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

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 20 16
Rank change year-on-year 0 -4 -1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,693 2,158 3,293
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.18% 8.88% 8.91%
As % of the General category 16.66% 13.86% 15.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,609 1,474 2,197
10th Percentile £350 £342 £311
25th Percentile £413 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £608 £638
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £520
% change year-on-year - -3.85% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 175 89 165
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.28 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.20 £15.39
Median hourly rate £22.64 £22.27 £21.73
Median % change year-on-year +1.64% +2.49% +8.65%
75th Percentile £27.57 £33.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £58.90 £62.74 £70.45
UK median hourly rate £22.50 £22.39 £21.25
% change year-on-year +0.51% +5.34% +6.25%

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 22,169 15,575 21,598
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.08% 64.08% 58.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,866 10,114 13,922
10th Percentile £305 £300 £275
25th Percentile £406 £413 £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 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,461 674 1,777
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.08 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.27 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.15 £28.17 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.05% -6.12% -11.53%
75th Percentile £61.50 £58.53 £51.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £28.08 £30.00
% change year-on-year +3.29% -6.42% -14.29%

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 29 April 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 29 April 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 29 April 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 +2 1,651 £525 - 268
North of England -2 654 £455 -4.21% 204
South East -3 437 £500 -7.24% 182
Midlands +1 387 £500 +8.11% 90
North West +1 321 £470 -6.93% 98
West Midlands 0 296 £488 +7.54% 79
South West -6 250 £525 -4.55% 82
Yorkshire +5 223 £473 +2.44% 52
North East -3 115 £450 -2.17% 54
East of England +18 96 £425 +9.68% 32
East Midlands +8 86 £513 +2.50% 11
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
1 147 (3.98%) Confluence
2 104 (2.82%) SharePoint
3 43 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
4 24 (0.65%) SAS
5 19 (0.51%) CMS
6 18 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.46%) Apache Spark
8 15 (0.41%) Apache
9 14 (0.38%) nginx
10 8 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
10 8 (0.22%) WebLogic
11 6 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.16%) Tomcat
12 5 (0.14%) Camunda
13 4 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 3 (0.081%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.081%) Anypoint
14 3 (0.081%) Drupal
14 3 (0.081%) Sitecore CMS
14 3 (0.081%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 90 (2.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (1.90%) Microsoft Office
3 34 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 28 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
5 16 (0.43%) MS Visio
5 16 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
6 8 (0.22%) Trello
7 5 (0.14%) Adobe XD
7 5 (0.14%) Sketch
8 4 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
9 3 (0.081%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.054%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.054%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.054%) InVision
11 1 (0.027%) Adobe Premiere
11 1 (0.027%) Quicktime
11 1 (0.027%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.027%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 61 (1.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.51%) SAP PSCD
4 16 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
6 12 (0.32%) SAP BRIM
6 12 (0.32%) SAP Hybris
7 10 (0.27%) SystmOne
8 9 (0.24%) iTrent
9 8 (0.22%) SAP Payroll
9 8 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 7 (0.19%) NEC Housing
11 5 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
11 5 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
11 5 (0.14%) SAP ERP
11 5 (0.14%) SAP HR
12 4 (0.11%) Oracle Financials
12 4 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
