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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 23 18
Rank change year-on-year +3 -5 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,882 1,943 3,067
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.94% 7.76% 8.21%
As % of the General category 16.29% 12.07% 14.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,718 1,299 2,048
10th Percentile £358 £340 £310
25th Percentile £425 £416 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £688 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £510 £500 £508
% change year-on-year +2.00% -1.48% -2.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 81 164
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.48 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.09 £18.22 £15.50
Median hourly rate £24.19 £25.08 £24.75
Median % change year-on-year -3.53% +1.31% +20.38%
75th Percentile £45.78 £34.46 £57.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £74.48
UK median hourly rate £24.25 £23.23 £23.99
% change year-on-year +4.41% -3.19% +19.95%

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 23,825 16,097 21,320
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.84% 64.27% 57.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,506 10,353 13,616
10th Percentile £313 £281 £288
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £520 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -2.80% -2.73%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
90th Percentile £749 £763 £775
UK median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,685 786 1,825
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.25 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.75 £16.73 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.50 £28.17 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year +15.39% -12.30% +14.41%
75th Percentile £63.75 £53.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.76 £31.13
% change year-on-year +15.27% -10.81% +3.75%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +3 1,726 £525 - 276
North of England +2 678 £470 - 196
South East +5 490 £500 -6.19% 198
Midlands +9 442 £500 +8.11% 114
West Midlands +6 367 £500 +8.11% 81
North West +1 296 £500 +5.26% 75
South West -9 274 £525 -3.00% 109
Yorkshire +13 232 £455 -2.93% 77
North East -3 158 £450 -3.23% 44
East of England +16 72 £475 -5.00% 32
East Midlands +19 68 £525 +29.63% 33
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
1 148 (3.81%) Confluence
2 114 (2.94%) SharePoint
3 46 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 44 (1.13%) Apache Airflow
4 44 (1.13%) SAS
5 34 (0.88%) Apache Spark
6 32 (0.82%) Apache
7 20 (0.52%) Jupyter
8 19 (0.49%) CMS
9 12 (0.31%) nginx
9 12 (0.31%) Palantir Foundry
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
11 7 (0.18%) Tomcat
11 7 (0.18%) WordPress
12 5 (0.13%) Camunda
12 5 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
12 5 (0.13%) Tuxedo
12 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
13 4 (0.10%) Drupal
14 3 (0.077%) IIS
Applications
1 73 (1.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (1.13%) Microsoft Office
3 31 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
4 23 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.28%) MS Visio
7 8 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.052%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.052%) Sketch
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 64 (1.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (1.06%) Dynamics CRM
3 37 (0.95%) Oracle ERP
4 26 (0.67%) SAP PSCD
5 16 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
6 12 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
6 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
7 10 (0.26%) SAP Payroll
7 10 (0.26%) SystmOne
8 9 (0.23%) NEC Housing
8 9 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
9 8 (0.21%) ContrOCC
9 8 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 7 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 7 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
11 6 (0.15%) Oracle Cash Management
11 6 (0.15%) SAP ERP
11 6 (0.15%) Workday HCM
12 5 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
12 5 (0.13%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 769 (19.81%) AWS
2 681 (17.54%) Azure
3 204 (5.26%) Power Platform
4 174 (4.48%) Microsoft 365
