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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 19 22 16
Rank change year-on-year +3 -6 0
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,647 2,075 3,156
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.90% 8.48% 8.66%
As % of the General category 16.45% 13.23% 14.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,587 1,419 2,123
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 £683 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £514
% change year-on-year - -2.68% -2.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 155 82 159
10th Percentile £13.81 £16.26 £12.74
25th Percentile £16.92 £18.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £23.83 £23.45 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +1.60% +9.07% +4.37%
75th Percentile £29.88 £32.06 £54.77
90th Percentile £62.40 £64.72 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £22.39 £21.00
% change year-on-year +6.43% +6.60% +2.84%

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 22,176 15,681 21,191
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.12% 64.08% 58.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,726 10,164 13,658
10th Percentile £308 £293 £281
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £505 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -2.88% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,471 678 1,777
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.77 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.95 £15.43
Median hourly rate £30.58 £27.45 £30.12
Median % change year-on-year +11.40% -8.86% -6.75%
75th Percentile £63.75 £55.25 £51.91
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.45
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.69%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +4 1,636 £525 - 416
North of England 0 663 £450 -5.26% 262
South East -1 431 £500 -6.98% 209
Midlands +5 368 £500 +10.38% 129
North West +2 321 £469 -6.20% 105
West Midlands +3 294 £488 +7.97% 102
South West -5 256 £525 -4.55% 107
Yorkshire +3 221 £450 -2.70% 85
North East -3 128 £450 -3.23% 73
East of England +21 85 £425 -5.56% 44
East Midlands +5 69 £525 +10.53% 27
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
1 143 (3.92%) Confluence
2 107 (2.93%) SharePoint
3 44 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
4 26 (0.71%) SAS
5 19 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
5 19 (0.52%) Apache Spark
6 18 (0.49%) CMS
7 14 (0.38%) Apache
8 9 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
9 7 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.19%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.16%) nginx
10 6 (0.16%) WebLogic
11 5 (0.14%) Camunda
11 5 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.082%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 3 (0.082%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.082%) ArcGIS
12 3 (0.082%) Drupal
13 2 (0.055%) OpenROAD
Applications
1 84 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 62 (1.70%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
4 27 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.19%) Trello
8 4 (0.11%) Adobe XD
8 4 (0.11%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.11%) Sketch
9 3 (0.082%) Adobe After Effects
10 2 (0.055%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.055%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.027%) Adobe Premiere
11 1 (0.027%) InVision
11 1 (0.027%) Quicktime
11 1 (0.027%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.027%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 61 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.55%) SAP PSCD
4 16 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
6 11 (0.30%) SAP BRIM
6 11 (0.30%) SAP Hybris
6 11 (0.30%) SystmOne
7 9 (0.25%) iTrent
8 8 (0.22%) NEC Housing
9 6 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
9 6 (0.16%) SAP ERP
9 6 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 5 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
10 5 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
10 5 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
10 5 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 4 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 4 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
11 4 (0.11%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 684 (18.76%) AWS
2 633 (17.36%) Azure
3 195 (5.35%) Power Platform
4 161 (4.41%) Microsoft 365
5 145 (3.98%) Serverless
