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

6 months to
21 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 2 1
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 252 387 688
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 16.54% 23.24% 29.03%
As % of the General category 25.17% 34.52% 43.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 172 271 424
10th Percentile £224 £190 £152
25th Percentile £389 £370 £312
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -5.26% +0.80%
75th Percentile £538 £525 £569
90th Percentile £599 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 15 9
10th Percentile £15.24 £14.18 £11.63
25th Percentile £17.20 £18.26 £12.26
Median hourly rate £21.01 £20.29 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% +15.91% +6.97%
75th Percentile £25.35 £25.97 £55.00
90th Percentile £27.63 £32.05 £55.28
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £22.00 £21.31
% change year-on-year -4.55% +3.24% +12.16%

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 common skills in Scotland.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 1,001 1,121 1,600
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 65.68% 67.33% 67.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 603 674 986
10th Percentile £200 £190 £196
25th Percentile £361 £361 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £450 £488
Median % change year-on-year +2.22% -7.69% +2.63%
75th Percentile £544 £538 £588
90th Percentile £623 £625 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 30 43
10th Percentile £13.00 £13.60 £12.13
25th Percentile £13.50 £19.59 £15.42
Median hourly rate £18.87 £23.00 £19.18
Median % change year-on-year -17.96% +19.92% +13.26%
75th Percentile £26.21 £24.18 £55.70
90th Percentile £59.25 £42.65 £62.30
UK median hourly rate £23.54 £27.30 £33.00
% change year-on-year -13.78% -17.27% +32.00%

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 21 December 2025.

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
Hourly Rate Histogram in Scotland

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Public Sector in Scotland over the 6 months to 21 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Public Sector in Scotland

