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

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 20 18
Rank change year-on-year -4 -2 +18
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,358 1,236 1,591
As % of all contract jobs in London 9.11% 9.02% 8.66%
As % of the General category 14.08% 13.82% 13.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 991 776 1,099
10th Percentile £375 £350 £388
25th Percentile £431 £443 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.38% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £688 £766 £745
England median daily rate £500 £525 £534
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.69% -1.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 16 12
10th Percentile - £21.00 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.50 £22.20 £15.86
Median hourly rate £20.60 £33.75 £19.75
Median % change year-on-year -38.97% +70.89% -3.28%
75th Percentile £42.69 £42.45 £35.06
90th Percentile £55.28 £65.00 £77.03
England median hourly rate £22.00 £25.50 £20.85
% change year-on-year -13.73% +22.29% +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 9,642 8,946 11,695
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 64.65% 65.26% 63.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,284 5,634 8,389
10th Percentile £350 £325 £336
25th Percentile £425 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.96% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £668 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £800
England median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 112 255
10th Percentile £17.50 £20.88 £16.00
25th Percentile £20.52 £25.94 £18.42
Median hourly rate £27.61 £36.15 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.64% +26.84% +3.64%
75th Percentile £47.38 £53.75 £50.13
90th Percentile £72.50 £78.40 £73.29
England median hourly rate £22.92 £30.40 £25.71
% change year-on-year -24.61% +18.24% -1.12%

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 -5 149 £550 +5.26% 91
South London 0 46 £500 -2.44% 8
East London 0 5 £638 +12.83% 18
North London -2 5 £650 +154.90% 1
West London -31 4 £600 +77.78% 14
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 54 (3.98%) Confluence
2 37 (2.72%) SharePoint
3 13 (0.96%) nginx
4 12 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (0.66%) Apache
6 7 (0.52%) Apache Spark
6 7 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
7 4 (0.29%) CMS
7 4 (0.29%) SAS
8 3 (0.22%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.15%) Camunda
10 1 (0.074%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.074%) Appian
10 1 (0.074%) GeoServer
10 1 (0.074%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.074%) Moodle
10 1 (0.074%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.074%) Sitecore CMS
10 1 (0.074%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 43 (3.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (1.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 16 (1.18%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.44%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 6 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.37%) Adobe XD
7 4 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.29%) Sketch
7 4 (0.29%) Trello
8 3 (0.22%) InVision
9 2 (0.15%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.074%) Adobe Illustrator
10 1 (0.074%) OmniGraffle
10 1 (0.074%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.074%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.074%) Siemens NX
10 1 (0.074%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 21 (1.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (1.25%) Oracle ERP
3 15 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
4 9 (0.66%) SAP Payroll
5 6 (0.44%) iTrent
6 5 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
7 4 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
7 4 (0.29%) Oracle General Ledger
7 4 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
7 4 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
8 3 (0.22%) SAP HCM
9 2 (0.15%) Exchequer
9 2 (0.15%) Loan IQ
9 2 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 2 (0.15%) SAP Business One
9 2 (0.15%) SAP ERP
9 2 (0.15%) SAP GRC
9 2 (0.15%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.15%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 266 (19.59%) AWS
