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 20 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -1 -4 +16
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,459 1,217 1,557
As % of all contract jobs in London 9.33% 8.98% 8.48%
As % of the General category 14.63% 13.71% 13.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,068 772 1,074
10th Percentile £381 £350 £385
25th Percentile £431 £438 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £600 £629 £650
90th Percentile £675 £761 £743
England median daily rate £500 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 18 12
10th Percentile - £18.52 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.50 £22.00 £15.86
Median hourly rate £25.00 £29.50 £19.75
Median % change year-on-year -15.25% +49.37% -3.28%
75th Percentile £41.25 £41.18 £35.06
90th Percentile £53.00 £65.00 £77.03
England median hourly rate £22.00 £25.00 £21.00
% change year-on-year -12.00% +19.05% +5.00%

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 9,970 8,877 11,638
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 63.75% 65.53% 63.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,486 5,656 8,319
10th Percentile £350 £327 £336
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £800
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 171 114 254
10th Percentile £17.50 £20.14 £16.00
25th Percentile £20.62 £26.06 £18.84
Median hourly rate £31.49 £38.56 £29.36
Median % change year-on-year -18.32% +31.32% +3.02%
75th Percentile £49.38 £55.25 £48.69
90th Percentile £72.50 £78.65 £73.72
England median hourly rate £23.00 £30.31 £26.00
% change year-on-year -24.10% +16.56% -13.33%

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 20 February 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 20 February 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 20 February 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 -6 148 £538 +2.38% 66
South London +5 64 £500 - 17
West London -29 7 £531 +91.44% 13
North London -2 5 £650 +154.90% 6
East London -4 5 £638 +10.87% 14
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 61 (4.18%) Confluence
2 38 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 13 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
4 11 (0.75%) nginx
5 9 (0.62%) Apache
6 7 (0.48%) Apache Spark
6 7 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
7 4 (0.27%) CMS
7 4 (0.27%) SAS
8 3 (0.21%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.14%) Camunda
9 2 (0.14%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.14%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.069%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.069%) Appian
10 1 (0.069%) GeoServer
10 1 (0.069%) JBoss
10 1 (0.069%) Moodle
10 1 (0.069%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.069%) WebLogic
Applications
1 50 (3.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (1.17%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
3 8 (0.55%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.34%) Adobe XD
5 4 (0.27%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.27%) Sketch
5 4 (0.27%) Trello
6 3 (0.21%) InVision
6 3 (0.21%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 2 (0.14%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.069%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.069%) OmniGraffle
8 1 (0.069%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.069%) Siemens NX
8 1 (0.069%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 20 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (1.03%) Oracle ERP
2 15 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.62%) SAP Payroll
4 6 (0.41%) iTrent
5 5 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
6 3 (0.21%) Exchequer
6 3 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
7 2 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
7 2 (0.14%) SAP Business One
7 2 (0.14%) SAP ERP
7 2 (0.14%) SAP GRC
7 2 (0.14%) SAP HCM
7 2 (0.14%) SAP HR
7 2 (0.14%) Workday HCM
8 1 (0.069%) Oracle Cash Management
8 1 (0.069%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 299 (20.49%) AWS
2 274 (18.78%) Azure
3 97 (6.65%) Power Platform
4 84 (5.76%) Serverless
5 65 (4.46%) GitHub
6 60 (4.11%) Azure DevOps
7 52 (3.56%) AWS Lambda
7 52 (3.56%) GCP
