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

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 17 16
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,660 2,308 3,392
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.11% 9.32% 8.91%
As % of the General category 17.44% 14.76% 15.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,586 1,508 2,257
10th Percentile £350 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £418 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.37% -0.40% -2.78%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £638
90th Percentile £675 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £505 £525
% change year-on-year -0.89% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 190 78 144
10th Percentile £16.49 £15.19 £13.36
25th Percentile £17.78 £18.28 £15.39
Median hourly rate £22.08 £23.80 £21.25
Median % change year-on-year -7.25% +12.00% +6.25%
75th Percentile £25.38 £33.56 £55.43
90th Percentile £45.02 £62.99 £69.28
UK median hourly rate £22.00 £23.00 £21.00
% change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% +5.00%

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 20,990 15,632 22,320
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 58.00% 63.14% 58.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,292 9,992 14,576
10th Percentile £300 £300 £266
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £756
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,299 561 1,673
10th Percentile £14.12 £15.06 £13.05
25th Percentile £17.50 £19.91 £15.29
Median hourly rate £25.00 £30.21 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.25% +16.19% -20.00%
75th Percentile £57.25 £60.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £75.79 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £24.03 £29.07 £25.75
% change year-on-year -17.34% +12.89% -20.77%

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 10 March 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 10 March 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 10 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 +2 1,564 £525 - 287
North of England -2 657 £450 -5.26% 167
South East -1 440 £500 -7.24% 208
Midlands +1 386 £500 +5.26% 98
North West +3 326 £450 -10.00% 76
West Midlands 0 284 £500 +5.26% 72
South West 0 274 £525 -4.55% 69
Yorkshire -2 207 £500 +11.11% 57
North East -1 129 £450 +4.65% 35
East of England +27 116 £413 +17.86% 26
East Midlands +8 99 £450 -7.69% 24
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
1 133 (3.63%) Confluence
2 102 (2.79%) SharePoint
3 31 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
4 25 (0.68%) SAS
5 22 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (0.46%) Apache
7 14 (0.38%) Apache Spark
8 13 (0.36%) nginx
9 12 (0.33%) CMS
10 8 (0.22%) Skype for Business
10 8 (0.22%) WebLogic
11 6 (0.16%) ArcGIS
12 4 (0.11%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
12 4 (0.11%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.082%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.082%) GeoServer
13 3 (0.082%) OpenStack
13 3 (0.082%) Smallworld
Applications
1 93 (2.54%) Microsoft Excel
1 93 (2.54%) Microsoft Office
2 35 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 23 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
4 19 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 15 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.25%) Trello
7 7 (0.19%) Sketch
8 6 (0.16%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.14%) Chatbot
10 3 (0.082%) Adobe After Effects
10 3 (0.082%) InVision
11 2 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.055%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.027%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.027%) Adobe Premiere
12 1 (0.027%) OmniGraffle
12 1 (0.027%) Oracle Smart View
12 1 (0.027%) Quicktime
12 1 (0.027%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 68 (1.86%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.60%) SAP PSCD
4 18 (0.49%) SAP BRIM
4 18 (0.49%) SAP Hybris
5 15 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
6 13 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
7 11 (0.30%) SAP Payroll
8 9 (0.25%) iTrent
9 7 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
9 7 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
10 6 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
10 6 (0.16%) SAP ERP
10 6 (0.16%) SAP HR
11 5 (0.14%) NEC Housing
11 5 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
11 5 (0.14%) SAP FI
11 5 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
12 4 (0.11%) Oracle Cash Management
12 4 (0.11%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 673 (18.39%) AWS
