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 31 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 212 163 171
Rank change year-on-year -49 +8 +74
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 503 529 638
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.30% 1.68% 1.43%
As % of the General category 2.19% 2.72% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 215 280 455
10th Percentile £173 £349 £375
25th Percentile £351 £467 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -25.00% - +3.45%
75th Percentile £625 £673 £675
90th Percentile £675 £800 £742
UK excluding London median daily rate £375 £525 £503
% change year-on-year -28.57% +4.37% +0.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 16
10th Percentile £14.61 - £11.45
25th Percentile £15.34 - £13.13
Median hourly rate £16.67 - £27.93
75th Percentile £62.94 - £58.70
90th Percentile £145.18 - £63.29
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.67 - £34.21
% change year-on-year - - +146.56%

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 22,967 19,471 26,307
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.28% 61.92% 58.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,411 11,610 17,070
10th Percentile £286 £284 £265
25th Percentile £400 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £731 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.09% -3.95% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,400 630 1,545
10th Percentile £13.71 £15.62 £13.16
25th Percentile £16.35 £20.00 £15.17
Median hourly rate £22.50 £28.21 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.23% +8.48% +4.00%
75th Percentile £46.00 £53.75 £55.25
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.85 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £26.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -20.75% +6.00% +11.11%

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 31 January 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 31 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Inclusion and Diversity in the UK

Inclusion and Diversity
Top 16 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 31 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 -50 452 £475 -20.83% 626
London -15 269 £571 -6.73% 249
Work from Home -10 234 £438 -27.08% 318
UK excluding London -81 183 £375 -28.57% 624
Midlands -54 60 £195 -66.09% 69
North of England -56 39 £388 -13.89% 116
South East -24 38 £381 -19.74% 262
West Midlands -65 36 £195 -66.09% 44
North West -26 26 £470 +4.47% 56
East Midlands -10 24 £168 -64.76% 25
South West -33 18 £540 +10.77% 61
East of England -12 16 £353 -32.86% 34
Scotland +1 14 £175 -61.11% 80
Yorkshire -47 10 £375 -26.83% 41
North East -22 3 £400 -11.11% 19
Northern Ireland -5 1 £625 +8.70% 4

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 14 (2.78%) SharePoint
2 11 (2.19%) Confluence
2 11 (2.19%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.99%) Apache Spark
4 8 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.99%) CMS
6 4 (0.80%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 4 (0.80%) HCL Notes
6 4 (0.80%) WordPress
7 2 (0.40%) Apache
7 2 (0.40%) Camunda
7 2 (0.40%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.20%) Appian
8 1 (0.20%) IIS
8 1 (0.20%) nginx
8 1 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 18 (3.58%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (2.78%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.80%) Adobe Captivate
4 4 (0.80%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 4 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.60%) Trello
6 2 (0.40%) Adobe After Effects
6 2 (0.40%) Adobe XD
6 2 (0.40%) InVision
6 2 (0.40%) Sketch
7 1 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.20%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 7 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.60%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.40%) CODA-Financials
3 2 (0.40%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.40%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.20%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg AIM
4 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.20%) Fidessa
4 1 (0.20%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.20%) ResourceLink
