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

6 months to
8 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 23 18
Rank change year-on-year +3 -5 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,738 1,893 3,107
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.85% 7.77% 8.32%
As % of the General category 16.26% 12.10% 14.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,628 1,280 2,076
10th Percentile £358 £349 £310
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £519 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.78% -1.10% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £688 £700 £714
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -1.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 76 170
10th Percentile £13.69 £16.34 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.13 £18.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £23.83 £25.08 £22.75
Median % change year-on-year -4.99% +10.22% +10.44%
75th Percentile £46.13 £35.53 £55.08
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £72.42
UK median hourly rate £24.19 £22.95 £22.50
% change year-on-year +5.40% +2.00% +11.94%

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 22,992 15,643 21,412
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.41% 64.20% 57.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,067 10,061 13,708
10th Percentile £313 £281 £281
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -1.78% -2.82%
75th Percentile £630 £645 £650
90th Percentile £744 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,588 727 1,826
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.31 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £28.18 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +15.33% -9.82% +0.81%
75th Percentile £63.75 £53.75 £52.35
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £67.44
UK median hourly rate £31.46 £28.08 £30.00
% change year-on-year +12.06% -6.42% -6.25%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 +4 1,693 £525 - 486
North of England +2 677 £455 -4.21% 315
South East +3 442 £500 -6.72% 255
Midlands +11 398 £500 +6.67% 147
West Midlands +3 324 £500 +8.11% 116
North West 0 304 £486 +1.30% 137
South West -7 249 £525 -4.55% 140
Yorkshire +11 231 £450 -1.10% 109
North East -3 148 £450 -3.23% 69
East of England +24 79 £463 +37.04% 39
East Midlands +11 67 £525 +10.53% 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
1 140 (3.75%) Confluence
2 107 (2.86%) SharePoint
3 45 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
4 41 (1.10%) SAS
5 39 (1.04%) Apache Airflow
6 31 (0.83%) Apache Spark
7 28 (0.75%) Apache
8 16 (0.43%) CMS
9 15 (0.40%) Jupyter
10 11 (0.29%) Palantir Foundry
11 9 (0.24%) nginx
12 8 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
13 7 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.13%) Camunda
14 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
15 4 (0.11%) Drupal
15 4 (0.11%) WordPress
16 3 (0.080%) Anypoint
17 2 (0.054%) IIS
17 2 (0.054%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 72 (1.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (1.26%) Microsoft Office
3 27 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 23 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.32%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.13%) Trello
8 3 (0.080%) Adobe XD
8 3 (0.080%) Sketch
9 2 (0.054%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.054%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.054%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.027%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.027%) Quicktime
10 1 (0.027%) Siemens NX
10 1 (0.027%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 63 (1.69%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.75%) Oracle ERP
4 21 (0.56%) SAP PSCD
5 15 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
6 10 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
6 10 (0.27%) SAP Hybris
6 10 (0.27%) SystmOne
7 8 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
8 7 (0.19%) NEC Housing
8 7 (0.19%) SAP Payroll
8 7 (0.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 6 (0.16%) Oracle Cash Management
9 6 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
10 5 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
10 5 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
10 5 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
10 5 (0.13%) SAP ERP
10 5 (0.13%) Workday HCM
11 4 (0.11%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 706 (18.89%) AWS
2 650 (17.39%) Azure
3 193 (5.16%) Power Platform
4 171 (4.57%) Microsoft 365
5 137 (3.67%) Azure DevOps
6 135 (3.61%) GitHub