1 266 (19.59%) Azure
2 99 (7.29%) Power Platform
3 73 (5.38%) Serverless
4 63 (4.64%) GitHub
5 58 (4.27%) Azure DevOps
6 57 (4.20%) Microsoft 365
7 45 (3.31%) GCP
8 41 (3.02%) AWS Lambda
8 41 (3.02%) Power Automate
9 38 (2.80%) OCI
10 37 (2.72%) GitHub Actions
11 36 (2.65%) Dynamics 365
12 33 (2.43%) Amazon S3
13 32 (2.36%) PowerApps
14 31 (2.28%) Amazon ECS
14 31 (2.28%) AWS CloudFormation
15 25 (1.84%) Amazon EKS
15 25 (1.84%) Entra ID
16 24 (1.77%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 28 (2.06%) Firewall
2 24 (1.77%) Network Security
3 21 (1.55%) DNS
4 17 (1.25%) WAN
5 15 (1.10%) VPN
5 15 (1.10%) Wireless
6 13 (0.96%) LAN
6 13 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
7 10 (0.74%) BGP
7 10 (0.74%) OSPF
7 10 (0.74%) TCP/IP
8 7 (0.52%) HTTP
8 7 (0.52%) SD-WAN
8 7 (0.52%) SMTP
9 6 (0.44%) FTP
9 6 (0.44%) IMAP
9 6 (0.44%) Internet
9 6 (0.44%) OpenLDAP
9 6 (0.44%) SSH
10 5 (0.37%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (4.86%) Power BI
2 40 (2.95%) PostgreSQL
3 25 (1.84%) Metadata
4 23 (1.69%) Data Lake
5 19 (1.40%) SQL Server
6 17 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
7 16 (1.18%) Data Warehouse
8 14 (1.03%) Azure SQL Database
8 14 (1.03%) MongoDB
8 14 (1.03%) NoSQL
9 12 (0.88%) Relational Database
10 10 (0.74%) Power Query
11 9 (0.66%) Data Hub
11 9 (0.66%) Oracle Database
12 8 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
12 8 (0.59%) Amazon Redshift
12 8 (0.59%) DynamoDB
13 7 (0.52%) Amazon Aurora
13 7 (0.52%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 6 (0.44%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 83 (6.11%) JIRA
2 69 (5.08%) Git
3 38 (2.80%) GitLab
4 36 (2.65%) Jenkins
5 28 (2.06%) Postman
6 23 (1.69%) Selenium
7 7 (0.52%) JUnit
8 6 (0.44%) Cypress.io
8 6 (0.44%) Vagrant
9 5 (0.37%) Gradle
9 5 (0.37%) JMeter
9 5 (0.37%) MLflow
10 4 (0.29%) Cucumber
10 4 (0.29%) Liquibase
10 4 (0.29%) Mockito
11 3 (0.22%) Android Studio
11 3 (0.22%) Appium
11 3 (0.22%) Axure RP
11 3 (0.22%) Pa11y
11 3 (0.22%) REST Assured
General
1 395 (29.09%) Social Skills
2 225 (16.57%) Finance
3 116 (8.54%) Analytical Skills
4 70 (5.15%) Telecoms
5 64 (4.71%) Marketing
6 60 (4.42%) Manufacturing
7 59 (4.34%) Local Government
8 50 (3.68%) Electronics
9 37 (2.72%) Military
10 32 (2.36%) Legal
11 31 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
12 29 (2.14%) Presentation Skills
13 28 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
14 20 (1.47%) Retail
15 19 (1.40%) Banking
15 19 (1.40%) Organisational Skills
16 16 (1.18%) Law
17 15 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 13 (0.96%) Police
19 11 (0.81%) Billing
Job Titles
1 181 (13.33%) Developer
2 164 (12.08%) Architect
3 156 (11.49%) Senior
4 131 (9.65%) Analyst
5 116 (8.54%) Lead
6 80 (5.89%) Business Analyst
7 67 (4.93%) Designer
8 64 (4.71%) Consultant
9 63 (4.64%) DevOps Engineer
10 44 (3.24%) User Researcher
11 41 (3.02%) Project Manager
12 38 (2.80%) Solutions Architect
13 36 (2.65%) AWS Engineer
14 35 (2.58%) Service Designer
15 33 (2.43%) Data Engineer
16 32 (2.36%) Technical Architect
17 31 (2.28%) Azure Engineer
18 29 (2.14%) Senior Developer
19 26 (1.91%) Senior Analyst
20 25 (1.84%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (4.57%) REST
2 40 (2.95%) Oracle Fusion
3 37 (2.72%) React
4 35 (2.58%) RESTful
5 34 (2.50%) Node.js
6 32 (2.36%) .NET
6 32 (2.36%) Web Services
7 30 (2.21%) JSON
8 27 (1.99%) AngularJS
8 27 (1.99%) Spring
9 26 (1.91%) HTML
10 25 (1.84%) SOAP
11 24 (1.77%) CSS
11 24 (1.77%) Kafka
12 23 (1.69%) Lightning Web Components
12 23 (1.69%) Spring Boot
13 19 (1.40%) XML
14 17 (1.25%) OAuth
15 13 (0.96%) LangChain
16 12 (0.88%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 66 (4.86%) Cloud Native
2 58 (4.27%) Onboarding
3 36 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
4 33 (2.43%) Product Ownership
5 32 (2.36%) Data Centre
6 25 (1.84%) AI Agents
7 23 (1.69%) NHS
8 18 (1.33%) Management Information System
9 17 (1.25%) Security Posture
10 16 (1.18%) Public Cloud
11 15 (1.10%) Data Structures
11 15 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
12 14 (1.03%) Replication
13 13 (0.96%) Virtual Team
14 12 (0.88%) Security Operations Centre
14 12 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
15 11 (0.81%) Distributed Systems
15 11 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
