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 31 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 23 18
Rank change year-on-year 0 -5 +11
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,605 1,060 1,516
As % of all contract jobs in London 9.53% 8.39% 8.39%
As % of the General category 15.37% 12.55% 13.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,205 758 1,046
10th Percentile £382 £374 £369
25th Percentile £433 £453 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.42% -4.36%
75th Percentile £602 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £745
England median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 17 12
10th Percentile - £18.03 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.50 £22.00 £15.38
Median hourly rate £25.39 £32.50 £18.25
Median % change year-on-year -21.89% +78.08% -10.63%
75th Percentile £43.75 £47.50 £35.06
90th Percentile £74.95 £66.50 £68.70
England median hourly rate £22.09 £23.25 £21.73
% change year-on-year -5.00% +6.99% +8.65%

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 10,445 8,443 11,444
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 62.01% 66.85% 63.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,804 5,707 8,162
10th Percentile £350 £336 £330
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 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 140 254
10th Percentile £17.50 £17.99 £15.65
25th Percentile £20.82 £24.66 £18.39
Median hourly rate £35.00 £35.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year - +16.67% -7.69%
75th Percentile £49.06 £55.06 £49.77
90th Percentile £73.13 £77.59 £72.13
England median hourly rate £25.77 £30.00 £26.03
% change year-on-year -14.10% +15.25% -25.63%

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 31 March 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 31 March 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 31 March 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 -2 149 £525 - 101
South London 0 67 £500 +2.04% 4
East London 0 8 £750 +30.43% 13
North London -2 5 £650 +128.07% 4
West London -28 5 £506 +26.56% 11
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 63 (3.93%) Confluence
2 38 (2.37%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.69%) nginx
4 10 (0.62%) Apache
4 10 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
5 8 (0.50%) Apache Spark
6 6 (0.37%) Tomcat
7 5 (0.31%) Camunda
8 4 (0.25%) CMS
8 4 (0.25%) SAS
9 3 (0.19%) ArcGIS
9 3 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.19%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.12%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.12%) OpenROAD
11 1 (0.062%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.062%) JBoss
11 1 (0.062%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.062%) WebSphere
Applications
1 51 (3.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (1.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 14 (0.87%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.31%) Sketch
5 5 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.31%) Trello
6 4 (0.25%) Adobe XD
7 3 (0.19%) Adobe After Effects
7 3 (0.19%) InVision
8 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.062%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.062%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.062%) OmniGraffle
9 1 (0.062%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.062%) Siemens NX
9 1 (0.062%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 22 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
4 9 (0.56%) SAP Payroll
5 8 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.31%) iTrent
7 4 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 3 (0.19%) 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 (0.062%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 1 (0.062%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 1 (0.062%) Payment Gateway
10 1 (0.062%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 358 (22.31%) AWS
2 300 (18.69%) Azure
3 97 (6.04%) Power Platform
4 90 (5.61%) Serverless
5 70 (4.36%) GitHub
6 67 (4.17%) Azure DevOps
7 59 (3.68%) GCP
8 56 (3.49%) AWS Lambda
9 50 (3.12%) Amazon S3
9 50 (3.12%) Microsoft 365
10 41 (2.55%) GitHub Actions
11 40 (2.49%) AWS CloudFormation
12 38 (2.37%) Amazon EKS
