Public Sector Contracts 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 June 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 23 19 17
Rank change year-on-year -4 -2 +8
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,961 3,058 4,207
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 7.70% 8.19% 8.91%
As % of the General category 12.01% 14.28% 15.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,311 2,038 3,157
10th Percentile £340 £311 £298
25th Percentile £419 £413 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - +2.44%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £645
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £505 £520
% change year-on-year -0.99% -2.88% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 80 160 77
10th Percentile £15.47 £13.09 £13.95
25th Percentile £18.13 £15.50 £16.85
Median hourly rate £25.08 £25.50 £20.64
Median % change year-on-year -1.67% +23.55% +3.20%
75th Percentile £34.23 £58.54 £28.75
90th Percentile £68.75 £75.13 £47.20
UK median hourly rate £22.95 £23.99 £20.00
% change year-on-year -4.34% +19.95% -0.60%

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 common skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 16,332 21,408 27,924
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 64.10% 57.31% 59.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,494 13,656 19,569
10th Percentile £282 £291 £313
25th Percentile £404 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.92% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £688
90th Percentile £763 £775 £798
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 804 1,802 937
10th Percentile £13.28 £13.00 £13.92
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.62 £17.00
Median hourly rate £27.70 £32.90 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.79% +9.65% +30.43%
75th Percentile £52.04 £54.89 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £31.76 £30.54
% change year-on-year -13.40% +3.98% +27.25%

Public Sector
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Public Sector as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Public Sector in England

Public Sector
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Public Sector in England.

Daily rate trend for Public Sector in England

Public Sector
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Public Sector in England over the 6 months to 29 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Public Sector in England

Public Sector
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Public Sector in England.

Hourly rate trend for Public Sector in England

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Public Sector in England over the 6 months to 29 June 2025.

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 June 2025. 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 -3 907 £525 - 1,099
North of England -2 322 £465 -7.00% 540
South West 0 229 £550 -8.33% 311
South East -5 222 £540 +13.68% 555
North West -6 173 £465 -5.68% 272
Midlands -8 140 £463 +2.78% 361
West Midlands -4 115 £469 -3.85% 218
North East +11 77 £465 -7.00% 66
Yorkshire -15 74 £475 -5.00% 204
East of England -17 25 £513 +13.89% 240
East Midlands -29 25 £400 - 131
Public Sector
UK

