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

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 4 1
Rank change year-on-year -3 -3 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 243 345 688
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 16.23% 21.66% 29.13%
As % of the General category 24.52% 31.54% 43.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 155 249 420
10th Percentile £242 £190 £155
25th Percentile £403 £365 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -5.26% -
75th Percentile £538 £513 £575
90th Percentile £580 £600 £664
UK median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 11 11
10th Percentile £14.92 £19.59 £11.65
25th Percentile £16.41 £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 £20.21 £28.07 £38.94
90th Percentile £25.58 £34.50 £55.00
UK median hourly rate £21.30 £24.83 £20.00
% change year-on-year -14.22% +24.15% +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 991 1,094 1,587
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 66.20% 68.68% 67.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 556 655 948
10th Percentile £204 £190 £200
25th Percentile £363 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £458 £450 £487
Median % change year-on-year +1.67% -7.64% +2.58%
75th Percentile £556 £538 £588
90th Percentile £675 £623 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 32 72
10th Percentile £13.00 £16.34 £11.87
25th Percentile £13.50 £20.94 £16.25
Median hourly rate £17.87 £23.50 £26.25
Median % change year-on-year -23.96% -10.48% +55.00%
75th Percentile £30.00 £27.91 £60.75
90th Percentile £63.10 £62.75 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £22.85 £27.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -16.91% +5.77% +4.00%

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 27 January 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 27 January 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 27 January 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 -4 134 £450 - 18
Glasgow -4 88 £500 +11.11% 17
South Lanarkshire - 6 £550 - 1
West Lothian - 3 £276 - 1
Lanarkshire +4 1 £130 -75.24% 14
Stirling 0 1 £275 -21.43%
Midlothian - 1 £150 - 15
North Lanarkshire - 1 £314 -
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 3 (1.23%) CMS
4 2 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.82%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.82%) Apache TomEE
4 2 (0.82%) ArcGIS
4 2 (0.82%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.41%) Apache
5 1 (0.41%) CICS
5 1 (0.41%) Drupal
5 1 (0.41%) Exchange Server 2013
5 1 (0.41%) nginx
5 1 (0.41%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 13 (5.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (3.29%) Microsoft Project
3 6 (2.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.82%) Adobe Illustrator
5 2 (0.82%) InDesign
5 2 (0.82%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.41%) Adobe After Effects
6 1 (0.41%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 10 (4.12%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.41%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 57 (23.46%) Azure
2 50 (20.58%) AWS
3 26 (10.70%) Power Platform
4 17 (7.00%) Microsoft 365
5 16 (6.58%) Azure DevOps
6 15 (6.17%) AWS CloudFormation
6 15 (6.17%) Serverless
7 13 (5.35%) AWS Lambda
8 12 (4.94%) Dynamics 365
9 11 (4.53%) Amazon S3
9 11 (4.53%) OpenShift
10 10 (4.12%) Cloud Computing
10 10 (4.12%) Power Automate
10 10 (4.12%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 9 (3.70%) PowerApps
11 9 (3.70%) SaaS
12 8 (3.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 8 (3.29%) Entra ID
13 5 (2.06%) Amazon EventBridge
13 5 (2.06%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 11 (4.53%) Firewall
2 9 (3.70%) 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%) SDH
6 2 (0.82%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.82%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.82%) VoIP
7 1 (0.41%) Cisco Firepower
7 1 (0.41%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (6.58%) Power BI
2 11 (4.53%) PostgreSQL
2 11 (4.53%) SQL Server
3 8 (3.29%) Relational Database
4 7 (2.88%) Amazon Aurora
4 7 (2.88%) Elasticsearch
5 5 (2.06%) Amazon Athena
5 5 (2.06%) MongoDB
5 5 (2.06%) MySQL
6 4 (1.65%) Data Lake
6 4 (1.65%) DynamoDB
6 4 (1.65%) Oracle Database
7 3 (1.23%) GIS
7 3 (1.23%) Metadata
7 3 (1.23%) NoSQL
7 3 (1.23%) Snowflake Schema
8 2 (0.82%) Big Data
8 2 (0.82%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.82%) Spatial Data
8 2 (0.82%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 11 (4.53%) Git
1 11 (4.53%) JIRA
2 10 (4.12%) Jenkins
3 4 (1.65%) Cypress.io
3 4 (1.65%) GitLab
4 3 (1.23%) Cucumber
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%) Postman
5 2 (0.82%) Selenium
5 2 (0.82%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.82%) Subversion
5 2 (0.82%) WebDriver
6 1 (0.41%) JUnit
6 1 (0.41%) MLflow
6 1 (0.41%) NUnit
6 1 (0.41%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.41%) webpack
General
1 72 (29.63%) Social Skills
2 31 (12.76%) Finance
3 25 (10.29%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (3.70%) Influencing Skills
5 6 (2.47%) Organisational Skills
6 5 (2.06%) Legal
