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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 23 19
Rank change year-on-year +2 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,994 2,147 2,676
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.79% 7.78% 7.99%
As % of the General category 15.89% 12.16% 13.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,786 1,474 1,828
10th Percentile £360 £344 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £513 £515
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -0.49% -4.19%
75th Percentile £607 £600 £625
90th Percentile £694 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £515 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +3.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 184 79 114
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.48 £15.10
25th Percentile £16.70 £18.13 £18.06
Median hourly rate £23.68 £21.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.13% -20.37% +29.68%
75th Percentile £53.75 £29.28 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.43 £64.05 £72.97
UK median hourly rate £25.05 £19.83 £23.21
% change year-on-year +26.32% -14.54% +15.45%

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 25,141 17,654 19,265
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.35% 63.94% 57.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,039 11,267 12,408
10th Percentile £313 £280 £300
25th Percentile £418 £402 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -5.12% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £662
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 1,926 944 1,252
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.35 £18.00
Median hourly rate £33.06 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +31.45% -34.02% +30.32%
75th Percentile £63.75 £50.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +27.07%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 1,763 £530 +0.95% 705
North of England +1 702 £469 -1.26% 308
South East +5 489 £500 -4.76% 220
Midlands +10 486 £500 +5.26% 143
West Midlands +5 404 £490 +3.16% 118
South West -5 313 £525 -4.55% 237
North West -4 278 £500 +11.11% 153
Yorkshire +11 261 £473 -0.53% 104
North East -3 175 £450 -10.00% 52
East Midlands +24 74 £566 +37.93% 24
East of England +8 60 £463 -7.50% 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
1 168 (4.21%) Confluence
2 115 (2.88%) SharePoint
3 51 (1.28%) SAS
4 50 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
5 46 (1.15%) Apache Airflow
6 37 (0.93%) Apache Spark
7 34 (0.85%) Apache
8 24 (0.60%) CMS
9 20 (0.50%) Jupyter
10 13 (0.33%) nginx
10 13 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.28%) WordPress
12 8 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
13 7 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.13%) Drupal
14 5 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
14 5 (0.13%) Tuxedo
14 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
15 3 (0.075%) Camunda
15 3 (0.075%) IIS
Applications
1 83 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
3 29 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
4 18 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 16 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.28%) MS Visio
7 8 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.15%) Sketch
8 6 (0.15%) Trello
9 3 (0.075%) 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 60 (1.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (1.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 41 (1.03%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
5 24 (0.60%) SAP PSCD
6 15 (0.38%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
8 12 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.28%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 10 (0.25%) ContrOCC
10 10 (0.25%) NEC Housing
10 10 (0.25%) SAP Payroll
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 9 (0.23%) SAP BRIM
11 9 (0.23%) SAP FI
11 9 (0.23%) SAP Hybris
12 8 (0.20%) SystmOne
13 7 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 811 (20.31%) AWS
2 773 (19.35%) Azure
3 238 (5.96%) Power Platform
4 188 (4.71%) Azure DevOps
5 183 (4.58%) Microsoft 365
6 158 (3.96%) GCP
7 152 (3.81%) GitHub
8 144 (3.61%) Serverless
9 130 (3.25%) Amazon S3
9 130 (3.25%) Entra ID
10 104 (2.60%) SaaS
11 103 (2.58%) GitHub Actions
12 89 (2.23%) OCI
