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

6 months to
9 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 3,747 1,893 3,099
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.83% 7.77% 8.34%
As % of the General category 16.23% 12.09% 14.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,629 1,280 2,068
10th Percentile £358 £349 £310
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £519 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.74% -1.10% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £686 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -1.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 76 170
10th Percentile £13.29 £16.34 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.09 £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 £47.19 £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 23,088 15,652 21,315
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.44% 64.22% 57.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,118 10,057 13,646
10th Percentile £313 £281 £281
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -1.71% -1.57% -3.03%
75th Percentile £630 £645 £650
90th Percentile £745 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,596 729 1,825
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.25 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £28.15 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.45% -10.63% +3.14%
75th Percentile £63.75 £53.75 £52.50
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £67.45
UK median hourly rate £31.46 £28.00 £30.06
% change year-on-year +12.36% -6.85% -5.83%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +5 1,694 £525 - 335
North of England +1 679 £455 -4.21% 274
South East +2 444 £500 -6.72% 227
Midlands +11 403 £500 +6.67% 134
West Midlands +3 329 £500 +8.11% 103
North West +1 306 £485 +1.04% 114
South West -7 249 £525 -4.55% 99
Yorkshire +11 230 £450 -1.10% 98
North East -3 149 £450 -3.23% 64
East of England +15 78 £463 +37.04% 36
East Midlands +9 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
1 139 (3.71%) Confluence
2 108 (2.88%) SharePoint
3 45 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
4 41 (1.09%) 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
16 3 (0.080%) SharePoint 2013
16 3 (0.080%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 70 (1.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
3 27 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 23 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.29%) 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 (0.053%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.053%) 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 64 (1.71%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.80%) 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%) NEC Housing
7 8 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
8 7 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
8 7 (0.19%) SAP Payroll
8 7 (0.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 6 (0.16%) Oracle Cash Management
10 5 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
10 5 (0.13%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 5 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
10 5 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
10 5 (0.13%) SAP ERP
10 5 (0.13%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 723 (19.30%) AWS
2 653 (17.43%) Azure
3 190 (5.07%) Power Platform
4 171 (4.56%) Microsoft 365
5 141 (3.76%) GitHub
5 141 (3.76%) Serverless
6 137 (3.66%) Azure DevOps
7 128 (3.42%) GCP
8 111 (2.96%) Amazon S3
9 104 (2.78%) Entra ID
10 100 (2.67%) SaaS
11 90 (2.40%) AWS Lambda
12 85 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
13 79 (2.11%) Amazon EC2
14 69 (1.84%) OCI
15 66 (1.76%) Power Automate
16 64 (1.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 63 (1.68%) Dynamics 365
18 61 (1.63%) Amazon EKS
19 54 (1.44%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 95 (2.54%) Firewall
2 55 (1.47%) Network Security
3 53 (1.41%) WAN
4 50 (1.33%) DNS
5 39 (1.04%) LAN
5 39 (1.04%) VPN
6 34 (0.91%) BGP
7 29 (0.77%) OSPF
8 25 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
9 24 (0.64%) TCP/IP
10 23 (0.61%) SD-WAN
11 21 (0.56%) DHCP
12 19 (0.51%) BIG-IP
13 18 (0.48%) VXLAN
14 17 (0.45%) Ethernet VPN
15 15 (0.40%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 14 (0.37%) WLAN
17 12 (0.32%) DKIM
17 12 (0.32%) SSL
18 11 (0.29%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (3.47%) Power BI
2 84 (2.24%) PostgreSQL
3 81 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
4 69 (1.84%) SQL Server
5 55 (1.47%) MongoDB
6 52 (1.39%) Metadata
7 51 (1.36%) Amazon RDS
8 44 (1.17%) Data Lake
9 40 (1.07%) Oracle Database
10 39 (1.04%) NoSQL
11 38 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
12 34 (0.91%) Relational Database
13 31 (0.83%) DynamoDB
14 30 (0.80%) Tableau
15 29 (0.77%) Amazon Athena
16 24 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
17 22 (0.59%) Amazon Aurora
17 22 (0.59%) Electronic Patient Records
18 21 (0.56%) Pentaho
19 17 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 209 (5.58%) JIRA
2 157 (4.19%) Git
3 153 (4.08%) GitLab
4 122 (3.26%) 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 (0.69%) 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
1 945 (25.22%) Social Skills
2 439 (11.72%) Finance
3 355 (9.47%) Analytical Skills
4 202 (5.39%) Military
5 175 (4.67%) Local Government
6 94 (2.51%) Documentation Skills
7 92 (2.46%) Legal
8 90 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 86 (2.30%) Organisational Skills
10 78 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
11 69 (1.84%) Police
12 63 (1.68%) Telecoms
13 55 (1.47%) Law
