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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 26 19
Rank change year-on-year +4 -7 +8
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,629 943 1,483
As % of all contract jobs in London 9.02% 7.63% 8.48%
As % of the General category 15.16% 11.27% 13.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,230 681 1,049
10th Percentile £385 £400 £370
25th Percentile £450 £450 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -6.67%
75th Percentile £619 £613 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
England median daily rate £501 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.67% - -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 19 14
10th Percentile £16.75 £21.60 £15.00
25th Percentile £21.96 £22.14 £15.66
Median hourly rate £38.25 £25.08 £18.13
Median % change year-on-year +52.54% +38.31% -27.48%
75th Percentile £50.00 £56.25 £25.73
90th Percentile £76.45 £72.25 £65.90
England median hourly rate £23.83 £22.70 £21.50
% change year-on-year +4.96% +5.58% +4.17%

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 10,746 8,365 11,026
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 59.53% 67.71% 63.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,960 5,601 7,877
10th Percentile £350 £349 £336
25th Percentile £430 £440 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £565 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.42% -1.74% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £706 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £825
England median daily rate £513 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 147 233
10th Percentile £18.75 £15.84 £15.60
25th Percentile £22.50 £23.99 £18.13
Median hourly rate £35.00 £34.00 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% +21.43% -6.67%
75th Percentile £46.56 £50.75 £44.75
90th Percentile £67.40 £65.00 £65.00
England median hourly rate £30.78 £27.25 £30.16
% change year-on-year +12.95% -9.65% -5.75%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -3 148 £550 +4.76% 71
South London 0 66 £500 +1.01% 5
West London -31 10 £506 +26.56% 8
East London -8 8 £750 +27.66% 18
North London -3 2 £425 -15.00%
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 (4.36%) Confluence
2 34 (2.09%) SharePoint
3 12 (0.74%) Apache Spark
3 12 (0.74%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (0.49%) Apache
4 8 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (0.49%) Palantir Foundry
5 7 (0.43%) CMS
5 7 (0.43%) Tomcat
6 6 (0.37%) nginx
7 5 (0.31%) Camunda
8 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.12%) Drupal
9 2 (0.12%) OpenROAD
9 2 (0.12%) SAS
9 2 (0.12%) WordPress
10 1 (0.061%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.061%) Mule
10 1 (0.061%) Skype for Business
10 1 (0.061%) WebSphere
Applications
1 39 (2.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.31%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.25%) Trello
7 3 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.12%) Adobe After Effects
8 2 (0.12%) Adobe XD
8 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.12%) Sketch
9 1 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.061%) InVision
9 1 (0.061%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 23 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.86%) Oracle ERP
4 7 (0.43%) iTrent
4 7 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
5 4 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 3 (0.18%) Exchequer
6 3 (0.18%) PeopleSoft HCM
6 3 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
7 2 (0.12%) Integrated Workplace Management System
7 2 (0.12%) Oracle Financials
7 2 (0.12%) Oracle Payroll
7 2 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 2 (0.12%) SAP ERP
7 2 (0.12%) SAP HCM
7 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
8 1 (0.061%) NEC Housing
8 1 (0.061%) OpenText VIM for SAP
8 1 (0.061%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 359 (22.04%) AWS
2 286 (17.56%) Azure
3 94 (5.77%) Power Platform
4 73 (4.48%) Serverless
5 66 (4.05%) GCP
5 66 (4.05%) GitHub
6 57 (3.50%) Azure DevOps
7 56 (3.44%) Amazon S3
7 56 (3.44%) Microsoft 365
8 50 (3.07%) AWS Lambda
9 42 (2.58%) Amazon EKS
10 41 (2.52%) Amazon EC2