13 88 (2.20%) AWS Lambda
14 81 (2.03%) Power Automate
15 79 (1.98%) Dynamics 365
16 74 (1.85%) Amazon EC2
17 68 (1.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 67 (1.68%) PowerApps
19 64 (1.60%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 112 (2.80%) Firewall
2 70 (1.75%) DNS
3 59 (1.48%) WAN
4 52 (1.30%) LAN
5 48 (1.20%) Network Security
6 39 (0.98%) VPN
7 35 (0.88%) DHCP
8 31 (0.78%) BGP
9 30 (0.75%) OSPF
10 29 (0.73%) TCP/IP
11 28 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
12 21 (0.53%) SD-WAN
13 18 (0.45%) VXLAN
13 18 (0.45%) WLAN
14 17 (0.43%) BIG-IP
15 16 (0.40%) Ethernet VPN
16 15 (0.38%) Wireless
17 14 (0.35%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
18 13 (0.33%) NGFW
18 13 (0.33%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 163 (4.08%) Power BI
2 110 (2.75%) Data Warehouse
3 95 (2.38%) PostgreSQL
4 79 (1.98%) SQL Server
5 60 (1.50%) Relational Database
6 55 (1.38%) Metadata
7 52 (1.30%) Data Lake
8 51 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
8 51 (1.28%) Oracle Database
9 49 (1.23%) MongoDB
9 49 (1.23%) NoSQL
10 36 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
11 32 (0.80%) DynamoDB
12 30 (0.75%) Amazon Athena
12 30 (0.75%) Amazon Redshift
12 30 (0.75%) Pentaho
12 30 (0.75%) Tableau
13 24 (0.60%) Delta Lake
14 22 (0.55%) Amazon Aurora
14 22 (0.55%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 243 (6.08%) JIRA
2 184 (4.61%) Git
3 147 (3.68%) GitLab
4 137 (3.43%) Jenkins
5 44 (1.10%) Selenium
6 39 (0.98%) Mockito
7 38 (0.95%) JUnit
8 33 (0.83%) Cucumber
8 33 (0.83%) SonarQube
9 28 (0.70%) Postman
10 26 (0.65%) Maven
11 25 (0.63%) JMeter
12 24 (0.60%) Cypress.io
13 18 (0.45%) REST Assured
14 17 (0.43%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.38%) Gatling
16 14 (0.35%) DbUnit
17 13 (0.33%) jMock
18 11 (0.28%) Bitbucket Server
18 11 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,100 (27.54%) Social Skills
2 468 (11.72%) Finance
3 402 (10.07%) Analytical Skills
4 234 (5.86%) Military
5 216 (5.41%) Local Government
6 141 (3.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 129 (3.23%) Influencing Skills
8 105 (2.63%) Legal
9 90 (2.25%) Organisational Skills
10 86 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
11 82 (2.05%) Police
12 51 (1.28%) Law
13 50 (1.25%) Telecoms
14 44 (1.10%) Marketing
15 41 (1.03%) Banking
16 37 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
17 27 (0.68%) Billing
18 22 (0.55%) Retail
19 18 (0.45%) General Ledger
20 17 (0.43%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 544 (13.62%) Developer
2 543 (13.60%) Architect
3 526 (13.17%) Senior
4 449 (11.24%) Lead
5 363 (9.09%) Analyst
6 161 (4.03%) Data Engineer
7 158 (3.96%) Consultant
8 154 (3.86%) Designer
9 146 (3.66%) Business Analyst
10 136 (3.41%) DevOps Engineer
11 126 (3.15%) Solutions Architect
12 120 (3.00%) Delivery Manager
13 112 (2.80%) Java Developer
14 110 (2.75%) Senior Developer
15 108 (2.70%) Technical Architect
16 95 (2.38%) Project Manager
17 94 (2.35%) Data Architect
18 85 (2.13%) User Researcher
19 73 (1.83%) Senior Manager
20 69 (1.73%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (3.81%) REST
2 108 (2.70%) RESTful
3 107 (2.68%) Node.js
4 101 (2.53%) Spring
5 100 (2.50%) React
6 90 (2.25%) Spring Boot
7 80 (2.00%) Oracle Fusion
8 78 (1.95%) Kafka
9 76 (1.90%) SOAP
10 71 (1.78%) HTML
11 68 (1.70%) .NET
12 63 (1.58%) Web Services
13 61 (1.53%) AngularJS
14 60 (1.50%) CSS
15 53 (1.33%) Django
16 52 (1.30%) OAuth
17 48 (1.20%) JSON
18 44 (1.10%) PySpark
19 40 (1.00%) OpenID
20 35 (0.88%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 233 (5.83%) Cloud Native
2 170 (4.26%) Onboarding
3 168 (4.21%) Product Ownership
4 141 (3.53%) NHS
5 112 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
6 99 (2.48%) Management Information System
7 66 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
8 65 (1.63%) Distributed Systems
9 64 (1.60%) Data Centre
10 48 (1.20%) Data Structures
11 44 (1.10%) Hybrid Cloud
11 44 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
12 42 (1.05%) Public Cloud
13 39 (0.98%) Analytical Mindset
14 31 (0.78%) CMDB
14 31 (0.78%) Virtual Team
15 28 (0.70%) Low-Code
16 26 (0.65%) PKI
17 25 (0.63%) Freedom of Information
17 25 (0.63%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 158 (3.96%) Windows
2 155 (3.88%) Linux
3 58 (1.45%) Windows Server
