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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 17 16
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,526 2,428 3,403
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.08% 9.57% 9.01%
As % of the General category 17.08% 15.28% 15.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,478 1,510 2,262
10th Percentile £350 £310 £313
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £519 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.61% -1.19% -2.78%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £638
90th Percentile £672 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 180 83 149
10th Percentile £16.49 £15.25 £13.73
25th Percentile £17.69 £19.35 £15.39
Median hourly rate £22.00 £25.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.73% +21.43% +5.00%
75th Percentile £25.12 £38.88 £55.11
90th Percentile £44.94 £64.23 £69.10
UK median hourly rate £22.00 £25.00 £21.00
% change year-on-year -12.00% +19.05% +5.00%

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 20,650 15,892 22,292
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 59.03% 62.61% 59.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,080 9,813 14,637
10th Percentile £300 £300 £265
25th Percentile £406 £411 £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 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,286 527 1,583
10th Percentile £14.06 £15.51 £13.19
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.06 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.54 £31.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.07% +19.23% -13.33%
75th Percentile £53.75 £60.00 £50.75
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £65.60
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £30.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -23.33% +15.38% -8.77%

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 -1 1,482 £515 -1.90% 335
North of England -3 649 £450 -5.26% 153
South East +1 419 £500 -4.76% 213
Midlands +2 367 £493 +0.51% 93
North West +1 325 £450 -10.00% 63
West Midlands +1 274 £500 - 65
South West -2 273 £525 -4.55% 75
Yorkshire -3 203 £500 +11.11% 54
North East -1 125 £450 +5.88% 36
East of England +30 112 £400 +14.29% 33
East Midlands +9 92 £425 -10.53% 27
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
1 123 (3.49%) Confluence
2 98 (2.78%) SharePoint
3 29 (0.82%) Microsoft Exchange
4 25 (0.71%) SAS
5 21 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
6 16 (0.45%) Apache
7 15 (0.43%) nginx
8 13 (0.37%) Apache Spark
9 12 (0.34%) CMS
10 11 (0.31%) Skype for Business
11 8 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 6 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 4 (0.11%) Jupyter
13 4 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
13 4 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
13 4 (0.11%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.085%) Anypoint
14 3 (0.085%) GeoServer
14 3 (0.085%) OpenStack
14 3 (0.085%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 95 (2.69%) Microsoft Office
2 94 (2.67%) Microsoft Excel
3 35 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 23 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
5 18 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 14 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.20%) Adobe XD
7 7 (0.20%) Trello
8 6 (0.17%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.17%) Sketch
9 3 (0.085%) InVision
10 2 (0.057%) Adobe After Effects
10 2 (0.057%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.057%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 2 (0.057%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.028%) Adobe Premiere
11 1 (0.028%) OmniGraffle
11 1 (0.028%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.028%) Quicktime
11 1 (0.028%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 61 (1.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.62%) SAP PSCD
4 19 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
5 18 (0.51%) SAP BRIM
5 18 (0.51%) SAP Hybris
6 11 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
6 11 (0.31%) SAP Payroll
7 9 (0.26%) iTrent
7 9 (0.26%) SAP ERP
8 8 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
9 7 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
9 7 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 7 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
10 6 (0.17%) SAP HR
11 5 (0.14%) NEC Housing
11 5 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
11 5 (0.14%) SAP FI
12 4 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
