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

6 months to
9 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 248 360 699
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 16.29% 22.14% 29.08%
As % of the General category 25.36% 31.94% 43.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 152 264 428
10th Percentile £238 £186 £157
25th Percentile £375 £322 £362
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £443 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.58% -6.74% +2.15%
75th Percentile £540 £504 £575
90th Percentile £580 £596 £663
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 9 12
10th Percentile £15.25 £18.67 £11.71
25th Percentile - £22.50 £13.00
Median hourly rate £17.23 £24.18 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.74% +38.17% +2.70%
75th Percentile £25.58 £27.75 £30.90
90th Percentile £27.72 £31.20 £55.00
UK median hourly rate £21.80 £25.00 £20.35
% change year-on-year -12.80% +22.84% +2.43%

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 978 1,127 1,602
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 64.26% 69.31% 66.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 541 674 963
10th Percentile £188 £192 £200
25th Percentile £358 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £480
Median % change year-on-year - -6.25% +1.05%
75th Percentile £564 £538 £588
90th Percentile £675 £625 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 29 72
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.88 £11.87
25th Percentile £13.47 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £17.87 £24.00 £26.25
Median % change year-on-year -25.54% -8.57% +55.00%
75th Percentile £30.38 £27.75 £60.75
90th Percentile £70.80 £66.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 £25.25
% change year-on-year -21.34% +14.85% -2.88%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -3 128 £448 +5.29% 12
Glasgow +3 98 £500 +11.11% 20
South Lanarkshire 0 7 £550 -
West Lothian - 3 £276 - 2
Stirling -1 1 £275 -26.67%
Midlothian - 1 £150 - 11
North Lanarkshire - 1 £314 -
Moray - 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 7 (2.82%) Confluence
2 6 (2.42%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (1.61%) CMS
3 4 (1.61%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.21%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.81%) Apache
5 2 (0.81%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.81%) Apache TomEE
5 2 (0.81%) ArcGIS
5 2 (0.81%) Drupal
5 2 (0.81%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.40%) CICS
6 1 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2013
6 1 (0.40%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 11 (4.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (3.23%) Microsoft Project
3 5 (2.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.81%) Adobe Illustrator
4 2 (0.81%) InDesign
4 2 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.81%) 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 12 (4.84%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.40%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 59 (23.79%) Azure
2 50 (20.16%) AWS
3 25 (10.08%) Power Platform
4 19 (7.66%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (6.05%) Microsoft 365
6 14 (5.65%) AWS CloudFormation
6 14 (5.65%) Dynamics 365
6 14 (5.65%) Serverless
7 12 (4.84%) AWS Lambda
8 11 (4.44%) Power Automate
8 11 (4.44%) PowerApps
9 9 (3.63%) Cloud Computing
9 9 (3.63%) SaaS
10 8 (3.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 8 (3.23%) Amazon S3
11 7 (2.82%) Entra ID
11 7 (2.82%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 6 (2.42%) OpenShift
