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

6 months to
22 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 284 276 203
Rank change year-on-year -8 -73 -32
Contract jobs citing NHS 345 208 451
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.92% 0.84% 1.20%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.74% 2.49% 3.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 264 137 304
10th Percentile £243 £175 £161
25th Percentile £338 £209 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £375 £278
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% +35.14% -7.50%
75th Percentile £525 £488 £400
90th Percentile £600 £550 £538
UK median daily rate £438 £375 £290
% change year-on-year +16.67% +29.31% -3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 22 78
10th Percentile £6.00 £13.29 £11.42
25th Percentile £15.50 £16.67 £12.86
Median hourly rate £17.50 £25.25 £16.46
Median % change year-on-year -30.69% +53.40% -25.18%
75th Percentile £23.75 £33.75 £25.83
90th Percentile £31.55 - £38.46
UK median hourly rate £16.00 £25.09 £15.99
% change year-on-year -36.23% +56.96% -26.03%

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 12,608 8,369 11,641
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.62% 33.93% 30.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,009 5,430 7,607
10th Percentile £300 £300 £257
25th Percentile £412 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £543 £545
Median % change year-on-year -5.53% -0.46% -5.22%
75th Percentile £625 £673 £663
90th Percentile £741 £786 £775
UK median daily rate £501 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.67% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 628 309 792
10th Percentile £15.62 £16.91 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.00 £22.72 £15.39
Median hourly rate £37.50 £34.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.70% +25.45% +15.59%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.12 £84.20 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year +15.38% +18.18% +22.22%

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 22 March 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 22 March 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 22 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
London -12 109 £425 +2.41% 49
North of England -38 94 £500 +25.00% 90
Yorkshire -19 75 £500 +9.89% 62
East of England +28 59 £285 +5.37% 22
South East -62 26 £400 +44.80% 37
Midlands -55 21 £400 +14.45% 44
West Midlands -64 18 £425 +89.73% 26
South West -24 14 £573 +61.27% 26
North West -36 14 £438 +103.49% 29
North East - 5 £400 - 1
East Midlands -33 3 £338 -53.45% 18
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 10 (2.90%) SharePoint
2 7 (2.03%) Confluence
3 5 (1.45%) CMS
4 2 (0.58%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (0.58%) Palantir Foundry
5 1 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.29%) Umbraco
Applications
1 17 (4.93%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (3.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (1.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (1.45%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.58%) Trello
Business Applications
1 13 (3.77%) SystmOne
2 3 (0.87%) Lorenzo
3 2 (0.58%) Cerner Millennium
3 2 (0.58%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.58%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.29%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 45 (13.04%) AWS
2 44 (12.75%) Azure
3 17 (4.93%) Microsoft 365
4 16 (4.64%) Serverless
5 14 (4.06%) GitHub
6 13 (3.77%) Azure DevOps
7 12 (3.48%) AWS Lambda
8 11 (3.19%) Amazon S3
8 11 (3.19%) GCP
9 10 (2.90%) Power Platform
10 8 (2.32%) GitHub Actions
11 7 (2.03%) Amazon ECS
