Inclusion and Diversity Contract Job Trends

Inclusion and Diversity
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Inclusion and Diversity in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Inclusion and Diversity over the 6 months leading up to 17 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 220 163 172
Rank change year-on-year -57 +9 +64
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 488 515 635
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.21% 1.69% 1.42%
As % of the General category 2.07% 2.72% 2.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 193 263 453
10th Percentile £173 £264 £376
25th Percentile £353 £450 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -20.83% - +3.45%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £675
90th Percentile £675 £800 £760
UK excluding London median daily rate £375 £525 £508
% change year-on-year -28.57% +3.45% +1.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 19
10th Percentile £14.45 - £10.40
25th Percentile £14.94 - £11.86
Median hourly rate £16.50 - £21.64
75th Percentile £17.05 - £49.35
90th Percentile £17.17 - £63.29
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.50 - £34.21
% change year-on-year - - +146.56%

All General Skills
UK

Inclusion and Diversity 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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 23,589 18,910 26,233
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.66% 62.08% 58.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,768 11,381 16,900
10th Percentile £298 £284 £266
25th Percentile £404 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £644 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £500
% change year-on-year -0.42% -4.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,455 595 1,648
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.36 £20.12 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 £25.71
Median % change year-on-year -21.34% +12.80% -4.78%
75th Percentile £50.00 £57.50 £53.38
90th Percentile £71.80 £75.00 £67.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.73 £27.13 £24.83
% change year-on-year -19.91% +9.26% -0.70%

Inclusion and Diversity
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Inclusion and Diversity relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Inclusion and Diversity job vacancy trend in the UK

Inclusion and Diversity
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Inclusion and Diversity.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Inclusion and Diversity

Inclusion and Diversity
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity over the 6 months to 17 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Inclusion and Diversity in the UK

Inclusion and Diversity
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Inclusion and Diversity.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Inclusion and Diversity

Inclusion and Diversity
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity within the UK over the 6 months to 17 February 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
England -59 440 £488 -18.75% 695
London -29 250 £575 -6.12% 294
Work from Home -28 224 £425 -29.17% 362
UK excluding London -87 192 £375 -28.57% 652
Midlands -56 58 £188 -67.39% 73
South East -24 41 £375 +87.50% 286
North of England -65 37 £375 -16.67% 125
West Midlands -66 34 £195 -66.09% 41
East of England -10 27 £550 - 43
North West -27 26 £425 -5.56% 74
East Midlands -9 24 £168 -64.76% 32
South West -38 17 £540 +2.86% 61
Scotland -2 14 £175 -63.16% 52
Yorkshire -50 9 £375 -17.81% 31
North East -19 2 - - 20
Northern Ireland -7 1 £625 +8.70% 7

