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

6 months to
27 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 1,653 889 1,447
As % of all contract jobs in London 9.03% 7.36% 8.30%
As % of the General category 15.10% 10.85% 13.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,238 635 1,028
10th Percentile £389 £400 £363
25th Percentile £450 £456 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% +0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £619 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
England median daily rate £508 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.19% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 16 14
10th Percentile £16.86 £21.00 £15.00
25th Percentile £24.12 £22.20 £15.66
Median hourly rate £40.25 £25.08 £18.13
Median % change year-on-year +60.52% +38.31% -27.48%
75th Percentile £50.00 £44.69 £25.73
90th Percentile £75.85 £77.50 £65.90
England median hourly rate £23.83 £25.08 £23.00
% change year-on-year -4.99% +9.02% +11.43%

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 10,945 8,191 10,984
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 59.81% 67.79% 62.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,069 5,483 7,850
10th Percentile £350 £344 £335
25th Percentile £431 £440 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £565 £575
Median % change year-on-year -2.65% -1.74% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £706 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £825
England median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 143 238
10th Percentile £18.75 £15.84 £15.85
25th Percentile £22.50 £24.42 £18.25
Median hourly rate £35.00 £31.35 £29.25
Median % change year-on-year +11.66% +7.16% -7.76%
75th Percentile £44.75 £50.63 £46.05
90th Percentile £66.15 £63.65 £65.01
England median hourly rate £30.58 £27.25 £30.00
% change year-on-year +12.22% -9.17% -6.25%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -3 146 £550 +4.56% 113
South London -1 67 £500 +1.01% 4
West London -35 11 £500 +16.96% 8
East London -5 9 £750 +30.43% 15
North London -2 2 £425 -19.05% 1
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 70 (4.23%) Confluence
2 36 (2.18%) SharePoint
3 13 (0.79%) Microsoft Exchange
4 11 (0.67%) Apache Spark
5 9 (0.54%) Apache
6 8 (0.48%) CMS
6 8 (0.48%) nginx
6 8 (0.48%) Palantir Foundry
7 7 (0.42%) Apache Airflow
7 7 (0.42%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.30%) Camunda
9 4 (0.24%) WordPress
10 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.12%) Drupal
11 2 (0.12%) OpenROAD
11 2 (0.12%) SAS
12 1 (0.060%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.060%) Mule
12 1 (0.060%) Skype for Business
12 1 (0.060%) WebSphere
Applications
1 38 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.85%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.30%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.24%) 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 (0.060%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.060%) InVision
9 1 (0.060%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 21 (1.27%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.85%) Oracle ERP
4 7 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 4 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.18%) Exchequer
7 3 (0.18%) iTrent
7 3 (0.18%) PeopleSoft HCM
7 3 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
8 2 (0.12%) Integrated Workplace Management System
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle Financials
8 2 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
8 2 (0.12%) SAP ERP
8 2 (0.12%) SAP HCM
8 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
9 1 (0.060%) Loan IQ
9 1 (0.060%) NEC Housing
9 1 (0.060%) OpenText VIM for SAP
9 1 (0.060%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 370 (22.38%) AWS
2 301 (18.21%) Azure
3 93 (5.63%) Power Platform
4 70 (4.23%) Serverless
5 69 (4.17%) GCP
6 63 (3.81%) GitHub
7 58 (3.51%) Azure DevOps
8 57 (3.45%) Microsoft 365
9 55 (3.33%) Amazon S3
10 47 (2.84%) AWS Lambda
11 42 (2.54%) Amazon EKS
12 40 (2.42%) Amazon EC2
13 39 (2.36%) Entra ID
14 37 (2.24%) SaaS
15 36 (2.18%) Dynamics 365
