NHS Contract Job Trends in England

National Health Service (NHS)
UK > England

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term NHS in contract job vacancies in England. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited NHS 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 316 346 307
Rank change year-on-year +30 -39 -82
Contract jobs citing NHS 350 167 234
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.76% 0.61% 0.71%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.28% 1.69% 2.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 275 121 156
10th Percentile £250 £200 £175
25th Percentile £363 £313 £267
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £466 £450 £350
Median % change year-on-year +3.44% +28.57% +7.69%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £516
90th Percentile £600 £594 £606
UK median daily rate £451 £420 £350
% change year-on-year +7.26% +20.00% +10.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 5 20
10th Percentile £17.08 £23.28 £14.78
25th Percentile £23.66 £26.32 £15.92
Median hourly rate £31.47 £30.50 £21.70
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% +40.59% +8.48%
75th Percentile £34.62 £32.71 £25.83
90th Percentile £54.00 £34.62 £26.26
UK median hourly rate £30.88 £30.25 £22.40
% change year-on-year +2.09% +35.04% +14.87%

All Generic Skills
England

NHS falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 15,379 9,878 10,199
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.60% 35.85% 30.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,379 6,246 6,504
10th Percentile £325 £301 £300
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £688
90th Percentile £750 £775 £825
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £550
% change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 960 493 502
10th Percentile £14.68 £15.48 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.87 £19.49
Median hourly rate £40.00 £32.74 £49.75
Median % change year-on-year +22.19% -34.20% +8.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £60.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £77.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.96 £30.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +36.53% -29.41% -2.95%

NHS
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing NHS relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

NHS job vacancy trend in England

NHS
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing NHS.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing NHS

NHS
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing NHS in England over the 6 months to 28 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for NHS in England

NHS
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing NHS.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing NHS

NHS
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing NHS in England over the 6 months to 28 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for NHS in England

NHS
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing NHS within the England region 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
London -8 151 £481 +13.24% 266
North of England -16 109 £475 -4.04% 252
Yorkshire 0 82 £500 - 103
North West -36 25 £350 +7.69% 132
East of England -3 23 £191 -15.87% 81
South East -53 19 £450 +28.57% 113
Midlands -42 13 £425 +21.43% 147
South West -21 12 £546 +72.86% 103
West Midlands -49 10 £500 +74.22% 95
East Midlands -16 3 £300 -25.00% 52
North East -38 2 - - 21
NHS
UK

