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 4 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 24 18
Rank change year-on-year +3 -6 +9
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,638 1,014 1,516
As % of all contract jobs in London 9.27% 8.07% 8.57%
As % of the General category 15.39% 11.94% 13.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,237 747 1,062
10th Percentile £382 £388 £375
25th Percentile £448 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -4.44%
75th Percentile £607 £624 £650
90th Percentile £701 £750 £745
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 17 14
10th Percentile £17.42 £21.20 £15.00
25th Percentile £20.36 £22.00 £15.66
Median hourly rate £37.00 £26.45 £18.13
Median % change year-on-year +39.89% +45.89% -20.17%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £25.73
90th Percentile £74.65 £75.75 £65.90
England median hourly rate £22.57 £22.50 £21.62
% change year-on-year +0.30% +4.09% +5.85%

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 10,640 8,490 11,166
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 60.22% 67.55% 63.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,918 5,734 7,967
10th Percentile £347 £340 £335
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £668 £713 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £813
England median daily rate £505 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -3.81% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 195 137 244
10th Percentile £18.37 £15.84 £16.00
25th Percentile £21.93 £22.66 £18.25
Median hourly rate £35.00 £34.00 £28.25
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% +20.35% -11.50%
75th Percentile £49.38 £51.18 £43.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £64.86
England median hourly rate £30.50 £27.50 £30.16
% change year-on-year +10.91% -8.82% -7.20%

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 4 May 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 4 May 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 4 May 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 0 156 £550 +4.76% 107
South London 0 68 £500 +1.52% 7
East London -8 7 £750 +27.66% 18
West London -30 6 £506 +26.56% 14
North London -2 4 £450 +11.25%
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 71 (4.33%) Confluence
2 34 (2.08%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.67%) Apache Spark
3 11 (0.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (0.61%) Apache
5 8 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (0.49%) CMS
5 8 (0.49%) Palantir Foundry
6 7 (0.43%) nginx
7 6 (0.37%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.31%) Camunda
9 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.12%) Drupal
10 2 (0.12%) OpenROAD
10 2 (0.12%) SAS
11 1 (0.061%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.061%) Sitecore CMS
11 1 (0.061%) Skype for Business
11 1 (0.061%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.061%) WordPress
Applications
1 47 (2.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 15 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.31%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.31%) Trello
6 3 (0.18%) Adobe After Effects
6 3 (0.18%) Adobe XD
6 3 (0.18%) Sketch
7 2 (0.12%) InVision
8 1 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.061%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.061%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 27 (1.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.79%) Oracle ERP
4 8 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
5 6 (0.37%) iTrent
5 6 (0.37%) SAP Payroll
6 5 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 4 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.18%) Exchequer
9 2 (0.12%) Integrated Workplace Management System
9 2 (0.12%) Loan IQ
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Payroll
9 2 (0.12%) SAP ERP
9 2 (0.12%) SAP GRC
9 2 (0.12%) SAP HCM
9 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
10 1 (0.061%) Oracle Assets
10 1 (0.061%) Oracle Cash Management
10 1 (0.061%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 1 (0.061%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 358 (21.86%) AWS
2 306 (18.68%) Azure
3 102 (6.23%) Power Platform
4 81 (4.95%) Serverless
5 67 (4.09%) GitHub
6 65 (3.97%) GCP
7 61 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
