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

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 217 150 162
Rank change year-on-year -67 +12 +17
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 711 626 570
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.32% 1.91% 1.47%
As % of the General category 2.40% 3.01% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 371 259 381
10th Percentile £306 £173 £425
25th Percentile £375 £354 £505
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% -22.92% -
75th Percentile £581 £600 £675
90th Percentile £675 £661 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £420 £500
% change year-on-year +1.19% -16.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 16 5
10th Percentile £14.85 £17.48 £29.60
25th Percentile £17.36 - £42.50
Median hourly rate £20.00 £22.14 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.67% -50.80% -29.13%
75th Percentile £30.28 £25.00 £48.75
90th Percentile £44.50 £70.00 £54.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.29 £22.14 -
% change year-on-year -12.87% - -

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 29,589 20,788 22,240
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.04% 63.55% 57.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,455 12,930 13,776
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £416 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £741 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,293 1,169 1,250
10th Percentile £13.81 £13.50 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.00 £16.25 £16.67
Median hourly rate £31.16 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.88% -28.14% +27.27%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.90 £69.65 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.96 £22.14 £35.00
% change year-on-year +44.37% -36.74% +34.62%

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 August 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 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Inclusion and Diversity in the UK

Inclusion and Diversity
Top 17 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 August 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 -68 619 £469 -1.32% 4,181
London -72 323 £518 -3.72% 2,479
UK excluding London -44 322 £425 +1.19% 2,652
Work from Home -41 265 £525 +5.00% 2,200
Midlands -20 101 £425 -1.16% 351
South East -28 78 £450 -11.33% 439
West Midlands -24 77 £490 +16.67% 242
North of England -51 75 £425 +14.09% 573
North East +1 47 £425 +6.25% 89
Scotland -16 26 £288 -37.84% 421
South West -27 25 £475 -15.56% 482
East Midlands -16 24 £165 -63.33% 109
North West -48 14 £518 +29.38% 332
Yorkshire -72 14 £400 +100.00% 152
East of England -28 9 £425 +174.19% 189
Wales -15 7 £394 +18.90% 52
Northern Ireland +2 1 - - 184

