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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 5 1
Rank change year-on-year -5 -4 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 275 329 569
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 12.40% 19.30% 27.24%
As % of the General category 20.71% 26.75% 42.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 181 214 369
10th Percentile £313 £185 £156
25th Percentile £406 £313 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% - -2.70%
75th Percentile £570 £504 £538
90th Percentile £720 £588 £613
UK median daily rate £513 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.50% - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 9 15
10th Percentile - £16.68 £12.00
25th Percentile £25.19 £18.54 £13.23
Median hourly rate £25.39 £19.83 £16.92
Median % change year-on-year +28.01% +17.20% +10.19%
75th Percentile £25.58 £27.95 £18.96
90th Percentile - £31.86 £22.94
UK median hourly rate £24.19 £22.03 £23.00
% change year-on-year +9.80% -4.22% +14.43%

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 1,328 1,230 1,327
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 59.90% 72.14% 63.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 702 718 796
10th Percentile £250 £220 £175
25th Percentile £361 £363 £320
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £465 £450
Median % change year-on-year -0.97% +3.22% -5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £550
90th Percentile £675 £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 40 71
10th Percentile £12.69 £15.98 £12.00
25th Percentile £13.45 £16.48 £13.23
Median hourly rate £16.25 £19.97 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.63% +17.47% -8.11%
75th Percentile £43.96 £26.21 £29.13
90th Percentile £61.50 £46.97 £60.75
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £26.75 £31.97
% change year-on-year +21.50% -16.33% +4.75%

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 10 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 10 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 -2 130 £451 +0.11% 23
Glasgow +5 117 £525 +11.70% 25
South Lanarkshire -2 12 £669 +42.23% 1
Lanarkshire 0 3 £431 +231.73% 18
West Lothian -3 2 £388 +106.67% 1
East Lothian +4 1 - -
Moray -1 1 - -
North Lanarkshire -3 1 £350 -12.50%
Aberdeen -4 1 £138 -58.80%
Dundee -5 1 - -
Inverclyde - 1 £675 -
Fife - 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 (4.73%) Confluence
2 4 (1.45%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.09%) CMS
4 2 (0.73%) Apache
4 2 (0.73%) Drupal
4 2 (0.73%) JBoss
5 1 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.36%) CICS
5 1 (0.36%) Exchange Server 2013
5 1 (0.36%) IIS
5 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.36%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.36%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 9 (3.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.82%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.36%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.36%) Adobe Illustrator
4 1 (0.36%) InDesign
4 1 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.36%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 5 (1.82%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.36%) Dynamics GP
2 1 (0.36%) IntelliMatch
2 1 (0.36%) iTrent
2 1 (0.36%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.36%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 52 (18.91%) AWS
2 45 (16.36%) Azure
3 23 (8.36%) Power Platform
4 19 (6.91%) Azure DevOps
5 16 (5.82%) Microsoft 365
6 14 (5.09%) OCI
6 14 (5.09%) Serverless
7 13 (4.73%) Amazon S3
8 9 (3.27%) AWS Lambda
9 7 (2.55%) AWS CloudFormation
9 7 (2.55%) GCP
9 7 (2.55%) PowerApps
10 6 (2.18%) Amazon EKS
10 6 (2.18%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 6 (2.18%) Azure Monitor
10 6 (2.18%) Dynamics 365
10 6 (2.18%) GitHub
10 6 (2.18%) GitHub Actions
