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 4 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 1
Rank change year-on-year -3 -4 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 249 319 583
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 12.63% 20.14% 27.37%
As % of the General category 21.37% 27.55% 42.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 160 218 368
10th Percentile £313 £190 £156
25th Percentile £406 £330 £279
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% - -2.70%
75th Percentile £575 £519 £538
90th Percentile £720 £588 £633
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -1.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 10 12
10th Percentile - £16.88 £12.00
25th Percentile - £18.80 £12.94
Median hourly rate £17.23 £22.08 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -21.97% +26.17% +13.97%
75th Percentile £21.40 £27.13 £18.86
90th Percentile £23.91 £30.12 £24.57
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £22.59 £22.50
% change year-on-year +5.49% +0.38% +11.06%

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 1,165 1,158 1,366
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 59.08% 73.11% 64.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 589 676 822
10th Percentile £250 £239 £178
25th Percentile £363 £368 £334
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £463 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.51% +2.89% -5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £562
90th Percentile £675 £600 £638
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 40 76
10th Percentile £12.60 £15.98 £12.15
25th Percentile £13.45 £16.21 £14.25
Median hourly rate £16.25 £19.97 £18.20
Median % change year-on-year -18.63% +9.73% -8.45%
75th Percentile £50.00 £25.48 £49.75
90th Percentile £63.25 £60.50 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £30.54 £27.97 £30.16
% change year-on-year +9.19% -7.26% -6.91%

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 4 June 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 4 June 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 -4 118 £450 - 15
Glasgow +6 104 £536 +12.84% 32
South Lanarkshire -3 13 £669 +42.23% 2
Lanarkshire 0 2 £431 +31.68% 12
West Lothian -4 2 £388 +106.67%
East Lothian +4 1 - -
Aberdeen -2 1 £138 -17.91% 3
Moray -3 1 - -
North Lanarkshire -3 1 £350 -12.50%
Dundee -5 1 - - 4
Inverclyde - 1 £675 -
Fife - 1 - - 2
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 (3.61%) Confluence
2 3 (1.20%) CMS
3 2 (0.80%) Apache
3 2 (0.80%) Drupal
3 2 (0.80%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.40%) CICS
4 1 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2013
4 1 (0.40%) JBoss
4 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.40%) OpenStack
Applications
1 8 (3.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.80%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (2.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.40%) Dynamics GP
2 1 (0.40%) IntelliMatch
2 1 (0.40%) iTrent
2 1 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.40%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 53 (21.29%) Azure
2 46 (18.47%) AWS
3 22 (8.84%) Power Platform
4 19 (7.63%) Azure DevOps
5 17 (6.83%) Microsoft 365
6 14 (5.62%) OCI
7 11 (4.42%) Serverless
8 9 (3.61%) GCP
9 7 (2.81%) Amazon S3
9 7 (2.81%) AWS Lambda
9 7 (2.81%) Azure AI
9 7 (2.81%) Azure Cognitive Search
9 7 (2.81%) Azure Cognitive Services
10 6 (2.41%) Amazon EKS
10 6 (2.41%) Dynamics 365
10 6 (2.41%) PowerApps
10 6 (2.41%) SaaS
11 5 (2.01%) AWS CloudFormation
11 5 (2.01%) Cloud Computing
11 5 (2.01%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 8 (3.21%) DNS
2 6 (2.41%) Cisco Nexus
2 6 (2.41%) Wi-Fi
3 5 (2.01%) Firewall
3 5 (2.01%) WAN
4 4 (1.61%) LAN
4 4 (1.61%) Network Security
4 4 (1.61%) SD-WAN
4 4 (1.61%) VPN
5 3 (1.20%) Remote Desktop
5 3 (1.20%) SSH
