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 30 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -11 -1 -3
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 251 230 230
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 6.39% 10.63% 9.76%
As % of the General category 12.52% 17.31% 17.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 141 168 120
10th Percentile £363 £215 £328
25th Percentile £420 £385 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £450 £493
Median % change year-on-year +22.22% -8.72% -6.10%
75th Percentile £640 £562 £603
90th Percentile £734 £658 £689
England median daily rate £525 £500 £521
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.08% -5.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 8 10
10th Percentile £13.59 £16.11 £15.95
25th Percentile £22.99 £17.30 £16.70
Median hourly rate £25.49 £20.07 £18.62
Median % change year-on-year +27.01% +7.77% +10.52%
75th Percentile £69.66 £32.95 £29.88
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.25 £36.40
England median hourly rate £21.35 £22.07 £23.99
% change year-on-year -3.26% -8.00% +14.24%

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 2,005 1,329 1,345
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 51.07% 61.44% 57.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,121 866 740
10th Percentile £230 £268 £292
25th Percentile £400 £376 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £455 £490
Median % change year-on-year +9.89% -7.14% -2.00%
75th Percentile £598 £575 £575
90th Percentile £680 £683 £675
England median daily rate £525 £500 £534
% change year-on-year +5.00% -6.28% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 261 107 79
10th Percentile £14.06 £12.82 £16.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £15.34 £18.02
Median hourly rate £35.00 £24.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +42.86% -30.00% +59.09%
75th Percentile £55.00 £48.56 £46.84
90th Percentile £77.50 £65.00 £63.00
England median hourly rate £29.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +19.13% -32.93% +27.12%

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 30 September 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 30 September 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 30 September 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 -10 170 £550 +22.22% 270
Cheshire -15 25 £511 +17.36% 10
Merseyside -12 23 £525 -1.87% 28
Lancashire -14 18 £575 +26.37% 25
Cumbria -31 9 £334 -38.53% 2
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 14 (5.58%) SharePoint
2 9 (3.59%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (2.39%) Confluence
4 4 (1.59%) SharePoint 2013
5 3 (1.20%) Apache
5 3 (1.20%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (1.20%) Apache Spark
5 3 (1.20%) SAS
6 2 (0.80%) Oracle Workflow
6 2 (0.80%) WordPress
7 1 (0.40%) CMS
7 1 (0.40%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.40%) nginx
7 1 (0.40%) Skype for Business
7 1 (0.40%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.40%) AutoCAD
1 1 (0.40%) Chatbot
1 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (0.40%) Navisworks
1 1 (0.40%) ProjectWise
1 1 (0.40%) Revit
1 1 (0.40%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 3 (1.20%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.80%) Oracle Cash Management
2 2 (0.80%) Oracle Payables
2 2 (0.80%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
2 2 (0.80%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.40%) Integrated Workplace Management System
3 1 (0.40%) Primavera
3 1 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.40%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 61 (24.30%) AWS
2 47 (18.73%) Azure
3 26 (10.36%) Microsoft 365
4 18 (7.17%) SaaS
5 13 (5.18%) OCI
6 11 (4.38%) Google Workspace
7 10 (3.98%) GCP
