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 13 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 22 16
Rank change year-on-year +2 -6 -1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,602 2,055 3,181
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.93% 8.52% 8.70%
As % of the General category 16.48% 13.27% 14.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,554 1,410 2,134
10th Percentile £350 £350 £313
25th Percentile £413 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.33%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £517
% change year-on-year - -3.29% -1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 153 81 160
10th Percentile £13.75 £16.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.00 £18.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £23.83 £22.90 £21.25
Median % change year-on-year +4.04% +7.76% +4.06%
75th Percentile £31.88 £33.00 £54.66
90th Percentile £62.70 £65.00 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £22.39 £21.00
% change year-on-year +6.43% +6.60% +5.00%

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 21,859 15,486 21,277
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.22% 64.21% 58.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,538 10,031 13,702
10th Percentile £306 £300 £280
25th Percentile £410 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.51% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £503 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.37% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,442 661 1,781
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.85 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.58 £27.25 £30.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.22% -10.66% -6.15%
75th Percentile £63.75 £55.25 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.25
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.30 £30.16
% change year-on-year +9.89% -9.48% -10.82%

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 13 May 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 13 May 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 13 May 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 +5 1,621 £525 - 384
North of England -1 643 £450 -6.25% 244
South East -1 427 £500 -6.19% 184
Midlands +7 364 £500 +9.15% 138
North West +3 316 £460 -8.00% 98
West Midlands +2 291 £488 +7.97% 102
South West -6 252 £525 -4.55% 108
Yorkshire +2 213 £450 -5.26% 75
North East -3 119 £450 -3.23% 72
East of England +16 87 £425 +6.25% 47
East Midlands +7 68 £525 +7.69% 35
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
1 142 (3.94%) Confluence
2 106 (2.94%) SharePoint
3 44 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (0.75%) SAS
5 19 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
5 19 (0.53%) Apache Spark
6 18 (0.50%) CMS
7 14 (0.39%) Apache
8 9 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
9 7 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.19%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.17%) nginx
10 6 (0.17%) WebLogic
11 5 (0.14%) Camunda
11 5 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.083%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 3 (0.083%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.083%) ArcGIS
12 3 (0.083%) Drupal
13 2 (0.056%) WordPress
Applications
1 86 (2.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 65 (1.80%) Microsoft Office
3 29 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
4 28 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.19%) Trello
8 4 (0.11%) Adobe XD
8 4 (0.11%) Sketch
9 3 (0.083%) Adobe After Effects
9 3 (0.083%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.056%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.056%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.028%) Adobe Premiere
11 1 (0.028%) InVision
11 1 (0.028%) Quicktime
11 1 (0.028%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.028%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 60 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.56%) SAP PSCD
4 17 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
6 11 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
6 11 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
6 11 (0.31%) SystmOne
7 8 (0.22%) iTrent
7 8 (0.22%) NEC Housing
8 6 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
9 5 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.14%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 4 (0.11%) SAP Payroll
10 4 (0.11%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 672 (18.66%) AWS
2 619 (17.18%) Azure
