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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 21 16
Rank change year-on-year +1 -5 -1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,640 2,083 3,200
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.97% 8.57% 8.70%
As % of the General category 16.49% 13.35% 14.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,577 1,433 2,149
10th Percentile £350 £350 £313
25th Percentile £413 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.33%
75th Percentile £600 £602 £638
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £517
% change year-on-year - -3.29% -1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 156 84 160
10th Percentile £13.85 £16.27 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.07 £18.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £23.83 £24.50 £21.25
Median % change year-on-year -2.76% +15.29% +4.06%
75th Percentile £31.86 £33.29 £54.66
90th Percentile £62.25 £64.93 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £22.90 £21.00
% change year-on-year +4.04% +9.05% +5.00%

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 22,074 15,601 21,399
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.38% 64.17% 58.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,667 10,126 13,790
10th Percentile £306 £300 £280
25th Percentile £410 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,465 667 1,786
10th Percentile £14.23 £14.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.27 £16.98 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.58 £27.50 £30.75
Median % change year-on-year +11.20% -10.57% -5.38%
75th Percentile £63.75 £56.58 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.50
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.16
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.82% -11.29%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 1,636 £525 - 388
North of England -3 651 £450 -6.25% 241
South East -1 428 £500 -6.72% 199
Midlands +7 367 £500 +8.11% 125
North West +2 318 £460 -8.00% 107
West Midlands +3 294 £488 +7.62% 102
South West -5 259 £525 -4.55% 115
Yorkshire +2 215 £450 -5.26% 65
North East -3 123 £450 -3.23% 70
East of England +20 89 £425 +6.25% 42
East Midlands +5 68 £525 +7.69% 23
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
1 144 (3.96%) Confluence
2 107 (2.94%) SharePoint
3 43 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (0.74%) SAS
5 19 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
5 19 (0.52%) Apache Spark
6 18 (0.49%) CMS
7 15 (0.41%) Apache
8 9 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
9 7 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.19%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.16%) nginx
10 6 (0.16%) WebLogic
11 5 (0.14%) Camunda
11 5 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.082%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 3 (0.082%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.082%) ArcGIS
12 3 (0.082%) Drupal
13 2 (0.055%) WordPress
Applications
1 88 (2.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 67 (1.84%) Microsoft Office
3 30 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 28 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
5 14 (0.38%) MS Visio
6 11 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.19%) Trello
8 4 (0.11%) Adobe XD
8 4 (0.11%) Sketch
9 3 (0.082%) Adobe After Effects
9 3 (0.082%) Chatbot
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 63 (1.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (1.07%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.55%) SAP PSCD
4 17 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
6 11 (0.30%) SAP BRIM
6 11 (0.30%) SAP Hybris
6 11 (0.30%) SystmOne
7 8 (0.22%) iTrent
7 8 (0.22%) NEC Housing
8 6 (0.16%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 4 (0.11%) SAP FI
10 4 (0.11%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 680 (18.68%) AWS
2 631 (17.34%) Azure
3 194 (5.33%) Power Platform
4 161 (4.42%) Microsoft 365
5 148 (4.07%) Serverless
6 141 (3.87%) GitHub
7 132 (3.63%) GCP
8 127 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
9 100 (2.75%) Entra ID
10 95 (2.61%) Amazon S3
11 91 (2.50%) AWS Lambda
12 83 (2.28%) SaaS
13 80 (2.20%) GitHub Actions
14 70 (1.92%) Amazon EC2
