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 21 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 4 1
Rank change year-on-year -3 -3 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 245 350 649
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 14.97% 21.08% 28.35%
As % of the General category 24.31% 29.46% 43.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 143 252 398
10th Percentile £250 £190 £153
25th Percentile £354 £364 £309
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £447 £468
Median % change year-on-year +0.73% -4.44% +1.08%
75th Percentile £538 £501 £567
90th Percentile £575 £581 £666
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 9 8
10th Percentile - £19.71 £12.79
25th Percentile £17.23 £22.50 £13.27
Median hourly rate £21.31 £24.18 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.88% +38.17% -7.35%
75th Percentile £26.47 £27.75 £19.78
90th Percentile £28.08 £28.38 £32.93
UK median hourly rate £22.08 £24.09 £21.25
% change year-on-year -8.36% +13.36% +6.25%

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 1,008 1,188 1,506
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 61.58% 71.57% 65.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 552 727 898
10th Percentile £200 £212 £181
25th Percentile £350 £363 £369
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -5.26% -
75th Percentile £565 £538 £588
90th Percentile £675 £613 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 28 70
10th Percentile £12.60 £17.79 £12.48
25th Percentile £13.00 £20.94 £16.25
Median hourly rate £16.25 £23.50 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -30.85% +20.51% +18.18%
75th Percentile £50.00 £27.91 £60.56
90th Percentile £65.00 £49.05 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £25.00 £30.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -16.67% +15.38% -25.71%

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 21 March 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 21 March 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 -4 128 £438 +1.51% 12
Glasgow +3 94 £475 +2.70% 18
South Lanarkshire -5 9 £550 +17.02%
West Lothian - 3 £276 - 2
North Lanarkshire -4 1 £350 -12.50%
Moray - 1 - -
Fife - 1 - - 1
Midlothian - 1 £150 - 10
Aberdeen - 1 £138 -
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 (3.67%) Confluence
2 5 (2.04%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.22%) Apache
3 3 (1.22%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (1.22%) CMS
4 2 (0.82%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.82%) Apache TomEE
4 2 (0.82%) Drupal
4 2 (0.82%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.41%) CICS
5 1 (0.41%) Exchange Server 2013
5 1 (0.41%) JBoss
5 1 (0.41%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.41%) Oracle Coherence
5 1 (0.41%) Umbraco
Applications
1 10 (4.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (2.04%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.82%) Adobe Illustrator
4 2 (0.82%) InDesign
4 2 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.82%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.41%) Adobe After Effects
5 1 (0.41%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.41%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 14 (5.71%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.82%) iTrent
3 1 (0.41%) IntelliMatch
3 1 (0.41%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 59 (24.08%) Azure
2 40 (16.33%) AWS
3 30 (12.24%) Power Platform
4 22 (8.98%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (6.12%) Dynamics 365
6 13 (5.31%) Microsoft 365
6 13 (5.31%) Serverless
7 12 (4.90%) Power Automate
7 12 (4.90%) PowerApps
8 9 (3.67%) AWS CloudFormation
9 8 (3.27%) AWS Lambda
10 7 (2.86%) Azure AI
10 7 (2.86%) Azure Cognitive Search
10 7 (2.86%) Azure Cognitive Services
10 7 (2.86%) Cloud Computing
11 6 (2.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 6 (2.45%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 6 (2.45%) Entra ID
