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 14 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 24 23
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,831 1,037 1,267
As % of all contract jobs in London 8.93% 7.74% 7.92%
As % of the General category 14.39% 11.30% 12.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,387 747 773
10th Percentile £381 £363 £350
25th Percentile £463 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +9.89% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £619 £625
90th Percentile £711 £688 £700
England median daily rate £525 £500 £513
% change year-on-year +5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 21 12
10th Percentile £16.85 £17.98 £18.13
25th Percentile £19.88 £22.00 £19.53
Median hourly rate £32.65 £25.15 £29.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.82% -14.75% -32.74%
75th Percentile £47.75 £47.00 £37.27
90th Percentile £57.50 £86.25 £73.03
England median hourly rate £21.35 £22.02 £23.80
% change year-on-year -3.02% -7.48% +11.66%

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 12,725 9,178 10,001
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 62.05% 68.52% 62.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,130 6,045 6,454
10th Percentile £350 £331 £330
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £574
Median % change year-on-year - -4.18% -3.12%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £780 £788 £825
England median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 301 179 116
10th Percentile £15.55 £17.88 £17.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £24.50 £25.62
Median hourly rate £28.55 £31.49 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.34% -10.03% +1.45%
75th Percentile £47.50 £47.25 £53.75
90th Percentile £68.75 £70.40 £73.13
England median hourly rate £29.00 £25.08 £35.00
% change year-on-year +15.65% -28.36% +16.67%

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 14 October 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 14 October 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 14 October 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 +7 183 £545 +3.81% 121
South London -1 61 £525 +4.48% 8
West London -18 21 £450 -10.00% 26
East London +13 13 £600 +20.00% 13
North London -3 5 £400 -27.27% 3
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 77 (4.21%) Confluence
2 52 (2.84%) SharePoint
3 22 (1.20%) CMS
4 20 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
5 13 (0.71%) Apache Spark
6 12 (0.66%) Apache
7 11 (0.60%) nginx
8 7 (0.38%) SAS
9 6 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
9 6 (0.33%) Headless CMS
9 6 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
10 5 (0.27%) WordPress
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.11%) Mendix
13 1 (0.055%) Anypoint
13 1 (0.055%) Jupyter
13 1 (0.055%) Luigi
13 1 (0.055%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 1 (0.055%) SharePoint 2013
13 1 (0.055%) Tomcat
Applications
1 38 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
5 6 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.16%) Adobe XD
7 3 (0.16%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.16%) Sketch
8 2 (0.11%) Trello
9 1 (0.055%) Gliffy
9 1 (0.055%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 19 (1.04%) Oracle ERP
3 17 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 17 (0.93%) Oracle EBS
4 13 (0.71%) NetSuite
5 6 (0.33%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 5 (0.27%) Exchequer
6 5 (0.27%) SAP FI
7 4 (0.22%) iTrent
7 4 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.22%) SAP CO
7 4 (0.22%) SAP FI/CO
8 3 (0.16%) PeopleSoft HCM
8 3 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
8 3 (0.16%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.11%) Changepoint
9 2 (0.11%) NEC Housing
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Payroll
9 2 (0.11%) SAP ERP
9 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 375 (20.48%) AWS
2 368 (20.10%) Azure
3 116 (6.34%) Power Platform
4 94 (5.13%) GitHub
5 91 (4.97%) GCP
6 84 (4.59%) Azure DevOps
7 80 (4.37%) Entra ID
8 76 (4.15%) Microsoft 365
9 71 (3.88%) Serverless
10 67 (3.66%) GitHub Actions
