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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 247 143 159
Rank change year-on-year -104 +16 +54
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 496 575 657
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.02% 2.01% 1.54%
As % of the General category 1.89% 3.18% 2.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 223 243 469
10th Percentile £286 £187 £400
25th Percentile £375 £400 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £508 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.87% -15.42% -
75th Percentile £600 £638 £700
90th Percentile £675 £697 £776
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £460 £500
% change year-on-year -7.61% -8.00% -1.72%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 10 21
10th Percentile £15.28 - £11.36
25th Percentile £17.03 - £12.27
Median hourly rate £20.32 £22.14 £21.64
Median % change year-on-year -8.23% +2.31% -44.51%
75th Percentile £55.16 £29.91 £47.50
90th Percentile £110.56 £60.00 £57.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £79.56 £22.14 £17.60
% change year-on-year +259.35% +25.80% +26.85%

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 26,189 18,092 24,661
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.74% 63.32% 57.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,889 11,502 15,553
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.29% -2.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £773
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,728 774 1,959
10th Percentile £13.72 £13.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.50 £16.64 £15.44
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.45 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.29% -8.50% -7.69%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.63 £24.22 £28.00
% change year-on-year +18.19% -13.50% +1.08%

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 27 May 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 27 May 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 27 May 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 -114 435 £495 -7.48% 1,092
London -64 242 £550 -7.37% 518
Work from Home -49 210 £540 -1.82% 547
UK excluding London -150 195 £425 -7.61% 728
South East -62 54 £413 -18.72% 208
North of England -97 52 £425 +6.25% 193
Midlands -84 47 £565 +29.14% 98
West Midlands -69 36 £565 +29.14% 49
North East -4 22 £425 -22.73% 24
East of England -30 19 £338 +11.57% 35
Yorkshire -82 16 £400 - 65
North West -57 14 £354 -16.66% 106
Scotland -14 13 £210 -54.59% 60
East Midlands -40 11 - - 49
South West -57 10 £350 -41.72% 101

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 18 (3.63%) SharePoint
2 14 (2.82%) Apache Spark
3 10 (2.02%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (1.81%) Apache Airflow
4 9 (1.81%) CMS
4 9 (1.81%) Confluence
5 5 (1.01%) WordPress
6 4 (0.81%) Kentico
7 2 (0.40%) Apache
7 2 (0.40%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.40%) Skype for Business
8 1 (0.20%) Appian
8 1 (0.20%) Drupal
8 1 (0.20%) nginx
8 1 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
8 1 (0.20%) SAS
8 1 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 22 (4.44%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.60%) Trello
4 2 (0.40%) InVision
4 2 (0.40%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.40%) Sketch
5 1 (0.20%) Adobe After Effects
5 1 (0.20%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.20%) AutoCAD
5 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 7 (1.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.81%) NetSuite
2 4 (0.81%) Oracle ERP
3 2 (0.40%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.40%) SAP Business One
3 2 (0.40%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.20%) Advent Geneva
4 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg AIM
4 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.20%) Fidessa
4 1 (0.20%) Hyperion Planning
4 1 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
4 1 (0.20%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.20%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.20%) SAP FS
4 1 (0.20%) thinkFolio
4 1 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 118 (23.79%) Azure
