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

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 265 285 193
Rank change year-on-year +20 -92 -8
Contract jobs citing NHS 321 213 461
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.96% 0.81% 1.21%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.78% 2.45% 3.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 241 129 328
10th Percentile £196 £160 £163
25th Percentile £313 £205 £205
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £350 £275
Median % change year-on-year +21.43% +27.27% -1.79%
75th Percentile £526 £500 £396
90th Percentile £600 £576 £538
UK median daily rate £418 £363 £290
% change year-on-year +15.17% +25.00% +3.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 17 76
10th Percentile £6.00 £16.97 £11.45
25th Percentile £15.50 £20.30 £12.86
Median hourly rate £16.00 £32.50 £16.52
Median % change year-on-year -50.77% +96.70% -19.40%
75th Percentile £21.45 £33.75 £22.19
90th Percentile £23.75 - £36.13
UK median hourly rate £16.00 £25.09 £15.99
% change year-on-year -36.23% +56.96% -20.08%

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 11,538 8,682 11,834
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.54% 33.05% 31.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,382 5,235 7,845
10th Percentile £276 £268 £253
25th Percentile £406 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £550 £545
Median % change year-on-year -7.27% +0.92% -5.22%
75th Percentile £630 £673 £660
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £527
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.28% -4.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 566 245 740
10th Percentile £15.42 £18.51 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.58 £24.18 £17.00
Median hourly rate £30.75 £37.00 £32.41
Median % change year-on-year -16.89% +14.16% +44.14%
75th Percentile £63.75 £66.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £74.84 £83.20 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £35.00 £32.12
% change year-on-year -17.14% +8.98% +44.05%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 -14 98 £400 +13.07% 36
North of England -18 93 £500 +30.54% 62
Yorkshire -15 70 £500 +11.11% 33
East of England +26 59 £278 +2.78% 25
South East -32 27 £388 +40.27% 37
North West -37 18 £450 +28.57% 23
Midlands -71 15 £400 -28.89% 41
West Midlands -58 12 £425 -15.00% 23
South West -14 6 £400 +33.33% 30
North East - 5 £400 - 6
East Midlands -27 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 9 (2.80%) Confluence
2 8 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 3 (0.93%) CMS
4 2 (0.62%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.31%) Palantir Foundry
5 1 (0.31%) Umbraco
Applications
1 16 (4.98%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (3.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (1.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (1.25%) MS Visio
4 4 (1.25%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.31%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.31%) Trello
Business Applications
1 12 (3.74%) SystmOne
2 3 (0.93%) Lorenzo
3 2 (0.62%) Cerner Millennium
4 1 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.31%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 47 (14.64%) AWS
1 47 (14.64%) Azure
2 16 (4.98%) Microsoft 365
2 16 (4.98%) Serverless
3 14 (4.36%) Azure DevOps
4 13 (4.05%) GitHub
5 12 (3.74%) AWS Lambda
5 12 (3.74%) GCP
6 11 (3.43%) Amazon S3
7 10 (3.12%) Power Platform
8 9 (2.80%) GitHub Actions
9 8 (2.49%) Entra ID
10 7 (2.18%) Amazon EC2
10 7 (2.18%) Amazon ECS
10 7 (2.18%) AWS CloudFormation