3 194 (5.39%) Power Platform
4 159 (4.41%) Microsoft 365
5 143 (3.97%) Serverless
6 139 (3.86%) GitHub
7 134 (3.72%) GCP
8 126 (3.50%) Azure DevOps
9 100 (2.78%) Entra ID
10 94 (2.61%) Amazon S3
11 88 (2.44%) AWS Lambda
12 82 (2.28%) SaaS
13 79 (2.19%) GitHub Actions
14 69 (1.92%) Amazon EC2
15 64 (1.78%) OCI
16 63 (1.75%) Dynamics 365
17 62 (1.72%) Amazon EKS
17 62 (1.72%) Power Automate
18 57 (1.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 57 (1.58%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 95 (2.64%) Firewall
2 55 (1.53%) WAN
3 52 (1.44%) DNS
4 49 (1.36%) Network Security
5 44 (1.22%) VPN
6 43 (1.19%) LAN
7 33 (0.92%) BGP
8 28 (0.78%) OSPF
9 27 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
10 25 (0.69%) TCP/IP
11 22 (0.61%) SD-WAN
12 20 (0.56%) DHCP
13 17 (0.47%) VXLAN
14 16 (0.44%) BIG-IP
14 16 (0.44%) SSL
15 15 (0.42%) Ethernet VPN
16 13 (0.36%) VoIP
16 13 (0.36%) WLAN
17 12 (0.33%) Internet
17 12 (0.33%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 139 (3.86%) Power BI
2 76 (2.11%) PostgreSQL
3 67 (1.86%) SQL Server
4 66 (1.83%) Data Warehouse
5 54 (1.50%) Metadata
6 53 (1.47%) MongoDB
7 43 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
7 43 (1.19%) NoSQL
8 36 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
9 31 (0.86%) Data Lake
9 31 (0.86%) Relational Database
10 30 (0.83%) Tableau
11 29 (0.81%) Oracle Database
12 27 (0.75%) DynamoDB
13 22 (0.61%) Electronic Patient Records
14 20 (0.56%) Pentaho
15 18 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
15 18 (0.50%) Delta Lake
16 17 (0.47%) Amazon Aurora
17 16 (0.44%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 215 (5.97%) JIRA
2 164 (4.55%) Git
3 136 (3.78%) GitLab
4 112 (3.11%) Jenkins
5 40 (1.11%) Selenium
6 37 (1.03%) JUnit
7 34 (0.94%) Postman
8 32 (0.89%) Mockito
9 29 (0.81%) SonarQube
10 24 (0.67%) JMeter
11 20 (0.56%) Cypress.io
12 18 (0.50%) Cucumber
12 18 (0.50%) Maven
13 17 (0.47%) CircleCI
14 15 (0.42%) Artifactory
15 11 (0.31%) DbUnit
15 11 (0.31%) jMock
16 10 (0.28%) Gatling
16 10 (0.28%) REST Assured
17 9 (0.25%) Bitbucket Server
General
1 897 (24.90%) Social Skills
2 457 (12.69%) Finance
3 356 (9.88%) Analytical Skills
4 188 (5.22%) Military
5 154 (4.28%) Local Government
6 92 (2.55%) Telecoms
7 87 (2.42%) Organisational Skills
8 80 (2.22%) Legal
9 79 (2.19%) Documentation Skills
10 70 (1.94%) Marketing
11 67 (1.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 67 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
12 60 (1.67%) Police
13 53 (1.47%) Banking
14 52 (1.44%) Manufacturing
15 51 (1.42%) Law
16 41 (1.14%) Electronics
17 39 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
18 30 (0.83%) Billing
19 25 (0.69%) Retail
Job Titles
1 484 (13.44%) Developer
2 456 (12.66%) Architect
3 404 (11.22%) Senior
4 354 (9.83%) Analyst
5 305 (8.47%) Lead
6 159 (4.41%) Designer
7 157 (4.36%) Business Analyst
8 143 (3.97%) Consultant
9 126 (3.50%) Data Engineer
10 118 (3.28%) DevOps Engineer
11 117 (3.25%) Project Manager
12 110 (3.05%) Java Developer
13 104 (2.89%) Technical Architect
14 98 (2.72%) Solutions Architect
15 87 (2.42%) Senior Developer
16 82 (2.28%) User Researcher
17 78 (2.17%) Delivery Manager
18 67 (1.86%) Service Designer
19 62 (1.72%) Administrator
20 60 (1.67%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (3.61%) REST
2 123 (3.41%) Node.js
3 115 (3.19%) Spring
4 100 (2.78%) Spring Boot
5 94 (2.61%) React
6 93 (2.58%) RESTful
7 75 (2.08%) Oracle Fusion
8 68 (1.89%) Web Services
9 66 (1.83%) AngularJS
10 65 (1.80%) .NET
11 63 (1.75%) Kafka
12 61 (1.69%) HTML
13 59 (1.64%) SOAP
14 51 (1.42%) CSS
15 44 (1.22%) Lightning Web Components
16 39 (1.08%) OAuth
17 36 (1.00%) Playwright
18 35 (0.97%) JSON
18 35 (0.97%) Middleware
19 27 (0.75%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 171 (4.75%) Cloud Native
2 143 (3.97%) Product Ownership
3 123 (3.41%) NHS
3 123 (3.41%) Onboarding
4 87 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
5 74 (2.05%) Management Information System
6 71 (1.97%) Data Centre
7 49 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
8 48 (1.33%) Public Cloud
9 41 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
10 39 (1.08%) Data Structures
10 39 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
11 32 (0.89%) Hybrid Cloud
12 28 (0.78%) CMDB
13 27 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
14 24 (0.67%) Freedom of Information
15 21 (0.58%) Virtual Team
16 20 (0.56%) Data Protection Act
16 20 (0.56%) PKI
17 19 (0.53%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 177 (4.91%) Windows
2 144 (4.00%) Linux
3 58 (1.61%) Windows Server
