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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 209 151 173
Rank change year-on-year -58 +22 -9
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 753 622 546
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.38% 1.89% 1.42%
As % of the General category 2.47% 2.97% 2.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 395 239 330
10th Percentile £306 £182 £425
25th Percentile £363 £357 £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 £665 £653 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £413 £500
% change year-on-year +3.03% -17.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 13 5
10th Percentile £13.31 £17.48 £29.60
25th Percentile £14.45 - £42.50
Median hourly rate £19.29 £22.14 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.87% -50.80% -29.13%
75th Percentile £30.28 £22.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £45.20 £72.50 £54.00
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 30,448 20,925 22,374
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.78% 63.60% 58.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,837 12,966 13,391
10th Percentile £313 £275 £281
25th Percentile £419 £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 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% 0.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,565 1,206 1,101
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.08
Median hourly rate £29.60 £25.15 £35.03
Median % change year-on-year +17.69% -28.20% +27.38%
75th Percentile £54.40 £48.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.50 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.29 £35.02
% change year-on-year +40.94% -39.21% +27.33%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -64 639 £460 -3.16% 4,602
UK excluding London -31 345 £425 +3.03% 2,679
London -79 324 £510 -5.12% 2,672
Work from Home -37 271 £475 -2.81% 2,313
Midlands -13 109 £425 +2.41% 382
South East -17 82 £450 -4.00% 484
North of England -43 79 £425 +21.43% 617
West Midlands -17 77 £425 +2.41% 267
North East +5 52 £425 +6.25% 95
East Midlands -8 32 £163 -63.59% 115
South West -24 27 £475 -20.83% 355
Scotland -28 27 £210 -54.59% 446
North West -48 14 £518 +29.38% 392
Yorkshire -72 13 £425 +112.50% 131
East of England -34 11 £425 +9.68% 203
Wales -8 7 £394 +18.90% 53
Northern Ireland +4 3 - - 166

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 36 (4.78%) SharePoint
2 17 (2.26%) Confluence
3 13 (1.73%) Apache Airflow
4 11 (1.46%) CMS
5 10 (1.33%) Microsoft Exchange
6 9 (1.20%) WordPress
7 8 (1.06%) Apache Spark
8 7 (0.93%) Apache
9 4 (0.53%) Jupyter
9 4 (0.53%) Kentico
10 2 (0.27%) 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 (3.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.86%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (1.06%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.40%) AutoCAD
5 3 (0.40%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.40%) Trello
6 2 (0.27%) Acrobat
6 2 (0.27%) Sketch
7 1 (0.13%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.13%) InVision
Business Applications
1 21 (2.79%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (2.26%) NetSuite
3 8 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.66%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.66%) Salesforce CRM
4 5 (0.66%) Workday HCM
5 4 (0.53%) Dynamics NAV
5 4 (0.53%) 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
1 222 (29.48%) Azure
2 132 (17.53%) AWS
3 88 (11.69%) Azure DevOps
4 84 (11.16%) Power Platform
5 65 (8.63%) Microsoft 365
6 53 (7.04%) GCP
7 49 (6.51%) GitHub
8 45 (5.98%) Dynamics 365
9 44 (5.84%) Serverless
10 37 (4.91%) GitHub Actions
10 37 (4.91%) Power Automate
11 29 (3.85%) Amazon EKS
12 28 (3.72%) Entra ID
13 26 (3.45%) Snowflake
14 24 (3.19%) AWS Lambda
15 21 (2.79%) Azure Data Factory
16 19 (2.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 18 (2.39%) Azure Functions
18 17 (2.26%) Amazon S3
