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

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 251 144 161
Rank change year-on-year -107 +17 +48
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 478 564 662
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.03% 1.91% 1.52%
As % of the General category 1.87% 3.02% 2.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 216 276 485
10th Percentile £183 £203 £386
25th Percentile £353 £408 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -22.73% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £588 £650 £688
90th Percentile £675 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £463 £508
% change year-on-year -10.81% -8.87% -0.68%
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% -44.51%
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 25,523 18,645 25,420
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.74% 63.17% 58.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,795 11,922 16,091
10th Percentile £305 £300 £270
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £758
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,617 795 1,928
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.13 £15.40
Median hourly rate £29.00 £28.00 £28.42
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% -1.48% -18.80%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £51.50
90th Percentile £79.40 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.50 £25.15 £27.00
% change year-on-year +1.39% -6.85% -13.66%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -100 424 £431 -21.59% 818
London -74 223 £528 -12.08% 206
Work from Home -30 216 £525 -8.70% 455
UK excluding London -114 196 £413 -10.81% 754
Midlands -47 59 £533 +17.03% 96
South East -59 56 £388 -23.65% 164
North of England -102 40 £419 -6.94% 319
West Midlands -55 35 £540 +17.39% 35
East Midlands -26 24 £155 -64.57% 61
East of England -31 24 £520 +71.90% 39
North West -53 17 £325 -27.78% 235
North East -9 13 £425 -10.53% 18
South West -66 11 £438 -16.67% 62
Yorkshire -88 10 £275 -31.25% 66
Scotland -7 7 £288 -37.84% 50

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 17 (3.56%) SharePoint
2 15 (3.14%) Apache Spark
3 14 (2.93%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (2.09%) Confluence
5 7 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (1.46%) CMS
6 4 (0.84%) WordPress
7 3 (0.63%) Apache
7 3 (0.63%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.42%) Kentico
9 1 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 1 (0.21%) Appian
9 1 (0.21%) Camunda
9 1 (0.21%) Drupal
9 1 (0.21%) HCL Notes
9 1 (0.21%) nginx
9 1 (0.21%) Oracle Application Server
9 1 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 21 (4.39%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (2.72%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.84%) Trello
4 3 (0.63%) InVision
4 3 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.63%) Sketch
4 3 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.42%) Adobe After Effects
5 2 (0.42%) Adobe XD
5 2 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.42%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.42%) NetSuite
3 2 (0.42%) SAP Business One
3 2 (0.42%) 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
1 106 (22.18%) Azure
2 85 (17.78%) AWS
3 35 (7.32%) Power Platform
4 33 (6.90%) Microsoft 365
5 23 (4.81%) GitHub
6 21 (4.39%) Azure DevOps
7 19 (3.97%) GitHub Actions
8 18 (3.77%) GCP
9 16 (3.35%) Entra ID
10 15 (3.14%) Azure Data Factory
10 15 (3.14%) dbt
11 11 (2.30%) Amazon EKS
11 11 (2.30%) Snowflake
12 10 (2.09%) Serverless
13 9 (1.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 9 (1.88%) Google Workspace
13 9 (1.88%) SaaS
14 7 (1.46%) AWS Lambda
15 6 (1.26%) Figma
15 6 (1.26%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 19 (3.97%) TCP/IP
2 15 (3.14%) Ethernet
3 10 (2.09%) Firewall
4 8 (1.67%) Network Security
5 7 (1.46%) DNS
5 7 (1.46%) VLAN
6 6 (1.26%) DHCP
6 6 (1.26%) HTTP
6 6 (1.26%) VSAN
