Public Sector Contracts

Public Sector
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Public Sector in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Public Sector over the 6 months leading up to 26 July 2024, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jul 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 16 15 17
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 +5
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 3,539 5,227 7,745
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 8.81% 9.62% 8.67%
As % of the General category 15.38% 16.33% 15.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,398 3,925 6,031
10th Percentile £263 £261 £281
25th Percentile £408 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +1.46% +6.05%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £600
90th Percentile £700 £725 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £500 £489
% change year-on-year -1.20% +2.25% +8.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 157 98 169
10th Percentile £13.58 £13.91 £13.63
25th Percentile £15.62 £16.79 £16.00
Median hourly rate £22.56 £20.30 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.13% +1.50% +11.11%
75th Percentile £48.75 £38.81 £27.73
90th Percentile £70.39 £60.03 £65.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.56 £19.50 £19.00
% change year-on-year +15.69% +2.63% +7.50%

All General Skills
UK

Public Sector falls under the General Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring common skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 23,017 32,002 51,583
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 57.31% 58.89% 57.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,520 21,952 35,872
10th Percentile £287 £313 £325
25th Percentile £413 £431 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - +10.00%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £650
90th Percentile £775 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £500 £494
% change year-on-year -1.20% +1.16% +9.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,537 1,068 1,355
10th Percentile £13.67 £13.99 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.30 £16.77 £15.25
Median hourly rate £36.17 £30.54 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.42% +22.16% +28.21%
75th Percentile £57.50 £60.00 £48.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £71.46 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £26.25 £20.00
% change year-on-year +42.86% +31.25% +14.29%

Public Sector
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Public Sector in the UK

Public Sector
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Public Sector in the UK

Public Sector
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Public Sector over the 6 months to 26 July 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Public Sector in the UK

Public Sector
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Public Sector in the UK

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Public Sector over the 6 months to 26 July 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Public Sector in the UK

Public Sector
Top 17 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Public Sector within the UK over the 6 months to 26 July 2024. 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 -1 2,756 £520 -0.95% 608
UK excluding London -3 1,969 £494 -1.20% 557
London +1 1,260 £525 -8.70% 182
Work from Home -2 1,219 £500 -4.76% 353
Scotland +1 520 £450 -2.70% 62
North of England -10 395 £500 -4.76% 121
South East -2 393 £510 +3.03% 125
South West -2 340 £600 +9.09% 101
North West -3 258 £493 -6.10% 79
Midlands -2 212 £450 -10.00% 73
West Midlands -7 138 £463 -9.76% 55
Yorkshire -18 110 £500 -7.41% 34
East Midlands -3 73 £447 -29.16% 18
East of England -31 58 £444 -26.04% 40
Wales +5 50 £210 -23.64% 20
Northern Ireland -1 30 £294 -41.20% 38
North East -8 27 £438 -12.50% 11