4 1 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.20%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 114 (22.66%) Azure
2 75 (14.91%) AWS
3 36 (7.16%) Power Platform
4 30 (5.96%) GitHub
5 26 (5.17%) GitHub Actions
6 23 (4.57%) Microsoft 365
7 22 (4.37%) Azure DevOps
7 22 (4.37%) GCP
8 16 (3.18%) dbt
8 16 (3.18%) SaaS
9 11 (2.19%) Azure Data Factory
9 11 (2.19%) Entra ID
9 11 (2.19%) Serverless
10 10 (1.99%) Snowflake
11 9 (1.79%) Amazon EKS
12 8 (1.59%) Google Workspace
13 7 (1.39%) Figma
14 6 (1.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 6 (1.19%) Microsoft Purview
14 6 (1.19%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.58%) Network Security
2 10 (1.99%) Firewall
3 9 (1.79%) VPN
4 7 (1.39%) WAN
5 5 (0.99%) DNS
5 5 (0.99%) LAN
5 5 (0.99%) VSAN
6 4 (0.80%) DHCP
6 4 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
7 3 (0.60%) AMQP
7 3 (0.60%) Intranet
7 3 (0.60%) TCP/IP
7 3 (0.60%) VLAN
8 2 (0.40%) MPLS
8 2 (0.40%) SD-WAN
8 2 (0.40%) SMS
8 2 (0.40%) SMTP
9 1 (0.20%) HTTPS
9 1 (0.20%) SAN
9 1 (0.20%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (5.37%) Power BI
2 20 (3.98%) Data Warehouse
3 19 (3.78%) SQL Server
4 14 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
5 10 (1.99%) Metadata
6 8 (1.59%) Big Data
7 7 (1.39%) Azure SQL Database
7 7 (1.39%) Hadoop
7 7 (1.39%) NoSQL
7 7 (1.39%) Relational Database
7 7 (1.39%) Snowflake Schema
8 6 (1.19%) Tableau
9 5 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 4 (0.80%) BigQuery
10 4 (0.80%) Data Lake
10 4 (0.80%) Looker
10 4 (0.80%) Metadata Repository
10 4 (0.80%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.60%) Amazon Aurora
11 3 (0.60%) Apache Iceberg
Development Applications
1 24 (4.77%) Git
2 18 (3.58%) JIRA
3 9 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.39%) Cucumber
5 5 (0.99%) GitLab
5 5 (0.99%) Maven
6 4 (0.80%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.60%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.60%) Selenium
7 3 (0.60%) Team Foundation Server
8 2 (0.40%) Axure RP
8 2 (0.40%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.40%) JMeter
8 2 (0.40%) JUnit
8 2 (0.40%) Mockito
9 1 (0.20%) Appium
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
9 1 (0.20%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.20%) TestNG
9 1 (0.20%) Visual Studio
General
1 172 (34.19%) Social Skills
2 126 (25.05%) Finance
3 61 (12.13%) Analytical Skills
4 56 (11.13%) Public Sector
5 24 (4.77%) Banking
6 23 (4.57%) Marketing
7 19 (3.78%) Organisational Skills
8 12 (2.39%) Legal
9 11 (2.19%) Local Government
9 11 (2.19%) Retail
10 10 (1.99%) Fire and Rescue
11 7 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
11 7 (1.39%) Manufacturing
11 7 (1.39%) Pharmaceutical
12 5 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (0.99%) Investment Banking
12 5 (0.99%) Military
12 5 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
12 5 (0.99%) Publishing
13 4 (0.80%) Law
Job Titles
1 83 (16.50%) Analyst
2 40 (7.95%) Lead
3 38 (7.55%) Architect
4 35 (6.96%) Data Engineer
4 35 (6.96%) Senior
5 34 (6.76%) Developer
6 27 (5.37%) Support Engineer
7 25 (4.97%) Project Manager
8 22 (4.37%) Business Analyst
9 21 (4.17%) Cloud Engineer
10 20 (3.98%) Consultant
11 18 (3.58%) IT Analyst
12 17 (3.38%) IT Support
13 15 (2.98%) IT Engineer
14 14 (2.78%) Data Analyst
14 14 (2.78%) DevOps Engineer
14 14 (2.78%) Service Analyst
15 13 (2.58%) Solutions Architect
16 12 (2.39%) Platform Engineer
16 12 (2.39%) PMO Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (3.58%) EDI
2 11 (2.19%) Spring
2 11 (2.19%) Spring Boot
2 11 (2.19%) YAML
3 10 (1.99%) AngularJS
3 10 (1.99%) Middleware
3 10 (1.99%) React
3 10 (1.99%) REST
4 9 (1.79%) HTML
5 7 (1.39%) .NET
6 5 (0.99%) CSS
6 5 (0.99%) Kafka
6 5 (0.99%) PySpark
6 5 (0.99%) RESTful
6 5 (0.99%) XML
7 4 (0.80%) Akka
7 4 (0.80%) Hibernate
7 4 (0.80%) JPA
8 3 (0.60%) JSON
8 3 (0.60%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 24 (4.77%) Onboarding
2 21 (4.17%) Management Information System
3 20 (3.98%) Cloud Native
4 17 (3.38%) Data Centre
5 9 (1.79%) Product Ownership
6 7 (1.39%) Virtual Team
7 6 (1.19%) e-Learning
7 6 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (1.19%) Public Cloud
8 5 (0.99%) Analytical Mindset
8 5 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
8 5 (0.99%) Reinsurance
8 5 (0.99%) Replication
9 4 (0.80%) Distributed Systems
9 4 (0.80%) Driving Licence
