Public Sector Contract Job Trends in London

Public Sector
England > London

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Public Sector in contract job vacancies in London. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Public Sector over the 6 months leading up to 1 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 25 23
Rank change year-on-year -1 -2 0
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,698 1,000 1,282
As % of all contract jobs in London 8.46% 7.47% 7.89%
As % of the General category 13.87% 10.84% 12.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,282 728 861
10th Percentile £390 £363 £356
25th Percentile £463 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £517 £525
Median % change year-on-year +6.43% -1.57% -8.70%
75th Percentile £638 £613 £625
90th Percentile £725 £688 £700
England median daily rate £525 £510 £521
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.16% -3.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 22 11
10th Percentile £17.11 £20.01 £18.13
25th Percentile £31.48 £23.71 £19.07
Median hourly rate £44.00 £33.75 £33.75
Median % change year-on-year +30.37% - -23.05%
75th Percentile £61.25 £47.38 £63.50
90th Percentile £73.17 £84.50 £76.25
England median hourly rate £21.35 £21.95 £24.18
% change year-on-year -2.73% -9.22% +20.30%

All General Skills
London

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 London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 12,238 9,225 10,139
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 60.95% 68.92% 62.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,791 6,124 6,922
10th Percentile £350 £325 £338
25th Percentile £450 £423 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £680 £700
90th Percentile £788 £800 £825
England median daily rate £525 £501 £538
% change year-on-year +4.90% -6.88% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 230 186 137
10th Percentile £18.50 £16.17 £18.08
25th Percentile £21.93 £24.66 £24.18
Median hourly rate £28.40 £32.25 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.95% -11.64% +14.35%
75th Percentile £43.75 £50.50 £51.75
90th Percentile £65.00 £64.25 £65.42
England median hourly rate £31.93 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +26.94% -34.02% +38.62%

Public Sector
Job Vacancy Trend in London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Public Sector relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in London.

Public Sector job vacancy trend in London

Public Sector
Daily Rate Trend in London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Public Sector.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Public Sector

Public Sector
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Public Sector in London over the 6 months to 1 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Public Sector in London

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Trend in London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Public Sector.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Public Sector

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Histogram in London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Public Sector in London over the 6 months to 1 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Public Sector in London

Public Sector
Contract Job Locations in London

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 London region over the 6 months to 1 September 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
Central London +8 175 £550 +4.76% 137
South London -4 58 £525 +6.54% 14
West London -21 14 £500 +5.26% 109
East London +8 11 £750 +30.43% 24
North London 0 5 £400 -27.27% 2
Public Sector
England

