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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 215 147 163
Rank change year-on-year -68 +16 +6
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 712 627 581
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.33% 1.92% 1.50%
As % of the General category 2.41% 3.02% 2.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 372 256 392
10th Percentile £306 £173 £425
25th Percentile £375 £352 £507
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% -22.92% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £675
90th Percentile £675 £658 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £420 £500
% change year-on-year +1.19% -16.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 18 5
10th Percentile £14.85 £17.48 £29.60
25th Percentile £17.36 - £42.50
Median hourly rate £20.00 £22.14 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.67% -50.80% -29.13%
75th Percentile £30.28 £22.41 £48.75
90th Percentile £44.50 £65.00 £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 29,490 20,770 22,288
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.97% 63.45% 57.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,431 12,916 13,846
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £415 £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 £749 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,285 1,168 1,267
10th Percentile £13.89 £13.43 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.11 £16.17 £16.70
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -28.87% +28.58%
75th Percentile £56.21 £50.00 £59.98
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £70.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £22.14 £35.00
% change year-on-year +44.53% -36.74% +34.74%

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 August 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 August 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 25 August 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 -69 624 £475 - 1,077
UK excluding London -42 325 £425 +1.19% 1,097
London -57 323 £510 -5.12% 452
Work from Home -41 267 £525 +3.70% 525
Midlands -27 103 £491 +14.19% 134
South East -35 80 £450 -11.33% 254
West Midlands -11 79 £525 +25.00% 80
North of England -56 75 £425 +14.09% 179
North East +3 47 £425 +6.25% 32
South West -38 26 £475 -15.56% 321
East Midlands -16 24 £165 -63.33% 54
Scotland -19 24 £288 -37.84% 102
North West -41 14 £518 +29.38% 93
Yorkshire -71 14 £400 +100.00% 54
East of England -31 9 £425 +174.19% 75
Wales -11 7 £394 +18.90% 8
Northern Ireland 0 1 - - 65

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 30 (4.21%) SharePoint
2 16 (2.25%) Confluence
3 12 (1.69%) Apache Airflow
4 11 (1.54%) CMS
4 11 (1.54%) Microsoft Exchange
5 9 (1.26%) WordPress
6 8 (1.12%) Apache Spark
7 6 (0.84%) Apache
8 4 (0.56%) Kentico
9 3 (0.42%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.28%) Skype for Business
11 1 (0.14%) Drupal
11 1 (0.14%) JBoss
11 1 (0.14%) SAS
11 1 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 17 (2.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (1.26%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.84%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.42%) AutoCAD
5 3 (0.42%) Trello
6 2 (0.28%) Acrobat
6 2 (0.28%) Sketch
7 1 (0.14%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.14%) InVision
7 1 (0.14%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 16 (2.25%) NetSuite
2 11 (1.54%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.70%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.70%) Salesforce CRM
4 5 (0.70%) Workday HCM
5 4 (0.56%) Dynamics NAV
5 4 (0.56%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.28%) SAP Business One
7 1 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
7 1 (0.14%) Hyperion Planning
7 1 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.14%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.14%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.14%) SAP FS
7 1 (0.14%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 216 (30.34%) Azure
2 122 (17.13%) AWS
3 77 (10.81%) Azure DevOps
4 70 (9.83%) Power Platform
5 64 (8.99%) Microsoft 365
