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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 23 19
Rank change year-on-year +2 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 4,029 2,152 2,673
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.80% 7.80% 8.02%
As % of the General category 15.85% 12.15% 13.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,812 1,478 1,825
10th Percentile £360 £337 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £513 £518
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -0.97% -3.72%
75th Percentile £607 £600 £627
90th Percentile £700 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £515 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +3.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 186 81 113
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.48 £15.10
25th Percentile £16.63 £18.13 £18.03
Median hourly rate £22.50 £21.50 £26.13
Median % change year-on-year +4.65% -17.70% +26.57%
75th Percentile £53.75 £30.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.38 £63.75 £73.07
UK median hourly rate £24.25 £19.92 £23.21
% change year-on-year +21.77% -14.18% +15.74%

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 25,412 17,705 19,172
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.52% 64.13% 57.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,172 11,297 12,343
10th Percentile £313 £278 £300
25th Percentile £419 £402 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -4.65% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £663
90th Percentile £750 £750 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,980 947 1,246
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.25 £14.27
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.50 £18.03
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +36.24%
75th Percentile £63.38 £50.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £70.32
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +27.24% -34.02% +27.07%

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 8 August 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 8 August 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 8 August 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 +1 1,776 £533 +1.43% 697
North of England +2 712 £475 -1.04% 309
South East +6 492 £500 -4.76% 208
Midlands +8 485 £495 +4.21% 139
West Midlands +4 404 £490 +3.16% 116
South West -5 325 £525 -4.55% 213
North West -5 279 £500 +5.26% 143
Yorkshire +11 264 £475 - 110
North East -2 181 £450 -10.00% 57
East Midlands +25 73 £591 +44.02% 23
East of England +5 59 £450 -10.00% 38
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
1 164 (4.07%) Confluence
2 114 (2.83%) SharePoint
3 51 (1.27%) SAS
4 50 (1.24%) Microsoft Exchange
5 47 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
6 38 (0.94%) Apache Spark
7 35 (0.87%) Apache
8 24 (0.60%) CMS
9 21 (0.52%) Jupyter
10 13 (0.32%) nginx
10 13 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.27%) WordPress
12 8 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
13 7 (0.17%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.12%) Drupal
14 5 (0.12%) SharePoint 2013
14 5 (0.12%) Tuxedo
14 5 (0.12%) WebLogic
15 3 (0.074%) Camunda
15 3 (0.074%) IIS
Applications
1 84 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (1.17%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
4 20 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
5 17 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.27%) MS Visio
7 8 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.15%) Sketch
8 6 (0.15%) Trello
9 3 (0.074%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.050%) Adobe After Effects
10 2 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.050%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.025%) Gliffy
11 1 (0.025%) LaTeX
11 1 (0.025%) Navisworks
11 1 (0.025%) ProjectWise
11 1 (0.025%) Revit
11 1 (0.025%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 60 (1.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 41 (1.02%) Oracle ERP
4 26 (0.65%) Oracle EBS
5 23 (0.57%) SAP PSCD
6 15 (0.37%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
8 12 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.27%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.27%) SAP Payroll
10 10 (0.25%) ContrOCC
10 10 (0.25%) NEC Housing
10 10 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 9 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
11 9 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 9 (0.22%) SAP FI
12 8 (0.20%) SAP BRIM
12 8 (0.20%) SAP Hybris
12 8 (0.20%) SystmOne
13 7 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 819 (20.33%) AWS
