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

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 21 18
Rank change year-on-year +1 -3 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,659 1,913 3,106
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.78% 7.94% 8.42%
As % of the General category 16.18% 12.39% 14.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,572 1,298 2,081
10th Percentile £356 £350 £313
25th Percentile £420 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.35% -0.48% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £683 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -1.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 72 170
10th Percentile £13.63 £16.50 £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% +14.30%
75th Percentile £36.69 £35.53 £55.08
90th Percentile £72.63 £68.40 £72.42
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £22.27 £22.50
% change year-on-year +6.98% -1.02% +11.06%

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 22,611 15,439 21,245
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.26% 64.12% 57.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,839 9,972 13,632
10th Percentile £313 £281 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £650
90th Percentile £744 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,554 701 1,818
10th Percentile £14.11 £13.35 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.38 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £31.16 £28.00 £30.44
Median % change year-on-year +11.27% -8.00% -4.65%
75th Percentile £62.00 £53.75 £52.35
90th Percentile £80.08 £75.00 £67.38
UK median hourly rate £30.08 £28.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +7.41% -6.67% -7.12%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 1,657 £525 - 517
North of England -1 667 £452 -4.95% 307
South East +2 424 £500 -4.76% 246
Midlands +9 381 £500 +8.11% 152
West Midlands +4 307 £494 +6.76% 121
North West +1 306 £476 -4.80% 138
South West -7 246 £525 -4.55% 144
Yorkshire +5 227 £450 -2.17% 101
North East -3 140 £450 -3.23% 68
East of England +15 82 £450 - 43
East Midlands +10 67 £525 +10.53% 31
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
1 137 (3.74%) Confluence
2 106 (2.90%) SharePoint
3 46 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
4 30 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
4 30 (0.82%) SAS
5 28 (0.77%) Apache Spark
6 25 (0.68%) Apache
7 16 (0.44%) CMS
8 12 (0.33%) Jupyter
9 11 (0.30%) Palantir Foundry
10 9 (0.25%) nginx
11 8 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
12 7 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 6 (0.16%) WebLogic
14 5 (0.14%) Camunda
15 4 (0.11%) Drupal
15 4 (0.11%) WordPress
16 3 (0.082%) Anypoint
17 2 (0.055%) OpenROAD
17 2 (0.055%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 73 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 52 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
4 24 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.16%) Trello
8 5 (0.14%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.11%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.11%) Sketch
10 3 (0.082%) Adobe After Effects
11 2 (0.055%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.055%) CPLEX
12 1 (0.027%) Adobe Premiere
12 1 (0.027%) InVision
12 1 (0.027%) Quicktime
12 1 (0.027%) Siemens NX
12 1 (0.027%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 61 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.57%) SAP PSCD
4 16 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
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%) SAP ERP
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 692 (18.91%) AWS
2 642 (17.55%) Azure
3 189 (5.17%) Power Platform
4 170 (4.65%) Microsoft 365
5 135 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
6 134 (3.66%) Serverless
7 132 (3.61%) GitHub
8 131 (3.58%) GCP
9 101 (2.76%) Amazon S3
9 101 (2.76%) Entra ID
10 93 (2.54%) SaaS
11 82 (2.24%) AWS Lambda
12 79 (2.16%) Amazon EC2
12 79 (2.16%) GitHub Actions
13 68 (1.86%) Power Automate
14 65 (1.78%) Dynamics 365
15 63 (1.72%) OCI
16 62 (1.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 60 (1.64%) Amazon EKS
18 54 (1.48%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 95 (2.60%) Firewall
