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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 22 19
Rank change year-on-year -2 -3 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,924 2,277 2,730
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.58% 8.25% 8.22%
As % of the General category 15.53% 12.81% 14.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,720 1,567 1,823
10th Percentile £363 £321 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £520
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -1.92% -3.53%
75th Percentile £615 £600 £629
90th Percentile £700 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £521 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +4.10% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 94 111
10th Percentile £14.19 £15.29 £14.41
25th Percentile £16.62 £18.02 £16.13
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.39 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year -0.16% -11.56% +20.90%
75th Percentile £50.00 £30.19 £57.50
90th Percentile £76.88 £64.80 £74.87
UK median hourly rate £21.50 £20.57 £22.56
% change year-on-year +4.52% -8.82% +12.80%

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 25,265 17,776 19,139
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.26% 64.42% 57.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,980 11,293 12,119
10th Percentile £313 £275 £300
25th Percentile £420 £400 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £503 £538
Median % change year-on-year +4.48% -6.51% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £651
90th Percentile £750 £750 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,035 997 1,113
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.43 £14.10
25th Percentile £17.50 £16.30 £17.50
Median hourly rate £31.90 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +26.84% -34.02% +35.37%
75th Percentile £57.50 £50.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £31.46 £25.15 £35.36
% change year-on-year +25.09% -28.87% +26.38%

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 27 August 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 27 August 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 27 August 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 -1 1,699 £540 +3.50% 385
North of England +1 707 £475 -2.56% 231
Midlands +10 485 £500 +5.26% 137
South East +1 465 £511 -2.62% 99
West Midlands +6 406 £493 +3.84% 99
South West -4 360 £525 -1.64% 211
Yorkshire +5 269 £475 -3.06% 81
North West -12 256 £511 +7.58% 102
North East -1 192 £450 -11.76% 51
East Midlands +20 71 £600 +43.71% 38
East of England -8 57 £450 -10.00% 25
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
1 157 (4.00%) Confluence
2 107 (2.73%) SharePoint
3 50 (1.27%) SAS
4 48 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
5 46 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
6 42 (1.07%) Apache Spark
7 38 (0.97%) Apache
8 24 (0.61%) CMS
9 20 (0.51%) Jupyter
10 16 (0.41%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.28%) WordPress
12 9 (0.23%) nginx
13 7 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
14 5 (0.13%) Drupal
14 5 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
14 5 (0.13%) Tuxedo
15 4 (0.10%) IIS
16 3 (0.076%) Camunda
16 3 (0.076%) Tomcat
17 2 (0.051%) Mendix
Applications
1 75 (1.91%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
3 27 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
4 26 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
5 16 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 8 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.18%) MS Visio
8 5 (0.13%) Sketch
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 3 (0.076%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.051%) Adobe After Effects
10 2 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.051%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.051%) Navisworks
10 2 (0.051%) ProjectWise
10 2 (0.051%) Revit
11 1 (0.025%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.025%) LaTeX
11 1 (0.025%) SPSS
11 1 (0.025%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 52 (1.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
3 43 (1.10%) Oracle ERP
4 24 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
5 23 (0.59%) SAP PSCD
6 14 (0.36%) Workday HCM
7 12 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
8 11 (0.28%) NetSuite
8 11 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
8 11 (0.28%) SAP Payroll
9 10 (0.25%) ContrOCC
9 10 (0.25%) Oracle Payroll
9 10 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 9 (0.23%) NEC Housing
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
10 9 (0.23%) SAP FI
11 8 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 8 (0.20%) SAP BRIM
