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

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 229 155 163
Rank change year-on-year -74 +8 +69
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 491 531 659
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.13% 1.81% 1.48%
As % of the General category 1.99% 2.89% 2.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 207 276 487
10th Percentile £173 £256 £375
25th Percentile £344 £425 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -20.83% - -
75th Percentile £616 £665 £675
90th Percentile £675 £759 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £381 £508 £508
% change year-on-year -24.88% - -13.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 7 20
10th Percentile £14.61 - £10.88
25th Percentile £15.34 - £12.06
Median hourly rate £16.67 £22.14 £20.22
Median % change year-on-year -24.71% +9.51% -23.53%
75th Percentile £17.44 - £35.66
90th Percentile £17.78 £36.28 £59.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.50 £22.14 £27.93
% change year-on-year -25.47% -20.72% +101.26%

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 24,639 18,367 25,993
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.94% 62.65% 58.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,366 11,681 16,636
10th Percentile £300 £300 £263
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,513 669 1,810
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.22 £12.84
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.12 £15.38
Median hourly rate £24.55 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.17% +15.38% -23.53%
75th Percentile £56.96 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.20 £75.45 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £27.85 £25.00
% change year-on-year -17.41% +11.40% -14.53%

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 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
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 18 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 -86 444 £488 -18.75% 820
Work from Home -28 231 £537 -10.50% 385
London -51 226 £568 -7.72% 381
UK excluding London -85 215 £381 -24.88% 676
Midlands -45 70 £438 -14.63% 84
South East -52 50 £363 -30.29% 280
West Midlands -52 44 £540 +2.86% 48
North of England -83 40 £375 -16.67% 135
East of England -5 28 £520 +285.19% 45
East Midlands -26 26 £168 -62.78% 36
North West -39 25 £425 -5.56% 59
South West -38 19 £540 +2.86% 77
Scotland +6 11 £250 -45.95% 51
Yorkshire -74 10 £275 -39.73% 54
North East -14 5 £438 -2.78% 23

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 (3.26%) SharePoint
2 13 (2.65%) Apache Spark
2 13 (2.65%) Confluence
2 13 (2.65%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.63%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.22%) CMS
5 4 (0.81%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 4 (0.81%) WordPress
6 2 (0.41%) Apache
6 2 (0.41%) HCL Notes
6 2 (0.41%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.20%) Appian
7 1 (0.20%) Camunda
7 1 (0.20%) IIS
7 1 (0.20%) nginx
7 1 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
7 1 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 26 (5.30%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (3.05%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.81%) Adobe Captivate
3 4 (0.81%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 4 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.81%) Trello
4 3 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
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 (0.20%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
1 4 (0.81%) 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 (0.20%) Advent Geneva
3 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg AIM
3 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 1 (0.20%) Fidessa
3 1 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.20%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.20%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 112 (22.81%) Azure
2 81 (16.50%) AWS
3 35 (7.13%) Power Platform
4 29 (5.91%) Microsoft 365
5 23 (4.68%) GitHub
6 20 (4.07%) GitHub Actions
