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

6 months to
19 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 11 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 -5
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 323 210 318
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 10.72% 10.47% 11.28%
As % of the General category 18.57% 18.13% 20.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 240 126 214
10th Percentile £330 £341 £350
25th Percentile £400 £412 £436
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £532 £600 £650
90th Percentile £623 £661 £725
England median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.44% -0.33% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 4 33
10th Percentile - £12.88 £12.00
25th Percentile - £14.82 £14.50
Median hourly rate £25.38 £16.01 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +58.50% +0.08% -20.00%
75th Percentile £40.05 £16.20 £21.00
90th Percentile £44.94 £16.23 £32.77
England median hourly rate £22.09 £25.00 £24.50
% change year-on-year -11.65% +2.04% +22.50%

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 1,739 1,158 1,539
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 57.70% 57.76% 54.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,082 695 952
10th Percentile £198 £264 £284
25th Percentile £358 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +1.01%
75th Percentile £551 £580 £582
90th Percentile £638 £675 £687
England median daily rate £500 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 146 107 205
10th Percentile £15.62 £15.96 £12.50
25th Percentile £20.87 £21.77 £14.71
Median hourly rate £31.83 £29.80 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.80% +65.56% -30.52%
75th Percentile £57.24 £46.63 £37.18
90th Percentile £74.26 £72.93 £48.00
England median hourly rate £25.08 £30.81 £26.00
% change year-on-year -18.60% +18.48% -22.76%

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 19 March 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 19 March 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 19 March 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 +1 211 £450 -9.59% 62
Cheshire +10 50 £436 +0.35% 6
Merseyside -7 33 £510 -2.86% 7
Cumbria -5 12 £500 -
Lancashire -18 4 £425 -29.17% 20
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 12 (3.72%) Confluence
2 11 (3.41%) SharePoint
3 10 (3.10%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (0.62%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 2 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.62%) CICS
4 2 (0.62%) CMS
4 2 (0.62%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.62%) Skype for Business
5 1 (0.31%) Apache
5 1 (0.31%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.31%) SAS
Applications
1 19 (5.88%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (1.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.31%) Adobe Premiere
4 1 (0.31%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.31%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.31%) Quicktime
4 1 (0.31%) Trello
Business Applications
1 6 (1.86%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (1.24%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.93%) iTrent
4 1 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.31%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.31%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.31%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.31%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 77 (23.84%) Azure
2 62 (19.20%) AWS
3 29 (8.98%) Microsoft 365
4 27 (8.36%) Power Platform
5 23 (7.12%) GitHub
6 20 (6.19%) Serverless
7 16 (4.95%) GCP
8 15 (4.64%) Azure DevOps
8 15 (4.64%) PowerApps
9 14 (4.33%) Power Automate
10 13 (4.02%) AWS Lambda
10 13 (4.02%) Dynamics 365
10 13 (4.02%) Entra ID
10 13 (4.02%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (3.72%) Microsoft Copilot
