Inclusion and Diversity Contract Job Trends

Inclusion and Diversity
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Inclusion and Diversity in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Inclusion and Diversity over the 6 months leading up to 29 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 251 140 161
Rank change year-on-year -111 +21 +49
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 506 578 663
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.03% 2.01% 1.55%
As % of the General category 1.92% 3.17% 2.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 228 244 473
10th Percentile £306 £185 £400
25th Percentile £380 £398 £505
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £508 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.87% -15.42% -
75th Percentile £598 £638 £700
90th Percentile £675 £685 £780
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £455 £500
% change year-on-year -6.59% -9.00% -1.72%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 11 21
10th Percentile £15.28 - £11.36
25th Percentile £17.03 - £12.27
Median hourly rate £20.32 £22.14 £21.64
Median % change year-on-year -8.23% +2.31% -44.51%
75th Percentile £55.16 £27.32 £47.50
90th Percentile £110.56 £57.50 £57.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £79.56 £22.14 £17.60
% change year-on-year +259.35% +25.80% +26.85%

All General Skills
UK

Inclusion and Diversity falls under the General Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring general skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 26,317 18,236 24,705
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.80% 63.42% 57.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,939 11,561 15,577
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £760 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,743 807 1,967
10th Percentile £13.76 £13.50 £12.77
25th Percentile £17.69 £16.79 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.41%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £24.28 £28.13
% change year-on-year +19.46% -13.69% +2.27%

Inclusion and Diversity
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Inclusion and Diversity relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Inclusion and Diversity job vacancy trend in the UK

Inclusion and Diversity
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Inclusion and Diversity.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Inclusion and Diversity

Inclusion and Diversity
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity over the 6 months to 29 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Inclusion and Diversity in the UK

Inclusion and Diversity
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Inclusion and Diversity.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Inclusion and Diversity

Inclusion and Diversity
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity over the 6 months to 29 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Inclusion and Diversity in the UK

Inclusion and Diversity
Top 15 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity within the UK over the 6 months to 29 May 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 -107 443 £495 -7.48% 1,002
London -63 244 £550 -8.33% 491
Work from Home -39 216 £540 -1.82% 514
UK excluding London -139 202 £425 -6.59% 660
South East -53 57 £413 -18.72% 183
North of England -101 52 £425 +6.25% 177
Midlands -71 50 £553 +26.29% 96
West Midlands -64 39 £553 +26.29% 45
North East -6 23 £425 -22.73% 28
East of England -29 20 £338 +3.85% 33
Yorkshire -85 15 £375 -6.25% 49
Scotland -17 14 £210 -54.59% 52
North West -50 14 £354 -16.66% 102
East Midlands -35 11 - - 51
South West -58 9 £350 -41.72% 86