Public Sector
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
1 152 (4.29%) SharePoint
2 82 (2.32%) Confluence
3 59 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 39 (1.10%) CMS
5 21 (0.59%) Apache Spark
6 16 (0.45%) ArcGIS
7 13 (0.37%) nginx
8 12 (0.34%) Apache
9 8 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
10 7 (0.20%) Drupal
10 7 (0.20%) SAS
10 7 (0.20%) Site Server
11 5 (0.14%) Camunda
11 5 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
11 5 (0.14%) JBoss
12 4 (0.11%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
12 4 (0.11%) Tomcat
12 4 (0.11%) WebLogic
Applications
1 107 (3.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 100 (2.83%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 26 (0.73%) MS Visio
5 22 (0.62%) Microsoft Project
6 17 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.28%) Trello
8 9 (0.25%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 9 (0.25%) Sketch
9 7 (0.20%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.11%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.085%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.085%) InDesign
12 2 (0.057%) Acrobat
12 2 (0.057%) CANalyzer
12 2 (0.057%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.057%) UserZoom
13 1 (0.028%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.028%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 19 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 16 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
4 12 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
4 12 (0.34%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 10 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 10 (0.28%) Primavera
6 9 (0.25%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
7 7 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
7 7 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
7 7 (0.20%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.17%) Dynamics GP
8 6 (0.17%) SAP EWM
9 5 (0.14%) iTrent
10 4 (0.11%) SAP CO
10 4 (0.11%) SAP FI
10 4 (0.11%) SAP FI/CO
10 4 (0.11%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 559 (15.80%) Azure
2 344 (9.72%) AWS
3 208 (5.88%) Microsoft 365
4 178 (5.03%) Azure DevOps
5 160 (4.52%) Power Platform
6 104 (2.94%) Serverless
7 75 (2.12%) SaaS
8 71 (2.01%) OCI
9 70 (1.98%) GitHub
10 68 (1.92%) PaaS
11 67 (1.89%) Entra ID
12 60 (1.70%) Amazon S3
13 59 (1.67%) IaaS
14 55 (1.55%) GCP
15 53 (1.50%) AWS Lambda
16 51 (1.44%) Cloud Computing
17 49 (1.38%) Dynamics 365
18 45 (1.27%) AWS CloudFormation
19 43 (1.22%) Power Automate
20 37 (1.05%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 121 (3.42%) Firewall
2 88 (2.49%) WAN
3 77 (2.18%) LAN
4 44 (1.24%) DNS
4 44 (1.24%) VPN
5 39 (1.10%) Network Security
6 29 (0.82%) Wi-Fi
7 26 (0.73%) DHCP
7 26 (0.73%) Wireless
8 25 (0.71%) BGP
9 24 (0.68%) SAN
10 20 (0.57%) Intranet
10 20 (0.57%) IPsec
11 19 (0.54%) OSPF
11 19 (0.54%) SSL
12 18 (0.51%) Internet
12 18 (0.51%) TCP/IP
13 17 (0.48%) SD-WAN
13 17 (0.48%) VoIP
14 16 (0.45%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 152 (4.29%) SQL Server
2 112 (3.16%) Power BI
3 104 (2.94%) PostgreSQL
4 89 (2.51%) Data Warehouse
5 61 (1.72%) Relational Database
6 56 (1.58%) Data Lake
7 50 (1.41%) Oracle Database
8 46 (1.30%) Metadata
9 44 (1.24%) Big Data
10 42 (1.19%) Azure SQL Database
11 41 (1.16%) GIS
12 39 (1.10%) NoSQL
13 29 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
14 28 (0.79%) MySQL
15 27 (0.76%) Tableau
16 26 (0.73%) MongoDB
17 24 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
18 20 (0.57%) Metadata Repository
19 18 (0.51%) Elasticsearch
20 17 (0.48%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 131 (3.70%) JIRA
2 112 (3.16%) Git
3 54 (1.53%) Jenkins
