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

6 months to
10 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 24 18
Rank change year-on-year +3 -6 +8
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,653 985 1,509
As % of all contract jobs in London 9.24% 7.83% 8.53%
As % of the General category 15.38% 11.57% 13.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,250 723 1,067
10th Percentile £381 £400 £375
25th Percentile £448 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -4.89%
75th Percentile £607 £613 £650
90th Percentile £706 £738 £743
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 18 14
10th Percentile £16.91 £21.40 £15.00
25th Percentile £20.42 £22.07 £15.66
Median hourly rate £37.00 £25.76 £18.13
Median % change year-on-year +43.62% +42.10% -27.48%
75th Percentile £50.00 £60.63 £25.73
90th Percentile £75.55 £74.00 £65.90
England median hourly rate £22.57 £24.00 £21.25
% change year-on-year -5.97% +12.94% +4.89%

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 10,745 8,514 11,157
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 60.03% 67.72% 63.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,955 5,742 7,961
10th Percentile £350 £343 £336
25th Percentile £425 £445 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £669 £713 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £825
England median daily rate £508 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -3.24% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 196 141 242
10th Percentile £18.52 £15.84 £16.00
25th Percentile £21.93 £22.90 £18.25
Median hourly rate £32.81 £34.00 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% +21.43% -12.28%
75th Percentile £48.19 £51.18 £44.50
90th Percentile £69.68 £65.00 £65.00
England median hourly rate £30.50 £27.50 £30.27
% change year-on-year +10.89% -9.14% -6.59%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -2 150 £550 +4.76% 113
South London 0 68 £500 +1.52% 8
West London -29 10 £506 +26.56% 12
East London -10 7 £750 +27.66% 20
North London -1 4 £450 -0.50%
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 73 (4.42%) Confluence
2 38 (2.30%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.67%) Apache Spark
3 11 (0.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (0.48%) Apache
4 8 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (0.48%) CMS
4 8 (0.48%) Palantir Foundry
5 7 (0.42%) nginx
5 7 (0.42%) Tomcat
6 5 (0.30%) Camunda
7 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.12%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.12%) Drupal
8 2 (0.12%) OpenROAD
8 2 (0.12%) SAS
8 2 (0.12%) WordPress
9 1 (0.060%) Appian
9 1 (0.060%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.060%) R Markdown
Applications
1 47 (2.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 15 (0.91%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.30%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.30%) Trello
6 3 (0.18%) Adobe After Effects
6 3 (0.18%) Adobe XD
6 3 (0.18%) Sketch
6 3 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.12%) InVision
8 1 (0.060%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.060%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.060%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 26 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.85%) Oracle ERP
4 7 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
5 6 (0.36%) iTrent
6 4 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
6 4 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 3 (0.18%) Exchequer
7 3 (0.18%) PeopleSoft HCM
7 3 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
8 2 (0.12%) Integrated Workplace Management System
8 2 (0.12%) Loan IQ
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle Financials
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle Payroll
8 2 (0.12%) SAP ERP
8 2 (0.12%) SAP GRC
8 2 (0.12%) SAP HCM
8 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
9 1 (0.060%) NEC Housing
9 1 (0.060%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 362 (21.90%) AWS
2 301 (18.21%) Azure
3 101 (6.11%) Power Platform
4 78 (4.72%) Serverless
5 66 (3.99%) GCP
5 66 (3.99%) GitHub
6 58 (3.51%) Azure DevOps
7 56 (3.39%) Microsoft 365
8 54 (3.27%) Amazon S3
9 51 (3.09%) AWS Lambda
10 38 (2.30%) Amazon EKS
10 38 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
