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

6 months to
20 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 1,623 953 1,490
As % of all contract jobs in London 9.02% 7.69% 8.53%
As % of the General category 15.15% 11.37% 13.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,226 690 1,053
10th Percentile £383 £400 £371
25th Percentile £447 £451 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -6.67%
75th Percentile £619 £612 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 19 14
10th Percentile £16.75 £21.60 £15.00
25th Percentile £21.96 £22.14 £15.66
Median hourly rate £38.25 £25.08 £18.13
Median % change year-on-year +52.54% +38.31% -27.48%
75th Percentile £50.00 £56.25 £25.73
90th Percentile £76.45 £72.25 £65.90
England median hourly rate £23.83 £24.50 £21.50
% change year-on-year -2.76% +13.95% +4.17%

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 10,715 8,384 11,011
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 59.53% 67.68% 63.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,934 5,618 7,859
10th Percentile £350 £349 £336
25th Percentile £428 £440 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £565 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.42% -1.74% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £713 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £825
England median daily rate £513 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 145 233
10th Percentile £18.75 £15.84 £15.60
25th Percentile £22.50 £23.80 £18.13
Median hourly rate £35.25 £34.00 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% +21.43% -6.67%
75th Percentile £46.56 £50.75 £44.75
90th Percentile £67.40 £65.00 £65.00
England median hourly rate £30.58 £27.50 £30.14
% change year-on-year +11.20% -8.76% -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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -2 146 £550 +4.76% 102
South London +1 66 £500 +1.01% 6
West London -27 10 £506 +26.56% 7
East London -9 8 £750 +27.66% 19
North London -3 2 £425 -15.00%
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 (4.31%) Confluence
2 34 (2.09%) SharePoint
3 12 (0.74%) Apache Spark
3 12 (0.74%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (0.49%) Apache
4 8 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (0.49%) Palantir Foundry
5 7 (0.43%) CMS
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 (0.062%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.062%) Mule
10 1 (0.062%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.062%) WebSphere
Applications
1 39 (2.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.31%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.25%) 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 (0.062%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.062%) InVision
9 1 (0.062%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 24 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.86%) Oracle ERP
4 7 (0.43%) iTrent
4 7 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
5 4 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 3 (0.18%) Exchequer
6 3 (0.18%) PeopleSoft HCM
6 3 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
7 2 (0.12%) Integrated Workplace Management System
7 2 (0.12%) Loan IQ
7 2 (0.12%) Oracle Financials
7 2 (0.12%) Oracle Payroll
7 2 (0.12%) SAP ERP
7 2 (0.12%) SAP HCM
7 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
8 1 (0.062%) Oracle Assets
8 1 (0.062%) Oracle Cash Management
8 1 (0.062%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 358 (22.06%) AWS
2 288 (17.74%) Azure
3 95 (5.85%) Power Platform
4 74 (4.56%) Serverless
5 66 (4.07%) GCP
5 66 (4.07%) GitHub
6 59 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
7 56 (3.45%) Amazon S3
7 56 (3.45%) Microsoft 365
8 50 (3.08%) AWS Lambda
9 42 (2.59%) Amazon EKS
10 41 (2.53%) Amazon EC2
11 37 (2.28%) Dynamics 365
11 37 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
12 36 (2.22%) Entra ID
12 36 (2.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 33 (2.03%) Power Automate
13 33 (2.03%) SaaS
14 32 (1.97%) AWS CloudFormation