2 623 (17.02%) Azure
3 211 (5.77%) Power Platform
4 165 (4.51%) Serverless
5 155 (4.23%) GitHub
6 154 (4.21%) Microsoft 365
7 145 (3.96%) GCP
8 136 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
9 103 (2.81%) AWS Lambda
10 89 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
11 88 (2.40%) Entra ID
12 84 (2.30%) Amazon S3
13 65 (1.78%) AWS CloudFormation
14 64 (1.75%) Power Automate
15 61 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
16 60 (1.64%) Amazon EKS
17 58 (1.58%) Amazon EC2
17 58 (1.58%) PowerApps
18 55 (1.50%) OCI
19 54 (1.48%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 91 (2.49%) Firewall
2 58 (1.58%) VPN
3 53 (1.45%) Network Security
3 53 (1.45%) WAN
4 49 (1.34%) DNS
5 43 (1.17%) LAN
6 42 (1.15%) Wireless
7 32 (0.87%) TCP/IP
8 31 (0.85%) BGP
9 25 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
10 24 (0.66%) OSPF
11 20 (0.55%) DHCP
12 19 (0.52%) SD-WAN
13 16 (0.44%) SSL
14 15 (0.41%) Internet
15 13 (0.36%) MPLS
16 12 (0.33%) IPsec
16 12 (0.33%) VLAN
17 11 (0.30%) Cisco ASA
18 10 (0.27%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 165 (4.51%) Power BI
2 80 (2.19%) PostgreSQL
3 60 (1.64%) SQL Server
4 54 (1.48%) MongoDB
5 52 (1.42%) Metadata
6 44 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
7 41 (1.12%) Data Lake
8 40 (1.09%) NoSQL
9 37 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
10 32 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
11 31 (0.85%) Relational Database
12 28 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
13 23 (0.63%) Tableau
14 22 (0.60%) Oracle Database
15 21 (0.57%) Electronic Patient Records
16 20 (0.55%) DynamoDB
17 19 (0.52%) MySQL
17 19 (0.52%) Redis
18 17 (0.46%) BigQuery
19 16 (0.44%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 207 (5.66%) JIRA
2 166 (4.54%) Git
3 130 (3.55%) GitLab
4 125 (3.42%) Jenkins
5 47 (1.28%) Selenium
6 44 (1.20%) Postman
7 32 (0.87%) JUnit
8 28 (0.77%) Mockito
9 26 (0.71%) Cucumber
10 25 (0.68%) Cypress.io
11 21 (0.57%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.55%) JMeter
13 16 (0.44%) REST Assured
14 14 (0.38%) Bitbucket
14 14 (0.38%) CircleCI
14 14 (0.38%) Mocha
15 12 (0.33%) Maven
16 10 (0.27%) Artifactory
16 10 (0.27%) MSI
17 9 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,014 (27.70%) Social Skills
2 552 (15.08%) Finance
3 337 (9.21%) Analytical Skills
4 184 (5.03%) Telecoms
5 155 (4.23%) Marketing
5 155 (4.23%) Military
6 154 (4.21%) Manufacturing
7 138 (3.77%) Local Government
8 133 (3.63%) Electronics
9 80 (2.19%) Legal
10 74 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
11 72 (1.97%) Organisational Skills
12 69 (1.89%) Influencing Skills
13 51 (1.39%) Banking
14 49 (1.34%) Presentation Skills
15 48 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 43 (1.17%) Police
17 39 (1.07%) Law
18 36 (0.98%) Billing
19 32 (0.87%) Retail
Job Titles
1 447 (12.21%) Developer
2 443 (12.10%) Architect
3 390 (10.66%) Senior
4 366 (10.00%) Analyst
5 317 (8.66%) Lead
6 191 (5.22%) Consultant
7 172 (4.70%) Business Analyst
8 141 (3.85%) Designer
9 125 (3.42%) DevOps Engineer
10 108 (2.95%) Project Manager
10 108 (2.95%) Solutions Architect
11 105 (2.87%) Data Engineer
12 100 (2.73%) Technical Architect
13 86 (2.35%) Java Developer
14 82 (2.24%) User Researcher
15 69 (1.89%) Senior Developer
16 67 (1.83%) Delivery Manager
16 67 (1.83%) Service Designer
17 64 (1.75%) AWS Engineer
18 57 (1.56%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 150 (4.10%) REST
2 130 (3.55%) Node.js
3 105 (2.87%) React
4 103 (2.81%) Spring
5 91 (2.49%) Spring Boot
6 87 (2.38%) RESTful
7 75 (2.05%) .NET
8 73 (1.99%) HTML
8 73 (1.99%) Oracle Fusion
9 71 (1.94%) AngularJS
10 67 (1.83%) CSS
11 65 (1.78%) Web Services
12 59 (1.61%) SOAP
13 53 (1.45%) Kafka
14 50 (1.37%) JSON
15 36 (0.98%) Playwright
16 35 (0.96%) Lightning Web Components
17 34 (0.93%) Middleware
17 34 (0.93%) XML
18 27 (0.74%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 144 (3.93%) Cloud Native
2 135 (3.69%) Onboarding
3 121 (3.31%) NHS
4 119 (3.25%) Product Ownership
5 89 (2.43%) Data Centre
6 78 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
7 68 (1.86%) Management Information System
8 54 (1.48%) Public Cloud
9 35 (0.96%) Enterprise Software
10 34 (0.93%) Distributed Systems
11 33 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
12 32 (0.87%) Hybrid Cloud
13 31 (0.85%) Data Structures
13 31 (0.85%) Security Posture
14 28 (0.77%) CMDB
15 26 (0.71%) AI Agents
15 26 (0.71%) PKI
16 22 (0.60%) Replication
17 20 (0.55%) Security Operations Centre
18 17 (0.46%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 214 (5.85%) Windows
2 163 (4.45%) Linux
3 55 (1.50%) Windows Server
