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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 1
Rank change year-on-year -3 -4 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 270 323 518
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 12.18% 19.17% 26.62%
As % of the General category 20.38% 26.89% 42.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 179 207 333
10th Percentile £325 £190 £162
25th Percentile £406 £353 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% - -2.70%
75th Percentile £573 £526 £538
90th Percentile £721 £600 £650
UK median daily rate £515 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +3.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 9 14
10th Percentile - £16.68 £12.00
25th Percentile - £18.54 £13.22
Median hourly rate - £19.83 £15.96
Median % change year-on-year - +24.25% +3.94%
75th Percentile - £27.95 £19.49
90th Percentile - £31.86 £23.90
UK median hourly rate £25.38 £19.92 £23.41
% change year-on-year +27.44% -14.93% +16.47%

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 1,325 1,201 1,232
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 59.77% 71.28% 63.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 707 712 748
10th Percentile £250 £238 £175
25th Percentile £363 £368 £310
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £467 £445
Median % change year-on-year -1.50% +5.06% -6.42%
75th Percentile £570 £538 £538
90th Percentile £650 £600 £638
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 43 49
10th Percentile £12.95 £15.68 £12.30
25th Percentile £13.45 £16.14 £13.50
Median hourly rate £16.56 £19.37 £16.92
Median % change year-on-year -14.51% +14.45% -11.78%
75th Percentile £43.96 £24.58 £20.93
90th Percentile £61.50 £39.45 £31.35
UK median hourly rate £33.00 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +31.21% -32.93% +22.79%

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 30 July 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 30 July 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 -2 128 £464 +0.22% 18
Glasgow +3 116 £490 +3.16% 26
South Lanarkshire -3 10 £669 +42.23% 1
Lanarkshire 0 4 £431 +231.73% 25
Dumfries and Galloway - 2 £500 -
East Lothian +4 1 - -
North Lanarkshire -3 1 £350 -12.50% 1
Aberdeen -4 1 £138 -58.80% 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 12 (4.44%) Confluence
2 6 (2.22%) CMS
3 5 (1.85%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.74%) JBoss
5 1 (0.37%) Apache
5 1 (0.37%) Drupal
5 1 (0.37%) IIS
5 1 (0.37%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.37%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 9 (3.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.85%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (1.11%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.37%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.37%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.37%) InDesign
5 1 (0.37%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 5 (1.85%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.74%) Dynamics GP
3 1 (0.37%) IntelliMatch
3 1 (0.37%) iTrent
3 1 (0.37%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.37%) SAP GRC
3 1 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 46 (17.04%) AWS
1 46 (17.04%) Azure
2 20 (7.41%) Power Platform
3 18 (6.67%) Azure DevOps
4 15 (5.56%) Microsoft 365
4 15 (5.56%) OCI
5 14 (5.19%) Amazon S3
6 13 (4.81%) Serverless
7 8 (2.96%) AWS Lambda
7 8 (2.96%) GCP
7 8 (2.96%) SaaS
8 7 (2.59%) AWS CloudFormation
9 6 (2.22%) Azure Monitor
9 6 (2.22%) Dynamics 365
9 6 (2.22%) Entra ID
9 6 (2.22%) GitHub
9 6 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
9 6 (2.22%) Power Automate
9 6 (2.22%) PowerApps
10 5 (1.85%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.59%) DNS