2 89 (17.94%) AWS
3 36 (7.26%) Microsoft 365
4 34 (6.85%) Power Platform
5 30 (6.05%) Azure DevOps
6 24 (4.84%) GitHub
7 21 (4.23%) GCP
8 20 (4.03%) Entra ID
9 18 (3.63%) dbt
9 18 (3.63%) GitHub Actions
10 17 (3.43%) Azure Data Factory
11 13 (2.62%) Snowflake
12 11 (2.22%) Serverless
13 9 (1.81%) Amazon EKS
13 9 (1.81%) SaaS
14 8 (1.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 7 (1.41%) AWS Lambda
15 7 (1.41%) Figma
16 6 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
16 6 (1.21%) Firebase
Communications & Networking
1 19 (3.83%) TCP/IP
2 15 (3.02%) Ethernet
3 11 (2.22%) Network Security
4 10 (2.02%) Firewall
5 8 (1.61%) VLAN
5 8 (1.61%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (1.41%) DNS
7 6 (1.21%) HTTP
7 6 (1.21%) VSAN
8 5 (1.01%) DHCP
8 5 (1.01%) WAN
9 4 (0.81%) VPN
10 2 (0.40%) LAN
10 2 (0.40%) MPLS
10 2 (0.40%) SD-WAN
10 2 (0.40%) Skype
11 1 (0.20%) AMQP
11 1 (0.20%) Ethernet VPN
11 1 (0.20%) iSCSI
11 1 (0.20%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (6.25%) Power BI
2 25 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
3 21 (4.23%) SQL Server
4 16 (3.23%) PostgreSQL
5 13 (2.62%) Big Data
6 12 (2.42%) Hadoop
7 10 (2.02%) Snowflake Schema
8 8 (1.61%) DB2
9 7 (1.41%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 7 (1.41%) Tableau
10 6 (1.21%) Metadata
10 6 (1.21%) NoSQL
10 6 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 5 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
11 5 (1.01%) Looker
12 4 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
12 4 (0.81%) Data Lake
12 4 (0.81%) Metadata Repository
12 4 (0.81%) SAP Data Services
13 3 (0.60%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 23 (4.64%) JIRA
2 20 (4.03%) Git
3 18 (3.63%) Jenkins
4 10 (2.02%) GitLab
5 6 (1.21%) fastlane
5 6 (1.21%) JMeter
5 6 (1.21%) SonarQube
5 6 (1.21%) Vite
6 5 (1.01%) Gatling
6 5 (1.01%) LoadRunner
7 4 (0.81%) JUnit
8 3 (0.60%) Android Studio
8 3 (0.60%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.60%) CircleCI
8 3 (0.60%) Crashlytics
8 3 (0.60%) Cucumber
8 3 (0.60%) Gradle
8 3 (0.60%) Mockito
8 3 (0.60%) Snyk
8 3 (0.60%) Xcode
General
1 153 (30.85%) Social Skills
2 131 (26.41%) Finance
3 98 (19.76%) Public Sector
4 56 (11.29%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (5.24%) Banking
6 17 (3.43%) Presentation Skills
7 11 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
7 11 (2.22%) Legal
8 10 (2.02%) Law
8 10 (2.02%) Manufacturing
8 10 (2.02%) Organisational Skills
9 8 (1.61%) Marketing
9 8 (1.61%) Pharmaceutical
10 7 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
11 6 (1.21%) Retail
12 5 (1.01%) Local Government
13 4 (0.81%) Aerospace
13 4 (0.81%) Front Office
13 4 (0.81%) General Ledger
14 3 (0.60%) Police
Job Titles
1 64 (12.90%) Analyst
2 55 (11.09%) Developer
3 45 (9.07%) Senior
4 41 (8.27%) Lead
5 36 (7.26%) Architect
6 32 (6.45%) Data Engineer
7 28 (5.65%) Consultant
8 24 (4.84%) Data Analyst
9 21 (4.23%) DevOps Engineer
9 21 (4.23%) Support Engineer
10 16 (3.23%) Business Analyst
10 16 (3.23%) Systems Engineer
11 15 (3.02%) IT Engineer
11 15 (3.02%) IT Support
11 15 (3.02%) Technical Engineer
12 14 (2.82%) Senior Developer
13 13 (2.62%) Cloud Engineer
13 13 (2.62%) Project Manager
14 12 (2.42%) Azure Engineer
14 12 (2.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.03%) React
2 16 (3.23%) GraphQL
3 13 (2.62%) RESTful
4 11 (2.22%) .NET
5 10 (2.02%) Spring
5 10 (2.02%) Spring Boot
6 9 (1.81%) REST
7 8 (1.61%) HTML
7 8 (1.61%) PySpark
7 8 (1.61%) YAML
8 7 (1.41%) CSS
8 7 (1.41%) Kafka
8 7 (1.41%) Next.js
9 6 (1.21%) Middleware
10 5 (1.01%) AngularJS
10 5 (1.01%) ARM Templates
11 4 (0.81%) Elastic Stack
11 4 (0.81%) FastAPI
11 4 (0.81%) JSON
11 4 (0.81%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 30 (6.05%) Onboarding
2 26 (5.24%) Cloud Native
3 15 (3.02%) Industry 4.0
3 15 (3.02%) Product Ownership
3 15 (3.02%) Robotics
4 12 (2.42%) Data Centre
5 11 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
5 11 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
6 10 (2.02%) Data Structures
7 8 (1.61%) Linux Command Line
7 8 (1.61%) Replication
8 6 (1.21%) Management Information System
8 6 (1.21%) Mobile App
8 6 (1.21%) Operational Technology
