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 16 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 207 158 162
Rank change year-on-year -49 +4 +93
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 514 529 629
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.38% 1.66% 1.48%
As % of the General category 2.30% 2.70% 2.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 223 286 448
10th Percentile £172 £400 £400
25th Percentile £344 £469 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -25.00% - +3.45%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £675
90th Percentile £675 £788 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £388 £525 £485
% change year-on-year -26.19% +8.19% -2.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 8
10th Percentile £14.94 - £13.07
25th Percentile £16.02 - £14.93
Median hourly rate £17.79 - £47.90
75th Percentile £19.99 - £63.29
90th Percentile £109.99 - £63.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.79 - £59.55
% change year-on-year - - +329.15%

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 22,374 19,622 25,110
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 60.17% 61.59% 58.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,087 11,709 16,440
10th Percentile £283 £281 £272
25th Percentile £400 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £729 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £500
% change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,370 656 1,193
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.48 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.39 £19.94 £16.19
Median hourly rate £23.00 £27.50 £30.48
Median % change year-on-year -16.38% -9.76% +21.90%
75th Percentile £45.94 £53.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.03 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.13 £26.50 £29.83
% change year-on-year -20.28% -11.15% +32.56%

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 16 January 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 16 January 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 16 January 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 -38 466 £475 -20.83% 753
London +8 277 £568 -7.72% 234
Work from Home -18 227 £450 -25.00% 378
UK excluding London -65 191 £388 -26.19% 722
Midlands -62 59 £195 -66.09% 95
South East -14 42 £381 -19.74% 276
North of England -51 40 £350 -22.22% 127
West Midlands -66 34 £304 -47.17% 48
East Midlands -11 25 £180 -74.29% 46
North West -19 24 £470 +4.47% 54
South West -24 20 £570 +16.92% 81
East of England -15 16 £353 -32.86% 68
Scotland 0 15 £175 -61.11% 62
Yorkshire -47 13 £200 -56.16% 46
North East -19 3 £400 -11.11% 27
Wales 0 1 £331 -37.52% 22
Northern Ireland -7 1 £625 +8.70% 6

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 (2.72%) SharePoint
2 12 (2.33%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.95%) Confluence
4 8 (1.56%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (1.17%) Apache Spark
6 5 (0.97%) CMS
7 4 (0.78%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 4 (0.78%) HCL Notes
7 4 (0.78%) WordPress
8 2 (0.39%) Apache
8 2 (0.39%) Camunda
8 2 (0.39%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.19%) Appian
9 1 (0.19%) IIS
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 19 (3.70%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (2.72%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.97%) Adobe Captivate
3 5 (0.97%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 4 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.58%) Trello
6 2 (0.39%) Adobe After Effects
6 2 (0.39%) Adobe XD
6 2 (0.39%) InVision
6 2 (0.39%) Sketch
7 1 (0.19%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.19%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 8 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.39%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.39%) CODA-Financials
3 2 (0.39%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.39%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.19%) Bloomberg AIM
4 1 (0.19%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.19%) Fidessa
4 1 (0.19%) iTrent
4 1 (0.19%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.19%) ResourceLink
4 1 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.19%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.19%) SAP PS
