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

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 267 270 203
Rank change year-on-year +3 -67 -26
Contract jobs citing NHS 326 224 453
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.95% 0.87% 1.19%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.78% 2.62% 3.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 242 135 322
10th Percentile £197 £163 £163
25th Percentile £313 £205 £205
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £415 £350 £280
Median % change year-on-year +18.57% +25.00% -
75th Percentile £512 £488 £406
90th Percentile £600 £571 £549
UK median daily rate £411 £360 £296
% change year-on-year +14.24% +21.83% +3.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 20 75
10th Percentile £6.00 £15.22 £11.40
25th Percentile £15.50 £17.76 £12.86
Median hourly rate £16.00 £23.89 £16.94
Median % change year-on-year -33.03% +41.07% -20.32%
75th Percentile £23.75 £33.75 £24.63
90th Percentile £24.75 - £36.70
UK median hourly rate £16.00 £24.00 £15.99
% change year-on-year -33.33% +50.14% -23.88%

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 11,721 8,549 11,792
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.18% 33.35% 31.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,469 5,219 7,722
10th Percentile £275 £275 £256
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% -1.82% -4.35%
75th Percentile £628 £664 £663
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 586 248 754
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.19 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £24.18 £17.00
Median hourly rate £33.00 £37.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -10.81% +13.85% +44.44%
75th Percentile £63.75 £66.13 £58.75
90th Percentile £75.50 £83.20 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.11 £34.50 £32.31
% change year-on-year -12.74% +6.79% +43.68%

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 17 February 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 17 February 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 17 February 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 -12 103 £405 +15.79% 48
North of England -26 92 £500 +28.53% 62
Yorkshire -14 69 £500 +11.11% 36
East of England +29 61 £278 +2.78% 27
South East -31 27 £388 +39.64% 50
North West -38 18 £450 +28.57% 22
Midlands -71 16 £400 -20.00% 46
West Midlands -62 13 £400 -2.44% 25
South West -18 7 £400 +33.33% 31
North East - 5 £400 - 6
East Midlands -24 3 £338 -53.45% 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 9 (2.76%) Confluence
1 9 (2.76%) SharePoint
2 3 (0.92%) CMS
3 2 (0.61%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.31%) Palantir Foundry
4 1 (0.31%) Umbraco
Applications
1 17 (5.21%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (3.07%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (1.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (1.53%) Spreadsheet
4 4 (1.23%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.31%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.31%) Trello
Business Applications
1 12 (3.68%) SystmOne
2 3 (0.92%) Lorenzo
3 2 (0.61%) Cerner Millennium
3 2 (0.61%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.31%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 48 (14.72%) Azure
2 45 (13.80%) AWS
3 17 (5.21%) Microsoft 365
4 16 (4.91%) Serverless
5 14 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
6 12 (3.68%) AWS Lambda
6 12 (3.68%) GCP
6 12 (3.68%) GitHub
6 12 (3.68%) Power Platform
7 11 (3.37%) Amazon S3
8 8 (2.45%) Entra ID
8 8 (2.45%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (2.15%) Amazon EC2
9 7 (2.15%) Amazon ECS
9 7 (2.15%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (1.23%) Amazon EKS