4 51 (1.42%) Unix
5 30 (0.83%) Windows 10
6 27 (0.75%) Android
7 25 (0.69%) Apple iOS
8 22 (0.61%) Mac OS
9 20 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 10 (0.28%) Mac OS X
11 9 (0.25%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.22%) Solaris
13 7 (0.19%) VMS
14 6 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
15 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
16 4 (0.11%) AIX
17 3 (0.083%) Amazon Linux
17 3 (0.083%) Windows Server 2012
18 2 (0.056%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 938 (26.04%) Agile
2 523 (14.52%) CI/CD
3 511 (14.19%) DevOps
4 463 (12.85%) Stakeholder Management
5 396 (10.99%) Problem-Solving
6 372 (10.33%) Continuous Improvement
7 366 (10.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 339 (9.41%) Migration
9 308 (8.55%) Analytics
10 298 (8.27%) Decision-Making
11 294 (8.16%) Roadmaps
12 240 (6.66%) Containerisation
13 238 (6.61%) Data Modelling
14 229 (6.36%) Infrastructure as Code
15 225 (6.25%) Test Automation
16 217 (6.02%) Microservices
17 212 (5.89%) User Research
18 207 (5.75%) AI
19 200 (5.55%) Business Intelligence
20 189 (5.25%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 379 (10.52%) Python
2 333 (9.24%) SQL
3 268 (7.44%) Java
4 179 (4.97%) JavaScript
5 107 (2.97%) PowerShell
6 105 (2.92%) TypeScript
7 79 (2.19%) C#
8 50 (1.39%) Bash
9 45 (1.25%) Apex Code
10 39 (1.08%) PL/SQL
10 39 (1.08%) Ruby
11 23 (0.64%) Kotlin
11 23 (0.64%) R
12 22 (0.61%) Bicep
13 21 (0.58%) Go
13 21 (0.58%) Shell Script
14 16 (0.44%) Scala
15 13 (0.36%) PHP
16 12 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 12 (0.33%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,952 (54.19%) Security Cleared
2 1,305 (36.23%) SC Cleared
3 189 (5.25%) DV Cleared
4 172 (4.78%) Degree
5 112 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 47 (1.30%) Azure Certification
7 35 (0.97%) CISSP
8 34 (0.94%) AWS Certification
9 32 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
10 31 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
11 28 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
11 28 (0.78%) PMP
12 26 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
13 25 (0.69%) PMI Certification
14 22 (0.61%) CISM
15 15 (0.42%) CCNP
15 15 (0.42%) DBS Check
16 14 (0.39%) APMP
17 13 (0.36%) ISEB
18 12 (0.33%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 238 (6.61%) Accessibility
2 162 (4.50%) Data Quality
3 159 (4.41%) QA
4 101 (2.80%) GDPR
5 92 (2.55%) WCAG
6 76 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 68 (1.89%) PMO
8 64 (1.78%) NCSC
9 51 (1.42%) NIST
10 29 (0.81%) SLA
11 26 (0.72%) GRC
12 25 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials
13 21 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.36%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.33%) COBIT
16 10 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 10 (0.28%) HL7
17 8 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
17 8 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 8 (0.22%) IFRS
System Software
1 248 (6.89%) Docker
2 150 (4.16%) Active Directory
3 46 (1.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.61%) VMware NSX
5 20 (0.56%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
7 13 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 11 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
9 10 (0.28%) Postfix
10 9 (0.25%) vSphere
11 7 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
12 4 (0.11%) NFS
13 3 (0.083%) RACF
14 2 (0.056%) ISA Server
14 2 (0.056%) Squid
14 2 (0.056%) SRDF
15 1 (0.028%) FreeRADIUS
15 1 (0.028%) GPFS
15 1 (0.028%) IAG
15 1 (0.028%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 270 (7.50%) Terraform
2 247 (6.86%) Kubernetes
3 79 (2.19%) Grafana
4 74 (2.05%) Ansible
5 57 (1.58%) Prometheus
6 40 (1.11%) Microsoft Intune
7 38 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
8 18 (0.50%) Argo
9 15 (0.42%) SCCM
10 14 (0.39%) Puppet
11 12 (0.33%) Kibana
12 11 (0.31%) vCenter Server
13 8 (0.22%) FortiGate
13 8 (0.22%) Oracle RMAN
14 7 (0.19%) Istio
14 7 (0.19%) Progress Chef
15 6 (0.17%) Rancher
16 4 (0.11%) NetBackup
16 4 (0.11%) Salt
16 4 (0.11%) vRealize
Vendors
1 411 (11.41%) Microsoft
2 220 (6.11%) Oracle
3 176 (4.89%) SAP
4 120 (3.33%) Salesforce
5 112 (3.11%) ServiceNow
6 92 (2.55%) Google
7 76 (2.11%) Databricks
8 75 (2.08%) VMware
9 49 (1.36%) Cisco
10 40 (1.11%) Splunk
11 32 (0.89%) Red Hat
12 31 (0.86%) Atlassian
12 31 (0.86%) Palo Alto
13 29 (0.81%) Talend
14 27 (0.75%) IBM
14 27 (0.75%) Virgin Media
15 26 (0.72%) Dynatrace
15 26 (0.72%) MuleSoft
16 24 (0.67%) F5
17 20 (0.56%) Foundry