Public Sector Contracts 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 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 20 16 15
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 +8
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 2,150 3,305 4,625
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 8.83% 8.88% 9.17%
As % of the General category 13.80% 15.20% 15.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,470 2,205 3,480
10th Percentile £340 £311 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% +6.93%
75th Percentile £606 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £725 £734
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 166 88
10th Percentile £15.28 £12.75 £14.90
25th Percentile £18.20 £15.39 £17.44
Median hourly rate £22.39 £22.12 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.22% +10.58% -
75th Percentile £33.86 £55.08 £30.00
90th Percentile £64.78 £70.44 £47.88
UK median hourly rate £22.50 £21.50 £20.00
% change year-on-year +4.65% +7.50% -

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 common skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 15,582 21,742 29,876
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 64.02% 58.41% 59.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,120 14,023 20,959
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £413 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £650 £650 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +2.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 674 1,785 974
10th Percentile £14.01 £13.00 £13.97
25th Percentile £17.27 £15.50 £18.25
Median hourly rate £28.00 £30.00 £33.91
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% -11.53% +57.72%
75th Percentile £58.34 £51.75 £61.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -6.67% -14.29% +59.71%

Public Sector
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Public Sector as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Public Sector in England

Public Sector
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Public Sector in England.

Daily rate trend for Public Sector in England

Public Sector
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Public Sector in England over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Public Sector in England

Public Sector
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Public Sector in England.

Hourly rate trend for Public Sector in England

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Public Sector in England over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

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 30 April 2025. 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 -6 1,031 £525 -2.33% 549
North of England 0 353 £475 -9.52% 251
South East +2 280 £539 +19.78% 176
South West -1 207 £550 -3.51% 137
North West -4 196 £500 -4.76% 141
Midlands -7 131 £463 +2.78% 177
West Midlands -2 109 £453 -9.33% 102
North East +6 80 £463 -11.90% 29
Yorkshire -11 77 £461 -12.14% 82
East of England -2 27 £388 - 43
East Midlands -19 22 £500 +81.82% 72
Public Sector
UK