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 21 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
Edinburgh -3 131 £450 - 18
Glasgow -10 99 £474 +5.33% 7
South Lanarkshire +6 3 £550 -
North Lanarkshire - 3 £314 -
West Lothian +1 2 £289 -45.00% 2
Aberdeen - 2 £500 -
Lanarkshire +4 1 £130 -75.24% 5
Dundee 0 1 £115 -33.33%
Stirling 0 1 £275 +41.03%
Midlothian - 1 £150 - 15
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 8 (3.17%) Confluence
2 6 (2.38%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.98%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (1.59%) Apache
5 3 (1.19%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.79%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.79%) Apache TomEE
6 2 (0.79%) ArcGIS
6 2 (0.79%) CMS
6 2 (0.79%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.79%) Umbraco
6 2 (0.79%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.40%) Alfresco
7 1 (0.40%) Apache Solr
7 1 (0.40%) nginx
7 1 (0.40%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 15 (5.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (3.17%) Microsoft Project
3 5 (1.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.79%) Adobe Illustrator
4 2 (0.79%) InDesign
4 2 (0.79%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.79%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.40%) Adobe After Effects
5 1 (0.40%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.40%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 10 (3.97%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.40%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 53 (21.03%) AWS
2 48 (19.05%) Azure
3 27 (10.71%) Power Platform
4 21 (8.33%) Serverless
5 19 (7.54%) AWS CloudFormation
5 19 (7.54%) AWS Lambda
6 17 (6.75%) Amazon S3
7 16 (6.35%) Microsoft 365
8 13 (5.16%) Azure DevOps
9 12 (4.76%) Dynamics 365
10 11 (4.37%) OpenShift
10 11 (4.37%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 10 (3.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 10 (3.97%) Power Automate
12 9 (3.57%) Amazon EKS
13 8 (3.17%) Entra ID
13 8 (3.17%) PowerApps
13 8 (3.17%) SaaS
14 7 (2.78%) GitHub
15 5 (1.98%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.57%) Firewall
1 9 (3.57%) WAN
2 6 (2.38%) VPN
3 5 (1.98%) LAN
3 5 (1.98%) Wi-Fi
4 4 (1.59%) Cisco ISE
4 4 (1.59%) Network Security
5 3 (1.19%) Cisco Nexus
5 3 (1.19%) MPLS
5 3 (1.19%) Unified Communications
6 2 (0.79%) SDH
6 2 (0.79%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.79%) TETRA
6 2 (0.79%) VoIP
7 1 (0.40%) Cisco Firepower
7 1 (0.40%) Ethernet VPN
7 1 (0.40%) HTTP
7 1 (0.40%) IPsec
7 1 (0.40%) VXLAN
7 1 (0.40%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (7.14%) Power BI
2 14 (5.56%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (4.76%) SQL Server
4 11 (4.37%) Amazon Aurora
5 10 (3.97%) Relational Database
6 6 (2.38%) Elasticsearch
7 5 (1.98%) Amazon Athena
7 5 (1.98%) DynamoDB
7 5 (1.98%) MySQL
7 5 (1.98%) Oracle Database
8 4 (1.59%) MongoDB
9 3 (1.19%) GIS
9 3 (1.19%) Oracle Reports
10 2 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.79%) Big Data
10 2 (0.79%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.79%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.79%) NoSQL
10 2 (0.79%) Spatial Data
10 2 (0.79%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 15 (5.95%) JIRA
2 14 (5.56%) Git
3 11 (4.37%) Jenkins
4 7 (2.78%) Cypress.io
5 4 (1.59%) GitLab
6 3 (1.19%) Subversion
6 3 (1.19%) Terragrunt
6 3 (1.19%) webpack
7 2 (0.79%) Ant
7 2 (0.79%) Axure RP
7 2 (0.79%) CircleCI
7 2 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.79%) Eclipse
7 2 (0.79%) Maven
7 2 (0.79%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (0.79%) Postman
8 1 (0.40%) MLflow
8 1 (0.40%) Mockito
8 1 (0.40%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.40%) WebDriver
General
1 75 (29.76%) Social Skills
2 39 (15.48%) Finance
3 32 (12.70%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (3.57%) Influencing Skills
5 7 (2.78%) Telecoms
6 6 (2.38%) Organisational Skills
7 4 (1.59%) Legal
7 4 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
8 3 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.19%) Local Government
8 3 (1.19%) Retail
9 2 (0.79%) Back Office
9 2 (0.79%) Electronics
9 2 (0.79%) Law
9 2 (0.79%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.79%) Marketing
10 1 (0.40%) Billing
10 1 (0.40%) General Ledger
10 1 (0.40%) Military
10 1 (0.40%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 39 (15.48%) Developer
2 25 (9.92%) Analyst
3 23 (9.13%) Architect
4 16 (6.35%) Senior
5 14 (5.56%) Lead
6 13 (5.16%) Project Manager
7 11 (4.37%) Business Analyst
7 11 (4.37%) Solutions Architect
8 10 (3.97%) Consultant
9 9 (3.57%) Network Engineer
9 9 (3.57%) Support Officer
10 8 (3.17%) Java Developer
