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 3 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 4 1
Rank change year-on-year -3 -3 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 243 354 704
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 16.03% 22.11% 29.35%
As % of the General category 24.72% 32.01% 43.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 151 258 434
10th Percentile £238 £190 £158
25th Percentile £391 £361 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £446 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.84% -6.05% +1.60%
75th Percentile £540 £501 £574
90th Percentile £580 £600 £663
UK median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 11 11
10th Percentile £15.25 £19.59 £11.65
25th Percentile - £21.05 £12.77
Median hourly rate £17.23 £24.18 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.74% +38.17% -1.24%
75th Percentile £25.58 £28.07 £38.94
90th Percentile £27.72 £34.50 £55.00
UK median hourly rate £21.30 £25.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year -14.80% +25.00% +5.26%

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 983 1,106 1,605
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 64.84% 69.08% 66.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 540 666 968
10th Percentile £200 £192 £200
25th Percentile £359 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £484
Median % change year-on-year - -6.93% +1.79%
75th Percentile £569 £538 £588
90th Percentile £675 £625 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 31 71
10th Percentile £13.00 £16.10 £11.86
25th Percentile £13.50 £20.97 £16.25
Median hourly rate £17.87 £24.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -25.54% -7.69% +53.53%
75th Percentile £30.38 £28.07 £60.75
90th Percentile £70.80 £65.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £22.50 £29.00 £25.79
% change year-on-year -22.41% +12.45% +3.16%

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 3 February 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in Scotland

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Public Sector in Scotland over the 6 months to 3 February 2026.

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 3 February 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 -4 130 £448 +3.83% 12
Glasgow 0 92 £500 +11.11% 26
South Lanarkshire - 7 £550 - 2
West Lothian - 3 £276 - 3
Stirling 0 1 £275 -26.67%
Midlothian - 1 £150 - 10
North Lanarkshire - 1 £314 -
Moray - 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 6 (2.47%) Confluence
1 6 (2.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (2.06%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.65%) CMS
4 3 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.82%) Apache
5 2 (0.82%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.82%) Apache TomEE
5 2 (0.82%) ArcGIS
5 2 (0.82%) Drupal
5 2 (0.82%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.41%) CICS
6 1 (0.41%) Exchange Server 2013
6 1 (0.41%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 11 (4.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (3.70%) Microsoft Project
3 5 (2.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.82%) Adobe Illustrator
4 2 (0.82%) InDesign
4 2 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.82%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.41%) Adobe After Effects
5 1 (0.41%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.41%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 12 (4.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.41%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 55 (22.63%) Azure
2 49 (20.16%) AWS
3 26 (10.70%) Power Platform
4 17 (7.00%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (6.17%) Microsoft 365
6 14 (5.76%) AWS CloudFormation
