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 28 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 14 11
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 -6
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 197 98 138
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 10.61% 10.52% 9.53%
As % of the General category 19.78% 17.98% 19.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 128 71 81
10th Percentile £362 £215 £350
25th Percentile £400 £381 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -10.00% -2.44%
75th Percentile £575 £545 £588
90th Percentile £672 £650 £650
North West median daily rate £500 £465 £493
% change year-on-year +7.53% -5.68% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 6
10th Percentile - - £16.00
25th Percentile - £17.08 £21.38
Median hourly rate - £17.15 £26.50
Median % change year-on-year - -35.28% +57.27%
75th Percentile - £17.23 £27.00
90th Percentile - - £58.50
North West median hourly rate £25.38 £21.27 £16.00
% change year-on-year +19.32% +32.94% -15.79%

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 996 545 721
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 53.63% 58.48% 49.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 575 357 456
10th Percentile £275 £273 £300
25th Percentile £375 £375 £391
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £450 £490
Median % change year-on-year +4.78% -8.16% -2.00%
75th Percentile £575 £550 £575
90th Percentile £650 £700 £656
North West median daily rate £475 £464 £490
% change year-on-year +2.43% -5.36% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 113 34 59
10th Percentile £18.04 - £12.50
25th Percentile £25.00 £13.00 £13.50
Median hourly rate £41.06 £15.78 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year +160.25% -37.52% +32.89%
75th Percentile £76.00 £60.00 £39.38
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.75 £58.50
North West median hourly rate £35.82 £29.80 £22.98
% change year-on-year +20.20% +29.71% -4.57%

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 28 June 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 28 June 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
Heywood - 2 £375 -
Salford - 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 19 (9.64%) SharePoint
2 15 (7.61%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (3.55%) Confluence
4 4 (2.03%) SharePoint 2013
5 2 (1.02%) Apache
5 2 (1.02%) CICS
5 2 (1.02%) CMS
5 2 (1.02%) Jupyter
5 2 (1.02%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.51%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.51%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (1.02%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.51%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (2.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (1.02%) Oracle Cash Management
2 2 (1.02%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (1.02%) Oracle Payables
2 2 (1.02%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
2 2 (1.02%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 49 (24.87%) AWS
2 43 (21.83%) Azure
3 24 (12.18%) Microsoft 365
4 16 (8.12%) Serverless
5 15 (7.61%) Microsoft Copilot
6 10 (5.08%) Amazon S3
6 10 (5.08%) SaaS
7 9 (4.57%) Amazon EC2
7 9 (4.57%) GCP
7 9 (4.57%) GitHub
7 9 (4.57%) Google Workspace
7 9 (4.57%) Power Platform
8 8 (4.06%) AWS Lambda
8 8 (4.06%) Power Automate
9 7 (3.55%) Entra ID
9 7 (3.55%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (3.55%) Google Drive
10 6 (3.05%) Amazon ECR
10 6 (3.05%) Amazon SQS
10 6 (3.05%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.54%) Firewall
2 4 (2.03%) DNS
3 3 (1.52%) BIG-IP
3 3 (1.52%) DKIM
3 3 (1.52%) DMARC
3 3 (1.52%) Ethernet VPN
3 3 (1.52%) VXLAN
4 2 (1.02%) BGP
4 2 (1.02%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 2 (1.02%) OSPF
4 2 (1.02%) VPN
5 1 (0.51%) Network Security
5 1 (0.51%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.51%) VSAN
5 1 (0.51%) WAN
5 1 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.51%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (7.61%) MongoDB
2 7 (3.55%) Relational Database
3 6 (3.05%) DocumentDB
4 5 (2.54%) Oracle Database
4 5 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (2.03%) Metadata
5 4 (2.03%) RDBMS
6 3 (1.52%) MySQL
6 3 (1.52%) NoSQL
7 2 (1.02%) Data Lake
7 2 (1.02%) Data Mining
7 2 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (1.02%) DataStage
7 2 (1.02%) Oracle BI Publisher
7 2 (1.02%) Oracle Exadata
7 2 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (1.02%) SQL Server
8 1 (0.51%) Power BI
8 1 (0.51%) SAS Enterprise Guide
8 1 (0.51%) WebFOCUS
Development Applications
1 24 (12.18%) GitLab
2 11 (5.58%) JIRA
3 10 (5.08%) Selenium
4 9 (4.57%) Cucumber
4 9 (4.57%) Git
5 8 (4.06%) Jenkins
6 7 (3.55%) Mockito
7 6 (3.05%) Cypress.io
7 6 (3.05%) JUnit
8 5 (2.54%) Mocha
8 5 (2.54%) REST Assured
9 4 (2.03%) Postman
10 3 (1.52%) CircleCI
11 2 (1.02%) Gatling
11 2 (1.02%) JDeveloper
11 2 (1.02%) JMeter
11 2 (1.02%) SonarQube
11 2 (1.02%) WebDriver
12 1 (0.51%) Serenity BDD
12 1 (0.51%) TestNG
