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

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 24 18
Rank change year-on-year +3 -6 +9
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,639 986 1,501
As % of all contract jobs in London 9.20% 7.84% 8.51%
As % of the General category 15.34% 11.58% 13.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,238 724 1,059
10th Percentile £379 £400 £375
25th Percentile £447 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -0.94% -5.78%
75th Percentile £607 £613 £650
90th Percentile £707 £738 £743
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 18 14
10th Percentile £16.86 £21.40 £15.00
25th Percentile £19.69 £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 £75.85 £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 10,682 8,517 11,149
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 59.97% 67.72% 63.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,908 5,743 7,947
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 £510 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -2.86% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 194 142 239
10th Percentile £18.42 £15.84 £15.90
25th Percentile £21.93 £23.13 £18.19
Median hourly rate £34.06 £34.25 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.55% +22.32% -12.28%
75th Percentile £47.94 £51.07 £44.75
90th Percentile £69.63 £65.00 £65.00
England median hourly rate £30.50 £27.50 £30.75
% change year-on-year +10.91% -10.57% -5.38%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -1 149 £550 +4.76% 98
South London 0 65 £500 +1.52% 8
West London -28 10 £506 +26.56% 11
East London -9 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 72 (4.39%) Confluence
2 35 (2.14%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.67%) Apache Spark
3 11 (0.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (0.49%) Apache
4 8 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (0.49%) CMS
4 8 (0.49%) Palantir Foundry
5 7 (0.43%) Tomcat
6 6 (0.37%) nginx
7 5 (0.31%) Camunda
8 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.12%) Drupal
9 2 (0.12%) OpenROAD
9 2 (0.12%) SAS
9 2 (0.12%) WordPress
10 1 (0.061%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.061%) Mule
10 1 (0.061%) Skype for Business
10 1 (0.061%) WebSphere
Applications
1 47 (2.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 15 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.31%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.31%) 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 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.061%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.061%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 25 (1.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.85%) Oracle ERP
4 7 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
5 6 (0.37%) 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 (0.061%) NEC Housing
9 1 (0.061%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 357 (21.78%) AWS
2 295 (18.00%) Azure
3 100 (6.10%) Power Platform
4 77 (4.70%) Serverless
5 66 (4.03%) GCP
6 65 (3.97%) GitHub
7 57 (3.48%) Azure DevOps
8 55 (3.36%) Microsoft 365
9 54 (3.29%) Amazon S3
10 51 (3.11%) AWS Lambda
11 38 (2.32%) Amazon EKS
12 37 (2.26%) Amazon EC2
12 37 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
13 36 (2.20%) Dynamics 365
13 36 (2.20%) Entra ID
13 36 (2.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 35 (2.14%) AWS CloudFormation
14 35 (2.14%) OCI
15 31 (1.89%) Power Automate
15 31 (1.89%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.83%) Firewall
2 26 (1.59%) Network Security
3 18 (1.10%) DNS
4 12 (0.73%) LAN
4 12 (0.73%) WAN
5 11 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
6 10 (0.61%) VPN
7 9 (0.55%) TCP/IP
8 8 (0.49%) NGFW
9 7 (0.43%) DKIM
10 6 (0.37%) Internet
10 6 (0.37%) Wireless
11 5 (0.31%) BGP
11 5 (0.31%) DMARC
11 5 (0.31%) OSPF
