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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 5 1
Rank change year-on-year -5 -4 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 257 309 565
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 12.32% 19.39% 26.76%
As % of the General category 20.74% 26.41% 42.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 165 200 362
10th Percentile £318 £190 £156
25th Percentile £406 £314 £281
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% - -4.15%
75th Percentile £575 £508 £539
90th Percentile £720 £588 £649
UK median daily rate £510 £500 £510
% change year-on-year +2.00% -1.96% -2.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 10 11
10th Percentile - £16.88 £12.00
25th Percentile - £18.80 £12.63
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 £18.96
90th Percentile £23.91 £30.12 £25.17
UK median hourly rate £24.22 £22.95 £23.00
% change year-on-year +5.53% -0.22% +15.00%

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 1,239 1,170 1,328
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 59.40% 73.40% 62.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 645 672 803
10th Percentile £250 £230 £178
25th Percentile £375 £363 £340
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £463 £450
Median % change year-on-year +2.70% +2.78% -5.26%
75th Percentile £580 £538 £563
90th Percentile £675 £600 £638
UK median daily rate £514 £503 £525
% change year-on-year +2.29% -4.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 46 78
10th Percentile £12.60 £16.02 £12.21
25th Percentile £13.45 £16.57 £14.56
Median hourly rate £16.25 £20.00 £18.07
Median % change year-on-year -18.75% +10.71% -5.81%
75th Percentile £50.00 £26.21 £47.25
90th Percentile £63.25 £58.75 £66.50
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.70 £30.50
% change year-on-year +15.52% -9.18% -0.07%

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 18 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 18 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 -4 122 £450 - 12
Glasgow +3 110 £525 +10.53% 17
South Lanarkshire -3 12 £669 +42.23% 1
Lanarkshire -1 2 £431 +231.73% 6
West Lothian -3 2 £388 +106.67% 1
East Lothian +4 1 - -
Moray -2 1 - -
North Lanarkshire -3 1 £350 -12.50%
Aberdeen -3 1 £138 -17.91% 2
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 10 (3.89%) Confluence
2 3 (1.17%) CMS
2 3 (1.17%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.78%) Apache
3 2 (0.78%) Drupal
4 1 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.39%) CICS
4 1 (0.39%) Exchange Server 2013
4 1 (0.39%) JBoss
4 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.39%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.39%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 7 (2.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.39%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.39%) Adobe Illustrator
4 1 (0.39%) InDesign
4 1 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.39%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.39%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 5 (1.95%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.39%) Dynamics GP
2 1 (0.39%) IntelliMatch
2 1 (0.39%) iTrent
2 1 (0.39%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.39%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 52 (20.23%) Azure
2 48 (18.68%) AWS
3 19 (7.39%) Azure DevOps
3 19 (7.39%) Power Platform
4 16 (6.23%) Microsoft 365
5 14 (5.45%) OCI
6 11 (4.28%) Serverless
7 9 (3.50%) GCP
8 7 (2.72%) Amazon S3
8 7 (2.72%) AWS Lambda
8 7 (2.72%) Azure AI
8 7 (2.72%) Azure Cognitive Search
8 7 (2.72%) Azure Cognitive Services
9 6 (2.33%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (1.95%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 5 (1.95%) Azure Key Vault
10 5 (1.95%) Dynamics 365
10 5 (1.95%) Entra ID
10 5 (1.95%) PowerApps
