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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 23 19
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,912 1,960 3,034
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.94% 7.69% 8.17%
As % of the General category 16.29% 12.00% 14.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,735 1,310 2,022
10th Percentile £358 £340 £310
25th Percentile £425 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £688 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £513 £500 £505
% change year-on-year +2.50% -0.99% -2.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 80 158
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.47 £13.66
25th Percentile £16.70 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £22.50 £25.08 £26.50
Median % change year-on-year -10.27% -5.38% +27.28%
75th Percentile £41.00 £34.23 £58.65
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £75.38
UK median hourly rate £23.41 £22.95 £23.99
% change year-on-year +2.02% -4.34% +19.65%

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 24,022 16,337 21,271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.89% 64.06% 57.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,558 10,493 13,567
10th Percentile £313 £282 £295
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £519 £535
Median % change year-on-year +1.16% -2.99% -2.73%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
90th Percentile £749 £763 £775
UK median daily rate £516 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.27% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,721 807 1,796
10th Percentile £14.25 £13.31 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.75 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.50 £27.50 £32.70
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.90% +8.99%
75th Percentile £63.38 £52.00 £53.81
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £68.82
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.50 £31.61
% change year-on-year +16.36% -12.99% +5.35%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 +3 1,731 £525 - 346
North of England +2 680 £470 +0.97% 178
South East +5 499 £500 -7.41% 203
Midlands +10 448 £500 +8.11% 107
West Midlands +6 364 £500 +6.67% 72
North West -1 293 £500 +7.53% 71
South West -6 286 £525 -4.55% 94
Yorkshire +13 235 £458 -3.68% 63
North East -3 161 £450 -3.23% 47
East Midlands +19 77 £500 +25.00% 35
East of England +14 69 £463 -9.76% 31
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
1 143 (3.66%) Confluence
2 113 (2.89%) SharePoint
3 48 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
4 45 (1.15%) Apache Airflow
5 44 (1.12%) SAS
6 35 (0.89%) Apache Spark
7 33 (0.84%) Apache
8 20 (0.51%) CMS
8 20 (0.51%) Jupyter
9 12 (0.31%) nginx
9 12 (0.31%) Palantir Foundry
10 10 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
11 7 (0.18%) Tomcat
11 7 (0.18%) WordPress
12 5 (0.13%) Camunda
12 5 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
12 5 (0.13%) Tuxedo
12 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
13 4 (0.10%) Drupal
14 3 (0.077%) IIS
Applications
1 72 (1.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
4 20 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.28%) MS Visio
7 9 (0.23%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.10%) Trello
9 3 (0.077%) Sketch
10 2 (0.051%) Adobe After Effects
10 2 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.051%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.051%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.026%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 64 (1.64%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
3 38 (0.97%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.69%) SAP PSCD
5 17 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
6 12 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
6 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
7 10 (0.26%) SAP Payroll
7 10 (0.26%) SystmOne
8 9 (0.23%) ContrOCC
8 9 (0.23%) NEC Housing
8 9 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
8 9 (0.23%) Workday HCM
9 8 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 7 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 7 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.18%) SAP ERP
11 6 (0.15%) Oracle Cash Management
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
12 5 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 772 (19.73%) AWS
2 686 (17.54%) Azure
3 204 (5.21%) Power Platform
4 176 (4.50%) Microsoft 365
5 152 (3.89%) Serverless
6 146 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
