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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 23 19
Rank change year-on-year 0 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,961 2,205 2,667
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.69% 7.98% 8.00%
As % of the General category 15.69% 12.41% 13.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,761 1,511 1,819
10th Percentile £360 £325 £315
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £513 £520
Median % change year-on-year +0.98% -1.44% -3.26%
75th Percentile £608 £600 £630
90th Percentile £694 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £518 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +3.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 84 116
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.48 £15.10
25th Percentile £16.62 £18.13 £18.03
Median hourly rate £22.10 £21.70 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.84% -19.63% +31.71%
75th Percentile £53.75 £30.88 £58.54
90th Percentile £77.45 £66.65 £74.93
UK median hourly rate £22.35 £20.19 £23.41
% change year-on-year +10.70% -13.75% +17.05%

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 25,244 17,764 19,195
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.36% 64.28% 57.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,039 11,302 12,323
10th Percentile £313 £277 £300
25th Percentile £419 £400 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -4.83% -2.18%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £663
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 2,001 964 1,232
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £17.87 £16.48 £18.03
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +38.62%
75th Percentile £62.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £31.53 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +25.36% -34.02% +38.62%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 1,725 £538 +2.38% 676
North of England -1 696 £475 -1.04% 290
Midlands +7 490 £494 +4.00% 137
South East +3 484 £500 -4.76% 209
West Midlands +5 410 £490 +3.16% 112
South West -6 332 £525 -4.55% 208
North West -7 265 £500 +5.26% 134
Yorkshire +7 259 £475 - 104
North East -2 184 £450 -11.76% 55
East Midlands +16 72 £600 +46.34% 25
East of England -1 57 £450 -10.00% 39
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
1 153 (3.86%) Confluence
2 113 (2.85%) SharePoint
3 51 (1.29%) SAS
4 50 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
5 44 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
6 39 (0.98%) Apache Spark
7 35 (0.88%) Apache
8 24 (0.61%) CMS
9 19 (0.48%) Jupyter
10 13 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.28%) nginx
11 11 (0.28%) WordPress
12 7 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
13 5 (0.13%) Drupal
13 5 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
13 5 (0.13%) Tomcat
13 5 (0.13%) Tuxedo
14 4 (0.10%) WebLogic
15 3 (0.076%) Camunda
15 3 (0.076%) IIS
Applications
1 77 (1.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (1.16%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
4 23 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
5 17 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 9 (0.23%) MS Visio
7 8 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.15%) Sketch
8 6 (0.15%) Trello
9 3 (0.076%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.050%) Adobe After Effects
10 2 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.050%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.025%) Gliffy
11 1 (0.025%) LaTeX
11 1 (0.025%) Navisworks
11 1 (0.025%) ProjectWise
11 1 (0.025%) Revit
11 1 (0.025%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 58 (1.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 42 (1.06%) Oracle ERP
4 26 (0.66%) Oracle EBS
5 23 (0.58%) SAP PSCD
6 15 (0.38%) Workday HCM
7 12 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
8 11 (0.28%) NetSuite
8 11 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
8 11 (0.28%) SAP Payroll
9 10 (0.25%) ContrOCC
9 10 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 9 (0.23%) NEC Housing
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
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
11 8 (0.20%) SystmOne
12 7 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 813 (20.53%) AWS
2 773 (19.52%) Azure
3 231 (5.83%) Power Platform
4 190 (4.80%) Azure DevOps
5 183 (4.62%) Microsoft 365
6 156 (3.94%) GCP
7 153 (3.86%) GitHub
8 143 (3.61%) Serverless
9 132 (3.33%) Entra ID
