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

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 211 149 169
Rank change year-on-year -62 +20 +84
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 505 529 635
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.39% 1.66% 1.48%
As % of the General category 2.30% 2.71% 2.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 215 284 451
10th Percentile £172 £400 £400
25th Percentile £335 £469 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -20.83% - +3.45%
75th Percentile £625 £678 £675
90th Percentile £675 £793 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £525 £479
% change year-on-year -23.81% +9.60% -17.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 7
10th Percentile £15.10 - £12.96
25th Percentile £16.30 - £14.42
Median hourly rate £18.73 - £40.00
75th Percentile £21.24 - £63.29
90th Percentile £93.50 - £64.07
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.73 - £63.29
% change year-on-year - - +356.14%

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 21,923 19,550 25,372
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 60.24% 61.51% 59.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,747 11,658 16,657
10th Percentile £283 £285 £272
25th Percentile £400 £411 £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 £727 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £500
% change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,363 647 1,179
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.48 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.50 £19.59 £16.25
Median hourly rate £23.00 £27.39 £30.48
Median % change year-on-year -16.01% -10.14% +21.90%
75th Percentile £45.88 £53.75 £57.33
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.64 £70.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £26.12 £29.65
% change year-on-year -17.85% -11.90% +31.78%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -44 457 £475 -20.83% 816
London 0 272 £568 -8.47% 251
Work from Home -22 216 £450 -25.00% 433
UK excluding London -72 188 £400 -23.81% 776
Midlands -54 59 £195 -66.09% 95
North of England -42 40 £350 -22.22% 128
South East -7 36 £394 -17.11% 310
West Midlands -59 34 £304 -47.17% 51
East Midlands -6 25 £180 -74.29% 43
North West -26 24 £470 +4.47% 49
South West -23 21 £600 +23.08% 92
East of England -14 17 £353 -32.86% 79
Scotland -1 16 £175 -61.11% 54
Yorkshire -42 13 £200 -56.16% 52
North East -14 3 £400 -11.11% 27
Wales 0 1 £331 -37.52% 28
Northern Ireland -10 1 £625 +8.70% 8

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 13 (2.57%) SharePoint
2 11 (2.18%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.78%) Confluence
4 8 (1.58%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (1.19%) Apache Spark
6 5 (0.99%) CMS
7 4 (0.79%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 4 (0.79%) HCL Notes
7 4 (0.79%) WordPress
8 2 (0.40%) Apache
8 2 (0.40%) Camunda
8 2 (0.40%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.20%) Appian
9 1 (0.20%) IIS
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 19 (3.76%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (2.38%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.99%) Adobe Captivate
3 5 (0.99%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 5 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.59%) Trello
6 2 (0.40%) Adobe After Effects
6 2 (0.40%) Adobe XD
6 2 (0.40%) InVision
6 2 (0.40%) Sketch
7 1 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.20%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 8 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.79%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.40%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.40%) CODA-Financials
3 2 (0.40%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.40%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg AIM
4 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.20%) Fidessa
4 1 (0.20%) iTrent
4 1 (0.20%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.20%) ResourceLink
4 1 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.20%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.20%) SAP PS
4 1 (0.20%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 114 (22.57%) Azure