7 18 (3.67%) Azure DevOps
7 18 (3.67%) GCP
8 17 (3.46%) SaaS
9 16 (3.26%) dbt
10 14 (2.85%) Azure Data Factory
11 13 (2.65%) Entra ID
12 10 (2.04%) Google Workspace
12 10 (2.04%) Serverless
12 10 (2.04%) Snowflake
13 9 (1.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 9 (1.83%) Figma
14 8 (1.63%) Amazon EKS
15 7 (1.43%) Power Automate
16 6 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 18 (3.67%) TCP/IP
2 15 (3.05%) Ethernet
3 12 (2.44%) Firewall
4 11 (2.24%) Network Security
5 8 (1.63%) VPN
5 8 (1.63%) WAN
6 7 (1.43%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (1.22%) LAN
8 5 (1.02%) DHCP
8 5 (1.02%) DNS
8 5 (1.02%) HTTP
8 5 (1.02%) VLAN
8 5 (1.02%) VSAN
9 3 (0.61%) AMQP
10 2 (0.41%) Intranet
10 2 (0.41%) MPLS
10 2 (0.41%) SD-WAN
11 1 (0.20%) iSCSI
11 1 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
11 1 (0.20%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (5.91%) Power BI
2 24 (4.89%) Data Warehouse
3 22 (4.48%) SQL Server
4 13 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
5 11 (2.24%) Big Data
6 10 (2.04%) Hadoop
7 8 (1.63%) Snowflake Schema
8 7 (1.43%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 7 (1.43%) Metadata
9 6 (1.22%) Azure SQL Database
9 6 (1.22%) DB2
9 6 (1.22%) Relational Database
9 6 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 6 (1.22%) Tableau
10 5 (1.02%) NoSQL
11 4 (0.81%) Amazon Aurora
11 4 (0.81%) Looker
11 4 (0.81%) Metadata Repository
12 3 (0.61%) InfluxDB
12 3 (0.61%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 23 (4.68%) Git
2 21 (4.28%) JIRA
3 6 (1.22%) GitLab
3 6 (1.22%) Jenkins
3 6 (1.22%) JMeter
4 5 (1.02%) Cucumber
4 5 (1.02%) Gatling
4 5 (1.02%) LoadRunner
5 3 (0.61%) Maven
5 3 (0.61%) Selenium
5 3 (0.61%) SonarQube
5 3 (0.61%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.41%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.41%) Axure RP
6 2 (0.41%) JUnit
6 2 (0.41%) Mockito
7 1 (0.20%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.20%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.20%) TestNG
General
1 164 (33.40%) Social Skills
2 116 (23.63%) Finance
3 64 (13.03%) Public Sector
4 58 (11.81%) Analytical Skills
5 23 (4.68%) Banking
6 19 (3.87%) Presentation Skills
7 13 (2.65%) Local Government
8 12 (2.44%) Marketing
8 12 (2.44%) Organisational Skills
9 10 (2.04%) Fire and Rescue
10 9 (1.83%) Pharmaceutical
10 9 (1.83%) Retail
11 8 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
11 8 (1.63%) Legal
12 6 (1.22%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.81%) Aerospace
13 4 (0.81%) Documentation Skills
13 4 (0.81%) Military
13 4 (0.81%) Publishing
13 4 (0.81%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 70 (14.26%) Analyst
2 39 (7.94%) Data Engineer
3 38 (7.74%) Lead
4 36 (7.33%) Architect
5 31 (6.31%) Senior
6 29 (5.91%) Developer
7 27 (5.50%) Support Engineer
8 22 (4.48%) Consultant
9 19 (3.87%) IT Engineer
9 19 (3.87%) IT Support
10 18 (3.67%) Data Analyst
11 17 (3.46%) Project Manager
11 17 (3.46%) Systems Engineer
12 16 (3.26%) Cloud Engineer
13 15 (3.05%) IT Analyst
13 15 (3.05%) Technical Engineer
14 14 (2.85%) Business Analyst
15 13 (2.65%) Designer
15 13 (2.65%) DevOps Engineer
15 13 (2.65%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (3.46%) EDI
2 13 (2.65%) YAML
3 10 (2.04%) Middleware
3 10 (2.04%) PySpark
4 9 (1.83%) AngularJS
4 9 (1.83%) React
5 8 (1.63%) HTML
6 7 (1.43%) .NET
6 7 (1.43%) Spring
6 7 (1.43%) Spring Boot
7 6 (1.22%) REST
8 4 (0.81%) CSS
8 4 (0.81%) Hibernate
8 4 (0.81%) JPA
9 3 (0.61%) Akka
9 3 (0.61%) Oracle Fusion
9 3 (0.61%) scikit-learn
9 3 (0.61%) TensorFlow
9 3 (0.61%) Web Services
9 3 (0.61%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 21 (4.28%) Cloud Native
2 20 (4.07%) Onboarding
3 19 (3.87%) Management Information System
4 18 (3.67%) Data Centre
5 15 (3.05%) Industry 4.0
5 15 (3.05%) Robotics
6 7 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
6 7 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
6 7 (1.43%) Virtual Team
7 6 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
7 6 (1.22%) Replication
8 5 (1.02%) Algorithms
8 5 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
