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

6 months to
15 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 23 19
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,775 1,930 3,105
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.81% 7.82% 8.27%
As % of the General category 16.18% 12.15% 14.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,653 1,296 2,067
10th Percentile £358 £346 £310
25th Percentile £425 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £627
90th Percentile £688 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £505 £500 £510
% change year-on-year +1.00% -1.96% -1.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 80 164
10th Percentile £13.23 £16.22 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.09 £18.22 £15.39
Median hourly rate £24.19 £25.08 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year -3.53% +3.70% +17.78%
75th Percentile £48.13 £35.53 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £72.97
UK median hourly rate £24.22 £23.00 £22.56
% change year-on-year +5.30% +1.95% +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 23,328 15,884 21,496
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.46% 64.32% 57.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,246 10,227 13,740
10th Percentile £313 £281 £281
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £520 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -3.09%
75th Percentile £636 £640 £650
90th Percentile £744 £763 £775
UK median daily rate £513 £504 £525
% change year-on-year +1.79% -4.05% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,613 752 1,831
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.36 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.53 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £28.17 £31.97
Median % change year-on-year +15.39% -11.90% +6.57%
75th Percentile £63.75 £53.75 £52.78
90th Percentile £82.01 £75.00 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £28.15 £30.91
% change year-on-year +13.68% -8.94% +1.22%

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 15 June 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 15 June 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 15 June 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 1,700 £525 - 362
North of England +1 670 £465 -2.11% 249
South East +4 465 £500 -5.66% 222
Midlands +9 407 £500 +8.11% 132
West Midlands +2 335 £500 +8.11% 98
North West +1 298 £500 +5.26% 99
South West -7 263 £525 -4.55% 100
Yorkshire +12 226 £450 -2.70% 97
North East -3 152 £450 -4.26% 57
East of England +11 70 £475 +5.56% 30
East Midlands +9 65 £513 +25.00% 32
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
1 139 (3.68%) Confluence
2 108 (2.86%) SharePoint
3 44 (1.17%) Microsoft Exchange
4 42 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
5 41 (1.09%) SAS
6 34 (0.90%) Apache Spark
7 30 (0.79%) Apache
8 19 (0.50%) Jupyter
9 16 (0.42%) CMS
10 11 (0.29%) Palantir Foundry
11 9 (0.24%) nginx
12 8 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
13 7 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.13%) Camunda
14 5 (0.13%) Tuxedo
14 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
15 4 (0.11%) Drupal
15 4 (0.11%) WordPress
16 3 (0.079%) IIS
16 3 (0.079%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 70 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
3 29 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
4 22 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.29%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.16%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.053%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.053%) Sketch
10 1 (0.026%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 64 (1.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.87%) Oracle ERP
4 22 (0.58%) SAP PSCD
5 14 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
6 11 (0.29%) SAP BRIM
6 11 (0.29%) SAP Hybris
7 10 (0.26%) SAP Payroll
7 10 (0.26%) SystmOne
8 8 (0.21%) NEC Housing
8 8 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
9 7 (0.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 6 (0.16%) Oracle Cash Management
10 6 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 6 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
10 6 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
11 5 (0.13%) ContrOCC
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
11 5 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
11 5 (0.13%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 740 (19.60%) AWS
2 653 (17.30%) Azure
3 194 (5.14%) Power Platform
4 170 (4.50%) Microsoft 365
5 147 (3.89%) Serverless
