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 15 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 25 23
Rank change year-on-year -1 -2 0
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,725 1,008 1,247
As % of all contract jobs in London 8.52% 7.61% 7.75%
As % of the General category 13.89% 11.00% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,292 735 810
10th Percentile £381 £363 £350
25th Percentile £463 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.37% -2.38% -8.50%
75th Percentile £638 £613 £618
90th Percentile £725 £688 £700
England median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 21 9
10th Percentile £16.79 £19.79 £18.13
25th Percentile £23.97 £23.45 £20.00
Median hourly rate £38.00 £30.00 £33.75
Median % change year-on-year +26.67% -11.11% -20.49%
75th Percentile £50.00 £47.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £65.00 £86.25 £90.75
England median hourly rate £21.35 £21.75 £24.09
% change year-on-year -1.84% -9.71% +17.17%

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 12,415 9,163 9,994
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 61.30% 69.20% 62.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,902 6,037 6,671
10th Percentile £350 £325 £330
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £545 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.92% -5.22% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £788 £790 £825
England median daily rate £525 £500 £538
% change year-on-year +5.00% -6.98% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 247 186 121
10th Percentile £16.83 £16.75 £18.00
25th Percentile £20.94 £24.62 £24.50
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -7.14% +13.82%
75th Percentile £43.75 £49.69 £53.75
90th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £66.00
England median hourly rate £31.16 £25.15 £38.85
% change year-on-year +23.88% -35.26% +41.27%

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 15 September 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 15 September 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 15 September 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 +4 185 £550 +5.77% 156
South London 0 58 £525 +8.75% 17
West London -20 14 £500 - 93
East London +9 12 £750 +30.43% 25
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 72 (4.17%) Confluence
2 50 (2.90%) SharePoint
3 20 (1.16%) CMS
4 18 (1.04%) Microsoft Exchange
5 13 (0.75%) Apache
5 13 (0.75%) Apache Spark
6 10 (0.58%) Palantir Foundry
7 9 (0.52%) nginx
8 7 (0.41%) SAS
9 6 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
9 6 (0.35%) WordPress
10 4 (0.23%) Headless CMS
11 3 (0.17%) Drupal
11 3 (0.17%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.12%) Camunda
12 2 (0.12%) Mendix
12 2 (0.12%) WebLogic
13 1 (0.058%) Anypoint
13 1 (0.058%) Luigi
13 1 (0.058%) R Markdown
Applications
1 35 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.17%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.17%) MS Visio
7 2 (0.12%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.12%) Sketch
7 2 (0.12%) Trello
8 1 (0.058%) Gliffy
Business Applications
1 20 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 18 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
3 17 (0.99%) Oracle ERP
4 15 (0.87%) Oracle EBS
5 11 (0.64%) NetSuite
6 6 (0.35%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 4 (0.23%) iTrent
7 4 (0.23%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.17%) Exchequer
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle Payroll
8 3 (0.17%) PeopleSoft HCM
8 3 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
8 3 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.17%) SAP CO
8 3 (0.17%) SAP FI/CO
8 3 (0.17%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.12%) Changepoint
9 2 (0.12%) SAP ERP
10 1 (0.058%) Oracle Applications
10 1 (0.058%) Oracle Financials
Cloud Services
1 384 (22.26%) AWS
2 342 (19.83%) Azure
3 109 (6.32%) Power Platform
4 88 (5.10%) GCP
5 80 (4.64%) GitHub
6 76 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
6 76 (4.41%) Serverless
7 70 (4.06%) Microsoft 365
8 68 (3.94%) Amazon S3
9 66 (3.83%) Entra ID
10 58 (3.36%) GitHub Actions
11 47 (2.72%) AWS Lambda
12 44 (2.55%) SaaS