13 36 (2.24%) OCI
14 35 (2.18%) Dynamics 365
15 34 (2.12%) Amazon EC2
16 31 (1.93%) Entra ID
17 30 (1.87%) Power Automate
17 30 (1.87%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 29 (1.81%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.68%) Network Security
2 25 (1.56%) Firewall
3 17 (1.06%) DNS
4 15 (0.93%) VPN
4 15 (0.93%) WAN
5 14 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
6 13 (0.81%) LAN
7 12 (0.75%) Wireless
8 10 (0.62%) TCP/IP
9 7 (0.44%) BGP
9 7 (0.44%) Internet
9 7 (0.44%) OSPF
10 6 (0.37%) NGFW
10 6 (0.37%) SD-WAN
10 6 (0.37%) WLAN
11 4 (0.25%) DHCP
11 4 (0.25%) HTTP
11 4 (0.25%) SSL
12 3 (0.19%) 5G
12 3 (0.19%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (4.74%) Power BI
2 37 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
3 28 (1.74%) Metadata
4 27 (1.68%) Data Warehouse
5 26 (1.62%) SQL Server
6 24 (1.50%) Amazon RDS
7 21 (1.31%) Data Lake
8 17 (1.06%) MongoDB
8 17 (1.06%) NoSQL
9 15 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
9 15 (0.93%) Tableau
10 13 (0.81%) Delta Lake
11 11 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
11 11 (0.69%) DynamoDB
12 9 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
12 9 (0.56%) Data Hub
12 9 (0.56%) Relational Database
13 7 (0.44%) GIS
13 7 (0.44%) Oracle Reports
13 7 (0.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 90 (5.61%) Git
2 88 (5.48%) JIRA
3 48 (2.99%) GitLab
4 42 (2.62%) Jenkins
5 23 (1.43%) Postman
5 23 (1.43%) Selenium
6 13 (0.81%) JUnit
7 10 (0.62%) Mockito
8 7 (0.44%) JMeter
8 7 (0.44%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.37%) Cypress.io
9 6 (0.37%) Liquibase
10 5 (0.31%) Artifactory
10 5 (0.31%) Gradle
10 5 (0.31%) MLflow
10 5 (0.31%) Snyk
11 4 (0.25%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.25%) CircleCI
11 4 (0.25%) Maven
12 3 (0.19%) ERwin
General
1 419 (26.11%) Social Skills
2 234 (14.58%) Finance
3 146 (9.10%) Analytical Skills
4 71 (4.42%) Local Government
5 51 (3.18%) Telecoms
6 49 (3.05%) Marketing
7 42 (2.62%) Influencing Skills
7 42 (2.62%) Manufacturing
8 40 (2.49%) Legal
8 40 (2.49%) Military
9 33 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
10 32 (1.99%) Electronics
11 28 (1.74%) Presentation Skills
12 25 (1.56%) Banking
13 22 (1.37%) Police
14 21 (1.31%) Law
14 21 (1.31%) Retail
15 18 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
16 17 (1.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 13 (0.81%) Billing
Job Titles
1 228 (14.21%) Developer
2 215 (13.40%) Architect
3 190 (11.84%) Senior
4 155 (9.66%) Analyst
5 128 (7.98%) Lead
6 88 (5.48%) Business Analyst
7 86 (5.36%) Designer
8 64 (3.99%) DevOps Engineer
9 56 (3.49%) User Researcher
10 54 (3.36%) Consultant
10 54 (3.36%) Solutions Architect
11 53 (3.30%) Data Engineer
12 51 (3.18%) Project Manager
13 48 (2.99%) Technical Architect
14 45 (2.80%) Delivery Manager
15 41 (2.55%) Senior Developer
16 38 (2.37%) Service Designer
17 37 (2.31%) Salesforce Developer
18 36 (2.24%) Security Architect
19 34 (2.12%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (3.93%) REST
2 51 (3.18%) React
3 48 (2.99%) Node.js
3 48 (2.99%) RESTful
4 40 (2.49%) Web Services
5 38 (2.37%) .NET
6 37 (2.31%) Oracle Fusion
7 35 (2.18%) AngularJS
8 33 (2.06%) Lightning Web Components
8 33 (2.06%) Spring
9 31 (1.93%) HTML
10 28 (1.74%) SOAP
11 27 (1.68%) CSS
11 27 (1.68%) Spring Boot
12 26 (1.62%) Kafka
13 24 (1.50%) JSON
14 18 (1.12%) Middleware
15 15 (0.93%) XML
16 14 (0.87%) PySpark
17 13 (0.81%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 97 (6.04%) Cloud Native
2 59 (3.68%) Onboarding
3 46 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
4 41 (2.55%) Product Ownership
5 36 (2.24%) Data Centre
6 29 (1.81%) NHS
7 23 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
8 19 (1.18%) Public Cloud
9 18 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
10 16 (1.00%) Data Structures
10 16 (1.00%) Management Information System
10 16 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
11 15 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
11 15 (0.93%) Security Posture
12 14 (0.87%) AI Agents
13 10 (0.62%) Data Protection Act
13 10 (0.62%) Greenfield Project
13 10 (0.62%) Replication
14 9 (0.56%) CMDB
14 9 (0.56%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 53 (3.30%) Windows
