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

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 22 18
Rank change year-on-year 0 -4 +14
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,577 1,091 1,531
As % of all contract jobs in London 9.71% 8.45% 8.40%
As % of the General category 15.48% 12.72% 13.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,170 743 1,047
10th Percentile £375 £361 £379
25th Percentile £432 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £688 £756 £745
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 17 13
10th Percentile - £18.03 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.50 £22.00 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.08 £32.50 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.85% +75.68% -9.40%
75th Percentile £41.25 £41.91 £61.53
90th Percentile £70.93 £65.00 £76.90
England median hourly rate £22.00 £24.18 £21.00
% change year-on-year -9.02% +15.14% +5.00%

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 10,189 8,574 11,569
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 62.76% 66.38% 63.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,641 5,685 8,250
10th Percentile £350 £337 £331
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £668 £700 £688
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
England median daily rate £500 £525 £534
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.69% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 123 265
10th Percentile £17.50 £20.09 £16.00
25th Percentile £20.36 £24.71 £18.33
Median hourly rate £28.55 £35.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.43% +16.67% -6.25%
75th Percentile £49.06 £55.25 £47.50
90th Percentile £70.75 £78.40 £71.30
England median hourly rate £25.00 £30.79 £26.00
% change year-on-year -18.81% +18.43% -20.46%

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 13 March 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 13 March 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 13 March 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 -2 144 £525 - 78
South London +1 68 £500 +1.52% 7
West London -26 6 £513 +46.43% 10
North London -2 5 £650 +128.07% 5
East London -3 5 £663 +15.22% 15
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 63 (3.99%) Confluence
2 40 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 12 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (0.63%) nginx
5 9 (0.57%) Apache
5 9 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
6 8 (0.51%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.25%) CMS
7 4 (0.25%) SAS
7 4 (0.25%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.19%) ArcGIS
8 3 (0.19%) Camunda
9 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.13%) OpenROAD
9 2 (0.13%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.063%) JBoss
10 1 (0.063%) Moodle
10 1 (0.063%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.063%) Sitecore CMS
10 1 (0.063%) WebSphere
Applications
1 52 (3.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (1.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
3 8 (0.51%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.32%) Sketch
4 5 (0.32%) Trello
5 4 (0.25%) Adobe XD
6 3 (0.19%) Adobe After Effects
6 3 (0.19%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.19%) InVision
6 3 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.063%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.063%) OmniGraffle
7 1 (0.063%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.063%) Siemens NX
7 1 (0.063%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 22 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.70%) Oracle ERP
4 9 (0.57%) SAP Payroll
5 6 (0.38%) iTrent
5 6 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.19%) Exchequer
7 3 (0.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 2 (0.13%) Integrated Workplace Management System
8 2 (0.13%) Loan IQ
8 2 (0.13%) SAP ERP
8 2 (0.13%) SAP GRC
8 2 (0.13%) SAP HCM
8 2 (0.13%) SAP HR
8 2 (0.13%) Workday HCM
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Assets
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Payables
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 344 (21.81%) AWS
2 295 (18.71%) Azure