10 5 (1.95%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.72%) DNS
2 6 (2.33%) Cisco Nexus
2 6 (2.33%) Wi-Fi
3 5 (1.95%) Firewall
3 5 (1.95%) WAN
4 4 (1.56%) LAN
4 4 (1.56%) Network Security
4 4 (1.56%) SD-WAN
4 4 (1.56%) VPN
5 3 (1.17%) Remote Desktop
5 3 (1.17%) SSH
5 3 (1.17%) SSL
6 2 (0.78%) BGP
6 2 (0.78%) Fibre Channel
6 2 (0.78%) HTTPS
6 2 (0.78%) Intranet
6 2 (0.78%) OSPF
7 1 (0.39%) DSL
7 1 (0.39%) MPLS
7 1 (0.39%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (6.23%) Power BI
2 10 (3.89%) Relational Database
3 9 (3.50%) Metadata
3 9 (3.50%) MySQL
4 7 (2.72%) SQL Server
5 6 (2.33%) MongoDB
5 6 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (1.95%) MariaDB
6 5 (1.95%) Oracle Database
7 4 (1.56%) Amazon Aurora
8 3 (1.17%) DynamoDB
8 3 (1.17%) Geospatial Data
9 2 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.78%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.78%) GIS
9 2 (0.78%) Power Query
9 2 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
9 2 (0.78%) SQLPlus
10 1 (0.39%) OpenStack Swift
Development Applications
1 13 (5.06%) JIRA
2 11 (4.28%) Git
3 8 (3.11%) Cypress.io
4 7 (2.72%) Jenkins
4 7 (2.72%) Selenium
5 5 (1.95%) Cucumber
6 4 (1.56%) Subversion
7 3 (1.17%) WebDriver
8 2 (0.78%) Appium
8 2 (0.78%) GoCD
8 2 (0.78%) Gradle
8 2 (0.78%) JProfiler
8 2 (0.78%) JUnit
8 2 (0.78%) Maven
8 2 (0.78%) Postman
8 2 (0.78%) REST Assured
8 2 (0.78%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.78%) Terragrunt
9 1 (0.39%) MLflow
9 1 (0.39%) Oracle Forms
General
1 73 (28.40%) Social Skills
2 33 (12.84%) Finance
3 20 (7.78%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (4.67%) Legal
5 11 (4.28%) Influencing Skills
6 6 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (2.33%) Organisational Skills
7 4 (1.56%) Military
8 3 (1.17%) Banking
8 3 (1.17%) Police
8 3 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.78%) Local Government
9 2 (0.78%) Marketing
9 2 (0.78%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.39%) Back Office
10 1 (0.39%) Law
10 1 (0.39%) Publishing
10 1 (0.39%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 33 (12.84%) Analyst
2 29 (11.28%) Architect
3 27 (10.51%) Senior
4 20 (7.78%) Developer
5 16 (6.23%) Lead
6 15 (5.84%) Project Manager
7 14 (5.45%) Consultant
8 11 (4.28%) DevOps Engineer
9 10 (3.89%) Solutions Architect
10 9 (3.50%) DBA
11 8 (3.11%) Cloud Consultant
11 8 (3.11%) Network Engineer
11 8 (3.11%) Oracle Consultant
12 7 (2.72%) Administrator
12 7 (2.72%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
12 7 (2.72%) Cloud Engineer
13 6 (2.33%) Business Analyst
13 6 (2.33%) Help Desk Consultant
13 6 (2.33%) HR Consultant
13 6 (2.33%) Oracle HRMS Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (5.84%) .NET
2 13 (5.06%) React
3 8 (3.11%) RESTful
4 6 (2.33%) REST
4 6 (2.33%) Spring
5 5 (1.95%) AWS CDK
5 5 (1.95%) Playwright
5 5 (1.95%) Spring Boot
5 5 (1.95%) Web Services
6 4 (1.56%) JSON
6 4 (1.56%) Middleware
7 3 (1.17%) Gherkin
7 3 (1.17%) Jest
7 3 (1.17%) Node.js
8 2 (0.78%) FastAPI
8 2 (0.78%) FHIR
8 2 (0.78%) Hugging Face
8 2 (0.78%) JWT
8 2 (0.78%) OpenCV
8 2 (0.78%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 21 (8.17%) Product Ownership
2 13 (5.06%) Management Information System
3 11 (4.28%) Legacy Systems
4 8 (3.11%) Data Centre
4 8 (3.11%) Data Protection Act
5 6 (2.33%) Cloud Native
6 5 (1.95%) Data Structures
7 4 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (1.56%) Legacy Applications
7 4 (1.56%) NHS
7 4 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (0.78%) Cyber Threat
8 2 (0.78%) Freedom of Information
8 2 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
8 2 (0.78%) NVMe
8 2 (0.78%) Onboarding
8 2 (0.78%) PKI
8 2 (0.78%) Replication
8 2 (0.78%) Web Conferencing
9 1 (0.39%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 20 (7.78%) Linux
2 18 (7.00%) Windows
3 6 (2.33%) Windows Server
4 5 (1.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (1.95%) Windows 10