8 47 (3.22%) Microsoft 365
9 42 (2.88%) Amazon S3
10 38 (2.60%) GitHub Actions
11 36 (2.47%) OCI
12 35 (2.40%) Dynamics 365
13 33 (2.26%) AWS CloudFormation
14 30 (2.06%) Amazon ECS
14 30 (2.06%) Amazon EKS
14 30 (2.06%) Power Automate
15 26 (1.78%) Entra ID
16 25 (1.71%) Amazon EC2
17 24 (1.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.85%) Firewall
2 25 (1.71%) Network Security
3 17 (1.17%) DNS
4 16 (1.10%) Wireless
5 15 (1.03%) WAN
6 14 (0.96%) VPN
6 14 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
7 11 (0.75%) LAN
7 11 (0.75%) TCP/IP
8 10 (0.69%) BGP
8 10 (0.69%) OSPF
9 7 (0.48%) SD-WAN
10 6 (0.41%) Internet
11 5 (0.34%) HTTP
11 5 (0.34%) NGFW
11 5 (0.34%) SSL
12 4 (0.27%) Cisco Wireless
12 4 (0.27%) SMTP
12 4 (0.27%) WLAN
13 3 (0.21%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 74 (5.07%) Power BI
2 38 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
3 25 (1.71%) Data Lake
4 23 (1.58%) Metadata
5 22 (1.51%) Amazon RDS
6 20 (1.37%) Data Warehouse
6 20 (1.37%) SQL Server
7 15 (1.03%) Azure SQL Database
7 15 (1.03%) NoSQL
8 14 (0.96%) MongoDB
9 13 (0.89%) Relational Database
10 12 (0.82%) Tableau
11 10 (0.69%) Amazon Athena
12 9 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
12 9 (0.62%) Data Hub
12 9 (0.62%) Delta Lake
12 9 (0.62%) DynamoDB
13 8 (0.55%) BigQuery
13 8 (0.55%) Power Query
13 8 (0.55%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 86 (5.89%) JIRA
2 68 (4.66%) Git
3 41 (2.81%) GitLab
4 36 (2.47%) Jenkins
5 28 (1.92%) Postman
6 23 (1.58%) Selenium
7 10 (0.69%) JUnit
8 7 (0.48%) Cypress.io
9 6 (0.41%) JMeter
9 6 (0.41%) MLflow
10 5 (0.34%) Gradle
10 5 (0.34%) Liquibase
10 5 (0.34%) Mockito
11 4 (0.27%) Cucumber
12 3 (0.21%) Android Studio
12 3 (0.21%) Appium
12 3 (0.21%) Axure RP
12 3 (0.21%) Bitbucket
12 3 (0.21%) Pa11y
12 3 (0.21%) Vagrant
General
1 413 (28.31%) Social Skills
2 229 (15.70%) Finance
3 129 (8.84%) Analytical Skills
4 65 (4.46%) Telecoms
5 60 (4.11%) Local Government
6 59 (4.04%) Marketing
7 54 (3.70%) Manufacturing
8 44 (3.02%) Electronics
9 39 (2.67%) Military
10 33 (2.26%) Legal
11 30 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
12 29 (1.99%) Influencing Skills
13 28 (1.92%) Presentation Skills
14 22 (1.51%) Banking
15 21 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
16 20 (1.37%) Retail
17 18 (1.23%) Law
18 15 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 14 (0.96%) Police
20 11 (0.75%) Billing
Job Titles
1 186 (12.75%) Developer
2 183 (12.54%) Senior
3 180 (12.34%) Architect
4 145 (9.94%) Analyst
5 117 (8.02%) Lead
6 88 (6.03%) Business Analyst
7 79 (5.41%) Designer
8 68 (4.66%) DevOps Engineer
9 53 (3.63%) Consultant
10 51 (3.50%) User Researcher
11 44 (3.02%) Project Manager
12 41 (2.81%) Data Engineer
12 41 (2.81%) Solutions Architect
13 39 (2.67%) Service Designer
14 36 (2.47%) Technical Architect
15 35 (2.40%) AWS Engineer
16 33 (2.26%) Senior Developer
17 32 (2.19%) Azure Engineer
18 31 (2.12%) Security Architect
19 28 (1.92%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (4.04%) REST
2 40 (2.74%) Node.js
3 39 (2.67%) React
3 39 (2.67%) RESTful
4 38 (2.60%) Oracle Fusion
5 34 (2.33%) Web Services
6 33 (2.26%) .NET
7 31 (2.12%) Spring
8 29 (1.99%) JSON
9 28 (1.92%) AngularJS
10 27 (1.85%) CSS
10 27 (1.85%) HTML
11 26 (1.78%) SOAP
12 24 (1.64%) Kafka
12 24 (1.64%) Spring Boot
13 23 (1.58%) Lightning Web Components
14 18 (1.23%) XML
15 17 (1.17%) OAuth
16 14 (0.96%) Pandas
16 14 (0.96%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 75 (5.14%) Cloud Native
2 57 (3.91%) Onboarding
3 39 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
3 39 (2.67%) Product Ownership
4 36 (2.47%) Data Centre
5 26 (1.78%) NHS
6 23 (1.58%) AI Agents
7 19 (1.30%) Management Information System
8 18 (1.23%) Public Cloud
9 16 (1.10%) Security Posture
10 15 (1.03%) Enterprise Software
11 12 (0.82%) Distributed Systems
11 12 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
11 12 (0.82%) Replication
11 12 (0.82%) Self-Motivation
12 11 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
13 10 (0.69%) Data Protection Act
13 10 (0.69%) Greenfield Project
14 9 (0.62%) Data Structures
15 8 (0.55%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 52 (3.56%) Linux
2 51 (3.50%) Windows
3 19 (1.30%) Mac OS