11 65 (3.55%) Amazon S3
12 47 (2.57%) SaaS
13 41 (2.24%) Amazon EKS
14 38 (2.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 38 (2.08%) AWS Lambda
15 30 (1.64%) Amazon EC2
15 30 (1.64%) Dynamics 365
15 30 (1.64%) Power Automate
15 30 (1.64%) PowerApps
15 30 (1.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 43 (2.35%) Firewall
2 31 (1.69%) DNS
3 30 (1.64%) Network Security
4 12 (0.66%) WAN
5 11 (0.60%) Cisco IPT
5 11 (0.60%) LAN
5 11 (0.60%) VPN
6 10 (0.55%) NGFW
6 10 (0.55%) TCP/IP
7 8 (0.44%) Wi-Fi
8 7 (0.38%) DHCP
9 6 (0.33%) DKIM
9 6 (0.33%) DMARC
9 6 (0.33%) Wireshark
10 5 (0.27%) 3GPP
10 5 (0.27%) 5G
10 5 (0.27%) NGN
10 5 (0.27%) Radio Access Network
10 5 (0.27%) SD-WAN
10 5 (0.27%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (3.99%) Power BI
2 62 (3.39%) PostgreSQL
3 43 (2.35%) Metadata
4 33 (1.80%) Data Warehouse
5 31 (1.69%) Amazon RDS
6 26 (1.42%) Data Lake
7 23 (1.26%) MongoDB
7 23 (1.26%) SQL Server
8 22 (1.20%) Amazon Aurora
8 22 (1.20%) NoSQL
9 20 (1.09%) MySQL
10 19 (1.04%) Amazon Redshift
11 18 (0.98%) Oracle Database
11 18 (0.98%) Relational Database
12 15 (0.82%) Amazon Athena
13 14 (0.76%) Redis
14 12 (0.66%) Delta Lake
14 12 (0.66%) Tableau
15 11 (0.60%) Oracle Reports
16 10 (0.55%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 106 (5.79%) JIRA
2 83 (4.53%) Git
3 74 (4.04%) Jenkins
4 65 (3.55%) GitLab
5 17 (0.93%) Selenium
6 13 (0.71%) JUnit
7 11 (0.60%) Cucumber
8 10 (0.55%) Cypress.io
8 10 (0.55%) Postman
9 9 (0.49%) Maven
9 9 (0.49%) SonarQube
10 8 (0.44%) JMeter
10 8 (0.44%) Mockito
11 7 (0.38%) CircleCI
12 5 (0.27%) REST Assured
12 5 (0.27%) TestNG
13 4 (0.22%) Bitbucket
13 4 (0.22%) MSI
14 3 (0.16%) Gradle
14 3 (0.16%) VTune
General
1 612 (33.42%) Social Skills
2 185 (10.10%) Finance
3 179 (9.78%) Analytical Skills
4 126 (6.88%) Local Government
5 100 (5.46%) Military
6 77 (4.21%) Influencing Skills
7 58 (3.17%) Legal
8 46 (2.51%) Organisational Skills
9 42 (2.29%) Police
10 39 (2.13%) Documentation Skills
10 39 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 33 (1.80%) Law
12 22 (1.20%) Telecoms
13 19 (1.04%) Banking
14 18 (0.98%) Marketing
14 18 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
15 15 (0.82%) Publishing
16 13 (0.71%) Manufacturing
17 11 (0.60%) Billing
18 8 (0.44%) Retail
Job Titles
1 308 (16.82%) Architect
2 235 (12.83%) Senior
3 227 (12.40%) Lead
4 187 (10.21%) Developer
5 142 (7.76%) Analyst
6 82 (4.48%) Designer
7 76 (4.15%) Consultant
8 75 (4.10%) User Researcher
9 74 (4.04%) Delivery Manager
10 73 (3.99%) DevOps Engineer
11 72 (3.93%) Solutions Architect
12 70 (3.82%) Business Analyst
13 51 (2.79%) Data Engineer
14 50 (2.73%) Technical Architect
15 44 (2.40%) Data Architect
16 41 (2.24%) Security Architect
17 39 (2.13%) Service Designer
17 39 (2.13%) Software Engineer
18 38 (2.08%) Java Developer
19 37 (2.02%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 180 (9.83%) Terraform
2 83 (4.53%) REST
3 46 (2.51%) Django
4 45 (2.46%) Spring
5 44 (2.40%) React
6 39 (2.13%) RESTful
7 34 (1.86%) Spring Boot
8 33 (1.80%) Node.js
9 32 (1.75%) Kafka
9 32 (1.75%) SOAP
10 31 (1.69%) .NET
10 31 (1.69%) Oracle Fusion
11 26 (1.42%) Web Services
12 25 (1.37%) JSON
13 23 (1.26%) PySpark
14 22 (1.20%) HTML
14 22 (1.20%) Middleware
15 20 (1.09%) AngularJS
15 20 (1.09%) OAuth
16 19 (1.04%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 111 (6.06%) Cloud Native
2 87 (4.75%) Onboarding
3 68 (3.71%) Product Ownership
4 66 (3.60%) NHS
5 57 (3.11%) Legacy Systems
6 49 (2.68%) Management Information System
7 38 (2.08%) Enterprise Software
8 29 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
9 28 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
10 26 (1.42%) Data Structures
11 24 (1.31%) AI Agents
12 17 (0.93%) Replication
13 15 (0.82%) Low-Code
13 15 (0.82%) Taxonomies
14 14 (0.76%) Data Protection Act
14 14 (0.76%) Freedom of Information
15 13 (0.71%) CMDB
15 13 (0.71%) Mobile App
15 13 (0.71%) Self-Motivation
15 13 (0.71%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 48 (2.62%) Linux
2 43 (2.35%) Windows
3 13 (0.71%) Windows 10
4 12 (0.66%) Android
5 9 (0.49%) Apple iOS
5 9 (0.49%) macOS
5 9 (0.49%) Windows Server