10 6 (2.18%) Power Automate
11 5 (1.82%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.91%) DNS
2 7 (2.55%) Wi-Fi
3 5 (1.82%) Cisco Nexus
3 5 (1.82%) Firewall
3 5 (1.82%) LAN
4 4 (1.45%) Network Security
4 4 (1.45%) WAN
5 3 (1.09%) Remote Desktop
5 3 (1.09%) SD-WAN
5 3 (1.09%) SSH
5 3 (1.09%) SSL
5 3 (1.09%) VPN
5 3 (1.09%) Wireless
6 2 (0.73%) BGP
6 2 (0.73%) Fibre Channel
6 2 (0.73%) HTTPS
6 2 (0.73%) Intranet
6 2 (0.73%) OSPF
7 1 (0.36%) Structured Cabling
7 1 (0.36%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (6.18%) Power BI
2 12 (4.36%) MySQL
3 10 (3.64%) Relational Database
4 9 (3.27%) Metadata
5 7 (2.55%) MongoDB
5 7 (2.55%) SQL Server
6 6 (2.18%) MariaDB
6 6 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (1.82%) Amazon Aurora
8 4 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (1.45%) Oracle Database
9 3 (1.09%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (1.09%) DynamoDB
9 3 (1.09%) Geospatial Data
9 3 (1.09%) Power Query
10 2 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.73%) GIS
10 2 (0.73%) SQLPlus
11 1 (0.36%) BusinessObjects
11 1 (0.36%) EDRMS
Development Applications
1 16 (5.82%) JIRA
2 12 (4.36%) Git
3 10 (3.64%) Jenkins
4 9 (3.27%) Cypress.io
5 7 (2.55%) Selenium
6 5 (1.82%) Cucumber
6 5 (1.82%) Subversion
7 4 (1.45%) Gradle
7 4 (1.45%) Maven
8 3 (1.09%) GoCD
8 3 (1.09%) JProfiler
8 3 (1.09%) JUnit
8 3 (1.09%) Sonatype Nexus
8 3 (1.09%) WebDriver
9 2 (0.73%) Appium
9 2 (0.73%) Postman
9 2 (0.73%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.73%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.36%) Karma Test Runner
10 1 (0.36%) MLflow
General
1 78 (28.36%) Social Skills
2 36 (13.09%) Finance
3 23 (8.36%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (3.64%) Legal
5 9 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
5 9 (3.27%) Influencing Skills
6 8 (2.91%) Organisational Skills
7 4 (1.45%) Banking
7 4 (1.45%) Military
8 3 (1.09%) Marketing
8 3 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.73%) Local Government
9 2 (0.73%) Police
9 2 (0.73%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.36%) Back Office
10 1 (0.36%) Law
10 1 (0.36%) Publishing
10 1 (0.36%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 30 (10.91%) Analyst
2 28 (10.18%) Architect
3 27 (9.82%) Senior
4 26 (9.45%) Developer
5 19 (6.91%) Lead
6 17 (6.18%) Project Manager
7 14 (5.09%) Consultant
7 14 (5.09%) DevOps Engineer
8 11 (4.00%) Solutions Architect
9 10 (3.64%) Network Engineer
10 9 (3.27%) Cloud Engineer
11 8 (2.91%) Cloud Consultant
11 8 (2.91%) Oracle Consultant
12 7 (2.55%) Administrator
12 7 (2.55%) Designer
13 6 (2.18%) DBA
13 6 (2.18%) Help Desk Consultant
13 6 (2.18%) HR Consultant
13 6 (2.18%) Oracle HRMS Consultant
13 6 (2.18%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (4.73%) .NET
2 12 (4.36%) React
3 9 (3.27%) REST
3 9 (3.27%) Spring
3 9 (3.27%) Spring Boot
4 7 (2.55%) AWS CDK
4 7 (2.55%) RESTful
5 6 (2.18%) Web Services
6 5 (1.82%) Jest
6 5 (1.82%) Node.js
6 5 (1.82%) Playwright
7 4 (1.45%) JSON
7 4 (1.45%) Middleware
7 4 (1.45%) SOAP
8 3 (1.09%) ARM Templates
8 3 (1.09%) ASP.NET
8 3 (1.09%) FreeMarker
8 3 (1.09%) Gherkin
8 3 (1.09%) JSF
9 2 (0.73%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 25 (9.09%) Product Ownership
2 12 (4.36%) Legacy Systems
3 11 (4.00%) Management Information System
4 8 (2.91%) Data Protection Act
5 7 (2.55%) Cloud Native
5 7 (2.55%) Data Centre
6 6 (2.18%) NHS
7 5 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
8 4 (1.45%) Legacy Applications
9 3 (1.09%) Data Structures
10 2 (0.73%) Freedom of Information
10 2 (0.73%) NVMe
10 2 (0.73%) Onboarding
10 2 (0.73%) PKI
10 2 (0.73%) Self-Motivation
11 1 (0.36%) CCTV
11 1 (0.36%) Client/Server
11 1 (0.36%) Smartphone
11 1 (0.36%) VSAM
11 1 (0.36%) W3C
Operating Systems
1 23 (8.36%) Linux
2 20 (7.27%) Windows