6 49 (6.88%) GCP
7 40 (5.62%) GitHub
8 35 (4.92%) Dynamics 365
9 32 (4.49%) GitHub Actions
10 30 (4.21%) Serverless
11 28 (3.93%) Entra ID
12 25 (3.51%) Power Automate
13 24 (3.37%) Azure Data Factory
14 22 (3.09%) Snowflake
15 20 (2.81%) Amazon EKS
16 19 (2.67%) AWS Lambda
17 17 (2.39%) dbt
18 16 (2.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 16 (2.25%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 15 (2.11%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.83%) DNS
1 13 (1.83%) Firewall
1 13 (1.83%) Network Security
2 12 (1.69%) VPN
3 11 (1.54%) Wi-Fi
4 10 (1.40%) VLAN
4 10 (1.40%) Wireless
5 9 (1.26%) DHCP
6 6 (0.84%) Structured Cabling
6 6 (0.84%) TCP/IP
6 6 (0.84%) WAN
7 5 (0.70%) HTTP
7 5 (0.70%) SD-WAN
8 4 (0.56%) BGP
8 4 (0.56%) OSPF
9 3 (0.42%) Ethernet VPN
9 3 (0.42%) MPLS
9 3 (0.42%) SSL
9 3 (0.42%) VXLAN
10 2 (0.28%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (6.88%) Power BI
2 34 (4.78%) Data Warehouse
3 30 (4.21%) PostgreSQL
4 20 (2.81%) SQL Server
5 16 (2.25%) Metadata
6 14 (1.97%) MongoDB
7 11 (1.54%) Data Lake
8 9 (1.26%) Big Data
8 9 (1.26%) NoSQL
8 9 (1.26%) Relational Database
9 8 (1.12%) Looker
9 8 (1.12%) Power Query
10 7 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
10 7 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
10 7 (0.98%) Redis
10 7 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
10 7 (0.98%) Tableau
11 6 (0.84%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 5 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
12 5 (0.70%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 41 (5.76%) JIRA
2 35 (4.92%) Git
3 28 (3.93%) Jenkins
4 24 (3.37%) GitLab
5 11 (1.54%) Cypress.io
5 11 (1.54%) Selenium
6 10 (1.40%) fastlane
6 10 (1.40%) Postman
7 9 (1.26%) WebDriver
8 8 (1.12%) Cucumber
9 6 (0.84%) Vite
10 5 (0.70%) Android Studio
10 5 (0.70%) Crashlytics
10 5 (0.70%) Gradle
10 5 (0.70%) JUnit
10 5 (0.70%) Mockito
10 5 (0.70%) Visual Studio
10 5 (0.70%) Xcode
11 4 (0.56%) JMeter
11 4 (0.56%) SonarQube
General
1 267 (37.50%) Social Skills
2 192 (26.97%) Public Sector
3 190 (26.69%) Finance
4 105 (14.75%) Analytical Skills
5 27 (3.79%) Organisational Skills
6 24 (3.37%) Banking
7 22 (3.09%) Manufacturing
8 17 (2.39%) Documentation Skills
8 17 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
8 17 (2.39%) Law
9 14 (1.97%) Legal
9 14 (1.97%) Marketing
10 13 (1.83%) Retail
11 10 (1.40%) Local Government
11 10 (1.40%) Telecoms
12 9 (1.26%) Pharmaceutical
13 7 (0.98%) Aerospace
13 7 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
13 7 (0.98%) Publishing
14 5 (0.70%) Military
Job Titles
1 106 (14.89%) Developer
2 100 (14.04%) Analyst
3 80 (11.24%) Senior
4 72 (10.11%) Lead
5 59 (8.29%) Architect
6 46 (6.46%) Consultant
7 33 (4.63%) Data Engineer
8 27 (3.79%) Senior Developer
9 26 (3.65%) Business Analyst
9 26 (3.65%) Data Analyst
9 26 (3.65%) DevOps Engineer
10 24 (3.37%) IT Engineer
10 24 (3.37%) Support Engineer
11 20 (2.81%) Project Manager
12 19 (2.67%) IT Support
13 18 (2.53%) Software Developer
14 17 (2.39%) Coordinator
15 15 (2.11%) Azure Engineer
15 15 (2.11%) Solutions Architect
16 14 (1.97%) Dynamics 365 Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 80 (11.24%) Terraform
2 41 (5.76%) RESTful
3 29 (4.07%) React
4 28 (3.93%) .NET
5 23 (3.23%) GraphQL
5 23 (3.23%) HTML
6 22 (3.09%) CSS
7 20 (2.81%) Node.js
7 20 (2.81%) PySpark
8 19 (2.67%) Kafka
9 18 (2.53%) JSON
9 18 (2.53%) REST
10 17 (2.39%) Django
11 15 (2.11%) Spring
11 15 (2.11%) Spring Boot
12 13 (1.83%) OAuth
13 12 (1.69%) OpenID
14 11 (1.54%) Gherkin
14 11 (1.54%) OAuth2
15 9 (1.26%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 68 (9.55%) Onboarding
2 42 (5.90%) Product Ownership
3 41 (5.76%) Cloud Native
4 23 (3.23%) Legacy Systems
5 19 (2.67%) Distributed Systems
6 18 (2.53%) Data Centre
7 14 (1.97%) Data Structures
7 14 (1.97%) Management Information System
8 11 (1.54%) Mobile App
9 10 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
10 8 (1.12%) Security Posture
10 8 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
11 7 (0.98%) EPoS
11 7 (0.98%) Replication
11 7 (0.98%) Virtual Team
12 5 (0.70%) Algorithms
12 5 (0.70%) Blog
12 5 (0.70%) Reinsurance
13 4 (0.56%) Driving Licence