11 6 (2.45%) GCP
11 6 (2.45%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.86%) WAN
2 6 (2.45%) Firewall
2 6 (2.45%) Network Security
3 5 (2.04%) Cisco Nexus
3 5 (2.04%) LAN
4 4 (1.63%) DNS
4 4 (1.63%) MPLS
4 4 (1.63%) Wi-Fi
5 3 (1.22%) BGP
5 3 (1.22%) OSPF
5 3 (1.22%) SDH
5 3 (1.22%) VPN
6 2 (0.82%) Fibre Channel
6 2 (0.82%) Intranet
6 2 (0.82%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.82%) SSH
6 2 (0.82%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.41%) Cisco Firepower
7 1 (0.41%) Ethernet VPN
7 1 (0.41%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (8.98%) Power BI
2 12 (4.90%) SQL Server
3 11 (4.49%) Relational Database
4 10 (4.08%) MySQL
5 7 (2.86%) Metadata
5 7 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (2.45%) Amazon Athena
6 6 (2.45%) DynamoDB
7 5 (2.04%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (1.63%) Data Lake
9 3 (1.22%) Amazon Aurora
9 3 (1.22%) MariaDB
9 3 (1.22%) NoSQL
9 3 (1.22%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
10 2 (0.82%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.82%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.82%) GIS
10 2 (0.82%) MongoDB
10 2 (0.82%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 13 (5.31%) JIRA
2 9 (3.67%) Git
3 6 (2.45%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.63%) Cucumber
4 4 (1.63%) Selenium
5 3 (1.22%) Cypress.io
5 3 (1.22%) GitLab
5 3 (1.22%) WebDriver
6 2 (0.82%) Ant
6 2 (0.82%) Axure RP
6 2 (0.82%) Eclipse
6 2 (0.82%) Maven
6 2 (0.82%) MLflow
6 2 (0.82%) NUnit
6 2 (0.82%) Postman
6 2 (0.82%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.41%) ERwin
7 1 (0.41%) JUnit
7 1 (0.41%) Subversion
7 1 (0.41%) Visual Studio
General
1 71 (28.98%) Social Skills
2 38 (15.51%) Finance
3 28 (11.43%) Analytical Skills
4 13 (5.31%) Influencing Skills
5 8 (3.27%) Legal
6 5 (2.04%) Documentation Skills
6 5 (2.04%) Organisational Skills
7 4 (1.63%) Local Government
7 4 (1.63%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.22%) Banking
8 3 (1.22%) Military
8 3 (1.22%) Police
8 3 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
8 3 (1.22%) Retail
9 2 (0.82%) Back Office
10 1 (0.41%) Billing
10 1 (0.41%) General Ledger
10 1 (0.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.41%) Marketing
10 1 (0.41%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 34 (13.88%) Analyst
2 28 (11.43%) Developer
3 25 (10.20%) Architect
4 21 (8.57%) Senior
5 16 (6.53%) Project Manager
6 12 (4.90%) Lead
7 11 (4.49%) Business Analyst
8 9 (3.67%) Power Platform Developer
9 8 (3.27%) Consultant
9 8 (3.27%) DBA
9 8 (3.27%) Designer
9 8 (3.27%) Network Engineer
9 8 (3.27%) Solutions Architect
10 7 (2.86%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
10 7 (2.86%) Cloud Engineer
10 7 (2.86%) Java Developer
11 6 (2.45%) Data Analyst
11 6 (2.45%) Project Officer
11 6 (2.45%) Project Support Officer
11 6 (2.45%) Support Officer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (8.16%) .NET
2 17 (6.94%) React
3 8 (3.27%) Node.js
3 8 (3.27%) REST
3 8 (3.27%) RESTful
3 8 (3.27%) Spring
4 6 (2.45%) HTML
5 5 (2.04%) CSS
5 5 (2.04%) JSON
6 4 (1.63%) AngularJS
6 4 (1.63%) Spring Boot
7 3 (1.22%) ASP.NET
7 3 (1.22%) Express.js
7 3 (1.22%) Hibernate
7 3 (1.22%) JPA
7 3 (1.22%) XML
8 2 (0.82%) JSP
8 2 (0.82%) OAuth
8 2 (0.82%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (0.82%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 20 (8.16%) Product Ownership
2 13 (5.31%) Legacy Systems
2 13 (5.31%) Management Information System
3 12 (4.90%) NHS
4 9 (3.67%) Data Centre
5 8 (3.27%) Data Protection Act
6 7 (2.86%) Legacy Applications
7 5 (2.04%) Cyber Threat
7 5 (2.04%) Data Structures
8 4 (1.63%) Freedom of Information
8 4 (1.63%) IVR
8 4 (1.63%) Onboarding
8 4 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (1.63%) Wiki
9 3 (1.22%) Cloud Native
9 3 (1.22%) EPoS
9 3 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