10 120 (3.03%) Amazon S3
11 108 (2.73%) SaaS
12 106 (2.68%) GitHub Actions
13 91 (2.30%) OCI
14 86 (2.17%) AWS Lambda
15 85 (2.15%) Power Automate
16 78 (1.97%) Dynamics 365
17 71 (1.79%) PowerApps
18 70 (1.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 64 (1.62%) Amazon EC2
19 64 (1.62%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 114 (2.88%) Firewall
2 71 (1.79%) DNS
3 56 (1.41%) WAN
4 49 (1.24%) LAN
5 46 (1.16%) Network Security
6 39 (0.98%) VPN
7 34 (0.86%) DHCP
8 29 (0.73%) BGP
8 29 (0.73%) OSPF
8 29 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
9 28 (0.71%) TCP/IP
10 21 (0.53%) SD-WAN
11 19 (0.48%) WLAN
12 16 (0.40%) VXLAN
12 16 (0.40%) Wireless
13 15 (0.38%) BIG-IP
14 14 (0.35%) Ethernet VPN
14 14 (0.35%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 14 (0.35%) VLAN
14 14 (0.35%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 152 (3.84%) Power BI
2 112 (2.83%) Data Warehouse
3 105 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
4 81 (2.04%) SQL Server
5 66 (1.67%) Relational Database
6 60 (1.51%) Metadata
7 56 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
7 56 (1.41%) MongoDB
8 51 (1.29%) Data Lake
9 50 (1.26%) Oracle Database
10 47 (1.19%) NoSQL
11 35 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
12 31 (0.78%) Amazon Redshift
12 31 (0.78%) Pentaho
13 30 (0.76%) MySQL
14 29 (0.73%) Amazon Athena
14 29 (0.73%) Amazon Aurora
15 28 (0.71%) DynamoDB
16 26 (0.66%) Tableau
17 21 (0.53%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 234 (5.91%) JIRA
2 184 (4.65%) Git
3 149 (3.76%) GitLab
4 135 (3.41%) Jenkins
5 42 (1.06%) Selenium
6 33 (0.83%) Cucumber
7 32 (0.81%) JUnit
7 32 (0.81%) Mockito
8 29 (0.73%) SonarQube
9 28 (0.71%) Postman
10 23 (0.58%) Cypress.io
10 23 (0.58%) JMeter
11 22 (0.56%) Maven
12 17 (0.43%) REST Assured
12 17 (0.43%) WebDriver
13 15 (0.38%) Gatling
14 11 (0.28%) DbUnit
14 11 (0.28%) MSI
14 11 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
15 10 (0.25%) jMock
General
1 1,125 (28.40%) Social Skills
2 458 (11.56%) Finance
3 392 (9.90%) Analytical Skills
4 229 (5.78%) Military
5 222 (5.60%) Local Government
6 150 (3.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 132 (3.33%) Influencing Skills
8 103 (2.60%) Legal
9 97 (2.45%) Organisational Skills
10 85 (2.15%) Police
11 82 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
12 53 (1.34%) Law
13 48 (1.21%) Telecoms
14 44 (1.11%) Marketing
15 37 (0.93%) Banking
16 33 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
17 25 (0.63%) Billing
17 25 (0.63%) Retail
18 19 (0.48%) Manufacturing
19 17 (0.43%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 531 (13.41%) Architect
2 527 (13.30%) Developer
3 524 (13.23%) Senior
4 445 (11.23%) Lead
5 344 (8.68%) Analyst
6 165 (4.17%) Consultant
7 157 (3.96%) Data Engineer
8 156 (3.94%) Designer
9 136 (3.43%) DevOps Engineer
10 135 (3.41%) Business Analyst
11 129 (3.26%) Delivery Manager
12 120 (3.03%) Solutions Architect
13 107 (2.70%) Senior Developer
14 103 (2.60%) Technical Architect
15 102 (2.58%) Data Architect
16 98 (2.47%) Java Developer
17 92 (2.32%) Project Manager
18 89 (2.25%) User Researcher
19 79 (1.99%) Senior Manager
20 76 (1.92%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 153 (3.86%) REST
2 105 (2.65%) RESTful
3 104 (2.63%) React
4 101 (2.55%) Node.js
5 94 (2.37%) Spring
6 85 (2.15%) Spring Boot
7 83 (2.10%) Oracle Fusion
8 75 (1.89%) Kafka
9 73 (1.84%) HTML
10 71 (1.79%) SOAP
11 66 (1.67%) Web Services
12 65 (1.64%) .NET
13 62 (1.57%) CSS
14 58 (1.46%) AngularJS
15 57 (1.44%) Django
16 55 (1.39%) OAuth
17 48 (1.21%) JSON
18 44 (1.11%) OpenID
19 42 (1.06%) PySpark
20 38 (0.96%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 227 (5.73%) Cloud Native
2 167 (4.22%) Onboarding
3 161 (4.06%) Product Ownership
4 138 (3.48%) NHS
5 112 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
6 102 (2.58%) Management Information System
7 67 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
8 61 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
9 55 (1.39%) Data Centre
10 47 (1.19%) Data Structures
11 41 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
11 41 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
12 39 (0.98%) Analytical Mindset
12 39 (0.98%) Public Cloud
13 32 (0.81%) CMDB
14 31 (0.78%) Virtual Team
15 30 (0.76%) Low-Code
16 28 (0.71%) Freedom of Information
16 28 (0.71%) Replication
17 27 (0.68%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 149 (3.76%) Windows
2 137 (3.46%) Linux
3 49 (1.24%) Windows Server
4 45 (1.14%) Unix
