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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 251 152 161
Rank change year-on-year -99 +9 +57
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 482 549 653
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.05% 1.87% 1.49%
As % of the General category 1.90% 2.97% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 211 275 476
10th Percentile £176 £215 £378
25th Percentile £351 £413 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -22.73% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £594 £656 £688
90th Percentile £675 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £463 £508
% change year-on-year -13.51% -8.87% -1.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 7 21
10th Percentile £15.21 - £11.36
25th Percentile £16.84 - £12.27
Median hourly rate £18.00 £22.14 £21.64
Median % change year-on-year -18.70% +2.31% -18.15%
75th Percentile £24.38 - £47.50
90th Percentile £98.25 £36.28 £58.70
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 25,372 18,505 25,531
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.25% 63.17% 58.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,742 11,825 16,175
10th Percentile £304 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,589 769 1,908
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.13 £15.39
Median hourly rate £27.50 £28.75 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -21.43%
75th Percentile £59.00 £56.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £26.42 £26.00
% change year-on-year -4.80% +1.61% -16.85%

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 April 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 April 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 16 April 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 -85 436 £450 -21.74% 1,615
London -54 232 £550 -8.33% 649
Work from Home -27 226 £525 -8.70% 391
UK excluding London -113 198 £400 -13.51% 1,219
Midlands -54 61 £533 +17.03% 121
South East -49 55 £375 -26.11% 422
North of England -95 40 £375 -16.67% 350
West Midlands -53 37 £540 +17.39% 50
East of England -24 25 £520 +71.90% 144
East Midlands -24 24 £155 -64.57% 71
North West -44 21 £325 -27.78% 256
South West -53 13 £525 - 106
Yorkshire -76 10 £275 -31.25% 74
North East -13 9 £425 -22.73% 20
Scotland -11 5 £288 -37.84% 62

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 18 (3.73%) SharePoint
2 14 (2.90%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (2.49%) Apache Spark
4 10 (2.07%) Confluence
5 6 (1.24%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (1.24%) CMS
6 3 (0.62%) WordPress
7 2 (0.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.41%) Apache
7 2 (0.41%) HCL Notes
7 2 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.21%) Appian
8 1 (0.21%) Camunda
8 1 (0.21%) Drupal
8 1 (0.21%) nginx
8 1 (0.21%) Oracle Application Server
8 1 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 25 (5.19%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (2.90%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.83%) Spreadsheet
3 4 (0.83%) Trello
4 3 (0.62%) InVision
4 3 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.62%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.62%) Sketch
5 2 (0.41%) Adobe After Effects
5 2 (0.41%) Adobe XD
5 2 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.21%) Adobe Captivate
6 1 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
Business Applications
1 7 (1.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.41%) CODA-Financials
3 2 (0.41%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.41%) NetSuite
3 2 (0.41%) SAP Business One
3 2 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.21%) Advent Geneva
4 1 (0.21%) Bloomberg AIM
4 1 (0.21%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.21%) Fidessa
4 1 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.21%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.21%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.21%) SAP FS
4 1 (0.21%) thinkFolio
4 1 (0.21%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 110 (22.82%) Azure
2 73 (15.15%) AWS
3 36 (7.47%) Power Platform
4 33 (6.85%) Microsoft 365
5 22 (4.56%) GitHub
6 20 (4.15%) Azure DevOps
7 18 (3.73%) GitHub Actions
8 17 (3.53%) dbt