Public Sector
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London 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 74 (4.36%) Confluence
2 48 (2.83%) SharePoint
3 19 (1.12%) CMS
4 15 (0.88%) Microsoft Exchange
5 14 (0.82%) Apache Spark
6 13 (0.77%) Apache
7 11 (0.65%) Palantir Foundry
8 8 (0.47%) nginx
9 7 (0.41%) SAS
10 6 (0.35%) WordPress
11 5 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
12 4 (0.24%) Headless CMS
13 3 (0.18%) Camunda
13 3 (0.18%) Drupal
13 3 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.12%) Mendix
14 2 (0.12%) OpenROAD
15 1 (0.059%) Anypoint
15 1 (0.059%) Luigi
15 1 (0.059%) R Markdown
Applications
1 35 (2.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.18%) MS Visio
7 2 (0.12%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.12%) Sketch
7 2 (0.12%) Trello
8 1 (0.059%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.059%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.059%) Gliffy
Business Applications
1 21 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 18 (1.06%) Dynamics CRM
3 17 (1.00%) Oracle ERP
4 16 (0.94%) Oracle EBS
5 11 (0.65%) NetSuite
6 6 (0.35%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 4 (0.24%) iTrent
7 4 (0.24%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.18%) Exchequer
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
8 3 (0.18%) PeopleSoft HCM
8 3 (0.18%) Remedy ITSM
8 3 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.18%) SAP CO
8 3 (0.18%) SAP FI/CO
8 3 (0.18%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.12%) SAP ERP
10 1 (0.059%) Changepoint
10 1 (0.059%) Oracle Assets
10 1 (0.059%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 396 (23.32%) AWS
2 352 (20.73%) Azure
3 106 (6.24%) Power Platform
4 90 (5.30%) GCP
5 85 (5.01%) GitHub
6 78 (4.59%) Serverless
7 77 (4.53%) Azure DevOps
8 70 (4.12%) Amazon S3
9 67 (3.95%) Microsoft 365
10 65 (3.83%) Entra ID
11 60 (3.53%) GitHub Actions
12 49 (2.89%) AWS Lambda
13 43 (2.53%) SaaS
14 37 (2.18%) Amazon EKS
14 37 (2.18%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 36 (2.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 33 (1.94%) Amazon EC2
17 31 (1.83%) Power Automate
17 31 (1.83%) PowerApps
18 30 (1.77%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 44 (2.59%) Firewall
2 29 (1.71%) DNS
2 29 (1.71%) Network Security
3 14 (0.82%) LAN
3 14 (0.82%) WAN
4 11 (0.65%) VPN
5 9 (0.53%) Cisco IPT
6 8 (0.47%) DHCP
6 8 (0.47%) NGFW
6 8 (0.47%) TCP/IP
7 7 (0.41%) DKIM
7 7 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.35%) DMARC
9 5 (0.29%) HTTPS
10 4 (0.24%) Intranet
10 4 (0.24%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (0.24%) SD-WAN
10 4 (0.24%) Wireless
11 3 (0.18%) 5G
11 3 (0.18%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (3.89%) Power BI
2 54 (3.18%) PostgreSQL
3 36 (2.12%) Metadata
4 35 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
5 30 (1.77%) Amazon RDS
6 25 (1.47%) NoSQL
7 24 (1.41%) Data Lake
7 24 (1.41%) MongoDB
8 21 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
9 20 (1.18%) MySQL
10 19 (1.12%) SQL Server
11 18 (1.06%) Amazon Aurora
12 17 (1.00%) Amazon Athena
13 16 (0.94%) Tableau
14 14 (0.82%) Delta Lake
14 14 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
14 14 (0.82%) Relational Database
15 12 (0.71%) Oracle Database
15 12 (0.71%) Redis
16 9 (0.53%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 103 (6.07%) Git
1 103 (6.07%) JIRA
2 67 (3.95%) Jenkins
3 62 (3.65%) GitLab
4 10 (0.59%) JUnit
4 10 (0.59%) Selenium
4 10 (0.59%) SonarQube
5 9 (0.53%) CircleCI
5 9 (0.53%) Cypress.io
5 9 (0.53%) Mockito
6 8 (0.47%) Maven
7 6 (0.35%) Postman
8 5 (0.29%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.29%) JMeter
8 5 (0.29%) Snyk
9 4 (0.24%) Artifactory
9 4 (0.24%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.18%) Gradle
10 3 (0.18%) REST Assured
10 3 (0.18%) VTune
General
1 521 (30.68%) Social Skills
2 178 (10.48%) Finance
3 156 (9.19%) Analytical Skills
4 106 (6.24%) Local Government
5 91 (5.36%) Military
6 69 (4.06%) Influencing Skills
7 43 (2.53%) Legal
8 40 (2.36%) Organisational Skills
9 39 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 35 (2.06%) Police
11 33 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
12 32 (1.88%) Law
13 25 (1.47%) Telecoms
14 22 (1.30%) Marketing
15 21 (1.24%) Banking
16 13 (0.77%) Publishing
17 12 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
18 10 (0.59%) Manufacturing
19 9 (0.53%) Retail
20 7 (0.41%) Billing
Job Titles
1 288 (16.96%) Architect
2 221 (13.02%) Lead
3 208 (12.25%) Developer
4 188 (11.07%) Senior
5 117 (6.89%) Analyst
6 73 (4.30%) Delivery Manager
7 69 (4.06%) Designer
8 68 (4.00%) DevOps Engineer
9 63 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
10 55 (3.24%) Consultant
10 55 (3.24%) Technical Architect
11 54 (3.18%) User Researcher
12 50 (2.94%) Business Analyst
12 50 (2.94%) Data Engineer
13 49 (2.89%) Data Architect
14 42 (2.47%) Software Engineer
15 37 (2.18%) AWS Architect
15 37 (2.18%) Java Developer
15 37 (2.18%) Project Manager
16 36 (2.12%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 174 (10.25%) Terraform
2 73 (4.30%) REST
3 52 (3.06%) React
4 50 (2.94%) Django
5 46 (2.71%) RESTful
5 46 (2.71%) Spring
6 37 (2.18%) Spring Boot
7 36 (2.12%) Node.js