6 143 (3.79%) GitHub
7 141 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
8 135 (3.58%) GCP
9 116 (3.07%) Amazon S3
10 102 (2.70%) Entra ID
11 99 (2.62%) SaaS
12 95 (2.52%) AWS Lambda
13 87 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
14 81 (2.15%) Amazon EC2
15 67 (1.77%) OCI
16 66 (1.75%) Power Automate
17 64 (1.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 64 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
18 59 (1.56%) Amazon EKS
19 54 (1.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 94 (2.49%) Firewall
2 54 (1.43%) Network Security
3 53 (1.40%) WAN
4 51 (1.35%) DNS
5 40 (1.06%) LAN
6 37 (0.98%) VPN
7 32 (0.85%) BGP
8 27 (0.72%) OSPF
9 25 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
10 23 (0.61%) TCP/IP
11 22 (0.58%) DHCP
11 22 (0.58%) SD-WAN
12 19 (0.50%) BIG-IP
13 18 (0.48%) VXLAN
14 16 (0.42%) Ethernet VPN
15 15 (0.40%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 14 (0.37%) WLAN
17 12 (0.32%) DKIM
18 11 (0.29%) NGFW
18 11 (0.29%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 134 (3.55%) Power BI
2 88 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
3 86 (2.28%) Data Warehouse
4 72 (1.91%) SQL Server
5 55 (1.46%) Metadata
5 55 (1.46%) MongoDB
6 51 (1.35%) Amazon RDS
7 48 (1.27%) Data Lake
8 45 (1.19%) Oracle Database
9 42 (1.11%) Relational Database
10 40 (1.06%) NoSQL
11 38 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
12 31 (0.82%) DynamoDB
13 30 (0.79%) Amazon Athena
13 30 (0.79%) Tableau
14 27 (0.72%) Amazon Redshift
15 22 (0.58%) Amazon Aurora
15 22 (0.58%) Electronic Patient Records
15 22 (0.58%) Pentaho
16 17 (0.45%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 210 (5.56%) JIRA
2 157 (4.16%) Git
3 155 (4.11%) GitLab
4 127 (3.36%) Jenkins
5 49 (1.30%) Selenium
6 40 (1.06%) JUnit
7 34 (0.90%) Mockito
8 30 (0.79%) SonarQube
9 26 (0.69%) JMeter
9 26 (0.69%) Postman
10 24 (0.64%) Cucumber
11 23 (0.61%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.56%) Maven
13 17 (0.45%) CircleCI
13 17 (0.45%) REST Assured
14 14 (0.37%) DbUnit
15 13 (0.34%) Gatling
15 13 (0.34%) jMock
16 12 (0.32%) Artifactory
17 11 (0.29%) WebDriver
General
1 955 (25.30%) Social Skills
2 447 (11.84%) Finance
3 352 (9.32%) Analytical Skills
4 202 (5.35%) Military
5 184 (4.87%) Local Government
6 97 (2.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 93 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
8 92 (2.44%) Legal
9 83 (2.20%) Organisational Skills
10 80 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
11 73 (1.93%) Police
12 56 (1.48%) Law
12 56 (1.48%) Telecoms
13 52 (1.38%) Banking
14 50 (1.32%) Marketing
15 41 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
16 28 (0.74%) Billing
17 25 (0.66%) Retail
18 20 (0.53%) Manufacturing
19 12 (0.32%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 500 (13.25%) Developer
2 497 (13.17%) Architect
3 447 (11.84%) Senior
4 360 (9.54%) Lead
5 356 (9.43%) Analyst
6 165 (4.37%) Designer
7 156 (4.13%) Consultant
8 154 (4.08%) Business Analyst
9 138 (3.66%) Data Engineer
10 136 (3.60%) DevOps Engineer
11 120 (3.18%) Solutions Architect
12 116 (3.07%) Technical Architect
13 114 (3.02%) Project Manager
14 104 (2.75%) Java Developer
15 94 (2.49%) Senior Developer
16 93 (2.46%) Delivery Manager
17 89 (2.36%) User Researcher
18 73 (1.93%) Service Designer
19 70 (1.85%) Administrator
20 68 (1.80%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 126 (3.34%) REST
2 114 (3.02%) Node.js
3 108 (2.86%) Spring
4 97 (2.57%) React
5 95 (2.52%) Spring Boot
6 92 (2.44%) RESTful
7 74 (1.96%) Oracle Fusion
8 71 (1.88%) Kafka
9 66 (1.75%) Web Services
10 65 (1.72%) .NET
11 62 (1.64%) AngularJS
12 59 (1.56%) SOAP
13 58 (1.54%) HTML
14 49 (1.30%) CSS
15 45 (1.19%) OAuth
16 41 (1.09%) Lightning Web Components
17 40 (1.06%) Middleware
18 38 (1.01%) Playwright
19 32 (0.85%) JSON
19 32 (0.85%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 198 (5.25%) Cloud Native
2 147 (3.89%) Product Ownership
3 133 (3.52%) Onboarding
4 132 (3.50%) NHS
5 90 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
6 79 (2.09%) Management Information System
7 69 (1.83%) Data Centre
8 59 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
9 53 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
10 51 (1.35%) Public Cloud
11 43 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
12 42 (1.11%) Data Structures
13 41 (1.09%) Hybrid Cloud
14 32 (0.85%) CMDB
15 29 (0.77%) Analytical Mindset
16 26 (0.69%) Mobile App
16 26 (0.69%) Virtual Team
17 25 (0.66%) Freedom of Information
18 24 (0.64%) PKI
18 24 (0.64%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 165 (4.37%) Windows
2 150 (3.97%) Linux
