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

6 months to
24 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 22 17
Rank change year-on-year +2 -5 -1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,664 1,958 3,094
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.82% 8.16% 8.50%
As % of the General category 16.30% 12.74% 14.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,583 1,344 2,076
10th Percentile £350 £350 £311
25th Percentile £414 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.90% - -1.87%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £688 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 157 71 165
10th Percentile £13.69 £16.36 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.00 £18.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £23.83 £25.08 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.99% +9.02% +11.43%
75th Percentile £35.53 £33.58 £55.11
90th Percentile £66.80 £62.24 £71.55
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £22.39 £21.86
% change year-on-year +6.43% +2.40% +7.05%

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 22,483 15,368 21,164
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.10% 64.06% 58.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,838 9,963 13,637
10th Percentile £311 £285 £281
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £628 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £513 £514 £525
% change year-on-year -0.19% -2.19% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,518 670 1,792
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.64 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.18 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.67 £27.39 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.97% -8.71% -6.25%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.75 £51.91
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.25
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.69%

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 24 May 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 24 May 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 24 May 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 1,650 £525 - 434
North of England -4 661 £450 -5.21% 269
South East -1 432 £500 -6.98% 221
Midlands +5 375 £500 +9.15% 124
North West 0 314 £475 -5.00% 109
West Midlands +3 303 £495 +9.11% 90
South West -5 256 £525 -4.55% 110
Yorkshire +4 222 £450 -1.10% 96
North East -3 132 £450 -3.23% 65
East of England +17 84 £450 - 40
East Midlands +7 66 £525 +10.53% 33
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
1 142 (3.88%) Confluence
2 105 (2.87%) SharePoint
3 45 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
4 30 (0.82%) SAS
5 23 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (0.57%) Apache Spark
7 17 (0.46%) Apache
8 15 (0.41%) CMS
9 9 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
10 7 (0.19%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
10 7 (0.19%) Tomcat
11 6 (0.16%) nginx
11 6 (0.16%) WebLogic
12 5 (0.14%) Camunda
13 4 (0.11%) Drupal
14 3 (0.082%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.082%) Anypoint
14 3 (0.082%) WordPress
15 2 (0.055%) OpenStack
Applications
1 77 (2.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 61 (1.66%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
4 25 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.35%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.19%) Trello
8 4 (0.11%) Adobe XD
8 4 (0.11%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.11%) Sketch
9 3 (0.082%) Adobe After Effects
10 2 (0.055%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.055%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.027%) Adobe Premiere
11 1 (0.027%) InVision
11 1 (0.027%) Quicktime
11 1 (0.027%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.027%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 59 (1.61%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.52%) SAP PSCD
4 17 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
5 14 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
6 10 (0.27%) SystmOne
7 9 (0.25%) iTrent
7 9 (0.25%) SAP BRIM
7 9 (0.25%) SAP Hybris
8 8 (0.22%) NEC Housing
9 7 (0.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 6 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
10 6 (0.16%) SAP ERP
11 5 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
11 5 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
11 5 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
11 5 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
12 4 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 4 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