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 31 (4.36%) SharePoint
2 16 (2.25%) Confluence
3 12 (1.69%) Apache Airflow
4 11 (1.55%) CMS
5 10 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
6 9 (1.27%) WordPress
7 8 (1.13%) Apache Spark
8 6 (0.84%) Apache
9 4 (0.56%) Kentico
10 3 (0.42%) Jupyter
11 2 (0.28%) Skype for Business
12 1 (0.14%) Drupal
12 1 (0.14%) JBoss
12 1 (0.14%) SAS
Applications
1 17 (2.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.84%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.42%) AutoCAD
5 3 (0.42%) Trello
6 2 (0.28%) Acrobat
6 2 (0.28%) Sketch
7 1 (0.14%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.14%) InVision
7 1 (0.14%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 17 (2.39%) NetSuite
2 13 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (1.27%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.70%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.70%) Salesforce CRM
4 5 (0.70%) Workday HCM
5 4 (0.56%) Dynamics NAV
5 4 (0.56%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.28%) SAP Business One
7 1 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
7 1 (0.14%) Hyperion Planning
7 1 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.14%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.14%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.14%) SAP FS
7 1 (0.14%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 213 (29.96%) Azure
2 119 (16.74%) AWS
3 79 (11.11%) Azure DevOps
4 72 (10.13%) Power Platform
5 64 (9.00%) Microsoft 365
6 48 (6.75%) GCP
7 40 (5.63%) GitHub
8 37 (5.20%) Dynamics 365
9 32 (4.50%) GitHub Actions
9 32 (4.50%) Serverless
10 27 (3.80%) Entra ID
10 27 (3.80%) Power Automate
11 24 (3.38%) Azure Data Factory
12 22 (3.09%) Snowflake
13 20 (2.81%) Amazon EKS
14 19 (2.67%) AWS Lambda
15 17 (2.39%) dbt
16 16 (2.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 15 (2.11%) SaaS
18 14 (1.97%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 14 (1.97%) Firewall
2 13 (1.83%) DNS
2 13 (1.83%) Network Security
2 13 (1.83%) VPN
3 11 (1.55%) VLAN
3 11 (1.55%) Wi-Fi
4 10 (1.41%) Wireless
5 9 (1.27%) DHCP
6 6 (0.84%) Structured Cabling
6 6 (0.84%) TCP/IP
6 6 (0.84%) WAN
7 5 (0.70%) SD-WAN
8 4 (0.56%) BGP
8 4 (0.56%) OSPF
9 3 (0.42%) Ethernet VPN
9 3 (0.42%) HTTP
9 3 (0.42%) MPLS
9 3 (0.42%) SSL
9 3 (0.42%) VXLAN
10 2 (0.28%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (6.89%) Power BI
2 32 (4.50%) Data Warehouse
3 31 (4.36%) PostgreSQL
4 22 (3.09%) SQL Server
5 17 (2.39%) Metadata
6 14 (1.97%) MongoDB
7 10 (1.41%) Data Lake
8 9 (1.27%) Big Data
8 9 (1.27%) NoSQL
8 9 (1.27%) Relational Database
9 8 (1.13%) Looker
9 8 (1.13%) Power Query
10 7 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
10 7 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
10 7 (0.98%) Redis
10 7 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
10 7 (0.98%) Tableau
11 5 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
11 5 (0.70%) BigQuery
11 5 (0.70%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 41 (5.77%) JIRA
2 37 (5.20%) Git
3 28 (3.94%) Jenkins
4 24 (3.38%) GitLab
5 11 (1.55%) Cypress.io
5 11 (1.55%) Selenium
6 10 (1.41%) fastlane
6 10 (1.41%) Postman
7 9 (1.27%) WebDriver
8 8 (1.13%) Cucumber
9 6 (0.84%) Vite
10 5 (0.70%) Android Studio
10 5 (0.70%) Crashlytics
10 5 (0.70%) Gradle
10 5 (0.70%) JUnit
10 5 (0.70%) Mockito
10 5 (0.70%) Visual Studio
10 5 (0.70%) Xcode
11 4 (0.56%) CircleCI
11 4 (0.56%) SonarQube
General
1 268 (37.69%) Social Skills
2 193 (27.14%) Public Sector
3 188 (26.44%) Finance
4 107 (15.05%) Analytical Skills
5 27 (3.80%) Organisational Skills
6 25 (3.52%) Banking
7 23 (3.23%) Manufacturing
8 18 (2.53%) Documentation Skills
9 17 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
9 17 (2.39%) Law
10 14 (1.97%) Legal
10 14 (1.97%) Marketing
11 13 (1.83%) Retail
12 11 (1.55%) Telecoms
13 10 (1.41%) Local Government
14 9 (1.27%) Pharmaceutical
15 7 (0.98%) Aerospace
15 7 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
15 7 (0.98%) Publishing
16 5 (0.70%) Military
Job Titles
1 109 (15.33%) Developer
2 101 (14.21%) Analyst
3 78 (10.97%) Senior
4 72 (10.13%) Lead
5 56 (7.88%) Architect
6 46 (6.47%) Consultant
7 33 (4.64%) Data Engineer
8 28 (3.94%) Senior Developer
9 26 (3.66%) Business Analyst
9 26 (3.66%) Data Analyst
9 26 (3.66%) DevOps Engineer
10 24 (3.38%) Support Engineer
11 23 (3.23%) IT Engineer
12 20 (2.81%) Project Manager
13 19 (2.67%) IT Support
14 18 (2.53%) Software Developer
15 17 (2.39%) Coordinator
16 16 (2.25%) Dynamics 365 Developer
17 15 (2.11%) Azure Engineer
17 15 (2.11%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 80 (11.25%) Terraform
2 41 (5.77%) RESTful
3 29 (4.08%) .NET
3 29 (4.08%) React
4 24 (3.38%) HTML
5 23 (3.23%) CSS
5 23 (3.23%) GraphQL
6 21 (2.95%) Node.js
7 20 (2.81%) JSON
8 19 (2.67%) Kafka
8 19 (2.67%) PySpark
9 18 (2.53%) REST
