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

6 months to
21 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 23 18
Rank change year-on-year +3 -5 -1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,862 1,946 3,105
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.93% 7.80% 8.23%
As % of the General category 16.31% 12.13% 14.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,699 1,303 2,064
10th Percentile £360 £341 £310
25th Percentile £425 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £626
90th Percentile £688 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £510 £500 £510
% change year-on-year +2.00% -1.96% -1.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 172 81 167
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.48 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.09 £18.22 £15.39
Median hourly rate £24.79 £25.08 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year -1.16% +3.70% +17.78%
75th Percentile £47.19 £34.46 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £73.95
UK median hourly rate £25.38 £23.23 £23.00
% change year-on-year +9.28% +0.98% +15.00%

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 23,678 16,041 21,549
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.76% 64.32% 57.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,416 10,326 13,731
10th Percentile £313 £281 £285
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £520 £534
Median % change year-on-year - -2.62% -2.91%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
90th Percentile £749 £763 £775
UK median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.95% -4.71% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,657 776 1,853
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.41 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.75 £16.94 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.50 £28.34 £31.97
Median % change year-on-year +14.68% -11.35% +12.18%
75th Percentile £63.75 £53.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £67.75
UK median hourly rate £32.36 £28.00 £31.25
% change year-on-year +15.58% -10.40% +4.17%

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 21 June 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 21 June 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 21 June 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 +2 1,721 £525 - 283
North of England +4 682 £470 -1.05% 205
South East +4 481 £500 -7.06% 193
Midlands +9 434 £500 +8.11% 108
West Midlands +5 359 £500 +8.11% 78
North West +2 299 £500 +5.26% 78
South West -7 274 £525 -3.00% 117
Yorkshire +9 235 £451 -3.89% 79
North East -3 156 £450 -3.23% 50
East of England +20 72 £475 -5.00% 33
East Midlands +15 68 £525 +28.05% 30
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
1 146 (3.78%) Confluence
2 112 (2.90%) SharePoint
3 47 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
4 44 (1.14%) SAS
5 43 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.88%) Apache Spark
7 31 (0.80%) Apache
8 20 (0.52%) Jupyter
9 18 (0.47%) CMS
10 12 (0.31%) nginx
11 11 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
12 9 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
13 7 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 6 (0.16%) WordPress
15 5 (0.13%) Camunda
15 5 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.13%) Tuxedo
15 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
16 4 (0.10%) Drupal
17 3 (0.078%) IIS
Applications
1 71 (1.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 42 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
3 30 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
4 22 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.28%) MS Visio
5 11 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
6 8 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.13%) Trello
8 2 (0.052%) Adobe After Effects
8 2 (0.052%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.052%) CPLEX
8 2 (0.052%) Sketch
9 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.026%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 62 (1.61%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
3 36 (0.93%) Oracle ERP
4 26 (0.67%) SAP PSCD
5 15 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
6 12 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
6 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
7 10 (0.26%) SystmOne
8 9 (0.23%) NEC Housing
8 9 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
8 9 (0.23%) SAP Payroll
9 8 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 7 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 7 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
11 6 (0.16%) ContrOCC
11 6 (0.16%) Oracle Cash Management
11 6 (0.16%) SAP ERP