8 6 (1.21%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.01%) Algorithms
9 5 (1.01%) Reinsurance
9 5 (1.01%) Security Posture
10 4 (0.81%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (0.81%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 44 (8.87%) Windows
2 18 (3.63%) Windows 10
3 17 (3.43%) Windows Server
4 16 (3.23%) Linux
5 8 (1.61%) Android
5 8 (1.61%) Apple iOS
5 8 (1.61%) Unix
6 6 (1.21%) AIX
7 3 (0.60%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.60%) Windows 7
8 2 (0.40%) VMS
9 1 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 115 (23.19%) Problem-Solving
2 111 (22.38%) Agile
3 87 (17.54%) CI/CD
4 82 (16.53%) Decision-Making
5 80 (16.13%) DevOps
6 68 (13.71%) Analytics
7 52 (10.48%) Stakeholder Management
8 50 (10.08%) Continuous Improvement
8 50 (10.08%) Migration
9 47 (9.48%) Infrastructure as Code
10 43 (8.67%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
11 42 (8.47%) AI
12 40 (8.06%) Test Automation
13 39 (7.86%) Data Modelling
14 38 (7.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 37 (7.46%) Business Intelligence
15 37 (7.46%) Mentoring
16 36 (7.26%) User Experience
16 36 (7.26%) Validation
17 35 (7.06%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 78 (15.73%) Python
1 78 (15.73%) SQL
2 24 (4.84%) Java
3 22 (4.44%) PowerShell
4 20 (4.03%) JavaScript
5 13 (2.62%) Bash
5 13 (2.62%) TypeScript
6 11 (2.22%) R
7 8 (1.61%) C#
7 8 (1.61%) Kotlin
7 8 (1.61%) Swift
8 7 (1.41%) Scala
9 5 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 5 (1.01%) VBA
10 4 (0.81%) Groovy
10 4 (0.81%) PL/SQL
10 4 (0.81%) Ruby
11 3 (0.60%) Go
11 3 (0.60%) VB
12 2 (0.40%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 78 (15.73%) Security Cleared
2 71 (14.31%) SC Cleared
3 41 (8.27%) Degree
4 21 (4.23%) DBS Check
5 15 (3.02%) Azure Certification
6 10 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (1.81%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (1.01%) PMP
10 4 (0.81%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.60%) CISM
11 3 (0.60%) CISSP
11 3 (0.60%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.40%) ACCA
12 2 (0.40%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.40%) CIMA
12 2 (0.40%) CIPD
12 2 (0.40%) CRISC
12 2 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (7.46%) Accessibility
2 32 (6.45%) Data Quality
3 16 (3.23%) QA
4 13 (2.62%) GDPR
5 12 (2.42%) WCAG
6 11 (2.22%) Actionable Recommendations
7 8 (1.61%) SLA
8 7 (1.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (1.21%) Cyber Essentials
9 6 (1.21%) GRC
10 4 (0.81%) NIST
10 4 (0.81%) PMO
11 2 (0.40%) COBIT
11 2 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.40%) Def Stans
11 2 (0.40%) NCSC
11 2 (0.40%) PSD2
12 1 (0.20%) ISO 22301
12 1 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 36 (7.26%) Active Directory
2 31 (6.25%) Docker
3 13 (2.62%) Hyper-V
4 11 (2.22%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.21%) KVM
5 6 (1.21%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (1.21%) VMware NSX
5 6 (1.21%) vSphere
6 4 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.40%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.20%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 47 (9.48%) Terraform
2 35 (7.06%) Kubernetes
3 22 (4.44%) Grafana
4 16 (3.23%) Ansible
5 15 (3.02%) Prometheus
6 9 (1.81%) Kibana
7 8 (1.61%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (1.21%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.21%) SCCM
8 6 (1.21%) vCenter Server
9 4 (0.81%) Consul
9 4 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (0.60%) Rancher
11 2 (0.40%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.40%) HP Quality Center
11 2 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.40%) Packer
11 2 (0.40%) Zipkin
12 1 (0.20%) EMC VPLEX
12 1 (0.20%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 78 (15.73%) Microsoft
2 27 (5.44%) Databricks
3 20 (4.03%) SAP
4 19 (3.83%) ServiceNow
5 17 (3.43%) Dynatrace
6 16 (3.23%) Google
6 16 (3.23%) Oracle
7 15 (3.02%) Siemens
8 14 (2.82%) Salesforce
8 14 (2.82%) VMware
9 8 (1.61%) CyberArk
10 7 (1.41%) IBM
11 6 (1.21%) Atlassian
12 4 (0.81%) Cisco
13 3 (0.60%) Acronis
13 3 (0.60%) AppDynamics
13 3 (0.60%) Apple
13 3 (0.60%) Dell
13 3 (0.60%) HP
13 3 (0.60%) MuleSoft