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

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 17 12
Rank change year-on-year +1 -5 -5
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 299 172 282
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.67% 8.63% 10.12%
As % of the General category 16.09% 14.58% 19.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 182 117 174
10th Percentile £358 £313 £325
25th Percentile £400 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £480 £497
Median % change year-on-year +1.82% -3.32% -3.12%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £597
90th Percentile £640 £650 £674
England median daily rate £510 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -0.94% -1.94% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 2 33
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% -20.00%
75th Percentile £25.49 £21.52 £21.00
90th Percentile £85.00 - £34.21
England median hourly rate £24.19 £25.08 £22.25
% change year-on-year -3.53% +12.70% +8.01%

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 1,858 1,180 1,468
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 53.86% 59.18% 52.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,055 756 866
10th Percentile £275 £300 £300
25th Percentile £375 £378 £392
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £469 £493
Median % change year-on-year -0.85% -4.87% -1.40%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £581
90th Percentile £643 £675 £663
England median daily rate £520 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.50% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 100 203
10th Percentile £16.50 £12.98 £12.50
25th Percentile £25.38 £13.90 £15.00
Median hourly rate £36.70 £29.01 £21.43
Median % change year-on-year +26.51% +35.37% -7.43%
75th Percentile £69.50 £59.48 £37.25
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.38 £51.70
England median hourly rate £32.50 £28.08 £31.50
% change year-on-year +15.76% -10.87% +3.14%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +7 201 £495 +7.61% 78
Cheshire +9 40 £450 +12.36% 9
Merseyside -11 22 £510 -27.14% 9
Lancashire -6 13 £575 -4.17% 25
Cumbria -13 12 £424 -19.29%
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 22 (7.36%) SharePoint
2 16 (5.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (4.01%) Confluence
4 2 (0.67%) Apache
4 2 (0.67%) CICS
4 2 (0.67%) CMS
4 2 (0.67%) Jupyter
4 2 (0.67%) Oracle Workflow
4 2 (0.67%) SharePoint 2013
5 1 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.33%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.33%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.33%) SAS
5 1 (0.33%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 5 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.67%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.67%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.33%) Adobe Premiere
5 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.33%) Quicktime
Business Applications
1 5 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.67%) Oracle Cash Management
2 2 (0.67%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.67%) Oracle Payables
2 2 (0.67%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
2 2 (0.67%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 69 (23.08%) Azure
2 61 (20.40%) AWS
3 40 (13.38%) Microsoft 365
4 19 (6.35%) Microsoft Copilot
5 17 (5.69%) GitHub
5 17 (5.69%) SaaS
6 16 (5.35%) Serverless
7 14 (4.68%) OCI
8 13 (4.35%) Dynamics 365
8 13 (4.35%) Power Platform
9 12 (4.01%) Entra ID
10 11 (3.68%) GCP
11 10 (3.34%) Amazon S3
11 10 (3.34%) GitHub Actions
12 9 (3.01%) Amazon EC2
12 9 (3.01%) Azure DevOps
12 9 (3.01%) Google Workspace
13 8 (2.68%) AWS Lambda
13 8 (2.68%) OneDrive
13 8 (2.68%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 16 (5.35%) Firewall
2 8 (2.68%) BIG-IP
2 8 (2.68%) Ethernet VPN
2 8 (2.68%) VXLAN
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%) WAN
4 6 (2.01%) SD-WAN
4 6 (2.01%) WLAN
5 5 (1.67%) DNS
6 3 (1.00%) DKIM
6 3 (1.00%) DMARC
6 3 (1.00%) VPN
7 1 (0.33%) Skype
7 1 (0.33%) SNMP
7 1 (0.33%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.33%) VSAN
7 1 (0.33%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (5.02%) MongoDB
2 7 (2.34%) Relational Database
3 6 (2.01%) DocumentDB
4 5 (1.67%) Oracle Database
4 5 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.34%) Metadata
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%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 34 (11.37%) GitLab
2 19 (6.35%) JIRA
3 11 (3.68%) Git
4 9 (3.01%) Selenium
5 8 (2.68%) Cypress.io
5 8 (2.68%) Jenkins
6 7 (2.34%) Cucumber
6 7 (2.34%) JUnit
6 7 (2.34%) Mocha
6 7 (2.34%) Mockito
7 5 (1.67%) CircleCI
8 4 (1.34%) Postman
8 4 (1.34%) REST Assured
9 3 (1.00%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.67%) Gatling
10 2 (0.67%) JDeveloper
10 2 (0.67%) JMeter
10 2 (0.67%) WebDriver
11 1 (0.33%) Axure RP
11 1 (0.33%) Serenity BDD
General
1 65 (21.74%) Social Skills
2 29 (9.70%) Finance
3 28 (9.36%) Military
4 22 (7.36%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (5.02%) Local Government
6 8 (2.68%) Banking
6 8 (2.68%) Legal