11 7 (2.03%) Entra ID
12 6 (1.74%) Amazon EC2
12 6 (1.74%) AWS CloudFormation
13 3 (0.87%) Amazon EKS
13 3 (0.87%) Amazon SQS
13 3 (0.87%) Azure Functions
13 3 (0.87%) Miro
13 3 (0.87%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 12 (3.48%) DNS
1 12 (3.48%) LAN
1 12 (3.48%) TCP/IP
1 12 (3.48%) WAN
2 10 (2.90%) Firewall
3 8 (2.32%) VPN
3 8 (2.32%) Wireless
4 5 (1.45%) Structured Cabling
5 4 (1.16%) Network Security
6 3 (0.87%) BGP
6 3 (0.87%) DHCP
6 3 (0.87%) Junos
6 3 (0.87%) OSPF
7 2 (0.58%) VLAN
8 1 (0.29%) Internet
8 1 (0.29%) NGFW
8 1 (0.29%) NGN
8 1 (0.29%) Remote Desktop
8 1 (0.29%) RS-232
8 1 (0.29%) X.400
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (17.68%) Electronic Patient Records
2 11 (3.19%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (2.90%) SQL Server
4 8 (2.32%) Power BI
5 5 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (1.45%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 4 (1.16%) Data Lake
6 4 (1.16%) NoSQL
7 3 (0.87%) BusinessObjects
7 3 (0.87%) DynamoDB
7 3 (0.87%) EDMS
7 3 (0.87%) Geospatial Data
7 3 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 2 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.58%) ImageNet
8 2 (0.58%) MongoDB
8 2 (0.58%) QlikView
8 2 (0.58%) Relational Database
8 2 (0.58%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 2 (0.58%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 8 (2.32%) JIRA
2 7 (2.03%) GitLab
2 7 (2.03%) Jenkins
3 2 (0.58%) Android Studio
3 2 (0.58%) CircleCI
3 2 (0.58%) ERwin
3 2 (0.58%) Git
3 2 (0.58%) MSI
4 1 (0.29%) Appium
4 1 (0.29%) Cypress.io
4 1 (0.29%) Gradle
4 1 (0.29%) JUnit
4 1 (0.29%) Rational Rhapsody
4 1 (0.29%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 1 (0.29%) Team Foundation Server
4 1 (0.29%) Xcode
General
1 125 (36.23%) Public Sector
2 115 (33.33%) Social Skills
3 37 (10.72%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (7.83%) Finance
5 26 (7.54%) Organisational Skills
6 20 (5.80%) Digital Health
7 19 (5.51%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (4.64%) Legal
9 14 (4.06%) Telecoms
10 13 (3.77%) Health Technology
10 13 (3.77%) Marketing
11 12 (3.48%) Electronics
11 12 (3.48%) Manufacturing
12 9 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
12 9 (2.61%) Local Government
13 7 (2.03%) Digital Healthcare
14 4 (1.16%) Publishing
15 3 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
16 2 (0.58%) Law
16 2 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 53 (15.36%) Analyst
2 35 (10.14%) Lead
3 27 (7.83%) Developer
4 26 (7.54%) Senior
5 25 (7.25%) Architect
5 25 (7.25%) Project Manager
6 22 (6.38%) Business Analyst
7 18 (5.22%) Consultant
8 14 (4.06%) Technical Analyst
8 14 (4.06%) Technical Support
8 14 (4.06%) Technical Support Analyst
9 13 (3.77%) AWS Engineer
9 13 (3.77%) Designer
10 12 (3.48%) 2nd Line Support
10 12 (3.48%) User Researcher
11 11 (3.19%) Administrator
11 11 (3.19%) NHS Business Analyst
11 11 (3.19%) NHS Project Manager
11 11 (3.19%) Support Analyst
12 10 (2.90%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (11.01%) FHIR
2 14 (4.06%) .NET
3 13 (3.77%) RESTful
4 9 (2.61%) React
5 5 (1.45%) Spring
5 5 (1.45%) Spring Boot
5 5 (1.45%) Vue
6 4 (1.16%) .NET Core
7 3 (0.87%) Django
7 3 (0.87%) FastAPI
7 3 (0.87%) Flask
7 3 (0.87%) GeoJSON
7 3 (0.87%) Kafka
7 3 (0.87%) Middleware
7 3 (0.87%) RabbitMQ
7 3 (0.87%) Spring Cloud
8 2 (0.58%) AngularJS
8 2 (0.58%) Matplotlib
8 2 (0.58%) Node.js
8 2 (0.58%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 17 (4.93%) Onboarding
2 16 (4.64%) Management Information System
3 14 (4.06%) LIMS
4 13 (3.77%) Cloud Native
5 12 (3.48%) Product Ownership
6 10 (2.90%) PACS
7 9 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.74%) Analytical Mindset
