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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 1
Rank change year-on-year -3 -4 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 242 330 585
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 12.91% 20.63% 27.53%
As % of the General category 22.10% 28.28% 42.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 156 230 371
10th Percentile £309 £191 £156
25th Percentile £403 £371 £268
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% - -2.17%
75th Percentile £558 £519 £538
90th Percentile £675 £588 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 9 12
10th Percentile - £17.85 £12.00
25th Percentile - £19.59 £12.94
Median hourly rate £17.23 £23.00 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -25.09% +31.43% +13.97%
75th Percentile £21.40 £24.66 £18.86
90th Percentile £23.91 £31.86 £24.57
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £22.17 £21.00
% change year-on-year +7.47% +5.57% +2.84%

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 1,095 1,167 1,370
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 58.43% 72.94% 64.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 552 687 833
10th Percentile £250 £243 £178
25th Percentile £363 £368 £340
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £463 £464
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -0.22% -2.42%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £575
90th Percentile £675 £600 £653
UK median daily rate £510 £517 £525
% change year-on-year -1.35% -1.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 36 71
10th Percentile £12.60 £15.81 £12.00
25th Percentile £13.45 £16.08 £14.59
Median hourly rate £16.25 £20.94 £19.17
Median % change year-on-year -22.40% +9.23% -9.83%
75th Percentile £50.00 £24.66 £56.25
90th Percentile £61.85 £52.90 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.40 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.49% -8.67% -7.69%

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 May 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 21 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
Edinburgh -4 117 £450 - 13
Glasgow +8 101 £500 +5.26% 24
South Lanarkshire -4 12 £669 +42.23% 1
Lanarkshire 0 2 £431 +31.68% 12
West Lothian 0 2 £388 +106.67%
East Lothian +4 1 - - 1
North Lanarkshire -3 1 £350 -12.50%
Moray -3 1 - -
Fife - 1 - - 1
Aberdeen - 1 £138 - 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 8 (3.31%) Confluence
2 4 (1.65%) CMS
3 3 (1.24%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.83%) Apache
4 2 (0.83%) Drupal
5 1 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.41%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.41%) CICS
5 1 (0.41%) Exchange Server 2013
5 1 (0.41%) JBoss
5 1 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.41%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.41%) Umbraco
Applications
1 8 (3.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.41%) Adobe After Effects
4 1 (0.41%) Adobe Illustrator
4 1 (0.41%) InDesign
4 1 (0.41%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 6 (2.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.41%) Dynamics GP
2 1 (0.41%) IntelliMatch
2 1 (0.41%) iTrent
2 1 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.41%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.41%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 51 (21.07%) Azure
2 42 (17.36%) AWS
3 23 (9.50%) Power Platform
4 21 (8.68%) Azure DevOps
5 16 (6.61%) Microsoft 365
6 14 (5.79%) OCI
7 11 (4.55%) Serverless
8 8 (3.31%) Dynamics 365
8 8 (3.31%) PowerApps
9 7 (2.89%) Azure AI
9 7 (2.89%) Azure Cognitive Search
9 7 (2.89%) Azure Cognitive Services
9 7 (2.89%) GCP
9 7 (2.89%) Power Automate
10 6 (2.48%) Amazon EKS
10 6 (2.48%) AWS Lambda
10 6 (2.48%) Cloud Computing
10 6 (2.48%) SaaS
11 5 (2.07%) Amazon S3
11 5 (2.07%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.89%) DNS
