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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 19 22 17
Rank change year-on-year +3 -5 -1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,664 1,929 3,095
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.79% 8.11% 8.47%
As % of the General category 16.22% 12.66% 14.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,578 1,321 2,081
10th Percentile £355 £350 £313
25th Percentile £419 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.19% - -
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 161 67 165
10th Percentile £13.69 £17.42 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.09 £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 £34.31 £55.11
90th Percentile £72.50 £63.45 £71.55
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £22.27 £21.86
% change year-on-year +6.98% +1.88% +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 22,594 15,235 21,177
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.23% 64.08% 57.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,884 9,879 13,638
10th Percentile £313 £285 £281
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £513 £514 £525
% change year-on-year -0.29% -2.10% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,539 664 1,801
10th Percentile £14.21 £13.28 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.30 £16.67 £15.46
Median hourly rate £30.58 £27.25 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.22% -9.17% -6.25%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.75 £51.91
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.74
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.45 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.29% -8.50% -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 27 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 27 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 27 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 +4 1,653 £525 -0.94% 462
North of England -3 655 £453 -4.74% 277
South East 0 430 £500 -6.72% 215
Midlands +4 381 £500 +8.11% 123
North West 0 313 £475 -5.00% 117
West Midlands +1 309 £495 +8.06% 92
South West -3 256 £525 -4.55% 127
Yorkshire +6 219 £450 -2.17% 92
North East -3 130 £450 -3.23% 69
East of England +22 84 £450 - 47
East Midlands +5 66 £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
1 138 (3.77%) Confluence
2 105 (2.87%) SharePoint
3 45 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
4 30 (0.82%) SAS
5 24 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
6 22 (0.60%) Apache Spark
7 20 (0.55%) Apache
8 16 (0.44%) CMS
9 9 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
10 8 (0.22%) nginx
10 8 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
11 7 (0.19%) Jupyter
11 7 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 6 (0.16%) WebLogic
13 5 (0.14%) Camunda
14 4 (0.11%) Drupal
14 4 (0.11%) WordPress
15 3 (0.082%) Anypoint
16 2 (0.055%) OpenROAD
16 2 (0.055%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 75 (2.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 59 (1.61%) 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 33 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.52%) SAP PSCD
4 17 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
5 16 (0.44%) Oracle EBS
6 10 (0.27%) SystmOne
7 9 (0.25%) SAP BRIM
7 9 (0.25%) SAP Hybris
8 8 (0.22%) NEC Housing
8 8 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 6 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
9 6 (0.16%) SAP ERP
10 5 (0.14%) iTrent
10 5 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
10 5 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
10 5 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 4 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 4 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 4 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
11 4 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 697 (19.02%) AWS
2 637 (17.39%) Azure
3 186 (5.08%) Power Platform
4 166 (4.53%) Microsoft 365
5 134 (3.66%) GitHub
6 132 (3.60%) Serverless
7 130 (3.55%) Azure DevOps
8 128 (3.49%) GCP
9 106 (2.89%) Entra ID
10 98 (2.67%) Amazon S3
11 90 (2.46%) SaaS
12 81 (2.21%) AWS Lambda
13 76 (2.07%) GitHub Actions
14 75 (2.05%) Amazon EC2
15 67 (1.83%) Power Automate