4 48 (1.31%) Android
5 44 (1.20%) Mac OS
5 44 (1.20%) Windows 10
6 37 (1.01%) Unix
7 25 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 20 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 11 (0.30%) Mac OS X
10 10 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
11 9 (0.25%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.25%) VMS
12 8 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
13 7 (0.19%) Solaris
14 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
15 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.11%) AIX
16 4 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 909 (24.84%) Agile
2 517 (14.13%) CI/CD
3 505 (13.80%) DevOps
4 453 (12.38%) Problem-Solving
5 440 (12.02%) Stakeholder Management
6 403 (11.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 358 (9.78%) Migration
8 343 (9.37%) Continuous Improvement
9 330 (9.02%) Roadmaps
10 323 (8.83%) Business Intelligence
11 273 (7.46%) Analytics
12 253 (6.91%) Decision-Making
13 227 (6.20%) Infrastructure as Code
14 226 (6.17%) Containerisation
15 222 (6.07%) Test Automation
16 219 (5.98%) Microservices
17 213 (5.82%) Workshop Facilitation
18 211 (5.77%) Data Modelling
19 210 (5.74%) AI
20 205 (5.60%) User Research
Programming Languages
1 390 (10.66%) Python
2 330 (9.02%) SQL
3 259 (7.08%) Java
4 192 (5.25%) JavaScript
5 119 (3.25%) TypeScript
6 114 (3.11%) PowerShell
7 84 (2.30%) C#
8 65 (1.78%) Bash
9 39 (1.07%) Ruby
10 34 (0.93%) Apex Code
11 30 (0.82%) PL/SQL
12 26 (0.71%) Go
13 25 (0.68%) Shell Script
14 19 (0.52%) R
15 17 (0.46%) Kotlin
16 15 (0.41%) Bicep
16 15 (0.41%) PHP
17 13 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 12 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
19 10 (0.27%) C
Qualifications
1 2,143 (58.55%) Security Cleared
2 1,400 (38.25%) SC Cleared
3 178 (4.86%) Degree
4 175 (4.78%) DV Cleared
5 100 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
6 51 (1.39%) Azure Certification
7 45 (1.23%) AWS Certification
8 42 (1.15%) CISSP
9 39 (1.07%) ITIL Certification
10 37 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
11 36 (0.98%) Computer Science Degree
12 31 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
13 25 (0.68%) CISM
13 25 (0.68%) PMP
14 22 (0.60%) ISEB
15 21 (0.57%) PMI Certification
16 16 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 16 (0.44%) CCNP
16 16 (0.44%) ISTQB
17 15 (0.41%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 194 (5.30%) Accessibility
2 149 (4.07%) QA
3 141 (3.85%) Data Quality
4 110 (3.01%) GDPR
5 80 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 66 (1.80%) WCAG
7 65 (1.78%) NIST
8 61 (1.67%) PMO
9 59 (1.61%) NCSC
10 45 (1.23%) SLA
11 27 (0.74%) GRC
12 19 (0.52%) COBIT
13 17 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
13 17 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
14 15 (0.41%) JSP 440
15 13 (0.36%) PCI DSS
16 12 (0.33%) HIPAA
17 11 (0.30%) HL7
17 11 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 7 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 251 (6.86%) Docker
2 133 (3.63%) Active Directory
3 60 (1.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
4 18 (0.49%) VMware NSX
5 16 (0.44%) Hyper-V
6 14 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.38%) vSphere
7 11 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (0.16%) Postfix
9 5 (0.14%) NFS
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
11 3 (0.082%) RACF
11 3 (0.082%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.055%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.055%) ISA Server
12 2 (0.055%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 2 (0.055%) SRDF
13 1 (0.027%) GPFS
13 1 (0.027%) RHEV
Systems Management
1 298 (8.14%) Terraform
2 272 (7.43%) Kubernetes
3 75 (2.05%) Ansible
4 73 (1.99%) Grafana
5 49 (1.34%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.01%) Microsoft Intune
7 29 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
8 26 (0.71%) SCCM
9 15 (0.41%) Argo
10 13 (0.36%) FortiGate
10 13 (0.36%) Puppet
11 12 (0.33%) vCenter Server
12 11 (0.30%) Packer
13 10 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
14 9 (0.25%) Kibana
15 8 (0.22%) Consul
16 7 (0.19%) Istio
16 7 (0.19%) Progress Chef
16 7 (0.19%) vRealize
17 6 (0.16%) SCOM
Vendors
1 416 (11.37%) Microsoft
2 282 (7.70%) SAP
3 209 (5.71%) Oracle
4 134 (3.66%) Cisco
5 113 (3.09%) Salesforce
6 111 (3.03%) ServiceNow
7 94 (2.57%) VMware
8 69 (1.89%) Databricks
9 68 (1.86%) Google
10 56 (1.53%) Splunk
11 44 (1.20%) Virgin Media
12 42 (1.15%) Aruba
13 35 (0.96%) Dell
13 35 (0.96%) Red Hat
14 34 (0.93%) Apple
14 34 (0.93%) Juniper
15 31 (0.85%) HP
16 30 (0.82%) Atlassian
16 30 (0.82%) Palo Alto
17 29 (0.79%) IBM