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

6 months to
11 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 3,659 2,098 3,200
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.00% 8.57% 8.71%
As % of the General category 16.51% 13.36% 14.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,591 1,443 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 £601 £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 160 85 160
10th Percentile £13.97 £16.14 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.09 £18.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £22.57 £24.00 £21.25
Median % change year-on-year -5.97% +12.94% +4.89%
75th Percentile £28.88 £33.00 £54.66
90th Percentile £61.65 £64.90 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £22.50 £22.70 £21.00
% change year-on-year -0.88% +8.10% +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 22,163 15,699 21,396
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.49% 64.12% 58.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,733 10,196 13,789
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 1,467 669 1,786
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.23 £17.00 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.50 £27.50 £30.75
Median % change year-on-year +10.91% -10.57% -5.38%
75th Percentile £63.75 £55.93 £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% -11.06%

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 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 11 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 11 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 1,639 £525 - 394
North of England -1 657 £450 -6.25% 234
South East 0 431 £500 -6.72% 202
Midlands +4 370 £500 +8.11% 127
North West +2 319 £458 -8.50% 104
West Midlands +4 294 £488 +7.62% 102
South West -5 259 £525 -4.55% 113
Yorkshire 0 216 £450 -5.26% 64
North East -3 127 £450 -3.23% 67
East of England +19 92 £425 +6.25% 42
East Midlands +8 71 £525 +7.69% 25
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
1 145 (3.96%) Confluence
2 107 (2.92%) SharePoint
3 43 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 26 (0.71%) 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 (2.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 67 (1.83%) Microsoft Office
3 30 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 28 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
5 14 (0.38%) MS Visio
6 13 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.22%) Trello
8 5 (0.14%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.14%) Sketch
9 4 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
10 3 (0.082%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.055%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.055%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.055%) InVision
12 1 (0.027%) Adobe Premiere
12 1 (0.027%) Quicktime
12 1 (0.027%) Siemens NX
12 1 (0.027%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 63 (1.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (1.07%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.60%) SAP PSCD
4 17 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
6 13 (0.36%) SAP BRIM
6 13 (0.36%) SAP Hybris
7 11 (0.30%) SystmOne
8 8 (0.22%) iTrent
8 8 (0.22%) NEC Housing
9 6 (0.16%) SAP ERP
9 6 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 5 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
10 5 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
10 5 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
10 5 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 5 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
11 4 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 4 (0.11%) SAP FI
11 4 (0.11%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 682 (18.64%) AWS
2 637 (17.41%) Azure
3 196 (5.36%) Power Platform
4 160 (4.37%) Microsoft 365
