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 26 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 11
Rank change year-on-year 0 +5 -6
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 199 148 145
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 16.47% 14.27% 9.05%
As % of the General category 28.03% 23.16% 17.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 169 77 94
10th Percentile £313 £326 £318
25th Percentile £400 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -9.09% +7.32%
75th Percentile £525 £588 £647
90th Percentile £590 £700 £734
North West median daily rate £450 £500 £538
% change year-on-year -10.00% -6.98% +4.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 5 6
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 £15.59
90th Percentile - £29.80 £53.06
North West median hourly rate £41.86 £16.25 £16.00
% change year-on-year +157.57% +1.56% -20.00%

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 710 639 817
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 58.77% 61.62% 50.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 492 373 560
10th Percentile £300 £266 £255
25th Percentile £363 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £470 £480
Median % change year-on-year -4.26% -2.08% -1.29%
75th Percentile £550 £565 £588
90th Percentile £625 £679 £675
North West median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 32 50
10th Percentile £15.89 £15.92 £12.00
25th Percentile £18.44 £23.50 £12.96
Median hourly rate £24.08 £32.50 £19.75
Median % change year-on-year -25.92% +64.56% -21.00%
75th Percentile £51.25 £33.75 £34.69
90th Percentile £70.25 £60.00 £57.75
North West median hourly rate £29.60 £27.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +7.64% +30.95% -4.55%

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 26 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 26 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 +8 2 £500 -
Bolton - 2 £606 - 2
Cheadle - 2 £550 -
Ashton-under-Lyne 0 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 (1.51%) Confluence
2 2 (1.01%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 2 (1.01%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.50%) Apache
3 1 (0.50%) CMS
3 1 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.50%) nginx
3 1 (0.50%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.50%) SAS
Applications
1 14 (7.04%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.50%) Adobe Premiere
2 1 (0.50%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.50%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.50%) Quicktime
2 1 (0.50%) Trello
Business Applications
1 6 (3.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (2.01%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (1.01%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.50%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.50%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.50%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 59 (29.65%) Azure
2 54 (27.14%) AWS
3 26 (13.07%) Power Platform
4 20 (10.05%) Serverless
5 18 (9.05%) GCP
6 14 (7.04%) Amazon SQS
6 14 (7.04%) AWS Lambda
7 12 (6.03%) GitHub
7 12 (6.03%) Microsoft 365
8 11 (5.53%) PowerApps
9 10 (5.03%) Google Tag Manager
9 10 (5.03%) Power Automate
10 9 (4.52%) Azure DevOps
10 9 (4.52%) Google Analytics
11 8 (4.02%) GitHub Actions
12 7 (3.52%) Dynamics 365
13 5 (2.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 5 (2.51%) Amazon EC2