2 5 (1.85%) LAN
2 5 (1.85%) Wi-Fi
3 4 (1.48%) Firewall
3 4 (1.48%) SSL
3 4 (1.48%) WAN
4 3 (1.11%) Cisco Nexus
4 3 (1.11%) Remote Desktop
4 3 (1.11%) SD-WAN
4 3 (1.11%) SSH
4 3 (1.11%) VPN
4 3 (1.11%) Wireless
5 2 (0.74%) HTTPS
5 2 (0.74%) Network Security
6 1 (0.37%) Intranet
6 1 (0.37%) MPLS
6 1 (0.37%) SDH
6 1 (0.37%) Structured Cabling
6 1 (0.37%) VLAN
6 1 (0.37%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (5.19%) Power BI
2 9 (3.33%) MongoDB
2 9 (3.33%) MySQL
2 9 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (2.59%) MariaDB
3 7 (2.59%) Metadata
4 6 (2.22%) Amazon Aurora
4 6 (2.22%) Relational Database
4 6 (2.22%) SQL Server
5 4 (1.48%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (1.11%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (1.11%) DynamoDB
6 3 (1.11%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.74%) Geospatial Data
7 2 (0.74%) MS Access
7 2 (0.74%) Power Query
7 2 (0.74%) SQLPlus
8 1 (0.37%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.37%) OpenStack Swift
8 1 (0.37%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 16 (5.93%) JIRA
2 12 (4.44%) Jenkins
3 11 (4.07%) Git
4 8 (2.96%) Cypress.io
5 6 (2.22%) Selenium
6 4 (1.48%) Cucumber
6 4 (1.48%) Gradle
6 4 (1.48%) Maven
6 4 (1.48%) Subversion
7 3 (1.11%) GitLab
7 3 (1.11%) GoCD
7 3 (1.11%) JProfiler
7 3 (1.11%) JUnit
8 2 (0.74%) Appium
8 2 (0.74%) Postman
8 2 (0.74%) REST Assured
8 2 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.74%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.74%) WebDriver
9 1 (0.37%) Oracle APEX
General
1 82 (30.37%) Social Skills
2 37 (13.70%) Finance
3 21 (7.78%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (3.33%) Legal
4 9 (3.33%) Organisational Skills
5 8 (2.96%) Influencing Skills
6 7 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.48%) Local Government
7 4 (1.48%) Marketing
8 3 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
8 3 (1.11%) Publishing
9 2 (0.74%) Banking
9 2 (0.74%) Military
9 2 (0.74%) Retail
9 2 (0.74%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.37%) Back Office
10 1 (0.37%) Law
10 1 (0.37%) Police
10 1 (0.37%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 32 (11.85%) Analyst
1 32 (11.85%) Developer
2 26 (9.63%) Architect
2 26 (9.63%) Senior
3 18 (6.67%) Project Manager
4 17 (6.30%) Lead
5 14 (5.19%) Consultant
5 14 (5.19%) DevOps Engineer
6 12 (4.44%) Solutions Architect
7 10 (3.70%) Designer
8 8 (2.96%) Administrator
8 8 (2.96%) Business Analyst
8 8 (2.96%) Cloud Consultant
8 8 (2.96%) Cloud Engineer
8 8 (2.96%) Oracle Consultant
8 8 (2.96%) Software Developer
9 7 (2.59%) Network Engineer
10 6 (2.22%) Help Desk Consultant
10 6 (2.22%) Oracle HRMS Consultant
10 6 (2.22%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (4.81%) Spring
1 13 (4.81%) Spring Boot
2 11 (4.07%) .NET
2 11 (4.07%) React
3 10 (3.70%) REST
4 8 (2.96%) Playwright
5 7 (2.59%) RESTful
5 7 (2.59%) Web Services
6 6 (2.22%) AWS CDK
6 6 (2.22%) Node.js
7 5 (1.85%) Jest
8 4 (1.48%) JSON
8 4 (1.48%) Middleware
8 4 (1.48%) OAuth
8 4 (1.48%) OAuth2
9 3 (1.11%) ASP.NET
9 3 (1.11%) FreeMarker
9 3 (1.11%) JSF
9 3 (1.11%) SOAP
9 3 (1.11%) Spring Security
Miscellaneous
1 21 (7.78%) Product Ownership
2 15 (5.56%) Legacy Systems
3 11 (4.07%) Data Protection Act
4 10 (3.70%) Cloud Native
4 10 (3.70%) Management Information System
5 8 (2.96%) NHS
6 5 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (1.48%) Legacy Applications
8 3 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
9 2 (0.74%) Data Centre
9 2 (0.74%) Distributed Systems
9 2 (0.74%) Freedom of Information
9 2 (0.74%) Mainframe
9 2 (0.74%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.74%) PKI
10 1 (0.37%) Blog
10 1 (0.37%) Data Structures
