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 23 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 203 145 174
Rank change year-on-year -58 +29 -4
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 762 619 537
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.39% 1.89% 1.43%
As % of the General category 2.49% 2.98% 2.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 399 240 321
10th Percentile £306 £182 £425
25th Percentile £363 £356 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% -22.92% -
75th Percentile £575 £615 £675
90th Percentile £655 £651 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £411 £500
% change year-on-year +3.34% -17.75% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 13 4
10th Percentile £13.31 £17.48 £27.45
25th Percentile £14.45 - £37.13
Median hourly rate £19.29 £22.14 £46.25
Median % change year-on-year -12.87% -52.13% -27.17%
75th Percentile £30.28 £22.50 £50.94
90th Percentile £45.20 £72.50 £54.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.29 £22.14 -
% change year-on-year -12.87% - -

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 30,644 20,748 21,900
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.86% 63.46% 58.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,940 12,852 13,090
10th Percentile £313 £275 £283
25th Percentile £420 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,583 1,203 1,057
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £29.50 £25.11 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.48% -28.26% +27.27%
75th Percentile £54.45 £47.12 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £70.73
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.27 £35.00
% change year-on-year +41.04% -39.23% +27.27%

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 23 September 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 23 September 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 23 September 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 -52 647 £450 -5.26% 4,989
UK excluding London -26 348 £425 +3.34% 2,931
London -72 329 £510 -6.21% 2,802
Work from Home -36 273 £475 -2.81% 2,459
Midlands -14 110 £425 +2.41% 385
South East -15 84 £438 -2.78% 565
North of England -55 79 £425 +21.43% 672
West Midlands -9 77 £425 +2.41% 252
North East +9 52 £425 +6.25% 95
East Midlands -10 33 £163 -63.59% 133
South West -23 27 £475 -20.83% 424
Scotland -28 27 £210 -53.97% 473
North West -50 14 £518 +29.38% 413
Yorkshire -72 13 £425 +112.50% 164
East of England -36 11 £425 +9.68% 229
Wales -9 7 £394 +18.90% 75
Northern Ireland +3 3 - - 138

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 37 (4.86%) SharePoint
2 17 (2.23%) Confluence
3 13 (1.71%) Apache Airflow
4 11 (1.44%) CMS
5 10 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
6 9 (1.18%) WordPress
7 8 (1.05%) Apache Spark
8 7 (0.92%) Apache
9 4 (0.52%) Jupyter
9 4 (0.52%) Kentico
10 2 (0.26%) Skype for Business
11 1 (0.13%) Drupal
11 1 (0.13%) JBoss
11 1 (0.13%) nginx
11 1 (0.13%) SAS
Applications
1 26 (3.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (1.97%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (1.05%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.39%) AutoCAD
5 3 (0.39%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.39%) Trello
6 2 (0.26%) Acrobat
6 2 (0.26%) Sketch
7 1 (0.13%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.13%) InVision
Business Applications
1 21 (2.76%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (2.23%) NetSuite
3 8 (1.05%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.66%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.66%) Salesforce CRM
4 5 (0.66%) Workday HCM
5 4 (0.52%) Dynamics NAV
5 4 (0.52%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 1 (0.13%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.13%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.13%) SAP FI
6 1 (0.13%) SAP FS
6 1 (0.13%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 223 (29.27%) Azure
2 133 (17.45%) AWS
3 88 (11.55%) Azure DevOps
4 85 (11.15%) Power Platform
5 69 (9.06%) Microsoft 365
6 53 (6.96%) GCP
7 49 (6.43%) GitHub
8 45 (5.91%) Dynamics 365
8 45 (5.91%) Serverless