7 4 (1.65%) Local Government
7 4 (1.65%) Presentation Skills
7 4 (1.65%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.23%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.23%) Police
8 3 (1.23%) Retail
9 2 (0.82%) Back Office
9 2 (0.82%) Banking
10 1 (0.41%) Billing
10 1 (0.41%) General Ledger
10 1 (0.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.41%) Law
10 1 (0.41%) Military
10 1 (0.41%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 35 (14.40%) Developer
2 27 (11.11%) Analyst
3 25 (10.29%) Architect
4 16 (6.58%) Senior
5 12 (4.94%) Project Manager
6 11 (4.53%) Lead
6 11 (4.53%) Solutions Architect
7 10 (4.12%) Network Engineer
8 9 (3.70%) Consultant
8 9 (3.70%) Java Developer
9 8 (3.29%) Business Analyst
9 8 (3.29%) Cloud Engineer
9 8 (3.29%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 7 (2.88%) DBA
10 7 (2.88%) Site Engineer
11 6 (2.47%) .NET Developer
11 6 (2.47%) Delivery Manager
11 6 (2.47%) Project Officer
11 6 (2.47%) Project Support Officer
11 6 (2.47%) Support Officer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (6.17%) .NET
2 13 (5.35%) React
3 9 (3.70%) HTML
3 9 (3.70%) Node.js
3 9 (3.70%) REST
3 9 (3.70%) Spring
4 8 (3.29%) AWS CDK
5 7 (2.88%) CSS
5 7 (2.88%) RESTful
6 6 (2.47%) JSON
6 6 (2.47%) PyTorch
7 5 (2.06%) Spring Boot
8 4 (1.65%) AngularJS
8 4 (1.65%) Elastic Stack
8 4 (1.65%) XML
9 3 (1.23%) Express.js
9 3 (1.23%) Hibernate
9 3 (1.23%) NumPy
9 3 (1.23%) OAuth2
9 3 (1.23%) OpenCV
Miscellaneous
1 16 (6.58%) Product Ownership
2 12 (4.94%) NHS
3 10 (4.12%) Management Information System
4 9 (3.70%) Data Centre
5 8 (3.29%) Legacy Applications
5 8 (3.29%) Legacy Systems
6 7 (2.88%) Cloud Native
7 6 (2.47%) Cyber Threat
8 5 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (2.06%) Data Structures
8 5 (2.06%) Onboarding
8 5 (2.06%) Wiki
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%) Analytical Mindset
10 3 (1.23%) Low-Code
10 3 (1.23%) Replication
10 3 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 21 (8.64%) Linux
2 15 (6.17%) Windows
3 11 (4.53%) Unix
4 7 (2.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (1.65%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.82%) Oracle Linux
7 1 (0.41%) Solaris
7 1 (0.41%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (33.74%) Agile
2 43 (17.70%) Problem-Solving
3 42 (17.28%) DevOps
4 33 (13.58%) CI/CD
5 27 (11.11%) Migration
6 26 (10.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 25 (10.29%) Stakeholder Management
8 24 (9.88%) Infrastructure as Code
9 23 (9.47%) Project Management
10 19 (7.82%) Continuous Improvement
10 19 (7.82%) User Experience
11 18 (7.41%) Cybersecurity
12 17 (7.00%) AI
12 17 (7.00%) Disaster Recovery
12 17 (7.00%) Roadmaps
13 16 (6.58%) Business Intelligence
13 16 (6.58%) Collaborative Working
13 16 (6.58%) Data Protection
13 16 (6.58%) Performance Tuning
14 15 (6.17%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 36 (14.81%) Python
2 21 (8.64%) Java
3 19 (7.82%) SQL
4 16 (6.58%) PowerShell
5 15 (6.17%) C#
6 14 (5.76%) JavaScript
7 12 (4.94%) TypeScript
8 8 (3.29%) Bash
9 7 (2.88%) Bicep
10 6 (2.47%) Shell Script
11 5 (2.06%) Perl
12 2 (0.82%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.82%) C++
12 2 (0.82%) Go
13 1 (0.41%) COBOL
13 1 (0.41%) Groovy
13 1 (0.41%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.41%) SPARQL
13 1 (0.41%) VBA
13 1 (0.41%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 50 (20.58%) Security Cleared
2 21 (8.64%) Degree
3 17 (7.00%) SC Cleared
4 16 (6.58%) 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
8 4 (1.65%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (1.23%) CISM
9 3 (1.23%) CompTIA CySA+
9 3 (1.23%) GIAC
9 3 (1.23%) SSCP
10 2 (0.82%) CCIE Collaboration
10 2 (0.82%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (7.00%) GDPR
2 16 (6.58%) Disclosure Scotland
3 15 (6.17%) Accessibility
3 15 (6.17%) QA
4 9 (3.70%) Data Quality
5 7 (2.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (2.88%) PMO
6 4 (1.65%) PCI DSS
6 4 (1.65%) SLA
7 3 (1.23%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.82%) Actionable Recommendations
8 2 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.82%) GRC
8 2 (0.82%) NCSC
9 1 (0.41%) COBIT
9 1 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.41%) NIST
9 1 (0.41%) P3O
9 1 (0.41%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (7.41%) Docker
2 8 (3.29%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.65%) KVM
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 18 (7.41%) Terraform
2 15 (6.17%) Kubernetes
3 13 (5.35%) Ansible
4 11 (4.53%) Grafana
5 4 (1.65%) Kibana
5 4 (1.65%) logstash
5 4 (1.65%) Prometheus
6 3 (1.23%) Red Hat Satellite
6 3 (1.23%) SCCM
7 2 (0.82%) Fluentd
7 2 (0.82%) HAProxy
7 2 (0.82%) Nagios
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 52 (21.40%) Microsoft
2 19 (7.82%) Oracle
3 17 (7.00%) Cisco
4 7 (2.88%) Google
4 7 (2.88%) Salesforce
5 6 (2.47%) Red Hat
5 6 (2.47%) Splunk
6 5 (2.06%) F5
6 5 (2.06%) Palo Alto
6 5 (2.06%) VMware
7 4 (1.65%) Commvault
7 4 (1.65%) OpenAI
7 4 (1.65%) Pega
7 4 (1.65%) ServiceNow
8 3 (1.23%) Avaya
8 3 (1.23%) Genesys
8 3 (1.23%) Greenplum
8 3 (1.23%) Informatica
8 3 (1.23%) Talend
9 2 (0.82%) Juniper