4 1 (0.19%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 118 (22.96%) Azure
2 72 (14.01%) AWS
3 37 (7.20%) Power Platform
4 26 (5.06%) GCP
4 26 (5.06%) GitHub
4 26 (5.06%) Microsoft 365
5 24 (4.67%) GitHub Actions
6 23 (4.47%) Azure DevOps
7 17 (3.31%) Entra ID
8 16 (3.11%) SaaS
9 15 (2.92%) dbt
10 11 (2.14%) Azure Data Factory
10 11 (2.14%) Microsoft Purview
10 11 (2.14%) Snowflake
11 10 (1.95%) Serverless
12 9 (1.75%) Amazon EKS
12 9 (1.75%) Google Workspace
13 8 (1.56%) Figma
14 7 (1.36%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 7 (1.36%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.53%) Network Security
2 11 (2.14%) Firewall
3 9 (1.75%) VPN
4 6 (1.17%) WAN
5 5 (0.97%) LAN
6 4 (0.78%) DNS
6 4 (0.78%) VSAN
6 4 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
7 3 (0.58%) AMQP
7 3 (0.58%) DHCP
7 3 (0.58%) Intranet
7 3 (0.58%) VLAN
8 2 (0.39%) SMS
8 2 (0.39%) TCP/IP
9 1 (0.19%) ADSL
9 1 (0.19%) IPsec
9 1 (0.19%) PSTN
9 1 (0.19%) SMTP
9 1 (0.19%) Wireless
9 1 (0.19%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (4.86%) Power BI
2 21 (4.09%) Data Warehouse
3 15 (2.92%) SQL Server
4 13 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
5 11 (2.14%) Metadata
6 8 (1.56%) NoSQL
7 7 (1.36%) Relational Database
8 6 (1.17%) Azure SQL Database
8 6 (1.17%) Snowflake Schema
8 6 (1.17%) Tableau
9 5 (0.97%) MongoDB
9 5 (0.97%) Spark SQL
9 5 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 4 (0.78%) Big Data
10 4 (0.78%) BigQuery
10 4 (0.78%) Data Lake
11 3 (0.58%) InfluxDB
11 3 (0.58%) Looker
11 3 (0.58%) SSDT
11 3 (0.58%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 23 (4.47%) Git
2 17 (3.31%) JIRA
3 9 (1.75%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.36%) Cucumber
5 5 (0.97%) Maven
6 4 (0.78%) GitLab
6 4 (0.78%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.58%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.58%) Selenium
7 3 (0.58%) Team Foundation Server
8 2 (0.39%) Axure RP
8 2 (0.39%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.39%) JMeter
8 2 (0.39%) JUnit
8 2 (0.39%) MLflow
8 2 (0.39%) Mockito
8 2 (0.39%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.39%) Vite
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
9 1 (0.19%) XCUITest
General
1 178 (34.63%) Social Skills
2 126 (24.51%) Finance
3 59 (11.48%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (10.12%) Public Sector
5 25 (4.86%) Banking
6 21 (4.09%) Marketing
7 19 (3.70%) Organisational Skills
8 14 (2.72%) Legal
9 11 (2.14%) Local Government
10 10 (1.95%) Fire and Rescue
10 10 (1.95%) Retail
11 8 (1.56%) Manufacturing
12 7 (1.36%) Documentation Skills
12 7 (1.36%) Pharmaceutical
13 5 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.97%) Law
13 5 (0.97%) Military
13 5 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (0.97%) Publishing
14 4 (0.78%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 82 (15.95%) Analyst
2 44 (8.56%) Architect
3 42 (8.17%) Lead
4 37 (7.20%) Senior
5 36 (7.00%) Developer
6 33 (6.42%) Data Engineer
7 28 (5.45%) Project Manager
8 26 (5.06%) Support Engineer
9 24 (4.67%) Business Analyst
10 23 (4.47%) Consultant
11 19 (3.70%) Cloud Engineer
12 17 (3.31%) IT Analyst
13 16 (3.11%) IT Support
14 15 (2.92%) IT Engineer
14 15 (2.92%) Service Analyst
14 15 (2.92%) Solutions Architect
15 13 (2.53%) Designer
15 13 (2.53%) DevOps Engineer
15 13 (2.53%) PMO Lead
16 12 (2.33%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (3.31%) EDI
2 12 (2.33%) Spring
2 12 (2.33%) Spring Boot
3 11 (2.14%) React
4 10 (1.95%) .NET
4 10 (1.95%) REST
4 10 (1.95%) YAML
5 9 (1.75%) HTML
6 8 (1.56%) AngularJS
7 7 (1.36%) Middleware
7 7 (1.36%) PySpark
8 5 (0.97%) CSS
8 5 (0.97%) Kafka
8 5 (0.97%) RESTful
8 5 (0.97%) XML
9 4 (0.78%) Akka
9 4 (0.78%) Hibernate
9 4 (0.78%) JPA
9 4 (0.78%) scikit-learn
9 4 (0.78%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 23 (4.47%) Onboarding
2 22 (4.28%) Cloud Native
3 21 (4.09%) Management Information System
4 17 (3.31%) Data Centre
5 10 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
6 9 (1.75%) Product Ownership
7 8 (1.56%) Virtual Team
8 7 (1.36%) Public Cloud
9 6 (1.17%) e-Learning
9 6 (1.17%) Mobile App
10 5 (0.97%) Analytical Mindset
10 5 (0.97%) Hybrid Cloud
10 5 (0.97%) Low-Code
10 5 (0.97%) Reinsurance
