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

6 months to
18 Jul 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 23 18
Rank change year-on-year +3 -5 -1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 4,036 2,099 2,929
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.97% 7.71% 8.11%
As % of the General category 16.22% 12.11% 14.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,804 1,429 1,966
10th Percentile £358 £338 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £510 £516
Median % change year-on-year +0.98% -1.07% -1.81%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £688 £700 £723
UK median daily rate £515 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.90% - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 81 145
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.48 £15.04
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £22.50 £21.90 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.74% -20.36% +30.95%
75th Percentile £50.00 £30.25 £58.70
90th Percentile £75.40 £63.75 £75.75
UK median hourly rate £25.38 £20.00 £23.99
% change year-on-year +26.90% -16.63% +17.02%

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 24,886 17,337 20,728
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.30% 63.68% 57.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,960 11,100 13,262
10th Percentile £313 £281 £300
25th Percentile £413 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £530
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -3.30% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
90th Percentile £749 £760 £775
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,820 899 1,587
10th Percentile £14.25 £13.25 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.17 £16.36 £16.25
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.32 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.14% -24.80% +14.68%
75th Percentile £65.00 £51.58 £57.50
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.00 £26.21 £33.97
% change year-on-year +25.91% -22.83% +11.21%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 +3 1,790 £525 - 360
North of England +3 716 £470 -1.05% 213
South East +4 504 £500 -4.76% 212
Midlands +10 467 £500 +8.11% 114
West Midlands +4 378 £495 +7.03% 90
North West -6 300 £510 +8.51% 84
South West -8 299 £525 -4.55% 104
Yorkshire +13 257 £462 -2.80% 86
North East -2 170 £450 -6.25% 44
East Midlands +25 81 £525 +28.05% 24
East of England +7 65 £475 -4.95% 41
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
1 159 (3.94%) Confluence
2 117 (2.90%) SharePoint
3 50 (1.24%) Microsoft Exchange
4 45 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
5 44 (1.09%) SAS
6 34 (0.84%) Apache Spark
7 30 (0.74%) Apache
8 23 (0.57%) CMS
9 20 (0.50%) Jupyter
10 13 (0.32%) nginx
10 13 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
11 9 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
12 8 (0.20%) WordPress
13 7 (0.17%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.12%) Camunda
14 5 (0.12%) Drupal
14 5 (0.12%) SharePoint 2013
14 5 (0.12%) Tuxedo
14 5 (0.12%) WebLogic
15 3 (0.074%) IIS
Applications
1 78 (1.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
3 29 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 19 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 16 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.30%) MS Visio
7 9 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.15%) Trello
9 5 (0.12%) Sketch
10 3 (0.074%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.050%) Adobe After Effects
11 2 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.050%) CPLEX
12 1 (0.025%) Navisworks
12 1 (0.025%) ProjectWise
12 1 (0.025%) Revit
12 1 (0.025%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 65 (1.61%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 41 (1.02%) Oracle ERP
4 25 (0.62%) SAP PSCD
5 21 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
6 12 (0.30%) SAP Payroll
6 12 (0.30%) Workday HCM
7 11 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
8 10 (0.25%) ContrOCC
8 10 (0.25%) NEC Housing
8 10 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 10 (0.25%) Oracle Receivables
8 10 (0.25%) SAP BRIM
8 10 (0.25%) SAP Hybris
9 9 (0.22%) SystmOne
10 8 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 7 (0.17%) NetSuite
11 7 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
11 7 (0.17%) SAP HR
12 6 (0.15%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 800 (19.82%) AWS
2 752 (18.63%) Azure
3 220 (5.45%) Power Platform
4 181 (4.48%) Microsoft 365
5 169 (4.19%) Azure DevOps
