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

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 246 146 158
Rank change year-on-year -100 +12 +47
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 488 573 656
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.01% 1.99% 1.54%
As % of the General category 1.88% 3.15% 2.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 223 243 469
10th Percentile £276 £187 £400
25th Percentile £363 £400 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £508 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.87% -15.42% -
75th Percentile £603 £638 £700
90th Percentile £675 £705 £776
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £460 £500
% change year-on-year -7.61% -8.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 9 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 - £47.50
90th Percentile £110.56 £37.50 £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 25,912 18,211 24,655
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.52% 63.24% 57.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,740 11,575 15,555
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 £763 £770
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,696 777 1,954
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.71 £12.76
25th Percentile £17.50 £16.95 £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 £66.59
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £24.42 £28.00
% change year-on-year +18.76% -12.79% +1.45%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -102 429 £481 -10.05% 953
London -63 239 £550 -7.37% 406
Work from Home -42 207 £540 -1.82% 492
UK excluding London -153 191 £425 -7.61% 681
South East -65 53 £406 -19.95% 205
North of England -107 50 £425 +6.25% 189
Midlands -75 47 £565 +25.56% 98
West Midlands -71 35 £565 +29.14% 50
North East -5 22 £425 -22.73% 24
East of England -33 19 £338 +11.57% 36
Yorkshire -93 15 £400 - 64
North West -60 13 £325 -23.53% 103
Scotland -14 12 £210 -54.59% 51
East Midlands -32 12 £143 -68.33% 48
South West -57 10 £350 -41.72% 78

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 18 (3.69%) SharePoint
2 16 (3.28%) Apache Spark
3 9 (1.84%) CMS
3 9 (1.84%) Confluence
4 8 (1.64%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (1.64%) Microsoft Exchange
5 5 (1.02%) WordPress
6 4 (0.82%) Kentico
7 2 (0.41%) Apache
7 2 (0.41%) Jupyter
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 20 (4.10%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.61%) Trello
4 2 (0.41%) InVision
4 2 (0.41%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.41%) 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 (1.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.82%) Oracle ERP
3 3 (0.61%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.41%) FLEXCUBE
4 2 (0.41%) SAP Business One
4 2 (0.41%) 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%) 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
1 111 (22.75%) Azure
2 87 (17.83%) AWS
3 33 (6.76%) Microsoft 365
4 32 (6.56%) Power Platform
5 29 (5.94%) Azure DevOps
6 23 (4.71%) GitHub
7 19 (3.89%) GCP
8 18 (3.69%) Entra ID
8 18 (3.69%) GitHub Actions
9 17 (3.48%) dbt
10 16 (3.28%) Azure Data Factory
11 12 (2.46%) Snowflake
12 11 (2.25%) Serverless
13 9 (1.84%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (1.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 7 (1.43%) AWS Lambda
15 7 (1.43%) Figma
15 7 (1.43%) SaaS
16 6 (1.23%) Firebase
16 6 (1.23%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 19 (3.89%) TCP/IP
2 15 (3.07%) Ethernet
3 10 (2.05%) Firewall
3 10 (2.05%) Network Security
4 8 (1.64%) VLAN
4 8 (1.64%) Wi-Fi
5 7 (1.43%) DNS
6 6 (1.23%) HTTP
6 6 (1.23%) VSAN
7 5 (1.02%) DHCP
7 5 (1.02%) WAN
8 4 (0.82%) VPN
9 2 (0.41%) LAN
9 2 (0.41%) MPLS
9 2 (0.41%) SD-WAN
