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

6 months to
5 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 3,703 1,887 3,086
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.83% 7.84% 8.39%
As % of the General category 16.23% 12.20% 14.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,599 1,277 2,063
10th Percentile £358 £350 £310
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.92% -0.95% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £688 £700 £719
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 75 170
10th Percentile £13.69 £16.34 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.09 £18.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £23.83 £25.08 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.99% +6.70% +14.08%
75th Percentile £41.00 £34.31 £55.08
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.35 £72.42
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £22.59 £22.50
% change year-on-year +5.49% +0.38% +11.94%

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 22,811 15,463 21,153
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.38% 64.21% 57.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,957 9,953 13,561
10th Percentile £313 £281 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £630 £648 £650
90th Percentile £740 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £513 £511 £525
% change year-on-year +0.36% -2.73% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,569 713 1,811
10th Percentile £14.10 £13.27 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.00 £28.00 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -9.68% -2.88%
75th Percentile £63.75 £53.75 £52.20
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £67.38
UK median hourly rate £30.75 £27.94 £30.16
% change year-on-year +10.06% -7.36% -7.20%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +4 1,681 £525 - 484
North of England +1 668 £455 -4.21% 307
South East +3 433 £500 -5.21% 244
Midlands +10 395 £500 +6.67% 145
West Midlands +6 321 £500 +8.11% 116
North West +2 302 £485 -3.00% 137
South West -7 248 £525 -4.55% 141
Yorkshire +11 230 £450 -2.17% 106
North East -3 142 £450 -3.23% 64
East of England +21 80 £463 +37.04% 40
East Midlands +8 67 £525 +10.53% 29
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
1 139 (3.75%) Confluence
2 106 (2.86%) SharePoint
3 45 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
4 39 (1.05%) SAS
5 38 (1.03%) Apache Airflow
6 31 (0.84%) Apache Spark
7 28 (0.76%) Apache
8 16 (0.43%) CMS
9 15 (0.41%) Jupyter
10 11 (0.30%) Palantir Foundry
11 9 (0.24%) nginx
12 8 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
13 7 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.14%) Camunda
14 5 (0.14%) WebLogic
15 4 (0.11%) Drupal
15 4 (0.11%) WordPress
16 3 (0.081%) Anypoint
17 2 (0.054%) IIS
17 2 (0.054%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 71 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
3 25 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
4 23 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.32%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.14%) Trello
8 3 (0.081%) Adobe XD
8 3 (0.081%) Sketch
9 2 (0.054%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.054%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.054%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.027%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.027%) Quicktime
10 1 (0.027%) Siemens NX
10 1 (0.027%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 61 (1.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.62%) Oracle ERP
4 21 (0.57%) SAP PSCD
5 15 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
6 10 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
6 10 (0.27%) SAP Hybris
6 10 (0.27%) SystmOne
7 7 (0.19%) NEC Housing
7 7 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
7 7 (0.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.16%) Oracle Cash Management
8 6 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
8 6 (0.16%) SAP Payroll
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
9 5 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
9 5 (0.14%) SAP ERP
9 5 (0.14%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 697 (18.82%) AWS
2 643 (17.36%) Azure
3 189 (5.10%) Power Platform
4 170 (4.59%) Microsoft 365
5 135 (3.65%) Azure DevOps
6 133 (3.59%) GitHub
7 132 (3.56%) Serverless
8 125 (3.38%) GCP
9 103 (2.78%) Amazon S3
10 101 (2.73%) Entra ID
11 98 (2.65%) SaaS
12 81 (2.19%) AWS Lambda