15 65 (1.79%) OCI
16 64 (1.76%) Dynamics 365
17 62 (1.70%) Amazon EKS
17 62 (1.70%) Power Automate
18 59 (1.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 59 (1.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 96 (2.64%) Firewall
2 55 (1.51%) WAN
3 52 (1.43%) DNS
4 51 (1.40%) Network Security
5 45 (1.24%) VPN
6 43 (1.18%) LAN
7 34 (0.93%) BGP
8 29 (0.80%) OSPF
9 28 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
10 25 (0.69%) TCP/IP
11 22 (0.60%) SD-WAN
12 20 (0.55%) DHCP
13 17 (0.47%) VXLAN
14 16 (0.44%) BIG-IP
14 16 (0.44%) SSL
15 15 (0.41%) Ethernet VPN
16 13 (0.36%) Internet
16 13 (0.36%) VoIP
16 13 (0.36%) WLAN
17 12 (0.33%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 139 (3.82%) Power BI
2 76 (2.09%) PostgreSQL
3 67 (1.84%) SQL Server
4 66 (1.81%) Data Warehouse
5 55 (1.51%) Metadata
6 53 (1.46%) MongoDB
7 44 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
7 44 (1.21%) NoSQL
8 36 (0.99%) Oracle Reports
9 31 (0.85%) Data Lake
9 31 (0.85%) Relational Database
10 30 (0.82%) Tableau
11 29 (0.80%) Oracle Database
12 27 (0.74%) DynamoDB
13 22 (0.60%) Electronic Patient Records
14 20 (0.55%) Pentaho
15 19 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
16 18 (0.49%) Delta Lake
17 17 (0.47%) Amazon Aurora
18 16 (0.44%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 214 (5.88%) JIRA
2 166 (4.56%) Git
3 139 (3.82%) GitLab
4 114 (3.13%) Jenkins
5 40 (1.10%) Selenium
6 39 (1.07%) JUnit
7 35 (0.96%) Postman
8 33 (0.91%) Mockito
9 30 (0.82%) SonarQube
10 24 (0.66%) JMeter
11 20 (0.55%) Cypress.io
12 19 (0.52%) Cucumber
13 18 (0.49%) Maven
14 17 (0.47%) CircleCI
15 15 (0.41%) Artifactory
16 11 (0.30%) DbUnit
16 11 (0.30%) jMock
17 10 (0.27%) Gatling
17 10 (0.27%) Mocha
17 10 (0.27%) REST Assured
General
1 917 (25.19%) Social Skills
2 461 (12.66%) Finance
3 363 (9.97%) Analytical Skills
4 188 (5.16%) Military
5 159 (4.37%) Local Government
6 95 (2.61%) Telecoms
7 89 (2.45%) Organisational Skills
8 83 (2.28%) Legal
9 80 (2.20%) Documentation Skills
10 72 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
10 72 (1.98%) Marketing
11 66 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 63 (1.73%) Police
13 54 (1.48%) Manufacturing
14 53 (1.46%) Banking
14 53 (1.46%) Law
15 43 (1.18%) Electronics
16 42 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
17 30 (0.82%) Billing
18 24 (0.66%) Retail
Job Titles
1 484 (13.30%) Developer
2 463 (12.72%) Architect
3 410 (11.26%) Senior
4 364 (10.00%) Analyst
5 308 (8.46%) Lead
6 163 (4.48%) Business Analyst
7 159 (4.37%) Designer
8 145 (3.98%) Consultant
9 126 (3.46%) Data Engineer
10 120 (3.30%) DevOps Engineer
11 115 (3.16%) Project Manager
12 111 (3.05%) Java Developer
13 105 (2.88%) Technical Architect
14 100 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
15 85 (2.34%) Senior Developer
16 83 (2.28%) User Researcher
17 78 (2.14%) Delivery Manager
18 67 (1.84%) Service Designer
19 63 (1.73%) Administrator
20 61 (1.68%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 134 (3.68%) REST
2 125 (3.43%) Node.js
3 118 (3.24%) Spring
4 103 (2.83%) Spring Boot
5 94 (2.58%) React
6 93 (2.55%) RESTful
7 76 (2.09%) Oracle Fusion
8 67 (1.84%) AngularJS
8 67 (1.84%) Web Services
9 65 (1.79%) .NET
10 63 (1.73%) Kafka
11 61 (1.68%) HTML
12 59 (1.62%) SOAP
13 51 (1.40%) CSS
14 45 (1.24%) Lightning Web Components
15 38 (1.04%) OAuth
16 36 (0.99%) Middleware
16 36 (0.99%) Playwright
17 35 (0.96%) JSON
18 27 (0.74%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 174 (4.78%) Cloud Native
2 144 (3.96%) Product Ownership
3 126 (3.46%) NHS
3 126 (3.46%) Onboarding
4 88 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
5 73 (2.01%) Management Information System
6 72 (1.98%) Data Centre
7 50 (1.37%) Public Cloud
8 49 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
9 42 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
10 39 (1.07%) Data Structures
10 39 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
11 33 (0.91%) Hybrid Cloud
12 28 (0.77%) CMDB
13 27 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
14 23 (0.63%) Freedom of Information
15 21 (0.58%) Virtual Team
16 20 (0.55%) Data Protection Act
16 20 (0.55%) PKI
16 20 (0.55%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 181 (4.97%) Windows
2 145 (3.98%) Linux