4 40 (1.13%) GitLab
5 36 (1.02%) Selenium
6 29 (0.82%) Visual Studio
7 24 (0.68%) JUnit
8 21 (0.59%) Cypress.io
9 17 (0.48%) Postman
9 17 (0.48%) SpecFlow
10 14 (0.40%) Cucumber
11 12 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
11 12 (0.34%) WebDriver
12 9 (0.25%) JMeter
12 9 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.20%) Bitbucket
13 7 (0.20%) CircleCI
13 7 (0.20%) MSI
14 6 (0.17%) Artifactory
14 6 (0.17%) Rational DOORS
General
1 734 (20.74%) Social Skills
2 585 (16.53%) Finance
3 294 (8.31%) Analytical Skills
4 276 (7.80%) Marketing
5 264 (7.46%) Telecoms
6 257 (7.26%) Manufacturing
7 248 (7.01%) Electronics
8 80 (2.26%) Local Government
9 61 (1.72%) Presentation Skills
10 56 (1.58%) Back Office
10 56 (1.58%) Military
11 55 (1.55%) Organisational Skills
12 48 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
13 43 (1.22%) Legal
14 35 (0.99%) Banking
15 26 (0.73%) Publishing
16 25 (0.71%) Police
17 24 (0.68%) Retail
18 22 (0.62%) Law
19 17 (0.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 464 (13.11%) Architect
2 400 (11.30%) Developer
3 399 (11.27%) Senior
4 366 (10.34%) Analyst
5 232 (6.56%) Lead
6 200 (5.65%) Consultant
7 175 (4.94%) Project Manager
8 122 (3.45%) Business Analyst
9 100 (2.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 90 (2.54%) Technical Architect
11 89 (2.51%) DevOps Engineer
12 88 (2.49%) Solutions Architect
13 85 (2.40%) Network Engineer
14 75 (2.12%) Designer
15 73 (2.06%) Support Engineer
16 71 (2.01%) Data Engineer
17 68 (1.92%) Delivery Manager
17 68 (1.92%) Senior Analyst
18 67 (1.89%) Senior Developer
19 60 (1.70%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 156 (4.41%) .NET
2 96 (2.71%) REST
3 95 (2.68%) HTML
4 94 (2.66%) React
5 89 (2.51%) CSS
6 59 (1.67%) Spring
7 56 (1.58%) Spring Boot
8 52 (1.47%) Node.js
8 52 (1.47%) Oracle Fusion
8 52 (1.47%) RESTful
9 47 (1.33%) .NET Core
9 47 (1.33%) AngularJS
10 43 (1.22%) XML
11 42 (1.19%) .NET Framework
12 36 (1.02%) Web Services
13 33 (0.93%) ASP.NET
14 32 (0.90%) AWS CDK
14 32 (0.90%) PySpark
15 31 (0.88%) Kafka
16 30 (0.85%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 130 (3.67%) Management Information System
2 100 (2.83%) Product Ownership
3 96 (2.71%) Data Centre
4 77 (2.18%) Onboarding
5 67 (1.89%) NHS
6 45 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
7 43 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
8 41 (1.16%) Freedom of Information
8 41 (1.16%) Legacy Systems
9 37 (1.05%) Cloud Native
10 31 (0.88%) Cyber Threat
11 30 (0.85%) Replication
12 29 (0.82%) Data Structures
12 29 (0.82%) PKI
13 27 (0.76%) Virtual Team
14 25 (0.71%) Public Cloud
15 24 (0.68%) Freedom of Information Act
16 23 (0.65%) CMDB
16 23 (0.65%) Greenfield Project
17 22 (0.62%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 313 (8.84%) Windows
2 198 (5.59%) Linux
3 81 (2.29%) Windows Server
4 69 (1.95%) Unix
5 66 (1.86%) Windows 10
6 45 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 35 (0.99%) Android
8 33 (0.93%) Apple iOS
9 24 (0.68%) Windows Server 2016
10 18 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
11 15 (0.42%) Windows 7
11 15 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
12 10 (0.28%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.25%) zOS
14 8 (0.23%) Mac OS
14 8 (0.23%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.23%) Solaris
15 7 (0.20%) AIX
15 7 (0.20%) VMS
15 7 (0.20%) Windows Vista
Processes & Methodologies
1 819 (23.14%) Agile
2 409 (11.56%) Business Intelligence
3 408 (11.53%) DevOps
4 351 (9.92%) Problem-Solving
5 309 (8.73%) Stakeholder Management
6 302 (8.53%) Project Management
7 301 (8.51%) Programme Management
8 266 (7.52%) Migration
9 248 (7.01%) Digital Marketing
10 222 (6.27%) Scrum
11 214 (6.05%) CI/CD
