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 26 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 25 23
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,704 1,000 1,270
As % of all contract jobs in London 8.49% 7.48% 7.81%
As % of the General category 13.95% 10.84% 12.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,289 726 869
10th Percentile £390 £363 £363
25th Percentile £463 £429 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £522 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -0.62% -8.70%
75th Percentile £638 £613 £625
90th Percentile £725 £688 £700
England median daily rate £525 £510 £520
% change year-on-year +2.94% -1.92% -3.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 21 10
10th Percentile £17.95 £19.79 £17.87
25th Percentile £33.83 £23.45 £18.60
Median hourly rate £47.00 £30.00 £28.97
Median % change year-on-year +56.67% +3.57% -33.96%
75th Percentile £65.75 £47.00 £66.50
90th Percentile £75.85 £68.75 £83.50
England median hourly rate £21.50 £21.50 £24.18
% change year-on-year - -11.08% +20.90%

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 12,216 9,226 10,136
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 60.85% 68.98% 62.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,771 6,134 6,995
10th Percentile £350 £325 £338
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £700
90th Percentile £788 £800 £825
England median daily rate £525 £505 £538
% change year-on-year +3.96% -6.05% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 234 184 138
10th Percentile £18.50 £15.84 £18.09
25th Percentile £21.93 £24.50 £24.18
Median hourly rate £28.40 £31.49 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.83% -12.53% +3.99%
75th Percentile £43.75 £49.56 £51.75
90th Percentile £65.00 £63.60 £66.60
England median hourly rate £31.93 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +26.94% -34.02% +35.80%

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 26 August 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 26 August 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 26 August 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 +6 177 £548 +4.29% 81
South London -2 59 £525 +7.14% 6
West London -20 14 £500 +5.26% 102
East London +8 10 £750 +30.43% 19
North London -2 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 75 (4.40%) Confluence
2 50 (2.93%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.94%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (0.88%) CMS
5 14 (0.82%) Apache Spark
6 13 (0.76%) 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 3 (0.18%) Camunda
12 3 (0.18%) Drupal
12 3 (0.18%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.12%) Mendix
13 2 (0.12%) OpenROAD
14 1 (0.059%) Anypoint
14 1 (0.059%) Headless CMS
14 1 (0.059%) Luigi
14 1 (0.059%) R Markdown
Applications
1 34 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.70%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.18%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.18%) Sketch
7 2 (0.12%) Adobe XD
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 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 18 (1.06%) Dynamics CRM
3 17 (1.00%) Oracle EBS
3 17 (1.00%) Oracle ERP
4 11 (0.65%) NetSuite
5 6 (0.35%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 4 (0.23%) iTrent
6 4 (0.23%) SAP FI
7 3 (0.18%) Exchequer
7 3 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
7 3 (0.18%) PeopleSoft HCM
7 3 (0.18%) Remedy ITSM
7 3 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.18%) SAP CO
7 3 (0.18%) SAP FI/CO
7 3 (0.18%) SAP HR
8 2 (0.12%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.059%) Changepoint
9 1 (0.059%) Oracle Assets
9 1 (0.059%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 403 (23.65%) AWS
2 363 (21.30%) Azure
3 108 (6.34%) Power Platform
4 93 (5.46%) GCP
5 88 (5.16%) GitHub
6 80 (4.69%) Azure DevOps
7 77 (4.52%) Serverless
8 72 (4.23%) Amazon S3
9 67 (3.93%) Microsoft 365
