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

6 months to
4 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 221 149 162
Rank change year-on-year -72 +13 +25
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 620 605 655
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.20% 1.92% 1.51%
As % of the General category 2.20% 3.04% 2.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 299 243 441
10th Percentile £306 £183 £413
25th Percentile £381 £381 £520
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £600
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -16.67% -
75th Percentile £588 £638 £700
90th Percentile £675 £675 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £503
% change year-on-year - -10.45% +0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 14 22
10th Percentile £18.40 - £11.37
25th Percentile £19.00 - £12.56
Median hourly rate £22.64 £22.14 £21.32
Median % change year-on-year +2.24% +3.85% -47.36%
75th Percentile £44.50 - £44.18
90th Percentile £106.30 £50.00 £56.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £94.75 £22.14 £17.60
% change year-on-year +327.96% +25.80% -76.22%

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 28,167 19,915 24,791
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.57% 63.13% 57.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,875 12,519 15,502
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.73% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,947 987 1,949
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.50 £12.82
25th Percentile £18.09 £16.39 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.22 £31.80
Median % change year-on-year +17.56% -14.40% +4.13%
75th Percentile £60.00 £52.00 £53.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.06 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.95 £23.00 £30.91
% change year-on-year +38.91% -25.60% +19.12%

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 4 July 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 4 July 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 4 July 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 -80 537 £490 -5.08% 1,030
London -53 286 £525 -8.70% 492
UK excluding London -87 267 £450 - 693
Work from Home -39 252 £525 -1.87% 597
Midlands -42 79 £525 +17.98% 108
South East -41 71 £425 -16.26% 199
West Midlands -40 64 £525 +22.09% 66
North of England -93 55 £425 +6.25% 167
North East - 27 £425 - 23
Scotland -20 21 £250 -45.95% 53
South West -37 20 £475 -20.83% 90
East of England -28 18 £338 +3.85% 39
East Midlands -25 15 £133 -70.56% 42
Yorkshire -88 15 £375 -5.66% 42
North West -51 13 £365 -14.21% 102
Wales -18 2 £700 +62.57% 25
Northern Ireland -1 1 - - 26

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 26 (4.19%) SharePoint
2 15 (2.42%) Apache Spark
3 13 (2.10%) Microsoft Exchange
4 11 (1.77%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (1.61%) Confluence
6 8 (1.29%) CMS
7 5 (0.81%) Apache
7 5 (0.81%) WordPress
8 4 (0.65%) Kentico
9 3 (0.48%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.32%) Skype for Business
11 1 (0.16%) Drupal
11 1 (0.16%) nginx
11 1 (0.16%) SAS
11 1 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 23 (3.71%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.48%) AutoCAD
4 2 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.32%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.32%) Sketch
4 2 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.32%) Trello
5 1 (0.16%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.16%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.16%) InVision
5 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 12 (1.94%) NetSuite
2 10 (1.61%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (1.13%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.81%) Sage X3
5 4 (0.65%) Oracle ERP
6 3 (0.48%) Salesforce CRM
7 2 (0.32%) SAP Business One
8 1 (0.16%) Advent Geneva
8 1 (0.16%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.16%) Hyperion Planning
8 1 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
8 1 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
8 1 (0.16%) SAP ERP
8 1 (0.16%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.16%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.16%) SAP GRC
8 1 (0.16%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 169 (27.26%) Azure