2 6 (2.48%) Cisco Nexus
2 6 (2.48%) Wi-Fi
3 5 (2.07%) Firewall
3 5 (2.07%) WAN
4 4 (1.65%) LAN
4 4 (1.65%) Network Security
4 4 (1.65%) SD-WAN
4 4 (1.65%) VPN
5 3 (1.24%) Remote Desktop
6 2 (0.83%) BGP
6 2 (0.83%) Fibre Channel
6 2 (0.83%) Intranet
6 2 (0.83%) OSPF
6 2 (0.83%) SSH
6 2 (0.83%) SSL
6 2 (0.83%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.41%) DSL
7 1 (0.41%) MPLS
7 1 (0.41%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (7.44%) Power BI
2 9 (3.72%) Metadata
2 9 (3.72%) MySQL
2 9 (3.72%) Relational Database
3 7 (2.89%) SQL Server
4 6 (2.48%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.65%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (1.65%) Geospatial Data
5 4 (1.65%) MariaDB
6 3 (1.24%) Data Lake
6 3 (1.24%) Oracle Database
6 3 (1.24%) Snowflake Schema
7 2 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (0.83%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.83%) GIS
7 2 (0.83%) MongoDB
7 2 (0.83%) Power Query
8 1 (0.41%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.41%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.41%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 11 (4.55%) JIRA
2 7 (2.89%) Git
3 5 (2.07%) Selenium
4 4 (1.65%) Cucumber
4 4 (1.65%) Cypress.io
5 3 (1.24%) Jenkins
5 3 (1.24%) WebDriver
6 2 (0.83%) GitLab
6 2 (0.83%) NUnit
6 2 (0.83%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.83%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.41%) Jasmine
7 1 (0.41%) Karma Test Runner
7 1 (0.41%) MLflow
7 1 (0.41%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.41%) Subversion
7 1 (0.41%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.41%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.41%) Visual Studio
General
1 59 (24.38%) Social Skills
2 29 (11.98%) Finance
3 19 (7.85%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (4.55%) Legal
5 10 (4.13%) Influencing Skills
6 7 (2.89%) Organisational Skills
7 5 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.24%) Banking
8 3 (1.24%) Military
8 3 (1.24%) Police
8 3 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.83%) Local Government
9 2 (0.83%) Marketing
9 2 (0.83%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.41%) Back Office
10 1 (0.41%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 35 (14.46%) Analyst
2 25 (10.33%) Architect
3 20 (8.26%) Senior
4 19 (7.85%) Developer
5 18 (7.44%) Consultant
6 16 (6.61%) Lead
7 13 (5.37%) Project Manager
8 12 (4.96%) DevOps Engineer
9 8 (3.31%) Business Analyst
9 8 (3.31%) Cloud Consultant
9 8 (3.31%) DBA
9 8 (3.31%) Oracle Consultant
10 7 (2.89%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
10 7 (2.89%) Network Engineer
10 7 (2.89%) Solutions Architect
11 6 (2.48%) Help Desk Consultant
11 6 (2.48%) HR Consultant
11 6 (2.48%) Oracle HRMS Consultant
12 5 (2.07%) Cloud Architect
12 5 (2.07%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (8.26%) .NET
2 13 (5.37%) React
3 7 (2.89%) REST
4 6 (2.48%) JSON
4 6 (2.48%) RESTful
5 5 (2.07%) Spring
6 4 (1.65%) Spring Boot
7 3 (1.24%) ASP.NET
7 3 (1.24%) AWS CDK
7 3 (1.24%) Gherkin
7 3 (1.24%) Middleware
7 3 (1.24%) Playwright
7 3 (1.24%) XML
8 2 (0.83%) ADO
8 2 (0.83%) FastAPI
8 2 (0.83%) FHIR
8 2 (0.83%) Hugging Face
8 2 (0.83%) JWT
8 2 (0.83%) PyTorch
8 2 (0.83%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 18 (7.44%) Product Ownership
2 15 (6.20%) Management Information System
3 11 (4.55%) Legacy Systems
4 8 (3.31%) Data Centre
5 7 (2.89%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (2.48%) Legacy Applications
7 5 (2.07%) Data Structures
7 5 (2.07%) NHS
7 5 (2.07%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (1.65%) Cloud Native
8 4 (1.65%) Cyber Threat
9 3 (1.24%) Onboarding
9 3 (1.24%) Replication
9 3 (1.24%) Wiki
10 2 (0.83%) Cyberattack
10 2 (0.83%) Enterprise Software
10 2 (0.83%) Freedom of Information
10 2 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
10 2 (0.83%) PKI
