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

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 3 1
Rank change year-on-year -3 -2 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 236 339 665
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 16.32% 21.90% 29.10%
As % of the General category 24.43% 32.01% 43.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 155 241 403
10th Percentile £247 £193 £152
25th Percentile £403 £378 £333
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.11% -5.26% -
75th Percentile £540 £519 £575
90th Percentile £591 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 12 9
10th Percentile £14.92 £19.59 £11.63
25th Percentile £16.41 £19.63 £12.26
Median hourly rate £17.23 £23.59 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.96% +34.80% +2.70%
75th Percentile £20.21 £27.91 £55.00
90th Percentile £25.58 £33.89 £55.28
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £23.00 £20.71
% change year-on-year -8.70% +11.08% +8.97%

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 966 1,059 1,544
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 66.80% 68.41% 67.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 568 633 938
10th Percentile £206 £190 £200
25th Percentile £363 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.78% -10.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £550 £538 £588
90th Percentile £638 £625 £699
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 60 33 49
10th Percentile £13.00 £16.58 £12.21
25th Percentile £13.50 £20.94 £16.50
Median hourly rate £17.87 £24.00 £26.50
Median % change year-on-year -25.54% -9.43% +56.48%
75th Percentile £25.80 £27.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £60.06 £43.73 £70.75
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £27.19 £30.00
% change year-on-year -15.40% -9.38% +20.00%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -3 130 £455 +1.11% 11
Glasgow -4 88 £500 +6.95% 11
South Lanarkshire - 3 £550 - 1
North Lanarkshire - 2 £314 -
Lanarkshire +4 1 £130 -75.24% 14
Dundee +1 1 £115 -39.47%
Stirling 0 1 £275 +41.03%
Midlothian - 1 £150 - 6
West Lothian - 1 £165 - 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 5 (2.12%) Confluence
1 5 (2.12%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.69%) Apache
2 4 (1.69%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.85%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.85%) Apache TomEE
4 2 (0.85%) ArcGIS
4 2 (0.85%) CMS
4 2 (0.85%) Tomcat
4 2 (0.85%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.42%) Alfresco
5 1 (0.42%) Apache Solr
5 1 (0.42%) nginx
5 1 (0.42%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 14 (5.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (3.39%) Microsoft Project
3 5 (2.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.85%) Adobe Illustrator
4 2 (0.85%) InDesign
4 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.85%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.42%) Adobe After Effects
5 1 (0.42%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.42%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 10 (4.24%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.42%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 55 (23.31%) Azure
2 49 (20.76%) AWS
3 25 (10.59%) Power Platform
4 16 (6.78%) Serverless
5 15 (6.36%) AWS CloudFormation
5 15 (6.36%) Azure DevOps
6 14 (5.93%) AWS Lambda
6 14 (5.93%) Microsoft 365
7 12 (5.08%) Amazon S3
7 12 (5.08%) Dynamics 365
8 11 (4.66%) OpenShift
9 10 (4.24%) Power Automate
9 10 (4.24%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 9 (3.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 8 (3.39%) Entra ID
11 8 (3.39%) PowerApps