3 59 (1.62%) Windows Server
4 51 (1.40%) Unix
5 31 (0.85%) Windows 10
6 27 (0.74%) Android
7 25 (0.69%) Apple iOS
8 22 (0.60%) Mac OS
9 20 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 10 (0.27%) Mac OS X
11 9 (0.25%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.22%) Solaris
12 8 (0.22%) VMS
13 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
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
1 946 (25.99%) Agile
2 531 (14.59%) CI/CD
3 517 (14.20%) DevOps
4 466 (12.80%) Stakeholder Management
5 399 (10.96%) Problem-Solving
6 378 (10.38%) Continuous Improvement
7 377 (10.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 345 (9.48%) Migration
9 313 (8.60%) Analytics
10 301 (8.27%) Decision-Making
11 299 (8.21%) Roadmaps
12 245 (6.73%) Containerisation
13 239 (6.57%) Data Modelling
14 231 (6.35%) Infrastructure as Code
15 228 (6.26%) Test Automation
16 218 (5.99%) Microservices
17 214 (5.88%) User Research
18 210 (5.77%) AI
19 202 (5.55%) Business Intelligence
20 189 (5.19%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 385 (10.58%) Python
2 336 (9.23%) SQL
3 273 (7.50%) Java
4 179 (4.92%) JavaScript
5 109 (2.99%) PowerShell
6 106 (2.91%) TypeScript
7 79 (2.17%) C#
8 52 (1.43%) Bash
9 46 (1.26%) Apex Code
10 40 (1.10%) Ruby
11 39 (1.07%) PL/SQL
12 23 (0.63%) Kotlin
12 23 (0.63%) R
13 22 (0.60%) Bicep
14 21 (0.58%) Go
14 21 (0.58%) Shell Script
15 16 (0.44%) Scala
16 13 (0.36%) PHP
17 12 (0.33%) T-SQL
18 11 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,974 (54.23%) Security Cleared
2 1,316 (36.15%) SC Cleared
3 192 (5.27%) DV Cleared
4 171 (4.70%) Degree
5 113 (3.10%) BPSS Clearance
6 47 (1.29%) Azure Certification
7 37 (1.02%) CISSP
8 36 (0.99%) AWS Certification
9 33 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
10 32 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
11 30 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
12 27 (0.74%) PMP
13 26 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
14 24 (0.66%) PMI Certification
15 23 (0.63%) CISM
16 15 (0.41%) CCNP
16 15 (0.41%) DBS Check
16 15 (0.41%) ISEB
17 14 (0.38%) APMP
18 13 (0.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 236 (6.48%) Accessibility
2 162 (4.45%) QA
3 161 (4.42%) Data Quality
4 102 (2.80%) GDPR
5 90 (2.47%) WCAG
6 77 (2.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 69 (1.90%) PMO
8 64 (1.76%) NCSC
9 51 (1.40%) NIST
10 29 (0.80%) SLA
11 26 (0.71%) GRC
12 25 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials
13 21 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.41%) PCI DSS
15 14 (0.38%) COBIT
16 11 (0.30%) HL7
17 10 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 8 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
18 8 (0.22%) IFRS
19 7 (0.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 253 (6.95%) Docker
2 151 (4.15%) Active Directory
3 49 (1.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.60%) VMware NSX
5 20 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
7 13 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 11 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (0.30%) vSphere
9 10 (0.27%) Postfix
10 7 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
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%) IAG
14 1 (0.027%) RHEV
14 1 (0.027%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 278 (7.64%) Terraform
2 255 (7.01%) Kubernetes
3 82 (2.25%) Grafana
4 75 (2.06%) Ansible
5 59 (1.62%) Prometheus
6 42 (1.15%) Microsoft Intune
7 37 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
8 18 (0.49%) Argo
9 17 (0.47%) SCCM
10 14 (0.38%) Puppet
11 13 (0.36%) Kibana
12 11 (0.30%) vCenter Server
13 8 (0.22%) FortiGate
13 8 (0.22%) Oracle RMAN
14 7 (0.19%) Istio
14 7 (0.19%) Progress Chef
15 6 (0.16%) Rancher
15 6 (0.16%) vRealize
16 5 (0.14%) SCOM
17 4 (0.11%) Data Guard
Vendors
1 424 (11.65%) Microsoft
2 220 (6.04%) Oracle
3 180 (4.95%) SAP
4 120 (3.30%) Salesforce
5 111 (3.05%) ServiceNow
6 93 (2.55%) Google
7 78 (2.14%) VMware
8 77 (2.12%) Databricks
9 53 (1.46%) Cisco
10 40 (1.10%) Splunk
11 32 (0.88%) Red Hat
12 31 (0.85%) Atlassian
12 31 (0.85%) Palo Alto
13 29 (0.80%) IBM
13 29 (0.80%) Talend
14 27 (0.74%) Virgin Media
15 26 (0.71%) Dynatrace
15 26 (0.71%) MuleSoft
16 24 (0.66%) F5
17 21 (0.58%) Juniper