16 64 (1.75%) OCI
17 63 (1.72%) Dynamics 365
18 62 (1.69%) Amazon EKS
19 61 (1.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 58 (1.58%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 98 (2.67%) Firewall
2 55 (1.50%) WAN
3 52 (1.42%) DNS
4 50 (1.36%) Network Security
5 43 (1.17%) VPN
6 41 (1.12%) LAN
7 35 (0.96%) BGP
8 30 (0.82%) OSPF
9 28 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
10 24 (0.66%) TCP/IP
11 22 (0.60%) SD-WAN
12 20 (0.55%) DHCP
13 19 (0.52%) BIG-IP
13 19 (0.52%) VXLAN
14 17 (0.46%) Ethernet VPN
15 15 (0.41%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 15 (0.41%) SSL
16 13 (0.35%) WLAN
17 12 (0.33%) DKIM
18 11 (0.30%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (3.47%) Power BI
2 80 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
3 69 (1.88%) Data Warehouse
4 67 (1.83%) SQL Server
5 59 (1.61%) MongoDB
6 54 (1.47%) Metadata
7 48 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
8 43 (1.17%) NoSQL
9 35 (0.96%) Oracle Reports
10 33 (0.90%) Data Lake
11 32 (0.87%) Oracle Database
12 31 (0.85%) DynamoDB
13 30 (0.82%) Relational Database
13 30 (0.82%) Tableau
14 21 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
14 21 (0.57%) Electronic Patient Records
15 20 (0.55%) Pentaho
16 19 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
17 18 (0.49%) Delta Lake
18 16 (0.44%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 211 (5.76%) JIRA
2 158 (4.31%) Git
3 143 (3.90%) GitLab
4 119 (3.25%) Jenkins
5 50 (1.36%) Selenium
6 40 (1.09%) JUnit
7 34 (0.93%) Mockito
8 31 (0.85%) Postman
9 30 (0.82%) SonarQube
10 25 (0.68%) JMeter
11 24 (0.66%) Cucumber
12 22 (0.60%) Cypress.io
13 21 (0.57%) Maven
14 17 (0.46%) CircleCI
14 17 (0.46%) REST Assured
15 14 (0.38%) DbUnit
16 13 (0.35%) Artifactory
16 13 (0.35%) jMock
17 11 (0.30%) Bitbucket Server
17 11 (0.30%) Gatling
General
1 927 (25.30%) Social Skills
2 448 (12.23%) Finance
3 351 (9.58%) Analytical Skills
4 196 (5.35%) Military
5 161 (4.39%) Local Government
6 93 (2.54%) Organisational Skills
7 84 (2.29%) Documentation Skills
8 82 (2.24%) Legal
9 80 (2.18%) Telecoms
10 74 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 72 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
12 63 (1.72%) Marketing
13 60 (1.64%) Police
14 55 (1.50%) Banking
15 52 (1.42%) Law
16 42 (1.15%) Manufacturing
17 35 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
18 32 (0.87%) Electronics
19 28 (0.76%) Billing
20 26 (0.71%) Retail
Job Titles
1 493 (13.46%) Developer
2 479 (13.07%) Architect
3 420 (11.46%) Senior
4 345 (9.42%) Analyst
5 329 (8.98%) Lead
6 158 (4.31%) Designer
7 149 (4.07%) Business Analyst
8 146 (3.98%) Consultant
9 127 (3.47%) DevOps Engineer
10 124 (3.38%) Data Engineer
11 115 (3.14%) Project Manager
12 114 (3.11%) Technical Architect
13 111 (3.03%) Java Developer
14 107 (2.92%) Solutions Architect
15 89 (2.43%) Senior Developer
16 86 (2.35%) User Researcher
17 85 (2.32%) Delivery Manager
18 69 (1.88%) Service Designer
19 65 (1.77%) Administrator
20 61 (1.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (3.55%) REST
2 123 (3.36%) Node.js
3 115 (3.14%) Spring
4 101 (2.76%) Spring Boot
5 98 (2.67%) React
6 89 (2.43%) RESTful
7 70 (1.91%) Kafka
7 70 (1.91%) Web Services
8 67 (1.83%) AngularJS
8 67 (1.83%) Oracle Fusion
9 65 (1.77%) .NET
9 65 (1.77%) SOAP
10 60 (1.64%) HTML
11 50 (1.36%) CSS
12 45 (1.23%) Lightning Web Components
13 42 (1.15%) OAuth
14 39 (1.06%) Playwright
15 37 (1.01%) Middleware
16 35 (0.96%) JSON
17 27 (0.74%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 179 (4.89%) Cloud Native
2 143 (3.90%) Product Ownership
3 131 (3.58%) Onboarding
4 125 (3.41%) NHS
5 85 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
6 77 (2.10%) Management Information System
7 71 (1.94%) Data Centre
8 52 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
9 46 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
10 45 (1.23%) Public Cloud
11 44 (1.20%) Data Structures
12 43 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
13 38 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
14 31 (0.85%) CMDB
15 28 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
16 24 (0.66%) Freedom of Information
16 24 (0.66%) PKI
17 22 (0.60%) Mobile App
18 21 (0.57%) Virtual Team
19 20 (0.55%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 167 (4.56%) Windows