5 153 (3.94%) Serverless
6 151 (3.89%) Azure DevOps
7 145 (3.74%) GitHub
8 139 (3.58%) GCP
9 120 (3.09%) Amazon S3
10 111 (2.86%) Entra ID
11 102 (2.63%) SaaS
12 98 (2.52%) AWS Lambda
13 92 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
14 81 (2.09%) Amazon EC2
15 71 (1.83%) OCI
16 70 (1.80%) Power Automate
17 66 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
18 65 (1.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 57 (1.47%) Amazon EKS
19 57 (1.47%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 91 (2.34%) Firewall
2 56 (1.44%) Network Security
3 53 (1.37%) DNS
4 51 (1.31%) WAN
5 40 (1.03%) LAN
6 37 (0.95%) VPN
7 30 (0.77%) BGP
8 25 (0.64%) OSPF
9 24 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
10 23 (0.59%) DHCP
11 21 (0.54%) SD-WAN
12 19 (0.49%) BIG-IP
13 18 (0.46%) TCP/IP
13 18 (0.46%) VXLAN
14 16 (0.41%) Ethernet VPN
15 15 (0.39%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 14 (0.36%) WLAN
17 12 (0.31%) DKIM
18 10 (0.26%) NGFW
19 9 (0.23%) DMARC
Database & Business Intelligence
1 140 (3.61%) Power BI
2 93 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
3 86 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
4 75 (1.93%) SQL Server
5 56 (1.44%) Metadata
6 53 (1.37%) MongoDB
7 51 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
8 49 (1.26%) Data Lake
9 46 (1.18%) Relational Database
10 45 (1.16%) Oracle Database
11 42 (1.08%) NoSQL
12 39 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
13 33 (0.85%) DynamoDB
14 31 (0.80%) Amazon Athena
14 31 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
14 31 (0.80%) Tableau
15 22 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
15 22 (0.57%) Electronic Patient Records
15 22 (0.57%) Pentaho
16 19 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 220 (5.67%) JIRA
2 159 (4.10%) GitLab
3 154 (3.97%) Git
4 133 (3.43%) Jenkins
5 50 (1.29%) Selenium
6 39 (1.00%) JUnit
7 35 (0.90%) Mockito
8 30 (0.77%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.77%) SonarQube
9 29 (0.75%) JMeter
9 29 (0.75%) Postman
10 24 (0.62%) Cypress.io
11 21 (0.54%) Maven
12 18 (0.46%) REST Assured
13 15 (0.39%) WebDriver
14 14 (0.36%) CircleCI
14 14 (0.36%) DbUnit
15 13 (0.33%) Gatling
15 13 (0.33%) jMock
16 12 (0.31%) Artifactory
General
1 1,006 (25.91%) Social Skills
2 457 (11.77%) Finance
3 362 (9.33%) Analytical Skills
4 217 (5.59%) Military
5 196 (5.05%) Local Government
6 108 (2.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 100 (2.58%) Legal
8 92 (2.37%) Influencing Skills
9 88 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
9 88 (2.27%) Organisational Skills
10 76 (1.96%) Police
11 58 (1.49%) Telecoms
12 54 (1.39%) Law
13 51 (1.31%) Banking
14 45 (1.16%) Marketing
15 37 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
16 29 (0.75%) Billing
17 24 (0.62%) Retail
18 17 (0.44%) Manufacturing
19 15 (0.39%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 527 (13.58%) Architect
2 505 (13.01%) Developer
3 472 (12.16%) Senior
4 377 (9.71%) Lead
5 353 (9.09%) Analyst
6 165 (4.25%) Designer
7 158 (4.07%) Consultant
8 145 (3.74%) Data Engineer
9 144 (3.71%) Business Analyst
10 141 (3.63%) DevOps Engineer
11 129 (3.32%) Solutions Architect
12 120 (3.09%) Technical Architect
13 111 (2.86%) Project Manager
14 103 (2.65%) Java Developer
15 96 (2.47%) Delivery Manager
16 95 (2.45%) Senior Developer
17 89 (2.29%) User Researcher
18 76 (1.96%) Service Designer
19 70 (1.80%) AWS Engineer
20 69 (1.78%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 131 (3.37%) REST
2 113 (2.91%) Node.js
3 108 (2.78%) Spring
4 98 (2.52%) React
5 96 (2.47%) RESTful
6 93 (2.40%) Spring Boot
7 76 (1.96%) Oracle Fusion
8 70 (1.80%) Kafka
9 63 (1.62%) SOAP
10 62 (1.60%) .NET
10 62 (1.60%) AngularJS
11 60 (1.55%) Web Services
12 53 (1.37%) HTML
13 45 (1.16%) CSS
13 45 (1.16%) OAuth
14 40 (1.03%) Middleware
14 40 (1.03%) PySpark
15 39 (1.00%) Lightning Web Components
16 38 (0.98%) JSON
17 36 (0.93%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 213 (5.49%) Cloud Native
2 162 (4.17%) Product Ownership
3 142 (3.66%) NHS
4 140 (3.61%) Onboarding
5 93 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
6 86 (2.22%) Management Information System
7 69 (1.78%) Data Centre
8 64 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
9 58 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
10 52 (1.34%) Public Cloud
11 47 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