2 784 (19.46%) Azure
3 238 (5.91%) Power Platform
4 189 (4.69%) Azure DevOps
5 182 (4.52%) Microsoft 365
6 160 (3.97%) GCP
7 155 (3.85%) GitHub
8 147 (3.65%) Serverless
9 133 (3.30%) Entra ID
10 129 (3.20%) Amazon S3
11 106 (2.63%) GitHub Actions
12 105 (2.61%) SaaS
13 90 (2.23%) AWS Lambda
14 89 (2.21%) OCI
15 83 (2.06%) Power Automate
16 80 (1.99%) Dynamics 365
17 72 (1.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 72 (1.79%) Amazon EC2
18 69 (1.71%) PowerApps
19 66 (1.64%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 115 (2.85%) Firewall
2 73 (1.81%) DNS
3 58 (1.44%) WAN
4 51 (1.27%) LAN
5 48 (1.19%) Network Security
6 39 (0.97%) VPN
7 35 (0.87%) DHCP
8 31 (0.77%) BGP
9 30 (0.74%) OSPF
10 28 (0.69%) TCP/IP
10 28 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
11 21 (0.52%) SD-WAN
12 18 (0.45%) VXLAN
12 18 (0.45%) WLAN
13 17 (0.42%) BIG-IP
14 16 (0.40%) Ethernet VPN
15 15 (0.37%) Wireless
16 14 (0.35%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 14 (0.35%) NGFW
16 14 (0.35%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 162 (4.02%) Power BI
2 115 (2.85%) Data Warehouse
3 97 (2.41%) PostgreSQL
4 82 (2.04%) SQL Server
5 61 (1.51%) Relational Database
6 59 (1.46%) Metadata
7 56 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
8 52 (1.29%) Data Lake
8 52 (1.29%) Oracle Database
9 51 (1.27%) MongoDB
10 49 (1.22%) NoSQL
11 36 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
12 31 (0.77%) Amazon Redshift
13 30 (0.74%) Amazon Athena
13 30 (0.74%) DynamoDB
13 30 (0.74%) Pentaho
13 30 (0.74%) Tableau
14 25 (0.62%) MySQL
15 24 (0.60%) Delta Lake
16 23 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 240 (5.96%) JIRA
2 184 (4.57%) Git
3 151 (3.75%) GitLab
4 136 (3.38%) Jenkins
5 42 (1.04%) Selenium
6 37 (0.92%) Mockito
7 35 (0.87%) JUnit
8 32 (0.79%) Cucumber
9 31 (0.77%) SonarQube
10 26 (0.65%) Postman
11 24 (0.60%) Cypress.io
11 24 (0.60%) JMeter
11 24 (0.60%) Maven
12 17 (0.42%) REST Assured
12 17 (0.42%) WebDriver
13 15 (0.37%) Gatling
14 12 (0.30%) DbUnit
15 11 (0.27%) jMock
15 11 (0.27%) MSI
15 11 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,117 (27.72%) Social Skills
2 469 (11.64%) Finance
3 407 (10.10%) Analytical Skills
4 234 (5.81%) Military
5 228 (5.66%) Local Government
6 144 (3.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 128 (3.18%) Influencing Skills
8 107 (2.66%) Legal
9 95 (2.36%) Organisational Skills
10 85 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
11 82 (2.04%) Police
12 50 (1.24%) Law
13 49 (1.22%) Telecoms
14 44 (1.09%) Marketing
15 38 (0.94%) Banking
16 36 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
17 26 (0.65%) Billing
18 23 (0.57%) Retail
19 18 (0.45%) General Ledger
20 17 (0.42%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 547 (13.58%) Architect
2 543 (13.48%) Developer
3 533 (13.23%) Senior
4 451 (11.19%) Lead
5 358 (8.89%) Analyst
6 163 (4.05%) Data Engineer
7 160 (3.97%) Consultant
8 158 (3.92%) Designer
9 145 (3.60%) Business Analyst
10 138 (3.43%) DevOps Engineer
11 126 (3.13%) Delivery Manager
12 124 (3.08%) Solutions Architect
13 110 (2.73%) Java Developer
13 110 (2.73%) Senior Developer
14 107 (2.66%) Technical Architect
15 99 (2.46%) Data Architect
16 95 (2.36%) Project Manager
17 90 (2.23%) User Researcher
18 75 (1.86%) Senior Manager
19 72 (1.79%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 151 (3.75%) REST
2 109 (2.71%) RESTful
3 105 (2.61%) Node.js
4 102 (2.53%) React
5 98 (2.43%) Spring
6 87 (2.16%) Spring Boot
7 83 (2.06%) Oracle Fusion
8 79 (1.96%) Kafka
9 73 (1.81%) HTML
9 73 (1.81%) SOAP
10 68 (1.69%) .NET
11 65 (1.61%) Web Services
12 62 (1.54%) CSS
13 60 (1.49%) AngularJS
14 55 (1.37%) Django
14 55 (1.37%) OAuth
15 49 (1.22%) JSON
16 45 (1.12%) PySpark
17 44 (1.09%) OpenID
18 38 (0.94%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 233 (5.78%) Cloud Native
2 173 (4.29%) Onboarding
3 167 (4.14%) Product Ownership
4 142 (3.52%) NHS
5 113 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
6 101 (2.51%) Management Information System
7 69 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
8 63 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
9 62 (1.54%) Data Centre
10 49 (1.22%) Data Structures
11 44 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
12 43 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
13 42 (1.04%) Public Cloud
14 40 (0.99%) Analytical Mindset
15 33 (0.82%) CMDB
16 31 (0.77%) Virtual Team
17 29 (0.72%) Low-Code
18 27 (0.67%) Security Operations Centre
19 26 (0.65%) Freedom of Information
19 26 (0.65%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 159 (3.95%) Windows
2 153 (3.80%) Linux