11 37 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
12 36 (2.21%) Dynamics 365
12 36 (2.21%) Entra ID
12 36 (2.21%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 33 (2.03%) Power Automate
13 33 (2.03%) SaaS
14 31 (1.90%) AWS CloudFormation
15 30 (1.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 29 (1.78%) Firewall
2 23 (1.41%) Network Security
3 15 (0.92%) DNS
4 10 (0.61%) LAN
4 10 (0.61%) VPN
4 10 (0.61%) WAN
5 8 (0.49%) DKIM
5 8 (0.49%) NGFW
5 8 (0.49%) TCP/IP
5 8 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
6 6 (0.37%) DMARC
7 5 (0.31%) BGP
7 5 (0.31%) OSPF
8 4 (0.25%) Reverse Proxy
8 4 (0.25%) SSL
8 4 (0.25%) Wireless
9 3 (0.18%) HTTP
9 3 (0.18%) Intranet
9 3 (0.18%) VoIP
9 3 (0.18%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 62 (3.81%) Power BI
2 37 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
3 29 (1.78%) Data Warehouse
4 28 (1.72%) Amazon RDS
4 28 (1.72%) Metadata
5 22 (1.35%) SQL Server
6 21 (1.29%) Data Lake
6 21 (1.29%) MongoDB
7 16 (0.98%) NoSQL
8 15 (0.92%) Tableau
9 14 (0.86%) Delta Lake
10 12 (0.74%) Amazon Athena
10 12 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
11 11 (0.68%) DynamoDB
12 9 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
13 8 (0.49%) Amazon QuickSight
14 7 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
14 7 (0.43%) GIS
14 7 (0.43%) MySQL
14 7 (0.43%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 96 (5.89%) JIRA
2 89 (5.46%) Git
3 56 (3.44%) GitLab
4 52 (3.19%) Jenkins
5 22 (1.35%) Selenium
6 17 (1.04%) Postman
7 12 (0.74%) JUnit
8 11 (0.68%) Mockito
9 10 (0.61%) SonarQube
10 9 (0.55%) CircleCI
11 8 (0.49%) Cypress.io
12 7 (0.43%) Artifactory
12 7 (0.43%) JMeter
12 7 (0.43%) Snyk
13 5 (0.31%) Gradle
13 5 (0.31%) Maven
14 4 (0.25%) Cucumber
14 4 (0.25%) DbUnit
14 4 (0.25%) jMock
14 4 (0.25%) MLflow
General
1 384 (23.57%) Social Skills
2 209 (12.83%) Finance
3 135 (8.29%) Analytical Skills
4 69 (4.24%) Local Government
5 58 (3.56%) Military
6 40 (2.46%) Influencing Skills
6 40 (2.46%) Telecoms
7 38 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (2.33%) Marketing
8 33 (2.03%) Banking
9 30 (1.84%) Legal
10 29 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 29 (1.78%) Organisational Skills
11 27 (1.66%) Police
12 26 (1.60%) Law
13 22 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
14 15 (0.92%) Retail
15 14 (0.86%) Manufacturing
16 13 (0.80%) Electronics
17 12 (0.74%) Billing
Job Titles
1 241 (14.79%) Developer
2 232 (14.24%) Architect
3 169 (10.37%) Senior
4 161 (9.88%) Lead
5 124 (7.61%) Analyst
6 88 (5.40%) Designer
7 70 (4.30%) Business Analyst
8 69 (4.24%) DevOps Engineer
9 61 (3.74%) User Researcher
10 52 (3.19%) Data Engineer
10 52 (3.19%) Technical Architect
11 51 (3.13%) Consultant
12 50 (3.07%) Project Manager
13 48 (2.95%) Solutions Architect
14 45 (2.76%) Delivery Manager
15 42 (2.58%) AWS Engineer
16 41 (2.52%) Salesforce Developer
17 40 (2.46%) Security Architect
17 40 (2.46%) Senior Developer
18 37 (2.27%) Service Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (3.01%) REST
2 47 (2.89%) React
2 47 (2.89%) RESTful
3 46 (2.82%) Node.js
4 40 (2.46%) Lightning Web Components
5 39 (2.39%) Spring
6 34 (2.09%) HTML
7 33 (2.03%) Oracle Fusion
7 33 (2.03%) Spring Boot
8 32 (1.96%) Web Services
9 30 (1.84%) .NET
10 29 (1.78%) Kafka
11 28 (1.72%) AngularJS
12 23 (1.41%) CSS
12 23 (1.41%) SOAP
13 19 (1.17%) Django
14 17 (1.04%) JSON
15 16 (0.98%) Middleware
16 15 (0.92%) PySpark
17 14 (0.86%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 104 (6.38%) Cloud Native
2 57 (3.50%) Onboarding
3 47 (2.89%) Legacy Systems
4 41 (2.52%) Product Ownership
5 37 (2.27%) NHS
6 28 (1.72%) Data Centre
7 27 (1.66%) Distributed Systems
8 26 (1.60%) Management Information System
9 20 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
10 15 (0.92%) Data Structures
10 15 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (0.86%) Hybrid Cloud
12 12 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
12 12 (0.74%) Public Cloud
13 11 (0.68%) AI Agents
13 11 (0.68%) CMDB
13 11 (0.68%) Enterprise Cloud
13 11 (0.68%) Freedom of Information
13 11 (0.68%) Security Posture
13 11 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 51 (3.13%) Linux
2 42 (2.58%) Windows
3 14 (0.86%) Android
