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

6 months to
12 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 18 12
Rank change year-on-year 0 -6 -5
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 308 186 268
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.31% 8.58% 9.82%
As % of the General category 15.52% 14.66% 18.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 179 129 164
10th Percentile £358 £215 £327
25th Percentile £407 £400 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £465 £493
Median % change year-on-year +7.53% -5.68% -6.10%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £579
90th Percentile £690 £650 £669
England median daily rate £514 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +0.29% -2.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 3 26
10th Percentile - £17.86 £14.50
25th Percentile - £19.05 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.38 £21.27 £18.03
Median % change year-on-year +19.32% +17.95% +0.60%
75th Percentile £25.49 £21.52 £27.00
90th Percentile £85.00 - £35.11
England median hourly rate £22.50 £25.08 £27.00
% change year-on-year -10.27% -7.13% +28.57%

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 1,984 1,269 1,479
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 53.55% 58.51% 54.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,130 811 878
10th Percentile £275 £296 £284
25th Percentile £393 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £493
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -8.72% -1.40%
75th Percentile £582 £575 £576
90th Percentile £650 £675 £666
England median daily rate £525 £514 £534
% change year-on-year +2.14% -3.75% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 216 114 187
10th Percentile £16.81 £12.87 £13.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £15.44 £15.96
Median hourly rate £35.91 £29.27 £23.45
Median % change year-on-year +22.69% +24.82% +1.30%
75th Percentile £69.63 £54.12 £42.99
90th Percentile £85.00 £74.25 £51.91
England median hourly rate £33.00 £27.17 £33.65
% change year-on-year +21.47% -19.26% +10.18%

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 12 July 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 July 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 July 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 +2 206 £488 +8.33% 79
Cheshire +8 34 £456 +9.55% 6
Merseyside -4 30 £525 -19.23% 10
Lancashire -5 14 £575 -2.13% 23
Cumbria -18 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 (7.79%) SharePoint
2 16 (5.19%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (3.57%) Confluence
4 4 (1.30%) SharePoint 2013
5 2 (0.65%) Apache
5 2 (0.65%) CICS
5 2 (0.65%) CMS
5 2 (0.65%) Jupyter
5 2 (0.65%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.32%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.32%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.32%) SAS
6 1 (0.32%) Skype for Business
6 1 (0.32%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.65%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (1.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.97%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.97%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.65%) Oracle Cash Management
3 2 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.65%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 1 (0.32%) Primavera
4 1 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.32%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 74 (24.03%) Azure
2 66 (21.43%) AWS
3 40 (12.99%) Microsoft 365
4 20 (6.49%) Microsoft Copilot
5 18 (5.84%) Serverless
6 17 (5.52%) SaaS
7 15 (4.87%) OCI
8 14 (4.55%) Dynamics 365
9 13 (4.22%) GitHub