12 4 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 4 (0.11%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 698 (18.90%) AWS
2 645 (17.47%) Azure
3 196 (5.31%) Power Platform
4 163 (4.41%) Serverless
5 155 (4.20%) Microsoft 365
6 147 (3.98%) GitHub
7 136 (3.68%) GCP
8 132 (3.57%) Azure DevOps
9 103 (2.79%) Entra ID
10 95 (2.57%) AWS Lambda
11 93 (2.52%) Amazon S3
12 87 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
13 83 (2.25%) SaaS
14 69 (1.87%) AWS CloudFormation
15 67 (1.81%) Dynamics 365
16 65 (1.76%) Amazon EC2
17 62 (1.68%) OCI
18 61 (1.65%) Power Automate
19 59 (1.60%) Amazon EKS
20 58 (1.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 97 (2.63%) Firewall
2 57 (1.54%) WAN
3 56 (1.52%) DNS
4 54 (1.46%) Network Security
5 52 (1.41%) VPN
6 46 (1.25%) LAN
7 34 (0.92%) BGP
8 31 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
9 29 (0.79%) OSPF
10 24 (0.65%) TCP/IP
11 23 (0.62%) SD-WAN
12 20 (0.54%) DHCP
13 16 (0.43%) SSL
14 15 (0.41%) VLAN
14 15 (0.41%) VXLAN
15 14 (0.38%) BIG-IP
15 14 (0.38%) Internet
16 13 (0.35%) Ethernet VPN
16 13 (0.35%) Wireless
17 12 (0.32%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 145 (3.93%) Power BI
2 78 (2.11%) PostgreSQL
3 70 (1.90%) SQL Server
4 63 (1.71%) Data Warehouse
5 56 (1.52%) Metadata
6 52 (1.41%) MongoDB
7 44 (1.19%) NoSQL
8 43 (1.16%) Amazon RDS
9 35 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
10 31 (0.84%) Data Lake
11 29 (0.79%) Relational Database
12 27 (0.73%) DynamoDB
12 27 (0.73%) Tableau
13 25 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 23 (0.62%) Electronic Patient Records
15 22 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
16 19 (0.51%) MySQL
16 19 (0.51%) Pentaho
17 18 (0.49%) Delta Lake
18 17 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 226 (6.12%) JIRA
2 183 (4.96%) Git
3 128 (3.47%) GitLab
4 114 (3.09%) Jenkins
5 40 (1.08%) JUnit
6 38 (1.03%) Selenium
7 36 (0.97%) Postman
8 34 (0.92%) Mockito
9 31 (0.84%) SonarQube
10 23 (0.62%) JMeter
11 20 (0.54%) Cypress.io
12 19 (0.51%) Maven
13 17 (0.46%) CircleCI
14 16 (0.43%) Cucumber
15 14 (0.38%) Artifactory
16 11 (0.30%) DbUnit
16 11 (0.30%) jMock
17 10 (0.27%) Mocha
18 9 (0.24%) Bitbucket
18 9 (0.24%) Gradle
General
1 946 (25.62%) Social Skills
2 481 (13.02%) Finance
3 359 (9.72%) Analytical Skills
4 184 (4.98%) Military
5 171 (4.63%) Local Government
6 122 (3.30%) Telecoms
7 95 (2.57%) Marketing
8 83 (2.25%) Documentation Skills
8 83 (2.25%) Legal
9 82 (2.22%) Manufacturing
9 82 (2.22%) Organisational Skills
10 76 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
11 74 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 67 (1.81%) Electronics
13 59 (1.60%) Police
14 54 (1.46%) Banking
15 49 (1.33%) Law
16 45 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
17 30 (0.81%) Billing
18 26 (0.70%) Retail
Job Titles
1 493 (13.35%) Developer
2 465 (12.59%) Architect
3 403 (10.91%) Senior
4 370 (10.02%) Analyst
5 313 (8.48%) Lead
6 164 (4.44%) Business Analyst
7 161 (4.36%) Designer
8 151 (4.09%) Consultant
9 124 (3.36%) Data Engineer
10 121 (3.28%) DevOps Engineer
11 115 (3.11%) Project Manager
12 110 (2.98%) Java Developer
13 105 (2.84%) Technical Architect
14 98 (2.65%) Solutions Architect
15 89 (2.41%) Senior Developer
16 82 (2.22%) Delivery Manager
16 82 (2.22%) User Researcher
17 71 (1.92%) Service Designer
18 64 (1.73%) Administrator
19 63 (1.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 139 (3.76%) REST
2 119 (3.22%) Node.js
3 117 (3.17%) Spring
4 103 (2.79%) Spring Boot
5 102 (2.76%) React
6 96 (2.60%) RESTful
7 77 (2.09%) Oracle Fusion
8 72 (1.95%) .NET
8 72 (1.95%) AngularJS
9 70 (1.90%) Web Services
10 63 (1.71%) HTML
11 61 (1.65%) SOAP
12 60 (1.62%) Kafka
13 51 (1.38%) CSS
14 43 (1.16%) Lightning Web Components
15 37 (1.00%) JSON
15 37 (1.00%) OAuth
16 34 (0.92%) Playwright
17 33 (0.89%) Middleware
18 28 (0.76%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 175 (4.74%) Cloud Native
2 137 (3.71%) NHS
3 132 (3.57%) Onboarding
4 130 (3.52%) Product Ownership
5 86 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
6 80 (2.17%) Management Information System
7 71 (1.92%) Data Centre
8 54 (1.46%) Public Cloud
9 47 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
10 43 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
11 40 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
12 38 (1.03%) Data Structures
13 32 (0.87%) Hybrid Cloud
14 27 (0.73%) CMDB
15 26 (0.70%) Analytical Mindset
16 24 (0.65%) Replication
17 21 (0.57%) PKI
18 20 (0.54%) Data Protection Act
18 20 (0.54%) Freedom of Information
18 20 (0.54%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 193 (5.23%) Windows