3 102 (6.47%) Power Platform
4 87 (5.52%) Serverless
5 70 (4.44%) GitHub
6 64 (4.06%) Azure DevOps
7 59 (3.74%) GCP
8 54 (3.42%) AWS Lambda
9 53 (3.36%) Microsoft 365
10 48 (3.04%) Amazon S3
11 39 (2.47%) GitHub Actions
12 37 (2.35%) AWS CloudFormation
13 36 (2.28%) Amazon EKS
13 36 (2.28%) Dynamics 365
14 33 (2.09%) Entra ID
14 33 (2.09%) Power Automate
15 31 (1.97%) OCI
16 30 (1.90%) Amazon EC2
17 27 (1.71%) Amazon ECS
17 27 (1.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.59%) Network Security
2 24 (1.52%) Firewall
3 17 (1.08%) DNS
4 16 (1.01%) VPN
5 15 (0.95%) Wireless
6 14 (0.89%) Wi-Fi
7 12 (0.76%) WAN
8 11 (0.70%) TCP/IP
9 9 (0.57%) LAN
10 7 (0.44%) BGP
10 7 (0.44%) Internet
10 7 (0.44%) OSPF
11 6 (0.38%) NGFW
11 6 (0.38%) SD-WAN
12 4 (0.25%) DHCP
12 4 (0.25%) SSL
13 3 (0.19%) HTTP
13 3 (0.19%) NAS
13 3 (0.19%) Reverse Proxy
13 3 (0.19%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 79 (5.01%) Power BI
2 39 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
3 27 (1.71%) Data Lake
4 26 (1.65%) Data Warehouse
4 26 (1.65%) SQL Server
5 24 (1.52%) Metadata
6 21 (1.33%) Amazon RDS
7 17 (1.08%) MongoDB
8 16 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
9 15 (0.95%) NoSQL
10 14 (0.89%) Relational Database
10 14 (0.89%) Tableau
11 12 (0.76%) Delta Lake
12 11 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
13 10 (0.63%) Amazon Athena
13 10 (0.63%) DynamoDB
14 9 (0.57%) Data Hub
15 8 (0.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 7 (0.44%) GIS
16 7 (0.44%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 86 (5.45%) JIRA
2 77 (4.88%) Git
3 46 (2.92%) GitLab
4 39 (2.47%) Jenkins
5 23 (1.46%) Postman
5 23 (1.46%) Selenium
6 11 (0.70%) JUnit
7 8 (0.51%) Mockito
8 7 (0.44%) JMeter
9 6 (0.38%) Cypress.io
9 6 (0.38%) MLflow
10 5 (0.32%) Gradle
10 5 (0.32%) Liquibase
10 5 (0.32%) SonarQube
11 4 (0.25%) Artifactory
11 4 (0.25%) Bitbucket
12 3 (0.19%) Axure RP
12 3 (0.19%) Cucumber
12 3 (0.19%) ERwin
12 3 (0.19%) Maven
General
1 427 (27.08%) Social Skills
2 236 (14.97%) Finance
3 143 (9.07%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (4.19%) Local Government
5 57 (3.61%) Marketing
5 57 (3.61%) Telecoms
6 50 (3.17%) Manufacturing
7 41 (2.60%) Military
8 40 (2.54%) Electronics
8 40 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
9 36 (2.28%) Legal
10 34 (2.16%) Documentation Skills
11 28 (1.78%) Presentation Skills
12 23 (1.46%) Banking
13 21 (1.33%) Police
13 21 (1.33%) Retail
14 20 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
15 19 (1.20%) Law
16 16 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 12 (0.76%) Billing
Job Titles
1 218 (13.82%) Developer
2 210 (13.32%) Architect
3 187 (11.86%) Senior
4 153 (9.70%) Analyst
5 127 (8.05%) Lead
6 94 (5.96%) Business Analyst
7 83 (5.26%) Designer
8 61 (3.87%) DevOps Engineer
9 56 (3.55%) User Researcher
10 54 (3.42%) Consultant
11 51 (3.23%) Data Engineer
12 49 (3.11%) Technical Architect
13 48 (3.04%) Project Manager
13 48 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
14 41 (2.60%) Delivery Manager
15 39 (2.47%) Service Designer
16 37 (2.35%) Senior Developer
17 33 (2.09%) AWS Engineer
17 33 (2.09%) Salesforce Developer
17 33 (2.09%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (3.74%) REST
2 49 (3.11%) Node.js
3 47 (2.98%) React
4 45 (2.85%) RESTful
5 37 (2.35%) .NET
6 36 (2.28%) Web Services
7 34 (2.16%) AngularJS
7 34 (2.16%) Oracle Fusion
8 33 (2.09%) Spring
9 31 (1.97%) HTML
10 29 (1.84%) Lightning Web Components
11 28 (1.78%) CSS
12 24 (1.52%) SOAP
12 24 (1.52%) Spring Boot
13 23 (1.46%) JSON
13 23 (1.46%) Kafka
14 15 (0.95%) Middleware
14 15 (0.95%) XML
15 14 (0.89%) Pandas
16 13 (0.82%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 91 (5.77%) Cloud Native
2 69 (4.38%) Onboarding
3 46 (2.92%) Legacy Systems
4 37 (2.35%) Data Centre
5 36 (2.28%) Product Ownership
6 26 (1.65%) NHS
7 22 (1.40%) AI Agents
8 18 (1.14%) Management Information System
8 18 (1.14%) Public Cloud
9 17 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
10 16 (1.01%) Distributed Systems
10 16 (1.01%) Security Posture
11 14 (0.89%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
13 12 (0.76%) Data Structures
14 10 (0.63%) Data Protection Act
14 10 (0.63%) Greenfield Project