12 46 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
13 44 (1.13%) Data Structures
14 34 (0.88%) CMDB
15 33 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
16 28 (0.72%) Virtual Team
17 26 (0.67%) Security Posture
18 25 (0.64%) Freedom of Information
19 24 (0.62%) Mobile App
19 24 (0.62%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 164 (4.22%) Windows
2 149 (3.84%) Linux
3 60 (1.55%) Windows Server
4 52 (1.34%) Unix
5 28 (0.72%) 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 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
15 5 (0.13%) AIX
16 4 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
17 3 (0.077%) Amazon Linux
17 3 (0.077%) VMS
17 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
18 2 (0.052%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,097 (28.26%) Agile
2 609 (15.69%) DevOps
3 608 (15.66%) CI/CD
4 588 (15.15%) Stakeholder Management
5 486 (12.52%) Continuous Improvement
6 483 (12.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 387 (9.97%) Problem-Solving
8 371 (9.56%) Analytics
9 352 (9.07%) Decision-Making
9 352 (9.07%) Migration
10 315 (8.11%) Roadmaps
11 290 (7.47%) Infrastructure as Code
12 273 (7.03%) Data Modelling
13 270 (6.96%) AI
14 264 (6.80%) Containerisation
15 234 (6.03%) Test Automation
16 229 (5.90%) User Research
17 226 (5.82%) Microservices
18 217 (5.59%) Scrum
19 216 (5.56%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 431 (11.10%) Python
2 372 (9.58%) SQL
3 286 (7.37%) Java
4 179 (4.61%) JavaScript
5 111 (2.86%) TypeScript
6 98 (2.52%) PowerShell
7 79 (2.04%) C#
8 54 (1.39%) Bash
9 51 (1.31%) PL/SQL
10 41 (1.06%) Apex Code
11 36 (0.93%) Ruby
12 30 (0.77%) Bicep
13 27 (0.70%) Kotlin
14 20 (0.52%) R
15 18 (0.46%) Shell Script
16 17 (0.44%) Go
17 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 15 (0.39%) Scala
19 12 (0.31%) ABAP
19 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 2,034 (52.40%) Security Cleared
2 1,464 (37.71%) SC Cleared
3 222 (5.72%) DV Cleared
4 186 (4.79%) Degree
5 152 (3.92%) BPSS Clearance
6 49 (1.26%) Azure Certification
7 46 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
8 41 (1.06%) CISSP
9 38 (0.98%) Cisco Certification
10 35 (0.90%) AWS Certification
11 26 (0.67%) CISM
11 26 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
12 23 (0.59%) PMP
13 22 (0.57%) PMI Certification
14 21 (0.54%) Computer Science Degree
15 19 (0.49%) CCNP
16 17 (0.44%) Master's Degree
17 16 (0.41%) ISTQB
18 15 (0.39%) DBS Check
19 14 (0.36%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 272 (7.01%) Accessibility
2 186 (4.79%) Data Quality
3 177 (4.56%) QA
4 124 (3.19%) GDPR
5 110 (2.83%) WCAG
6 92 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 79 (2.04%) PMO
8 77 (1.98%) NCSC
9 66 (1.70%) NIST
10 39 (1.00%) SLA
11 30 (0.77%) GRC
12 25 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials
13 21 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
14 14 (0.36%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 12 (0.31%) Government Security Classifications
17 10 (0.26%) HL7
17 10 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 8 (0.21%) IFRS
19 7 (0.18%) NIST 800
System Software
1 278 (7.16%) Docker
2 158 (4.07%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) VMware NSX
5 15 (0.39%) 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 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.052%) NFS
10 2 (0.052%) 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 (8.24%) Terraform
2 269 (6.93%) Kubernetes
3 86 (2.22%) Grafana
4 76 (1.96%) Ansible
5 60 (1.55%) Prometheus
6 41 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
7 38 (0.98%) Microsoft Intune
8 23 (0.59%) Argo
9 14 (0.36%) Puppet
9 14 (0.36%) SCCM
10 13 (0.33%) Kibana
11 10 (0.26%) Oracle RMAN
11 10 (0.26%) vCenter Server
12 7 (0.18%) FortiGate
13 6 (0.15%) Data Guard
13 6 (0.15%) 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
1 447 (11.51%) Microsoft
2 274 (7.06%) Oracle
3 153 (3.94%) SAP
4 122 (3.14%) ServiceNow
5 117 (3.01%) Salesforce
6 98 (2.52%) Google
7 91 (2.34%) Databricks
8 61 (1.57%) VMware
9 42 (1.08%) Cisco
10 38 (0.98%) Red Hat
11 37 (0.95%) Atlassian
12 33 (0.85%) Palo Alto
13 31 (0.80%) Dynatrace
13 31 (0.80%) Splunk
14 28 (0.72%) Talend
15 27 (0.70%) IBM
16 24 (0.62%) CyberArk
16 24 (0.62%) F5
17 23 (0.59%) Foundry
17 23 (0.59%) Informatica
835 Public Sector jobs in England