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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 20 19
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 4,045 2,386 2,705
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.69% 8.53% 8.32%
As % of the General category 15.44% 13.30% 14.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,773 1,647 1,659
10th Percentile £363 £314 £313
25th Percentile £440 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -5.45%
75th Percentile £615 £600 £627
90th Percentile £700 £677 £707
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 194 109 98
10th Percentile £15.80 £15.48 £14.91
25th Percentile £16.67 £18.13 £16.29
Median hourly rate £21.35 £22.07 £24.09
Median % change year-on-year -3.26% -8.37% +14.69%
75th Percentile £41.00 £28.55 £43.75
90th Percentile £75.28 £58.35 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £21.35 £21.00 £22.56
% change year-on-year +1.67% -6.91% +7.43%

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 26,195 17,942 19,094
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 56.28% 64.11% 58.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,313 11,367 11,482
10th Percentile £313 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -6.54% -2.73%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
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 2,362 1,037 887
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.70 £16.17 £17.47
Median hourly rate £29.50 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +17.30% -32.93% +31.00%
75th Percentile £56.21 £45.75 £61.37
90th Percentile £78.54 £69.65 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £28.26 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +12.35% -28.14% +27.27%

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 2 October 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 2 October 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 2 October 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 1,773 £550 +7.32% 1,836
North of England +2 749 £475 - 781
Midlands +6 530 £490 +3.16% 342
West Midlands +7 452 £490 +3.16% 249
South East 0 439 £500 -2.91% 436
South West -3 366 £535 -2.73% 321
Yorkshire +2 288 £473 -5.50% 220
North West -13 258 £550 +22.22% 425
North East +2 222 £450 -10.00% 138
East Midlands +13 74 £450 +9.42% 93
East of England -18 49 £450 -10.00% 164
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
1 164 (4.05%) Confluence
2 102 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 51 (1.26%) SAS
4 48 (1.19%) Microsoft Exchange
5 45 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
6 44 (1.09%) Apache
6 44 (1.09%) Apache Spark
7 29 (0.72%) CMS
8 20 (0.49%) Jupyter
9 14 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
10 11 (0.27%) WordPress
11 10 (0.25%) nginx
12 8 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
13 7 (0.17%) Headless CMS
14 5 (0.12%) Drupal
14 5 (0.12%) SharePoint 2013
14 5 (0.12%) Tuxedo
15 4 (0.099%) IIS
16 3 (0.074%) Tomcat
17 2 (0.049%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 78 (1.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 51 (1.26%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
4 22 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 22 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
5 8 (0.20%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.12%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.12%) Sketch
6 5 (0.12%) Trello
7 4 (0.099%) Adobe After Effects
7 4 (0.099%) Adobe XD
8 2 (0.049%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.049%) Adobe Premiere
8 2 (0.049%) Navisworks
8 2 (0.049%) ProjectWise
8 2 (0.049%) Revit
9 1 (0.025%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.025%) Gliffy
9 1 (0.025%) LaTeX
9 1 (0.025%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 52 (1.29%) Dynamics CRM
2 50 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
3 45 (1.11%) Oracle ERP
4 31 (0.77%) SAP PSCD
5 22 (0.54%) SAP Payroll
6 21 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
7 17 (0.42%) Workday HCM
8 15 (0.37%) SAP BRIM
8 15 (0.37%) SAP HR
9 14 (0.35%) NetSuite
9 14 (0.35%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.32%) SAP Hybris
11 12 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
11 12 (0.30%) SAP FI
12 11 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
12 11 (0.27%) SAP HCM
13 10 (0.25%) Oracle Payroll
14 9 (0.22%) NEC Housing
14 9 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
15 8 (0.20%) ContrOCC
Cloud Services
1 805 (19.90%) AWS
2 736 (18.20%) Azure
3 244 (6.03%) Power Platform
4 185 (4.57%) Azure DevOps
5 164 (4.05%) Microsoft 365