11 5 (0.31%) WLAN
12 4 (0.24%) Reverse Proxy
12 4 (0.24%) SD-WAN
12 4 (0.24%) SSL
13 3 (0.18%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (4.33%) Power BI
2 35 (2.14%) PostgreSQL
3 28 (1.71%) Data Warehouse
4 27 (1.65%) Metadata
5 25 (1.53%) Amazon RDS
6 23 (1.40%) SQL Server
7 21 (1.28%) Data Lake
8 20 (1.22%) MongoDB
9 17 (1.04%) NoSQL
10 15 (0.92%) Tableau
11 14 (0.85%) Delta Lake
12 12 (0.73%) Amazon Athena
12 12 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
13 10 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
13 10 (0.61%) DynamoDB
14 9 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
15 8 (0.49%) Amazon QuickSight
15 8 (0.49%) GIS
16 7 (0.43%) Oracle Database
16 7 (0.43%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 98 (5.98%) JIRA
2 88 (5.37%) Git
3 55 (3.36%) GitLab
4 50 (3.05%) Jenkins
5 21 (1.28%) Selenium
6 20 (1.22%) Postman
7 13 (0.79%) JUnit
8 11 (0.67%) Mockito
9 10 (0.61%) SonarQube
10 8 (0.49%) CircleCI
10 8 (0.49%) Cypress.io
11 7 (0.43%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.43%) Snyk
12 6 (0.37%) JMeter
13 5 (0.31%) Gradle
14 4 (0.24%) Cucumber
14 4 (0.24%) Maven
14 4 (0.24%) MLflow
15 3 (0.18%) Bitbucket Server
15 3 (0.18%) Liquibase
General
1 395 (24.10%) Social Skills
2 213 (13.00%) Finance
3 142 (8.66%) Analytical Skills
4 73 (4.45%) Local Government
5 55 (3.36%) Military
6 43 (2.62%) Influencing Skills
7 42 (2.56%) Telecoms
8 40 (2.44%) Marketing
9 35 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
10 33 (2.01%) Legal
11 32 (1.95%) Banking
12 30 (1.83%) Organisational Skills
13 27 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 27 (1.65%) Police
14 26 (1.59%) Law
15 25 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
16 17 (1.04%) Manufacturing
17 15 (0.92%) Electronics
17 15 (0.92%) Retail
18 12 (0.73%) Billing
Job Titles
1 238 (14.52%) Developer
2 230 (14.03%) Architect
3 171 (10.43%) Senior
4 157 (9.58%) Lead
5 139 (8.48%) Analyst
6 89 (5.43%) Designer
7 80 (4.88%) Business Analyst
8 65 (3.97%) DevOps Engineer
9 58 (3.54%) User Researcher
10 53 (3.23%) Consultant
10 53 (3.23%) Data Engineer
10 53 (3.23%) Project Manager
11 52 (3.17%) Technical Architect
12 47 (2.87%) Solutions Architect
13 41 (2.50%) Delivery Manager
13 41 (2.50%) Salesforce Developer
14 39 (2.38%) Security Architect
14 39 (2.38%) Senior Developer
15 36 (2.20%) AWS Engineer
15 36 (2.20%) Service Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (3.17%) REST
2 49 (2.99%) RESTful
3 46 (2.81%) React
4 45 (2.75%) Node.js
5 43 (2.62%) Spring
6 40 (2.44%) Lightning Web Components
7 38 (2.32%) Oracle Fusion
8 37 (2.26%) Spring Boot
9 35 (2.14%) HTML
10 34 (2.07%) Web Services
11 32 (1.95%) .NET
12 30 (1.83%) AngularJS
13 27 (1.65%) Kafka
14 25 (1.53%) SOAP
15 24 (1.46%) CSS
16 17 (1.04%) JSON
16 17 (1.04%) Middleware
17 15 (0.92%) PySpark
18 14 (0.85%) OAuth
19 12 (0.73%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 105 (6.41%) Cloud Native
2 58 (3.54%) Onboarding
3 50 (3.05%) Legacy Systems
4 42 (2.56%) Product Ownership
5 33 (2.01%) NHS
6 32 (1.95%) Data Centre
7 25 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
8 23 (1.40%) Management Information System
9 22 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
10 15 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
11 14 (0.85%) Public Cloud
12 13 (0.79%) Analytical Mindset
12 13 (0.79%) Data Structures
13 12 (0.73%) AI Agents
14 11 (0.67%) CMDB
14 11 (0.67%) Enterprise Cloud
14 11 (0.67%) Security Posture
14 11 (0.67%) Virtual Team
15 10 (0.61%) Freedom of Information
Operating Systems
1 49 (2.99%) Windows
2 48 (2.93%) Linux
3 15 (0.92%) Windows Server
4 13 (0.79%) Android
5 9 (0.55%) Apple iOS
5 9 (0.55%) Windows 10
6 7 (0.43%) Mac OS
6 7 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.37%) Solaris
7 6 (0.37%) VMS
7 6 (0.37%) Windows Server 2008
7 6 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
8 5 (0.31%) Unix
