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

6 months to
27 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 23 19
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,882 1,948 3,044
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.93% 7.71% 8.16%
As % of the General category 16.26% 11.99% 14.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,714 1,303 2,029
10th Percentile £358 £340 £311
25th Percentile £425 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £630
90th Percentile £688 £700 £712
UK median daily rate £510 £500 £507
% change year-on-year +2.00% -1.28% -2.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 80 159
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.47 £13.06
25th Percentile £16.77 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £23.41 £25.08 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.63% -3.56% +25.97%
75th Percentile £44.59 £34.23 £58.60
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £75.25
UK median hourly rate £24.25 £22.90 £24.00
% change year-on-year +5.90% -4.58% +20.00%

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 23,870 16,248 21,372
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.91% 64.30% 57.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,487 10,447 13,653
10th Percentile £313 £284 £290
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £535
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -2.80% -2.73%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
90th Percentile £750 £763 £775
UK median daily rate £517 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +3.33% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,703 793 1,792
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.27 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.75 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.50 £27.64 £32.90
Median % change year-on-year +17.58% -15.98% +9.65%
75th Percentile £63.75 £52.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £82.01 £75.00 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.50 £31.80
% change year-on-year +16.36% -13.52% +5.12%

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 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 27 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 27 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 1,722 £525 - 350
North of England +2 675 £470 +1.08% 195
South East +4 496 £500 -7.41% 202
Midlands +9 438 £500 +8.11% 118
West Midlands +6 363 £500 +6.67% 84
North West 0 293 £500 +7.53% 78
South West -6 281 £525 -3.45% 111
Yorkshire +14 230 £455 -4.21% 68
North East -3 161 £450 -3.23% 52
East of England +13 71 £475 -7.32% 33
East Midlands +19 68 £525 +31.25% 34
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
1 144 (3.71%) Confluence
2 112 (2.89%) SharePoint
3 48 (1.24%) Microsoft Exchange
4 44 (1.13%) Apache Airflow
4 44 (1.13%) SAS
5 34 (0.88%) Apache Spark
6 32 (0.82%) Apache
7 20 (0.52%) CMS
7 20 (0.52%) Jupyter
8 12 (0.31%) nginx
8 12 (0.31%) Palantir Foundry
9 10 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 7 (0.18%) Tomcat
10 7 (0.18%) WordPress
11 5 (0.13%) Camunda
11 5 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
11 5 (0.13%) Tuxedo
11 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.10%) Drupal
13 3 (0.077%) IIS
Applications
1 71 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 21 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.28%) MS Visio
7 9 (0.23%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.10%) Trello
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.052%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.052%) Sketch
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 64 (1.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (1.03%) Dynamics CRM
3 37 (0.95%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.70%) SAP PSCD
5 16 (0.41%) 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%) NEC Housing
8 9 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
9 8 (0.21%) ContrOCC
9 8 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 8 (0.21%) Workday HCM
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
1 769 (19.81%) AWS
2 678 (17.47%) Azure
3 200 (5.15%) Power Platform
4 175 (4.51%) Microsoft 365
5 152 (3.92%) Serverless
6 145 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