3 59 (1.56%) Windows Server
4 53 (1.40%) Unix
5 29 (0.77%) Android
6 27 (0.72%) Apple iOS
7 22 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 20 (0.53%) Windows 10
9 17 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 12 (0.32%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.24%) Mac OS X
12 8 (0.21%) Solaris
12 8 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
14 5 (0.13%) AIX
14 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
15 4 (0.11%) VMS
16 3 (0.079%) Amazon Linux
16 3 (0.079%) Windows Server 2012
17 2 (0.053%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,038 (27.50%) Agile
2 590 (15.63%) CI/CD
3 576 (15.26%) DevOps
4 539 (14.28%) Stakeholder Management
5 442 (11.71%) Continuous Improvement
5 442 (11.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 367 (9.72%) Problem-Solving
7 357 (9.46%) Analytics
8 342 (9.06%) Migration
9 333 (8.82%) Decision-Making
10 310 (8.21%) Roadmaps
11 277 (7.34%) Infrastructure as Code
12 262 (6.94%) Data Modelling
13 258 (6.83%) Containerisation
14 250 (6.62%) AI
15 235 (6.23%) Test Automation
16 227 (6.01%) User Research
17 216 (5.72%) Microservices
18 209 (5.54%) Scrum
19 203 (5.38%) Digital Transformation Programme
Programming Languages
1 415 (10.99%) Python
2 366 (9.70%) SQL
3 282 (7.47%) Java
4 172 (4.56%) JavaScript
5 107 (2.83%) TypeScript
6 102 (2.70%) PowerShell
7 79 (2.09%) C#
8 52 (1.38%) Bash
9 50 (1.32%) PL/SQL
10 43 (1.14%) Apex Code
11 39 (1.03%) Ruby
12 28 (0.74%) Kotlin
13 25 (0.66%) Bicep
14 22 (0.58%) R
15 19 (0.50%) Shell Script
16 17 (0.45%) Go
17 15 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 15 (0.40%) Scala
18 12 (0.32%) T-SQL
19 9 (0.24%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 1,982 (52.50%) Security Cleared
2 1,400 (37.09%) SC Cleared
3 206 (5.46%) DV Cleared
4 180 (4.77%) Degree
5 139 (3.68%) BPSS Clearance
6 46 (1.22%) Azure Certification
7 41 (1.09%) CISSP
8 40 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
9 35 (0.93%) Cisco Certification
10 34 (0.90%) AWS Certification
11 27 (0.72%) CISM
11 27 (0.72%) PMP
12 25 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
13 23 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
14 22 (0.58%) PMI Certification
15 16 (0.42%) CCNP
15 16 (0.42%) Master's Degree
16 15 (0.40%) DBS Check
17 13 (0.34%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 13 (0.34%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 273 (7.23%) Accessibility
2 172 (4.56%) QA
3 170 (4.50%) Data Quality
4 114 (3.02%) GDPR
5 110 (2.91%) WCAG
6 87 (2.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 75 (1.99%) PMO
8 71 (1.88%) NCSC
9 62 (1.64%) NIST
10 36 (0.95%) SLA
11 29 (0.77%) GRC
12 25 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
13 21 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.40%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 12 (0.32%) Government Security Classifications
17 9 (0.24%) HL7
17 9 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 7 (0.19%) COBIT
18 7 (0.19%) IFRS
System Software
1 274 (7.26%) Docker
2 153 (4.05%) Active Directory
3 40 (1.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.58%) VMware NSX
5 16 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.29%) Hyper-V
6 11 (0.29%) Postfix
7 9 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
7 9 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.21%) vSphere
9 5 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.079%) NFS
10 3 (0.079%) RACF
11 2 (0.053%) Squid
12 1 (0.026%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.026%) etcd
12 1 (0.026%) FreeRADIUS
12 1 (0.026%) GPFS
12 1 (0.026%) NLBS
12 1 (0.026%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 308 (8.16%) Terraform
2 258 (6.83%) Kubernetes
3 86 (2.28%) Grafana
4 78 (2.07%) Ansible
5 59 (1.56%) Prometheus
6 43 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
7 37 (0.98%) Microsoft Intune
8 22 (0.58%) Argo
9 14 (0.37%) Puppet
9 14 (0.37%) SCCM
10 12 (0.32%) Kibana
11 10 (0.26%) Oracle RMAN
11 10 (0.26%) vCenter Server
12 7 (0.19%) FortiGate
13 6 (0.16%) Data Guard
13 6 (0.16%) Istio
14 5 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (0.13%) Progress Chef
14 5 (0.13%) Rancher
15 4 (0.11%) Salt
Vendors
1 418 (11.07%) Microsoft
2 262 (6.94%) Oracle
3 149 (3.95%) SAP
4 119 (3.15%) ServiceNow
5 115 (3.05%) Salesforce
6 97 (2.57%) Google
7 85 (2.25%) Databricks
8 61 (1.62%) VMware
9 43 (1.14%) Cisco
10 36 (0.95%) Red Hat
11 35 (0.93%) Palo Alto
11 35 (0.93%) Splunk
12 32 (0.85%) Atlassian
13 31 (0.82%) Dynatrace
14 27 (0.72%) IBM
14 27 (0.72%) Talend
15 25 (0.66%) F5
16 22 (0.58%) CyberArk
17 21 (0.56%) Foundry
17 21 (0.56%) MuleSoft