10 1 (0.20%) ADSL
10 1 (0.20%) Ethernet VPN
10 1 (0.20%) OSPF
10 1 (0.20%) SMTP
10 1 (0.20%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (5.94%) Power BI
2 24 (4.92%) Data Warehouse
3 21 (4.30%) SQL Server
4 15 (3.07%) Big Data
4 15 (3.07%) PostgreSQL
5 14 (2.87%) Hadoop
6 10 (2.05%) Snowflake Schema
7 8 (1.64%) DB2
8 7 (1.43%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 6 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 6 (1.23%) Tableau
10 5 (1.02%) Azure SQL Database
10 5 (1.02%) Metadata
11 4 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
11 4 (0.82%) Data Lake
11 4 (0.82%) Looker
11 4 (0.82%) Metadata Repository
11 4 (0.82%) NoSQL
11 4 (0.82%) SAP Data Services
12 3 (0.61%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 21 (4.30%) JIRA
2 19 (3.89%) Git
3 18 (3.69%) Jenkins
4 10 (2.05%) GitLab
5 6 (1.23%) fastlane
5 6 (1.23%) JMeter
5 6 (1.23%) SonarQube
5 6 (1.23%) Vite
6 5 (1.02%) Gatling
6 5 (1.02%) LoadRunner
7 4 (0.82%) JUnit
8 3 (0.61%) Android Studio
8 3 (0.61%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.61%) CircleCI
8 3 (0.61%) Crashlytics
8 3 (0.61%) Cucumber
8 3 (0.61%) Gradle
8 3 (0.61%) Mockito
8 3 (0.61%) Snyk
8 3 (0.61%) Xcode
General
1 150 (30.74%) Social Skills
2 123 (25.20%) Finance
3 98 (20.08%) Public Sector
4 55 (11.27%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (5.12%) Banking
6 17 (3.48%) Presentation Skills
7 11 (2.25%) Influencing Skills
8 10 (2.05%) Legal
8 10 (2.05%) Manufacturing
8 10 (2.05%) Organisational Skills
9 8 (1.64%) Law
9 8 (1.64%) Pharmaceutical
10 7 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
10 7 (1.43%) Marketing
11 5 (1.02%) Local Government
11 5 (1.02%) Retail
12 4 (0.82%) Aerospace
12 4 (0.82%) General Ledger
13 3 (0.61%) Front Office
13 3 (0.61%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 64 (13.11%) Analyst
2 52 (10.66%) Developer
3 44 (9.02%) Senior
4 41 (8.40%) Lead
5 35 (7.17%) Architect
6 31 (6.35%) Data Engineer
7 28 (5.74%) Consultant
8 24 (4.92%) Data Analyst
9 21 (4.30%) Support Engineer
10 20 (4.10%) DevOps Engineer
11 16 (3.28%) Business Analyst
11 16 (3.28%) IT Engineer
11 16 (3.28%) Systems Engineer
12 15 (3.07%) Technical Engineer
13 14 (2.87%) IT Support
14 13 (2.66%) Cloud Engineer
14 13 (2.66%) Data Scientist
14 13 (2.66%) Senior Developer
15 12 (2.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 12 (2.46%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.10%) React
2 16 (3.28%) GraphQL
3 11 (2.25%) .NET
3 11 (2.25%) RESTful
4 9 (1.84%) REST
5 8 (1.64%) HTML
5 8 (1.64%) PySpark
5 8 (1.64%) Spring
5 8 (1.64%) Spring Boot
5 8 (1.64%) YAML
6 7 (1.43%) CSS
6 7 (1.43%) Next.js
7 6 (1.23%) Kafka
7 6 (1.23%) Middleware
8 5 (1.02%) AngularJS
9 4 (0.82%) ARM Templates
9 4 (0.82%) Django
9 4 (0.82%) Elastic Stack
9 4 (0.82%) JSON
9 4 (0.82%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 28 (5.74%) Onboarding
2 25 (5.12%) Cloud Native
3 15 (3.07%) Industry 4.0
3 15 (3.07%) Robotics
4 14 (2.87%) Product Ownership
5 12 (2.46%) Data Centre
6 11 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
6 11 (2.25%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (2.05%) Data Structures
8 9 (1.84%) Replication
9 8 (1.64%) Linux Command Line
10 6 (1.23%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.23%) Mobile App
10 6 (1.23%) Operational Technology
10 6 (1.23%) Virtual Team
11 5 (1.02%) Algorithms
11 5 (1.02%) Reinsurance
11 5 (1.02%) Security Posture
12 4 (0.82%) Analytical Mindset
12 4 (0.82%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 40 (8.20%) Windows
2 16 (3.28%) Windows Server
3 15 (3.07%) Linux
3 15 (3.07%) Windows 10
4 8 (1.64%) Android
4 8 (1.64%) Apple iOS
4 8 (1.64%) Unix
5 6 (1.23%) AIX
6 3 (0.61%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.41%) VMS
8 1 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.20%) Windows 7