6 155 (3.84%) GitHub
7 151 (3.74%) Serverless
8 149 (3.69%) GCP
9 128 (3.17%) Amazon S3
10 127 (3.15%) Entra ID
11 104 (2.58%) SaaS
12 103 (2.55%) GitHub Actions
13 97 (2.40%) AWS Lambda
14 84 (2.08%) OCI
15 81 (2.01%) Amazon EC2
16 74 (1.83%) Dynamics 365
17 73 (1.81%) Power Automate
18 66 (1.64%) Amazon EKS
19 65 (1.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 61 (1.51%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 109 (2.70%) Firewall
2 69 (1.71%) DNS
3 60 (1.49%) WAN
4 56 (1.39%) Network Security
5 51 (1.26%) LAN
6 43 (1.07%) VPN
7 32 (0.79%) BGP
7 32 (0.79%) DHCP
8 31 (0.77%) TCP/IP
9 28 (0.69%) OSPF
10 26 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
11 22 (0.55%) SD-WAN
12 19 (0.47%) BIG-IP
13 18 (0.45%) VXLAN
14 17 (0.42%) WLAN
15 16 (0.40%) Ethernet VPN
16 15 (0.37%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 14 (0.35%) NGFW
17 14 (0.35%) Wireless
18 12 (0.30%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 150 (3.72%) Power BI
2 101 (2.50%) Data Warehouse
3 89 (2.21%) PostgreSQL
4 80 (1.98%) SQL Server
5 57 (1.41%) Metadata
6 51 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
6 51 (1.26%) MongoDB
6 51 (1.26%) Relational Database
7 50 (1.24%) Data Lake
8 49 (1.21%) Oracle Database
9 42 (1.04%) NoSQL
10 39 (0.97%) Oracle Reports
11 33 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
12 32 (0.79%) DynamoDB
13 31 (0.77%) Amazon Athena
13 31 (0.77%) Tableau
14 23 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
14 23 (0.57%) Pentaho
15 20 (0.50%) Delta Lake
15 20 (0.50%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 232 (5.75%) JIRA
2 164 (4.06%) Git
3 160 (3.96%) GitLab
4 135 (3.34%) Jenkins
5 45 (1.11%) Selenium
6 39 (0.97%) JUnit
7 38 (0.94%) Mockito
8 31 (0.77%) SonarQube
9 30 (0.74%) Cucumber
10 29 (0.72%) Postman
11 27 (0.67%) JMeter
12 24 (0.59%) Cypress.io
12 24 (0.59%) Maven
13 19 (0.47%) REST Assured
14 16 (0.40%) WebDriver
15 14 (0.35%) DbUnit
16 13 (0.32%) Gatling
16 13 (0.32%) jMock
17 12 (0.30%) CircleCI
18 11 (0.27%) Bitbucket Server
General
1 1,075 (26.64%) Social Skills
2 481 (11.92%) Finance
3 391 (9.69%) Analytical Skills
4 220 (5.45%) Military
5 205 (5.08%) Local Government
6 119 (2.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 116 (2.87%) Influencing Skills
8 110 (2.73%) Legal
9 93 (2.30%) Organisational Skills
10 85 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
11 83 (2.06%) Police
12 51 (1.26%) Telecoms
13 47 (1.16%) Banking
13 47 (1.16%) Law
14 43 (1.07%) Marketing
15 37 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
16 29 (0.72%) Billing
17 23 (0.57%) Retail
18 16 (0.40%) General Ledger
19 14 (0.35%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 536 (13.28%) Architect
2 528 (13.08%) Developer
3 520 (12.88%) Senior
4 423 (10.48%) Lead
5 380 (9.42%) Analyst
6 165 (4.09%) Designer
7 159 (3.94%) Consultant
8 158 (3.91%) Business Analyst
9 150 (3.72%) Data Engineer
10 146 (3.62%) DevOps Engineer
11 129 (3.20%) Solutions Architect
12 114 (2.82%) Technical Architect
13 112 (2.78%) Java Developer
14 110 (2.73%) Delivery Manager
15 106 (2.63%) Project Manager
16 104 (2.58%) Senior Developer
17 91 (2.25%) User Researcher
18 81 (2.01%) Data Architect
19 75 (1.86%) AWS Engineer
20 73 (1.81%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 144 (3.57%) REST
2 111 (2.75%) Node.js
3 108 (2.68%) Spring
4 105 (2.60%) RESTful
5 98 (2.43%) Spring Boot
6 96 (2.38%) React
7 76 (1.88%) Oracle Fusion
8 74 (1.83%) Kafka
9 70 (1.73%) SOAP
10 65 (1.61%) .NET
11 59 (1.46%) AngularJS
11 59 (1.46%) Web Services
12 58 (1.44%) HTML
13 49 (1.21%) CSS
13 49 (1.21%) OAuth
14 47 (1.16%) Django
15 45 (1.11%) JSON
16 43 (1.07%) PySpark
17 38 (0.94%) Lightning Web Components
17 38 (0.94%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 225 (5.57%) Cloud Native
2 164 (4.06%) Product Ownership
3 156 (3.87%) Onboarding
4 143 (3.54%) NHS
5 102 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
6 94 (2.33%) Management Information System
7 70 (1.73%) Data Centre
8 66 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
9 57 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
10 49 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
11 48 (1.19%) Data Structures
12 46 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
13 45 (1.11%) Public Cloud
14 34 (0.84%) Virtual Team
15 33 (0.82%) Analytical Mindset
15 33 (0.82%) CMDB
16 28 (0.69%) Security Posture
17 27 (0.67%) PKI
18 26 (0.64%) Freedom of Information
18 26 (0.64%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 172 (4.26%) Windows
2 158 (3.91%) Linux
