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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 23 19
Rank change year-on-year +2 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 4,007 2,161 2,667
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.79% 7.82% 8.00%
As % of the General category 15.86% 12.19% 13.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,797 1,487 1,818
10th Percentile £360 £337 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £513 £521
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -1.68% -3.07%
75th Percentile £606 £600 £630
90th Percentile £694 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £515 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +3.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 184 80 116
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.47 £15.10
25th Percentile £16.62 £18.09 £18.03
Median hourly rate £22.50 £21.70 £26.56
Median % change year-on-year +3.69% -18.31% +29.57%
75th Percentile £53.75 £30.06 £57.75
90th Percentile £77.43 £63.90 £74.13
UK median hourly rate £23.44 £19.71 £23.41
% change year-on-year +18.94% -15.81% +17.05%

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 25,260 17,724 19,192
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.40% 64.14% 57.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,052 11,294 12,322
10th Percentile £313 £278 £300
25th Percentile £419 £401 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -4.65% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £660
90th Percentile £750 £750 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,000 954 1,233
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.25 £14.45
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.43 £18.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +38.62%
75th Percentile £63.17 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £74.63 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £32.11 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +27.68% -34.02% +29.22%

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 11 August 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 11 August 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 11 August 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 1,767 £535 +1.90% 688
North of England +2 705 £475 -1.04% 331
Midlands +7 490 £492 +3.58% 161
South East +4 485 £500 -4.76% 219
West Midlands +5 411 £490 +3.16% 136
South West -6 326 £525 -4.55% 227
North West -5 274 £500 +5.26% 166
Yorkshire +10 261 £475 -1.30% 110
North East -2 182 £450 -10.00% 57
East Midlands +22 71 £600 +46.34% 25
East of England +2 58 £450 -10.00% 37
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 (4.12%) Confluence
2 113 (2.82%) SharePoint
3 50 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
3 50 (1.25%) SAS
4 45 (1.12%) Apache Airflow
5 38 (0.95%) Apache Spark
6 35 (0.87%) Apache
7 24 (0.60%) CMS
8 21 (0.52%) Jupyter
9 13 (0.32%) nginx
9 13 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
10 11 (0.27%) WordPress
11 8 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
12 7 (0.17%) Tomcat
13 5 (0.12%) Drupal
13 5 (0.12%) SharePoint 2013
13 5 (0.12%) Tuxedo
13 5 (0.12%) WebLogic
14 3 (0.075%) Camunda
14 3 (0.075%) IIS
Applications
1 84 (2.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
4 21 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
5 17 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.27%) MS Visio
7 8 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.15%) Sketch
8 6 (0.15%) Trello
9 3 (0.075%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.050%) Adobe After Effects
10 2 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.050%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.025%) Gliffy
11 1 (0.025%) LaTeX
11 1 (0.025%) Navisworks
11 1 (0.025%) ProjectWise
11 1 (0.025%) Revit
11 1 (0.025%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 59 (1.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (1.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 42 (1.05%) Oracle ERP
4 26 (0.65%) Oracle EBS
5 23 (0.57%) SAP PSCD
6 15 (0.37%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
8 12 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.27%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.27%) SAP Payroll
10 10 (0.25%) ContrOCC
10 10 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 9 (0.22%) NEC Housing
11 9 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
11 9 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 9 (0.22%) SAP FI
12 8 (0.20%) SAP BRIM
12 8 (0.20%) SAP Hybris
12 8 (0.20%) SystmOne
13 7 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 822 (20.51%) AWS
