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 10 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 9 10 10
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -4
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 296 239 346
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 12.07% 10.64% 12.87%
As % of the General category 19.62% 18.30% 23.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 223 122 249
10th Percentile £300 £330 £315
25th Percentile £394 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -9.09% +10.00%
75th Percentile £538 £613 £670
90th Percentile £635 £699 £721
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 12 11
10th Percentile £16.43 £15.53 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.38 £15.98 £15.45
Median hourly rate £41.86 £16.65 £16.85
Median % change year-on-year +151.34% -1.17% -15.24%
75th Percentile £44.94 £20.97 £20.63
90th Percentile £67.25 £29.95 £21.50
England median hourly rate £21.40 £22.50 £25.38
% change year-on-year -4.89% -11.35% +27.70%

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 common skills in the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 1,509 1,306 1,492
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 61.54% 58.12% 55.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 984 699 974
10th Percentile £213 £258 £256
25th Percentile £358 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £478 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.86% -4.40% +3.15%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £670 £700
England median daily rate £500 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -6.98% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 103 108
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.00 £15.74
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.08 £17.07
Median hourly rate £29.60 £27.50 £22.81
Median % change year-on-year +7.64% +20.59% +13.66%
75th Percentile £45.46 £44.75 £45.88
90th Percentile £67.84 £65.00 £57.20
England median hourly rate £23.58 £30.45 £32.50
% change year-on-year -22.58% -6.31% +26.41%

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 10 December 2025.

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 10 December 2025.

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 10 December 2025. 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 +1 191 £425 -15.00% 108
Cheshire -6 38 £410 -21.90% 35
Merseyside +1 27 £510 +10.27% 24
Cumbria +6 20 £531 +6.20% 1
Lancashire -16 9 £475 +46.15% 48
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 4 (1.35%) Confluence
1 4 (1.35%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.01%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.68%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 2 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.68%) CMS
3 2 (0.68%) OpenStack
3 2 (0.68%) Skype for Business
4 1 (0.34%) nginx
4 1 (0.34%) SAS
Applications
1 23 (7.77%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.34%) SPSS
3 1 (0.34%) Stata
3 1 (0.34%) Trello
Business Applications
1 15 (5.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.69%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (1.01%) iTrent
4 1 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
4 1 (0.34%) SAP EHS
4 1 (0.34%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.34%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.34%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.34%) SAP PSCD
4 1 (0.34%) SAP QM
4 1 (0.34%) SAP VC
4 1 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 71 (23.99%) Azure
2 60 (20.27%) AWS
3 26 (8.78%) Power Platform
4 20 (6.76%) GCP
5 18 (6.08%) Microsoft 365
5 18 (6.08%) Serverless
6 17 (5.74%) Azure DevOps
7 13 (4.39%) AWS Lambda
7 13 (4.39%) SaaS
8 12 (4.05%) Amazon SQS
9 11 (3.72%) PowerApps
10 10 (3.38%) Google Tag Manager
11 9 (3.04%) GitHub
11 9 (3.04%) Google Analytics
11 9 (3.04%) Power Automate
12 8 (2.70%) Entra ID