7 144 (3.68%) GitHub
8 143 (3.66%) GCP
9 120 (3.07%) Amazon S3
10 114 (2.91%) Entra ID
11 102 (2.61%) SaaS
12 97 (2.48%) AWS Lambda
13 93 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
14 80 (2.04%) Amazon EC2
15 73 (1.87%) OCI
16 67 (1.71%) Power Automate
17 63 (1.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 63 (1.61%) Dynamics 365
18 57 (1.46%) Amazon EKS
19 56 (1.43%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 95 (2.43%) Firewall
2 58 (1.48%) Network Security
3 56 (1.43%) DNS
4 55 (1.41%) WAN
5 43 (1.10%) LAN
6 38 (0.97%) VPN
7 32 (0.82%) BGP
8 27 (0.69%) OSPF
9 25 (0.64%) DHCP
9 25 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
10 22 (0.56%) SD-WAN
11 21 (0.54%) TCP/IP
12 19 (0.49%) BIG-IP
13 18 (0.46%) VXLAN
14 16 (0.41%) Ethernet VPN
15 15 (0.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 15 (0.38%) WLAN
16 12 (0.31%) DKIM
17 10 (0.26%) NGFW
17 10 (0.26%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 140 (3.58%) Power BI
2 94 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
3 87 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
4 76 (1.94%) SQL Server
5 56 (1.43%) Metadata
6 54 (1.38%) MongoDB
7 51 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
8 49 (1.25%) Data Lake
9 45 (1.15%) Oracle Database
9 45 (1.15%) Relational Database
10 43 (1.10%) NoSQL
11 37 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
12 34 (0.87%) DynamoDB
13 33 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
14 32 (0.82%) Amazon Athena
15 30 (0.77%) Tableau
16 22 (0.56%) Amazon Aurora
16 22 (0.56%) Pentaho
17 20 (0.51%) Electronic Patient Records
18 18 (0.46%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 216 (5.52%) JIRA
2 160 (4.09%) GitLab
3 154 (3.94%) Git
4 133 (3.40%) Jenkins
5 49 (1.25%) Selenium
6 40 (1.02%) JUnit
7 36 (0.92%) Mockito
8 30 (0.77%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.77%) SonarQube
9 29 (0.74%) Postman
10 28 (0.72%) JMeter
11 24 (0.61%) Cypress.io
12 22 (0.56%) Maven
13 19 (0.49%) REST Assured
14 16 (0.41%) WebDriver
15 14 (0.36%) CircleCI
15 14 (0.36%) DbUnit
16 13 (0.33%) Gatling
16 13 (0.33%) jMock
17 12 (0.31%) Artifactory
General
1 1,013 (25.89%) Social Skills
2 467 (11.94%) Finance
3 367 (9.38%) Analytical Skills
4 216 (5.52%) Military
5 195 (4.98%) Local Government
6 109 (2.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 100 (2.56%) Legal
8 97 (2.48%) Influencing Skills
9 86 (2.20%) Documentation Skills
10 85 (2.17%) Organisational Skills
11 81 (2.07%) Police
12 58 (1.48%) Telecoms
13 52 (1.33%) Law
14 49 (1.25%) Banking
15 42 (1.07%) Marketing
16 34 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
17 29 (0.74%) Billing
18 23 (0.59%) Retail
19 16 (0.41%) General Ledger
19 16 (0.41%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 531 (13.57%) Architect
2 513 (13.11%) Developer
3 478 (12.22%) Senior
4 380 (9.71%) Lead
5 356 (9.10%) Analyst
6 166 (4.24%) Designer
7 159 (4.06%) Consultant
8 146 (3.73%) Data Engineer
9 144 (3.68%) Business Analyst
10 141 (3.60%) DevOps Engineer
11 125 (3.20%) Solutions Architect
12 121 (3.09%) Technical Architect
13 108 (2.76%) Java Developer
14 105 (2.68%) Project Manager
15 99 (2.53%) Delivery Manager
16 96 (2.45%) Senior Developer
17 86 (2.20%) User Researcher
18 76 (1.94%) Service Designer
19 74 (1.89%) Data Architect
20 72 (1.84%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 133 (3.40%) REST
2 114 (2.91%) Spring
3 113 (2.89%) Node.js
4 96 (2.45%) Spring Boot
5 95 (2.43%) React
5 95 (2.43%) RESTful
6 76 (1.94%) Oracle Fusion
7 73 (1.87%) Kafka
8 65 (1.66%) SOAP
9 61 (1.56%) .NET
10 60 (1.53%) AngularJS
10 60 (1.53%) Web Services
11 51 (1.30%) HTML
12 45 (1.15%) OAuth
13 42 (1.07%) CSS
14 40 (1.02%) Middleware
14 40 (1.02%) PySpark
15 39 (1.00%) Lightning Web Components
16 38 (0.97%) Django
16 38 (0.97%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 216 (5.52%) Cloud Native
2 159 (4.06%) Product Ownership
3 144 (3.68%) Onboarding
4 142 (3.63%) NHS
5 94 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
6 88 (2.25%) Management Information System
7 69 (1.76%) Data Centre
8 63 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
9 58 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
10 52 (1.33%) Public Cloud
11 48 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
12 46 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
13 45 (1.15%) Data Structures
14 35 (0.89%) CMDB
15 31 (0.79%) Analytical Mindset
16 30 (0.77%) Virtual Team
17 26 (0.66%) Security Posture
18 25 (0.64%) Freedom of Information
19 23 (0.59%) PKI
19 23 (0.59%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 169 (4.32%) Windows