2 780 (19.47%) Azure
3 242 (6.04%) Power Platform
4 191 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
5 182 (4.54%) Microsoft 365
6 158 (3.94%) GCP
7 154 (3.84%) GitHub
8 149 (3.72%) Serverless
9 130 (3.24%) Entra ID
10 128 (3.19%) Amazon S3
11 105 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
11 105 (2.62%) SaaS
12 91 (2.27%) AWS Lambda
13 90 (2.25%) OCI
14 84 (2.10%) Power Automate
15 79 (1.97%) Dynamics 365
16 76 (1.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 73 (1.82%) Amazon EC2
18 70 (1.75%) PowerApps
19 65 (1.62%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 115 (2.87%) Firewall
2 73 (1.82%) DNS
3 58 (1.45%) WAN
4 51 (1.27%) LAN
5 47 (1.17%) Network Security
6 38 (0.95%) VPN
7 35 (0.87%) DHCP
8 30 (0.75%) BGP
8 30 (0.75%) OSPF
9 28 (0.70%) TCP/IP
9 28 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
10 21 (0.52%) SD-WAN
11 18 (0.45%) VXLAN
11 18 (0.45%) WLAN
12 17 (0.42%) BIG-IP
13 16 (0.40%) Ethernet VPN
14 15 (0.37%) Wireless
15 14 (0.35%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 14 (0.35%) NGFW
15 14 (0.35%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 164 (4.09%) Power BI
2 116 (2.89%) Data Warehouse
3 102 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
4 80 (2.00%) SQL Server
5 63 (1.57%) Relational Database
6 60 (1.50%) Amazon RDS
6 60 (1.50%) Metadata
7 53 (1.32%) Data Lake
8 52 (1.30%) Oracle Database
9 50 (1.25%) MongoDB
10 48 (1.20%) NoSQL
11 35 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
12 31 (0.77%) Amazon Redshift
13 30 (0.75%) DynamoDB
13 30 (0.75%) Pentaho
13 30 (0.75%) Tableau
14 28 (0.70%) Amazon Athena
14 28 (0.70%) MySQL
15 27 (0.67%) Amazon Aurora
16 24 (0.60%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 243 (6.06%) JIRA
2 189 (4.72%) Git
3 153 (3.82%) GitLab
4 139 (3.47%) Jenkins
5 42 (1.05%) Selenium
6 35 (0.87%) JUnit
7 34 (0.85%) Mockito
8 32 (0.80%) Cucumber
9 31 (0.77%) SonarQube
10 28 (0.70%) Postman
11 24 (0.60%) Cypress.io
11 24 (0.60%) JMeter
11 24 (0.60%) Maven
12 17 (0.42%) REST Assured
12 17 (0.42%) WebDriver
13 15 (0.37%) Gatling
14 12 (0.30%) DbUnit
15 11 (0.27%) jMock
15 11 (0.27%) MSI
15 11 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,118 (27.90%) Social Skills
2 464 (11.58%) Finance
3 402 (10.03%) Analytical Skills
4 233 (5.81%) Military
5 224 (5.59%) Local Government
6 146 (3.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 129 (3.22%) Influencing Skills
8 104 (2.60%) Legal
9 96 (2.40%) Organisational Skills
10 84 (2.10%) Police
11 81 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
12 50 (1.25%) Law
13 49 (1.22%) Telecoms
14 44 (1.10%) Marketing
15 38 (0.95%) Banking
16 36 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
17 26 (0.65%) Billing
18 23 (0.57%) Retail
19 18 (0.45%) General Ledger
20 17 (0.42%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 536 (13.38%) Architect
1 536 (13.38%) Developer
2 529 (13.20%) Senior
3 449 (11.21%) Lead
4 357 (8.91%) Analyst
5 164 (4.09%) Data Engineer
6 161 (4.02%) Consultant
7 157 (3.92%) Designer
8 145 (3.62%) Business Analyst
9 138 (3.44%) DevOps Engineer
10 127 (3.17%) Delivery Manager
11 120 (2.99%) Solutions Architect
12 106 (2.65%) Senior Developer
13 104 (2.60%) Java Developer
13 104 (2.60%) Technical Architect
14 99 (2.47%) Data Architect
15 95 (2.37%) Project Manager
16 88 (2.20%) User Researcher
17 75 (1.87%) Senior Manager
18 72 (1.80%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (3.79%) REST
2 108 (2.70%) RESTful
3 105 (2.62%) Node.js
4 102 (2.55%) React
5 98 (2.45%) Spring
6 87 (2.17%) Spring Boot
7 83 (2.07%) Oracle Fusion
8 76 (1.90%) Kafka
9 74 (1.85%) HTML
10 73 (1.82%) SOAP
11 70 (1.75%) .NET
12 67 (1.67%) Web Services
13 63 (1.57%) CSS
14 60 (1.50%) AngularJS
15 56 (1.40%) Django
16 55 (1.37%) OAuth
17 48 (1.20%) JSON
18 45 (1.12%) PySpark
19 44 (1.10%) OpenID
20 38 (0.95%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 230 (5.74%) Cloud Native
2 168 (4.19%) Onboarding
3 165 (4.12%) Product Ownership
4 142 (3.54%) NHS
5 113 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
6 100 (2.50%) Management Information System
7 67 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
8 62 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
9 61 (1.52%) Data Centre
10 47 (1.17%) Data Structures
11 43 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
12 42 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
13 41 (1.02%) Public Cloud
14 40 (1.00%) Analytical Mindset
15 33 (0.82%) CMDB
16 31 (0.77%) Virtual Team
17 29 (0.72%) Low-Code
18 26 (0.65%) Freedom of Information
18 26 (0.65%) Replication
18 26 (0.65%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 153 (3.82%) Windows