7 133 (3.56%) Serverless
8 127 (3.40%) GCP
9 103 (2.76%) Amazon S3
10 101 (2.70%) Entra ID
11 98 (2.62%) SaaS
12 82 (2.19%) AWS Lambda
12 82 (2.19%) GitHub Actions
13 79 (2.11%) Amazon EC2
14 68 (1.82%) Power Automate
15 66 (1.77%) OCI
16 64 (1.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 64 (1.71%) Dynamics 365
17 61 (1.63%) Amazon EKS
18 54 (1.44%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 95 (2.54%) Firewall
2 54 (1.44%) Network Security
3 53 (1.42%) WAN
4 50 (1.34%) DNS
5 40 (1.07%) LAN
6 39 (1.04%) VPN
7 33 (0.88%) BGP
8 28 (0.75%) OSPF
9 25 (0.67%) TCP/IP
9 25 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
10 22 (0.59%) SD-WAN
11 21 (0.56%) DHCP
12 18 (0.48%) BIG-IP
13 17 (0.45%) VXLAN
14 16 (0.43%) Ethernet VPN
15 14 (0.37%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 13 (0.35%) WLAN
17 12 (0.32%) DKIM
17 12 (0.32%) SSL
18 11 (0.29%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 133 (3.56%) Power BI
2 83 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
3 75 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
4 66 (1.77%) SQL Server
5 55 (1.47%) MongoDB
6 52 (1.39%) Metadata
7 50 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
8 39 (1.04%) NoSQL
8 39 (1.04%) Oracle Database
9 38 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
10 35 (0.94%) Data Lake
11 31 (0.83%) DynamoDB
11 31 (0.83%) Relational Database
12 30 (0.80%) Tableau
13 22 (0.59%) Electronic Patient Records
14 21 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
14 21 (0.56%) Amazon Aurora
14 21 (0.56%) Pentaho
15 18 (0.48%) Delta Lake
16 17 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 210 (5.62%) JIRA
2 155 (4.15%) Git
3 152 (4.07%) GitLab
4 121 (3.24%) Jenkins
5 51 (1.36%) Selenium
6 40 (1.07%) JUnit
7 34 (0.91%) Mockito
8 30 (0.80%) Postman
8 30 (0.80%) SonarQube
9 26 (0.70%) JMeter
10 24 (0.64%) Cucumber
11 22 (0.59%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.56%) Maven
13 19 (0.51%) CircleCI
14 17 (0.45%) REST Assured
15 14 (0.37%) DbUnit
16 13 (0.35%) Artifactory
16 13 (0.35%) jMock
17 11 (0.29%) Bitbucket Server
17 11 (0.29%) Gatling
General
1 954 (25.52%) Social Skills
2 445 (11.90%) Finance
3 357 (9.55%) Analytical Skills
4 199 (5.32%) Military
5 173 (4.63%) Local Government
6 93 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
7 92 (2.46%) Legal
8 90 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 84 (2.25%) Organisational Skills
10 78 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
11 68 (1.82%) Police
11 68 (1.82%) Telecoms
12 59 (1.58%) Marketing
13 55 (1.47%) Law
14 53 (1.42%) Banking
15 39 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
16 31 (0.83%) Manufacturing
17 27 (0.72%) Billing
17 27 (0.72%) Retail
18 21 (0.56%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 493 (13.19%) Developer
2 488 (13.06%) Architect
3 440 (11.77%) Senior
4 353 (9.44%) Analyst
5 352 (9.42%) Lead
6 164 (4.39%) Designer
7 153 (4.09%) Business Analyst
8 152 (4.07%) Consultant
9 133 (3.56%) DevOps Engineer
10 132 (3.53%) Data Engineer
11 117 (3.13%) Project Manager
11 117 (3.13%) Technical Architect
12 115 (3.08%) Solutions Architect
13 106 (2.84%) Java Developer
14 91 (2.43%) Delivery Manager
15 90 (2.41%) Senior Developer
16 88 (2.35%) User Researcher
17 73 (1.95%) Service Designer
18 67 (1.79%) Administrator
19 65 (1.74%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (3.42%) REST
2 118 (3.16%) Node.js
3 109 (2.92%) Spring
4 99 (2.65%) React
5 94 (2.51%) Spring Boot
6 88 (2.35%) RESTful
7 73 (1.95%) Oracle Fusion
8 69 (1.85%) Web Services
9 68 (1.82%) Kafka
10 63 (1.69%) .NET
10 63 (1.69%) AngularJS
11 61 (1.63%) SOAP
12 57 (1.52%) HTML
13 48 (1.28%) CSS
14 44 (1.18%) Lightning Web Components
15 43 (1.15%) OAuth
16 39 (1.04%) Middleware
17 37 (0.99%) Playwright
18 34 (0.91%) JSON
19 32 (0.86%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 190 (5.08%) Cloud Native
2 149 (3.99%) Product Ownership
3 132 (3.53%) NHS
4 131 (3.50%) Onboarding
5 87 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
6 79 (2.11%) Management Information System
7 69 (1.85%) Data Centre
8 55 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
9 49 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
9 49 (1.31%) Public Cloud
10 42 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
11 41 (1.10%) Data Structures
12 40 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
13 30 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
14 28 (0.75%) CMDB
15 25 (0.67%) Freedom of Information
15 25 (0.67%) Virtual Team
16 24 (0.64%) PKI
16 24 (0.64%) Security Operations Centre
17 23 (0.62%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 167 (4.47%) Windows
