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 18 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 240 149 159
Rank change year-on-year -91 +10 +53
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 483 557 652
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.05% 1.89% 1.49%
As % of the General category 1.90% 3.00% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 214 278 472
10th Percentile £177 £211 £376
25th Percentile £351 £410 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -22.73% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £585 £650 £688
90th Percentile £675 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £463 £508
% change year-on-year -13.51% -8.87% -1.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 7 21
10th Percentile £15.21 - £11.36
25th Percentile £16.84 - £12.27
Median hourly rate £18.00 £22.14 £21.64
Median % change year-on-year -18.70% +2.31% -18.15%
75th Percentile £24.38 - £47.50
90th Percentile £98.25 £36.28 £58.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.84 £22.14 £19.62
% change year-on-year -23.94% +12.84% +41.41%

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 25,419 18,596 25,477
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.12% 63.19% 58.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,754 11,902 16,136
10th Percentile £305 £296 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,600 775 1,917
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.34 £18.17 £15.39
Median hourly rate £27.80 £28.60 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.80% +4.00% -21.43%
75th Percentile £59.50 £56.00 £51.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £26.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -5.09% +1.92% -14.75%

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 18 April 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 18 April 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 18 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 -98 431 £425 -24.44% 671
London -60 227 £528 -12.08% 264
Work from Home -31 222 £525 -8.70% 341
UK excluding London -112 200 £400 -13.51% 549
Midlands -51 61 £533 +17.03% 83
South East -40 55 £375 -26.11% 189
North of England -95 41 £400 -11.11% 117
West Midlands -59 37 £540 +17.39% 43
East of England -22 25 £520 +71.90% 33
East Midlands -25 24 £155 -64.57% 40
North West -55 21 £325 -27.78% 64
South West -54 12 £438 -16.67% 66
North East -7 10 £425 -10.53% 15
Yorkshire -80 10 £275 -31.25% 38
Scotland -12 7 £288 -37.84% 46

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 20 (4.14%) SharePoint
2 14 (2.90%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (2.69%) Apache Spark
4 10 (2.07%) Confluence
5 6 (1.24%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (1.24%) CMS
6 3 (0.62%) WordPress
7 2 (0.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.41%) Apache
7 2 (0.41%) HCL Notes
7 2 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.21%) Appian
8 1 (0.21%) Camunda
8 1 (0.21%) Drupal
8 1 (0.21%) nginx
8 1 (0.21%) Oracle Application Server
8 1 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 24 (4.97%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (2.90%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.83%) Spreadsheet
3 4 (0.83%) Trello
4 3 (0.62%) InVision
4 3 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.62%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.62%) Sketch
5 2 (0.41%) Adobe After Effects
5 2 (0.41%) Adobe XD
5 2 (0.41%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.41%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.41%) NetSuite
3 2 (0.41%) SAP Business One
3 2 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.21%) Advent Geneva
4 1 (0.21%) Bloomberg AIM
4 1 (0.21%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.21%) Fidessa
4 1 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.21%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.21%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.21%) SAP FS
4 1 (0.21%) thinkFolio
4 1 (0.21%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 108 (22.36%) Azure
2 77 (15.94%) AWS
3 36 (7.45%) Power Platform
4 34 (7.04%) Microsoft 365
5 22 (4.55%) GitHub
6 20 (4.14%) Azure DevOps
7 18 (3.73%) GitHub Actions