12 4 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 698 (19.05%) AWS
2 631 (17.22%) Azure
3 188 (5.13%) Power Platform
4 165 (4.50%) Microsoft 365
5 140 (3.82%) GitHub
5 140 (3.82%) Serverless
6 130 (3.55%) GCP
7 129 (3.52%) Azure DevOps
8 105 (2.87%) Entra ID
9 99 (2.70%) Amazon S3
10 86 (2.35%) AWS Lambda
10 86 (2.35%) SaaS
11 80 (2.18%) GitHub Actions
12 77 (2.10%) Amazon EC2
13 66 (1.80%) Power Automate
14 64 (1.75%) Amazon EKS
15 63 (1.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 63 (1.72%) OCI
16 62 (1.69%) Dynamics 365
17 59 (1.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 98 (2.67%) Firewall
2 54 (1.47%) WAN
3 50 (1.36%) DNS
3 50 (1.36%) Network Security
4 44 (1.20%) VPN
5 40 (1.09%) LAN
6 35 (0.96%) BGP
7 30 (0.82%) OSPF
8 26 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
9 24 (0.66%) TCP/IP
10 21 (0.57%) SD-WAN
11 19 (0.52%) DHCP
11 19 (0.52%) VXLAN
12 18 (0.49%) BIG-IP
13 17 (0.46%) Ethernet VPN
14 16 (0.44%) SSL
15 14 (0.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 12 (0.33%) DKIM
16 12 (0.33%) WLAN
17 11 (0.30%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (3.52%) Power BI
2 78 (2.13%) PostgreSQL
3 71 (1.94%) Data Warehouse
4 66 (1.80%) SQL Server
5 58 (1.58%) MongoDB
6 53 (1.45%) Metadata
7 50 (1.36%) Amazon RDS
8 42 (1.15%) NoSQL
9 34 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
10 32 (0.87%) Data Lake
11 31 (0.85%) DynamoDB
11 31 (0.85%) Oracle Database
11 31 (0.85%) Tableau
12 28 (0.76%) Relational Database
13 21 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
13 21 (0.57%) Electronic Patient Records
14 20 (0.55%) Pentaho
15 18 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
15 18 (0.49%) Delta Lake
16 17 (0.46%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 214 (5.84%) JIRA
2 163 (4.45%) Git
3 143 (3.90%) GitLab
4 120 (3.28%) Jenkins
5 49 (1.34%) Selenium
6 40 (1.09%) JUnit
7 34 (0.93%) Mockito
8 32 (0.87%) SonarQube
9 31 (0.85%) Postman
10 26 (0.71%) JMeter
11 24 (0.66%) Cucumber
12 22 (0.60%) Cypress.io
13 21 (0.57%) Maven
14 17 (0.46%) CircleCI
15 16 (0.44%) REST Assured
16 14 (0.38%) Artifactory
16 14 (0.38%) DbUnit
17 13 (0.35%) jMock
18 12 (0.33%) Gatling
19 11 (0.30%) Bitbucket Server
General
1 918 (25.05%) Social Skills
2 449 (12.25%) Finance
3 356 (9.72%) Analytical Skills
4 196 (5.35%) Military
5 160 (4.37%) Local Government
6 93 (2.54%) Organisational Skills
7 83 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
7 83 (2.27%) Telecoms
8 81 (2.21%) Legal
9 77 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 72 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
11 65 (1.77%) Marketing
12 60 (1.64%) Police
13 54 (1.47%) Banking
14 53 (1.45%) Law
15 45 (1.23%) Manufacturing
16 36 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
17 35 (0.96%) Electronics
18 28 (0.76%) Billing
19 26 (0.71%) Retail
Job Titles
1 497 (13.56%) Developer
2 476 (12.99%) Architect
3 420 (11.46%) Senior
4 346 (9.44%) Analyst
5 321 (8.76%) Lead
6 158 (4.31%) Designer
7 150 (4.09%) Business Analyst
8 142 (3.88%) Consultant
9 125 (3.41%) DevOps Engineer
10 124 (3.38%) Data Engineer
11 114 (3.11%) Technical Architect
12 113 (3.08%) Project Manager
13 110 (3.00%) Java Developer
14 106 (2.89%) Solutions Architect
15 90 (2.46%) Senior Developer
16 86 (2.35%) User Researcher
17 85 (2.32%) Delivery Manager
18 69 (1.88%) Service Designer
19 64 (1.75%) Administrator
20 60 (1.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 135 (3.68%) REST
2 129 (3.52%) Node.js
3 115 (3.14%) Spring
4 102 (2.78%) Spring Boot
5 98 (2.67%) React
6 92 (2.51%) RESTful
7 69 (1.88%) Oracle Fusion
7 69 (1.88%) Web Services
8 68 (1.86%) AngularJS
9 67 (1.83%) Kafka
10 64 (1.75%) .NET
10 64 (1.75%) SOAP
11 62 (1.69%) HTML
12 51 (1.39%) CSS
13 44 (1.20%) Lightning Web Components
14 41 (1.12%) OAuth
15 40 (1.09%) Playwright
16 36 (0.98%) Middleware
17 34 (0.93%) JSON
18 26 (0.71%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 176 (4.80%) Cloud Native
2 141 (3.85%) Product Ownership
3 129 (3.52%) NHS
3 129 (3.52%) Onboarding
4 83 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
5 76 (2.07%) Management Information System
6 70 (1.91%) Data Centre
7 53 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
8 46 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
8 46 (1.26%) Public Cloud
9 44 (1.20%) Data Structures
10 39 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
11 37 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
12 32 (0.87%) CMDB
13 28 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
14 26 (0.71%) Freedom of Information
15 22 (0.60%) Mobile App
15 22 (0.60%) PKI
16 21 (0.57%) Virtual Team
17 20 (0.55%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 170 (4.64%) Windows