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
12 5 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
12 5 (0.13%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 769 (19.91%) AWS
2 668 (17.30%) Azure
3 204 (5.28%) Power Platform
4 174 (4.51%) Microsoft 365
5 156 (4.04%) Serverless
6 147 (3.81%) Azure DevOps
7 146 (3.78%) GitHub
8 139 (3.60%) GCP
9 121 (3.13%) Amazon S3
10 109 (2.82%) Entra ID
11 101 (2.62%) AWS Lambda
11 101 (2.62%) SaaS
12 93 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
13 83 (2.15%) Amazon EC2
14 70 (1.81%) OCI
15 67 (1.73%) Power Automate
16 65 (1.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 64 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
18 60 (1.55%) Amazon EKS
19 56 (1.45%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 93 (2.41%) Firewall
2 56 (1.45%) Network Security
3 54 (1.40%) WAN
4 53 (1.37%) DNS
5 43 (1.11%) LAN
6 37 (0.96%) VPN
7 31 (0.80%) BGP
8 26 (0.67%) OSPF
8 26 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
9 23 (0.60%) DHCP
10 21 (0.54%) SD-WAN
10 21 (0.54%) TCP/IP
11 19 (0.49%) BIG-IP
12 18 (0.47%) VXLAN
13 16 (0.41%) Ethernet VPN
14 15 (0.39%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 14 (0.36%) WLAN
16 12 (0.31%) DKIM
17 11 (0.28%) NGFW
18 9 (0.23%) DMARC
Database & Business Intelligence
1 141 (3.65%) Power BI
2 92 (2.38%) Data Warehouse
3 86 (2.23%) PostgreSQL
4 73 (1.89%) SQL Server
5 56 (1.45%) Metadata
6 53 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
6 53 (1.37%) MongoDB
7 48 (1.24%) Data Lake
8 47 (1.22%) Relational Database
9 45 (1.17%) Oracle Database
10 42 (1.09%) NoSQL
11 39 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
12 32 (0.83%) DynamoDB
13 31 (0.80%) Amazon Athena
13 31 (0.80%) Tableau
14 30 (0.78%) Amazon Redshift
15 22 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
15 22 (0.57%) Electronic Patient Records
15 22 (0.57%) Pentaho
16 18 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 218 (5.64%) JIRA
2 159 (4.12%) Git
2 159 (4.12%) GitLab
3 135 (3.50%) Jenkins
4 50 (1.29%) Selenium
5 40 (1.04%) JUnit
6 35 (0.91%) Mockito
7 30 (0.78%) SonarQube
8 29 (0.75%) Cucumber
9 28 (0.73%) JMeter
9 28 (0.73%) Postman
10 24 (0.62%) Cypress.io
11 21 (0.54%) Maven
12 19 (0.49%) REST Assured
13 15 (0.39%) CircleCI
14 14 (0.36%) DbUnit
15 13 (0.34%) Gatling
15 13 (0.34%) jMock
15 13 (0.34%) WebDriver
16 12 (0.31%) Artifactory
General
1 995 (25.76%) Social Skills
2 454 (11.76%) Finance
3 357 (9.24%) Analytical Skills
4 218 (5.64%) Military
5 188 (4.87%) Local Government
6 104 (2.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 97 (2.51%) Legal
8 90 (2.33%) Influencing Skills
9 89 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
10 87 (2.25%) Organisational Skills
11 74 (1.92%) Police
12 59 (1.53%) Telecoms
13 55 (1.42%) Law
14 51 (1.32%) Banking
15 46 (1.19%) Marketing
16 37 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
17 30 (0.78%) Billing
18 22 (0.57%) Retail
19 18 (0.47%) Manufacturing
20 14 (0.36%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 527 (13.65%) Architect
2 511 (13.23%) Developer
3 461 (11.94%) Senior
4 377 (9.76%) Lead
5 351 (9.09%) Analyst
6 163 (4.22%) Designer
7 156 (4.04%) Consultant
8 147 (3.81%) Business Analyst
9 140 (3.63%) Data Engineer
10 138 (3.57%) DevOps Engineer
11 127 (3.29%) Solutions Architect
12 123 (3.18%) Technical Architect
13 113 (2.93%) Project Manager
14 104 (2.69%) Java Developer
15 98 (2.54%) Delivery Manager
16 97 (2.51%) Senior Developer
17 89 (2.30%) User Researcher
18 75 (1.94%) Service Designer
19 71 (1.84%) AWS Engineer
20 69 (1.79%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 131 (3.39%) REST
2 114 (2.95%) Node.js
3 110 (2.85%) Spring
4 101 (2.62%) React
5 96 (2.49%) RESTful
6 95 (2.46%) Spring Boot
7 76 (1.97%) Oracle Fusion
8 70 (1.81%) Kafka
9 65 (1.68%) Web Services
10 64 (1.66%) AngularJS
11 63 (1.63%) .NET
12 61 (1.58%) SOAP
13 55 (1.42%) HTML
14 47 (1.22%) CSS
15 46 (1.19%) OAuth
16 40 (1.04%) Lightning Web Components
17 39 (1.01%) Middleware
18 38 (0.98%) Playwright
19 35 (0.91%) Django
19 35 (0.91%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 213 (5.52%) Cloud Native
2 157 (4.07%) Product Ownership
3 139 (3.60%) NHS
4 137 (3.55%) Onboarding
5 92 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
6 85 (2.20%) Management Information System
7 68 (1.76%) Data Centre
8 62 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
9 56 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
10 52 (1.35%) Public Cloud
11 46 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
12 45 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
13 44 (1.14%) Data Structures
14 32 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
14 32 (0.83%) CMDB
15 27 (0.70%) Virtual Team
