Public Sector Contract Job Trends in Scotland

Public Sector
UK > Scotland

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Public Sector in contract job vacancies in Scotland. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Public Sector over the 6 months leading up to 18 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 1
Rank change year-on-year -2 -4 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 273 293 476
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 12.40% 17.79% 25.56%
As % of the General category 20.21% 25.39% 40.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 186 309
10th Percentile £318 £210 £157
25th Percentile £406 £381 £243
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £463 £450
Median % change year-on-year +2.65% +2.83% -3.74%
75th Percentile £575 £530 £538
90th Percentile £720 £600 £638
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 8 15
10th Percentile - £16.48 £12.00
25th Percentile - £18.18 £13.36
Median hourly rate - £22.08 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year - +22.67% +33.33%
75th Percentile - £28.06 £20.26
90th Percentile - £33.61 £26.12
UK median hourly rate £22.20 £20.01 £23.41
% change year-on-year +10.94% -14.52% +20.05%

All General Skills
Scotland

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 Scotland.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 1,351 1,154 1,184
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 61.38% 70.07% 63.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 730 670 714
10th Percentile £250 £238 £166
25th Percentile £363 £368 £301
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £470 £440
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% +6.82% -7.37%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £538
90th Percentile £650 £589 £629
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 102 48 51
10th Percentile £13.01 £15.88 £12.30
25th Percentile £13.45 £16.48 £13.57
Median hourly rate £16.86 £19.23 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.32% +13.12% -11.37%
75th Percentile £43.96 £24.54 £22.55
90th Percentile £59.75 £43.29 £34.50
UK median hourly rate £31.56 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +25.47% -34.02% +38.62%

Public Sector
Job Vacancy Trend in Scotland

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Public Sector relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland.

Public Sector job vacancy trend in Scotland

Public Sector
Daily Rate Trend in Scotland

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Scotland citing Public Sector.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Scotland citing Public Sector

Public Sector
Daily Rate Histogram in Scotland

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Public Sector in Scotland over the 6 months to 18 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Public Sector in Scotland

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Trend in Scotland

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Scotland citing Public Sector.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Scotland citing Public Sector

Public Sector
Contract Job Locations in Scotland

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 Scotland region over the 6 months to 18 August 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
Edinburgh 0 127 £465 -2.11% 21
Glasgow +9 124 £488 +2.63% 38
South Lanarkshire -3 9 £669 +42.23% 1
Lanarkshire -1 4 £431 +231.73% 32
Dumfries and Galloway - 2 £500 -
East Lothian +4 1 - -
Dundee -4 1 - -
Inverclyde - 1 £675 -
Fife - 1 - -
Public Sector
UK

