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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 65 61
Rank change year-on-year -60 -4 +41
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 1,019 1,115 1,397
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.02% 3.74% 3.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.38% 4.11% 3.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 580 616 831
10th Percentile £178 £245 £315
25th Percentile £218 £366 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £650 £663 £650
90th Percentile £764 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £455 £513
% change year-on-year -11.99% -11.32% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 38 104
10th Percentile £26.75 £25.00 £21.25
25th Percentile £41.71 £28.56 £38.75
Median hourly rate £77.46 £37.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +106.55% -31.82% -
75th Percentile £88.00 £68.44 £65.00
90th Percentile - £84.47 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £82.50 £41.25 £55.00
% change year-on-year +100.00% -25.00% +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 42,883 27,154 37,300
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.85% 91.05% 85.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,719 17,238 23,736
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £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 2,572 1,254 2,607
10th Percentile £14.70 £14.20 £12.70
25th Percentile £20.07 £17.79 £16.04
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.40 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +73.07% -32.27% +7.05%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.19 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.08 £38.12
% change year-on-year +79.46% -34.22% +17.29%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 -52 912 £475 -6.63% 692
UK excluding London -50 545 £400 -11.99% 507
London -63 397 £550 -8.33% 283
Work from Home -70 231 £500 -9.09% 268
South East -11 218 £215 -55.61% 189
North of England -32 132 £400 -15.79% 93
Yorkshire -7 80 £525 +22.38% 16
Midlands -72 68 £450 +46.82% 79
West Midlands -68 52 £450 +50.00% 46
North West -41 51 £350 -26.32% 54
East of England -36 40 £308 -52.69% 56
South West -46 38 £469 +95.42% 59
Scotland -32 36 £650 +26.83% 20
East Midlands -32 15 £545 +67.56% 33
Wales -32 9 £530 +82.76% 8
Northern Ireland +7 7 £350 -41.67% 20
North East -38 2 £125 -73.68% 23

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 46 (4.51%) Confluence
2 34 (3.34%) Apache Spark
3 26 (2.55%) SharePoint
4 21 (2.06%) Apache Airflow
5 20 (1.96%) Apache
6 9 (0.88%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.59%) IIS
8 5 (0.49%) SAS
9 3 (0.29%) Camunda
9 3 (0.29%) CMS
9 3 (0.29%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.20%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.20%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.20%) nginx
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.098%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.098%) Apache Solr
Applications
1 34 (3.34%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (2.45%) Microsoft Excel
3 17 (1.67%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.69%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.69%) Revit
6 4 (0.39%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.20%) Simulink
8 2 (0.20%) Trello
9 1 (0.098%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.098%) Sketch
9 1 (0.098%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 21 (2.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.39%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
3 3 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.20%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.20%) Workfront
5 1 (0.098%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.098%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.098%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
5 1 (0.098%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.098%) SAP SM
5 1 (0.098%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.098%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.098%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 304 (29.83%) Azure
2 188 (18.45%) AWS
3 89 (8.73%) GCP
4 69 (6.77%) Power Platform
5 55 (5.40%) Microsoft 365
6 52 (5.10%) Entra ID
7 47 (4.61%) SaaS
8 42 (4.12%) Azure DevOps
8 42 (4.12%) GitHub
9 22 (2.16%) Snowflake
10 21 (2.06%) Serverless
