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 19 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 213 144 165
Rank change year-on-year -69 +21 +11
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 706 647 590
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.32% 1.97% 1.52%
As % of the General category 2.39% 3.10% 2.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 371 260 407
10th Percentile £306 £173 £425
25th Percentile £375 £352 £508
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £600
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -20.83% -
75th Percentile £581 £625 £688
90th Percentile £675 £660 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £428 £500
% change year-on-year -0.58% -14.50% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 20 5
10th Percentile £14.85 £17.48 £29.60
25th Percentile £17.36 - £42.50
Median hourly rate £19.65 £22.14 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.27% -50.80% -16.86%
75th Percentile £28.81 £22.23 £48.75
90th Percentile £54.80 £60.00 £54.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.90 £22.14 -
% change year-on-year +44.06% - -

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 29,481 20,839 22,293
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.04% 63.50% 57.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,497 12,935 13,967
10th Percentile £313 £275 £292
25th Percentile £415 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £746 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,248 1,152 1,327
10th Percentile £13.98 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.25 £16.86
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £38.07
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -33.94% +38.44%
75th Percentile £56.30 £50.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £79.13 £71.48 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +44.53% -41.92% +52.48%

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 19 August 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity over the 6 months to 19 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Inclusion and Diversity in the UK

Inclusion and Diversity
Top 17 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 19 August 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 -67 619 £475 -5.00% 3,057
UK excluding London -55 322 £425 -0.58% 2,075
London -60 319 £510 -7.27% 1,648
Work from Home -42 266 £525 -1.87% 1,610
Midlands -14 102 £509 +18.26% 298
South East -47 81 £450 -11.33% 377
West Midlands -24 78 £525 +25.00% 217
North of England -81 74 £425 +14.09% 491
North East +2 45 £425 +6.25% 85
South West -38 27 £475 -15.56% 253
East Midlands -15 24 £165 -63.33% 80
Scotland -23 22 £250 -45.95% 339
Yorkshire -83 15 £400 +100.00% 131
North West -58 14 £518 +29.38% 277
East of England -39 8 £425 +174.19% 147
Wales -12 7 £394 +18.90% 40
Northern Ireland +5 1 - - 151

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 30 (4.25%) SharePoint
2 16 (2.27%) Confluence
3 12 (1.70%) Apache Airflow
4 11 (1.56%) CMS
4 11 (1.56%) Microsoft Exchange
5 9 (1.27%) Apache Spark
5 9 (1.27%) WordPress
6 6 (0.85%) Apache
7 4 (0.57%) Kentico
8 3 (0.42%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.28%) Skype for Business
10 1 (0.14%) Drupal
10 1 (0.14%) JBoss
10 1 (0.14%) SAS
10 1 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 18 (2.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
3 6 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (0.42%) AutoCAD
4 3 (0.42%) Trello
5 2 (0.28%) Acrobat
5 2 (0.28%) Sketch
6 1 (0.14%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.14%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.14%) InVision
6 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.14%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 16 (2.27%) NetSuite
2 11 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (1.27%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.71%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.71%) Salesforce CRM
4 5 (0.71%) Workday HCM
5 4 (0.57%) Dynamics NAV
5 4 (0.57%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.28%) SAP Business One
7 1 (0.14%) Advent Geneva
7 1 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
7 1 (0.14%) Hyperion Planning