5 151 (4.13%) Serverless
6 141 (3.85%) GitHub
7 133 (3.63%) GCP
8 127 (3.47%) Azure DevOps
9 100 (2.73%) Entra ID
10 96 (2.62%) Amazon S3
11 93 (2.54%) AWS Lambda
12 83 (2.27%) SaaS
13 80 (2.19%) GitHub Actions
14 69 (1.89%) Amazon EC2
15 65 (1.78%) OCI
16 64 (1.75%) Dynamics 365
17 63 (1.72%) Power Automate
18 61 (1.67%) Amazon EKS
19 58 (1.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 58 (1.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 96 (2.62%) Firewall
2 55 (1.50%) WAN
3 52 (1.42%) DNS
4 51 (1.39%) Network Security
5 45 (1.23%) VPN
6 43 (1.18%) LAN
7 34 (0.93%) BGP
8 29 (0.79%) OSPF
9 28 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
10 25 (0.68%) TCP/IP
11 22 (0.60%) SD-WAN
12 20 (0.55%) DHCP
13 17 (0.46%) 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
1 142 (3.88%) Power BI
2 76 (2.08%) PostgreSQL
3 67 (1.83%) SQL Server
4 66 (1.80%) Data Warehouse
5 55 (1.50%) Metadata
6 53 (1.45%) MongoDB
7 44 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
7 44 (1.20%) NoSQL
8 36 (0.98%) Oracle Reports
9 31 (0.85%) Data Lake
9 31 (0.85%) Relational Database
10 30 (0.82%) Tableau
11 29 (0.79%) Oracle Database
12 27 (0.74%) DynamoDB
13 22 (0.60%) Electronic Patient Records
14 21 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
15 20 (0.55%) Pentaho
16 18 (0.49%) Delta Lake
17 17 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
18 16 (0.44%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 218 (5.96%) JIRA
2 167 (4.56%) Git
3 139 (3.80%) GitLab
4 115 (3.14%) Jenkins
5 40 (1.09%) Selenium
6 39 (1.07%) JUnit
7 35 (0.96%) Postman
8 33 (0.90%) Mockito
9 31 (0.85%) SonarQube
10 24 (0.66%) JMeter
11 20 (0.55%) Cypress.io
12 19 (0.52%) Cucumber
13 18 (0.49%) Maven
14 17 (0.46%) 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
1 930 (25.42%) Social Skills
2 469 (12.82%) Finance
3 366 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
4 188 (5.14%) Military
5 160 (4.37%) Local Government
6 99 (2.71%) Telecoms
7 89 (2.43%) Organisational Skills
8 84 (2.30%) Legal
9 81 (2.21%) Documentation Skills
10 74 (2.02%) Marketing
11 72 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
12 68 (1.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 63 (1.72%) Police
14 56 (1.53%) Manufacturing
15 53 (1.45%) Banking
15 53 (1.45%) Law
16 45 (1.23%) Electronics
17 42 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
18 32 (0.87%) Billing
19 24 (0.66%) Retail
Job Titles
1 488 (13.34%) Developer
2 464 (12.68%) Architect
3 411 (11.23%) Senior
4 367 (10.03%) Analyst
5 309 (8.44%) Lead
6 165 (4.51%) Business Analyst
7 160 (4.37%) Designer
8 147 (4.02%) Consultant
9 126 (3.44%) Data Engineer
10 119 (3.25%) DevOps Engineer
11 117 (3.20%) Project Manager
12 111 (3.03%) Java Developer
13 106 (2.90%) Technical Architect
14 100 (2.73%) Solutions Architect
15 85 (2.32%) Senior Developer
16 83 (2.27%) User Researcher
17 78 (2.13%) Delivery Manager
18 68 (1.86%) Service Designer
19 64 (1.75%) Administrator
20 61 (1.67%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 134 (3.66%) REST
2 125 (3.42%) Node.js
3 120 (3.28%) Spring
4 105 (2.87%) Spring Boot
5 94 (2.57%) React
5 94 (2.57%) RESTful
6 76 (2.08%) Oracle Fusion
7 69 (1.89%) AngularJS
8 67 (1.83%) .NET
8 67 (1.83%) Web Services
9 63 (1.72%) Kafka
10 61 (1.67%) HTML
11 59 (1.61%) SOAP
12 51 (1.39%) CSS
13 45 (1.23%) Lightning Web Components
14 38 (1.04%) OAuth
15 36 (0.98%) Middleware
15 36 (0.98%) Playwright
16 35 (0.96%) JSON
17 27 (0.74%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 174 (4.76%) Cloud Native
2 144 (3.94%) Product Ownership
3 127 (3.47%) NHS
4 126 (3.44%) Onboarding
5 88 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
6 75 (2.05%) Management Information System
7 72 (1.97%) Data Centre
8 50 (1.37%) Public Cloud
9 49 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
10 42 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