13 80 (2.16%) GitHub Actions
14 79 (2.13%) Amazon EC2
15 68 (1.84%) Power Automate
16 66 (1.78%) OCI
17 64 (1.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 64 (1.73%) Dynamics 365
18 61 (1.65%) Amazon EKS
19 53 (1.43%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 95 (2.57%) Firewall
2 53 (1.43%) Network Security
2 53 (1.43%) WAN
3 50 (1.35%) DNS
4 40 (1.08%) LAN
5 39 (1.05%) VPN
6 33 (0.89%) BGP
7 28 (0.76%) OSPF
8 25 (0.68%) TCP/IP
8 25 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
9 22 (0.59%) SD-WAN
10 21 (0.57%) DHCP
11 18 (0.49%) BIG-IP
12 17 (0.46%) VXLAN
13 16 (0.43%) Ethernet VPN
14 14 (0.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 13 (0.35%) WLAN
16 12 (0.32%) DKIM
16 12 (0.32%) SSL
17 11 (0.30%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (3.48%) Power BI
2 82 (2.21%) PostgreSQL
3 73 (1.97%) Data Warehouse
4 65 (1.76%) SQL Server
5 54 (1.46%) MongoDB
6 52 (1.40%) Metadata
7 50 (1.35%) Amazon RDS
8 39 (1.05%) NoSQL
8 39 (1.05%) Oracle Database
9 37 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
10 34 (0.92%) Data Lake
11 30 (0.81%) DynamoDB
11 30 (0.81%) Relational Database
12 29 (0.78%) Tableau
13 21 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
13 21 (0.57%) Electronic Patient Records
13 21 (0.57%) Pentaho
14 20 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
15 18 (0.49%) Delta Lake
16 17 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 209 (5.64%) JIRA
2 155 (4.19%) Git
3 151 (4.08%) GitLab
4 119 (3.21%) Jenkins
5 51 (1.38%) Selenium
6 40 (1.08%) JUnit
7 34 (0.92%) Mockito
8 29 (0.78%) Postman
8 29 (0.78%) SonarQube
9 26 (0.70%) JMeter
10 24 (0.65%) Cucumber
11 22 (0.59%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.57%) Maven
13 17 (0.46%) CircleCI
13 17 (0.46%) REST Assured
14 14 (0.38%) DbUnit
15 13 (0.35%) Artifactory
15 13 (0.35%) jMock
16 11 (0.30%) Bitbucket Server
16 11 (0.30%) Gatling
General
1 948 (25.60%) Social Skills
2 443 (11.96%) Finance
3 355 (9.59%) Analytical Skills
4 198 (5.35%) Military
5 171 (4.62%) Local Government
6 93 (2.51%) Documentation Skills
7 89 (2.40%) Legal
8 87 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (2.30%) Organisational Skills
10 75 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
11 69 (1.86%) Telecoms
12 67 (1.81%) Police
13 57 (1.54%) Marketing
14 55 (1.49%) Law
15 53 (1.43%) Banking
16 37 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
17 32 (0.86%) Manufacturing
18 27 (0.73%) Billing
19 25 (0.68%) Retail
20 22 (0.59%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 488 (13.18%) Developer
2 483 (13.04%) Architect
3 437 (11.80%) Senior
4 349 (9.42%) Analyst
5 342 (9.24%) Lead
6 164 (4.43%) Designer
7 151 (4.08%) Business Analyst
8 150 (4.05%) Consultant
9 131 (3.54%) DevOps Engineer
10 130 (3.51%) Data Engineer
11 116 (3.13%) Project Manager
12 115 (3.11%) Solutions Architect
12 115 (3.11%) Technical Architect
13 106 (2.86%) Java Developer
14 90 (2.43%) Delivery Manager
14 90 (2.43%) Senior Developer
15 88 (2.38%) User Researcher
16 73 (1.97%) Service Designer
17 67 (1.81%) Administrator
18 64 (1.73%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (3.46%) REST
2 118 (3.19%) Node.js
3 108 (2.92%) Spring
4 99 (2.67%) React
5 93 (2.51%) Spring Boot
6 85 (2.30%) RESTful
7 70 (1.89%) Oracle Fusion
8 69 (1.86%) Web Services
9 67 (1.81%) Kafka
10 63 (1.70%) .NET
10 63 (1.70%) AngularJS
11 61 (1.65%) SOAP
12 57 (1.54%) HTML
13 48 (1.30%) CSS
14 44 (1.19%) Lightning Web Components
15 43 (1.16%) OAuth
16 39 (1.05%) Middleware
17 37 (1.00%) Playwright
18 33 (0.89%) JSON
19 31 (0.84%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 189 (5.10%) Cloud Native
2 147 (3.97%) Product Ownership
3 131 (3.54%) NHS
4 129 (3.48%) Onboarding
5 86 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
6 79 (2.13%) Management Information System
7 68 (1.84%) Data Centre
8 55 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
9 49 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
10 48 (1.30%) Public Cloud
11 42 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
12 41 (1.11%) Data Structures
13 40 (1.08%) Hybrid Cloud
14 29 (0.78%) Analytical Mindset
15 28 (0.76%) CMDB
16 25 (0.68%) Freedom of Information
16 25 (0.68%) Virtual Team
17 24 (0.65%) PKI
17 24 (0.65%) Security Operations Centre
18 22 (0.59%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 165 (4.46%) Windows
2 149 (4.02%) Linux
3 61 (1.65%) Windows Server
4 50 (1.35%) Unix
5 29 (0.78%) Android
6 26 (0.70%) Apple iOS
7 23 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 22 (0.59%) Windows 10
9 18 (0.49%) Mac OS
10 12 (0.32%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.24%) Mac OS X
12 8 (0.22%) Solaris
12 8 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
14 5 (0.14%) AIX
14 5 (0.14%) VMS
14 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.081%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.081%) Windows Server 2012
16 2 (0.054%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,007 (27.19%) Agile
2 563 (15.20%) CI/CD
3 555 (14.99%) DevOps
4 515 (13.91%) Stakeholder Management
5 425 (11.48%) Continuous Improvement
6 424 (11.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 373 (10.07%) Problem-Solving
8 340 (9.18%) Migration
9 335 (9.05%) Analytics
10 315 (8.51%) Decision-Making
11 304 (8.21%) Roadmaps
12 258 (6.97%) Infrastructure as Code
13 253 (6.83%) Data Modelling
14 249 (6.72%) Containerisation
15 231 (6.24%) Test Automation
16 230 (6.21%) AI
17 226 (6.10%) User Research
18 211 (5.70%) Microservices
19 202 (5.46%) Scrum
20 201 (5.43%) Digital Transformation Programme
Programming Languages
1 391 (10.56%) Python
2 341 (9.21%) SQL
3 279 (7.53%) Java
4 180 (4.86%) JavaScript
5 105 (2.84%) TypeScript
6 103 (2.78%) PowerShell
7 78 (2.11%) C#
8 51 (1.38%) Bash
9 47 (1.27%) Apex Code
10 46 (1.24%) PL/SQL
11 38 (1.03%) Ruby
12 25 (0.68%) Kotlin
13 21 (0.57%) Bicep
13 21 (0.57%) Shell Script
14 20 (0.54%) R
15 18 (0.49%) Go
16 16 (0.43%) Scala
17 12 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 11 (0.30%) PHP
18 11 (0.30%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,969 (53.17%) Security Cleared
2 1,379 (37.24%) SC Cleared
3 186 (5.02%) DV Cleared
4 174 (4.70%) Degree
5 126 (3.40%) BPSS Clearance
6 47 (1.27%) Azure Certification
7 42 (1.13%) CISSP
8 38 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
9 34 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
10 33 (0.89%) AWS Certification
11 28 (0.76%) PMP
12 27 (0.73%) CISM
13 26 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
14 24 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
15 23 (0.62%) PMI Certification
16 15 (0.41%) CCNP
16 15 (0.41%) DBS Check
16 15 (0.41%) Master's Degree
17 13 (0.35%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 13 (0.35%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 264 (7.13%) Accessibility
2 162 (4.37%) QA
3 161 (4.35%) Data Quality
4 112 (3.02%) GDPR
5 103 (2.78%) WCAG
6 84 (2.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 67 (1.81%) NCSC
7 67 (1.81%) PMO
8 58 (1.57%) NIST
9 34 (0.92%) SLA
10 30 (0.81%) GRC
11 26 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials
12 20 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
13 16 (0.43%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 12 (0.32%) Government Security Classifications
16 9 (0.24%) HL7
17 8 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 7 (0.19%) COBIT
18 7 (0.19%) IFRS
System Software
1 262 (7.08%) Docker
2 151 (4.08%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.59%) VMware NSX
5 16 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (0.32%) Hyper-V
7 11 (0.30%) Postfix
8 9 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
8 9 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
9 8 (0.22%) vSphere
10 6 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.081%) NFS
11 3 (0.081%) RACF
12 2 (0.054%) Squid
13 1 (0.027%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.027%) etcd
13 1 (0.027%) NLBS
13 1 (0.027%) Sendmail
13 1 (0.027%) SRDF
13 1 (0.027%) Xen
Systems Management
1 284 (7.67%) Terraform
2 250 (6.75%) Kubernetes
3 84 (2.27%) Grafana
4 76 (2.05%) Ansible
5 59 (1.59%) Prometheus
6 45 (1.22%) Single Sign-On
7 37 (1.00%) Microsoft Intune
8 21 (0.57%) Argo
9 14 (0.38%) Puppet
9 14 (0.38%) SCCM
10 11 (0.30%) Kibana
11 10 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
11 10 (0.27%) vCenter Server
12 8 (0.22%) FortiGate
13 6 (0.16%) Data Guard
13 6 (0.16%) Istio
14 5 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (0.14%) Progress Chef
14 5 (0.14%) Rancher
15 4 (0.11%) Consul
Vendors
1 414 (11.18%) Microsoft
2 239 (6.45%) Oracle
3 154 (4.16%) SAP
4 124 (3.35%) Salesforce
5 111 (3.00%) ServiceNow
6 93 (2.51%) Google
7 83 (2.24%) Databricks
8 64 (1.73%) VMware
9 45 (1.22%) Cisco
10 37 (1.00%) Splunk
11 34 (0.92%) Red Hat
12 32 (0.86%) Atlassian
12 32 (0.86%) Palo Alto
13 30 (0.81%) Dynatrace
14 27 (0.73%) IBM
15 26 (0.70%) Talend
16 25 (0.68%) F5
16 25 (0.68%) MuleSoft
17 21 (0.57%) CyberArk
18 20 (0.54%) Foundry