11 8 (3.39%) SaaS
12 7 (2.97%) Cloud Computing
13 5 (2.12%) Amazon EKS
13 5 (2.12%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.81%) Firewall
1 9 (3.81%) WAN
2 6 (2.54%) VPN
3 5 (2.12%) LAN
4 4 (1.69%) Network Security
4 4 (1.69%) Wi-Fi
5 3 (1.27%) Cisco ISE
5 3 (1.27%) Cisco Nexus
5 3 (1.27%) MPLS
5 3 (1.27%) Unified Communications
6 2 (0.85%) SDH
6 2 (0.85%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.85%) TETRA
6 2 (0.85%) VoIP
7 1 (0.42%) Cisco Firepower
7 1 (0.42%) Ethernet VPN
7 1 (0.42%) HTTP
7 1 (0.42%) IPsec
7 1 (0.42%) VXLAN
7 1 (0.42%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (6.78%) Power BI
2 12 (5.08%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (4.24%) SQL Server
4 9 (3.81%) Relational Database
5 7 (2.97%) Amazon Aurora
6 6 (2.54%) Elasticsearch
7 5 (2.12%) Amazon Athena
7 5 (2.12%) MongoDB
7 5 (2.12%) MySQL
8 4 (1.69%) Data Lake
8 4 (1.69%) DynamoDB
9 3 (1.27%) GIS
9 3 (1.27%) Oracle Database
9 3 (1.27%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.85%) Big Data
10 2 (0.85%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.85%) InfluxDB
10 2 (0.85%) NoSQL
10 2 (0.85%) Oracle Reports
10 2 (0.85%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 12 (5.08%) Git
1 12 (5.08%) JIRA
2 9 (3.81%) Jenkins
3 4 (1.69%) GitLab
4 3 (1.27%) Cypress.io
4 3 (1.27%) Subversion
5 2 (0.85%) Ant
5 2 (0.85%) Axure RP
5 2 (0.85%) Cucumber
5 2 (0.85%) Eclipse
5 2 (0.85%) Maven
5 2 (0.85%) Postman
6 1 (0.42%) JUnit
6 1 (0.42%) MLflow
6 1 (0.42%) Mockito
6 1 (0.42%) Selenium
6 1 (0.42%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.42%) Team Foundation Server
6 1 (0.42%) WebDriver
6 1 (0.42%) webpack
General
1 72 (30.51%) Social Skills
2 31 (13.14%) Finance
3 23 (9.75%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (4.24%) Influencing Skills
5 6 (2.54%) Legal
5 6 (2.54%) Telecoms
6 5 (2.12%) Organisational Skills
7 3 (1.27%) Local Government
7 3 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (1.27%) Retail
8 2 (0.85%) Back Office
8 2 (0.85%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (0.85%) Law
8 2 (0.85%) Police
9 1 (0.42%) Digital Healthcare
9 1 (0.42%) Electronics
9 1 (0.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.42%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.42%) Military
9 1 (0.42%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 38 (16.10%) Developer
2 26 (11.02%) Analyst
3 24 (10.17%) Architect
4 16 (6.78%) Senior
5 11 (4.66%) Project Manager
5 11 (4.66%) Solutions Architect
6 10 (4.24%) Business Analyst
6 10 (4.24%) Consultant
7 9 (3.81%) Java Developer
7 9 (3.81%) Lead
8 8 (3.39%) Network Engineer
9 7 (2.97%) Cloud Engineer
9 7 (2.97%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 6 (2.54%) .NET Developer
10 6 (2.54%) DBA
10 6 (2.54%) Power Platform Developer
10 6 (2.54%) Project Support Officer
10 6 (2.54%) Site Engineer
10 6 (2.54%) Support Officer
10 6 (2.54%) User Researcher
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (6.36%) .NET
2 13 (5.51%) React
3 11 (4.66%) Spring
4 10 (4.24%) REST
5 9 (3.81%) AWS CDK
5 9 (3.81%) HTML
5 9 (3.81%) Node.js
6 7 (2.97%) CSS
6 7 (2.97%) PyTorch
6 7 (2.97%) RESTful
6 7 (2.97%) Spring Boot
7 6 (2.54%) JSON
7 6 (2.54%) XML
8 4 (1.69%) AngularJS
8 4 (1.69%) NumPy
8 4 (1.69%) OAuth
8 4 (1.69%) OpenCV
8 4 (1.69%) Spring Security
8 4 (1.69%) Spring Web Flow
8 4 (1.69%) SQLAlchemy
Miscellaneous
1 13 (5.51%) Product Ownership
2 12 (5.08%) NHS
3 11 (4.66%) Management Information System
4 7 (2.97%) Cloud Native
4 7 (2.97%) Cyber Threat
4 7 (2.97%) Legacy Applications
4 7 (2.97%) Legacy Systems
5 6 (2.54%) Data Structures
6 5 (2.12%) Data Centre
6 5 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
