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 5 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -3 -2 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,928 2,277 2,660
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.56% 8.31% 8.19%
As % of the General category 15.44% 12.90% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,700 1,582 1,733
10th Percentile £363 £316 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -3.70%
75th Percentile £619 £600 £627
90th Percentile £700 £683 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 190 92 110
10th Percentile £15.64 £15.48 £14.41
25th Percentile £16.62 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.95 £24.09
Median % change year-on-year -2.73% -8.88% +19.85%
75th Percentile £50.00 £33.19 £57.44
90th Percentile £77.28 £67.05 £74.88
UK median hourly rate £21.35 £21.00 £22.56
% change year-on-year +1.67% -6.91% +12.80%

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 25,436 17,647 18,783
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.43% 64.41% 57.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,084 11,181 11,750
10th Percentile £313 £275 £300
25th Percentile £424 £400 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £651
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 2,060 987 1,026
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.46 £14.56
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.15 £18.00
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £38.31
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -34.35% +39.31%
75th Percentile £57.50 £49.88 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £72.50 £71.38
UK median hourly rate £30.73 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +22.19% -32.93% +36.36%

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 5 September 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 5 September 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 5 September 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 -2 1,697 £544 +6.10% 1,556
North of England 0 711 £475 -0.52% 527
Midlands +8 498 £491 +3.37% 293
South East -2 448 £505 -3.81% 297
West Midlands +4 424 £490 +3.16% 221
South West -3 373 £525 -2.33% 348
Yorkshire +5 273 £473 -3.57% 159
North West -14 251 £525 +16.02% 295
North East -1 196 £450 -10.00% 79
East Midlands +14 67 £500 +19.76% 72
East of England -8 54 £450 -10.00% 136
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
1 154 (3.92%) Confluence
2 103 (2.62%) SharePoint
3 50 (1.27%) SAS
4 48 (1.22%) Apache Airflow
4 48 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
5 43 (1.09%) Apache Spark
6 40 (1.02%) Apache
7 31 (0.79%) CMS
8 20 (0.51%) Jupyter
9 16 (0.41%) 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%) Headless CMS
13 5 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
13 5 (0.13%) Tuxedo
14 3 (0.076%) Camunda
14 3 (0.076%) IIS
14 3 (0.076%) Tomcat
Applications
1 77 (1.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 48 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
3 27 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
4 26 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
5 18 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 8 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.15%) MS Visio
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) Sketch
10 3 (0.076%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.051%) Adobe After Effects
11 2 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.051%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.051%) Navisworks
11 2 (0.051%) ProjectWise
11 2 (0.051%) Revit
12 1 (0.025%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.025%) Gliffy
12 1 (0.025%) LaTeX
12 1 (0.025%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 48 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 45 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 43 (1.09%) Oracle ERP
4 23 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
4 23 (0.59%) SAP PSCD
5 14 (0.36%) Workday HCM
6 13 (0.33%) NetSuite
7 12 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
8 11 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
8 11 (0.28%) SAP Payroll
9 10 (0.25%) ContrOCC
9 10 (0.25%) Oracle Payroll
10 9 (0.23%) NEC Housing
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
10 9 (0.23%) SAP FI
10 9 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
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
1 814 (20.72%) AWS
2 764 (19.45%) Azure
3 239 (6.08%) Power Platform
4 188 (4.79%) Azure DevOps
5 171 (4.35%) Microsoft 365
6 156 (3.97%) GitHub
7 153 (3.90%) Serverless
8 150 (3.82%) GCP