2 155 (4.23%) Linux
3 58 (1.58%) Windows Server
4 51 (1.39%) Unix
5 27 (0.74%) Android
6 26 (0.71%) Apple iOS
7 24 (0.66%) Windows 10
8 23 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 19 (0.52%) Mac OS
10 12 (0.33%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.25%) Mac OS X
11 9 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.22%) Solaris
13 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
14 5 (0.14%) VMS
14 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
15 4 (0.11%) AIX
16 3 (0.082%) Amazon Linux
16 3 (0.082%) Windows Server 2012
17 2 (0.055%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 964 (26.31%) Agile
2 548 (14.96%) CI/CD
3 535 (14.60%) DevOps
4 493 (13.46%) Stakeholder Management
5 405 (11.05%) Continuous Improvement
6 387 (10.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 381 (10.40%) Problem-Solving
8 332 (9.06%) Migration
9 312 (8.52%) Decision-Making
10 311 (8.49%) Analytics
11 298 (8.13%) Roadmaps
12 253 (6.91%) Data Modelling
13 245 (6.69%) Infrastructure as Code
14 239 (6.52%) Containerisation
15 225 (6.14%) Test Automation
16 222 (6.06%) AI
17 220 (6.00%) User Research
18 216 (5.90%) Microservices
19 187 (5.10%) Scrum
20 186 (5.08%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 386 (10.53%) Python
2 339 (9.25%) SQL
3 288 (7.86%) Java
4 187 (5.10%) JavaScript
5 109 (2.97%) PowerShell
6 103 (2.81%) TypeScript
7 78 (2.13%) C#
8 51 (1.39%) Bash
9 48 (1.31%) Apex Code
10 44 (1.20%) PL/SQL
11 42 (1.15%) Ruby
12 23 (0.63%) Bicep
12 23 (0.63%) Kotlin
13 21 (0.57%) Shell Script
14 20 (0.55%) Go
14 20 (0.55%) R
15 15 (0.41%) Scala
16 12 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 11 (0.30%) PHP
17 11 (0.30%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,973 (53.85%) Security Cleared
2 1,351 (36.87%) SC Cleared
3 189 (5.16%) DV Cleared
4 172 (4.69%) Degree
5 116 (3.17%) BPSS Clearance
6 46 (1.26%) Azure Certification
7 42 (1.15%) CISSP
8 36 (0.98%) AWS Certification
8 36 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
9 32 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
10 29 (0.79%) PMP
11 26 (0.71%) CISM
12 25 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
13 24 (0.66%) 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
1 256 (6.99%) Accessibility
2 157 (4.28%) Data Quality
3 155 (4.23%) QA
4 106 (2.89%) GDPR
5 100 (2.73%) WCAG
6 81 (2.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 70 (1.91%) NCSC
8 68 (1.86%) PMO
9 58 (1.58%) NIST
10 31 (0.85%) SLA
11 29 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials
11 29 (0.79%) GRC
12 20 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
13 16 (0.44%) PCI DSS
14 12 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 11 (0.30%) Government Security Classifications
16 9 (0.25%) HL7
17 8 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 7 (0.19%) COBIT
18 7 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 253 (6.91%) Docker
2 152 (4.15%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.63%) VMware NSX
5 18 (0.49%) 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 9 (0.25%) vSphere
11 8 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
12 4 (0.11%) NFS
13 3 (0.082%) RACF
14 2 (0.055%) Squid
14 2 (0.055%) SRDF
15 1 (0.027%) etcd
15 1 (0.027%) FreeRADIUS
15 1 (0.027%) GPFS
15 1 (0.027%) KVM
15 1 (0.027%) RHEV
Systems Management
1 278 (7.59%) Terraform
2 247 (6.74%) Kubernetes
3 87 (2.37%) Grafana
4 78 (2.13%) Ansible
5 62 (1.69%) Prometheus
6 44 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
7 38 (1.04%) Microsoft Intune
8 22 (0.60%) Argo
9 15 (0.41%) Puppet
10 14 (0.38%) SCCM
11 12 (0.33%) Kibana
12 11 (0.30%) vCenter Server
13 9 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
14 8 (0.22%) FortiGate
15 6 (0.16%) Istio
15 6 (0.16%) Progress Chef
15 6 (0.16%) Rancher
16 5 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 5 (0.14%) Data Guard
17 4 (0.11%) SCOM
Vendors
1 415 (11.33%) Microsoft
2 225 (6.14%) Oracle
3 162 (4.42%) SAP
4 126 (3.44%) Salesforce
5 114 (3.11%) ServiceNow
6 91 (2.48%) Google
7 80 (2.18%) Databricks
8 70 (1.91%) VMware
9 46 (1.26%) Cisco
10 39 (1.06%) 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%) F5
14 27 (0.74%) IBM
15 26 (0.71%) MuleSoft
15 26 (0.71%) Talend
16 25 (0.68%) Virgin Media
17 20 (0.55%) CyberArk