2 155 (4.20%) Linux
3 61 (1.65%) Windows Server
4 50 (1.35%) Unix
5 39 (1.06%) Windows 10
6 27 (0.73%) Android
7 23 (0.62%) Apple iOS
8 21 (0.57%) Mac OS
9 20 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 10 (0.27%) Mac OS X
11 9 (0.24%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.24%) VMS
12 8 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
13 7 (0.19%) Solaris
13 7 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
14 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
15 4 (0.11%) AIX
16 3 (0.081%) Windows 7
17 2 (0.054%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 959 (25.97%) Agile
2 524 (14.19%) CI/CD
3 513 (13.89%) DevOps
4 456 (12.35%) Stakeholder Management
5 413 (11.18%) Problem-Solving
6 395 (10.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 385 (10.43%) Continuous Improvement
8 372 (10.07%) Migration
9 311 (8.42%) Analytics
10 308 (8.34%) Roadmaps
11 292 (7.91%) Decision-Making
12 244 (6.61%) Containerisation
13 238 (6.44%) Data Modelling
14 235 (6.36%) Business Intelligence
15 234 (6.34%) Test Automation
16 233 (6.31%) Infrastructure as Code
17 223 (6.04%) AI
18 221 (5.98%) Microservices
19 213 (5.77%) User Research
20 200 (5.42%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 407 (11.02%) Python
2 339 (9.18%) SQL
3 274 (7.42%) Java
4 189 (5.12%) JavaScript
5 118 (3.20%) PowerShell
6 116 (3.14%) TypeScript
7 86 (2.33%) C#
8 50 (1.35%) Bash
9 45 (1.22%) Ruby
10 43 (1.16%) Apex Code
11 34 (0.92%) PL/SQL
12 23 (0.62%) Bicep
13 22 (0.60%) Go
14 21 (0.57%) Shell Script
15 20 (0.54%) Kotlin
15 20 (0.54%) R
16 14 (0.38%) Scala
17 13 (0.35%) PHP
18 12 (0.32%) T-SQL
19 11 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 2,044 (55.35%) Security Cleared
2 1,364 (36.93%) SC Cleared
3 191 (5.17%) DV Cleared
4 178 (4.82%) Degree
5 115 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 50 (1.35%) Azure Certification
7 39 (1.06%) AWS Certification
8 37 (1.00%) ITIL Certification
9 36 (0.97%) CISSP
10 33 (0.89%) Cisco Certification
11 30 (0.81%) Microsoft Certification
12 29 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
12 29 (0.79%) PMP
13 26 (0.70%) PMI Certification
14 23 (0.62%) ISEB
15 22 (0.60%) CISM
16 18 (0.49%) CCNP
17 14 (0.38%) APMP
17 14 (0.38%) DBS Check
17 14 (0.38%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 219 (5.93%) Accessibility
2 163 (4.41%) Data Quality
3 156 (4.22%) QA
4 101 (2.73%) GDPR
5 89 (2.41%) WCAG
6 81 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 68 (1.84%) PMO
8 63 (1.71%) NCSC
9 57 (1.54%) NIST
10 34 (0.92%) SLA
11 30 (0.81%) GRC
12 22 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials
13 21 (0.57%) COBIT
14 20 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
15 15 (0.41%) HL7
15 15 (0.41%) PCI DSS
16 13 (0.35%) JSP 440
17 12 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 9 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 9 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 263 (7.12%) Docker
2 156 (4.22%) Active Directory
3 55 (1.49%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.57%) VMware NSX
5 20 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
6 19 (0.51%) Hyper-V
7 14 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
8 12 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.30%) vSphere
10 10 (0.27%) Postfix
11 6 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
12 4 (0.11%) NFS
13 3 (0.081%) RACF
14 2 (0.054%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.054%) ISA Server
14 2 (0.054%) SRDF
15 1 (0.027%) FreeRADIUS
15 1 (0.027%) GPFS
15 1 (0.027%) RHEV
15 1 (0.027%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 296 (8.02%) Terraform
2 270 (7.31%) Kubernetes
3 79 (2.14%) Grafana
4 73 (1.98%) Ansible
5 57 (1.54%) Prometheus
6 42 (1.14%) Microsoft Intune
7 35 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
8 23 (0.62%) SCCM
9 14 (0.38%) Puppet
10 13 (0.35%) Argo
10 13 (0.35%) Kibana
11 12 (0.32%) vCenter Server
12 10 (0.27%) Consul
12 10 (0.27%) FortiGate
13 9 (0.24%) Packer
14 8 (0.22%) vRealize
15 7 (0.19%) Oracle RMAN
15 7 (0.19%) Progress Chef
16 6 (0.16%) Istio
16 6 (0.16%) Rancher
Vendors
1 435 (11.78%) Microsoft
2 227 (6.15%) Oracle
3 206 (5.58%) SAP
4 121 (3.28%) Salesforce
5 108 (2.92%) ServiceNow
6 92 (2.49%) Google
7 88 (2.38%) VMware
8 78 (2.11%) Databricks
9 71 (1.92%) Cisco
10 41 (1.11%) Splunk
11 34 (0.92%) Atlassian
12 30 (0.81%) Virgin Media
13 29 (0.79%) IBM
13 29 (0.79%) Palo Alto
14 28 (0.76%) Red Hat
15 26 (0.70%) MuleSoft
15 26 (0.70%) Talend
16 25 (0.68%) Dynatrace
17 24 (0.65%) Juniper
18 23 (0.62%) F5