10 5 (0.97%) Replication
11 4 (0.78%) Distributed Systems
11 4 (0.78%) Driving Licence
11 4 (0.78%) Enterprise Software
11 4 (0.78%) Greenfield Project
11 4 (0.78%) Learning Management System
Operating Systems
1 40 (7.78%) Windows
2 10 (1.95%) Windows Server
3 9 (1.75%) Windows 10
4 8 (1.56%) Linux
5 4 (0.78%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.39%) Android
6 2 (0.39%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.19%) Oracle Linux
7 1 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.19%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (25.88%) Problem-Solving
2 79 (15.37%) Agile
3 68 (13.23%) CI/CD
3 68 (13.23%) DevOps
4 61 (11.87%) Stakeholder Management
5 49 (9.53%) Continuous Improvement
6 44 (8.56%) Analytics
7 38 (7.39%) Infrastructure as Code
8 37 (7.20%) Data Modelling
8 37 (7.20%) Decision-Making
8 37 (7.20%) Migration
8 37 (7.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 35 (6.81%) Project Management
10 30 (5.84%) Business Intelligence
10 30 (5.84%) Test Automation
11 29 (5.64%) Mentoring
12 28 (5.45%) Data Governance
13 27 (5.25%) Business Analysis
14 26 (5.06%) Coaching
14 26 (5.06%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 58 (11.28%) SQL
2 57 (11.09%) Python
3 31 (6.03%) Java
4 20 (3.89%) JavaScript
5 11 (2.14%) C#
5 11 (2.14%) PowerShell
6 7 (1.36%) TypeScript
7 6 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 5 (0.97%) Bash
8 5 (0.97%) Go
8 5 (0.97%) Scala
9 4 (0.78%) Rust
10 3 (0.58%) C++
10 3 (0.58%) R
11 2 (0.39%) Apex Code
11 2 (0.39%) AWK
11 2 (0.39%) C
11 2 (0.39%) Perl
11 2 (0.39%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.39%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 62 (12.06%) Security Cleared
2 52 (10.12%) SC Cleared
3 32 (6.23%) Degree
4 16 (3.11%) AWS Certification
5 14 (2.72%) DBS Check
6 9 (1.75%) Azure Certification
6 9 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.56%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.17%) CISSP
9 4 (0.78%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 4 (0.78%) CTC Cleared
9 4 (0.78%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (0.78%) Oracle Certification
10 3 (0.58%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.58%) CompTIA CySA+
10 3 (0.58%) ISTQB
10 3 (0.58%) Master's Degree
10 3 (0.58%) PMI Certification
10 3 (0.58%) PMP
10 3 (0.58%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.67%) Accessibility
2 23 (4.47%) Data Quality
3 22 (4.28%) QA
4 17 (3.31%) GDPR
5 14 (2.72%) PMO
6 11 (2.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (1.17%) Actionable Recommendations
7 6 (1.17%) SLA
8 5 (0.97%) GRC
8 5 (0.97%) NIST
9 4 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials
9 4 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.58%) HIPAA
10 3 (0.58%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.58%) WCAG
11 2 (0.39%) ISO 22301
11 2 (0.39%) PSD2
11 2 (0.39%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.39%) Software Quality Assurance
12 1 (0.19%) NIST 800
System Software
1 29 (5.64%) Active Directory
2 22 (4.28%) Docker
3 6 (1.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.97%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (0.78%) VMware NSX
5 4 (0.78%) vSphere
6 3 (0.58%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.39%) Firmware
8 1 (0.19%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 38 (7.39%) Terraform
2 28 (5.45%) Kubernetes
3 13 (2.53%) Microsoft Intune
4 11 (2.14%) Grafana
5 9 (1.75%) Prometheus
6 7 (1.36%) Ansible
7 5 (0.97%) SCCM
8 4 (0.78%) Argo
8 4 (0.78%) Jamf Pro
8 4 (0.78%) Kibana
9 1 (0.19%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.19%) FortiGate
9 1 (0.19%) Nessus
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 1 (0.19%) RSA Archer
9 1 (0.19%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.19%) vRealize
9 1 (0.19%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 79 (15.37%) Microsoft
2 22 (4.28%) ServiceNow
3 19 (3.70%) Databricks
4 18 (3.50%) Oracle
5 17 (3.31%) Google
6 14 (2.72%) VMware
7 13 (2.53%) Cisco
8 12 (2.33%) Salesforce
9 11 (2.14%) Adobe
10 6 (1.17%) SAP
11 5 (0.97%) Citrix
11 5 (0.97%) Dynatrace
12 4 (0.78%) Apple
12 4 (0.78%) Atlassian
12 4 (0.78%) Lotus
12 4 (0.78%) Netskope
13 3 (0.58%) Bloomberg
13 3 (0.58%) CODA
13 3 (0.58%) Commvault
13 3 (0.58%) Talend