NHS Contracts

National Health Service (NHS)
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term NHS in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited NHS over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 319 237 178
Rank change year-on-year -82 -59 -20
Contract jobs citing NHS 213 446 872
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.73% 1.02% 1.46%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.15% 3.37% 4.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 152 300 671
10th Percentile £195 £170 £158
25th Percentile £250 £205 £203
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £306 £300
Median % change year-on-year +30.51% +2.16% -13.67%
75th Percentile £488 £452 £475
90th Percentile £561 £550 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £325 £335 £245
% change year-on-year -2.99% +36.87% -18.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 77 47
10th Percentile £13.08 £11.25 £14.35
25th Percentile £15.94 £12.25 £16.85
Median hourly rate £21.67 £14.49 £21.72
Median % change year-on-year +49.60% -33.31% +23.13%
75th Percentile £33.75 £23.50 £30.24
90th Percentile £33.83 £39.00 £55.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.13 £12.86 £21.00
% change year-on-year +40.98% -38.76% +24.85%

All Generic Skills
UK

NHS falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 9,915 13,252 19,898
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.91% 30.40% 33.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,331 8,505 13,670
10th Percentile £300 £263 £308
25th Percentile £413 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.42% -2.18% -
75th Percentile £650 £660 £680
90th Percentile £775 £788 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £496 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -0.90% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 394 910 640
10th Percentile £16.46 £12.25 £9.80
25th Percentile £21.00 £15.17 £10.63
Median hourly rate £32.05 £30.00 £22.49
Median % change year-on-year +6.83% +33.42% -18.24%
75th Percentile £63.75 £60.66 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.99 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.93 £27.75 £22.00
% change year-on-year +11.46% +26.14% +9.64%

NHS
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing NHS as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for NHS in the UK

NHS
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing NHS.

Daily rate trend for NHS in the UK

NHS
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing NHS over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for NHS in the UK

NHS
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing NHS.

Hourly rate trend for NHS in the UK

NHS
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing NHS over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for NHS in the UK

NHS
Top 15 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing NHS within the UK over the 6 months to 30 April 2025. 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 -91 172 £410 +40.17% 467
UK excluding London -50 129 £325 -2.99% 327
Work from Home -21 68 £448 +44.05% 215
London -41 60 £450 +55.17% 166
North of England -10 47 £450 - 120
South East +7 36 £275 +34.15% 59
Yorkshire +3 27 £488 -0.51% 57
Wales -5 22 £309 -27.36% 22
North West -5 19 £215 -38.57% 56
West Midlands +12 11 £224 -61.04% 18
Midlands +5 11 £224 -47.91% 38
Scotland +13 7 £448 +48.18% 13
South West +25 3 £355 +92.09% 39
East of England +4 3 £280 +8.00% 36
North East -11 1 £650 +100.00% 13