12 10 (3.10%) Amazon SQS
13 9 (2.79%) Amazon S3
14 8 (2.48%) OneDrive
15 7 (2.17%) Amazon EKS
15 7 (2.17%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 18 (5.57%) Firewall
2 9 (2.79%) WAN
3 8 (2.48%) VPN
3 8 (2.48%) Wi-Fi
4 7 (2.17%) DNS
4 7 (2.17%) Wireless
5 6 (1.86%) LAN
6 4 (1.24%) DHCP
6 4 (1.24%) MPLS
6 4 (1.24%) VLAN
7 3 (0.93%) Cisco ISE
7 3 (0.93%) Network Security
7 3 (0.93%) SNMP
7 3 (0.93%) TCP/IP
8 2 (0.62%) BGP
8 2 (0.62%) OSPF
8 2 (0.62%) SD-WAN
8 2 (0.62%) Skype
8 2 (0.62%) TACACS
8 2 (0.62%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (4.33%) MongoDB
2 13 (4.02%) Power BI
3 10 (3.10%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (2.79%) DocumentDB
5 8 (2.48%) Redis
6 7 (2.17%) MySQL
7 6 (1.86%) Looker
7 6 (1.86%) NoSQL
7 6 (1.86%) Relational Database
7 6 (1.86%) SQL Server
8 5 (1.55%) BigQuery
9 4 (1.24%) Metadata
9 4 (1.24%) Tableau
10 3 (0.93%) Data Warehouse
10 3 (0.93%) RDBMS
10 3 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 2 (0.62%) Data Mining
11 2 (0.62%) DataStage
11 2 (0.62%) DynamoDB
11 2 (0.62%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 34 (10.53%) GitLab
2 24 (7.43%) Git
3 15 (4.64%) JIRA
4 10 (3.10%) Cypress.io
5 9 (2.79%) Jenkins
6 8 (2.48%) JUnit
6 8 (2.48%) Mocha
6 8 (2.48%) Postman
7 7 (2.17%) CircleCI
7 7 (2.17%) Mockito
7 7 (2.17%) SonarQube
8 5 (1.55%) Cucumber
9 3 (0.93%) Selenium
10 2 (0.62%) Jasmine
10 2 (0.62%) MSI
11 1 (0.31%) Axure RP
11 1 (0.31%) InstallShield
11 1 (0.31%) JMeter
11 1 (0.31%) MLflow
General
1 68 (21.05%) Social Skills
2 35 (10.84%) Finance
3 23 (7.12%) Analytical Skills
4 13 (4.02%) Local Government
4 13 (4.02%) Military
5 11 (3.41%) Banking
6 8 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
6 8 (2.48%) Manufacturing
7 7 (2.17%) Marketing
7 7 (2.17%) Telecoms
8 6 (1.86%) Electronics
8 6 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
8 6 (1.86%) Legal
9 4 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.62%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.62%) Digital Economy
12 1 (0.31%) Digital Health
12 1 (0.31%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 88 (27.24%) Developer
2 35 (10.84%) Java Developer
2 35 (10.84%) Senior
3 32 (9.91%) Analyst
4 29 (8.98%) Architect
5 28 (8.67%) Lead
6 16 (4.95%) Full-Stack Developer
7 14 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
8 13 (4.02%) Tester
9 12 (3.72%) Designer
9 12 (3.72%) Senior Developer
10 11 (3.41%) Software Developer
11 10 (3.10%) Business Analyst
12 9 (2.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 9 (2.79%) Lead Developer
12 9 (2.79%) Technical Architect
13 8 (2.48%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
13 8 (2.48%) Security Engineer
13 8 (2.48%) Senior Java Developer
13 8 (2.48%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (11.15%) Spring
1 36 (11.15%) Spring Boot
2 30 (9.29%) Node.js
3 18 (5.57%) React
4 16 (4.95%) REST
5 14 (4.33%) HTML
5 14 (4.33%) RESTful
6 13 (4.02%) Jest
7 11 (3.41%) Kafka
7 11 (3.41%) Playwright
8 9 (2.79%) CSS
8 9 (2.79%) JSON
9 8 (2.48%) AngularJS
9 8 (2.48%) Spring MVC
10 7 (2.17%) Hibernate
10 7 (2.17%) JAX-RS
11 6 (1.86%) ActiveMQ
12 5 (1.55%) HTML5 Canvas
12 5 (1.55%) Oracle Fusion
12 5 (1.55%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 24 (7.43%) Onboarding
2 17 (5.26%) Product Ownership
3 12 (3.72%) Cloud Native
3 12 (3.72%) Data Centre
4 6 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
4 6 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
5 5 (1.55%) NHS
5 5 (1.55%) Public Cloud
6 4 (1.24%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (1.24%) Low-Code
6 4 (1.24%) Mobile App
6 4 (1.24%) Operational Technology
7 2 (0.62%) BYOD
7 2 (0.62%) Clustering
7 2 (0.62%) e-Learning
7 2 (0.62%) Graphic Design
7 2 (0.62%) Housing Association
7 2 (0.62%) Mainframe
7 2 (0.62%) Replication
