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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 24 22
Rank change year-on-year -2 -2 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 1,744 1,028 1,261
As % of all contract jobs in London 8.56% 7.63% 7.73%
As % of the General category 13.91% 11.04% 12.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,317 752 800
10th Percentile £381 £363 £350
25th Percentile £463 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +7.32% -2.38% -6.67%
75th Percentile £638 £610 £621
90th Percentile £715 £688 £700
England median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 21 9
10th Percentile £16.76 £19.79 £18.13
25th Percentile £22.94 £23.45 £20.00
Median hourly rate £35.00 £30.00 £33.75
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% -11.11% -17.76%
75th Percentile £50.00 £47.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £62.00 £86.25 £90.75
England median hourly rate £21.35 £21.40 £23.99
% change year-on-year -0.23% -10.80% +15.45%

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 12,540 9,314 10,134
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 61.59% 69.16% 62.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,018 6,144 6,716
10th Percentile £350 £325 £330
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £788 £788 £825
England median daily rate £525 £500 £538
% change year-on-year +5.00% -6.98% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 258 183 121
10th Percentile £16.70 £17.00 £18.00
25th Percentile £21.04 £24.64 £25.00
Median hourly rate £28.40 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.63% -7.14% +22.81%
75th Percentile £45.16 £49.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £70.03 £65.00 £66.00
England median hourly rate £31.16 £25.15 £38.50
% change year-on-year +23.88% -34.68% +29.41%

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 19 September 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 19 September 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 19 September 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 +5 183 £550 +6.80% 147
South London -2 57 £525 +10.53% 14
West London -23 16 £475 -5.00% 84
East London +10 13 £725 +26.09% 19
North London 0 5 £400 -27.27%
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 74 (4.24%) Confluence
2 50 (2.87%) SharePoint
3 21 (1.20%) CMS
4 17 (0.97%) Microsoft Exchange
5 13 (0.75%) Apache
5 13 (0.75%) Apache Spark
6 10 (0.57%) Palantir Foundry
7 9 (0.52%) nginx
8 7 (0.40%) SAS
9 6 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
9 6 (0.34%) WordPress
10 5 (0.29%) Headless CMS
11 3 (0.17%) Drupal
12 2 (0.11%) Mendix
12 2 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.11%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.11%) WebLogic
13 1 (0.057%) IIS
13 1 (0.057%) PowerExchange
13 1 (0.057%) WebLogic Portal
Applications
1 34 (1.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.80%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.17%) Adobe XD
6 3 (0.17%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.17%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.17%) Sketch
7 2 (0.11%) Trello
8 1 (0.057%) Gliffy
Business Applications
1 20 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 18 (1.03%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (1.03%) Oracle ERP
3 14 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
4 12 (0.69%) NetSuite
5 7 (0.40%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 5 (0.29%) Exchequer
7 4 (0.23%) iTrent
7 4 (0.23%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle Payroll
8 3 (0.17%) PeopleSoft HCM
8 3 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
8 3 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.17%) SAP CO
8 3 (0.17%) SAP FI/CO
8 3 (0.17%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.11%) Changepoint
9 2 (0.11%) SAP ERP
10 1 (0.057%) Oracle Cash Management
10 1 (0.057%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 382 (21.90%) AWS
2 349 (20.01%) Azure
3 109 (6.25%) Power Platform
4 92 (5.28%) GCP
5 81 (4.64%) GitHub
6 73 (4.19%) Serverless
7 72 (4.13%) Azure DevOps
8 71 (4.07%) Microsoft 365
9 70 (4.01%) Entra ID
10 66 (3.78%) Amazon S3
11 59 (3.38%) GitHub Actions
12 46 (2.64%) SaaS
13 44 (2.52%) AWS Lambda
14 38 (2.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 37 (2.12%) Amazon EKS
