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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 13 11
Rank change year-on-year -13 -2 -2
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 273 237 245
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 6.75% 10.67% 10.12%
As % of the General category 13.21% 17.17% 17.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 160 174 128
10th Percentile £363 £215 £327
25th Percentile £424 £393 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £570 £450 £490
Median % change year-on-year +26.67% -8.21% -6.62%
75th Percentile £659 £550 £591
90th Percentile £751 £642 £684
England median daily rate £525 £500 £515
% change year-on-year +5.00% -2.91% -6.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 8 10
10th Percentile £13.25 £16.11 £15.95
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £16.70
Median hourly rate £25.49 £20.07 £18.62
Median % change year-on-year +27.01% +7.77% -1.99%
75th Percentile £72.66 £32.95 £29.88
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.25 £36.40
England median hourly rate £20.62 £22.02 £23.80
% change year-on-year -6.36% -7.48% +11.66%

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 2,067 1,380 1,403
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 51.14% 62.13% 57.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,150 902 768
10th Percentile £261 £257 £271
25th Percentile £400 £375 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £479
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -6.05% -4.20%
75th Percentile £600 £550 £575
90th Percentile £691 £678 £664
England median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 279 112 88
10th Percentile £14.06 £12.84 £16.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £15.50 £18.89
Median hourly rate £35.50 £25.94 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.87% -25.89% +55.35%
75th Percentile £64.09 £47.84 £46.18
90th Percentile £80.00 £65.23 £63.25
England median hourly rate £28.40 £25.08 £35.00
% change year-on-year +13.24% -28.36% +16.67%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 -13 186 £563 +28.57% 57
Cheshire -3 26 £510 +17.24% 2
Merseyside -10 23 £525 +2.94% 6
Lancashire -12 22 £575 +26.37% 19
Cumbria -30 10 £376 -30.37%
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 (5.13%) SharePoint
2 9 (3.30%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (1.83%) Confluence
3 5 (1.83%) SAS
4 4 (1.47%) SharePoint 2013
5 3 (1.10%) Apache
5 3 (1.10%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (1.10%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.73%) Oracle Workflow
6 2 (0.73%) WordPress
7 1 (0.37%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.37%) nginx
7 1 (0.37%) Skype for Business
7 1 (0.37%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.37%) AutoCAD
1 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (0.37%) Navisworks
1 1 (0.37%) ProjectWise
1 1 (0.37%) Revit
1 1 (0.37%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 3 (1.10%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.73%) Oracle Cash Management
2 2 (0.73%) Oracle Payables
2 2 (0.73%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 1 (0.37%) Integrated Workplace Management System
3 1 (0.37%) Primavera
3 1 (0.37%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 61 (22.34%) AWS
2 45 (16.48%) Azure
3 24 (8.79%) Microsoft 365
4 20 (7.33%) SaaS
5 13 (4.76%) OCI
6 11 (4.03%) Google Workspace
7 10 (3.66%) Power Platform
8 9 (3.30%) GCP
8 9 (3.30%) GitHub
9 8 (2.93%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (2.93%) Serverless
10 7 (2.56%) Google Drive
11 6 (2.20%) Amazon S3
11 6 (2.20%) AWS KMS
11 6 (2.20%) Microsoft Copilot
12 5 (1.83%) Amazon EC2
12 5 (1.83%) Amazon ECS
12 5 (1.83%) GitHub Actions