11 4 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
11 4 (1.25%) Miro
12 3 (0.93%) Azure AKS
12 3 (0.93%) Azure Functions
12 3 (0.93%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 13 (4.05%) LAN
1 13 (4.05%) WAN
2 12 (3.74%) DNS
2 12 (3.74%) TCP/IP
3 9 (2.80%) Firewall
3 9 (2.80%) VPN
3 9 (2.80%) Wireless
4 6 (1.87%) Network Security
4 6 (1.87%) Structured Cabling
5 4 (1.25%) DHCP
5 4 (1.25%) VLAN
6 3 (0.93%) BGP
6 3 (0.93%) Junos
6 3 (0.93%) OSPF
7 1 (0.31%) Internet
7 1 (0.31%) Intranet
7 1 (0.31%) NGN
7 1 (0.31%) RS-232
7 1 (0.31%) VoIP
7 1 (0.31%) X.400
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (15.26%) Electronic Patient Records
2 11 (3.43%) Data Warehouse
3 8 (2.49%) SQL Server
4 7 (2.18%) Power BI
5 5 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (1.56%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 4 (1.25%) Data Lake
6 4 (1.25%) Tableau
7 3 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (0.93%) BusinessObjects
7 3 (0.93%) Metadata
7 3 (0.93%) NoSQL
7 3 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 2 (0.62%) DynamoDB
8 2 (0.62%) EDMS
8 2 (0.62%) MongoDB
8 2 (0.62%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.62%) QlikView
8 2 (0.62%) Relational Database
8 2 (0.62%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 10 (3.12%) JIRA
2 9 (2.80%) Jenkins
3 7 (2.18%) ERwin
4 6 (1.87%) GitLab
5 4 (1.25%) CircleCI
6 2 (0.62%) Android Studio
6 2 (0.62%) MSI
6 2 (0.62%) Rational Rhapsody
7 1 (0.31%) Appium
7 1 (0.31%) Git
7 1 (0.31%) Gradle
7 1 (0.31%) Postman
7 1 (0.31%) Selenium
7 1 (0.31%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.31%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.31%) Xcode
General
1 120 (37.38%) Social Skills
2 118 (36.76%) Public Sector
3 34 (10.59%) Analytical Skills
4 31 (9.66%) Finance
5 24 (7.48%) Organisational Skills
6 18 (5.61%) Telecoms
7 17 (5.30%) Digital Health
8 16 (4.98%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (4.98%) Marketing
9 15 (4.67%) Electronics
9 15 (4.67%) Manufacturing
10 14 (4.36%) Legal
11 13 (4.05%) Health Technology
12 8 (2.49%) Influencing Skills
13 7 (2.18%) Digital Healthcare
14 4 (1.25%) Local Government
14 4 (1.25%) Pharmaceutical
15 2 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
15 2 (0.62%) Publishing
16 1 (0.31%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 49 (15.26%) Analyst
2 30 (9.35%) Lead
3 25 (7.79%) Architect
3 25 (7.79%) Developer
4 24 (7.48%) Senior
5 18 (5.61%) Project Manager
6 17 (5.30%) Business Analyst
7 15 (4.67%) AWS Engineer
7 15 (4.67%) Consultant
8 14 (4.36%) Technical Analyst
8 14 (4.36%) Technical Support
8 14 (4.36%) Technical Support Analyst
9 12 (3.74%) Support Analyst
10 11 (3.43%) Designer
11 10 (3.12%) 2nd Line Support
11 10 (3.12%) IT Support
12 9 (2.80%) Administrator
12 9 (2.80%) Data Architect
12 9 (2.80%) NHS Business Analyst
12 9 (2.80%) Trainer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (9.03%) FHIR
2 15 (4.67%) .NET
3 11 (3.43%) RESTful
4 8 (2.49%) React
5 5 (1.56%) Vue
6 4 (1.25%) .NET Core
6 4 (1.25%) Spring
6 4 (1.25%) Spring Boot
7 3 (0.93%) AngularJS
7 3 (0.93%) Django
7 3 (0.93%) FastAPI
7 3 (0.93%) Flask
7 3 (0.93%) Kafka
7 3 (0.93%) RabbitMQ
7 3 (0.93%) Spring Cloud
8 2 (0.62%) HTML
8 2 (0.62%) Node.js
8 2 (0.62%) OpenAPI
8 2 (0.62%) Swagger
8 2 (0.62%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 20 (6.23%) Management Information System
2 13 (4.05%) Cloud Native
2 13 (4.05%) LIMS
3 11 (3.43%) Product Ownership
4 10 (3.12%) Onboarding
5 9 (2.80%) PACS
6 8 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (1.87%) Analytical Mindset
7 6 (1.87%) CMDB
7 6 (1.87%) Driving Licence