16 33 (1.89%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 31 (1.78%) Amazon EC2
18 30 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
19 28 (1.61%) Power Automate
19 28 (1.61%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 48 (2.75%) Firewall
2 30 (1.72%) DNS
3 29 (1.66%) Network Security
4 14 (0.80%) LAN
4 14 (0.80%) WAN
5 11 (0.63%) VPN
6 10 (0.57%) Cisco IPT
6 10 (0.57%) NGFW
6 10 (0.57%) TCP/IP
7 7 (0.40%) DHCP
7 7 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.34%) DKIM
8 6 (0.34%) DMARC
8 6 (0.34%) Wireshark
9 5 (0.29%) 5G
9 5 (0.29%) Kerberos
9 5 (0.29%) NGN
9 5 (0.29%) Radio Access Network
9 5 (0.29%) Reverse Proxy
9 5 (0.29%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (3.90%) Power BI
2 56 (3.21%) PostgreSQL
3 42 (2.41%) Metadata
4 34 (1.95%) Data Warehouse
5 30 (1.72%) Amazon RDS
6 26 (1.49%) Data Lake
7 23 (1.32%) MongoDB
8 22 (1.26%) NoSQL
9 21 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
9 21 (1.20%) MySQL
10 20 (1.15%) Amazon Aurora
11 18 (1.03%) Amazon Athena
12 17 (0.97%) SQL Server
13 15 (0.86%) Relational Database
14 14 (0.80%) Oracle Database
14 14 (0.80%) Tableau
15 12 (0.69%) Delta Lake
15 12 (0.69%) Oracle Reports
16 11 (0.63%) Redis
17 10 (0.57%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 105 (6.02%) JIRA
2 92 (5.28%) Git
3 69 (3.96%) Jenkins
4 62 (3.56%) GitLab
5 11 (0.63%) JUnit
5 11 (0.63%) SonarQube
6 9 (0.52%) CircleCI
6 9 (0.52%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.52%) Maven
6 9 (0.52%) Mockito
6 9 (0.52%) Selenium
7 7 (0.40%) Cucumber
8 6 (0.34%) Postman
9 5 (0.29%) JMeter
9 5 (0.29%) Snyk
10 4 (0.23%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.17%) Gradle
11 3 (0.17%) MLflow
11 3 (0.17%) REST Assured
11 3 (0.17%) VTune
General
1 562 (32.22%) Social Skills
2 175 (10.03%) Finance
3 166 (9.52%) Analytical Skills
4 116 (6.65%) Local Government
5 96 (5.50%) Military
6 70 (4.01%) Influencing Skills
7 49 (2.81%) Legal
7 49 (2.81%) Organisational Skills
8 42 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 37 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
10 36 (2.06%) Law
10 36 (2.06%) Police
11 25 (1.43%) Telecoms
12 22 (1.26%) Marketing
13 21 (1.20%) Banking
14 14 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
15 13 (0.75%) Manufacturing
15 13 (0.75%) Publishing
16 9 (0.52%) Retail
17 7 (0.40%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 298 (17.09%) Architect
2 223 (12.79%) Lead
3 203 (11.64%) Senior
4 194 (11.12%) Developer
5 122 (7.00%) Analyst
6 80 (4.59%) Designer
7 71 (4.07%) Delivery Manager
8 66 (3.78%) DevOps Engineer
9 64 (3.67%) Solutions Architect
10 62 (3.56%) Consultant
11 61 (3.50%) User Researcher
12 57 (3.27%) Business Analyst
13 52 (2.98%) Data Architect
14 51 (2.92%) Technical Architect
15 48 (2.75%) Data Engineer
16 41 (2.35%) Software Engineer
17 40 (2.29%) Java Developer
18 37 (2.12%) Project Manager
19 36 (2.06%) AWS Engineer
19 36 (2.06%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 175 (10.03%) Terraform
2 69 (3.96%) REST
3 49 (2.81%) Django
4 48 (2.75%) Spring
5 44 (2.52%) React
6 41 (2.35%) RESTful
7 38 (2.18%) Spring Boot
8 33 (1.89%) Kafka
9 32 (1.83%) Node.js
9 32 (1.83%) Oracle Fusion
10 30 (1.72%) .NET
10 30 (1.72%) SOAP
11 27 (1.55%) Web Services
12 26 (1.49%) HTML
12 26 (1.49%) Lightning Web Components
13 25 (1.43%) PySpark
14 22 (1.26%) JSON
15 20 (1.15%) AngularJS
16 19 (1.09%) CSS
17 18 (1.03%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 115 (6.59%) Cloud Native
2 78 (4.47%) Onboarding
3 63 (3.61%) NHS
4 62 (3.56%) Product Ownership
5 52 (2.98%) Legacy Systems
6 42 (2.41%) Management Information System
7 30 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
7 30 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
8 27 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
9 21 (1.20%) AI Agents
10 19 (1.09%) Data Structures
11 18 (1.03%) Low-Code
12 15 (0.86%) Data Centre
12 15 (0.86%) Replication
13 14 (0.80%) CMDB
13 14 (0.80%) Freedom of Information
14 13 (0.75%) Data Protection Act
14 13 (0.75%) Self-Motivation
15 12 (0.69%) Cyber Threat
15 12 (0.69%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 48 (2.75%) Linux
2 40 (2.29%) Windows
3 14 (0.80%) Android
4 11 (0.63%) Apple iOS
4 11 (0.63%) Windows 10
4 11 (0.63%) Windows Server