5 3 (1.20%) SSL
6 2 (0.80%) BGP
6 2 (0.80%) Fibre Channel
6 2 (0.80%) HTTPS
6 2 (0.80%) Intranet
6 2 (0.80%) OSPF
6 2 (0.80%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.40%) DSL
7 1 (0.40%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (6.83%) Power BI
2 9 (3.61%) Metadata
2 9 (3.61%) MySQL
3 8 (3.21%) Relational Database
4 6 (2.41%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (2.01%) MariaDB
5 5 (2.01%) SQL Server
6 4 (1.61%) Amazon Aurora
7 3 (1.20%) Geospatial Data
7 3 (1.20%) MongoDB
7 3 (1.20%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.80%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.80%) DynamoDB
8 2 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.80%) GIS
8 2 (0.80%) Power Query
8 2 (0.80%) Snowflake Schema
8 2 (0.80%) SQLPlus
9 1 (0.40%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 12 (4.82%) JIRA
2 8 (3.21%) Cypress.io
2 8 (3.21%) Git
3 7 (2.81%) Selenium
4 5 (2.01%) Cucumber
4 5 (2.01%) Jenkins
5 3 (1.20%) WebDriver
6 2 (0.80%) Appium
6 2 (0.80%) Postman
6 2 (0.80%) REST Assured
6 2 (0.80%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.80%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.40%) GitLab
7 1 (0.40%) Jasmine
7 1 (0.40%) Karma Test Runner
7 1 (0.40%) MLflow
7 1 (0.40%) SpecFlow
7 1 (0.40%) Subversion
7 1 (0.40%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.40%) TeamCity
General
1 65 (26.10%) Social Skills
2 31 (12.45%) Finance
3 18 (7.23%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (4.42%) Legal
5 10 (4.02%) Influencing Skills
6 7 (2.81%) Organisational Skills
7 5 (2.01%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.61%) Military
9 3 (1.20%) Banking
9 3 (1.20%) Police
9 3 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.80%) Local Government
10 2 (0.80%) Marketing
10 2 (0.80%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.40%) Back Office
11 1 (0.40%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 37 (14.86%) Analyst
2 28 (11.24%) Architect
3 23 (9.24%) Senior
4 17 (6.83%) Developer
5 16 (6.43%) Lead
6 14 (5.62%) Consultant
6 14 (5.62%) Project Manager
7 11 (4.42%) DevOps Engineer
8 9 (3.61%) Solutions Architect
9 8 (3.21%) Business Analyst
9 8 (3.21%) Cloud Consultant
9 8 (3.21%) Network Engineer
9 8 (3.21%) Oracle Consultant
10 7 (2.81%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
10 7 (2.81%) Cloud Engineer
10 7 (2.81%) DBA
11 6 (2.41%) Help Desk Consultant
11 6 (2.41%) HR Consultant
11 6 (2.41%) Oracle HRMS Consultant
12 5 (2.01%) Cloud Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (6.02%) .NET
2 11 (4.42%) React
3 6 (2.41%) RESTful
4 5 (2.01%) AWS CDK
4 5 (2.01%) Playwright
5 4 (1.61%) Middleware
5 4 (1.61%) REST
5 4 (1.61%) Spring
6 3 (1.20%) Gherkin
6 3 (1.20%) JSON
6 3 (1.20%) Spring Boot
7 2 (0.80%) ADO
7 2 (0.80%) ASP.NET
7 2 (0.80%) NumPy
7 2 (0.80%) OAuth
7 2 (0.80%) OpenCV
7 2 (0.80%) Pandas
7 2 (0.80%) SOAP
7 2 (0.80%) Web Services
7 2 (0.80%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 19 (7.63%) Product Ownership
2 16 (6.43%) Management Information System
3 11 (4.42%) Legacy Systems
4 8 (3.21%) Data Centre
4 8 (3.21%) Data Protection Act
5 6 (2.41%) Cloud Native
6 5 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
7 4 (1.61%) Cyber Threat
7 4 (1.61%) Data Structures
7 4 (1.61%) Legacy Applications
7 4 (1.61%) NHS
8 3 (1.20%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.80%) Cyberattack
9 2 (0.80%) Freedom of Information
9 2 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (0.80%) NVMe
9 2 (0.80%) PKI
9 2 (0.80%) Replication
9 2 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
9 2 (0.80%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 20 (8.03%) Linux
2 19 (7.63%) Windows
3 6 (2.41%) Windows Server
4 5 (2.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (2.01%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.40%) Android