8 5 (1.56%) Security Posture
9 4 (1.25%) Freedom of Information
10 3 (0.93%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (0.93%) IoT
11 2 (0.62%) CSOC
11 2 (0.62%) Data Structures
11 2 (0.62%) Mobile App
11 2 (0.62%) Reference Data
11 2 (0.62%) Robotics
11 2 (0.62%) SystemC
Operating Systems
1 33 (10.28%) Windows
2 18 (5.61%) Windows Server
3 12 (3.74%) Linux
4 6 (1.87%) Windows Server 2012
5 5 (1.56%) Windows Server 2003
6 4 (1.25%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.62%) Android
7 2 (0.62%) 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 64 (19.94%) Agile
2 49 (15.26%) Problem-Solving
3 44 (13.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
3 44 (13.71%) Stakeholder Management
4 40 (12.46%) CI/CD
5 37 (11.53%) DevOps
6 33 (10.28%) Information Governance
7 30 (9.35%) Digital Transformation Programme
8 29 (9.03%) Infrastructure as Code
9 28 (8.72%) Analytics
9 28 (8.72%) Business Intelligence
9 28 (8.72%) Continuous Improvement
10 27 (8.41%) Data Governance
11 24 (7.48%) Mentoring
11 24 (7.48%) Programme Management
12 23 (7.17%) Project Delivery
13 22 (6.85%) Cybersecurity
14 21 (6.54%) Data Protection
14 21 (6.54%) Migration
15 19 (5.92%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 35 (10.90%) Python
2 23 (7.17%) SQL
3 11 (3.43%) Java
4 10 (3.12%) TypeScript
5 9 (2.80%) C#
6 8 (2.49%) Bash
6 8 (2.49%) JavaScript
6 8 (2.49%) PL/SQL
7 4 (1.25%) PowerShell
8 3 (0.93%) C++
8 3 (0.93%) PHP
9 2 (0.62%) R
9 2 (0.62%) Ruby
9 2 (0.62%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.31%) Bicep
10 1 (0.31%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.31%) Swift
10 1 (0.31%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 23 (7.17%) Degree
2 21 (6.54%) Security Cleared
3 19 (5.92%) SC Cleared
4 10 (3.12%) BPSS Clearance
5 7 (2.18%) ECDL
6 6 (1.87%) HND
6 6 (1.87%) ITIL Certification
7 5 (1.56%) CISSP
7 5 (1.56%) HNC
7 5 (1.56%) MCSE
7 5 (1.56%) Microsoft Certification
7 5 (1.56%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 4 (1.25%) CISM
8 4 (1.25%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 4 (1.25%) JNCIA
8 4 (1.25%) JNCIP
8 4 (1.25%) JNCIS
9 3 (0.93%) Cisco Certification
9 3 (0.93%) ISEB
10 2 (0.62%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (8.10%) HL7
2 18 (5.61%) Data Quality
3 15 (4.67%) GDPR
4 14 (4.36%) Accessibility
5 13 (4.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 9 (2.80%) NCSC
7 7 (2.18%) Cyber Essentials
7 7 (2.18%) QA
8 5 (1.56%) NIST
8 5 (1.56%) PMO
9 2 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.62%) DICOM
9 2 (0.62%) GRC
9 2 (0.62%) SLA
9 2 (0.62%) WCAG
10 1 (0.31%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.31%) SNOMED CT
10 1 (0.31%) SOC 2
System Software
1 29 (9.03%) Active Directory
2 18 (5.61%) Docker
3 5 (1.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (1.25%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.62%) Xen
7 1 (0.31%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 32 (9.97%) Terraform
2 20 (6.23%) Kubernetes
3 8 (2.49%) Microsoft Intune
4 7 (2.18%) Grafana
5 4 (1.25%) Prometheus
5 4 (1.25%) SCCM
6 2 (0.62%) Ansible
6 2 (0.62%) Nessus
6 2 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.31%) Argo
7 1 (0.31%) Packer
Vendors
1 40 (12.46%) Microsoft
2 15 (4.67%) SAP
3 14 (4.36%) Oracle
4 11 (3.43%) Brio
5 10 (3.12%) Cerner
6 8 (2.49%) Cisco
7 6 (1.87%) VMware
8 5 (1.56%) Juniper
9 4 (1.25%) Databricks
9 4 (1.25%) Palantir
10 3 (0.93%) Splunk
11 2 (0.62%) Aruba
11 2 (0.62%) Cribl.io
11 2 (0.62%) Fortinet
11 2 (0.62%) MEDITECH
11 2 (0.62%) Rapid7
11 2 (0.62%) Tenable
12 1 (0.31%) accuRx
12 1 (0.31%) BiZZdesign
12 1 (0.31%) Datix