5 23 (0.58%) Android
5 23 (0.58%) Windows 10
6 21 (0.53%) Apple iOS
6 21 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.35%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.13%) AIX
8 5 (0.13%) Solaris
8 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
9 4 (0.10%) Amazon Linux
9 4 (0.10%) Mac OS X
9 4 (0.10%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.050%) CentOS
10 2 (0.050%) VMS
10 2 (0.050%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.025%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,251 (31.58%) Agile
2 745 (18.81%) Stakeholder Management
3 663 (16.74%) DevOps
4 661 (16.69%) CI/CD
5 637 (16.08%) Continuous Improvement
6 618 (15.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 471 (11.89%) Problem-Solving
8 421 (10.63%) Analytics
9 413 (10.43%) Decision-Making
10 374 (9.44%) Migration
11 339 (8.56%) Roadmaps
12 337 (8.51%) Infrastructure as Code
13 325 (8.20%) AI
14 311 (7.85%) Digital Transformation Programme
15 300 (7.57%) Data Modelling
16 279 (7.04%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
17 266 (6.72%) Containerisation
18 260 (6.56%) Technical Leadership
19 256 (6.46%) Scrum
20 254 (6.41%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 472 (11.92%) Python
2 402 (10.15%) SQL
3 268 (6.77%) Java
4 213 (5.38%) JavaScript
5 110 (2.78%) PowerShell
6 107 (2.70%) TypeScript
7 82 (2.07%) C#
8 63 (1.59%) Bash
9 56 (1.41%) PL/SQL
10 47 (1.19%) Bicep
11 34 (0.86%) Apex Code
12 32 (0.81%) Scala
13 28 (0.71%) Kotlin
14 27 (0.68%) Ruby
15 24 (0.61%) R
16 23 (0.58%) Groovy
17 20 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 15 (0.38%) Shell Script
19 14 (0.35%) ABAP
20 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 2,043 (51.58%) Security Cleared
2 1,606 (40.55%) SC Cleared
3 242 (6.11%) DV Cleared
4 232 (5.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 176 (4.44%) Degree
6 65 (1.64%) Microsoft Certification
7 57 (1.44%) Azure Certification
8 53 (1.34%) AWS Certification
9 44 (1.11%) CISSP
10 43 (1.09%) Cisco Certification
11 30 (0.76%) CISM
12 28 (0.71%) PMI Certification
13 26 (0.66%) CCNP
13 26 (0.66%) ISTQB
13 26 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
14 19 (0.48%) Computer Science Degree
14 19 (0.48%) Master's Degree
15 17 (0.43%) PMP
16 14 (0.35%) DBS Check
16 14 (0.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 313 (7.90%) Accessibility
2 220 (5.55%) Data Quality
3 214 (5.40%) QA
4 132 (3.33%) WCAG
5 130 (3.28%) GDPR
6 99 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 82 (2.07%) NCSC
8 78 (1.97%) PMO
9 72 (1.82%) NIST
10 37 (0.93%) GRC
11 33 (0.83%) SLA
12 26 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
13 19 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 13 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 13 (0.33%) PCI DSS
16 12 (0.30%) Government Security Classifications
17 10 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 9 (0.23%) HL7
19 5 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 303 (7.65%) Docker
2 158 (3.99%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (0.63%) VMware NSX
5 18 (0.45%) Hyper-V
6 14 (0.35%) vSphere
7 12 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
7 12 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
8 9 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
9 8 (0.20%) Postfix
10 1 (0.025%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.025%) Ceph
10 1 (0.025%) etcd
10 1 (0.025%) FreeRADIUS
10 1 (0.025%) GPFS
10 1 (0.025%) NFS
10 1 (0.025%) Sendmail
10 1 (0.025%) Squid
Systems Management
1 350 (8.84%) Terraform
2 276 (6.97%) Kubernetes
3 89 (2.25%) Grafana
4 78 (1.97%) Ansible
5 60 (1.51%) Prometheus
6 46 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
7 42 (1.06%) Microsoft Intune
8 25 (0.63%) Argo
9 16 (0.40%) SCCM
10 15 (0.38%) Kibana
11 12 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
12 10 (0.25%) Data Guard
12 10 (0.25%) Puppet
13 9 (0.23%) VxRail
14 8 (0.20%) Istio
15 7 (0.18%) vCenter Server
16 5 (0.13%) Consul
16 5 (0.13%) Packer
16 5 (0.13%) Progress Chef
16 5 (0.13%) QRadar
Vendors
1 525 (13.25%) Microsoft
2 324 (8.18%) Oracle
3 140 (3.53%) ServiceNow
4 131 (3.31%) SAP
5 121 (3.05%) Google
6 111 (2.80%) Salesforce
7 95 (2.40%) Databricks
8 57 (1.44%) VMware
9 47 (1.19%) Cisco
10 40 (1.01%) Palo Alto
11 34 (0.86%) Dynatrace
12 32 (0.81%) Talend
13 27 (0.68%) Atlassian
13 27 (0.68%) Informatica
13 27 (0.68%) Red Hat
14 24 (0.61%) Workday
15 23 (0.58%) Foundry
15 23 (0.58%) Splunk
16 22 (0.56%) Palantir
17 20 (0.50%) CyberArk