11 7 (2.78%) Cloud Engineer
11 7 (2.78%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 7 (2.78%) Technical Leader
12 6 (2.38%) Delivery Manager
12 6 (2.38%) Power Platform Developer
12 6 (2.38%) Project Officer
12 6 (2.38%) Site Engineer
12 6 (2.38%) User Researcher
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (6.35%) React
2 14 (5.56%) HTML
3 13 (5.16%) .NET
3 13 (5.16%) AWS CDK
4 12 (4.76%) CSS
5 11 (4.37%) Node.js
5 11 (4.37%) Spring
6 10 (3.97%) REST
7 8 (3.17%) Spring Boot
8 7 (2.78%) PyTorch
8 7 (2.78%) RESTful
9 5 (1.98%) JSON
10 4 (1.59%) AngularJS
10 4 (1.59%) NumPy
10 4 (1.59%) OAuth
10 4 (1.59%) OpenCV
10 4 (1.59%) Pandas
10 4 (1.59%) Spring Security
10 4 (1.59%) Spring Web Flow
10 4 (1.59%) SQLAlchemy
Miscellaneous
1 13 (5.16%) Management Information System
2 12 (4.76%) Legacy Systems
2 12 (4.76%) NHS
2 12 (4.76%) Product Ownership
3 7 (2.78%) Legacy Applications
4 6 (2.38%) Cloud Native
4 6 (2.38%) Cyber Threat
5 5 (1.98%) Data Centre
5 5 (1.98%) Freedom of Information
5 5 (1.98%) Onboarding
5 5 (1.98%) Wiki
6 4 (1.59%) Algorithms
6 4 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (1.59%) Data Structures
6 4 (1.59%) Device Driver
6 4 (1.59%) IVR
6 4 (1.59%) Security Operations Centre
6 4 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.19%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 20 (7.94%) Linux
2 12 (4.76%) Windows
3 10 (3.97%) Unix
4 4 (1.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.79%) Oracle Linux
5 2 (0.79%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.40%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (33.73%) Agile
2 41 (16.27%) DevOps
3 40 (15.87%) Problem-Solving
4 35 (13.89%) CI/CD
5 27 (10.71%) Infrastructure as Code
5 27 (10.71%) Migration
5 27 (10.71%) Project Management
6 26 (10.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 22 (8.73%) User Experience
8 20 (7.94%) Business Intelligence
8 20 (7.94%) Continuous Improvement
8 20 (7.94%) Cybersecurity
8 20 (7.94%) Mentoring
8 20 (7.94%) Roadmaps
8 20 (7.94%) Stakeholder Management
9 16 (6.35%) Data Analysis
9 16 (6.35%) Data Protection
9 16 (6.35%) Disaster Recovery
10 15 (5.95%) Coaching
10 15 (5.95%) Service Design
Programming Languages
1 32 (12.70%) Python
2 24 (9.52%) Java
3 21 (8.33%) TypeScript
4 20 (7.94%) JavaScript
5 17 (6.75%) SQL
6 14 (5.56%) PowerShell
7 11 (4.37%) C#
8 7 (2.78%) Bash
9 6 (2.38%) Bicep
10 5 (1.98%) Shell Script
11 4 (1.59%) Perl
12 3 (1.19%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.79%) Apex Code
13 2 (0.79%) Go
13 2 (0.79%) Groovy
13 2 (0.79%) R
14 1 (0.40%) C
14 1 (0.40%) C++
14 1 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 48 (19.05%) Security Cleared
2 22 (8.73%) Degree
3 19 (7.54%) SC Cleared
4 15 (5.95%) BPSS Clearance
5 9 (3.57%) Cisco Certification
6 8 (3.17%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (2.78%) CCNA
7 7 (2.78%) CISSP
8 5 (1.98%) DV Cleared
9 4 (1.59%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.59%) CCNP
9 4 (1.59%) CISM
9 4 (1.59%) CompTIA Security+
9 4 (1.59%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (1.59%) MCSA
10 3 (1.19%) CCIE
10 3 (1.19%) CEH
10 3 (1.19%) GIAC
10 3 (1.19%) SSCP
11 2 (0.79%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (8.33%) GDPR
2 20 (7.94%) Accessibility
3 14 (5.56%) Disclosure Scotland
4 13 (5.16%) QA
5 8 (3.17%) PMO
6 7 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (1.98%) Data Quality
7 5 (1.98%) SLA
8 4 (1.59%) PCI DSS
9 3 (1.19%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.79%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.79%) GRC
10 2 (0.79%) NCSC
11 1 (0.40%) COBIT
11 1 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.40%) NIST
11 1 (0.40%) P3O
11 1 (0.40%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (7.14%) Docker
2 8 (3.17%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.59%) KVM
3 4 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.40%) HDFS
4 1 (0.40%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 23 (9.13%) Terraform
2 21 (8.33%) Kubernetes
3 15 (5.95%) Grafana
4 7 (2.78%) Ansible
4 7 (2.78%) Prometheus
5 5 (1.98%) SCCM
6 4 (1.59%) Kibana
6 4 (1.59%) logstash
7 3 (1.19%) Argo
7 3 (1.19%) Istio
7 3 (1.19%) Red Hat Satellite
8 2 (0.79%) Fluentd
8 2 (0.79%) HAProxy
8 2 (0.79%) Nagios
8 2 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.40%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 53 (21.03%) Microsoft
2 22 (8.73%) Oracle
3 15 (5.95%) Cisco
4 6 (2.38%) Salesforce
4 6 (2.38%) Splunk
5 5 (1.98%) F5
5 5 (1.98%) Red Hat
6 4 (1.59%) Pega
6 4 (1.59%) SAP
6 4 (1.59%) ServiceNow
7 3 (1.19%) Avaya
7 3 (1.19%) Commvault
7 3 (1.19%) Genesys
7 3 (1.19%) Palo Alto
8 2 (0.79%) Adobe
9 1 (0.40%) CheckPoint
9 1 (0.40%) Informatica
9 1 (0.40%) NetApp
9 1 (0.40%) Remedy
9 1 (0.40%) Siemens