18 17 (2.26%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.99%) VPN
2 14 (1.86%) Firewall
2 14 (1.86%) Network Security
3 12 (1.59%) DNS
4 11 (1.46%) VLAN
5 9 (1.20%) Wireless
6 8 (1.06%) DHCP
6 8 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (0.93%) TCP/IP
8 6 (0.80%) Structured Cabling
8 6 (0.80%) WAN
9 5 (0.66%) 3GPP
9 5 (0.66%) 5G
9 5 (0.66%) BGP
9 5 (0.66%) NGN
9 5 (0.66%) OSPF
9 5 (0.66%) Radio Access Network
9 5 (0.66%) SD-WAN
9 5 (0.66%) tcpdump
9 5 (0.66%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (7.30%) Power BI
2 39 (5.18%) PostgreSQL
3 30 (3.98%) SQL Server
4 26 (3.45%) Data Warehouse
5 22 (2.92%) Metadata
6 21 (2.79%) MongoDB
7 14 (1.86%) Power Query
8 11 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
8 11 (1.46%) NoSQL
9 10 (1.33%) Data Lake
9 10 (1.33%) Looker
10 9 (1.20%) Redis
10 9 (1.20%) Relational Database
11 8 (1.06%) Azure SQL Database
11 8 (1.06%) Big Data
11 8 (1.06%) Tableau
12 7 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
13 5 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
13 5 (0.66%) BigQuery
13 5 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 48 (6.37%) Git
2 45 (5.98%) JIRA
3 32 (4.25%) GitLab
4 30 (3.98%) Jenkins
5 13 (1.73%) Cucumber
6 12 (1.59%) Cypress.io
6 12 (1.59%) Postman
6 12 (1.59%) Selenium
7 11 (1.46%) WebDriver
8 8 (1.06%) fastlane
8 8 (1.06%) JUnit
8 8 (1.06%) Mockito
9 7 (0.93%) Gradle
10 6 (0.80%) Vite
11 5 (0.66%) Visual Studio
12 4 (0.53%) Android Studio
12 4 (0.53%) CircleCI
12 4 (0.53%) Crashlytics
12 4 (0.53%) SonarQube
12 4 (0.53%) Xcode
General
1 310 (41.17%) Social Skills
2 229 (30.41%) Public Sector
3 195 (25.90%) Finance
4 120 (15.94%) Analytical Skills
5 34 (4.52%) Organisational Skills
6 25 (3.32%) Manufacturing
7 24 (3.19%) Banking
7 24 (3.19%) Local Government
8 21 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (2.79%) Influencing Skills
9 17 (2.26%) Law
9 17 (2.26%) Retail
10 14 (1.86%) Legal
10 14 (1.86%) Marketing
10 14 (1.86%) Telecoms
11 7 (0.93%) Pharmaceutical
11 7 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
11 7 (0.93%) Publishing
12 6 (0.80%) Back Office
12 6 (0.80%) Military
Job Titles
1 124 (16.47%) Developer
2 114 (15.14%) Analyst
3 95 (12.62%) Senior
4 77 (10.23%) Lead
5 60 (7.97%) Architect
6 41 (5.44%) Consultant
7 31 (4.12%) Senior Developer
8 29 (3.85%) Data Engineer
8 29 (3.85%) DevOps Engineer
9 28 (3.72%) Data Analyst
10 26 (3.45%) Business Analyst
11 22 (2.92%) Dynamics 365 Developer
11 22 (2.92%) Software Developer
11 22 (2.92%) Support Engineer
12 19 (2.52%) Coordinator
12 19 (2.52%) IT Engineer
13 18 (2.39%) Administrator
13 18 (2.39%) Project Manager
14 17 (2.26%) Senior Analyst
15 16 (2.12%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (11.42%) Terraform
2 47 (6.24%) RESTful
3 30 (3.98%) .NET
3 30 (3.98%) React
4 28 (3.72%) HTML
4 28 (3.72%) Node.js
5 27 (3.59%) CSS
5 27 (3.59%) JSON
6 26 (3.45%) GraphQL
7 25 (3.32%) Kafka
8 24 (3.19%) REST
9 18 (2.39%) Spring
9 18 (2.39%) Spring Boot
10 17 (2.26%) Django
11 15 (1.99%) PySpark
11 15 (1.99%) XML
12 14 (1.86%) XSLT
13 13 (1.73%) Gherkin
13 13 (1.73%) OAuth
14 12 (1.59%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 70 (9.30%) Onboarding
2 46 (6.11%) Product Ownership
3 40 (5.31%) Cloud Native
4 27 (3.59%) Management Information System
5 22 (2.92%) Legacy Systems
6 19 (2.52%) Distributed Systems
7 18 (2.39%) Data Structures
8 14 (1.86%) Data Centre
9 11 (1.46%) AI Agents
9 11 (1.46%) Taxonomies
9 11 (1.46%) Virtual Team
10 10 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
11 9 (1.20%) Mobile App
12 8 (1.06%) Blog
12 8 (1.06%) Driving Licence
12 8 (1.06%) Replication
12 8 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
13 7 (0.93%) Security Posture
14 6 (0.80%) EPoS
15 5 (0.66%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 77 (10.23%) Windows
2 22 (2.92%) Linux
3 17 (2.26%) Windows 10
3 17 (2.26%) Windows Server
4 13 (1.73%) Apple iOS
5 12 (1.59%) Android
6 5 (0.66%) Mac OS
6 5 (0.66%) Unix
7 4 (0.53%) Windows 7
