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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 208 151 171
Rank change year-on-year -57 +20 -4
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 747 622 550
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.37% 1.89% 1.43%
As % of the General category 2.46% 2.97% 2.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 389 240 333
10th Percentile £311 £180 £425
25th Percentile £365 £355 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% -22.92% -
75th Percentile £575 £615 £675
90th Percentile £655 £651 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £413 £500
% change year-on-year +3.03% -17.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 13 5
10th Percentile £13.31 £17.48 £29.60
25th Percentile £14.85 - £42.50
Median hourly rate £19.29 £22.14 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.87% -50.80% -29.13%
75th Percentile £30.28 £22.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £45.20 £72.50 £54.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.29 £22.14 -
% change year-on-year -12.87% - -

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 30,365 20,972 22,349
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.81% 63.65% 58.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,805 13,001 13,375
10th Percentile £313 £275 £281
25th Percentile £419 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,530 1,207 1,105
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.71
25th Percentile £16.33 £16.17 £17.08
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -28.87% +28.58%
75th Percentile £55.00 £49.13 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.50 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.30 £35.36
% change year-on-year +40.85% -39.76% +30.56%

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 18 September 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 18 September 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 18 September 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 -61 636 £450 -5.26% 4,262
UK excluding London -27 344 £425 +3.03% 2,509
London -77 321 £510 -5.12% 2,469
Work from Home -29 270 £480 -1.79% 2,137
Midlands -12 106 £425 +2.41% 333
South East -16 84 £438 -6.67% 522
North of England -40 80 £425 +21.43% 579
West Midlands -14 76 £425 +2.41% 229
North East +3 53 £425 +6.25% 99
East Midlands -8 30 £164 -63.31% 104
South West -24 27 £475 -20.83% 333
Scotland -29 26 £416 -10.05% 408
North West -50 14 £518 +29.38% 365
Yorkshire -64 13 £425 +112.50% 117
East of England -37 11 £425 +30.77% 171
Wales -10 7 £394 +18.90% 46
Northern Ireland +2 3 - - 155

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 36 (4.82%) SharePoint
2 17 (2.28%) Confluence
3 12 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
4 11 (1.47%) CMS
5 10 (1.34%) Microsoft Exchange
6 9 (1.20%) WordPress
7 7 (0.94%) Apache Spark
8 6 (0.80%) Apache
9 4 (0.54%) Kentico
10 3 (0.40%) Jupyter
11 2 (0.27%) Skype for Business
12 1 (0.13%) Drupal
12 1 (0.13%) JBoss
12 1 (0.13%) nginx
12 1 (0.13%) SAS
Applications
1 25 (3.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.87%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (1.07%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.40%) AutoCAD
5 3 (0.40%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.40%) Trello
6 2 (0.27%) Acrobat
6 2 (0.27%) Sketch
7 1 (0.13%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.13%) InVision
Business Applications
1 20 (2.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (2.28%) NetSuite
3 8 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.67%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.67%) Salesforce CRM
4 5 (0.67%) Workday HCM
5 4 (0.54%) Dynamics NAV
5 4 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 1 (0.13%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.13%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.13%) SAP FI
6 1 (0.13%) SAP FS
6 1 (0.13%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 221 (29.59%) Azure
2 129 (17.27%) AWS
3 89 (11.91%) Azure DevOps
4 82 (10.98%) Power Platform
5 66 (8.84%) Microsoft 365
6 52 (6.96%) GCP
7 49 (6.56%) GitHub