8 5 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.02%) Operational Technology
8 5 (1.02%) Product Ownership
9 4 (0.81%) Data Structures
9 4 (0.81%) Driving Licence
9 4 (0.81%) Mobile App
9 4 (0.81%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 36 (7.33%) Windows
2 15 (3.05%) Windows 10
3 11 (2.24%) Windows Server
4 10 (2.04%) Linux
5 6 (1.22%) AIX
5 6 (1.22%) Unix
6 3 (0.61%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.20%) Oracle Linux
7 1 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.20%) Windows 7
7 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (26.48%) Problem-Solving
2 70 (14.26%) Agile
3 65 (13.24%) CI/CD
4 64 (13.03%) Decision-Making
5 61 (12.42%) Analytics
6 59 (12.02%) DevOps
7 46 (9.37%) Stakeholder Management
8 44 (8.96%) Continuous Improvement
9 43 (8.76%) Migration
10 39 (7.94%) Data Modelling
11 37 (7.54%) Customer Service
12 36 (7.33%) Infrastructure as Code
13 35 (7.13%) Data Pipeline
14 32 (6.52%) Business Intelligence
15 30 (6.11%) AI
16 29 (5.91%) Mentoring
17 28 (5.70%) Data Engineering
18 27 (5.50%) Data Governance
19 26 (5.30%) Machine Learning
20 25 (5.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 73 (14.87%) SQL
2 65 (13.24%) Python
3 20 (4.07%) PowerShell
4 18 (3.67%) Java
5 16 (3.26%) JavaScript
6 10 (2.04%) Bash
6 10 (2.04%) R
7 9 (1.83%) C#
8 7 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 6 (1.22%) TypeScript
10 5 (1.02%) VBA
11 3 (0.61%) Go
11 3 (0.61%) Scala
12 2 (0.41%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.41%) AWK
12 2 (0.41%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.41%) Ruby
12 2 (0.41%) Rust
13 1 (0.20%) C++
13 1 (0.20%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 74 (15.07%) Security Cleared
2 62 (12.63%) SC Cleared
3 46 (9.37%) Degree
4 16 (3.26%) DBS Check
5 15 (3.05%) AWS Certification
6 9 (1.83%) Azure Certification
6 9 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (1.22%) DV Cleared
8 4 (0.81%) ACCA
8 4 (0.81%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 4 (0.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 4 (0.81%) CIMA
8 4 (0.81%) CISSP
8 4 (0.81%) CTC Cleared
9 3 (0.61%) CompTIA CySA+
9 3 (0.61%) Network+ Certification
9 3 (0.61%) Oracle Certification
9 3 (0.61%) SANS
10 2 (0.41%) BPSS Clearance
10 2 (0.41%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (5.30%) Data Quality
2 23 (4.68%) Accessibility
3 19 (3.87%) QA
4 9 (1.83%) Actionable Recommendations
5 8 (1.63%) GDPR
6 7 (1.43%) PMO
7 5 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (1.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.61%) GRC
8 3 (0.61%) SLA
8 3 (0.61%) WCAG
9 2 (0.41%) ISO 22301
9 2 (0.41%) NIST
9 2 (0.41%) PSD2
9 2 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.20%) Def Stans
10 1 (0.20%) GMP
10 1 (0.20%) GxP
10 1 (0.20%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.20%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 30 (6.11%) Active Directory
2 17 (3.46%) Docker
3 10 (2.04%) Hyper-V
4 7 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.22%) KVM
6 5 (1.02%) VMware NSX
6 5 (1.02%) vSphere
7 4 (0.81%) VMware Infrastructure
8 2 (0.41%) Firmware
8 2 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 37 (7.54%) Terraform
2 21 (4.28%) Kubernetes
3 14 (2.85%) Grafana
4 12 (2.44%) Microsoft Intune
5 9 (1.83%) Ansible
6 8 (1.63%) Prometheus
7 7 (1.43%) SCCM
8 6 (1.22%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.22%) Kibana
8 6 (1.22%) vCenter Server
9 4 (0.81%) Jamf Pro
10 3 (0.61%) Argo
10 3 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
11 1 (0.20%) Data Guard
11 1 (0.20%) EMC VPLEX
11 1 (0.20%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 1 (0.20%) PaperCut
11 1 (0.20%) Rancher
11 1 (0.20%) vRealize
11 1 (0.20%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 76 (15.48%) Microsoft
2 30 (6.11%) Databricks
3 21 (4.28%) Oracle
4 18 (3.67%) ServiceNow
5 16 (3.26%) Google
6 15 (3.05%) Siemens
7 13 (2.65%) Salesforce
7 13 (2.65%) SAP
8 12 (2.44%) VMware
9 11 (2.24%) Cisco
10 10 (2.04%) Adobe
10 10 (2.04%) Dynatrace
11 7 (1.43%) Atlassian
12 6 (1.22%) IBM
13 4 (0.81%) Citrix
13 4 (0.81%) Dell
13 4 (0.81%) MuleSoft
13 4 (0.81%) Netskope
13 4 (0.81%) Talend
14 3 (0.61%) Meraki