Public Sector
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 80 (3.72%) SharePoint
2 63 (2.93%) Confluence
3 47 (2.19%) Microsoft Exchange
4 17 (0.79%) Apache
5 11 (0.51%) Skype for Business
6 9 (0.42%) Apache Spark
6 9 (0.42%) CMS
6 9 (0.42%) nginx
7 8 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (0.37%) Camunda
8 7 (0.33%) IIS
8 7 (0.33%) Jupyter
9 6 (0.28%) ArcGIS
10 5 (0.23%) Drupal
10 5 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
11 4 (0.19%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.19%) SAS
12 3 (0.14%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
12 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
Applications
1 63 (2.93%) Microsoft Office
2 34 (1.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
4 13 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.33%) MS Visio
6 6 (0.28%) Sketch
7 5 (0.23%) Oracle Smart View
7 5 (0.23%) Trello
8 3 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
8 3 (0.14%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.093%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.093%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.093%) Adobe Premiere
9 2 (0.093%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.093%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.093%) CINEMA 4D
9 2 (0.093%) Final Cut Pro
9 2 (0.093%) InVision
9 2 (0.093%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 22 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.70%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.51%) Oracle EBS
4 8 (0.37%) SAP PSCD
5 7 (0.33%) SAP BRIM
5 7 (0.33%) SAP Hybris
6 6 (0.28%) SAP HR
6 6 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
7 4 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
7 4 (0.19%) Oracle Financials
7 4 (0.19%) SAP Payroll
8 3 (0.14%) Exchequer
8 3 (0.14%) Primavera
8 3 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
8 3 (0.14%) SAP GRC
8 3 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 2 (0.093%) NetSuite
9 2 (0.093%) Oracle EBS R12
9 2 (0.093%) Oracle HRMS
9 2 (0.093%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 363 (16.88%) AWS
2 338 (15.72%) Azure
3 139 (6.47%) Power Platform
4 98 (4.56%) Microsoft 365
5 97 (4.51%) Serverless
6 67 (3.12%) Amazon S3
7 65 (3.02%) AWS Lambda
8 63 (2.93%) Azure DevOps
9 56 (2.60%) GCP
9 56 (2.60%) GitHub
10 51 (2.37%) PowerApps
11 48 (2.23%) Power Automate
12 44 (2.05%) AWS CloudFormation
12 44 (2.05%) Entra ID
13 41 (1.91%) Dynamics 365
14 36 (1.67%) Azure Data Factory
15 34 (1.58%) Amazon EKS
15 34 (1.58%) SaaS
16 31 (1.44%) GitHub Actions
17 25 (1.16%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 74 (3.44%) Firewall
2 59 (2.74%) DNS
2 59 (2.74%) VPN
3 39 (1.81%) DHCP
4 34 (1.58%) Network Security
5 32 (1.49%) WAN
6 22 (1.02%) BGP
6 22 (1.02%) LAN
7 17 (0.79%) IPsec
8 15 (0.70%) OSPF
9 14 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
10 13 (0.60%) EIGRP
10 13 (0.60%) SAN
10 13 (0.60%) Wireless
11 12 (0.56%) SMTP
12 11 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
12 11 (0.51%) Internet
12 11 (0.51%) MPLS
13 10 (0.47%) Skype
13 10 (0.47%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 101 (4.70%) PostgreSQL
2 89 (4.14%) Power BI
3 59 (2.74%) MongoDB
4 46 (2.14%) Amazon RDS
4 46 (2.14%) Relational Database
5 41 (1.91%) Data Warehouse
6 40 (1.86%) NoSQL
7 39 (1.81%) MySQL
8 36 (1.67%) SQL Server
9 34 (1.58%) Data Lake
9 34 (1.58%) Tableau
10 28 (1.30%) Metadata
11 24 (1.12%) Big Data
12 20 (0.93%) Amazon Athena
13 19 (0.88%) DynamoDB
14 17 (0.79%) Oracle Database
15 14 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
16 12 (0.56%) Amazon Redshift
16 12 (0.56%) Apache Cassandra
16 12 (0.56%) Redis
Development Applications
1 96 (4.47%) JIRA
2 85 (3.95%) Jenkins
3 81 (3.77%) Git
4 70 (3.26%) GitLab
5 45 (2.09%) JUnit
6 30 (1.40%) Mockito
7 27 (1.26%) Cucumber
8 25 (1.16%) Selenium
9 22 (1.02%) Liquibase
10 21 (0.98%) Gradle
11 18 (0.84%) Maven
11 18 (0.84%) SonarQube
12 15 (0.70%) Cypress.io
13 11 (0.51%) Jasmine
13 11 (0.51%) Postman
14 9 (0.42%) REST Assured
15 7 (0.33%) gulp
15 7 (0.33%) Visual Studio
16 6 (0.28%) JMeter
17 5 (0.23%) ERwin
General
1 498 (23.16%) Social Skills
2 347 (16.14%) Finance
3 229 (10.65%) Analytical Skills
4 213 (9.91%) Telecoms
5 205 (9.53%) Marketing
6 187 (8.70%) Manufacturing
7 179 (8.33%) Electronics
8 125 (5.81%) Military
9 105 (4.88%) Local Government
10 38 (1.77%) Law
11 29 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 28 (1.30%) Police
13 27 (1.26%) Legal
14 25 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
15 22 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
16 21 (0.98%) Documentation Skills
16 21 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
17 19 (0.88%) Banking
18 15 (0.70%) Back Office
19 11 (0.51%) Fire and Rescue
Job Titles
1 304 (14.14%) Architect
2 280 (13.02%) Developer
3 231 (10.74%) Senior
4 170 (7.91%) Analyst
5 148 (6.88%) Lead
6 88 (4.09%) Consultant
7 82 (3.81%) Data Engineer
7 82 (3.81%) Project Manager
8 79 (3.67%) DevOps Engineer
9 72 (3.35%) Business Analyst
10 69 (3.21%) Java Developer
11 57 (2.65%) Support Engineer
12 52 (2.42%) Technical Architect
13 48 (2.23%) Designer
14 45 (2.09%) Azure Engineer
14 45 (2.09%) Network Engineer
15 43 (2.00%) Senior Developer
16 42 (1.95%) Senior Manager
17 39 (1.81%) Delivery Manager
17 39 (1.81%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 99 (4.60%) React
2 89 (4.14%) Kafka
3 80 (3.72%) Spring
4 79 (3.67%) Spring Boot
5 69 (3.21%) HTML
6 67 (3.12%) .NET
7 63 (2.93%) Node.js
8 57 (2.65%) CSS
9 39 (1.81%) AngularJS
10 38 (1.77%) REST
11 36 (1.67%) SOAP
12 34 (1.58%) Oracle Fusion
12 34 (1.58%) Swagger
