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

6 months to
30 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 22 19
Rank change year-on-year -2 -3 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,953 2,292 2,714
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.60% 8.26% 8.23%
As % of the General category 15.54% 12.85% 14.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,743 1,585 1,794
10th Percentile £363 £321 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £523
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.53% -3.10%
75th Percentile £619 £600 £630
90th Percentile £700 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 194 94 114
10th Percentile £15.17 £15.36 £14.49
25th Percentile £16.63 £18.02 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.43 £21.70 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year -1.27% -10.26% +20.60%
75th Percentile £50.00 £32.14 £57.50
90th Percentile £76.70 £66.65 £74.38
UK median hourly rate £21.50 £21.00 £22.78
% change year-on-year +2.38% -7.81% +13.90%

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 25,444 17,843 19,038
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.35% 64.31% 57.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,084 11,342 12,003
10th Percentile £313 £275 £300
25th Percentile £423 £400 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £538
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -6.88% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £653
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 2,060 991 1,082
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.50 £14.50
25th Percentile £17.50 £16.28 £18.00
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -34.02% +38.62%
75th Percentile £57.50 £50.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.88 £72.50 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £31.00 £25.15 £37.04
% change year-on-year +23.26% -32.10% +34.69%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -1 1,713 £550 +6.80% 487
North of England -1 709 £475 -2.56% 278
Midlands +9 492 £500 +5.26% 171
South East +1 464 £511 -2.62% 198
West Midlands +6 413 £495 +4.11% 121
South West -4 367 £525 -1.64% 231
Yorkshire +5 269 £475 -3.06% 100
North West -13 257 £515 +8.42% 120
North East -1 193 £450 -13.46% 61
East Midlands +22 71 £588 +40.72% 50
East of England -8 56 £450 -10.00% 34
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
1 156 (3.95%) Confluence
2 105 (2.66%) SharePoint
3 50 (1.26%) SAS
4 47 (1.19%) Microsoft Exchange
5 46 (1.16%) Apache Airflow
6 42 (1.06%) Apache Spark
7 38 (0.96%) Apache
8 27 (0.68%) CMS
9 20 (0.51%) Jupyter
10 16 (0.40%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.28%) WordPress
12 9 (0.23%) nginx
13 7 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
14 5 (0.13%) Drupal
14 5 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
14 5 (0.13%) Tuxedo
15 4 (0.10%) Headless CMS
15 4 (0.10%) IIS
16 3 (0.076%) Camunda
16 3 (0.076%) Tomcat
Applications
1 76 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 48 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
3 27 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
4 26 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
5 17 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 8 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.18%) MS Visio
8 5 (0.13%) Sketch
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 3 (0.076%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.051%) Adobe After Effects
10 2 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.051%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.051%) Navisworks
10 2 (0.051%) ProjectWise
10 2 (0.051%) Revit
11 1 (0.025%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.025%) LaTeX
11 1 (0.025%) SPSS
11 1 (0.025%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 51 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (1.19%) Dynamics CRM
3 43 (1.09%) Oracle ERP
4 23 (0.58%) SAP PSCD
5 22 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
6 14 (0.35%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.33%) NetSuite
8 12 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
9 11 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.28%) SAP Payroll
10 10 (0.25%) ContrOCC
10 10 (0.25%) Oracle Payroll
10 10 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 9 (0.23%) NEC Housing
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
11 9 (0.23%) SAP FI
12 8 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 8 (0.20%) SAP BRIM
12 8 (0.20%) SAP Hybris
13 7 (0.18%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 817 (20.67%) AWS
2 791 (20.01%) Azure
