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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 23 19
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,832 1,934 3,106
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.91% 7.80% 8.24%
As % of the General category 16.31% 12.11% 14.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,688 1,298 2,067
10th Percentile £358 £343 £310
25th Percentile £425 £419 £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 £510
% change year-on-year +2.00% -1.96% -2.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 81 166
10th Percentile £13.52 £16.32 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.20 £18.22 £15.39
Median hourly rate £23.41 £25.08 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year -6.63% +3.70% +17.78%
75th Percentile £45.90 £34.46 £56.90
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £72.79
UK median hourly rate £24.22 £22.95 £23.00
% change year-on-year +5.53% -0.22% +15.00%

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 23,488 15,968 21,563
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.64% 64.36% 57.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,306 10,292 13,773
10th Percentile £313 £285 £281
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £520 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -2.35% -3.18%
75th Percentile £638 £640 £650
90th Percentile £749 £763 £775
UK median daily rate £514 £503 £525
% change year-on-year +2.29% -4.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,641 771 1,839
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.35 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.75 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £28.00 £31.97
Median % change year-on-year +16.07% -12.42% +6.57%
75th Percentile £63.75 £53.75 £52.64
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.70 £30.50
% change year-on-year +15.52% -9.18% -0.07%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 1,715 £525 - 291
North of England 0 675 £470 -1.05% 222
South East +4 476 £500 -7.06% 204
Midlands +9 425 £500 +8.11% 111
West Midlands +5 351 £500 +8.11% 77
North West 0 296 £500 +5.26% 92
South West -5 271 £525 -4.55% 96
Yorkshire +9 232 £450 -2.65% 79
North East -3 155 £450 -3.23% 53
East of England +14 70 £475 +5.56% 33
East Midlands +11 67 £525 +28.05% 32
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 (3.78%) Confluence
2 112 (2.92%) SharePoint
3 47 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
4 44 (1.15%) SAS
5 43 (1.12%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.89%) Apache Spark
7 31 (0.81%) Apache
8 20 (0.52%) Jupyter
9 17 (0.44%) CMS
10 11 (0.29%) Palantir Foundry
11 9 (0.23%) nginx
12 8 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
13 7 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.13%) Camunda
14 5 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
14 5 (0.13%) Tuxedo
14 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
14 5 (0.13%) WordPress
15 4 (0.10%) Drupal
16 3 (0.078%) IIS
Applications
1 70 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
3 29 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
4 22 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.29%) MS Visio
5 11 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
6 8 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.13%) Trello
8 2 (0.052%) Adobe After Effects
8 2 (0.052%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.052%) CPLEX
8 2 (0.052%) Sketch
9 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.026%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 62 (1.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
3 34 (0.89%) Oracle ERP
4 26 (0.68%) SAP PSCD
5 14 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
6 12 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
6 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
7 10 (0.26%) SystmOne
8 9 (0.23%) NEC Housing
8 9 (0.23%) SAP Payroll
9 8 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
9 8 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 6 (0.16%) ContrOCC
10 6 (0.16%) Oracle Cash Management
10 6 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 6 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
10 6 (0.16%) SAP ERP
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
11 5 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
11 5 (0.13%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 763 (19.91%) AWS
2 667 (17.41%) Azure