14 53 (1.41%) Banking
15 52 (1.39%) Marketing
16 40 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
17 27 (0.72%) Billing
18 26 (0.69%) Retail
19 25 (0.67%) Manufacturing
20 16 (0.43%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 491 (13.10%) Architect
2 489 (13.05%) Developer
3 440 (11.74%) Senior
4 356 (9.50%) Analyst
5 353 (9.42%) Lead
6 165 (4.40%) Designer
7 154 (4.11%) Business Analyst
8 152 (4.06%) Consultant
9 134 (3.58%) Data Engineer
9 134 (3.58%) DevOps Engineer
10 118 (3.15%) Technical Architect
11 117 (3.12%) Solutions Architect
12 116 (3.10%) Project Manager
13 105 (2.80%) Java Developer
14 91 (2.43%) Delivery Manager
15 89 (2.38%) User Researcher
16 88 (2.35%) Senior Developer
17 74 (1.97%) Service Designer
18 70 (1.87%) Administrator
19 65 (1.73%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 124 (3.31%) REST
2 118 (3.15%) Node.js
3 108 (2.88%) Spring
4 99 (2.64%) React
5 95 (2.54%) Spring Boot
6 89 (2.38%) RESTful
7 74 (1.97%) Oracle Fusion
8 68 (1.81%) Kafka
8 68 (1.81%) Web Services
9 63 (1.68%) AngularJS
10 62 (1.65%) .NET
11 59 (1.57%) SOAP
12 57 (1.52%) HTML
13 48 (1.28%) CSS
14 44 (1.17%) OAuth
15 43 (1.15%) Lightning Web Components
16 39 (1.04%) Middleware
17 37 (0.99%) Playwright
18 34 (0.91%) JSON
19 31 (0.83%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 194 (5.18%) Cloud Native
2 146 (3.90%) Product Ownership
3 130 (3.47%) NHS
4 128 (3.42%) Onboarding
5 87 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
6 80 (2.14%) Management Information System
7 69 (1.84%) Data Centre
8 54 (1.44%) Distributed Systems
9 50 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
9 50 (1.33%) Public Cloud
10 43 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
11 41 (1.09%) 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%) Security Operations Centre
15 25 (0.67%) Virtual Team
16 24 (0.64%) PKI
17 23 (0.61%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 167 (4.46%) Windows
2 148 (3.95%) Linux
3 61 (1.63%) Windows Server
4 51 (1.36%) Unix
5 29 (0.77%) Android
6 27 (0.72%) Apple iOS
7 22 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 20 (0.53%) 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%) Windows Server 2016
15 4 (0.11%) VMS
16 3 (0.080%) Amazon Linux
16 3 (0.080%) Windows Server 2012
17 2 (0.053%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,018 (27.17%) Agile
2 575 (15.35%) CI/CD
3 563 (15.03%) DevOps
4 523 (13.96%) Stakeholder Management
5 431 (11.50%) Continuous Improvement
6 429 (11.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 370 (9.87%) Problem-Solving
8 347 (9.26%) Analytics
9 344 (9.18%) Migration
10 321 (8.57%) Decision-Making
11 311 (8.30%) Roadmaps
12 265 (7.07%) Infrastructure as Code
13 259 (6.91%) Data Modelling
14 250 (6.67%) Containerisation
15 241 (6.43%) AI
16 234 (6.24%) Test Automation
17 228 (6.08%) User Research
18 210 (5.60%) Microservices
19 206 (5.50%) Digital Transformation Programme
20 204 (5.44%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 405 (10.81%) Python
2 356 (9.50%) SQL
3 278 (7.42%) Java
4 176 (4.70%) JavaScript
5 106 (2.83%) TypeScript
6 102 (2.72%) PowerShell
7 77 (2.05%) C#
8 51 (1.36%) Bash
9 49 (1.31%) PL/SQL
10 46 (1.23%) 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 (0.53%) R
16 16 (0.43%) Go
16 16 (0.43%) Scala
17 12 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 11 (0.29%) T-SQL
19 8 (0.21%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,979 (52.82%) Security Cleared
2 1,387 (37.02%) SC Cleared
3 193 (5.15%) DV Cleared
4 181 (4.83%) Degree
5 133 (3.55%) BPSS Clearance
6 47 (1.25%) Azure Certification
7 41 (1.09%) CISSP
8 39 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 33 (0.88%) AWS Certification
9 33 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
10 28 (0.75%) PMP
11 27 (0.72%) CISM
12 26 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
13 23 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
13 23 (0.61%) PMI Certification
14 15 (0.40%) DBS Check
14 15 (0.40%) Master's Degree
15 14 (0.37%) CCNP
16 13 (0.35%) CIMA
16 13 (0.35%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 268 (7.15%) Accessibility
2 167 (4.46%) Data Quality
3 165 (4.40%) QA
4 113 (3.02%) GDPR
5 106 (2.83%) WCAG
6 87 (2.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 70 (1.87%) NCSC
7 70 (1.87%) PMO
8 60 (1.60%) NIST
9 36 (0.96%) SLA
10 30 (0.80%) GRC
11 26 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials
12 20 (0.53%) 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
16 9 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 7 (0.19%) COBIT
17 7 (0.19%) IFRS
System Software
1 265 (7.07%) Docker
2 153 (4.08%) Active Directory
3 40 (1.07%) 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 (0.053%) Squid
13 1 (0.027%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.027%) FreeRADIUS
13 1 (0.027%) GPFS
13 1 (0.027%) NLBS
13 1 (0.027%) Sendmail
13 1 (0.027%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 298 (7.95%) Terraform
2 253 (6.75%) Kubernetes
3 86 (2.30%) Grafana
4 78 (2.08%) Ansible
5 61 (1.63%) Prometheus
6 45 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
7 37 (0.99%) Microsoft Intune
8 22 (0.59%) 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%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 417 (11.13%) Microsoft
2 255 (6.81%) Oracle
3 151 (4.03%) SAP
4 121 (3.23%) Salesforce
5 111 (2.96%) ServiceNow
6 95 (2.54%) Google
7 85 (2.27%) Databricks
8 63 (1.68%) VMware
9 44 (1.17%) Cisco
10 36 (0.96%) Splunk
11 35 (0.93%) Red Hat
12 33 (0.88%) Palo Alto
13 32 (0.85%) Atlassian
14 31 (0.83%) Dynatrace
15 28 (0.75%) IBM
16 26 (0.69%) MuleSoft
16 26 (0.69%) Talend
17 25 (0.67%) F5
18 22 (0.59%) CyberArk
19 20 (0.53%) Foundry