7 10 (3.98%) GitHub
7 10 (3.98%) Serverless
8 8 (3.19%) Power Platform
9 7 (2.79%) Google Drive
9 7 (2.79%) Microsoft Copilot
10 6 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
11 5 (1.99%) Amazon EC2
11 5 (1.99%) Amazon S3
11 5 (1.99%) AWS KMS
11 5 (1.99%) Azure DevOps
11 5 (1.99%) Dynamics 365
12 4 (1.59%) Amazon ECS
12 4 (1.59%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 11 (4.38%) Firewall
2 10 (3.98%) Wi-Fi
3 9 (3.59%) BGP
3 9 (3.59%) OSPF
4 8 (3.19%) SD-WAN
4 8 (3.19%) WAN
5 7 (2.79%) BIG-IP
5 7 (2.79%) Ethernet VPN
5 7 (2.79%) VXLAN
6 6 (2.39%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
6 6 (2.39%) WLAN
7 4 (1.59%) DNS
8 3 (1.20%) Cisco ASA
8 3 (1.20%) Cisco Firepower
8 3 (1.20%) DKIM
8 3 (1.20%) DMARC
8 3 (1.20%) EIGRP
8 3 (1.20%) HSRP
8 3 (1.20%) IPsec
9 2 (0.80%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (3.59%) Relational Database
2 8 (3.19%) MongoDB
3 7 (2.79%) Oracle Database
4 6 (2.39%) RDBMS
5 5 (1.99%) Power BI
6 4 (1.59%) Metadata
6 4 (1.59%) Oracle Exadata
7 2 (0.80%) Amazon QuickSight
7 2 (0.80%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.80%) DocumentDB
7 2 (0.80%) EDMS
7 2 (0.80%) Oracle BI Publisher
7 2 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.40%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.40%) Big Data
8 1 (0.40%) Data Lake
8 1 (0.40%) PowerCenter
8 1 (0.40%) SAS Enterprise Guide
8 1 (0.40%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 20 (7.97%) GitLab
2 13 (5.18%) Cucumber
3 12 (4.78%) Selenium
4 11 (4.38%) JIRA
5 10 (3.98%) Jenkins
6 8 (3.19%) REST Assured
7 7 (2.79%) Git
8 5 (1.99%) JUnit
9 3 (1.20%) Cypress.io
9 3 (1.20%) Gatling
9 3 (1.20%) Maven
9 3 (1.20%) Mockito
9 3 (1.20%) TestNG
10 2 (0.80%) JDeveloper
10 2 (0.80%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.80%) WebDriver
11 1 (0.40%) JMeter
11 1 (0.40%) MSI
11 1 (0.40%) SonarQube
11 1 (0.40%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 62 (24.70%) Social Skills
2 43 (17.13%) Military
3 22 (8.76%) Finance
4 16 (6.37%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (4.78%) Local Government
6 5 (1.99%) Legal
6 5 (1.99%) Police
6 5 (1.99%) Presentation Skills
7 4 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
8 3 (1.20%) Marketing
9 2 (0.80%) General Ledger
9 2 (0.80%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.40%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 49 (19.52%) Lead
2 40 (15.94%) Architect
3 35 (13.94%) Senior
4 34 (13.55%) Developer
5 15 (5.98%) Security Architect
6 14 (5.58%) Administrator
6 14 (5.58%) Analyst
6 14 (5.58%) Consultant
7 13 (5.18%) Solutions Architect
8 11 (4.38%) Designer
8 11 (4.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 11 (4.38%) Java Developer
8 11 (4.38%) Test Engineer
9 10 (3.98%) Business Analyst
9 10 (3.98%) Lead Developer
9 10 (3.98%) Technical Architect
10 8 (3.19%) Content Designer
10 8 (3.19%) Lead Architect
10 8 (3.19%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 7 (2.79%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (11.16%) Terraform
2 19 (7.57%) Node.js
3 14 (5.58%) REST
4 12 (4.78%) Spring Boot
5 11 (4.38%) Spring
6 9 (3.59%) Kafka
7 7 (2.79%) OAuth
8 6 (2.39%) Playwright
9 5 (1.99%) RESTful
10 4 (1.59%) AWS CDK
10 4 (1.59%) Django
10 4 (1.59%) Oracle Fusion
10 4 (1.59%) Oracle GoldenGate
11 3 (1.20%) Middleware
11 3 (1.20%) Nunjucks
11 3 (1.20%) PySpark
11 3 (1.20%) React
12 2 (0.80%) JAX-RS
12 2 (0.80%) OAuth2
12 2 (0.80%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 19 (7.57%) Cloud Native
2 11 (4.38%) Legacy Systems
3 10 (3.98%) Management Information System
4 8 (3.19%) Data Centre
5 7 (2.79%) Hybrid Cloud
5 7 (2.79%) NHS
5 7 (2.79%) Product Ownership
6 6 (2.39%) Onboarding
6 6 (2.39%) Self-Motivation
7 5 (1.99%) Taxonomies
8 4 (1.59%) Public Cloud
8 4 (1.59%) Replication
