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 16 September 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 14 10 9
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 229 246 360
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 10.64% 10.41% 12.70%
As % of the General category 17.23% 18.66% 23.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 160 137 248
10th Percentile £215 £350 £270
25th Percentile £383 £413 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -6.98% +5.39%
75th Percentile £550 £630 £625
90th Percentile £644 £688 £720
England median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 11 17
10th Percentile £16.11 £16.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.30 £17.14 £16.19
Median hourly rate £20.07 £19.18 £16.85
Median % change year-on-year +4.64% +13.83% -32.60%
75th Percentile £32.95 £29.75 £20.00
90th Percentile £67.25 £36.00 £27.98
England median hourly rate £22.00 £24.09 £20.78
% change year-on-year -8.68% +15.93% +3.90%

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 1,329 1,318 1,527
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 61.73% 55.75% 53.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 850 752 1,000
10th Percentile £272 £276 £255
25th Percentile £380 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.71% -1.40% +2.56%
75th Percentile £558 £585 £594
90th Percentile £675 £682 £680
England median daily rate £500 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -6.98% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 78 105
10th Percentile £12.82 £15.98 £15.72
25th Percentile £14.50 £18.00 £16.70
Median hourly rate £22.63 £35.00 £22.53
Median % change year-on-year -35.34% +55.35% +5.70%
75th Percentile £50.00 £45.89 £38.75
90th Percentile £70.03 £55.05 £62.59
England median hourly rate £25.15 £38.68 £27.50
% change year-on-year -34.97% +40.64% +10.93%

Public Sector
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings citing Public Sector as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for Public Sector 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 16 September 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 16 September 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 16 September 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 0 143 £450 -10.00% 100
Cheshire -16 27 £350 -27.84% 17
Cumbria 0 19 £540 +8.00%
Merseyside -1 19 £510 +13.33% 15
Lancashire -9 9 £455 -13.33% 55
Public Sector
England

Public Sector
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 5 (2.18%) Confluence
2 2 (0.87%) IIS
2 2 (0.87%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.44%) Documentum
3 1 (0.44%) FileNet
3 1 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.44%) nginx
3 1 (0.44%) OpenStack
Applications
1 9 (3.93%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (2.62%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (1.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.44%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.44%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.44%) SPSS
4 1 (0.44%) Stata
Business Applications
1 9 (3.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.44%) SAP ERP
2 1 (0.44%) SAP HR
2 1 (0.44%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 41 (17.90%) Azure
2 35 (15.28%) AWS
3 15 (6.55%) SaaS
4 13 (5.68%) Microsoft 365
4 13 (5.68%) Power Platform
5 12 (5.24%) Google Workspace
6 11 (4.80%) GCP
7 10 (4.37%) Azure DevOps
8 9 (3.93%) SuccessFactors
9 8 (3.49%) Serverless
10 7 (3.06%) Amazon SQS
10 7 (3.06%) Entra ID
11 6 (2.62%) AWS Lambda
12 4 (1.75%) Amazon EC2
12 4 (1.75%) Amazon EMR
12 4 (1.75%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (1.75%) Azure AKS
12 4 (1.75%) GitHub
12 4 (1.75%) Google Analytics
12 4 (1.75%) Google Tag Manager
Communications & Networking
1 14 (6.11%) Firewall
2 9 (3.93%) DNS