15 30 (1.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.73%) Firewall
2 23 (1.42%) Network Security
3 17 (1.05%) DNS
4 10 (0.62%) LAN
4 10 (0.62%) VPN
4 10 (0.62%) WAN
5 9 (0.55%) TCP/IP
6 8 (0.49%) DKIM
6 8 (0.49%) NGFW
6 8 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.37%) DMARC
8 5 (0.31%) BGP
8 5 (0.31%) OSPF
9 4 (0.25%) Reverse Proxy
9 4 (0.25%) SSL
9 4 (0.25%) Wireless
10 3 (0.18%) DHCP
10 3 (0.18%) HTTP
10 3 (0.18%) Intranet
10 3 (0.18%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 62 (3.82%) Power BI
2 37 (2.28%) PostgreSQL
3 29 (1.79%) Data Warehouse
4 28 (1.73%) Amazon RDS
4 28 (1.73%) Metadata
5 23 (1.42%) SQL Server
6 21 (1.29%) Data Lake
6 21 (1.29%) MongoDB
7 16 (0.99%) NoSQL
8 15 (0.92%) Tableau
9 14 (0.86%) Delta Lake
10 12 (0.74%) Amazon Athena
10 12 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
11 11 (0.68%) DynamoDB
12 9 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
13 8 (0.49%) Amazon QuickSight
14 7 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
14 7 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
14 7 (0.43%) Oracle Database
14 7 (0.43%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 96 (5.91%) JIRA
2 90 (5.55%) Git
3 56 (3.45%) GitLab
4 51 (3.14%) Jenkins
5 22 (1.36%) Selenium
6 17 (1.05%) Postman
7 12 (0.74%) JUnit
8 11 (0.68%) Mockito
9 10 (0.62%) SonarQube
10 9 (0.55%) CircleCI
11 8 (0.49%) Cypress.io
12 7 (0.43%) Artifactory
12 7 (0.43%) Snyk
13 6 (0.37%) JMeter
14 5 (0.31%) Gradle
14 5 (0.31%) Maven
15 4 (0.25%) Bitbucket Server
15 4 (0.25%) Cucumber
15 4 (0.25%) DbUnit
15 4 (0.25%) MLflow
General
1 382 (23.54%) Social Skills
2 210 (12.94%) Finance
3 133 (8.19%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (4.19%) Local Government
5 58 (3.57%) Military
6 41 (2.53%) Telecoms
7 40 (2.46%) Influencing Skills
8 39 (2.40%) Marketing
9 38 (2.34%) Documentation Skills
10 33 (2.03%) Banking
11 30 (1.85%) Legal
12 29 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 29 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
13 27 (1.66%) Police
14 26 (1.60%) Law
15 23 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
16 15 (0.92%) Manufacturing
16 15 (0.92%) Retail
17 14 (0.86%) Electronics
18 12 (0.74%) Billing
Job Titles
1 243 (14.97%) Developer
2 227 (13.99%) Architect
3 167 (10.29%) Senior
4 160 (9.86%) Lead
5 125 (7.70%) Analyst
6 88 (5.42%) Designer
7 70 (4.31%) Business Analyst
8 69 (4.25%) DevOps Engineer
9 59 (3.64%) User Researcher
10 52 (3.20%) Consultant
10 52 (3.20%) Data Engineer
11 51 (3.14%) Technical Architect
12 50 (3.08%) Project Manager
13 47 (2.90%) Solutions Architect
14 45 (2.77%) Delivery Manager
15 42 (2.59%) AWS Engineer
16 41 (2.53%) Salesforce Developer
17 40 (2.46%) Senior Developer
18 39 (2.40%) Security Architect
19 36 (2.22%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (3.02%) REST
2 48 (2.96%) React
3 47 (2.90%) RESTful
4 46 (2.83%) Node.js
5 41 (2.53%) Lightning Web Components
6 39 (2.40%) Spring
7 34 (2.09%) HTML
8 33 (2.03%) Oracle Fusion
8 33 (2.03%) Spring Boot
8 33 (2.03%) Web Services
9 32 (1.97%) .NET
10 29 (1.79%) AngularJS
10 29 (1.79%) Kafka
11 24 (1.48%) SOAP
12 23 (1.42%) CSS
13 19 (1.17%) Django
14 17 (1.05%) JSON
14 17 (1.05%) Middleware
15 15 (0.92%) PySpark
16 14 (0.86%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 104 (6.41%) Cloud Native
2 57 (3.51%) Onboarding
3 47 (2.90%) Legacy Systems
4 42 (2.59%) Product Ownership
5 35 (2.16%) NHS
6 28 (1.73%) Data Centre
7 26 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
8 25 (1.54%) Management Information System
9 21 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
10 15 (0.92%) Data Structures
11 14 (0.86%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
13 12 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
13 12 (0.74%) Public Cloud
14 11 (0.68%) AI Agents
14 11 (0.68%) CMDB
14 11 (0.68%) Enterprise Cloud
14 11 (0.68%) Freedom of Information
14 11 (0.68%) Virtual Team
15 10 (0.62%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 52 (3.20%) Linux
2 43 (2.65%) Windows
3 14 (0.86%) Android
3 14 (0.86%) Windows Server
4 11 (0.68%) Apple iOS
5 9 (0.55%) Windows 10