Public Sector
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Scotland 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%) Confluence
2 9 (3.30%) CMS
3 7 (2.56%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.73%) JBoss
5 1 (0.37%) Apache
5 1 (0.37%) IIS
5 1 (0.37%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.37%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 7 (2.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.83%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.37%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.37%) Adobe Illustrator
4 1 (0.37%) InDesign
4 1 (0.37%) Photoshop
4 1 (0.37%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.73%) Dynamics GP
2 1 (0.37%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.37%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 50 (18.32%) AWS
2 42 (15.38%) Azure
3 18 (6.59%) Microsoft 365
4 17 (6.23%) Power Platform
5 16 (5.86%) Azure DevOps
6 15 (5.49%) OCI
7 14 (5.13%) Amazon S3
8 12 (4.40%) Serverless
9 9 (3.30%) GCP
9 9 (3.30%) SaaS
10 8 (2.93%) AWS Lambda
11 6 (2.20%) Amazon EKS
11 6 (2.20%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (2.20%) Azure Monitor
11 6 (2.20%) GitHub
11 6 (2.20%) GitHub Actions
11 6 (2.20%) OpenShift
12 5 (1.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (1.83%) Entra ID
12 5 (1.83%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.93%) DNS
2 5 (1.83%) LAN
2 5 (1.83%) SSL
2 5 (1.83%) Wi-Fi
3 4 (1.47%) Firewall
3 4 (1.47%) SSH
4 3 (1.10%) Cisco Nexus
4 3 (1.10%) HTTPS
4 3 (1.10%) Remote Desktop
4 3 (1.10%) SD-WAN
4 3 (1.10%) VPN
4 3 (1.10%) WAN
4 3 (1.10%) Wireless
5 1 (0.37%) Cisco Wireless
5 1 (0.37%) MPLS
5 1 (0.37%) Network Security
5 1 (0.37%) SDH
5 1 (0.37%) Structured Cabling
5 1 (0.37%) VLAN
5 1 (0.37%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (4.40%) PostgreSQL
2 11 (4.03%) Amazon Aurora
2 11 (4.03%) MySQL
2 11 (4.03%) Power BI
3 10 (3.66%) MongoDB
4 9 (3.30%) MariaDB
4 9 (3.30%) SQL Server
5 6 (2.20%) Relational Database
6 5 (1.83%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (1.83%) Metadata
7 3 (1.10%) Oracle Database
7 3 (1.10%) Power Query
7 3 (1.10%) SQLPlus
8 2 (0.73%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.73%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.73%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (0.73%) MS Access
9 1 (0.37%) NoSQL
9 1 (0.37%) SAP Data Services
9 1 (0.37%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 16 (5.86%) Jenkins
1 16 (5.86%) JIRA
2 11 (4.03%) Git
3 8 (2.93%) Cypress.io
4 6 (2.20%) Gradle
4 6 (2.20%) Maven
4 6 (2.20%) Selenium
5 4 (1.47%) Cucumber
5 4 (1.47%) Subversion
6 3 (1.10%) GitLab
6 3 (1.10%) GoCD
6 3 (1.10%) JProfiler
6 3 (1.10%) JUnit
6 3 (1.10%) webpack
7 2 (0.73%) Appium
7 2 (0.73%) Postman
7 2 (0.73%) REST Assured
7 2 (0.73%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.73%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.73%) WebDriver
General
1 74 (27.11%) Social Skills
2 30 (10.99%) Finance
3 17 (6.23%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (5.13%) Organisational Skills
5 6 (2.20%) Documentation Skills
5 6 (2.20%) Legal
5 6 (2.20%) Publishing
6 5 (1.83%) Influencing Skills
7 4 (1.47%) Local Government
8 3 (1.10%) Marketing
8 3 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
8 3 (1.10%) Retail
9 2 (0.73%) Military
9 2 (0.73%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.37%) Back Office
10 1 (0.37%) Banking
10 1 (0.37%) Law
10 1 (0.37%) Police
10 1 (0.37%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 34 (12.45%) Developer
2 29 (10.62%) Analyst
2 29 (10.62%) Architect
3 24 (8.79%) Senior
4 19 (6.96%) Lead
5 18 (6.59%) Project Manager
6 15 (5.49%) Solutions Architect
7 13 (4.76%) Consultant
7 13 (4.76%) DevOps Engineer
8 9 (3.30%) Administrator
8 9 (3.30%) Software Developer
8 9 (3.30%) Technical Architect
9 8 (2.93%) Business Analyst
9 8 (2.93%) Cloud Consultant
9 8 (2.93%) Cloud Engineer
9 8 (2.93%) Designer
9 8 (2.93%) Oracle Consultant
10 7 (2.56%) DBA
10 7 (2.56%) Java Developer
10 7 (2.56%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (7.33%) Spring
1 20 (7.33%) Spring Boot
2 14 (5.13%) React
3 12 (4.40%) REST
4 10 (3.66%) Node.js
5 8 (2.93%) .NET
5 8 (2.93%) Playwright
5 8 (2.93%) RESTful
6 7 (2.56%) Web Services
7 6 (2.20%) AWS CDK
7 6 (2.20%) Jest
8 5 (1.83%) HTML
8 5 (1.83%) Next.js
8 5 (1.83%) Vue
9 4 (1.47%) JSON
9 4 (1.47%) Middleware
10 3 (1.10%) FreeMarker
10 3 (1.10%) JSF
10 3 (1.10%) RabbitMQ