7 1 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.14%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.14%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.14%) SAP FS
7 1 (0.14%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 215 (30.45%) Azure
2 125 (17.71%) AWS
3 75 (10.62%) Azure DevOps
4 69 (9.77%) Power Platform
5 62 (8.78%) Microsoft 365
6 49 (6.94%) GCP
7 40 (5.67%) GitHub
8 33 (4.67%) Dynamics 365
9 32 (4.53%) GitHub Actions
10 30 (4.25%) Serverless
11 27 (3.82%) Entra ID
12 25 (3.54%) Power Automate
13 23 (3.26%) Azure Data Factory
14 22 (3.12%) Snowflake
15 19 (2.69%) Amazon EKS
15 19 (2.69%) AWS Lambda
16 17 (2.41%) dbt
17 16 (2.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 15 (2.12%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 14 (1.98%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.84%) DNS
1 13 (1.84%) Firewall
1 13 (1.84%) Network Security
2 12 (1.70%) VPN
3 10 (1.42%) VLAN
3 10 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
3 10 (1.42%) Wireless
4 9 (1.27%) DHCP
5 7 (0.99%) HTTP
6 6 (0.85%) Structured Cabling
6 6 (0.85%) TCP/IP
6 6 (0.85%) WAN
7 5 (0.71%) SD-WAN
8 4 (0.57%) BGP
8 4 (0.57%) OSPF
9 3 (0.42%) Ethernet VPN
9 3 (0.42%) MPLS
9 3 (0.42%) SSL
9 3 (0.42%) VXLAN
10 2 (0.28%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (6.94%) Power BI
2 34 (4.82%) Data Warehouse
3 30 (4.25%) PostgreSQL
4 20 (2.83%) SQL Server
5 14 (1.98%) Metadata
6 13 (1.84%) MongoDB
7 10 (1.42%) Big Data
7 10 (1.42%) Data Lake
8 9 (1.27%) NoSQL
8 9 (1.27%) Relational Database
9 8 (1.13%) Azure SQL Database
9 8 (1.13%) Looker
9 8 (1.13%) Power Query
9 8 (1.13%) Snowflake Schema
9 8 (1.13%) Tableau
10 7 (0.99%) Amazon RDS
10 7 (0.99%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
10 7 (0.99%) Redis
11 6 (0.85%) Hadoop
12 5 (0.71%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 39 (5.52%) JIRA
2 35 (4.96%) Git
3 28 (3.97%) Jenkins
4 24 (3.40%) GitLab
5 11 (1.56%) Cypress.io
5 11 (1.56%) Selenium
6 10 (1.42%) fastlane
6 10 (1.42%) Postman
7 9 (1.27%) WebDriver
8 8 (1.13%) Cucumber
9 6 (0.85%) JMeter
9 6 (0.85%) Vite
10 5 (0.71%) Crashlytics
10 5 (0.71%) Gatling
10 5 (0.71%) Gradle
10 5 (0.71%) JUnit
10 5 (0.71%) LoadRunner
10 5 (0.71%) Mockito
10 5 (0.71%) Visual Studio
10 5 (0.71%) Xcode
General
1 264 (37.39%) Social Skills
2 190 (26.91%) Public Sector
3 188 (26.63%) Finance
4 103 (14.59%) Analytical Skills
5 28 (3.97%) Organisational Skills
6 23 (3.26%) Banking
7 21 (2.97%) Manufacturing
8 18 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
9 17 (2.41%) Law
10 16 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
11 15 (2.12%) Legal
12 14 (1.98%) Marketing
13 12 (1.70%) Retail
14 9 (1.27%) Local Government
14 9 (1.27%) Pharmaceutical
14 9 (1.27%) Telecoms
15 8 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
16 7 (0.99%) Aerospace
16 7 (0.99%) Publishing
17 5 (0.71%) Billing
Job Titles
1 105 (14.87%) Developer
2 99 (14.02%) Analyst
3 79 (11.19%) Senior
4 73 (10.34%) Lead
5 57 (8.07%) Architect
6 46 (6.52%) Consultant
7 33 (4.67%) Data Engineer
8 27 (3.82%) Data Analyst
9 26 (3.68%) Business Analyst
9 26 (3.68%) DevOps Engineer
10 25 (3.54%) Senior Developer
11 21 (2.97%) IT Engineer
11 21 (2.97%) Support Engineer
12 18 (2.55%) Coordinator
12 18 (2.55%) Project Manager
13 17 (2.41%) IT Support
13 17 (2.41%) Software Developer
14 15 (2.12%) Azure Engineer
14 15 (2.12%) Solutions Architect
15 14 (1.98%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (5.67%) RESTful
2 29 (4.11%) React
3 28 (3.97%) .NET
4 23 (3.26%) GraphQL
4 23 (3.26%) HTML
5 22 (3.12%) CSS
6 20 (2.83%) Node.js
6 20 (2.83%) PySpark
7 19 (2.69%) Kafka
8 18 (2.55%) REST
9 17 (2.41%) Django
9 17 (2.41%) JSON
10 15 (2.12%) Spring
10 15 (2.12%) Spring Boot
11 13 (1.84%) OAuth
12 12 (1.70%) OpenID
13 11 (1.56%) Gherkin
13 11 (1.56%) OAuth2
14 9 (1.27%) Web Services
15 8 (1.13%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 64 (9.07%) Onboarding
2 41 (5.81%) Cloud Native
3 39 (5.52%) Product Ownership
4 23 (3.26%) Legacy Systems
5 21 (2.97%) Distributed Systems
6 18 (2.55%) Data Centre
7 13 (1.84%) Data Structures
8 12 (1.70%) Management Information System
9 10 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
9 10 (1.42%) Mobile App
10 9 (1.27%) Security Posture
11 7 (0.99%) EPoS
11 7 (0.99%) Replication
11 7 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
