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

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 22 19
Rank change year-on-year -2 -3 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,912 2,267 2,715
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.56% 8.17% 8.17%
As % of the General category 15.51% 12.70% 14.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,727 1,556 1,820
10th Percentile £360 £325 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £520
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -1.44% -3.26%
75th Percentile £615 £600 £638
90th Percentile £700 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 92 110
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.48 £14.41
25th Percentile £16.62 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.50 £21.70 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year -0.92% -10.26% +20.90%
75th Percentile £51.00 £30.88 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.15 £65.10 £74.88
UK median hourly rate £22.00 £20.79 £22.56
% change year-on-year +5.85% -7.87% +14.23%

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 25,224 17,849 19,148
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.21% 64.34% 57.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,991 11,349 12,154
10th Percentile £313 £275 £300
25th Percentile £420 £400 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £538
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -5.58% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £656
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 2,036 989 1,124
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.37 £14.26
25th Percentile £17.57 £16.36 £17.25
Median hourly rate £32.36 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +28.68% -34.02% +37.42%
75th Percentile £60.00 £50.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £35.36
% change year-on-year +25.25% -28.87% +27.47%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 0 1,693 £540 +2.86% 383
North of England 0 702 £475 -2.81% 234
Midlands +9 476 £493 +3.84% 131
South East 0 468 £510 -2.86% 183
West Midlands +6 397 £491 +3.37% 102
South West -4 356 £525 -3.45% 179
Yorkshire +9 262 £470 -4.08% 88
North West -11 256 £510 +7.37% 103
North East -2 194 £450 -13.46% 46
East Midlands +21 71 £600 +43.71% 29
East of England -8 58 £450 -10.00% 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
1 162 (4.14%) Confluence
2 105 (2.68%) SharePoint
3 50 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
3 50 (1.28%) SAS
4 46 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
5 42 (1.07%) Apache Spark
6 38 (0.97%) Apache
7 24 (0.61%) CMS
8 20 (0.51%) Jupyter
9 15 (0.38%) Palantir Foundry
10 11 (0.28%) WordPress
11 9 (0.23%) nginx
12 7 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
13 5 (0.13%) Drupal
13 5 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
13 5 (0.13%) Tuxedo
14 4 (0.10%) IIS
15 3 (0.077%) Camunda
15 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
16 2 (0.051%) Mendix
Applications
1 73 (1.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 48 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
3 26 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
4 16 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.20%) Chatbot
5 8 (0.20%) MS Visio
6 6 (0.15%) Trello
7 5 (0.13%) Sketch
8 3 (0.077%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.051%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.026%) Gliffy
10 1 (0.026%) LaTeX
10 1 (0.026%) Navisworks
10 1 (0.026%) ProjectWise
10 1 (0.026%) Revit
10 1 (0.026%) SPSS
10 1 (0.026%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 53 (1.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (1.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 41 (1.05%) Oracle ERP
4 24 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
5 23 (0.59%) SAP PSCD
6 14 (0.36%) Workday HCM
7 12 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
8 11 (0.28%) NetSuite
8 11 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
8 11 (0.28%) SAP Payroll
9 10 (0.26%) ContrOCC
9 10 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 9 (0.23%) NEC Housing
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
10 9 (0.23%) SAP FI
11 8 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 8 (0.20%) SAP BRIM
11 8 (0.20%) SAP Hybris
12 7 (0.18%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 810 (20.71%) AWS
2 787 (20.12%) Azure
3 232 (5.93%) Power Platform
4 192 (4.91%) Azure DevOps
5 176 (4.50%) Microsoft 365
6 155 (3.96%) GCP
