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

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 1
Rank change year-on-year -4 -4 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 289 327 562
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 12.73% 19.33% 27.52%
As % of the General category 21.28% 26.91% 43.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 188 213 366
10th Percentile £321 £185 £158
25th Percentile £406 £313 £260
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% - -2.70%
75th Percentile £571 £519 £538
90th Percentile £720 £594 £638
UK median daily rate £515 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.90% - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 9 14
10th Percentile - £16.68 £12.00
25th Percentile £25.19 £18.54 £13.22
Median hourly rate £25.39 £19.83 £15.96
Median % change year-on-year +28.01% +24.25% +3.94%
75th Percentile £25.58 £27.95 £19.07
90th Percentile - £31.86 £23.50
UK median hourly rate £25.38 £20.00 £23.99
% change year-on-year +26.90% -16.63% +17.02%

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 1,358 1,215 1,303
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 59.80% 71.81% 63.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 718 716 790
10th Percentile £250 £219 £177
25th Percentile £361 £363 £317
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £463 £450
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% +2.83% -5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £550
90th Percentile £650 £600 £638
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 42 62
10th Percentile £12.69 £15.64 £12.30
25th Percentile £13.45 £16.33 £13.22
Median hourly rate £16.86 £19.71 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.46% +15.94% -11.37%
75th Percentile £43.96 £24.62 £27.31
90th Percentile £61.50 £40.84 £60.75
UK median hourly rate £33.00 £26.21 £33.97
% change year-on-year +25.91% -22.83% +11.21%

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 18 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 18 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 -1 137 £457 +1.44% 11
Glasgow +4 123 £508 +7.98% 13
South Lanarkshire -2 12 £669 +42.23% 1
Lanarkshire 0 3 £431 +231.73% 11
West Lothian -3 2 £388 +106.67%
East Lothian +4 1 - -
Moray -1 1 - -
North Lanarkshire -3 1 £350 -12.50%
Aberdeen -4 1 £138 -58.80%
Dundee -4 1 - -
Inverclyde - 1 £675 -
Fife - 1 - -
Dumfries and Galloway - 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 13 (4.50%) Confluence
2 6 (2.08%) CMS
2 6 (2.08%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.69%) Apache
3 2 (0.69%) JBoss
4 1 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.35%) Drupal
4 1 (0.35%) IIS
4 1 (0.35%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.35%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 10 (3.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (2.08%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (1.04%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.69%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.35%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.35%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.35%) InDesign
5 1 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.35%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 5 (1.73%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.69%) Dynamics GP
3 1 (0.35%) IntelliMatch
3 1 (0.35%) iTrent
3 1 (0.35%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.35%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.35%) SAP GRC
3 1 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 51 (17.65%) AWS
2 48 (16.61%) Azure
3 24 (8.30%) Power Platform
4 19 (6.57%) Azure DevOps
5 18 (6.23%) Microsoft 365
6 14 (4.84%) OCI
6 14 (4.84%) Serverless
7 13 (4.50%) Amazon S3
8 9 (3.11%) AWS Lambda
9 8 (2.77%) GCP
9 8 (2.77%) SaaS
10 7 (2.42%) AWS CloudFormation
10 7 (2.42%) PowerApps
11 6 (2.08%) Amazon EKS
11 6 (2.08%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 6 (2.08%) Azure Monitor