11 37 (2.24%) Amazon EC2
11 37 (2.24%) Dynamics 365
11 37 (2.24%) Entra ID
12 36 (2.18%) AWS CloudFormation
12 36 (2.18%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 35 (2.12%) OCI
14 31 (1.88%) Power Automate
14 31 (1.88%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 31 (1.88%) Firewall
2 27 (1.63%) Network Security
3 18 (1.09%) DNS
4 12 (0.73%) LAN
4 12 (0.73%) WAN
5 11 (0.67%) VPN
5 11 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
6 9 (0.54%) TCP/IP
7 8 (0.48%) NGFW
8 7 (0.42%) DKIM
9 6 (0.36%) Internet
9 6 (0.36%) Wireless
10 5 (0.30%) BGP
10 5 (0.30%) DMARC
10 5 (0.30%) OSPF
10 5 (0.30%) WLAN
11 4 (0.24%) HTTP
11 4 (0.24%) Reverse Proxy
11 4 (0.24%) SD-WAN
11 4 (0.24%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (4.30%) Power BI
2 35 (2.12%) PostgreSQL
3 28 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
4 27 (1.63%) Metadata
5 25 (1.51%) Amazon RDS
6 23 (1.39%) SQL Server
7 22 (1.33%) Data Lake
8 20 (1.21%) MongoDB
9 17 (1.03%) NoSQL
10 15 (0.91%) Tableau
11 14 (0.85%) Delta Lake
12 12 (0.73%) Amazon Athena
12 12 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
13 11 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
14 10 (0.60%) DynamoDB
15 9 (0.54%) Oracle Reports
16 8 (0.48%) Amazon QuickSight
16 8 (0.48%) GIS
17 7 (0.42%) Oracle Database
17 7 (0.42%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 100 (6.05%) JIRA
2 90 (5.44%) Git
3 55 (3.33%) GitLab
4 51 (3.09%) Jenkins
5 21 (1.27%) Selenium
6 20 (1.21%) Postman
7 13 (0.79%) JUnit
8 11 (0.67%) Mockito
9 10 (0.60%) SonarQube
10 8 (0.48%) CircleCI
10 8 (0.48%) Cypress.io
11 7 (0.42%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.42%) Snyk
12 6 (0.36%) JMeter
13 5 (0.30%) Gradle
13 5 (0.30%) Maven
14 4 (0.24%) Bitbucket
14 4 (0.24%) Cucumber
14 4 (0.24%) MLflow
15 3 (0.18%) Bitbucket Server
General
1 400 (24.20%) Social Skills
2 215 (13.01%) Finance
3 142 (8.59%) Analytical Skills
4 74 (4.48%) Local Government
5 55 (3.33%) Military
6 44 (2.66%) Influencing Skills
7 42 (2.54%) Telecoms
8 40 (2.42%) Marketing
9 35 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
10 33 (2.00%) Legal
11 32 (1.94%) Banking
12 30 (1.81%) Organisational Skills
13 27 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 27 (1.63%) Police
14 26 (1.57%) Law
14 26 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
15 17 (1.03%) Manufacturing
16 15 (0.91%) Electronics
16 15 (0.91%) Retail
17 12 (0.73%) Billing
Job Titles
1 241 (14.58%) Developer
2 232 (14.04%) Architect
3 172 (10.41%) Senior
4 160 (9.68%) Lead
5 141 (8.53%) Analyst
6 89 (5.38%) Designer
7 81 (4.90%) Business Analyst
8 65 (3.93%) DevOps Engineer
9 58 (3.51%) User Researcher
10 54 (3.27%) Consultant
10 54 (3.27%) Project Manager
11 53 (3.21%) Data Engineer
11 53 (3.21%) Technical Architect
12 48 (2.90%) Solutions Architect
13 42 (2.54%) Delivery Manager
14 41 (2.48%) Salesforce Developer
15 40 (2.42%) Senior Developer
16 39 (2.36%) Security Architect
17 36 (2.18%) AWS Engineer
17 36 (2.18%) Service Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (3.21%) REST
2 49 (2.96%) RESTful
3 47 (2.84%) React
4 46 (2.78%) Node.js
5 43 (2.60%) Spring
6 40 (2.42%) Lightning Web Components
7 38 (2.30%) Oracle Fusion
8 37 (2.24%) Spring Boot
9 35 (2.12%) HTML
10 34 (2.06%) Web Services
11 33 (2.00%) .NET
12 31 (1.88%) AngularJS
13 27 (1.63%) Kafka
14 25 (1.51%) SOAP
15 24 (1.45%) CSS
16 18 (1.09%) JSON
17 17 (1.03%) Middleware
18 15 (0.91%) PySpark
19 14 (0.85%) OAuth
20 12 (0.73%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 106 (6.41%) Cloud Native
2 60 (3.63%) Onboarding
3 52 (3.15%) Legacy Systems
4 44 (2.66%) Product Ownership
5 33 (2.00%) NHS
6 32 (1.94%) Data Centre
7 25 (1.51%) Distributed Systems
8 23 (1.39%) Management Information System
9 22 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
10 15 (0.91%) Public Cloud
10 15 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
12 13 (0.79%) AI Agents
12 13 (0.79%) Analytical Mindset
12 13 (0.79%) Data Structures
13 11 (0.67%) CMDB
13 11 (0.67%) Enterprise Cloud
13 11 (0.67%) Low-Code
13 11 (0.67%) Security Posture
13 11 (0.67%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 49 (2.96%) Linux
1 49 (2.96%) Windows
2 15 (0.91%) Windows Server
3 13 (0.79%) Android
4 9 (0.54%) Apple iOS
4 9 (0.54%) Windows 10
5 7 (0.42%) Mac OS