6 143 (3.92%) GitHub
7 132 (3.62%) GCP
8 130 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
9 102 (2.80%) Entra ID
10 96 (2.63%) Amazon S3
11 90 (2.47%) AWS Lambda
12 84 (2.30%) SaaS
13 81 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
14 71 (1.95%) Amazon EC2
15 65 (1.78%) Amazon EKS
16 64 (1.75%) Dynamics 365
16 64 (1.75%) Power Automate
17 62 (1.70%) OCI
18 57 (1.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 57 (1.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 94 (2.58%) Firewall
2 55 (1.51%) WAN
3 53 (1.45%) DNS
4 47 (1.29%) Network Security
5 44 (1.21%) VPN
6 42 (1.15%) LAN
7 34 (0.93%) BGP
8 29 (0.80%) OSPF
9 28 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
10 25 (0.69%) TCP/IP
11 22 (0.60%) SD-WAN
12 20 (0.55%) DHCP
13 18 (0.49%) VXLAN
14 17 (0.47%) BIG-IP
15 16 (0.44%) Ethernet VPN
15 16 (0.44%) SSL
16 14 (0.38%) WLAN
17 13 (0.36%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
18 12 (0.33%) DKIM
18 12 (0.33%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 138 (3.78%) Power BI
2 77 (2.11%) PostgreSQL
3 68 (1.86%) Data Warehouse
4 67 (1.84%) SQL Server
5 58 (1.59%) MongoDB
6 55 (1.51%) Metadata
7 45 (1.23%) Amazon RDS
8 42 (1.15%) NoSQL
9 36 (0.99%) Oracle Reports
10 32 (0.88%) Data Lake
10 32 (0.88%) Relational Database
11 31 (0.85%) Oracle Database
11 31 (0.85%) Tableau
12 27 (0.74%) DynamoDB
13 22 (0.60%) Electronic Patient Records
14 20 (0.55%) Pentaho
15 18 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
15 18 (0.49%) Delta Lake
16 17 (0.47%) Amazon Aurora
17 16 (0.44%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 216 (5.92%) JIRA
2 163 (4.47%) Git
3 141 (3.87%) GitLab
4 117 (3.21%) Jenkins
5 46 (1.26%) Selenium
6 37 (1.01%) JUnit
7 32 (0.88%) Mockito
7 32 (0.88%) Postman
8 29 (0.80%) SonarQube
9 25 (0.69%) JMeter
10 22 (0.60%) Cucumber
11 20 (0.55%) Cypress.io
12 18 (0.49%) Maven
13 17 (0.47%) CircleCI
14 15 (0.41%) Artifactory
14 15 (0.41%) REST Assured
15 12 (0.33%) Gatling
16 11 (0.30%) DbUnit
16 11 (0.30%) jMock
17 9 (0.25%) Mocha
General
1 912 (25.01%) Social Skills
2 459 (12.59%) Finance
3 358 (9.82%) Analytical Skills
4 189 (5.18%) Military
5 158 (4.33%) Local Government
6 90 (2.47%) Telecoms
7 88 (2.41%) Organisational Skills
8 82 (2.25%) Documentation Skills
8 82 (2.25%) Legal
9 74 (2.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 69 (1.89%) Influencing Skills
10 69 (1.89%) Marketing
11 60 (1.65%) Police
12 56 (1.54%) Banking
13 51 (1.40%) Law
14 50 (1.37%) Manufacturing
15 39 (1.07%) Electronics
16 37 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
17 30 (0.82%) Billing
18 27 (0.74%) Retail
Job Titles
1 496 (13.60%) Developer
2 461 (12.64%) Architect
3 413 (11.32%) Senior
4 356 (9.76%) Analyst
5 312 (8.55%) Lead
6 161 (4.41%) Designer
7 158 (4.33%) Business Analyst
8 145 (3.98%) Consultant
9 126 (3.45%) Data Engineer
10 123 (3.37%) DevOps Engineer
11 115 (3.15%) Project Manager
12 111 (3.04%) Java Developer
13 107 (2.93%) Technical Architect
14 102 (2.80%) Solutions Architect
15 89 (2.44%) Senior Developer
16 82 (2.25%) User Researcher
17 79 (2.17%) Delivery Manager
18 68 (1.86%) Service Designer
19 64 (1.75%) Administrator
20 62 (1.70%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 132 (3.62%) REST
2 125 (3.43%) Node.js
3 115 (3.15%) Spring
4 101 (2.77%) Spring Boot
5 98 (2.69%) React
6 92 (2.52%) RESTful
7 72 (1.97%) Oracle Fusion
8 69 (1.89%) AngularJS
9 68 (1.86%) Kafka
10 66 (1.81%) .NET
10 66 (1.81%) Web Services
11 61 (1.67%) HTML
12 59 (1.62%) SOAP
13 51 (1.40%) CSS
14 45 (1.23%) Lightning Web Components
15 40 (1.10%) Playwright
16 38 (1.04%) OAuth
17 36 (0.99%) Middleware
18 34 (0.93%) JSON
19 27 (0.74%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 174 (4.77%) Cloud Native
2 146 (4.00%) Product Ownership
3 125 (3.43%) Onboarding
4 123 (3.37%) NHS
5 88 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
6 75 (2.06%) Management Information System
7 71 (1.95%) Data Centre
8 50 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
9 47 (1.29%) Public Cloud
10 43 (1.18%) Data Structures
11 42 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
12 39 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
13 33 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
14 31 (0.85%) CMDB
15 26 (0.71%) Analytical Mindset
16 25 (0.69%) Freedom of Information
17 22 (0.60%) PKI
18 21 (0.58%) Mobile App
18 21 (0.58%) Virtual Team
19 20 (0.55%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 173 (4.74%) Windows
2 149 (4.09%) Linux
3 58 (1.59%) Windows Server
4 52 (1.43%) Unix