9 4 (0.80%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
9 4 (0.80%) Learning Management System
9 4 (0.80%) Mobile App
10 3 (0.60%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 43 (8.55%) Windows
2 14 (2.78%) Windows Server
3 12 (2.39%) Linux
4 11 (2.19%) Windows 10
5 4 (0.80%) Mac OS
5 4 (0.80%) Unix
6 3 (0.60%) AIX
7 1 (0.20%) Android
7 1 (0.20%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.20%) Oracle Linux
7 1 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (25.84%) Problem-Solving
2 74 (14.71%) Agile
3 71 (14.12%) CI/CD
4 70 (13.92%) DevOps
5 60 (11.93%) Stakeholder Management
6 50 (9.94%) Analytics
7 48 (9.54%) Continuous Improvement
8 41 (8.15%) Infrastructure as Code
9 40 (7.95%) Decision-Making
9 40 (7.95%) Migration
10 36 (7.16%) Data Modelling
11 34 (6.76%) Project Management
12 33 (6.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 32 (6.36%) Mentoring
13 32 (6.36%) Test Automation
14 29 (5.77%) Business Intelligence
15 28 (5.57%) Containerisation
15 28 (5.57%) Data Governance
15 28 (5.57%) Data Pipeline
16 26 (5.17%) Coaching
Programming Languages
1 69 (13.72%) SQL
2 62 (12.33%) Python
3 27 (5.37%) Java
4 22 (4.37%) JavaScript
5 16 (3.18%) PowerShell
6 11 (2.19%) C#
7 9 (1.79%) TypeScript
8 8 (1.59%) Bash
8 8 (1.59%) R
9 6 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 5 (0.99%) Go
11 4 (0.80%) Rust
11 4 (0.80%) Scala
12 3 (0.60%) C++
13 2 (0.40%) AWK
13 2 (0.40%) C
13 2 (0.40%) Perl
13 2 (0.40%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.40%) Ruby
14 1 (0.20%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 71 (14.12%) Security Cleared
2 61 (12.13%) SC Cleared
3 30 (5.96%) Degree
4 18 (3.58%) AWS Certification
5 15 (2.98%) DBS Check
6 9 (1.79%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.59%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.59%) DV Cleared
8 5 (0.99%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 4 (0.80%) ACCA
9 4 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 4 (0.80%) CIMA
9 4 (0.80%) CISSP
9 4 (0.80%) CTC Cleared
9 4 (0.80%) Oracle Certification
10 3 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.60%) Network+ Certification
10 3 (0.60%) PMI Certification
10 3 (0.60%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (4.57%) Data Quality
1 23 (4.57%) QA
2 22 (4.37%) Accessibility
3 13 (2.58%) PMO
4 12 (2.39%) GDPR
5 8 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (1.39%) Actionable Recommendations
7 5 (0.99%) GRC
7 5 (0.99%) NIST
7 5 (0.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.80%) Cyber Essentials
8 4 (0.80%) SLA
9 3 (0.60%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.60%) WCAG
10 2 (0.40%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.40%) PSD2
10 2 (0.40%) Software Quality Assurance
11 1 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.20%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.20%) SOC 2
System Software
1 26 (5.17%) Active Directory
2 22 (4.37%) Docker
3 5 (0.99%) Virtual Desktop
3 5 (0.99%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (0.99%) VMware NSX
3 5 (0.99%) vSphere
4 4 (0.80%) Hyper-V
4 4 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.60%) KVM
5 3 (0.60%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (0.40%) Firmware
7 1 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 41 (8.15%) Terraform
2 27 (5.37%) Kubernetes
3 13 (2.58%) Grafana
4 11 (2.19%) Microsoft Intune
5 10 (1.99%) Prometheus
6 7 (1.39%) Ansible
6 7 (1.39%) SCCM
7 4 (0.80%) Argo
7 4 (0.80%) Jamf Pro
7 4 (0.80%) Kibana
8 3 (0.60%) IBM BigFix
8 3 (0.60%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.20%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.20%) FortiGate
9 1 (0.20%) Nessus
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 1 (0.20%) RSA Archer
9 1 (0.20%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.20%) vRealize
9 1 (0.20%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 70 (13.92%) Microsoft
2 20 (3.98%) Oracle
2 20 (3.98%) ServiceNow
3 19 (3.78%) Databricks
4 16 (3.18%) Google
5 14 (2.78%) VMware
6 12 (2.39%) Cisco
7 11 (2.19%) Salesforce
8 10 (1.99%) Adobe
9 7 (1.39%) Dynatrace
10 6 (1.19%) SAP
11 5 (0.99%) Citrix
12 4 (0.80%) Apple
12 4 (0.80%) Atlassian
12 4 (0.80%) Lotus
12 4 (0.80%) Netskope
13 3 (0.60%) CODA
13 3 (0.60%) Commvault
13 3 (0.60%) CyberArk
13 3 (0.60%) Meraki