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 6 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 2 1
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 255 403 687
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 16.16% 23.50% 28.68%
As % of the General category 24.33% 35.32% 42.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 170 278 430
10th Percentile £222 £190 £155
25th Percentile £400 £363 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -5.26% -
75th Percentile £538 £532 £572
90th Percentile £600 £633 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 15 8
10th Percentile £15.24 £14.18 £11.61
25th Percentile £17.20 £18.26 £12.11
Median hourly rate £21.01 £20.29 £18.21
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% +11.43% +11.28%
75th Percentile £25.35 £25.97 £55.00
90th Percentile £27.63 £32.05 £55.42
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £22.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year -4.55% -2.22% +15.83%

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 common skills in Scotland.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 1,048 1,141 1,605
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 66.41% 66.53% 67.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 628 674 999
10th Percentile £200 £181 £200
25th Percentile £360 £355 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £450 £488
Median % change year-on-year +1.11% -7.69% +2.63%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £588
90th Percentile £602 £629 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 33 44
10th Percentile £13.00 £13.85 £12.13
25th Percentile £15.83 £15.75 £15.42
Median hourly rate £19.23 £20.94 £19.18
Median % change year-on-year -8.17% +9.18% +13.26%
75th Percentile £26.21 £24.18 £55.35
90th Percentile £55.42 £33.28 £62.20
UK median hourly rate £24.00 £27.50 £31.71
% change year-on-year -12.73% -13.28% +26.84%

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 6 December 2025.

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 6 December 2025.

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 6 December 2025. 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 -3 134 £453 +0.56% 29
Glasgow -11 101 £453 +0.56% 29
North Lanarkshire - 3 £314 -
South Lanarkshire +7 2 £550 -
West Lothian +1 2 £289 -45.00% 2
Aberdeen - 2 £500 - 11
Lanarkshire +2 1 £130 - 15
Stirling 0 1 £275 +41.03%
Dundee -1 1 £115 -39.47% 2
Midlothian - 1 £150 - 11
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 9 (3.53%) Confluence
2 7 (2.75%) SharePoint
3 6 (2.35%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (1.57%) Apache
5 3 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.78%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.78%) Apache TomEE
6 2 (0.78%) ArcGIS
6 2 (0.78%) CMS
6 2 (0.78%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.78%) Umbraco
6 2 (0.78%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.39%) Alfresco
7 1 (0.39%) Apache Solr
7 1 (0.39%) Exchange Server 2013
7 1 (0.39%) nginx
7 1 (0.39%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 14 (5.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (3.14%) Microsoft Project
3 5 (1.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.78%) Adobe Illustrator
4 2 (0.78%) InDesign
4 2 (0.78%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.78%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.39%) Adobe After Effects
5 1 (0.39%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.39%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 9 (3.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.39%) Dynamics GP
2 1 (0.39%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 55 (21.57%) AWS
2 47 (18.43%) Azure
3 26 (10.20%) Power Platform
4 21 (8.24%) Serverless
5 19 (7.45%) AWS CloudFormation
5 19 (7.45%) AWS Lambda
6 17 (6.67%) Amazon S3
6 17 (6.67%) Microsoft 365
7 15 (5.88%) Azure DevOps
8 11 (4.31%) Dynamics 365