5 10 (0.57%) Mac OS
6 8 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.40%) Unix
8 5 (0.29%) Amazon Linux
9 3 (0.17%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.11%) Solaris
10 2 (0.11%) VMS
10 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.057%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 557 (31.94%) Agile
2 412 (23.62%) Stakeholder Management
3 312 (17.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 304 (17.43%) CI/CD
5 295 (16.92%) Continuous Improvement
6 282 (16.17%) DevOps
7 229 (13.13%) Decision-Making
8 212 (12.16%) AI
9 193 (11.07%) Problem-Solving
10 177 (10.15%) Infrastructure as Code
11 171 (9.81%) Digital Transformation Programme
12 162 (9.29%) Migration
13 159 (9.12%) Roadmaps
14 154 (8.83%) Analytics
15 139 (7.97%) Data Modelling
16 134 (7.68%) Technical Leadership
17 131 (7.51%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
18 119 (6.82%) User Research
19 116 (6.65%) Containerisation
20 111 (6.36%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 224 (12.84%) Python
2 152 (8.72%) SQL
3 108 (6.19%) Java
4 85 (4.87%) JavaScript
5 60 (3.44%) TypeScript
6 46 (2.64%) PowerShell
7 35 (2.01%) C#
8 29 (1.66%) Bash
9 28 (1.61%) Bicep
10 24 (1.38%) Apex Code
11 22 (1.26%) Groovy
12 18 (1.03%) PL/SQL
13 16 (0.92%) Ruby
14 14 (0.80%) R
15 11 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 10 (0.57%) Kotlin
16 10 (0.57%) Scala
17 8 (0.46%) Go
18 6 (0.34%) Search Processing Language
18 6 (0.34%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 957 (54.87%) Security Cleared
2 849 (48.68%) SC Cleared
3 110 (6.31%) BPSS Clearance
4 92 (5.28%) DV Cleared
5 51 (2.92%) Degree
6 45 (2.58%) AWS Certification
7 39 (2.24%) Azure Certification
8 32 (1.83%) Microsoft Certification
9 31 (1.78%) CISSP
10 20 (1.15%) Cisco Certification
10 20 (1.15%) CISM
11 15 (0.86%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 13 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
12 13 (0.75%) Master's Degree
13 10 (0.57%) CCNP
14 9 (0.52%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 9 (0.52%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 9 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
15 8 (0.46%) APMG
15 8 (0.46%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 125 (7.17%) Accessibility
2 99 (5.68%) Data Quality
3 69 (3.96%) QA
4 58 (3.33%) GDPR
5 51 (2.92%) WCAG
6 45 (2.58%) PMO
7 40 (2.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 40 (2.29%) NCSC
8 31 (1.78%) NIST
9 23 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
10 15 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 15 (0.86%) GRC
11 11 (0.63%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 11 (0.63%) PCI DSS
12 10 (0.57%) SLA
13 9 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
14 8 (0.46%) Government Security Classifications
15 5 (0.29%) NIST 800
15 5 (0.29%) P3O
15 5 (0.29%) PERC
System Software
1 128 (7.34%) Docker
2 44 (2.52%) Active Directory
3 10 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
4 7 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.11%) Postfix
6 1 (0.057%) Ceph
6 1 (0.057%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.057%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.057%) Squid
6 1 (0.057%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.057%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 133 (7.63%) Kubernetes
2 42 (2.41%) Grafana
3 35 (2.01%) Prometheus
4 27 (1.55%) Microsoft Intune
5 26 (1.49%) Ansible
6 13 (0.75%) Kibana
7 10 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 9 (0.52%) SCCM
9 8 (0.46%) Argo
10 5 (0.29%) Puppet
11 4 (0.23%) Istio
12 3 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
12 3 (0.17%) Karpenter
13 2 (0.11%) AirWatch
13 2 (0.11%) Consul
13 2 (0.11%) Docker Swarm
13 2 (0.11%) Kustomize
13 2 (0.11%) Oracle RMAN
13 2 (0.11%) Salt
14 1 (0.057%) Podman
Vendors
1 242 (13.88%) Microsoft
2 120 (6.88%) Oracle
3 83 (4.76%) Salesforce
4 66 (3.78%) Google
5 60 (3.44%) ServiceNow
6 49 (2.81%) Databricks
7 40 (2.29%) SAP
8 21 (1.20%) Foundry
9 18 (1.03%) Cisco
10 17 (0.97%) Palantir
11 16 (0.92%) Palo Alto
12 12 (0.69%) IBM
12 12 (0.69%) Splunk
13 11 (0.63%) Informatica
14 10 (0.57%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.46%) CrowdStrike
15 8 (0.46%) Juniper
16 7 (0.40%) Sparx
16 7 (0.40%) VMware
17 6 (0.34%) Okta