8 54 (3.30%) Microsoft 365
9 53 (3.24%) Amazon S3
10 51 (3.11%) AWS Lambda
11 39 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
12 38 (2.32%) AWS CloudFormation
12 38 (2.32%) Dynamics 365
12 38 (2.32%) Entra ID
13 37 (2.26%) Amazon EKS
14 35 (2.14%) Amazon EC2
15 34 (2.08%) OCI
15 34 (2.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 32 (1.95%) SaaS
17 31 (1.89%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.83%) Firewall
2 27 (1.65%) Network Security
3 19 (1.16%) DNS
4 14 (0.85%) VPN
5 13 (0.79%) WAN
5 13 (0.79%) Wi-Fi
6 12 (0.73%) LAN
7 8 (0.49%) NGFW
7 8 (0.49%) TCP/IP
8 7 (0.43%) DKIM
8 7 (0.43%) Internet
8 7 (0.43%) Wireless
9 6 (0.37%) BGP
9 6 (0.37%) OSPF
10 5 (0.31%) DMARC
10 5 (0.31%) SD-WAN
10 5 (0.31%) WLAN
11 4 (0.24%) HTTP
11 4 (0.24%) Reverse Proxy
11 4 (0.24%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 74 (4.52%) Power BI
2 33 (2.01%) PostgreSQL
3 28 (1.71%) Data Warehouse
4 27 (1.65%) Metadata
5 24 (1.47%) Amazon RDS
6 23 (1.40%) SQL Server
7 22 (1.34%) Data Lake
8 20 (1.22%) MongoDB
9 18 (1.10%) NoSQL
10 15 (0.92%) Tableau
11 14 (0.85%) Delta Lake
12 12 (0.73%) Amazon Athena
12 12 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
13 11 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
14 10 (0.61%) DynamoDB
15 9 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
16 8 (0.49%) Amazon QuickSight
17 7 (0.43%) Data Hub
17 7 (0.43%) GIS
17 7 (0.43%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 98 (5.98%) JIRA
2 91 (5.56%) Git
3 53 (3.24%) GitLab
4 50 (3.05%) Jenkins
5 21 (1.28%) Selenium
6 20 (1.22%) Postman
7 15 (0.92%) JUnit
8 13 (0.79%) Mockito
9 10 (0.61%) SonarQube
10 8 (0.49%) CircleCI
10 8 (0.49%) Cypress.io
11 7 (0.43%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.43%) Snyk
12 6 (0.37%) JMeter
13 5 (0.31%) Gradle
13 5 (0.31%) Liquibase
13 5 (0.31%) Maven
14 4 (0.24%) Bitbucket
14 4 (0.24%) Cucumber
14 4 (0.24%) MLflow
General
1 391 (23.87%) Social Skills
2 216 (13.19%) Finance
3 142 (8.67%) Analytical Skills
4 76 (4.64%) Local Government
5 50 (3.05%) Military
6 45 (2.75%) Influencing Skills
6 45 (2.75%) Telecoms
7 41 (2.50%) Marketing
8 34 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
9 32 (1.95%) Banking
10 30 (1.83%) Legal
11 28 (1.71%) Organisational Skills
12 27 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 26 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
14 25 (1.53%) Law
15 24 (1.47%) Manufacturing
16 23 (1.40%) Police
17 19 (1.16%) Retail
18 18 (1.10%) Electronics
19 11 (0.67%) Billing
Job Titles
1 237 (14.47%) Developer
2 226 (13.80%) Architect
3 175 (10.68%) Senior
4 153 (9.34%) Lead
5 136 (8.30%) Analyst
6 91 (5.56%) Designer
7 76 (4.64%) Business Analyst
8 66 (4.03%) DevOps Engineer
9 56 (3.42%) User Researcher
10 55 (3.36%) Consultant
11 53 (3.24%) Project Manager
12 52 (3.17%) Data Engineer
13 49 (2.99%) Technical Architect
14 48 (2.93%) Solutions Architect
15 44 (2.69%) Delivery Manager
16 41 (2.50%) Senior Developer
17 39 (2.38%) Salesforce Developer
18 38 (2.32%) Azure Engineer
18 38 (2.32%) Service Designer
19 36 (2.20%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (3.42%) REST
2 49 (2.99%) RESTful
3 47 (2.87%) React
4 46 (2.81%) Node.js
5 42 (2.56%) Spring
6 38 (2.32%) Oracle Fusion
7 36 (2.20%) Lightning Web Components
7 36 (2.20%) Spring Boot
8 35 (2.14%) Web Services
9 34 (2.08%) HTML
10 33 (2.01%) .NET
11 31 (1.89%) AngularJS
12 27 (1.65%) Kafka
13 25 (1.53%) SOAP
14 23 (1.40%) CSS
15 18 (1.10%) JSON
16 17 (1.04%) Middleware
17 15 (0.92%) PySpark
18 14 (0.85%) OAuth
19 12 (0.73%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 104 (6.35%) Cloud Native
2 61 (3.72%) Onboarding
3 49 (2.99%) Legacy Systems
4 41 (2.50%) Product Ownership
5 34 (2.08%) NHS
6 31 (1.89%) Data Centre
7 24 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
8 23 (1.40%) Management Information System
9 22 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
10 17 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
11 16 (0.98%) Public Cloud
12 15 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
13 13 (0.79%) Analytical Mindset
13 13 (0.79%) Data Structures
14 12 (0.73%) AI Agents
15 11 (0.67%) CMDB
15 11 (0.67%) Enterprise Cloud
15 11 (0.67%) Security Posture
16 10 (0.61%) Low-Code
17 9 (0.55%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 48 (2.93%) Linux
1 48 (2.93%) Windows
2 14 (0.85%) Windows Server