13 39 (2.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 38 (2.20%) Amazon EKS
15 34 (1.97%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 33 (1.91%) Amazon EC2
17 31 (1.80%) AWS CloudFormation
18 28 (1.62%) Power Automate
18 28 (1.62%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 45 (2.61%) Firewall
2 28 (1.62%) DNS
2 28 (1.62%) Network Security
3 14 (0.81%) LAN
3 14 (0.81%) WAN
4 10 (0.58%) Cisco IPT
5 9 (0.52%) NGFW
5 9 (0.52%) VPN
6 8 (0.46%) TCP/IP
7 7 (0.41%) DHCP
7 7 (0.41%) DKIM
7 7 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.35%) DMARC
8 6 (0.35%) Wireshark
9 5 (0.29%) 3GPP
9 5 (0.29%) HTTPS
9 5 (0.29%) NGN
9 5 (0.29%) Radio Access Network
9 5 (0.29%) Reverse Proxy
9 5 (0.29%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (3.94%) Power BI
2 59 (3.42%) PostgreSQL
3 37 (2.14%) Metadata
4 33 (1.91%) Data Warehouse
5 30 (1.74%) Amazon RDS
6 25 (1.45%) Data Lake
7 24 (1.39%) MongoDB
7 24 (1.39%) NoSQL
8 21 (1.22%) Amazon Redshift
8 21 (1.22%) MySQL
9 20 (1.16%) Amazon Aurora
10 18 (1.04%) Amazon Athena
10 18 (1.04%) SQL Server
11 16 (0.93%) Relational Database
12 15 (0.87%) Tableau
13 13 (0.75%) Delta Lake
13 13 (0.75%) Oracle Database
13 13 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
14 11 (0.64%) Redis
15 10 (0.58%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 105 (6.09%) JIRA
2 99 (5.74%) Git
3 69 (4.00%) Jenkins
4 60 (3.48%) GitLab
5 12 (0.70%) JUnit
6 11 (0.64%) SonarQube
7 10 (0.58%) Maven
7 10 (0.58%) Mockito
8 9 (0.52%) CircleCI
8 9 (0.52%) Cypress.io
8 9 (0.52%) Selenium
9 7 (0.41%) Cucumber
10 6 (0.35%) Postman
11 5 (0.29%) JMeter
11 5 (0.29%) Snyk
12 4 (0.23%) Bitbucket
12 4 (0.23%) Gradle
13 3 (0.17%) Artifactory
13 3 (0.17%) REST Assured
13 3 (0.17%) VTune
General
1 552 (32.00%) Social Skills
2 177 (10.26%) Finance
3 167 (9.68%) Analytical Skills
4 109 (6.32%) Local Government
5 96 (5.57%) Military
6 69 (4.00%) Influencing Skills
7 48 (2.78%) Legal
8 47 (2.72%) Organisational Skills
9 41 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 36 (2.09%) Law
10 36 (2.09%) Police
11 35 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
12 26 (1.51%) Telecoms
13 22 (1.28%) Marketing
14 21 (1.22%) Banking
15 13 (0.75%) Manufacturing
15 13 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
16 12 (0.70%) Publishing
17 9 (0.52%) Retail
18 7 (0.41%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 287 (16.64%) Architect
2 219 (12.70%) Lead
3 199 (11.54%) Developer
4 198 (11.48%) Senior
5 124 (7.19%) Analyst
6 74 (4.29%) Designer
7 71 (4.12%) Delivery Manager
8 67 (3.88%) DevOps Engineer
9 64 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
10 59 (3.42%) Consultant
11 58 (3.36%) User Researcher
12 54 (3.13%) Business Analyst
13 50 (2.90%) Technical Architect
14 49 (2.84%) Data Architect
15 48 (2.78%) Data Engineer
16 42 (2.43%) Software Engineer
17 39 (2.26%) Java Developer
17 39 (2.26%) Project Manager
18 37 (2.14%) AWS Engineer
19 36 (2.09%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 175 (10.14%) Terraform
2 70 (4.06%) REST
3 50 (2.90%) Django
4 48 (2.78%) React
4 48 (2.78%) Spring
5 43 (2.49%) RESTful
6 39 (2.26%) Spring Boot
7 34 (1.97%) Kafka
7 34 (1.97%) Oracle Fusion
8 32 (1.86%) Node.js
9 31 (1.80%) .NET
10 30 (1.74%) SOAP
11 28 (1.62%) HTML
12 26 (1.51%) Lightning Web Components
12 26 (1.51%) PySpark
12 26 (1.51%) Web Services
13 23 (1.33%) AngularJS
13 23 (1.33%) JSON
14 20 (1.16%) CSS
15 18 (1.04%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 112 (6.49%) Cloud Native
2 76 (4.41%) Onboarding
3 61 (3.54%) NHS
4 60 (3.48%) Product Ownership
5 52 (3.01%) Legacy Systems
6 41 (2.38%) Management Information System
7 31 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
8 29 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
9 26 (1.51%) Analytical Mindset
10 21 (1.22%) Data Structures
11 18 (1.04%) AI Agents
11 18 (1.04%) Low-Code
12 16 (0.93%) Data Centre
13 15 (0.87%) Replication
14 14 (0.81%) Self-Motivation
15 13 (0.75%) CMDB
15 13 (0.75%) Freedom of Information
15 13 (0.75%) Virtual Team
16 12 (0.70%) Security Operations Centre
16 12 (0.70%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 48 (2.78%) Linux
2 38 (2.20%) Windows
3 12 (0.70%) Android
4 11 (0.64%) Windows Server
