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 28 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -3 -4 +22
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,321 1,252 1,609
As % of all contract jobs in London 8.95% 9.06% 8.75%
As % of the General category 13.82% 13.94% 13.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 968 784 1,114
10th Percentile £377 £350 £400
25th Percentile £441 £445 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.48% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £658
90th Percentile £688 £750 £743
England median daily rate £500 £520 £538
% change year-on-year -3.85% -3.26% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 16 10
10th Percentile - £21.00 £14.81
25th Percentile £17.50 £22.20 £16.42
Median hourly rate £20.84 £33.75 £22.69
Median % change year-on-year -38.25% +48.74% +11.12%
75th Percentile £41.25 £42.45 £52.71
90th Percentile £54.70 £65.00 £79.63
England median hourly rate £21.97 £25.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year -13.85% +21.43% +5.63%

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 9,561 8,983 11,741
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 64.75% 65.02% 63.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,230 5,675 8,396
10th Percentile £343 £327 £335
25th Percentile £425 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £673 £700 £695
90th Percentile £775 £825 £800
England median daily rate £500 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -4.76% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 165 112 236
10th Percentile £17.50 £20.08 £16.08
25th Percentile £20.82 £24.94 £19.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £35.00 £28.88
Median % change year-on-year -21.43% +21.21% +5.00%
75th Percentile £47.50 £51.50 £51.94
90th Percentile £72.50 £78.40 £74.38
England median hourly rate £22.85 £29.23 £26.00
% change year-on-year -21.83% +12.42% +1.13%

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 28 January 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 28 January 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 28 January 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 -4 149 £550 +5.01% 50
South London +1 45 £500 - 8
East London 0 5 £638 +12.83% 13
North London -3 4 £700 +174.51% 1
West London -28 4 £600 +60.00% 10
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 52 (3.94%) Confluence
2 37 (2.80%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.14%) nginx
4 12 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (0.76%) Apache
6 7 (0.53%) Apache Spark
7 5 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
8 4 (0.30%) CMS
8 4 (0.30%) SAS
9 2 (0.15%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.15%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.15%) Camunda
10 1 (0.076%) Appian
10 1 (0.076%) GeoServer
10 1 (0.076%) IIS
10 1 (0.076%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.076%) Mule
10 1 (0.076%) Mule ESB
10 1 (0.076%) Sitecore CMS
10 1 (0.076%) Tomcat
Applications
1 42 (3.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (1.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 16 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.61%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.53%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 5 (0.38%) Adobe XD
7 4 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.30%) MS Visio
7 4 (0.30%) Sketch
7 4 (0.30%) Trello
8 3 (0.23%) InVision
9 2 (0.15%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.076%) Adobe Illustrator
10 1 (0.076%) OmniGraffle
10 1 (0.076%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.076%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.076%) Siemens NX
10 1 (0.076%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 21 (1.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (1.06%) Oracle ERP
4 8 (0.61%) SAP Payroll
5 6 (0.45%) iTrent
6 5 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
7 4 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
7 4 (0.30%) Oracle General Ledger
7 4 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
7 4 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.23%) Oracle Cash Management
8 3 (0.23%) SAP HCM
9 2 (0.15%) Exchequer
9 2 (0.15%) Loan IQ
9 2 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
9 2 (0.15%) SAP Business One