2 104 (16.77%) AWS
3 52 (8.39%) Azure DevOps
4 46 (7.42%) Power Platform
5 45 (7.26%) Microsoft 365
6 40 (6.45%) GCP
7 34 (5.48%) GitHub
8 26 (4.19%) GitHub Actions
9 23 (3.71%) Entra ID
10 19 (3.06%) Snowflake
11 18 (2.90%) Azure Data Factory
11 18 (2.90%) dbt
12 17 (2.74%) Dynamics 365
12 17 (2.74%) Serverless
13 14 (2.26%) Power Automate
14 12 (1.94%) Amazon EKS
15 11 (1.77%) SaaS
16 10 (1.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 10 (1.61%) AWS Lambda
16 10 (1.61%) Firebase
Communications & Networking
1 21 (3.39%) TCP/IP
2 15 (2.42%) Ethernet
3 11 (1.77%) Network Security
4 10 (1.61%) Firewall
5 9 (1.45%) DNS
5 9 (1.45%) WAN
6 8 (1.29%) VLAN
6 8 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (1.13%) DHCP
8 6 (0.97%) HTTP
8 6 (0.97%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.97%) Structured Cabling
8 6 (0.97%) VPN
9 4 (0.65%) MPLS
10 3 (0.48%) BGP
10 3 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
10 3 (0.48%) LAN
10 3 (0.48%) OSPF
10 3 (0.48%) VXLAN
10 3 (0.48%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (6.45%) Power BI
2 29 (4.68%) Data Warehouse
3 26 (4.19%) SQL Server
4 21 (3.39%) PostgreSQL
5 13 (2.10%) Big Data
6 12 (1.94%) Hadoop
7 11 (1.77%) Metadata
8 9 (1.45%) Snowflake Schema
9 8 (1.29%) Azure SQL Database
9 8 (1.29%) Db2
9 8 (1.29%) NoSQL
10 7 (1.13%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
10 7 (1.13%) Tableau
11 6 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
11 6 (0.97%) Data Lake
11 6 (0.97%) Geospatial Data
11 6 (0.97%) Looker
11 6 (0.97%) MongoDB
11 6 (0.97%) Redis
11 6 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 31 (5.00%) JIRA
2 28 (4.52%) Jenkins
3 21 (3.39%) Git
4 19 (3.06%) GitLab
5 10 (1.61%) fastlane
6 6 (0.97%) JMeter
6 6 (0.97%) Selenium
6 6 (0.97%) Vite
7 5 (0.81%) Android Studio
7 5 (0.81%) Crashlytics
7 5 (0.81%) Cypress.io
7 5 (0.81%) Gatling
7 5 (0.81%) Gradle
7 5 (0.81%) JUnit
7 5 (0.81%) LoadRunner
7 5 (0.81%) Mockito
7 5 (0.81%) Postman
7 5 (0.81%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.81%) Xcode
8 4 (0.65%) CircleCI
General
1 215 (34.68%) Social Skills
2 167 (26.94%) Finance
3 146 (23.55%) Public Sector
4 83 (13.39%) Analytical Skills
5 23 (3.71%) Banking
5 23 (3.71%) Organisational Skills
6 18 (2.90%) Law
6 18 (2.90%) Presentation Skills
7 16 (2.58%) Manufacturing
8 15 (2.42%) Legal
9 12 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
9 12 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
10 11 (1.77%) Marketing
10 11 (1.77%) Pharmaceutical
11 9 (1.45%) Retail
12 8 (1.29%) Local Government
12 8 (1.29%) Telecoms
13 5 (0.81%) Billing
13 5 (0.81%) General Ledger
14 4 (0.65%) Police
Job Titles
1 82 (13.23%) Analyst
2 76 (12.26%) Developer
3 65 (10.48%) Senior
4 62 (10.00%) Lead
5 39 (6.29%) Consultant
5 39 (6.29%) Data Engineer
6 37 (5.97%) Architect
7 24 (3.87%) Data Analyst
8 23 (3.71%) Business Analyst
8 23 (3.71%) DevOps Engineer
9 22 (3.55%) Support Engineer
10 20 (3.23%) IT Support
11 19 (3.06%) Senior Developer
12 17 (2.74%) IT Engineer
12 17 (2.74%) Project Manager
13 15 (2.42%) Systems Engineer
13 15 (2.42%) Technical Engineer
14 14 (2.26%) Azure Engineer
14 14 (2.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 13 (2.10%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (4.52%) RESTful
2 21 (3.39%) .NET
2 21 (3.39%) GraphQL
2 21 (3.39%) React
3 15 (2.42%) REST
4 14 (2.26%) Kafka
4 14 (2.26%) PySpark
5 13 (2.10%) HTML
6 12 (1.94%) CSS
6 12 (1.94%) Spring
6 12 (1.94%) Spring Boot
7 10 (1.61%) JSON
7 10 (1.61%) Node.js
8 8 (1.29%) Django
8 8 (1.29%) Middleware
9 7 (1.13%) ARM Templates
9 7 (1.13%) Next.js
9 7 (1.13%) RabbitMQ
10 6 (0.97%) Gherkin
10 6 (0.97%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 51 (8.23%) Onboarding
2 35 (5.65%) Cloud Native
3 29 (4.68%) Product Ownership
4 20 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
5 19 (3.06%) Legacy Systems
6 17 (2.74%) Data Centre
7 15 (2.42%) Industry 4.0
7 15 (2.42%) Robotics
8 14 (2.26%) Data Structures
9 10 (1.61%) Mobile App
10 9 (1.45%) Linux Command Line
11 8 (1.29%) Algorithms
11 8 (1.29%) Security Posture
12 7 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
12 7 (1.13%) Management Information System
13 6 (0.97%) EPoS
13 6 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
14 5 (0.81%) Reinsurance
14 5 (0.81%) Replication