6 5 (2.12%) Onboarding
6 5 (2.12%) Wiki
7 4 (1.69%) Algorithms
7 4 (1.69%) Freedom of Information
7 4 (1.69%) Hybrid Cloud
7 4 (1.69%) IVR
7 4 (1.69%) Security Operations Centre
8 3 (1.27%) Cyber Defence
8 3 (1.27%) EPoS
8 3 (1.27%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 18 (7.63%) Linux
2 10 (4.24%) Unix
2 10 (4.24%) Windows
3 5 (2.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (0.85%) Oracle Linux
4 2 (0.85%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.42%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (33.05%) Agile
2 40 (16.95%) Problem-Solving
3 37 (15.68%) DevOps
4 30 (12.71%) CI/CD
5 26 (11.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 25 (10.59%) Migration
7 24 (10.17%) Project Management
8 21 (8.90%) Infrastructure as Code
8 21 (8.90%) Stakeholder Management
8 21 (8.90%) User Experience
9 20 (8.47%) Cybersecurity
10 19 (8.05%) Continuous Improvement
11 17 (7.20%) Business Intelligence
12 16 (6.78%) AI
12 16 (6.78%) Data Protection
12 16 (6.78%) Machine Learning
12 16 (6.78%) Roadmaps
13 15 (6.36%) Data Analysis
13 15 (6.36%) Disaster Recovery
13 15 (6.36%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 36 (15.25%) Python
2 21 (8.90%) Java
3 18 (7.63%) SQL
4 15 (6.36%) JavaScript
5 14 (5.93%) C#
5 14 (5.93%) PowerShell
6 13 (5.51%) TypeScript
7 7 (2.97%) Bash
8 6 (2.54%) Bicep
9 5 (2.12%) Shell Script
10 4 (1.69%) Perl
11 3 (1.27%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.85%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.85%) Go
12 2 (0.85%) Groovy
12 2 (0.85%) R
13 1 (0.42%) C
13 1 (0.42%) C++
13 1 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 47 (19.92%) Security Cleared
2 21 (8.90%) Degree
3 16 (6.78%) BPSS Clearance
3 16 (6.78%) SC Cleared
4 8 (3.39%) Cisco Certification
5 7 (2.97%) CISSP
6 6 (2.54%) CCNA
6 6 (2.54%) DV Cleared
6 6 (2.54%) Microsoft Certification
7 4 (1.69%) Azure Certification
7 4 (1.69%) CCNP
7 4 (1.69%) CISM
7 4 (1.69%) CompTIA Security+
7 4 (1.69%) GIAC
8 3 (1.27%) CCIE
8 3 (1.27%) CEH
8 3 (1.27%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (1.27%) SSCP
9 2 (0.85%) HNC
9 2 (0.85%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (8.47%) GDPR
2 16 (6.78%) Accessibility
3 13 (5.51%) Disclosure Scotland
3 13 (5.51%) QA
4 8 (3.39%) Data Quality
4 8 (3.39%) PMO
5 7 (2.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (2.12%) SLA
7 4 (1.69%) PCI DSS
8 3 (1.27%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.85%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.85%) GRC
9 2 (0.85%) NCSC
10 1 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.42%) NIST
10 1 (0.42%) P3O
10 1 (0.42%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (7.63%) Docker
2 8 (3.39%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.69%) KVM
3 4 (1.69%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.42%) HDFS
4 1 (0.42%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 17 (7.20%) Terraform
2 16 (6.78%) Kubernetes
3 10 (4.24%) Ansible
3 10 (4.24%) Grafana
4 4 (1.69%) Kibana
4 4 (1.69%) logstash
4 4 (1.69%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.27%) Red Hat Satellite
5 3 (1.27%) SCCM
6 2 (0.85%) Fluentd
6 2 (0.85%) HAProxy
6 2 (0.85%) Nagios
6 2 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.42%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 49 (20.76%) Microsoft
2 19 (8.05%) Oracle
3 14 (5.93%) Cisco
4 6 (2.54%) Google
4 6 (2.54%) Red Hat
4 6 (2.54%) Salesforce
4 6 (2.54%) Splunk
5 5 (2.12%) F5
6 4 (1.69%) OpenAI
6 4 (1.69%) Pega
6 4 (1.69%) ServiceNow
7 3 (1.27%) Avaya
7 3 (1.27%) Commvault
7 3 (1.27%) Genesys
7 3 (1.27%) Greenplum
7 3 (1.27%) Informatica
7 3 (1.27%) Palo Alto
7 3 (1.27%) SAP
7 3 (1.27%) Talend
8 2 (0.85%) Adobe