Public Sector Contract Job Trends in Manchester

Public Sector
North West > Manchester

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Public Sector in contract job vacancies in Manchester. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Public Sector over the 6 months leading up to 19 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 12
Rank change year-on-year -1 +7 -7
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 190 154 153
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 16.05% 14.72% 9.86%
As % of the General category 27.34% 24.18% 19.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 162 77 94
10th Percentile £313 £343 £318
25th Percentile £400 £420 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -15.00% -9.09% +7.32%
75th Percentile £500 £613 £647
90th Percentile £599 £720 £734
North West median daily rate £450 £500 £550
% change year-on-year -10.00% -9.09% +7.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 5 7
10th Percentile - £15.97 -
25th Percentile - £16.06 £12.00
Median hourly rate £13.85 £16.25 £13.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.77% +25.00% -35.00%
75th Percentile - £29.50 £17.94
90th Percentile - £29.80 £47.85
North West median hourly rate £41.86 £16.25 £15.71
% change year-on-year +157.57% +3.45% -21.46%

All General Skills
Manchester

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 Manchester.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 695 637 786
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 58.70% 60.90% 50.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 481 362 540
10th Percentile £300 £294 £255
25th Percentile £363 £380 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +2.56%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £588
90th Percentile £625 £688 £683
North West median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 31 39
10th Percentile £15.80 £15.90 £12.00
25th Percentile £18.26 £22.75 £13.07
Median hourly rate £22.00 £32.50 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.31% +66.67% -22.00%
75th Percentile £31.83 £33.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £64.75 £60.00 £60.75
North West median hourly rate £29.60 £27.26 £22.11
% change year-on-year +8.60% +23.27% +5.04%

Public Sector
Job Vacancy Trend in Manchester

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Public Sector relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester.

Public Sector job vacancy trend in Manchester

Public Sector
Daily Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Public Sector.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Public Sector

Public Sector
Daily Rate Histogram in Manchester

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Public Sector in Manchester over the 6 months to 19 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Public Sector in Manchester

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Public Sector.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Public Sector

Public Sector
Contract Job Locations in Manchester

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 Manchester region over the 6 months to 19 January 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
Salford +6 2 £500 -
Bolton - 2 £606 - 1
Cheadle - 2 £550 -
Ashton-under-Lyne 0 1 - - 1
Public Sector
North West

