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 31 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 17 11
Rank change year-on-year +2 -6 -5
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 306 178 293
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 9.11% 9.07% 10.78%
As % of the General category 16.67% 15.44% 20.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 191 121 185
10th Percentile £350 £313 £335
25th Percentile £400 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.80% - -4.31%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £627
90th Percentile £640 £650 £725
England median daily rate £505 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -3.54% -0.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 2 33
10th Percentile £24.14 - £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 £25.46 £21.52 £21.00
90th Percentile £25.49 - £34.21
England median hourly rate £23.83 £25.08 £22.75
% change year-on-year -4.99% +10.22% +9.27%

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 1,836 1,153 1,458
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 54.68% 58.77% 53.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,042 725 881
10th Percentile £251 £276 £288
25th Percentile £370 £381 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year -2.63% -3.65% -1.40%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £585
90th Percentile £642 £675 £672
England median daily rate £515 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -1.90% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 172 102 196
10th Percentile £16.28 £13.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £22.92 £16.36 £15.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £28.75 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.48% +36.90% -19.23%
75th Percentile £64.56 £57.81 £37.25
90th Percentile £83.75 £76.13 £51.89
England median hourly rate £31.16 £28.00 £30.50
% change year-on-year +11.27% -8.20% -4.57%

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 31 May 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
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 31 May 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 +5 210 £478 -3.63% 48
Cheshire +4 37 £447 +13.16% 9
Merseyside -11 22 £510 -27.14% 2
Lancashire -7 13 £575 -4.17% 21
Cumbria -14 13 £442 -19.66%
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 21 (6.86%) SharePoint
2 17 (5.56%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (3.92%) Confluence
4 2 (0.65%) CICS
4 2 (0.65%) CMS
4 2 (0.65%) Oracle Workflow
5 1 (0.33%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.33%) Apache
5 1 (0.33%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.33%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.33%) SAS
5 1 (0.33%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 6 (1.96%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.63%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.65%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.65%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.33%) Adobe Premiere
5 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.33%) Quicktime
Business Applications
1 4 (1.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.65%) Oracle Cash Management
2 2 (0.65%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
2 2 (0.65%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
2 2 (0.65%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 76 (24.84%) Azure
2 63 (20.59%) AWS
3 40 (13.07%) Microsoft 365
4 20 (6.54%) GitHub
5 19 (6.21%) Serverless
6 18 (5.88%) Microsoft Copilot
6 18 (5.88%) SaaS
7 16 (5.23%) Power Platform
8 15 (4.90%) OCI
9 14 (4.58%) Dynamics 365
9 14 (4.58%) GCP
10 13 (4.25%) Entra ID
11 12 (3.92%) GitHub Actions
12 11 (3.59%) Amazon S3
13 10 (3.27%) AWS Lambda
14 9 (2.94%) Amazon EC2
14 9 (2.94%) Azure DevOps