5 1 (0.40%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.40%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.40%) Rocky
5 1 (0.40%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.40%) Unix
5 1 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
5 1 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 67 (26.91%) Agile
2 37 (14.86%) Stakeholder Management
3 35 (14.06%) DevOps
4 33 (13.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 30 (12.05%) CI/CD
6 29 (11.65%) AI
6 29 (11.65%) Migration
7 27 (10.84%) Continuous Improvement
8 26 (10.44%) Roadmaps
9 25 (10.04%) Problem-Solving
10 23 (9.24%) Project Delivery
11 22 (8.84%) Decision-Making
12 19 (7.63%) Infrastructure as Code
13 17 (6.83%) Cybersecurity
14 16 (6.43%) Business Intelligence
15 15 (6.02%) Coaching
15 15 (6.02%) Machine Learning
15 15 (6.02%) Project Management
16 14 (5.62%) Data Protection
16 14 (5.62%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 32 (12.85%) Python
2 20 (8.03%) SQL
3 18 (7.23%) Java
4 16 (6.43%) C#
5 15 (6.02%) JavaScript
6 11 (4.42%) PowerShell
7 10 (4.02%) TypeScript
8 6 (2.41%) Bicep
9 4 (1.61%) Bash
10 2 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.40%) C++
11 1 (0.40%) COBOL
11 1 (0.40%) JCL
11 1 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
11 1 (0.40%) Perl
11 1 (0.40%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.40%) SPARQL
11 1 (0.40%) VBA
11 1 (0.40%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 62 (24.90%) Security Cleared
2 44 (17.67%) SC Cleared
3 20 (8.03%) BPSS Clearance
4 15 (6.02%) Degree
5 11 (4.42%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.61%) CCNP
6 4 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
6 4 (1.61%) ITIL Certification
6 4 (1.61%) PMI Certification
6 4 (1.61%) PMP
7 3 (1.20%) CCAB
7 3 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (1.20%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.80%) CIPD
8 2 (0.80%) CompTIA CySA+
8 2 (0.80%) CompTIA Security+
8 2 (0.80%) ISTQB
8 2 (0.80%) MCSE
8 2 (0.80%) Six Sigma Black Belt
8 2 (0.80%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.22%) QA
2 12 (4.82%) Data Quality
2 12 (4.82%) Disclosure Scotland
3 11 (4.42%) Accessibility
4 10 (4.02%) GDPR
5 6 (2.41%) PMO
6 4 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (1.61%) NIST
6 4 (1.61%) WCAG
7 3 (1.20%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (1.20%) GRC
7 3 (1.20%) NCSC
8 2 (0.80%) SLA
9 1 (0.40%) COBIT
9 1 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.40%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.40%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 9 (3.61%) Active Directory
2 5 (2.01%) Docker
2 5 (2.01%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (1.61%) Hyper-V
3 4 (1.61%) VMware NSX
4 3 (1.20%) Ceph
5 2 (0.80%) Squid
5 2 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.80%) vSphere
6 1 (0.40%) IAG
6 1 (0.40%) iptables
6 1 (0.40%) NFS
6 1 (0.40%) Samba
6 1 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 14 (5.62%) Terraform
2 11 (4.42%) Kubernetes
3 9 (3.61%) Ansible
4 6 (2.41%) Istio
5 5 (2.01%) Grafana
5 5 (2.01%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (1.20%) Argo
7 2 (0.80%) SCCM
7 2 (0.80%) vMotion
8 1 (0.40%) PowerCLI
8 1 (0.40%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.40%) Rundeck
8 1 (0.40%) SELinux
8 1 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.40%) systemd
8 1 (0.40%) vRealize
8 1 (0.40%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 39 (15.66%) Microsoft
2 23 (9.24%) Oracle
3 11 (4.42%) Google
4 10 (4.02%) Salesforce
5 9 (3.61%) Cisco
6 7 (2.81%) OpenAI
6 7 (2.81%) VMware
7 6 (2.41%) Palo Alto
8 4 (1.61%) F5
9 2 (0.80%) Arista
9 2 (0.80%) Atlassian
9 2 (0.80%) Greenplum
9 2 (0.80%) Informatica
9 2 (0.80%) Juniper
9 2 (0.80%) Red Hat
9 2 (0.80%) Splunk
9 2 (0.80%) Talend
10 1 (0.40%) FIS
10 1 (0.40%) Okta
10 1 (0.40%) Workday