9 38 (4.99%) Power Automate
10 37 (4.86%) GitHub Actions
11 30 (3.94%) Entra ID
12 29 (3.81%) Amazon EKS
13 26 (3.41%) Snowflake
14 25 (3.28%) AWS Lambda
15 21 (2.76%) Azure Data Factory
16 20 (2.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 18 (2.36%) Amazon S3
17 18 (2.36%) Azure Functions
18 17 (2.23%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.97%) VPN
2 14 (1.84%) Firewall
2 14 (1.84%) Network Security
3 12 (1.57%) DNS
4 11 (1.44%) VLAN
5 9 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
5 9 (1.18%) Wireless
6 8 (1.05%) DHCP
6 8 (1.05%) TCP/IP
7 6 (0.79%) Structured Cabling
7 6 (0.79%) WAN
8 5 (0.66%) 3GPP
8 5 (0.66%) 5G
8 5 (0.66%) BGP
8 5 (0.66%) NGN
8 5 (0.66%) OSPF
8 5 (0.66%) Radio Access Network
8 5 (0.66%) SD-WAN
8 5 (0.66%) tcpdump
8 5 (0.66%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (7.35%) Power BI
2 39 (5.12%) PostgreSQL
3 30 (3.94%) SQL Server
4 26 (3.41%) Data Warehouse
5 22 (2.89%) Metadata
5 22 (2.89%) MongoDB
6 15 (1.97%) Power Query
7 11 (1.44%) Amazon RDS
7 11 (1.44%) Data Lake
7 11 (1.44%) NoSQL
8 10 (1.31%) Looker
9 9 (1.18%) Redis
9 9 (1.18%) Relational Database
10 8 (1.05%) Azure SQL Database
10 8 (1.05%) Big Data
10 8 (1.05%) Tableau
11 7 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
12 6 (0.79%) DocumentDB
13 5 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
13 5 (0.66%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 48 (6.30%) Git
2 46 (6.04%) JIRA
3 33 (4.33%) GitLab
4 30 (3.94%) Jenkins
5 13 (1.71%) Cucumber
6 12 (1.57%) Cypress.io
6 12 (1.57%) Postman
6 12 (1.57%) Selenium
7 11 (1.44%) WebDriver
8 8 (1.05%) fastlane
8 8 (1.05%) JUnit
8 8 (1.05%) Mockito
9 7 (0.92%) Gradle
10 6 (0.79%) Vite
11 5 (0.66%) Visual Studio
12 4 (0.52%) Android Studio
12 4 (0.52%) CircleCI
12 4 (0.52%) Crashlytics
12 4 (0.52%) SonarQube
12 4 (0.52%) Xcode
General
1 315 (41.34%) Social Skills
2 230 (30.18%) Public Sector
3 197 (25.85%) Finance
4 122 (16.01%) Analytical Skills
5 34 (4.46%) Organisational Skills
6 26 (3.41%) Manufacturing
7 25 (3.28%) Banking
8 24 (3.15%) Local Government
9 22 (2.89%) Influencing Skills
10 21 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
11 17 (2.23%) Law
11 17 (2.23%) Retail
12 14 (1.84%) Legal
12 14 (1.84%) Marketing
12 14 (1.84%) Telecoms
13 7 (0.92%) Back Office
13 7 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
13 7 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
13 7 (0.92%) Publishing
14 6 (0.79%) Military
Job Titles
1 125 (16.40%) Developer
2 114 (14.96%) Analyst
3 96 (12.60%) Senior
4 77 (10.10%) Lead
5 60 (7.87%) Architect
6 41 (5.38%) Consultant
7 31 (4.07%) Senior Developer
8 29 (3.81%) Data Engineer
8 29 (3.81%) DevOps Engineer
9 28 (3.67%) Data Analyst
10 26 (3.41%) Business Analyst
11 23 (3.02%) Software Developer
11 23 (3.02%) Support Engineer
12 22 (2.89%) Dynamics 365 Developer
13 19 (2.49%) Administrator
13 19 (2.49%) Coordinator
13 19 (2.49%) IT Engineer
13 19 (2.49%) Project Manager
14 17 (2.23%) Senior Analyst
15 16 (2.10%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (11.42%) Terraform
2 47 (6.17%) RESTful
3 30 (3.94%) .NET
3 30 (3.94%) React
4 29 (3.81%) Node.js
5 28 (3.67%) HTML
6 27 (3.54%) CSS
6 27 (3.54%) JSON
7 26 (3.41%) GraphQL
7 26 (3.41%) Kafka
8 24 (3.15%) REST
9 18 (2.36%) Spring
9 18 (2.36%) Spring Boot
10 17 (2.23%) Django
11 15 (1.97%) PySpark
11 15 (1.97%) XML
12 14 (1.84%) XSLT
13 13 (1.71%) Gherkin
13 13 (1.71%) OAuth
14 12 (1.57%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 75 (9.84%) Onboarding
2 46 (6.04%) Product Ownership
3 41 (5.38%) Cloud Native
4 27 (3.54%) Management Information System
5 22 (2.89%) Legacy Systems
6 19 (2.49%) Data Structures
6 19 (2.49%) Distributed Systems
7 14 (1.84%) Data Centre
8 11 (1.44%) AI Agents
8 11 (1.44%) Taxonomies
8 11 (1.44%) Virtual Team
9 10 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
10 9 (1.18%) Mobile App
11 8 (1.05%) Blog
11 8 (1.05%) Driving Licence
11 8 (1.05%) Replication
11 8 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
12 7 (0.92%) Security Posture
13 6 (0.79%) EPoS
14 5 (0.66%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 79 (10.37%) Windows
2 22 (2.89%) Linux
3 18 (2.36%) Windows 10