9 3 (1.22%) Low-Code
9 3 (1.22%) Replication
9 3 (1.22%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 19 (7.76%) Linux
2 13 (5.31%) Windows
3 5 (2.04%) Unix
3 5 (2.04%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.82%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.41%) Rocky
6 1 (0.41%) Solaris
6 1 (0.41%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (28.98%) Agile
2 41 (16.73%) DevOps
3 40 (16.33%) Problem-Solving
4 34 (13.88%) Migration
5 32 (13.06%) CI/CD
6 30 (12.24%) Stakeholder Management
7 27 (11.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 22 (8.98%) Business Intelligence
8 22 (8.98%) Roadmaps
9 21 (8.57%) Data Protection
10 20 (8.16%) AI
11 19 (7.76%) Project Management
12 17 (6.94%) CRM
12 17 (6.94%) Cybersecurity
12 17 (6.94%) Decision-Making
12 17 (6.94%) Infrastructure as Code
12 17 (6.94%) User Experience
13 16 (6.53%) Continuous Improvement
13 16 (6.53%) Project Delivery
14 15 (6.12%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 33 (13.47%) Python
2 23 (9.39%) C#
3 22 (8.98%) Java
4 21 (8.57%) SQL
5 18 (7.35%) PowerShell
6 17 (6.94%) JavaScript
7 10 (4.08%) TypeScript
8 5 (2.04%) Bash
9 4 (1.63%) Bicep
10 2 (0.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 2 (0.82%) Go
11 1 (0.41%) C++
11 1 (0.41%) COBOL
11 1 (0.41%) JCL
11 1 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
11 1 (0.41%) Perl
11 1 (0.41%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.41%) SPARQL
11 1 (0.41%) VBA
11 1 (0.41%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 59 (24.08%) Security Cleared
2 27 (11.02%) SC Cleared
3 19 (7.76%) BPSS Clearance
4 18 (7.35%) Degree
5 6 (2.45%) Cisco Certification
5 6 (2.45%) DV Cleared
5 6 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (2.04%) CCNP
6 5 (2.04%) CISSP
7 4 (1.63%) CompTIA Security+
8 3 (1.22%) CCAB
8 3 (1.22%) CompTIA CySA+
8 3 (1.22%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (1.22%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (0.82%) CCIE
9 2 (0.82%) CISM
9 2 (0.82%) GIAC
9 2 (0.82%) ISEB
9 2 (0.82%) PMI Certification
9 2 (0.82%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (8.57%) QA
2 18 (7.35%) Disclosure Scotland
2 18 (7.35%) GDPR
3 13 (5.31%) Accessibility
4 12 (4.90%) Data Quality
5 8 (3.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 8 (3.27%) PMO
6 4 (1.63%) NCSC
6 4 (1.63%) PCI DSS
7 3 (1.22%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (1.22%) HIPAA
7 3 (1.22%) NIST
7 3 (1.22%) WCAG
8 2 (0.82%) Actionable Recommendations
8 2 (0.82%) GRC
8 2 (0.82%) SLA
9 1 (0.41%) COBIT
9 1 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.41%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.41%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 9 (3.67%) Active Directory
2 7 (2.86%) Docker
3 5 (2.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (1.63%) VMware NSX
5 3 (1.22%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.82%) vSphere
7 1 (0.41%) Ceph
7 1 (0.41%) HDFS
7 1 (0.41%) iptables
7 1 (0.41%) NFS
7 1 (0.41%) Samba
7 1 (0.41%) Squid
Systems Management
1 15 (6.12%) Terraform
2 9 (3.67%) Ansible
3 8 (3.27%) Kubernetes
4 4 (1.63%) Grafana
5 3 (1.22%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (1.22%) SCCM
6 2 (0.82%) Istio
6 2 (0.82%) vMotion
7 1 (0.41%) Argo
7 1 (0.41%) Kibana
7 1 (0.41%) logstash
7 1 (0.41%) PowerCLI
7 1 (0.41%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.41%) Rundeck
7 1 (0.41%) SELinux
7 1 (0.41%) systemd
7 1 (0.41%) vRealize
7 1 (0.41%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 54 (22.04%) Microsoft
2 14 (5.71%) Cisco
2 14 (5.71%) Oracle
3 9 (3.67%) Google
4 7 (2.86%) OpenAI
4 7 (2.86%) VMware
5 5 (2.04%) Palo Alto
5 5 (2.04%) Salesforce
6 4 (1.63%) ServiceNow
6 4 (1.63%) Splunk
7 3 (1.22%) Avaya
7 3 (1.22%) F5
7 3 (1.22%) Genesys
7 3 (1.22%) Greenplum
7 3 (1.22%) Informatica
7 3 (1.22%) Pega
7 3 (1.22%) Red Hat
7 3 (1.22%) Talend
8 2 (0.82%) Adobe
8 2 (0.82%) Juniper