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 5 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 13 9
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 330 214 315
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 11.50% 10.29% 11.29%
As % of the General category 19.41% 17.73% 20.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 252 118 209
10th Percentile £330 £350 £350
25th Percentile £400 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £530 £602 £638
90th Percentile £625 £673 £725
England median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 31
10th Percentile - £12.88 £12.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £14.82 £14.50
Median hourly rate £41.86 £16.01 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +161.39% +0.08% -20.00%
75th Percentile £44.94 £16.20 £20.25
90th Percentile - £16.23 £34.21
England median hourly rate £22.00 £24.59 £21.00
% change year-on-year -10.53% +17.10% +5.00%

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 1,700 1,207 1,528
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 59.23% 58.03% 54.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,069 696 939
10th Percentile £200 £267 £265
25th Percentile £356 £375 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +2.04%
75th Percentile £551 £575 £583
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
England median daily rate £500 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 140 101 199
10th Percentile £15.62 £16.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.75 £22.72 £14.50
Median hourly rate £32.00 £30.40 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% +71.56% -31.85%
75th Percentile £55.36 £50.00 £36.72
90th Percentile £74.26 £73.56 £46.54
England median hourly rate £24.00 £30.45 £25.90
% change year-on-year -21.18% +17.59% -20.32%

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 5 March 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 5 March 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 5 March 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 +3 220 £450 -10.00% 61
Cheshire +10 53 £449 -3.55% 6
Merseyside -8 28 £510 +2.00% 17
Cumbria -3 12 £500 -
Lancashire -20 5 £455 -24.17% 19
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 11 (3.33%) Confluence
2 9 (2.73%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (2.73%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.61%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 2 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.61%) CICS
3 2 (0.61%) CMS
3 2 (0.61%) OpenStack
3 2 (0.61%) Skype for Business
4 1 (0.30%) Apache
4 1 (0.30%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.30%) SAS
Applications
1 21 (6.36%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.30%) Adobe Premiere
3 1 (0.30%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.30%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.30%) Quicktime
3 1 (0.30%) Trello
Business Applications
1 13 (3.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (1.21%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.91%) iTrent
4 1 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.30%) SAP EHS
4 1 (0.30%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.30%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.30%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.30%) SAP PSCD
4 1 (0.30%) SAP QM
4 1 (0.30%) SAP VC
Cloud Services
1 76 (23.03%) Azure
2 62 (18.79%) AWS
3 29 (8.79%) Power Platform
4 25 (7.58%) Microsoft 365
5 23 (6.97%) GitHub
6 20 (6.06%) Serverless
7 17 (5.15%) GCP
8 14 (4.24%) AWS Lambda
8 14 (4.24%) Azure DevOps
8 14 (4.24%) Power Automate
8 14 (4.24%) PowerApps
9 13 (3.94%) Entra ID
9 13 (3.94%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (3.33%) Amazon SQS
11 9 (2.73%) Amazon S3
11 9 (2.73%) Dynamics 365
11 9 (2.73%) Microsoft Copilot
12 8 (2.42%) Google Tag Manager