3 7 (2.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 7 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 5 (1.82%) Windows 10
5 2 (0.73%) Unix
6 1 (0.36%) Android
6 1 (0.36%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.36%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.36%) Rocky
6 1 (0.36%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 81 (29.45%) Agile
2 45 (16.36%) Stakeholder Management
3 43 (15.64%) DevOps
4 40 (14.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 39 (14.18%) Continuous Improvement
6 37 (13.45%) CI/CD
7 31 (11.27%) Migration
8 26 (9.45%) AI
8 26 (9.45%) Infrastructure as Code
9 25 (9.09%) Problem-Solving
9 25 (9.09%) Project Delivery
10 22 (8.00%) Decision-Making
11 21 (7.64%) Roadmaps
11 21 (7.64%) Scrum
12 19 (6.91%) Microservices
13 17 (6.18%) Business Intelligence
13 17 (6.18%) Mentoring
14 16 (5.82%) Data Protection
14 16 (5.82%) Project Management
15 15 (5.45%) Kanban
Programming Languages
1 25 (9.09%) Python
2 24 (8.73%) Java
3 23 (8.36%) SQL
4 20 (7.27%) JavaScript
5 14 (5.09%) TypeScript
6 13 (4.73%) C#
7 12 (4.36%) PowerShell
8 8 (2.91%) Bicep
9 7 (2.55%) Bash
10 3 (1.09%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 3 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.09%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.73%) VBA
12 1 (0.36%) C++
12 1 (0.36%) COBOL
12 1 (0.36%) JCL
12 1 (0.36%) Perl
12 1 (0.36%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.36%) VB.NET
12 1 (0.36%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 58 (21.09%) Security Cleared
2 43 (15.64%) SC Cleared
3 21 (7.64%) BPSS Clearance
4 12 (4.36%) Degree
5 8 (2.91%) DV Cleared
6 5 (1.82%) PMI Certification
6 5 (1.82%) PMP
7 4 (1.45%) ITIL Certification
8 3 (1.09%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.09%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 3 (1.09%) CCAB
8 3 (1.09%) CCNP
8 3 (1.09%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (1.09%) IIBA
8 3 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
8 3 (1.09%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 2 (0.73%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (0.73%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
9 2 (0.73%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (0.73%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (6.55%) Accessibility
2 16 (5.82%) Disclosure Scotland
2 16 (5.82%) QA
3 11 (4.00%) Data Quality
3 11 (4.00%) GDPR
4 6 (2.18%) PMO
5 5 (1.82%) WCAG
6 4 (1.45%) NIST
7 3 (1.09%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (1.09%) NCSC
8 2 (0.73%) SLA
9 1 (0.36%) COBIT
9 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.36%) GRC
9 1 (0.36%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.36%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 9 (3.27%) Active Directory
2 6 (2.18%) Docker
3 5 (1.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (1.45%) Hyper-V
4 4 (1.45%) VMware NSX
5 3 (1.09%) Ceph
6 2 (0.73%) Squid
6 2 (0.73%) vSphere
7 1 (0.36%) IAG
7 1 (0.36%) iptables
7 1 (0.36%) NFS
7 1 (0.36%) Samba
7 1 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 20 (7.27%) Terraform
2 13 (4.73%) Kubernetes
3 9 (3.27%) Ansible
4 7 (2.55%) Grafana
5 6 (2.18%) Istio
6 5 (1.82%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (1.45%) Argo
8 3 (1.09%) Prometheus
9 2 (0.73%) SCCM
9 2 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.73%) vMotion
10 1 (0.36%) PowerCLI
10 1 (0.36%) Rundeck
10 1 (0.36%) SELinux
10 1 (0.36%) systemd
10 1 (0.36%) vRealize
10 1 (0.36%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 41 (14.91%) Microsoft
2 32 (11.64%) Oracle
3 10 (3.64%) Cisco
3 10 (3.64%) Salesforce
4 7 (2.55%) VMware
5 6 (2.18%) Google
6 5 (1.82%) MuleSoft
6 5 (1.82%) Palo Alto
7 3 (1.09%) F5
7 3 (1.09%) OpenAI
7 3 (1.09%) SAP
8 2 (0.73%) Arista
8 2 (0.73%) Atlassian
8 2 (0.73%) Juniper
8 2 (0.73%) Okta
8 2 (0.73%) Red Hat
9 1 (0.36%) AppNeta
9 1 (0.36%) FIS
9 1 (0.36%) UiPath
9 1 (0.36%) Workday