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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 20 18
Rank change year-on-year -2 -2 -1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 4,054 2,385 2,699
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.75% 8.59% 8.40%
As % of the General category 15.51% 13.44% 14.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,787 1,653 1,646
10th Percentile £363 £313 £308
25th Percentile £444 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £519
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -3.66% -5.64%
75th Percentile £619 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 194 111 92
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.48 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.70 £18.05 £16.36
Median hourly rate £21.35 £22.00 £23.99
Median % change year-on-year -2.95% -8.30% +14.24%
75th Percentile £41.00 £28.25 £40.79
90th Percentile £75.28 £57.00 £62.53
UK median hourly rate £21.35 £21.00 £22.53
% change year-on-year +1.67% -6.79% +7.29%

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 26,133 17,743 18,910
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 56.41% 63.92% 58.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,228 11,259 11,352
10th Percentile £313 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -5.66% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
90th Percentile £750 £738 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,401 1,045 859
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.56 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.62 £16.30 £17.75
Median hourly rate £29.03 £25.15 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +15.41% -28.87% +17.87%
75th Percentile £56.21 £45.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £25.08 £33.29
% change year-on-year +11.67% -24.67% +21.04%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 1,788 £550 +7.32% 1,666
North of England +3 754 £475 - 752
Midlands +7 528 £490 +3.16% 323
West Midlands +6 448 £490 +3.16% 223
South East +3 442 £505 -1.75% 415
South West -3 364 £535 -2.73% 271
Yorkshire +3 281 £470 -6.00% 216
North West -13 269 £570 +26.67% 388
North East +1 223 £450 -10.00% 149
East Midlands +13 76 £450 +9.76% 100
East of England -23 47 £450 -10.00% 118
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
1 165 (4.07%) Confluence
2 103 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 49 (1.21%) SAS
4 48 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
5 44 (1.09%) Apache Airflow
6 43 (1.06%) Apache
6 43 (1.06%) Apache Spark
7 29 (0.72%) CMS
8 20 (0.49%) Jupyter
9 14 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
10 11 (0.27%) nginx
10 11 (0.27%) WordPress
11 8 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
12 7 (0.17%) Headless CMS
13 5 (0.12%) Drupal
13 5 (0.12%) SharePoint 2013
13 5 (0.12%) Tuxedo
14 4 (0.099%) IIS
15 3 (0.074%) Tomcat
16 2 (0.049%) SAP Portal
Applications
1 78 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 52 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
4 22 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 22 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
5 8 (0.20%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.12%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.12%) Sketch
6 5 (0.12%) Trello
7 4 (0.099%) Adobe After Effects
7 4 (0.099%) Adobe XD
8 2 (0.049%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.049%) Adobe Premiere
8 2 (0.049%) Navisworks
8 2 (0.049%) ProjectWise
8 2 (0.049%) Revit
9 1 (0.025%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.025%) Gliffy
9 1 (0.025%) LaTeX
9 1 (0.025%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 51 (1.26%) Dynamics CRM
1 51 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (1.11%) Oracle ERP
3 31 (0.76%) SAP PSCD
4 22 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
4 22 (0.54%) SAP Payroll
5 17 (0.42%) Workday HCM
6 15 (0.37%) NetSuite
6 15 (0.37%) SAP BRIM
6 15 (0.37%) SAP HR
7 14 (0.35%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.32%) SAP FI
8 13 (0.32%) SAP Hybris
9 12 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.27%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.25%) Oracle Payroll
12 9 (0.22%) NEC Housing
12 9 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
13 8 (0.20%) ContrOCC
Cloud Services
1 800 (19.73%) AWS
2 740 (18.25%) Azure
3 245 (6.04%) Power Platform
4 190 (4.69%) Azure DevOps
5 162 (4.00%) Microsoft 365
6 159 (3.92%) GCP
6 159 (3.92%) GitHub
7 146 (3.60%) Serverless