11 6 (2.08%) Dynamics 365
11 6 (2.08%) Entra ID
11 6 (2.08%) GitHub Actions
11 6 (2.08%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.77%) DNS
2 7 (2.42%) Wi-Fi
3 6 (2.08%) Firewall
4 5 (1.73%) Cisco Nexus
4 5 (1.73%) LAN
5 4 (1.38%) Network Security
5 4 (1.38%) SSL
5 4 (1.38%) WAN
6 3 (1.04%) Remote Desktop
6 3 (1.04%) SD-WAN
6 3 (1.04%) SSH
6 3 (1.04%) VPN
6 3 (1.04%) Wireless
7 2 (0.69%) BGP
7 2 (0.69%) Fibre Channel
7 2 (0.69%) HTTPS
7 2 (0.69%) OSPF
8 1 (0.35%) MPLS
8 1 (0.35%) Structured Cabling
8 1 (0.35%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (5.88%) Power BI
2 11 (3.81%) MySQL
3 9 (3.11%) Metadata
3 9 (3.11%) Relational Database
4 8 (2.77%) SQL Server
5 7 (2.42%) MongoDB
6 6 (2.08%) MariaDB
6 6 (2.08%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (1.73%) Amazon Aurora
8 4 (1.38%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (1.38%) Oracle Database
9 3 (1.04%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (1.04%) DynamoDB
9 3 (1.04%) Geospatial Data
9 3 (1.04%) Power Query
10 2 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.69%) GIS
10 2 (0.69%) MS Access
10 2 (0.69%) SQLPlus
11 1 (0.35%) EDRMS
Development Applications
1 16 (5.54%) JIRA
2 12 (4.15%) Git
3 10 (3.46%) Jenkins
4 9 (3.11%) Cypress.io
5 7 (2.42%) Selenium
6 5 (1.73%) Cucumber
6 5 (1.73%) Subversion
7 4 (1.38%) Gradle
7 4 (1.38%) Maven
8 3 (1.04%) GoCD
8 3 (1.04%) JProfiler
8 3 (1.04%) JUnit
8 3 (1.04%) Sonatype Nexus
8 3 (1.04%) WebDriver
9 2 (0.69%) Appium
9 2 (0.69%) Postman
9 2 (0.69%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.69%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.35%) MLflow
10 1 (0.35%) webpack
General
1 87 (30.10%) Social Skills
2 38 (13.15%) Finance
3 23 (7.96%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (3.46%) Legal
4 10 (3.46%) Organisational Skills
5 9 (3.11%) Documentation Skills
5 9 (3.11%) Influencing Skills
6 4 (1.38%) Local Government
6 4 (1.38%) Marketing
6 4 (1.38%) Military
6 4 (1.38%) Publishing
7 3 (1.04%) Banking
7 3 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (0.69%) Police
8 2 (0.69%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.35%) Back Office
9 1 (0.35%) Law
9 1 (0.35%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 31 (10.73%) Analyst
1 31 (10.73%) Architect
2 29 (10.03%) Developer
3 26 (9.00%) Senior
4 20 (6.92%) Lead
4 20 (6.92%) Project Manager
5 14 (4.84%) Consultant
5 14 (4.84%) DevOps Engineer
5 14 (4.84%) Solutions Architect
6 10 (3.46%) Designer
6 10 (3.46%) Network Engineer
7 8 (2.77%) Cloud Consultant
7 8 (2.77%) Cloud Engineer
7 8 (2.77%) Oracle Consultant
8 7 (2.42%) Administrator
8 7 (2.42%) Software Developer
9 6 (2.08%) DBA
9 6 (2.08%) Help Desk Consultant
9 6 (2.08%) Oracle HRMS Consultant
9 6 (2.08%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (4.50%) .NET
2 12 (4.15%) React
3 10 (3.46%) Spring
3 10 (3.46%) Spring Boot
4 9 (3.11%) REST
5 8 (2.77%) RESTful
5 8 (2.77%) Web Services
6 7 (2.42%) AWS CDK
7 5 (1.73%) Jest
7 5 (1.73%) Node.js
7 5 (1.73%) Playwright
8 4 (1.38%) JSON
8 4 (1.38%) Middleware
8 4 (1.38%) SOAP
9 3 (1.04%) ARM Templates
9 3 (1.04%) ASP.NET
9 3 (1.04%) FHIR
9 3 (1.04%) FreeMarker
9 3 (1.04%) Gherkin
9 3 (1.04%) JSF
Miscellaneous
1 25 (8.65%) Product Ownership
2 12 (4.15%) Legacy Systems
2 12 (4.15%) Management Information System
3 10 (3.46%) Data Protection Act
4 8 (2.77%) Cloud Native
5 7 (2.42%) Data Centre
5 7 (2.42%) NHS
6 6 (2.08%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (1.38%) Legacy Applications
8 3 (1.04%) Data Structures
8 3 (1.04%) Freedom of Information
8 3 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
9 2 (0.69%) Distributed Systems
9 2 (0.69%) NVMe
9 2 (0.69%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.69%) PKI
10 1 (0.35%) Distributed Architecture
10 1 (0.35%) Security Posture
10 1 (0.35%) Virtual Team
10 1 (0.35%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 23 (7.96%) Linux