2 71 (14.06%) AWS
3 33 (6.53%) Power Platform
4 27 (5.35%) Microsoft 365
5 26 (5.15%) GitHub
6 24 (4.75%) GCP
6 24 (4.75%) GitHub Actions
7 23 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
8 17 (3.37%) Entra ID
9 15 (2.97%) SaaS
10 12 (2.38%) dbt
11 11 (2.18%) Microsoft Purview
11 11 (2.18%) Snowflake
12 10 (1.98%) Azure Data Factory
12 10 (1.98%) Serverless
13 9 (1.78%) Amazon EKS
13 9 (1.78%) Google Workspace
14 8 (1.58%) Figma
15 7 (1.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 7 (1.39%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.57%) Network Security
2 11 (2.18%) Firewall
3 9 (1.78%) VPN
4 5 (0.99%) LAN
4 5 (0.99%) WAN
5 4 (0.79%) DNS
5 4 (0.79%) VSAN
5 4 (0.79%) Wi-Fi
6 3 (0.59%) AMQP
6 3 (0.59%) DHCP
6 3 (0.59%) VLAN
7 2 (0.40%) Intranet
7 2 (0.40%) SAN
7 2 (0.40%) SMS
8 1 (0.20%) BGP
8 1 (0.20%) EIGRP
8 1 (0.20%) MPLS
8 1 (0.20%) OSPF
8 1 (0.20%) PSTN
8 1 (0.20%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (4.16%) Data Warehouse
1 21 (4.16%) Power BI
2 13 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
2 13 (2.57%) SQL Server
3 9 (1.78%) Metadata
3 9 (1.78%) NoSQL
4 7 (1.39%) Relational Database
5 6 (1.19%) Azure SQL Database
5 6 (1.19%) MongoDB
5 6 (1.19%) Snowflake Schema
5 6 (1.19%) Tableau
6 5 (0.99%) Spark SQL
7 4 (0.79%) Big Data
7 4 (0.79%) BigQuery
7 4 (0.79%) Data Lake
7 4 (0.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 3 (0.59%) Hadoop
8 3 (0.59%) InfluxDB
8 3 (0.59%) SSDT
8 3 (0.59%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 22 (4.36%) Git
2 16 (3.17%) JIRA
3 9 (1.78%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.39%) Cucumber
5 5 (0.99%) Maven
6 4 (0.79%) GitLab
6 4 (0.79%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.59%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.59%) Selenium
7 3 (0.59%) Team Foundation Server
7 3 (0.59%) Vite
8 2 (0.40%) Axure RP
8 2 (0.40%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.40%) JMeter
8 2 (0.40%) JUnit
8 2 (0.40%) Mockito
8 2 (0.40%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
9 1 (0.20%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.20%) webpack
General
1 170 (33.66%) Social Skills
2 122 (24.16%) Finance
3 50 (9.90%) Analytical Skills
4 47 (9.31%) Public Sector
5 25 (4.95%) Banking
6 20 (3.96%) Marketing
7 18 (3.56%) Organisational Skills
8 14 (2.77%) Legal
9 11 (2.18%) Local Government
10 10 (1.98%) Fire and Rescue
10 10 (1.98%) Retail
11 9 (1.78%) Manufacturing
12 7 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
12 7 (1.39%) Pharmaceutical
13 5 (0.99%) Military
13 5 (0.99%) Publishing
14 4 (0.79%) Investment Banking
14 4 (0.79%) Law
14 4 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
14 4 (0.79%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 80 (15.84%) Analyst
2 44 (8.71%) Architect
3 42 (8.32%) Lead
4 36 (7.13%) Developer
4 36 (7.13%) Senior
5 28 (5.54%) Data Engineer
5 28 (5.54%) Project Manager
6 25 (4.95%) Support Engineer
7 23 (4.55%) Business Analyst
8 22 (4.36%) Consultant
9 19 (3.76%) Cloud Engineer
10 17 (3.37%) IT Analyst
11 16 (3.17%) IT Support
12 15 (2.97%) IT Engineer
12 15 (2.97%) Solutions Architect
13 14 (2.77%) Service Analyst
14 13 (2.57%) DevOps Engineer
14 13 (2.57%) PMO Lead
15 12 (2.38%) Designer
15 12 (2.38%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (3.17%) EDI
2 13 (2.57%) Spring
2 13 (2.57%) Spring Boot
3 12 (2.38%) React
4 10 (1.98%) .NET
4 10 (1.98%) REST
5 9 (1.78%) HTML
5 9 (1.78%) YAML
6 8 (1.58%) AngularJS
7 7 (1.39%) Middleware
7 7 (1.39%) PySpark
8 5 (0.99%) CSS
8 5 (0.99%) Kafka
8 5 (0.99%) RESTful
8 5 (0.99%) XML
9 4 (0.79%) Akka
9 4 (0.79%) Hibernate
9 4 (0.79%) JPA
9 4 (0.79%) SOAP
10 3 (0.59%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 22 (4.36%) Onboarding
2 20 (3.96%) Cloud Native
2 20 (3.96%) Management Information System
3 17 (3.37%) Data Centre
4 10 (1.98%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (1.78%) Product Ownership
6 8 (1.58%) Public Cloud
6 8 (1.58%) Virtual Team
7 6 (1.19%) Mobile App
8 5 (0.99%) e-Learning
8 5 (0.99%) Hybrid Cloud
8 5 (0.99%) Low-Code
8 5 (0.99%) Reinsurance
8 5 (0.99%) Replication
9 4 (0.79%) Analytical Mindset
9 4 (0.79%) Distributed Systems
9 4 (0.79%) Driving Licence
9 4 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (0.79%) Greenfield Project