8 138 (3.40%) Entra ID
9 117 (2.89%) SaaS
10 115 (2.84%) Amazon S3
11 113 (2.79%) GitHub Actions
12 99 (2.44%) OCI
13 85 (2.10%) Power Automate
14 82 (2.02%) AWS Lambda
15 80 (1.97%) Dynamics 365
16 75 (1.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 72 (1.78%) Amazon EKS
18 62 (1.53%) PowerApps
19 56 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 96 (2.37%) Firewall
2 67 (1.65%) DNS
3 49 (1.21%) WAN
4 41 (1.01%) LAN
5 40 (0.99%) Network Security
6 32 (0.79%) Wi-Fi
7 31 (0.76%) DHCP
7 31 (0.76%) TCP/IP
8 27 (0.67%) BGP
8 27 (0.67%) VPN
9 26 (0.64%) OSPF
10 19 (0.47%) SD-WAN
10 19 (0.47%) Wireless
11 15 (0.37%) VXLAN
12 14 (0.35%) BIG-IP
12 14 (0.35%) VoIP
12 14 (0.35%) WLAN
13 13 (0.32%) Ethernet VPN
13 13 (0.32%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 13 (0.32%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 158 (3.90%) Power BI
2 105 (2.59%) Data Warehouse
3 99 (2.44%) Metadata
3 99 (2.44%) PostgreSQL
4 73 (1.80%) SQL Server
5 71 (1.75%) Relational Database
6 66 (1.63%) MongoDB
7 55 (1.36%) Oracle Database
8 54 (1.33%) Data Lake
9 51 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
10 40 (0.99%) NoSQL
11 30 (0.74%) Amazon Athena
12 29 (0.72%) Amazon Aurora
12 29 (0.72%) Amazon Redshift
13 27 (0.67%) MySQL
13 27 (0.67%) Pentaho
14 25 (0.62%) Tableau
15 24 (0.59%) Oracle Reports
16 21 (0.52%) DynamoDB
16 21 (0.52%) Redis
Development Applications
1 236 (5.82%) JIRA
2 182 (4.49%) Git
3 171 (4.22%) GitLab
4 129 (3.18%) Jenkins
5 58 (1.43%) Selenium
6 52 (1.28%) Cucumber
7 38 (0.94%) JUnit
8 32 (0.79%) Postman
9 28 (0.69%) Cypress.io
10 25 (0.62%) Maven
10 25 (0.62%) Mockito
11 24 (0.59%) SonarQube
12 22 (0.54%) REST Assured
13 21 (0.52%) Gatling
13 21 (0.52%) JMeter
14 20 (0.49%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.37%) MSI
16 11 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
17 10 (0.25%) TestNG
18 8 (0.20%) fastlane
General
1 1,328 (32.76%) Social Skills
2 451 (11.12%) Finance
3 432 (10.66%) Analytical Skills
4 283 (6.98%) Military
5 227 (5.60%) Local Government
6 186 (4.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 166 (4.09%) Influencing Skills
8 120 (2.96%) Legal
9 117 (2.89%) Organisational Skills
10 94 (2.32%) Police
11 92 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
12 63 (1.55%) Law
13 53 (1.31%) Telecoms
14 46 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
15 40 (0.99%) Marketing
16 39 (0.96%) Banking
17 32 (0.79%) Billing
18 25 (0.62%) Retail
19 21 (0.52%) Publishing
20 20 (0.49%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 575 (14.18%) Senior
2 566 (13.96%) Architect
3 507 (12.51%) Developer
4 488 (12.04%) Lead
5 361 (8.90%) Analyst
6 201 (4.96%) Consultant
7 154 (3.80%) Business Analyst
8 149 (3.68%) Designer
9 147 (3.63%) Data Engineer
10 134 (3.31%) Data Architect
10 134 (3.31%) DevOps Engineer
11 124 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
12 115 (2.84%) Delivery Manager
13 106 (2.61%) Technical Architect
14 104 (2.57%) Senior Developer
14 104 (2.57%) User Researcher
15 90 (2.22%) Java Developer
16 87 (2.15%) Senior Manager
17 83 (2.05%) Project Manager
18 80 (1.97%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 354 (8.73%) Terraform
2 170 (4.19%) REST
3 108 (2.66%) RESTful
4 100 (2.47%) Spring
5 99 (2.44%) Node.js
6 93 (2.29%) React
7 90 (2.22%) Spring Boot
8 87 (2.15%) Oracle Fusion
9 73 (1.80%) SOAP
10 70 (1.73%) HTML
11 69 (1.70%) Web Services
12 67 (1.65%) Kafka
13 64 (1.58%) CSS
14 61 (1.50%) Django
15 60 (1.48%) OAuth
16 59 (1.46%) JSON
17 58 (1.43%) .NET
18 50 (1.23%) OpenID
19 46 (1.13%) AngularJS
20 45 (1.11%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 248 (6.12%) Cloud Native
2 173 (4.27%) Product Ownership
3 169 (4.17%) Onboarding
4 142 (3.50%) Management Information System
5 131 (3.23%) NHS
6 112 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
7 88 (2.17%) Enterprise Software
8 51 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
9 46 (1.13%) Data Structures
10 44 (1.09%) Data Centre
11 43 (1.06%) Freedom of Information
12 42 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
13 41 (1.01%) CMDB
13 41 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
14 40 (0.99%) AI Agents
15 36 (0.89%) Hybrid Cloud
16 34 (0.84%) Taxonomies
17 32 (0.79%) Cyber Threat
17 32 (0.79%) Data Protection Act
17 32 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 131 (3.23%) Windows
2 122 (3.01%) Linux
3 45 (1.11%) Unix
4 37 (0.91%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.59%) Android
6 21 (0.52%) Apple iOS