2 54 (1.48%) WAN
3 51 (1.39%) DNS
3 51 (1.39%) Network Security
4 40 (1.09%) LAN
4 40 (1.09%) VPN
5 33 (0.90%) BGP
6 28 (0.77%) OSPF
7 27 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
8 25 (0.68%) TCP/IP
9 22 (0.60%) SD-WAN
10 21 (0.57%) DHCP
11 18 (0.49%) BIG-IP
11 18 (0.49%) VXLAN
12 16 (0.44%) Ethernet VPN
13 14 (0.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 13 (0.36%) WLAN
15 12 (0.33%) DKIM
15 12 (0.33%) SSL
16 11 (0.30%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (3.50%) Power BI
2 83 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
3 70 (1.91%) Data Warehouse
4 63 (1.72%) SQL Server
5 55 (1.50%) MongoDB
6 52 (1.42%) Metadata
7 50 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
8 40 (1.09%) NoSQL
9 35 (0.96%) Oracle Reports
10 33 (0.90%) Data Lake
11 32 (0.87%) Oracle Database
12 31 (0.85%) DynamoDB
12 31 (0.85%) Relational Database
13 30 (0.82%) Tableau
14 21 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
14 21 (0.57%) Electronic Patient Records
15 20 (0.55%) Pentaho
16 18 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
16 18 (0.49%) Delta Lake
17 17 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 210 (5.74%) JIRA
2 155 (4.24%) Git
3 146 (3.99%) GitLab
4 119 (3.25%) Jenkins
5 50 (1.37%) Selenium
6 40 (1.09%) JUnit
7 34 (0.93%) Mockito
8 31 (0.85%) Postman
9 29 (0.79%) SonarQube
10 26 (0.71%) JMeter
11 25 (0.68%) Cucumber
12 22 (0.60%) Cypress.io
13 21 (0.57%) Maven
14 17 (0.46%) CircleCI
15 16 (0.44%) REST Assured
16 14 (0.38%) DbUnit
17 13 (0.36%) Artifactory
17 13 (0.36%) jMock
18 11 (0.30%) Bitbucket Server
18 11 (0.30%) Gatling
General
1 938 (25.64%) Social Skills
2 441 (12.05%) Finance
3 353 (9.65%) Analytical Skills
4 190 (5.19%) Military
5 166 (4.54%) Local Government
6 93 (2.54%) Organisational Skills
7 89 (2.43%) Documentation Skills
8 85 (2.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 85 (2.32%) Legal
9 75 (2.05%) Telecoms
10 74 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
11 64 (1.75%) Police
12 60 (1.64%) Marketing
13 54 (1.48%) Banking
14 53 (1.45%) Law
15 36 (0.98%) Manufacturing
16 35 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
17 27 (0.74%) Billing
17 27 (0.74%) Electronics
18 25 (0.68%) Retail
Job Titles
1 487 (13.31%) Developer
2 476 (13.01%) Architect
3 423 (11.56%) Senior
4 346 (9.46%) Analyst
5 328 (8.96%) Lead
6 163 (4.45%) Designer
7 151 (4.13%) Business Analyst
8 147 (4.02%) Consultant
9 128 (3.50%) Data Engineer
10 127 (3.47%) DevOps Engineer
11 118 (3.22%) Project Manager
12 114 (3.12%) Technical Architect
13 111 (3.03%) Solutions Architect
14 109 (2.98%) Java Developer
15 90 (2.46%) Senior Developer
16 87 (2.38%) Delivery Manager
17 86 (2.35%) User Researcher
18 73 (2.00%) Service Designer
19 65 (1.78%) Administrator
20 61 (1.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 126 (3.44%) REST
2 116 (3.17%) Node.js
3 111 (3.03%) Spring
4 98 (2.68%) React
5 96 (2.62%) Spring Boot
6 87 (2.38%) RESTful
7 70 (1.91%) Web Services
8 68 (1.86%) Oracle Fusion
9 66 (1.80%) Kafka
10 65 (1.78%) AngularJS
11 64 (1.75%) SOAP
12 63 (1.72%) .NET
13 59 (1.61%) HTML
14 50 (1.37%) CSS
15 45 (1.23%) Lightning Web Components
16 42 (1.15%) OAuth
17 38 (1.04%) Middleware
17 38 (1.04%) Playwright
18 36 (0.98%) JSON
19 29 (0.79%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 184 (5.03%) Cloud Native
2 146 (3.99%) Product Ownership
3 129 (3.53%) NHS
4 127 (3.47%) Onboarding
5 84 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
6 75 (2.05%) Management Information System
7 71 (1.94%) Data Centre
8 53 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
9 48 (1.31%) Public Cloud
10 42 (1.15%) Data Structures
10 42 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
11 40 (1.09%) Hybrid Cloud
12 30 (0.82%) CMDB
13 29 (0.79%) Analytical Mindset
14 24 (0.66%) Virtual Team
15 23 (0.63%) Freedom of Information
15 23 (0.63%) PKI
16 21 (0.57%) Mobile App
17 20 (0.55%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 163 (4.45%) Windows
2 152 (4.15%) Linux
3 58 (1.59%) Windows Server
4 50 (1.37%) Unix
5 28 (0.77%) Android
6 26 (0.71%) Apple iOS
7 23 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 23 (0.63%) Windows 10
8 19 (0.52%) Mac OS
9 12 (0.33%) Ubuntu
10 9 (0.25%) Mac OS X
11 8 (0.22%) Solaris
11 8 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