8 17 (3.52%) GCP
9 16 (3.31%) dbt
9 16 (3.31%) Entra ID
10 15 (3.11%) Azure Data Factory
11 11 (2.28%) Snowflake
12 10 (2.07%) Amazon EKS
12 10 (2.07%) Google Workspace
12 10 (2.07%) SaaS
13 9 (1.86%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 9 (1.86%) Serverless
14 7 (1.45%) Power Automate
15 6 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
15 6 (1.24%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 18 (3.73%) TCP/IP
2 15 (3.11%) Ethernet
3 11 (2.28%) Firewall
4 8 (1.66%) Network Security
4 8 (1.66%) VLAN
5 7 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
6 6 (1.24%) DHCP
6 6 (1.24%) DNS
6 6 (1.24%) VSAN
7 5 (1.04%) HTTP
7 5 (1.04%) WAN
8 3 (0.62%) AMQP
8 3 (0.62%) LAN
8 3 (0.62%) VPN
9 2 (0.41%) Intranet
9 2 (0.41%) MPLS
10 1 (0.21%) Fibre Channel
10 1 (0.21%) iSCSI
10 1 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
10 1 (0.21%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (6.42%) Power BI
2 27 (5.59%) Data Warehouse
3 23 (4.76%) SQL Server
4 14 (2.90%) PostgreSQL
5 10 (2.07%) Big Data
5 10 (2.07%) Hadoop
6 9 (1.86%) Snowflake Schema
7 8 (1.66%) DB2
7 8 (1.66%) Tableau
8 7 (1.45%) Azure SQL Database
8 7 (1.45%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 7 (1.45%) Metadata
9 6 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 4 (0.83%) Looker
10 4 (0.83%) Metadata Repository
10 4 (0.83%) NoSQL
10 4 (0.83%) Power Query
10 4 (0.83%) SAP Data Services
11 3 (0.62%) Redis
11 3 (0.62%) SSDT
Development Applications
1 21 (4.35%) Git
2 18 (3.73%) JIRA
3 9 (1.86%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.24%) GitLab
4 6 (1.24%) JMeter
4 6 (1.24%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.04%) Gatling
5 5 (1.04%) LoadRunner
6 4 (0.83%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.62%) Maven
7 3 (0.62%) Snyk
8 2 (0.41%) Axure RP
8 2 (0.41%) fastlane
8 2 (0.41%) Selenium
9 1 (0.21%) Android Studio
9 1 (0.21%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.21%) Cypress.io
9 1 (0.21%) Gradle
9 1 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.21%) TestNG
General
1 158 (32.71%) Social Skills
2 105 (21.74%) Finance
3 82 (16.98%) Public Sector
4 60 (12.42%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (3.73%) Banking
6 17 (3.52%) Presentation Skills
7 14 (2.90%) Local Government
8 12 (2.48%) Organisational Skills
9 10 (2.07%) Fire and Rescue
10 9 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
10 9 (1.86%) Legal
10 9 (1.86%) Pharmaceutical
11 8 (1.66%) Manufacturing
11 8 (1.66%) Marketing
12 7 (1.45%) Retail
13 6 (1.24%) Documentation Skills
14 4 (0.83%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.83%) General Ledger
15 3 (0.62%) Front Office
15 3 (0.62%) Military
Job Titles
1 74 (15.32%) Analyst
2 36 (7.45%) Data Engineer
2 36 (7.45%) Lead
3 34 (7.04%) Senior
4 32 (6.63%) Developer
5 29 (6.00%) Architect
5 29 (6.00%) Support Engineer
6 26 (5.38%) Consultant
7 24 (4.97%) Data Analyst
8 21 (4.35%) IT Engineer
9 18 (3.73%) Cloud Engineer
9 18 (3.73%) IT Support
10 17 (3.52%) Systems Engineer
11 16 (3.31%) DevOps Engineer
12 15 (3.11%) Business Analyst
12 15 (3.11%) Service Analyst
12 15 (3.11%) Technical Engineer
13 14 (2.90%) IT Analyst
13 14 (2.90%) Project Manager
14 12 (2.48%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (3.11%) EDI
2 12 (2.48%) React
3 11 (2.28%) YAML
4 9 (1.86%) Middleware
5 8 (1.66%) .NET
5 8 (1.66%) PySpark
6 6 (1.24%) AngularJS
6 6 (1.24%) REST
7 5 (1.04%) HTML
7 5 (1.04%) RESTful
8 4 (0.83%) JSON
8 4 (0.83%) Kafka
8 4 (0.83%) Spring
8 4 (0.83%) Spring Boot
8 4 (0.83%) XML
9 3 (0.62%) Akka
9 3 (0.62%) Elastic Stack
9 3 (0.62%) Keycloak
9 3 (0.62%) scikit-learn
9 3 (0.62%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 24 (4.97%) Onboarding
2 23 (4.76%) Cloud Native
3 19 (3.93%) Management Information System
4 15 (3.11%) Industry 4.0
4 15 (3.11%) Robotics
5 13 (2.69%) Data Centre
6 12 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (2.07%) Replication
8 8 (1.66%) Product Ownership
9 7 (1.45%) Linux Command Line
10 6 (1.24%) Data Structures
10 6 (1.24%) Distributed Systems
10 6 (1.24%) Virtual Team
11 5 (1.04%) Algorithms
11 5 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (1.04%) Enterprise Software
11 5 (1.04%) Operational Technology