9 4 (0.79%) Learning Management System
Operating Systems
1 40 (7.92%) Windows
2 11 (2.18%) Windows Server
3 9 (1.78%) Linux
4 8 (1.58%) Windows 10
5 4 (0.79%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.40%) Android
6 2 (0.40%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.40%) Oracle Linux
7 1 (0.20%) CentOS
7 1 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.20%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (25.74%) Problem-Solving
2 80 (15.84%) Agile
3 67 (13.27%) CI/CD
3 67 (13.27%) DevOps
4 58 (11.49%) Stakeholder Management
5 46 (9.11%) Continuous Improvement
6 39 (7.72%) Analytics
6 39 (7.72%) Migration
7 38 (7.52%) Infrastructure as Code
8 35 (6.93%) Project Management
8 35 (6.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 34 (6.73%) Decision-Making
10 33 (6.53%) Data Modelling
11 30 (5.94%) Test Automation
12 29 (5.74%) Mentoring
13 27 (5.35%) Business Intelligence
13 27 (5.35%) Data Governance
14 26 (5.15%) Business Analysis
14 26 (5.15%) Containerisation
15 25 (4.95%) Coaching
Programming Languages
1 55 (10.89%) Python
2 54 (10.69%) SQL
3 32 (6.34%) Java
4 20 (3.96%) JavaScript
5 12 (2.38%) PowerShell
6 11 (2.18%) C#
7 7 (1.39%) TypeScript
8 5 (0.99%) Bash
8 5 (0.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 5 (0.99%) Go
8 5 (0.99%) Scala
9 4 (0.79%) Rust
10 3 (0.59%) C++
10 3 (0.59%) R
11 2 (0.40%) AWK
11 2 (0.40%) C
11 2 (0.40%) Perl
11 2 (0.40%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.40%) Ruby
11 2 (0.40%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 60 (11.88%) Security Cleared
2 50 (9.90%) SC Cleared
3 32 (6.34%) Degree
4 16 (3.17%) AWS Certification
5 14 (2.77%) DBS Check
6 9 (1.78%) Azure Certification
6 9 (1.78%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.58%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.19%) CISSP
9 4 (0.79%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 4 (0.79%) CTC Cleared
9 4 (0.79%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (0.79%) Oracle Certification
9 4 (0.79%) PMI Certification
9 4 (0.79%) PMP
10 3 (0.59%) ACCA
10 3 (0.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.59%) CIMA
10 3 (0.59%) CompTIA CySA+
10 3 (0.59%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (4.55%) Accessibility
2 20 (3.96%) Data Quality
2 20 (3.96%) QA
3 16 (3.17%) GDPR
4 14 (2.77%) PMO
5 11 (2.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (1.19%) SLA
7 5 (0.99%) Actionable Recommendations
7 5 (0.99%) GRC
7 5 (0.99%) NIST
8 4 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials
8 4 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.59%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.59%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.59%) WCAG
10 2 (0.40%) GMP
10 2 (0.40%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.40%) PSD2
10 2 (0.40%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.40%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 29 (5.74%) Active Directory
2 23 (4.55%) Docker
3 6 (1.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.99%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (0.79%) VMware NSX
5 4 (0.79%) vSphere
6 3 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.40%) Firmware
8 1 (0.20%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 38 (7.52%) Terraform
2 29 (5.74%) Kubernetes
3 13 (2.57%) Microsoft Intune
4 11 (2.18%) Grafana
5 9 (1.78%) Prometheus
6 7 (1.39%) Ansible
7 5 (0.99%) SCCM
8 4 (0.79%) Argo
8 4 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
8 4 (0.79%) Kibana
9 1 (0.20%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.20%) FortiGate
9 1 (0.20%) Nessus
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 1 (0.20%) RSA Archer
9 1 (0.20%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.20%) vRealize
9 1 (0.20%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 79 (15.64%) Microsoft
2 22 (4.36%) ServiceNow
3 18 (3.56%) Oracle
4 16 (3.17%) Google
5 15 (2.97%) Databricks
6 14 (2.77%) VMware
7 13 (2.57%) Cisco
8 12 (2.38%) Salesforce
9 11 (2.18%) Adobe
10 6 (1.19%) SAP
11 5 (0.99%) Citrix
11 5 (0.99%) Dynatrace
12 4 (0.79%) Apple
12 4 (0.79%) Atlassian
12 4 (0.79%) Lotus
12 4 (0.79%) Netskope
13 3 (0.59%) Bloomberg
13 3 (0.59%) CODA
13 3 (0.59%) Commvault
13 3 (0.59%) Talend