8 3 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 2 (0.27%) VMS
9 2 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.13%) AIX
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 266 (35.33%) Agile
2 181 (24.04%) Problem-Solving
3 172 (22.84%) DevOps
4 165 (21.91%) CI/CD
5 156 (20.72%) Stakeholder Management
6 136 (18.06%) Continuous Improvement
7 131 (17.40%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
8 120 (15.94%) AI
8 120 (15.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 103 (13.68%) Decision-Making
10 100 (13.28%) Analytics
11 82 (10.89%) Mentoring
12 80 (10.62%) Migration
13 79 (10.49%) Test Automation
14 73 (9.69%) Infrastructure as Code
15 71 (9.43%) Data Modelling
16 70 (9.30%) Technical Leadership
16 70 (9.30%) Validation
17 65 (8.63%) Digital Transformation Programme
18 63 (8.37%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 112 (14.87%) Python
2 108 (14.34%) SQL
3 78 (10.36%) JavaScript
4 53 (7.04%) C#
5 42 (5.58%) Java
6 31 (4.12%) TypeScript
7 15 (1.99%) Kotlin
7 15 (1.99%) Scala
8 13 (1.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 13 (1.73%) PowerShell
9 12 (1.59%) Bash
10 10 (1.33%) Go
11 9 (1.20%) Swift
12 8 (1.06%) Bicep
12 8 (1.06%) Ruby
13 6 (0.80%) Groovy
13 6 (0.80%) PL/SQL
14 5 (0.66%) PHP
15 4 (0.53%) C++
15 4 (0.53%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 168 (22.31%) Security Cleared
2 158 (20.98%) SC Cleared
3 64 (8.50%) Degree
4 37 (4.91%) Microsoft Certification
5 30 (3.98%) DBS Check
6 28 (3.72%) Azure Certification
6 28 (3.72%) BPSS Clearance
7 26 (3.45%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (1.99%) Master's Degree
9 12 (1.59%) ISTQB
10 7 (0.93%) CISSP
11 6 (0.80%) ACCA
11 6 (0.80%) AWS Certification
11 6 (0.80%) CIMA
11 6 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
12 5 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 5 (0.66%) CISM
12 5 (0.66%) PhD
12 5 (0.66%) PMP
13 4 (0.53%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 108 (14.34%) Accessibility
2 54 (7.17%) QA
3 51 (6.77%) WCAG
4 48 (6.37%) GDPR
5 44 (5.84%) Data Quality
6 22 (2.92%) SLA
7 17 (2.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (2.12%) NCSC
9 10 (1.33%) PMO
10 9 (1.20%) NIST
11 6 (0.80%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.80%) GRC
12 5 (0.66%) COBIT
12 5 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
13 3 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 3 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
14 2 (0.27%) Def Stans
14 2 (0.27%) DICOM
14 2 (0.27%) HL7
15 1 (0.13%) JSP 440
System Software
1 64 (8.50%) Docker
2 45 (5.98%) Active Directory
3 9 (1.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (0.93%) Hyper-V
5 6 (0.80%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.40%) Firmware
8 2 (0.27%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 2 (0.27%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.27%) vSphere
9 1 (0.13%) KVM
9 1 (0.13%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 71 (9.43%) Kubernetes
2 36 (4.78%) Grafana
3 28 (3.72%) Prometheus
4 19 (2.52%) Microsoft Intune
5 17 (2.26%) Ansible
6 14 (1.86%) SCCM
7 5 (0.66%) Consul
7 5 (0.66%) Kibana
7 5 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.53%) Rancher
9 3 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.40%) Packer
10 2 (0.27%) HP ALM
10 2 (0.27%) HP Quality Center
10 2 (0.27%) ITRS Geneos
10 2 (0.27%) ZABBIX
10 2 (0.27%) Zipkin
11 1 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 1 (0.13%) Kustomize
11 1 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 180 (23.90%) Microsoft
2 33 (4.38%) Google
3 25 (3.32%) ServiceNow
4 24 (3.19%) Databricks
4 24 (3.19%) Dynatrace
5 21 (2.79%) Salesforce
6 19 (2.52%) Oracle
7 18 (2.39%) SAP
8 14 (1.86%) Splunk
9 12 (1.59%) Sage
10 11 (1.46%) Cisco
10 11 (1.46%) CyberArk
10 11 (1.46%) OpenAI
10 11 (1.46%) VMware
11 9 (1.20%) Apple
11 9 (1.20%) PagerDuty
12 8 (1.06%) Qualys
12 8 (1.06%) UiPath
13 7 (0.93%) Aspera
13 7 (0.93%) Signiant