2 19 (6.57%) Windows
3 7 (2.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (2.08%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.38%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.35%) Android
6 1 (0.35%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.35%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.35%) Rocky
6 1 (0.35%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.35%) Unix
6 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (28.72%) Agile
2 49 (16.96%) Stakeholder Management
3 47 (16.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 43 (14.88%) DevOps
5 40 (13.84%) Continuous Improvement
6 39 (13.49%) CI/CD
7 31 (10.73%) Migration
8 27 (9.34%) AI
8 27 (9.34%) Infrastructure as Code
9 25 (8.65%) Project Delivery
10 23 (7.96%) Problem-Solving
11 22 (7.61%) Decision-Making
12 21 (7.27%) Roadmaps
12 21 (7.27%) Scrum
13 19 (6.57%) Data Protection
13 19 (6.57%) Microservices
14 18 (6.23%) Cybersecurity
15 17 (5.88%) Business Intelligence
15 17 (5.88%) Change Management
15 17 (5.88%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 25 (8.65%) Python
2 24 (8.30%) Java
3 23 (7.96%) SQL
4 20 (6.92%) JavaScript
5 14 (4.84%) C#
5 14 (4.84%) TypeScript
6 12 (4.15%) PowerShell
7 8 (2.77%) Bicep
8 7 (2.42%) Bash
9 3 (1.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 3 (1.04%) PL/SQL
9 3 (1.04%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.69%) VBA
11 1 (0.35%) C++
11 1 (0.35%) Groovy
11 1 (0.35%) Perl
11 1 (0.35%) SPARQL
11 1 (0.35%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.35%) VB.NET
11 1 (0.35%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 59 (20.42%) Security Cleared
2 44 (15.22%) SC Cleared
3 21 (7.27%) BPSS Clearance
4 13 (4.50%) Degree
5 10 (3.46%) DV Cleared
6 5 (1.73%) PMI Certification
6 5 (1.73%) PMP
7 4 (1.38%) ITIL Certification
7 4 (1.38%) Microsoft Certification
8 3 (1.04%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.04%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 3 (1.04%) CCAB
8 3 (1.04%) CCNP
8 3 (1.04%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (1.04%) CISSP
8 3 (1.04%) IIBA
8 3 (1.04%) MCSE
8 3 (1.04%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 2 (0.69%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (0.69%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (6.57%) Accessibility
2 17 (5.88%) Disclosure Scotland
3 15 (5.19%) QA
4 12 (4.15%) Data Quality
5 11 (3.81%) GDPR
6 9 (3.11%) PMO
7 6 (2.08%) NIST
8 5 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (1.73%) WCAG
9 4 (1.38%) NCSC
10 3 (1.04%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.69%) GRC
11 2 (0.69%) SLA
12 1 (0.35%) COBIT
12 1 (0.35%) ISO 20022
12 1 (0.35%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 10 (3.46%) Active Directory
2 7 (2.42%) Docker
3 5 (1.73%) Hyper-V
3 5 (1.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (1.38%) VMware NSX
5 3 (1.04%) Ceph
6 2 (0.69%) Squid
6 2 (0.69%) vSphere
7 1 (0.35%) IAG
7 1 (0.35%) iptables
7 1 (0.35%) NFS
7 1 (0.35%) Samba
7 1 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.35%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 21 (7.27%) Terraform
2 14 (4.84%) Kubernetes
3 9 (3.11%) Ansible
4 7 (2.42%) Grafana
5 6 (2.08%) Istio
5 6 (2.08%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (1.38%) Argo
7 3 (1.04%) Prometheus
7 3 (1.04%) SCCM
8 2 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.69%) vMotion
9 1 (0.35%) PowerCLI
9 1 (0.35%) Rundeck
9 1 (0.35%) SELinux
9 1 (0.35%) systemd
9 1 (0.35%) vRealize
9 1 (0.35%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 43 (14.88%) Microsoft
2 32 (11.07%) Oracle
3 10 (3.46%) Cisco
3 10 (3.46%) Salesforce
4 7 (2.42%) Google
4 7 (2.42%) VMware
5 5 (1.73%) MuleSoft
5 5 (1.73%) Palo Alto
6 3 (1.04%) F5
6 3 (1.04%) OpenAI
6 3 (1.04%) SAP
7 2 (0.69%) Arista
7 2 (0.69%) Atlassian
7 2 (0.69%) Juniper
7 2 (0.69%) Okta
7 2 (0.69%) Red Hat
7 2 (0.69%) UiPath
8 1 (0.35%) Confluent
8 1 (0.35%) FIS
8 1 (0.35%) Workday