16 10 (0.74%) Data Protection Act
17 9 (0.66%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 52 (3.83%) Linux
2 51 (3.76%) Windows
3 17 (1.25%) Mac OS
4 15 (1.10%) Android
5 13 (0.96%) VMS
6 7 (0.52%) Windows Server
7 6 (0.44%) Amazon Linux
7 6 (0.44%) Ubuntu
7 6 (0.44%) Unix
8 5 (0.37%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.22%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.074%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 1 (0.074%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 337 (24.82%) Agile
2 209 (15.39%) CI/CD
3 183 (13.48%) DevOps
4 180 (13.25%) Stakeholder Management
5 162 (11.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 148 (10.90%) Problem-Solving
7 123 (9.06%) AI
8 122 (8.98%) Business Intelligence
9 114 (8.39%) Roadmaps
10 112 (8.25%) Migration
11 111 (8.17%) Continuous Improvement
12 106 (7.81%) Decision-Making
13 99 (7.29%) Infrastructure as Code
14 95 (7.00%) User Research
15 93 (6.85%) Analytics
16 84 (6.19%) Containerisation
17 79 (5.82%) Test Automation
18 76 (5.60%) Workshop Facilitation
19 73 (5.38%) Service Design
19 73 (5.38%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 155 (11.41%) Python
2 121 (8.91%) SQL
3 76 (5.60%) Java
4 66 (4.86%) JavaScript
5 41 (3.02%) C#
5 41 (3.02%) PowerShell
6 33 (2.43%) TypeScript
7 31 (2.28%) Ruby
8 23 (1.69%) Bash
9 22 (1.62%) Apex Code
10 12 (0.88%) PL/SQL
11 11 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 10 (0.74%) Go
13 8 (0.59%) Bicep
13 8 (0.59%) R
14 7 (0.52%) C
15 6 (0.44%) Groovy
15 6 (0.44%) Kotlin
16 4 (0.29%) C++
16 4 (0.29%) JSX
Qualifications
1 798 (58.76%) Security Cleared
2 593 (43.67%) SC Cleared
3 68 (5.01%) Degree
4 45 (3.31%) DV Cleared
5 29 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
6 28 (2.06%) Azure Certification
7 18 (1.33%) AWS Certification
8 16 (1.18%) CISSP
9 14 (1.03%) PMP
10 12 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
11 11 (0.81%) CISM
11 11 (0.81%) Computer Science Degree
12 10 (0.74%) APMP
12 10 (0.74%) OSCP
13 9 (0.66%) CIMA
13 9 (0.66%) ISTQB
13 9 (0.66%) PMI Certification
14 8 (0.59%) ACCA
14 8 (0.59%) TOGAF Certification
15 7 (0.52%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (4.86%) Accessibility
2 53 (3.90%) QA
3 52 (3.83%) GDPR
4 46 (3.39%) Data Quality
5 37 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 28 (2.06%) NIST
7 26 (1.91%) NCSC
8 24 (1.77%) PMO
9 14 (1.03%) GRC
9 14 (1.03%) WCAG
10 11 (0.81%) Actionable Recommendations
11 10 (0.74%) HIPAA
12 7 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
13 6 (0.44%) SLA
14 5 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 4 (0.29%) PCI DSS
15 4 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 3 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 3 (0.22%) IFRS
17 2 (0.15%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 95 (7.00%) Docker
2 28 (2.06%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.52%) Squid
4 7 (0.52%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.44%) DFS Replication
5 6 (0.44%) Dovecot
5 6 (0.44%) Postfix
6 5 (0.37%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.22%) vSphere
9 2 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.15%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.074%) IAG
10 1 (0.074%) NLBS
10 1 (0.074%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 122 (8.98%) Terraform
2 110 (8.10%) Kubernetes
3 25 (1.84%) Grafana
4 22 (1.62%) Prometheus
5 20 (1.47%) Ansible
6 9 (0.66%) Jamf Pro
7 8 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
8 7 (0.52%) Argo
8 7 (0.52%) Nessus
8 7 (0.52%) Packer
8 7 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
9 6 (0.44%) Proxmox
10 5 (0.37%) Consul
10 5 (0.37%) SCCM
11 4 (0.29%) FortiGate
12 3 (0.22%) vCenter Server
13 2 (0.15%) CSIRT
13 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Clustering
13 2 (0.15%) QRadar
13 2 (0.15%) vRealize
Vendors
1 157 (11.56%) Microsoft
2 92 (6.77%) SAP
3 84 (6.19%) Oracle
4 65 (4.79%) Salesforce
5 44 (3.24%) ServiceNow
6 30 (2.21%) Cisco
6 30 (2.21%) Databricks
7 19 (1.40%) Google
7 19 (1.40%) VMware
8 18 (1.33%) Virgin Media
9 17 (1.25%) Splunk
10 16 (1.18%) Apple
10 16 (1.18%) MuleSoft
11 13 (0.96%) Palo Alto
12 12 (0.88%) Fortinet
13 11 (0.81%) Dell
14 10 (0.74%) HP
14 10 (0.74%) Red Hat
15 9 (0.66%) CyberArk
15 9 (0.66%) Juniper