Public Sector Contract Job Trends in the North West

Public Sector
England > North West

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Public Sector in contract job vacancies in the North West. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Public Sector over the 6 months leading up to 21 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 18 12
Rank change year-on-year +2 -6 -5
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 299 170 281
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.52% 8.51% 9.89%
As % of the General category 15.80% 14.43% 18.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 176 117 174
10th Percentile £358 £310 £325
25th Percentile £400 £410 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £576
90th Percentile £688 £650 £669
England median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 2 31
10th Percentile - - £12.00
25th Percentile - £21.02 £14.50
Median hourly rate £25.38 £21.27 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.32% +32.94% -18.99%
75th Percentile £25.49 £21.52 £26.75
90th Percentile £85.00 - £34.21
England median hourly rate £24.79 £25.08 £24.18
% change year-on-year -1.16% +3.70% +17.78%

All General Skills
North West

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 the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 1,893 1,178 1,505
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 53.95% 58.99% 52.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,067 758 881
10th Percentile £275 £305 £284
25th Percentile £375 £380 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £465 £490
Median % change year-on-year +0.75% -5.10% -2.00%
75th Percentile £578 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £656
England median daily rate £520 £520 £534
% change year-on-year - -2.62% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 102 201
10th Percentile £16.50 £12.84 £12.50
25th Percentile £25.38 £13.30 £15.00
Median hourly rate £36.00 £29.54 £22.11
Median % change year-on-year +21.89% +33.58% -4.49%
75th Percentile £69.08 £59.83 £40.00
90th Percentile £84.13 £77.38 £51.00
England median hourly rate £32.50 £28.34 £31.97
% change year-on-year +14.68% -11.35% +12.18%

Public Sector
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Public Sector job vacancy trend in the North West

Public Sector
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Public Sector.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Public Sector

Public Sector
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Public Sector in the North West over the 6 months to 21 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Public Sector in the North West

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Public Sector.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Public Sector

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Public Sector in the North West over the 6 months to 21 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Public Sector in the North West

Public Sector
Contract Job Locations in the North West

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 North West region over the 6 months to 21 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
Manchester +5 198 £500 +11.11% 58
Cheshire +7 40 £450 +8.11% 9
Merseyside -6 26 £510 -21.54% 7
Lancashire -3 13 £575 -4.17% 18
Cumbria -20 11 £424 -17.32%
Public Sector
England

