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 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 17 13 15
Rank change year-on-year -4 +2 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 2,776 4,275 5,831
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 9.50% 9.81% 9.77%
As % of the General category 15.03% 16.84% 16.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,943 2,842 4,453
10th Percentile £316 £275 £275
25th Percentile £413 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% +5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.00% - +7.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 185 95
10th Percentile £15.33 £12.75 £13.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £15.39 £16.85
Median hourly rate £22.50 £21.50 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.65% +7.50% -
75th Percentile £28.57 £50.00 £26.57
90th Percentile £62.24 £70.03 £47.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £21.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +4.76% +5.00% +6.67%

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 18,465 25,387 34,897
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 63.16% 58.23% 58.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,795 16,033 24,201
10th Percentile £300 £270 £313
25th Percentile £409 £413 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% +2.80%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £763 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -4.23% -0.80% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 794 1,939 1,062
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.78 £13.42
25th Percentile £17.85 £15.50 £18.09
Median hourly rate £28.00 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% -14.29% +59.71%
75th Percentile £56.00 £51.91 £61.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £28.13 £30.54
% change year-on-year -10.58% -7.91% +65.08%

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 30 April 2025.

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 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Public Sector in the UK

Public Sector
Top 18 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 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 -4 2,150 £525 - 1,339
UK excluding London -1 1,375 £485 -3.00% 890
London -6 1,031 £525 -2.33% 544
Work from Home -5 967 £500 -4.53% 780
North of England 0 353 £475 -9.52% 253
Scotland -5 329 £450 -5.26% 61
South East +2 280 £539 +19.78% 179
South West -1 207 £550 -3.51% 137
North West -4 196 £500 -4.76% 142
Midlands -7 131 £463 +2.78% 176
West Midlands -2 109 £453 -9.33% 101
North East +6 80 £463 -11.90% 29
Yorkshire -11 77 £461 -12.14% 83
Wales +5 39 £372 -25.63% 39
East of England -2 27 £388 - 44
East Midlands -19 22 £500 +81.82% 72
Northern Ireland -9 15 £520 -16.80% 20
Channel Islands - 2 £298 -

