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

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 242 155 169
Rank change year-on-year -87 +14 +50
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 487 527 649
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.11% 1.81% 1.47%
As % of the General category 1.96% 2.88% 2.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 274 478
10th Percentile £173 £236 £375
25th Percentile £351 £425 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £592 £600
Median % change year-on-year -19.70% -1.42% -
75th Percentile £611 £660 £675
90th Percentile £675 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £508 £508
% change year-on-year -18.72% - -3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 7 20
10th Percentile £14.77 - £10.88
25th Percentile £15.75 - £12.06
Median hourly rate £16.84 £22.14 £20.22
Median % change year-on-year -23.94% +9.51% -23.53%
75th Percentile £18.00 - £37.53
90th Percentile £95.70 £36.28 £59.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.67 £22.14 £21.64
% change year-on-year -24.71% +2.31% +55.96%

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 24,883 18,301 25,821
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.69% 62.93% 58.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,522 11,737 16,463
10th Percentile £300 £300 £265
25th Percentile £405 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £495
% change year-on-year - -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,539 684 1,820
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.00 £15.28
Median hourly rate £25.00 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +15.38% -25.71%
75th Percentile £57.38 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £77.00 £75.95 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.58 £28.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year -15.80% +12.00% -19.70%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 -93 442 £475 -20.83% 776
Work from Home -23 229 £537 -10.50% 354
London -64 221 £550 -10.57% 338
UK excluding London -100 218 £413 -18.72% 664
Midlands -51 68 £495 -1.00% 81
South East -46 55 £375 -27.01% 269
West Midlands -45 44 £540 +2.86% 48
North of England -89 41 £425 -5.56% 140
East of England -15 28 £520 +258.62% 48
East Midlands -23 24 £155 -65.56% 33
North West -42 23 £425 -5.56% 64
South West -39 19 £540 +2.86% 70
Yorkshire -74 10 £275 -39.73% 58
Scotland +4 9 £213 -54.05% 46
North East -11 8 £425 -5.56% 19

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 16 (3.29%) SharePoint
2 14 (2.87%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (2.67%) Apache Spark
3 13 (2.67%) Confluence
4 8 (1.64%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (1.23%) CMS
6 4 (0.82%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 4 (0.82%) WordPress
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%) IIS
8 1 (0.21%) nginx
8 1 (0.21%) Oracle Application Server
8 1 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 26 (5.34%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (2.87%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.82%) Adobe Captivate
3 4 (0.82%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 4 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
3 4 (0.82%) Trello
4 3 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.41%) Adobe After Effects
5 2 (0.41%) Adobe XD
5 2 (0.41%) InVision
5 2 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.41%) Sketch
6 1 (0.21%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
1 4 (0.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.41%) CODA-Financials
2 2 (0.41%) FLEXCUBE
2 2 (0.41%) NetSuite
2 2 (0.41%) SAP Business One
2 2 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.21%) Advent Geneva
3 1 (0.21%) Bloomberg AIM
3 1 (0.21%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 1 (0.21%) Fidessa
3 1 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.21%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.21%) thinkFolio
3 1 (0.21%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 111 (22.79%) Azure
2 81 (16.63%) AWS
