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 3 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 246 149 157
Rank change year-on-year -97 +8 +49
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 477 560 659
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.01% 1.91% 1.52%
As % of the General category 1.85% 3.03% 2.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 221 262 483
10th Percentile £185 £195 £400
25th Percentile £353 £400 £510
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £533 £600
Median % change year-on-year -17.84% -11.25% -
75th Percentile £594 £650 £694
90th Percentile £675 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £401 £463 £508
% change year-on-year -13.30% -8.87% -2.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 7 22
10th Percentile £15.21 - £11.37
25th Percentile £16.84 - £12.56
Median hourly rate £18.00 £22.14 £21.99
Median % change year-on-year -18.70% +0.68% -43.62%
75th Percentile £24.38 - £47.50
90th Percentile £98.25 £36.28 £58.58
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.84 £22.14 £19.62
% change year-on-year -23.94% +12.84% +41.41%

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 25,769 18,495 25,239
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.37% 63.14% 58.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,872 11,806 15,915
10th Percentile £305 £300 £275
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £641 £650
90th Percentile £738 £764 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £495
% change year-on-year - -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,642 789 1,949
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.50 £17.50 £15.46
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -12.56%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £51.91
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.55 £24.88 £28.00
% change year-on-year +6.72% -11.14% -6.67%

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 3 May 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 3 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Inclusion and Diversity in the UK

Inclusion and Diversity
Top 15 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 3 May 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 -107 421 £450 -18.18% 870
London -74 224 £550 -8.33% 349
Work from Home -48 209 £525 -8.70% 542
UK excluding London -131 196 £401 -13.30% 660
Midlands -61 59 £533 +17.03% 93
South East -57 55 £394 -22.41% 207
North of England -96 40 £400 -11.11% 165
West Midlands -57 34 £540 +17.39% 43
East Midlands -26 25 £155 -65.56% 50
East of England -31 23 £520 +71.90% 47
North East -8 15 £425 -10.53% 13
North West -52 15 £325 -27.78% 92
South West -51 11 £438 -16.67% 75
Yorkshire -83 10 £275 -31.25% 61
Scotland -17 9 £250 -45.95% 57

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 16 (3.35%) Apache Spark
1 16 (3.35%) SharePoint
2 14 (2.94%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.89%) Confluence
4 6 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.26%) CMS
5 3 (0.63%) Apache
5 3 (0.63%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.63%) WordPress
6 2 (0.42%) Kentico
7 1 (0.21%) Appian
7 1 (0.21%) Drupal
7 1 (0.21%) nginx
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle Application Server
7 1 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 20 (4.19%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (2.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.84%) Trello
4 3 (0.63%) InVision
4 3 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.63%) Sketch
5 2 (0.42%) Adobe After Effects
5 2 (0.42%) Adobe XD
5 2 (0.42%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.42%) FLEXCUBE
4 2 (0.42%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.42%) SAP Business One
4 2 (0.42%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.21%) Advent Geneva
5 1 (0.21%) Bloomberg AIM
5 1 (0.21%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.21%) Fidessa
5 1 (0.21%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.21%) SAP FI
5 1 (0.21%) SAP FS
5 1 (0.21%) thinkFolio
5 1 (0.21%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 102 (21.38%) Azure
2 84 (17.61%) AWS
3 32 (6.71%) Microsoft 365
3 32 (6.71%) Power Platform
4 25 (5.24%) GitHub
5 22 (4.61%) Azure DevOps