Public Sector
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 24 (8.03%) SharePoint
2 16 (5.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (4.01%) Confluence
4 4 (1.34%) SharePoint 2013
5 2 (0.67%) Apache
5 2 (0.67%) CICS
5 2 (0.67%) CMS
5 2 (0.67%) Jupyter
5 2 (0.67%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.33%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.33%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.33%) SAS
6 1 (0.33%) Skype for Business
6 1 (0.33%) WordPress
Applications
1 5 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.67%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.33%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.67%) Oracle Cash Management
3 2 (0.67%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.67%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.67%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 2 (0.67%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 73 (24.41%) Azure
2 63 (21.07%) AWS
3 40 (13.38%) Microsoft 365
4 20 (6.69%) Microsoft Copilot
5 18 (6.02%) Serverless
6 17 (5.69%) SaaS
7 16 (5.35%) GitHub
8 14 (4.68%) OCI
8 14 (4.68%) Power Platform
9 13 (4.35%) Dynamics 365
10 12 (4.01%) Entra ID
10 12 (4.01%) GCP
11 10 (3.34%) Amazon S3
12 9 (3.01%) Amazon EC2
12 9 (3.01%) Azure DevOps
12 9 (3.01%) GitHub Actions
12 9 (3.01%) Google Workspace
12 9 (3.01%) Power Automate
13 8 (2.68%) AWS Lambda
13 8 (2.68%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 15 (5.02%) Firewall
2 8 (2.68%) BIG-IP
2 8 (2.68%) Ethernet VPN
2 8 (2.68%) VXLAN
2 8 (2.68%) WAN
2 8 (2.68%) Wi-Fi
3 7 (2.34%) BGP
3 7 (2.34%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
3 7 (2.34%) OSPF
3 7 (2.34%) SD-WAN
4 6 (2.01%) WLAN
5 5 (1.67%) DNS
6 3 (1.00%) DKIM
6 3 (1.00%) DMARC
7 2 (0.67%) LAN
7 2 (0.67%) VPN
8 1 (0.33%) IPv6
8 1 (0.33%) Kerberos
8 1 (0.33%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.33%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (5.02%) MongoDB
2 7 (2.34%) Relational Database
3 6 (2.01%) DocumentDB
4 5 (1.67%) Metadata
4 5 (1.67%) Oracle Database
4 5 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.34%) RDBMS
5 4 (1.34%) Tableau
6 3 (1.00%) MySQL
6 3 (1.00%) NoSQL
6 3 (1.00%) Power BI
6 3 (1.00%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.67%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.67%) Data Mining
7 2 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.67%) DataStage
7 2 (0.67%) Oracle BI Publisher
7 2 (0.67%) Oracle Exadata
7 2 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.33%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 33 (11.04%) GitLab
2 19 (6.35%) JIRA
3 11 (3.68%) Git
4 10 (3.34%) Selenium
5 9 (3.01%) Cucumber
5 9 (3.01%) Jenkins
6 7 (2.34%) Cypress.io
6 7 (2.34%) JUnit
6 7 (2.34%) Mockito
7 6 (2.01%) Mocha
8 5 (1.67%) REST Assured
9 4 (1.34%) CircleCI
9 4 (1.34%) Postman
10 3 (1.00%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.67%) Gatling
11 2 (0.67%) JDeveloper
11 2 (0.67%) JMeter
11 2 (0.67%) WebDriver
12 1 (0.33%) Serenity BDD
12 1 (0.33%) TestNG
General
1 62 (20.74%) Social Skills
2 32 (10.70%) Military
3 28 (9.36%) Finance
4 22 (7.36%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (5.35%) Local Government
6 8 (2.68%) Banking
6 8 (2.68%) Legal
7 6 (2.01%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (1.67%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.34%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (0.67%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.67%) Digital Economy
11 2 (0.67%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.67%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.67%) Marketing
12 1 (0.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.33%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 69 (23.08%) Developer
2 48 (16.05%) Lead
3 38 (12.71%) Senior
4 33 (11.04%) Architect
5 28 (9.36%) Java Developer
6 17 (5.69%) Analyst
6 17 (5.69%) Lead Developer
7 15 (5.02%) Software Developer
7 15 (5.02%) Tester
8 14 (4.68%) Administrator
8 14 (4.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 14 (4.68%) Senior Developer
9 13 (4.35%) Designer
10 11 (3.68%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
10 11 (3.68%) Technical Architect
10 11 (3.68%) Test Engineer
11 10 (3.34%) Consultant
11 10 (3.34%) Full-Stack Developer
11 10 (3.34%) Lead Architect
11 10 (3.34%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (9.03%) Spring
2 26 (8.70%) Node.js
3 25 (8.36%) Spring Boot
4 16 (5.35%) REST
5 14 (4.68%) Kafka
6 11 (3.68%) React
7 9 (3.01%) OAuth
8 8 (2.68%) Playwright
9 7 (2.34%) Jest
9 7 (2.34%) RESTful
10 6 (2.01%) ActiveMQ
10 6 (2.01%) JAX-RS
11 5 (1.67%) AngularJS
11 5 (1.67%) OpenID