13 5 (0.14%) AIX
13 5 (0.14%) VMS
13 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.082%) Amazon Linux
14 3 (0.082%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.055%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 982 (26.84%) Agile
2 553 (15.11%) CI/CD
3 545 (14.89%) DevOps
4 505 (13.80%) Stakeholder Management
5 414 (11.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 412 (11.26%) Continuous Improvement
7 373 (10.19%) Problem-Solving
8 338 (9.24%) Migration
9 325 (8.88%) Analytics
10 314 (8.58%) Decision-Making
11 297 (8.12%) Roadmaps
12 255 (6.97%) Infrastructure as Code
13 251 (6.86%) Data Modelling
14 242 (6.61%) Containerisation
15 226 (6.18%) Test Automation
16 224 (6.12%) AI
17 223 (6.09%) User Research
18 211 (5.77%) Microservices
19 196 (5.36%) Digital Transformation Programme
20 192 (5.25%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 386 (10.55%) Python
2 338 (9.24%) SQL
3 281 (7.68%) Java
4 183 (5.00%) JavaScript
5 103 (2.81%) PowerShell
6 101 (2.76%) TypeScript
7 79 (2.16%) C#
8 50 (1.37%) Bash
9 48 (1.31%) Apex Code
10 45 (1.23%) PL/SQL
11 42 (1.15%) Ruby
12 22 (0.60%) Bicep
12 22 (0.60%) Kotlin
13 21 (0.57%) Shell Script
14 19 (0.52%) R
15 18 (0.49%) Go
16 16 (0.44%) Scala
17 12 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 11 (0.30%) PHP
18 11 (0.30%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,942 (53.07%) Security Cleared
2 1,350 (36.90%) SC Cleared
3 180 (4.92%) DV Cleared
4 176 (4.81%) Degree
5 119 (3.25%) BPSS Clearance
6 46 (1.26%) Azure Certification
7 41 (1.12%) CISSP
8 38 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 33 (0.90%) AWS Certification
9 33 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
10 28 (0.77%) PMP
11 26 (0.71%) CISM
11 26 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
12 24 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
13 23 (0.63%) PMI Certification
14 15 (0.41%) DBS Check
14 15 (0.41%) Master's Degree
15 14 (0.38%) CCNP
16 13 (0.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 13 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 262 (7.16%) Accessibility
2 160 (4.37%) Data Quality
3 159 (4.35%) QA
4 106 (2.90%) GDPR
5 104 (2.84%) WCAG
6 80 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 68 (1.86%) PMO
8 65 (1.78%) NCSC
9 57 (1.56%) NIST
10 31 (0.85%) SLA
11 29 (0.79%) GRC
12 26 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials
13 20 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.41%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 12 (0.33%) Government Security Classifications
16 9 (0.25%) HL7
17 8 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 7 (0.19%) COBIT
18 7 (0.19%) IFRS
System Software
1 254 (6.94%) Docker
2 149 (4.07%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.63%) VMware NSX
5 17 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (0.33%) Hyper-V
7 11 (0.30%) Postfix
8 10 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
9 9 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
9 9 (0.25%) vSphere
10 8 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.082%) NFS
11 3 (0.082%) RACF
12 2 (0.055%) Squid
12 2 (0.055%) SRDF
13 1 (0.027%) etcd
13 1 (0.027%) ISA Server
13 1 (0.027%) NLBS
13 1 (0.027%) Sendmail
13 1 (0.027%) Xen
Systems Management
1 281 (7.68%) Terraform
2 246 (6.72%) Kubernetes
3 84 (2.30%) Grafana
4 78 (2.13%) Ansible
5 59 (1.61%) Prometheus
6 44 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
7 38 (1.04%) Microsoft Intune
8 21 (0.57%) Argo
9 15 (0.41%) Puppet
10 13 (0.36%) SCCM
11 11 (0.30%) Kibana
12 10 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
12 10 (0.27%) vCenter Server
13 8 (0.22%) FortiGate
14 6 (0.16%) Data Guard
14 6 (0.16%) Istio
14 6 (0.16%) Progress Chef
15 5 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 5 (0.14%) Rancher
16 4 (0.11%) Consul
Vendors
1 411 (11.23%) Microsoft
2 224 (6.12%) Oracle
3 161 (4.40%) SAP
4 125 (3.42%) Salesforce
5 112 (3.06%) ServiceNow
6 94 (2.57%) Google
7 82 (2.24%) Databricks
8 66 (1.80%) VMware
9 45 (1.23%) Cisco
10 38 (1.04%) Splunk
11 34 (0.93%) Red Hat
12 32 (0.87%) Atlassian
12 32 (0.87%) Palo Alto
13 29 (0.79%) Dynatrace
14 27 (0.74%) IBM
15 26 (0.71%) MuleSoft
16 25 (0.68%) F5
16 25 (0.68%) Talend
17 22 (0.60%) Virgin Media
18 20 (0.55%) CyberArk