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

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 14 10
Rank change year-on-year -2 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 310 184 282
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 9.39% 9.46% 10.59%
As % of the General category 17.16% 16.15% 19.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 200 127 182
10th Percentile £350 £320 £327
25th Percentile £400 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.44%
75th Percentile £571 £588 £636
90th Percentile £638 £653 £725
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.86% - -1.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 0 32
10th Percentile - - £12.00
25th Percentile - - £14.50
Median hourly rate £25.38 - £16.00
75th Percentile £25.49 - £21.00
90th Percentile - - £33.49
England median hourly rate £23.83 £25.08 £23.00
% change year-on-year -4.99% +9.02% +11.65%

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 1,807 1,139 1,423
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 54.74% 58.56% 53.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,035 709 865
10th Percentile £227 £260 £300
25th Percentile £367 £380 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year -3.16% -3.65% -1.40%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £585
90th Percentile £640 £675 £671
England median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 165 99 192
10th Percentile £16.11 £13.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £22.68 £17.44 £14.50
Median hourly rate £35.50 £28.75 £18.59
Median % change year-on-year +23.48% +54.65% -28.50%
75th Percentile £63.75 £57.04 £37.18
90th Percentile £84.50 £76.50 £51.51
England median hourly rate £30.58 £27.38 £30.00
% change year-on-year +11.71% -8.75% -6.25%

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 25 May 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
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 25 May 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 +4 215 £476 -4.80% 86
Cheshire +5 38 £445 +12.72% 4
Merseyside -9 22 £510 -21.54% 6
Cumbria -14 13 £442 -19.66%
Lancashire -5 11 £575 -4.17% 21
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 21 (6.77%) SharePoint
2 17 (5.48%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (3.87%) Confluence
4 2 (0.65%) CICS
4 2 (0.65%) CMS
5 1 (0.32%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.32%) Apache
5 1 (0.32%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.32%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
5 1 (0.32%) SAS
5 1 (0.32%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 6 (1.94%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.65%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.65%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.32%) Adobe Premiere
5 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.32%) Quicktime
Business Applications
1 4 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.65%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.65%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle Cash Management
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 1 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 75 (24.19%) Azure
2 65 (20.97%) AWS
3 37 (11.94%) Microsoft 365
4 21 (6.77%) Serverless
5 20 (6.45%) GitHub
6 17 (5.48%) SaaS
7 16 (5.16%) Power Platform
8 15 (4.84%) Microsoft Copilot
9 14 (4.52%) Dynamics 365
9 14 (4.52%) GCP
10 13 (4.19%) Entra ID
10 13 (4.19%) OCI
11 12 (3.87%) AWS Lambda
11 12 (3.87%) GitHub Actions
12 11 (3.55%) Amazon S3
13 10 (3.23%) Azure DevOps
14 9 (2.90%) Amazon EC2
14 9 (2.90%) Google Workspace
14 9 (2.90%) OneDrive
15 8 (2.58%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 19 (6.13%) Firewall