10 65 (3.81%) Entra ID
11 63 (3.70%) GitHub Actions
12 50 (2.93%) AWS Lambda
13 44 (2.58%) SaaS
14 39 (2.29%) Amazon EKS
15 37 (2.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 35 (2.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 33 (1.94%) Amazon EC2
18 32 (1.88%) Power Automate
18 32 (1.88%) PowerApps
19 31 (1.82%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 45 (2.64%) Firewall
2 30 (1.76%) DNS
3 29 (1.70%) Network Security
4 13 (0.76%) LAN
4 13 (0.76%) WAN
5 12 (0.70%) VPN
6 9 (0.53%) NGFW
7 8 (0.47%) Cisco IPT
7 8 (0.47%) DHCP
7 8 (0.47%) TCP/IP
8 7 (0.41%) DKIM
9 6 (0.35%) DMARC
9 6 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
10 5 (0.29%) HTTPS
11 4 (0.23%) Intranet
11 4 (0.23%) Reverse Proxy
11 4 (0.23%) Wireless
12 3 (0.18%) 4G
12 3 (0.18%) Internet
12 3 (0.18%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (4.05%) Power BI
2 57 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
3 37 (2.17%) Data Warehouse
4 33 (1.94%) Metadata
5 30 (1.76%) Amazon RDS
6 27 (1.58%) Data Lake
6 27 (1.58%) MongoDB
7 26 (1.53%) NoSQL
8 22 (1.29%) Amazon Redshift
8 22 (1.29%) SQL Server
9 20 (1.17%) MySQL
10 18 (1.06%) Amazon Athena
10 18 (1.06%) Amazon Aurora
11 16 (0.94%) Delta Lake
11 16 (0.94%) Tableau
12 14 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
12 14 (0.82%) Relational Database
13 12 (0.70%) Redis
14 11 (0.65%) Oracle Database
15 9 (0.53%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 103 (6.04%) Git
1 103 (6.04%) JIRA
2 68 (3.99%) Jenkins
3 62 (3.64%) GitLab
4 11 (0.65%) SonarQube
5 10 (0.59%) CircleCI
5 10 (0.59%) JUnit
5 10 (0.59%) Mockito
5 10 (0.59%) Selenium
6 9 (0.53%) Cypress.io
7 8 (0.47%) Maven
8 6 (0.35%) JMeter
8 6 (0.35%) Postman
8 6 (0.35%) Snyk
9 5 (0.29%) Bitbucket
9 5 (0.29%) Cucumber
10 4 (0.23%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.18%) Gradle
11 3 (0.18%) REST Assured
11 3 (0.18%) VTune
General
1 506 (29.69%) Social Skills
2 182 (10.68%) Finance
3 150 (8.80%) Analytical Skills
4 104 (6.10%) Local Government
5 89 (5.22%) Military
6 67 (3.93%) Influencing Skills
7 43 (2.52%) Legal
8 39 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 39 (2.29%) Organisational Skills
9 37 (2.17%) Police
10 32 (1.88%) Documentation Skills
11 29 (1.70%) Law
12 24 (1.41%) Telecoms
13 23 (1.35%) Marketing
14 21 (1.23%) Banking
15 13 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
16 10 (0.59%) Retail
17 9 (0.53%) Manufacturing
17 9 (0.53%) Publishing
18 8 (0.47%) Billing
Job Titles
1 292 (17.14%) Architect
2 226 (13.26%) Developer
3 225 (13.20%) Lead
4 189 (11.09%) Senior
5 112 (6.57%) Analyst
6 74 (4.34%) Delivery Manager
7 69 (4.05%) Designer
8 68 (3.99%) DevOps Engineer
9 65 (3.81%) Solutions Architect
10 57 (3.35%) Technical Architect
11 54 (3.17%) Consultant
11 54 (3.17%) User Researcher
12 50 (2.93%) Data Architect
13 49 (2.88%) Business Analyst
13 49 (2.88%) Data Engineer
14 42 (2.46%) Software Engineer
15 40 (2.35%) Project Manager
16 39 (2.29%) Java Developer
17 38 (2.23%) AWS Architect
18 37 (2.17%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 172 (10.09%) Terraform
2 76 (4.46%) REST
3 55 (3.23%) React
4 50 (2.93%) Django
5 47 (2.76%) RESTful
6 46 (2.70%) Spring
7 40 (2.35%) Node.js
8 38 (2.23%) Spring Boot
9 37 (2.17%) Kafka
10 35 (2.05%) Oracle Fusion
11 33 (1.94%) Lightning Web Components
12 31 (1.82%) HTML
12 31 (1.82%) SOAP
13 30 (1.76%) .NET
14 29 (1.70%) Web Services
15 27 (1.58%) PySpark
16 23 (1.35%) AngularJS
16 23 (1.35%) CSS
17 22 (1.29%) JSON
18 17 (1.00%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 114 (6.69%) Cloud Native
2 77 (4.52%) Onboarding
3 64 (3.76%) NHS
4 57 (3.35%) Legacy Systems
4 57 (3.35%) Product Ownership
5 35 (2.05%) Management Information System
6 34 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
7 27 (1.58%) Enterprise Software
8 24 (1.41%) Analytical Mindset
9 21 (1.23%) Data Structures
10 18 (1.06%) Low-Code
11 17 (1.00%) Data Centre
12 16 (0.94%) AI Agents
