18%) Debian
11 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.18%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.090%) Kali Linux
12 1 (0.090%) Rocky
12 1 (0.090%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 382 (34.38%) Problem-Solving
2 305 (27.45%) Agile
3 238 (21.42%) DevOps
4 219 (19.71%) CI/CD
5 199 (17.91%) AI
6 183 (16.47%) Software Engineering
7 148 (13.32%) Microservices
8 140 (12.60%) Containerisation
9 129 (11.61%) Cybersecurity
10 118 (10.62%) Machine Learning
11 117 (10.53%) Analytics
12 114 (10.26%) Stakeholder Management
13 111 (9.99%) Continuous Improvement
14 110 (9.90%) Data Modelling
15 104 (9.36%) Data Science
16 101 (9.09%) Mathematics
17 92 (8.28%) Decision-Making
18 84 (7.56%) ITIL
18 84 (7.56%) Validation
19 83 (7.47%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 362 (32.58%) Python
2 200 (18.00%) SQL
3 146 (13.14%) Java
4 108 (9.72%) JavaScript
5 60 (5.40%) PowerShell
6 59 (5.31%) TypeScript
7 53 (4.77%) C#
8 51 (4.59%) Go
9 49 (4.41%) Bash
10 46 (4.14%) C++
11 24 (2.16%) Perl
12 18 (1.62%) R
13 16 (1.44%) Kotlin
14 13 (1.17%) Rust
14 13 (1.17%) Shell Script
15 11 (0.99%) Ruby
16 10 (0.90%) MATLAB
17 9 (0.81%) C
17 9 (0.81%) Swift
18 8 (0.72%) Scala
Qualifications
1 918 (82.63%) Degree
2 615 (55.36%) Computer Science Degree
3 223 (20.07%) Master's Degree
4 136 (12.24%) Security Cleared
5 98 (8.82%) SC Cleared
6 70 (6.30%) CISSP
7 51 (4.59%) DBS Check
7 51 (4.59%) PhD
8 48 (4.32%) CISM
9 37 (3.33%) Azure Certification
10 33 (2.97%) Microsoft Certification
11 31 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
12 30 (2.70%) Cisco Certification
13 29 (2.61%) TOGAF Certification
14 28 (2.52%) AWS Certification
14 28 (2.52%) PMI Certification
15 25 (2.25%) DV Cleared
16 21 (1.89%) PMP
17 20 (1.80%) CompTIA Security+
18 19 (1.71%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (6.30%) QA
2 59 (5.31%) GDPR
3 47 (4.23%) Data Quality
4 43 (3.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 32 (2.88%) NIST
6 18 (1.62%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.53%) GRC
8 15 (1.35%) Accessibility
9 11 (0.99%) Def Stans
10 9 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 8 (0.72%) HIPAA
12 7 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials
13 6 (0.54%) DO-254
13 6 (0.54%) PSD2
13 6 (0.54%) SLA
14 4 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 3 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 3 (0.27%) ISO 19650
15 3 (0.27%) NCSC
15 3 (0.27%) SOC 2
System Software
1 163 (14.67%) Docker
2 53 (4.77%) Active Directory
3 23 (2.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.90%) Firmware
5 6 (0.54%) VMware NSX
6 5 (0.45%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 5 (0.45%) Virtual Servers
7 4 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.18%) KVM
8 2 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.090%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.090%) HDFS
9 1 (0.090%) PowerHA
9 1 (0.090%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 156 (14.04%) Kubernetes
2 94 (8.46%) Terraform
3 67 (6.03%) Ansible
4 53 (4.77%) Grafana
5 41 (3.69%) Prometheus
6 22 (1.98%) Puppet
7 15 (1.35%) Kibana
7 15 (1.35%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (1.26%) SCCM
9 12 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.72%) Kiali
11 7 (0.63%) Argo
12 6 (0.54%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.54%) WSUS
13 5 (0.45%) CSIRT
13 5 (0.45%) QRadar
14 4 (0.36%) SCOM
15 3 (0.27%) Control-M
16 2 (0.18%) FortiGate
16 2 (0.18%) Knative
Vendors
1 185 (16.65%) Microsoft
2 91 (8.19%) Splunk
3 60 (5.40%) Google
4 56 (5.04%) Oracle
5 51 (4.59%) SAP
6 36 (3.24%) Databricks
7 30 (2.70%) Cisco
7 30 (2.70%) Salesforce
8 26 (2.34%) VMware
9 25 (2.25%) ServiceNow
10 20 (1.80%) BiZZdesign
10 20 (1.80%) IBM
11 16 (1.44%) Informatica
12 14 (1.26%) OpenAI
12 14 (1.26%) Red Hat
13 13 (1.17%) MuleSoft
13 13 (1.17%) Palo Alto
14 11 (0.99%) Fortinet
14 11 (0.99%) Foundry
15 10 (0.90%) Atlassian