12 4 (0.11%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 642 (18.21%) AWS
2 581 (16.48%) Azure
3 198 (5.62%) Power Platform
4 159 (4.51%) Serverless
5 148 (4.20%) GitHub
6 139 (3.94%) Microsoft 365
7 136 (3.86%) GCP
8 122 (3.46%) Azure DevOps
9 102 (2.89%) AWS Lambda
10 84 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
11 82 (2.33%) Amazon S3
12 78 (2.21%) Entra ID
13 63 (1.79%) AWS CloudFormation
14 61 (1.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 60 (1.70%) OCI
16 58 (1.64%) Power Automate
17 57 (1.62%) Amazon EC2
17 57 (1.62%) Dynamics 365
17 57 (1.62%) SaaS
18 53 (1.50%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 90 (2.55%) Firewall
2 54 (1.53%) DNS
3 51 (1.45%) Network Security
3 51 (1.45%) WAN
4 50 (1.42%) VPN
5 43 (1.22%) Wireless
6 39 (1.11%) LAN
7 34 (0.96%) TCP/IP
8 31 (0.88%) BGP
9 24 (0.68%) DHCP
9 24 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
10 23 (0.65%) OSPF
11 17 (0.48%) SSL
12 15 (0.43%) SD-WAN
13 14 (0.40%) IPsec
13 14 (0.40%) MPLS
14 13 (0.37%) Internet
14 13 (0.37%) VLAN
15 12 (0.34%) Cisco ASA
15 12 (0.34%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 156 (4.42%) Power BI
2 79 (2.24%) PostgreSQL
3 54 (1.53%) SQL Server
4 53 (1.50%) MongoDB
5 52 (1.47%) Metadata
6 40 (1.13%) Data Warehouse
7 38 (1.08%) Data Lake
8 37 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
9 36 (1.02%) NoSQL
10 31 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
11 30 (0.85%) Relational Database
12 25 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
13 22 (0.62%) Tableau
14 21 (0.60%) MySQL
15 20 (0.57%) Oracle Database
15 20 (0.57%) Redis
16 19 (0.54%) BigQuery
16 19 (0.54%) DynamoDB
17 18 (0.51%) Electronic Patient Records
18 15 (0.43%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 194 (5.50%) JIRA
2 163 (4.62%) Git
3 126 (3.57%) GitLab
4 122 (3.46%) Jenkins
5 48 (1.36%) Postman
5 48 (1.36%) Selenium
6 32 (0.91%) JUnit
7 29 (0.82%) Cucumber
8 27 (0.77%) Cypress.io
8 27 (0.77%) Mockito
9 18 (0.51%) REST Assured
9 18 (0.51%) SonarQube
10 14 (0.40%) JMeter
10 14 (0.40%) Mocha
11 13 (0.37%) CircleCI
12 12 (0.34%) Bitbucket
13 11 (0.31%) Maven
14 10 (0.28%) MSI
15 9 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
16 8 (0.23%) Gradle
General
1 1,001 (28.39%) Social Skills
2 535 (15.17%) Finance
3 321 (9.10%) Analytical Skills
4 195 (5.53%) Telecoms
5 163 (4.62%) Marketing
6 160 (4.54%) Manufacturing
7 157 (4.45%) Military
8 140 (3.97%) Electronics
9 127 (3.60%) Local Government
10 75 (2.13%) Legal
11 71 (2.01%) Documentation Skills
12 70 (1.99%) Organisational Skills
13 62 (1.76%) Influencing Skills
14 47 (1.33%) Banking
14 47 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
15 45 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 39 (1.11%) Police
17 38 (1.08%) Law
18 34 (0.96%) Billing
19 30 (0.85%) Retail
Job Titles
1 425 (12.05%) Developer
2 413 (11.71%) Architect
3 380 (10.78%) Senior
4 347 (9.84%) Analyst
5 306 (8.68%) Lead
6 187 (5.30%) Consultant
7 163 (4.62%) Business Analyst
8 136 (3.86%) Designer
9 130 (3.69%) DevOps Engineer
10 107 (3.03%) Project Manager
11 98 (2.78%) Solutions Architect
12 93 (2.64%) Technical Architect
13 92 (2.61%) Data Engineer
14 85 (2.41%) Java Developer
15 80 (2.27%) User Researcher
16 70 (1.99%) AWS Engineer
17 69 (1.96%) Senior Developer
18 67 (1.90%) Service Designer
19 60 (1.70%) Delivery Manager
20 57 (1.62%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 147 (4.17%) REST
2 124 (3.52%) Node.js
3 107 (3.03%) React
4 101 (2.86%) Spring
5 90 (2.55%) Spring Boot
6 85 (2.41%) RESTful
7 75 (2.13%) Oracle Fusion
8 73 (2.07%) .NET
9 70 (1.99%) HTML
10 67 (1.90%) CSS
11 66 (1.87%) AngularJS
12 64 (1.82%) Web Services
13 59 (1.67%) SOAP
14 53 (1.50%) JSON
15 48 (1.36%) Kafka
16 38 (1.08%) Playwright
17 35 (0.99%) XML
18 31 (0.88%) Middleware
19 30 (0.85%) Lightning Web Components
20 26 (0.74%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 135 (3.83%) Cloud Native
2 128 (3.63%) Onboarding
3 120 (3.40%) NHS
4 119 (3.37%) Product Ownership
5 88 (2.50%) Data Centre
6 72 (2.04%) Legacy Systems
7 68 (1.93%) Management Information System
8 45 (1.28%) Public Cloud
9 33 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
10 30 (0.85%) PKI
10 30 (0.85%) Security Posture
11 29 (0.82%) Distributed Systems
11 29 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
12 28 (0.79%) Data Structures
12 28 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
13 27 (0.77%) CMDB
14 24 (0.68%) AI Agents
14 24 (0.68%) Replication
15 22 (0.62%) Security Operations Centre
16 18 (0.51%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 213 (6.04%) Windows
2 169 (4.79%) Linux
3 55 (1.56%) Windows Server