12 8 (2.70%) Google Workspace
13 7 (2.36%) Dynamics 365
13 7 (2.36%) SuccessFactors
14 6 (2.03%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 18 (6.08%) Firewall
2 10 (3.38%) DNS
3 9 (3.04%) WAN
4 7 (2.36%) Wi-Fi
5 6 (2.03%) DHCP
5 6 (2.03%) LAN
5 6 (2.03%) Wireless
6 5 (1.69%) TCP/IP
6 5 (1.69%) VPN
7 4 (1.35%) Cisco ISE
7 4 (1.35%) DMZ
7 4 (1.35%) NetScaler
7 4 (1.35%) VLAN
8 3 (1.01%) BGP
8 3 (1.01%) MPLS
8 3 (1.01%) SAN
9 2 (0.68%) Cisco Nexus
9 2 (0.68%) Internet
9 2 (0.68%) Network Security
9 2 (0.68%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (5.74%) Power BI
2 14 (4.73%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (4.39%) MongoDB
4 11 (3.72%) Redis
5 10 (3.38%) BigQuery
5 10 (3.38%) Looker
5 10 (3.38%) MySQL
6 8 (2.70%) Relational Database
7 6 (2.03%) Data Warehouse
8 5 (1.69%) DocumentDB
8 5 (1.69%) DynamoDB
8 5 (1.69%) Metadata
8 5 (1.69%) NoSQL
9 4 (1.35%) RDBMS
9 4 (1.35%) SQL Server
10 3 (1.01%) Apache Cassandra
10 3 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
10 3 (1.01%) Big Data
11 2 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.68%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 19 (6.42%) GitLab
2 17 (5.74%) Git
3 10 (3.38%) JIRA
4 9 (3.04%) Postman
5 8 (2.70%) Jenkins
5 8 (2.70%) SonarQube
6 5 (1.69%) Cucumber
6 5 (1.69%) JUnit
6 5 (1.69%) Selenium
7 4 (1.35%) Mockito
8 3 (1.01%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.68%) Gradle
9 2 (0.68%) Jasmine
9 2 (0.68%) Maven
9 2 (0.68%) MSI
9 2 (0.68%) SonarLint
10 1 (0.34%) Browser DevTools
10 1 (0.34%) Gatling
10 1 (0.34%) MLflow
10 1 (0.34%) REST Assured
General
1 61 (20.61%) Social Skills
2 36 (12.16%) Finance
3 23 (7.77%) Military
4 15 (5.07%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (4.73%) Local Government
6 13 (4.39%) Telecoms
7 12 (4.05%) Manufacturing
8 11 (3.72%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (3.72%) Marketing
9 10 (3.38%) Electronics
10 9 (3.04%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (1.35%) Legal
13 3 (1.01%) Banking
13 3 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
14 2 (0.68%) Law
14 2 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
15 1 (0.34%) Digital Health
15 1 (0.34%) Digital Healthcare
Job Titles
1 54 (18.24%) Developer
2 47 (15.88%) Analyst
3 31 (10.47%) Architect
4 29 (9.80%) Senior
5 22 (7.43%) Java Developer
6 21 (7.09%) Lead
7 17 (5.74%) Consultant
8 14 (4.73%) Business Analyst
9 13 (4.39%) AWS Engineer
10 12 (4.05%) DevOps Engineer
10 12 (4.05%) Technical Architect
11 11 (3.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 9 (3.04%) Full-Stack Developer
12 9 (3.04%) Senior Developer
13 8 (2.70%) Data Architect
13 8 (2.70%) Network Engineer
13 8 (2.70%) Senior Java Developer
13 8 (2.70%) Software Engineer
13 8 (2.70%) Test Engineer
14 7 (2.36%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (9.12%) Spring Boot
2 23 (7.77%) Spring
3 17 (5.74%) Node.js
4 16 (5.41%) RESTful
5 15 (5.07%) JSON
6 12 (4.05%) Kafka
7 11 (3.72%) React
8 10 (3.38%) HTML
9 9 (3.04%) AngularJS
10 6 (2.03%) HTML5 Canvas
10 6 (2.03%) Playwright
10 6 (2.03%) Spring MVC
10 6 (2.03%) Spring Security
11 5 (1.69%) Hibernate
11 5 (1.69%) JAX-RS
11 5 (1.69%) REST
12 4 (1.35%) ActiveMQ
12 4 (1.35%) jQuery
12 4 (1.35%) POJO
12 4 (1.35%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 24 (8.11%) Onboarding
2 16 (5.41%) Data Centre
3 9 (3.04%) Cloud Native
3 9 (3.04%) Product Ownership
4 8 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
5 7 (2.36%) NHS
5 7 (2.36%) Public Cloud
6 6 (2.03%) Distributed Systems
7 5 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (1.69%) Low-Code
8 4 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
8 4 (1.35%) Data Structures
9 3 (1.01%) N-Tier
9 3 (1.01%) Operational Technology
10 2 (0.68%) Driving Licence
10 2 (0.68%) Fibre Optics
10 2 (0.68%) Mobile App
10 2 (0.68%) Taxonomies
11 1 (0.34%) Digital Signage
11 1 (0.34%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 18 (6.08%) Windows