7 19 (0.47%) Windows 10
8 16 (0.39%) Mac OS
9 15 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.12%) AIX
10 5 (0.12%) Amazon Linux
11 3 (0.074%) CentOS
11 3 (0.074%) Ubuntu
12 2 (0.049%) Solaris
12 2 (0.049%) VMS
13 1 (0.025%) Mac OS X
13 1 (0.025%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.025%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.025%) Windows Server 2008
13 1 (0.025%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,304 (32.17%) Agile
2 991 (24.44%) Stakeholder Management
3 728 (17.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 721 (17.78%) Continuous Improvement
5 684 (16.87%) CI/CD
6 633 (15.61%) DevOps
7 515 (12.70%) Problem-Solving
8 484 (11.94%) Decision-Making
9 414 (10.21%) Analytics
10 393 (9.69%) AI
11 385 (9.50%) Migration
12 383 (9.45%) Roadmaps
13 377 (9.30%) Digital Transformation Programme
14 346 (8.53%) Infrastructure as Code
15 320 (7.89%) Data Modelling
15 320 (7.89%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
16 301 (7.42%) Technical Leadership
17 281 (6.93%) Mentoring
18 262 (6.46%) Containerisation
18 262 (6.46%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 453 (11.17%) Python
2 403 (9.94%) SQL
3 254 (6.27%) Java
4 225 (5.55%) JavaScript
5 124 (3.06%) TypeScript
6 111 (2.74%) PowerShell
7 81 (2.00%) C#
8 65 (1.60%) Bash
9 50 (1.23%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.18%) Bicep
11 43 (1.06%) Scala
12 27 (0.67%) Groovy
12 27 (0.67%) R
13 26 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 24 (0.59%) ABAP
15 22 (0.54%) Kotlin
16 20 (0.49%) Apex Code
17 16 (0.39%) Ruby
18 14 (0.35%) Go
18 14 (0.35%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 2,046 (50.47%) Security Cleared
2 1,699 (41.91%) SC Cleared
3 348 (8.58%) BPSS Clearance
4 232 (5.72%) DV Cleared
5 185 (4.56%) Degree
6 80 (1.97%) Microsoft Certification
7 76 (1.87%) AWS Certification
8 67 (1.65%) Azure Certification
9 48 (1.18%) CISSP
10 38 (0.94%) Cisco Certification
11 34 (0.84%) CISM
12 31 (0.76%) ISTQB
13 25 (0.62%) PMI Certification
14 24 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
15 23 (0.57%) CCNP
15 23 (0.57%) Master's Degree
16 20 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
17 19 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 17 (0.42%) DBS Check
19 16 (0.39%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 347 (8.56%) Accessibility
2 267 (6.59%) Data Quality
3 251 (6.19%) QA
4 140 (3.45%) WCAG
5 132 (3.26%) GDPR
6 95 (2.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 86 (2.12%) NCSC
8 80 (1.97%) NIST
9 77 (1.90%) PMO
10 34 (0.84%) GRC
11 30 (0.74%) SLA
12 27 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
13 23 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 12 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 11 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
17 10 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 8 (0.20%) PCI DSS
19 6 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 6 (0.15%) PERC
System Software
1 285 (7.03%) Docker
2 135 (3.33%) Active Directory
3 32 (0.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (0.39%) Hyper-V
5 13 (0.32%) VMware NSX
6 12 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
7 9 (0.22%) vSphere
8 8 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
9 5 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
10 4 (0.099%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.074%) Microsoft App-V
11 3 (0.074%) Postfix
12 1 (0.025%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.025%) Ceph
12 1 (0.025%) Squid
12 1 (0.025%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 275 (6.78%) Kubernetes
2 102 (2.52%) Grafana
3 67 (1.65%) Ansible
4 61 (1.50%) Prometheus
5 41 (1.01%) Microsoft Intune
6 39 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.57%) Argo
8 22 (0.54%) SCCM
9 20 (0.49%) Kibana
10 8 (0.20%) Data Guard
10 8 (0.20%) Oracle RMAN
10 8 (0.20%) VxRail
11 6 (0.15%) Istio
11 6 (0.15%) QRadar
12 5 (0.12%) Consul
12 5 (0.12%) Packer
12 5 (0.12%) Puppet
12 5 (0.12%) vCenter Server
13 4 (0.099%) Jamf Pro
13 4 (0.099%) Karpenter
Vendors
1 546 (13.47%) Microsoft
2 347 (8.56%) Oracle
3 151 (3.72%) ServiceNow
4 129 (3.18%) Google
5 128 (3.16%) SAP
6 90 (2.22%) Salesforce
7 83 (2.05%) Databricks
8 50 (1.23%) Cisco
9 38 (0.94%) Palo Alto
9 38 (0.94%) Splunk
10 36 (0.89%) VMware
11 33 (0.81%) Dynatrace
11 33 (0.81%) Informatica
12 30 (0.74%) Talend
12 30 (0.74%) Workday
13 24 (0.59%) CyberArk
14 23 (0.57%) Foundry
14 23 (0.57%) Palantir
15 19 (0.47%) Red Hat
16 18 (0.44%) Adobe