3 241 (6.10%) Power Platform
4 194 (4.91%) Azure DevOps
5 176 (4.45%) Microsoft 365
6 157 (3.97%) GitHub
7 153 (3.87%) GCP
8 150 (3.79%) Serverless
9 135 (3.42%) Entra ID
10 118 (2.99%) Amazon S3
11 111 (2.81%) GitHub Actions
12 107 (2.71%) SaaS
13 94 (2.38%) OCI
14 91 (2.30%) AWS Lambda
15 86 (2.18%) Power Automate
16 82 (2.07%) Dynamics 365
17 70 (1.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 69 (1.75%) PowerApps
19 65 (1.64%) Amazon EKS
20 58 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 109 (2.76%) Firewall
2 70 (1.77%) DNS
3 56 (1.42%) WAN
4 48 (1.21%) LAN
5 44 (1.11%) Network Security
6 37 (0.94%) VPN
7 33 (0.83%) DHCP
8 30 (0.76%) BGP
9 29 (0.73%) OSPF
9 29 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
10 27 (0.68%) TCP/IP
11 23 (0.58%) SD-WAN
12 19 (0.48%) WLAN
13 16 (0.40%) VXLAN
14 15 (0.38%) BIG-IP
15 14 (0.35%) Ethernet VPN
15 14 (0.35%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 14 (0.35%) Wireless
16 13 (0.33%) VLAN
16 13 (0.33%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 159 (4.02%) Power BI
2 108 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
3 98 (2.48%) PostgreSQL
4 82 (2.07%) Metadata
5 74 (1.87%) SQL Server
6 68 (1.72%) Relational Database
7 59 (1.49%) MongoDB
8 54 (1.37%) Oracle Database
9 51 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
9 51 (1.29%) Data Lake
10 50 (1.26%) NoSQL
11 31 (0.78%) Amazon Athena
12 30 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
12 30 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
13 28 (0.71%) MySQL
13 28 (0.71%) Tableau
14 27 (0.68%) Amazon Aurora
15 25 (0.63%) Pentaho
16 24 (0.61%) DynamoDB
17 20 (0.51%) Redis
Development Applications
1 236 (5.97%) JIRA
2 187 (4.73%) Git
3 159 (4.02%) GitLab
4 124 (3.14%) Jenkins
5 44 (1.11%) Selenium
6 35 (0.89%) Cucumber
7 29 (0.73%) JUnit
7 29 (0.73%) Postman
8 25 (0.63%) Cypress.io
8 25 (0.63%) Mockito
9 24 (0.61%) SonarQube
10 21 (0.53%) JMeter
11 19 (0.48%) Maven
12 18 (0.46%) REST Assured
13 17 (0.43%) WebDriver
14 13 (0.33%) Gatling
15 12 (0.30%) MSI
16 11 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
17 10 (0.25%) fastlane
18 9 (0.23%) CircleCI
General
1 1,159 (29.32%) Social Skills
2 442 (11.18%) Finance
3 398 (10.07%) Analytical Skills
4 248 (6.27%) Military
5 221 (5.59%) Local Government
6 160 (4.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 144 (3.64%) Influencing Skills
8 101 (2.56%) Organisational Skills
9 98 (2.48%) Legal
10 84 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
11 83 (2.10%) Police
12 60 (1.52%) Law
13 51 (1.29%) Telecoms
14 41 (1.04%) Marketing
15 36 (0.91%) Banking
16 33 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
17 30 (0.76%) Retail
18 24 (0.61%) Billing
19 18 (0.46%) Manufacturing
19 18 (0.46%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 553 (13.99%) Architect
2 528 (13.36%) Developer
3 520 (13.15%) Senior
4 471 (11.92%) Lead
5 345 (8.73%) Analyst
6 172 (4.35%) Consultant
7 145 (3.67%) Data Engineer
7 145 (3.67%) Designer
8 134 (3.39%) DevOps Engineer
9 131 (3.31%) Business Analyst
10 124 (3.14%) Delivery Manager
11 119 (3.01%) Data Architect
12 117 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
13 114 (2.88%) Technical Architect
14 104 (2.63%) Senior Developer
15 92 (2.33%) Project Manager
16 86 (2.18%) User Researcher
17 84 (2.12%) Java Developer
17 84 (2.12%) Senior Manager
18 74 (1.87%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 358 (9.06%) Terraform
2 157 (3.97%) REST
3 106 (2.68%) RESTful
4 103 (2.61%) React
5 92 (2.33%) Spring
6 90 (2.28%) Node.js
7 81 (2.05%) Spring Boot
8 80 (2.02%) Oracle Fusion
9 76 (1.92%) Kafka
10 74 (1.87%) HTML
11 71 (1.80%) SOAP
12 66 (1.67%) CSS
12 66 (1.67%) Django
13 65 (1.64%) .NET
14 64 (1.62%) Web Services
15 57 (1.44%) OAuth
16 51 (1.29%) JSON
17 48 (1.21%) OpenID
18 47 (1.19%) PySpark
19 44 (1.11%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 233 (5.89%) Cloud Native
2 163 (4.12%) Product Ownership
3 160 (4.05%) Onboarding
4 139 (3.52%) NHS
5 116 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
6 109 (2.76%) Management Information System
7 75 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
8 55 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
9 52 (1.32%) Data Centre
10 46 (1.16%) Data Structures
11 41 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
12 40 (1.01%) CMDB
13 39 (0.99%) Analytical Mindset
14 38 (0.96%) Freedom of Information
15 37 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
16 34 (0.86%) Public Cloud
17 33 (0.83%) Low-Code
18 31 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
18 31 (0.78%) Virtual Team