9 2 (0.15%) SAP ERP
9 2 (0.15%) SAP GRC
9 2 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 2 (0.15%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 262 (19.83%) AWS
2 261 (19.76%) Azure
3 101 (7.65%) Power Platform
4 71 (5.37%) Serverless
5 60 (4.54%) GitHub
6 55 (4.16%) Microsoft 365
7 54 (4.09%) Azure DevOps
8 47 (3.56%) GCP
9 41 (3.10%) AWS Lambda
9 41 (3.10%) Power Automate
10 38 (2.88%) Amazon S3
11 36 (2.73%) OCI
12 35 (2.65%) Dynamics 365
12 35 (2.65%) GitHub Actions
13 30 (2.27%) Amazon ECS
13 30 (2.27%) PowerApps
14 29 (2.20%) AWS CloudFormation
15 24 (1.82%) SaaS
16 23 (1.74%) PaaS
17 22 (1.67%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 29 (2.20%) Firewall
2 24 (1.82%) DNS
3 22 (1.67%) Network Security
4 16 (1.21%) VPN
5 15 (1.14%) WAN
5 15 (1.14%) Wireless
6 13 (0.98%) TCP/IP
7 12 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
8 11 (0.83%) LAN
9 10 (0.76%) BGP
9 10 (0.76%) OSPF
10 8 (0.61%) HTTP
10 8 (0.61%) SMTP
10 8 (0.61%) SSL
11 7 (0.53%) FTP
11 7 (0.53%) IMAP
11 7 (0.53%) Internet
11 7 (0.53%) OpenLDAP
11 7 (0.53%) SSH
12 6 (0.45%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (5.22%) Power BI
2 45 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
3 26 (1.97%) Metadata
4 20 (1.51%) Data Lake
5 19 (1.44%) SQL Server
6 18 (1.36%) Amazon RDS
7 14 (1.06%) Data Warehouse
7 14 (1.06%) MongoDB
7 14 (1.06%) NoSQL
8 13 (0.98%) Relational Database
9 12 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
10 10 (0.76%) Oracle Database
10 10 (0.76%) Power Query
11 9 (0.68%) Data Hub
12 8 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
13 7 (0.53%) Amazon Aurora
13 7 (0.53%) DynamoDB
13 7 (0.53%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 7 (0.53%) Tableau
14 6 (0.45%) Oracle BI Publisher
Development Applications
1 81 (6.13%) JIRA
2 68 (5.15%) Git
3 33 (2.50%) GitLab
4 32 (2.42%) Jenkins
5 27 (2.04%) Postman
6 22 (1.67%) Selenium
7 7 (0.53%) JUnit
7 7 (0.53%) Vagrant
8 6 (0.45%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.38%) Gradle
9 5 (0.38%) MLflow
10 4 (0.30%) Cucumber
10 4 (0.30%) Liquibase
10 4 (0.30%) Mockito
11 3 (0.23%) Android Studio
11 3 (0.23%) Appium
11 3 (0.23%) Axure RP
11 3 (0.23%) JMeter
11 3 (0.23%) Pa11y
11 3 (0.23%) REST Assured
General
1 386 (29.22%) Social Skills
2 217 (16.43%) Finance
3 117 (8.86%) Analytical Skills
4 70 (5.30%) Telecoms
5 66 (5.00%) Marketing
6 61 (4.62%) Manufacturing
7 59 (4.47%) Local Government
8 51 (3.86%) Electronics
9 37 (2.80%) Military
10 33 (2.50%) Legal
11 30 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
12 28 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
13 20 (1.51%) Retail
14 19 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
15 16 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 16 (1.21%) Law
16 15 (1.14%) Banking
17 12 (0.91%) Police
18 11 (0.83%) Billing
Job Titles
1 180 (13.63%) Developer
2 158 (11.96%) Architect
3 151 (11.43%) Senior
4 127 (9.61%) Analyst
5 124 (9.39%) Lead
6 77 (5.83%) Business Analyst
7 66 (5.00%) Consultant
8 61 (4.62%) Designer
9 58 (4.39%) DevOps Engineer
10 42 (3.18%) Project Manager
11 39 (2.95%) Solutions Architect
11 39 (2.95%) User Researcher
12 35 (2.65%) Data Engineer
13 34 (2.57%) AWS Engineer
14 33 (2.50%) Service Designer
15 32 (2.42%) Technical Architect
16 28 (2.12%) Senior Developer
17 27 (2.04%) Azure Engineer
18 26 (1.97%) Senior Analyst
19 25 (1.89%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (4.84%) REST
2 41 (3.10%) Oracle Fusion
3 38 (2.88%) RESTful
4 37 (2.80%) React
5 32 (2.42%) Web Services
6 31 (2.35%) .NET
6 31 (2.35%) Node.js
7 30 (2.27%) JSON
8 27 (2.04%) AngularJS
8 27 (2.04%) SOAP
8 27 (2.04%) Spring
9 26 (1.97%) HTML
10 25 (1.89%) Kafka
11 23 (1.74%) CSS
11 23 (1.74%) Lightning Web Components
11 23 (1.74%) Spring Boot
12 22 (1.67%) XML
13 18 (1.36%) OAuth
14 13 (0.98%) LangChain
14 13 (0.98%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 67 (5.07%) Cloud Native
2 50 (3.79%) Onboarding
3 38 (2.88%) Legacy Systems
4 37 (2.80%) Product Ownership
5 30 (2.27%) Data Centre
6 25 (1.89%) AI Agents
7 24 (1.82%) NHS
8 18 (1.36%) Management Information System
9 17 (1.29%) Public Cloud
9 17 (1.29%) Replication
10 15 (1.14%) Security Posture
11 14 (1.06%) Data Structures
11 14 (1.06%) Virtual Team
12 12 (0.91%) Enterprise Software
12 12 (0.91%) Security Operations Centre