10 1 (0.37%) Replication
10 1 (0.37%) Smartphone
10 1 (0.37%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 20 (7.41%) Linux
2 16 (5.93%) Windows
3 6 (2.22%) Windows Server
4 5 (1.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (1.48%) 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%) SUSE
6 1 (0.37%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.37%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (28.89%) Agile
2 47 (17.41%) Stakeholder Management
3 45 (16.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 44 (16.30%) DevOps
5 41 (15.19%) Continuous Improvement
6 38 (14.07%) CI/CD
7 25 (9.26%) Migration
8 24 (8.89%) AI
8 24 (8.89%) Project Delivery
9 22 (8.15%) Infrastructure as Code
9 22 (8.15%) Problem-Solving
10 20 (7.41%) Scrum
11 19 (7.04%) Microservices
12 18 (6.67%) Decision-Making
12 18 (6.67%) Mentoring
12 18 (6.67%) Roadmaps
13 17 (6.30%) Cybersecurity
13 17 (6.30%) Data Protection
14 16 (5.93%) Project Management
14 16 (5.93%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 23 (8.52%) Java
2 22 (8.15%) JavaScript
2 22 (8.15%) Python
3 19 (7.04%) SQL
4 14 (5.19%) TypeScript
5 12 (4.44%) C#
6 10 (3.70%) PowerShell
7 7 (2.59%) Bicep
8 6 (2.22%) Bash
9 3 (1.11%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 2 (0.74%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.37%) Groovy
11 1 (0.37%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.37%) VB.NET
11 1 (0.37%) VBA
11 1 (0.37%) XPath
Qualifications
1 52 (19.26%) Security Cleared
2 42 (15.56%) SC Cleared
3 17 (6.30%) BPSS Clearance
4 10 (3.70%) Degree
5 9 (3.33%) DV Cleared
6 5 (1.85%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (1.85%) PMI Certification
6 5 (1.85%) PMP
7 4 (1.48%) ITIL Certification
8 3 (1.11%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.11%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 3 (1.11%) CCAB
8 3 (1.11%) CISSP
8 3 (1.11%) MCSE
8 3 (1.11%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 2 (0.74%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (0.74%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
9 2 (0.74%) IIBA
9 2 (0.74%) Six Sigma Black Belt
9 2 (0.74%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (6.67%) Accessibility
2 16 (5.93%) Disclosure Scotland
3 11 (4.07%) QA
4 10 (3.70%) Data Quality
4 10 (3.70%) GDPR
5 9 (3.33%) PMO
6 6 (2.22%) NIST
7 5 (1.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (1.85%) WCAG
8 4 (1.48%) NCSC
9 3 (1.11%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.74%) GRC
10 2 (0.74%) SLA
11 1 (0.37%) ISO 20022
11 1 (0.37%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 10 (3.70%) Active Directory
2 8 (2.96%) Docker
3 5 (1.85%) Hyper-V
4 3 (1.11%) Ceph
4 3 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.74%) Squid
5 2 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.37%) IAG
6 1 (0.37%) iptables
6 1 (0.37%) NFS
6 1 (0.37%) Samba
6 1 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 20 (7.41%) Terraform
2 13 (4.81%) Kubernetes
3 7 (2.59%) Grafana
4 6 (2.22%) Ansible
4 6 (2.22%) Istio
4 6 (2.22%) Microsoft Intune
5 4 (1.48%) Argo
6 3 (1.11%) Kibana
6 3 (1.11%) Prometheus
6 3 (1.11%) SCCM
7 2 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.37%) Rundeck
8 1 (0.37%) SELinux
8 1 (0.37%) systemd
8 1 (0.37%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 38 (14.07%) Microsoft
2 33 (12.22%) Oracle
3 9 (3.33%) Salesforce
4 7 (2.59%) Google
5 6 (2.22%) Cisco
6 5 (1.85%) MuleSoft
7 3 (1.11%) F5
7 3 (1.11%) Palo Alto
7 3 (1.11%) Red Hat
7 3 (1.11%) SAP
7 3 (1.11%) UiPath
7 3 (1.11%) VMware
8 2 (0.74%) Atlassian
8 2 (0.74%) Okta
8 2 (0.74%) OpenAI
8 2 (0.74%) SaltStack
9 1 (0.37%) Confluent
9 1 (0.37%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.37%) IFS
9 1 (0.37%) Openreach