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 6 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 23 19
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,952 2,031 3,033
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.95% 7.65% 8.15%
As % of the General category 16.27% 11.98% 14.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,754 1,361 2,024
10th Percentile £358 £338 £313
25th Percentile £425 £415 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £694 £700 £714
UK median daily rate £513 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.50% - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 186 87 163
10th Percentile £13.85 £15.48 £14.28
25th Percentile £16.70 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £22.50 £25.08 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.27% -3.56% +23.81%
75th Percentile £41.00 £33.58 £58.60
90th Percentile £75.00 £66.65 £74.65
UK median hourly rate £22.57 £22.90 £23.50
% change year-on-year -1.45% -2.53% +15.74%

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 24,290 16,957 21,334
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.02% 63.88% 57.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,657 10,879 13,608
10th Percentile £313 £281 £300
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £518 £533
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% -2.91% -3.09%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
90th Percentile £749 £763 £775
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,760 851 1,767
10th Percentile £14.25 £13.35 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.75 £16.46 £15.92
Median hourly rate £32.50 £27.28 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.13% -17.33% +8.13%
75th Percentile £63.75 £51.22 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £73.75 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.22 £31.89
% change year-on-year +17.56% -14.63% +4.40%

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 6 July 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 6 July 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 6 July 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 +3 1,743 £525 - 530
North of England +1 692 £470 -1.05% 241
South East +5 501 £500 -4.76% 249
Midlands +10 459 £500 +9.15% 150
West Midlands +6 368 £500 +8.11% 101
North West 0 295 £500 +6.38% 107
South West -5 289 £525 -4.55% 132
Yorkshire +12 243 £460 -3.06% 79
North East -3 164 £450 -3.23% 57
East Midlands +21 84 £500 +23.46% 49
East of England +9 70 £475 -7.32% 41
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 (3.72%) Confluence
2 111 (2.81%) SharePoint
3 48 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
4 45 (1.14%) Apache Airflow
4 45 (1.14%) SAS
5 35 (0.89%) Apache Spark
6 33 (0.84%) Apache
7 21 (0.53%) CMS
8 20 (0.51%) Jupyter
9 13 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
10 12 (0.30%) nginx
11 10 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
12 7 (0.18%) Tomcat
12 7 (0.18%) WordPress
13 5 (0.13%) Camunda
13 5 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
13 5 (0.13%) Tuxedo
13 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
14 4 (0.10%) Drupal
15 3 (0.076%) IIS
Applications
1 74 (1.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
4 18 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.28%) MS Visio
7 9 (0.23%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.076%) Sketch
8 3 (0.076%) Trello
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.051%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.025%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 67 (1.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (0.99%) Dynamics CRM
2 39 (0.99%) Oracle ERP
3 27 (0.68%) SAP PSCD
4 19 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
5 12 (0.30%) SAP BRIM
5 12 (0.30%) SAP Hybris
5 12 (0.30%) SAP Payroll
6 11 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 11 (0.28%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.25%) ContrOCC
7 10 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 10 (0.25%) Oracle Receivables
8 9 (0.23%) NEC Housing
8 9 (0.23%) SystmOne
9 8 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 7 (0.18%) Oracle Cash Management
10 7 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 6 (0.15%) SAP ERP
11 6 (0.15%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 776 (19.64%) AWS
2 705 (17.84%) Azure
3 211 (5.34%) Power Platform
4 179 (4.53%) Microsoft 365
5 149 (3.77%) Serverless
6 148 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
6 148 (3.74%) GitHub
