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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 202 158 179
Rank change year-on-year -44 +21 -13
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 757 607 541
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.39% 1.83% 1.43%
As % of the General category 2.46% 2.90% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 389 237 318
10th Percentile £306 £183 £423
25th Percentile £363 £356 £505
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £600
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -20.83% -
75th Percentile £565 £625 £675
90th Percentile £650 £668 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £413 £518
% change year-on-year +3.03% -20.29% +4.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 14 2
10th Percentile £12.34 £17.48 £24.15
25th Percentile £13.78 £18.64 £28.88
Median hourly rate £14.85 £22.14 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.93% -41.74% -40.06%
75th Percentile £21.22 £22.41 £48.38
90th Percentile £44.50 £67.50 £53.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £14.05 £22.14 -
% change year-on-year -36.54% - -

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 30,832 20,956 22,240
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.48% 63.27% 58.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,899 13,033 13,139
10th Percentile £313 £275 £281
25th Percentile £420 £400 £411
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 £740 £738 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £480
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.04% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,749 1,247 954
10th Percentile £13.46 £13.51 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.01 £16.17 £17.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -23.08% +18.18%
75th Percentile £53.75 £45.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £72.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £21.39 £31.97
% change year-on-year +28.56% -33.09% +21.79%

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 10 October 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 10 October 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 10 October 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 -62 641 £450 -7.69% 6,170
UK excluding London -7 368 £425 +3.03% 3,780
London -88 306 £500 -9.09% 3,217
Work from Home -32 258 £475 -2.56% 3,287
Midlands -10 114 £425 +1.19% 502
South East -14 91 £425 -5.56% 600
North of England -47 81 £425 +37.10% 1,006
West Midlands -18 76 £425 +2.41% 356
North East +6 54 £425 +6.25% 161
East Midlands 0 38 £163 -63.59% 146
South West -13 29 £475 -20.83% 401
Scotland -27 27 £210 -30.00% 661
Yorkshire -48 16 £425 +112.50% 256
East of England -35 15 £389 +61.98% 307
North West -57 11 £518 +29.38% 590
Wales -7 8 £413 +24.56% 111
Northern Ireland +7 3 - - 211

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 35 (4.62%) SharePoint
2 17 (2.25%) Confluence
3 14 (1.85%) Apache Airflow
4 11 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
5 9 (1.19%) CMS
6 8 (1.06%) Apache Spark
6 8 (1.06%) WordPress
7 7 (0.92%) Apache
8 4 (0.53%) Jupyter
8 4 (0.53%) Kentico
9 2 (0.26%) Skype for Business
10 1 (0.13%) JBoss
10 1 (0.13%) nginx
10 1 (0.13%) SAS
Applications
1 30 (3.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (2.11%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.40%) AutoCAD
5 3 (0.40%) Trello
6 2 (0.26%) Acrobat
6 2 (0.26%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.13%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.13%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.13%) Sketch
7 1 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 21 (2.77%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (2.38%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.66%) Sage X3
3 5 (0.66%) Salesforce CRM
3 5 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.53%) Dynamics NAV
4 4 (0.53%) Oracle ERP
4 4 (0.53%) Workday HCM
5 1 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
5 1 (0.13%) Hyperion Planning
5 1 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.13%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 217 (28.67%) Azure
2 143 (18.89%) AWS
3 84 (11.10%) Azure DevOps
4 81 (10.70%) Power Platform