13 15 (0.88%) Replication
14 14 (0.82%) Self-Motivation
15 12 (0.70%) CMDB
15 12 (0.70%) Hybrid Cloud
15 12 (0.70%) Security Operations Centre
15 12 (0.70%) Virtual Team
16 11 (0.65%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 44 (2.58%) Linux
2 38 (2.23%) Windows
3 12 (0.70%) Windows Server
4 11 (0.65%) Android
4 11 (0.65%) Windows 10
5 8 (0.47%) Apple iOS
6 7 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.35%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.29%) Amazon Linux
9 4 (0.23%) 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 (31.75%) Agile
2 346 (20.31%) Stakeholder Management
3 311 (18.25%) CI/CD
4 301 (17.66%) DevOps
5 291 (17.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 285 (16.73%) Continuous Improvement
7 201 (11.80%) Decision-Making
8 187 (10.97%) AI
9 181 (10.62%) Infrastructure as Code
10 177 (10.39%) Problem-Solving
11 163 (9.57%) Migration
12 161 (9.45%) Digital Transformation Programme
13 159 (9.33%) Roadmaps
14 152 (8.92%) Analytics
14 152 (8.92%) Data Modelling
15 128 (7.51%) Technical Leadership
16 120 (7.04%) Containerisation
17 113 (6.63%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
18 108 (6.34%) User Research
19 106 (6.22%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 229 (13.44%) Python
2 160 (9.39%) SQL
3 118 (6.92%) Java
4 90 (5.28%) JavaScript
5 60 (3.52%) TypeScript
6 43 (2.52%) PowerShell
7 35 (2.05%) C#
8 31 (1.82%) Apex Code
9 29 (1.70%) Bash
10 26 (1.53%) Bicep
11 23 (1.35%) Ruby
12 21 (1.23%) Groovy
13 19 (1.12%) PL/SQL
14 12 (0.70%) Kotlin
14 12 (0.70%) R
15 11 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 8 (0.47%) Shell Script
17 7 (0.41%) Scala
18 6 (0.35%) Search Processing Language
19 5 (0.29%) Go
Qualifications
1 952 (55.87%) Security Cleared
2 830 (48.71%) SC Cleared
3 89 (5.22%) DV Cleared
4 84 (4.93%) BPSS Clearance
5 44 (2.58%) Degree
6 40 (2.35%) AWS Certification
7 36 (2.11%) Azure Certification
8 31 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
9 27 (1.58%) CISSP
10 18 (1.06%) Cisco Certification
11 16 (0.94%) CISM
12 13 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 12 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
14 10 (0.59%) CCNP
14 10 (0.59%) Master's Degree
15 9 (0.53%) APMG
15 9 (0.53%) CTC Cleared
16 8 (0.47%) PMI Certification
17 7 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 7 (0.41%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 127 (7.45%) Accessibility
2 95 (5.58%) Data Quality
3 71 (4.17%) QA
4 56 (3.29%) GDPR
5 54 (3.17%) WCAG
6 48 (2.82%) PMO
7 39 (2.29%) NCSC
8 29 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 25 (1.47%) NIST
10 20 (1.17%) Cyber Essentials
11 13 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 12 (0.70%) GRC
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 (0.23%) PERC
16 4 (0.23%) Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment)
System Software
1 132 (7.75%) Docker
2 42 (2.46%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.41%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.12%) Postfix
5 2 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.059%) Ceph
6 1 (0.059%) FreeRADIUS
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%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 129 (7.57%) Kubernetes
2 39 (2.29%) Grafana
3 31 (1.82%) Prometheus
4 27 (1.58%) Ansible
5 22 (1.29%) Microsoft Intune
6 12 (0.70%) Kibana
7 9 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.47%) Argo
8 8 (0.47%) SCCM
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
1 224 (13.15%) Microsoft
2 116 (6.81%) Oracle
3 93 (5.46%) Salesforce
4 59 (3.46%) Google
5 55 (3.23%) ServiceNow
6 53 (3.11%) Databricks
7 39 (2.29%) SAP
8 20 (1.17%) Foundry
9 18 (1.06%) Cisco
9 18 (1.06%) Palantir
10 14 (0.82%) IBM
10 14 (0.82%) Palo Alto
11 11 (0.65%) Informatica
11 11 (0.65%) MuleSoft
12 10 (0.59%) OpenAI
13 9 (0.53%) Splunk
14 8 (0.47%) Atlassian
14 8 (0.47%) Juniper
14 8 (0.47%) VMware
15 7 (0.41%) CrowdStrike