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

6 months to
1 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 115 63 62
Rank change year-on-year -52 -1 +43
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,048 1,066 1,340
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.14% 3.66% 3.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.53% 4.02% 3.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 611 595 812
10th Percentile £178 £250 £313
25th Percentile £220 £385 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.37% -2.38% -7.08%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £650
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -15.79% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 102 33 103
10th Percentile £28.50 £25.25 £21.25
25th Percentile £47.56 £29.00 £38.75
Median hourly rate £81.50 £37.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +117.33% -31.82% +2.10%
75th Percentile £88.00 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile - £82.82 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.00 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +121.33% -31.82% +10.00%

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 41,434 26,510 36,773
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.66% 90.99% 85.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,895 16,942 23,625
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,481 1,120 2,526
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.97 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.98% -23.38% -0.11%
75th Percentile £67.84 £57.50 £60.71
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -44 938 £475 -9.52% 972
UK excluding London -45 562 £400 -15.79% 618
London -51 404 £550 -8.33% 474
Work from Home -67 229 £500 -9.09% 375
South East -6 217 £215 -55.26% 215
North of England -23 136 £400 -20.00% 111
Yorkshire -6 80 £525 +22.38% 24
Midlands -64 73 £463 +57.31% 65
West Midlands -60 57 £450 +54.11% 41
North West -41 55 £350 -33.33% 62
South West -39 47 £469 +34.00% 63
Scotland -18 39 £610 +16.19% 41
East of England -38 38 £280 -56.92% 85
East Midlands -40 15 £525 +74.71% 24
Northern Ireland +11 8 £350 -41.67% 39
Wales -33 7 £370 +27.59% 13
North East -29 2 £125 -73.68% 25

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 (4.96%) Confluence
2 39 (3.72%) Apache Spark
3 26 (2.48%) SharePoint
4 23 (2.19%) Apache
5 21 (2.00%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (0.95%) Microsoft Exchange
7 5 (0.48%) IIS
8 4 (0.38%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.38%) SAS
9 3 (0.29%) Camunda
9 3 (0.29%) CMS
9 3 (0.29%) Jupyter
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 (0.095%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.095%) Tomcat
Applications
1 32 (3.05%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (2.10%) 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 3 (0.29%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.19%) Simulink
7 2 (0.19%) Trello
8 1 (0.095%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.095%) Sketch
8 1 (0.095%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 23 (2.19%) 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 (0.095%) Actimize
6 1 (0.095%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.095%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.095%) SAP Retail
6 1 (0.095%) SAP SM
6 1 (0.095%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.095%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 300 (28.63%) Azure
2 191 (18.23%) AWS
3 82 (7.82%) GCP
4 60 (5.73%) Power Platform
5 54 (5.15%) Microsoft 365
6 48 (4.58%) SaaS
7 46 (4.39%) GitHub
8 45 (4.29%) Entra ID
9 34 (3.24%) Azure DevOps
10 21 (2.00%) Snowflake
11 20 (1.91%) GitHub Actions
12 19 (1.81%) AWS CloudFormation
13 17 (1.62%) Azure AKS
13 17 (1.62%) IaaS
13 17 (1.62%) Serverless
14 14 (1.34%) PowerApps
15 13 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
15 13 (1.24%) PaaS
16 12 (1.15%) Azure Service Bus