NHS
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 2 (0.94%) Microsoft Exchange
1 2 (0.94%) SharePoint
2 1 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 12 (5.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (2.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (2.35%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (1.88%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.94%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.47%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.47%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.47%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.47%) Cerner Millennium
2 1 (0.47%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 27 (12.68%) Azure
2 17 (7.98%) AWS
3 13 (6.10%) Microsoft 365
4 11 (5.16%) Power Platform
5 10 (4.69%) GCP
6 4 (1.88%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (1.41%) Amazon S3
7 3 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
7 3 (1.41%) IaaS
7 3 (1.41%) Serverless
8 2 (0.94%) Amazon EC2
8 2 (0.94%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (0.94%) Azure Service Bus
8 2 (0.94%) Azure Stack
8 2 (0.94%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (0.94%) PowerApps
9 1 (0.47%) AWS CloudFormation
9 1 (0.47%) Azure Machine Learning
9 1 (0.47%) Entra ID
9 1 (0.47%) Mimecast
Communications & Networking
1 13 (6.10%) Firewall
1 13 (6.10%) VPN
2 8 (3.76%) Wireless
3 6 (2.82%) DNS
4 5 (2.35%) BGP
4 5 (2.35%) DHCP
4 5 (2.35%) LAN
4 5 (2.35%) Network Security
4 5 (2.35%) WAN
5 4 (1.88%) OSPF
6 3 (1.41%) VoIP
6 3 (1.41%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.94%) EIGRP
7 2 (0.94%) H.323
7 2 (0.94%) Internet
7 2 (0.94%) Intrusion Detection
7 2 (0.94%) IPv4
7 2 (0.94%) MGCP
7 2 (0.94%) MPLS
7 2 (0.94%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (8.45%) Electronic Patient Records
2 12 (5.63%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (4.23%) Power BI
4 8 (3.76%) SQL Server
5 4 (1.88%) DynamoDB
5 4 (1.88%) Metadata
5 4 (1.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 3 (1.41%) Data Lake
6 3 (1.41%) Data Mining
6 3 (1.41%) NoSQL
6 3 (1.41%) Qlik Sense
6 3 (1.41%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 2 (0.94%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (0.94%) InterSystems Cache
7 2 (0.94%) Metadata Repository
7 2 (0.94%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (0.94%) Power Query
7 2 (0.94%) Tableau
8 1 (0.47%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 6 (2.82%) Selenium
2 4 (1.88%) SpecFlow
3 3 (1.41%) Git
3 3 (1.41%) JIRA
4 1 (0.47%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 1 (0.47%) tSQLt
General
1 67 (31.46%) Social Skills
2 65 (30.52%) Public Sector
3 29 (13.62%) Finance
4 20 (9.39%) Marketing
5 19 (8.92%) Telecoms
6 18 (8.45%) Electronics
6 18 (8.45%) Manufacturing
7 17 (7.98%) Analytical Skills
8 13 (6.10%) Local Government
9 10 (4.69%) Pharmaceutical
9 10 (4.69%) Presentation Skills
10 7 (3.29%) Digital Health
10 7 (3.29%) Organisational Skills
11 4 (1.88%) Digital Healthcare
12 3 (1.41%) Advertising
12 3 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (1.41%) Health Technology
12 3 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (1.41%) Welsh Language
13 2 (0.94%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 24 (11.27%) Project Manager
2 23 (10.80%) Developer
3 22 (10.33%) Lead
4 20 (9.39%) Architect
5 16 (7.51%) Analyst
6 13 (6.10%) Network Engineer
7 11 (5.16%) Desktop Engineer
7 11 (5.16%) Senior
8 10 (4.69%) Support Engineer
9 9 (4.23%) Desktop Support
9 9 (4.23%) Desktop Support Engineer
10 8 (3.76%) IT Engineer
11 7 (3.29%) Designer
12 6 (2.82%) Solutions Architect
13 5 (2.35%) Business Analyst
13 5 (2.35%) Cloud Architect
13 5 (2.35%) Facilities Manager
13 5 (2.35%) IT Manager
13 5 (2.35%) Technical Architect
13 5 (2.35%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (4.23%) .NET
2 7 (3.29%) CSS
2 7 (3.29%) FHIR
2 7 (3.29%) HTML
3 6 (2.82%) React
4 4 (1.88%) XML
5 3 (1.41%) ASP.NET
5 3 (1.41%) ASP.NET Web API
5 3 (1.41%) HTML5