6 158 (3.91%) GCP
7 150 (3.71%) GitHub
8 149 (3.68%) Serverless
9 130 (3.21%) Entra ID
10 119 (2.94%) Amazon S3
11 117 (2.89%) SaaS
12 111 (2.74%) GitHub Actions
13 98 (2.42%) OCI
14 87 (2.15%) AWS Lambda
15 86 (2.13%) Power Automate
16 81 (2.00%) Dynamics 365
17 78 (1.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 73 (1.80%) Amazon EKS
19 63 (1.56%) PowerApps
20 57 (1.41%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 95 (2.35%) Firewall
2 66 (1.63%) DNS
3 49 (1.21%) WAN
4 41 (1.01%) LAN
5 39 (0.96%) Network Security
6 31 (0.77%) TCP/IP
6 31 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
7 30 (0.74%) DHCP
8 27 (0.67%) VPN
9 26 (0.64%) BGP
10 25 (0.62%) OSPF
11 18 (0.44%) SD-WAN
11 18 (0.44%) Wireless
12 15 (0.37%) VoIP
12 15 (0.37%) VXLAN
12 15 (0.37%) WLAN
13 14 (0.35%) BIG-IP
14 13 (0.32%) Ethernet VPN
14 13 (0.32%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 13 (0.32%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 158 (3.91%) Power BI
2 106 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
3 97 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
4 94 (2.32%) Metadata
5 72 (1.78%) SQL Server
6 69 (1.71%) Relational Database
7 65 (1.61%) MongoDB
8 55 (1.36%) Data Lake
9 53 (1.31%) Oracle Database
10 52 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
11 40 (0.99%) NoSQL
12 33 (0.82%) Amazon Athena
13 30 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
14 29 (0.72%) Amazon Aurora
15 28 (0.69%) MySQL
16 26 (0.64%) Pentaho
16 26 (0.64%) Tableau
17 24 (0.59%) DynamoDB
17 24 (0.59%) Oracle Reports
18 18 (0.44%) Redis
Development Applications
1 237 (5.86%) JIRA
2 184 (4.55%) Git
3 172 (4.25%) GitLab
4 130 (3.21%) Jenkins
5 56 (1.38%) Selenium
6 53 (1.31%) Cucumber
7 39 (0.96%) JUnit
8 32 (0.79%) Postman
9 28 (0.69%) Cypress.io
10 26 (0.64%) Maven
10 26 (0.64%) Mockito
11 25 (0.62%) SonarQube
12 23 (0.57%) REST Assured
13 20 (0.49%) Gatling
13 20 (0.49%) JMeter
13 20 (0.49%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.37%) MSI
15 11 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
16 10 (0.25%) TestNG
17 8 (0.20%) Gradle
General
1 1,305 (32.26%) Social Skills
2 450 (11.12%) Finance
3 434 (10.73%) Analytical Skills
4 286 (7.07%) Military
5 224 (5.54%) Local Government
6 184 (4.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 160 (3.96%) Influencing Skills
8 119 (2.94%) Legal
9 118 (2.92%) Organisational Skills
10 93 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
11 90 (2.22%) Police
12 62 (1.53%) Law
13 54 (1.33%) Telecoms
14 44 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
15 42 (1.04%) Marketing
16 40 (0.99%) Banking
17 30 (0.74%) Billing
18 26 (0.64%) Retail
19 20 (0.49%) Manufacturing
19 20 (0.49%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 564 (13.94%) Architect
2 560 (13.84%) Senior
3 516 (12.76%) Developer
4 492 (12.16%) Lead
5 355 (8.78%) Analyst
6 201 (4.97%) Consultant
7 153 (3.78%) Designer
8 150 (3.71%) Data Engineer
9 143 (3.54%) Business Analyst
10 135 (3.34%) Data Architect
11 134 (3.31%) DevOps Engineer
12 119 (2.94%) Solutions Architect
13 115 (2.84%) Delivery Manager
14 105 (2.60%) Senior Developer
14 105 (2.60%) Technical Architect
15 104 (2.57%) User Researcher
16 90 (2.22%) Java Developer
17 87 (2.15%) Senior Manager
18 86 (2.13%) Project Manager
19 79 (1.95%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 354 (8.75%) Terraform
2 166 (4.10%) REST
3 108 (2.67%) RESTful
4 102 (2.52%) Spring
5 98 (2.42%) Node.js
6 91 (2.25%) React
6 91 (2.25%) Spring Boot
7 87 (2.15%) Oracle Fusion
8 74 (1.83%) SOAP
9 71 (1.76%) HTML
10 69 (1.71%) Kafka
11 68 (1.68%) Web Services
12 63 (1.56%) CSS
13 61 (1.51%) Django
14 58 (1.43%) OAuth
15 57 (1.41%) .NET
15 57 (1.41%) JSON
16 48 (1.19%) OpenID
17 47 (1.16%) PySpark
18 46 (1.14%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 248 (6.13%) Cloud Native
2 172 (4.25%) Product Ownership
3 167 (4.13%) Onboarding
4 136 (3.36%) Management Information System
5 133 (3.29%) NHS
6 109 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
7 82 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
8 48 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
9 45 (1.11%) Data Centre
9 45 (1.11%) Data Structures
9 45 (1.11%) Freedom of Information
10 43 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
11 41 (1.01%) CMDB
11 41 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
12 39 (0.96%) AI Agents
13 35 (0.87%) Hybrid Cloud
14 33 (0.82%) Cyber Threat
14 33 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
14 33 (0.82%) Taxonomies
15 32 (0.79%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 130 (3.21%) Windows
2 126 (3.11%) Linux