10 17 (2.39%) Django
11 15 (2.11%) Spring
11 15 (2.11%) Spring Boot
12 13 (1.83%) OAuth
13 12 (1.69%) OpenID
14 11 (1.55%) Gherkin
14 11 (1.55%) OAuth2
15 9 (1.27%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 67 (9.42%) Onboarding
2 42 (5.91%) Product Ownership
3 41 (5.77%) Cloud Native
4 23 (3.23%) Legacy Systems
5 18 (2.53%) Distributed Systems
6 17 (2.39%) Management Information System
7 15 (2.11%) Data Centre
7 15 (2.11%) Data Structures
8 11 (1.55%) Mobile App
9 10 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
10 8 (1.13%) Security Posture
10 8 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
10 8 (1.13%) Virtual Team
11 7 (0.98%) EPoS
11 7 (0.98%) Replication
12 5 (0.70%) Algorithms
12 5 (0.70%) Blog
12 5 (0.70%) Reinsurance
12 5 (0.70%) Taxonomies
13 4 (0.56%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 75 (10.55%) Windows
2 19 (2.67%) Linux
2 19 (2.67%) Windows 10
3 17 (2.39%) Windows Server
4 14 (1.97%) Apple iOS
5 13 (1.83%) Android
6 4 (0.56%) Mac OS
6 4 (0.56%) Unix
6 4 (0.56%) Windows 7
7 3 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.28%) VMS
8 2 (0.28%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.14%) AIX
9 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 227 (31.93%) Agile
2 174 (24.47%) Problem-Solving
3 158 (22.22%) DevOps
4 146 (20.53%) CI/CD
5 142 (19.97%) Stakeholder Management
6 126 (17.72%) Continuous Improvement
7 113 (15.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 108 (15.19%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
9 104 (14.63%) Analytics
10 96 (13.50%) AI
10 96 (13.50%) Decision-Making
11 86 (12.10%) Migration
12 74 (10.41%) Test Automation
13 71 (9.99%) Mentoring
14 69 (9.70%) Infrastructure as Code
15 68 (9.56%) Validation
16 62 (8.72%) Digital Transformation Programme
16 62 (8.72%) Technical Leadership
17 59 (8.30%) Business Intelligence
17 59 (8.30%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 112 (15.75%) Python
2 98 (13.78%) SQL
3 63 (8.86%) JavaScript
4 46 (6.47%) C#
5 41 (5.77%) Java
6 28 (3.94%) TypeScript
7 14 (1.97%) PowerShell
8 13 (1.83%) Kotlin
9 10 (1.41%) Bash
9 10 (1.41%) Go
9 10 (1.41%) Swift
10 9 (1.27%) Scala
11 8 (1.13%) Bicep
11 8 (1.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 8 (1.13%) Ruby
12 6 (0.84%) PL/SQL
13 5 (0.70%) Groovy
13 5 (0.70%) PHP
14 4 (0.56%) Shell Script
14 4 (0.56%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 142 (19.97%) Security Cleared
2 131 (18.42%) SC Cleared
3 51 (7.17%) Degree
4 28 (3.94%) DBS Check
5 27 (3.80%) Microsoft Certification
6 26 (3.66%) Azure Certification
7 24 (3.38%) BPSS Clearance
8 21 (2.95%) Computer Science Degree
9 12 (1.69%) Master's Degree
10 9 (1.27%) ISTQB
11 7 (0.98%) CISSP
12 6 (0.84%) ACCA
12 6 (0.84%) CIMA
12 6 (0.84%) ITIL Certification
13 5 (0.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 5 (0.70%) CISM
13 5 (0.70%) PMP
14 4 (0.56%) AWS Certification
14 4 (0.56%) DV Cleared
15 3 (0.42%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (13.78%) Accessibility
2 44 (6.19%) QA
3 40 (5.63%) WCAG
4 39 (5.49%) Data Quality
5 35 (4.92%) GDPR
6 22 (3.09%) SLA
7 17 (2.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 11 (1.55%) NCSC
9 10 (1.41%) PMO
10 8 (1.13%) NIST
11 6 (0.84%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
11 6 (0.84%) GRC
12 5 (0.70%) COBIT
13 3 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 2 (0.28%) Def Stans
14 2 (0.28%) DICOM
14 2 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
14 2 (0.28%) GxP
14 2 (0.28%) HL7
System Software
1 57 (8.02%) Docker
2 46 (6.47%) Active Directory
3 9 (1.27%) Hyper-V
4 8 (1.13%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.56%) Firmware
6 4 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.28%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 2 (0.28%) BitLocker
7 2 (0.28%) vSphere
8 1 (0.14%) KVM
8 1 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.14%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 63 (8.86%) Kubernetes
2 27 (3.80%) Grafana
3 22 (3.09%) Prometheus
4 20 (2.81%) Microsoft Intune
5 16 (2.25%) Ansible
6 14 (1.97%) SCCM
7 5 (0.70%) Consul
7 5 (0.70%) Kibana
7 5 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (0.42%) Packer
8 3 (0.42%) Rancher
9 2 (0.28%) HP ALM
9 2 (0.28%) HP Quality Center
9 2 (0.28%) ITRS Geneos
9 2 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (0.28%) ZABBIX
9 2 (0.28%) Zipkin
10 1 (0.14%) PaperCut
10 1 (0.14%) RSA Archer
10 1 (0.14%) SCOM
Vendors
1 164 (23.07%) Microsoft
2 34 (4.78%) Google
3 31 (4.36%) Databricks
4 24 (3.38%) Dynatrace
4 24 (3.38%) Salesforce
4 24 (3.38%) ServiceNow
5 23 (3.23%) SAP
6 16 (2.25%) Oracle
7 12 (1.69%) CyberArk
7 12 (1.69%) Sage
8 11 (1.55%) Splunk
9 10 (1.41%) Cisco
9 10 (1.41%) VMware
10 9 (1.27%) Apple
10 9 (1.27%) PagerDuty
11 8 (1.13%) OpenAI
11 8 (1.13%) Qualys
11 8 (1.13%) UiPath
12 7 (0.98%) Aspera
12 7 (0.98%) Signiant