Public Sector
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 70 (3.57%) Confluence
2 51 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 34 (1.73%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (0.76%) Apache
5 11 (0.56%) Apache Spark
6 10 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
7 9 (0.46%) CMS
8 8 (0.41%) ArcGIS
9 7 (0.36%) Skype for Business
10 6 (0.31%) IIS
10 6 (0.31%) Jupyter
10 6 (0.31%) nginx
11 5 (0.25%) Anypoint
11 5 (0.25%) Camunda
12 4 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.20%) SAS
13 3 (0.15%) Documentum
13 3 (0.15%) Drupal
13 3 (0.15%) FileNet
13 3 (0.15%) Umbraco
Applications
1 58 (2.96%) Microsoft Office
2 44 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.25%) Adobe Illustrator
6 5 (0.25%) Oracle Smart View
6 5 (0.25%) Photoshop
6 5 (0.25%) Sketch
7 4 (0.20%) InVision
8 3 (0.15%) OmniGraffle
8 3 (0.15%) Trello
8 3 (0.15%) UXPin
9 2 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.10%) Adobe Premiere
9 2 (0.10%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.10%) CINEMA 4D
9 2 (0.10%) Final Cut Pro
9 2 (0.10%) Revit
9 2 (0.10%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 22 (1.12%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
4 10 (0.51%) SAP PSCD
5 7 (0.36%) SAP BRIM
5 7 (0.36%) SAP Hybris
6 6 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
7 5 (0.25%) Primavera
7 5 (0.25%) SAP HR
8 4 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
8 4 (0.20%) Oracle Payroll
8 4 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
9 3 (0.15%) Oracle HRMS
9 3 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
9 3 (0.15%) SAP GRC
10 2 (0.10%) NetSuite
10 2 (0.10%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.10%) SAP PS
10 2 (0.10%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 387 (19.73%) AWS
2 302 (15.40%) Azure
3 109 (5.56%) Power Platform
4 91 (4.64%) Serverless
5 83 (4.23%) Amazon S3
6 82 (4.18%) Microsoft 365
7 77 (3.93%) GCP
8 65 (3.31%) GitHub
9 56 (2.86%) AWS Lambda
10 52 (2.65%) SaaS
11 48 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
12 47 (2.40%) Amazon EC2
13 40 (2.04%) Amazon SQS
14 39 (1.99%) AWS CloudFormation
15 36 (1.84%) Entra ID
16 35 (1.78%) PowerApps
17 32 (1.63%) Dynamics 365
18 31 (1.58%) Amazon EKS
18 31 (1.58%) OCI
19 28 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 85 (4.33%) Firewall
2 54 (2.75%) VPN
3 52 (2.65%) DNS
4 32 (1.63%) DHCP
5 26 (1.33%) Network Security
6 23 (1.17%) WAN
7 20 (1.02%) BGP
8 18 (0.92%) LAN
9 16 (0.82%) Wi-Fi
10 15 (0.76%) IPsec
10 15 (0.76%) OSPF
11 13 (0.66%) SMTP
12 11 (0.56%) EIGRP
12 11 (0.56%) HTTP
12 11 (0.56%) Wireless
13 10 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
13 10 (0.51%) Internet
13 10 (0.51%) TCP/IP
14 9 (0.46%) SSL
14 9 (0.46%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (4.74%) PostgreSQL
2 73 (3.72%) Power BI
3 57 (2.91%) Amazon RDS
4 53 (2.70%) MongoDB
5 42 (2.14%) Relational Database
6 38 (1.94%) MySQL
7 36 (1.84%) NoSQL
7 36 (1.84%) SQL Server
8 33 (1.68%) Data Warehouse
9 30 (1.53%) Tableau
10 24 (1.22%) Metadata
11 19 (0.97%) Big Data
12 17 (0.87%) Amazon Aurora
12 17 (0.87%) DynamoDB
13 14 (0.71%) Amazon Athena
13 14 (0.71%) Oracle Database
14 12 (0.61%) GIS
15 11 (0.56%) Amazon Redshift
15 11 (0.56%) Redis
16 9 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 97 (4.95%) JIRA
2 85 (4.33%) Git
2 85 (4.33%) Jenkins
3 66 (3.37%) GitLab
4 42 (2.14%) JUnit
5 38 (1.94%) SonarQube
6 37 (1.89%) Mockito
7 23 (1.17%) Maven
8 21 (1.07%) Gradle
8 21 (1.07%) Liquibase
9 16 (0.82%) Selenium
10 15 (0.76%) Cypress.io