14 9 (2.94%) Google Workspace
14 9 (2.94%) OneDrive
15 8 (2.61%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 19 (6.21%) Firewall
2 11 (3.59%) Wi-Fi
3 10 (3.27%) WAN
4 8 (2.61%) BGP
4 8 (2.61%) BIG-IP
4 8 (2.61%) Ethernet VPN
4 8 (2.61%) OSPF
4 8 (2.61%) VXLAN
5 7 (2.29%) DNS
5 7 (2.29%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 7 (2.29%) SD-WAN
6 6 (1.96%) WLAN
7 5 (1.63%) VPN
8 3 (0.98%) DKIM
8 3 (0.98%) DMARC
9 2 (0.65%) DHCP
9 2 (0.65%) LAN
9 2 (0.65%) SNMP
9 2 (0.65%) TCP/IP
9 2 (0.65%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (4.90%) MongoDB
2 7 (2.29%) Relational Database
3 6 (1.96%) DocumentDB
4 5 (1.63%) Oracle Database
4 5 (1.63%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (1.63%) Power BI
5 4 (1.31%) Metadata
5 4 (1.31%) RDBMS
5 4 (1.31%) Tableau
6 3 (0.98%) MySQL
6 3 (0.98%) NoSQL
6 3 (0.98%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.65%) BigQuery
7 2 (0.65%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.65%) Data Mining
7 2 (0.65%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.65%) DataStage
7 2 (0.65%) Oracle BI Publisher
7 2 (0.65%) Oracle Exadata
7 2 (0.65%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 36 (11.76%) GitLab
2 20 (6.54%) JIRA
3 13 (4.25%) Git
4 10 (3.27%) Cypress.io
5 9 (2.94%) Cucumber
5 9 (2.94%) Selenium
6 8 (2.61%) Jenkins
6 8 (2.61%) JUnit
6 8 (2.61%) Mocha
7 7 (2.29%) CircleCI
7 7 (2.29%) Mockito
8 6 (1.96%) Postman
9 4 (1.31%) REST Assured
10 3 (0.98%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.65%) Gatling
11 2 (0.65%) JDeveloper
11 2 (0.65%) JMeter
11 2 (0.65%) WebDriver
12 1 (0.33%) Axure RP
12 1 (0.33%) Jasmine
General
1 67 (21.90%) Social Skills
2 29 (9.48%) Finance
3 28 (9.15%) Military
4 24 (7.84%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (4.25%) Local Government
6 8 (2.61%) Banking
6 8 (2.61%) Legal
7 7 (2.29%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.65%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.65%) Digital Economy
11 2 (0.65%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.65%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.33%) Retail Banking
12 1 (0.33%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 71 (23.20%) Developer
2 42 (13.73%) Senior
3 37 (12.09%) Lead
4 31 (10.13%) Java Developer
5 29 (9.48%) Architect
6 24 (7.84%) Analyst
7 16 (5.23%) Designer
7 16 (5.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 15 (4.90%) Software Developer
8 15 (4.90%) Tester
9 14 (4.58%) Lead Developer
9 14 (4.58%) Senior Developer
10 13 (4.25%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
10 13 (4.25%) Test Engineer
11 12 (3.92%) Business Analyst
11 12 (3.92%) Full-Stack Developer
12 11 (3.59%) Technical Architect
13 10 (3.27%) Administrator
13 10 (3.27%) Lead Architect
13 10 (3.27%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (10.13%) Spring
2 30 (9.80%) Spring Boot
3 29 (9.48%) Node.js
4 17 (5.56%) REST
5 14 (4.58%) React
6 13 (4.25%) Kafka
7 12 (3.92%) Playwright
8 11 (3.59%) Jest
9 9 (2.94%) OAuth
10 8 (2.61%) RESTful
11 7 (2.29%) CSS
11 7 (2.29%) HTML
12 6 (1.96%) ActiveMQ
12 6 (1.96%) AngularJS
12 6 (1.96%) JAX-RS
13 5 (1.63%) OpenID
14 4 (1.31%) Nunjucks
14 4 (1.31%) Spring MVC
15 3 (0.98%) Swagger
15 3 (0.98%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 23 (7.52%) Cloud Native
2 20 (6.54%) Product Ownership
3 16 (5.23%) Onboarding
4 12 (3.92%) Data Centre
5 9 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (2.94%) Operational Technology
6 7 (2.29%) Management Information System
7 6 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (1.96%) Hybrid Cloud
8 5 (1.63%) NHS
8 5 (1.63%) Public Cloud
8 5 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
9 3 (0.98%) Distributed Systems
9 3 (0.98%) Freedom of Information
9 3 (0.98%) Housing Association
9 3 (0.98%) Mobile App