13 33 (1.53%) OpenAPI
14 32 (1.49%) RESTful
15 27 (1.26%) Web Services
16 22 (1.02%) PySpark
17 21 (0.98%) Jinja
17 21 (0.98%) OAuth
18 18 (0.84%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 94 (4.37%) Onboarding
2 61 (2.84%) Management Information System
3 56 (2.60%) NHS
4 50 (2.33%) PKI
5 40 (1.86%) Product Ownership
6 34 (1.58%) Data Centre
7 25 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
7 25 (1.16%) Legacy Systems
8 23 (1.07%) Driving Licence
9 22 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
10 21 (0.98%) Clustering
11 17 (0.79%) CMDB
11 17 (0.79%) Security Posture
12 15 (0.70%) Enterprise Software
12 15 (0.70%) Public Cloud
12 15 (0.70%) Social Media
13 14 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
14 12 (0.56%) Operational Technology
15 11 (0.51%) Virtual Team
16 10 (0.47%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 184 (8.56%) Windows
2 105 (4.88%) Linux
3 57 (2.65%) Windows Server
4 42 (1.95%) Windows 10
5 33 (1.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (0.98%) Unix
7 16 (0.74%) Mac OS
8 11 (0.51%) Apple iOS
8 11 (0.51%) CentOS
9 10 (0.47%) VMS
9 10 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
10 9 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
10 9 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
11 7 (0.33%) Android
12 6 (0.28%) Windows 7
12 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.093%) AIX
14 2 (0.093%) HPUX
14 2 (0.093%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 495 (23.02%) Agile
2 293 (13.63%) DevOps
3 289 (13.44%) Problem-Solving
4 272 (12.65%) Business Intelligence
5 240 (11.16%) Stakeholder Management
6 235 (10.93%) CI/CD
7 198 (9.21%) Programme Management
8 183 (8.51%) Digital Marketing
9 168 (7.81%) Project Management
10 152 (7.07%) ITIL
11 147 (6.84%) Microservices
12 145 (6.74%) Migration
13 130 (6.05%) Test Automation
14 129 (6.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 120 (5.58%) Analytics
16 118 (5.49%) Containerisation
17 112 (5.21%) Decision-Making
18 111 (5.16%) Data Modelling
19 109 (5.07%) Mentoring
19 109 (5.07%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 278 (12.93%) SQL
2 246 (11.44%) Python
3 178 (8.28%) Java
4 152 (7.07%) JavaScript
5 124 (5.77%) PowerShell
6 67 (3.12%) Bash
7 63 (2.93%) TypeScript
8 60 (2.79%) C#
9 21 (0.98%) R
10 17 (0.79%) PL/SQL
11 15 (0.70%) Bicep
11 15 (0.70%) Ruby
12 11 (0.51%) C++
12 11 (0.51%) Go
13 10 (0.47%) Shell Script
14 9 (0.42%) Groovy
14 9 (0.42%) Kotlin
15 8 (0.37%) Kusto Query Language
15 8 (0.37%) Scala
16 7 (0.33%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,233 (57.35%) Security Cleared
2 888 (41.30%) SC Cleared
3 170 (7.91%) DV Cleared
4 151 (7.02%) Degree
5 34 (1.58%) AWS Certification
5 34 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
6 32 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
7 29 (1.35%) CISSP
7 29 (1.35%) ITIL Certification
8 28 (1.30%) Microsoft Certification
9 26 (1.21%) BPSS Clearance
9 26 (1.21%) Master's Degree
10 24 (1.12%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 23 (1.07%) CCNA
12 19 (0.88%) CISM
12 19 (0.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 17 (0.79%) AWS Certified Developer
14 15 (0.70%) CCNP
15 14 (0.65%) Azure Certification
16 13 (0.60%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 80 (3.72%) Accessibility
2 65 (3.02%) QA
3 43 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 41 (1.91%) Data Quality
5 40 (1.86%) GDPR
6 33 (1.53%) SLA
7 31 (1.44%) NCSC
7 31 (1.44%) NIST
8 27 (1.26%) WCAG
9 18 (0.84%) GRC
9 18 (0.84%) PMO
10 10 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 8 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
11 8 (0.37%) HIPAA
11 8 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 7 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
12 7 (0.33%) Def Stans
12 7 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 7 (0.33%) JSP 440
13 6 (0.28%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 137 (6.37%) Active Directory
2 132 (6.14%) Docker
3 59 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (1.40%) VMware ESXi
5 24 (1.12%) VMware NSX
6 21 (0.98%) Hyper-V
7 15 (0.70%) BitLocker
8 13 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.51%) vSphere
10 8 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
10 8 (0.37%) Terminal Services
11 7 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
12 6 (0.28%) Firmware
13 5 (0.23%) NFS
13 5 (0.23%) Postfix
14 4 (0.19%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 3 (0.14%) IAG
15 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
16 2 (0.093%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 154 (7.16%) Kubernetes
2 148 (6.88%) Terraform
3 62 (2.88%) Ansible
4 45 (2.09%) Microsoft Intune
5 27 (1.26%) Grafana
6 26 (1.21%) Prometheus
7 24 (1.12%) vCenter Server
8 20 (0.93%) SCCM
9 19 (0.88%) Puppet
10 13 (0.60%) Packer
11 12 (0.56%) WSUS
12 11 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
12 11 (0.51%) vMotion
13 8 (0.37%) Nagios
14 7 (0.33%) FortiGate
15 6 (0.28%) Istio
15 6 (0.28%) vRealize
16 5 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
16 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Clustering
16 5 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 334 (15.53%) Microsoft
2 226 (10.51%) SAP
3 129 (6.00%) Oracle
4 84 (3.91%) VMware
5 79 (3.67%) Cisco
6 68 (3.16%) ServiceNow
7 64 (2.98%) Google
8 56 (2.60%) Virgin Media
9 46 (2.14%) Databricks
10 29 (1.35%) Atlassian
11 26 (1.21%) HP
12 25 (1.16%) Juniper
13 23 (1.07%) Palo Alto
14 21 (0.98%) Citrix
14 21 (0.98%) Splunk
15 20 (0.93%) Salesforce
16 16 (0.74%) Adobe
16 16 (0.74%) Dell
17 14 (0.65%) IBM
18 13 (0.60%) CheckPoint