13 5 (2.51%) Amazon S3
13 5 (2.51%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 6 (3.02%) Firewall
1 6 (3.02%) Wireless
2 3 (1.51%) DHCP
2 3 (1.51%) DNS
2 3 (1.51%) VPN
3 2 (1.01%) BGP
3 2 (1.01%) OSPF
3 2 (1.01%) TCP/IP
3 2 (1.01%) WAN
3 2 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (0.50%) EIGRP
4 1 (0.50%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.50%) IPsec
4 1 (0.50%) LAN
4 1 (0.50%) MPLS
4 1 (0.50%) SNMP
4 1 (0.50%) SSH
4 1 (0.50%) SSL
4 1 (0.50%) TACACS
4 1 (0.50%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (8.04%) Power BI
2 11 (5.53%) Redis
3 10 (5.03%) BigQuery
3 10 (5.03%) Looker
3 10 (5.03%) MongoDB
3 10 (5.03%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (3.52%) DocumentDB
5 6 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (3.02%) MySQL
5 6 (3.02%) NoSQL
6 5 (2.51%) DynamoDB
6 5 (2.51%) Relational Database
7 4 (2.01%) Metadata
7 4 (2.01%) RDBMS
8 3 (1.51%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (1.01%) Big Data
9 2 (1.01%) SQL Server
9 2 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 24 (12.06%) GitLab
2 20 (10.05%) Git
3 10 (5.03%) Cypress.io
4 8 (4.02%) SonarQube
5 7 (3.52%) CircleCI
5 7 (3.52%) JUnit
5 7 (3.52%) Mocha
5 7 (3.52%) Postman
6 6 (3.02%) Cucumber
6 6 (3.02%) Jenkins
6 6 (3.02%) JIRA
7 4 (2.01%) Mockito
7 4 (2.01%) Selenium
8 2 (1.01%) Gradle
8 2 (1.01%) Jasmine
8 2 (1.01%) Maven
8 2 (1.01%) SonarLint
9 1 (0.50%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.50%) Browser DevTools
9 1 (0.50%) Rational DOORS
General
1 43 (21.61%) Social Skills
2 22 (11.06%) Finance
3 10 (5.03%) Manufacturing
4 9 (4.52%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (4.52%) Telecoms
5 8 (4.02%) Electronics
5 8 (4.02%) Marketing
6 7 (3.52%) Military
7 5 (2.51%) Influencing Skills
7 5 (2.51%) Local Government
8 4 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (2.01%) Legal
9 2 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.50%) Banking
10 1 (0.50%) Digital Health
10 1 (0.50%) Digital Healthcare
10 1 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 53 (26.63%) Developer
2 23 (11.56%) Architect
3 20 (10.05%) Analyst
4 19 (9.55%) Senior
5 15 (7.54%) Java Developer
5 15 (7.54%) Lead
6 14 (7.04%) Full-Stack Developer
7 10 (5.03%) Test Engineer
8 9 (4.52%) AWS Engineer
8 9 (4.52%) Designer
8 9 (4.52%) DevOps Engineer
8 9 (4.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 9 (4.52%) Technical Architect
9 6 (3.02%) AWS DevOps
9 6 (3.02%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 6 (3.02%) Business Analyst
9 6 (3.02%) Data Architect
9 6 (3.02%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
9 6 (3.02%) IT Support
9 6 (3.02%) Performance Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (14.57%) Spring Boot
2 27 (13.57%) Node.js
3 26 (13.07%) Spring
4 16 (8.04%) React
5 13 (6.53%) Playwright
5 13 (6.53%) REST
6 12 (6.03%) Jest
7 11 (5.53%) HTML
8 9 (4.52%) Kafka
9 8 (4.02%) RESTful
10 7 (3.52%) JSON
11 6 (3.02%) AngularJS
11 6 (3.02%) CSS
11 6 (3.02%) HTML5 Canvas
12 4 (2.01%) ActiveMQ
12 4 (2.01%) GraphQL
12 4 (2.01%) JAX-RS
13 3 (1.51%) Hibernate
13 3 (1.51%) J2EE
13 3 (1.51%) Spring Security
Miscellaneous
1 17 (8.54%) Onboarding
2 11 (5.53%) Product Ownership
3 9 (4.52%) Cloud Native
4 6 (3.02%) Data Centre
5 5 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
5 5 (2.51%) Low-Code
5 5 (2.51%) NHS
6 4 (2.01%) Mobile App
6 4 (2.01%) Public Cloud
7 3 (1.51%) Distributed Systems