6 14 (5.76%) Dynamics 365
6 14 (5.76%) Serverless
7 12 (4.94%) AWS Lambda
7 12 (4.94%) Power Automate
8 11 (4.53%) PowerApps
9 10 (4.12%) Cloud Computing
10 9 (3.70%) SaaS
11 8 (3.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 8 (3.29%) Amazon S3
12 7 (2.88%) Entra ID
12 7 (2.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 6 (2.47%) OpenShift
14 5 (2.06%) GCP
14 5 (2.06%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (4.53%) Firewall
2 10 (4.12%) WAN
3 6 (2.47%) Network Security
3 6 (2.47%) VPN
4 5 (2.06%) Cisco Nexus
4 5 (2.06%) LAN
4 5 (2.06%) Wi-Fi
5 3 (1.23%) BGP
5 3 (1.23%) MPLS
5 3 (1.23%) OSPF
5 3 (1.23%) Unified Communications
6 2 (0.82%) Cisco ISE
6 2 (0.82%) DNS
6 2 (0.82%) Fibre Channel
6 2 (0.82%) Intranet
6 2 (0.82%) SDH
6 2 (0.82%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.82%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.82%) VoIP
7 1 (0.41%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (7.41%) Power BI
2 12 (4.94%) SQL Server
3 10 (4.12%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (4.12%) Relational Database
4 9 (3.70%) MySQL
5 6 (2.47%) Amazon Aurora
6 5 (2.06%) Amazon Athena
6 5 (2.06%) DynamoDB
6 5 (2.06%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (1.65%) Data Lake
7 4 (1.65%) GIS
7 4 (1.65%) Metadata
8 3 (1.23%) Geospatial Data
8 3 (1.23%) NoSQL
8 3 (1.23%) Snowflake Schema
9 2 (0.82%) Big Data
9 2 (0.82%) Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.82%) Oracle Database
9 2 (0.82%) Spatial Data
10 1 (0.41%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 9 (3.70%) JIRA
2 8 (3.29%) Git
3 7 (2.88%) Jenkins
4 3 (1.23%) Cucumber
4 3 (1.23%) Cypress.io
4 3 (1.23%) GitLab
5 2 (0.82%) Ant
5 2 (0.82%) Axure RP
5 2 (0.82%) Eclipse
5 2 (0.82%) Maven
5 2 (0.82%) MLflow
5 2 (0.82%) Postman
5 2 (0.82%) Selenium
5 2 (0.82%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.82%) WebDriver
6 1 (0.41%) ERwin
6 1 (0.41%) JUnit
6 1 (0.41%) NUnit
6 1 (0.41%) Subversion
6 1 (0.41%) Visual Studio
General
1 71 (29.22%) Social Skills
2 30 (12.35%) Finance
3 24 (9.88%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (4.12%) Influencing Skills
5 6 (2.47%) Legal
5 6 (2.47%) Organisational Skills
6 4 (1.65%) Documentation Skills
6 4 (1.65%) Local Government
6 4 (1.65%) Presentation Skills
6 4 (1.65%) Telecoms
7 3 (1.23%) Military
7 3 (1.23%) Police
7 3 (1.23%) Retail
8 2 (0.82%) Back Office
8 2 (0.82%) Banking
8 2 (0.82%) Publishing
9 1 (0.41%) Billing
9 1 (0.41%) General Ledger
9 1 (0.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.41%) Law
Job Titles
1 35 (14.40%) Developer
2 28 (11.52%) Analyst
3 27 (11.11%) Architect
4 16 (6.58%) Senior
5 14 (5.76%) Project Manager
6 12 (4.94%) Solutions Architect
7 10 (4.12%) Lead
8 9 (3.70%) Business Analyst
8 9 (3.70%) Network Engineer
9 8 (3.29%) Cloud Engineer
9 8 (3.29%) Consultant
9 8 (3.29%) DBA
9 8 (3.29%) Java Developer
9 8 (3.29%) Power Platform Developer
10 6 (2.47%) .NET Developer
10 6 (2.47%) Project Officer
10 6 (2.47%) Project Support Officer
10 6 (2.47%) Support Officer
11 5 (2.06%) Operations Engineer
11 5 (2.06%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (6.58%) .NET
2 15 (6.17%) React
3 8 (3.29%) Node.js
3 8 (3.29%) REST
3 8 (3.29%) Spring
4 7 (2.88%) PyTorch
5 6 (2.47%) AWS CDK
5 6 (2.47%) HTML
5 6 (2.47%) RESTful
6 5 (2.06%) CSS
6 5 (2.06%) JSON
7 4 (1.65%) Elastic Stack
7 4 (1.65%) Hugging Face
7 4 (1.65%) NumPy
7 4 (1.65%) OpenCV
7 4 (1.65%) Pandas
7 4 (1.65%) Spring Boot
7 4 (1.65%) SQLAlchemy
8 3 (1.23%) boto
8 3 (1.23%) SpaCy
Miscellaneous
1 19 (7.82%) Product Ownership
2 12 (4.94%) NHS
3 11 (4.53%) Management Information System
4 10 (4.12%) Data Centre
5 8 (3.29%) Legacy Applications
5 8 (3.29%) Legacy Systems
6 7 (2.88%) Data Structures
7 6 (2.47%) Cyber Threat
8 5 (2.06%) Onboarding