9 3 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
9 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.061%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 401 (24.47%) Agile
2 262 (15.99%) CI/CD
3 251 (15.31%) DevOps
4 219 (13.36%) Stakeholder Management
5 179 (10.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 153 (9.33%) Decision-Making
7 150 (9.15%) Roadmaps
8 149 (9.09%) Continuous Improvement
9 148 (9.03%) Problem-Solving
10 147 (8.97%) Migration
11 134 (8.18%) Infrastructure as Code
12 129 (7.87%) Containerisation
13 127 (7.75%) AI
14 122 (7.44%) Analytics
15 121 (7.38%) User Research
16 119 (7.26%) Data Modelling
17 109 (6.65%) Test Automation
18 101 (6.16%) Service Design
19 99 (6.04%) Digital Transformation Programme
20 91 (5.55%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 190 (11.59%) Python
2 137 (8.36%) SQL
3 112 (6.83%) Java
4 80 (4.88%) JavaScript
5 54 (3.29%) TypeScript
6 40 (2.44%) Apex Code
7 37 (2.26%) C#
8 35 (2.14%) PowerShell
8 35 (2.14%) Ruby
9 27 (1.65%) Bash
10 18 (1.10%) PL/SQL
11 13 (0.79%) Kotlin
12 12 (0.73%) Bicep
12 12 (0.73%) R
13 10 (0.61%) Go
13 10 (0.61%) Shell Script
14 8 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 5 (0.31%) C
15 5 (0.31%) T-SQL
16 4 (0.24%) Scala
Qualifications
1 922 (56.25%) Security Cleared
2 698 (42.59%) SC Cleared
3 68 (4.15%) DV Cleared
4 51 (3.11%) Degree
5 43 (2.62%) BPSS Clearance
6 25 (1.53%) CISSP
7 24 (1.46%) Azure Certification
8 21 (1.28%) AWS Certification
9 16 (0.98%) Cisco Certification
9 16 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
10 15 (0.92%) CISM
11 13 (0.79%) PMP
12 11 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 11 (0.67%) APMP
13 10 (0.61%) CIMA
14 9 (0.55%) ACCA
14 9 (0.55%) CTC Cleared
15 8 (0.49%) PMI Certification
16 7 (0.43%) CCSP
16 7 (0.43%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 117 (7.14%) Accessibility
2 71 (4.33%) Data Quality
2 71 (4.33%) QA
3 47 (2.87%) WCAG
4 43 (2.62%) GDPR
5 39 (2.38%) PMO
6 36 (2.20%) NCSC
7 27 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 12 (0.73%) Actionable Recommendations
8 12 (0.73%) SLA
9 11 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
9 11 (0.67%) NIST
10 9 (0.55%) GRC
10 9 (0.55%) PCI DSS
11 7 (0.43%) Government Security Classifications
12 6 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 5 (0.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 5 (0.31%) IFRS
14 4 (0.24%) IFRS 9
15 3 (0.18%) NIST 800
System Software
1 118 (7.20%) Docker
2 33 (2.01%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.43%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
5 4 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.12%) Postfix
7 2 (0.12%) Squid
7 2 (0.12%) vSphere
8 1 (0.061%) FreeRADIUS
8 1 (0.061%) IAG
8 1 (0.061%) NLBS
8 1 (0.061%) Sendmail
8 1 (0.061%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.061%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 146 (8.91%) Terraform
2 122 (7.44%) Kubernetes
3 34 (2.07%) Grafana
4 30 (1.83%) Ansible
4 30 (1.83%) Prometheus
5 12 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
6 7 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (0.37%) Kibana
7 6 (0.37%) Puppet
8 5 (0.31%) 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%) Microsoft Clustering
10 2 (0.12%) Progress Chef
10 2 (0.12%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.061%) Consul
11 1 (0.061%) RSA Archer
11 1 (0.061%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 168 (10.25%) Microsoft
2 92 (5.61%) Salesforce
3 90 (5.49%) Oracle
4 53 (3.23%) SAP
5 48 (2.93%) Databricks
6 45 (2.75%) ServiceNow
7 34 (2.07%) Google
8 19 (1.16%) Cisco
8 19 (1.16%) IBM
9 18 (1.10%) MuleSoft
10 17 (1.04%) Foundry
11 16 (0.98%) Atlassian
12 13 (0.79%) Red Hat
12 13 (0.79%) Splunk
12 13 (0.79%) VMware
13 11 (0.67%) OpenAI
13 11 (0.67%) Virgin Media
14 10 (0.61%) Palo Alto
15 9 (0.55%) ForgeRock
16 8 (0.49%) Zscaler