2 51 (3.18%) Linux
3 16 (1.00%) Windows Server
4 13 (0.81%) Android
5 12 (0.75%) Mac OS
6 8 (0.50%) Windows 10
7 7 (0.44%) Unix
7 7 (0.44%) VMS
8 5 (0.31%) Apple iOS
8 5 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (0.31%) Solaris
8 5 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
8 5 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.062%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 416 (25.92%) Agile
2 250 (15.58%) CI/CD
3 234 (14.58%) DevOps
4 213 (13.27%) Stakeholder Management
5 187 (11.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 159 (9.91%) Problem-Solving
7 150 (9.35%) Roadmaps
8 149 (9.28%) Continuous Improvement
9 146 (9.10%) Decision-Making
10 141 (8.79%) Migration
11 130 (8.10%) AI
12 125 (7.79%) Infrastructure as Code
13 122 (7.60%) Containerisation
14 118 (7.35%) Analytics
15 117 (7.29%) User Research
16 114 (7.10%) Business Intelligence
17 110 (6.85%) Data Modelling
18 106 (6.60%) Digital Transformation Programme
18 106 (6.60%) Test Automation
19 92 (5.73%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 199 (12.40%) Python
2 142 (8.85%) SQL
3 92 (5.73%) Java
4 82 (5.11%) JavaScript
5 48 (2.99%) TypeScript
6 42 (2.62%) C#
7 39 (2.43%) Ruby
8 35 (2.18%) PowerShell
9 33 (2.06%) Apex Code
10 27 (1.68%) Bash
11 14 (0.87%) PL/SQL
12 12 (0.75%) Go
12 12 (0.75%) R
13 10 (0.62%) Kotlin
13 10 (0.62%) Shell Script
14 9 (0.56%) Bicep
15 7 (0.44%) C
15 7 (0.44%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 5 (0.31%) T-SQL
17 4 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 945 (58.88%) Security Cleared
2 707 (44.05%) SC Cleared
3 58 (3.61%) Degree
4 52 (3.24%) DV Cleared
5 43 (2.68%) BPSS Clearance
6 25 (1.56%) Azure Certification
7 23 (1.43%) CISSP
8 19 (1.18%) AWS Certification
9 16 (1.00%) Cisco Certification
9 16 (1.00%) CISM
10 14 (0.87%) Microsoft Certification
10 14 (0.87%) PMP
11 11 (0.69%) APMP
11 11 (0.69%) CIMA
12 10 (0.62%) ACCA
13 9 (0.56%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 9 (0.56%) OSCP
13 9 (0.56%) PMI Certification
14 8 (0.50%) Computer Science Degree
15 7 (0.44%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (6.11%) Accessibility
2 68 (4.24%) Data Quality
3 64 (3.99%) QA
4 51 (3.18%) GDPR
5 39 (2.43%) PMO
6 37 (2.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 36 (2.24%) NCSC
8 35 (2.18%) WCAG
9 20 (1.25%) NIST
10 15 (0.93%) GRC
11 13 (0.81%) Actionable Recommendations
12 11 (0.69%) SLA
13 8 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
13 8 (0.50%) PCI DSS
14 7 (0.44%) Government Security Classifications
15 5 (0.31%) NIST 800
16 4 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 4 (0.25%) IFRS
17 3 (0.19%) HIPAA
17 3 (0.19%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 125 (7.79%) Docker
2 29 (1.81%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
5 5 (0.31%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
6 3 (0.19%) vSphere
7 2 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.12%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.062%) FreeRADIUS
8 1 (0.062%) IAG
8 1 (0.062%) NLBS
8 1 (0.062%) Postfix
8 1 (0.062%) Sendmail
8 1 (0.062%) Squid
8 1 (0.062%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 147 (9.16%) Terraform
2 126 (7.85%) Kubernetes
3 24 (1.50%) Ansible
3 24 (1.50%) Grafana
4 20 (1.25%) Prometheus
5 11 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
6 6 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
6 6 (0.37%) Packer
7 5 (0.31%) Argo
7 5 (0.31%) Consul
7 5 (0.31%) SCCM
8 4 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
9 3 (0.19%) FortiGate
9 3 (0.19%) Oracle RMAN
9 3 (0.19%) Puppet
9 3 (0.19%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Clustering
10 2 (0.12%) Progress Chef
10 2 (0.12%) vRealize
11 1 (0.062%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 165 (10.28%) Microsoft
2 88 (5.48%) Oracle
2 88 (5.48%) Salesforce
3 68 (4.24%) SAP
4 51 (3.18%) Databricks
5 43 (2.68%) ServiceNow
6 27 (1.68%) Google
7 25 (1.56%) Cisco
8 23 (1.43%) VMware
9 20 (1.25%) IBM
9 20 (1.25%) MuleSoft
10 16 (1.00%) Atlassian
11 12 (0.75%) Red Hat
11 12 (0.75%) Splunk
11 12 (0.75%) Virgin Media
12 11 (0.69%) Palo Alto
13 10 (0.62%) Foundry
14 9 (0.56%) Fortinet
14 9 (0.56%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.50%) Apple