7 144 (3.64%) GCP
8 125 (3.16%) Amazon S3
9 120 (3.04%) Entra ID
10 102 (2.58%) SaaS
11 100 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
12 95 (2.40%) AWS Lambda
13 81 (2.05%) OCI
14 80 (2.02%) Amazon EC2
15 70 (1.77%) Power Automate
16 65 (1.64%) Dynamics 365
17 62 (1.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 62 (1.57%) Amazon EKS
18 60 (1.52%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 98 (2.48%) Firewall
2 59 (1.49%) DNS
2 59 (1.49%) Network Security
3 56 (1.42%) WAN
4 45 (1.14%) LAN
5 40 (1.01%) VPN
6 33 (0.84%) BGP
7 28 (0.71%) OSPF
8 26 (0.66%) DHCP
9 24 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
10 22 (0.56%) SD-WAN
10 22 (0.56%) TCP/IP
11 19 (0.48%) BIG-IP
12 18 (0.46%) VXLAN
13 16 (0.40%) Ethernet VPN
13 16 (0.40%) WLAN
14 15 (0.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 12 (0.30%) DKIM
16 11 (0.28%) VoIP
17 10 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 143 (3.62%) Power BI
2 92 (2.33%) Data Warehouse
3 86 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
4 76 (1.92%) SQL Server
5 54 (1.37%) Metadata
5 54 (1.37%) MongoDB
6 49 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
7 48 (1.21%) Data Lake
8 46 (1.16%) Oracle Database
9 44 (1.11%) NoSQL
9 44 (1.11%) Relational Database
10 40 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
11 34 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
11 34 (0.86%) DynamoDB
12 32 (0.81%) Amazon Athena
13 31 (0.78%) Tableau
14 22 (0.56%) Amazon Aurora
14 22 (0.56%) Pentaho
15 19 (0.48%) Delta Lake
16 18 (0.46%) Electronic Patient Records
Development Applications
1 216 (5.47%) JIRA
2 161 (4.07%) GitLab
3 156 (3.95%) Git
4 134 (3.39%) Jenkins
5 46 (1.16%) Selenium
6 40 (1.01%) JUnit
7 38 (0.96%) Mockito
8 30 (0.76%) SonarQube
9 29 (0.73%) Cucumber
10 28 (0.71%) Postman
11 27 (0.68%) JMeter
12 23 (0.58%) Cypress.io
13 22 (0.56%) Maven
14 19 (0.48%) REST Assured
15 15 (0.38%) WebDriver
16 14 (0.35%) CircleCI
16 14 (0.35%) DbUnit
17 13 (0.33%) Gatling
17 13 (0.33%) jMock
18 11 (0.28%) Artifactory
General
1 1,030 (26.06%) Social Skills
2 477 (12.07%) Finance
3 376 (9.51%) Analytical Skills
4 221 (5.59%) Military
5 206 (5.21%) Local Government
6 111 (2.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 103 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
8 100 (2.53%) Legal
9 84 (2.13%) Police
10 83 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
10 83 (2.10%) Organisational Skills
11 55 (1.39%) Telecoms
12 49 (1.24%) Banking
13 48 (1.21%) Law
14 40 (1.01%) Marketing
15 32 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
16 31 (0.78%) Billing
17 24 (0.61%) Retail
18 17 (0.43%) General Ledger
19 14 (0.35%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 531 (13.44%) Architect
2 525 (13.28%) Developer
3 486 (12.30%) Senior
4 391 (9.89%) Lead
5 364 (9.21%) Analyst
6 164 (4.15%) Designer
7 161 (4.07%) Consultant
8 146 (3.69%) Data Engineer
9 145 (3.67%) Business Analyst
10 143 (3.62%) DevOps Engineer
11 125 (3.16%) Solutions Architect
12 118 (2.99%) Technical Architect
13 111 (2.81%) Java Developer
14 101 (2.56%) Delivery Manager
15 100 (2.53%) Senior Developer
16 99 (2.51%) Project Manager
17 88 (2.23%) User Researcher
18 76 (1.92%) Data Architect
19 75 (1.90%) Service Designer
20 72 (1.82%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 141 (3.57%) REST
2 116 (2.94%) Node.js
2 116 (2.94%) Spring
3 98 (2.48%) Spring Boot
4 96 (2.43%) RESTful
5 94 (2.38%) React
6 77 (1.95%) Oracle Fusion
7 76 (1.92%) Kafka
8 69 (1.75%) SOAP
9 62 (1.57%) .NET
10 61 (1.54%) Web Services
11 58 (1.47%) AngularJS
12 51 (1.29%) HTML
13 46 (1.16%) OAuth
14 42 (1.06%) CSS
14 42 (1.06%) PySpark
15 41 (1.04%) JSON
16 40 (1.01%) Django
16 40 (1.01%) Middleware
17 39 (0.99%) Lightning Web Components
Miscellaneous
1 217 (5.49%) Cloud Native
2 159 (4.02%) Product Ownership
3 147 (3.72%) Onboarding
4 142 (3.59%) NHS
5 97 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
6 88 (2.23%) Management Information System
7 69 (1.75%) Data Centre
8 63 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
9 57 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
10 53 (1.34%) Public Cloud
11 48 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
12 45 (1.14%) Data Structures
12 45 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
13 37 (0.94%) CMDB
14 32 (0.81%) Analytical Mindset
15 30 (0.76%) Virtual Team
16 29 (0.73%) Security Posture
17 26 (0.66%) Security Operations Centre
18 25 (0.63%) PKI
19 24 (0.61%) Freedom of Information
Operating Systems
1 176 (4.45%) Windows
2 153 (3.87%) Linux