19 27 (0.68%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 138 (3.49%) Windows
2 125 (3.16%) Linux
3 45 (1.14%) Windows Server
4 43 (1.09%) Unix
5 21 (0.53%) Android
6 20 (0.51%) Windows 10
7 18 (0.46%) Apple iOS
8 17 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 16 (0.40%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.13%) AIX
10 5 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
11 4 (0.10%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.076%) Solaris
13 2 (0.051%) CentOS
13 2 (0.051%) Mac OS X
13 2 (0.051%) VMS
13 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.025%) Windows 7
14 1 (0.025%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,252 (31.67%) Agile
2 805 (20.36%) Stakeholder Management
3 668 (16.90%) CI/CD
4 661 (16.72%) Continuous Improvement
5 658 (16.65%) DevOps
6 657 (16.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 481 (12.17%) Problem-Solving
8 453 (11.46%) Decision-Making
9 416 (10.52%) Analytics
10 373 (9.44%) Migration
11 353 (8.93%) Roadmaps
12 346 (8.75%) Digital Transformation Programme
12 346 (8.75%) Infrastructure as Code
13 341 (8.63%) AI
14 305 (7.72%) Data Modelling
15 288 (7.29%) Technical Leadership
16 276 (6.98%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
17 266 (6.73%) Mentoring
18 255 (6.45%) Test Automation
19 254 (6.43%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 476 (12.04%) Python
2 387 (9.79%) SQL
3 244 (6.17%) Java
4 218 (5.51%) JavaScript
5 113 (2.86%) PowerShell
6 109 (2.76%) TypeScript
7 84 (2.12%) C#
8 59 (1.49%) Bash
9 52 (1.32%) PL/SQL
10 47 (1.19%) Bicep
11 35 (0.89%) Scala
12 34 (0.86%) Apex Code
13 29 (0.73%) Kotlin
14 26 (0.66%) Ruby
15 25 (0.63%) R
16 24 (0.61%) Groovy
17 22 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 15 (0.38%) Shell Script
19 14 (0.35%) ABAP
20 12 (0.30%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 2,021 (51.13%) Security Cleared
2 1,619 (40.96%) SC Cleared
3 260 (6.58%) BPSS Clearance
4 245 (6.20%) DV Cleared
5 174 (4.40%) Degree
6 68 (1.72%) Microsoft Certification
7 61 (1.54%) Azure Certification
8 58 (1.47%) AWS Certification
9 45 (1.14%) CISSP
10 43 (1.09%) Cisco Certification
11 31 (0.78%) CISM
12 28 (0.71%) CCNP
12 28 (0.71%) PMI Certification
13 27 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
14 25 (0.63%) ISTQB
15 22 (0.56%) Master's Degree
16 19 (0.48%) Computer Science Degree
17 16 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.40%) PMP
17 16 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 317 (8.02%) Accessibility
2 237 (6.00%) Data Quality
3 232 (5.87%) QA
4 138 (3.49%) WCAG
5 131 (3.31%) GDPR
6 99 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (2.02%) NCSC
8 79 (2.00%) PMO
9 75 (1.90%) NIST
10 40 (1.01%) GRC
11 32 (0.81%) SLA
12 26 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
13 18 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 12 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 12 (0.30%) PCI DSS
16 11 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
16 11 (0.28%) NIST 800
17 10 (0.25%) HL7
18 6 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 295 (7.46%) Docker
2 153 (3.87%) Active Directory
3 39 (0.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.53%) VMware NSX
5 17 (0.43%) Hyper-V
6 12 (0.30%) vSphere
7 10 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
8 9 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
9 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (0.13%) Postfix
11 1 (0.025%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.025%) etcd
11 1 (0.025%) FreeRADIUS
11 1 (0.025%) GPFS
11 1 (0.025%) Microsoft App-V
11 1 (0.025%) NFS
11 1 (0.025%) Sendmail
11 1 (0.025%) Squid
11 1 (0.025%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 271 (6.86%) Kubernetes
2 85 (2.15%) Grafana
3 76 (1.92%) Ansible
4 59 (1.49%) Prometheus
5 45 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
6 41 (1.04%) Microsoft Intune
7 25 (0.63%) Argo
8 19 (0.48%) SCCM
9 16 (0.40%) Kibana
10 9 (0.23%) Data Guard
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle RMAN
10 9 (0.23%) VxRail
11 7 (0.18%) Puppet
12 6 (0.15%) Istio
12 6 (0.15%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.13%) QRadar
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
1 534 (13.51%) Microsoft
2 323 (8.17%) Oracle
3 152 (3.85%) ServiceNow
4 124 (3.14%) SAP
5 120 (3.04%) Google
6 108 (2.73%) Salesforce
7 89 (2.25%) Databricks
8 50 (1.26%) VMware
9 48 (1.21%) Cisco
10 37 (0.94%) Palo Alto
11 30 (0.76%) Dynatrace
11 30 (0.76%) Talend
12 29 (0.73%) Splunk
13 28 (0.71%) Foundry
14 26 (0.66%) Informatica
15 24 (0.61%) Palantir
16 23 (0.58%) Workday
17 22 (0.56%) Red Hat
18 21 (0.53%) CyberArk
19 20 (0.51%) Blue Prism