9 3 (0.98%) Replication
10 2 (0.65%) BYOD
10 2 (0.65%) Private Cloud
10 2 (0.65%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 22 (7.19%) Linux
2 13 (4.25%) Windows
3 12 (3.92%) Unix
4 6 (1.96%) Mac OS X
5 4 (1.31%) AIX
5 4 (1.31%) Windows 10
6 3 (0.98%) Mac OS
6 3 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.65%) Solaris
8 1 (0.33%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.33%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 97 (31.70%) Agile
2 66 (21.57%) CI/CD
3 60 (19.61%) DevOps
4 48 (15.69%) Continuous Improvement
5 46 (15.03%) Microservices
5 46 (15.03%) Test Automation
6 31 (10.13%) Migration
6 31 (10.13%) Stakeholder Management
7 30 (9.80%) User Experience
8 29 (9.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 26 (8.50%) Problem-Solving
10 25 (8.17%) Infrastructure as Code
11 22 (7.19%) Mentoring
12 20 (6.54%) Digital Transformation Programme
12 20 (6.54%) Roadmaps
12 20 (6.54%) Technical Leadership
12 20 (6.54%) User Research
13 19 (6.21%) Containerisation
13 19 (6.21%) Validation
14 18 (5.88%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 60 (19.61%) Java
2 35 (11.44%) JavaScript
3 24 (7.84%) Python
4 22 (7.19%) TypeScript
5 16 (5.23%) SQL
6 11 (3.59%) PowerShell
7 3 (0.98%) PL/SQL
7 3 (0.98%) Ruby
8 2 (0.65%) COBOL
8 2 (0.65%) Go
8 2 (0.65%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.33%) Bash
9 1 (0.33%) C#
9 1 (0.33%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.33%) ProC
9 1 (0.33%) Scala
9 1 (0.33%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 140 (45.75%) Security Cleared
2 76 (24.84%) SC Cleared
3 16 (5.23%) Degree
4 11 (3.59%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (1.96%) Microsoft Certification
6 4 (1.31%) Azure Certification
7 3 (0.98%) Master's Degree
8 2 (0.65%) CCNA
8 2 (0.65%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.65%) DBS Check
8 2 (0.65%) DV Cleared
8 2 (0.65%) ISTQB
8 2 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
8 2 (0.65%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 2 (0.65%) MBA
8 2 (0.65%) PMI Certification
8 2 (0.65%) PMP
9 1 (0.33%) CISM
9 1 (0.33%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (13.73%) Accessibility
2 18 (5.88%) WCAG
3 12 (3.92%) Data Quality
4 11 (3.59%) QA
5 8 (2.61%) NIST
6 7 (2.29%) GDPR
6 7 (2.29%) PMO
7 4 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (1.31%) SLA
8 2 (0.65%) GRC
8 2 (0.65%) IFRS
8 2 (0.65%) IFRS 17
8 2 (0.65%) 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 28 (9.15%) Docker
2 23 (7.52%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.65%) Hyper-V
3 2 (0.65%) Oracle RAC
3 2 (0.65%) Virtual Desktop
3 2 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.33%) BitLocker
4 1 (0.33%) GPFS
4 1 (0.33%) ISA Server
4 1 (0.33%) NFS
4 1 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (0.33%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 42 (13.73%) Terraform
2 29 (9.48%) Kubernetes
3 14 (4.58%) Ansible
4 6 (1.96%) Grafana
5 4 (1.31%) Prometheus
6 3 (0.98%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 3 (0.98%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.65%) Cisco CUCM
7 2 (0.65%) Data Guard
7 2 (0.65%) Oracle RMAN
7 2 (0.65%) SCCM
8 1 (0.33%) Argo
8 1 (0.33%) Cisco Prime
8 1 (0.33%) Failover Clustering
8 1 (0.33%) FortiGate
8 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Clustering
8 1 (0.33%) Nagios
8 1 (0.33%) Norton AntiVirus
8 1 (0.33%) VxRail
Vendors
1 52 (16.99%) Microsoft
2 14 (4.58%) Oracle
3 12 (3.92%) Google
4 10 (3.27%) Palo Alto
5 9 (2.94%) Aruba
6 8 (2.61%) F5
6 8 (2.61%) ServiceNow
6 8 (2.61%) Virgin Media
7 7 (2.29%) Arista
8 6 (1.96%) Cisco
8 6 (1.96%) SAP
9 5 (1.63%) PeopleSoft
10 4 (1.31%) IBM
10 4 (1.31%) VMware
11 2 (0.65%) Adobe
11 2 (0.65%) BeyondTrust
11 2 (0.65%) CyberArk
11 2 (0.65%) Fortinet
11 2 (0.65%) SolarWinds
11 2 (0.65%) Splunk