6 155 (3.96%) GitHub
7 146 (3.73%) Serverless
8 134 (3.43%) Entra ID
9 119 (3.04%) Amazon S3
10 110 (2.81%) GitHub Actions
11 104 (2.66%) SaaS
12 92 (2.35%) OCI
13 90 (2.30%) AWS Lambda
14 83 (2.12%) Power Automate
15 78 (1.99%) Dynamics 365
16 69 (1.76%) PowerApps
17 66 (1.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 66 (1.69%) Amazon EKS
18 58 (1.48%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 110 (2.81%) Firewall
2 70 (1.79%) DNS
3 56 (1.43%) WAN
4 49 (1.25%) LAN
5 46 (1.18%) Network Security
6 39 (1.00%) VPN
7 33 (0.84%) DHCP
8 30 (0.77%) BGP
9 29 (0.74%) OSPF
9 29 (0.74%) TCP/IP
9 29 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
10 22 (0.56%) SD-WAN
11 19 (0.49%) WLAN
12 16 (0.41%) VXLAN
13 15 (0.38%) BIG-IP
13 15 (0.38%) Wireless
14 14 (0.36%) Ethernet VPN
14 14 (0.36%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 14 (0.36%) VLAN
14 14 (0.36%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 152 (3.89%) Power BI
2 111 (2.84%) Data Warehouse
3 105 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
4 76 (1.94%) SQL Server
5 69 (1.76%) Relational Database
6 68 (1.74%) Metadata
7 58 (1.48%) MongoDB
8 52 (1.33%) Amazon RDS
8 52 (1.33%) Data Lake
8 52 (1.33%) Oracle Database
9 47 (1.20%) NoSQL
10 32 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
11 31 (0.79%) Amazon Athena
11 31 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
12 29 (0.74%) MySQL
13 27 (0.69%) Amazon Aurora
14 26 (0.66%) Tableau
15 25 (0.64%) DynamoDB
16 24 (0.61%) Pentaho
17 20 (0.51%) Redis
Development Applications
1 243 (6.21%) JIRA
2 187 (4.78%) Git
3 157 (4.01%) GitLab
4 128 (3.27%) Jenkins
5 43 (1.10%) Selenium
6 35 (0.89%) Cucumber
7 30 (0.77%) JUnit
8 29 (0.74%) Postman
9 28 (0.72%) Mockito
10 26 (0.66%) SonarQube
11 25 (0.64%) Cypress.io
12 23 (0.59%) JMeter
13 20 (0.51%) Maven
14 18 (0.46%) REST Assured
15 17 (0.43%) WebDriver
16 15 (0.38%) Gatling
17 12 (0.31%) MSI
18 11 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
19 10 (0.26%) CircleCI
19 10 (0.26%) fastlane
General
1 1,118 (28.58%) Social Skills
2 440 (11.25%) Finance
3 386 (9.87%) Analytical Skills
4 237 (6.06%) Military
5 221 (5.65%) Local Government
6 159 (4.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 138 (3.53%) Influencing Skills
8 101 (2.58%) Legal
9 99 (2.53%) Organisational Skills
10 85 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
11 83 (2.12%) Police
12 57 (1.46%) Law
13 50 (1.28%) Telecoms
14 42 (1.07%) Marketing
15 35 (0.89%) Banking
15 35 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
16 30 (0.77%) Retail
17 25 (0.64%) Billing
18 18 (0.46%) Manufacturing
19 17 (0.43%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 540 (13.80%) Architect
2 527 (13.47%) Developer
3 514 (13.14%) Senior
4 465 (11.89%) Lead
5 339 (8.67%) Analyst
6 164 (4.19%) Consultant
7 147 (3.76%) Data Engineer
8 143 (3.66%) Designer
9 133 (3.40%) DevOps Engineer
10 131 (3.35%) Business Analyst
11 123 (3.14%) Delivery Manager
12 116 (2.97%) Solutions Architect
13 113 (2.89%) Technical Architect
14 110 (2.81%) Data Architect
15 104 (2.66%) Senior Developer
16 93 (2.38%) Project Manager
17 87 (2.22%) Java Developer
18 84 (2.15%) User Researcher
19 82 (2.10%) Senior Manager
20 77 (1.97%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 352 (9.00%) Terraform
2 155 (3.96%) REST
3 107 (2.74%) RESTful
4 102 (2.61%) React
5 94 (2.40%) Node.js
6 90 (2.30%) Spring
7 82 (2.10%) Oracle Fusion
8 80 (2.04%) Spring Boot
9 77 (1.97%) Kafka
10 76 (1.94%) HTML
11 71 (1.81%) SOAP
12 68 (1.74%) Web Services
13 67 (1.71%) .NET
14 65 (1.66%) CSS
15 64 (1.64%) Django
16 60 (1.53%) OAuth
17 51 (1.30%) AngularJS
18 50 (1.28%) JSON
19 48 (1.23%) OpenID
20 47 (1.20%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 232 (5.93%) Cloud Native
2 164 (4.19%) Onboarding
3 160 (4.09%) Product Ownership
4 137 (3.50%) NHS
5 114 (2.91%) Legacy Systems
6 100 (2.56%) Management Information System
7 71 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
8 58 (1.48%) Distributed Systems
9 52 (1.33%) Data Centre
10 46 (1.18%) Data Structures
11 43 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
12 39 (1.00%) Analytical Mindset
12 39 (1.00%) Hybrid Cloud
13 37 (0.95%) Public Cloud
14 34 (0.87%) Freedom of Information
15 33 (0.84%) CMDB
16 31 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
17 30 (0.77%) Low-Code
17 30 (0.77%) Virtual Team
18 27 (0.69%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 140 (3.58%) Windows
2 127 (3.25%) Linux
3 44 (1.12%) Windows Server
4 43 (1.10%) Unix
5 21 (0.54%) Android