2 155 (4.23%) Linux
3 57 (1.56%) Windows Server
4 52 (1.42%) Unix
5 27 (0.74%) Android
6 26 (0.71%) Apple iOS
6 26 (0.71%) Windows 10
7 22 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 19 (0.52%) Mac OS
9 11 (0.30%) Ubuntu
10 9 (0.25%) Mac OS X
10 9 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
11 8 (0.22%) Solaris
12 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
13 5 (0.14%) VMS
13 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.11%) AIX
15 3 (0.082%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.082%) Windows Server 2012
16 2 (0.055%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 964 (26.31%) Agile
2 544 (14.85%) CI/CD
3 528 (14.41%) DevOps
4 493 (13.46%) Stakeholder Management
5 401 (10.94%) Continuous Improvement
6 388 (10.59%) Problem-Solving
7 379 (10.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 332 (9.06%) Migration
9 314 (8.57%) Analytics
9 314 (8.57%) Decision-Making
10 297 (8.11%) Roadmaps
11 249 (6.80%) Data Modelling
12 244 (6.66%) Containerisation
13 240 (6.55%) Infrastructure as Code
14 229 (6.25%) Test Automation
15 221 (6.03%) AI
16 219 (5.98%) Microservices
16 219 (5.98%) User Research
17 189 (5.16%) Workshop Facilitation
18 187 (5.10%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 390 (10.64%) Python
2 335 (9.14%) SQL
3 285 (7.78%) Java
4 187 (5.10%) JavaScript
5 109 (2.97%) PowerShell
6 105 (2.87%) TypeScript
7 77 (2.10%) C#
8 50 (1.36%) Bash
9 47 (1.28%) Apex Code
10 44 (1.20%) Ruby
11 41 (1.12%) PL/SQL
12 24 (0.66%) Bicep
13 23 (0.63%) Kotlin
14 21 (0.57%) Go
14 21 (0.57%) R
14 21 (0.57%) Shell Script
15 15 (0.41%) Scala
16 12 (0.33%) PHP
17 11 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 11 (0.30%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,978 (53.98%) Security Cleared
2 1,344 (36.68%) SC Cleared
3 188 (5.13%) DV Cleared
4 173 (4.72%) Degree
5 116 (3.17%) BPSS Clearance
6 45 (1.23%) Azure Certification
7 40 (1.09%) CISSP
8 35 (0.96%) AWS Certification
9 34 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
10 32 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
11 28 (0.76%) PMP
12 25 (0.68%) CISM
12 25 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
13 23 (0.63%) PMI Certification
14 21 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
15 15 (0.41%) DBS Check
16 14 (0.38%) CCNP
17 13 (0.35%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 13 (0.35%) APMP
17 13 (0.35%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 251 (6.85%) Accessibility
2 160 (4.37%) Data Quality
3 158 (4.31%) QA
4 104 (2.84%) GDPR
5 97 (2.65%) WCAG
6 80 (2.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 69 (1.88%) NCSC
8 67 (1.83%) PMO
9 56 (1.53%) NIST
10 29 (0.79%) SLA
11 28 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials
11 28 (0.76%) GRC
12 20 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.41%) PCI DSS
14 11 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 10 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
15 10 (0.27%) HL7
16 8 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 7 (0.19%) COBIT
17 7 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 253 (6.91%) Docker
2 153 (4.18%) Active Directory
3 40 (1.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.60%) VMware NSX
5 17 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
7 12 (0.33%) Hyper-V
8 11 (0.30%) Postfix
9 10 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
10 8 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
10 8 (0.22%) vSphere
11 4 (0.11%) NFS
12 3 (0.082%) RACF
13 2 (0.055%) ISA Server
13 2 (0.055%) Squid
13 2 (0.055%) SRDF
14 1 (0.027%) FreeRADIUS
14 1 (0.027%) GPFS
14 1 (0.027%) RHEV
14 1 (0.027%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 276 (7.53%) Terraform
2 245 (6.69%) Kubernetes
3 87 (2.37%) Grafana
4 79 (2.16%) Ansible
5 61 (1.66%) Prometheus
6 44 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
7 40 (1.09%) Microsoft Intune
8 21 (0.57%) Argo
9 16 (0.44%) Puppet
10 14 (0.38%) SCCM
11 12 (0.33%) Kibana
12 10 (0.27%) vCenter Server
13 9 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
14 8 (0.22%) FortiGate
15 7 (0.19%) Progress Chef
16 6 (0.16%) Istio
16 6 (0.16%) Rancher
17 5 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 5 (0.14%) Data Guard
18 4 (0.11%) SCOM
Vendors
1 409 (11.16%) Microsoft
2 217 (5.92%) Oracle
3 168 (4.59%) SAP
4 122 (3.33%) Salesforce
5 116 (3.17%) ServiceNow
6 92 (2.51%) Google
7 78 (2.13%) Databricks
8 68 (1.86%) VMware
9 45 (1.23%) Cisco
10 42 (1.15%) Splunk
11 35 (0.96%) Red Hat
12 32 (0.87%) Atlassian
12 32 (0.87%) Palo Alto
13 29 (0.79%) Dynatrace
14 27 (0.74%) IBM
15 26 (0.71%) F5
15 26 (0.71%) MuleSoft
15 26 (0.71%) Talend
16 25 (0.68%) Virgin Media
17 20 (0.55%) CyberArk