13 11 (0.83%) Data Protection Act
14 10 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
14 10 (0.76%) Distributed Systems
15 9 (0.68%) Cyber Threat
15 9 (0.68%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 50 (3.79%) Linux
2 45 (3.41%) Windows
3 16 (1.21%) Mac OS
4 14 (1.06%) VMS
5 13 (0.98%) Android
6 7 (0.53%) Amazon Linux
6 7 (0.53%) Ubuntu
7 6 (0.45%) Unix
7 6 (0.45%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.30%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.23%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.076%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 336 (25.44%) Agile
2 200 (15.14%) CI/CD
3 173 (13.10%) DevOps
4 170 (12.87%) Stakeholder Management
5 161 (12.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 149 (11.28%) Problem-Solving
7 127 (9.61%) Business Intelligence
8 125 (9.46%) AI
9 111 (8.40%) Continuous Improvement
9 111 (8.40%) Roadmaps
10 106 (8.02%) Decision-Making
11 99 (7.49%) Migration
12 92 (6.96%) Infrastructure as Code
13 88 (6.66%) User Research
14 87 (6.59%) Analytics
15 84 (6.36%) Containerisation
16 75 (5.68%) Project Management
16 75 (5.68%) Test Automation
17 74 (5.60%) Digital Transformation Programme
18 72 (5.45%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 160 (12.11%) Python
2 127 (9.61%) SQL
3 81 (6.13%) Java
4 65 (4.92%) JavaScript
5 41 (3.10%) PowerShell
6 38 (2.88%) C#
7 34 (2.57%) TypeScript
8 30 (2.27%) Ruby
9 22 (1.67%) Bash
10 21 (1.59%) Apex Code
11 13 (0.98%) PL/SQL
12 11 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 10 (0.76%) Go
14 8 (0.61%) R
15 7 (0.53%) Bicep
15 7 (0.53%) C
15 7 (0.53%) Groovy
16 6 (0.45%) Kotlin
17 4 (0.30%) C++
17 4 (0.30%) JSX
Qualifications
1 773 (58.52%) Security Cleared
2 572 (43.30%) SC Cleared
3 68 (5.15%) Degree
4 47 (3.56%) DV Cleared
5 28 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
6 27 (2.04%) Azure Certification
7 19 (1.44%) AWS Certification
8 17 (1.29%) CISSP
9 15 (1.14%) PMP
10 12 (0.91%) CISM
10 12 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
10 12 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
11 10 (0.76%) APMP
11 10 (0.76%) OSCP
11 10 (0.76%) PMI Certification
12 9 (0.68%) CIMA
13 8 (0.61%) ACCA
13 8 (0.61%) ISTQB
13 8 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
14 7 (0.53%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 59 (4.47%) Accessibility
2 53 (4.01%) GDPR
3 52 (3.94%) QA
4 43 (3.26%) Data Quality
5 40 (3.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 29 (2.20%) NIST
7 28 (2.12%) NCSC
8 24 (1.82%) PMO
9 14 (1.06%) GRC
10 11 (0.83%) WCAG
11 10 (0.76%) Actionable Recommendations
11 10 (0.76%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials
13 5 (0.38%) NIST 800
13 5 (0.38%) SLA
14 4 (0.30%) PCI DSS
14 4 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 2 (0.15%) Government Security Classifications
16 2 (0.15%) IFRS
System Software
1 98 (7.42%) Docker
2 26 (1.97%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.61%) Squid
4 7 (0.53%) DFS Replication
4 7 (0.53%) Dovecot
4 7 (0.53%) Postfix
4 7 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.45%) VMware Infrastructure
6 5 (0.38%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.15%) vSphere
9 1 (0.076%) IAG
9 1 (0.076%) NLBS
9 1 (0.076%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.076%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 116 (8.78%) Terraform
2 107 (8.10%) Kubernetes
3 22 (1.67%) Grafana
4 20 (1.51%) Ansible
5 19 (1.44%) Prometheus
6 8 (0.61%) Jamf Pro
6 8 (0.61%) Nessus
7 7 (0.53%) Packer
7 7 (0.53%) Proxmox
7 7 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (0.45%) Argo
9 5 (0.38%) Consul
9 5 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (0.30%) SCCM
11 3 (0.23%) CSIRT
11 3 (0.23%) FortiGate
11 3 (0.23%) QRadar
12 2 (0.15%) CloudHub
12 2 (0.15%) Fluentd
12 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 152 (11.51%) Microsoft
2 92 (6.96%) SAP
3 81 (6.13%) Oracle
4 64 (4.84%) Salesforce
5 41 (3.10%) ServiceNow
6 30 (2.27%) Cisco
7 27 (2.04%) Databricks
8 18 (1.36%) VMware
9 17 (1.29%) Google
9 17 (1.29%) MuleSoft
10 16 (1.21%) Apple
10 16 (1.21%) Splunk
11 15 (1.14%) Palo Alto
12 14 (1.06%) Virgin Media
13 13 (0.98%) Fortinet
14 11 (0.83%) Dell
15 10 (0.76%) HP
16 9 (0.68%) CyberArk
16 9 (0.68%) Juniper
17 8 (0.61%) Foundry