9 3 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.20%) Freedom of Information
9 3 (1.20%) Operational Technology
10 2 (0.80%) CSOC
10 2 (0.80%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (0.80%) Educational Technology
10 2 (0.80%) SCADA
10 2 (0.80%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 14 (5.58%) Linux
2 7 (2.79%) Unix
3 5 (1.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.59%) AIX
4 4 (1.59%) Windows
5 2 (0.80%) CentOS
6 1 (0.40%) Android
6 1 (0.40%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.40%) Mac OS X
6 1 (0.40%) Solaris
6 1 (0.40%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.40%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (21.91%) Agile
2 49 (19.52%) Stakeholder Management
3 45 (17.93%) CI/CD
4 38 (15.14%) DevOps
5 36 (14.34%) Continuous Improvement
6 30 (11.95%) Migration
6 30 (11.95%) Test Automation
7 28 (11.16%) Microservices
7 28 (11.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 25 (9.96%) Technical Leadership
9 23 (9.16%) Infrastructure as Code
10 22 (8.76%) Cybersecurity
10 22 (8.76%) Mentoring
11 21 (8.37%) Risk Management
11 21 (8.37%) Roadmaps
12 19 (7.57%) Software Engineering
13 18 (7.17%) Architectural Patterns
14 17 (6.77%) Decision-Making
15 16 (6.37%) Digital Transformation Programme
15 16 (6.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 32 (12.75%) Java
2 24 (9.56%) Python
3 23 (9.16%) JavaScript
4 12 (4.78%) SQL
5 9 (3.59%) TypeScript
6 5 (1.99%) PowerShell
7 4 (1.59%) Bash
7 4 (1.59%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.80%) PHP
8 2 (0.80%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.40%) Bicep
9 1 (0.40%) C#
9 1 (0.40%) Go
9 1 (0.40%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 128 (51.00%) Security Cleared
2 102 (40.64%) SC Cleared
3 14 (5.58%) BPSS Clearance
4 4 (1.59%) AWS Certification
5 3 (1.20%) Azure Certification
5 3 (1.20%) Degree
6 2 (0.80%) DBS Check
6 2 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
6 2 (0.80%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.40%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
7 1 (0.40%) CISM
7 1 (0.40%) CISSP
7 1 (0.40%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
7 1 (0.40%) PMI Certification
7 1 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (9.16%) Accessibility
2 16 (6.37%) QA
3 9 (3.59%) PMO
4 8 (3.19%) WCAG
5 7 (2.79%) Data Quality
6 5 (1.99%) GDPR
6 5 (1.99%) NCSC
7 3 (1.20%) NIST
8 2 (0.80%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.40%) ISO 19650
9 1 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.40%) SLA
9 1 (0.40%) Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment)
System Software
1 20 (7.97%) Docker
2 10 (3.98%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.99%) Oracle RAC
4 1 (0.40%) BitLocker
4 1 (0.40%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 14 (5.58%) Kubernetes
2 13 (5.18%) Ansible
3 5 (1.99%) Data Guard
4 4 (1.59%) Oracle RMAN
5 3 (1.20%) Grafana
5 3 (1.20%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.80%) Packer
6 2 (0.80%) SCCM
7 1 (0.40%) CASB
7 1 (0.40%) Cisco CUCM
7 1 (0.40%) Consul
7 1 (0.40%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.40%) Istio
7 1 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.40%) linkerd
7 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.40%) Oracle ZFS
7 1 (0.40%) Rancher
7 1 (0.40%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 30 (11.95%) Microsoft
2 14 (5.58%) Oracle
3 11 (4.38%) Google
4 10 (3.98%) Palo Alto
5 8 (3.19%) ServiceNow
6 7 (2.79%) Aruba
6 7 (2.79%) F5
7 6 (2.39%) Arista
8 5 (1.99%) Cisco
9 4 (1.59%) SAP
10 3 (1.20%) CheckPoint
11 2 (0.80%) Databricks
11 2 (0.80%) OpenAI
11 2 (0.80%) Splunk
11 2 (0.80%) Trend Micro
12 1 (0.40%) ESET
12 1 (0.40%) Okta
12 1 (0.40%) Tanium
12 1 (0.40%) Tenable
12 1 (0.40%) Veeam