11 20 (1.96%) GitHub Actions
11 20 (1.96%) PowerApps
12 16 (1.57%) AWS CloudFormation
13 14 (1.37%) Azure AKS
13 14 (1.37%) Power Automate
14 13 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
15 12 (1.18%) IaaS
16 11 (1.08%) AWS Lambda
16 11 (1.08%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 33 (3.24%) Firewall
2 32 (3.14%) Network Security
3 24 (2.36%) DNS
3 24 (2.36%) TCP/IP
4 13 (1.28%) WAN
5 12 (1.18%) BGP
5 12 (1.18%) SSH
6 10 (0.98%) HTTPS
6 10 (0.98%) LAN
6 10 (0.98%) VPN
7 9 (0.88%) 3GPP
7 9 (0.88%) OSPF
8 8 (0.79%) Wireless
9 7 (0.69%) VLAN
10 6 (0.59%) DHCP
10 6 (0.59%) LTE
11 5 (0.49%) RTP
11 5 (0.49%) SAN
11 5 (0.49%) Wireshark
12 4 (0.39%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (5.59%) Power BI
2 50 (4.91%) SQL Server
3 47 (4.61%) Relational Database
4 45 (4.42%) PostgreSQL
5 37 (3.63%) Data Warehouse
6 32 (3.14%) Big Data
7 30 (2.94%) Metadata
8 24 (2.36%) NoSQL
9 23 (2.26%) MongoDB
10 21 (2.06%) Hadoop
11 20 (1.96%) MySQL
12 19 (1.86%) Tableau
13 16 (1.57%) Data Lake
14 11 (1.08%) Elasticsearch
14 11 (1.08%) Snowflake Schema
15 10 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 9 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
16 9 (0.88%) Redis
17 8 (0.79%) Data Mining
17 8 (0.79%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 76 (7.46%) Git
2 58 (5.69%) JIRA
3 39 (3.83%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.34%) GitLab
5 28 (2.75%) Rational DOORS
6 12 (1.18%) Selenium
7 11 (1.08%) Gradle
8 9 (0.88%) JUnit
9 8 (0.79%) MLflow
9 8 (0.79%) TeamCity
10 7 (0.69%) Maven
10 7 (0.69%) Postman
10 7 (0.69%) Visual Studio
11 6 (0.59%) Bitbucket
11 6 (0.59%) CircleCI
11 6 (0.59%) Cucumber
11 6 (0.59%) Cypress.io
11 6 (0.59%) REST Assured
12 5 (0.49%) Flyway
12 5 (0.49%) SonarQube
General
1 411 (40.33%) Social Skills
2 235 (23.06%) Finance
3 215 (21.10%) Analytical Skills
4 88 (8.64%) Banking
5 64 (6.28%) Public Sector
6 57 (5.59%) Aerospace
7 54 (5.30%) Documentation Skills
8 34 (3.34%) Marketing
9 31 (3.04%) Telecoms
10 30 (2.94%) Organisational Skills
11 28 (2.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 27 (2.65%) Presentation Skills
13 26 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
14 25 (2.45%) Front Office
14 25 (2.45%) Legal
15 18 (1.77%) Manufacturing
16 17 (1.67%) Publishing
17 16 (1.57%) Retail
18 15 (1.47%) Law
19 12 (1.18%) Military
Job Titles
1 112 (10.99%) Developer
2 110 (10.79%) Architect
3 86 (8.44%) Analyst
4 82 (8.05%) Senior
5 80 (7.85%) Lead
6 37 (3.63%) Software Engineer
7 36 (3.53%) Product Manager
8 34 (3.34%) Delivery Manager
9 33 (3.24%) Solutions Architect
10 31 (3.04%) Data Scientist
11 28 (2.75%) Product Delivery Manager
12 27 (2.65%) Data Engineer
13 26 (2.55%) Technical Support
14 22 (2.16%) Python Developer
14 22 (2.16%) Security Engineer
14 22 (2.16%) Systems Delivery Manager
14 22 (2.16%) Systems Manager
15 21 (2.06%) Junior
15 21 (2.06%) Project Manager
16 20 (1.96%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (8.34%) REST
2 57 (5.59%) React
3 52 (5.10%) .NET
4 42 (4.12%) Kafka
5 40 (3.93%) Middleware
6 35 (3.43%) RESTful
7 30 (2.94%) Spring Boot
8 29 (2.85%) OAuth
8 29 (2.85%) Spring
9 22 (2.16%) AngularJS
10 20 (1.96%) JSON
11 19 (1.86%) HTML
11 19 (1.86%) PyTorch
11 19 (1.86%) SAML
11 19 (1.86%) SOAP
12 18 (1.77%) Web Services
13 17 (1.67%) CSS
13 17 (1.67%) OAuth2
13 17 (1.67%) OpenID
14 16 (1.57%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 101 (9.91%) Management Information System
2 82 (8.05%) Onboarding
2 82 (8.05%) Product Ownership
3 70 (6.87%) Algorithms
4 63 (6.18%) Cloud Native
5 53 (5.20%) Data Structures
6 50 (4.91%) Distributed Systems
7 26 (2.55%) Derivative
7 26 (2.55%) Virtual Team
8 23 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
9 22 (2.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 21 (2.06%) AI Agents
10 21 (2.06%) Equities
11 20 (1.96%) Taxonomies
12 19 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
13 18 (1.77%) Analytical Mindset
14 16 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
14 16 (1.57%) Fixed Income
15 15 (1.47%) Security Posture
16 14 (1.37%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 131 (12.86%) Windows
2 115 (11.29%) Linux
3 42 (4.12%) Unix
4 22 (2.16%) Android
5 20 (1.96%) Windows 10
6 19 (1.86%) Windows Server
7 17 (1.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (1.37%) Apple iOS
9 12 (1.18%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.49%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.39%) Debian