8 35 (2.06%) Kafka
9 34 (2.00%) Oracle Fusion
10 31 (1.83%) HTML
10 31 (1.83%) Lightning Web Components
11 29 (1.71%) .NET
11 29 (1.71%) SOAP
12 27 (1.59%) PySpark
13 26 (1.53%) Web Services
14 23 (1.35%) AngularJS
14 23 (1.35%) CSS
15 22 (1.30%) JSON
16 17 (1.00%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 113 (6.65%) Cloud Native
2 73 (4.30%) Onboarding
3 62 (3.65%) NHS
4 56 (3.30%) Legacy Systems
4 56 (3.30%) Product Ownership
5 38 (2.24%) Management Information System
6 34 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
7 28 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
8 26 (1.53%) Analytical Mindset
9 20 (1.18%) AI Agents
9 20 (1.18%) Data Structures
10 19 (1.12%) Low-Code
11 16 (0.94%) Data Centre
12 15 (0.88%) Replication
13 13 (0.77%) Self-Motivation
13 13 (0.77%) Virtual Team
14 12 (0.71%) CMDB
14 12 (0.71%) Hybrid Cloud
14 12 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
14 12 (0.71%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 44 (2.59%) Linux
2 38 (2.24%) Windows
3 12 (0.71%) Windows 10
4 11 (0.65%) Android
4 11 (0.65%) Windows Server
5 9 (0.53%) Mac OS
6 8 (0.47%) Apple iOS
7 7 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (0.29%) Amazon Linux
9 4 (0.24%) Unix
10 3 (0.18%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.12%) Solaris
11 2 (0.12%) VMS
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 541 (31.86%) Agile
2 360 (21.20%) Stakeholder Management
3 311 (18.32%) CI/CD
4 296 (17.43%) DevOps
5 294 (17.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 284 (16.73%) Continuous Improvement
7 209 (12.31%) Decision-Making
8 192 (11.31%) AI
9 181 (10.66%) Problem-Solving
10 179 (10.54%) Infrastructure as Code
11 163 (9.60%) Migration
12 161 (9.48%) Digital Transformation Programme
13 156 (9.19%) Roadmaps
14 149 (8.78%) Data Modelling
15 147 (8.66%) Analytics
16 134 (7.89%) Technical Leadership
17 117 (6.89%) Containerisation
18 115 (6.77%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
19 107 (6.30%) User Research
20 104 (6.12%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 236 (13.90%) Python
2 159 (9.36%) SQL
3 113 (6.65%) Java
4 90 (5.30%) JavaScript
5 60 (3.53%) TypeScript
6 42 (2.47%) PowerShell
7 35 (2.06%) C#
8 30 (1.77%) Bash
9 29 (1.71%) Apex Code
10 26 (1.53%) Bicep
11 23 (1.35%) Ruby
12 21 (1.24%) Groovy
13 18 (1.06%) PL/SQL
14 13 (0.77%) R
15 11 (0.65%) Kotlin
16 10 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 7 (0.41%) Scala
17 7 (0.41%) Shell Script
18 6 (0.35%) Search Processing Language
19 5 (0.29%) Perl
Qualifications
1 947 (55.77%) Security Cleared
2 831 (48.94%) SC Cleared
3 93 (5.48%) BPSS Clearance
4 91 (5.36%) DV Cleared
5 46 (2.71%) Degree
6 42 (2.47%) AWS Certification
7 35 (2.06%) Azure Certification
8 30 (1.77%) CISSP
8 30 (1.77%) Microsoft Certification
9 19 (1.12%) Cisco Certification
10 18 (1.06%) CISM
11 13 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 12 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
13 11 (0.65%) Master's Degree
14 10 (0.59%) CCNP
15 9 (0.53%) APMG
15 9 (0.53%) CTC Cleared
15 9 (0.53%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 8 (0.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 8 (0.47%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 126 (7.42%) Accessibility
2 93 (5.48%) Data Quality
3 73 (4.30%) QA
4 56 (3.30%) WCAG
5 53 (3.12%) GDPR
6 50 (2.94%) PMO
7 37 (2.18%) NCSC
8 33 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 28 (1.65%) NIST
10 20 (1.18%) Cyber Essentials
11 16 (0.94%) GRC
12 13 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 11 (0.65%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 11 (0.65%) PCI DSS
13 11 (0.65%) SLA
14 8 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
14 8 (0.47%) Government Security Classifications
15 5 (0.29%) NIST 800
16 4 (0.24%) PERC
16 4 (0.24%) Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment)
System Software
1 131 (7.71%) Docker
2 41 (2.41%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.41%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.12%) Postfix
6 1 (0.059%) Ceph
6 1 (0.059%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.059%) Sendmail
6 1 (0.059%) Squid
6 1 (0.059%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.059%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 131 (7.71%) Kubernetes
2 37 (2.18%) Grafana
3 30 (1.77%) Prometheus
4 26 (1.53%) Ansible
5 23 (1.35%) Microsoft Intune
6 13 (0.77%) Kibana
7 9 (0.53%) SCCM
7 9 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.47%) Argo
9 5 (0.29%) Istio
9 5 (0.29%) Puppet
10 3 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.12%) AirWatch
11 2 (0.12%) Consul
11 2 (0.12%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.12%) Karpenter
11 2 (0.12%) Kustomize
11 2 (0.12%) Salt
12 1 (0.059%) Oracle RMAN
12 1 (0.059%) SELinux
Vendors
1 228 (13.43%) Microsoft
2 115 (6.77%) Oracle
3 87 (5.12%) Salesforce
4 61 (3.59%) Google
5 57 (3.36%) ServiceNow
6 51 (3.00%) Databricks
7 40 (2.36%) SAP
8 22 (1.30%) Foundry
9 18 (1.06%) Cisco
9 18 (1.06%) Palantir
10 15 (0.88%) IBM
11 14 (0.82%) Palo Alto
12 12 (0.71%) Splunk
13 11 (0.65%) Informatica
13 11 (0.65%) MuleSoft
13 11 (0.65%) OpenAI
14 8 (0.47%) CrowdStrike
14 8 (0.47%) Juniper
14 8 (0.47%) VMware
15 7 (0.41%) Atlassian