8 44 (5.89%) Dynamics 365
9 42 (5.62%) Serverless
10 37 (4.95%) GitHub Actions
11 36 (4.82%) Power Automate
12 28 (3.75%) Amazon EKS
12 28 (3.75%) Entra ID
13 26 (3.48%) Snowflake
14 23 (3.08%) AWS Lambda
15 21 (2.81%) Azure Data Factory
16 18 (2.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 17 (2.28%) Azure Functions
17 17 (2.28%) dbt
18 16 (2.14%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 15 (2.01%) VPN
2 14 (1.87%) Firewall
2 14 (1.87%) Network Security
3 13 (1.74%) DNS
4 11 (1.47%) VLAN
5 9 (1.20%) DHCP
5 9 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
5 9 (1.20%) Wireless
6 7 (0.94%) TCP/IP
7 6 (0.80%) Structured Cabling
7 6 (0.80%) WAN
8 5 (0.67%) 3GPP
8 5 (0.67%) 5G
8 5 (0.67%) BGP
8 5 (0.67%) NGN
8 5 (0.67%) OSPF
8 5 (0.67%) Radio Access Network
8 5 (0.67%) SD-WAN
8 5 (0.67%) tcpdump
8 5 (0.67%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (7.10%) Power BI
2 36 (4.82%) PostgreSQL
3 29 (3.88%) SQL Server
4 26 (3.48%) Data Warehouse
5 20 (2.68%) Metadata
5 20 (2.68%) MongoDB
6 13 (1.74%) Power Query
7 10 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
7 10 (1.34%) Data Lake
7 10 (1.34%) NoSQL
8 9 (1.20%) Looker
8 9 (1.20%) Redis
8 9 (1.20%) Relational Database
9 8 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
9 8 (1.07%) Big Data
9 8 (1.07%) Tableau
10 7 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
11 5 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
11 5 (0.67%) BigQuery
11 5 (0.67%) DocumentDB
Development Applications
1 47 (6.29%) Git
2 45 (6.02%) JIRA
3 31 (4.15%) Jenkins
4 30 (4.02%) GitLab
5 11 (1.47%) Cucumber
5 11 (1.47%) Cypress.io
5 11 (1.47%) Postman
5 11 (1.47%) Selenium
6 10 (1.34%) fastlane
6 10 (1.34%) WebDriver
7 7 (0.94%) Gradle
7 7 (0.94%) JUnit
7 7 (0.94%) Mockito
8 6 (0.80%) Vite
9 5 (0.67%) Android Studio
9 5 (0.67%) Crashlytics
9 5 (0.67%) Visual Studio
9 5 (0.67%) Xcode
10 4 (0.54%) CircleCI
10 4 (0.54%) SonarQube
General
1 306 (40.96%) Social Skills
2 228 (30.52%) Public Sector
3 194 (25.97%) Finance
4 118 (15.80%) Analytical Skills
5 34 (4.55%) Organisational Skills
6 25 (3.35%) Manufacturing
7 24 (3.21%) Banking
7 24 (3.21%) Local Government
8 21 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
9 20 (2.68%) Influencing Skills
10 17 (2.28%) Law
10 17 (2.28%) Retail
11 14 (1.87%) Legal
11 14 (1.87%) Marketing
11 14 (1.87%) Telecoms
12 7 (0.94%) Pharmaceutical
12 7 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (0.94%) Publishing
13 6 (0.80%) Back Office
13 6 (0.80%) Military
Job Titles
1 124 (16.60%) Developer
2 112 (14.99%) Analyst
3 95 (12.72%) Senior
4 75 (10.04%) Lead
5 60 (8.03%) Architect
6 41 (5.49%) Consultant
7 33 (4.42%) Senior Developer
8 29 (3.88%) Data Engineer
8 29 (3.88%) DevOps Engineer
9 28 (3.75%) Business Analyst
9 28 (3.75%) Data Analyst
10 23 (3.08%) Support Engineer
11 22 (2.95%) Dynamics 365 Developer
12 21 (2.81%) Software Developer
13 20 (2.68%) IT Engineer
14 19 (2.54%) Coordinator
15 18 (2.41%) Project Manager
16 17 (2.28%) Administrator
16 17 (2.28%) IT Support
17 16 (2.14%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (11.38%) Terraform
2 49 (6.56%) RESTful
3 30 (4.02%) .NET
3 30 (4.02%) React
4 27 (3.61%) HTML
4 27 (3.61%) JSON
4 27 (3.61%) Node.js
5 26 (3.48%) CSS
6 25 (3.35%) GraphQL
7 24 (3.21%) Kafka
8 23 (3.08%) REST
9 17 (2.28%) Django
9 17 (2.28%) Spring
9 17 (2.28%) Spring Boot
10 15 (2.01%) XML
11 14 (1.87%) PySpark
11 14 (1.87%) XSLT
12 13 (1.74%) OAuth
13 12 (1.61%) Gherkin
13 12 (1.61%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 70 (9.37%) Onboarding
2 48 (6.43%) Product Ownership
3 38 (5.09%) Cloud Native
4 26 (3.48%) Management Information System
5 22 (2.95%) Legacy Systems
6 19 (2.54%) Distributed Systems
7 16 (2.14%) Data Structures
8 14 (1.87%) Data Centre
9 11 (1.47%) Mobile App
9 11 (1.47%) Taxonomies
9 11 (1.47%) Virtual Team
10 10 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
11 9 (1.20%) AI Agents
12 8 (1.07%) Blog
12 8 (1.07%) Driving Licence
12 8 (1.07%) Replication
12 8 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
13 7 (0.94%) Security Posture
14 6 (0.80%) EPoS
15 5 (0.67%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 78 (10.44%) Windows