10 2 (0.83%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 21 (8.68%) Linux
2 19 (7.85%) Windows
3 6 (2.48%) Windows Server
4 5 (2.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (2.07%) Windows 10
5 2 (0.83%) Unix
6 1 (0.41%) Android
6 1 (0.41%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.41%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.41%) Rocky
6 1 (0.41%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (26.86%) Agile
2 37 (15.29%) DevOps
3 33 (13.64%) Stakeholder Management
4 32 (13.22%) CI/CD
5 31 (12.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 30 (12.40%) Migration
7 28 (11.57%) Continuous Improvement
8 27 (11.16%) AI
8 27 (11.16%) Problem-Solving
9 25 (10.33%) Roadmaps
10 21 (8.68%) Decision-Making
11 18 (7.44%) Business Intelligence
11 18 (7.44%) Infrastructure as Code
12 17 (7.02%) Project Delivery
13 16 (6.61%) Coaching
14 15 (6.20%) Cybersecurity
15 14 (5.79%) Change Management
15 14 (5.79%) Machine Learning
15 14 (5.79%) Project Management
15 14 (5.79%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 29 (11.98%) Python
2 21 (8.68%) SQL
3 19 (7.85%) Java
4 17 (7.02%) C#
5 14 (5.79%) JavaScript
6 12 (4.96%) PowerShell
7 8 (3.31%) TypeScript
8 6 (2.48%) Bicep
9 4 (1.65%) Bash
10 2 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.41%) C++
11 1 (0.41%) COBOL
11 1 (0.41%) Go
11 1 (0.41%) JCL
11 1 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
11 1 (0.41%) Perl
11 1 (0.41%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.41%) SPARQL
11 1 (0.41%) VBA
11 1 (0.41%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 61 (25.21%) Security Cleared
2 39 (16.12%) SC Cleared
3 19 (7.85%) BPSS Clearance
4 15 (6.20%) Degree
5 8 (3.31%) DV Cleared
6 5 (2.07%) Microsoft Certification
7 4 (1.65%) CCNP
7 4 (1.65%) Cisco Certification
7 4 (1.65%) ITIL Certification
7 4 (1.65%) PMI Certification
8 3 (1.24%) CCAB
8 3 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (1.24%) PMP
9 2 (0.83%) CIPD
9 2 (0.83%) CompTIA CySA+
9 2 (0.83%) CompTIA Security+
9 2 (0.83%) IIBA
9 2 (0.83%) MCSE
9 2 (0.83%) Six Sigma Black Belt
9 2 (0.83%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.79%) QA
2 13 (5.37%) Disclosure Scotland
3 11 (4.55%) Accessibility
3 11 (4.55%) Data Quality
3 11 (4.55%) GDPR
4 5 (2.07%) PMO
5 4 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (1.65%) WCAG
6 3 (1.24%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (1.24%) GRC
6 3 (1.24%) NCSC
6 3 (1.24%) NIST
7 2 (0.83%) SLA
8 1 (0.41%) COBIT
8 1 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.41%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.41%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 9 (3.72%) Active Directory
2 7 (2.89%) Docker
3 4 (1.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (1.65%) VMware NSX
4 3 (1.24%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.83%) Ceph
5 2 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.83%) vSphere
6 1 (0.41%) HDFS
6 1 (0.41%) IAG
6 1 (0.41%) iptables
6 1 (0.41%) NFS
6 1 (0.41%) Samba
6 1 (0.41%) Squid
6 1 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 12 (4.96%) Terraform
2 10 (4.13%) Ansible
2 10 (4.13%) Kubernetes
3 5 (2.07%) Istio
3 5 (2.07%) Microsoft Intune
4 4 (1.65%) Grafana
5 2 (0.83%) Argo
5 2 (0.83%) SCCM
5 2 (0.83%) vMotion
6 1 (0.41%) PowerCLI
6 1 (0.41%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.41%) Rundeck
6 1 (0.41%) SELinux
6 1 (0.41%) systemd
6 1 (0.41%) vRealize
6 1 (0.41%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 43 (17.77%) Microsoft
2 23 (9.50%) Oracle
3 12 (4.96%) Google
4 10 (4.13%) Salesforce
5 8 (3.31%) Cisco
6 7 (2.89%) OpenAI
7 6 (2.48%) Palo Alto
7 6 (2.48%) VMware
8 4 (1.65%) F5
9 3 (1.24%) Greenplum
9 3 (1.24%) Informatica
9 3 (1.24%) Splunk
9 3 (1.24%) Talend
10 2 (0.83%) Arista
10 2 (0.83%) Atlassian
10 2 (0.83%) Juniper
10 2 (0.83%) Red Hat
11 1 (0.41%) FIS
11 1 (0.41%) Openreach
11 1 (0.41%) Workday