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 5 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 24 23
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,766 1,028 1,288
As % of all contract jobs in London 8.76% 7.67% 7.96%
As % of the General category 14.19% 11.18% 12.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,328 736 793
10th Percentile £381 £363 £350
25th Percentile £463 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +7.32% -2.38% -6.67%
75th Percentile £638 £620 £625
90th Percentile £715 £688 £700
England median daily rate £525 £500 £518
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.38% -5.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 22 12
10th Percentile £16.85 £19.82 £18.32
25th Percentile £18.90 £23.04 £23.14
Median hourly rate £32.65 £27.58 £33.13
Median % change year-on-year +18.40% -16.75% -24.48%
75th Percentile £47.75 £47.00 £47.44
90th Percentile £57.50 £83.33 £74.38
England median hourly rate £21.35 £22.03 £23.99
% change year-on-year -3.09% -8.17% +14.24%

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 12,449 9,199 10,094
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 61.77% 68.61% 62.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,931 6,052 6,567
10th Percentile £350 £325 £330
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £788 £788 £825
England median daily rate £525 £500 £530
% change year-on-year +5.00% -5.66% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 287 177 120
10th Percentile £16.08 £17.05 £17.95
25th Percentile £20.26 £24.50 £25.93
Median hourly rate £28.40 £31.49 £36.15
Median % change year-on-year -9.83% -12.89% +21.51%
75th Percentile £47.50 £47.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £70.45 £65.23 £71.25
England median hourly rate £29.07 £25.08 £36.00
% change year-on-year +15.93% -30.35% +23.08%

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 5 October 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 5 October 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 5 October 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 +8 178 £550 +4.76% 140
South London +1 61 £525 +6.06% 11
West London -17 19 £450 -10.00% 48
East London +11 13 £600 +20.00% 14
North London 0 5 £400 -27.27%
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 77 (4.36%) Confluence
2 50 (2.83%) SharePoint
3 22 (1.25%) CMS
4 17 (0.96%) Microsoft Exchange
5 12 (0.68%) Apache
5 12 (0.68%) Apache Spark
6 8 (0.45%) nginx
6 8 (0.45%) Palantir Foundry
7 7 (0.40%) SAS
8 6 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
8 6 (0.34%) Headless CMS
8 6 (0.34%) WordPress
9 3 (0.17%) Drupal
10 2 (0.11%) Mendix
10 2 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.057%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.057%) Jupyter
11 1 (0.057%) Luigi
11 1 (0.057%) Umbraco
11 1 (0.057%) WebSphere
Applications
1 38 (2.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.91%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
5 6 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.17%) Adobe XD
7 3 (0.17%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.17%) Sketch
8 2 (0.11%) Trello
9 1 (0.057%) Gliffy
Business Applications
1 22 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 18 (1.02%) Oracle ERP
3 17 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
3 17 (0.96%) Oracle EBS
4 13 (0.74%) NetSuite
5 5 (0.28%) Exchequer
5 5 (0.28%) SAP FI
5 5 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 4 (0.23%) iTrent
6 4 (0.23%) SAP CO
6 4 (0.23%) SAP FI/CO
7 3 (0.17%) PeopleSoft HCM
7 3 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
7 3 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.17%) SAP HR
8 2 (0.11%) Changepoint
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle Payroll
8 2 (0.11%) SAP ERP
8 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
9 1 (0.057%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 376 (21.29%) AWS
2 342 (19.37%) Azure
3 108 (6.12%) Power Platform
4 92 (5.21%) GCP
5 84 (4.76%) GitHub
6 74 (4.19%) Azure DevOps
7 70 (3.96%) Entra ID
7 70 (3.96%) Microsoft 365
8 69 (3.91%) Serverless
9 66 (3.74%) Amazon S3
10 64 (3.62%) GitHub Actions