11 8 (0.20%) SAP Hybris
12 7 (0.18%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 807 (20.57%) AWS
2 789 (20.11%) Azure
3 240 (6.12%) Power Platform
4 195 (4.97%) Azure DevOps
5 176 (4.49%) Microsoft 365
6 153 (3.90%) GCP
6 153 (3.90%) GitHub
7 151 (3.85%) Serverless
8 135 (3.44%) Entra ID
9 118 (3.01%) Amazon S3
10 109 (2.78%) GitHub Actions
11 104 (2.65%) SaaS
12 93 (2.37%) OCI
13 91 (2.32%) AWS Lambda
14 87 (2.22%) Power Automate
15 82 (2.09%) Dynamics 365
16 70 (1.78%) PowerApps
17 68 (1.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 67 (1.71%) Amazon EKS
19 58 (1.48%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 109 (2.78%) Firewall
2 70 (1.78%) DNS
3 55 (1.40%) WAN
4 47 (1.20%) LAN
5 45 (1.15%) Network Security
6 37 (0.94%) VPN
7 33 (0.84%) DHCP
8 30 (0.76%) BGP
9 29 (0.74%) OSPF
10 28 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
11 27 (0.69%) TCP/IP
12 22 (0.56%) SD-WAN
13 19 (0.48%) WLAN
14 16 (0.41%) VXLAN
15 15 (0.38%) BIG-IP
16 14 (0.36%) Ethernet VPN
16 14 (0.36%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 14 (0.36%) Wireless
17 13 (0.33%) VLAN
17 13 (0.33%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 157 (4.00%) Power BI
2 109 (2.78%) Data Warehouse
3 99 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
4 75 (1.91%) Metadata
5 74 (1.89%) SQL Server
6 68 (1.73%) Relational Database
7 59 (1.50%) MongoDB
8 54 (1.38%) Oracle Database
9 51 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
9 51 (1.30%) Data Lake
10 50 (1.27%) NoSQL
11 31 (0.79%) Amazon Athena
11 31 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
12 30 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
13 28 (0.71%) MySQL
13 28 (0.71%) Tableau
14 27 (0.69%) Amazon Aurora
15 24 (0.61%) DynamoDB
16 23 (0.59%) Pentaho
17 20 (0.51%) Redis
Development Applications
1 235 (5.99%) JIRA
2 189 (4.82%) Git
3 156 (3.98%) GitLab
4 122 (3.11%) Jenkins
5 44 (1.12%) Selenium
6 35 (0.89%) Cucumber
7 29 (0.74%) JUnit
7 29 (0.74%) Postman
8 25 (0.64%) Cypress.io
8 25 (0.64%) Mockito
9 24 (0.61%) SonarQube
10 22 (0.56%) JMeter
11 19 (0.48%) Maven
12 18 (0.46%) REST Assured
13 17 (0.43%) WebDriver
14 14 (0.36%) Gatling
15 12 (0.31%) MSI
16 11 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
17 10 (0.25%) fastlane
18 9 (0.23%) CircleCI
General
1 1,134 (28.90%) Social Skills
2 442 (11.26%) Finance
3 390 (9.94%) Analytical Skills
4 242 (6.17%) Military
5 220 (5.61%) Local Government
6 159 (4.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 137 (3.49%) Influencing Skills
8 99 (2.52%) Legal
9 95 (2.42%) Organisational Skills
10 84 (2.14%) Police
11 83 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
12 59 (1.50%) Law
13 51 (1.30%) Telecoms
14 41 (1.04%) Marketing
15 37 (0.94%) Banking
16 33 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
17 30 (0.76%) Retail
18 24 (0.61%) Billing
19 18 (0.46%) Manufacturing
20 17 (0.43%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 548 (13.97%) Architect
2 535 (13.63%) Developer
3 520 (13.25%) Senior
4 468 (11.93%) Lead
5 339 (8.64%) Analyst
6 169 (4.31%) Consultant
7 146 (3.72%) Data Engineer
8 144 (3.67%) Designer
9 133 (3.39%) DevOps Engineer
10 129 (3.29%) Business Analyst
11 123 (3.13%) Delivery Manager
12 119 (3.03%) Solutions Architect
13 115 (2.93%) Data Architect
14 113 (2.88%) Technical Architect
15 105 (2.68%) Senior Developer
16 93 (2.37%) Project Manager
17 86 (2.19%) Java Developer
17 86 (2.19%) User Researcher
18 84 (2.14%) Senior Manager
19 77 (1.96%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 353 (9.00%) Terraform
2 160 (4.08%) REST
3 106 (2.70%) RESTful
4 104 (2.65%) React
5 92 (2.34%) Spring
6 91 (2.32%) Node.js
7 83 (2.12%) Oracle Fusion
8 81 (2.06%) Spring Boot
9 76 (1.94%) Kafka
10 74 (1.89%) HTML
10 74 (1.89%) SOAP
11 66 (1.68%) .NET
11 66 (1.68%) CSS
11 66 (1.68%) Django
12 64 (1.63%) Web Services
13 60 (1.53%) OAuth
14 52 (1.33%) JSON
15 48 (1.22%) OpenID
16 47 (1.20%) PySpark
17 45 (1.15%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 231 (5.89%) Cloud Native
2 163 (4.15%) Product Ownership
3 162 (4.13%) Onboarding
4 140 (3.57%) NHS
5 116 (2.96%) Legacy Systems
6 104 (2.65%) Management Information System
7 72 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
8 56 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
9 52 (1.33%) Data Centre
10 47 (1.20%) Data Structures
11 41 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
12 40 (1.02%) CMDB
13 38 (0.97%) Analytical Mindset
14 37 (0.94%) Freedom of Information
14 37 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
15 36 (0.92%) Public Cloud
16 31 (0.79%) Low-Code
16 31 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
17 30 (0.76%) Virtual Team