10 3 (1.10%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 17 (6.23%) Product Ownership
2 13 (4.76%) Cloud Native
3 12 (4.40%) Legacy Systems
4 11 (4.03%) Management Information System
5 9 (3.30%) Data Protection Act
6 8 (2.93%) NHS
7 5 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (1.10%) Legacy Applications
8 3 (1.10%) Mainframe
8 3 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
9 2 (0.73%) Data Centre
9 2 (0.73%) Distributed Architecture
9 2 (0.73%) Distributed Systems
9 2 (0.73%) Freedom of Information
9 2 (0.73%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.73%) PKI
10 1 (0.37%) Blog
10 1 (0.37%) Data Structures
10 1 (0.37%) Hybrid Cloud
10 1 (0.37%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 23 (8.42%) Linux
2 15 (5.49%) Windows
3 6 (2.20%) Windows Server
4 5 (1.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (1.10%) SUSE
5 3 (1.10%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.37%) Android
6 1 (0.37%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.37%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.37%) Rocky
6 1 (0.37%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.37%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (29.30%) Agile
2 51 (18.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
3 43 (15.75%) Continuous Improvement
3 43 (15.75%) DevOps
4 42 (15.38%) Stakeholder Management
5 39 (14.29%) CI/CD
6 27 (9.89%) Project Delivery
7 26 (9.52%) Migration
8 22 (8.06%) Infrastructure as Code
9 21 (7.69%) Decision-Making
10 20 (7.33%) AI
10 20 (7.33%) Microservices
11 19 (6.96%) Mentoring
11 19 (6.96%) Scrum
12 18 (6.59%) Coaching
12 18 (6.59%) Digital Transformation Programme
12 18 (6.59%) Problem-Solving
12 18 (6.59%) Workshop Facilitation
13 17 (6.23%) Roadmaps
13 17 (6.23%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 33 (12.09%) Java
2 23 (8.42%) JavaScript
3 20 (7.33%) SQL
4 18 (6.59%) Python
4 18 (6.59%) TypeScript
5 9 (3.30%) Bash
6 8 (2.93%) PowerShell
7 7 (2.56%) C#
8 6 (2.20%) Bicep
9 4 (1.47%) Shell Script
10 3 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 3 (1.10%) Groovy
10 3 (1.10%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.37%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.37%) VB.NET
11 1 (0.37%) VBA
11 1 (0.37%) XPath
Qualifications
1 48 (17.58%) Security Cleared
2 44 (16.12%) SC Cleared
3 15 (5.49%) BPSS Clearance
4 10 (3.66%) DV Cleared
5 6 (2.20%) Degree
5 6 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (1.83%) PMI Certification
6 5 (1.83%) PMP
7 4 (1.47%) ITIL Certification
8 3 (1.10%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 3 (1.10%) CISSP
8 3 (1.10%) MCSE
8 3 (1.10%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 2 (0.73%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (0.73%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
9 2 (0.73%) CISM
9 2 (0.73%) IIBA
9 2 (0.73%) Six Sigma Black Belt
9 2 (0.73%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (8.42%) Accessibility
2 19 (6.96%) Disclosure Scotland
3 12 (4.40%) PMO
4 10 (3.66%) QA
5 9 (3.30%) GDPR
5 9 (3.30%) WCAG
6 8 (2.93%) Data Quality
7 4 (1.47%) NIST
8 3 (1.10%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 2 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.73%) GRC
9 2 (0.73%) NCSC
9 2 (0.73%) SLA
System Software
1 11 (4.03%) Docker
2 9 (3.30%) Active Directory
3 6 (2.20%) Hyper-V
4 4 (1.47%) Ceph
4 4 (1.47%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (1.10%) Squid
6 2 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.37%) IAG
7 1 (0.37%) iptables
7 1 (0.37%) NFS
7 1 (0.37%) Samba
7 1 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 19 (6.96%) Terraform
2 13 (4.76%) Kubernetes
3 8 (2.93%) Grafana
4 7 (2.56%) Ansible
5 6 (2.20%) Istio
6 5 (1.83%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (1.47%) Argo
8 3 (1.10%) Kibana
8 3 (1.10%) Prometheus
9 2 (0.73%) SCCM
9 2 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.37%) Rundeck
10 1 (0.37%) SELinux
10 1 (0.37%) systemd
10 1 (0.37%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 33 (12.09%) Microsoft
2 32 (11.72%) Oracle
3 9 (3.30%) Salesforce
4 6 (2.20%) Cisco
5 5 (1.83%) Google
5 5 (1.83%) MuleSoft
6 4 (1.47%) VMware
7 3 (1.10%) F5
7 3 (1.10%) Palo Alto
7 3 (1.10%) Red Hat
7 3 (1.10%) SAP
7 3 (1.10%) UiPath
8 2 (0.73%) Atlassian
8 2 (0.73%) Okta
8 2 (0.73%) SaltStack
9 1 (0.37%) AppDynamics
9 1 (0.37%) EnterpriseDB
9 1 (0.37%) Infor
9 1 (0.37%) Qualys
9 1 (0.37%) SolarWinds