Public Sector Contract Job Trends in England

Public Sector
UK > England

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Public Sector in contract job vacancies in England. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Public Sector over the 6 months leading up to 30 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 19 22 17
Rank change year-on-year +3 -5 -1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,681 1,920 3,090
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.76% 7.99% 8.40%
As % of the General category 16.12% 12.46% 14.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,586 1,304 2,077
10th Percentile £356 £350 £313
25th Percentile £419 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £524 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.94% -0.17% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £683 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 71 166
10th Percentile £13.69 £16.36 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.09 £18.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £23.83 £25.08 £22.75
Median % change year-on-year -4.99% +10.22% +10.22%
75th Percentile £36.07 £34.31 £55.08
90th Percentile £71.75 £65.25 £71.36
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £22.27 £21.86
% change year-on-year +6.98% +1.88% +7.05%

All General Skills
England

Public Sector 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 in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 22,831 15,405 21,227
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.35% 64.12% 57.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,997 9,950 13,648
10th Percentile £313 £285 £281
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,561 695 1,806
10th Percentile £14.10 £13.41 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.32 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.81 £27.76 £30.44
Median % change year-on-year +10.99% -8.79% -4.89%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.75 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.87
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.85 £30.00
% change year-on-year +7.72% -7.17% -7.69%

Public Sector
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Public Sector job vacancy trend in England

Public Sector
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Public Sector.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Public Sector

Public Sector
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Public Sector in England over the 6 months to 30 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Public Sector in England

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Public Sector.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Public Sector

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Public Sector in England over the 6 months to 30 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Public Sector in England

Public Sector
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 Public Sector within the England region over the 6 months to 30 May 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 +4 1,667 £525 - 377
North of England -2 664 £450 -5.21% 247
South East +1 427 £500 -4.76% 207
Midlands +9 381 £500 +8.11% 111
West Midlands 0 307 £492 +7.46% 88
North West +1 306 £476 -4.80% 102
South West -5 252 £525 -4.55% 118
Yorkshire +2 226 £450 -2.17% 80
North East -3 138 £450 -3.23% 66
East of England +15 84 £450 - 34
East Midlands +9 67 £525 +10.53% 23
Public Sector
UK