13 7 (2.12%) Amazon EKS
13 7 (2.12%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 18 (5.45%) Firewall
2 9 (2.73%) WAN
3 8 (2.42%) VPN
3 8 (2.42%) Wi-Fi
4 7 (2.12%) DNS
4 7 (2.12%) Wireless
5 6 (1.82%) LAN
6 4 (1.21%) DHCP
6 4 (1.21%) MPLS
6 4 (1.21%) VLAN
7 3 (0.91%) Cisco ISE
7 3 (0.91%) Network Security
7 3 (0.91%) SNMP
7 3 (0.91%) TCP/IP
8 2 (0.61%) BGP
8 2 (0.61%) Internet
8 2 (0.61%) OSPF
8 2 (0.61%) SD-WAN
8 2 (0.61%) TACACS
8 2 (0.61%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (4.85%) Power BI
2 14 (4.24%) MongoDB
3 9 (2.73%) DocumentDB
3 9 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (2.73%) Redis
4 8 (2.42%) Looker
5 7 (2.12%) BigQuery
6 6 (1.82%) MySQL
7 5 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (1.52%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.21%) NoSQL
8 4 (1.21%) SQL Server
9 3 (0.91%) Big Data
9 3 (0.91%) Metadata
9 3 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.61%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.61%) DynamoDB
10 2 (0.61%) RDBMS
10 2 (0.61%) SAP HANA
10 2 (0.61%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 36 (10.91%) GitLab
2 25 (7.58%) Git
3 15 (4.55%) JIRA
4 10 (3.03%) Cypress.io
5 9 (2.73%) Jenkins
6 8 (2.42%) JUnit
6 8 (2.42%) Mocha
6 8 (2.42%) Mockito
6 8 (2.42%) Postman
7 7 (2.12%) CircleCI
7 7 (2.12%) SonarQube
8 5 (1.52%) Cucumber
9 3 (0.91%) Selenium
10 2 (0.61%) Jasmine
10 2 (0.61%) MSI
11 1 (0.30%) Axure RP
11 1 (0.30%) Browser DevTools
11 1 (0.30%) InstallShield
11 1 (0.30%) JMeter
11 1 (0.30%) MLflow
General
1 62 (18.79%) Social Skills
2 36 (10.91%) Finance
3 17 (5.15%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (3.64%) Military
5 11 (3.33%) Local Government
6 10 (3.03%) Banking
7 8 (2.42%) Manufacturing
7 8 (2.42%) Telecoms
8 7 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (2.12%) Marketing
9 6 (1.82%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (1.82%) Electronics
9 6 (1.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 5 (1.52%) Legal
11 4 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.61%) Corporate Banking
12 2 (0.61%) Digital Economy
12 2 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.30%) Digital Health
13 1 (0.30%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 86 (26.06%) Developer
2 34 (10.30%) Analyst
3 33 (10.00%) Java Developer
4 31 (9.39%) Senior
5 30 (9.09%) Architect
6 26 (7.88%) Lead
7 16 (4.85%) DevOps Engineer
7 16 (4.85%) Full-Stack Developer
8 12 (3.64%) Business Analyst
8 12 (3.64%) Designer
9 11 (3.33%) Consultant
10 10 (3.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 10 (3.03%) Software Developer
11 9 (2.73%) Lead Developer
11 9 (2.73%) Senior Developer
11 9 (2.73%) Technical Architect
12 8 (2.42%) Administrator
12 8 (2.42%) Project Manager
12 8 (2.42%) Test Engineer
12 8 (2.42%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (10.61%) Spring Boot
2 34 (10.30%) Spring
3 31 (9.39%) Node.js
4 19 (5.76%) React
5 16 (4.85%) REST
6 14 (4.24%) HTML
6 14 (4.24%) RESTful
7 13 (3.94%) Jest
7 13 (3.94%) Playwright
8 12 (3.64%) Kafka
9 10 (3.03%) JSON
10 8 (2.42%) AngularJS
10 8 (2.42%) CSS
10 8 (2.42%) JAX-RS
11 7 (2.12%) ActiveMQ
11 7 (2.12%) Hibernate
11 7 (2.12%) Spring MVC
12 6 (1.82%) HTML5 Canvas
13 5 (1.52%) Oracle Fusion
13 5 (1.52%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 27 (8.18%) Onboarding
2 16 (4.85%) Product Ownership
3 13 (3.94%) Data Centre
4 12 (3.64%) Cloud Native
5 6 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
5 6 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
6 5 (1.52%) Low-Code
6 5 (1.52%) NHS
6 5 (1.52%) Public Cloud
7 4 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
8 3 (0.91%) Mobile App
8 3 (0.91%) Operational Technology
9 2 (0.61%) BYOD
9 2 (0.61%) Clustering
9 2 (0.61%) e-Learning
9 2 (0.61%) Mainframe
9 2 (0.61%) Replication
9 2 (0.61%) VSAM
10 1 (0.30%) PKI