8 17 (3.53%) GCP
9 15 (3.11%) Azure Data Factory
9 15 (3.11%) Entra ID
10 11 (2.28%) SaaS
10 11 (2.28%) Snowflake
11 10 (2.07%) Google Workspace
12 9 (1.87%) Amazon EKS
12 9 (1.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 7 (1.45%) Figma
13 7 (1.45%) Serverless
14 6 (1.24%) Power Automate
15 5 (1.04%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 18 (3.73%) TCP/IP
2 15 (3.11%) Ethernet
3 12 (2.49%) Firewall
4 8 (1.66%) Network Security
4 8 (1.66%) VLAN
5 7 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
6 6 (1.24%) DHCP
6 6 (1.24%) DNS
6 6 (1.24%) WAN
7 5 (1.04%) HTTP
7 5 (1.04%) VSAN
8 4 (0.83%) LAN
9 3 (0.62%) AMQP
9 3 (0.62%) VPN
10 2 (0.41%) Intranet
10 2 (0.41%) MPLS
11 1 (0.21%) Fibre Channel
11 1 (0.21%) iSCSI
11 1 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
11 1 (0.21%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (6.43%) Power BI
2 27 (5.60%) Data Warehouse
3 22 (4.56%) SQL Server
4 14 (2.90%) PostgreSQL
5 10 (2.07%) Big Data
5 10 (2.07%) Hadoop
5 10 (2.07%) Snowflake Schema
6 8 (1.66%) DB2
6 8 (1.66%) Metadata
6 8 (1.66%) Tableau
7 7 (1.45%) Azure SQL Database
7 7 (1.45%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 6 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 4 (0.83%) Looker
9 4 (0.83%) Metadata Repository
9 4 (0.83%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.83%) Power Query
9 4 (0.83%) SAP Data Services
10 3 (0.62%) Data Lake
10 3 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 19 (3.94%) Git
2 18 (3.73%) JIRA
3 8 (1.66%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.24%) GitLab
4 6 (1.24%) JMeter
4 6 (1.24%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.04%) Gatling
5 5 (1.04%) LoadRunner
6 4 (0.83%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.62%) Maven
7 3 (0.62%) Snyk
8 2 (0.41%) Axure RP
8 2 (0.41%) fastlane
8 2 (0.41%) Selenium
8 2 (0.41%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.21%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.21%) Cypress.io
9 1 (0.21%) Gradle
9 1 (0.21%) MLflow
9 1 (0.21%) TestNG
General
1 159 (32.99%) Social Skills
2 108 (22.41%) Finance
3 78 (16.18%) Public Sector
4 60 (12.45%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (3.73%) Banking
6 17 (3.53%) Presentation Skills
7 13 (2.70%) Local Government
8 12 (2.49%) Organisational Skills
9 10 (2.07%) Fire and Rescue
10 9 (1.87%) Legal
10 9 (1.87%) Pharmaceutical
11 8 (1.66%) Influencing Skills
11 8 (1.66%) Manufacturing
11 8 (1.66%) Marketing
12 7 (1.45%) Retail
13 6 (1.24%) Documentation Skills
14 4 (0.83%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.83%) General Ledger
15 3 (0.62%) Investment Banking
15 3 (0.62%) Military
Job Titles
1 74 (15.35%) Analyst
2 37 (7.68%) Data Engineer
3 35 (7.26%) Lead
3 35 (7.26%) Senior
4 31 (6.43%) Architect
5 29 (6.02%) Developer
5 29 (6.02%) Support Engineer
6 25 (5.19%) Consultant
7 24 (4.98%) Data Analyst
8 21 (4.36%) IT Engineer
9 18 (3.73%) IT Support
10 17 (3.53%) Cloud Engineer
10 17 (3.53%) Systems Engineer
11 15 (3.11%) Business Analyst
11 15 (3.11%) DevOps Engineer
11 15 (3.11%) Project Manager
11 15 (3.11%) Service Analyst
11 15 (3.11%) Technical Engineer
12 14 (2.90%) IT Analyst
13 12 (2.49%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (3.11%) EDI
2 12 (2.49%) Middleware
2 12 (2.49%) YAML
3 11 (2.28%) React
4 9 (1.87%) .NET
4 9 (1.87%) PySpark
5 6 (1.24%) REST
6 5 (1.04%) AngularJS
6 5 (1.04%) HTML
6 5 (1.04%) RESTful
7 3 (0.62%) Akka
7 3 (0.62%) JSON
7 3 (0.62%) PyTorch
7 3 (0.62%) SAP Basis
7 3 (0.62%) scikit-learn
7 3 (0.62%) Spring
7 3 (0.62%) Spring Boot
7 3 (0.62%) TensorFlow
7 3 (0.62%) Web Services
7 3 (0.62%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 24 (4.98%) Onboarding
2 23 (4.77%) Cloud Native
3 19 (3.94%) Management Information System
4 15 (3.11%) Industry 4.0
4 15 (3.11%) Robotics
5 13 (2.70%) Data Centre
6 12 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
7 9 (1.87%) Replication
8 8 (1.66%) Product Ownership
9 6 (1.24%) Data Structures
9 6 (1.24%) Distributed Systems
9 6 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
9 6 (1.24%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.04%) Algorithms
10 5 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
10 5 (1.04%) Enterprise Software
10 5 (1.04%) Operational Technology
