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 7 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 18 16
Rank change year-on-year +1 -2 0
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,749 2,222 3,329
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.62% 9.11% 8.91%
As % of the General category 17.03% 14.31% 15.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,665 1,506 2,208
10th Percentile £350 £325 £300
25th Percentile £413 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.37% -0.40% -2.78%
75th Percentile £588 £612 £638
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 180 85 163
10th Percentile £15.68 £15.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.20 £15.39
Median hourly rate £22.18 £22.27 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.39% -7.21% +20.00%
75th Percentile £25.50 £33.00 £58.24
90th Percentile £55.65 £63.75 £70.48
UK median hourly rate £22.08 £23.00 £21.73
% change year-on-year -4.02% +5.84% +8.65%

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 22,013 15,532 21,799
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 56.48% 63.68% 58.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,876 10,115 14,140
10th Percentile £303 £300 £275
25th Percentile £408 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £774
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,391 633 1,721
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.24 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £18.13 £15.29
Median hourly rate £27.22 £29.00 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.14% +7.41% -22.86%
75th Percentile £61.18 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £29.00 £26.53
% change year-on-year -11.14% +9.31% -24.20%

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 7 April 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 7 April 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 7 April 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 0 1,623 £520 -0.95% 363
North of England -2 653 £454 -4.42% 228
South East -4 459 £500 -7.62% 200
Midlands +4 406 £500 +7.82% 117
North West -1 320 £455 -9.05% 90
West Midlands +2 304 £500 +10.29% 89
South West -2 271 £525 -2.78% 87
Yorkshire +9 223 £500 +11.11% 76
North East -2 115 £450 +3.15% 62
East of England +25 113 £375 +11.11% 44
East Midlands +16 97 £500 - 28
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
1 132 (3.52%) Confluence
2 105 (2.80%) SharePoint
3 32 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
4 29 (0.77%) SAS
5 20 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (0.45%) Apache
7 16 (0.43%) Apache Spark
8 15 (0.40%) CMS
9 14 (0.37%) nginx
10 9 (0.24%) WebLogic
11 6 (0.16%) ArcGIS
11 6 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.16%) Tomcat
12 5 (0.13%) Camunda
13 4 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 4 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
13 4 (0.11%) Skype for Business
14 3 (0.080%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.080%) OpenStack
14 3 (0.080%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 95 (2.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (2.08%) Microsoft Office
3 35 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 28 (0.75%) Microsoft Project
5 19 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 15 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.21%) Trello
8 7 (0.19%) Sketch
9 6 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.13%) Chatbot
11 4 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
12 3 (0.080%) InVision
13 2 (0.053%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.053%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.053%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.027%) Adobe Premiere
14 1 (0.027%) OmniGraffle
14 1 (0.027%) Siemens NX
14 1 (0.027%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 62 (1.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.53%) SAP PSCD
4 16 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 16 (0.43%) SAP BRIM
4 16 (0.43%) SAP Hybris
5 14 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
6 10 (0.27%) iTrent
6 10 (0.27%) SAP Payroll
7 7 (0.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
8 6 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
8 6 (0.16%) SAP FI
8 6 (0.16%) SystmOne
9 5 (0.13%) NEC Housing
9 5 (0.13%) Oracle Cash Management
9 5 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.13%) SAP ERP
9 5 (0.13%) SAP HR
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle Financials
Cloud Services
1 700 (18.67%) AWS
2 644 (17.18%) Azure
3 208 (5.55%) Power Platform
4 174 (4.64%) Serverless
5 157 (4.19%) GitHub
6 153 (4.08%) Microsoft 365