6 6 (0.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.27%) Amazon Linux
7 5 (0.27%) Unix
8 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.11%) VMS
9 1 (0.055%) Solaris
9 1 (0.055%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.055%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 574 (31.35%) Agile
2 484 (26.43%) Stakeholder Management
3 332 (18.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 321 (17.53%) CI/CD
5 308 (16.82%) Continuous Improvement
6 299 (16.33%) DevOps
7 236 (12.89%) Decision-Making
8 215 (11.74%) AI
9 213 (11.63%) Problem-Solving
10 186 (10.16%) Digital Transformation Programme
10 186 (10.16%) Migration
11 185 (10.10%) Infrastructure as Code
12 171 (9.34%) Roadmaps
13 157 (8.57%) Analytics
14 148 (8.08%) Data Modelling
15 141 (7.70%) User Research
15 141 (7.70%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
16 133 (7.26%) Technical Leadership
17 122 (6.66%) Software Engineering
18 121 (6.61%) Service Design
Programming Languages
1 237 (12.94%) Python
2 169 (9.23%) SQL
3 111 (6.06%) Java
4 88 (4.81%) JavaScript
5 61 (3.33%) TypeScript
6 49 (2.68%) PowerShell
7 36 (1.97%) C#
8 33 (1.80%) Bash
8 33 (1.80%) Bicep
9 26 (1.42%) Groovy
10 17 (0.93%) R
11 16 (0.87%) PL/SQL
12 15 (0.82%) Apex Code
13 14 (0.76%) Scala
14 13 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 12 (0.66%) Ruby
16 9 (0.49%) Go
16 9 (0.49%) Kotlin
17 6 (0.33%) Search Processing Language
18 5 (0.27%) Perl
Qualifications
1 999 (54.56%) Security Cleared
2 889 (48.55%) SC Cleared
3 142 (7.76%) BPSS Clearance
4 95 (5.19%) DV Cleared
5 60 (3.28%) Degree
6 50 (2.73%) AWS Certification
7 41 (2.24%) Azure Certification
8 35 (1.91%) Microsoft Certification
9 28 (1.53%) CISSP
10 19 (1.04%) Cisco Certification
11 18 (0.98%) CISM
12 16 (0.87%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 14 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
14 13 (0.71%) Master's Degree
15 11 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
16 10 (0.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 10 (0.55%) PMI Certification
17 9 (0.49%) CRISC
17 9 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
17 9 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (7.21%) Accessibility
2 114 (6.23%) Data Quality
3 87 (4.75%) QA
4 55 (3.00%) GDPR
5 48 (2.62%) WCAG
6 43 (2.35%) PMO
7 39 (2.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 39 (2.13%) NCSC
8 32 (1.75%) NIST
9 17 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
9 17 (0.93%) GRC
10 11 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
10 11 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 11 (0.60%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 9 (0.49%) SLA
12 8 (0.44%) Government Security Classifications
13 6 (0.33%) PCI DSS
14 5 (0.27%) P3O
14 5 (0.27%) PERC
15 4 (0.22%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 127 (6.94%) Docker
2 49 (2.68%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.60%) Virtual Desktop
4 8 (0.44%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.11%) Postfix
6 1 (0.055%) Ceph
6 1 (0.055%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.055%) Microsoft App-V
6 1 (0.055%) Squid
6 1 (0.055%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 135 (7.37%) Kubernetes
2 47 (2.57%) Grafana
3 33 (1.80%) Prometheus
4 31 (1.69%) Microsoft Intune
5 21 (1.15%) Ansible
6 14 (0.76%) Kibana
7 11 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
8 9 (0.49%) Argo
8 9 (0.49%) SCCM
9 4 (0.22%) Istio
9 4 (0.22%) Karpenter
10 3 (0.16%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.11%) AirWatch
11 2 (0.11%) Consul
11 2 (0.11%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.11%) Kustomize
11 2 (0.11%) Puppet
11 2 (0.11%) QRadar
12 1 (0.055%) Podman
12 1 (0.055%) Suricata
Vendors
1 270 (14.75%) Microsoft
2 132 (7.21%) Oracle
3 73 (3.99%) Google
3 73 (3.99%) Salesforce
4 66 (3.60%) ServiceNow
5 49 (2.68%) Databricks
6 46 (2.51%) SAP
7 18 (0.98%) Cisco
8 16 (0.87%) Palo Alto
9 15 (0.82%) Splunk
10 13 (0.71%) Foundry
10 13 (0.71%) Palantir
10 13 (0.71%) Workday
11 12 (0.66%) OpenAI
12 11 (0.60%) Informatica
13 10 (0.55%) IBM
14 9 (0.49%) CrowdStrike
14 9 (0.49%) Juniper
15 8 (0.44%) NEC
15 8 (0.44%) VMware