2 22 (2.95%) Linux
3 18 (2.41%) Windows 10
4 17 (2.28%) Windows Server
5 14 (1.87%) Apple iOS
6 13 (1.74%) Android
7 5 (0.67%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.67%) Unix
8 4 (0.54%) Windows 7
9 3 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.27%) VMS
10 2 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.13%) AIX
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 261 (34.94%) Agile
2 180 (24.10%) Problem-Solving
3 170 (22.76%) DevOps
4 163 (21.82%) CI/CD
5 154 (20.62%) Stakeholder Management
6 136 (18.21%) Continuous Improvement
7 128 (17.14%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
8 119 (15.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 115 (15.39%) AI
10 102 (13.65%) Decision-Making
11 101 (13.52%) Analytics
12 80 (10.71%) Migration
13 79 (10.58%) Mentoring
13 79 (10.58%) Test Automation
14 71 (9.50%) Infrastructure as Code
15 68 (9.10%) Data Modelling
15 68 (9.10%) Technical Leadership
15 68 (9.10%) Validation
16 65 (8.70%) Digital Transformation Programme
17 62 (8.30%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 109 (14.59%) Python
2 106 (14.19%) SQL
3 76 (10.17%) JavaScript
4 52 (6.96%) C#
5 42 (5.62%) Java
6 31 (4.15%) TypeScript
7 15 (2.01%) Kotlin
8 14 (1.87%) Scala
9 13 (1.74%) PowerShell
10 12 (1.61%) Bash
10 12 (1.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 10 (1.34%) Go
11 10 (1.34%) Swift
12 8 (1.07%) Bicep
12 8 (1.07%) Ruby
13 6 (0.80%) Groovy
13 6 (0.80%) PL/SQL
14 5 (0.67%) PHP
15 4 (0.54%) Shell Script
15 4 (0.54%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 162 (21.69%) Security Cleared
2 152 (20.35%) SC Cleared
3 63 (8.43%) Degree
4 36 (4.82%) Microsoft Certification
5 30 (4.02%) DBS Check
6 27 (3.61%) Azure Certification
6 27 (3.61%) BPSS Clearance
7 25 (3.35%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (2.01%) Master's Degree
9 11 (1.47%) ISTQB
10 7 (0.94%) CISSP
11 6 (0.80%) ACCA
11 6 (0.80%) CIMA
11 6 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
12 5 (0.67%) AWS Certification
12 5 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 5 (0.67%) CISM
12 5 (0.67%) PhD
12 5 (0.67%) PMP
13 4 (0.54%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (14.86%) Accessibility
2 52 (6.96%) WCAG
3 51 (6.83%) QA
4 47 (6.29%) GDPR
5 45 (6.02%) Data Quality
6 22 (2.95%) SLA
7 17 (2.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (2.01%) NCSC
9 10 (1.34%) PMO
10 9 (1.20%) NIST
11 6 (0.80%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.80%) GRC
12 5 (0.67%) COBIT
12 5 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
13 3 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 3 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
14 2 (0.27%) Def Stans
14 2 (0.27%) DICOM
14 2 (0.27%) HL7
15 1 (0.13%) JSP 440
System Software
1 62 (8.30%) Docker
2 46 (6.16%) Active Directory
3 9 (1.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (0.94%) Hyper-V
5 6 (0.80%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.40%) Firmware
8 2 (0.27%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 2 (0.27%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.27%) vSphere
9 1 (0.13%) KVM
9 1 (0.13%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 70 (9.37%) Kubernetes
2 35 (4.69%) Grafana
3 27 (3.61%) Prometheus
4 19 (2.54%) Microsoft Intune
5 17 (2.28%) Ansible
6 14 (1.87%) SCCM
7 5 (0.67%) Consul
7 5 (0.67%) Kibana
7 5 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.54%) Rancher
9 3 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.40%) Packer
10 2 (0.27%) HP ALM
10 2 (0.27%) HP Quality Center
10 2 (0.27%) ITRS Geneos
10 2 (0.27%) ZABBIX
10 2 (0.27%) Zipkin
11 1 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 1 (0.13%) Kustomize
11 1 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 179 (23.96%) Microsoft
2 33 (4.42%) Google
3 26 (3.48%) Dynatrace
4 25 (3.35%) ServiceNow
5 24 (3.21%) Databricks
6 21 (2.81%) Salesforce
7 19 (2.54%) SAP
8 18 (2.41%) Oracle
9 14 (1.87%) Splunk
10 12 (1.61%) Sage
11 11 (1.47%) Cisco
11 11 (1.47%) CyberArk
11 11 (1.47%) VMware
12 10 (1.34%) Apple
12 10 (1.34%) OpenAI
13 9 (1.20%) PagerDuty
14 8 (1.07%) Qualys
14 8 (1.07%) UiPath
15 7 (0.94%) Aspera
15 7 (0.94%) Signiant