8 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 115 (23.57%) Problem-Solving
2 105 (21.52%) Agile
3 84 (17.21%) CI/CD
4 83 (17.01%) Decision-Making
5 77 (15.78%) DevOps
6 67 (13.73%) Analytics
7 50 (10.25%) Migration
7 50 (10.25%) Stakeholder Management
8 48 (9.84%) Continuous Improvement
9 46 (9.43%) Infrastructure as Code
10 43 (8.81%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
11 41 (8.40%) AI
12 38 (7.79%) Data Modelling
12 38 (7.79%) Test Automation
13 36 (7.38%) Data Pipeline
13 36 (7.38%) Mentoring
13 36 (7.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 35 (7.17%) Validation
15 34 (6.97%) Business Intelligence
15 34 (6.97%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 79 (16.19%) Python
2 77 (15.78%) SQL
3 22 (4.51%) Java
4 20 (4.10%) JavaScript
5 19 (3.89%) PowerShell
6 13 (2.66%) Bash
6 13 (2.66%) R
6 13 (2.66%) TypeScript
7 8 (1.64%) C#
7 8 (1.64%) Kotlin
7 8 (1.64%) Swift
8 6 (1.23%) Scala
9 5 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 5 (1.02%) VBA
10 4 (0.82%) Groovy
10 4 (0.82%) PL/SQL
10 4 (0.82%) Ruby
11 3 (0.61%) Go
12 2 (0.41%) COBOL
12 2 (0.41%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 80 (16.39%) Security Cleared
2 73 (14.96%) SC Cleared
3 40 (8.20%) Degree
4 18 (3.69%) DBS Check
5 15 (3.07%) Azure Certification
6 9 (1.84%) AWS Certification
6 9 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (1.02%) PMP
9 4 (0.82%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.61%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.61%) CISM
10 3 (0.61%) CISSP
10 3 (0.61%) CTC Cleared
10 3 (0.61%) DV Cleared
10 3 (0.61%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.41%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.41%) CIPD
11 2 (0.41%) CRISC
12 1 (0.20%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (7.38%) Accessibility
2 30 (6.15%) Data Quality
3 17 (3.48%) QA
4 13 (2.66%) GDPR
5 12 (2.46%) WCAG
6 11 (2.25%) Actionable Recommendations
7 6 (1.23%) GRC
7 6 (1.23%) SLA
8 5 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
8 5 (1.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.82%) NIST
9 4 (0.82%) PMO
10 2 (0.41%) Def Stans
10 2 (0.41%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.41%) NCSC
10 2 (0.41%) PSD2
11 1 (0.20%) COBIT
11 1 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.20%) ISO 31000
11 1 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 33 (6.76%) Active Directory
2 28 (5.74%) Docker
3 13 (2.66%) Hyper-V
4 11 (2.25%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.23%) KVM
5 6 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (1.23%) VMware NSX
5 6 (1.23%) vSphere
6 4 (0.82%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.41%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 46 (9.43%) Terraform
2 31 (6.35%) Kubernetes
3 22 (4.51%) Grafana
4 16 (3.28%) Ansible
5 15 (3.07%) Prometheus
6 9 (1.84%) Kibana
7 8 (1.64%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (1.23%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.23%) vCenter Server
9 4 (0.82%) Consul
9 4 (0.82%) SCCM
10 3 (0.61%) Rancher
10 3 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.41%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.41%) HP Quality Center
11 2 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.41%) Packer
11 2 (0.41%) Zipkin
12 1 (0.20%) EMC VPLEX
12 1 (0.20%) PaperCut
Vendors
1 73 (14.96%) Microsoft
2 27 (5.53%) Databricks
3 20 (4.10%) SAP
4 17 (3.48%) Dynatrace
4 17 (3.48%) ServiceNow
5 16 (3.28%) Google
6 15 (3.07%) Siemens
7 14 (2.87%) Oracle
7 14 (2.87%) VMware
8 13 (2.66%) Salesforce
9 7 (1.43%) IBM
10 6 (1.23%) Atlassian
10 6 (1.23%) CyberArk
11 4 (0.82%) Apple
11 4 (0.82%) HP
12 3 (0.61%) Acronis
12 3 (0.61%) AppDynamics
12 3 (0.61%) Cisco
12 3 (0.61%) Dell
12 3 (0.61%) MuleSoft