Public Sector
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
1 139 (3.78%) Confluence
2 106 (2.88%) SharePoint
3 46 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 31 (0.84%) SAS
5 30 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
6 28 (0.76%) Apache Spark
7 25 (0.68%) Apache
8 16 (0.43%) CMS
9 12 (0.33%) Jupyter
10 11 (0.30%) Palantir Foundry
11 9 (0.24%) nginx
12 8 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
13 7 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 6 (0.16%) WebLogic
15 5 (0.14%) Camunda
16 4 (0.11%) Drupal
16 4 (0.11%) WordPress
17 3 (0.081%) Anypoint
18 2 (0.054%) OpenROAD
18 2 (0.054%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 73 (1.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 56 (1.52%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
4 24 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.35%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.16%) Trello
8 5 (0.14%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.11%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.11%) Sketch
10 3 (0.081%) Adobe After Effects
11 2 (0.054%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.054%) CPLEX
12 1 (0.027%) Adobe Premiere
12 1 (0.027%) InVision
12 1 (0.027%) Quicktime
12 1 (0.027%) Siemens NX
12 1 (0.027%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 61 (1.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.54%) SAP PSCD
4 16 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
6 10 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
6 10 (0.27%) SAP Hybris
6 10 (0.27%) SystmOne
7 7 (0.19%) NEC Housing
7 7 (0.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
8 6 (0.16%) SAP ERP
9 5 (0.14%) iTrent
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 701 (19.04%) AWS
2 643 (17.47%) Azure
3 188 (5.11%) Power Platform
4 172 (4.67%) Microsoft 365
5 135 (3.67%) GitHub
6 133 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
6 133 (3.61%) Serverless
7 131 (3.56%) GCP
8 106 (2.88%) Entra ID
9 101 (2.74%) Amazon S3
10 93 (2.53%) SaaS
11 81 (2.20%) AWS Lambda
12 79 (2.15%) GitHub Actions
13 78 (2.12%) Amazon EC2
14 68 (1.85%) Power Automate
15 65 (1.77%) Dynamics 365
16 63 (1.71%) OCI
17 61 (1.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 61 (1.66%) Amazon EKS
18 59 (1.60%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 96 (2.61%) Firewall
2 54 (1.47%) WAN
3 52 (1.41%) Network Security
4 51 (1.39%) DNS
5 42 (1.14%) VPN
6 40 (1.09%) LAN
7 33 (0.90%) BGP
8 28 (0.76%) OSPF
8 28 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
9 25 (0.68%) TCP/IP
10 22 (0.60%) SD-WAN
11 21 (0.57%) DHCP
12 18 (0.49%) BIG-IP
12 18 (0.49%) VXLAN
13 16 (0.43%) Ethernet VPN
14 14 (0.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 13 (0.35%) SSL
15 13 (0.35%) WLAN
16 12 (0.33%) DKIM
17 11 (0.30%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (3.45%) Power BI
2 83 (2.25%) PostgreSQL
3 70 (1.90%) Data Warehouse
4 64 (1.74%) SQL Server
5 57 (1.55%) MongoDB
6 53 (1.44%) Metadata
7 50 (1.36%) Amazon RDS
8 41 (1.11%) NoSQL
9 35 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
10 33 (0.90%) Data Lake
10 33 (0.90%) Oracle Database
11 31 (0.84%) DynamoDB
11 31 (0.84%) Relational Database
12 30 (0.81%) Tableau
13 21 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
13 21 (0.57%) Electronic Patient Records
14 20 (0.54%) Pentaho
15 18 (0.49%) Delta Lake
16 17 (0.46%) Amazon Athena
16 17 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 213 (5.79%) JIRA
2 157 (4.27%) Git
3 147 (3.99%) GitLab
4 121 (3.29%) Jenkins
5 51 (1.39%) Selenium
6 40 (1.09%) JUnit
7 34 (0.92%) Mockito
8 32 (0.87%) Postman
9 29 (0.79%) SonarQube
10 26 (0.71%) JMeter
11 25 (0.68%) Cucumber
12 22 (0.60%) Cypress.io
13 21 (0.57%) Maven
14 17 (0.46%) CircleCI
14 17 (0.46%) REST Assured
15 14 (0.38%) DbUnit
16 13 (0.35%) Artifactory
16 13 (0.35%) jMock
17 11 (0.30%) Bitbucket Server
17 11 (0.30%) Gatling
General
1 943 (25.62%) Social Skills
2 452 (12.28%) Finance
3 354 (9.62%) Analytical Skills
4 193 (5.24%) Military
5 166 (4.51%) Local Government
6 94 (2.55%) Organisational Skills
7 89 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
8 86 (2.34%) Legal
9 85 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 79 (2.15%) Telecoms
11 74 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
12 63 (1.71%) Marketing
12 63 (1.71%) Police
13 54 (1.47%) Banking
14 53 (1.44%) Law
15 40 (1.09%) Manufacturing
16 35 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
17 31 (0.84%) Electronics
18 27 (0.73%) Billing
19 26 (0.71%) Retail
Job Titles
1 489 (13.28%) Developer
2 480 (13.04%) Architect
3 421 (11.44%) Senior
4 350 (9.51%) Analyst
5 333 (9.05%) Lead
6 165 (4.48%) Designer
7 151 (4.10%) Business Analyst
8 145 (3.94%) Consultant
9 128 (3.48%) Data Engineer
10 127 (3.45%) DevOps Engineer
11 119 (3.23%) Project Manager
12 114 (3.10%) Technical Architect
13 111 (3.02%) Solutions Architect
14 109 (2.96%) Java Developer
15 90 (2.44%) Senior Developer
16 88 (2.39%) Delivery Manager
17 86 (2.34%) User Researcher
18 74 (2.01%) Service Designer
19 65 (1.77%) Administrator
20 60 (1.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (3.48%) REST
2 118 (3.21%) Node.js
3 112 (3.04%) Spring
4 98 (2.66%) React
5 97 (2.64%) Spring Boot
6 89 (2.42%) RESTful
7 70 (1.90%) Web Services
8 67 (1.82%) Kafka
8 67 (1.82%) Oracle Fusion
9 65 (1.77%) AngularJS
10 64 (1.74%) SOAP
11 63 (1.71%) .NET
12 60 (1.63%) HTML
13 50 (1.36%) CSS
14 45 (1.22%) Lightning Web Components