3 34 (6.98%) Power Platform
4 30 (6.16%) Microsoft 365
5 23 (4.72%) GitHub
6 20 (4.11%) GitHub Actions
7 19 (3.90%) Azure DevOps
8 18 (3.70%) GCP
9 17 (3.49%) SaaS
10 16 (3.29%) dbt
11 14 (2.87%) Azure Data Factory
12 13 (2.67%) Entra ID
13 10 (2.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 10 (2.05%) Google Workspace
13 10 (2.05%) Serverless
13 10 (2.05%) Snowflake
14 9 (1.85%) Amazon EKS
14 9 (1.85%) Figma
15 7 (1.44%) AWS Lambda
15 7 (1.44%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 18 (3.70%) TCP/IP
2 15 (3.08%) Ethernet
3 12 (2.46%) Firewall
4 10 (2.05%) Network Security
5 8 (1.64%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (1.44%) WAN
7 6 (1.23%) DHCP
7 6 (1.23%) DNS
7 6 (1.23%) VPN
8 5 (1.03%) HTTP
8 5 (1.03%) LAN
8 5 (1.03%) VLAN
8 5 (1.03%) VSAN
9 3 (0.62%) AMQP
10 2 (0.41%) Intranet
10 2 (0.41%) MPLS
10 2 (0.41%) SD-WAN
11 1 (0.21%) iSCSI
11 1 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
11 1 (0.21%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (5.95%) Power BI
2 25 (5.13%) Data Warehouse
3 22 (4.52%) SQL Server
4 14 (2.87%) PostgreSQL
5 11 (2.26%) Big Data
6 10 (2.05%) Hadoop
7 8 (1.64%) Snowflake Schema
8 7 (1.44%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 7 (1.44%) Metadata
9 6 (1.23%) Azure SQL Database
9 6 (1.23%) DB2
9 6 (1.23%) Relational Database
9 6 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 6 (1.23%) Tableau
10 5 (1.03%) Amazon Aurora
10 5 (1.03%) NoSQL
11 4 (0.82%) Data Lake
11 4 (0.82%) Looker
11 4 (0.82%) Metadata Repository
11 4 (0.82%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 24 (4.93%) Git
2 21 (4.31%) JIRA
3 9 (1.85%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.23%) GitLab
4 6 (1.23%) JMeter
5 5 (1.03%) Cucumber
5 5 (1.03%) Gatling
5 5 (1.03%) LoadRunner
6 3 (0.62%) Maven
6 3 (0.62%) Selenium
6 3 (0.62%) SonarQube
6 3 (0.62%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.41%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.41%) Axure RP
7 2 (0.41%) fastlane
7 2 (0.41%) JUnit
7 2 (0.41%) Mockito
8 1 (0.21%) Chocolatey
8 1 (0.21%) Crashlytics
8 1 (0.21%) MLflow
General
1 161 (33.06%) Social Skills
2 114 (23.41%) Finance
3 69 (14.17%) Public Sector
4 59 (12.11%) Analytical Skills
5 23 (4.72%) Banking
6 17 (3.49%) Presentation Skills
7 13 (2.67%) Local Government
8 11 (2.26%) Marketing
8 11 (2.26%) Organisational Skills
9 10 (2.05%) Fire and Rescue
10 9 (1.85%) Pharmaceutical
10 9 (1.85%) Retail
11 8 (1.64%) Influencing Skills
12 7 (1.44%) Legal
13 6 (1.23%) Manufacturing
14 4 (0.82%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.82%) General Ledger
14 4 (0.82%) Military
14 4 (0.82%) Publishing
15 3 (0.62%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 74 (15.20%) Analyst
2 39 (8.01%) Data Engineer
3 34 (6.98%) Architect
3 34 (6.98%) Lead
4 33 (6.78%) Senior
5 29 (5.95%) Developer
6 28 (5.75%) Support Engineer
7 25 (5.13%) Consultant
8 20 (4.11%) Data Analyst
8 20 (4.11%) IT Engineer
9 19 (3.90%) IT Support
10 17 (3.49%) Systems Engineer
11 16 (3.29%) Cloud Engineer
11 16 (3.29%) Project Manager
12 15 (3.08%) Business Analyst
12 15 (3.08%) IT Analyst
12 15 (3.08%) Technical Engineer
13 14 (2.87%) DevOps Engineer
13 14 (2.87%) Service Analyst
14 13 (2.67%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (3.49%) EDI
2 13 (2.67%) YAML
3 10 (2.05%) Middleware
3 10 (2.05%) PySpark
4 8 (1.64%) AngularJS
4 8 (1.64%) HTML
4 8 (1.64%) React
5 7 (1.44%) .NET
6 6 (1.23%) REST
6 6 (1.23%) Spring
6 6 (1.23%) Spring Boot
7 4 (0.82%) CSS
7 4 (0.82%) Hibernate
7 4 (0.82%) JPA
7 4 (0.82%) RESTful
8 3 (0.62%) Akka
8 3 (0.62%) scikit-learn
8 3 (0.62%) TensorFlow
8 3 (0.62%) Web Services
8 3 (0.62%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 22 (4.52%) Onboarding
2 21 (4.31%) Cloud Native
3 19 (3.90%) Management Information System
4 17 (3.49%) Data Centre
5 15 (3.08%) Industry 4.0
5 15 (3.08%) Robotics
6 8 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (1.44%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (1.44%) Product Ownership
7 7 (1.44%) Replication
7 7 (1.44%) Virtual Team
8 6 (1.23%) Linux Command Line