11 12 (0.61%) Burp Suite
11 12 (0.61%) Cucumber
11 12 (0.61%) Metasploit
12 8 (0.41%) Bitbucket Server
12 8 (0.41%) DbUnit
12 8 (0.41%) jMock
13 7 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
13 7 (0.36%) Vagrant
General
1 489 (24.94%) Social Skills
2 340 (17.34%) Finance
3 198 (10.10%) Analytical Skills
4 178 (9.08%) Telecoms
5 167 (8.52%) Marketing
6 152 (7.75%) Manufacturing
7 146 (7.45%) Electronics
8 120 (6.12%) Military
9 94 (4.79%) Local Government
10 52 (2.65%) Law
11 41 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
12 38 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 36 (1.84%) Police
14 31 (1.58%) Legal
15 27 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
16 26 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
17 23 (1.17%) Banking
18 22 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
19 17 (0.87%) Fire and Rescue
20 11 (0.56%) Retail
Job Titles
1 277 (14.13%) Architect
2 271 (13.82%) Developer
3 186 (9.48%) Senior
4 159 (8.11%) Analyst
5 129 (6.58%) Lead
6 107 (5.46%) Consultant
7 67 (3.42%) Business Analyst
8 64 (3.26%) Project Manager
9 60 (3.06%) DevOps Engineer
10 58 (2.96%) Data Engineer
11 57 (2.91%) Java Developer
12 54 (2.75%) Security Architect
13 53 (2.70%) Support Engineer
14 45 (2.29%) Technical Architect
15 42 (2.14%) Designer
16 40 (2.04%) Solutions Architect
17 39 (1.99%) Delivery Manager
18 38 (1.94%) Administrator
18 38 (1.94%) Full-Stack Developer
19 36 (1.84%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 81 (4.13%) Kafka
1 81 (4.13%) React
2 78 (3.98%) Spring
3 73 (3.72%) Spring Boot
4 65 (3.31%) Node.js
5 62 (3.16%) .NET
6 54 (2.75%) HTML
7 51 (2.60%) REST
8 44 (2.24%) Web Services
9 43 (2.19%) AngularJS
9 43 (2.19%) SOAP
10 42 (2.14%) CSS
11 36 (1.84%) Oracle Fusion
12 28 (1.43%) RESTful
13 26 (1.33%) Swagger
14 25 (1.27%) Hibernate
14 25 (1.27%) OpenAPI
15 23 (1.17%) OAuth
16 20 (1.02%) OpenID
17 19 (0.97%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 87 (4.44%) Onboarding
2 69 (3.52%) Management Information System
3 49 (2.50%) Product Ownership
4 42 (2.14%) NHS
5 39 (1.99%) Data Centre
6 35 (1.78%) PKI
7 32 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
8 27 (1.38%) Driving Licence
9 23 (1.17%) Hybrid Cloud
10 20 (1.02%) CMDB
10 20 (1.02%) Distributed Systems
11 19 (0.97%) Clustering
11 19 (0.97%) Security Operations Centre
12 17 (0.87%) Security Posture
13 16 (0.82%) Public Cloud
14 15 (0.76%) CSOC
14 15 (0.76%) Self-Motivation
14 15 (0.76%) Social Media
15 12 (0.61%) Replication
16 11 (0.56%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 164 (8.36%) Windows
2 99 (5.05%) Linux
3 47 (2.40%) Windows Server
4 33 (1.68%) Windows 10
5 14 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (0.66%) Unix
7 10 (0.51%) Android
7 10 (0.51%) Apple iOS
7 10 (0.51%) Mac OS
7 10 (0.51%) VMS
8 9 (0.46%) Windows Server 2016
9 7 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
10 6 (0.31%) Windows 7
10 6 (0.31%) Windows Server 2003
10 6 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.15%) CentOS
12 3 (0.15%) Mac OS X
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle Linux
12 3 (0.15%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 470 (23.97%) Agile
2 253 (12.90%) DevOps
3 250 (12.75%) Problem-Solving
4 229 (11.68%) Business Intelligence
5 227 (11.58%) Stakeholder Management
6 208 (10.61%) CI/CD
7 160 (8.16%) Migration
8 157 (8.01%) Programme Management
9 150 (7.65%) Digital Marketing
10 143 (7.29%) Microservices
11 141 (7.19%) ITIL
12 139 (7.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 130 (6.63%) Project Management