10 4 (1.23%) Miro
11 3 (0.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 3 (0.92%) Azure Functions
11 3 (0.92%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 14 (4.29%) LAN
1 14 (4.29%) WAN
2 13 (3.99%) DNS
2 13 (3.99%) TCP/IP
3 9 (2.76%) Firewall
3 9 (2.76%) VPN
3 9 (2.76%) Wireless
4 6 (1.84%) Network Security
4 6 (1.84%) Structured Cabling
5 4 (1.23%) DHCP
5 4 (1.23%) VLAN
6 3 (0.92%) BGP
6 3 (0.92%) Junos
6 3 (0.92%) OSPF
7 1 (0.31%) Ethernet VPN
7 1 (0.31%) Internet
7 1 (0.31%) Intranet
7 1 (0.31%) NGN
7 1 (0.31%) VoIP
7 1 (0.31%) X.400
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (15.03%) Electronic Patient Records
2 11 (3.37%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (2.76%) Power BI
3 9 (2.76%) SQL Server
4 5 (1.53%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (1.53%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 4 (1.23%) Data Lake
5 4 (1.23%) Tableau
6 3 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.92%) BusinessObjects
6 3 (0.92%) Geospatial Data
6 3 (0.92%) Metadata
6 3 (0.92%) NoSQL
6 3 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 2 (0.61%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.61%) EDMS
7 2 (0.61%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.61%) QlikView
7 2 (0.61%) Relational Database
7 2 (0.61%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 10 (3.07%) JIRA
2 8 (2.45%) Jenkins
3 6 (1.84%) GitLab
4 3 (0.92%) CircleCI
5 2 (0.61%) Android Studio
5 2 (0.61%) ERwin
5 2 (0.61%) MSI
5 2 (0.61%) Rational Rhapsody
6 1 (0.31%) Appium
6 1 (0.31%) Git
6 1 (0.31%) Gradle
6 1 (0.31%) JUnit
6 1 (0.31%) Postman
6 1 (0.31%) Selenium
6 1 (0.31%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 1 (0.31%) Team Foundation Server
6 1 (0.31%) Xcode
General
1 125 (38.34%) Social Skills
2 123 (37.73%) Public Sector
3 37 (11.35%) Analytical Skills
4 31 (9.51%) Finance
5 25 (7.67%) Organisational Skills
6 17 (5.21%) Digital Health
6 17 (5.21%) Documentation Skills
6 17 (5.21%) Telecoms
7 15 (4.60%) Marketing
8 14 (4.29%) Electronics
8 14 (4.29%) Legal
8 14 (4.29%) Manufacturing
9 12 (3.68%) Health Technology
10 8 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
11 7 (2.15%) Digital Healthcare
12 6 (1.84%) Local Government
13 4 (1.23%) Publishing
14 3 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
15 2 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
16 1 (0.31%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 51 (15.64%) Analyst
2 33 (10.12%) Lead
3 24 (7.36%) Architect
3 24 (7.36%) Developer
4 23 (7.06%) Senior
5 20 (6.13%) Project Manager
6 18 (5.52%) Business Analyst
7 15 (4.60%) Consultant
7 15 (4.60%) Technical Analyst
7 15 (4.60%) Technical Support
7 15 (4.60%) Technical Support Analyst
8 14 (4.29%) AWS Engineer
9 12 (3.68%) Designer
9 12 (3.68%) Support Analyst
10 11 (3.37%) 2nd Line Support
11 10 (3.07%) Administrator
11 10 (3.07%) IT Support
12 9 (2.76%) NHS Business Analyst
12 9 (2.76%) NHS Project Manager
12 9 (2.76%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (9.20%) FHIR
2 16 (4.91%) .NET
3 12 (3.68%) RESTful
4 8 (2.45%) React
5 5 (1.53%) Spring
5 5 (1.53%) Spring Boot
5 5 (1.53%) Vue
6 4 (1.23%) .NET Core
7 3 (0.92%) AngularJS
7 3 (0.92%) Django
7 3 (0.92%) FastAPI
7 3 (0.92%) Flask
7 3 (0.92%) GeoJSON
7 3 (0.92%) Kafka
7 3 (0.92%) RabbitMQ
7 3 (0.92%) Spring Cloud
8 2 (0.61%) Matplotlib
8 2 (0.61%) Node.js
8 2 (0.61%) Pandas
8 2 (0.61%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 20 (6.13%) Management Information System
2 13 (3.99%) LIMS
3 12 (3.68%) Cloud Native
3 12 (3.68%) Product Ownership
4 11 (3.37%) Onboarding
5 9 (2.76%) PACS
6 8 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (1.84%) CMDB
7 6 (1.84%) Driving Licence
8 5 (1.53%) Analytical Mindset