7 144 (3.71%) GitHub
8 143 (3.68%) GCP
9 120 (3.09%) Amazon S3
10 114 (2.94%) Entra ID
11 102 (2.63%) SaaS
12 97 (2.50%) AWS Lambda
13 92 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
14 80 (2.06%) Amazon EC2
15 71 (1.83%) OCI
16 68 (1.75%) Power Automate
17 64 (1.65%) Dynamics 365
18 63 (1.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 57 (1.47%) Amazon EKS
20 56 (1.44%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 93 (2.40%) Firewall
2 57 (1.47%) Network Security
3 55 (1.42%) DNS
4 51 (1.31%) WAN
5 40 (1.03%) LAN
6 37 (0.95%) VPN
7 30 (0.77%) BGP
8 25 (0.64%) OSPF
9 24 (0.62%) DHCP
9 24 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
10 21 (0.54%) SD-WAN
11 19 (0.49%) BIG-IP
11 19 (0.49%) TCP/IP
12 18 (0.46%) VXLAN
13 16 (0.41%) Ethernet VPN
14 15 (0.39%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 14 (0.36%) WLAN
16 12 (0.31%) DKIM
17 10 (0.26%) NGFW
18 9 (0.23%) DMARC
Database & Business Intelligence
1 136 (3.50%) Power BI
2 92 (2.37%) Data Warehouse
3 87 (2.24%) PostgreSQL
4 75 (1.93%) SQL Server
5 56 (1.44%) Metadata
6 52 (1.34%) MongoDB
7 51 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
8 49 (1.26%) Data Lake
9 45 (1.16%) Oracle Database
10 44 (1.13%) Relational Database
11 42 (1.08%) NoSQL
12 37 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
13 34 (0.88%) DynamoDB
14 32 (0.82%) Amazon Athena
14 32 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
15 30 (0.77%) Tableau
16 22 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
16 22 (0.57%) Pentaho
17 20 (0.52%) Electronic Patient Records
18 18 (0.46%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 217 (5.59%) JIRA
2 159 (4.10%) GitLab
3 154 (3.97%) Git
4 132 (3.40%) Jenkins
5 48 (1.24%) Selenium
6 39 (1.00%) JUnit
7 36 (0.93%) Mockito
8 30 (0.77%) SonarQube
9 29 (0.75%) Cucumber
10 28 (0.72%) JMeter
10 28 (0.72%) Postman
11 24 (0.62%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.54%) Maven
13 18 (0.46%) REST Assured
14 15 (0.39%) 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 1,003 (25.84%) Social Skills
2 461 (11.88%) Finance
3 361 (9.30%) Analytical Skills
4 216 (5.56%) Military
5 197 (5.07%) Local Government
6 109 (2.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 99 (2.55%) Legal
8 96 (2.47%) Influencing Skills
9 85 (2.19%) Documentation Skills
10 84 (2.16%) Organisational Skills
11 77 (1.98%) Police
12 58 (1.49%) Telecoms
13 51 (1.31%) Law
14 49 (1.26%) Banking
15 43 (1.11%) Marketing
16 33 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
17 29 (0.75%) Billing
18 23 (0.59%) Retail
19 16 (0.41%) General Ledger
19 16 (0.41%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 523 (13.47%) Architect
2 508 (13.09%) Developer
3 475 (12.24%) Senior
4 379 (9.76%) Lead
5 351 (9.04%) Analyst
6 165 (4.25%) Designer
7 158 (4.07%) Consultant
8 143 (3.68%) Data Engineer
9 142 (3.66%) Business Analyst
10 141 (3.63%) DevOps Engineer
11 124 (3.19%) Solutions Architect
12 120 (3.09%) Technical Architect
13 107 (2.76%) Java Developer
13 107 (2.76%) Project Manager
14 98 (2.52%) Delivery Manager
15 95 (2.45%) Senior Developer
16 86 (2.22%) User Researcher
17 76 (1.96%) Service Designer
18 72 (1.85%) AWS Engineer
19 69 (1.78%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 131 (3.37%) REST
2 114 (2.94%) Node.js
3 112 (2.89%) Spring
4 95 (2.45%) React
4 95 (2.45%) RESTful
5 94 (2.42%) Spring Boot
6 73 (1.88%) Oracle Fusion
7 72 (1.85%) Kafka
8 64 (1.65%) SOAP
9 61 (1.57%) .NET
10 60 (1.55%) AngularJS
10 60 (1.55%) Web Services
11 51 (1.31%) HTML
12 45 (1.16%) OAuth
13 42 (1.08%) CSS
14 40 (1.03%) Middleware
14 40 (1.03%) PySpark
15 39 (1.00%) Lightning Web Components
16 38 (0.98%) JSON
17 37 (0.95%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 217 (5.59%) Cloud Native
2 160 (4.12%) Product Ownership
3 143 (3.68%) Onboarding
4 141 (3.63%) NHS
5 94 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
6 87 (2.24%) Management Information System
7 68 (1.75%) Data Centre
8 63 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
9 58 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
10 52 (1.34%) Public Cloud
11 47 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
12 45 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
13 44 (1.13%) Data Structures
14 34 (0.88%) CMDB