Inclusion and Diversity
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 17 (3.36%) SharePoint
2 14 (2.77%) Apache Spark
3 10 (1.98%) Apache Airflow
3 10 (1.98%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (1.78%) CMS
4 9 (1.78%) Confluence
5 5 (0.99%) WordPress
6 4 (0.79%) Kentico
7 3 (0.59%) Apache
8 2 (0.40%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.40%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.20%) Appian
9 1 (0.20%) Drupal
9 1 (0.20%) nginx
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
9 1 (0.20%) SAS
9 1 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 22 (4.35%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.59%) Trello
4 2 (0.40%) InVision
4 2 (0.40%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.40%) Sketch
5 1 (0.20%) Adobe After Effects
5 1 (0.20%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.20%) AutoCAD
5 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 7 (1.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.79%) NetSuite
2 4 (0.79%) Oracle ERP
3 3 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.40%) FLEXCUBE
4 2 (0.40%) SAP Business One
4 2 (0.40%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.20%) Advent Geneva
5 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg AIM
5 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.20%) Fidessa
5 1 (0.20%) Hyperion Planning
5 1 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.20%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.20%) SAP FI
5 1 (0.20%) SAP FS
5 1 (0.20%) thinkFolio
5 1 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 121 (23.91%) Azure
2 89 (17.59%) AWS
3 37 (7.31%) Microsoft 365
4 36 (7.11%) Power Platform
5 33 (6.52%) Azure DevOps
6 24 (4.74%) GitHub
7 21 (4.15%) GCP
8 20 (3.95%) Entra ID
9 19 (3.75%) dbt
10 18 (3.56%) GitHub Actions
11 17 (3.36%) Azure Data Factory
12 14 (2.77%) Snowflake
13 11 (2.17%) Serverless
14 9 (1.78%) Amazon EKS
14 9 (1.78%) SaaS
15 8 (1.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 7 (1.38%) AWS Lambda
16 7 (1.38%) Figma
17 6 (1.19%) Dynamics 365
17 6 (1.19%) Firebase
Communications & Networking
1 19 (3.75%) TCP/IP
2 15 (2.96%) Ethernet
3 11 (2.17%) Network Security
4 9 (1.78%) Firewall
5 7 (1.38%) DNS
5 7 (1.38%) VLAN
5 7 (1.38%) Wi-Fi
6 6 (1.19%) HTTP
6 6 (1.19%) VSAN
7 5 (0.99%) DHCP
7 5 (0.99%) WAN
8 4 (0.79%) VPN
9 2 (0.40%) LAN
9 2 (0.40%) MPLS
9 2 (0.40%) SD-WAN
9 2 (0.40%) Skype
10 1 (0.20%) AMQP
10 1 (0.20%) iSCSI
10 1 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
10 1 (0.20%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (6.32%) Power BI
2 25 (4.94%) Data Warehouse
3 21 (4.15%) SQL Server
4 16 (3.16%) PostgreSQL
5 13 (2.57%) Big Data
6 12 (2.37%) Hadoop
7 10 (1.98%) Snowflake Schema
8 8 (1.58%) DB2
9 7 (1.38%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 7 (1.38%) Tableau
10 6 (1.19%) Looker
10 6 (1.19%) Metadata
10 6 (1.19%) NoSQL
10 6 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 5 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
12 4 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
12 4 (0.79%) Data Lake
12 4 (0.79%) Metadata Repository
12 4 (0.79%) SAP Data Services
13 3 (0.59%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 24 (4.74%) JIRA
2 20 (3.95%) Git
3 18 (3.56%) Jenkins
4 10 (1.98%) GitLab
5 6 (1.19%) fastlane
5 6 (1.19%) JMeter
5 6 (1.19%) SonarQube
5 6 (1.19%) Vite
6 5 (0.99%) Gatling
6 5 (0.99%) LoadRunner
7 4 (0.79%) JUnit
8 3 (0.59%) Android Studio
8 3 (0.59%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.59%) CircleCI
8 3 (0.59%) Crashlytics
8 3 (0.59%) Cucumber
8 3 (0.59%) Gradle
8 3 (0.59%) Mockito
8 3 (0.59%) Snyk
8 3 (0.59%) Xcode
General
1 158 (31.23%) Social Skills
2 136 (26.88%) Finance
3 102 (20.16%) Public Sector
4 60 (11.86%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (5.14%) Banking
6 17 (3.36%) Presentation Skills
7 12 (2.37%) Influencing Skills
8 11 (2.17%) Legal
8 11 (2.17%) Manufacturing
9 10 (1.98%) Law
9 10 (1.98%) Pharmaceutical
10 9 (1.78%) Organisational Skills
11 8 (1.58%) Marketing
12 7 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
13 6 (1.19%) Retail
14 5 (0.99%) General Ledger
14 5 (0.99%) Local Government
15 4 (0.79%) Aerospace
15 4 (0.79%) Front Office
16 3 (0.59%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 66 (13.04%) Analyst
2 57 (11.26%) Developer
3 48 (9.49%) Senior
4 41 (8.10%) Lead
5 36 (7.11%) Architect
6 33 (6.52%) Data Engineer
7 30 (5.93%) Consultant
8 24 (4.74%) Data Analyst
9 21 (4.15%) DevOps Engineer
9 21 (4.15%) Support Engineer
10 17 (3.36%) Business Analyst
11 16 (3.16%) IT Support
11 16 (3.16%) Senior Developer
11 16 (3.16%) Systems Engineer
12 15 (2.96%) IT Engineer
12 15 (2.96%) Technical Engineer
13 14 (2.77%) Project Manager
14 13 (2.57%) Cloud Engineer
15 12 (2.37%) Azure Engineer
15 12 (2.37%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (3.95%) React
2 16 (3.16%) GraphQL
3 13 (2.57%) RESTful
4 12 (2.37%) .NET
5 10 (1.98%) Spring