7 142 (3.79%) Azure DevOps
8 138 (3.68%) GCP
9 107 (2.85%) AWS Lambda
10 94 (2.51%) Amazon S3
11 92 (2.45%) Entra ID
12 91 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
13 73 (1.95%) AWS CloudFormation
14 65 (1.73%) Amazon EC2
15 64 (1.71%) Dynamics 365
15 64 (1.71%) Power Automate
16 61 (1.63%) Amazon EKS
16 61 (1.63%) SaaS
17 58 (1.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 56 (1.49%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 91 (2.43%) Firewall
2 59 (1.57%) VPN
3 57 (1.52%) WAN
4 55 (1.47%) Network Security
5 49 (1.31%) LAN
6 48 (1.28%) DNS
7 29 (0.77%) BGP
8 27 (0.72%) Wireless
9 26 (0.69%) TCP/IP
10 25 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
11 23 (0.61%) OSPF
12 20 (0.53%) DHCP
12 20 (0.53%) SD-WAN
13 16 (0.43%) SSL
14 15 (0.40%) Internet
15 13 (0.35%) VLAN
16 12 (0.32%) MPLS
16 12 (0.32%) VoIP
17 11 (0.29%) Cisco ASA
17 11 (0.29%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 161 (4.29%) Power BI
2 84 (2.24%) PostgreSQL
3 64 (1.71%) SQL Server
4 58 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
4 58 (1.55%) Metadata
5 53 (1.41%) MongoDB
6 47 (1.25%) NoSQL
7 43 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
8 34 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
9 33 (0.88%) Data Lake
10 31 (0.83%) Tableau
11 28 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
11 28 (0.75%) Relational Database
12 27 (0.72%) DynamoDB
13 26 (0.69%) Electronic Patient Records
14 23 (0.61%) Oracle Database
15 21 (0.56%) MySQL
16 17 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
16 17 (0.45%) Delta Lake
17 16 (0.43%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 213 (5.68%) JIRA
2 184 (4.91%) Git
3 122 (3.25%) GitLab
4 119 (3.17%) Jenkins
5 45 (1.20%) Selenium
6 41 (1.09%) Postman
7 37 (0.99%) JUnit
8 33 (0.88%) Mockito
9 25 (0.67%) SonarQube
10 24 (0.64%) JMeter
11 20 (0.53%) Cucumber
11 20 (0.53%) Cypress.io
12 15 (0.40%) Maven
13 13 (0.35%) CircleCI
13 13 (0.35%) REST Assured
14 12 (0.32%) Bitbucket
14 12 (0.32%) Mocha
15 11 (0.29%) Artifactory
16 9 (0.24%) DbUnit
16 9 (0.24%) Gradle
General
1 989 (26.38%) Social Skills
2 540 (14.40%) Finance
3 360 (9.60%) Analytical Skills
4 171 (4.56%) Military
5 165 (4.40%) Local Government
6 154 (4.11%) Telecoms
7 124 (3.31%) Marketing
8 120 (3.20%) Manufacturing
9 100 (2.67%) Electronics
10 89 (2.37%) Legal
11 78 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
11 78 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
12 71 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
13 61 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 56 (1.49%) Banking
15 53 (1.41%) Police
16 47 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
17 42 (1.12%) Law
18 36 (0.96%) Billing
19 34 (0.91%) Retail
Job Titles
1 476 (12.70%) Architect
1 476 (12.70%) Developer
2 411 (10.96%) Senior
3 391 (10.43%) Analyst
4 309 (8.24%) Lead
5 176 (4.69%) Consultant
6 174 (4.64%) Business Analyst
7 151 (4.03%) Designer
8 121 (3.23%) Data Engineer
9 120 (3.20%) DevOps Engineer
10 114 (3.04%) Project Manager
11 111 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
12 108 (2.88%) Technical Architect
13 90 (2.40%) Java Developer
14 86 (2.29%) Senior Developer
15 83 (2.21%) User Researcher
16 81 (2.16%) Delivery Manager
17 67 (1.79%) Service Designer
18 61 (1.63%) Data Analyst
19 57 (1.52%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (3.97%) REST
2 120 (3.20%) Node.js
3 106 (2.83%) React
3 106 (2.83%) Spring
4 100 (2.67%) RESTful
5 93 (2.48%) Spring Boot
6 77 (2.05%) .NET
7 73 (1.95%) Oracle Fusion
8 71 (1.89%) AngularJS
9 69 (1.84%) HTML
10 68 (1.81%) Web Services
11 63 (1.68%) CSS
12 62 (1.65%) SOAP
13 60 (1.60%) Kafka
14 48 (1.28%) JSON
15 41 (1.09%) Lightning Web Components
16 35 (0.93%) Middleware
17 34 (0.91%) Playwright
17 34 (0.91%) XML
18 28 (0.75%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 163 (4.35%) Cloud Native
2 140 (3.73%) NHS
3 131 (3.49%) Product Ownership
4 128 (3.41%) Onboarding
5 79 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
6 76 (2.03%) Data Centre
7 68 (1.81%) Management Information System
8 59 (1.57%) Public Cloud
9 48 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
10 40 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
11 39 (1.04%) Data Structures
12 36 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
13 32 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
14 28 (0.75%) CMDB
15 25 (0.67%) Replication
16 23 (0.61%) Analytical Mindset
16 23 (0.61%) Security Posture
17 22 (0.59%) PKI
18 20 (0.53%) Virtual Team
19 18 (0.48%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 198 (5.28%) Windows
2 154 (4.11%) Linux
3 60 (1.60%) Windows Server