5 10 (0.58%) Mac OS
6 9 (0.52%) Apple iOS
6 9 (0.52%) Windows 10
7 8 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 7 (0.41%) Unix
9 5 (0.29%) Amazon Linux
10 3 (0.17%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.12%) Solaris
11 2 (0.12%) VMS
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.058%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 556 (32.23%) Agile
2 392 (22.72%) Stakeholder Management
3 308 (17.86%) CI/CD
4 303 (17.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 290 (16.81%) Continuous Improvement
6 288 (16.70%) DevOps
7 223 (12.93%) Decision-Making
8 201 (11.65%) AI
9 193 (11.19%) Problem-Solving
10 177 (10.26%) Infrastructure as Code
11 166 (9.62%) Digital Transformation Programme
12 160 (9.28%) Migration
13 158 (9.16%) Roadmaps
14 150 (8.70%) Analytics
15 143 (8.29%) Data Modelling
16 132 (7.65%) Technical Leadership
17 122 (7.07%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
18 119 (6.90%) Containerisation
19 112 (6.49%) Software Engineering
20 110 (6.38%) User Research
Programming Languages
1 231 (13.39%) Python
2 157 (9.10%) SQL
3 112 (6.49%) Java
4 86 (4.99%) JavaScript
5 63 (3.65%) TypeScript
6 43 (2.49%) PowerShell
7 35 (2.03%) C#
8 31 (1.80%) Bash
9 26 (1.51%) Bicep
10 24 (1.39%) Apex Code
11 21 (1.22%) Groovy
12 18 (1.04%) PL/SQL
12 18 (1.04%) Ruby
13 14 (0.81%) R
14 11 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 11 (0.64%) Kotlin
15 9 (0.52%) Scala
16 6 (0.35%) Go
16 6 (0.35%) Search Processing Language
16 6 (0.35%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 954 (55.30%) Security Cleared
2 842 (48.81%) SC Cleared
3 100 (5.80%) BPSS Clearance
4 93 (5.39%) DV Cleared
5 52 (3.01%) Degree
6 43 (2.49%) AWS Certification
7 35 (2.03%) Azure Certification
8 32 (1.86%) Microsoft Certification
9 29 (1.68%) CISSP
10 19 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
11 18 (1.04%) CISM
12 15 (0.87%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 13 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
13 13 (0.75%) Master's Degree
14 10 (0.58%) CCNP
15 9 (0.52%) APMG
15 9 (0.52%) CTC Cleared
15 9 (0.52%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 8 (0.46%) CRISC
16 8 (0.46%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 119 (6.90%) Accessibility
2 96 (5.57%) Data Quality
3 75 (4.35%) QA
4 54 (3.13%) GDPR
5 51 (2.96%) WCAG
6 49 (2.84%) PMO
7 38 (2.20%) NCSC
8 36 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 29 (1.68%) NIST
10 20 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials
11 16 (0.93%) GRC
12 13 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 11 (0.64%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 11 (0.64%) PCI DSS
14 10 (0.58%) SLA
15 9 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
16 8 (0.46%) Government Security Classifications
17 5 (0.29%) NIST 800
17 5 (0.29%) P3O
17 5 (0.29%) PERC
System Software
1 131 (7.59%) Docker
2 41 (2.38%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
4 7 (0.41%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.12%) Postfix
6 1 (0.058%) Ceph
6 1 (0.058%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.058%) Sendmail
6 1 (0.058%) Squid
6 1 (0.058%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.058%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 133 (7.71%) Kubernetes
2 42 (2.43%) Grafana
3 35 (2.03%) Prometheus
4 26 (1.51%) Ansible
5 24 (1.39%) Microsoft Intune
6 13 (0.75%) Kibana
7 9 (0.52%) SCCM
7 9 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.46%) Argo
9 5 (0.29%) Puppet
10 4 (0.23%) Istio
11 3 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 3 (0.17%) Karpenter
12 2 (0.12%) AirWatch
12 2 (0.12%) Consul
12 2 (0.12%) Docker Swarm
12 2 (0.12%) Kustomize
12 2 (0.12%) Oracle RMAN
12 2 (0.12%) Salt
13 1 (0.058%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 234 (13.57%) Microsoft
2 120 (6.96%) Oracle
3 82 (4.75%) Salesforce
4 63 (3.65%) Google
5 61 (3.54%) ServiceNow
6 48 (2.78%) Databricks
7 39 (2.26%) SAP
8 21 (1.22%) Foundry
9 18 (1.04%) Cisco
10 17 (0.99%) Palantir
11 14 (0.81%) Palo Alto
12 13 (0.75%) IBM
13 12 (0.70%) Splunk
14 11 (0.64%) Informatica
15 9 (0.52%) OpenAI
16 8 (0.46%) CrowdStrike
16 8 (0.46%) Juniper
16 8 (0.46%) VMware
17 6 (0.35%) Fortinet
17 6 (0.35%) NEC