11 7 (0.99%) Virtual Team
12 6 (0.85%) Algorithms
13 5 (0.71%) Reinsurance
14 4 (0.57%) Driving Licence
14 4 (0.57%) Hybrid Cloud
14 4 (0.57%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 68 (9.63%) Windows
2 17 (2.41%) Linux
3 16 (2.27%) Windows 10
3 16 (2.27%) Windows Server
4 13 (1.84%) Apple iOS
5 12 (1.70%) Android
6 4 (0.57%) Mac OS
6 4 (0.57%) Unix
6 4 (0.57%) Windows 7
7 3 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.28%) VMS
8 2 (0.28%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.14%) AIX
9 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 225 (31.87%) Agile
2 174 (24.65%) Problem-Solving
3 155 (21.95%) DevOps
4 147 (20.82%) CI/CD
5 139 (19.69%) Stakeholder Management
6 125 (17.71%) Continuous Improvement
7 110 (15.58%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
8 109 (15.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 107 (15.16%) Analytics
10 97 (13.74%) Decision-Making
11 90 (12.75%) AI
12 85 (12.04%) Migration
13 72 (10.20%) Test Automation
14 70 (9.92%) Infrastructure as Code
15 69 (9.77%) Mentoring
16 66 (9.35%) Validation
17 62 (8.78%) Digital Transformation Programme
18 60 (8.50%) Technical Leadership
19 59 (8.36%) Business Intelligence
20 55 (7.79%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 115 (16.29%) Python
2 99 (14.02%) SQL
3 59 (8.36%) JavaScript
4 42 (5.95%) C#
5 41 (5.81%) Java
6 28 (3.97%) TypeScript
7 14 (1.98%) PowerShell
8 13 (1.84%) Kotlin
9 10 (1.42%) Bash
9 10 (1.42%) Go
9 10 (1.42%) Swift
10 8 (1.13%) Bicep
10 8 (1.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 8 (1.13%) Ruby
10 8 (1.13%) Scala
11 6 (0.85%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.71%) Groovy
12 5 (0.71%) PHP
12 5 (0.71%) R
13 4 (0.57%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 139 (19.69%) Security Cleared
2 127 (17.99%) SC Cleared
3 50 (7.08%) Degree
4 26 (3.68%) DBS Check
5 25 (3.54%) Azure Certification
6 24 (3.40%) Microsoft Certification
7 22 (3.12%) BPSS Clearance
8 20 (2.83%) Computer Science Degree
9 10 (1.42%) Master's Degree
10 9 (1.27%) ISTQB
11 7 (0.99%) CISSP
12 6 (0.85%) ACCA
12 6 (0.85%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 6 (0.85%) CIMA
12 6 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
13 5 (0.71%) AWS Certification
13 5 (0.71%) CISM
13 5 (0.71%) PMP
14 4 (0.57%) DV Cleared
15 3 (0.42%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 93 (13.17%) Accessibility
2 43 (6.09%) QA
3 39 (5.52%) Data Quality
4 37 (5.24%) WCAG
5 31 (4.39%) GDPR
6 21 (2.97%) SLA
7 17 (2.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 12 (1.70%) NCSC
9 9 (1.27%) PMO
10 8 (1.13%) NIST
11 7 (0.99%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
12 6 (0.85%) GRC
13 5 (0.71%) COBIT
14 3 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 2 (0.28%) Def Stans
15 2 (0.28%) DICOM
15 2 (0.28%) HL7
16 1 (0.14%) ISO 22301
16 1 (0.14%) JSP 440
System Software
1 57 (8.07%) Docker
2 47 (6.66%) Active Directory
3 9 (1.27%) Hyper-V
4 7 (0.99%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.42%) Firmware
8 2 (0.28%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 2 (0.28%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.28%) vSphere
9 1 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.14%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 80 (11.33%) Terraform
2 62 (8.78%) Kubernetes
3 28 (3.97%) Grafana
4 22 (3.12%) Prometheus
5 20 (2.83%) Microsoft Intune
6 15 (2.12%) Ansible
7 12 (1.70%) SCCM
8 7 (0.99%) Kibana
9 5 (0.71%) Consul
9 5 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (0.42%) Packer
10 3 (0.42%) Rancher
11 2 (0.28%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.28%) HP Quality Center
11 2 (0.28%) ITRS Geneos
11 2 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.28%) ZABBIX
11 2 (0.28%) Zipkin
12 1 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 1 (0.14%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 161 (22.80%) Microsoft
2 33 (4.67%) Google
3 32 (4.53%) Databricks
4 25 (3.54%) SAP
5 24 (3.40%) Dynatrace
5 24 (3.40%) Salesforce
5 24 (3.40%) ServiceNow
6 16 (2.27%) Oracle
7 12 (1.70%) CyberArk
7 12 (1.70%) Sage
8 10 (1.42%) Splunk
9 9 (1.27%) Apple
9 9 (1.27%) Cisco
9 9 (1.27%) PagerDuty
9 9 (1.27%) VMware
10 8 (1.13%) OpenAI
10 8 (1.13%) UiPath
11 7 (0.99%) Aspera
11 7 (0.99%) CA Agile Central
11 7 (0.99%) Signiant