3 63 (1.59%) Windows Server
4 55 (1.39%) Unix
5 28 (0.71%) Android
6 27 (0.68%) Apple iOS
7 25 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 23 (0.58%) Windows 10
9 19 (0.48%) Mac OS
10 10 (0.25%) Mac OS X
10 10 (0.25%) Ubuntu
11 8 (0.20%) Solaris
12 7 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
14 5 (0.13%) AIX
15 4 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
16 3 (0.076%) Amazon Linux
16 3 (0.076%) Windows Server 2012
17 2 (0.051%) VMS
17 2 (0.051%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,129 (28.57%) Agile
2 626 (15.84%) CI/CD
3 618 (15.64%) Stakeholder Management
4 617 (15.61%) DevOps
5 518 (13.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 505 (12.78%) Continuous Improvement
7 403 (10.20%) Problem-Solving
8 388 (9.82%) Analytics
9 377 (9.54%) Decision-Making
10 360 (9.11%) Migration
11 322 (8.15%) Roadmaps
12 294 (7.44%) Infrastructure as Code
13 281 (7.11%) Data Modelling
14 277 (7.01%) AI
15 270 (6.83%) Containerisation
16 237 (6.00%) Microservices
17 231 (5.85%) Digital Transformation Programme
17 231 (5.85%) Test Automation
18 225 (5.69%) User Research
18 225 (5.69%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 450 (11.39%) Python
2 375 (9.49%) SQL
3 303 (7.67%) Java
4 177 (4.48%) JavaScript
5 108 (2.73%) TypeScript
6 100 (2.53%) PowerShell
7 77 (1.95%) C#
8 59 (1.49%) Bash
9 55 (1.39%) PL/SQL
10 41 (1.04%) Apex Code
11 34 (0.86%) Bicep
12 33 (0.84%) Ruby
13 28 (0.71%) Kotlin
14 23 (0.58%) R
15 18 (0.46%) Shell Script
16 17 (0.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 17 (0.43%) Go
17 16 (0.40%) Scala
18 14 (0.35%) ABAP
19 12 (0.30%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 2,054 (51.97%) Security Cleared
2 1,502 (38.01%) SC Cleared
3 230 (5.82%) DV Cleared
4 184 (4.66%) Degree
5 175 (4.43%) BPSS Clearance
6 51 (1.29%) Azure Certification
7 48 (1.21%) Microsoft Certification
8 43 (1.09%) CISSP
9 40 (1.01%) Cisco Certification
10 38 (0.96%) AWS Certification
11 28 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
12 27 (0.68%) CISM
13 22 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
14 21 (0.53%) CCNP
15 19 (0.48%) PMI Certification
16 18 (0.46%) Master's Degree
17 17 (0.43%) ISTQB
17 17 (0.43%) PMP
18 15 (0.38%) DBS Check
19 14 (0.35%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 277 (7.01%) Accessibility
2 192 (4.86%) Data Quality
3 170 (4.30%) QA
4 126 (3.19%) GDPR
5 112 (2.83%) WCAG
6 97 (2.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (2.02%) NCSC
8 77 (1.95%) PMO
9 70 (1.77%) NIST
10 35 (0.89%) SLA
11 31 (0.78%) GRC
12 28 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials
13 22 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 15 (0.38%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.30%) Government Security Classifications
16 10 (0.25%) HL7
16 10 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 8 (0.20%) NIST 800
18 7 (0.18%) IFRS
System Software
1 290 (7.34%) Docker
2 161 (4.07%) Active Directory
3 44 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.53%) VMware NSX
5 15 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.28%) Postfix
7 10 (0.25%) Hyper-V
8 9 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
8 9 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (0.23%) vSphere
9 6 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.051%) NFS
10 2 (0.051%) RACF
11 1 (0.025%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.025%) etcd
11 1 (0.025%) FreeRADIUS
11 1 (0.025%) GPFS
11 1 (0.025%) NLBS
11 1 (0.025%) Sendmail
11 1 (0.025%) Squid
Systems Management
1 329 (8.32%) Terraform
2 278 (7.03%) Kubernetes
3 88 (2.23%) Grafana
4 77 (1.95%) Ansible
5 57 (1.44%) Prometheus
6 42 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
7 39 (0.99%) Microsoft Intune
8 28 (0.71%) Argo
9 15 (0.38%) SCCM
10 14 (0.35%) Kibana
10 14 (0.35%) Puppet
11 10 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
11 10 (0.25%) vCenter Server
12 7 (0.18%) FortiGate
13 6 (0.15%) Data Guard
13 6 (0.15%) Istio
14 5 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (0.13%) Progress Chef
14 5 (0.13%) Rancher
15 4 (0.10%) Consul
Vendors
1 479 (12.12%) Microsoft
2 295 (7.46%) Oracle
3 151 (3.82%) SAP
4 129 (3.26%) ServiceNow
5 116 (2.94%) Salesforce
6 106 (2.68%) Google
7 93 (2.35%) Databricks
8 63 (1.59%) VMware
9 47 (1.19%) Cisco
10 36 (0.91%) Atlassian
11 34 (0.86%) Palo Alto
11 34 (0.86%) Red Hat
12 29 (0.73%) Dynatrace
12 29 (0.73%) Splunk
13 28 (0.71%) Talend
14 27 (0.68%) IBM
15 25 (0.63%) CyberArk
16 24 (0.61%) F5
16 24 (0.61%) Informatica
17 23 (0.58%) Foundry