NHS
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 11 (3.14%) Palantir Foundry
2 4 (1.14%) Confluence
3 3 (0.86%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.57%) CMS
5 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.29%) nginx
5 1 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 4 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.29%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.29%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (1.43%) SystmOne
2 2 (0.57%) Cerner Millennium
2 2 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.57%) Lorenzo
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle Cash Management
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 60 (17.14%) AWS
2 46 (13.14%) Azure
3 28 (8.00%) Serverless
4 20 (5.71%) Amazon S3
5 19 (5.43%) AWS Lambda
6 16 (4.57%) Power Platform
7 14 (4.00%) GitHub
8 11 (3.14%) Amazon EC2
8 11 (3.14%) GitHub Actions
9 10 (2.86%) Microsoft 365
10 7 (2.00%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (2.00%) Entra ID
11 6 (1.71%) AWS Step Functions
11 6 (1.71%) Azure Data Factory
11 6 (1.71%) Azure Functions
11 6 (1.71%) Azure Key Vault
12 5 (1.43%) Adobe Analytics
12 5 (1.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 5 (1.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 4 (1.14%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.29%) Firewall
2 7 (2.00%) LAN
2 7 (2.00%) WAN
3 5 (1.43%) Network Security
3 5 (1.43%) NGFW
4 4 (1.14%) Structured Cabling
4 4 (1.14%) Wireless
5 3 (0.86%) DNS
6 1 (0.29%) DHCP
6 1 (0.29%) HTTP
6 1 (0.29%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.29%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (9.43%) Electronic Patient Records
2 17 (4.86%) Data Warehouse
3 13 (3.71%) Power BI
3 13 (3.71%) SQL Server
4 9 (2.57%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (2.29%) DynamoDB
6 6 (1.71%) Amazon Athena
7 4 (1.14%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 3 (0.86%) BusinessObjects
8 3 (0.86%) Data Lake
8 3 (0.86%) OLAP
8 3 (0.86%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.86%) Tableau
9 2 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.57%) Delta Lake
9 2 (0.57%) DocumentDB
9 2 (0.57%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.57%) Oracle BI Publisher
9 2 (0.57%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 11 (3.14%) Git
2 6 (1.71%) JIRA
3 5 (1.43%) GitLab
4 3 (0.86%) Jenkins
5 2 (0.57%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.29%) Postman
6 1 (0.29%) Rational Rhapsody
6 1 (0.29%) Selenium
6 1 (0.29%) SonarQube
General
1 139 (39.71%) Public Sector
2 119 (34.00%) Social Skills
3 30 (8.57%) Analytical Skills
4 22 (6.29%) Finance
5 14 (4.00%) Digital Health
6 13 (3.71%) Local Government
7 12 (3.43%) Influencing Skills
8 8 (2.29%) Digital Healthcare
9 6 (1.71%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.14%) Law
11 4 (1.14%) Legal
12 3 (0.86%) Billing
12 3 (0.86%) Health Technology
12 3 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.86%) Marketing
12 3 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.86%) Social Housing
13 2 (0.57%) Military
Job Titles
1 46 (13.14%) Developer
2 41 (11.71%) Senior
3 36 (10.29%) Analyst
4 31 (8.86%) Architect
5 22 (6.29%) Designer
6 20 (5.71%) Lead
7 19 (5.43%) Data Engineer
8 18 (5.14%) Project Manager
9 17 (4.86%) Business Analyst
10 12 (3.43%) Delivery Manager
10 12 (3.43%) User Researcher
11 11 (3.14%) Consultant
11 11 (3.14%) Data Architect
11 11 (3.14%) Service Designer
12 9 (2.57%) Python Developer
12 9 (2.57%) Solutions Architect
13 8 (2.29%) Full-Stack Developer
13 8 (2.29%) Performance Analyst
14 7 (2.00%) AWS Engineer
14 7 (2.00%) ServiceNow Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (9.71%) Terraform
2 24 (6.86%) FHIR
3 14 (4.00%) REST
4 11 (3.14%) PySpark
4 11 (3.14%) RESTful
5 10 (2.86%) React
6 7 (2.00%) Node.js
7 6 (1.71%) Vue
8 5 (1.43%) .NET
8 5 (1.43%) CSS
8 5 (1.43%) HTML
8 5 (1.43%) JSON
8 5 (1.43%) OpenID
8 5 (1.43%) Playwright
9 4 (1.14%) ARM Templates
9 4 (1.14%) Django
9 4 (1.14%) OAuth
9 4 (1.14%) OAuth2
10 3 (0.86%) Flask
10 3 (0.86%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 25 (7.14%) Cloud Native
2 19 (5.43%) Product Ownership
3 16 (4.57%) Onboarding
4 11 (3.14%) Data Structures
5 8 (2.29%) Legacy Systems
6 6 (1.71%) Driving Licence
6 6 (1.71%) IoT
6 6 (1.71%) Management Information System
6 6 (1.71%) Security Posture
7 5 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (1.14%) LIMS
8 4 (1.14%) Mobile App
8 4 (1.14%) Replication
9 3 (0.86%) Cloud Security Posture
9 3 (0.86%) Distributed Systems
10 2 (0.57%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.57%) CMDB
10 2 (0.57%) Distributed Architecture
10 2 (0.57%) Enterprise Software
10 2 (0.57%) Housing Association
Operating Systems
1 7 (2.00%) Windows
2 4 (1.14%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.57%) Android
3 2 (0.57%) Apple iOS
3 2 (0.57%) Linux
3 2 (0.57%) Mac OS
3 2 (0.57%) Windows 10
4 1 (0.29%) CentOS
4 1 (0.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.29%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (34.86%) Agile
2 79 (22.57%) Stakeholder Management
3 58 (16.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 54 (15.43%) CI/CD
5 48 (13.71%) Continuous Improvement
6 45 (12.86%) Problem-Solving
7 41 (11.71%) Analytics
8 38 (10.86%) Decision-Making
8 38 (10.86%) Infrastructure as Code
9 35 (10.00%) DevOps
10 34 (9.71%) Digital Transformation Programme
10 34 (9.71%) Migration
11 33 (9.43%) AI
12 31 (8.86%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
12 31 (8.86%) Validation
13 27 (7.71%) User Research
14 26 (7.43%) Information Governance
15 25 (7.14%) Workshop Facilitation
16 24 (6.86%) Data Protection
17 23 (6.57%) Service Design
Programming Languages
1 40 (11.43%) SQL
2 37 (10.57%) Python
3 16 (4.57%) JavaScript
3 16 (4.57%) TypeScript
4 8 (2.29%) Java
5 7 (2.00%) C#
6 5 (1.43%) Bicep
6 5 (1.43%) PowerShell
6 5 (1.43%) T-SQL
7 2 (0.57%) Bash
8 1 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (0.29%) R
Qualifications
1 34 (9.71%) Security Cleared
2 27 (7.71%) SC Cleared
3 19 (5.43%) BPSS Clearance
4 9 (2.57%) Degree
5 5 (1.43%) AWS Certification
6 4 (1.14%) JNCIP
6 4 (1.14%) JNCIS
6 4 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
7 3 (0.86%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (0.86%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.57%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (0.57%) DV Cleared
8 2 (0.57%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 1 (0.29%) CCNA
9 1 (0.29%) CCSP
9 1 (0.29%) CISSP
9 1 (0.29%) CRISC
9 1 (0.29%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.29%) NVQ Level 3
9 1 (0.29%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (6.86%) HL7
2 22 (6.29%) Data Quality
2 22 (6.29%) QA
3 21 (6.00%) Accessibility
4 19 (5.43%) GDPR
5 16 (4.57%) WCAG
6 11 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (1.71%) SNOMED CT
8 5 (1.43%) PMO
9 4 (1.14%) DICOM
9 4 (1.14%) NCSC
10 3 (0.86%) IEC 62304
11 2 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.57%) ISO 13485
12 1 (0.29%) GRC
12 1 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 1 (0.29%) PCI DSS
12 1 (0.29%) SLA
System Software
1 14 (4.00%) Docker
2 8 (2.29%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.29%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 12 (3.43%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
3 1 (0.29%) Ansible
3 1 (0.29%) Grafana
3 1 (0.29%) Puppet
Vendors
1 39 (11.14%) Microsoft
2 17 (4.86%) Palantir
3 15 (4.29%) Foundry
4 11 (3.14%) Databricks
4 11 (3.14%) ServiceNow
5 9 (2.57%) Oracle
6 8 (2.29%) Brio
6 8 (2.29%) Cerner
7 5 (1.43%) Adobe
7 5 (1.43%) Splunk
7 5 (1.43%) VMware
8 4 (1.14%) Google
8 4 (1.14%) Juniper
8 4 (1.14%) Palo Alto
9 3 (0.86%) Cisco
9 3 (0.86%) Citrix
9 3 (0.86%) InterSystems
10 2 (0.57%) Blue Prism
10 2 (0.57%) BMC
10 2 (0.57%) Meraki