12 4 (0.83%) Security Posture
13 3 (0.62%) Greenfield Project
13 3 (0.62%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 41 (8.49%) Windows
2 18 (3.73%) Windows 10
3 12 (2.48%) Linux
3 12 (2.48%) Windows Server
4 6 (1.24%) AIX
4 6 (1.24%) Unix
5 3 (0.62%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.41%) VMS
7 1 (0.21%) Android
7 1 (0.21%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
7 1 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.21%) Windows 7
7 1 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (25.26%) Problem-Solving
2 76 (15.73%) Agile
3 71 (14.70%) CI/CD
3 71 (14.70%) Decision-Making
4 66 (13.66%) DevOps
5 59 (12.22%) Analytics
6 51 (10.56%) Stakeholder Management
7 48 (9.94%) Migration
8 41 (8.49%) Continuous Improvement
8 41 (8.49%) Infrastructure as Code
9 39 (8.07%) AI
10 37 (7.66%) Data Modelling
11 36 (7.45%) Business Intelligence
11 36 (7.45%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
12 32 (6.63%) Data Pipeline
13 31 (6.42%) Customer Service
14 30 (6.21%) Roadmaps
14 30 (6.21%) Test Automation
15 28 (5.80%) Machine Learning
16 27 (5.59%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 75 (15.53%) SQL
2 62 (12.84%) Python
3 19 (3.93%) PowerShell
4 17 (3.52%) Java
5 13 (2.69%) JavaScript
6 11 (2.28%) Bash
7 10 (2.07%) R
8 7 (1.45%) C#
8 7 (1.45%) TypeScript
9 6 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 6 (1.24%) VBA
10 5 (1.04%) Scala
11 3 (0.62%) Groovy
12 2 (0.41%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.41%) AWK
12 2 (0.41%) COBOL
12 2 (0.41%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.21%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.21%) Rust
13 1 (0.21%) Swift
Qualifications
1 75 (15.53%) Security Cleared
2 65 (13.46%) SC Cleared
3 41 (8.49%) Degree
4 18 (3.73%) DBS Check
5 14 (2.90%) AWS Certification
6 9 (1.86%) Azure Certification
7 7 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (1.04%) DV Cleared
9 4 (0.83%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 4 (0.83%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 4 (0.83%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (0.83%) CTC Cleared
10 3 (0.62%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.62%) Oracle Certification
11 2 (0.41%) OCP
12 1 (0.21%) CCNA
12 1 (0.21%) CISSP
12 1 (0.21%) HND
12 1 (0.21%) MCSE
12 1 (0.21%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (6.63%) Data Quality
2 29 (6.00%) Accessibility
3 15 (3.11%) QA
4 12 (2.48%) GDPR
5 8 (1.66%) Actionable Recommendations
6 6 (1.24%) WCAG
7 5 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (1.04%) SLA
8 4 (0.83%) GRC
8 4 (0.83%) PMO
9 3 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 2 (0.41%) Def Stans
10 2 (0.41%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.41%) PSD2
10 2 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.21%) GMP
11 1 (0.21%) NCSC
11 1 (0.21%) NIST
11 1 (0.21%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 39 (8.07%) Active Directory
2 16 (3.31%) Docker
3 14 (2.90%) Hyper-V
4 11 (2.28%) Virtual Machines
5 9 (1.86%) VMware Infrastructure
6 6 (1.24%) KVM
6 6 (1.24%) VMware NSX
6 6 (1.24%) vSphere
7 4 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.41%) Firmware
9 1 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 41 (8.49%) Terraform
2 22 (4.55%) Kubernetes
3 18 (3.73%) Grafana
4 12 (2.48%) Microsoft Intune
5 11 (2.28%) Ansible
6 10 (2.07%) Prometheus
7 6 (1.24%) IBM BigFix
7 6 (1.24%) Kibana
7 6 (1.24%) SCCM
7 6 (1.24%) vCenter Server
8 4 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.62%) Argo
9 3 (0.62%) Rancher
9 3 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.21%) EMC VPLEX
10 1 (0.21%) Packer
10 1 (0.21%) PaperCut
10 1 (0.21%) RSA Archer
10 1 (0.21%) vRealize
10 1 (0.21%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 82 (16.98%) Microsoft
2 29 (6.00%) Databricks
3 23 (4.76%) ServiceNow
4 19 (3.93%) Oracle
4 19 (3.93%) SAP
5 18 (3.73%) Google
6 17 (3.52%) VMware
7 15 (3.11%) Siemens
8 14 (2.90%) Dynatrace
9 12 (2.48%) Salesforce
10 7 (1.45%) Atlassian
10 7 (1.45%) IBM
11 5 (1.04%) Adobe
11 5 (1.04%) Cisco
12 4 (0.83%) Dell
12 4 (0.83%) Meraki
12 4 (0.83%) MuleSoft
13 3 (0.62%) Acronis
13 3 (0.62%) AppDynamics
13 3 (0.62%) CyberArk