8 11 (4.31%) OpenShift
8 11 (4.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 10 (3.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 9 (3.53%) Amazon EKS
10 9 (3.53%) Power Automate
11 8 (3.14%) Entra ID
11 8 (3.14%) GitHub
12 7 (2.75%) PowerApps
12 7 (2.75%) SaaS
13 5 (1.96%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 11 (4.31%) Firewall
2 8 (3.14%) WAN
3 5 (1.96%) VPN
4 4 (1.57%) Cisco ISE
4 4 (1.57%) LAN
4 4 (1.57%) Network Security
4 4 (1.57%) Wi-Fi
5 3 (1.18%) MPLS
5 3 (1.18%) Unified Communications
6 2 (0.78%) Cisco Nexus
6 2 (0.78%) SDH
6 2 (0.78%) TETRA
6 2 (0.78%) VoIP
7 1 (0.39%) Cisco Firepower
7 1 (0.39%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 1 (0.39%) MQTT
7 1 (0.39%) Multicast
7 1 (0.39%) SD-WAN
7 1 (0.39%) Software-Defined Networking
7 1 (0.39%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (7.06%) Power BI
2 14 (5.49%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (4.31%) Amazon Aurora
4 10 (3.92%) Relational Database
5 9 (3.53%) SQL Server
6 6 (2.35%) Elasticsearch
7 5 (1.96%) Amazon Athena
7 5 (1.96%) DynamoDB
7 5 (1.96%) MySQL
8 4 (1.57%) MongoDB
8 4 (1.57%) Oracle Database
9 3 (1.18%) GIS
9 3 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
10 2 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.78%) Big Data
10 2 (0.78%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.78%) InfluxDB
10 2 (0.78%) NoSQL
10 2 (0.78%) Spatial Data
10 2 (0.78%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 16 (6.27%) JIRA
2 14 (5.49%) Git
3 11 (4.31%) Jenkins
4 7 (2.75%) Cypress.io
5 4 (1.57%) GitLab
6 3 (1.18%) Cucumber
6 3 (1.18%) Subversion
6 3 (1.18%) Terragrunt
6 3 (1.18%) webpack
7 2 (0.78%) Ant
7 2 (0.78%) Axure RP
7 2 (0.78%) CircleCI
7 2 (0.78%) Eclipse
7 2 (0.78%) Maven
7 2 (0.78%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (0.78%) Postman
7 2 (0.78%) Selenium
8 1 (0.39%) ClearCase
8 1 (0.39%) JUnit
8 1 (0.39%) Visual Studio
General
1 76 (29.80%) Social Skills
2 44 (17.25%) Finance
3 35 (13.73%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (4.31%) Influencing Skills
5 9 (3.53%) Telecoms
6 7 (2.75%) Organisational Skills
7 5 (1.96%) Legal
7 5 (1.96%) Marketing
8 4 (1.57%) Electronics
8 4 (1.57%) Manufacturing
8 4 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (1.18%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.18%) Local Government
9 3 (1.18%) Retail
10 2 (0.78%) Back Office
10 2 (0.78%) Law
11 1 (0.39%) Billing
11 1 (0.39%) General Ledger
11 1 (0.39%) Military
11 1 (0.39%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 40 (15.69%) Developer
2 26 (10.20%) Analyst
3 24 (9.41%) Architect
4 17 (6.67%) Senior
5 15 (5.88%) Lead
6 14 (5.49%) Project Manager
7 11 (4.31%) Business Analyst
7 11 (4.31%) Solutions Architect
8 10 (3.92%) Consultant
8 10 (3.92%) Support Officer
9 8 (3.14%) Java Developer
9 8 (3.14%) Network Engineer
10 7 (2.75%) .NET Developer
10 7 (2.75%) Cloud Engineer
10 7 (2.75%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 7 (2.75%) Technical Leader
11 6 (2.35%) Delivery Manager
11 6 (2.35%) Project Officer
11 6 (2.35%) Project Support Officer
11 6 (2.35%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (6.67%) React
2 15 (5.88%) .NET
3 14 (5.49%) HTML
4 13 (5.10%) AWS CDK
5 12 (4.71%) CSS
6 11 (4.31%) Node.js
6 11 (4.31%) Spring
7 10 (3.92%) REST
8 8 (3.14%) RESTful
8 8 (3.14%) Spring Boot
9 7 (2.75%) PyTorch
10 5 (1.96%) JSON
11 4 (1.57%) Elastic Stack
11 4 (1.57%) Hugging Face
11 4 (1.57%) OAuth
11 4 (1.57%) Spring Security
11 4 (1.57%) Spring Web Flow
11 4 (1.57%) SQLAlchemy
11 4 (1.57%) Thymeleaf
11 4 (1.57%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (4.71%) Product Ownership
2 11 (4.31%) Management Information System
2 11 (4.31%) NHS
3 9 (3.53%) Legacy Systems
4 6 (2.35%) Cloud Native
4 6 (2.35%) Legacy Applications
4 6 (2.35%) Wiki
5 5 (1.96%) Cyber Threat
5 5 (1.96%) Device Driver
5 5 (1.96%) Freedom of Information
6 4 (1.57%) Algorithms