8 5 (1.53%) Security Posture
9 4 (1.23%) Freedom of Information
10 3 (0.92%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (0.92%) IoT
11 2 (0.61%) Data Structures
11 2 (0.61%) Life Science
11 2 (0.61%) Mobile App
11 2 (0.61%) Reference Data
11 2 (0.61%) Robotics
11 2 (0.61%) SystemC
Operating Systems
1 36 (11.04%) Windows
2 20 (6.13%) Windows Server
3 11 (3.37%) Linux
4 6 (1.84%) Windows Server 2012
5 5 (1.53%) Windows Server 2003
6 4 (1.23%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.61%) Android
7 2 (0.61%) VMS
8 1 (0.31%) Amazon Linux
8 1 (0.31%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 68 (20.86%) Agile
2 48 (14.72%) Problem-Solving
3 47 (14.42%) Stakeholder Management
4 46 (14.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 40 (12.27%) CI/CD
6 37 (11.35%) DevOps
7 33 (10.12%) Information Governance
8 30 (9.20%) Analytics
8 30 (9.20%) Continuous Improvement
9 29 (8.90%) Business Intelligence
9 29 (8.90%) Data Governance
10 28 (8.59%) Digital Transformation Programme
10 28 (8.59%) Infrastructure as Code
11 25 (7.67%) Mentoring
12 24 (7.36%) Project Delivery
13 23 (7.06%) Programme Management
14 22 (6.75%) Cybersecurity
14 22 (6.75%) Data Protection
15 21 (6.44%) Migration
16 20 (6.13%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 34 (10.43%) Python
2 28 (8.59%) SQL
3 12 (3.68%) Java
4 10 (3.07%) TypeScript
5 9 (2.76%) C#
6 8 (2.45%) JavaScript
6 8 (2.45%) PL/SQL
7 7 (2.15%) Bash
8 4 (1.23%) PowerShell
9 3 (0.92%) C++
9 3 (0.92%) PHP
10 2 (0.61%) R
10 2 (0.61%) Ruby
10 2 (0.61%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.31%) Bicep
11 1 (0.31%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.31%) Swift
11 1 (0.31%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 27 (8.28%) Degree
2 19 (5.83%) Security Cleared
3 17 (5.21%) SC Cleared
4 14 (4.29%) BPSS Clearance
5 7 (2.15%) ECDL
6 6 (1.84%) HND
6 6 (1.84%) ITIL Certification
7 5 (1.53%) HNC
7 5 (1.53%) MCSE
7 5 (1.53%) Microsoft Certification
7 5 (1.53%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 4 (1.23%) CISM
8 4 (1.23%) CISSP
8 4 (1.23%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 4 (1.23%) JNCIA
8 4 (1.23%) JNCIP
8 4 (1.23%) JNCIS
9 3 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
9 3 (0.92%) ISEB
10 2 (0.61%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (8.59%) HL7
2 20 (6.13%) Data Quality
3 17 (5.21%) Accessibility
4 15 (4.60%) GDPR
5 12 (3.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 9 (2.76%) QA
7 8 (2.45%) NCSC
8 7 (2.15%) Cyber Essentials
9 6 (1.84%) PMO
10 5 (1.53%) NIST
11 2 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.61%) DICOM
11 2 (0.61%) GRC
11 2 (0.61%) SLA
11 2 (0.61%) WCAG
12 1 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.31%) ISO 9001
12 1 (0.31%) SNOMED CT
12 1 (0.31%) SOC 2
System Software
1 30 (9.20%) Active Directory
2 19 (5.83%) Docker
3 5 (1.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (1.23%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.61%) Xen
7 1 (0.31%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 29 (8.90%) Terraform
2 20 (6.13%) Kubernetes
3 9 (2.76%) Microsoft Intune
4 6 (1.84%) Grafana
5 4 (1.23%) SCCM
6 3 (0.92%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.61%) Ansible
7 2 (0.61%) Nessus
7 2 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.31%) Argo
8 1 (0.31%) Packer
Vendors
1 41 (12.58%) Microsoft
2 15 (4.60%) Oracle
3 14 (4.29%) SAP
4 11 (3.37%) Brio
5 10 (3.07%) Cerner
6 8 (2.45%) Cisco
7 6 (1.84%) VMware
8 5 (1.53%) Juniper
9 4 (1.23%) Databricks
9 4 (1.23%) Palantir
10 3 (0.92%) Splunk
11 2 (0.61%) Aruba
11 2 (0.61%) Cribl.io
11 2 (0.61%) Fortinet
11 2 (0.61%) Rapid7
11 2 (0.61%) Tenable
12 1 (0.31%) accuRx
12 1 (0.31%) BiZZdesign
12 1 (0.31%) Datix
12 1 (0.31%) OneLogin