11 4 (0.39%) Rocky
11 4 (0.39%) VMS
12 2 (0.20%) Solaris
12 2 (0.20%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.098%) CentOS
13 1 (0.098%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.098%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.098%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 302 (29.64%) Problem-Solving
2 262 (25.71%) Agile
3 224 (21.98%) AI
4 182 (17.86%) CI/CD
5 173 (16.98%) Continuous Improvement
6 170 (16.68%) DevOps
7 167 (16.39%) Software Engineering
8 134 (13.15%) Analytics
9 118 (11.58%) Cybersecurity
10 109 (10.70%) Stakeholder Management
11 107 (10.50%) Microservices
12 102 (10.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 96 (9.42%) Machine Learning
14 95 (9.32%) Mathematics
15 91 (8.93%) ITIL
16 90 (8.83%) Decision-Making
16 90 (8.83%) Technical Leadership
17 89 (8.73%) Data Science
18 87 (8.54%) Data Governance
19 85 (8.34%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 280 (27.48%) Python
2 204 (20.02%) SQL
3 122 (11.97%) Java
4 66 (6.48%) JavaScript
5 56 (5.50%) C#
6 46 (4.51%) PowerShell
7 28 (2.75%) TypeScript
8 22 (2.16%) Bash
8 22 (2.16%) C++
9 20 (1.96%) R
10 13 (1.28%) Go
11 11 (1.08%) Shell Script
12 10 (0.98%) Perl
13 9 (0.88%) Kotlin
13 9 (0.88%) Rust
14 8 (0.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 6 (0.59%) Scala
16 5 (0.49%) C
17 4 (0.39%) Ada
18 3 (0.29%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 804 (78.90%) Degree
2 479 (47.01%) Computer Science Degree
3 190 (18.65%) Security Cleared
4 132 (12.95%) Master's Degree
5 120 (11.78%) SC Cleared
6 59 (5.79%) CISSP
7 37 (3.63%) CISM
8 32 (3.14%) Microsoft Certification
9 31 (3.04%) PhD
10 30 (2.94%) Azure Certification
11 28 (2.75%) PMI Certification
11 28 (2.75%) TOGAF Certification
12 25 (2.45%) PMP
13 24 (2.36%) AWS Certification
13 24 (2.36%) DV Cleared
14 23 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
15 19 (1.86%) CISA
15 19 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
15 19 (1.86%) DBS Check
16 15 (1.47%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (6.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 64 (6.28%) NIST
3 58 (5.69%) Data Quality
4 48 (4.71%) QA
5 39 (3.83%) GDPR
6 20 (1.96%) PCI DSS
7 17 (1.67%) Accessibility
8 15 (1.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 14 (1.37%) GRC
10 11 (1.08%) SLA
11 10 (0.98%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.98%) NIST 800
12 9 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 8 (0.79%) NCSC
14 7 (0.69%) COBIT
15 6 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
16 5 (0.49%) DO-254
16 5 (0.49%) Government Security Classifications
16 5 (0.49%) ISO 20022
16 5 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 92 (9.03%) Docker
2 77 (7.56%) Active Directory
3 20 (1.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.98%) Firmware
5 9 (0.88%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.49%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.39%) vSphere
9 3 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
10 2 (0.20%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.20%) Ceph
10 2 (0.20%) KVM
10 2 (0.20%) Squid
10 2 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.098%) ACF2
11 1 (0.098%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 1 (0.098%) HDFS
11 1 (0.098%) RACF
Systems Management
1 113 (11.09%) Kubernetes
2 52 (5.10%) Terraform
3 39 (3.83%) Ansible
4 29 (2.85%) Prometheus
5 27 (2.65%) Grafana
5 27 (2.65%) Microsoft Intune
6 18 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (0.59%) Puppet
8 5 (0.49%) Kiali
8 5 (0.49%) Kibana
9 4 (0.39%) Control-M
9 4 (0.39%) Kubeflow
10 3 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
10 3 (0.29%) Foglight
10 3 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
10 3 (0.29%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.20%) Consul
11 2 (0.20%) Network Intrusion Detection System
11 2 (0.20%) PowerCLI
11 2 (0.20%) vRealize
Vendors
1 173 (16.98%) Microsoft
2 67 (6.58%) Oracle
3 46 (4.51%) Databricks
4 35 (3.43%) Google
5 34 (3.34%) IBM
6 33 (3.24%) SAP
6 33 (3.24%) Splunk
7 29 (2.85%) ServiceNow
8 24 (2.36%) VMware
9 19 (1.86%) Okta
10 15 (1.47%) Cisco
10 15 (1.47%) CyberArk
10 15 (1.47%) Informatica
11 14 (1.37%) BeyondTrust
11 14 (1.37%) BiZZdesign
12 13 (1.28%) Salesforce
13 12 (1.18%) Palo Alto
14 11 (1.08%) CheckPoint
14 11 (1.08%) MuleSoft
15 9 (0.88%) Citrix