6 4 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
6 4 (1.57%) Data Centre
6 4 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (1.57%) Data Structures
6 4 (1.57%) IVR
6 4 (1.57%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.57%) PKI
7 3 (1.18%) Low-Code
7 3 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 19 (7.45%) Linux
2 13 (5.10%) Windows
3 10 (3.92%) Unix
4 4 (1.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.57%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.78%) Oracle Linux
6 1 (0.39%) Solaris
6 1 (0.39%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.39%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (33.33%) Agile
2 41 (16.08%) DevOps
2 41 (16.08%) Problem-Solving
3 36 (14.12%) CI/CD
4 28 (10.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 27 (10.59%) Infrastructure as Code
5 27 (10.59%) Project Management
6 24 (9.41%) User Experience
7 23 (9.02%) Continuous Improvement
7 23 (9.02%) Migration
8 22 (8.63%) Business Intelligence
8 22 (8.63%) Stakeholder Management
9 20 (7.84%) Mentoring
9 20 (7.84%) Roadmaps
10 18 (7.06%) Cybersecurity
10 18 (7.06%) Data Analysis
11 16 (6.27%) Disaster Recovery
12 15 (5.88%) Data Protection
12 15 (5.88%) Microservices
12 15 (5.88%) PRINCE2
Programming Languages
1 34 (13.33%) Python
2 25 (9.80%) Java
3 21 (8.24%) TypeScript
4 20 (7.84%) JavaScript
5 15 (5.88%) SQL
6 11 (4.31%) C#
6 11 (4.31%) PowerShell
7 7 (2.75%) Bash
8 5 (1.96%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.57%) Bicep
9 4 (1.57%) Perl
10 3 (1.18%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.78%) Apex Code
11 2 (0.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 2 (0.78%) Go
11 2 (0.78%) Groovy
11 2 (0.78%) R
12 1 (0.39%) C
12 1 (0.39%) C++
Qualifications
1 49 (19.22%) Security Cleared
2 24 (9.41%) Degree
3 20 (7.84%) SC Cleared
4 14 (5.49%) BPSS Clearance
5 9 (3.53%) Microsoft Certification
6 8 (3.14%) Cisco Certification
7 7 (2.75%) CCNA
7 7 (2.75%) CISSP
8 5 (1.96%) MCSA
9 4 (1.57%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.57%) CISM
9 4 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (1.18%) CCIE
10 3 (1.18%) CCNP
10 3 (1.18%) CEH
10 3 (1.18%) CompTIA Security+
10 3 (1.18%) DV Cleared
10 3 (1.18%) GIAC
10 3 (1.18%) SSCP
11 2 (0.78%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (8.24%) Accessibility
2 20 (7.84%) GDPR
3 14 (5.49%) Disclosure Scotland
3 14 (5.49%) QA
4 8 (3.14%) PMO
5 6 (2.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.96%) SLA
7 4 (1.57%) Data Quality
7 4 (1.57%) PCI DSS
8 3 (1.18%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.78%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.78%) NCSC
10 1 (0.39%) COBIT
10 1 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.39%) NIST
10 1 (0.39%) P3O
10 1 (0.39%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (7.06%) Docker
2 10 (3.92%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.57%) KVM
4 3 (1.18%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.78%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.39%) HDFS
6 1 (0.39%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 21 (8.24%) Kubernetes
1 21 (8.24%) Terraform
2 15 (5.88%) Grafana
3 7 (2.75%) Ansible
3 7 (2.75%) Prometheus
3 7 (2.75%) SCCM
4 4 (1.57%) Kibana
4 4 (1.57%) logstash
5 3 (1.18%) Argo
5 3 (1.18%) Istio
5 3 (1.18%) Red Hat Satellite
6 2 (0.78%) Fluentd
6 2 (0.78%) HAProxy
6 2 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.78%) Nagios
6 2 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.39%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 56 (21.96%) Microsoft
2 21 (8.24%) Oracle
3 14 (5.49%) Cisco
4 7 (2.75%) Salesforce
5 6 (2.35%) SAP
6 5 (1.96%) Red Hat
6 5 (1.96%) Splunk
7 4 (1.57%) F5
7 4 (1.57%) Pega
7 4 (1.57%) ServiceNow
8 3 (1.18%) Avaya
8 3 (1.18%) Commvault
8 3 (1.18%) Genesys
9 2 (0.78%) Adobe
9 2 (0.78%) Palo Alto
10 1 (0.39%) Databricks
10 1 (0.39%) Meraki
10 1 (0.39%) Okta
10 1 (0.39%) OpenAI
10 1 (0.39%) Ping Identity