6 6 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.84%) WAN
8 3 (0.63%) AMQP
8 3 (0.63%) VPN
9 2 (0.42%) Intranet
9 2 (0.42%) LAN
9 2 (0.42%) MPLS
10 1 (0.21%) ADSL
10 1 (0.21%) SMTP
10 1 (0.21%) VoIP
10 1 (0.21%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (6.49%) Power BI
2 27 (5.65%) Data Warehouse
3 22 (4.60%) SQL Server
4 14 (2.93%) PostgreSQL
5 12 (2.51%) Big Data
6 11 (2.30%) Hadoop
7 9 (1.88%) Snowflake Schema
8 8 (1.67%) DB2
8 8 (1.67%) Tableau
9 7 (1.46%) Azure SQL Database
9 7 (1.46%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 7 (1.46%) Metadata
10 6 (1.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 5 (1.05%) NoSQL
12 4 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
12 4 (0.84%) Looker
12 4 (0.84%) Metadata Repository
12 4 (0.84%) Power Query
12 4 (0.84%) SAP Data Services
13 3 (0.63%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 21 (4.39%) Git
2 20 (4.18%) JIRA
3 11 (2.30%) Jenkins
4 10 (2.09%) GitLab
5 7 (1.46%) JMeter
5 7 (1.46%) SonarQube
6 5 (1.05%) Gatling
6 5 (1.05%) LoadRunner
7 4 (0.84%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.63%) Maven
8 3 (0.63%) Snyk
9 2 (0.42%) Axure RP
9 2 (0.42%) fastlane
9 2 (0.42%) Selenium
10 1 (0.21%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.21%) Cypress.io
10 1 (0.21%) Gradle
10 1 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.21%) TestNG
10 1 (0.21%) Xcode
General
1 154 (32.22%) Social Skills
2 103 (21.55%) Finance
3 89 (18.62%) Public Sector
4 61 (12.76%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (3.97%) Banking
6 17 (3.56%) Presentation Skills
7 14 (2.93%) Local Government
8 10 (2.09%) Fire and Rescue
8 10 (2.09%) Legal
8 10 (2.09%) Organisational Skills
9 9 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
10 8 (1.67%) Pharmaceutical
11 7 (1.46%) Manufacturing
11 7 (1.46%) Marketing
12 6 (1.26%) Retail
13 5 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
14 4 (0.84%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.84%) General Ledger
15 3 (0.63%) Front Office
15 3 (0.63%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 70 (14.64%) Analyst
2 35 (7.32%) Data Engineer
3 34 (7.11%) Developer
3 34 (7.11%) Lead
3 34 (7.11%) Senior
4 31 (6.49%) Architect
5 29 (6.07%) Support Engineer
6 27 (5.65%) Consultant
7 24 (5.02%) Data Analyst
8 20 (4.18%) DevOps Engineer
9 19 (3.97%) IT Engineer
10 18 (3.77%) Cloud Engineer
11 17 (3.56%) IT Support
12 16 (3.35%) Systems Engineer
13 15 (3.14%) Business Analyst
13 15 (3.14%) Technical Engineer
14 14 (2.93%) Service Analyst
15 12 (2.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 12 (2.51%) IT Analyst
15 12 (2.51%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (2.93%) EDI
2 12 (2.51%) React
3 11 (2.30%) YAML
4 9 (1.88%) .NET
5 8 (1.67%) Middleware
5 8 (1.67%) PySpark
6 6 (1.26%) AngularJS
6 6 (1.26%) HTML
6 6 (1.26%) REST
7 5 (1.05%) RESTful
8 4 (0.84%) CSS
8 4 (0.84%) JSON
8 4 (0.84%) Kafka
8 4 (0.84%) Spring
8 4 (0.84%) Spring Boot
8 4 (0.84%) XML
9 3 (0.63%) Keycloak
9 3 (0.63%) PyTorch
9 3 (0.63%) TensorFlow
9 3 (0.63%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 25 (5.23%) Cloud Native
2 24 (5.02%) Onboarding
3 16 (3.35%) Management Information System
4 15 (3.14%) Industry 4.0
4 15 (3.14%) Robotics
5 13 (2.72%) Data Centre
6 12 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (2.09%) Product Ownership
7 10 (2.09%) Replication
8 7 (1.46%) Data Structures
8 7 (1.46%) Linux Command Line
9 6 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
9 6 (1.26%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.05%) Algorithms
10 5 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
10 5 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
10 5 (1.05%) Operational Technology
11 4 (0.84%) Security Posture
12 3 (0.63%) AI Agents
12 3 (0.63%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 39 (8.16%) Windows
2 18 (3.77%) Windows 10
3 13 (2.72%) Linux
3 13 (2.72%) Windows Server
4 7 (1.46%) Unix
5 6 (1.26%) AIX
6 3 (0.63%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.42%) VMS