3 201 (5.25%) Power Platform
4 176 (4.59%) Microsoft 365
5 151 (3.94%) Serverless
6 146 (3.81%) GitHub
7 144 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
8 138 (3.60%) GCP
9 118 (3.08%) Amazon S3
10 106 (2.77%) Entra ID
11 100 (2.61%) SaaS
12 98 (2.56%) AWS Lambda
13 92 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
14 82 (2.14%) Amazon EC2
15 70 (1.83%) Power Automate
16 68 (1.77%) Dynamics 365
16 68 (1.77%) OCI
17 65 (1.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 60 (1.57%) Amazon EKS
19 56 (1.46%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 94 (2.45%) Firewall
2 54 (1.41%) DNS
2 54 (1.41%) Network Security
3 52 (1.36%) WAN
4 40 (1.04%) LAN
5 38 (0.99%) VPN
6 32 (0.84%) BGP
7 27 (0.70%) OSPF
8 26 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
9 25 (0.65%) DHCP
10 22 (0.57%) TCP/IP
11 21 (0.55%) SD-WAN
12 19 (0.50%) BIG-IP
13 18 (0.47%) VXLAN
14 16 (0.42%) Ethernet VPN
15 15 (0.39%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 14 (0.37%) WLAN
17 12 (0.31%) DKIM
18 11 (0.29%) NGFW
19 10 (0.26%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 139 (3.63%) Power BI
2 91 (2.37%) Data Warehouse
3 87 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
4 72 (1.88%) SQL Server
5 55 (1.44%) Metadata
6 53 (1.38%) MongoDB
7 52 (1.36%) Amazon RDS
8 49 (1.28%) Data Lake
9 45 (1.17%) Oracle Database
9 45 (1.17%) Relational Database
10 41 (1.07%) NoSQL
11 38 (0.99%) Oracle Reports
12 31 (0.81%) Amazon Athena
12 31 (0.81%) DynamoDB
13 30 (0.78%) Tableau
14 29 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
15 22 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
15 22 (0.57%) Electronic Patient Records
15 22 (0.57%) Pentaho
16 18 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 217 (5.66%) JIRA
2 160 (4.18%) GitLab
3 159 (4.15%) Git
4 131 (3.42%) Jenkins
5 51 (1.33%) Selenium
6 42 (1.10%) JUnit
7 35 (0.91%) Mockito
8 30 (0.78%) SonarQube
9 28 (0.73%) Cucumber
9 28 (0.73%) Postman
10 27 (0.70%) JMeter
11 25 (0.65%) Cypress.io
12 22 (0.57%) Maven
13 19 (0.50%) REST Assured
14 16 (0.42%) CircleCI
15 14 (0.37%) DbUnit
16 13 (0.34%) Gatling
16 13 (0.34%) jMock
16 13 (0.34%) WebDriver
17 12 (0.31%) Artifactory
General
1 981 (25.60%) Social Skills
2 457 (11.93%) Finance
3 355 (9.26%) Analytical Skills
4 212 (5.53%) Military
5 184 (4.80%) Local Government
6 101 (2.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 97 (2.53%) Legal
8 91 (2.37%) Documentation Skills
9 87 (2.27%) Influencing Skills
10 84 (2.19%) Organisational Skills
11 74 (1.93%) Police
12 61 (1.59%) Telecoms
13 55 (1.44%) Law
14 50 (1.30%) Banking
15 48 (1.25%) Marketing
16 37 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
17 30 (0.78%) Billing
18 25 (0.65%) Retail
19 20 (0.52%) Manufacturing
20 14 (0.37%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 512 (13.36%) Architect
2 510 (13.31%) Developer
3 460 (12.00%) Senior
4 367 (9.58%) Lead
5 351 (9.16%) Analyst
6 162 (4.23%) Designer
7 158 (4.12%) Consultant
8 150 (3.91%) Business Analyst
9 140 (3.65%) Data Engineer
10 139 (3.63%) DevOps Engineer
11 124 (3.24%) Solutions Architect
12 120 (3.13%) Technical Architect
13 116 (3.03%) Project Manager
14 105 (2.74%) Java Developer
15 99 (2.58%) Senior Developer
16 97 (2.53%) Delivery Manager
17 88 (2.30%) User Researcher
18 74 (1.93%) Service Designer
19 70 (1.83%) Administrator
19 70 (1.83%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (3.37%) REST
2 113 (2.95%) Node.js
3 110 (2.87%) Spring
4 99 (2.58%) React
5 97 (2.53%) Spring Boot
6 94 (2.45%) RESTful
7 75 (1.96%) Oracle Fusion
8 70 (1.83%) Kafka
9 66 (1.72%) Web Services
10 64 (1.67%) .NET
10 64 (1.67%) AngularJS
11 59 (1.54%) SOAP
12 56 (1.46%) HTML
13 48 (1.25%) CSS
14 47 (1.23%) OAuth
15 42 (1.10%) Lightning Web Components
16 39 (1.02%) Middleware
16 39 (1.02%) Playwright
17 34 (0.89%) JSON
18 33 (0.86%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 210 (5.48%) Cloud Native
2 153 (3.99%) Product Ownership
3 136 (3.55%) NHS
4 134 (3.50%) Onboarding
5 91 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
6 82 (2.14%) Management Information System
7 68 (1.77%) Data Centre
8 62 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
9 57 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
10 51 (1.33%) Public Cloud
11 44 (1.15%) Data Structures
12 43 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
12 43 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
13 31 (0.81%) Analytical Mindset
13 31 (0.81%) CMDB