3 11 (0.67%) Android
4 9 (0.55%) Windows 10
5 7 (0.43%) Apple iOS
6 6 (0.37%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.37%) VMS
7 5 (0.31%) Solaris
7 5 (0.31%) Unix
7 5 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
7 5 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
8 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (0.12%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.061%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 407 (24.85%) Agile
2 258 (15.75%) CI/CD
3 249 (15.20%) DevOps
4 214 (13.06%) Stakeholder Management
5 183 (11.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 154 (9.40%) Migration
7 152 (9.28%) Continuous Improvement
7 152 (9.28%) Roadmaps
8 151 (9.22%) Decision-Making
9 144 (8.79%) Problem-Solving
10 135 (8.24%) Infrastructure as Code
11 134 (8.18%) AI
12 131 (8.00%) Containerisation
13 126 (7.69%) Analytics
14 122 (7.45%) User Research
15 115 (7.02%) Data Modelling
16 107 (6.53%) Test Automation
17 102 (6.23%) Digital Transformation Programme
18 101 (6.17%) Service Design
19 97 (5.92%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 193 (11.78%) Python
2 137 (8.36%) SQL
3 110 (6.72%) Java
4 79 (4.82%) JavaScript
5 54 (3.30%) TypeScript
6 38 (2.32%) C#
7 37 (2.26%) Ruby
8 36 (2.20%) Apex Code
9 35 (2.14%) PowerShell
10 26 (1.59%) Bash
11 17 (1.04%) PL/SQL
12 14 (0.85%) Bicep
13 12 (0.73%) Kotlin
13 12 (0.73%) R
14 10 (0.61%) Go
14 10 (0.61%) Shell Script
15 8 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 5 (0.31%) C
16 5 (0.31%) T-SQL
17 4 (0.24%) Scala
Qualifications
1 921 (56.23%) Security Cleared
2 695 (42.43%) SC Cleared
3 67 (4.09%) DV Cleared
4 54 (3.30%) Degree
5 47 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
6 27 (1.65%) Azure Certification
7 25 (1.53%) CISSP
8 21 (1.28%) AWS Certification
9 17 (1.04%) Cisco Certification
10 15 (0.92%) CISM
10 15 (0.92%) Microsoft Certification
11 13 (0.79%) PMP
12 11 (0.67%) APMP
13 10 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 10 (0.61%) CIMA
14 9 (0.55%) ACCA
15 8 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
15 8 (0.49%) PMI Certification
16 7 (0.43%) ISTQB
16 7 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 110 (6.72%) Accessibility
2 72 (4.40%) Data Quality
3 70 (4.27%) QA
4 46 (2.81%) WCAG
5 42 (2.56%) GDPR
6 39 (2.38%) PMO
7 36 (2.20%) NCSC
8 29 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 13 (0.79%) NIST
10 12 (0.73%) SLA
11 11 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
11 11 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
11 11 (0.67%) GRC
12 9 (0.55%) PCI DSS
13 7 (0.43%) Government Security Classifications
14 6 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 5 (0.31%) IFRS
16 4 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 4 (0.24%) IFRS 9
16 4 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 124 (7.57%) Docker
2 33 (2.01%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.49%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
5 4 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (0.18%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.12%) Postfix
7 2 (0.12%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.12%) vSphere
8 1 (0.061%) FreeRADIUS
8 1 (0.061%) IAG
8 1 (0.061%) NLBS
8 1 (0.061%) Sendmail
8 1 (0.061%) Squid
8 1 (0.061%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 151 (9.22%) Terraform
2 131 (8.00%) Kubernetes
3 32 (1.95%) Grafana
4 29 (1.77%) Ansible
4 29 (1.77%) Prometheus
5 12 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
6 6 (0.37%) Kibana
6 6 (0.37%) Puppet
6 6 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
7 5 (0.31%) Argo
8 3 (0.18%) Consul
8 3 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle RMAN
8 3 (0.18%) Salt
8 3 (0.18%) SCCM
8 3 (0.18%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Clustering
9 2 (0.12%) Packer
9 2 (0.12%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.061%) CloudHub
Vendors
1 174 (10.62%) Microsoft
2 90 (5.49%) Oracle
2 90 (5.49%) Salesforce
3 56 (3.42%) SAP
4 49 (2.99%) Databricks
5 43 (2.63%) ServiceNow
6 35 (2.14%) Google
7 21 (1.28%) Cisco
8 19 (1.16%) Foundry
8 19 (1.16%) IBM
9 18 (1.10%) MuleSoft
10 16 (0.98%) Atlassian
10 16 (0.98%) VMware
11 12 (0.73%) OpenAI
11 12 (0.73%) Red Hat
11 12 (0.73%) Splunk
11 12 (0.73%) Virgin Media
12 10 (0.61%) Fortinet
12 10 (0.61%) Palo Alto
13 9 (0.55%) ForgeRock