5 10 (1.98%) Spring Boot
6 9 (1.78%) REST
7 8 (1.58%) HTML
7 8 (1.58%) PySpark
7 8 (1.58%) YAML
8 7 (1.38%) CSS
8 7 (1.38%) Kafka
8 7 (1.38%) Next.js
9 6 (1.19%) JSON
9 6 (1.19%) Middleware
10 5 (0.99%) AngularJS
10 5 (0.99%) ARM Templates
11 4 (0.79%) Django
11 4 (0.79%) Elastic Stack
11 4 (0.79%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 31 (6.13%) Onboarding
2 25 (4.94%) Cloud Native
3 17 (3.36%) Product Ownership
4 15 (2.96%) Industry 4.0
4 15 (2.96%) Robotics
5 12 (2.37%) Data Centre
6 11 (2.17%) Distributed Systems
6 11 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (1.98%) Data Structures
8 8 (1.58%) Linux Command Line
8 8 (1.58%) Replication
9 6 (1.19%) Management Information System
9 6 (1.19%) Mobile App
9 6 (1.19%) Operational Technology
9 6 (1.19%) Security Posture
10 5 (0.99%) Algorithms
10 5 (0.99%) Reinsurance
10 5 (0.99%) Virtual Team
11 4 (0.79%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (0.79%) EPoS
Operating Systems
1 45 (8.89%) Windows
2 18 (3.56%) Windows 10
3 17 (3.36%) Windows Server
4 16 (3.16%) Linux
5 8 (1.58%) Android
5 8 (1.58%) Apple iOS
5 8 (1.58%) Unix
6 6 (1.19%) AIX
7 3 (0.59%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.59%) Windows 7
8 2 (0.40%) VMS
9 1 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (23.12%) Problem-Solving
2 116 (22.92%) Agile
3 90 (17.79%) CI/CD
4 84 (16.60%) Decision-Making
5 82 (16.21%) DevOps
6 71 (14.03%) Analytics
7 57 (11.26%) Stakeholder Management
8 51 (10.08%) Continuous Improvement
8 51 (10.08%) Migration
9 47 (9.29%) Infrastructure as Code
10 46 (9.09%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
11 42 (8.30%) AI
11 42 (8.30%) Data Modelling
11 42 (8.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 40 (7.91%) Test Automation
13 38 (7.51%) Business Intelligence
14 37 (7.31%) Mentoring
15 36 (7.11%) Data Pipeline
15 36 (7.11%) User Experience
15 36 (7.11%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 80 (15.81%) Python
1 80 (15.81%) SQL
2 25 (4.94%) Java
3 22 (4.35%) JavaScript
3 22 (4.35%) PowerShell
4 13 (2.57%) Bash
4 13 (2.57%) TypeScript
5 11 (2.17%) C#
5 11 (2.17%) R
6 8 (1.58%) Kotlin
6 8 (1.58%) Swift
7 7 (1.38%) Scala
8 5 (0.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 5 (0.99%) VBA
9 4 (0.79%) Groovy
9 4 (0.79%) PL/SQL
9 4 (0.79%) Ruby
10 3 (0.59%) Go
10 3 (0.59%) VB
11 2 (0.40%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 81 (16.01%) Security Cleared
2 74 (14.62%) SC Cleared
3 41 (8.10%) Degree
4 22 (4.35%) DBS Check
5 14 (2.77%) Azure Certification
6 10 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (1.78%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.19%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.99%) PMP
10 3 (0.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.59%) CISM
10 3 (0.59%) CISSP
10 3 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
10 3 (0.59%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.40%) ACCA
11 2 (0.40%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.40%) CIMA
11 2 (0.40%) CIPD
11 2 (0.40%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (7.91%) Accessibility
2 33 (6.52%) Data Quality
3 17 (3.36%) QA
4 13 (2.57%) GDPR
5 12 (2.37%) WCAG
6 11 (2.17%) Actionable Recommendations
7 9 (1.78%) SLA
8 8 (1.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
10 5 (0.99%) GRC
11 4 (0.79%) NIST
11 4 (0.79%) PMO
12 3 (0.59%) COBIT
12 3 (0.59%) Def Stans
13 2 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 2 (0.40%) NCSC
13 2 (0.40%) PSD2
14 1 (0.20%) ISO 22301
14 1 (0.20%) ISO 31000
14 1 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 36 (7.11%) Active Directory
2 32 (6.32%) Docker
3 13 (2.57%) Hyper-V
4 11 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.19%) KVM
5 6 (1.19%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (1.19%) VMware NSX
5 6 (1.19%) vSphere
6 4 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.40%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.20%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 47 (9.29%) Terraform
2 35 (6.92%) Kubernetes
3 22 (4.35%) Grafana
4 16 (3.16%) Ansible
5 15 (2.96%) Prometheus
6 9 (1.78%) Kibana
7 8 (1.58%) Microsoft Intune
8 7 (1.38%) SCCM
9 6 (1.19%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (1.19%) vCenter Server
10 4 (0.79%) Consul
10 4 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
11 3 (0.59%) Rancher
12 2 (0.40%) HP ALM
12 2 (0.40%) HP Quality Center
12 2 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
12 2 (0.40%) Packer
12 2 (0.40%) Zipkin
13 1 (0.20%) PaperCut
13 1 (0.20%) vRealize
Vendors
1 79 (15.61%) Microsoft
2 28 (5.53%) Databricks
3 20 (3.95%) SAP
3 20 (3.95%) ServiceNow
4 17 (3.36%) Dynatrace
4 17 (3.36%) Google
5 16 (3.16%) Oracle
6 15 (2.96%) Siemens
7 14 (2.77%) Salesforce
7 14 (2.77%) VMware
8 8 (1.58%) CyberArk
9 7 (1.38%) IBM
10 6 (1.19%) Atlassian
11 4 (0.79%) Cisco
12 3 (0.59%) Acronis
12 3 (0.59%) AppDynamics
12 3 (0.59%) Apple
12 3 (0.59%) Dell
12 3 (0.59%) HP
12 3 (0.59%) MuleSoft