4 17 (2.23%) Windows Server
5 13 (1.71%) Apple iOS
6 12 (1.57%) Android
7 8 (1.05%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.66%) Unix
9 4 (0.52%) Windows 7
10 3 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 2 (0.26%) VMS
11 2 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
12 1 (0.13%) AIX
12 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 268 (35.17%) Agile
2 184 (24.15%) Problem-Solving
3 173 (22.70%) DevOps
4 166 (21.78%) CI/CD
5 157 (20.60%) Stakeholder Management
6 136 (17.85%) Continuous Improvement
7 132 (17.32%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
8 121 (15.88%) AI
9 120 (15.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 104 (13.65%) Decision-Making
11 101 (13.25%) Analytics
12 82 (10.76%) Mentoring
13 80 (10.50%) Migration
14 79 (10.37%) Test Automation
15 73 (9.58%) Infrastructure as Code
16 72 (9.45%) Data Modelling
17 70 (9.19%) Technical Leadership
17 70 (9.19%) Validation
18 65 (8.53%) Digital Transformation Programme
19 63 (8.27%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 113 (14.83%) Python
2 109 (14.30%) SQL
3 79 (10.37%) JavaScript
4 53 (6.96%) C#
5 42 (5.51%) Java
6 32 (4.20%) TypeScript
7 15 (1.97%) Kotlin
7 15 (1.97%) Scala
8 14 (1.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 13 (1.71%) PowerShell
10 12 (1.57%) Bash
11 10 (1.31%) Go
12 9 (1.18%) Swift
13 8 (1.05%) Bicep
13 8 (1.05%) Ruby
14 6 (0.79%) Groovy
14 6 (0.79%) PL/SQL
15 5 (0.66%) PHP
16 4 (0.52%) C++
16 4 (0.52%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 168 (22.05%) Security Cleared
2 158 (20.73%) SC Cleared
3 65 (8.53%) Degree
4 37 (4.86%) Microsoft Certification
5 30 (3.94%) DBS Check
6 29 (3.81%) BPSS Clearance
7 28 (3.67%) Azure Certification
8 26 (3.41%) Computer Science Degree
9 15 (1.97%) Master's Degree
10 12 (1.57%) ISTQB
11 7 (0.92%) CISSP
12 6 (0.79%) ACCA
12 6 (0.79%) AWS Certification
12 6 (0.79%) CIMA
12 6 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
13 5 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 5 (0.66%) CISM
13 5 (0.66%) PhD
13 5 (0.66%) PMP
14 4 (0.52%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 108 (14.17%) Accessibility
2 54 (7.09%) QA
3 51 (6.69%) WCAG
4 48 (6.30%) GDPR
5 45 (5.91%) Data Quality
6 22 (2.89%) SLA
7 18 (2.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (2.10%) NCSC
9 10 (1.31%) PMO
10 9 (1.18%) NIST
11 6 (0.79%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.79%) GRC
12 5 (0.66%) COBIT
12 5 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
13 3 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 3 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
14 2 (0.26%) Def Stans
14 2 (0.26%) DICOM
14 2 (0.26%) HL7
15 1 (0.13%) JSP 440
System Software
1 65 (8.53%) Docker
2 46 (6.04%) Active Directory
3 10 (1.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.05%) Hyper-V
5 6 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.39%) Firmware
8 2 (0.26%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 2 (0.26%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.26%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.26%) vSphere
9 1 (0.13%) KVM
9 1 (0.13%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 71 (9.32%) Kubernetes
2 36 (4.72%) Grafana
3 28 (3.67%) Prometheus
4 21 (2.76%) Microsoft Intune
5 17 (2.23%) Ansible
6 14 (1.84%) SCCM
7 7 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (0.66%) Consul
8 5 (0.66%) Kibana
9 4 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
9 4 (0.52%) Rancher
10 3 (0.39%) Packer
11 2 (0.26%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.26%) HP Quality Center
11 2 (0.26%) ITRS Geneos
11 2 (0.26%) ZABBIX
11 2 (0.26%) Zipkin
12 1 (0.13%) McAfee ePO
12 1 (0.13%) Nessus
12 1 (0.13%) SCOM
Vendors
1 184 (24.15%) Microsoft
2 33 (4.33%) Google
3 26 (3.41%) ServiceNow
4 25 (3.28%) Dynatrace
5 24 (3.15%) Databricks
6 21 (2.76%) Salesforce
7 19 (2.49%) Oracle
8 18 (2.36%) SAP
9 14 (1.84%) Splunk
10 12 (1.57%) Sage
10 12 (1.57%) VMware
11 11 (1.44%) Apple
11 11 (1.44%) Cisco
11 11 (1.44%) CyberArk
11 11 (1.44%) OpenAI
12 9 (1.18%) PagerDuty
13 8 (1.05%) Qualys
13 8 (1.05%) UiPath
14 7 (0.92%) Aspera
14 7 (0.92%) Signiant