6 21 (4.40%) GitHub Actions
7 16 (3.35%) Azure Data Factory
7 16 (3.35%) Entra ID
7 16 (3.35%) GCP
8 14 (2.94%) dbt
9 10 (2.10%) Amazon EKS
9 10 (2.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 10 (2.10%) Serverless
10 9 (1.89%) Google Workspace
10 9 (1.89%) SaaS
10 9 (1.89%) Snowflake
11 7 (1.47%) AWS Lambda
12 6 (1.26%) Figma
13 5 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 18 (3.77%) TCP/IP
2 15 (3.14%) Ethernet
3 11 (2.31%) Firewall
4 8 (1.68%) Network Security
4 8 (1.68%) VLAN
5 6 (1.26%) DNS
5 6 (1.26%) HTTP
5 6 (1.26%) VSAN
5 6 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
6 5 (1.05%) DHCP
7 4 (0.84%) WAN
8 3 (0.63%) AMQP
8 3 (0.63%) VPN
9 2 (0.42%) Intranet
9 2 (0.42%) LAN
9 2 (0.42%) MPLS
10 1 (0.21%) ADSL
10 1 (0.21%) SMTP
10 1 (0.21%) VoIP
10 1 (0.21%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (5.87%) Power BI
2 24 (5.03%) Data Warehouse
3 21 (4.40%) SQL Server
4 14 (2.94%) Big Data
5 13 (2.73%) Hadoop
5 13 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
6 8 (1.68%) DB2
6 8 (1.68%) Snowflake Schema
7 7 (1.47%) Azure SQL Database
7 7 (1.47%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
7 7 (1.47%) Metadata
8 6 (1.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 6 (1.26%) Tableau
9 4 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
9 4 (0.84%) Looker
9 4 (0.84%) Metadata Repository
9 4 (0.84%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.84%) SAP Data Services
10 3 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
10 3 (0.63%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 20 (4.19%) Git
2 18 (3.77%) JIRA
3 11 (2.31%) GitLab
3 11 (2.31%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.47%) JMeter
4 7 (1.47%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.05%) Gatling
5 5 (1.05%) LoadRunner
6 4 (0.84%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.63%) Maven
7 3 (0.63%) Snyk
8 2 (0.42%) Axure RP
8 2 (0.42%) CircleCI
8 2 (0.42%) fastlane
8 2 (0.42%) JUnit
8 2 (0.42%) Selenium
8 2 (0.42%) Vite
9 1 (0.21%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.21%) Gradle
9 1 (0.21%) TestNG
General
1 152 (31.87%) Social Skills
2 103 (21.59%) Finance
3 94 (19.71%) Public Sector
4 55 (11.53%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (3.77%) Banking
6 17 (3.56%) Presentation Skills
7 15 (3.14%) Local Government
8 10 (2.10%) Fire and Rescue
8 10 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
8 10 (2.10%) Legal
8 10 (2.10%) Organisational Skills
9 7 (1.47%) Manufacturing
10 5 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (1.05%) Marketing
10 5 (1.05%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (1.05%) Retail
11 4 (0.84%) Aerospace
11 4 (0.84%) General Ledger
12 3 (0.63%) Law
12 3 (0.63%) Military
Job Titles
1 69 (14.47%) Analyst
2 37 (7.76%) Senior
3 36 (7.55%) Developer
4 35 (7.34%) Lead
5 32 (6.71%) Architect
5 32 (6.71%) Data Engineer
6 27 (5.66%) Support Engineer
7 25 (5.24%) Consultant
8 23 (4.82%) Data Analyst
9 20 (4.19%) DevOps Engineer
10 19 (3.98%) IT Engineer
11 18 (3.77%) Cloud Engineer
12 17 (3.56%) IT Support
13 16 (3.35%) Systems Engineer
14 15 (3.14%) Business Analyst
14 15 (3.14%) Technical Engineer
15 13 (2.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 13 (2.73%) Service Analyst
16 12 (2.52%) Data Scientist
16 12 (2.52%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (2.73%) EDI
1 13 (2.73%) React
2 10 (2.10%) YAML
3 9 (1.89%) .NET
3 9 (1.89%) PySpark
4 7 (1.47%) Middleware
5 6 (1.26%) REST
6 5 (1.05%) AngularJS
6 5 (1.05%) GraphQL
6 5 (1.05%) HTML
6 5 (1.05%) Kafka
6 5 (1.05%) RESTful
6 5 (1.05%) Spring
6 5 (1.05%) Spring Boot
7 4 (0.84%) CSS
8 3 (0.63%) Django
8 3 (0.63%) JSON
8 3 (0.63%) Keycloak
8 3 (0.63%) Web Services
8 3 (0.63%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 26 (5.45%) Cloud Native
2 25 (5.24%) Onboarding
3 16 (3.35%) Management Information System
4 15 (3.14%) Industry 4.0
4 15 (3.14%) Robotics
5 14 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
6 12 (2.52%) Data Centre
7 10 (2.10%) Product Ownership
7 10 (2.10%) Replication
8 8 (1.68%) Distributed Systems
9 7 (1.47%) Data Structures
9 7 (1.47%) Linux Command Line
10 6 (1.26%) Operational Technology
10 6 (1.26%) Virtual Team
11 5 (1.05%) Algorithms
11 5 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