9 13 (4.22%) Power Platform
10 12 (3.90%) Entra ID
11 11 (3.57%) GCP
12 10 (3.25%) Amazon S3
13 9 (2.92%) Amazon EC2
13 9 (2.92%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (2.92%) Google Workspace
13 9 (2.92%) Power Automate
14 8 (2.60%) AWS Lambda
14 8 (2.60%) OneDrive
15 7 (2.27%) Google Drive
Communications & Networking
1 15 (4.87%) Firewall
2 8 (2.60%) BIG-IP
2 8 (2.60%) Ethernet VPN
2 8 (2.60%) VXLAN
2 8 (2.60%) WAN
2 8 (2.60%) Wi-Fi
3 7 (2.27%) BGP
3 7 (2.27%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
3 7 (2.27%) OSPF
3 7 (2.27%) SD-WAN
4 6 (1.95%) WLAN
5 5 (1.62%) DNS
6 3 (0.97%) DKIM
6 3 (0.97%) DMARC
7 2 (0.65%) LAN
7 2 (0.65%) VPN
8 1 (0.32%) IPv6
8 1 (0.32%) Kerberos
8 1 (0.32%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.32%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (5.52%) MongoDB
2 8 (2.60%) Relational Database
3 6 (1.95%) DocumentDB
3 6 (1.95%) Metadata
3 6 (1.95%) Oracle Database
4 5 (1.62%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (1.62%) RDBMS
5 4 (1.30%) SQL Server
6 3 (0.97%) MySQL
6 3 (0.97%) NoSQL
6 3 (0.97%) Oracle Exadata
6 3 (0.97%) Power BI
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 Reports
7 2 (0.65%) Tableau
8 1 (0.32%) WebFOCUS
Development Applications
1 31 (10.06%) GitLab
2 18 (5.84%) JIRA
3 10 (3.25%) Selenium
4 9 (2.92%) Cucumber
4 9 (2.92%) Mockito
5 8 (2.60%) Git
5 8 (2.60%) Jenkins
6 5 (1.62%) Cypress.io
6 5 (1.62%) JUnit
6 5 (1.62%) REST Assured
7 4 (1.30%) Mocha
7 4 (1.30%) Postman
8 3 (0.97%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.65%) CircleCI
9 2 (0.65%) Gatling
9 2 (0.65%) JDeveloper
9 2 (0.65%) JMeter
9 2 (0.65%) WebDriver
10 1 (0.32%) Serenity BDD
10 1 (0.32%) TestNG
General
1 60 (19.48%) Social Skills
2 35 (11.36%) Military
3 30 (9.74%) Finance
4 23 (7.47%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (5.84%) Local Government
6 10 (3.25%) Legal
7 6 (1.95%) Banking
7 6 (1.95%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.30%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (0.97%) Marketing
11 2 (0.65%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.65%) Digital Economy
11 2 (0.65%) General Ledger
12 1 (0.32%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 70 (22.73%) Developer
2 56 (18.18%) Lead
3 42 (13.64%) Senior
4 32 (10.39%) Architect
5 29 (9.42%) Java Developer
6 19 (6.17%) Analyst
7 18 (5.84%) Lead Developer
8 16 (5.19%) Senior Developer
9 15 (4.87%) Administrator
9 15 (4.87%) Software Developer
10 14 (4.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 14 (4.55%) Tester
11 13 (4.22%) Business Analyst
12 12 (3.90%) Designer
12 12 (3.90%) Senior Java Developer
13 11 (3.57%) Consultant
13 11 (3.57%) Technical Architect
14 10 (3.25%) Security Architect
14 10 (3.25%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 10 (3.25%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (8.12%) Node.js
1 25 (8.12%) Spring
2 23 (7.47%) Spring Boot
3 16 (5.19%) Kafka
4 14 (4.55%) REST
5 9 (2.92%) OAuth
5 9 (2.92%) React
6 8 (2.60%) ActiveMQ
6 8 (2.60%) JAX-RS
7 7 (2.27%) RESTful
8 6 (1.95%) Playwright
9 5 (1.62%) AngularJS
9 5 (1.62%) Jest
9 5 (1.62%) OpenID
10 4 (1.30%) Nunjucks
10 4 (1.30%) Oracle Fusion
11 3 (0.97%) ARM Templates
11 3 (0.97%) GraphQL
11 3 (0.97%) Vue
11 3 (0.97%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 24 (7.79%) Cloud Native
2 14 (4.55%) Product Ownership
3 12 (3.90%) Legacy Systems
4 11 (3.57%) Data Centre
5 10 (3.25%) Onboarding
6 8 (2.60%) Management Information System
7 7 (2.27%) NHS
8 6 (1.95%) Hybrid Cloud
8 6 (1.95%) Operational Technology
8 6 (1.95%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
10 4 (1.30%) Replication
11 3 (0.97%) Distributed Systems
11 3 (0.97%) Freedom of Information