6 8 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.37%) Mac OS
7 6 (0.37%) Solaris
7 6 (0.37%) Windows Server 2008
7 6 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
8 5 (0.31%) Unix
8 5 (0.31%) VMS
9 3 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
9 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 406 (25.02%) Agile
2 259 (15.96%) CI/CD
3 253 (15.59%) DevOps
4 218 (13.43%) Stakeholder Management
5 171 (10.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 155 (9.55%) Decision-Making
7 150 (9.24%) Continuous Improvement
8 148 (9.12%) Problem-Solving
9 147 (9.06%) Migration
9 147 (9.06%) Roadmaps
10 131 (8.07%) Infrastructure as Code
11 126 (7.76%) Containerisation
12 125 (7.70%) AI
13 123 (7.58%) Data Modelling
14 119 (7.33%) User Research
15 113 (6.96%) Analytics
16 106 (6.53%) Test Automation
17 101 (6.22%) Service Design
18 100 (6.16%) Digital Transformation Programme
19 81 (4.99%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 188 (11.58%) Python
2 135 (8.32%) SQL
3 111 (6.84%) Java
4 81 (4.99%) JavaScript
5 49 (3.02%) TypeScript
6 41 (2.53%) Apex Code
7 38 (2.34%) C#
8 37 (2.28%) Ruby
9 35 (2.16%) PowerShell
10 26 (1.60%) Bash
11 19 (1.17%) PL/SQL
12 13 (0.80%) Kotlin
13 12 (0.74%) Bicep
14 10 (0.62%) Go
14 10 (0.62%) R
14 10 (0.62%) Shell Script
15 7 (0.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 5 (0.31%) C
16 5 (0.31%) T-SQL
17 4 (0.25%) Scala
Qualifications
1 917 (56.50%) Security Cleared
2 704 (43.38%) SC Cleared
3 63 (3.88%) DV Cleared
4 48 (2.96%) Degree
5 41 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
6 25 (1.54%) Azure Certification
6 25 (1.54%) CISSP
7 21 (1.29%) AWS Certification
8 18 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
9 17 (1.05%) Cisco Certification
10 14 (0.86%) CISM
11 13 (0.80%) PMP
12 12 (0.74%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 10 (0.62%) APMP
13 10 (0.62%) CIMA
14 9 (0.55%) ACCA
15 8 (0.49%) CCSP
15 8 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
15 8 (0.49%) ISTQB
16 7 (0.43%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 120 (7.39%) Accessibility
2 74 (4.56%) Data Quality
3 67 (4.13%) QA
4 49 (3.02%) WCAG
5 41 (2.53%) GDPR
6 38 (2.34%) PMO
7 34 (2.09%) NCSC
8 26 (1.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 12 (0.74%) SLA
10 11 (0.68%) Actionable Recommendations
10 11 (0.68%) NIST
11 10 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials
12 8 (0.49%) PCI DSS
13 7 (0.43%) Government Security Classifications
13 7 (0.43%) GRC
14 6 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 5 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 5 (0.31%) IFRS
16 4 (0.25%) IFRS 9
17 3 (0.18%) NIST 800
System Software
1 115 (7.09%) Docker
2 32 (1.97%) Active Directory
3 5 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
4 4 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.18%) Postfix
6 2 (0.12%) Squid
7 1 (0.062%) FreeRADIUS
7 1 (0.062%) NLBS
7 1 (0.062%) Sendmail
7 1 (0.062%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.062%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 140 (8.63%) Terraform
2 119 (7.33%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.16%) Grafana
4 31 (1.91%) Prometheus
5 30 (1.85%) Ansible
6 12 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 8 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.43%) Puppet
9 6 (0.37%) Kibana
10 5 (0.31%) Argo
11 3 (0.18%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (0.18%) Salt
12 2 (0.12%) Jamf Pro
12 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Clustering
12 2 (0.12%) Progress Chef
12 2 (0.12%) SCCM
13 1 (0.062%) CloudHub
13 1 (0.062%) Consul
13 1 (0.062%) Sysdig
13 1 (0.062%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 161 (9.92%) Microsoft
2 93 (5.73%) Salesforce
3 87 (5.36%) Oracle
4 52 (3.20%) SAP
5 48 (2.96%) Databricks
6 44 (2.71%) ServiceNow
7 33 (2.03%) Google
8 18 (1.11%) MuleSoft
9 17 (1.05%) Atlassian
9 17 (1.05%) Foundry
9 17 (1.05%) IBM
10 16 (0.99%) Cisco
11 15 (0.92%) Splunk
12 13 (0.80%) Red Hat
13 11 (0.68%) Virgin Media
13 11 (0.68%) VMware
14 10 (0.62%) OpenAI
15 9 (0.55%) Palo Alto
16 8 (0.49%) Fortinet
16 8 (0.49%) Zscaler