2 142 (3.54%) Linux
3 54 (1.35%) Windows Server
4 46 (1.15%) Unix
5 24 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 23 (0.57%) Windows 10
7 22 (0.55%) Android
8 21 (0.52%) Apple iOS
9 15 (0.37%) Mac OS
10 7 (0.17%) Solaris
10 7 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
12 5 (0.12%) AIX
12 5 (0.12%) Amazon Linux
12 5 (0.12%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.100%) Mac OS X
14 3 (0.075%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.050%) CentOS
15 2 (0.050%) VMS
16 1 (0.025%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,259 (31.42%) Agile
2 741 (18.49%) Stakeholder Management
3 673 (16.80%) CI/CD
4 672 (16.77%) DevOps
5 633 (15.80%) Continuous Improvement
6 614 (15.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 471 (11.75%) Problem-Solving
8 430 (10.73%) Analytics
9 419 (10.46%) Decision-Making
10 380 (9.48%) Migration
11 344 (8.58%) Infrastructure as Code
12 332 (8.29%) Roadmaps
13 329 (8.21%) AI
14 307 (7.66%) Digital Transformation Programme
15 301 (7.51%) Data Modelling
16 275 (6.86%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
17 274 (6.84%) Containerisation
18 260 (6.49%) Scrum
19 257 (6.41%) Technical Leadership
20 254 (6.34%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 487 (12.15%) Python
2 416 (10.38%) SQL
3 279 (6.96%) Java
4 218 (5.44%) JavaScript
5 109 (2.72%) PowerShell
6 108 (2.70%) TypeScript
7 86 (2.15%) C#
8 68 (1.70%) Bash
9 58 (1.45%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.20%) Bicep
11 34 (0.85%) Apex Code
12 30 (0.75%) Scala
13 28 (0.70%) Kotlin
13 28 (0.70%) Ruby
14 24 (0.60%) R
15 23 (0.57%) Groovy
16 21 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 17 (0.42%) Shell Script
18 14 (0.35%) ABAP
18 14 (0.35%) Go
Qualifications
1 2,073 (51.73%) Security Cleared
2 1,617 (40.35%) SC Cleared
3 246 (6.14%) DV Cleared
4 239 (5.96%) BPSS Clearance
5 179 (4.47%) Degree
6 64 (1.60%) Microsoft Certification
7 58 (1.45%) Azure Certification
8 51 (1.27%) AWS Certification
9 46 (1.15%) CISSP
10 45 (1.12%) Cisco Certification
11 32 (0.80%) CISM
12 28 (0.70%) PMI Certification
13 26 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
14 25 (0.62%) CCNP
14 25 (0.62%) ISTQB
15 19 (0.47%) Computer Science Degree
16 17 (0.42%) Master's Degree
16 17 (0.42%) PMP
17 14 (0.35%) CCNA
17 14 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 317 (7.91%) Accessibility
2 224 (5.59%) Data Quality
3 214 (5.34%) QA
4 138 (3.44%) WCAG
5 133 (3.32%) GDPR
6 101 (2.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 85 (2.12%) PMO
8 84 (2.10%) NCSC
9 73 (1.82%) NIST
10 37 (0.92%) GRC
10 37 (0.92%) SLA
11 27 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
12 19 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
13 16 (0.40%) Government Security Classifications
14 15 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 13 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 13 (0.32%) PCI DSS
16 10 (0.25%) NIST 800
17 9 (0.22%) HL7
18 5 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 311 (7.76%) Docker
2 160 (3.99%) Active Directory
3 46 (1.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (0.62%) VMware NSX
5 18 (0.45%) Hyper-V
6 14 (0.35%) vSphere
7 13 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
7 13 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.22%) Postfix
8 9 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
8 9 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
9 1 (0.025%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.025%) Ceph
9 1 (0.025%) etcd
9 1 (0.025%) FreeRADIUS
9 1 (0.025%) GPFS
9 1 (0.025%) NFS
9 1 (0.025%) Sendmail
9 1 (0.025%) Squid
Systems Management
1 357 (8.91%) Terraform
2 275 (6.86%) Kubernetes
3 88 (2.20%) Grafana
4 81 (2.02%) Ansible
5 60 (1.50%) Prometheus
6 46 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
7 42 (1.05%) Microsoft Intune
8 25 (0.62%) Argo
9 16 (0.40%) SCCM
10 14 (0.35%) Kibana
11 13 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
12 11 (0.27%) Puppet
13 10 (0.25%) Data Guard
14 9 (0.22%) VxRail
15 8 (0.20%) Istio
16 7 (0.17%) vCenter Server
17 6 (0.15%) FortiGate
18 5 (0.12%) Packer
18 5 (0.12%) Progress Chef
18 5 (0.12%) QRadar
Vendors
1 527 (13.15%) Microsoft
2 325 (8.11%) Oracle
3 146 (3.64%) ServiceNow
4 132 (3.29%) SAP
5 120 (2.99%) Google
6 113 (2.82%) Salesforce
7 94 (2.35%) Databricks
8 60 (1.50%) VMware
9 48 (1.20%) Cisco
10 40 (1.00%) Palo Alto
11 34 (0.85%) Dynatrace
12 31 (0.77%) Talend
13 30 (0.75%) Atlassian
13 30 (0.75%) Red Hat
14 26 (0.65%) Informatica
15 25 (0.62%) IBM
16 24 (0.60%) Splunk
16 24 (0.60%) Workday
17 23 (0.57%) Foundry
18 22 (0.55%) Palantir