17 11 (1.05%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 37 (3.53%) Firewall
2 30 (2.86%) TCP/IP
3 29 (2.77%) DNS
4 28 (2.67%) Network Security
5 15 (1.43%) WAN
6 13 (1.24%) BGP
7 12 (1.15%) LAN
7 12 (1.15%) SSH
8 10 (0.95%) OSPF
9 9 (0.86%) 3GPP
9 9 (0.86%) VPN
9 9 (0.86%) Wireless
10 8 (0.76%) HTTPS
11 7 (0.67%) SAN
11 7 (0.67%) VLAN
12 6 (0.57%) DHCP
12 6 (0.57%) LTE
13 5 (0.48%) RTP
13 5 (0.48%) Wireshark
14 4 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (4.77%) SQL Server
2 49 (4.68%) Power BI
2 49 (4.68%) Relational Database
3 47 (4.48%) PostgreSQL
4 39 (3.72%) Data Warehouse
5 34 (3.24%) Big Data
6 27 (2.58%) Metadata
7 25 (2.39%) NoSQL
8 23 (2.19%) MongoDB
9 22 (2.10%) MySQL
10 21 (2.00%) Hadoop
11 17 (1.62%) Tableau
12 15 (1.43%) Elasticsearch
13 14 (1.34%) Data Lake
14 10 (0.95%) Snowflake Schema
14 10 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 9 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
15 9 (0.86%) Redis
16 7 (0.67%) Power Query
16 7 (0.67%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 74 (7.06%) Git
2 66 (6.30%) JIRA
3 36 (3.44%) GitLab
4 35 (3.34%) Jenkins
5 28 (2.67%) Rational DOORS
6 12 (1.15%) Gradle
7 11 (1.05%) JUnit
7 11 (1.05%) Selenium
8 10 (0.95%) TeamCity
9 9 (0.86%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.76%) MLflow
11 7 (0.67%) CircleCI
11 7 (0.67%) Maven
11 7 (0.67%) SonarQube
12 6 (0.57%) Cypress.io
12 6 (0.57%) Postman
13 5 (0.48%) Artifactory
13 5 (0.48%) Flyway
14 4 (0.38%) Bitbucket
14 4 (0.38%) Cucumber
General
1 421 (40.17%) Social Skills
2 238 (22.71%) Finance
3 209 (19.94%) Analytical Skills
4 94 (8.97%) Banking
5 61 (5.82%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.25%) Aerospace
7 49 (4.68%) Documentation Skills
8 32 (3.05%) Marketing
8 32 (3.05%) Telecoms
9 31 (2.96%) Presentation Skills
10 29 (2.77%) Legal
10 29 (2.77%) Organisational Skills
11 28 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 25 (2.39%) Front Office
12 25 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
13 19 (1.81%) Manufacturing
14 16 (1.53%) Investment Banking
14 16 (1.53%) Publishing
15 15 (1.43%) Financial Institution
15 15 (1.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 110 (10.50%) Architect
2 107 (10.21%) Developer
3 91 (8.68%) Analyst
4 86 (8.21%) Lead
5 85 (8.11%) Senior
6 41 (3.91%) Software Engineer
7 37 (3.53%) Delivery Manager
8 35 (3.34%) Product Manager
9 32 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
10 30 (2.86%) Technical Support
11 29 (2.77%) Data Scientist
12 28 (2.67%) Data Engineer
12 28 (2.67%) Product Delivery Manager
13 24 (2.29%) Python Developer
14 23 (2.19%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 23 (2.19%) Junior
14 23 (2.19%) Security Engineer
15 22 (2.10%) Systems Delivery Manager
15 22 (2.10%) Systems Manager
16 19 (1.81%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (8.49%) REST
2 57 (5.44%) React
3 53 (5.06%) .NET
4 46 (4.39%) Kafka
5 45 (4.29%) Middleware
6 35 (3.34%) RESTful
7 34 (3.24%) Spring Boot
8 29 (2.77%) Spring
9 26 (2.48%) PyTorch
10 23 (2.19%) AngularJS
10 23 (2.19%) OAuth
11 22 (2.10%) SOAP
12 21 (2.00%) TensorFlow
13 20 (1.91%) Elastic Stack
13 20 (1.91%) JSON
14 19 (1.81%) HTML
15 18 (1.72%) CSS
15 18 (1.72%) XML
16 17 (1.62%) Pandas
17 16 (1.53%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 100 (9.54%) Management Information System
2 78 (7.44%) Product Ownership
3 76 (7.25%) Onboarding
4 71 (6.77%) Algorithms
5 67 (6.39%) Cloud Native
6 52 (4.96%) Data Structures
7 51 (4.87%) Distributed Systems
8 30 (2.86%) Virtual Team
9 26 (2.48%) Derivative
10 25 (2.39%) Self-Motivation
11 22 (2.10%) Equities
12 20 (1.91%) Data Protection Act
12 20 (1.91%) Taxonomies
13 19 (1.81%) AI Agents
13 19 (1.81%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 18 (1.72%) Analytical Mindset
14 18 (1.72%) Security Operations Centre
15 17 (1.62%) Cyberattack
16 16 (1.53%) Robotics
17 14 (1.34%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 133 (12.69%) Windows