3 6 (2.62%) DHCP
4 5 (2.18%) BGP
4 5 (2.18%) WAN
4 5 (2.18%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (1.75%) DMZ
5 4 (1.75%) IPsec
5 4 (1.75%) OSPF
5 4 (1.75%) TCP/IP
6 3 (1.31%) Cisco ASA
6 3 (1.31%) Cisco Firepower
6 3 (1.31%) Cisco ISE
6 3 (1.31%) EIGRP
6 3 (1.31%) HSRP
6 3 (1.31%) NetScaler
6 3 (1.31%) SAN
7 2 (0.87%) MPLS
7 2 (0.87%) VLAN
7 2 (0.87%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (7.86%) PostgreSQL
2 12 (5.24%) Relational Database
3 11 (4.80%) MongoDB
4 8 (3.49%) MySQL
4 8 (3.49%) Power BI
5 6 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
6 5 (2.18%) BigQuery
6 5 (2.18%) NoSQL
7 4 (1.75%) Looker
7 4 (1.75%) Siebel EIM
8 3 (1.31%) Apache Cassandra
8 3 (1.31%) Azure SQL Database
8 3 (1.31%) DynamoDB
8 3 (1.31%) Metadata
8 3 (1.31%) Redis
8 3 (1.31%) SQL Server
9 2 (0.87%) Amazon Athena
9 2 (0.87%) Amazon Aurora
9 2 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.87%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 15 (6.55%) Jenkins
2 14 (6.11%) GitLab
3 13 (5.68%) JUnit
4 12 (5.24%) Mockito
5 11 (4.80%) Gradle
6 10 (4.37%) Git
7 9 (3.93%) Liquibase
8 8 (3.49%) JIRA
9 5 (2.18%) Postman
10 4 (1.75%) SonarQube
11 3 (1.31%) Maven
11 3 (1.31%) Selenium
12 2 (0.87%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.87%) Cucumber
12 2 (0.87%) SonarLint
13 1 (0.44%) Gatling
13 1 (0.44%) gulp
13 1 (0.44%) REST Assured
13 1 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
13 1 (0.44%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 52 (22.71%) Social Skills
2 36 (15.72%) Finance
3 26 (11.35%) Military
4 15 (6.55%) Manufacturing
4 15 (6.55%) Telecoms
5 13 (5.68%) Electronics
5 13 (5.68%) Marketing
6 9 (3.93%) Local Government
7 8 (3.49%) Analytical Skills
7 8 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (2.62%) Banking
9 4 (1.75%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.75%) Legal
10 3 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.87%) Law
11 2 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.44%) Digital Healthcare
12 1 (0.44%) General Ledger
12 1 (0.44%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.44%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 43 (18.78%) Analyst
2 33 (14.41%) Developer
3 23 (10.04%) Senior
4 22 (9.61%) Architect
5 16 (6.99%) Business Analyst
6 14 (6.11%) Lead
7 13 (5.68%) Java Developer
7 13 (5.68%) Software Engineer
8 12 (5.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 11 (4.80%) Consultant
10 10 (4.37%) AWS Engineer
11 9 (3.93%) Network Engineer
12 7 (3.06%) Payroll Manager
12 7 (3.06%) Senior Developer
12 7 (3.06%) Senior Java Developer
12 7 (3.06%) Systems Analyst
12 7 (3.06%) Systems Manager
12 7 (3.06%) Technical Architect
13 6 (2.62%) DevOps Engineer
13 6 (2.62%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (9.17%) Spring Boot
2 19 (8.30%) Kafka
3 18 (7.86%) Spring
4 16 (6.99%) React
5 10 (4.37%) RESTful
6 9 (3.93%) OpenAPI
6 9 (3.93%) Swagger
7 8 (3.49%) JSON
8 7 (3.06%) Node.js
9 6 (2.62%) AngularJS
9 6 (2.62%) SOAP
10 4 (1.75%) Dropwizard
10 4 (1.75%) GraphQL
10 4 (1.75%) JAX-RS
10 4 (1.75%) JMS
10 4 (1.75%) jQuery
10 4 (1.75%) POJO
10 4 (1.75%) Thymeleaf
10 4 (1.75%) Web Services
11 3 (1.31%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 12 (5.24%) Hybrid Cloud
2 9 (3.93%) Onboarding
2 9 (3.93%) Product Ownership
3 8 (3.49%) Data Centre
4 7 (3.06%) Cloud Native
5 6 (2.62%) Public Cloud
6 5 (2.18%) Distributed Systems
7 4 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
7 4 (1.75%) NHS
8 3 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.31%) Data Structures
8 3 (1.31%) N-Tier
8 3 (1.31%) Operational Technology
9 2 (0.87%) Driving Licence
9 2 (0.87%) Enterprise Software
9 2 (0.87%) Fibre Optics
9 2 (0.87%) Low-Code
9 2 (0.87%) Management Information System
9 2 (0.87%) Taxonomies
10 1 (0.44%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 14 (6.11%) Windows
