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 24 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 229 151 165
Rank change year-on-year -78 +14 +56
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 490 528 650
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.12% 1.81% 1.47%
As % of the General category 1.97% 2.88% 2.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 276 479
10th Percentile £173 £240 £375
25th Percentile £352 £425 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -20.83% - -
75th Percentile £608 £660 £675
90th Percentile £675 £759 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £508 £508
% change year-on-year -18.72% - -3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 7 20
10th Percentile £14.77 - £10.88
25th Percentile £15.75 - £12.06
Median hourly rate £16.84 £22.14 £20.22
Median % change year-on-year -23.94% +9.51% -23.53%
75th Percentile £18.00 - £37.53
90th Percentile £95.70 £36.28 £59.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.67 £22.14 £21.64
% change year-on-year -24.71% +2.31% +55.96%

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 24,864 18,322 25,812
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.74% 62.89% 58.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,517 11,749 16,454
10th Percentile £300 £296 £265
25th Percentile £405 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £649 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £495
% change year-on-year - -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,544 678 1,819
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.00 £15.27
Median hourly rate £25.00 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +15.38% -25.71%
75th Percentile £57.50 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.75 £75.55 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.58 £27.97 £25.00
% change year-on-year -15.71% +11.88% -19.70%

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 24 March 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 24 March 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 24 March 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 -86 445 £475 -20.83% 784
Work from Home -32 229 £537 -10.50% 365
London -55 223 £550 -10.57% 346
UK excluding London -88 219 £413 -18.72% 662
Midlands -50 68 £450 -10.00% 78
South East -48 55 £375 -27.01% 267
West Midlands -54 44 £540 +2.86% 47
North of England -88 42 £425 -5.56% 137
East of England -10 28 £520 +258.62% 49
East Midlands -22 24 £155 -65.56% 31
North West -39 24 £425 -5.56% 64
South West -47 19 £540 +2.86% 75
Scotland +1 10 £213 -54.05% 45
Yorkshire -75 10 £275 -39.73% 57
North East -17 8 £425 -5.56% 17

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 16 (3.27%) SharePoint
2 14 (2.86%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (2.65%) Apache Spark
3 13 (2.65%) Confluence
4 8 (1.63%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (1.22%) CMS
6 4 (0.82%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 4 (0.82%) WordPress
7 2 (0.41%) Apache
7 2 (0.41%) HCL Notes
7 2 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.20%) Appian
8 1 (0.20%) Camunda
8 1 (0.20%) IIS
8 1 (0.20%) nginx
8 1 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
8 1 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 26 (5.31%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (2.86%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.82%) Adobe Captivate
3 4 (0.82%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 4 (0.82%) Trello
4 3 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.41%) Adobe After Effects
5 2 (0.41%) Adobe XD
5 2 (0.41%) InVision
5 2 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.41%) Sketch
6 1 (0.20%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
1 4 (0.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.41%) CODA-Financials
2 2 (0.41%) FLEXCUBE
2 2 (0.41%) NetSuite
2 2 (0.41%) SAP Business One
2 2 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.20%) Advent Geneva
3 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg AIM
3 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 1 (0.20%) Fidessa
3 1 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.20%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.20%) thinkFolio
3 1 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 111 (22.65%) Azure
2 82 (16.73%) AWS
3 33 (6.73%) Power Platform
4 30 (6.12%) Microsoft 365
5 23 (4.69%) GitHub
6 20 (4.08%) GitHub Actions
7 19 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
8 18 (3.67%) GCP
9 17 (3.47%) SaaS
10 16 (3.27%) dbt
11 14 (2.86%) Azure Data Factory
12 13 (2.65%) Entra ID
13 11 (2.24%) Google Workspace
14 10 (2.04%) Serverless
14 10 (2.04%) Snowflake
15 9 (1.84%) Amazon EKS
15 9 (1.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 9 (1.84%) Figma
16 7 (1.43%) AWS Lambda
16 7 (1.43%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 18 (3.67%) TCP/IP
2 15 (3.06%) Ethernet
3 12 (2.45%) Firewall
4 10 (2.04%) Network Security
5 8 (1.63%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (1.43%) VPN
6 7 (1.43%) WAN
7 6 (1.22%) DHCP
7 6 (1.22%) DNS
8 5 (1.02%) HTTP
8 5 (1.02%) LAN
8 5 (1.02%) VLAN
8 5 (1.02%) VSAN
9 3 (0.61%) AMQP
10 2 (0.41%) Intranet
10 2 (0.41%) MPLS
10 2 (0.41%) SD-WAN
11 1 (0.20%) Cisco ISE
11 1 (0.20%) Fibre Channel
11 1 (0.20%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (5.51%) Power BI
2 24 (4.90%) Data Warehouse
3 22 (4.49%) SQL Server
4 14 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
5 11 (2.24%) Big Data
6 10 (2.04%) Hadoop
7 8 (1.63%) Snowflake Schema
8 7 (1.43%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 7 (1.43%) Metadata
9 6 (1.22%) Azure SQL Database
9 6 (1.22%) DB2
9 6 (1.22%) Relational Database
9 6 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 6 (1.22%) Tableau
10 5 (1.02%) Amazon Aurora
10 5 (1.02%) NoSQL
11 4 (0.82%) Looker
11 4 (0.82%) Metadata Repository
12 3 (0.61%) Data Lake
12 3 (0.61%) SSDT
Development Applications
1 24 (4.90%) Git
2 21 (4.29%) JIRA
3 9 (1.84%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.22%) GitLab
4 6 (1.22%) JMeter
5 5 (1.02%) Cucumber
5 5 (1.02%) Gatling
5 5 (1.02%) LoadRunner
6 3 (0.61%) Maven
6 3 (0.61%) Selenium
6 3 (0.61%) SonarQube
6 3 (0.61%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.41%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.41%) Axure RP
7 2 (0.41%) fastlane
7 2 (0.41%) JUnit
7 2 (0.41%) Mockito
8 1 (0.20%) Chocolatey
8 1 (0.20%) Crashlytics
8 1 (0.20%) MLflow
General
1 163 (33.27%) Social Skills
2 116 (23.67%) Finance
3 69 (14.08%) Public Sector
4 59 (12.04%) Analytical Skills
5 23 (4.69%) Banking
6 17 (3.47%) Presentation Skills
7 13 (2.65%) Local Government
8 12 (2.45%) Organisational Skills
9 11 (2.24%) Marketing
10 10 (2.04%) Fire and Rescue
11 9 (1.84%) Pharmaceutical
11 9 (1.84%) Retail
12 8 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
12 8 (1.63%) Legal
13 6 (1.22%) Manufacturing
14 4 (0.82%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.82%) General Ledger
14 4 (0.82%) Military
14 4 (0.82%) Publishing
15 3 (0.61%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 74 (15.10%) Analyst
2 39 (7.96%) Data Engineer
3 36 (7.35%) Lead
4 34 (6.94%) Architect
5 32 (6.53%) Senior
6 29 (5.92%) Developer
7 28 (5.71%) Support Engineer
8 25 (5.10%) Consultant
9 20 (4.08%) IT Engineer
10 19 (3.88%) Data Analyst
10 19 (3.88%) IT Support
11 17 (3.47%) Systems Engineer
12 16 (3.27%) Cloud Engineer
12 16 (3.27%) Project Manager
13 15 (3.06%) Business Analyst
13 15 (3.06%) IT Analyst
13 15 (3.06%) Technical Engineer
14 14 (2.86%) DevOps Engineer
14 14 (2.86%) Service Analyst
15 13 (2.65%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (3.47%) EDI
2 13 (2.65%) YAML
3 10 (2.04%) Middleware
3 10 (2.04%) PySpark
4 9 (1.84%) AngularJS
4 9 (1.84%) React
5 8 (1.63%) HTML
6 7 (1.43%) .NET
6 7 (1.43%) Spring
6 7 (1.43%) Spring Boot
7 6 (1.22%) REST
8 4 (0.82%) CSS
8 4 (0.82%) Hibernate
8 4 (0.82%) JPA
8 4 (0.82%) Kafka
8 4 (0.82%) RESTful
9 3 (0.61%) Akka
9 3 (0.61%) PyTorch
9 3 (0.61%) scikit-learn
9 3 (0.61%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 22 (4.49%) Onboarding
2 21 (4.29%) Cloud Native
3 19 (3.88%) Management Information System
4 17 (3.47%) Data Centre
5 15 (3.06%) Industry 4.0
5 15 (3.06%) Robotics
6 8 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (1.43%) Product Ownership
7 7 (1.43%) Replication
7 7 (1.43%) Virtual Team