2 151 (3.86%) Linux
3 62 (1.58%) Windows Server
4 54 (1.38%) Unix
5 28 (0.72%) Android
6 27 (0.69%) Apple iOS
7 24 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 21 (0.54%) Windows 10
9 19 (0.49%) Mac OS
10 11 (0.28%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.23%) Mac OS X
12 8 (0.20%) Solaris
13 7 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
15 5 (0.13%) AIX
16 4 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
17 3 (0.077%) Amazon Linux
17 3 (0.077%) VMS
17 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
18 2 (0.051%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,104 (28.22%) Agile
2 615 (15.72%) CI/CD
3 608 (15.54%) DevOps
4 598 (15.29%) Stakeholder Management
5 497 (12.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 495 (12.65%) Continuous Improvement
7 394 (10.07%) Problem-Solving
8 377 (9.64%) Analytics
9 363 (9.28%) Decision-Making
10 357 (9.13%) Migration
11 313 (8.00%) Roadmaps
12 288 (7.36%) Infrastructure as Code
13 276 (7.06%) Data Modelling
14 274 (7.00%) AI
15 266 (6.80%) Containerisation
16 232 (5.93%) Test Automation
17 228 (5.83%) Microservices
18 225 (5.75%) User Research
19 221 (5.65%) Digital Transformation Programme
20 219 (5.60%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 435 (11.12%) Python
2 372 (9.51%) SQL
3 298 (7.62%) Java
4 174 (4.45%) JavaScript
5 109 (2.79%) TypeScript
6 99 (2.53%) PowerShell
7 77 (1.97%) C#
8 54 (1.38%) Bash
8 54 (1.38%) PL/SQL
9 41 (1.05%) Apex Code
10 35 (0.89%) Ruby
11 31 (0.79%) Bicep
12 29 (0.74%) Kotlin
13 23 (0.59%) R
14 18 (0.46%) Go
14 18 (0.46%) Shell Script
15 15 (0.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 15 (0.38%) Scala
16 13 (0.33%) ABAP
17 11 (0.28%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 2,043 (52.22%) Security Cleared
2 1,481 (37.86%) SC Cleared
3 229 (5.85%) DV Cleared
4 184 (4.70%) Degree
5 164 (4.19%) BPSS Clearance
6 48 (1.23%) Azure Certification
7 46 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
8 41 (1.05%) CISSP
9 39 (1.00%) Cisco Certification
10 36 (0.92%) AWS Certification
11 27 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
12 26 (0.66%) CISM
13 23 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
14 20 (0.51%) CCNP
14 20 (0.51%) PMI Certification
15 19 (0.49%) PMP
16 17 (0.43%) Master's Degree
17 16 (0.41%) ISTQB
18 15 (0.38%) DBS Check
19 14 (0.36%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 272 (6.95%) Accessibility
2 189 (4.83%) Data Quality
3 175 (4.47%) QA
4 127 (3.25%) GDPR
5 110 (2.81%) WCAG
6 93 (2.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 77 (1.97%) PMO
8 76 (1.94%) NCSC
9 67 (1.71%) NIST
10 38 (0.97%) SLA
11 30 (0.77%) GRC
12 25 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials
13 21 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
14 14 (0.36%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 12 (0.31%) Government Security Classifications
17 10 (0.26%) HL7
17 10 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 7 (0.18%) COBIT
18 7 (0.18%) NIST 800
System Software
1 281 (7.18%) Docker
2 159 (4.06%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) VMware NSX
5 15 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.28%) Postfix
7 10 (0.26%) Hyper-V
8 9 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
8 9 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (0.23%) vSphere
9 6 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.051%) NFS
10 2 (0.051%) RACF
11 1 (0.026%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.026%) etcd
11 1 (0.026%) FreeRADIUS
11 1 (0.026%) GPFS
11 1 (0.026%) NLBS
11 1 (0.026%) Sendmail
11 1 (0.026%) Squid
Systems Management
1 322 (8.23%) Terraform
2 274 (7.00%) Kubernetes
3 84 (2.15%) Grafana
4 76 (1.94%) Ansible
5 58 (1.48%) Prometheus
6 42 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
7 39 (1.00%) Microsoft Intune
8 23 (0.59%) Argo
9 15 (0.38%) SCCM
10 14 (0.36%) Kibana
10 14 (0.36%) Puppet
11 10 (0.26%) Oracle RMAN
11 10 (0.26%) vCenter Server
12 7 (0.18%) FortiGate
13 6 (0.15%) Data Guard
13 6 (0.15%) Istio
14 5 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (0.13%) Progress Chef
14 5 (0.13%) Rancher
15 4 (0.10%) Consul
Vendors
1 454 (11.61%) Microsoft
2 279 (7.13%) Oracle
3 151 (3.86%) SAP
4 130 (3.32%) ServiceNow
5 115 (2.94%) Salesforce
6 103 (2.63%) Google
7 90 (2.30%) Databricks
8 62 (1.58%) VMware
9 45 (1.15%) Cisco
10 37 (0.95%) Atlassian
10 37 (0.95%) Red Hat
11 34 (0.87%) Palo Alto
12 30 (0.77%) Dynatrace
13 29 (0.74%) Splunk
14 28 (0.72%) Talend
15 27 (0.69%) IBM
16 25 (0.64%) CyberArk
17 24 (0.61%) F5
17 24 (0.61%) Informatica
18 22 (0.56%) Foundry