15 4 (0.65%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 60 (9.68%) Windows
2 19 (3.06%) Linux
3 18 (2.90%) Windows 10
3 18 (2.90%) Windows Server
4 11 (1.77%) Android
4 11 (1.77%) Apple iOS
5 9 (1.45%) Unix
6 6 (0.97%) AIX
7 3 (0.48%) Windows 7
8 2 (0.32%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.32%) VMS
9 1 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 160 (25.81%) Agile
2 151 (24.35%) Problem-Solving
3 120 (19.35%) CI/CD
4 115 (18.55%) DevOps
5 107 (17.26%) Decision-Making
6 97 (15.65%) Stakeholder Management
7 92 (14.84%) Analytics
8 80 (12.90%) Continuous Improvement
9 76 (12.26%) AI
10 75 (12.10%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
11 72 (11.61%) Migration
12 64 (10.32%) Infrastructure as Code
13 61 (9.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 56 (9.03%) Test Automation
15 54 (8.71%) Mentoring
16 50 (8.06%) Data Modelling
16 50 (8.06%) Validation
17 47 (7.58%) Business Intelligence
18 44 (7.10%) Data Pipeline
19 43 (6.94%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 108 (17.42%) Python
2 92 (14.84%) SQL
3 40 (6.45%) Java
4 38 (6.13%) JavaScript
5 25 (4.03%) C#
6 24 (3.87%) TypeScript
7 22 (3.55%) PowerShell
8 15 (2.42%) Bash
9 12 (1.94%) Kotlin
10 11 (1.77%) R
11 10 (1.61%) Swift
12 8 (1.29%) Bicep
12 8 (1.29%) Go
13 7 (1.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 6 (0.97%) Ruby
15 5 (0.81%) VBA
16 4 (0.65%) Groovy
16 4 (0.65%) PL/SQL
16 4 (0.65%) Scala
16 4 (0.65%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 98 (15.81%) Security Cleared
2 91 (14.68%) SC Cleared
3 52 (8.39%) Degree
4 23 (3.71%) DBS Check
5 16 (2.58%) Azure Certification
5 16 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (1.94%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (1.94%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (1.13%) AWS Certification
8 6 (0.97%) Master's Degree
9 5 (0.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 5 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
10 4 (0.65%) ISTQB
10 4 (0.65%) PMP
11 3 (0.48%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.32%) ACCA
12 2 (0.32%) CISM
12 2 (0.32%) CRISC
12 2 (0.32%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 2 (0.32%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (9.84%) Accessibility
2 36 (5.81%) Data Quality
3 25 (4.03%) QA
4 22 (3.55%) WCAG
5 19 (3.06%) GDPR
6 13 (2.10%) SLA
7 11 (1.77%) Actionable Recommendations
8 10 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 9 (1.45%) PMO
10 8 (1.29%) NCSC
11 5 (0.81%) COBIT
11 5 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
11 5 (0.81%) GRC
12 3 (0.48%) NIST
13 2 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 2 (0.32%) Def Stans
14 1 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
14 1 (0.16%) ISO 22301
14 1 (0.16%) ISO 31000
14 1 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 50 (8.06%) Docker
2 42 (6.77%) Active Directory
3 14 (2.26%) Hyper-V
4 11 (1.77%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.97%) KVM
5 6 (0.97%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.48%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.48%) vSphere
8 2 (0.32%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 2 (0.32%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.16%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 69 (11.13%) Terraform
2 50 (8.06%) Kubernetes
3 22 (3.55%) Grafana
4 19 (3.06%) Prometheus
5 16 (2.58%) Ansible
6 12 (1.94%) SCCM
7 11 (1.77%) Microsoft Intune
8 7 (1.13%) Kibana
9 6 (0.97%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (0.97%) vCenter Server
10 4 (0.65%) Consul
10 4 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
11 3 (0.48%) Rancher
12 2 (0.32%) HP ALM
12 2 (0.32%) HP Quality Center
12 2 (0.32%) ITRS Geneos
12 2 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
12 2 (0.32%) Packer
12 2 (0.32%) Zipkin
13 1 (0.16%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 114 (18.39%) Microsoft
2 28 (4.52%) Databricks
3 26 (4.19%) Google
4 24 (3.87%) Salesforce
5 23 (3.71%) SAP
6 22 (3.55%) ServiceNow
7 21 (3.39%) Dynatrace
8 15 (2.42%) Siemens
9 14 (2.26%) Oracle
10 12 (1.94%) CyberArk
11 10 (1.61%) VMware
12 9 (1.45%) PagerDuty
13 7 (1.13%) IBM
13 7 (1.13%) Qualys
13 7 (1.13%) Sage
14 6 (0.97%) Apple
15 5 (0.81%) Cisco
16 4 (0.65%) CA Agile Central
16 4 (0.65%) MuleSoft
16 4 (0.65%) Signiant