4 49 (1.39%) Android
5 42 (1.19%) Mac OS
6 40 (1.13%) Unix
6 40 (1.13%) Windows 10
7 23 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 21 (0.60%) Apple iOS
9 15 (0.43%) Mac OS X
10 13 (0.37%) VMS
11 11 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 10 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
13 8 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
14 7 (0.20%) Solaris
14 7 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 4 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 881 (24.99%) Agile
2 497 (14.10%) CI/CD
3 472 (13.39%) DevOps
4 441 (12.51%) Problem-Solving
5 409 (11.60%) Stakeholder Management
6 382 (10.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 345 (9.78%) Migration
8 324 (9.19%) Continuous Improvement
9 318 (9.02%) Business Intelligence
10 303 (8.59%) Roadmaps
11 248 (7.03%) Analytics
12 239 (6.78%) Decision-Making
13 222 (6.30%) Infrastructure as Code
14 221 (6.27%) Test Automation
15 215 (6.10%) Containerisation
15 215 (6.10%) Microservices
16 197 (5.59%) User Research
17 196 (5.56%) AI
18 190 (5.39%) Data Modelling
19 189 (5.36%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 376 (10.66%) Python
2 314 (8.91%) SQL
3 258 (7.32%) Java
4 188 (5.33%) JavaScript
5 119 (3.37%) TypeScript
6 116 (3.29%) PowerShell
7 85 (2.41%) C#
8 66 (1.87%) Bash
9 38 (1.08%) Ruby
10 30 (0.85%) PL/SQL
11 29 (0.82%) Apex Code
12 25 (0.71%) Go
13 21 (0.60%) Shell Script
14 18 (0.51%) PHP
15 17 (0.48%) R
16 14 (0.40%) Bicep
17 12 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 11 (0.31%) Kotlin
19 10 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
20 9 (0.26%) Scala
Qualifications
1 2,077 (58.91%) Security Cleared
2 1,369 (38.83%) SC Cleared
3 171 (4.85%) Degree
4 167 (4.74%) DV Cleared
5 101 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
6 45 (1.28%) Azure Certification
7 44 (1.25%) CISSP
8 41 (1.16%) AWS Certification
9 39 (1.11%) ITIL Certification
10 38 (1.08%) Microsoft Certification
11 33 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
12 30 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
13 26 (0.74%) CISM
14 24 (0.68%) ISEB
15 23 (0.65%) PMP
16 19 (0.54%) PMI Certification
17 17 (0.48%) ISTQB
18 16 (0.45%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 16 (0.45%) CCNP
19 15 (0.43%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 186 (5.28%) Accessibility
2 137 (3.89%) QA
3 128 (3.63%) Data Quality
4 103 (2.92%) GDPR
5 77 (2.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 67 (1.90%) NIST
7 65 (1.84%) WCAG
8 57 (1.62%) PMO
9 56 (1.59%) NCSC
10 46 (1.30%) SLA
11 22 (0.62%) GRC
12 19 (0.54%) COBIT
12 19 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
13 17 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
14 16 (0.45%) JSP 440
15 14 (0.40%) HIPAA
16 13 (0.37%) PCI DSS
17 11 (0.31%) HL7
18 10 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 8 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 245 (6.95%) Docker
2 116 (3.29%) Active Directory
3 62 (1.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.48%) Hyper-V
4 17 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
5 16 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
5 16 (0.45%) VMware NSX
6 13 (0.37%) vSphere
7 10 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (0.20%) Postfix
9 6 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 4 (0.11%) NFS
12 3 (0.085%) DFS Replication
12 3 (0.085%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.085%) RACF
12 3 (0.085%) Squid
13 2 (0.057%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.057%) Dovecot
13 2 (0.057%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 302 (8.56%) Terraform
2 259 (7.35%) Kubernetes
3 71 (2.01%) Ansible
4 70 (1.99%) Grafana
5 49 (1.39%) Prometheus
6 31 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
7 29 (0.82%) SCCM
8 22 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.37%) Argo
9 13 (0.37%) vCenter Server
10 12 (0.34%) Packer
11 11 (0.31%) FortiGate
11 11 (0.31%) Puppet
12 10 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
13 8 (0.23%) Consul
14 7 (0.20%) Kibana
14 7 (0.20%) Nessus
15 6 (0.17%) Istio
15 6 (0.17%) SCOM
15 6 (0.17%) vRealize
Vendors
1 397 (11.26%) Microsoft
2 277 (7.86%) SAP
3 210 (5.96%) Oracle
4 143 (4.06%) Cisco
5 105 (2.98%) Salesforce
6 104 (2.95%) ServiceNow
7 96 (2.72%) VMware
8 67 (1.90%) Google
9 61 (1.73%) Splunk
10 59 (1.67%) Databricks
11 41 (1.16%) Aruba
11 41 (1.16%) Virgin Media
12 37 (1.05%) Juniper
13 35 (0.99%) Dell
13 35 (0.99%) Palo Alto
14 34 (0.96%) Apple
15 33 (0.94%) Red Hat
16 31 (0.88%) HP
17 27 (0.77%) SolarWinds
18 26 (0.74%) Atlassian