11 45 (2.55%) SaaS
12 41 (2.32%) AWS Lambda
13 39 (2.21%) Amazon EKS
14 38 (2.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 32 (1.81%) Amazon EC2
15 32 (1.81%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 28 (1.59%) Power Automate
16 28 (1.59%) PowerApps
17 27 (1.53%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 44 (2.49%) Firewall
2 30 (1.70%) DNS
3 29 (1.64%) Network Security
4 11 (0.62%) WAN
5 10 (0.57%) Cisco IPT
5 10 (0.57%) LAN
5 10 (0.57%) NGFW
5 10 (0.57%) TCP/IP
5 10 (0.57%) VPN
6 7 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.34%) DHCP
7 6 (0.34%) DKIM
7 6 (0.34%) DMARC
7 6 (0.34%) Wireshark
8 5 (0.28%) 3GPP
8 5 (0.28%) Kerberos
8 5 (0.28%) NGN
8 5 (0.28%) Radio Access Network
8 5 (0.28%) Reverse Proxy
8 5 (0.28%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (3.85%) Power BI
2 58 (3.28%) PostgreSQL
3 41 (2.32%) Metadata
4 31 (1.76%) Data Warehouse
5 30 (1.70%) Amazon RDS
6 26 (1.47%) Data Lake
7 24 (1.36%) MongoDB
8 22 (1.25%) Amazon Aurora
8 22 (1.25%) NoSQL
9 20 (1.13%) Amazon Redshift
9 20 (1.13%) MySQL
10 19 (1.08%) SQL Server
11 17 (0.96%) Amazon Athena
12 15 (0.85%) Oracle Database
12 15 (0.85%) Relational Database
13 12 (0.68%) Redis
13 12 (0.68%) Tableau
14 11 (0.62%) Delta Lake
15 10 (0.57%) Oracle Reports
15 10 (0.57%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 106 (6.00%) JIRA
2 84 (4.76%) Git
3 69 (3.91%) Jenkins
4 63 (3.57%) GitLab
5 13 (0.74%) Selenium
6 12 (0.68%) JUnit
7 10 (0.57%) Cucumber
8 9 (0.51%) Cypress.io
8 9 (0.51%) Maven
8 9 (0.51%) SonarQube
9 8 (0.45%) JMeter
9 8 (0.45%) Mockito
9 8 (0.45%) Postman
10 7 (0.40%) CircleCI
11 5 (0.28%) REST Assured
12 4 (0.23%) Bitbucket
12 4 (0.23%) MSI
12 4 (0.23%) TestNG
13 3 (0.17%) Gradle
13 3 (0.17%) VTune
General
1 586 (33.18%) Social Skills
2 179 (10.14%) Finance
3 174 (9.85%) Analytical Skills
4 121 (6.85%) Local Government
5 98 (5.55%) Military
6 74 (4.19%) Influencing Skills
7 53 (3.00%) Legal
8 47 (2.66%) Organisational Skills
9 40 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
10 37 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 36 (2.04%) Police
12 34 (1.93%) Law
13 23 (1.30%) Banking
13 23 (1.30%) Telecoms
14 18 (1.02%) Marketing
15 16 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
16 14 (0.79%) Publishing
17 13 (0.74%) Manufacturing
18 9 (0.51%) Billing
19 8 (0.45%) Retail
Job Titles
1 299 (16.93%) Architect
2 222 (12.57%) Lead
3 216 (12.23%) Senior
4 181 (10.25%) Developer
5 137 (7.76%) Analyst
6 79 (4.47%) Designer
7 74 (4.19%) Consultant
8 68 (3.85%) Business Analyst
8 68 (3.85%) Delivery Manager
8 68 (3.85%) User Researcher
9 67 (3.79%) DevOps Engineer
10 64 (3.62%) Solutions Architect
11 49 (2.77%) Data Architect
12 47 (2.66%) Data Engineer
12 47 (2.66%) Technical Architect
13 38 (2.15%) Java Developer
13 38 (2.15%) Software Engineer
14 37 (2.10%) Security Architect
14 37 (2.10%) Service Designer
15 36 (2.04%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 169 (9.57%) Terraform
2 73 (4.13%) REST
3 45 (2.55%) Django
4 44 (2.49%) Spring
5 43 (2.43%) React
6 37 (2.10%) RESTful
7 33 (1.87%) Oracle Fusion
7 33 (1.87%) Spring Boot
8 32 (1.81%) Node.js
9 30 (1.70%) Kafka
10 29 (1.64%) .NET
10 29 (1.64%) SOAP
11 25 (1.42%) Web Services
12 23 (1.30%) HTML
12 23 (1.30%) JSON
12 23 (1.30%) PySpark
13 19 (1.08%) AngularJS
14 18 (1.02%) Lightning Web Components
14 18 (1.02%) XML
15 17 (0.96%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 112 (6.34%) Cloud Native
2 85 (4.81%) Onboarding
3 66 (3.74%) Product Ownership
4 61 (3.45%) NHS
5 56 (3.17%) Legacy Systems
6 42 (2.38%) Management Information System
7 35 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
8 29 (1.64%) Analytical Mindset
9 25 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
10 23 (1.30%) AI Agents
10 23 (1.30%) Data Structures
11 16 (0.91%) Low-Code
11 16 (0.91%) Replication
12 15 (0.85%) Taxonomies
13 14 (0.79%) Data Centre
13 14 (0.79%) Data Protection Act
14 13 (0.74%) CMDB
14 13 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
14 13 (0.74%) Self-Motivation
14 13 (0.74%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 45 (2.55%) Linux