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
1 112 (4.03%) SharePoint
2 92 (3.31%) Confluence
3 52 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 18 (0.65%) Apache
5 12 (0.43%) CMS
6 11 (0.40%) Apache Spark
6 11 (0.40%) nginx
6 11 (0.40%) Skype for Business
7 10 (0.36%) IIS
8 8 (0.29%) Anypoint
8 8 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
8 8 (0.29%) Camunda
9 7 (0.25%) Jupyter
10 6 (0.22%) ArcGIS
10 6 (0.22%) Drupal
11 5 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2013
11 5 (0.18%) Mule
12 4 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.14%) Tomcat
12 4 (0.14%) Umbraco
Applications
1 92 (3.31%) Microsoft Office
2 60 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 27 (0.97%) Trello
4 26 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
5 25 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 17 (0.61%) MS Visio
7 12 (0.43%) Sketch
8 9 (0.32%) Oracle Smart View
9 8 (0.29%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
11 3 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 3 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 3 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.072%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.072%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.072%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.072%) CINEMA 4D
12 2 (0.072%) Final Cut Pro
12 2 (0.072%) InVision
12 2 (0.072%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 29 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.68%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
4 8 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
4 8 (0.29%) SAP PSCD
5 7 (0.25%) iTrent
5 7 (0.25%) SAP BRIM
5 7 (0.25%) SAP Hybris
6 6 (0.22%) SAP HR
6 6 (0.22%) Unit4 Business World
7 4 (0.14%) Dynamics GP
7 4 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
7 4 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
7 4 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
8 3 (0.11%) Exchequer
8 3 (0.11%) Oracle Payroll
8 3 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 3 (0.11%) Primavera
8 3 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
8 3 (0.11%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 463 (16.68%) AWS
2 461 (16.61%) Azure
3 178 (6.41%) Power Platform
4 147 (5.30%) Microsoft 365
5 127 (4.57%) Serverless
6 93 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
7 90 (3.24%) Amazon S3
8 89 (3.21%) AWS Lambda
9 83 (2.99%) GCP
10 65 (2.34%) GitHub
11 63 (2.27%) PowerApps
12 62 (2.23%) AWS CloudFormation
13 59 (2.13%) Power Automate
14 57 (2.05%) Dynamics 365
14 57 (2.05%) Entra ID
15 50 (1.80%) SaaS
16 39 (1.40%) PaaS
17 38 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
18 37 (1.33%) GitHub Actions
18 37 (1.33%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 89 (3.21%) Firewall
2 65 (2.34%) VPN
3 61 (2.20%) DNS
4 39 (1.40%) DHCP
5 38 (1.37%) WAN
6 37 (1.33%) Network Security
7 26 (0.94%) LAN
8 23 (0.83%) BGP
9 19 (0.68%) IPsec
10 18 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
11 16 (0.58%) OSPF
12 15 (0.54%) SAN
13 13 (0.47%) EIGRP
13 13 (0.47%) Wireless
14 12 (0.43%) Internet
14 12 (0.43%) SMTP
15 11 (0.40%) Cisco ISE
15 11 (0.40%) MPLS
15 11 (0.40%) SSL
15 11 (0.40%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (4.57%) PostgreSQL
2 107 (3.85%) Power BI
3 76 (2.74%) MongoDB
4 65 (2.34%) Relational Database
5 64 (2.31%) Data Warehouse
6 59 (2.13%) Amazon RDS
7 54 (1.95%) NoSQL
7 54 (1.95%) SQL Server
8 51 (1.84%) MySQL
9 39 (1.40%) Tableau
10 36 (1.30%) Oracle Database
11 35 (1.26%) Data Lake
12 33 (1.19%) Metadata
13 29 (1.04%) Big Data
14 22 (0.79%) DynamoDB
15 20 (0.72%) Amazon Athena
16 18 (0.65%) GIS
16 18 (0.65%) Oracle Reports
17 17 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
18 16 (0.58%) Redis
Development Applications
1 146 (5.26%) JIRA
2 117 (4.21%) Git
3 107 (3.85%) Jenkins
4 84 (3.03%) GitLab
5 48 (1.73%) JUnit
6 33 (1.19%) Cucumber
7 32 (1.15%) Mockito
8 29 (1.04%) Selenium
9 25 (0.90%) Gradle
10 24 (0.86%) Liquibase
11 23 (0.83%) Cypress.io
12 19 (0.68%) SonarQube
13 18 (0.65%) Maven
14 16 (0.58%) Postman
15 11 (0.40%) Jasmine
15 11 (0.40%) REST Assured
16 10 (0.36%) JMeter
17 8 (0.29%) Visual Studio
18 7 (0.25%) NUnit
18 7 (0.25%) Oracle APEX
General
1 693 (24.96%) Social Skills
2 430 (15.49%) Finance
3 302 (10.88%) Analytical Skills
4 226 (8.14%) Telecoms
5 221 (7.96%) Marketing
6 200 (7.20%) Manufacturing
7 191 (6.88%) Electronics
8 127 (4.57%) Military
9 113 (4.07%) Local Government