15 42 (1.14%) OAuth
16 39 (1.06%) Playwright
17 37 (1.01%) Middleware
18 36 (0.98%) JSON
19 28 (0.76%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 184 (5.00%) Cloud Native
2 147 (3.99%) Product Ownership
3 129 (3.50%) NHS
3 129 (3.50%) Onboarding
4 84 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
5 76 (2.06%) Management Information System
6 71 (1.93%) Data Centre
7 53 (1.44%) Distributed Systems
8 48 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
8 48 (1.30%) Public Cloud
9 43 (1.17%) Data Structures
10 42 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
11 40 (1.09%) Hybrid Cloud
12 30 (0.81%) CMDB
13 29 (0.79%) Analytical Mindset
14 24 (0.65%) Virtual Team
15 23 (0.62%) Freedom of Information
15 23 (0.62%) PKI
16 22 (0.60%) Mobile App
17 20 (0.54%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 165 (4.48%) Windows
2 154 (4.18%) Linux
3 58 (1.58%) Windows Server
4 51 (1.39%) Unix
5 28 (0.76%) Android
6 26 (0.71%) Apple iOS
7 23 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 23 (0.62%) Windows 10
8 19 (0.52%) Mac OS
9 12 (0.33%) Ubuntu
10 9 (0.24%) Mac OS X
11 8 (0.22%) Solaris
11 8 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
13 5 (0.14%) AIX
13 5 (0.14%) VMS
13 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.081%) Amazon Linux
14 3 (0.081%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.054%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 987 (26.81%) Agile
2 556 (15.10%) CI/CD
3 546 (14.83%) DevOps
4 507 (13.77%) Stakeholder Management
5 413 (11.22%) Continuous Improvement
5 413 (11.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 380 (10.32%) Problem-Solving
7 342 (9.29%) Migration
8 327 (8.88%) Analytics
9 314 (8.53%) Decision-Making
10 300 (8.15%) Roadmaps
11 254 (6.90%) Infrastructure as Code
12 251 (6.82%) Data Modelling
13 244 (6.63%) Containerisation
14 227 (6.17%) Test Automation
15 223 (6.06%) AI
15 223 (6.06%) User Research
16 213 (5.79%) Microservices
17 195 (5.30%) Digital Transformation Programme
18 193 (5.24%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 391 (10.62%) Python
2 340 (9.24%) SQL
3 283 (7.69%) Java
4 186 (5.05%) JavaScript
5 105 (2.85%) PowerShell
6 103 (2.80%) TypeScript
7 79 (2.15%) C#
8 51 (1.39%) Bash
9 48 (1.30%) Apex Code
10 45 (1.22%) PL/SQL
11 42 (1.14%) Ruby
12 22 (0.60%) Bicep
12 22 (0.60%) Kotlin
13 21 (0.57%) Shell Script
14 19 (0.52%) Go
14 19 (0.52%) R
15 16 (0.43%) Scala
16 12 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 11 (0.30%) PHP
17 11 (0.30%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,964 (53.36%) Security Cleared
2 1,363 (37.03%) SC Cleared
3 181 (4.92%) DV Cleared
4 176 (4.78%) Degree
5 118 (3.21%) BPSS Clearance
6 46 (1.25%) Azure Certification
7 42 (1.14%) CISSP
8 38 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
9 36 (0.98%) AWS Certification
10 33 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
11 28 (0.76%) PMP
12 26 (0.71%) CISM
12 26 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
13 24 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
14 23 (0.62%) PMI Certification
15 15 (0.41%) DBS Check
15 15 (0.41%) Master's Degree
16 14 (0.38%) CCNP
17 13 (0.35%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 13 (0.35%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 262 (7.12%) Accessibility
2 160 (4.35%) Data Quality
3 159 (4.32%) QA
4 106 (2.88%) GDPR
5 103 (2.80%) WCAG
6 81 (2.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 69 (1.87%) NCSC
8 68 (1.85%) PMO
9 58 (1.58%) NIST
10 31 (0.84%) SLA
11 30 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
12 29 (0.79%) GRC
13 19 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.41%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 12 (0.33%) Government Security Classifications
16 9 (0.24%) HL7
17 8 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 7 (0.19%) COBIT
18 7 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 256 (6.95%) Docker
2 150 (4.07%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.62%) VMware NSX
5 18 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (0.33%) Hyper-V
6 12 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
7 11 (0.30%) Postfix
8 10 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
9 9 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
9 9 (0.24%) vSphere
10 3 (0.081%) NFS
10 3 (0.081%) RACF
11 2 (0.054%) Squid
11 2 (0.054%) SRDF
12 1 (0.027%) etcd
12 1 (0.027%) FreeRADIUS
12 1 (0.027%) GPFS
12 1 (0.027%) KVM
12 1 (0.027%) RHEV
Systems Management
1 285 (7.74%) Terraform
2 247 (6.71%) Kubernetes
3 85 (2.31%) Grafana
4 78 (2.12%) Ansible
5 60 (1.63%) Prometheus
6 44 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
7 38 (1.03%) Microsoft Intune
8 21 (0.57%) Argo
9 15 (0.41%) Puppet
10 13 (0.35%) SCCM
11 11 (0.30%) Kibana
11 11 (0.30%) vCenter Server
12 10 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
13 8 (0.22%) FortiGate
14 6 (0.16%) Data Guard
14 6 (0.16%) Istio
14 6 (0.16%) Progress Chef
15 5 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 5 (0.14%) Rancher
16 4 (0.11%) Consul
Vendors
1 416 (11.30%) Microsoft
2 225 (6.11%) Oracle
3 166 (4.51%) SAP
4 125 (3.40%) Salesforce
5 114 (3.10%) ServiceNow
6 94 (2.55%) Google
7 83 (2.25%) Databricks
8 67 (1.82%) VMware
9 46 (1.25%) Cisco
10 38 (1.03%) Splunk
11 34 (0.92%) Red Hat
12 32 (0.87%) Atlassian
12 32 (0.87%) Palo Alto
13 30 (0.81%) Dynatrace
14 27 (0.73%) IBM
15 26 (0.71%) MuleSoft
16 25 (0.68%) F5
16 25 (0.68%) Talend
17 22 (0.60%) Virgin Media
18 20 (0.54%) CyberArk