13 5 (2.02%) GCP
13 5 (2.02%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 10 (4.03%) WAN
2 9 (3.63%) Firewall
3 6 (2.42%) VPN
4 5 (2.02%) Cisco Nexus
4 5 (2.02%) LAN
4 5 (2.02%) Network Security
4 5 (2.02%) Wi-Fi
5 3 (1.21%) BGP
5 3 (1.21%) MPLS
5 3 (1.21%) OSPF
6 2 (0.81%) Cisco ISE
6 2 (0.81%) DNS
6 2 (0.81%) Fibre Channel
6 2 (0.81%) Intranet
6 2 (0.81%) SDH
6 2 (0.81%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.81%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.40%) Cisco Firepower
7 1 (0.40%) Ethernet VPN
7 1 (0.40%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (6.85%) Power BI
2 12 (4.84%) SQL Server
3 10 (4.03%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (4.03%) Relational Database
4 9 (3.63%) MySQL
5 6 (2.42%) Amazon Aurora
6 5 (2.02%) Amazon Athena
6 5 (2.02%) DynamoDB
6 5 (2.02%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (1.61%) Data Lake
7 4 (1.61%) GIS
7 4 (1.61%) Metadata
8 3 (1.21%) Geospatial Data
8 3 (1.21%) NoSQL
8 3 (1.21%) Snowflake Schema
9 2 (0.81%) Big Data
9 2 (0.81%) Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.81%) Oracle Database
9 2 (0.81%) Spatial Data
10 1 (0.40%) Electronic Patient Records
Development Applications
1 10 (4.03%) JIRA
2 8 (3.23%) Git
3 7 (2.82%) Jenkins
4 3 (1.21%) Cucumber
4 3 (1.21%) Cypress.io
4 3 (1.21%) GitLab
5 2 (0.81%) Ant
5 2 (0.81%) Axure RP
5 2 (0.81%) Eclipse
5 2 (0.81%) Maven
5 2 (0.81%) MLflow
5 2 (0.81%) Postman
5 2 (0.81%) Selenium
5 2 (0.81%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.81%) WebDriver
6 1 (0.40%) ERwin
6 1 (0.40%) JUnit
6 1 (0.40%) NUnit
6 1 (0.40%) Subversion
6 1 (0.40%) Visual Studio
General
1 72 (29.03%) Social Skills
2 31 (12.50%) Finance
3 24 (9.68%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (4.03%) Influencing Skills
5 7 (2.82%) Legal
6 6 (2.42%) Organisational Skills
7 4 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.61%) Local Government
7 4 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
7 4 (1.61%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.21%) Military
8 3 (1.21%) Police
8 3 (1.21%) Retail
9 2 (0.81%) Back Office
9 2 (0.81%) Banking
9 2 (0.81%) Publishing
10 1 (0.40%) Billing
10 1 (0.40%) General Ledger
10 1 (0.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.40%) Law
Job Titles
1 36 (14.52%) Developer
2 28 (11.29%) Analyst
2 28 (11.29%) Architect
3 18 (7.26%) Senior
4 14 (5.65%) Project Manager
5 12 (4.84%) Solutions Architect
6 10 (4.03%) Lead
7 9 (3.63%) Business Analyst
7 9 (3.63%) Network Engineer
8 8 (3.23%) Cloud Engineer
8 8 (3.23%) Consultant
8 8 (3.23%) DBA
8 8 (3.23%) Java Developer
8 8 (3.23%) Power Platform Developer
9 7 (2.82%) .NET Developer
9 7 (2.82%) Project Officer
9 7 (2.82%) Project Support Officer
9 7 (2.82%) Support Officer
10 5 (2.02%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 5 (2.02%) Operations Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (6.85%) .NET
2 16 (6.45%) React
3 8 (3.23%) Node.js
3 8 (3.23%) REST
3 8 (3.23%) Spring
4 7 (2.82%) PyTorch
5 6 (2.42%) AWS CDK
5 6 (2.42%) HTML
5 6 (2.42%) RESTful
6 5 (2.02%) CSS
6 5 (2.02%) JSON
7 4 (1.61%) Elastic Stack
7 4 (1.61%) Hugging Face
7 4 (1.61%) NumPy
7 4 (1.61%) OpenCV
7 4 (1.61%) Pandas
7 4 (1.61%) Spring Boot
7 4 (1.61%) SQLAlchemy
8 3 (1.21%) boto
8 3 (1.21%) SpaCy
Miscellaneous
1 20 (8.06%) Product Ownership
2 12 (4.84%) Management Information System
2 12 (4.84%) NHS
3 10 (4.03%) Data Centre
4 9 (3.63%) Legacy Applications
4 9 (3.63%) Legacy Systems
5 7 (2.82%) Data Structures
6 6 (2.42%) Cyber Threat
6 6 (2.42%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (2.42%) Wiki
7 5 (2.02%) Hybrid Cloud
7 5 (2.02%) Onboarding