14 10 (0.63%) Replication
14 10 (0.63%) Security Operations Centre
15 8 (0.51%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 55 (3.49%) Windows
2 50 (3.17%) Linux
3 19 (1.20%) Mac OS
4 17 (1.08%) Android
5 14 (0.89%) Windows Server
6 7 (0.44%) VMS
6 7 (0.44%) Windows 10
7 6 (0.38%) Apple iOS
7 6 (0.38%) Unix
8 5 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.25%) Solaris
9 4 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
9 4 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.063%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 392 (24.86%) Agile
2 235 (14.90%) CI/CD
3 226 (14.33%) DevOps
4 209 (13.25%) Stakeholder Management
5 178 (11.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 159 (10.08%) Problem-Solving
7 146 (9.26%) Roadmaps
8 140 (8.88%) Continuous Improvement
9 139 (8.81%) Decision-Making
10 135 (8.56%) Migration
11 132 (8.37%) AI
12 123 (7.80%) Business Intelligence
13 122 (7.74%) User Research
14 116 (7.36%) Analytics
15 115 (7.29%) Infrastructure as Code
16 112 (7.10%) Containerisation
17 102 (6.47%) Data Modelling
18 94 (5.96%) Service Design
19 93 (5.90%) Test Automation
20 92 (5.83%) Digital Transformation Programme
Programming Languages
1 192 (12.18%) Python
2 144 (9.13%) SQL
3 90 (5.71%) Java
4 80 (5.07%) JavaScript
5 45 (2.85%) TypeScript
6 41 (2.60%) C#
7 37 (2.35%) Ruby
8 36 (2.28%) PowerShell
9 29 (1.84%) Bash
10 28 (1.78%) Apex Code
11 14 (0.89%) PL/SQL
12 12 (0.76%) Go
13 11 (0.70%) R
14 10 (0.63%) Kotlin
15 9 (0.57%) Bicep
15 9 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 7 (0.44%) C
16 7 (0.44%) Shell Script
17 5 (0.32%) T-SQL
18 4 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 932 (59.10%) Security Cleared
2 689 (43.69%) SC Cleared
3 63 (3.99%) Degree
4 52 (3.30%) DV Cleared
5 43 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
6 25 (1.59%) Azure Certification
7 22 (1.40%) CISSP
8 19 (1.20%) AWS Certification
9 15 (0.95%) CISM
9 15 (0.95%) PMP
10 14 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
11 12 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
12 11 (0.70%) APMP
13 10 (0.63%) CIMA
13 10 (0.63%) OSCP
13 10 (0.63%) PMI Certification
14 9 (0.57%) ACCA
14 9 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
15 8 (0.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 8 (0.51%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 96 (6.09%) Accessibility
2 66 (4.19%) Data Quality
3 60 (3.80%) QA
4 54 (3.42%) GDPR
5 35 (2.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 33 (2.09%) NCSC
6 33 (2.09%) PMO
7 30 (1.90%) WCAG
8 25 (1.59%) NIST
9 13 (0.82%) GRC
10 12 (0.76%) Actionable Recommendations
11 10 (0.63%) SLA
12 9 (0.57%) HIPAA
13 7 (0.44%) Government Security Classifications
14 5 (0.32%) NIST 800
15 4 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
15 4 (0.25%) IFRS
15 4 (0.25%) PCI DSS
16 3 (0.19%) IFRS 9
16 3 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 115 (7.29%) Docker
2 32 (2.03%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (0.32%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.19%) vSphere
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.063%) FreeRADIUS
9 1 (0.063%) IAG
9 1 (0.063%) NLBS
9 1 (0.063%) Postfix
9 1 (0.063%) Squid
9 1 (0.063%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 139 (8.81%) Terraform
2 122 (7.74%) Kubernetes
3 23 (1.46%) Ansible
4 22 (1.40%) Grafana
5 18 (1.14%) Prometheus
6 10 (0.63%) Jamf Pro
6 10 (0.63%) Microsoft Intune
7 8 (0.51%) Argo
8 6 (0.38%) Packer
8 6 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
9 5 (0.32%) Consul
9 5 (0.32%) SCCM
10 3 (0.19%) FortiGate
10 3 (0.19%) Puppet
10 3 (0.19%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Clustering
11 2 (0.13%) Oracle RMAN
11 2 (0.13%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.13%) vRealize
12 1 (0.063%) Nessus
Vendors
1 160 (10.15%) Microsoft
2 80 (5.07%) Salesforce
3 79 (5.01%) SAP
4 78 (4.95%) Oracle
5 44 (2.79%) Databricks
5 44 (2.79%) ServiceNow
6 29 (1.84%) Cisco
7 26 (1.65%) Google
8 22 (1.40%) VMware
9 20 (1.27%) MuleSoft
10 17 (1.08%) Virgin Media
11 15 (0.95%) Apple
11 15 (0.95%) Atlassian
11 15 (0.95%) Red Hat
12 14 (0.89%) IBM
12 14 (0.89%) Splunk
13 12 (0.76%) Dell
14 11 (0.70%) HP
14 11 (0.70%) OpenAI
14 11 (0.70%) Palo Alto