5 68 (8.98%) Microsoft 365
6 58 (7.66%) GCP
7 49 (6.47%) GitHub
8 47 (6.21%) Serverless
9 46 (6.08%) Dynamics 365
10 38 (5.02%) GitHub Actions
10 38 (5.02%) Power Automate
11 29 (3.83%) Amazon EKS
11 29 (3.83%) Entra ID
12 27 (3.57%) AWS Lambda
13 23 (3.04%) Snowflake
14 21 (2.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 20 (2.64%) Amazon S3
15 20 (2.64%) Azure Data Factory
16 19 (2.51%) SaaS
17 18 (2.38%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 16 (2.11%) VPN
2 14 (1.85%) Firewall
2 14 (1.85%) Network Security
3 13 (1.72%) DNS
4 10 (1.32%) VLAN
4 10 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
5 9 (1.19%) DHCP
5 9 (1.19%) TCP/IP
5 9 (1.19%) Wireless
6 6 (0.79%) Structured Cabling
6 6 (0.79%) WAN
7 5 (0.66%) 3GPP
7 5 (0.66%) 5G
7 5 (0.66%) HTTP
7 5 (0.66%) NGN
7 5 (0.66%) OSPF
7 5 (0.66%) Radio Access Network
7 5 (0.66%) SD-WAN
7 5 (0.66%) tcpdump
7 5 (0.66%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (6.74%) Power BI
2 36 (4.76%) PostgreSQL
3 33 (4.36%) SQL Server
4 24 (3.17%) Metadata
5 23 (3.04%) MongoDB
6 20 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
7 13 (1.72%) Power Query
8 11 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
9 10 (1.32%) Data Lake
9 10 (1.32%) Looker
9 10 (1.32%) NoSQL
10 9 (1.19%) Redis
11 8 (1.06%) Big Data
11 8 (1.06%) Relational Database
12 7 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
12 7 (0.92%) DocumentDB
12 7 (0.92%) Elasticsearch
13 6 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
13 6 (0.79%) Tableau
14 5 (0.66%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 48 (6.34%) Git
1 48 (6.34%) JIRA
2 34 (4.49%) GitLab
3 31 (4.10%) Jenkins
4 13 (1.72%) Cucumber
4 13 (1.72%) Cypress.io
5 12 (1.59%) Postman
5 12 (1.59%) Selenium
6 11 (1.45%) WebDriver
7 8 (1.06%) fastlane
7 8 (1.06%) JUnit
7 8 (1.06%) Mockito
8 7 (0.92%) Gradle
8 7 (0.92%) JMeter
9 6 (0.79%) Gatling
9 6 (0.79%) LoadRunner
9 6 (0.79%) Vite
10 5 (0.66%) Visual Studio
11 4 (0.53%) Android Studio
11 4 (0.53%) Xcode
General
1 320 (42.27%) Social Skills
2 236 (31.18%) Public Sector
3 189 (24.97%) Finance
4 123 (16.25%) Analytical Skills
5 39 (5.15%) Organisational Skills
6 31 (4.10%) Manufacturing
7 27 (3.57%) Local Government
8 24 (3.17%) Banking
9 21 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
9 21 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
10 17 (2.25%) Law
11 16 (2.11%) Marketing
11 16 (2.11%) Retail
12 14 (1.85%) Legal
12 14 (1.85%) Telecoms
13 10 (1.32%) Back Office
14 8 (1.06%) Japanese Language
14 8 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
15 7 (0.92%) Military
15 7 (0.92%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 125 (16.51%) Developer
2 107 (14.13%) Analyst
3 106 (14.00%) Senior
4 79 (10.44%) Lead
5 58 (7.66%) Architect
6 39 (5.15%) Consultant
7 33 (4.36%) Senior Developer
8 28 (3.70%) Administrator
8 28 (3.70%) Business Analyst
9 26 (3.43%) DevOps Engineer
10 25 (3.30%) Data Engineer
11 24 (3.17%) Software Developer
12 22 (2.91%) Data Analyst
12 22 (2.91%) Dynamics 365 Developer
13 21 (2.77%) Support Engineer
14 19 (2.51%) Coordinator
15 18 (2.38%) IT Engineer
15 18 (2.38%) Project Manager
16 17 (2.25%) Senior Analyst
17 16 (2.11%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (11.10%) Terraform
2 50 (6.61%) RESTful
3 31 (4.10%) .NET
4 29 (3.83%) Node.js
4 29 (3.83%) React
5 27 (3.57%) CSS
5 27 (3.57%) HTML
5 27 (3.57%) Kafka
6 26 (3.43%) GraphQL
6 26 (3.43%) JSON
6 26 (3.43%) REST
7 21 (2.77%) Spring
7 21 (2.77%) Spring Boot
8 17 (2.25%) Django
9 15 (1.98%) PySpark
9 15 (1.98%) XML
10 14 (1.85%) XSLT
11 13 (1.72%) Gherkin
11 13 (1.72%) OAuth
11 13 (1.72%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 73 (9.64%) Onboarding
2 50 (6.61%) Product Ownership
3 43 (5.68%) Cloud Native
4 27 (3.57%) Management Information System
5 22 (2.91%) Distributed Systems
6 20 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
7 18 (2.38%) Data Structures
8 15 (1.98%) AI Agents
9 13 (1.72%) Data Centre
9 13 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
10 12 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
10 12 (1.59%) Taxonomies
11 11 (1.45%) Virtual Team
12 9 (1.19%) Driving Licence
12 9 (1.19%) Mobile App
12 9 (1.19%) NHS
13 8 (1.06%) Blog
14 7 (0.92%) Replication
15 6 (0.79%) EPoS