7 3 (1.51%) N-Tier
8 2 (1.01%) Data Structures
8 2 (1.01%) Fibre Optics
9 1 (0.50%) Data Protection Act
9 1 (0.50%) Enterprise Software
9 1 (0.50%) Freedom of Information
9 1 (0.50%) Graphic Design
9 1 (0.50%) Hybrid Cloud
9 1 (0.50%) Taxonomies
9 1 (0.50%) Video Editing
Operating Systems
1 11 (5.53%) Linux
2 6 (3.02%) Android
2 6 (3.02%) Mac OS
3 4 (2.01%) Windows
4 3 (1.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (1.01%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.50%) Mac OS X
6 1 (0.50%) Unix
6 1 (0.50%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.50%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 57 (28.64%) Agile
2 42 (21.11%) CI/CD
3 41 (20.60%) DevOps
4 39 (19.60%) Microservices
5 32 (16.08%) User Experience
6 29 (14.57%) Continuous Improvement
6 29 (14.57%) Test Automation
7 22 (11.06%) Business Intelligence
7 22 (11.06%) User Research
8 20 (10.05%) Containerisation
9 19 (9.55%) Full-Stack Development
10 18 (9.05%) Analytics
10 18 (9.05%) Problem-Solving
11 16 (8.04%) Service Design
11 16 (8.04%) Stakeholder Management
12 14 (7.04%) Validation
13 13 (6.53%) Infrastructure as Code
13 13 (6.53%) TDD
13 13 (6.53%) UX Design
14 12 (6.03%) Digital Transformation Programme
Programming Languages
1 47 (23.62%) Java
2 25 (12.56%) JavaScript
3 21 (10.55%) Python
4 20 (10.05%) TypeScript
5 12 (6.03%) SQL
6 5 (2.51%) Bash
7 4 (2.01%) C#
8 3 (1.51%) Go
8 3 (1.51%) Shell Script
9 2 (1.01%) C
9 2 (1.01%) C++
9 2 (1.01%) Perl
9 2 (1.01%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.01%) Ruby
10 1 (0.50%) ABAP
10 1 (0.50%) Bicep
10 1 (0.50%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.50%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.50%) ProC
10 1 (0.50%) Rust
Qualifications
1 83 (41.71%) Security Cleared
2 47 (23.62%) SC Cleared
3 19 (9.55%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (1.51%) Degree
4 3 (1.51%) ISTQB
5 1 (0.50%) AWS Certification
5 1 (0.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 1 (0.50%) Azure Certification
5 1 (0.50%) CCA
5 1 (0.50%) CISM
5 1 (0.50%) CISSP
5 1 (0.50%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.50%) DV Cleared
5 1 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (19.10%) Accessibility
2 15 (7.54%) Data Quality
3 14 (7.04%) WCAG
4 10 (5.03%) QA
5 2 (1.01%) GDPR
5 2 (1.01%) IEC 61508
5 2 (1.01%) ISO 26262
5 2 (1.01%) PMO
6 1 (0.50%) CRD IV
6 1 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.50%) FINREP
6 1 (0.50%) IEC 62304
6 1 (0.50%) IFRS
System Software
1 25 (12.56%) Docker
2 3 (1.51%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.01%) ISA Server
3 2 (1.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.50%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (0.50%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 25 (12.56%) Kubernetes
2 23 (11.56%) Terraform
3 4 (2.01%) Prometheus
4 3 (1.51%) Grafana
4 3 (1.51%) Microsoft Intune
5 2 (1.01%) Ansible
5 2 (1.01%) Packer
6 1 (0.50%) AirWatch
6 1 (0.50%) Failover Clustering
6 1 (0.50%) FortiGate
6 1 (0.50%) SCCM
Vendors
1 29 (14.57%) Microsoft
2 15 (7.54%) SAP
2 15 (7.54%) Virgin Media
3 11 (5.53%) Google
4 9 (4.52%) Oracle
5 7 (3.52%) Cisco
6 6 (3.02%) Apple
7 5 (2.51%) Dell
7 5 (2.51%) HP
8 4 (2.01%) Adobe
8 4 (2.01%) Dynatrace
8 4 (2.01%) VMware
9 3 (1.51%) Pega
9 3 (1.51%) Red Hat
9 3 (1.51%) Splunk
10 2 (1.01%) F5
10 2 (1.01%) Fortinet
10 2 (1.01%) Informatica
10 2 (1.01%) Palo Alto
10 2 (1.01%) ServiceNow