15 36 (2.18%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 35 (2.12%) GitHub Actions
17 33 (2.00%) Power Automate
18 29 (1.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 29 (1.75%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 31 (1.88%) Firewall
2 26 (1.57%) Network Security
3 16 (0.97%) DNS
4 11 (0.67%) LAN
4 11 (0.67%) WAN
5 10 (0.60%) VPN
6 8 (0.48%) DKIM
6 8 (0.48%) NGFW
6 8 (0.48%) TCP/IP
6 8 (0.48%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.36%) DMARC
8 4 (0.24%) BGP
8 4 (0.24%) OSPF
8 4 (0.24%) Reverse Proxy
8 4 (0.24%) Wireless
9 3 (0.18%) DHCP
9 3 (0.18%) HTTP
9 3 (0.18%) Intranet
9 3 (0.18%) VoIP
9 3 (0.18%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (3.69%) Power BI
2 39 (2.36%) PostgreSQL
3 29 (1.75%) Metadata
4 28 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
5 27 (1.63%) Amazon RDS
6 23 (1.39%) SQL Server
7 22 (1.33%) Data Lake
8 21 (1.27%) MongoDB
9 17 (1.03%) NoSQL
10 15 (0.91%) Tableau
11 14 (0.85%) Delta Lake
12 11 (0.67%) Amazon Athena
12 11 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
12 11 (0.67%) DynamoDB
13 9 (0.54%) Oracle Reports
14 8 (0.48%) Amazon QuickSight
14 8 (0.48%) MySQL
15 7 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
15 7 (0.42%) GIS
15 7 (0.42%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 95 (5.75%) JIRA
2 87 (5.26%) Git
3 56 (3.39%) GitLab
4 54 (3.27%) Jenkins
5 22 (1.33%) Selenium
6 17 (1.03%) Postman
7 12 (0.73%) JUnit
8 11 (0.67%) Mockito
9 10 (0.60%) SonarQube
10 9 (0.54%) CircleCI
11 8 (0.48%) Cypress.io
12 7 (0.42%) Artifactory
12 7 (0.42%) JMeter
12 7 (0.42%) Snyk
13 5 (0.30%) Maven
14 4 (0.24%) Cucumber
14 4 (0.24%) DbUnit
14 4 (0.24%) Gradle
14 4 (0.24%) jMock
14 4 (0.24%) MLflow
General
1 398 (24.08%) Social Skills
2 207 (12.52%) Finance
3 130 (7.86%) Analytical Skills
4 73 (4.42%) Local Government
5 62 (3.75%) Military
6 42 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
7 40 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
8 37 (2.24%) Telecoms
9 36 (2.18%) Marketing
10 34 (2.06%) Banking
11 32 (1.94%) Legal
12 29 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
13 28 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 27 (1.63%) Police
15 25 (1.51%) Law
16 21 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
17 15 (0.91%) Retail
18 12 (0.73%) Billing
19 11 (0.67%) Manufacturing
20 10 (0.60%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 244 (14.76%) Architect
2 239 (14.46%) Developer
3 170 (10.28%) Lead
4 169 (10.22%) Senior
5 121 (7.32%) Analyst
6 88 (5.32%) Designer
7 75 (4.54%) DevOps Engineer
8 67 (4.05%) Business Analyst
9 60 (3.63%) User Researcher
10 54 (3.27%) Technical Architect
11 51 (3.09%) Data Engineer
11 51 (3.09%) Project Manager
11 51 (3.09%) Solutions Architect
12 50 (3.02%) Consultant
13 48 (2.90%) AWS Engineer
14 45 (2.72%) Delivery Manager
15 42 (2.54%) Salesforce Developer
16 41 (2.48%) Security Architect
17 39 (2.36%) Senior Developer
18 38 (2.30%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (2.90%) React
2 46 (2.78%) REST
2 46 (2.78%) RESTful
3 44 (2.66%) Node.js
4 41 (2.48%) Lightning Web Components
5 39 (2.36%) Spring
6 33 (2.00%) HTML
6 33 (2.00%) Oracle Fusion
7 32 (1.94%) .NET
7 32 (1.94%) Spring Boot
7 32 (1.94%) Web Services
8 31 (1.88%) Kafka
9 28 (1.69%) AngularJS
10 24 (1.45%) SOAP
11 23 (1.39%) CSS
12 20 (1.21%) Django
13 18 (1.09%) JSON
13 18 (1.09%) Middleware
14 15 (0.91%) OAuth
15 14 (0.85%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 107 (6.47%) Cloud Native
2 62 (3.75%) Onboarding
3 48 (2.90%) Legacy Systems
4 42 (2.54%) Product Ownership
5 39 (2.36%) NHS
6 28 (1.69%) Data Centre
6 28 (1.69%) Management Information System
7 26 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
8 21 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
9 17 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
10 16 (0.97%) Hybrid Cloud
11 15 (0.91%) Data Structures
12 12 (0.73%) Analytical Mindset
12 12 (0.73%) Security Posture
13 11 (0.67%) AI Agents
13 11 (0.67%) Enterprise Cloud
13 11 (0.67%) Low-Code
13 11 (0.67%) Public Cloud
13 11 (0.67%) Virtual Team
14 10 (0.60%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 54 (3.27%) Linux