Inclusion and Diversity
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 14 (2.87%) SharePoint
2 13 (2.66%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (2.25%) Apache Spark
3 11 (2.25%) Confluence
4 8 (1.64%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (1.02%) CMS
6 4 (0.82%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 4 (0.82%) WordPress
7 3 (0.61%) HCL Notes
8 2 (0.41%) Apache
8 2 (0.41%) Camunda
8 2 (0.41%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.20%) Appian
9 1 (0.20%) IIS
9 1 (0.20%) nginx
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 27 (5.53%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (3.07%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.82%) Adobe Captivate
4 4 (0.82%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 4 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.61%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.41%) Adobe After Effects
6 2 (0.41%) Adobe XD
6 2 (0.41%) InVision
6 2 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.41%) Sketch
6 2 (0.41%) Trello
7 1 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.20%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 7 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.61%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.41%) CODA-Financials
3 2 (0.41%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg AIM
4 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.20%) Fidessa
4 1 (0.20%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.20%) ResourceLink
4 1 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.20%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 109 (22.34%) Azure
2 75 (15.37%) AWS
3 34 (6.97%) Power Platform
4 26 (5.33%) GitHub
5 23 (4.71%) Microsoft 365
6 22 (4.51%) Azure DevOps
6 22 (4.51%) GitHub Actions
7 19 (3.89%) GCP
8 18 (3.69%) SaaS
9 16 (3.28%) dbt
10 11 (2.25%) Azure Data Factory
10 11 (2.25%) Serverless
11 10 (2.05%) Snowflake
12 8 (1.64%) Amazon EKS
12 8 (1.64%) Entra ID
12 8 (1.64%) Google Workspace
13 7 (1.43%) Figma
13 7 (1.43%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
13 7 (1.43%) Salesforce Service Cloud
14 6 (1.23%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 16 (3.28%) TCP/IP
2 13 (2.66%) Ethernet
2 13 (2.66%) Network Security
3 9 (1.84%) Firewall
3 9 (1.84%) VPN
4 8 (1.64%) WAN
5 6 (1.23%) LAN
6 5 (1.02%) VSAN
7 4 (0.82%) DNS
7 4 (0.82%) Wi-Fi
8 3 (0.61%) AMQP
8 3 (0.61%) DHCP
8 3 (0.61%) Intranet
8 3 (0.61%) VLAN
9 2 (0.41%) MPLS
9 2 (0.41%) SD-WAN
10 1 (0.20%) BGP
10 1 (0.20%) EIGRP
10 1 (0.20%) OSPF
10 1 (0.20%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (5.12%) Power BI
2 19 (3.89%) SQL Server
3 16 (3.28%) Data Warehouse
4 15 (3.07%) PostgreSQL
5 9 (1.84%) Big Data
5 9 (1.84%) Metadata
6 8 (1.64%) Hadoop
7 7 (1.43%) NoSQL
7 7 (1.43%) Snowflake Schema
8 6 (1.23%) Azure SQL Database
8 6 (1.23%) Relational Database
8 6 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 5 (1.02%) Tableau
10 4 (0.82%) Data Lake
10 4 (0.82%) DB2
10 4 (0.82%) Looker
10 4 (0.82%) Metadata Repository
10 4 (0.82%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.61%) Apache Iceberg
11 3 (0.61%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 25 (5.12%) Git
2 18 (3.69%) JIRA
3 11 (2.25%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.43%) Cucumber
4 7 (1.43%) GitLab
5 5 (1.02%) Maven
6 4 (0.82%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.61%) Selenium
7 3 (0.61%) Team Foundation Server
8 2 (0.41%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.41%) Axure RP
8 2 (0.41%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.41%) JMeter
8 2 (0.41%) JUnit
8 2 (0.41%) Mockito
9 1 (0.20%) Appium
9 1 (0.20%) Gatling
9 1 (0.20%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.20%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.20%) webpack
General
1 172 (35.25%) Social Skills
2 117 (23.98%) Finance
3 59 (12.09%) Analytical Skills
4 56 (11.48%) Public Sector
5 24 (4.92%) Banking
6 19 (3.89%) Marketing
7 16 (3.28%) Presentation Skills
8 15 (3.07%) Organisational Skills
9 13 (2.66%) Legal
10 11 (2.25%) Local Government
10 11 (2.25%) Retail
11 10 (2.05%) Fire and Rescue
12 9 (1.84%) Pharmaceutical
13 7 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
13 7 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
14 6 (1.23%) Manufacturing
15 5 (1.02%) Military
15 5 (1.02%) Publishing
16 4 (0.82%) Law
16 4 (0.82%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 79 (16.19%) Analyst
2 42 (8.61%) Lead
3 39 (7.99%) Architect
4 35 (7.17%) Data Engineer
5 32 (6.56%) Developer
6 31 (6.35%) Senior
7 25 (5.12%) Support Engineer
8 22 (4.51%) Project Manager
9 19 (3.89%) IT Support
10 17 (3.48%) Business Analyst
10 17 (3.48%) Consultant
11 16 (3.28%) Data Analyst
11 16 (3.28%) IT Analyst
12 15 (3.07%) Cloud Engineer
12 15 (3.07%) IT Engineer
12 15 (3.07%) Systems Engineer
13 14 (2.87%) DevOps Engineer
14 13 (2.66%) Service Analyst
14 13 (2.66%) Solutions Architect
14 13 (2.66%) Technical Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (3.69%) EDI
2 13 (2.66%) React
3 11 (2.25%) Spring