14 26 (0.68%) Virtual Team
15 25 (0.65%) Freedom of Information
15 25 (0.65%) Security Posture
16 24 (0.63%) PKI
16 24 (0.63%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 165 (4.31%) Windows
2 149 (3.89%) Linux
3 61 (1.59%) Windows Server
4 52 (1.36%) Unix
5 27 (0.70%) Android
5 27 (0.70%) Apple iOS
6 24 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (0.52%) Windows 10
8 18 (0.47%) Mac OS
9 12 (0.31%) Ubuntu
10 9 (0.23%) Mac OS X
11 8 (0.21%) Solaris
11 8 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
13 5 (0.13%) AIX
13 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.10%) VMS
15 3 (0.078%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.078%) Windows Server 2012
16 2 (0.052%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,065 (27.79%) Agile
2 601 (15.68%) CI/CD
3 598 (15.61%) DevOps
4 565 (14.74%) Stakeholder Management
5 467 (12.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 462 (12.06%) Continuous Improvement
7 370 (9.66%) Problem-Solving
8 359 (9.37%) Analytics
9 348 (9.08%) Migration
10 343 (8.95%) Decision-Making
11 313 (8.17%) Roadmaps
12 286 (7.46%) Infrastructure as Code
13 267 (6.97%) Data Modelling
14 266 (6.94%) Containerisation
15 258 (6.73%) AI
16 243 (6.34%) Test Automation
17 226 (5.90%) User Research
18 222 (5.79%) Microservices
19 213 (5.56%) Digital Transformation Programme
20 212 (5.53%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 416 (10.86%) Python
2 368 (9.60%) SQL
3 286 (7.46%) Java
4 176 (4.59%) JavaScript
5 108 (2.82%) TypeScript
6 102 (2.66%) PowerShell
7 81 (2.11%) C#
8 52 (1.36%) Bash
9 49 (1.28%) PL/SQL
10 44 (1.15%) Apex Code
11 39 (1.02%) Ruby
12 27 (0.70%) Bicep
12 27 (0.70%) Kotlin
13 20 (0.52%) R
14 18 (0.47%) Go
14 18 (0.47%) Shell Script
15 15 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 15 (0.39%) Scala
16 11 (0.29%) ABAP
16 11 (0.29%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 2,018 (52.66%) Security Cleared
2 1,445 (37.71%) SC Cleared
3 219 (5.72%) DV Cleared
4 179 (4.67%) Degree
5 145 (3.78%) BPSS Clearance
6 48 (1.25%) Azure Certification
7 43 (1.12%) Microsoft Certification
8 41 (1.07%) CISSP
9 36 (0.94%) Cisco Certification
10 35 (0.91%) AWS Certification
11 27 (0.70%) CISM
12 26 (0.68%) PMP
13 25 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
14 24 (0.63%) PMI Certification
15 22 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
16 17 (0.44%) CCNP
17 15 (0.39%) DBS Check
17 15 (0.39%) ISTQB
17 15 (0.39%) Master's Degree
18 14 (0.37%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 273 (7.12%) Accessibility
2 179 (4.67%) QA
3 178 (4.65%) Data Quality
4 119 (3.11%) GDPR
5 110 (2.87%) WCAG
6 89 (2.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 74 (1.93%) NCSC
7 74 (1.93%) PMO
8 64 (1.67%) NIST
9 37 (0.97%) SLA
10 28 (0.73%) GRC
11 26 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials
12 21 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.37%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 12 (0.31%) Government Security Classifications
16 9 (0.23%) HL7
16 9 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 7 (0.18%) COBIT
17 7 (0.18%) IFRS
System Software
1 278 (7.25%) Docker
2 156 (4.07%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.57%) VMware NSX
5 16 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.29%) Hyper-V
6 11 (0.29%) Postfix
7 9 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
7 9 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (0.23%) vSphere
8 5 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.078%) NFS
9 3 (0.078%) RACF
10 2 (0.052%) Squid
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
Systems Management
1 316 (8.25%) Terraform
2 266 (6.94%) Kubernetes
3 87 (2.27%) Grafana
4 76 (1.98%) Ansible
5 60 (1.57%) Prometheus
6 43 (1.12%) Single Sign-On
7 37 (0.97%) Microsoft Intune
8 23 (0.60%) Argo
9 14 (0.37%) Puppet
9 14 (0.37%) SCCM
10 13 (0.34%) Kibana
11 10 (0.26%) Oracle RMAN
11 10 (0.26%) vCenter Server
12 7 (0.18%) 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 (0.10%) Consul
Vendors
1 434 (11.33%) Microsoft
2 264 (6.89%) Oracle
3 152 (3.97%) SAP
4 120 (3.13%) ServiceNow
5 117 (3.05%) Salesforce
6 98 (2.56%) Google
7 84 (2.19%) Databricks
8 62 (1.62%) VMware
9 44 (1.15%) Cisco
10 37 (0.97%) Atlassian
10 37 (0.97%) Red Hat
11 35 (0.91%) Palo Alto
12 33 (0.86%) Splunk
13 31 (0.81%) Dynatrace
14 28 (0.73%) Talend
15 27 (0.70%) IBM
16 25 (0.65%) F5
17 23 (0.60%) Foundry
18 22 (0.57%) CyberArk
18 22 (0.57%) Informatica