8 5 (2.06%) Wiki
9 4 (1.65%) Algorithms
9 4 (1.65%) Cloud Native
9 4 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (1.65%) Hybrid Cloud
9 4 (1.65%) IVR
9 4 (1.65%) Security Operations Centre
9 4 (1.65%) Web Conferencing
10 3 (1.23%) EPoS
10 3 (1.23%) Freedom of Information
10 3 (1.23%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 16 (6.58%) Linux
2 14 (5.76%) Windows
3 7 (2.88%) Unix
4 5 (2.06%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.41%) Solaris
6 1 (0.41%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (30.86%) Agile
2 45 (18.52%) Problem-Solving
3 37 (15.23%) DevOps
4 27 (11.11%) Migration
5 26 (10.70%) CI/CD
5 26 (10.70%) Stakeholder Management
6 25 (10.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 22 (9.05%) Project Management
8 20 (8.23%) Infrastructure as Code
9 19 (7.82%) AI
9 19 (7.82%) Roadmaps
10 18 (7.41%) Business Intelligence
11 17 (7.00%) CRM
11 17 (7.00%) SDLC
11 17 (7.00%) User Experience
12 16 (6.58%) Collaborative Working
12 16 (6.58%) Continuous Improvement
12 16 (6.58%) Cybersecurity
12 16 (6.58%) Data Protection
12 16 (6.58%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 33 (13.58%) Python
2 20 (8.23%) Java
3 18 (7.41%) C#
3 18 (7.41%) PowerShell
4 17 (7.00%) SQL
5 15 (6.17%) JavaScript
6 13 (5.35%) TypeScript
7 7 (2.88%) Bicep
8 3 (1.23%) Bash
9 2 (0.82%) Apex Code
9 2 (0.82%) Go
10 1 (0.41%) C++
10 1 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.41%) JCL
10 1 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
10 1 (0.41%) Perl
10 1 (0.41%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.41%) SPARQL
10 1 (0.41%) VBA
10 1 (0.41%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 48 (19.75%) Security Cleared
2 21 (8.64%) Degree
3 20 (8.23%) SC Cleared
4 18 (7.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 9 (3.70%) Cisco Certification
6 6 (2.47%) CCNP
6 6 (2.47%) CISSP
6 6 (2.47%) DV Cleared
6 6 (2.47%) Microsoft Certification
7 5 (2.06%) CCNA
7 5 (2.06%) CompTIA Security+
8 4 (1.65%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.65%) CCIE
9 3 (1.23%) CISM
9 3 (1.23%) CompTIA CySA+
9 3 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (1.23%) GIAC
9 3 (1.23%) SSCP
10 2 (0.82%) CEH
10 2 (0.82%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (7.82%) QA
2 17 (7.00%) Disclosure Scotland
3 16 (6.58%) GDPR
4 14 (5.76%) Accessibility
5 9 (3.70%) Data Quality
6 7 (2.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (2.88%) PMO
7 4 (1.65%) PCI DSS
7 4 (1.65%) SLA
8 3 (1.23%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.82%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.82%) GRC
9 2 (0.82%) NCSC
10 1 (0.41%) COBIT
10 1 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.41%) NIST
10 1 (0.41%) P3O
System Software
1 10 (4.12%) Docker
2 7 (2.88%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.65%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (1.65%) VMware NSX
4 3 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.82%) vSphere
6 1 (0.41%) HDFS
6 1 (0.41%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 14 (5.76%) Terraform
2 10 (4.12%) Kubernetes
3 8 (3.29%) Ansible
4 7 (2.88%) Grafana
5 4 (1.65%) Kibana
5 4 (1.65%) logstash
6 3 (1.23%) SCCM
7 2 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.82%) vMotion
8 1 (0.41%) PowerCLI
8 1 (0.41%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.41%) vRealize
Vendors
1 54 (22.22%) Microsoft
2 17 (7.00%) Cisco
3 13 (5.35%) Oracle
4 8 (3.29%) Google
5 7 (2.88%) Salesforce
6 6 (2.47%) Splunk
7 5 (2.06%) F5
7 5 (2.06%) OpenAI
7 5 (2.06%) Palo Alto
7 5 (2.06%) VMware
8 4 (1.65%) ServiceNow
9 3 (1.23%) Avaya
9 3 (1.23%) Genesys
9 3 (1.23%) Greenplum
9 3 (1.23%) Informatica
9 3 (1.23%) Pega
9 3 (1.23%) Red Hat
9 3 (1.23%) Talend
10 2 (0.82%) Adobe
10 2 (0.82%) Juniper