8 4 (1.61%) Algorithms
8 4 (1.61%) Cloud Native
8 4 (1.61%) Freedom of Information
8 4 (1.61%) IVR
8 4 (1.61%) Security Operations Centre
8 4 (1.61%) Web Conferencing
9 3 (1.21%) EPoS
9 3 (1.21%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 14 (5.65%) Linux
2 12 (4.84%) Windows
3 5 (2.02%) Unix
3 5 (2.02%) Windows Server
4 3 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.40%) Solaris
5 1 (0.40%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
5 1 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (30.24%) Agile
2 45 (18.15%) Problem-Solving
3 39 (15.73%) DevOps
4 29 (11.69%) Migration
5 26 (10.48%) CI/CD
5 26 (10.48%) Stakeholder Management
6 25 (10.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 22 (8.87%) Project Management
8 21 (8.47%) Infrastructure as Code
9 20 (8.06%) AI
10 19 (7.66%) Roadmaps
11 18 (7.26%) Cybersecurity
11 18 (7.26%) User Experience
12 17 (6.85%) Business Intelligence
12 17 (6.85%) CRM
12 17 (6.85%) Data Protection
12 17 (6.85%) SDLC
13 16 (6.45%) Collaborative Working
13 16 (6.45%) Continuous Improvement
13 16 (6.45%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 34 (13.71%) Python
2 20 (8.06%) Java
3 18 (7.26%) C#
3 18 (7.26%) PowerShell
4 17 (6.85%) SQL
5 15 (6.05%) JavaScript
6 13 (5.24%) TypeScript
7 8 (3.23%) Bicep
8 3 (1.21%) Bash
9 2 (0.81%) Apex Code
9 2 (0.81%) Go
10 1 (0.40%) C++
10 1 (0.40%) COBOL
10 1 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.40%) JCL
10 1 (0.40%) Perl
10 1 (0.40%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.40%) SPARQL
10 1 (0.40%) VBA
10 1 (0.40%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 49 (19.76%) Security Cleared
2 21 (8.47%) SC Cleared
3 20 (8.06%) Degree
4 18 (7.26%) BPSS Clearance
5 7 (2.82%) Cisco Certification
6 6 (2.42%) CISSP
6 6 (2.42%) DV Cleared
6 6 (2.42%) Microsoft Certification
7 5 (2.02%) CompTIA Security+
8 4 (1.61%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.61%) CCNP
9 3 (1.21%) CCNA
9 3 (1.21%) CISM
9 3 (1.21%) CompTIA CySA+
9 3 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (1.21%) GIAC
9 3 (1.21%) SSCP
10 2 (0.81%) CEH
10 2 (0.81%) CIPD
10 2 (0.81%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (8.06%) QA
2 19 (7.66%) GDPR
3 18 (7.26%) Disclosure Scotland
4 13 (5.24%) Accessibility
5 10 (4.03%) Data Quality
6 9 (3.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (2.42%) PMO
8 4 (1.61%) NCSC
8 4 (1.61%) PCI DSS
8 4 (1.61%) SLA
9 3 (1.21%) HIPAA
9 3 (1.21%) NIST
10 2 (0.81%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.81%) GRC
11 1 (0.40%) COBIT
11 1 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 10 (4.03%) Docker
2 7 (2.82%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.61%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (1.61%) VMware NSX
4 3 (1.21%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.81%) vSphere
6 1 (0.40%) HDFS
6 1 (0.40%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 15 (6.05%) Terraform
2 10 (4.03%) Kubernetes
3 8 (3.23%) Ansible
4 7 (2.82%) Grafana
5 4 (1.61%) Kibana
5 4 (1.61%) logstash
6 3 (1.21%) SCCM
7 2 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.81%) vMotion
8 1 (0.40%) PowerCLI
8 1 (0.40%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.40%) vRealize
Vendors
1 54 (21.77%) Microsoft
2 15 (6.05%) Cisco
3 13 (5.24%) Oracle
4 9 (3.63%) Google
5 7 (2.82%) Salesforce
6 6 (2.42%) Splunk
7 5 (2.02%) F5
7 5 (2.02%) OpenAI
7 5 (2.02%) Palo Alto
7 5 (2.02%) VMware
8 4 (1.61%) ServiceNow
9 3 (1.21%) Avaya
9 3 (1.21%) Genesys
9 3 (1.21%) Greenplum
9 3 (1.21%) Informatica
9 3 (1.21%) Pega
9 3 (1.21%) Red Hat
9 3 (1.21%) Talend
10 2 (0.81%) Juniper
10 2 (0.81%) SAP