2 10 (3.23%) Wi-Fi
3 9 (2.90%) WAN
4 8 (2.58%) BGP
4 8 (2.58%) BIG-IP
4 8 (2.58%) Ethernet VPN
4 8 (2.58%) OSPF
4 8 (2.58%) VXLAN
5 7 (2.26%) DNS
5 7 (2.26%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
6 6 (1.94%) SD-WAN
7 5 (1.61%) VPN
7 5 (1.61%) WLAN
8 3 (0.97%) DKIM
8 3 (0.97%) DMARC
9 2 (0.65%) DHCP
9 2 (0.65%) LAN
9 2 (0.65%) SNMP
9 2 (0.65%) TACACS
9 2 (0.65%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (4.84%) MongoDB
2 8 (2.58%) DocumentDB
3 6 (1.94%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (1.61%) NoSQL
4 5 (1.61%) Power BI
4 5 (1.61%) Relational Database
5 4 (1.29%) Metadata
5 4 (1.29%) SQL Server
5 4 (1.29%) Tableau
6 3 (0.97%) MySQL
6 3 (0.97%) Oracle Database
6 3 (0.97%) RDBMS
7 2 (0.65%) BigQuery
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%) Looker
7 2 (0.65%) Redis
7 2 (0.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 35 (11.29%) GitLab
2 20 (6.45%) JIRA
3 15 (4.84%) Git
4 10 (3.23%) Cypress.io
5 9 (2.90%) Cucumber
5 9 (2.90%) JUnit
6 8 (2.58%) Jenkins
6 8 (2.58%) Mocha
6 8 (2.58%) Selenium
7 7 (2.26%) CircleCI
7 7 (2.26%) Mockito
8 6 (1.94%) Postman
9 5 (1.61%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.97%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.65%) Gatling
11 2 (0.65%) JMeter
11 2 (0.65%) WebDriver
12 1 (0.32%) Axure RP
12 1 (0.32%) Jasmine
12 1 (0.32%) JDeveloper
General
1 66 (21.29%) Social Skills
2 30 (9.68%) Finance
3 26 (8.39%) Military
4 24 (7.74%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (4.19%) Local Government
6 8 (2.58%) Banking
7 7 (2.26%) Legal
7 7 (2.26%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.65%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.65%) Digital Economy
11 2 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.65%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.32%) General Ledger
12 1 (0.32%) Retail Banking
12 1 (0.32%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 79 (25.48%) Developer
2 43 (13.87%) Senior
3 36 (11.61%) Lead
4 34 (10.97%) Java Developer
5 29 (9.35%) Architect
6 25 (8.06%) Analyst
7 16 (5.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 15 (4.84%) Senior Developer
8 15 (4.84%) Software Developer
8 15 (4.84%) Tester
9 14 (4.52%) Full-Stack Developer
9 14 (4.52%) Lead Developer
10 13 (4.19%) Designer
10 13 (4.19%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 12 (3.87%) Business Analyst
11 12 (3.87%) Test Engineer
12 11 (3.55%) Administrator
12 11 (3.55%) Senior Java Developer
12 11 (3.55%) Technical Architect
13 10 (3.23%) Lead Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (10.65%) Node.js
1 33 (10.65%) Spring
2 32 (10.32%) Spring Boot
3 17 (5.48%) React
3 17 (5.48%) REST
4 13 (4.19%) Kafka
5 12 (3.87%) Playwright
6 11 (3.55%) Jest
7 10 (3.23%) OAuth
8 8 (2.58%) AngularJS
8 8 (2.58%) RESTful
9 7 (2.26%) CSS
9 7 (2.26%) HTML
10 6 (1.94%) ActiveMQ
10 6 (1.94%) JAX-RS
11 5 (1.61%) OpenID
12 4 (1.29%) Nunjucks
12 4 (1.29%) Oracle Fusion
12 4 (1.29%) Spring MVC
13 3 (0.97%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 22 (7.10%) Cloud Native
2 20 (6.45%) Product Ownership
3 17 (5.48%) Onboarding
4 11 (3.55%) Data Centre
5 10 (3.23%) Legacy Systems
6 9 (2.90%) Operational Technology
7 7 (2.26%) Management Information System
8 6 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (1.61%) Hybrid Cloud
9 5 (1.61%) NHS
9 5 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
10 4 (1.29%) Mobile App
10 4 (1.29%) Public Cloud
11 3 (0.97%) Freedom of Information
11 3 (0.97%) Housing Association
11 3 (0.97%) Replication
12 2 (0.65%) BYOD
12 2 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
12 2 (0.65%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 21 (6.77%) Linux