Public Sector
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Manchester 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 3 (1.58%) Confluence
2 2 (1.05%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 2 (1.05%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.53%) Apache
3 1 (0.53%) CMS
3 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.53%) nginx
3 1 (0.53%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.53%) SAS
Applications
1 14 (7.37%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.53%) Adobe Premiere
2 1 (0.53%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.53%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.53%) Quicktime
2 1 (0.53%) Trello
Business Applications
1 6 (3.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (2.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (1.05%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.53%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.53%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.53%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 55 (28.95%) Azure
2 50 (26.32%) AWS
3 26 (13.68%) Power Platform
4 18 (9.47%) GCP
5 17 (8.95%) Serverless
6 13 (6.84%) Microsoft 365
7 12 (6.32%) Amazon SQS
8 11 (5.79%) AWS Lambda
8 11 (5.79%) PowerApps
9 10 (5.26%) Google Tag Manager
9 10 (5.26%) Power Automate
10 9 (4.74%) Azure DevOps
10 9 (4.74%) Google Analytics
11 8 (4.21%) GitHub
11 8 (4.21%) SaaS
12 7 (3.68%) Dynamics 365
13 5 (2.63%) AWS CloudFormation
13 5 (2.63%) GitHub Actions
14 4 (2.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 4 (2.11%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 6 (3.16%) Firewall
1 6 (3.16%) Wireless
2 3 (1.58%) DHCP
2 3 (1.58%) DNS
2 3 (1.58%) VPN
3 2 (1.05%) BGP
3 2 (1.05%) OSPF
3 2 (1.05%) TCP/IP
3 2 (1.05%) WAN
3 2 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (0.53%) BIG-IP
4 1 (0.53%) EIGRP
4 1 (0.53%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.53%) IPsec
4 1 (0.53%) MPLS
4 1 (0.53%) SNMP
4 1 (0.53%) SSH
4 1 (0.53%) SSL
4 1 (0.53%) TACACS
4 1 (0.53%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (8.42%) Power BI
2 11 (5.79%) Redis
3 10 (5.26%) BigQuery
3 10 (5.26%) Looker
3 10 (5.26%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (4.74%) MongoDB
5 5 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
5 5 (2.63%) DocumentDB
5 5 (2.63%) DynamoDB
5 5 (2.63%) MySQL
5 5 (2.63%) NoSQL
5 5 (2.63%) Relational Database
6 4 (2.11%) Metadata
6 4 (2.11%) RDBMS
7 3 (1.58%) Apache Cassandra
8 2 (1.05%) Amazon Aurora
8 2 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (1.05%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (1.05%) Big Data
8 2 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 19 (10.00%) GitLab
2 15 (7.89%) Git
3 8 (4.21%) Cypress.io
3 8 (4.21%) SonarQube
4 7 (3.68%) JIRA
5 6 (3.16%) Cucumber
5 6 (3.16%) Postman
6 5 (2.63%) CircleCI
6 5 (2.63%) Jenkins
6 5 (2.63%) JUnit
7 4 (2.11%) Mocha
7 4 (2.11%) Mockito
8 3 (1.58%) Selenium
9 2 (1.05%) Gradle
9 2 (1.05%) Jasmine
9 2 (1.05%) Maven
9 2 (1.05%) SonarLint
10 1 (0.53%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.53%) Browser DevTools
10 1 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
General
1 40 (21.05%) Social Skills
2 22 (11.58%) Finance
3 10 (5.26%) Manufacturing
4 9 (4.74%) Telecoms
5 8 (4.21%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (4.21%) Electronics
5 8 (4.21%) Marketing
6 7 (3.68%) Military
7 5 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
7 5 (2.63%) Local Government
8 4 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (1.58%) Legal
10 2 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
10 2 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.53%) Banking
11 1 (0.53%) Digital Health
11 1 (0.53%) Digital Healthcare
11 1 (0.53%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 46 (24.21%) Developer
2 23 (12.11%) Analyst
3 22 (11.58%) Architect
4 19 (10.00%) Senior
5 14 (7.37%) Java Developer
6 12 (6.32%) Full-Stack Developer
7 10 (5.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 10 (5.26%) Lead
7 10 (5.26%) Test Engineer
8 8 (4.21%) AWS Engineer
8 8 (4.21%) DevOps Engineer
8 8 (4.21%) Technical Architect
9 7 (3.68%) Business Analyst
9 7 (3.68%) Designer
10 6 (3.16%) Data Architect
10 6 (3.16%) IT Support
10 6 (3.16%) Performance Analyst