2 13 (5.68%) Linux
3 5 (2.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.75%) Apple iOS
4 4 (1.75%) Mac OS
4 4 (1.75%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.31%) Windows 10
6 2 (0.87%) Android
6 2 (0.87%) Windows Server 2012
6 2 (0.87%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.87%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (22.71%) Agile
2 36 (15.72%) DevOps
3 30 (13.10%) Microservices
4 28 (12.23%) CI/CD
5 25 (10.92%) Migration
5 25 (10.92%) Stakeholder Management
6 24 (10.48%) Containerisation
7 23 (10.04%) Problem-Solving
7 23 (10.04%) Software Engineering
8 20 (8.73%) Business Intelligence
9 19 (8.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 18 (7.86%) User Experience
11 17 (7.42%) Mentoring
11 17 (7.42%) TDD
12 16 (6.99%) Continuous Improvement
12 16 (6.99%) Programme Management
13 14 (6.11%) Technical Leadership
14 13 (5.68%) Analytics
14 13 (5.68%) Digital Marketing
14 13 (5.68%) Requirements Gathering
Programming Languages
1 39 (17.03%) Java
2 27 (11.79%) SQL
3 18 (7.86%) Python
4 12 (5.24%) TypeScript
5 5 (2.18%) PL/SQL
6 4 (1.75%) Bash
6 4 (1.75%) JavaScript
6 4 (1.75%) Perl
6 4 (1.75%) PowerShell
7 3 (1.31%) C++
7 3 (1.31%) Go
7 3 (1.31%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.87%) C
8 2 (0.87%) C#
8 2 (0.87%) Kusto Query Language
8 2 (0.87%) Rust
9 1 (0.44%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 133 (58.08%) Security Cleared
2 92 (40.17%) SC Cleared
3 10 (4.37%) BPSS Clearance
4 8 (3.49%) Degree
5 7 (3.06%) ISTQB
6 4 (1.75%) Microsoft Certification
7 2 (0.87%) Azure Certification
7 2 (0.87%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (0.87%) DBS Check
7 2 (0.87%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 1 (0.44%) A+ Certification
8 1 (0.44%) CCDP
8 1 (0.44%) CCNP
8 1 (0.44%) CIPD
8 1 (0.44%) CISM
8 1 (0.44%) CTC Cleared
8 1 (0.44%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.44%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
8 1 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
8 1 (0.44%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (6.11%) Accessibility
2 7 (3.06%) Data Quality
2 7 (3.06%) SLA
3 6 (2.62%) NIST
4 4 (1.75%) QA
5 3 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.87%) IEC 61508
6 2 (0.87%) ISO 26262
6 2 (0.87%) NCSC
7 1 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.44%) GDPR
7 1 (0.44%) IEC 62304
7 1 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 1 (0.44%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.44%) PMO
7 1 (0.44%) WCAG
System Software
1 30 (13.10%) Docker
2 9 (3.93%) Active Directory
3 8 (3.49%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (1.75%) Hyper-V
4 4 (1.75%) UAG
5 2 (0.87%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.44%) BitLocker
6 1 (0.44%) Firmware
6 1 (0.44%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 21 (9.17%) Terraform
2 17 (7.42%) Kubernetes
3 6 (2.62%) Ansible
3 6 (2.62%) Microsoft Intune
4 4 (1.75%) SCCM
5 3 (1.31%) Microsoft Clustering
5 3 (1.31%) Packer
5 3 (1.31%) vCenter Server
6 2 (0.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (0.87%) HP ALM
6 2 (0.87%) NetApp OnCommand
6 2 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.87%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
6 2 (0.87%) vMotion
6 2 (0.87%) WSUS
7 1 (0.44%) AirWatch
7 1 (0.44%) Cisco CUCM
7 1 (0.44%) Nessus
7 1 (0.44%) PaperCut
7 1 (0.44%) SELinux
Vendors
1 36 (15.72%) Microsoft
2 23 (10.04%) SAP
3 20 (8.73%) Google
4 10 (4.37%) Cisco
4 10 (4.37%) Oracle
5 9 (3.93%) VMware
6 7 (3.06%) Palo Alto
7 6 (2.62%) ServiceNow
8 5 (2.18%) Meraki
8 5 (2.18%) SolarWinds
9 4 (1.75%) CheckPoint
9 4 (1.75%) Red Hat
9 4 (1.75%) Siebel
9 4 (1.75%) Virgin Media
10 3 (1.31%) Apple
10 3 (1.31%) Databricks
10 3 (1.31%) Dell
11 2 (0.87%) Atlassian
11 2 (0.87%) BMC
11 2 (0.87%) Pega