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 28 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 245 144 158
Rank change year-on-year -101 +14 +58
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 503 579 658
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.03% 2.02% 1.54%
As % of the General category 1.91% 3.19% 2.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 226 245 469
10th Percentile £293 £185 £400
25th Percentile £375 £400 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £508 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.87% -15.42% -
75th Percentile £600 £638 £700
90th Percentile £675 £694 £776
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 26,273 18,154 24,669
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.80% 63.36% 57.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,928 11,519 15,575
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 £493
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.60% -1.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,739 792 1,958
10th Percentile £13.90 £13.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.69 £16.73 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.25 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £24.34 £28.25
% change year-on-year +19.17% -13.86% +2.36%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -106 441 £500 -6.54% 1,003
London -63 243 £550 -8.33% 488
Work from Home -44 215 £540 -1.82% 509
UK excluding London -133 201 £425 -6.59% 668
South East -56 56 £413 -18.72% 190
North of England -100 53 £425 +6.25% 176
Midlands -75 48 £565 +29.14% 96
West Midlands -67 37 £565 +29.14% 45
North East -7 23 £425 -22.73% 20
East of England -30 20 £338 +3.85% 33
Yorkshire -89 16 £400 - 52
Scotland -16 14 £210 -54.59% 54
North West -55 14 £354 -16.66% 106
East Midlands -35 11 - - 51
South West -51 10 £350 -41.72% 87

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 (3.38%) SharePoint
2 14 (2.78%) Apache Spark
3 10 (1.99%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (1.79%) Apache Airflow
4 9 (1.79%) CMS
4 9 (1.79%) Confluence
5 5 (0.99%) WordPress
6 4 (0.80%) Kentico
7 2 (0.40%) Apache
7 2 (0.40%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.40%) Skype for Business
8 1 (0.20%) Appian
8 1 (0.20%) Drupal
8 1 (0.20%) nginx
8 1 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
8 1 (0.20%) SAS
8 1 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 22 (4.37%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (2.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.60%) 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 (1.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.80%) NetSuite
2 4 (0.80%) Oracle ERP
3 3 (0.60%) 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
1 119 (23.66%) Azure
2 89 (17.69%) AWS
3 37 (7.36%) Microsoft 365
4 35 (6.96%) Power Platform
5 30 (5.96%) Azure DevOps
6 24 (4.77%) GitHub
7 21 (4.17%) GCP
8 20 (3.98%) Entra ID
9 18 (3.58%) dbt
9 18 (3.58%) GitHub Actions
10 17 (3.38%) Azure Data Factory
11 13 (2.58%) Snowflake
12 11 (2.19%) Serverless
13 9 (1.79%) Amazon EKS
13 9 (1.79%) SaaS
14 8 (1.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 7 (1.39%) AWS Lambda
15 7 (1.39%) Figma
16 6 (1.19%) AWS CloudFormation
16 6 (1.19%) Firebase
Communications & Networking
1 19 (3.78%) TCP/IP
2 15 (2.98%) Ethernet
3 11 (2.19%) Network Security
4 10 (1.99%) Firewall
5 8 (1.59%) VLAN
5 8 (1.59%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (1.39%) DNS
7 6 (1.19%) HTTP
7 6 (1.19%) VSAN
8 5 (0.99%) DHCP
8 5 (0.99%) WAN
9 4 (0.80%) VPN
10 2 (0.40%) LAN
10 2 (0.40%) MPLS
10 2 (0.40%) SD-WAN
10 2 (0.40%) Skype
11 1 (0.20%) AMQP
11 1 (0.20%) Ethernet VPN
11 1 (0.20%) iSCSI
11 1 (0.20%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (6.36%) Power BI
2 25 (4.97%) Data Warehouse
3 21 (4.17%) SQL Server
4 16 (3.18%) PostgreSQL
5 13 (2.58%) Big Data
6 12 (2.39%) Hadoop
7 10 (1.99%) Snowflake Schema
8 8 (1.59%) DB2
9 7 (1.39%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 7 (1.39%) 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 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
12 4 (0.80%) Data Lake
12 4 (0.80%) Metadata Repository
12 4 (0.80%) SAP Data Services
13 3 (0.60%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 24 (4.77%) JIRA
2 20 (3.98%) Git
3 18 (3.58%) Jenkins
4 10 (1.99%) 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 (0.80%) JUnit
8 3 (0.60%) Android Studio
8 3 (0.60%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.60%) CircleCI
8 3 (0.60%) Crashlytics
8 3 (0.60%) Cucumber
8 3 (0.60%) Gradle
8 3 (0.60%) Mockito
8 3 (0.60%) Snyk
8 3 (0.60%) Xcode
General
1 156 (31.01%) Social Skills
2 135 (26.84%) Finance
3 100 (19.88%) Public Sector
4 59 (11.73%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (5.17%) Banking
6 17 (3.38%) Presentation Skills
7 12 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
8 11 (2.19%) Legal
9 10 (1.99%) Law
9 10 (1.99%) Manufacturing
10 9 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
10 9 (1.79%) Pharmaceutical
11 8 (1.59%) Marketing
12 7 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
13 6 (1.19%) Retail
14 5 (0.99%) General Ledger
14 5 (0.99%) Local Government
15 4 (0.80%) Aerospace
15 4 (0.80%) Front Office
16 3 (0.60%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 67 (13.32%) Analyst
2 55 (10.93%) Developer
3 45 (8.95%) Senior
4 41 (8.15%) Lead
5 36 (7.16%) Architect
6 32 (6.36%) Data Engineer
7 30 (5.96%) Consultant
8 24 (4.77%) Data Analyst
9 21 (4.17%) DevOps Engineer
9 21 (4.17%) Support Engineer
10 17 (3.38%) Business Analyst
11 16 (3.18%) IT Support
11 16 (3.18%) Systems Engineer
12 15 (2.98%) IT Engineer
12 15 (2.98%) Technical Engineer
13 14 (2.78%) Project Manager
13 14 (2.78%) Senior Developer
14 13 (2.58%) Cloud Engineer
15 12 (2.39%) Azure Engineer
15 12 (2.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (3.98%) React
2 16 (3.18%) GraphQL
3 13 (2.58%) RESTful
4 11 (2.19%) .NET
5 10 (1.99%) Spring
5 10 (1.99%) Spring Boot
6 9 (1.79%) REST
7 8 (1.59%) HTML
7 8 (1.59%) PySpark
7 8 (1.59%) YAML
8 7 (1.39%) CSS
8 7 (1.39%) Kafka
8 7 (1.39%) Next.js
9 6 (1.19%) Middleware
10 5 (0.99%) AngularJS
10 5 (0.99%) ARM Templates
11 4 (0.80%) Django
11 4 (0.80%) Elastic Stack
11 4 (0.80%) FastAPI
11 4 (0.80%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 31 (6.16%) Onboarding
2 26 (5.17%) Cloud Native
3 15 (2.98%) Industry 4.0
3 15 (2.98%) Product Ownership
3 15 (2.98%) Robotics
4 12 (2.39%) Data Centre
5 11 (2.19%) Distributed Systems
5 11 (2.19%) Legacy Systems
6 10 (1.99%) Data Structures
7 8 (1.59%) Linux Command Line
7 8 (1.59%) Replication
8 6 (1.19%) Management Information System
8 6 (1.19%) Mobile App
8 6 (1.19%) Operational Technology
8 6 (1.19%) Security Posture
8 6 (1.19%) Virtual Team
9 5 (0.99%) Algorithms
9 5 (0.99%) Reinsurance
10 4 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (0.80%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 44 (8.75%) Windows
2 18 (3.58%) Windows 10
3 17 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 16 (3.18%) Linux
5 8 (1.59%) Android
5 8 (1.59%) Apple iOS
5 8 (1.59%) Unix
6 6 (1.19%) AIX
7 3 (0.60%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.60%) 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 (23.26%) Problem-Solving
2 113 (22.47%) Agile
3 87 (17.30%) CI/CD
4 84 (16.70%) Decision-Making
5 80 (15.90%) DevOps
6 70 (13.92%) Analytics
7 56 (11.13%) Stakeholder Management
8 51 (10.14%) Migration
9 50 (9.94%) Continuous Improvement
10 47 (9.34%) Infrastructure as Code
11 45 (8.95%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
12 42 (8.35%) AI
13 41 (8.15%) Data Modelling
14 40 (7.95%) Test Automation
15 39 (7.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 38 (7.55%) Business Intelligence
16 38 (7.55%) Mentoring
17 36 (7.16%) User Experience
17 36 (7.16%) Validation
18 35 (6.96%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 79 (15.71%) SQL
2 78 (15.51%) Python
3 24 (4.77%) Java
4 22 (4.37%) PowerShell
5 20 (3.98%) JavaScript
6 13 (2.58%) Bash
6 13 (2.58%) TypeScript
7 11 (2.19%) R
8 8 (1.59%) C#
8 8 (1.59%) Kotlin
8 8 (1.59%) Swift
9 7 (1.39%) Scala
10 5 (0.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 5 (0.99%) VBA
11 4 (0.80%) Groovy
11 4 (0.80%) PL/SQL
11 4 (0.80%) Ruby
12 3 (0.60%) Go
12 3 (0.60%) VB
13 2 (0.40%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 78 (15.51%) Security Cleared
2 71 (14.12%) SC Cleared
3 42 (8.35%) Degree
4 21 (4.17%) DBS Check
5 15 (2.98%) Azure Certification
6 10 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (1.79%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.19%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (0.99%) PMP
10 4 (0.80%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.60%) CISM
11 3 (0.60%) CISSP
11 3 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.60%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.40%) ACCA
12 2 (0.40%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.40%) CIMA
12 2 (0.40%) CIPD
12 2 (0.40%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (7.36%) Accessibility
2 33 (6.56%) Data Quality
3 17 (3.38%) QA
4 13 (2.58%) GDPR
5 12 (2.39%) WCAG
6 11 (2.19%) Actionable Recommendations
7 9 (1.79%) SLA
8 8 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
9 6 (1.19%) GRC
10 4 (0.80%) NIST
10 4 (0.80%) PMO
11 3 (0.60%) COBIT
11 3 (0.60%) Def Stans
12 2 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 2 (0.40%) NCSC
12 2 (0.40%) PSD2
13 1 (0.20%) ISO 22301
13 1 (0.20%) ISO 31000
13 1 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 36 (7.16%) Active Directory
2 31 (6.16%) Docker
3 13 (2.58%) Hyper-V
4 11 (2.19%) 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 (0.80%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.40%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.20%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 47 (9.34%) Terraform
2 35 (6.96%) Kubernetes
3 22 (4.37%) Grafana
4 16 (3.18%) Ansible
5 15 (2.98%) Prometheus
6 9 (1.79%) Kibana
7 8 (1.59%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (1.19%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.19%) SCCM
8 6 (1.19%) vCenter Server
9 4 (0.80%) Consul
9 4 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (0.60%) Rancher
11 2 (0.40%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.40%) HP Quality Center
11 2 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.40%) Packer
11 2 (0.40%) Zipkin
12 1 (0.20%) ITRS Geneos
12 1 (0.20%) PaperCut
Vendors
1 78 (15.51%) Microsoft
2 27 (5.37%) Databricks
3 20 (3.98%) SAP
3 20 (3.98%) ServiceNow
4 17 (3.38%) Dynatrace
4 17 (3.38%) Google
5 16 (3.18%) Oracle
6 15 (2.98%) Siemens
7 14 (2.78%) Salesforce
7 14 (2.78%) VMware
8 8 (1.59%) CyberArk
9 7 (1.39%) IBM
10 6 (1.19%) Atlassian
11 4 (0.80%) Cisco
12 3 (0.60%) Acronis
12 3 (0.60%) AppDynamics
12 3 (0.60%) Apple
12 3 (0.60%) Dell
12 3 (0.60%) HP
12 3 (0.60%) MuleSoft