2 131 (12.50%) Linux
3 45 (4.29%) Unix
4 24 (2.29%) Android
5 20 (1.91%) Windows 10
6 18 (1.72%) Windows Server
7 16 (1.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 15 (1.43%) 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 (0.095%) CentOS
13 1 (0.095%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.095%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 315 (30.06%) Problem-Solving
2 263 (25.10%) Agile
3 224 (21.37%) AI
4 193 (18.42%) CI/CD
5 182 (17.37%) DevOps
6 177 (16.89%) Software Engineering
7 170 (16.22%) Continuous Improvement
8 130 (12.40%) Analytics
9 123 (11.74%) Cybersecurity
10 116 (11.07%) Microservices
11 103 (9.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 101 (9.64%) Stakeholder Management
13 96 (9.16%) Technical Leadership
14 95 (9.06%) Machine Learning
15 93 (8.87%) Containerisation
15 93 (8.87%) Decision-Making
16 89 (8.49%) Mathematics
17 87 (8.30%) Data Governance
17 87 (8.30%) Data Modelling
17 87 (8.30%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 285 (27.19%) Python
2 208 (19.85%) SQL
3 136 (12.98%) Java
4 68 (6.49%) JavaScript
5 57 (5.44%) C#
6 45 (4.29%) PowerShell
7 32 (3.05%) TypeScript
8 29 (2.77%) Bash
8 29 (2.77%) C++
9 19 (1.81%) R
10 14 (1.34%) Go
11 13 (1.24%) Perl
12 12 (1.15%) Rust
13 11 (1.05%) Shell Script
14 10 (0.95%) Kotlin
15 8 (0.76%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 6 (0.57%) Scala
17 5 (0.48%) C
18 4 (0.38%) Ada
19 3 (0.29%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 838 (79.96%) Degree
2 509 (48.57%) Computer Science Degree
3 190 (18.13%) Security Cleared
4 142 (13.55%) Master's Degree
5 113 (10.78%) SC Cleared
6 56 (5.34%) CISSP
7 38 (3.63%) CISM
8 32 (3.05%) Azure Certification
8 32 (3.05%) PhD
9 30 (2.86%) TOGAF Certification
10 29 (2.77%) DV Cleared
11 27 (2.58%) Microsoft Certification
12 26 (2.48%) PMI Certification
13 23 (2.19%) PMP
14 22 (2.10%) AWS Certification
14 22 (2.10%) CompTIA Security+
15 21 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
16 20 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
17 19 (1.81%) CISA
17 19 (1.81%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 56 (5.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 56 (5.34%) NIST
2 55 (5.25%) Data Quality
2 55 (5.25%) QA
3 36 (3.44%) GDPR
4 20 (1.91%) PCI DSS
5 19 (1.81%) Accessibility
6 13 (1.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 12 (1.15%) GRC
8 10 (0.95%) NIST 800
8 10 (0.95%) SLA
9 8 (0.76%) NCSC
10 7 (0.67%) COBIT
10 7 (0.67%) HIPAA
10 7 (0.67%) PSD2
11 6 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.57%) ISO 19650
11 6 (0.57%) ISO 20022
11 6 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 5 (0.48%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 107 (10.21%) Docker
2 68 (6.49%) 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 (0.095%) ACF2
11 1 (0.095%) HDFS
11 1 (0.095%) RACF
Systems Management
1 129 (12.31%) Kubernetes
2 62 (5.92%) Terraform
3 49 (4.68%) Ansible
4 32 (3.05%) Grafana
5 31 (2.96%) Prometheus
6 26 (2.48%) Microsoft Intune
7 16 (1.53%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (0.95%) Puppet
9 9 (0.86%) Kiali
9 9 (0.86%) Kibana
10 4 (0.38%) Control-M
10 4 (0.38%) Kubeflow
11 3 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
11 3 (0.29%) Foglight
11 3 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
11 3 (0.29%) Progress Chef
11 3 (0.29%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.19%) AirWatch
12 2 (0.19%) vRealize
12 2 (0.19%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 175 (16.70%) Microsoft
2 65 (6.20%) Oracle
3 49 (4.68%) Splunk
4 48 (4.58%) Databricks
5 36 (3.44%) SAP
6 35 (3.34%) Google
7 34 (3.24%) IBM
8 29 (2.77%) ServiceNow
9 24 (2.29%) VMware
10 18 (1.72%) Cisco
11 16 (1.53%) Okta
12 15 (1.43%) BiZZdesign
12 15 (1.43%) Informatica
13 13 (1.24%) Palo Alto
13 13 (1.24%) Salesforce
14 12 (1.15%) CheckPoint
15 10 (0.95%) CyberArk
15 10 (0.95%) MuleSoft
15 10 (0.95%) Software AG
16 9 (0.86%) BeyondTrust