13 4 (0.56%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 73 (10.25%) Windows
2 19 (2.67%) Linux
3 18 (2.53%) Windows 10
4 16 (2.25%) Windows Server
5 14 (1.97%) Apple iOS
6 13 (1.83%) Android
7 4 (0.56%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.56%) Unix
7 4 (0.56%) Windows 7
8 3 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 2 (0.28%) VMS
9 2 (0.28%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.14%) AIX
10 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 226 (31.74%) Agile
2 174 (24.44%) Problem-Solving
3 156 (21.91%) DevOps
4 146 (20.51%) CI/CD
5 142 (19.94%) Stakeholder Management
6 126 (17.70%) Continuous Improvement
7 113 (15.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 111 (15.59%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
9 106 (14.89%) Analytics
10 97 (13.62%) Decision-Making
11 92 (12.92%) AI
12 85 (11.94%) Migration
13 73 (10.25%) Test Automation
14 70 (9.83%) Mentoring
15 69 (9.69%) Infrastructure as Code
16 66 (9.27%) Validation
17 62 (8.71%) Digital Transformation Programme
18 61 (8.57%) Technical Leadership
19 59 (8.29%) Business Intelligence
20 57 (8.01%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 112 (15.73%) Python
2 98 (13.76%) SQL
3 60 (8.43%) JavaScript
4 43 (6.04%) C#
5 41 (5.76%) Java
6 28 (3.93%) TypeScript
7 13 (1.83%) Kotlin
7 13 (1.83%) PowerShell
8 10 (1.40%) Bash
8 10 (1.40%) Go
8 10 (1.40%) Swift
9 9 (1.26%) Scala
10 8 (1.12%) Bicep
10 8 (1.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 8 (1.12%) Ruby
11 6 (0.84%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.70%) Groovy
12 5 (0.70%) PHP
13 4 (0.56%) R
13 4 (0.56%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 140 (19.66%) Security Cleared
2 128 (17.98%) SC Cleared
3 50 (7.02%) Degree
4 28 (3.93%) DBS Check
5 25 (3.51%) Azure Certification
5 25 (3.51%) Microsoft Certification
6 23 (3.23%) BPSS Clearance
7 20 (2.81%) Computer Science Degree
8 11 (1.54%) Master's Degree
9 9 (1.26%) ISTQB
10 7 (0.98%) CISSP
11 6 (0.84%) ACCA
11 6 (0.84%) CIMA
11 6 (0.84%) ITIL Certification
12 5 (0.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 5 (0.70%) CISM
12 5 (0.70%) PMP
13 4 (0.56%) AWS Certification
13 4 (0.56%) DV Cleared
14 3 (0.42%) APMG
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 95 (13.34%) Accessibility
2 44 (6.18%) QA
3 39 (5.48%) Data Quality
4 38 (5.34%) WCAG
5 34 (4.78%) GDPR
6 21 (2.95%) SLA
7 17 (2.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 12 (1.69%) NCSC
9 9 (1.26%) PMO
10 8 (1.12%) NIST
11 6 (0.84%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
11 6 (0.84%) GRC
12 5 (0.70%) COBIT
13 3 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 2 (0.28%) Def Stans
14 2 (0.28%) DICOM
14 2 (0.28%) GxP
14 2 (0.28%) HL7
15 1 (0.14%) JSP 440
System Software
1 57 (8.01%) Docker
2 47 (6.60%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.12%) Hyper-V
4 7 (0.98%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.42%) Firmware
8 2 (0.28%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 2 (0.28%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.28%) vSphere
9 1 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.14%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 63 (8.85%) Kubernetes
2 28 (3.93%) Grafana
3 22 (3.09%) Prometheus
4 20 (2.81%) Microsoft Intune
5 15 (2.11%) Ansible
6 13 (1.83%) SCCM
7 6 (0.84%) Kibana
8 5 (0.70%) Consul
8 5 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
9 3 (0.42%) Packer
9 3 (0.42%) Rancher
10 2 (0.28%) HP ALM
10 2 (0.28%) HP Quality Center
10 2 (0.28%) ITRS Geneos
10 2 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
10 2 (0.28%) ZABBIX
10 2 (0.28%) Zipkin
11 1 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 1 (0.14%) Kustomize
11 1 (0.14%) PaperCut
Vendors
1 164 (23.03%) Microsoft
2 34 (4.78%) Google
3 32 (4.49%) Databricks
4 25 (3.51%) Dynatrace
5 24 (3.37%) Salesforce
6 23 (3.23%) SAP
6 23 (3.23%) ServiceNow
7 16 (2.25%) Oracle
8 12 (1.69%) CyberArk
8 12 (1.69%) Sage
9 11 (1.54%) Splunk
10 9 (1.26%) Apple
10 9 (1.26%) Cisco
10 9 (1.26%) PagerDuty
10 9 (1.26%) VMware
11 8 (1.12%) OpenAI
11 8 (1.12%) UiPath
12 7 (0.98%) Aspera
12 7 (0.98%) CA Agile Central
12 7 (0.98%) Signiant