7 2 (0.62%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 23 (7.12%) Linux
2 18 (5.57%) Windows
3 13 (4.02%) Unix
4 8 (2.48%) Mac OS
5 7 (2.17%) Android
5 7 (2.17%) Mac OS X
5 7 (2.17%) Windows 10
6 3 (0.93%) AIX
6 3 (0.93%) Apple iOS
6 3 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.62%) Solaris
7 2 (0.62%) Windows 7
8 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (29.41%) Agile
2 61 (18.89%) CI/CD
2 61 (18.89%) DevOps
3 48 (14.86%) Microservices
4 45 (13.93%) Test Automation
5 41 (12.69%) Continuous Improvement
5 41 (12.69%) Problem-Solving
6 34 (10.53%) User Experience
7 28 (8.67%) Stakeholder Management
8 25 (7.74%) Containerisation
8 25 (7.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 24 (7.43%) TDD
10 23 (7.12%) Change Management
10 23 (7.12%) Migration
10 23 (7.12%) Validation
11 21 (6.50%) User Research
12 19 (5.88%) Analytics
12 19 (5.88%) Full-Stack Development
13 18 (5.57%) Business Intelligence
13 18 (5.57%) Digital Transformation Programme
Programming Languages
1 64 (19.81%) Java
2 29 (8.98%) JavaScript
3 24 (7.43%) Python
4 20 (6.19%) TypeScript
5 18 (5.57%) SQL
6 13 (4.02%) PowerShell
7 4 (1.24%) C#
8 3 (0.93%) Bash
8 3 (0.93%) Go
8 3 (0.93%) Ruby
9 2 (0.62%) COBOL
9 2 (0.62%) Kotlin
9 2 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
9 2 (0.62%) VB
9 2 (0.62%) VBScript
10 1 (0.31%) ABAP
10 1 (0.31%) Perl
10 1 (0.31%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.31%) ProC
10 1 (0.31%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 157 (48.61%) Security Cleared
2 69 (21.36%) SC Cleared
3 23 (7.12%) Degree
4 17 (5.26%) BPSS Clearance
5 7 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (1.86%) Microsoft Certification
7 5 (1.55%) DV Cleared
8 4 (1.24%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.93%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.93%) Cisco Certification
9 3 (0.93%) ISTQB
9 3 (0.93%) ITIL Certification
9 3 (0.93%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.62%) CCNA
10 2 (0.62%) CCNP
10 2 (0.62%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 2 (0.62%) MBA
10 2 (0.62%) PMI Certification
10 2 (0.62%) PMP
11 1 (0.31%) APMG
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (13.31%) Accessibility
2 16 (4.95%) WCAG
3 14 (4.33%) Data Quality
4 13 (4.02%) QA
5 6 (1.86%) GDPR
5 6 (1.86%) NIST
6 5 (1.55%) PMO
7 4 (1.24%) SLA
8 3 (0.93%) IFRS
8 3 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 2 (0.62%) GRC
9 2 (0.62%) IFRS 17
9 2 (0.62%) PSD2
10 1 (0.31%) COBIT
10 1 (0.31%) CRD IV
10 1 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.31%) FINREP
10 1 (0.31%) ISO 20022
10 1 (0.31%) SEPA
10 1 (0.31%) SOC 2
System Software
1 34 (10.53%) Docker
2 15 (4.64%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.62%) BitLocker
4 2 (0.62%) Hyper-V
4 2 (0.62%) ISA Server
4 2 (0.62%) vSphere
5 1 (0.31%) GPFS
5 1 (0.31%) NFS
5 1 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
5 1 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 35 (10.84%) Kubernetes
2 32 (9.91%) Terraform
3 5 (1.55%) Ansible
3 5 (1.55%) Grafana
3 5 (1.55%) Microsoft Intune
4 4 (1.24%) SCCM
5 3 (0.93%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 1 (0.31%) Cisco CUCM
7 1 (0.31%) Cisco Prime
7 1 (0.31%) Data Guard
7 1 (0.31%) Failover Clustering
7 1 (0.31%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Clustering
7 1 (0.31%) Nagios
7 1 (0.31%) Norton AntiVirus
7 1 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.31%) vRealize
7 1 (0.31%) VxRail
Vendors
1 57 (17.65%) Microsoft
2 24 (7.43%) Oracle
3 17 (5.26%) SAP
4 14 (4.33%) Cisco
5 13 (4.02%) Virgin Media
6 8 (2.48%) Google
6 8 (2.48%) ServiceNow
7 7 (2.17%) Palo Alto
7 7 (2.17%) VMware
8 6 (1.86%) Apple
9 5 (1.55%) Dell
9 5 (1.55%) HP
9 5 (1.55%) IBM
9 5 (1.55%) PeopleSoft
10 4 (1.24%) Adobe
10 4 (1.24%) Meraki
10 4 (1.24%) Splunk
11 3 (0.93%) Aruba
11 3 (0.93%) Workday
12 2 (0.62%) F5