General
1 37 (18.78%) Social Skills
2 20 (10.15%) Military
3 17 (8.63%) Finance
4 10 (5.08%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (3.05%) Legal
6 5 (2.54%) Organisational Skills
7 4 (2.03%) Local Government
8 3 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (1.02%) Digital Economy
9 2 (1.02%) General Ledger
9 2 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.51%) Banking
10 1 (0.51%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.51%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 55 (27.92%) Developer
2 37 (18.78%) Lead
3 31 (15.74%) Senior
4 24 (12.18%) Java Developer
5 17 (8.63%) Architect
5 17 (8.63%) Lead Developer
6 13 (6.60%) Designer
6 13 (6.60%) Software Developer
7 12 (6.09%) Senior Developer
8 11 (5.58%) Administrator
8 11 (5.58%) Analyst
9 10 (5.08%) Technical Architect
9 10 (5.08%) Test Engineer
10 9 (4.57%) Full-Stack Developer
10 9 (4.57%) Senior Java Developer
11 8 (4.06%) Business Analyst
11 8 (4.06%) Lead Architect
11 8 (4.06%) Lead Software Developer
12 7 (3.55%) DevOps Engineer
12 7 (3.55%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (12.69%) Node.js
2 22 (11.17%) Spring
3 20 (10.15%) Spring Boot
4 15 (7.61%) REST
5 14 (7.11%) Kafka
6 9 (4.57%) React
7 7 (3.55%) Playwright
8 6 (3.05%) ActiveMQ
8 6 (3.05%) JAX-RS
8 6 (3.05%) Jest
8 6 (3.05%) OAuth
9 5 (2.54%) AngularJS
10 4 (2.03%) Nunjucks
10 4 (2.03%) RESTful
11 3 (1.52%) CSS
11 3 (1.52%) HTML
11 3 (1.52%) Vue
12 2 (1.02%) Elastic Stack
12 2 (1.02%) GraphQL
12 2 (1.02%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 18 (9.14%) Cloud Native
2 10 (5.08%) Legacy Systems
2 10 (5.08%) Product Ownership
3 7 (3.55%) NHS
4 6 (3.05%) Data Centre
4 6 (3.05%) Management Information System
5 5 (2.54%) Onboarding
5 5 (2.54%) Public Cloud
6 4 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (1.52%) Distributed Systems
7 3 (1.52%) Freedom of Information
8 2 (1.02%) BYOD
8 2 (1.02%) Mainframe
8 2 (1.02%) Mobile App
8 2 (1.02%) Replication
8 2 (1.02%) VSAM
9 1 (0.51%) Enterprise Cloud
9 1 (0.51%) Hybrid Cloud
9 1 (0.51%) Linux Command Line
9 1 (0.51%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 19 (9.64%) Linux
2 11 (5.58%) Unix
3 6 (3.05%) Mac OS X
4 4 (2.03%) AIX
5 3 (1.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (1.52%) Windows
6 2 (1.02%) Mac OS
6 2 (1.02%) Solaris
6 2 (1.02%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.51%) Android
7 1 (0.51%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (38.07%) Agile
2 46 (23.35%) CI/CD
3 39 (19.80%) Microservices
4 36 (18.27%) DevOps
5 34 (17.26%) Test Automation
6 28 (14.21%) Continuous Improvement
6 28 (14.21%) Migration
7 20 (10.15%) User Experience
8 19 (9.64%) Problem-Solving
8 19 (9.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 19 (9.64%) Stakeholder Management
9 18 (9.14%) Containerisation
9 18 (9.14%) Infrastructure as Code
9 18 (9.14%) Mentoring
10 17 (8.63%) TDD
11 16 (8.12%) Technical Leadership
12 15 (7.61%) Roadmaps
13 14 (7.11%) AI
13 14 (7.11%) BDD
14 13 (6.60%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 49 (24.87%) Java
2 25 (12.69%) JavaScript
3 16 (8.12%) Python
3 16 (8.12%) TypeScript
4 12 (6.09%) SQL
5 3 (1.52%) PowerShell
6 2 (1.02%) COBOL
6 2 (1.02%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.51%) Bash
7 1 (0.51%) C#
7 1 (0.51%) Go
7 1 (0.51%) Kotlin
7 1 (0.51%) Scala
7 1 (0.51%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 80 (40.61%) Security Cleared
2 54 (27.41%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.09%) BPSS Clearance
4 7 (3.55%) Degree
5 6 (3.05%) Microsoft Certification
6 2 (1.02%) ISTQB
7 1 (0.51%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.51%) CCNA
7 1 (0.51%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (12.18%) Accessibility
2 12 (6.09%) WCAG
3 10 (5.08%) Data Quality
4 9 (4.57%) QA
5 6 (3.05%) PMO
6 4 (2.03%) GDPR
7 1 (0.51%) Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment)
System Software
1 28 (14.21%) Docker
2 16 (8.12%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.02%) Oracle RAC
3 2 (1.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.51%) GPFS
4 1 (0.51%) NFS
4 1 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (0.51%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 26 (13.20%) Kubernetes
2 25 (12.69%) Terraform
3 7 (3.55%) Ansible
4 6 (3.05%) Grafana
5 3 (1.52%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.52%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (1.02%) Data Guard
6 2 (1.02%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (1.02%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.51%) Argo
7 1 (0.51%) Packer
7 1 (0.51%) vRealize
7 1 (0.51%) VxRail
Vendors
1 25 (12.69%) Microsoft
2 9 (4.57%) Google
3 8 (4.06%) Oracle
4 5 (2.54%) SAP
4 5 (2.54%) ServiceNow
5 3 (1.52%) F5
5 3 (1.52%) IBM
5 3 (1.52%) Palo Alto
5 3 (1.52%) Virgin Media
5 3 (1.52%) VMware
6 2 (1.02%) Arista
6 2 (1.02%) Automation Anywhere
6 2 (1.02%) Blue Prism
6 2 (1.02%) Trend Micro
7 1 (0.51%) Aruba
7 1 (0.51%) Commvault
7 1 (0.51%) Infoblox
7 1 (0.51%) PagerDuty
7 1 (0.51%) Splunk
7 1 (0.51%) Veeam