5 3 (1.41%) pydantic
6 2 (0.94%) .NET Core
6 2 (0.94%) AngularJS
6 2 (0.94%) Blazor
6 2 (0.94%) CSS3
6 2 (0.94%) GWT
6 2 (0.94%) HTML5 Canvas
6 2 (0.94%) Microsoft Graph
6 2 (0.94%) Playwright
6 2 (0.94%) Plotly
6 2 (0.94%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 6 (2.82%) Management Information System
1 6 (2.82%) PACS
2 5 (2.35%) LIMS
3 4 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
3 4 (1.88%) Digital Signage
4 3 (1.41%) Algorithms
4 3 (1.41%) Cloud Native
4 3 (1.41%) Data Centre
5 2 (0.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 2 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.47%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (0.47%) Biopharmaceutical
6 1 (0.47%) Clustering
6 1 (0.47%) Freedom of Information
6 1 (0.47%) Freedom of Information Act
6 1 (0.47%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (0.47%) Product Ownership
6 1 (0.47%) Replication
6 1 (0.47%) Security Posture
6 1 (0.47%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 27 (12.68%) Windows
2 16 (7.51%) Windows 10
3 6 (2.82%) Apple iOS
4 4 (1.88%) Android
5 2 (0.94%) Linux
5 2 (0.94%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.47%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.47%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 39 (18.31%) Agile
2 31 (14.55%) Business Intelligence
3 28 (13.15%) Project Management
4 27 (12.68%) Problem-Solving
5 24 (11.27%) Programme Management
5 24 (11.27%) Stakeholder Management
6 22 (10.33%) Risk Management
7 18 (8.45%) Digital Marketing
8 17 (7.98%) DevOps
8 17 (7.98%) Migration
9 16 (7.51%) Analytics
10 15 (7.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 13 (6.10%) CI/CD
11 13 (6.10%) Coaching
11 13 (6.10%) ITIL
12 12 (5.63%) Customer Service
12 12 (5.63%) Service Delivery
13 11 (5.16%) Continuous Improvement
13 11 (5.16%) Decision-Making
14 10 (4.69%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 19 (8.92%) SQL
2 17 (7.98%) Python
3 12 (5.63%) C#
4 8 (3.76%) JavaScript
5 4 (1.88%) PowerShell
6 3 (1.41%) T-SQL
6 3 (1.41%) TypeScript
7 2 (0.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 2 (0.94%) Go
8 1 (0.47%) Bicep
8 1 (0.47%) R
8 1 (0.47%) VB
8 1 (0.47%) VBA
Qualifications
1 31 (14.55%) Degree
2 13 (6.10%) Master's Degree
3 9 (4.23%) Microsoft Certification
4 8 (3.76%) Azure Certification
4 8 (3.76%) Cisco Certification
5 7 (3.29%) AWS Certification
5 7 (3.29%) Security Cleared
6 6 (2.82%) CCNP
6 6 (2.82%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (2.35%) CCNA
7 5 (2.35%) HNC
8 4 (1.88%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 4 (1.88%) SC Cleared
9 3 (1.41%) CITP
10 2 (0.94%) CCIE
10 2 (0.94%) ISTQB
10 2 (0.94%) ITIL Certification
10 2 (0.94%) PMI Certification
10 2 (0.94%) PMP
10 2 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (3.29%) Data Quality
1 7 (3.29%) HL7
2 6 (2.82%) Actionable Recommendations
2 6 (2.82%) QA
3 5 (2.35%) PMO
4 4 (1.88%) GDPR
5 3 (1.41%) DICOM
5 3 (1.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.94%) Accessibility
6 2 (0.94%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.94%) NCSC
7 1 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 1 (0.47%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 13 (6.10%) Active Directory
2 6 (2.82%) BitLocker
3 3 (1.41%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.94%) Firmware
5 1 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.47%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 8 (3.76%) SCCM
2 4 (1.88%) Terraform
3 2 (0.94%) Ansible
3 2 (0.94%) Cisco Prime
3 2 (0.94%) Cisco UCCE
4 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 29 (13.62%) Microsoft
2 18 (8.45%) SAP
3 16 (7.51%) Cisco
4 9 (4.23%) Google
5 6 (2.82%) Citrix
5 6 (2.82%) Nexthink
6 5 (2.35%) Oracle
6 5 (2.35%) ServiceNow
7 4 (1.88%) Brio
7 4 (1.88%) VMware
8 3 (1.41%) Databricks
8 3 (1.41%) Ekahau
9 2 (0.94%) Cerner
9 2 (0.94%) Extreme Networks
9 2 (0.94%) Liquidlogic
9 2 (0.94%) MEDITECH
9 2 (0.94%) Mitel
9 2 (0.94%) Palantir
9 2 (0.94%) Palo Alto
9 2 (0.94%) SolarWinds