4 17 (1.17%) Android
5 10 (0.69%) VMS
5 10 (0.69%) Windows Server
6 7 (0.48%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.34%) Unix
8 4 (0.27%) Amazon Linux
8 4 (0.27%) Windows 10
9 3 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.21%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.14%) Solaris
10 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.069%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 368 (25.22%) Agile
2 220 (15.08%) CI/CD
3 197 (13.50%) DevOps
4 189 (12.95%) Stakeholder Management
5 162 (11.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 154 (10.56%) Problem-Solving
7 127 (8.70%) AI
7 127 (8.70%) Decision-Making
8 126 (8.64%) Continuous Improvement
9 125 (8.57%) Roadmaps
10 123 (8.43%) Migration
11 121 (8.29%) Business Intelligence
12 109 (7.47%) Infrastructure as Code
12 109 (7.47%) User Research
13 102 (6.99%) Analytics
14 98 (6.72%) Containerisation
15 83 (5.69%) Test Automation
16 82 (5.62%) Data Modelling
17 81 (5.55%) Workshop Facilitation
18 79 (5.41%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 175 (11.99%) Python
2 129 (8.84%) SQL
3 85 (5.83%) Java
4 70 (4.80%) JavaScript
5 40 (2.74%) C#
6 38 (2.60%) TypeScript
7 35 (2.40%) PowerShell
8 32 (2.19%) Ruby
9 26 (1.78%) Bash
10 22 (1.51%) Apex Code
11 13 (0.89%) Go
12 10 (0.69%) PL/SQL
13 9 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 9 (0.62%) R
14 8 (0.55%) Bicep
15 7 (0.48%) C
15 7 (0.48%) Kotlin
16 5 (0.34%) Shell Script
17 4 (0.27%) C++
17 4 (0.27%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 847 (58.05%) Security Cleared
2 624 (42.77%) SC Cleared
3 66 (4.52%) Degree
4 51 (3.50%) DV Cleared
5 39 (2.67%) BPSS Clearance
6 25 (1.71%) Azure Certification
7 19 (1.30%) CISSP
8 15 (1.03%) AWS Certification
8 15 (1.03%) CISM
9 14 (0.96%) PMP
10 12 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
11 11 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
12 10 (0.69%) APMP
12 10 (0.69%) CIMA
12 10 (0.69%) OSCP
13 9 (0.62%) ACCA
13 9 (0.62%) ISTQB
13 9 (0.62%) PMI Certification
14 8 (0.55%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 84 (5.76%) Accessibility
2 55 (3.77%) Data Quality
3 51 (3.50%) GDPR
4 50 (3.43%) QA
5 36 (2.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 30 (2.06%) PMO
7 27 (1.85%) NIST
8 25 (1.71%) NCSC
9 24 (1.64%) WCAG
10 12 (0.82%) Actionable Recommendations
10 12 (0.82%) GRC
11 10 (0.69%) HIPAA
12 8 (0.55%) SLA
13 7 (0.48%) Government Security Classifications
14 5 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
14 5 (0.34%) NIST 800
15 4 (0.27%) PCI DSS
16 3 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 3 (0.21%) IFRS
16 3 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 107 (7.33%) Docker
2 26 (1.78%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
3 8 (0.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.34%) Hyper-V
4 5 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
5 4 (0.27%) Squid
6 3 (0.21%) DFS Replication
6 3 (0.21%) Dovecot
6 3 (0.21%) Postfix
6 3 (0.21%) vSphere
7 2 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.14%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.069%) IAG
8 1 (0.069%) NLBS
8 1 (0.069%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.069%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 139 (9.53%) Terraform
2 118 (8.09%) Kubernetes
3 23 (1.58%) Grafana
4 21 (1.44%) Ansible
5 19 (1.30%) Prometheus
6 10 (0.69%) Jamf Pro
7 9 (0.62%) Microsoft Intune
8 8 (0.55%) Argo
9 7 (0.48%) Packer
9 7 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
10 5 (0.34%) Consul
10 5 (0.34%) SCCM
11 4 (0.27%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.27%) Nessus
12 3 (0.21%) Proxmox
12 3 (0.21%) vCenter Server
13 2 (0.14%) Fluentd
13 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Clustering
13 2 (0.14%) Progress Chef
13 2 (0.14%) vRealize
Vendors
1 144 (9.87%) Microsoft
2 84 (5.76%) SAP
3 78 (5.35%) Oracle
4 71 (4.87%) Salesforce
5 45 (3.08%) ServiceNow
6 37 (2.54%) Databricks
7 32 (2.19%) Cisco
8 23 (1.58%) Google
9 22 (1.51%) VMware
10 17 (1.17%) MuleSoft
10 17 (1.17%) Virgin Media
11 16 (1.10%) Apple
12 15 (1.03%) Palo Alto
12 15 (1.03%) Splunk
13 12 (0.82%) Atlassian
13 12 (0.82%) Dell
13 12 (0.82%) Red Hat
14 11 (0.75%) HP
14 11 (0.75%) Juniper
15 10 (0.69%) IBM