11 39 (1.07%) Data Structures
11 39 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
12 33 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
13 28 (0.77%) CMDB
14 27 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
15 23 (0.63%) Freedom of Information
16 21 (0.57%) Virtual Team
17 20 (0.55%) Data Protection Act
17 20 (0.55%) PKI
17 20 (0.55%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 182 (4.97%) Windows
2 145 (3.96%) Linux
3 59 (1.61%) Windows Server
4 51 (1.39%) Unix
5 32 (0.87%) Windows 10
6 27 (0.74%) Android
7 25 (0.68%) 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
1 951 (25.99%) Agile
2 535 (14.62%) CI/CD
3 519 (14.18%) DevOps
4 472 (12.90%) Stakeholder Management
5 402 (10.99%) Problem-Solving
6 383 (10.47%) Continuous Improvement
7 382 (10.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 346 (9.46%) Migration
9 317 (8.66%) Analytics
10 303 (8.28%) Decision-Making
11 301 (8.23%) Roadmaps
12 246 (6.72%) Containerisation
13 239 (6.53%) Data Modelling
14 234 (6.40%) Infrastructure as Code
15 231 (6.31%) Test Automation
16 221 (6.04%) Microservices
17 215 (5.88%) User Research
18 211 (5.77%) AI
19 207 (5.66%) Business Intelligence
20 191 (5.22%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 387 (10.58%) Python
2 339 (9.26%) SQL
3 275 (7.52%) Java
4 180 (4.92%) JavaScript
5 110 (3.01%) PowerShell
6 109 (2.98%) TypeScript
7 81 (2.21%) C#
8 51 (1.39%) Bash
9 46 (1.26%) Apex Code
10 40 (1.09%) Ruby
11 39 (1.07%) PL/SQL
12 23 (0.63%) Kotlin
12 23 (0.63%) R
13 22 (0.60%) Bicep
14 21 (0.57%) Go
14 21 (0.57%) Shell Script
15 16 (0.44%) Scala
16 13 (0.36%) PHP
17 12 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 12 (0.33%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,986 (54.28%) Security Cleared
2 1,325 (36.21%) SC Cleared
3 192 (5.25%) DV Cleared
4 172 (4.70%) Degree
5 114 (3.12%) BPSS Clearance
6 47 (1.28%) Azure Certification
7 38 (1.04%) CISSP
8 36 (0.98%) AWS Certification
9 33 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
10 32 (0.87%) Microsoft Certification
11 30 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
12 27 (0.74%) PMP
13 26 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
14 24 (0.66%) CISM
14 24 (0.66%) PMI Certification
15 15 (0.41%) CCNP
15 15 (0.41%) DBS Check
15 15 (0.41%) ISEB
16 14 (0.38%) APMP
17 13 (0.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 237 (6.48%) Accessibility
2 163 (4.45%) QA
3 162 (4.43%) Data Quality
4 103 (2.81%) GDPR
5 91 (2.49%) WCAG
6 78 (2.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 71 (1.94%) PMO
8 64 (1.75%) NCSC
9 52 (1.42%) NIST
10 31 (0.85%) SLA
11 26 (0.71%) GRC
12 25 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials
13 21 (0.57%) 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
1 257 (7.02%) Docker
2 152 (4.15%) Active Directory
3 49 (1.34%) 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
1 281 (7.68%) Terraform
2 258 (7.05%) Kubernetes
3 82 (2.24%) Grafana
4 75 (2.05%) Ansible
5 59 (1.61%) Prometheus
6 42 (1.15%) Microsoft Intune
7 36 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
8 17 (0.46%) Argo
8 17 (0.46%) SCCM
9 14 (0.38%) Puppet
10 13 (0.36%) Kibana
11 11 (0.30%) vCenter Server
12 8 (0.22%) FortiGate
12 8 (0.22%) Oracle RMAN
13 7 (0.19%) Istio
13 7 (0.19%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.16%) Rancher
14 6 (0.16%) vRealize
15 5 (0.14%) SCOM
16 4 (0.11%) Data Guard
Vendors
1 427 (11.67%) Microsoft
2 220 (6.01%) Oracle
3 184 (5.03%) SAP
4 120 (3.28%) Salesforce
5 111 (3.03%) ServiceNow
6 93 (2.54%) Google
7 78 (2.13%) VMware
8 77 (2.10%) Databricks
9 53 (1.45%) Cisco
10 40 (1.09%) Splunk
11 31 (0.85%) Atlassian
11 31 (0.85%) Palo Alto
11 31 (0.85%) Red Hat
12 29 (0.79%) IBM
12 29 (0.79%) Talend
13 27 (0.74%) Dynatrace
13 27 (0.74%) Virgin Media
14 26 (0.71%) MuleSoft
15 24 (0.66%) F5
16 21 (0.57%) Juniper