2 43 (2.60%) Windows
3 15 (0.91%) Windows Server
4 14 (0.85%) Android
5 11 (0.67%) Apple iOS
6 9 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 8 (0.48%) Windows 10
8 6 (0.36%) Mac OS
8 6 (0.36%) Solaris
8 6 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
8 6 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
9 5 (0.30%) Unix
10 4 (0.24%) VMS
11 3 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
11 3 (0.18%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 411 (24.86%) Agile
2 265 (16.03%) CI/CD
3 263 (15.91%) DevOps
4 226 (13.67%) Stakeholder Management
5 190 (11.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 163 (9.86%) Continuous Improvement
7 157 (9.50%) Decision-Making
8 150 (9.07%) Roadmaps
9 145 (8.77%) Migration
10 143 (8.65%) Problem-Solving
11 138 (8.35%) Infrastructure as Code
12 128 (7.74%) AI
13 126 (7.62%) Data Modelling
14 125 (7.56%) Containerisation
15 121 (7.32%) User Research
16 113 (6.84%) Analytics
17 105 (6.35%) Digital Transformation Programme
18 104 (6.29%) Test Automation
19 102 (6.17%) Service Design
20 84 (5.08%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 190 (11.49%) Python
2 135 (8.17%) SQL
3 116 (7.02%) Java
4 81 (4.90%) JavaScript
5 51 (3.09%) TypeScript
6 42 (2.54%) Apex Code
7 38 (2.30%) C#
7 38 (2.30%) PowerShell
8 35 (2.12%) Ruby
9 29 (1.75%) Bash
10 21 (1.27%) PL/SQL
11 14 (0.85%) Bicep
12 12 (0.73%) Kotlin
13 10 (0.60%) Go
13 10 (0.60%) Shell Script
14 9 (0.54%) R
15 7 (0.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 5 (0.30%) C
17 4 (0.24%) Scala
17 4 (0.24%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 934 (56.50%) Security Cleared
2 725 (43.86%) SC Cleared
3 66 (3.99%) DV Cleared
4 49 (2.96%) Degree
5 44 (2.66%) BPSS Clearance
6 28 (1.69%) CISSP
7 25 (1.51%) Azure Certification
8 23 (1.39%) AWS Certification
9 20 (1.21%) Microsoft Certification
10 17 (1.03%) Cisco Certification
11 16 (0.97%) CISM
12 14 (0.85%) PMP
13 12 (0.73%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 10 (0.60%) APMP
14 10 (0.60%) CIMA
15 9 (0.54%) ACCA
15 9 (0.54%) CTC Cleared
16 8 (0.48%) CCSP
16 8 (0.48%) ITIL Certification
16 8 (0.48%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 123 (7.44%) Accessibility
2 72 (4.36%) Data Quality
3 70 (4.23%) QA
4 48 (2.90%) WCAG
5 45 (2.72%) GDPR
6 38 (2.30%) NCSC
6 38 (2.30%) PMO
7 28 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.85%) SLA
9 13 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials
10 12 (0.73%) NIST
11 11 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
11 11 (0.67%) PCI DSS
12 9 (0.54%) GRC
13 8 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 8 (0.48%) Government Security Classifications
14 6 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 5 (0.30%) IFRS
16 4 (0.24%) IFRS 9
17 3 (0.18%) NIST 800
System Software
1 118 (7.14%) Docker
2 31 (1.88%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
6 3 (0.18%) Postfix
6 3 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.12%) Squid
8 1 (0.060%) FreeRADIUS
8 1 (0.060%) NLBS
8 1 (0.060%) Sendmail
8 1 (0.060%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.060%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 144 (8.71%) Terraform
2 124 (7.50%) Kubernetes
3 37 (2.24%) Grafana
4 34 (2.06%) Prometheus
5 31 (1.88%) Ansible
6 13 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
7 10 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.48%) Puppet
9 6 (0.36%) Argo
9 6 (0.36%) Kibana
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.18%) Salt
10 3 (0.18%) SCCM
11 2 (0.12%) Consul
11 2 (0.12%) Istio
11 2 (0.12%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Clustering
11 2 (0.12%) Progress Chef
12 1 (0.060%) CloudHub
12 1 (0.060%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 167 (10.10%) Microsoft
2 96 (5.81%) Salesforce
3 95 (5.75%) Oracle
4 51 (3.09%) Databricks
5 47 (2.84%) SAP
6 45 (2.72%) ServiceNow
7 37 (2.24%) Google
8 19 (1.15%) IBM
9 18 (1.09%) MuleSoft
10 17 (1.03%) Cisco
11 16 (0.97%) Atlassian
11 16 (0.97%) Foundry
12 14 (0.85%) Red Hat
12 14 (0.85%) Splunk
13 11 (0.67%) OpenAI
13 11 (0.67%) Virgin Media
13 11 (0.67%) VMware
14 10 (0.60%) Palo Alto
15 9 (0.54%) Fortinet
16 8 (0.48%) Palantir