13 4 (1.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 4 (1.47%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 12 (4.40%) Firewall
2 11 (4.03%) Wi-Fi
3 9 (3.30%) BGP
3 9 (3.30%) OSPF
3 9 (3.30%) SD-WAN
3 9 (3.30%) WAN
4 7 (2.56%) BIG-IP
4 7 (2.56%) Ethernet VPN
4 7 (2.56%) VXLAN
5 6 (2.20%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 6 (2.20%) WLAN
6 4 (1.47%) DNS
7 3 (1.10%) Cisco ASA
7 3 (1.10%) Cisco Firepower
7 3 (1.10%) DKIM
7 3 (1.10%) DMARC
7 3 (1.10%) EIGRP
7 3 (1.10%) HSRP
7 3 (1.10%) IPsec
7 3 (1.10%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (3.30%) Relational Database
2 8 (2.93%) MongoDB
3 7 (2.56%) Oracle Database
3 7 (2.56%) Power BI
4 6 (2.20%) RDBMS
5 4 (1.47%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (1.47%) Metadata
5 4 (1.47%) Oracle Exadata
5 4 (1.47%) PowerCenter
6 2 (0.73%) Amazon QuickSight
6 2 (0.73%) DocumentDB
6 2 (0.73%) EDMS
6 2 (0.73%) Oracle BI Publisher
6 2 (0.73%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.37%) Amazon Athena
7 1 (0.37%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.37%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.37%) Redis
7 1 (0.37%) SAS Enterprise Guide
7 1 (0.37%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 19 (6.96%) GitLab
2 13 (4.76%) Cucumber
3 12 (4.40%) Selenium
4 11 (4.03%) JIRA
5 9 (3.30%) Jenkins
6 7 (2.56%) Git
6 7 (2.56%) REST Assured
7 5 (1.83%) JUnit
8 3 (1.10%) Cypress.io
8 3 (1.10%) Gatling
8 3 (1.10%) Maven
8 3 (1.10%) Mockito
8 3 (1.10%) TestNG
9 2 (0.73%) JDeveloper
9 2 (0.73%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.73%) WebDriver
10 1 (0.37%) MSI
10 1 (0.37%) Postman
10 1 (0.37%) Serenity BDD
10 1 (0.37%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 71 (26.01%) Social Skills
2 45 (16.48%) Military
3 23 (8.42%) Finance
4 17 (6.23%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (4.40%) Local Government
6 9 (3.30%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (2.20%) Legal
7 6 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (1.83%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (1.83%) Police
9 3 (1.10%) Marketing
10 2 (0.73%) Documentation Skills
10 2 (0.73%) General Ledger
11 1 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.37%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 44 (16.12%) Lead
2 42 (15.38%) Senior
3 38 (13.92%) Architect
4 33 (12.09%) Developer
5 16 (5.86%) Analyst
6 15 (5.49%) Consultant
6 15 (5.49%) Security Architect
6 15 (5.49%) Solutions Architect
7 14 (5.13%) Administrator
7 14 (5.13%) Test Engineer
8 12 (4.40%) Java Developer
9 11 (4.03%) Designer
9 11 (4.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 10 (3.66%) Business Analyst
11 8 (2.93%) Content Designer
11 8 (2.93%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 7 (2.56%) Product Manager
12 7 (2.56%) Software Engineer
12 7 (2.56%) Technical Architect
13 6 (2.20%) Lead Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (9.89%) Terraform
2 16 (5.86%) Node.js
3 13 (4.76%) REST
4 10 (3.66%) Spring Boot
5 9 (3.30%) Kafka
6 8 (2.93%) Spring
7 7 (2.56%) OAuth
8 6 (2.20%) RESTful
9 5 (1.83%) Playwright
10 4 (1.47%) AWS CDK
10 4 (1.47%) Django
10 4 (1.47%) Oracle Fusion
10 4 (1.47%) Oracle GoldenGate
11 3 (1.10%) ADO
11 3 (1.10%) Middleware
11 3 (1.10%) PySpark
12 2 (0.73%) GraphQL
12 2 (0.73%) Jest
12 2 (0.73%) OAuth2
12 2 (0.73%) React
Miscellaneous
1 19 (6.96%) Cloud Native
2 11 (4.03%) Management Information System
3 10 (3.66%) Product Ownership
4 9 (3.30%) Legacy Systems
5 8 (2.93%) Data Centre
6 7 (2.56%) Hybrid Cloud
6 7 (2.56%) NHS
7 6 (2.20%) Onboarding
8 5 (1.83%) Public Cloud
8 5 (1.83%) Self-Motivation
8 5 (1.83%) Taxonomies
9 3 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.10%) Freedom of Information
9 3 (1.10%) Replication
10 2 (0.73%) CSOC
10 2 (0.73%) Cyber Threat