5 7 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.36%) Solaris
6 6 (0.36%) VMS
6 6 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
6 6 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
7 5 (0.30%) Unix
8 3 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
8 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.060%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 409 (24.74%) Agile
2 265 (16.03%) CI/CD
3 254 (15.37%) DevOps
4 222 (13.43%) Stakeholder Management
5 184 (11.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 153 (9.26%) Decision-Making
7 152 (9.20%) Continuous Improvement
7 152 (9.20%) Roadmaps
8 149 (9.01%) Migration
8 149 (9.01%) Problem-Solving
9 134 (8.11%) Infrastructure as Code
10 130 (7.86%) AI
10 130 (7.86%) Containerisation
11 123 (7.44%) Analytics
11 123 (7.44%) User Research
12 120 (7.26%) Data Modelling
13 111 (6.72%) Test Automation
14 101 (6.11%) Digital Transformation Programme
14 101 (6.11%) Service Design
15 91 (5.51%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 192 (11.62%) Python
2 138 (8.35%) SQL
3 112 (6.78%) Java
4 81 (4.90%) JavaScript
5 54 (3.27%) TypeScript
6 40 (2.42%) Apex Code
7 38 (2.30%) C#
8 35 (2.12%) PowerShell
8 35 (2.12%) Ruby
9 27 (1.63%) Bash
10 18 (1.09%) PL/SQL
11 13 (0.79%) Bicep
11 13 (0.79%) Kotlin
12 12 (0.73%) R
13 10 (0.60%) Go
13 10 (0.60%) Shell Script
14 8 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 5 (0.30%) C
15 5 (0.30%) T-SQL
16 4 (0.24%) Scala
Qualifications
1 929 (56.20%) Security Cleared
2 705 (42.65%) SC Cleared
3 68 (4.11%) DV Cleared
4 53 (3.21%) Degree
5 43 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
6 26 (1.57%) Azure Certification
7 25 (1.51%) CISSP
8 22 (1.33%) AWS Certification
9 17 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
10 16 (0.97%) Cisco Certification
11 15 (0.91%) CISM
12 13 (0.79%) PMP
13 11 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 11 (0.67%) APMP
14 10 (0.60%) CIMA
15 9 (0.54%) ACCA
15 9 (0.54%) CTC Cleared
16 8 (0.48%) PMI Certification
17 7 (0.42%) CCSP
17 7 (0.42%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 117 (7.08%) Accessibility
2 73 (4.42%) QA
3 71 (4.30%) Data Quality
4 47 (2.84%) WCAG
5 43 (2.60%) GDPR
6 40 (2.42%) PMO
7 36 (2.18%) NCSC
8 28 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 12 (0.73%) Actionable Recommendations
9 12 (0.73%) NIST
9 12 (0.73%) SLA
10 11 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
11 9 (0.54%) GRC
11 9 (0.54%) PCI DSS
12 7 (0.42%) Government Security Classifications
13 6 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 5 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 5 (0.30%) IFRS
15 4 (0.24%) IFRS 9
15 4 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 120 (7.26%) Docker
2 34 (2.06%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.48%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
5 4 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.12%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.12%) Postfix
7 2 (0.12%) Squid
7 2 (0.12%) vSphere
8 1 (0.060%) FreeRADIUS
8 1 (0.060%) IAG
8 1 (0.060%) NLBS
8 1 (0.060%) Sendmail
8 1 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.060%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 148 (8.95%) Terraform
2 124 (7.50%) Kubernetes
3 34 (2.06%) Grafana
4 30 (1.81%) Ansible
4 30 (1.81%) Prometheus
5 12 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
6 7 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (0.36%) Kibana
7 6 (0.36%) Puppet
8 5 (0.30%) Argo
9 3 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.18%) Oracle RMAN
9 3 (0.18%) Salt
9 3 (0.18%) SCCM
10 2 (0.12%) CloudHub
10 2 (0.12%) Consul
10 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Clustering
10 2 (0.12%) Progress Chef
10 2 (0.12%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.060%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 172 (10.41%) Microsoft
2 93 (5.63%) Salesforce
3 92 (5.57%) Oracle
4 53 (3.21%) SAP
5 49 (2.96%) Databricks
6 45 (2.72%) ServiceNow
7 34 (2.06%) Google
8 19 (1.15%) Cisco
8 19 (1.15%) IBM
8 19 (1.15%) MuleSoft
9 18 (1.09%) Foundry
10 16 (0.97%) Atlassian
11 15 (0.91%) VMware
12 13 (0.79%) Red Hat
12 13 (0.79%) Splunk
13 12 (0.73%) OpenAI
13 12 (0.73%) Virgin Media
14 10 (0.60%) Palo Alto
15 9 (0.54%) ForgeRock
16 8 (0.48%) Zscaler