18 27 (0.69%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 137 (3.49%) Windows
2 124 (3.16%) Linux
3 44 (1.12%) Windows Server
4 42 (1.07%) Unix
5 21 (0.54%) Android
6 20 (0.51%) Windows 10
7 18 (0.46%) Apple iOS
8 17 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 15 (0.38%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.13%) AIX
10 5 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
11 4 (0.10%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.076%) Solaris
13 2 (0.051%) CentOS
13 2 (0.051%) Mac OS X
13 2 (0.051%) VMS
13 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.025%) Windows 7
14 1 (0.025%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,242 (31.65%) Agile
2 780 (19.88%) Stakeholder Management
3 667 (17.00%) CI/CD
4 657 (16.74%) DevOps
5 651 (16.59%) Continuous Improvement
6 645 (16.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 472 (12.03%) Problem-Solving
8 438 (11.16%) Decision-Making
9 421 (10.73%) Analytics
10 374 (9.53%) Migration
11 342 (8.72%) Roadmaps
12 341 (8.69%) Infrastructure as Code
13 337 (8.59%) Digital Transformation Programme
14 335 (8.54%) AI
15 307 (7.82%) Data Modelling
16 278 (7.08%) Technical Leadership
17 273 (6.96%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
18 259 (6.60%) Mentoring
19 257 (6.55%) Containerisation
20 251 (6.40%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 470 (11.98%) Python
2 388 (9.89%) SQL
3 247 (6.29%) Java
4 218 (5.56%) JavaScript
5 109 (2.78%) PowerShell
6 107 (2.73%) TypeScript
7 83 (2.12%) C#
8 57 (1.45%) Bash
9 52 (1.33%) PL/SQL
10 47 (1.20%) Bicep
11 35 (0.89%) Scala
12 34 (0.87%) Apex Code
13 29 (0.74%) Kotlin
14 26 (0.66%) R
15 25 (0.64%) Ruby
16 24 (0.61%) Groovy
17 22 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 15 (0.38%) Shell Script
19 14 (0.36%) ABAP
20 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,994 (50.82%) Security Cleared
2 1,591 (40.55%) SC Cleared
3 250 (6.37%) BPSS Clearance
4 244 (6.22%) DV Cleared
5 174 (4.43%) Degree
6 67 (1.71%) Microsoft Certification
7 61 (1.55%) Azure Certification
8 55 (1.40%) AWS Certification
9 42 (1.07%) Cisco Certification
9 42 (1.07%) CISSP
10 29 (0.74%) CISM
11 28 (0.71%) CCNP
12 27 (0.69%) PMI Certification
13 26 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
14 25 (0.64%) ISTQB
15 23 (0.59%) Master's Degree
16 19 (0.48%) Computer Science Degree
17 15 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 15 (0.38%) PMP
18 14 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 316 (8.05%) Accessibility
2 237 (6.04%) Data Quality
3 227 (5.78%) QA
4 136 (3.47%) WCAG
5 131 (3.34%) GDPR
6 95 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 78 (1.99%) PMO
8 77 (1.96%) NCSC
9 72 (1.83%) NIST
10 37 (0.94%) GRC
11 32 (0.82%) SLA
12 26 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
13 18 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 12 (0.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 12 (0.31%) PCI DSS
16 11 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
16 11 (0.28%) NIST 800
17 10 (0.25%) HL7
18 6 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 293 (7.47%) Docker
2 152 (3.87%) Active Directory
3 39 (0.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) VMware NSX
5 17 (0.43%) Hyper-V
6 12 (0.31%) vSphere
7 10 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
8 9 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
9 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (0.13%) Postfix
11 1 (0.025%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.025%) etcd
11 1 (0.025%) FreeRADIUS
11 1 (0.025%) GPFS
11 1 (0.025%) Microsoft App-V
11 1 (0.025%) NFS
11 1 (0.025%) Sendmail
11 1 (0.025%) Squid
11 1 (0.025%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 268 (6.83%) Kubernetes
2 85 (2.17%) Grafana
3 74 (1.89%) Ansible
4 58 (1.48%) Prometheus
5 46 (1.17%) Single Sign-On
6 40 (1.02%) Microsoft Intune
7 25 (0.64%) Argo
8 18 (0.46%) SCCM
9 17 (0.43%) Kibana
10 9 (0.23%) Data Guard
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle RMAN
10 9 (0.23%) VxRail
11 7 (0.18%) Puppet
12 6 (0.15%) Istio
12 6 (0.15%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.13%) QRadar
14 4 (0.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (0.10%) Consul
14 4 (0.10%) Packer
14 4 (0.10%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 527 (13.43%) Microsoft
2 322 (8.21%) Oracle
3 151 (3.85%) ServiceNow
4 125 (3.19%) SAP
5 119 (3.03%) Google
6 109 (2.78%) Salesforce
7 89 (2.27%) Databricks
8 50 (1.27%) VMware
9 48 (1.22%) Cisco
10 37 (0.94%) Palo Alto
11 31 (0.79%) Dynatrace
12 28 (0.71%) Talend
13 27 (0.69%) Foundry
14 26 (0.66%) Informatica
14 26 (0.66%) Splunk
15 24 (0.61%) Palantir
16 23 (0.59%) Workday
17 22 (0.56%) Red Hat
18 21 (0.54%) Atlassian
18 21 (0.54%) CyberArk