10 1 (0.30%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 23 (6.97%) Linux
2 18 (5.45%) Windows
3 13 (3.94%) Unix
4 8 (2.42%) Mac OS
5 7 (2.12%) Android
5 7 (2.12%) Mac OS X
5 7 (2.12%) Windows 10
6 4 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.91%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.61%) AIX
8 2 (0.61%) Solaris
8 2 (0.61%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 92 (27.88%) Agile
2 62 (18.79%) CI/CD
3 61 (18.48%) DevOps
4 50 (15.15%) Microservices
5 42 (12.73%) Test Automation
6 41 (12.42%) Continuous Improvement
7 40 (12.12%) Problem-Solving
8 35 (10.61%) User Experience
9 26 (7.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 26 (7.88%) Stakeholder Management
10 25 (7.58%) Containerisation
10 25 (7.58%) Validation
11 24 (7.27%) Change Management
12 23 (6.97%) User Research
13 22 (6.67%) TDD
14 21 (6.36%) Analytics
14 21 (6.36%) Migration
15 20 (6.06%) Business Intelligence
15 20 (6.06%) Infrastructure as Code
16 19 (5.76%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 63 (19.09%) Java
2 30 (9.09%) JavaScript
3 26 (7.88%) Python
4 22 (6.67%) TypeScript
5 15 (4.55%) SQL
6 13 (3.94%) PowerShell
7 4 (1.21%) Bash
7 4 (1.21%) C#
7 4 (1.21%) Go
8 3 (0.91%) ABAP
8 3 (0.91%) Ruby
9 2 (0.61%) COBOL
9 2 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
9 2 (0.61%) Perl
9 2 (0.61%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.61%) VB
9 2 (0.61%) VBScript
10 1 (0.30%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.30%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.30%) ProC
Qualifications
1 161 (48.79%) Security Cleared
2 80 (24.24%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.06%) BPSS Clearance
3 20 (6.06%) Degree
4 7 (2.12%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (1.52%) DV Cleared
7 4 (1.21%) Azure Certification
7 4 (1.21%) ISTQB
8 3 (0.91%) AWS Certification
8 3 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (0.91%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.61%) CCNA
9 2 (0.61%) CCNP
9 2 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (0.61%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 2 (0.61%) MBA
9 2 (0.61%) PMI Certification
9 2 (0.61%) PMP
10 1 (0.30%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (13.33%) Accessibility
2 15 (4.55%) WCAG
3 14 (4.24%) QA
4 12 (3.64%) Data Quality
5 6 (1.82%) NIST
6 5 (1.52%) GDPR
6 5 (1.52%) PMO
7 3 (0.91%) IFRS
7 3 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.91%) SLA
8 2 (0.61%) GRC
8 2 (0.61%) IFRS 17
8 2 (0.61%) PSD2
9 1 (0.30%) CRD IV
9 1 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.30%) FINREP
9 1 (0.30%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.30%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.30%) SEPA
9 1 (0.30%) SOC 2
System Software
1 36 (10.91%) Docker
2 14 (4.24%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.61%) BitLocker
4 2 (0.61%) Hyper-V
4 2 (0.61%) ISA Server
4 2 (0.61%) vSphere
5 1 (0.30%) GPFS
5 1 (0.30%) NFS
5 1 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 38 (11.52%) Kubernetes
2 37 (11.21%) Terraform
3 5 (1.52%) Ansible
3 5 (1.52%) Grafana
3 5 (1.52%) Microsoft Intune
4 4 (1.21%) Prometheus
4 4 (1.21%) SCCM
5 2 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 1 (0.30%) Cisco CUCM
6 1 (0.30%) Cisco Prime
6 1 (0.30%) Failover Clustering
6 1 (0.30%) FortiGate
6 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Clustering
6 1 (0.30%) Nagios
6 1 (0.30%) Norton AntiVirus
6 1 (0.30%) Packer
6 1 (0.30%) vRealize
6 1 (0.30%) VxRail
Vendors
1 57 (17.27%) Microsoft
2 24 (7.27%) SAP
3 23 (6.97%) Oracle
4 16 (4.85%) Virgin Media
5 14 (4.24%) Cisco
6 10 (3.03%) Google
7 8 (2.42%) ServiceNow
8 7 (2.12%) Palo Alto
8 7 (2.12%) VMware
9 6 (1.82%) Adobe
9 6 (1.82%) Apple
10 5 (1.52%) Dell
10 5 (1.52%) HP
10 5 (1.52%) IBM
10 5 (1.52%) PeopleSoft
11 4 (1.21%) Dynatrace
11 4 (1.21%) Meraki
11 4 (1.21%) Splunk
12 3 (0.91%) Aruba
12 3 (0.91%) Workday