10 6 (3.16%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 5 (2.63%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
11 5 (2.63%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (12.11%) Spring Boot
2 22 (11.58%) Node.js
3 20 (10.53%) Spring
4 12 (6.32%) React
5 11 (5.79%) Playwright
6 10 (5.26%) HTML
7 9 (4.74%) Jest
8 8 (4.21%) Kafka
8 8 (4.21%) REST
9 7 (3.68%) JSON
9 7 (3.68%) RESTful
10 6 (3.16%) HTML5 Canvas
11 5 (2.63%) AngularJS
11 5 (2.63%) CSS
12 4 (2.11%) ActiveMQ
12 4 (2.11%) JAX-RS
13 3 (1.58%) Dropwizard
13 3 (1.58%) HTML5
13 3 (1.58%) Sass
13 3 (1.58%) Spring Security
Miscellaneous
1 18 (9.47%) Onboarding
2 12 (6.32%) Product Ownership
3 6 (3.16%) Data Centre
4 5 (2.63%) Cloud Native
4 5 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
4 5 (2.63%) Low-Code
4 5 (2.63%) NHS
5 4 (2.11%) Hybrid Cloud
5 4 (2.11%) Mobile App
5 4 (2.11%) Public Cloud
6 3 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
6 3 (1.58%) N-Tier
7 2 (1.05%) Data Structures
7 2 (1.05%) Fibre Optics
8 1 (0.53%) Digital Signage
8 1 (0.53%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (0.53%) Freedom of Information
8 1 (0.53%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.53%) Legacy Code
8 1 (0.53%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 10 (5.26%) Linux
2 6 (3.16%) Android
2 6 (3.16%) Mac OS
3 4 (2.11%) Windows
4 3 (1.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (1.05%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.53%) Mac OS X
6 1 (0.53%) Unix
6 1 (0.53%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 51 (26.84%) Agile
2 34 (17.89%) DevOps
3 33 (17.37%) CI/CD
4 31 (16.32%) Microservices
5 30 (15.79%) User Experience
6 24 (12.63%) Continuous Improvement
6 24 (12.63%) Test Automation
7 22 (11.58%) Business Intelligence
8 18 (9.47%) User Research
9 17 (8.95%) Problem-Solving
10 16 (8.42%) Analytics
10 16 (8.42%) Containerisation
10 16 (8.42%) Full-Stack Development
11 15 (7.89%) Stakeholder Management
12 14 (7.37%) Service Design
13 13 (6.84%) Validation
14 12 (6.32%) BDD
14 12 (6.32%) Digital Transformation Programme
14 12 (6.32%) TDD
15 11 (5.79%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 41 (21.58%) Java
2 21 (11.05%) JavaScript
3 20 (10.53%) Python
4 14 (7.37%) TypeScript
5 12 (6.32%) SQL
6 5 (2.63%) Bash
7 4 (2.11%) C#
8 3 (1.58%) Shell Script
9 2 (1.05%) C
9 2 (1.05%) C++
9 2 (1.05%) Go
9 2 (1.05%) Perl
9 2 (1.05%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.05%) Ruby
10 1 (0.53%) ABAP
10 1 (0.53%) Bicep
10 1 (0.53%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.53%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.53%) ProC
10 1 (0.53%) Rust
Qualifications
1 85 (44.74%) Security Cleared
2 50 (26.32%) SC Cleared
3 16 (8.42%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (1.58%) ISTQB
5 2 (1.05%) Degree
6 1 (0.53%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (0.53%) Azure Certification
6 1 (0.53%) CCA
6 1 (0.53%) CISM
6 1 (0.53%) CISSP
6 1 (0.53%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.53%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (16.84%) Accessibility
2 14 (7.37%) Data Quality
3 11 (5.79%) WCAG
4 10 (5.26%) QA
5 2 (1.05%) GDPR
5 2 (1.05%) IEC 61508
5 2 (1.05%) ISO 26262
5 2 (1.05%) PMO
6 1 (0.53%) CRD IV
6 1 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.53%) FINREP
6 1 (0.53%) IEC 62304
6 1 (0.53%) IFRS
System Software
1 21 (11.05%) Docker
2 3 (1.58%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.05%) ISA Server
3 2 (1.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.53%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (0.53%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 21 (11.05%) Terraform
2 20 (10.53%) Kubernetes
3 3 (1.58%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (1.58%) Prometheus
4 2 (1.05%) Ansible
4 2 (1.05%) Packer
5 1 (0.53%) AirWatch
5 1 (0.53%) Failover Clustering
5 1 (0.53%) FortiGate
5 1 (0.53%) Grafana
5 1 (0.53%) SCCM
Vendors
1 25 (13.16%) Microsoft
2 16 (8.42%) Virgin Media
3 15 (7.89%) Google
3 15 (7.89%) SAP
4 9 (4.74%) Oracle
5 7 (3.68%) Cisco
6 6 (3.16%) Apple
7 5 (2.63%) Dell
7 5 (2.63%) HP
8 4 (2.11%) Adobe
8 4 (2.11%) Dynatrace
8 4 (2.11%) VMware
9 3 (1.58%) Pega
9 3 (1.58%) Red Hat
9 3 (1.58%) ServiceNow
9 3 (1.58%) Splunk
10 2 (1.05%) F5
10 2 (1.05%) Fortinet
10 2 (1.05%) Gigya
10 2 (1.05%) Informatica