12 4 (0.84%) Analytical Mindset
12 4 (0.84%) Security Posture
13 3 (0.63%) Greenfield Project
13 3 (0.63%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 39 (8.18%) Windows
2 16 (3.35%) Windows 10
3 13 (2.73%) Linux
3 13 (2.73%) Windows Server
4 8 (1.68%) Unix
5 6 (1.26%) AIX
6 3 (0.63%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.42%) Android
7 2 (0.42%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.42%) VMS
8 1 (0.21%) Windows 7
8 1 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 116 (24.32%) Problem-Solving
2 87 (18.24%) Agile
3 81 (16.98%) CI/CD
4 74 (15.51%) DevOps
5 73 (15.30%) Decision-Making
6 60 (12.58%) Analytics
7 49 (10.27%) Infrastructure as Code
8 48 (10.06%) Migration
8 48 (10.06%) Stakeholder Management
9 41 (8.60%) Continuous Improvement
10 38 (7.97%) AI
10 38 (7.97%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
11 35 (7.34%) Data Modelling
12 34 (7.13%) Test Automation
13 33 (6.92%) Business Intelligence
14 32 (6.71%) Data Pipeline
14 32 (6.71%) Roadmaps
14 32 (6.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 30 (6.29%) Customer Service
15 30 (6.29%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 75 (15.72%) SQL
2 72 (15.09%) Python
3 19 (3.98%) Java
4 18 (3.77%) PowerShell
5 13 (2.73%) Bash
5 13 (2.73%) JavaScript
6 12 (2.52%) R
7 9 (1.89%) TypeScript
8 6 (1.26%) C#
8 6 (1.26%) Scala
9 5 (1.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 5 (1.05%) VBA
10 4 (0.84%) Groovy
10 4 (0.84%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.63%) Go
11 3 (0.63%) Ruby
12 2 (0.42%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.42%) COBOL
12 2 (0.42%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.42%) Swift
Qualifications
1 86 (18.03%) Security Cleared
2 77 (16.14%) SC Cleared
3 41 (8.60%) Degree
4 16 (3.35%) DBS Check
5 14 (2.94%) AWS Certification
6 11 (2.31%) Azure Certification
7 6 (1.26%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (1.05%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.05%) DV Cleared
9 4 (0.84%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 4 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.63%) CTC Cleared
10 3 (0.63%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.42%) CIPD
11 2 (0.42%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.21%) ACCA
12 1 (0.21%) CISA
12 1 (0.21%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.21%) PMP
12 1 (0.21%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (6.50%) Data Quality
2 30 (6.29%) Accessibility
3 16 (3.35%) QA
4 13 (2.73%) GDPR
5 10 (2.10%) Actionable Recommendations
6 6 (1.26%) WCAG
7 5 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (1.05%) SLA
8 4 (0.84%) GRC
8 4 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.63%) PMO
10 2 (0.42%) Def Stans
10 2 (0.42%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.42%) NCSC
10 2 (0.42%) NIST
10 2 (0.42%) PSD2
11 1 (0.21%) GMP
11 1 (0.21%) GxP
11 1 (0.21%) ISO 9001
11 1 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 37 (7.76%) Active Directory
2 22 (4.61%) Docker
3 14 (2.94%) Hyper-V
4 11 (2.31%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (1.68%) VMware Infrastructure
6 6 (1.26%) KVM
6 6 (1.26%) VMware NSX
6 6 (1.26%) vSphere
7 4 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.42%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 51 (10.69%) Terraform
2 28 (5.87%) Kubernetes
3 22 (4.61%) Grafana
4 14 (2.94%) Ansible
4 14 (2.94%) Prometheus
5 9 (1.89%) Microsoft Intune
6 8 (1.68%) Kibana
7 6 (1.26%) IBM BigFix
7 6 (1.26%) vCenter Server
8 4 (0.84%) SCCM
9 3 (0.63%) Argo
9 3 (0.63%) Rancher
9 3 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.42%) Consul
10 2 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
10 2 (0.42%) Packer
11 1 (0.21%) EMC VPLEX
11 1 (0.21%) PaperCut
11 1 (0.21%) RSA Archer
11 1 (0.21%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 78 (16.35%) Microsoft
2 28 (5.87%) Databricks
3 19 (3.98%) SAP
3 19 (3.98%) ServiceNow
4 18 (3.77%) Oracle
5 17 (3.56%) Google
6 16 (3.35%) VMware
7 15 (3.14%) Dynatrace
7 15 (3.14%) Siemens
8 12 (2.52%) Salesforce
9 7 (1.47%) IBM
10 6 (1.26%) Atlassian
11 4 (0.84%) Cisco
12 3 (0.63%) Acronis
12 3 (0.63%) Adobe
12 3 (0.63%) AppDynamics
12 3 (0.63%) Dell
12 3 (0.63%) Meraki
12 3 (0.63%) MuleSoft
13 2 (0.42%) CyberArk