12 4 (1.34%) CSS
12 4 (1.34%) HTML
12 4 (1.34%) Nunjucks
13 3 (1.00%) ARM Templates
13 3 (1.00%) GraphQL
13 3 (1.00%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 24 (8.03%) Cloud Native
2 15 (5.02%) Product Ownership
3 11 (3.68%) Data Centre
3 11 (3.68%) Legacy Systems
4 9 (3.01%) Onboarding
5 8 (2.68%) Management Information System
5 8 (2.68%) Operational Technology
6 7 (2.34%) NHS
7 6 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (2.01%) Hybrid Cloud
7 6 (2.01%) Public Cloud
8 5 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
9 3 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
9 3 (1.00%) Freedom of Information
9 3 (1.00%) Housing Association
9 3 (1.00%) Mobile App
9 3 (1.00%) Replication
10 2 (0.67%) Mainframe
10 2 (0.67%) SCADA
10 2 (0.67%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 20 (6.69%) Linux
2 12 (4.01%) Unix
3 10 (3.34%) Windows
4 6 (2.01%) Mac OS X
5 4 (1.34%) AIX
5 4 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (1.00%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.67%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.67%) Solaris
8 1 (0.33%) Android
8 1 (0.33%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.33%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 90 (30.10%) Agile
2 63 (21.07%) CI/CD
3 58 (19.40%) DevOps
4 43 (14.38%) Microservices
5 42 (14.05%) Test Automation
6 41 (13.71%) Continuous Improvement
7 32 (10.70%) Migration
7 32 (10.70%) Stakeholder Management
8 31 (10.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 25 (8.36%) Infrastructure as Code
9 25 (8.36%) Problem-Solving
10 23 (7.69%) Mentoring
10 23 (7.69%) Technical Leadership
10 23 (7.69%) User Experience
11 22 (7.36%) Digital Transformation Programme
12 21 (7.02%) Roadmaps
13 20 (6.69%) Containerisation
13 20 (6.69%) Cybersecurity
13 20 (6.69%) TDD
14 17 (5.69%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 57 (19.06%) Java
2 30 (10.03%) JavaScript
3 23 (7.69%) Python
4 17 (5.69%) SQL
4 17 (5.69%) TypeScript
5 9 (3.01%) PowerShell
6 2 (0.67%) C#
6 2 (0.67%) COBOL
6 2 (0.67%) Go
6 2 (0.67%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.33%) Bash
7 1 (0.33%) Bicep
7 1 (0.33%) Kotlin
7 1 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
7 1 (0.33%) PHP
7 1 (0.33%) Ruby
7 1 (0.33%) Scala
7 1 (0.33%) Shell Script
7 1 (0.33%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 136 (45.48%) Security Cleared
2 84 (28.09%) SC Cleared
3 17 (5.69%) BPSS Clearance
4 16 (5.35%) Degree
5 7 (2.34%) Microsoft Certification
6 4 (1.34%) Azure Certification
7 3 (1.00%) Master's Degree
8 2 (0.67%) CCNA
8 2 (0.67%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.67%) DBS Check
8 2 (0.67%) DV Cleared
8 2 (0.67%) ISTQB
8 2 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
8 2 (0.67%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 2 (0.67%) MBA
8 2 (0.67%) PMI Certification
8 2 (0.67%) PMP
9 1 (0.33%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.33%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (11.04%) Accessibility
2 14 (4.68%) WCAG
3 12 (4.01%) QA
4 10 (3.34%) Data Quality
4 10 (3.34%) PMO
5 8 (2.68%) NIST
6 6 (2.01%) GDPR
7 4 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (1.34%) SLA
8 2 (0.67%) GRC
8 2 (0.67%) IFRS
8 2 (0.67%) IFRS 17
8 2 (0.67%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.33%) Basel III
9 1 (0.33%) NCSC
9 1 (0.33%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.33%) Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment)
System Software
1 30 (10.03%) Docker
2 21 (7.02%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.67%) Oracle RAC
3 2 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.33%) BitLocker
4 1 (0.33%) GPFS
4 1 (0.33%) NFS
4 1 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (0.33%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 39 (13.04%) Terraform
2 28 (9.36%) Kubernetes
3 14 (4.68%) Ansible
4 6 (2.01%) Grafana
5 3 (1.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 3 (1.00%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.67%) Data Guard
6 2 (0.67%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.67%) Oracle RMAN
6 2 (0.67%) SCCM
7 1 (0.33%) Argo
7 1 (0.33%) CASB
7 1 (0.33%) Cisco CUCM
7 1 (0.33%) Norton AntiVirus
7 1 (0.33%) Packer
7 1 (0.33%) vRealize
7 1 (0.33%) VxRail
Vendors
1 50 (16.72%) Microsoft
2 12 (4.01%) Oracle
3 10 (3.34%) Google
4 9 (3.01%) Palo Alto
4 9 (3.01%) ServiceNow
5 8 (2.68%) Aruba
5 8 (2.68%) F5
6 7 (2.34%) Arista
6 7 (2.34%) SAP
7 4 (1.34%) IBM
7 4 (1.34%) PeopleSoft
8 3 (1.00%) Virgin Media
8 3 (1.00%) VMware
9 2 (0.67%) Automation Anywhere
9 2 (0.67%) BeyondTrust
9 2 (0.67%) Cisco
9 2 (0.67%) OpenAI
9 2 (0.67%) Salesforce
9 2 (0.67%) Tanium
9 2 (0.67%) Thycotic