2 13 (4.19%) Windows
3 12 (3.87%) Unix
4 6 (1.94%) Mac OS X
5 4 (1.29%) Windows 10
6 3 (0.97%) AIX
6 3 (0.97%) Mac OS
6 3 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.65%) Solaris
8 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.32%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (30.65%) Agile
2 65 (20.97%) CI/CD
3 61 (19.68%) DevOps
4 49 (15.81%) Continuous Improvement
4 49 (15.81%) Microservices
5 47 (15.16%) Test Automation
6 32 (10.32%) Migration
6 32 (10.32%) Stakeholder Management
7 28 (9.03%) Problem-Solving
8 27 (8.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 27 (8.71%) User Experience
9 23 (7.42%) Infrastructure as Code
9 23 (7.42%) Mentoring
10 21 (6.77%) Validation
11 20 (6.45%) Containerisation
11 20 (6.45%) Digital Transformation Programme
11 20 (6.45%) Roadmaps
11 20 (6.45%) Technical Leadership
12 19 (6.13%) Change Management
12 19 (6.13%) User Research
Programming Languages
1 63 (20.32%) Java
2 38 (12.26%) JavaScript
3 22 (7.10%) Python
3 22 (7.10%) TypeScript
4 16 (5.16%) SQL
5 11 (3.55%) PowerShell
6 3 (0.97%) Ruby
7 2 (0.65%) C#
7 2 (0.65%) COBOL
7 2 (0.65%) Go
7 2 (0.65%) Kotlin
7 2 (0.65%) PL/SQL
7 2 (0.65%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.32%) Bash
8 1 (0.32%) Bicep
8 1 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (0.32%) ProC
8 1 (0.32%) Scala
8 1 (0.32%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 143 (46.13%) Security Cleared
2 71 (22.90%) SC Cleared
3 16 (5.16%) Degree
4 13 (4.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (1.94%) Microsoft Certification
6 4 (1.29%) Azure Certification
7 3 (0.97%) Master's Degree
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%) PMI Certification
8 2 (0.65%) PMP
9 1 (0.32%) CISM
9 1 (0.32%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (12.58%) Accessibility
2 15 (4.84%) WCAG
3 11 (3.55%) Data Quality
3 11 (3.55%) QA
4 8 (2.58%) NIST
5 7 (2.26%) GDPR
5 7 (2.26%) PMO
6 4 (1.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (1.29%) SLA
7 2 (0.65%) GRC
7 2 (0.65%) IFRS
7 2 (0.65%) IFRS 17
7 2 (0.65%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.32%) Basel III
8 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.32%) NCSC
8 1 (0.32%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.32%) PSD2
8 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
System Software
1 30 (9.68%) Docker
2 23 (7.42%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.65%) Hyper-V
3 2 (0.65%) Virtual Desktop
3 2 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.32%) BitLocker
4 1 (0.32%) GPFS
4 1 (0.32%) ISA Server
4 1 (0.32%) NFS
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
4 1 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (0.32%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 40 (12.90%) Terraform
2 29 (9.35%) Kubernetes
3 12 (3.87%) Ansible
4 6 (1.94%) Grafana
5 4 (1.29%) Prometheus
6 3 (0.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.65%) SCCM
8 1 (0.32%) Argo
8 1 (0.32%) Cisco CUCM
8 1 (0.32%) Cisco Prime
8 1 (0.32%) Data Guard
8 1 (0.32%) Failover Clustering
8 1 (0.32%) FortiGate
8 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Clustering
8 1 (0.32%) Nagios
8 1 (0.32%) Norton AntiVirus
8 1 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.32%) VxRail
Vendors
1 49 (15.81%) Microsoft
2 14 (4.52%) Oracle
3 12 (3.87%) Google
4 10 (3.23%) Palo Alto
5 9 (2.90%) Virgin Media
6 8 (2.58%) Aruba
6 8 (2.58%) F5
6 8 (2.58%) ServiceNow
7 7 (2.26%) Arista
8 6 (1.94%) SAP
9 5 (1.61%) Cisco
9 5 (1.61%) PeopleSoft
10 4 (1.29%) IBM
10 4 (1.29%) VMware
11 2 (0.65%) Adobe
11 2 (0.65%) BeyondTrust
11 2 (0.65%) CyberArk
11 2 (0.65%) Fortinet
11 2 (0.65%) SolarWinds
11 2 (0.65%) Splunk