3 62 (1.54%) Windows Server
4 58 (1.44%) Unix
5 26 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (0.62%) Android
7 23 (0.57%) Apple iOS
8 22 (0.55%) Windows 10
9 17 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 10 (0.25%) Mac OS X
11 9 (0.22%) Solaris
11 9 (0.22%) Ubuntu
12 7 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
14 5 (0.12%) AIX
15 4 (0.099%) Amazon Linux
16 3 (0.074%) VMS
16 3 (0.074%) Windows Server 2016
17 2 (0.050%) CentOS
17 2 (0.050%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,196 (29.63%) Agile
2 667 (16.53%) Stakeholder Management
3 648 (16.06%) DevOps
4 642 (15.91%) CI/CD
5 562 (13.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 554 (13.73%) Continuous Improvement
7 443 (10.98%) Problem-Solving
8 408 (10.11%) Analytics
9 400 (9.91%) Decision-Making
10 367 (9.09%) Migration
11 330 (8.18%) Roadmaps
12 310 (7.68%) Infrastructure as Code
13 291 (7.21%) AI
14 286 (7.09%) Data Modelling
15 270 (6.69%) Containerisation
16 256 (6.34%) Digital Transformation Programme
17 249 (6.17%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
18 244 (6.05%) Mentoring
19 241 (5.97%) Scrum
20 239 (5.92%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 466 (11.55%) Python
2 400 (9.91%) SQL
3 297 (7.36%) Java
4 181 (4.48%) JavaScript
5 108 (2.68%) PowerShell
6 104 (2.58%) TypeScript
7 80 (1.98%) C#
8 64 (1.59%) Bash
9 56 (1.39%) PL/SQL
10 40 (0.99%) Apex Code
11 39 (0.97%) Bicep
12 31 (0.77%) Ruby
13 29 (0.72%) Kotlin
14 23 (0.57%) R
15 17 (0.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 17 (0.42%) Go
15 17 (0.42%) Scala
15 17 (0.42%) Shell Script
16 16 (0.40%) Groovy
17 14 (0.35%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 2,087 (51.71%) Security Cleared
2 1,560 (38.65%) SC Cleared
3 237 (5.87%) DV Cleared
4 208 (5.15%) BPSS Clearance
5 191 (4.73%) Degree
6 58 (1.44%) Azure Certification
7 56 (1.39%) Microsoft Certification
8 45 (1.11%) CISSP
9 44 (1.09%) AWS Certification
10 43 (1.07%) Cisco Certification
11 29 (0.72%) CISM
11 29 (0.72%) PMI Certification
12 28 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
13 22 (0.55%) CCNP
13 22 (0.55%) Computer Science Degree
14 21 (0.52%) ISTQB
15 20 (0.50%) PMP
16 18 (0.45%) Master's Degree
17 15 (0.37%) CCNA
18 14 (0.35%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 299 (7.41%) Accessibility
2 200 (4.96%) Data Quality
3 180 (4.46%) QA
4 130 (3.22%) GDPR
5 127 (3.15%) WCAG
6 101 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 81 (2.01%) PMO
8 80 (1.98%) NCSC
9 73 (1.81%) NIST
10 35 (0.87%) SLA
11 32 (0.79%) GRC
12 29 (0.72%) Cyber Essentials
13 19 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
14 16 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 14 (0.35%) PCI DSS
16 13 (0.32%) Government Security Classifications
17 11 (0.27%) HL7
17 11 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 10 (0.25%) NIST 800
19 7 (0.17%) COBIT
System Software
1 291 (7.21%) Docker
2 165 (4.09%) Active Directory
3 46 (1.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (0.59%) VMware NSX
5 15 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.32%) Hyper-V
7 12 (0.30%) vSphere
8 11 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
8 11 (0.27%) Postfix
9 8 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
10 6 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.050%) NFS
11 2 (0.050%) RACF
12 1 (0.025%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.025%) etcd
12 1 (0.025%) FreeRADIUS
12 1 (0.025%) GPFS
12 1 (0.025%) Sendmail
12 1 (0.025%) Squid
Systems Management
1 343 (8.50%) Terraform
2 280 (6.94%) Kubernetes
3 90 (2.23%) Grafana
4 82 (2.03%) Ansible
5 59 (1.46%) Prometheus
6 45 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
7 39 (0.97%) Microsoft Intune
8 28 (0.69%) Argo
9 14 (0.35%) Kibana
10 12 (0.30%) SCCM
11 11 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
11 11 (0.27%) Puppet
12 10 (0.25%) vCenter Server
13 8 (0.20%) Data Guard
13 8 (0.20%) Istio
14 7 (0.17%) FortiGate
15 5 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 5 (0.12%) Rancher
15 5 (0.12%) VxRail
16 4 (0.099%) Consul
Vendors
1 506 (12.54%) Microsoft
2 310 (7.68%) Oracle
3 141 (3.49%) SAP
4 129 (3.20%) ServiceNow
5 119 (2.95%) Salesforce
6 115 (2.85%) Google
7 95 (2.35%) Databricks
8 64 (1.59%) VMware
9 45 (1.11%) Cisco
10 40 (0.99%) Palo Alto
11 35 (0.87%) Atlassian
12 33 (0.82%) Red Hat
13 30 (0.74%) Splunk
14 29 (0.72%) Dynatrace
14 29 (0.72%) Talend
15 26 (0.64%) IBM
16 25 (0.62%) CyberArk
17 24 (0.59%) F5
17 24 (0.59%) Foundry
17 24 (0.59%) Informatica
960 Public Sector jobs in England