3 11 (2.25%) Spring Boot
3 11 (2.25%) YAML
4 10 (2.05%) AngularJS
4 10 (2.05%) Middleware
4 10 (2.05%) REST
5 9 (1.84%) HTML
6 7 (1.43%) .NET
7 5 (1.02%) CSS
7 5 (1.02%) PySpark
8 4 (0.82%) Hibernate
8 4 (0.82%) JPA
8 4 (0.82%) Kafka
8 4 (0.82%) RESTful
9 3 (0.61%) Lightning Web Components
9 3 (0.61%) Oracle Fusion
9 3 (0.61%) Playwright
9 3 (0.61%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 25 (5.12%) Onboarding
2 22 (4.51%) Cloud Native
3 21 (4.30%) Management Information System
4 16 (3.28%) Data Centre
5 13 (2.66%) Industry 4.0
5 13 (2.66%) Robotics
6 7 (1.43%) Product Ownership
6 7 (1.43%) Virtual Team
7 6 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (1.23%) Public Cloud
8 5 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
8 5 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
8 5 (1.02%) Reinsurance
8 5 (1.02%) Replication
9 4 (0.82%) Algorithms
9 4 (0.82%) e-Learning
9 4 (0.82%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
9 4 (0.82%) Learning Management System
9 4 (0.82%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 41 (8.40%) Windows
2 14 (2.87%) Windows Server
3 13 (2.66%) Windows 10
4 12 (2.46%) Linux
5 5 (1.02%) Unix
6 4 (0.82%) AIX
7 3 (0.61%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.20%) Android
8 1 (0.20%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.20%) Oracle Linux
8 1 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (28.07%) Problem-Solving
2 73 (14.96%) Agile
3 69 (14.14%) CI/CD
4 67 (13.73%) DevOps
5 56 (11.48%) Decision-Making
5 56 (11.48%) Stakeholder Management
6 50 (10.25%) Analytics
7 46 (9.43%) Continuous Improvement
8 42 (8.61%) Migration
9 40 (8.20%) Infrastructure as Code
10 37 (7.58%) Customer Service
11 36 (7.38%) Data Modelling
12 34 (6.97%) Mentoring
13 33 (6.76%) Test Automation
14 29 (5.94%) Data Governance
14 29 (5.94%) Data Pipeline
14 29 (5.94%) Project Management
14 29 (5.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 27 (5.53%) Business Intelligence
15 27 (5.53%) Coaching
Programming Languages
1 69 (14.14%) SQL
2 66 (13.52%) Python
3 30 (6.15%) Java
4 24 (4.92%) JavaScript
5 16 (3.28%) PowerShell
6 11 (2.25%) C#
7 9 (1.84%) Bash
7 9 (1.84%) R
7 9 (1.84%) TypeScript
8 6 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 5 (1.02%) Go
10 4 (0.82%) Rust
11 3 (0.61%) Apex Code
11 3 (0.61%) C++
11 3 (0.61%) Scala
11 3 (0.61%) VBA
12 2 (0.41%) AWK
12 2 (0.41%) C
12 2 (0.41%) Perl
12 2 (0.41%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 67 (13.73%) Security Cleared
2 57 (11.68%) SC Cleared
3 44 (9.02%) Degree
4 16 (3.28%) DBS Check
5 14 (2.87%) AWS Certification
6 10 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.64%) DV Cleared
8 7 (1.43%) Azure Certification
9 4 (0.82%) ACCA
9 4 (0.82%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 4 (0.82%) CIMA
9 4 (0.82%) CISSP
9 4 (0.82%) CTC Cleared
9 4 (0.82%) Oracle Certification
10 3 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (0.61%) ISTQB
10 3 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.61%) Network+ Certification
10 3 (0.61%) OCP
10 3 (0.61%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.92%) Data Quality
2 23 (4.71%) QA
3 21 (4.30%) Accessibility
4 14 (2.87%) PMO
5 9 (1.84%) GDPR
6 8 (1.64%) Actionable Recommendations
7 5 (1.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.61%) GRC
9 3 (0.61%) SLA
9 3 (0.61%) WCAG
10 2 (0.41%) GMP
10 2 (0.41%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.41%) NIST
10 2 (0.41%) PSD2
10 2 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.41%) Software Quality Assurance
11 1 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.20%) Def Stans
11 1 (0.20%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 24 (4.92%) Active Directory
2 23 (4.71%) Docker
3 6 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.02%) Hyper-V
4 5 (1.02%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (1.02%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (1.02%) VMware NSX
4 5 (1.02%) vSphere
5 4 (0.82%) KVM
6 3 (0.61%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.41%) Firmware
8 1 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 40 (8.20%) Terraform
2 26 (5.33%) Kubernetes
3 12 (2.46%) Grafana
4 9 (1.84%) Microsoft Intune
4 9 (1.84%) Prometheus
5 8 (1.64%) Ansible
6 7 (1.43%) SCCM
7 4 (0.82%) IBM BigFix
7 4 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
7 4 (0.82%) vCenter Server
8 3 (0.61%) Argo
8 3 (0.61%) Kibana
9 1 (0.20%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.20%) EMC VPLEX
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 1 (0.20%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.20%) vRealize
9 1 (0.20%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 65 (13.32%) Microsoft
2 20 (4.10%) Oracle
2 20 (4.10%) ServiceNow
3 19 (3.89%) Databricks
4 15 (3.07%) Salesforce
5 14 (2.87%) VMware
6 13 (2.66%) Google
6 13 (2.66%) Siemens
7 12 (2.46%) Cisco
8 10 (2.05%) Adobe
9 7 (1.43%) SAP
10 6 (1.23%) Atlassian
10 6 (1.23%) Citrix
10 6 (1.23%) Dynatrace
11 4 (0.82%) Apple
11 4 (0.82%) IBM
11 4 (0.82%) MuleSoft
11 4 (0.82%) Netskope
11 4 (0.82%) Talend
12 3 (0.61%) CODA