8 6 (1.74%) Data Structures
9 5 (1.45%) CMDB
9 5 (1.45%) Driving Licence
10 4 (1.16%) Security Posture
11 3 (0.87%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (0.87%) Distributed Systems
11 3 (0.87%) Freedom of Information
11 3 (0.87%) Life Science
11 3 (0.87%) Replication
12 2 (0.58%) IoT
12 2 (0.58%) Mobile App
12 2 (0.58%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 32 (9.28%) Windows
2 17 (4.93%) Windows Server
3 9 (2.61%) Linux
4 5 (1.45%) Windows Server 2003
4 5 (1.45%) Windows Server 2012
5 3 (0.87%) Windows 10
6 2 (0.58%) Android
6 2 (0.58%) VMS
7 1 (0.29%) Amazon Linux
7 1 (0.29%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 81 (23.48%) Agile
2 49 (14.20%) Stakeholder Management
3 45 (13.04%) Problem-Solving
4 44 (12.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 41 (11.88%) CI/CD
6 36 (10.43%) Analytics
7 35 (10.14%) DevOps
8 34 (9.86%) Information Governance
9 30 (8.70%) Data Governance
9 30 (8.70%) Infrastructure as Code
10 29 (8.41%) Digital Transformation Programme
11 28 (8.12%) User Research
12 27 (7.83%) Business Intelligence
13 26 (7.54%) Continuous Improvement
13 26 (7.54%) Migration
14 23 (6.67%) Decision-Making
14 23 (6.67%) Project Delivery
15 22 (6.38%) Programme Management
15 22 (6.38%) Project Management
15 22 (6.38%) Service Design
Programming Languages
1 35 (10.14%) Python
2 31 (8.99%) SQL
3 12 (3.48%) Java
4 11 (3.19%) TypeScript
5 9 (2.61%) C#
6 8 (2.32%) JavaScript
7 6 (1.74%) Bash
8 4 (1.16%) PowerShell
9 3 (0.87%) PHP
9 3 (0.87%) PL/SQL
9 3 (0.87%) T-SQL
10 2 (0.58%) Ruby
11 1 (0.29%) Bicep
11 1 (0.29%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.29%) Swift
Qualifications
1 28 (8.12%) Degree
2 22 (6.38%) Security Cleared
3 19 (5.51%) SC Cleared
4 14 (4.06%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (1.74%) ECDL
5 6 (1.74%) HND
6 5 (1.45%) HNC
6 5 (1.45%) MCSE
6 5 (1.45%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (1.45%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 4 (1.16%) ITIL Certification
7 4 (1.16%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 4 (1.16%) JNCIA
7 4 (1.16%) JNCIP
7 4 (1.16%) JNCIS
8 3 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (0.87%) CISM
8 3 (0.87%) CISSP
8 3 (0.87%) TOGAF Certification
9 2 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (10.72%) HL7
2 21 (6.09%) Data Quality
3 17 (4.93%) Accessibility
4 13 (3.77%) GDPR
5 11 (3.19%) QA
6 10 (2.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 7 (2.03%) PMO
8 6 (1.74%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (1.74%) NCSC
9 4 (1.16%) DICOM
9 4 (1.16%) NIST
9 4 (1.16%) SNOMED CT
9 4 (1.16%) WCAG
10 2 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.58%) GRC
11 1 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.29%) ISO 9001
11 1 (0.29%) SLA
11 1 (0.29%) SOC 2
System Software
1 25 (7.25%) Active Directory
2 19 (5.51%) Docker
3 3 (0.87%) Hyper-V
3 3 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.58%) Xen
5 1 (0.29%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 30 (8.70%) Terraform
2 19 (5.51%) Kubernetes
3 11 (3.19%) Microsoft Intune
4 5 (1.45%) Grafana
5 2 (0.58%) Ansible
5 2 (0.58%) Nessus
5 2 (0.58%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.58%) SCCM
5 2 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.29%) Argo
6 1 (0.29%) Packer
Vendors
1 39 (11.30%) Microsoft
2 15 (4.35%) Oracle
3 12 (3.48%) SAP
4 11 (3.19%) Cerner
5 10 (2.90%) Brio
6 6 (1.74%) Cisco
6 6 (1.74%) Palantir
7 5 (1.45%) Juniper
8 4 (1.16%) Databricks
8 4 (1.16%) Splunk
9 3 (0.87%) InterSystems
9 3 (0.87%) VMware
10 2 (0.58%) Cribl.io
10 2 (0.58%) Fortinet
10 2 (0.58%) Foundry
10 2 (0.58%) OneLogin
10 2 (0.58%) Rapid7
10 2 (0.58%) Tenable
11 1 (0.29%) BiZZdesign
11 1 (0.29%) Datix