8 1 (0.21%) Android
8 1 (0.21%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
8 1 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.21%) Windows 7
8 1 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (25.52%) Problem-Solving
2 83 (17.36%) Agile
3 77 (16.11%) CI/CD
4 71 (14.85%) Decision-Making
4 71 (14.85%) DevOps
5 59 (12.34%) Analytics
6 48 (10.04%) Migration
7 47 (9.83%) Infrastructure as Code
7 47 (9.83%) Stakeholder Management
8 42 (8.79%) AI
9 40 (8.37%) Continuous Improvement
10 38 (7.95%) Data Modelling
11 37 (7.74%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
12 36 (7.53%) Business Intelligence
13 34 (7.11%) Data Pipeline
14 33 (6.90%) Test Automation
15 30 (6.28%) Customer Service
15 30 (6.28%) Roadmaps
15 30 (6.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 29 (6.07%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 75 (15.69%) SQL
2 68 (14.23%) Python
3 18 (3.77%) PowerShell
4 17 (3.56%) Java
5 13 (2.72%) JavaScript
6 12 (2.51%) Bash
7 10 (2.09%) R
8 8 (1.67%) TypeScript
9 6 (1.26%) C#
9 6 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 6 (1.26%) Scala
9 6 (1.26%) VBA
10 4 (0.84%) Groovy
11 2 (0.42%) Apex Code
11 2 (0.42%) AWK
11 2 (0.42%) COBOL
11 2 (0.42%) Go
11 2 (0.42%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.42%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.21%) VB
Qualifications
1 80 (16.74%) Security Cleared
2 72 (15.06%) SC Cleared
3 41 (8.58%) Degree
4 16 (3.35%) DBS Check
5 14 (2.93%) AWS Certification
6 10 (2.09%) Azure Certification
7 7 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (1.05%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.05%) DV Cleared
9 4 (0.84%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 4 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.63%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.63%) Oracle Certification
11 2 (0.42%) CIPD
11 2 (0.42%) CTC Cleared
11 2 (0.42%) OCP
12 1 (0.21%) APMG
12 1 (0.21%) CBAP
12 1 (0.21%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 1 (0.21%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (6.90%) Data Quality
2 29 (6.07%) Accessibility
3 16 (3.35%) QA
4 12 (2.51%) GDPR
5 9 (1.88%) Actionable Recommendations
6 6 (1.26%) WCAG
7 5 (1.05%) SLA
8 4 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
8 4 (0.84%) GRC
9 3 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.63%) PMO
10 2 (0.42%) Def Stans
10 2 (0.42%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.42%) PSD2
11 1 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.21%) GMP
11 1 (0.21%) NCSC
11 1 (0.21%) NIST
11 1 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.21%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 37 (7.74%) Active Directory
2 20 (4.18%) Docker
3 14 (2.93%) Hyper-V
4 11 (2.30%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (1.67%) VMware Infrastructure
6 6 (1.26%) KVM
6 6 (1.26%) VMware NSX
6 6 (1.26%) vSphere
7 4 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.42%) Firmware
9 1 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 48 (10.04%) Terraform
2 26 (5.44%) Kubernetes
3 20 (4.18%) Grafana
4 13 (2.72%) Ansible
5 12 (2.51%) Prometheus
6 10 (2.09%) Microsoft Intune
7 6 (1.26%) IBM BigFix
7 6 (1.26%) Kibana
7 6 (1.26%) vCenter Server
8 5 (1.05%) SCCM
9 3 (0.63%) Argo
9 3 (0.63%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.63%) Rancher
9 3 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.42%) Consul
10 2 (0.42%) Packer
11 1 (0.21%) Data Guard
11 1 (0.21%) EMC VPLEX
11 1 (0.21%) PaperCut
11 1 (0.21%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 75 (15.69%) Microsoft
2 29 (6.07%) Databricks
3 22 (4.60%) ServiceNow
4 19 (3.97%) Oracle
4 19 (3.97%) SAP
5 18 (3.77%) Google
6 16 (3.35%) VMware
7 15 (3.14%) Dynatrace
7 15 (3.14%) Siemens
8 12 (2.51%) Salesforce
9 7 (1.46%) IBM
10 6 (1.26%) Atlassian
11 5 (1.05%) Cisco
12 4 (0.84%) Adobe
12 4 (0.84%) Meraki
13 3 (0.63%) Acronis
13 3 (0.63%) AppDynamics
13 3 (0.63%) Dell
13 3 (0.63%) MuleSoft
14 2 (0.42%) Citrix