12 196 (5.54%) ITIL
13 188 (5.31%) Roadmaps
14 182 (5.14%) Continuous Improvement
15 166 (4.69%) Service Management
16 164 (4.63%) Analytics
17 163 (4.61%) Change Management
18 160 (4.52%) Cybersecurity
19 153 (4.32%) Project Delivery
20 144 (4.07%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 278 (7.86%) SQL
2 207 (5.85%) Python
3 180 (5.09%) Java
4 168 (4.75%) PowerShell
5 167 (4.72%) JavaScript
6 148 (4.18%) C#
7 81 (2.29%) TypeScript
8 39 (1.10%) C++
9 37 (1.05%) Bash
10 27 (0.76%) Bicep
11 24 (0.68%) Shell Script
12 22 (0.62%) PL/SQL
13 19 (0.54%) C
14 18 (0.51%) R
15 16 (0.45%) Ruby
16 14 (0.40%) ABAP
16 14 (0.40%) PHP
17 12 (0.34%) Scala
18 11 (0.31%) T-SQL
19 10 (0.28%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,566 (44.25%) Security Cleared
2 1,025 (28.96%) SC Cleared
3 403 (11.39%) DV Cleared
4 286 (8.08%) Degree
5 50 (1.41%) Master's Degree
6 48 (1.36%) Microsoft Certification
7 47 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 47 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
8 44 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
9 37 (1.05%) CCNA
10 36 (1.02%) Azure Certification
11 32 (0.90%) CISSP
12 29 (0.82%) PMI Certification
12 29 (0.82%) PMP
13 24 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
13 24 (0.68%) MCSE
14 19 (0.54%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 18 (0.51%) TOGAF Certification
16 15 (0.42%) ISEB
17 14 (0.40%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (2.51%) Accessibility
2 77 (2.18%) SLA
3 72 (2.03%) QA
4 63 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 62 (1.75%) Disclosure Scotland
6 53 (1.50%) PMO
7 49 (1.38%) Data Quality
8 48 (1.36%) NIST
9 39 (1.10%) GDPR
10 22 (0.62%) WCAG
11 18 (0.51%) NIST 800
12 14 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
13 12 (0.34%) ISO 9001
13 12 (0.34%) NCSC
13 12 (0.34%) PCI DSS
14 11 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
14 11 (0.31%) JSP 440
15 9 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 9 (0.25%) RMADS
16 7 (0.20%) HL7
System Software
1 221 (6.24%) Active Directory
2 128 (3.62%) Docker
3 85 (2.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (1.05%) Hyper-V
5 30 (0.85%) VMware NSX
5 30 (0.85%) vSphere
6 19 (0.54%) Firmware
7 15 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
7 15 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (0.31%) NFS
9 9 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
10 8 (0.23%) HDFS
10 8 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
11 7 (0.20%) BitLocker
12 4 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.085%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.057%) iptables
14 2 (0.057%) KVM
14 2 (0.057%) XenApp
14 2 (0.057%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 138 (3.90%) Terraform
2 132 (3.73%) Kubernetes
3 86 (2.43%) Ansible
4 55 (1.55%) SCCM
5 38 (1.07%) Grafana
6 31 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
7 29 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
8 18 (0.51%) Kibana
9 17 (0.48%) SCOM
10 16 (0.45%) Puppet
11 14 (0.40%) vCenter Server
12 13 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 13 (0.37%) Prometheus
13 9 (0.25%) Progress Chef
13 9 (0.25%) Red Hat Satellite
14 8 (0.23%) Argo
14 8 (0.23%) FortiGate
15 7 (0.20%) logstash
15 7 (0.20%) NetBackup
15 7 (0.20%) vRealize
Vendors
1 550 (15.54%) Microsoft
2 332 (9.38%) SAP
3 216 (6.10%) Oracle
4 124 (3.50%) VMware
5 87 (2.46%) Cisco
6 71 (2.01%) ServiceNow
7 55 (1.55%) Dell
8 49 (1.38%) Google
9 43 (1.22%) Citrix
10 38 (1.07%) Red Hat
11 37 (1.05%) Atlassian
12 35 (0.99%) Juniper
13 31 (0.88%) Adobe
14 29 (0.82%) Databricks
14 29 (0.82%) Palo Alto
14 29 (0.82%) Splunk
15 25 (0.71%) Virgin Media
16 24 (0.68%) IBM
17 23 (0.65%) CyberArk
17 23 (0.65%) HP