16 25 (0.65%) Freedom of Information
17 24 (0.62%) Mobile App
17 24 (0.62%) Security Posture
18 23 (0.60%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 165 (4.27%) Windows
2 148 (3.83%) Linux
3 60 (1.55%) Windows Server
4 53 (1.37%) Unix
5 28 (0.73%) Android
6 27 (0.70%) Apple iOS
7 24 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 20 (0.52%) Windows 10
9 19 (0.49%) Mac OS
10 12 (0.31%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.23%) Mac OS X
12 8 (0.21%) Solaris
13 7 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
15 5 (0.13%) AIX
16 4 (0.10%) VMS
16 4 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
17 3 (0.078%) Amazon Linux
17 3 (0.078%) Windows Server 2012
18 2 (0.052%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,085 (28.09%) Agile
2 608 (15.74%) CI/CD
3 601 (15.56%) DevOps
4 577 (14.94%) Stakeholder Management
5 477 (12.35%) Continuous Improvement
6 472 (12.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 379 (9.81%) Problem-Solving
8 363 (9.40%) Analytics
9 348 (9.01%) Migration
10 347 (8.98%) Decision-Making
11 314 (8.13%) Roadmaps
12 291 (7.53%) Infrastructure as Code
13 269 (6.97%) Data Modelling
14 267 (6.91%) Containerisation
15 264 (6.84%) AI
16 237 (6.14%) Test Automation
17 230 (5.96%) User Research
18 226 (5.85%) Microservices
19 214 (5.54%) Scrum
20 213 (5.52%) Digital Transformation Programme
Programming Languages
1 428 (11.08%) Python
2 368 (9.53%) SQL
3 288 (7.46%) Java
4 181 (4.69%) JavaScript
5 112 (2.90%) TypeScript
6 100 (2.59%) PowerShell
7 78 (2.02%) C#
8 53 (1.37%) Bash
9 51 (1.32%) PL/SQL
10 42 (1.09%) Apex Code
11 38 (0.98%) Ruby
12 29 (0.75%) Bicep
13 27 (0.70%) Kotlin
14 20 (0.52%) R
15 18 (0.47%) Go
15 18 (0.47%) Shell Script
16 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 15 (0.39%) Scala
18 11 (0.28%) ABAP
18 11 (0.28%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 2,033 (52.64%) Security Cleared
2 1,460 (37.80%) SC Cleared
3 224 (5.80%) DV Cleared
4 183 (4.74%) Degree
5 148 (3.83%) BPSS Clearance
6 48 (1.24%) Azure Certification
7 43 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
8 41 (1.06%) CISSP
9 38 (0.98%) Cisco Certification
10 35 (0.91%) AWS Certification
11 26 (0.67%) CISM
12 25 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
13 24 (0.62%) PMP
14 23 (0.60%) PMI Certification
15 21 (0.54%) Computer Science Degree
16 19 (0.49%) CCNP
17 17 (0.44%) Master's Degree
18 15 (0.39%) DBS Check
18 15 (0.39%) ISTQB
19 14 (0.36%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 273 (7.07%) Accessibility
2 179 (4.63%) Data Quality
3 178 (4.61%) QA
4 119 (3.08%) GDPR
5 110 (2.85%) WCAG
6 91 (2.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 76 (1.97%) NCSC
8 75 (1.94%) PMO
9 67 (1.73%) NIST
10 38 (0.98%) SLA
11 28 (0.73%) GRC
12 25 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
13 21 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
14 14 (0.36%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 12 (0.31%) Government Security Classifications
17 10 (0.26%) HL7
17 10 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 7 (0.18%) COBIT
18 7 (0.18%) IFRS
System Software
1 283 (7.33%) Docker
2 158 (4.09%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.57%) VMware NSX
5 16 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.28%) Postfix
7 10 (0.26%) Hyper-V
8 9 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
8 9 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (0.23%) vSphere
9 6 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.078%) NFS
10 3 (0.078%) RACF
11 1 (0.026%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.026%) etcd
11 1 (0.026%) FreeRADIUS
11 1 (0.026%) GPFS
11 1 (0.026%) NLBS
11 1 (0.026%) Sendmail
11 1 (0.026%) Squid
Systems Management
1 320 (8.29%) Terraform
2 270 (6.99%) Kubernetes
3 87 (2.25%) Grafana
4 77 (1.99%) Ansible
5 60 (1.55%) Prometheus
6 42 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
7 38 (0.98%) Microsoft Intune
8 23 (0.60%) Argo
9 14 (0.36%) Puppet
9 14 (0.36%) SCCM
10 13 (0.34%) Kibana
11 10 (0.26%) Oracle RMAN
11 10 (0.26%) vCenter Server
12 7 (0.18%) FortiGate
13 6 (0.16%) Data Guard
13 6 (0.16%) Istio
14 5 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (0.13%) Progress Chef
14 5 (0.13%) Rancher
15 4 (0.10%) Consul
Vendors
1 439 (11.37%) Microsoft
2 272 (7.04%) Oracle
3 150 (3.88%) SAP
4 122 (3.16%) ServiceNow
5 117 (3.03%) Salesforce
6 96 (2.49%) Google
7 85 (2.20%) Databricks
8 63 (1.63%) VMware
9 45 (1.17%) Cisco
10 38 (0.98%) Red Hat
11 37 (0.96%) Atlassian
12 34 (0.88%) Palo Alto
13 32 (0.83%) Splunk
14 31 (0.80%) Dynatrace
15 28 (0.73%) Talend
16 27 (0.70%) IBM
17 24 (0.62%) CyberArk
17 24 (0.62%) F5
18 23 (0.60%) Informatica
19 22 (0.57%) Foundry
860 Public Sector jobs in England