15 31 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
16 30 (0.77%) Virtual Team
17 26 (0.67%) Security Posture
18 25 (0.64%) Freedom of Information
19 24 (0.62%) Security Operations Centre
20 23 (0.59%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 167 (4.30%) Windows
2 152 (3.92%) Linux
3 61 (1.57%) Windows Server
4 54 (1.39%) Unix
5 28 (0.72%) Android
6 27 (0.70%) Apple iOS
7 24 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 20 (0.52%) Windows 10
9 19 (0.49%) Mac OS
10 11 (0.28%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.23%) Mac OS X
12 8 (0.21%) 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 (0.052%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,103 (28.41%) Agile
2 613 (15.79%) CI/CD
3 604 (15.56%) DevOps
4 593 (15.28%) Stakeholder Management
5 490 (12.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 487 (12.55%) Continuous Improvement
7 387 (9.97%) Problem-Solving
8 372 (9.58%) Analytics
9 356 (9.17%) Decision-Making
10 355 (9.14%) Migration
11 312 (8.04%) Roadmaps
12 290 (7.47%) Infrastructure as Code
13 274 (7.06%) AI
14 266 (6.85%) Containerisation
14 266 (6.85%) Data Modelling
15 231 (5.95%) Test Automation
16 226 (5.82%) Microservices
17 223 (5.74%) User Research
18 220 (5.67%) Digital Transformation Programme
19 218 (5.62%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 433 (11.15%) Python
2 367 (9.45%) SQL
3 292 (7.52%) Java
4 174 (4.48%) JavaScript
5 108 (2.78%) TypeScript
6 100 (2.58%) PowerShell
7 77 (1.98%) C#
8 55 (1.42%) Bash
9 52 (1.34%) PL/SQL
10 41 (1.06%) Apex Code
11 34 (0.88%) Ruby
12 32 (0.82%) Bicep
13 27 (0.70%) Kotlin
14 21 (0.54%) R
15 18 (0.46%) Shell Script
16 17 (0.44%) Go
17 15 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 15 (0.39%) Scala
18 13 (0.33%) ABAP
19 11 (0.28%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 2,028 (52.24%) Security Cleared
2 1,469 (37.84%) SC Cleared
3 226 (5.82%) DV Cleared
4 183 (4.71%) Degree
5 161 (4.15%) BPSS Clearance
6 48 (1.24%) Azure Certification
7 46 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
8 41 (1.06%) CISSP
9 38 (0.98%) Cisco Certification
10 36 (0.93%) AWS Certification
11 27 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
12 26 (0.67%) CISM
13 21 (0.54%) Computer Science Degree
13 21 (0.54%) PMI Certification
14 20 (0.52%) PMP
15 19 (0.49%) CCNP
16 17 (0.44%) Master's Degree
17 16 (0.41%) ISTQB
18 15 (0.39%) DBS Check
19 14 (0.36%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 270 (6.96%) Accessibility
2 184 (4.74%) Data Quality
3 173 (4.46%) QA
4 124 (3.19%) GDPR
5 109 (2.81%) WCAG
6 93 (2.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 77 (1.98%) NCSC
7 77 (1.98%) PMO
8 67 (1.73%) NIST
9 37 (0.95%) SLA
10 30 (0.77%) GRC
11 25 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials
12 21 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.36%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 12 (0.31%) Government Security Classifications
16 10 (0.26%) HL7
16 10 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 7 (0.18%) IFRS
17 7 (0.18%) NIST 800
System Software
1 281 (7.24%) Docker
2 158 (4.07%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) VMware NSX
5 15 (0.39%) 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 (0.052%) NFS
10 2 (0.052%) 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
1 323 (8.32%) Terraform
2 274 (7.06%) Kubernetes
3 85 (2.19%) Grafana
4 76 (1.96%) Ansible
5 59 (1.52%) Prometheus
6 42 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
7 38 (0.98%) Microsoft Intune
8 23 (0.59%) Argo
9 14 (0.36%) Kibana
9 14 (0.36%) Puppet
9 14 (0.36%) SCCM
10 10 (0.26%) Oracle RMAN
10 10 (0.26%) vCenter Server
11 7 (0.18%) FortiGate
12 6 (0.15%) Data Guard
12 6 (0.15%) Istio
13 5 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (0.13%) Progress Chef
13 5 (0.13%) Rancher
14 4 (0.10%) Consul
Vendors
1 449 (11.57%) Microsoft
2 273 (7.03%) Oracle
3 151 (3.89%) SAP
4 125 (3.22%) ServiceNow
5 115 (2.96%) Salesforce
6 102 (2.63%) Google
7 91 (2.34%) Databricks
8 61 (1.57%) VMware
9 43 (1.11%) Cisco
10 37 (0.95%) Atlassian
10 37 (0.95%) Red Hat
11 33 (0.85%) Palo Alto
12 30 (0.77%) Dynatrace
12 30 (0.77%) Splunk
13 28 (0.72%) Talend
14 27 (0.70%) IBM
15 25 (0.64%) CyberArk
16 24 (0.62%) F5
16 24 (0.62%) Informatica
17 22 (0.57%) Foundry