2 150 (4.01%) Linux
3 61 (1.63%) Windows Server
4 51 (1.36%) Unix
5 29 (0.78%) Android
6 27 (0.72%) Apple iOS
7 23 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 22 (0.59%) Windows 10
9 18 (0.48%) Mac OS
10 12 (0.32%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.24%) Mac OS X
12 8 (0.21%) Solaris
12 8 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
14 5 (0.13%) AIX
14 5 (0.13%) VMS
14 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.080%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.080%) Windows Server 2012
16 2 (0.054%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,013 (27.10%) Agile
2 567 (15.17%) CI/CD
3 560 (14.98%) DevOps
4 518 (13.86%) Stakeholder Management
5 427 (11.42%) Continuous Improvement
5 427 (11.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 373 (9.98%) Problem-Solving
7 344 (9.20%) Migration
8 341 (9.12%) Analytics
9 318 (8.51%) Decision-Making
10 305 (8.16%) Roadmaps
11 260 (6.96%) Infrastructure as Code
12 257 (6.88%) Data Modelling
13 251 (6.71%) Containerisation
14 232 (6.21%) Test Automation
15 231 (6.18%) AI
16 228 (6.10%) User Research
17 212 (5.67%) Microservices
18 205 (5.48%) Scrum
19 204 (5.46%) Digital Transformation Programme
Programming Languages
1 396 (10.59%) Python
2 345 (9.23%) SQL
3 280 (7.49%) Java
4 181 (4.84%) JavaScript
5 106 (2.84%) TypeScript
6 104 (2.78%) PowerShell
7 78 (2.09%) C#
8 51 (1.36%) Bash
9 48 (1.28%) PL/SQL
10 47 (1.26%) Apex Code
11 39 (1.04%) Ruby
12 25 (0.67%) Kotlin
13 22 (0.59%) Bicep
14 21 (0.56%) Shell Script
15 20 (0.54%) R
16 18 (0.48%) Go
17 16 (0.43%) Scala
18 12 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 11 (0.29%) PHP
19 11 (0.29%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,987 (53.16%) Security Cleared
2 1,392 (37.24%) SC Cleared
3 191 (5.11%) DV Cleared
4 178 (4.76%) Degree
5 131 (3.50%) BPSS Clearance
6 47 (1.26%) Azure Certification
7 42 (1.12%) CISSP
8 38 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
9 34 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
10 33 (0.88%) AWS Certification
11 28 (0.75%) PMP
12 27 (0.72%) CISM
13 26 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
14 25 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
15 23 (0.62%) PMI Certification
16 15 (0.40%) CCNP
16 15 (0.40%) DBS Check
16 15 (0.40%) Master's Degree
17 13 (0.35%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 13 (0.35%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 267 (7.14%) Accessibility
2 162 (4.33%) Data Quality
2 162 (4.33%) QA
3 112 (3.00%) GDPR
4 105 (2.81%) WCAG
5 85 (2.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 69 (1.85%) PMO
7 68 (1.82%) NCSC
8 59 (1.58%) NIST
9 34 (0.91%) SLA
10 30 (0.80%) GRC
11 26 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials
12 20 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
13 16 (0.43%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 12 (0.32%) Government Security Classifications
16 9 (0.24%) HL7
17 8 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 7 (0.19%) COBIT
18 7 (0.19%) IFRS
System Software
1 264 (7.06%) Docker
2 152 (4.07%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.59%) VMware NSX
5 16 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (0.32%) Hyper-V
7 11 (0.29%) Postfix
8 9 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
8 9 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
9 8 (0.21%) vSphere
10 6 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.080%) NFS
11 3 (0.080%) RACF
12 2 (0.054%) Squid
13 1 (0.027%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.027%) etcd
13 1 (0.027%) NLBS
13 1 (0.027%) Sendmail
13 1 (0.027%) SRDF
13 1 (0.027%) Xen
Systems Management
1 288 (7.70%) Terraform
2 253 (6.77%) Kubernetes
3 86 (2.30%) Grafana
4 77 (2.06%) Ansible
5 61 (1.63%) Prometheus
6 45 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
7 37 (0.99%) Microsoft Intune
8 21 (0.56%) Argo
9 14 (0.37%) Puppet
9 14 (0.37%) SCCM
10 12 (0.32%) Kibana
11 10 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
11 10 (0.27%) vCenter Server
12 8 (0.21%) FortiGate
13 6 (0.16%) Data Guard
13 6 (0.16%) Istio
14 5 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (0.13%) Progress Chef
14 5 (0.13%) Rancher
15 4 (0.11%) Consul
Vendors
1 416 (11.13%) Microsoft
2 248 (6.63%) Oracle
3 155 (4.15%) SAP
4 123 (3.29%) Salesforce
5 111 (2.97%) ServiceNow
6 95 (2.54%) Google
7 86 (2.30%) Databricks
8 64 (1.71%) VMware
9 45 (1.20%) Cisco
10 37 (0.99%) Splunk
11 34 (0.91%) Red Hat
12 32 (0.86%) Atlassian
12 32 (0.86%) Palo Alto
13 31 (0.83%) Dynatrace
14 27 (0.72%) IBM
15 26 (0.70%) MuleSoft
15 26 (0.70%) Talend
16 25 (0.67%) F5
17 22 (0.59%) CyberArk
18 20 (0.54%) Foundry