11 4 (0.83%) Security Posture
12 3 (0.62%) Mobile App
12 3 (0.62%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 39 (8.09%) Windows
2 18 (3.73%) Windows 10
3 11 (2.28%) Linux
3 11 (2.28%) Windows Server
4 6 (1.24%) AIX
4 6 (1.24%) Unix
5 3 (0.62%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.41%) VMS
7 1 (0.21%) Android
7 1 (0.21%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
7 1 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.21%) Windows 7
7 1 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 121 (25.10%) Problem-Solving
2 71 (14.73%) Agile
2 71 (14.73%) Decision-Making
3 68 (14.11%) CI/CD
4 63 (13.07%) DevOps
5 59 (12.24%) Analytics
6 51 (10.58%) Stakeholder Management
7 47 (9.75%) Migration
8 41 (8.51%) Continuous Improvement
9 39 (8.09%) Infrastructure as Code
10 38 (7.88%) Data Modelling
11 37 (7.68%) AI
12 36 (7.47%) Business Intelligence
13 35 (7.26%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
14 33 (6.85%) Data Pipeline
15 31 (6.43%) Customer Service
16 30 (6.22%) Test Automation
17 29 (6.02%) Roadmaps
18 28 (5.81%) Data Engineering
18 28 (5.81%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 77 (15.98%) SQL
2 60 (12.45%) Python
3 19 (3.94%) PowerShell
4 17 (3.53%) Java
5 11 (2.28%) JavaScript
6 10 (2.07%) Bash
6 10 (2.07%) R
7 7 (1.45%) C#
7 7 (1.45%) TypeScript
8 6 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 6 (1.24%) VBA
9 5 (1.04%) Scala
10 2 (0.41%) Apex Code
10 2 (0.41%) AWK
10 2 (0.41%) COBOL
10 2 (0.41%) Groovy
10 2 (0.41%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.21%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.21%) Rust
11 1 (0.21%) Swift
Qualifications
1 72 (14.94%) Security Cleared
2 62 (12.86%) SC Cleared
3 41 (8.51%) Degree
4 19 (3.94%) DBS Check
5 14 (2.90%) AWS Certification
6 9 (1.87%) Azure Certification
7 7 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (1.04%) DV Cleared
9 4 (0.83%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 4 (0.83%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 4 (0.83%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (0.83%) CTC Cleared
10 3 (0.62%) Oracle Certification
11 2 (0.41%) CCNA
11 2 (0.41%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.41%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.41%) OCP
12 1 (0.21%) CISSP
12 1 (0.21%) HND
12 1 (0.21%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (6.64%) Data Quality
2 28 (5.81%) Accessibility
3 14 (2.90%) QA
4 11 (2.28%) GDPR
5 8 (1.66%) Actionable Recommendations
6 5 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (1.04%) SLA
6 5 (1.04%) WCAG
7 4 (0.83%) GRC
7 4 (0.83%) PMO
8 3 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 2 (0.41%) ISO 22301
9 2 (0.41%) PSD2
9 2 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.21%) GMP
10 1 (0.21%) GxP
10 1 (0.21%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.21%) NCSC
10 1 (0.21%) NIST
10 1 (0.21%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 38 (7.88%) Active Directory
2 13 (2.70%) Docker
2 13 (2.70%) Hyper-V
3 10 (2.07%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (1.45%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (1.24%) KVM
6 5 (1.04%) VMware NSX
6 5 (1.04%) vSphere
7 3 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.41%) Firmware
9 1 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 39 (8.09%) Terraform
2 18 (3.73%) Kubernetes
3 16 (3.32%) Grafana
4 12 (2.49%) Microsoft Intune
5 10 (2.07%) Ansible
6 8 (1.66%) Prometheus
7 6 (1.24%) IBM BigFix
7 6 (1.24%) Kibana
7 6 (1.24%) SCCM
7 6 (1.24%) vCenter Server
8 4 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.62%) Argo
9 3 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.41%) Rancher
11 1 (0.21%) Data Guard
11 1 (0.21%) EMC VPLEX
11 1 (0.21%) PaperCut
11 1 (0.21%) RSA Archer
11 1 (0.21%) vRealize
11 1 (0.21%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 82 (17.01%) Microsoft
2 29 (6.02%) Databricks
3 22 (4.56%) ServiceNow
4 20 (4.15%) SAP
5 19 (3.94%) Oracle
6 18 (3.73%) Google
7 15 (3.11%) Siemens
7 15 (3.11%) VMware
8 13 (2.70%) Dynatrace
9 12 (2.49%) Salesforce
10 7 (1.45%) Atlassian
10 7 (1.45%) IBM
11 6 (1.24%) Adobe
11 6 (1.24%) Cisco
12 4 (0.83%) Dell
12 4 (0.83%) Meraki
12 4 (0.83%) MuleSoft
13 3 (0.62%) AppDynamics
13 3 (0.62%) Citrix
13 3 (0.62%) CyberArk