2 13 (4.39%) Linux
3 9 (3.04%) Mac OS
4 8 (2.70%) Android
5 7 (2.36%) Windows 10
6 6 (2.03%) Apple iOS
7 4 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.68%) Unix
8 2 (0.68%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.34%) Mac OS X
9 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (17.91%) Agile
2 43 (14.53%) DevOps
3 40 (13.51%) CI/CD
4 35 (11.82%) Microservices
5 33 (11.15%) Problem-Solving
6 26 (8.78%) Continuous Improvement
6 26 (8.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 26 (8.78%) Stakeholder Management
7 25 (8.45%) Business Intelligence
7 25 (8.45%) User Experience
8 23 (7.77%) Containerisation
9 22 (7.43%) Test Automation
10 20 (6.76%) Analytics
11 19 (6.42%) Change Management
12 17 (5.74%) Infrastructure as Code
12 17 (5.74%) Mentoring
12 17 (5.74%) Validation
13 16 (5.41%) Full-Stack Development
13 16 (5.41%) Migration
14 15 (5.07%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 51 (17.23%) Java
2 29 (9.80%) Python
3 17 (5.74%) SQL
4 12 (4.05%) JavaScript
5 10 (3.38%) PowerShell
6 8 (2.70%) TypeScript
7 7 (2.36%) Bash
8 5 (1.69%) C#
8 5 (1.69%) Perl
9 4 (1.35%) Go
10 3 (1.01%) ABAP
10 3 (1.01%) C++
10 3 (1.01%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (1.01%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.68%) C
11 2 (0.68%) Ruby
11 2 (0.68%) VB
11 2 (0.68%) VBScript
12 1 (0.34%) Bicep
12 1 (0.34%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 161 (54.39%) Security Cleared
2 101 (34.12%) SC Cleared
3 19 (6.42%) BPSS Clearance
4 11 (3.72%) Degree
5 6 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (2.03%) ISTQB
6 4 (1.35%) Azure Certification
6 4 (1.35%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.35%) Microsoft Certification
7 2 (0.68%) AWS Certification
7 2 (0.68%) CCNP
7 2 (0.68%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (0.34%) APMG
8 1 (0.34%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 1 (0.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.34%) CCDP
8 1 (0.34%) CCIE
8 1 (0.34%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
8 1 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
8 1 (0.34%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (8.45%) Accessibility
2 14 (4.73%) Data Quality
3 12 (4.05%) QA
4 7 (2.36%) NIST
5 4 (1.35%) WCAG
6 3 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (1.01%) PMO
7 2 (0.68%) IEC 61508
7 2 (0.68%) ISO 26262
7 2 (0.68%) SLA
8 1 (0.34%) COBIT
8 1 (0.34%) CRD IV
8 1 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.34%) FINREP
8 1 (0.34%) GDPR
8 1 (0.34%) IEC 62304
8 1 (0.34%) IFRS
8 1 (0.34%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.34%) PSD2
8 1 (0.34%) SEPA
System Software
1 33 (11.15%) Docker
2 8 (2.70%) Active Directory
2 8 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (1.35%) UAG
4 3 (1.01%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.68%) BitLocker
5 2 (0.68%) ISA Server
6 1 (0.34%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 29 (9.80%) Kubernetes
2 28 (9.46%) Terraform
3 8 (2.70%) Microsoft Intune
4 7 (2.36%) SCCM
5 4 (1.35%) Ansible
6 3 (1.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 3 (1.01%) Packer
7 2 (0.68%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.68%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
8 1 (0.34%) AirWatch
8 1 (0.34%) Cisco CUCM
8 1 (0.34%) Grafana
8 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Clustering
8 1 (0.34%) Nessus
8 1 (0.34%) SELinux
8 1 (0.34%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 45 (15.20%) Microsoft
2 31 (10.47%) SAP
3 19 (6.42%) Google
4 17 (5.74%) Oracle
5 15 (5.07%) Cisco
6 13 (4.39%) Virgin Media
7 9 (3.04%) Palo Alto
7 9 (3.04%) ServiceNow
7 9 (3.04%) VMware
8 8 (2.70%) Apple
9 7 (2.36%) Dell
9 7 (2.36%) Meraki
10 5 (1.69%) Adobe
10 5 (1.69%) HP
10 5 (1.69%) Splunk
11 4 (1.35%) Red Hat
12 3 (1.01%) Dynatrace
12 3 (1.01%) F5
12 3 (1.01%) LogRhythm
12 3 (1.01%) Pega