3 59 (1.46%) Windows Server
4 56 (1.39%) Unix
5 25 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 23 (0.57%) Windows 10
7 22 (0.55%) Android
8 21 (0.52%) Apple iOS
9 15 (0.37%) Mac OS
10 9 (0.22%) Mac OS X
11 7 (0.17%) Solaris
11 7 (0.17%) Ubuntu
11 7 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
13 5 (0.12%) AIX
14 4 (0.099%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.074%) Windows Server 2016
16 2 (0.050%) CentOS
16 2 (0.050%) VMS
16 2 (0.050%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,270 (31.52%) Agile
2 730 (18.12%) Stakeholder Management
3 673 (16.70%) DevOps
4 671 (16.65%) CI/CD
5 626 (15.54%) Continuous Improvement
6 612 (15.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 472 (11.72%) Problem-Solving
8 434 (10.77%) Analytics
9 417 (10.35%) Decision-Making
10 376 (9.33%) Migration
11 336 (8.34%) Infrastructure as Code
12 332 (8.24%) Roadmaps
13 326 (8.09%) AI
14 301 (7.47%) Digital Transformation Programme
15 300 (7.45%) Data Modelling
16 277 (6.88%) Containerisation
17 276 (6.85%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
18 264 (6.55%) Scrum
19 258 (6.40%) Technical Leadership
20 254 (6.30%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 492 (12.21%) Python
2 409 (10.15%) SQL
3 286 (7.10%) Java
4 217 (5.39%) JavaScript
5 114 (2.83%) PowerShell
6 109 (2.71%) TypeScript
7 84 (2.08%) C#
8 69 (1.71%) Bash
9 58 (1.44%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.19%) Bicep
11 35 (0.87%) Apex Code
12 28 (0.69%) Kotlin
12 28 (0.69%) Ruby
12 28 (0.69%) Scala
13 24 (0.60%) R
14 22 (0.55%) Groovy
15 20 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 17 (0.42%) Shell Script
17 14 (0.35%) ABAP
17 14 (0.35%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 2,088 (51.82%) Security Cleared
2 1,624 (40.31%) SC Cleared
3 249 (6.18%) DV Cleared
4 240 (5.96%) BPSS Clearance
5 184 (4.57%) Degree
6 64 (1.59%) Microsoft Certification
7 57 (1.41%) Azure Certification
8 47 (1.17%) CISSP
9 46 (1.14%) AWS Certification
9 46 (1.14%) Cisco Certification
10 32 (0.79%) CISM
11 28 (0.69%) PMI Certification
12 26 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
13 25 (0.62%) CCNP
14 23 (0.57%) ISTQB
15 19 (0.47%) Computer Science Degree
16 17 (0.42%) Master's Degree
16 17 (0.42%) PMP
17 15 (0.37%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 15 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 321 (7.97%) Accessibility
2 222 (5.51%) Data Quality
3 213 (5.29%) QA
4 141 (3.50%) WCAG
5 133 (3.30%) GDPR
6 104 (2.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 83 (2.06%) PMO
8 82 (2.04%) NCSC
9 77 (1.91%) NIST
10 37 (0.92%) SLA
11 35 (0.87%) GRC
12 29 (0.72%) Cyber Essentials
13 19 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
14 16 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 16 (0.40%) Government Security Classifications
15 13 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 13 (0.32%) PCI DSS
16 10 (0.25%) NIST 800
17 9 (0.22%) HL7
18 5 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 313 (7.77%) Docker
2 163 (4.05%) Active Directory
3 48 (1.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (0.65%) VMware NSX
5 18 (0.45%) Hyper-V
6 14 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (0.35%) vSphere
7 13 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
8 9 (0.22%) Postfix
8 9 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
8 9 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
9 1 (0.025%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.025%) Ceph
9 1 (0.025%) etcd
9 1 (0.025%) FreeRADIUS
9 1 (0.025%) GPFS
9 1 (0.025%) NFS
9 1 (0.025%) Sendmail
9 1 (0.025%) Squid
Systems Management
1 355 (8.81%) Terraform
2 277 (6.88%) Kubernetes
3 88 (2.18%) Grafana
4 80 (1.99%) Ansible
5 59 (1.46%) Prometheus
6 46 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
7 44 (1.09%) Microsoft Intune
8 26 (0.65%) Argo
9 16 (0.40%) SCCM
10 14 (0.35%) Kibana
11 13 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
12 11 (0.27%) Puppet
13 10 (0.25%) Data Guard
14 9 (0.22%) VxRail
15 8 (0.20%) Istio
15 8 (0.20%) vCenter Server
16 6 (0.15%) FortiGate
17 5 (0.12%) Consul
17 5 (0.12%) Packer
17 5 (0.12%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 527 (13.08%) Microsoft
2 324 (8.04%) Oracle
3 145 (3.60%) ServiceNow
4 133 (3.30%) SAP
5 121 (3.00%) Google
6 113 (2.80%) Salesforce
7 96 (2.38%) Databricks
8 62 (1.54%) VMware
9 49 (1.22%) Cisco
10 40 (0.99%) Palo Alto
11 34 (0.84%) Dynatrace
12 32 (0.79%) Talend
13 31 (0.77%) Atlassian
14 30 (0.74%) Red Hat
15 25 (0.62%) Informatica
16 24 (0.60%) CyberArk
16 24 (0.60%) IBM
16 24 (0.60%) Workday
17 23 (0.57%) Foundry
17 23 (0.57%) Splunk