9 132 (3.36%) Entra ID
10 119 (3.03%) Amazon S3
11 111 (2.83%) SaaS
12 110 (2.80%) GitHub Actions
13 94 (2.39%) OCI
14 92 (2.34%) AWS Lambda
15 86 (2.19%) Power Automate
16 79 (2.01%) Dynamics 365
17 73 (1.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 66 (1.68%) PowerApps
19 64 (1.63%) Amazon EKS
20 59 (1.50%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 105 (2.67%) Firewall
2 68 (1.73%) DNS
3 55 (1.40%) WAN
4 47 (1.20%) LAN
5 41 (1.04%) Network Security
6 34 (0.87%) DHCP
7 30 (0.76%) BGP
8 29 (0.74%) OSPF
8 29 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
9 27 (0.69%) TCP/IP
9 27 (0.69%) VPN
10 22 (0.56%) SD-WAN
11 19 (0.48%) WLAN
12 16 (0.41%) VXLAN
13 15 (0.38%) BIG-IP
14 14 (0.36%) Ethernet VPN
14 14 (0.36%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 14 (0.36%) Wireless
15 13 (0.33%) VLAN
16 12 (0.31%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 153 (3.90%) Power BI
2 105 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
3 102 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
4 86 (2.19%) Metadata
5 72 (1.83%) SQL Server
6 71 (1.81%) Relational Database
7 60 (1.53%) MongoDB
8 55 (1.40%) Oracle Database
9 51 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
10 49 (1.25%) NoSQL
11 48 (1.22%) Data Lake
12 32 (0.81%) Amazon Athena
13 30 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
13 30 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
14 28 (0.71%) Amazon Aurora
14 28 (0.71%) MySQL
14 28 (0.71%) Tableau
15 26 (0.66%) Pentaho
16 24 (0.61%) DynamoDB
17 18 (0.46%) Redis
Development Applications
1 235 (5.98%) JIRA
2 192 (4.89%) Git
3 159 (4.05%) GitLab
4 124 (3.16%) Jenkins
5 43 (1.09%) Selenium
6 37 (0.94%) Cucumber
7 33 (0.84%) JUnit
8 28 (0.71%) Mockito
8 28 (0.71%) Postman
9 26 (0.66%) SonarQube
10 25 (0.64%) Cypress.io
11 24 (0.61%) Maven
12 19 (0.48%) REST Assured
13 18 (0.46%) JMeter
14 17 (0.43%) WebDriver
15 12 (0.31%) Gatling
15 12 (0.31%) MSI
15 12 (0.31%) Team Foundation Server
16 10 (0.25%) fastlane
16 10 (0.25%) Gradle
General
1 1,188 (30.24%) Social Skills
2 432 (11.00%) Finance
3 417 (10.62%) Analytical Skills
4 264 (6.72%) Military
5 218 (5.55%) Local Government
6 167 (4.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 147 (3.74%) Influencing Skills
8 110 (2.80%) Organisational Skills
9 103 (2.62%) Legal
10 83 (2.11%) Police
11 82 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
12 61 (1.55%) Law
13 51 (1.30%) Telecoms
14 41 (1.04%) Marketing
15 36 (0.92%) Banking
16 33 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
17 28 (0.71%) Retail
18 23 (0.59%) Billing
19 20 (0.51%) Manufacturing
20 19 (0.48%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 549 (13.98%) Architect
2 526 (13.39%) Developer
2 526 (13.39%) Senior
3 480 (12.22%) Lead
4 346 (8.81%) Analyst
5 168 (4.28%) Consultant
6 146 (3.72%) Data Engineer
7 139 (3.54%) Designer
8 133 (3.39%) Business Analyst
9 131 (3.34%) DevOps Engineer
10 124 (3.16%) Data Architect
11 120 (3.05%) Delivery Manager
11 120 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
12 114 (2.90%) Senior Developer
13 109 (2.77%) Technical Architect
14 90 (2.29%) Project Manager
15 87 (2.21%) User Researcher
16 86 (2.19%) Java Developer
17 84 (2.14%) Senior Manager
18 73 (1.86%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 353 (8.99%) Terraform
2 162 (4.12%) REST
3 109 (2.77%) RESTful
4 99 (2.52%) React
5 96 (2.44%) Spring
6 89 (2.27%) Node.js
7 86 (2.19%) Oracle Fusion
8 85 (2.16%) Spring Boot
9 76 (1.93%) SOAP
10 75 (1.91%) HTML
11 73 (1.86%) Kafka
12 68 (1.73%) Django
13 66 (1.68%) CSS
13 66 (1.68%) Web Services
14 62 (1.58%) .NET
15 57 (1.45%) OAuth
16 53 (1.35%) JSON
17 49 (1.25%) AngularJS
18 48 (1.22%) PySpark
19 47 (1.20%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 239 (6.08%) Cloud Native
2 164 (4.18%) Product Ownership
3 161 (4.10%) Onboarding
4 135 (3.44%) NHS
5 120 (3.05%) Management Information System
6 109 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
7 77 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
8 54 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (1.22%) Data Centre
10 47 (1.20%) Data Structures
11 42 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
11 42 (1.07%) CMDB
11 42 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
12 40 (1.02%) Freedom of Information
13 36 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
14 33 (0.84%) Virtual Team
15 32 (0.81%) Cyber Threat
15 32 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
16 31 (0.79%) Low-Code
17 28 (0.71%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 132 (3.36%) Windows
2 121 (3.08%) Linux
3 45 (1.15%) Unix