10 2 (0.73%) Driving Licence
10 2 (0.73%) Educational Technology
10 2 (0.73%) Greenfield Project
10 2 (0.73%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 14 (5.13%) Linux
2 7 (2.56%) Unix
3 5 (1.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (1.83%) Windows
4 4 (1.47%) AIX
5 2 (0.73%) CentOS
6 1 (0.37%) Android
6 1 (0.37%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.37%) macOS
6 1 (0.37%) Solaris
6 1 (0.37%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.37%) Windows 7
6 1 (0.37%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (23.08%) Agile
2 59 (21.61%) Stakeholder Management
3 43 (15.75%) CI/CD
4 42 (15.38%) Continuous Improvement
5 39 (14.29%) DevOps
6 32 (11.72%) Migration
7 30 (10.99%) Test Automation
8 28 (10.26%) Microservices
8 28 (10.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 24 (8.79%) Cybersecurity
9 24 (8.79%) Risk Management
10 23 (8.42%) Infrastructure as Code
10 23 (8.42%) Mentoring
11 22 (8.06%) Digital Transformation Programme
12 21 (7.69%) Roadmaps
12 21 (7.69%) User Experience
13 19 (6.96%) Architectural Patterns
13 19 (6.96%) Decision-Making
13 19 (6.96%) Service Delivery
13 19 (6.96%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 29 (10.62%) Java
2 23 (8.42%) Python
3 19 (6.96%) SQL
4 18 (6.59%) JavaScript
5 9 (3.30%) TypeScript
6 5 (1.83%) PowerShell
7 4 (1.47%) Bash
7 4 (1.47%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.73%) PHP
8 2 (0.73%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.37%) Bicep
9 1 (0.37%) C#
9 1 (0.37%) Go
9 1 (0.37%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 134 (49.08%) Security Cleared
2 106 (38.83%) SC Cleared
3 18 (6.59%) BPSS Clearance
4 6 (2.20%) AWS Certification
5 3 (1.10%) Degree
6 2 (0.73%) Azure Certification
6 2 (0.73%) CISM
6 2 (0.73%) CISSP
6 2 (0.73%) DBS Check
6 2 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
7 1 (0.37%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
7 1 (0.37%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.37%) Oracle Certification
7 1 (0.37%) PMI Certification
7 1 (0.37%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (13.19%) Accessibility
2 18 (6.59%) QA
3 10 (3.66%) WCAG
4 9 (3.30%) Data Quality
4 9 (3.30%) PMO
5 7 (2.56%) NCSC
6 4 (1.47%) GDPR
7 3 (1.10%) NIST
8 2 (0.73%) Actionable Recommendations
8 2 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.37%) ISO 19650
9 1 (0.37%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.37%) SLA
9 1 (0.37%) Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment)
System Software
1 17 (6.23%) Docker
2 10 (3.66%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.83%) Oracle RAC
4 1 (0.37%) BitLocker
4 1 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 13 (4.76%) Ansible
2 12 (4.40%) Kubernetes
3 5 (1.83%) Data Guard
4 4 (1.47%) Oracle RMAN
5 3 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.73%) Grafana
6 2 (0.73%) Packer
6 2 (0.73%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.73%) SCCM
7 1 (0.37%) CASB
7 1 (0.37%) Cisco CUCM
7 1 (0.37%) Consul
7 1 (0.37%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.37%) Istio
7 1 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.37%) linkerd
7 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.37%) Oracle ZFS
7 1 (0.37%) Rancher
7 1 (0.37%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 29 (10.62%) Microsoft
2 18 (6.59%) Oracle
3 12 (4.40%) Google
4 10 (3.66%) Palo Alto
5 8 (2.93%) Aruba
6 7 (2.56%) F5
7 6 (2.20%) Arista
7 6 (2.20%) Cisco
7 6 (2.20%) Informatica
7 6 (2.20%) ServiceNow
8 3 (1.10%) CheckPoint
9 2 (0.73%) Databricks
9 2 (0.73%) Fortinet
9 2 (0.73%) Juniper
9 2 (0.73%) Meraki
9 2 (0.73%) Salesforce
9 2 (0.73%) Splunk
9 2 (0.73%) Trend Micro
10 1 (0.37%) Ivanti
10 1 (0.37%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud