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

6 months to
12 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 3,766 1,907 3,122
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.83% 7.78% 8.33%
As % of the General category 16.22% 12.09% 14.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,642 1,284 2,084
10th Percentile £358 £345 £308
25th Percentile £425 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -1.94% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £688 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £501 £500 £508
% change year-on-year +0.10% -1.48% -2.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 165 80 170
10th Percentile £13.35 £16.22 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.09 £18.22 £15.39
Median hourly rate £24.19 £25.08 £22.25
Median % change year-on-year -3.53% +12.70% +8.01%
75th Percentile £50.00 £35.53 £54.97
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £72.42
UK median hourly rate £24.22 £22.95 £22.50
% change year-on-year +5.53% +2.00% +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 23,220 15,777 21,486
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.44% 64.35% 57.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,184 10,166 13,782
10th Percentile £313 £281 £281
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £635 £644 £650
90th Percentile £749 £766 £775
UK median daily rate £513 £506 £525
% change year-on-year +1.28% -3.62% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,605 738 1,831
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.32 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £28.08 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.76% -10.87% +3.14%
75th Percentile £63.75 £53.75 £52.20
90th Percentile £81.77 £75.00 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £28.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +14.29% -6.67% -6.02%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 1,699 £525 - 415
North of England +2 673 £462 -2.80% 289
South East +3 458 £500 -5.66% 223
Midlands +9 404 £500 +6.67% 144
West Midlands +6 332 £500 +5.26% 109
North West +1 299 £489 +1.82% 123
South West -6 258 £525 -4.55% 110
Yorkshire +12 227 £450 -2.17% 106
North East -3 153 £450 -4.26% 64
East of England +18 71 £475 +18.75% 29
East Midlands +12 65 £525 +28.05% 35
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
1 140 (3.72%) Confluence
2 106 (2.81%) SharePoint
3 44 (1.17%) Microsoft Exchange
4 41 (1.09%) SAS
5 40 (1.06%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.85%) Apache Spark
7 28 (0.74%) Apache
8 17 (0.45%) Jupyter
9 16 (0.42%) CMS
10 11 (0.29%) Palantir Foundry
11 9 (0.24%) nginx
12 8 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
13 7 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.13%) Camunda
14 5 (0.13%) Tuxedo
14 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
15 4 (0.11%) Drupal
15 4 (0.11%) WordPress
16 3 (0.080%) IIS
16 3 (0.080%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 69 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
3 27 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 23 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.29%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.16%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.053%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.053%) Sketch
10 1 (0.027%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.027%) Quicktime
10 1 (0.027%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 62 (1.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.88%) Oracle ERP
4 21 (0.56%) SAP PSCD
5 14 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
6 10 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
6 10 (0.27%) SAP Hybris
6 10 (0.27%) SystmOne
7 9 (0.24%) SAP Payroll
8 8 (0.21%) NEC Housing
8 8 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
9 7 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
9 7 (0.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 6 (0.16%) Oracle Cash Management
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
11 5 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
11 5 (0.13%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 739 (19.62%) AWS
2 649 (17.23%) Azure
3 189 (5.02%) Power Platform
4 169 (4.49%) Microsoft 365
5 147 (3.90%) Serverless
6 141 (3.74%) GitHub
7 137 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
8 132 (3.51%) GCP
9 116 (3.08%) Amazon S3
10 101 (2.68%) Entra ID
11 99 (2.63%) SaaS
12 95 (2.52%) AWS Lambda
13 85 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
14 81 (2.15%) Amazon EC2
15 69 (1.83%) OCI
16 65 (1.73%) Power Automate
17 64 (1.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 64 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
18 60 (1.59%) Amazon EKS
19 54 (1.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 91 (2.42%) Firewall
2 54 (1.43%) Network Security
3 52 (1.38%) WAN
4 50 (1.33%) DNS
5 39 (1.04%) LAN
6 37 (0.98%) VPN
7 32 (0.85%) BGP
8 27 (0.72%) OSPF
9 24 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
10 23 (0.61%) TCP/IP
11 22 (0.58%) SD-WAN
12 21 (0.56%) DHCP
13 19 (0.50%) BIG-IP
14 18 (0.48%) VXLAN
15 16 (0.42%) Ethernet VPN
16 15 (0.40%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 14 (0.37%) WLAN
18 12 (0.32%) DKIM
19 11 (0.29%) NGFW
19 11 (0.29%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (3.45%) Power BI
2 87 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
3 84 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
4 72 (1.91%) SQL Server
5 54 (1.43%) Metadata
5 54 (1.43%) MongoDB
6 51 (1.35%) Amazon RDS
7 46 (1.22%) Data Lake
8 44 (1.17%) Oracle Database
9 41 (1.09%) Relational Database
10 40 (1.06%) NoSQL
11 37 (0.98%) Oracle Reports
12 31 (0.82%) Amazon Athena
12 31 (0.82%) DynamoDB
13 30 (0.80%) Tableau
14 27 (0.72%) Amazon Redshift
15 22 (0.58%) Amazon Aurora
15 22 (0.58%) Electronic Patient Records
16 21 (0.56%) Pentaho
17 17 (0.45%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 209 (5.55%) JIRA
2 156 (4.14%) Git
3 152 (4.04%) GitLab
4 125 (3.32%) Jenkins
5 48 (1.27%) Selenium
6 40 (1.06%) JUnit
7 34 (0.90%) Mockito
8 30 (0.80%) SonarQube
9 28 (0.74%) Postman
10 26 (0.69%) JMeter
11 23 (0.61%) Cucumber
12 22 (0.58%) Cypress.io
13 21 (0.56%) Maven
14 17 (0.45%) CircleCI
14 17 (0.45%) REST Assured
15 14 (0.37%) DbUnit
16 13 (0.35%) Gatling
16 13 (0.35%) jMock
17 12 (0.32%) Artifactory
18 11 (0.29%) Bitbucket Server
General
1 953 (25.31%) Social Skills
2 443 (11.76%) Finance
3 349 (9.27%) Analytical Skills
4 204 (5.42%) Military
5 177 (4.70%) Local Government
6 95 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 93 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
8 91 (2.42%) Legal
9 85 (2.26%) Organisational Skills
10 79 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
11 72 (1.91%) Police
12 61 (1.62%) Telecoms
13 56 (1.49%) Law
14 52 (1.38%) Banking
14 52 (1.38%) Marketing
15 39 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
16 27 (0.72%) Billing
17 25 (0.66%) Retail
18 23 (0.61%) Manufacturing
19 14 (0.37%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 498 (13.22%) Architect
2 496 (13.17%) Developer
3 448 (11.90%) Senior
4 360 (9.56%) Lead
5 356 (9.45%) Analyst
6 166 (4.41%) Designer
7 156 (4.14%) Business Analyst
8 152 (4.04%) Consultant
9 137 (3.64%) Data Engineer
10 134 (3.56%) DevOps Engineer
11 119 (3.16%) Technical Architect
12 118 (3.13%) Solutions Architect
13 113 (3.00%) Project Manager
14 104 (2.76%) Java Developer
15 94 (2.50%) Delivery Manager
15 94 (2.50%) Senior Developer
16 90 (2.39%) User Researcher
17 74 (1.96%) Service Designer
18 70 (1.86%) Administrator
19 68 (1.81%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 125 (3.32%) REST
2 114 (3.03%) Node.js
3 108 (2.87%) Spring
4 97 (2.58%) React
5 95 (2.52%) Spring Boot
6 91 (2.42%) RESTful
7 74 (1.96%) Oracle Fusion
8 70 (1.86%) Kafka
9 67 (1.78%) Web Services
10 65 (1.73%) .NET
11 62 (1.65%) AngularJS
12 59 (1.57%) SOAP
13 58 (1.54%) HTML
14 49 (1.30%) CSS
15 45 (1.19%) OAuth
16 41 (1.09%) Lightning Web Components
17 39 (1.04%) Middleware
18 38 (1.01%) Playwright
19 33 (0.88%) JSON
20 31 (0.82%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 199 (5.28%) Cloud Native
2 146 (3.88%) Product Ownership
3 132 (3.51%) NHS
4 131 (3.48%) Onboarding
5 89 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
6 79 (2.10%) Management Information System
7 68 (1.81%) Data Centre
8 57 (1.51%) Distributed Systems
9 52 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
10 51 (1.35%) Public Cloud
11 43 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
12 41 (1.09%) Data Structures
13 40 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
14 30 (0.80%) CMDB
15 29 (0.77%) Analytical Mindset
16 26 (0.69%) Virtual Team
17 25 (0.66%) Freedom of Information
17 25 (0.66%) Mobile App
18 24 (0.64%) PKI
18 24 (0.64%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 165 (4.38%) Windows
2 150 (3.98%) Linux
3 59 (1.57%) Windows Server
4 53 (1.41%) Unix
5 29 (0.77%) Android
6 26 (0.69%) Apple iOS
7 22 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 20 (0.53%) Windows 10
9 17 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 12 (0.32%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.24%) Mac OS X
12 8 (0.21%) Solaris
12 8 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
14 5 (0.13%) AIX
14 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
15 4 (0.11%) VMS
16 3 (0.080%) Amazon Linux
16 3 (0.080%) Windows Server 2012
17 2 (0.053%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,034 (27.46%) Agile
2 581 (15.43%) CI/CD
3 567 (15.06%) DevOps
4 535 (14.21%) Stakeholder Management
5 439 (11.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 437 (11.60%) Continuous Improvement
7 365 (9.69%) Problem-Solving
8 352 (9.35%) Analytics
9 340 (9.03%) Migration
10 329 (8.74%) Decision-Making
11 309 (8.20%) Roadmaps
12 271 (7.20%) Infrastructure as Code
13 259 (6.88%) Data Modelling
14 255 (6.77%) Containerisation
15 247 (6.56%) AI
16 232 (6.16%) Test Automation
17 228 (6.05%) User Research
18 214 (5.68%) Microservices
19 209 (5.55%) Scrum
20 205 (5.44%) Digital Transformation Programme
Programming Languages
1 414 (10.99%) Python
2 362 (9.61%) SQL
3 281 (7.46%) Java
4 171 (4.54%) JavaScript
5 108 (2.87%) TypeScript
6 102 (2.71%) PowerShell
7 79 (2.10%) C#
8 52 (1.38%) Bash
9 50 (1.33%) PL/SQL
10 43 (1.14%) Apex Code
11 39 (1.04%) Ruby
12 28 (0.74%) Kotlin
13 24 (0.64%) Bicep
14 22 (0.58%) R
15 19 (0.50%) Shell Script
16 17 (0.45%) Go
17 15 (0.40%) Scala
18 13 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 12 (0.32%) T-SQL
20 8 (0.21%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 1,981 (52.60%) Security Cleared
2 1,397 (37.10%) SC Cleared
3 196 (5.20%) DV Cleared
4 180 (4.78%) Degree
5 138 (3.66%) BPSS Clearance
6 45 (1.19%) Azure Certification
7 41 (1.09%) CISSP
8 39 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 34 (0.90%) AWS Certification
9 34 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
10 27 (0.72%) CISM
10 27 (0.72%) PMP
11 25 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
12 22 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
12 22 (0.58%) PMI Certification
13 15 (0.40%) CCNP
13 15 (0.40%) DBS Check
13 15 (0.40%) Master's Degree
14 13 (0.35%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 13 (0.35%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 270 (7.17%) Accessibility
2 169 (4.49%) Data Quality
2 169 (4.49%) QA
3 114 (3.03%) GDPR
4 109 (2.89%) WCAG
5 88 (2.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 74 (1.96%) PMO
7 72 (1.91%) NCSC
8 62 (1.65%) NIST
9 36 (0.96%) SLA
10 29 (0.77%) GRC
11 25 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
12 20 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.40%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 12 (0.32%) Government Security Classifications
16 9 (0.24%) HL7
16 9 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 7 (0.19%) COBIT
17 7 (0.19%) IFRS
System Software
1 271 (7.20%) Docker
2 152 (4.04%) Active Directory
3 40 (1.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.58%) VMware NSX
5 16 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.29%) Hyper-V
6 11 (0.29%) Postfix
7 9 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
7 9 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.21%) vSphere
9 5 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.080%) NFS
10 3 (0.080%) RACF
11 2 (0.053%) Squid
12 1 (0.027%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.027%) etcd
12 1 (0.027%) FreeRADIUS
12 1 (0.027%) NLBS
12 1 (0.027%) Sendmail
12 1 (0.027%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 303 (8.05%) Terraform
2 257 (6.82%) Kubernetes
3 86 (2.28%) Grafana
4 78 (2.07%) Ansible
5 59 (1.57%) Prometheus
6 43 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
7 37 (0.98%) Microsoft Intune
8 22 (0.58%) Argo
9 14 (0.37%) Puppet
9 14 (0.37%) SCCM
10 12 (0.32%) Kibana
11 10 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
11 10 (0.27%) vCenter Server
12 7 (0.19%) 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 (0.11%) Consul
Vendors
1 415 (11.02%) Microsoft
2 261 (6.93%) Oracle
3 148 (3.93%) SAP
4 118 (3.13%) Salesforce
5 116 (3.08%) ServiceNow
6 94 (2.50%) Google
7 85 (2.26%) Databricks
8 61 (1.62%) VMware
9 43 (1.14%) Cisco
10 36 (0.96%) Red Hat
11 35 (0.93%) Splunk
12 34 (0.90%) Palo Alto
13 32 (0.85%) Atlassian
14 30 (0.80%) Dynatrace
15 27 (0.72%) IBM
16 26 (0.69%) Talend
17 25 (0.66%) F5
18 22 (0.58%) CyberArk
19 21 (0.56%) Foundry
19 21 (0.56%) MuleSoft