8 6 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
8 6 (1.22%) Mobile App
9 5 (1.02%) Algorithms
9 5 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
9 5 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (1.02%) Operational Technology
10 4 (0.82%) Data Structures
10 4 (0.82%) Driving Licence
10 4 (0.82%) Learning Management System
Operating Systems
1 37 (7.55%) Windows
2 16 (3.27%) Windows 10
3 11 (2.24%) Windows Server
4 10 (2.04%) Linux
5 6 (1.22%) AIX
5 6 (1.22%) Unix
6 3 (0.61%) Mac OS
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
7 1 (0.20%) Windows 7
7 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (26.53%) Problem-Solving
2 75 (15.31%) Agile
3 69 (14.08%) CI/CD
4 67 (13.67%) Decision-Making
5 63 (12.86%) DevOps
6 60 (12.24%) Analytics
7 46 (9.39%) Stakeholder Management
8 44 (8.98%) Continuous Improvement
8 44 (8.98%) Migration
9 38 (7.76%) Data Modelling
10 37 (7.55%) Customer Service
11 36 (7.35%) Infrastructure as Code
12 35 (7.14%) Data Pipeline
13 30 (6.12%) Mentoring
14 29 (5.92%) AI
14 29 (5.92%) Business Intelligence
14 29 (5.92%) Test Automation
15 28 (5.71%) Data Engineering
16 27 (5.51%) Data Governance
16 27 (5.51%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 73 (14.90%) SQL
2 66 (13.47%) Python
3 20 (4.08%) PowerShell
4 19 (3.88%) Java
5 16 (3.27%) JavaScript
6 11 (2.24%) Bash
7 10 (2.04%) R
8 8 (1.63%) C#
9 6 (1.22%) TypeScript
10 5 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 5 (1.02%) VBA
11 3 (0.61%) Go
11 3 (0.61%) Scala
12 2 (0.41%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.41%) AWK
12 2 (0.41%) Groovy
12 2 (0.41%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.41%) Ruby
12 2 (0.41%) Rust
13 1 (0.20%) C++
Qualifications
1 74 (15.10%) Security Cleared
2 62 (12.65%) SC Cleared
3 44 (8.98%) Degree
4 16 (3.27%) DBS Check
5 15 (3.06%) AWS Certification
6 9 (1.84%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (1.22%) DV Cleared
9 4 (0.82%) ACCA
9 4 (0.82%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 4 (0.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 4 (0.82%) CIMA
9 4 (0.82%) CISSP
9 4 (0.82%) CTC Cleared
10 3 (0.61%) CompTIA CySA+
10 3 (0.61%) Network+ Certification
10 3 (0.61%) Oracle Certification
10 3 (0.61%) SANS
11 2 (0.41%) CCNA
11 2 (0.41%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (5.51%) Accessibility
1 27 (5.51%) Data Quality
2 19 (3.88%) QA
3 9 (1.84%) Actionable Recommendations
4 8 (1.63%) GDPR
5 7 (1.43%) PMO
6 5 (1.02%) WCAG
7 4 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
7 4 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.61%) GRC
8 3 (0.61%) SLA
9 2 (0.41%) ISO 22301
9 2 (0.41%) NIST
9 2 (0.41%) PSD2
9 2 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.20%) GMP
10 1 (0.20%) GxP
10 1 (0.20%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.20%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 32 (6.53%) Active Directory
2 18 (3.67%) Docker
3 10 (2.04%) Hyper-V
4 7 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.22%) KVM
6 5 (1.02%) VMware NSX
6 5 (1.02%) vSphere
7 4 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
8 2 (0.41%) Firmware
8 2 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 36 (7.35%) Terraform
2 22 (4.49%) Kubernetes
3 15 (3.06%) Grafana
4 12 (2.45%) Microsoft Intune
5 9 (1.84%) Ansible
5 9 (1.84%) Prometheus
6 7 (1.43%) SCCM
7 6 (1.22%) IBM BigFix
7 6 (1.22%) Kibana
7 6 (1.22%) vCenter Server
8 4 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.61%) Argo
9 3 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.41%) Rancher
11 1 (0.20%) Data Guard
11 1 (0.20%) EMC VPLEX
11 1 (0.20%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 1 (0.20%) PaperCut
11 1 (0.20%) vRealize
11 1 (0.20%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 75 (15.31%) Microsoft
2 29 (5.92%) Databricks
3 21 (4.29%) Oracle
4 19 (3.88%) ServiceNow
5 18 (3.67%) Google
6 15 (3.06%) Siemens
7 14 (2.86%) SAP
8 13 (2.65%) Dynatrace
9 12 (2.45%) Salesforce
9 12 (2.45%) VMware
10 10 (2.04%) Adobe
10 10 (2.04%) Cisco
11 7 (1.43%) Atlassian
12 6 (1.22%) IBM
13 4 (0.82%) Citrix
13 4 (0.82%) Dell
13 4 (0.82%) MuleSoft
13 4 (0.82%) Netskope
13 4 (0.82%) Talend
14 3 (0.61%) Meraki