4 43 (1.09%) Windows Server
5 21 (0.53%) Android
6 18 (0.46%) Apple iOS
7 17 (0.43%) Windows 10
8 16 (0.41%) Mac OS
8 16 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
10 4 (0.10%) AIX
10 4 (0.10%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.076%) 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 (0.025%) Mac OS X
13 1 (0.025%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.025%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,263 (32.15%) Agile
2 830 (21.13%) Stakeholder Management
3 679 (17.29%) Continuous Improvement
4 674 (17.16%) CI/CD
5 656 (16.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 646 (16.45%) DevOps
7 496 (12.63%) Problem-Solving
8 457 (11.63%) Decision-Making
9 412 (10.49%) Analytics
10 372 (9.47%) Migration
11 355 (9.04%) Roadmaps
12 349 (8.88%) AI
13 347 (8.83%) Digital Transformation Programme
14 341 (8.68%) Infrastructure as Code
15 310 (7.89%) Data Modelling
16 291 (7.41%) Technical Leadership
17 281 (7.15%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
18 265 (6.75%) Mentoring
19 256 (6.52%) Containerisation
19 256 (6.52%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 472 (12.02%) Python
2 392 (9.98%) SQL
3 246 (6.26%) Java
4 219 (5.58%) JavaScript
5 117 (2.98%) TypeScript
6 111 (2.83%) PowerShell
7 83 (2.11%) C#
8 60 (1.53%) Bash
9 53 (1.35%) PL/SQL
10 47 (1.20%) Bicep
11 36 (0.92%) Scala
12 29 (0.74%) Apex Code
13 27 (0.69%) Kotlin
14 26 (0.66%) Ruby
15 25 (0.64%) R
16 24 (0.61%) Groovy
17 22 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 14 (0.36%) ABAP
18 14 (0.36%) Shell Script
19 11 (0.28%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 2,014 (51.27%) Security Cleared
2 1,630 (41.50%) SC Cleared
3 265 (6.75%) BPSS Clearance
4 237 (6.03%) DV Cleared
5 172 (4.38%) Degree
6 69 (1.76%) Microsoft Certification
7 59 (1.50%) AWS Certification
8 58 (1.48%) Azure Certification
9 46 (1.17%) CISSP
10 42 (1.07%) Cisco Certification
11 32 (0.81%) CISM
12 28 (0.71%) CCNP
13 27 (0.69%) PMI Certification
14 25 (0.64%) ISTQB
14 25 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
15 22 (0.56%) Master's Degree
16 18 (0.46%) Computer Science Degree
17 17 (0.43%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 16 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 16 (0.41%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 314 (7.99%) Accessibility
2 239 (6.08%) Data Quality
3 234 (5.96%) QA
4 140 (3.56%) WCAG
5 129 (3.28%) GDPR
6 94 (2.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 78 (1.99%) NCSC
7 78 (1.99%) PMO
8 75 (1.91%) NIST
9 37 (0.94%) GRC
10 29 (0.74%) SLA
11 26 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
12 18 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 12 (0.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 12 (0.31%) PCI DSS
15 11 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
15 11 (0.28%) NIST 800
16 10 (0.25%) HL7
17 6 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 296 (7.54%) Docker
2 141 (3.59%) Active Directory
3 36 (0.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (0.48%) VMware NSX
5 17 (0.43%) Hyper-V
6 10 (0.25%) vSphere
7 9 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
7 9 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
8 7 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (0.15%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (0.13%) Postfix
11 1 (0.025%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.025%) Ceph
11 1 (0.025%) etcd
11 1 (0.025%) Microsoft App-V
11 1 (0.025%) Sendmail
11 1 (0.025%) Squid
11 1 (0.025%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 265 (6.75%) Kubernetes
2 87 (2.21%) Grafana
3 71 (1.81%) Ansible
4 60 (1.53%) Prometheus
5 41 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
6 36 (0.92%) Microsoft Intune
7 23 (0.59%) Argo
8 21 (0.53%) SCCM
9 15 (0.38%) Kibana
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle RMAN
11 8 (0.20%) Data Guard
11 8 (0.20%) VxRail
12 7 (0.18%) Puppet
13 5 (0.13%) Istio
13 5 (0.13%) QRadar
13 5 (0.13%) vCenter Server
14 4 (0.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (0.10%) Consul
14 4 (0.10%) Packer
14 4 (0.10%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 525 (13.37%) Microsoft
2 329 (8.38%) Oracle
3 155 (3.95%) ServiceNow
4 120 (3.05%) Google
5 114 (2.90%) SAP
6 100 (2.55%) Salesforce
7 85 (2.16%) Databricks
8 48 (1.22%) Cisco
9 46 (1.17%) VMware
10 37 (0.94%) Palo Alto
11 31 (0.79%) Talend
12 30 (0.76%) Splunk
13 29 (0.74%) Dynatrace
14 28 (0.71%) Foundry
15 26 (0.66%) Informatica
16 24 (0.61%) Palantir
17 23 (0.59%) Workday
18 21 (0.53%) CyberArk
19 20 (0.51%) Red Hat
20 19 (0.48%) Atlassian