5 21 (0.54%) Windows 10
6 18 (0.46%) Apple iOS
7 17 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (0.36%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.13%) AIX
9 5 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
10 4 (0.10%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.077%) Mac OS X
11 3 (0.077%) Solaris
12 2 (0.051%) CentOS
12 2 (0.051%) VMS
12 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.026%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.026%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,239 (31.67%) Agile
2 765 (19.56%) Stakeholder Management
3 665 (17.00%) CI/CD
4 662 (16.92%) DevOps
5 642 (16.41%) Continuous Improvement
6 631 (16.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 472 (12.07%) Problem-Solving
8 428 (10.94%) Decision-Making
9 418 (10.69%) Analytics
10 375 (9.59%) Migration
11 342 (8.74%) Infrastructure as Code
12 339 (8.67%) Roadmaps
13 331 (8.46%) Digital Transformation Programme
14 325 (8.31%) AI
15 297 (7.59%) Data Modelling
16 274 (7.00%) Technical Leadership
17 273 (6.98%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
18 263 (6.72%) Containerisation
19 257 (6.57%) Scrum
20 252 (6.44%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 468 (11.96%) Python
2 390 (9.97%) SQL
3 250 (6.39%) Java
4 212 (5.42%) JavaScript
5 111 (2.84%) PowerShell
6 108 (2.76%) TypeScript
7 82 (2.10%) C#
8 58 (1.48%) Bash
9 52 (1.33%) PL/SQL
10 47 (1.20%) Bicep
11 35 (0.89%) Apex Code
11 35 (0.89%) Scala
12 29 (0.74%) Kotlin
13 26 (0.66%) Ruby
14 25 (0.64%) R
15 24 (0.61%) Groovy
16 21 (0.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 15 (0.38%) Shell Script
18 14 (0.36%) ABAP
19 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 2,000 (51.12%) Security Cleared
2 1,588 (40.59%) SC Cleared
3 244 (6.24%) DV Cleared
4 242 (6.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 174 (4.45%) Degree
6 65 (1.66%) Microsoft Certification
7 60 (1.53%) Azure Certification
8 57 (1.46%) AWS Certification
9 45 (1.15%) Cisco Certification
10 42 (1.07%) CISSP
11 30 (0.77%) CCNP
12 29 (0.74%) CISM
13 28 (0.72%) PMI Certification
14 26 (0.66%) ISTQB
14 26 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
15 22 (0.56%) Master's Degree
16 21 (0.54%) Computer Science Degree
17 17 (0.43%) PMP
18 15 (0.38%) DBS Check
19 14 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 313 (8.00%) Accessibility
2 229 (5.85%) Data Quality
3 227 (5.80%) QA
4 130 (3.32%) WCAG
5 128 (3.27%) GDPR
6 95 (2.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (2.04%) NCSC
8 78 (1.99%) PMO
9 74 (1.89%) NIST
10 36 (0.92%) GRC
11 33 (0.84%) SLA
12 26 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
13 18 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 13 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 12 (0.31%) NIST 800
16 12 (0.31%) PCI DSS
17 11 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
18 10 (0.26%) HL7
19 5 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 297 (7.59%) Docker
2 154 (3.94%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) VMware NSX
5 16 (0.41%) Hyper-V
6 12 (0.31%) vSphere
7 10 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
7 10 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
9 6 (0.15%) Postfix
10 1 (0.026%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.026%) Ceph
10 1 (0.026%) etcd
10 1 (0.026%) FreeRADIUS
10 1 (0.026%) GPFS
10 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.026%) NFS
10 1 (0.026%) Sendmail
10 1 (0.026%) Squid
Systems Management
1 274 (7.00%) Kubernetes
2 88 (2.25%) Grafana
3 77 (1.97%) Ansible
4 59 (1.51%) Prometheus
5 46 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
6 40 (1.02%) Microsoft Intune
7 25 (0.64%) Argo
8 17 (0.43%) SCCM
9 14 (0.36%) Kibana
10 9 (0.23%) Data Guard
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle RMAN
10 9 (0.23%) Puppet
10 9 (0.23%) VxRail
11 7 (0.18%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.15%) Istio
12 6 (0.15%) Progress Chef
13 5 (0.13%) QRadar
14 4 (0.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (0.10%) Consul
14 4 (0.10%) Packer
Vendors
1 518 (13.24%) Microsoft
2 318 (8.13%) Oracle
3 140 (3.58%) ServiceNow
4 125 (3.20%) SAP
5 118 (3.02%) Google
6 111 (2.84%) Salesforce
7 91 (2.33%) Databricks
8 52 (1.33%) VMware
9 48 (1.23%) Cisco
10 38 (0.97%) Palo Alto
11 32 (0.82%) Dynatrace
12 27 (0.69%) Talend
13 26 (0.66%) Informatica
14 25 (0.64%) Foundry
14 25 (0.64%) Splunk
15 23 (0.59%) Palantir
16 22 (0.56%) Atlassian
16 22 (0.56%) Red Hat
16 22 (0.56%) Workday
17 21 (0.54%) Blue Prism