5 28 (0.77%) Windows 10
6 27 (0.74%) Android
7 26 (0.71%) Apple iOS
8 21 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 19 (0.52%) Mac OS
10 10 (0.27%) Mac OS X
10 10 (0.27%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.22%) Solaris
13 7 (0.19%) VMS
14 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
15 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
16 4 (0.11%) AIX
17 3 (0.082%) Amazon Linux
17 3 (0.082%) Windows Server 2012
18 2 (0.055%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 953 (26.13%) Agile
2 537 (14.72%) CI/CD
3 523 (14.34%) DevOps
4 475 (13.02%) Stakeholder Management
5 394 (10.80%) Problem-Solving
6 383 (10.50%) Continuous Improvement
7 369 (10.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 340 (9.32%) Migration
9 313 (8.58%) Analytics
10 303 (8.31%) Decision-Making
11 297 (8.14%) Roadmaps
12 250 (6.85%) Data Modelling
13 243 (6.66%) Containerisation
14 235 (6.44%) Test Automation
15 234 (6.42%) Infrastructure as Code
16 221 (6.06%) Microservices
17 213 (5.84%) User Research
18 212 (5.81%) AI
19 197 (5.40%) Business Intelligence
20 191 (5.24%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 393 (10.78%) Python
2 339 (9.30%) SQL
3 277 (7.60%) Java
4 183 (5.02%) JavaScript
5 108 (2.96%) PowerShell
6 105 (2.88%) TypeScript
7 80 (2.19%) C#
8 51 (1.40%) Bash
9 47 (1.29%) Apex Code
10 40 (1.10%) PL/SQL
10 40 (1.10%) Ruby
11 24 (0.66%) Kotlin
12 23 (0.63%) R
13 22 (0.60%) Bicep
13 22 (0.60%) Shell Script
14 21 (0.58%) Go
15 16 (0.44%) Scala
16 13 (0.36%) PHP
17 12 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 12 (0.33%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,977 (54.21%) Security Cleared
2 1,328 (36.41%) SC Cleared
3 194 (5.32%) DV Cleared
4 173 (4.74%) Degree
5 117 (3.21%) BPSS Clearance
6 46 (1.26%) Azure Certification
7 36 (0.99%) CISSP
8 33 (0.90%) AWS Certification
8 33 (0.90%) Microsoft Certification
9 32 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
10 28 (0.77%) PMP
11 25 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
12 23 (0.63%) PMI Certification
13 22 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
14 21 (0.58%) CISM
15 16 (0.44%) DBS Check
16 14 (0.38%) CCNP
16 14 (0.38%) ISTQB
17 13 (0.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 13 (0.36%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 245 (6.72%) Accessibility
2 164 (4.50%) Data Quality
3 160 (4.39%) QA
4 100 (2.74%) GDPR
5 97 (2.66%) WCAG
6 76 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 67 (1.84%) PMO
8 63 (1.73%) NCSC
9 53 (1.45%) NIST
10 29 (0.80%) SLA
11 25 (0.69%) GRC
12 24 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
13 21 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.36%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.33%) COBIT
16 10 (0.27%) HL7
17 9 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 8 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
18 8 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 8 (0.22%) IFRS
System Software
1 252 (6.91%) Docker
2 151 (4.14%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.60%) VMware NSX
5 20 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
7 13 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 11 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
9 10 (0.27%) Postfix
10 9 (0.25%) vSphere
11 8 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
12 4 (0.11%) NFS
13 3 (0.082%) RACF
14 2 (0.055%) ISA Server
14 2 (0.055%) Squid
14 2 (0.055%) SRDF
15 1 (0.027%) FreeRADIUS
15 1 (0.027%) IAG
15 1 (0.027%) NLBS
15 1 (0.027%) Xen
Systems Management
1 276 (7.57%) Terraform
2 246 (6.75%) Kubernetes
3 81 (2.22%) Grafana
4 77 (2.11%) Ansible
5 59 (1.62%) Prometheus
6 39 (1.07%) Microsoft Intune
6 39 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (0.49%) Argo
8 15 (0.41%) Puppet
9 13 (0.36%) SCCM
10 12 (0.33%) Kibana
11 11 (0.30%) vCenter Server
12 9 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
13 8 (0.22%) FortiGate
14 7 (0.19%) Istio
14 7 (0.19%) Progress Chef
15 6 (0.16%) Rancher
16 5 (0.14%) Data Guard
17 4 (0.11%) NetBackup
17 4 (0.11%) SCOM
Vendors
1 411 (11.27%) Microsoft
2 219 (6.00%) Oracle
3 175 (4.80%) SAP
4 123 (3.37%) Salesforce
5 116 (3.18%) ServiceNow
6 94 (2.58%) Google
7 79 (2.17%) Databricks
8 74 (2.03%) VMware
9 47 (1.29%) Cisco
10 42 (1.15%) Splunk
11 32 (0.88%) Red Hat
12 31 (0.85%) Atlassian
13 30 (0.82%) Palo Alto
14 29 (0.80%) Dynatrace
15 28 (0.77%) Talend
16 27 (0.74%) IBM
16 27 (0.74%) Virgin Media
17 26 (0.71%) MuleSoft
18 25 (0.69%) F5
19 20 (0.55%) Foundry