5 2 (0.78%) Unix
6 1 (0.39%) Android
6 1 (0.39%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.39%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.39%) Rocky
6 1 (0.39%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.39%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 69 (26.85%) Agile
2 41 (15.95%) Stakeholder Management
3 37 (14.40%) DevOps
4 34 (13.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 32 (12.45%) CI/CD
5 32 (12.45%) Migration
6 31 (12.06%) Continuous Improvement
7 30 (11.67%) AI
8 25 (9.73%) Roadmaps
9 24 (9.34%) Project Delivery
10 23 (8.95%) Problem-Solving
11 21 (8.17%) Decision-Making
12 19 (7.39%) Infrastructure as Code
13 17 (6.61%) Scrum
14 16 (6.23%) Business Intelligence
14 16 (6.23%) Data Protection
14 16 (6.23%) Project Management
15 15 (5.84%) Machine Learning
15 15 (5.84%) User Experience
16 14 (5.45%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 32 (12.45%) Python
2 23 (8.95%) SQL
3 20 (7.78%) Java
4 16 (6.23%) JavaScript
5 15 (5.84%) C#
6 10 (3.89%) PowerShell
6 10 (3.89%) TypeScript
7 6 (2.33%) Bicep
8 4 (1.56%) Bash
9 2 (0.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (0.78%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.39%) C++
10 1 (0.39%) COBOL
10 1 (0.39%) JCL
10 1 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
10 1 (0.39%) Perl
10 1 (0.39%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.39%) SPARQL
10 1 (0.39%) VBA
10 1 (0.39%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 60 (23.35%) Security Cleared
2 43 (16.73%) SC Cleared
3 19 (7.39%) BPSS Clearance
4 14 (5.45%) Degree
5 9 (3.50%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.56%) CCNP
6 4 (1.56%) Cisco Certification
6 4 (1.56%) ITIL Certification
6 4 (1.56%) PMI Certification
6 4 (1.56%) PMP
7 3 (1.17%) CCAB
7 3 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.78%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.78%) IIBA
8 2 (0.78%) ISTQB
8 2 (0.78%) MCSE
8 2 (0.78%) Six Sigma Black Belt
8 2 (0.78%) Six Sigma Green Belt
9 1 (0.39%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
9 1 (0.39%) VCP6
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.84%) QA
2 14 (5.45%) Accessibility
3 13 (5.06%) Data Quality
3 13 (5.06%) Disclosure Scotland
4 11 (4.28%) GDPR
5 6 (2.33%) PMO
6 5 (1.95%) WCAG
7 4 (1.56%) NIST
8 3 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (1.17%) NCSC
9 2 (0.78%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.78%) SLA
10 1 (0.39%) COBIT
10 1 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.39%) GRC
10 1 (0.39%) ISO 20022
10 1 (0.39%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 9 (3.50%) Active Directory
2 5 (1.95%) Docker
2 5 (1.95%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (1.56%) Hyper-V
3 4 (1.56%) VMware NSX
4 3 (1.17%) Ceph
5 2 (0.78%) Squid
5 2 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.78%) vSphere
6 1 (0.39%) IAG
6 1 (0.39%) iptables
6 1 (0.39%) NFS
6 1 (0.39%) Samba
6 1 (0.39%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 14 (5.45%) Terraform
2 11 (4.28%) Ansible
2 11 (4.28%) Kubernetes
3 6 (2.33%) Istio
4 5 (1.95%) Grafana
4 5 (1.95%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (1.17%) Argo
6 2 (0.78%) SCCM
6 2 (0.78%) vMotion
7 1 (0.39%) PowerCLI
7 1 (0.39%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.39%) Rundeck
7 1 (0.39%) SELinux
7 1 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.39%) systemd
7 1 (0.39%) vRealize
7 1 (0.39%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 40 (15.56%) Microsoft
2 29 (11.28%) Oracle
3 11 (4.28%) Google
4 10 (3.89%) Salesforce
5 9 (3.50%) Cisco
6 7 (2.72%) OpenAI
6 7 (2.72%) VMware
7 6 (2.33%) Palo Alto
8 4 (1.56%) F5
9 3 (1.17%) MuleSoft
9 3 (1.17%) SAP
10 2 (0.78%) Arista
10 2 (0.78%) Atlassian
10 2 (0.78%) Greenplum
10 2 (0.78%) Informatica
10 2 (0.78%) Juniper
10 2 (0.78%) Red Hat
10 2 (0.78%) Talend
11 1 (0.39%) Brocade
11 1 (0.39%) Qualys