4 57 (1.43%) Unix
5 26 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 23 (0.58%) Android
6 23 (0.58%) Windows 10
7 22 (0.55%) Apple iOS
8 16 (0.40%) Mac OS
9 9 (0.23%) Mac OS X
10 8 (0.20%) Solaris
11 7 (0.18%) Ubuntu
11 7 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.15%) AIX
12 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
13 4 (0.10%) Amazon Linux
14 3 (0.075%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.050%) CentOS
15 2 (0.050%) VMS
15 2 (0.050%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,257 (31.47%) Agile
2 710 (17.78%) Stakeholder Management
3 669 (16.75%) DevOps
4 663 (16.60%) CI/CD
5 608 (15.22%) Continuous Improvement
6 605 (15.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 471 (11.79%) Problem-Solving
8 424 (10.62%) Analytics
9 407 (10.19%) Decision-Making
10 368 (9.21%) Migration
11 329 (8.24%) Roadmaps
12 325 (8.14%) AI
13 322 (8.06%) Infrastructure as Code
14 300 (7.51%) Digital Transformation Programme
15 290 (7.26%) Data Modelling
16 273 (6.84%) Containerisation
17 268 (6.71%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
18 264 (6.61%) Scrum
19 251 (6.28%) Mentoring
20 250 (6.26%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 484 (12.12%) Python
2 404 (10.12%) SQL
3 290 (7.26%) Java
4 212 (5.31%) JavaScript
5 108 (2.70%) TypeScript
6 107 (2.68%) PowerShell
7 83 (2.08%) C#
8 65 (1.63%) Bash
9 57 (1.43%) PL/SQL
10 45 (1.13%) Bicep
11 36 (0.90%) Apex Code
12 29 (0.73%) Kotlin
13 28 (0.70%) Ruby
14 26 (0.65%) Scala
15 24 (0.60%) R
16 21 (0.53%) Groovy
17 20 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 16 (0.40%) Shell Script
19 14 (0.35%) T-SQL
20 13 (0.33%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 2,086 (52.23%) Security Cleared
2 1,615 (40.44%) SC Cleared
3 247 (6.18%) DV Cleared
4 235 (5.88%) BPSS Clearance
5 186 (4.66%) Degree
6 60 (1.50%) Microsoft Certification
7 55 (1.38%) Azure Certification
8 45 (1.13%) CISSP
9 44 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
10 43 (1.08%) AWS Certification
11 30 (0.75%) CISM
12 29 (0.73%) PMI Certification
13 27 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
14 24 (0.60%) CCNP
15 23 (0.58%) ISTQB
16 19 (0.48%) Computer Science Degree
17 18 (0.45%) PMP
18 17 (0.43%) Master's Degree
19 14 (0.35%) CCNA
19 14 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 315 (7.89%) Accessibility
2 211 (5.28%) Data Quality
3 209 (5.23%) QA
4 139 (3.48%) WCAG
5 131 (3.28%) GDPR
6 103 (2.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (2.00%) NCSC
7 80 (2.00%) PMO
8 76 (1.90%) NIST
9 36 (0.90%) SLA
10 35 (0.88%) GRC
11 29 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials
12 19 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
13 16 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 16 (0.40%) Government Security Classifications
14 13 (0.33%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 10 (0.25%) NIST 800
17 9 (0.23%) HL7
18 5 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 308 (7.71%) Docker
2 162 (4.06%) Active Directory
3 46 (1.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (0.65%) VMware NSX
5 16 (0.40%) Hyper-V
6 14 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (0.35%) vSphere
7 13 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
8 11 (0.28%) Postfix
9 7 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
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
1 343 (8.59%) Terraform
2 273 (6.84%) Kubernetes
3 86 (2.15%) Grafana
4 78 (1.95%) Ansible
5 55 (1.38%) Prometheus
6 43 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
7 40 (1.00%) Microsoft Intune
8 26 (0.65%) Argo
9 14 (0.35%) SCCM
10 13 (0.33%) Kibana
10 13 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
11 11 (0.28%) Puppet
12 10 (0.25%) Data Guard
13 8 (0.20%) vCenter Server
14 7 (0.18%) Istio
14 7 (0.18%) VxRail
15 6 (0.15%) FortiGate
16 4 (0.10%) Packer
16 4 (0.10%) QRadar
16 4 (0.10%) Rancher
Vendors
1 513 (12.84%) Microsoft
2 321 (8.04%) Oracle
3 142 (3.56%) ServiceNow
4 133 (3.33%) SAP
5 121 (3.03%) Google
6 114 (2.85%) Salesforce
7 96 (2.40%) Databricks
8 61 (1.53%) VMware
9 48 (1.20%) Cisco
10 40 (1.00%) Palo Alto
11 33 (0.83%) Atlassian
11 33 (0.83%) Dynatrace
12 32 (0.80%) Talend
13 30 (0.75%) Red Hat
14 25 (0.63%) IBM
14 25 (0.63%) Informatica
15 24 (0.60%) CyberArk
15 24 (0.60%) Workday
16 23 (0.58%) Foundry
17 22 (0.55%) Splunk