8 6 (1.23%) Mobile App
9 5 (1.03%) Algorithms
9 5 (1.03%) Analytical Mindset
9 5 (1.03%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (1.03%) Operational Technology
10 4 (0.82%) Data Structures
10 4 (0.82%) Driving Licence
10 4 (0.82%) Learning Management System
Operating Systems
1 35 (7.19%) Windows
2 16 (3.29%) Windows 10
3 11 (2.26%) Windows Server
4 10 (2.05%) Linux
5 6 (1.23%) AIX
5 6 (1.23%) Unix
6 3 (0.62%) Mac OS
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
1 129 (26.49%) Problem-Solving
2 74 (15.20%) Agile
3 69 (14.17%) CI/CD
4 67 (13.76%) Decision-Making
5 63 (12.94%) DevOps
6 60 (12.32%) Analytics
7 46 (9.45%) Stakeholder Management
8 44 (9.03%) Migration
9 42 (8.62%) Continuous Improvement
10 38 (7.80%) Data Modelling
11 36 (7.39%) Customer Service
11 36 (7.39%) Infrastructure as Code
12 35 (7.19%) Data Pipeline
13 31 (6.37%) Business Intelligence
14 29 (5.95%) AI
14 29 (5.95%) Data Engineering
14 29 (5.95%) Mentoring
14 29 (5.95%) Test Automation
15 27 (5.54%) Data Governance
15 27 (5.54%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 74 (15.20%) SQL
2 65 (13.35%) Python
3 20 (4.11%) PowerShell
4 18 (3.70%) Java
5 16 (3.29%) JavaScript
6 11 (2.26%) Bash
7 10 (2.05%) R
8 8 (1.64%) C#
9 6 (1.23%) TypeScript
10 5 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 5 (1.03%) VBA
11 3 (0.62%) Go
11 3 (0.62%) Scala
12 2 (0.41%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.41%) AWK
12 2 (0.41%) Groovy
12 2 (0.41%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.41%) Ruby
12 2 (0.41%) Rust
13 1 (0.21%) C++
Qualifications
1 74 (15.20%) Security Cleared
2 62 (12.73%) SC Cleared
3 44 (9.03%) Degree
4 16 (3.29%) DBS Check
5 15 (3.08%) AWS Certification
6 9 (1.85%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (1.23%) DV Cleared
9 4 (0.82%) ACCA
9 4 (0.82%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 4 (0.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 4 (0.82%) CIMA
9 4 (0.82%) CISSP
9 4 (0.82%) CTC Cleared
10 3 (0.62%) CompTIA CySA+
10 3 (0.62%) Network+ Certification
10 3 (0.62%) Oracle Certification
10 3 (0.62%) SANS
11 2 (0.41%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.41%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (5.75%) Accessibility
1 28 (5.75%) Data Quality
2 19 (3.90%) QA
3 9 (1.85%) GDPR
4 8 (1.64%) Actionable Recommendations
5 6 (1.23%) PMO
6 5 (1.03%) WCAG
7 4 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
7 4 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.62%) GRC
8 3 (0.62%) SLA
9 2 (0.41%) ISO 22301
9 2 (0.41%) NIST
9 2 (0.41%) PSD2
9 2 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.21%) Def Stans
10 1 (0.21%) NCSC
10 1 (0.21%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.21%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 32 (6.57%) Active Directory
2 18 (3.70%) Docker
3 10 (2.05%) Hyper-V
4 7 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.23%) KVM
6 5 (1.03%) VMware NSX
6 5 (1.03%) vSphere
7 4 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
8 2 (0.41%) Firmware
9 1 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 36 (7.39%) Terraform
2 22 (4.52%) Kubernetes
3 15 (3.08%) Grafana
4 12 (2.46%) Microsoft Intune
5 9 (1.85%) Ansible
5 9 (1.85%) Prometheus
6 6 (1.23%) IBM BigFix
6 6 (1.23%) Kibana
6 6 (1.23%) SCCM
6 6 (1.23%) vCenter Server
7 3 (0.62%) Argo
7 3 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
7 3 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.41%) Rancher
9 1 (0.21%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.21%) EMC VPLEX
9 1 (0.21%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 1 (0.21%) PaperCut
9 1 (0.21%) RSA Archer
9 1 (0.21%) vRealize
Vendors
1 75 (15.40%) Microsoft
2 29 (5.95%) Databricks
3 21 (4.31%) Oracle
4 20 (4.11%) ServiceNow
5 17 (3.49%) Google
6 15 (3.08%) SAP
6 15 (3.08%) Siemens
7 13 (2.67%) Dynatrace
8 12 (2.46%) VMware
9 11 (2.26%) Salesforce
10 10 (2.05%) Adobe
11 9 (1.85%) Cisco
12 7 (1.44%) Atlassian
13 6 (1.23%) IBM
14 4 (0.82%) Dell
14 4 (0.82%) MuleSoft
14 4 (0.82%) Talend
15 3 (0.62%) AppDynamics
15 3 (0.62%) CyberArk
15 3 (0.62%) Meraki