4 43 (1.15%) Windows 10
5 37 (0.99%) Android
5 37 (0.99%) Unix
6 28 (0.75%) Mac OS
7 26 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 21 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 10 (0.27%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.27%) Ubuntu
9 10 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
10 9 (0.24%) VMS
11 8 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
12 7 (0.19%) Solaris
13 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
13 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
13 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.11%) AIX
15 3 (0.080%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 972 (25.93%) Agile
2 532 (14.19%) CI/CD
3 526 (14.03%) DevOps
4 457 (12.19%) Stakeholder Management
5 446 (11.90%) Problem-Solving
6 426 (11.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 375 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
8 374 (9.98%) Migration
9 340 (9.07%) Roadmaps
10 305 (8.14%) Analytics
11 288 (7.68%) Decision-Making
12 287 (7.66%) Business Intelligence
13 240 (6.40%) Test Automation
14 239 (6.38%) Containerisation
15 234 (6.24%) Infrastructure as Code
16 233 (6.21%) Data Modelling
17 231 (6.16%) Microservices
18 217 (5.79%) Workshop Facilitation
19 215 (5.73%) AI
20 212 (5.65%) User Research
Programming Languages
1 403 (10.75%) Python
2 340 (9.07%) SQL
3 262 (6.99%) Java
4 196 (5.23%) JavaScript
5 115 (3.07%) TypeScript
6 109 (2.91%) PowerShell
7 90 (2.40%) C#
8 54 (1.44%) Bash
9 45 (1.20%) Ruby
10 41 (1.09%) Apex Code
11 31 (0.83%) PL/SQL
12 24 (0.64%) Go
13 23 (0.61%) Shell Script
14 22 (0.59%) Bicep
14 22 (0.59%) R
15 21 (0.56%) Kotlin
16 13 (0.35%) PHP
17 12 (0.32%) Scala
18 11 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
18 11 (0.29%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 2,142 (57.14%) Security Cleared
2 1,402 (37.40%) SC Cleared
3 185 (4.93%) DV Cleared
4 170 (4.53%) Degree
5 102 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
6 52 (1.39%) Azure Certification
7 44 (1.17%) CISSP
8 43 (1.15%) AWS Certification
9 40 (1.07%) ITIL Certification
10 36 (0.96%) Cisco Certification
11 32 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
11 32 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
12 29 (0.77%) PMP
13 27 (0.72%) CISM
14 25 (0.67%) PMI Certification
15 24 (0.64%) ISEB
16 20 (0.53%) CCNP
17 16 (0.43%) ISTQB
18 15 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
19 14 (0.37%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 193 (5.15%) Accessibility
2 159 (4.24%) QA
3 150 (4.00%) Data Quality
4 105 (2.80%) GDPR
5 87 (2.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 75 (2.00%) WCAG
7 67 (1.79%) NCSC
7 67 (1.79%) PMO
8 57 (1.52%) NIST
9 39 (1.04%) SLA
10 32 (0.85%) GRC
11 22 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
13 20 (0.53%) COBIT
14 16 (0.43%) HL7
14 16 (0.43%) PCI DSS
15 15 (0.40%) JSP 440
16 11 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 8 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 8 (0.21%) NIST 800
System Software
1 261 (6.96%) Docker
2 134 (3.57%) Active Directory
3 61 (1.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.61%) VMware NSX
5 20 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
6 17 (0.45%) Hyper-V
7 14 (0.37%) vSphere
8 13 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
9 11 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
10 8 (0.21%) Postfix
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 4 (0.11%) NFS
13 3 (0.080%) RACF
14 2 (0.053%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.053%) ISA Server
14 2 (0.053%) SRDF
15 1 (0.027%) FreeRADIUS
15 1 (0.027%) GPFS
15 1 (0.027%) RHEV
15 1 (0.027%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 300 (8.00%) Terraform
2 275 (7.34%) Kubernetes
3 70 (1.87%) Grafana
4 69 (1.84%) Ansible
5 51 (1.36%) Prometheus
6 41 (1.09%) Microsoft Intune
7 28 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
8 23 (0.61%) SCCM
9 14 (0.37%) Argo
10 13 (0.35%) Puppet
11 12 (0.32%) vCenter Server
12 11 (0.29%) FortiGate
13 9 (0.24%) Kibana
13 9 (0.24%) Packer
14 8 (0.21%) Consul
14 8 (0.21%) vRealize
15 7 (0.19%) Istio
15 7 (0.19%) Progress Chef
16 6 (0.16%) Oracle RMAN
16 6 (0.16%) SCOM
Vendors
1 422 (11.26%) Microsoft
2 244 (6.51%) SAP
3 222 (5.92%) Oracle
4 123 (3.28%) Salesforce
5 111 (2.96%) Cisco
5 111 (2.96%) ServiceNow
6 96 (2.56%) VMware
7 84 (2.24%) Databricks
8 78 (2.08%) Google
9 47 (1.25%) Splunk
10 38 (1.01%) Aruba
11 34 (0.91%) IBM
12 33 (0.88%) Virgin Media
13 32 (0.85%) Atlassian
13 32 (0.85%) Red Hat
14 29 (0.77%) MuleSoft
15 27 (0.72%) Juniper
16 26 (0.69%) Palo Alto
17 24 (0.64%) Talend
18 23 (0.61%) Dynatrace