16 5 (0.66%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 78 (10.30%) Windows
2 21 (2.77%) Linux
3 17 (2.25%) Windows 10
3 17 (2.25%) Windows Server
4 13 (1.72%) Apple iOS
5 12 (1.59%) Android
6 9 (1.19%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.66%) Unix
8 4 (0.53%) Windows 7
9 3 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.26%) AIX
10 2 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.13%) VMS
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 278 (36.72%) Agile
2 183 (24.17%) Problem-Solving
3 169 (22.32%) DevOps
4 167 (22.06%) CI/CD
5 159 (21.00%) Stakeholder Management
6 136 (17.97%) Continuous Improvement
7 134 (17.70%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
8 125 (16.51%) AI
9 120 (15.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 104 (13.74%) Decision-Making
11 96 (12.68%) Analytics
12 88 (11.62%) Mentoring
13 78 (10.30%) Test Automation
14 75 (9.91%) Technical Leadership
15 71 (9.38%) Infrastructure as Code
15 71 (9.38%) Validation
16 69 (9.11%) Migration
17 68 (8.98%) Digital Transformation Programme
18 66 (8.72%) Data Modelling
19 62 (8.19%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 109 (14.40%) Python
2 102 (13.47%) SQL
3 81 (10.70%) JavaScript
4 54 (7.13%) C#
5 45 (5.94%) Java
6 32 (4.23%) TypeScript
7 15 (1.98%) Kotlin
8 13 (1.72%) Scala
9 12 (1.59%) Bash
9 12 (1.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 12 (1.59%) PowerShell
10 10 (1.32%) Go
11 9 (1.19%) Ruby
11 9 (1.19%) Swift
12 8 (1.06%) Bicep
13 6 (0.79%) Groovy
13 6 (0.79%) PL/SQL
14 5 (0.66%) PHP
15 4 (0.53%) C++
15 4 (0.53%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 174 (22.99%) Security Cleared
2 165 (21.80%) SC Cleared
3 69 (9.11%) Degree
4 37 (4.89%) Microsoft Certification
5 31 (4.10%) BPSS Clearance
6 29 (3.83%) Azure Certification
7 26 (3.43%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (3.30%) DBS Check
9 15 (1.98%) Master's Degree
10 14 (1.85%) ISTQB
11 8 (1.06%) AWS Certification
11 8 (1.06%) CISSP
12 6 (0.79%) ACCA
12 6 (0.79%) CIMA
12 6 (0.79%) CISM
12 6 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
13 5 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 5 (0.66%) PhD
13 5 (0.66%) PMP
14 4 (0.53%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 104 (13.74%) Accessibility
2 58 (7.66%) QA
3 52 (6.87%) WCAG
4 48 (6.34%) GDPR
5 42 (5.55%) Data Quality
6 21 (2.77%) SLA
7 20 (2.64%) NCSC
8 18 (2.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 12 (1.59%) PMO
10 9 (1.19%) NIST
11 6 (0.79%) Actionable Recommendations
12 5 (0.66%) COBIT
12 5 (0.66%) GRC
13 4 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
14 3 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 3 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
15 2 (0.26%) Def Stans
15 2 (0.26%) DICOM
15 2 (0.26%) HL7
15 2 (0.26%) SOC 2
System Software
1 64 (8.45%) Docker
2 42 (5.55%) Active Directory
3 10 (1.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.06%) Hyper-V
5 5 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.40%) BitLocker
6 3 (0.40%) Firmware
7 2 (0.26%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 2 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.26%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.26%) vSphere
8 1 (0.13%) KVM
8 1 (0.13%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 70 (9.25%) Kubernetes
2 36 (4.76%) Grafana
3 27 (3.57%) Prometheus
4 20 (2.64%) Microsoft Intune
5 16 (2.11%) Ansible
6 14 (1.85%) SCCM
7 7 (0.92%) Kibana
7 7 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (0.66%) Consul
9 4 (0.53%) Rancher
10 3 (0.40%) Packer
11 2 (0.26%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.26%) HP Quality Center
11 2 (0.26%) ITRS Geneos
11 2 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.26%) ZABBIX
11 2 (0.26%) Zipkin
12 1 (0.13%) McAfee ePO
12 1 (0.13%) Nessus
12 1 (0.13%) SCOM
Vendors
1 184 (24.31%) Microsoft
2 31 (4.10%) Google
3 29 (3.83%) Dynatrace
4 25 (3.30%) Databricks
5 24 (3.17%) Oracle
6 23 (3.04%) ServiceNow
7 20 (2.64%) Salesforce
8 14 (1.85%) SAP
8 14 (1.85%) Splunk
9 12 (1.59%) VMware
10 11 (1.45%) Apple
10 11 (1.45%) CyberArk
10 11 (1.45%) Sage
11 10 (1.32%) OpenAI
12 9 (1.19%) Cisco
12 9 (1.19%) PagerDuty
13 8 (1.06%) Qualys
13 8 (1.06%) UiPath
14 7 (0.92%) CA Agile Central
14 7 (0.92%) Confluent