14 120 (6.12%) Containerisation
15 116 (5.92%) Analytics
16 109 (5.56%) Decision-Making
17 104 (5.30%) Cybersecurity
18 103 (5.25%) Continuous Improvement
19 101 (5.15%) Test Automation
20 97 (4.95%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 241 (12.29%) SQL
2 217 (11.07%) Python
3 183 (9.33%) Java
4 122 (6.22%) JavaScript
5 98 (5.00%) PowerShell
6 58 (2.96%) Bash
6 58 (2.96%) C#
7 57 (2.91%) TypeScript
8 20 (1.02%) PL/SQL
9 18 (0.92%) R
10 16 (0.82%) Ruby
11 14 (0.71%) C++
12 12 (0.61%) Bicep
13 11 (0.56%) Groovy
14 10 (0.51%) Kotlin
14 10 (0.51%) Perl
15 9 (0.46%) Shell Script
16 8 (0.41%) Scala
17 7 (0.36%) C
18 6 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,205 (61.45%) Security Cleared
2 851 (43.40%) SC Cleared
3 150 (7.65%) DV Cleared
4 107 (5.46%) Degree
5 38 (1.94%) CISSP
6 34 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
7 32 (1.63%) AWS Certification
8 27 (1.38%) Cisco Certification
9 23 (1.17%) Computer Science Degree
10 22 (1.12%) ITIL Certification
11 21 (1.07%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 19 (0.97%) Master's Degree
13 18 (0.92%) CISM
14 17 (0.87%) CCNA
15 16 (0.82%) CCNP
15 16 (0.82%) CREST Certified
16 15 (0.76%) CESG Certified Professional
16 15 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
17 13 (0.66%) OSCP
17 13 (0.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (3.26%) Accessibility
2 63 (3.21%) QA
3 46 (2.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 41 (2.09%) NCSC
5 35 (1.78%) Data Quality
5 35 (1.78%) GDPR
6 32 (1.63%) NIST
7 24 (1.22%) SLA
8 21 (1.07%) WCAG
9 20 (1.02%) PMO
10 12 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials
10 12 (0.61%) GRC
11 11 (0.56%) JSP 440
12 10 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
12 10 (0.51%) RMADS
12 10 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 9 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 8 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 7 (0.36%) Def Stans
16 6 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 151 (7.70%) Docker
2 115 (5.86%) Active Directory
3 52 (2.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (1.38%) VMware ESXi
5 18 (0.92%) Hyper-V
6 14 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (0.61%) BitLocker
7 12 (0.61%) VMware NSX
8 11 (0.56%) vSphere
9 9 (0.46%) Postfix
10 8 (0.41%) Microsoft App-V
10 8 (0.41%) Terminal Services
11 7 (0.36%) Firmware
12 6 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.25%) DFS Replication
14 3 (0.15%) IAG
14 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 154 (7.85%) Terraform
2 134 (6.83%) Kubernetes
3 70 (3.57%) Ansible
4 37 (1.89%) Grafana
5 33 (1.68%) Microsoft Intune
5 33 (1.68%) Prometheus
6 23 (1.17%) vCenter Server
7 16 (0.82%) Puppet
8 12 (0.61%) Nmap
8 12 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
9 10 (0.51%) Nagios
9 10 (0.51%) SCCM
9 10 (0.51%) vMotion
10 8 (0.41%) WSUS
11 7 (0.36%) Oracle RMAN
12 6 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 6 (0.31%) Packer
12 6 (0.31%) SCOM
13 5 (0.25%) Data Guard
13 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 282 (14.38%) Microsoft
2 195 (9.94%) SAP
3 132 (6.73%) Oracle
4 75 (3.82%) ServiceNow
5 73 (3.72%) Google
6 70 (3.57%) Cisco
7 67 (3.42%) VMware
8 39 (1.99%) Virgin Media
9 34 (1.73%) Splunk
10 31 (1.58%) Atlassian
11 29 (1.48%) Salesforce
12 25 (1.27%) Juniper
13 21 (1.07%) SolarWinds
14 20 (1.02%) Palo Alto
15 19 (0.97%) Adobe
16 18 (0.92%) Databricks
17 17 (0.87%) Citrix
18 15 (0.76%) HP
19 14 (0.71%) MuleSoft
20 13 (0.66%) Dell