3 46 (1.14%) Unix
4 38 (0.94%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.62%) Android
6 22 (0.54%) Apple iOS
7 18 (0.44%) Windows 10
8 17 (0.42%) Mac OS
9 16 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.12%) AIX
10 5 (0.12%) Amazon Linux
11 4 (0.099%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.074%) CentOS
13 2 (0.049%) Solaris
13 2 (0.049%) VMS
14 1 (0.025%) Mac OS X
14 1 (0.025%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 1 (0.025%) Windows 7
14 1 (0.025%) Windows Server 2008
14 1 (0.025%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,304 (32.24%) Agile
2 962 (23.78%) Stakeholder Management
3 712 (17.60%) Continuous Improvement
3 712 (17.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 679 (16.79%) CI/CD
5 634 (15.67%) DevOps
6 509 (12.58%) Problem-Solving
7 486 (12.01%) Decision-Making
8 414 (10.23%) Analytics
9 385 (9.52%) AI
10 379 (9.37%) Migration
11 374 (9.25%) Roadmaps
12 371 (9.17%) Digital Transformation Programme
13 341 (8.43%) Infrastructure as Code
14 316 (7.81%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
15 314 (7.76%) Data Modelling
16 302 (7.47%) Technical Leadership
17 285 (7.05%) Mentoring
18 260 (6.43%) User Research
19 258 (6.38%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 454 (11.22%) Python
2 402 (9.94%) SQL
3 254 (6.28%) Java
4 225 (5.56%) JavaScript
5 123 (3.04%) TypeScript
6 110 (2.72%) PowerShell
7 82 (2.03%) C#
8 65 (1.61%) Bash
9 49 (1.21%) PL/SQL
10 45 (1.11%) Bicep
11 44 (1.09%) Scala
12 27 (0.67%) R
13 26 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 25 (0.62%) Groovy
15 24 (0.59%) ABAP
16 22 (0.54%) Apex Code
16 22 (0.54%) Kotlin
17 16 (0.40%) Ruby
18 14 (0.35%) Go
18 14 (0.35%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 2,033 (50.26%) Security Cleared
2 1,684 (41.63%) SC Cleared
3 338 (8.36%) BPSS Clearance
4 233 (5.76%) DV Cleared
5 186 (4.60%) Degree
6 80 (1.98%) Microsoft Certification
7 72 (1.78%) AWS Certification
8 64 (1.58%) Azure Certification
9 47 (1.16%) CISSP
10 39 (0.96%) Cisco Certification
11 33 (0.82%) CISM
12 31 (0.77%) ISTQB
13 25 (0.62%) PMI Certification
14 24 (0.59%) CCNP
14 24 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
15 23 (0.57%) Master's Degree
16 21 (0.52%) ITIL Certification
17 18 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 17 (0.42%) DBS Check
19 16 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 338 (8.36%) Accessibility
2 260 (6.43%) Data Quality
3 248 (6.13%) QA
4 140 (3.46%) WCAG
5 132 (3.26%) GDPR
6 94 (2.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 83 (2.05%) NCSC
8 79 (1.95%) NIST
9 76 (1.88%) PMO
10 37 (0.91%) GRC
11 30 (0.74%) SLA
12 27 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
13 23 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 12 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 11 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
17 10 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 8 (0.20%) PCI DSS
19 6 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 6 (0.15%) PERC
System Software
1 288 (7.12%) Docker
2 137 (3.39%) Active Directory
3 32 (0.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (0.40%) Hyper-V
5 15 (0.37%) VMware NSX
6 11 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
7 9 (0.22%) vSphere
8 8 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
9 5 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
10 4 (0.099%) Postfix
10 4 (0.099%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.074%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.025%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.025%) Ceph
12 1 (0.025%) Squid
12 1 (0.025%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 273 (6.75%) Kubernetes
2 98 (2.42%) Grafana
3 69 (1.71%) Ansible
4 64 (1.58%) Prometheus
5 40 (0.99%) Microsoft Intune
6 38 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.57%) Argo
8 22 (0.54%) SCCM
9 19 (0.47%) Kibana
10 8 (0.20%) Data Guard
10 8 (0.20%) Oracle RMAN
10 8 (0.20%) VxRail
11 6 (0.15%) Istio
11 6 (0.15%) Puppet
11 6 (0.15%) QRadar
12 5 (0.12%) Consul
12 5 (0.12%) Packer
12 5 (0.12%) vCenter Server
13 4 (0.099%) Jamf Pro
14 3 (0.074%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 540 (13.35%) Microsoft
2 343 (8.48%) Oracle
3 151 (3.73%) ServiceNow
4 132 (3.26%) Google
5 126 (3.11%) SAP
6 92 (2.27%) Salesforce
7 85 (2.10%) Databricks
8 48 (1.19%) Cisco
9 39 (0.96%) Splunk
10 37 (0.91%) Palo Alto
10 37 (0.91%) VMware
11 32 (0.79%) Informatica
12 30 (0.74%) Talend
12 30 (0.74%) Workday
13 27 (0.67%) Dynatrace
14 24 (0.59%) CyberArk
15 23 (0.57%) Foundry
15 23 (0.57%) Palantir
16 19 (0.47%) F5
16 19 (0.47%) Red Hat