7 6 (2.01%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (1.67%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.67%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.67%) Corporate Banking
10 2 (0.67%) Digital Economy
10 2 (0.67%) General Ledger
10 2 (0.67%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.67%) Marketing
11 1 (0.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.33%) Retail Banking
11 1 (0.33%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 66 (22.07%) Developer
2 45 (15.05%) Lead
3 41 (13.71%) Senior
4 31 (10.37%) Architect
5 29 (9.70%) Java Developer
6 20 (6.69%) Analyst
7 17 (5.69%) Designer
8 16 (5.35%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 15 (5.02%) Lead Developer
9 15 (5.02%) Software Developer
9 15 (5.02%) Tester
10 14 (4.68%) Senior Developer
11 13 (4.35%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 12 (4.01%) Administrator
12 12 (4.01%) Business Analyst
13 11 (3.68%) Technical Architect
13 11 (3.68%) Test Engineer
14 10 (3.34%) DevOps Engineer
14 10 (3.34%) Lead Architect
14 10 (3.34%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (9.36%) Spring
2 26 (8.70%) Spring Boot
3 25 (8.36%) Node.js
4 16 (5.35%) REST
5 14 (4.68%) Kafka
6 12 (4.01%) React
7 9 (3.01%) OAuth
7 9 (3.01%) Playwright
8 8 (2.68%) Jest
9 7 (2.34%) RESTful
10 6 (2.01%) ActiveMQ
10 6 (2.01%) CSS
10 6 (2.01%) HTML
10 6 (2.01%) JAX-RS
11 5 (1.67%) AngularJS
11 5 (1.67%) OpenID
12 4 (1.34%) Nunjucks
13 3 (1.00%) ARM Templates
13 3 (1.00%) Swagger
13 3 (1.00%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 23 (7.69%) Cloud Native
2 17 (5.69%) Product Ownership
3 11 (3.68%) Data Centre
4 10 (3.34%) Onboarding
5 9 (3.01%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (3.01%) Operational Technology
6 7 (2.34%) Management Information System
7 6 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (2.01%) Hybrid Cloud
7 6 (2.01%) NHS
7 6 (2.01%) Public Cloud
8 5 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (1.34%) Mobile App
10 3 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
10 3 (1.00%) Freedom of Information
10 3 (1.00%) Housing Association
10 3 (1.00%) Replication
11 2 (0.67%) BYOD
11 2 (0.67%) Cyber Threat
11 2 (0.67%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 20 (6.69%) Linux
2 12 (4.01%) Unix
3 11 (3.68%) Windows
4 6 (2.01%) Mac OS X
5 4 (1.34%) AIX
6 3 (1.00%) 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 93 (31.10%) Agile
2 63 (21.07%) CI/CD
3 59 (19.73%) DevOps
4 44 (14.72%) Continuous Improvement
5 42 (14.05%) Microservices
5 42 (14.05%) Test Automation
6 32 (10.70%) Stakeholder Management
7 31 (10.37%) Migration
7 31 (10.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 28 (9.36%) User Experience
9 25 (8.36%) Problem-Solving
10 24 (8.03%) Infrastructure as Code
11 22 (7.36%) Mentoring
12 21 (7.02%) Cybersecurity
12 21 (7.02%) Roadmaps
12 21 (7.02%) Technical Leadership
13 20 (6.69%) Digital Transformation Programme
14 19 (6.35%) Containerisation
15 18 (6.02%) User Research
15 18 (6.02%) UX Design
Programming Languages
1 56 (18.73%) Java
2 30 (10.03%) JavaScript
3 21 (7.02%) Python
4 18 (6.02%) TypeScript
5 16 (5.35%) SQL
6 9 (3.01%) PowerShell
7 2 (0.67%) COBOL
7 2 (0.67%) Go
7 2 (0.67%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.33%) Bash
8 1 (0.33%) C#
8 1 (0.33%) Kotlin
8 1 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (0.33%) Ruby
8 1 (0.33%) Scala
8 1 (0.33%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.33%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 138 (46.15%) Security Cleared
2 80 (26.76%) SC Cleared
3 16 (5.35%) BPSS Clearance
3 16 (5.35%) Degree
4 6 (2.01%) Microsoft Certification
5 4 (1.34%) Azure Certification
6 3 (1.00%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.67%) CCNA
7 2 (0.67%) Cisco Certification
7 2 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (0.67%) DBS Check
7 2 (0.67%) DV Cleared
7 2 (0.67%) ISTQB
7 2 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
7 2 (0.67%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 2 (0.67%) MBA
7 2 (0.67%) PMI Certification
7 2 (0.67%) PMP
8 1 (0.33%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.33%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (13.38%) Accessibility
2 17 (5.69%) WCAG
3 10 (3.34%) Data Quality
3 10 (3.34%) QA
4 9 (3.01%) PMO
5 8 (2.68%) NIST
6 7 (2.34%) 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%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.33%) NCSC
9 1 (0.33%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.33%) PSD2
9 1 (0.33%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.33%) Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment)
System Software
1 29 (9.70%) 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%) Hyper-V
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 13 (4.35%) 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%) Cisco CUCM
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%) Cisco Prime
7 1 (0.33%) Norton AntiVirus
7 1 (0.33%) Packer
7 1 (0.33%) vRealize
7 1 (0.33%) VxRail
Vendors
1 51 (17.06%) 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
7 4 (1.34%) Virgin Media
7 4 (1.34%) VMware
8 3 (1.00%) Cisco
9 2 (0.67%) BeyondTrust
9 2 (0.67%) Blue Prism
9 2 (0.67%) CyberArk
9 2 (0.67%) Salesforce
9 2 (0.67%) Thycotic
9 2 (0.67%) Trend Micro