2 40 (2.27%) Windows
3 14 (0.79%) Android
4 12 (0.68%) Windows 10
5 11 (0.62%) Apple iOS
6 10 (0.57%) Mac OS
7 9 (0.51%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.28%) Amazon Linux
9 5 (0.28%) Unix
10 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.11%) VMS
11 1 (0.057%) Solaris
11 1 (0.057%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.057%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 556 (31.48%) Agile
2 452 (25.59%) Stakeholder Management
3 317 (17.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 301 (17.04%) CI/CD
5 296 (16.76%) Continuous Improvement
6 279 (15.80%) DevOps
7 229 (12.97%) Decision-Making
8 213 (12.06%) AI
9 208 (11.78%) Problem-Solving
10 176 (9.97%) Migration
11 174 (9.85%) Digital Transformation Programme
12 172 (9.74%) Infrastructure as Code
13 159 (9.00%) Roadmaps
14 149 (8.44%) Analytics
15 141 (7.98%) Data Modelling
16 135 (7.64%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
17 131 (7.42%) User Research
18 130 (7.36%) Technical Leadership
19 117 (6.63%) Service Design
20 112 (6.34%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 229 (12.97%) Python
2 159 (9.00%) SQL
3 108 (6.12%) Java
4 87 (4.93%) JavaScript
5 59 (3.34%) TypeScript
6 47 (2.66%) PowerShell
7 34 (1.93%) C#
8 33 (1.87%) Bash
9 27 (1.53%) Bicep
10 23 (1.30%) Groovy
11 16 (0.91%) Apex Code
11 16 (0.91%) R
12 15 (0.85%) PL/SQL
13 14 (0.79%) Scala
14 13 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 13 (0.74%) Ruby
15 9 (0.51%) Go
15 9 (0.51%) Kotlin
16 6 (0.34%) Search Processing Language
17 5 (0.28%) Perl
Qualifications
1 960 (54.36%) Security Cleared
2 853 (48.30%) SC Cleared
3 128 (7.25%) BPSS Clearance
4 95 (5.38%) DV Cleared
5 58 (3.28%) Degree
6 50 (2.83%) AWS Certification
7 37 (2.10%) Azure Certification
8 34 (1.93%) Microsoft Certification
9 29 (1.64%) CISSP
10 18 (1.02%) Cisco Certification
11 17 (0.96%) CISM
12 16 (0.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 13 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
13 13 (0.74%) Master's Degree
14 10 (0.57%) PMI Certification
15 9 (0.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 9 (0.51%) Computer Science Degree
15 9 (0.51%) CRISC
15 9 (0.51%) CTC Cleared
15 9 (0.51%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 127 (7.19%) Accessibility
2 111 (6.29%) Data Quality
3 77 (4.36%) QA
4 54 (3.06%) GDPR
5 48 (2.72%) WCAG
6 43 (2.43%) PMO
7 40 (2.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 40 (2.27%) NCSC
8 34 (1.93%) NIST
9 20 (1.13%) Cyber Essentials
10 15 (0.85%) GRC
11 13 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 11 (0.62%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 10 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
13 10 (0.57%) SLA
14 8 (0.45%) Government Security Classifications
15 7 (0.40%) PCI DSS
16 5 (0.28%) NIST 800
16 5 (0.28%) P3O
16 5 (0.28%) PERC
System Software
1 122 (6.91%) Docker
2 45 (2.55%) Active Directory
3 10 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.11%) Postfix
6 1 (0.057%) Ceph
6 1 (0.057%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.057%) Microsoft App-V
6 1 (0.057%) Squid
6 1 (0.057%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 127 (7.19%) Kubernetes
2 42 (2.38%) Grafana
3 34 (1.93%) Prometheus
4 29 (1.64%) Microsoft Intune
5 23 (1.30%) Ansible
6 12 (0.68%) Kibana
7 10 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 9 (0.51%) Argo
8 9 (0.51%) SCCM
9 4 (0.23%) Istio
9 4 (0.23%) Karpenter
9 4 (0.23%) Puppet
10 3 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.11%) AirWatch
11 2 (0.11%) Consul
11 2 (0.11%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.11%) Kustomize
11 2 (0.11%) QRadar
11 2 (0.11%) Salt
12 1 (0.057%) CloudHub
Vendors
1 250 (14.16%) Microsoft
2 126 (7.13%) Oracle
3 73 (4.13%) Google
3 73 (4.13%) Salesforce
4 61 (3.45%) ServiceNow
5 47 (2.66%) Databricks
6 46 (2.60%) SAP
7 17 (0.96%) Cisco
8 16 (0.91%) Palo Alto
9 15 (0.85%) Foundry
9 15 (0.85%) Palantir
10 14 (0.79%) Splunk
11 11 (0.62%) Informatica
11 11 (0.62%) OpenAI
11 11 (0.62%) Workday
12 9 (0.51%) CrowdStrike
12 9 (0.51%) IBM
13 8 (0.45%) Juniper
14 7 (0.40%) CyberArk
15 6 (0.34%) Fortinet