11 3 (0.97%) Housing Association
11 3 (0.97%) Taxonomies
12 2 (0.65%) CSOC
12 2 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
12 2 (0.65%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 24 (7.79%) Linux
2 15 (4.87%) Unix
3 10 (3.25%) Windows
4 7 (2.27%) Mac OS X
5 5 (1.62%) AIX
5 5 (1.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.97%) Solaris
6 3 (0.97%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.65%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.32%) Android
8 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.32%) CentOS
8 1 (0.32%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 92 (29.87%) Agile
2 61 (19.81%) CI/CD
3 55 (17.86%) DevOps
4 45 (14.61%) Continuous Improvement
5 44 (14.29%) Microservices
6 40 (12.99%) Test Automation
7 32 (10.39%) Migration
7 32 (10.39%) Stakeholder Management
8 30 (9.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 25 (8.12%) Infrastructure as Code
9 25 (8.12%) Mentoring
9 25 (8.12%) Problem-Solving
9 25 (8.12%) Technical Leadership
10 23 (7.47%) Digital Transformation Programme
10 23 (7.47%) Roadmaps
11 22 (7.14%) TDD
11 22 (7.14%) User Experience
12 20 (6.49%) Containerisation
13 19 (6.17%) Cybersecurity
14 17 (5.52%) AI
Programming Languages
1 58 (18.83%) Java
2 27 (8.77%) JavaScript
3 25 (8.12%) Python
4 19 (6.17%) SQL
5 15 (4.87%) TypeScript
6 9 (2.92%) PowerShell
7 2 (0.65%) C#
7 2 (0.65%) COBOL
7 2 (0.65%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.32%) Bash
8 1 (0.32%) Bicep
8 1 (0.32%) Go
8 1 (0.32%) Kotlin
8 1 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (0.32%) PHP
8 1 (0.32%) Scala
8 1 (0.32%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.32%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 133 (43.18%) Security Cleared
2 86 (27.92%) SC Cleared
3 17 (5.52%) BPSS Clearance
4 16 (5.19%) Degree
5 7 (2.27%) Microsoft Certification
6 4 (1.30%) Azure Certification
7 3 (0.97%) Master's Degree
7 3 (0.97%) PMI Certification
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%) PMP
9 1 (0.32%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (9.42%) Accessibility
2 12 (3.90%) QA
3 11 (3.57%) WCAG
4 10 (3.25%) Data Quality
5 9 (2.92%) PMO
6 6 (1.95%) GDPR
6 6 (1.95%) NIST
7 4 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.65%) GRC
8 2 (0.65%) NCSC
8 2 (0.65%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.65%) SLA
9 1 (0.32%) Basel III
9 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.32%) Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment)
System Software
1 30 (9.74%) Docker
2 21 (6.82%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.30%) Oracle RAC
4 2 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.32%) BitLocker
5 1 (0.32%) GPFS
5 1 (0.32%) NFS
5 1 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (0.32%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 39 (12.66%) Terraform
2 28 (9.09%) Kubernetes
3 15 (4.87%) Ansible
4 6 (1.95%) Grafana
5 4 (1.30%) Data Guard
6 3 (0.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 3 (0.97%) Oracle RMAN
6 3 (0.97%) Prometheus
6 3 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (0.65%) SCCM
8 1 (0.32%) Argo
8 1 (0.32%) CASB
8 1 (0.32%) Cisco CUCM
8 1 (0.32%) Norton AntiVirus
8 1 (0.32%) Oracle ZFS
8 1 (0.32%) Packer
8 1 (0.32%) vRealize
8 1 (0.32%) VxRail
Vendors
1 50 (16.23%) Microsoft
2 15 (4.87%) Oracle
3 10 (3.25%) Google
3 10 (3.25%) ServiceNow
4 9 (2.92%) Palo Alto
5 8 (2.60%) Aruba
5 8 (2.60%) F5
6 7 (2.27%) Arista
7 6 (1.95%) SAP
8 4 (1.30%) IBM
8 4 (1.30%) PeopleSoft
9 3 (0.97%) Virgin Media
9 3 (0.97%) VMware
10 2 (0.65%) Automation Anywhere
10 2 (0.65%) BeyondTrust
10 2 (0.65%) Cisco
10 2 (0.65%) OpenAI
10 2 (0.65%) Salesforce
10 2 (0.65%) Tanium
10 2 (0.65%) Thycotic