4 13 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 11 (0.68%) Apple iOS
6 9 (0.55%) Windows 10
7 8 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 6 (0.37%) Mac OS
8 6 (0.37%) Solaris
8 6 (0.37%) Windows Server 2008
8 6 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
9 5 (0.31%) Unix
10 4 (0.25%) VMS
11 3 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
11 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 407 (24.98%) Agile
2 259 (15.90%) CI/CD
3 251 (15.41%) DevOps
4 219 (13.44%) Stakeholder Management
5 177 (10.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 159 (9.76%) Decision-Making
7 153 (9.39%) Continuous Improvement
8 150 (9.21%) Problem-Solving
9 148 (9.09%) Roadmaps
10 145 (8.90%) Migration
11 131 (8.04%) Infrastructure as Code
12 125 (7.67%) AI
12 125 (7.67%) Containerisation
13 122 (7.49%) Data Modelling
14 121 (7.43%) User Research
15 114 (7.00%) Analytics
16 106 (6.51%) Test Automation
17 104 (6.38%) Service Design
18 103 (6.32%) Digital Transformation Programme
19 82 (5.03%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 189 (11.60%) Python
2 135 (8.29%) SQL
3 112 (6.88%) Java
4 80 (4.91%) JavaScript
5 49 (3.01%) TypeScript
6 41 (2.52%) Apex Code
7 36 (2.21%) C#
7 36 (2.21%) Ruby
8 35 (2.15%) PowerShell
9 27 (1.66%) Bash
10 19 (1.17%) PL/SQL
11 13 (0.80%) Kotlin
12 12 (0.74%) Bicep
13 10 (0.61%) Go
13 10 (0.61%) R
13 10 (0.61%) Shell Script
14 7 (0.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 5 (0.31%) C
16 4 (0.25%) Scala
16 4 (0.25%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 920 (56.48%) Security Cleared
2 709 (43.52%) SC Cleared
3 63 (3.87%) DV Cleared
4 48 (2.95%) Degree
5 41 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
6 25 (1.53%) CISSP
7 24 (1.47%) Azure Certification
8 21 (1.29%) AWS Certification
9 18 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
10 17 (1.04%) Cisco Certification
11 14 (0.86%) CISM
12 13 (0.80%) PMP
13 12 (0.74%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 10 (0.61%) APMP
14 10 (0.61%) CIMA
15 9 (0.55%) ACCA
16 8 (0.49%) CCSP
16 8 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
16 8 (0.49%) ISTQB
16 8 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 122 (7.49%) Accessibility
2 74 (4.54%) Data Quality
3 67 (4.11%) QA
4 48 (2.95%) WCAG
5 41 (2.52%) GDPR
6 38 (2.33%) PMO
7 36 (2.21%) NCSC
8 26 (1.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 12 (0.74%) SLA
10 11 (0.68%) Actionable Recommendations
10 11 (0.68%) NIST
11 10 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials
12 8 (0.49%) PCI DSS
13 7 (0.43%) Government Security Classifications
13 7 (0.43%) GRC
14 6 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 5 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 5 (0.31%) IFRS
16 4 (0.25%) IFRS 9
17 3 (0.18%) NIST 800
System Software
1 115 (7.06%) Docker
2 31 (1.90%) Active Directory
3 5 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.18%) Postfix
5 3 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.12%) Squid
7 1 (0.061%) FreeRADIUS
7 1 (0.061%) NLBS
7 1 (0.061%) Sendmail
7 1 (0.061%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.061%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 139 (8.53%) Terraform
2 121 (7.43%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.15%) Grafana
4 32 (1.96%) Prometheus
5 31 (1.90%) Ansible
6 12 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 8 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.43%) Puppet
9 6 (0.37%) Kibana
10 5 (0.31%) Argo
11 3 (0.18%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (0.18%) Salt
12 2 (0.12%) Consul
12 2 (0.12%) Jamf Pro
12 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Clustering
12 2 (0.12%) Progress Chef
12 2 (0.12%) SCCM
13 1 (0.061%) RSA Archer
13 1 (0.061%) Suricata
13 1 (0.061%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 158 (9.70%) Microsoft
2 92 (5.65%) Salesforce
3 88 (5.40%) Oracle
4 51 (3.13%) SAP
5 48 (2.95%) Databricks
6 46 (2.82%) ServiceNow
7 34 (2.09%) Google
8 18 (1.10%) IBM
8 18 (1.10%) MuleSoft
9 17 (1.04%) Foundry
10 16 (0.98%) Atlassian
10 16 (0.98%) Cisco
11 15 (0.92%) Splunk
12 13 (0.80%) Red Hat
13 11 (0.68%) Virgin Media
14 10 (0.61%) OpenAI
14 10 (0.61%) Palo Alto
14 10 (0.61%) VMware
15 9 (0.55%) Fortinet
16 8 (0.49%) Palantir