10 46 (1.66%) Organisational Skills
11 43 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
12 40 (1.44%) Law
13 34 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 31 (1.12%) Legal
15 30 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
16 28 (1.01%) Police
17 27 (0.97%) Back Office
17 27 (0.97%) Documentation Skills
18 22 (0.79%) Banking
19 11 (0.40%) Fire and Rescue
Job Titles
1 392 (14.12%) Developer
2 354 (12.75%) Architect
3 297 (10.70%) Senior
4 261 (9.40%) Analyst
5 186 (6.70%) Lead
6 130 (4.68%) Business Analyst
7 109 (3.93%) Consultant
8 105 (3.78%) Project Manager
9 96 (3.46%) Data Engineer
10 89 (3.21%) DevOps Engineer
11 83 (2.99%) Java Developer
12 79 (2.85%) Designer
13 69 (2.49%) Technical Architect
14 64 (2.31%) Support Engineer
15 56 (2.02%) Senior Developer
16 51 (1.84%) Solutions Architect
17 50 (1.80%) Network Engineer
17 50 (1.80%) Senior Manager
18 48 (1.73%) Administrator
18 48 (1.73%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 135 (4.86%) React
2 106 (3.82%) Kafka
3 103 (3.71%) Spring Boot
4 100 (3.60%) HTML
4 100 (3.60%) Spring
5 99 (3.57%) .NET
6 88 (3.17%) CSS
7 86 (3.10%) Node.js
8 68 (2.45%) REST
9 62 (2.23%) RESTful
10 57 (2.05%) AngularJS
11 56 (2.02%) Oracle Fusion
12 45 (1.62%) SOAP
13 41 (1.48%) Swagger
14 40 (1.44%) OpenAPI
15 36 (1.30%) Web Services
16 32 (1.15%) JSON
17 29 (1.04%) XML
18 28 (1.01%) OAuth
19 24 (0.86%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 102 (3.67%) Onboarding
2 84 (3.03%) Management Information System
3 74 (2.67%) Product Ownership
4 65 (2.34%) NHS
5 55 (1.98%) PKI
6 37 (1.33%) Data Centre
7 33 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
8 29 (1.04%) Driving Licence
9 28 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
9 28 (1.01%) Public Cloud
10 27 (0.97%) Cloud Native
10 27 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
11 22 (0.79%) Clustering
11 22 (0.79%) CMDB
11 22 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
12 20 (0.72%) Security Posture
12 20 (0.72%) Social Media
13 17 (0.61%) Mobile App
14 15 (0.54%) Distributed Systems
15 13 (0.47%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 224 (8.07%) Windows
2 137 (4.94%) Linux
3 71 (2.56%) Windows Server
4 50 (1.80%) Windows 10
5 38 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 30 (1.08%) Unix
7 22 (0.79%) Mac OS
8 20 (0.72%) Apple iOS
9 13 (0.47%) Android
10 12 (0.43%) CentOS
10 12 (0.43%) Windows Server 2016
11 11 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
11 11 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
12 10 (0.36%) VMS
13 8 (0.29%) Windows 7
14 6 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
15 5 (0.18%) AIX
15 5 (0.18%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.14%) Solaris
17 3 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 720 (25.94%) Agile
2 397 (14.30%) DevOps
3 388 (13.98%) Problem-Solving
4 317 (11.42%) CI/CD
5 310 (11.17%) Stakeholder Management
6 307 (11.06%) Business Intelligence
7 226 (8.14%) Programme Management
8 224 (8.07%) Project Management
9 202 (7.28%) Microservices
10 195 (7.02%) Digital Marketing
10 195 (7.02%) ITIL
11 175 (6.30%) Migration
12 171 (6.16%) Test Automation
13 167 (6.02%) User Experience
14 156 (5.62%) Analytics
15 154 (5.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 148 (5.33%) Decision-Making
17 146 (5.26%) Mentoring
18 145 (5.22%) Containerisation
19 140 (5.04%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 337 (12.14%) SQL
2 296 (10.66%) Python
3 229 (8.25%) Java
4 227 (8.18%) JavaScript
5 139 (5.01%) PowerShell
6 87 (3.13%) TypeScript
7 83 (2.99%) C#
8 81 (2.92%) Bash
9 31 (1.12%) PL/SQL
10 25 (0.90%) R
10 25 (0.90%) Shell Script
11 24 (0.86%) Ruby
12 18 (0.65%) Bicep
13 14 (0.50%) C++
14 13 (0.47%) Go
14 13 (0.47%) Kotlin
15 10 (0.36%) Groovy
15 10 (0.36%) VBA
16 8 (0.29%) Scala
16 8 (0.29%) VB
Qualifications
1 1,381 (49.75%) Security Cleared
2 1,001 (36.06%) SC Cleared
3 220 (7.93%) Degree
4 176 (6.34%) DV Cleared
5 53 (1.91%) AWS Certification
6 51 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
7 43 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
8 42 (1.51%) Master's Degree
9 41 (1.48%) Microsoft Certification
10 37 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
11 34 (1.22%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 32 (1.15%) CISSP
13 31 (1.12%) ITIL Certification
14 27 (0.97%) Azure Certification
15 25 (0.90%) CCNA
16 21 (0.76%) CISM
17 20 (0.72%) DBS Check
18 19 (0.68%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 17 (0.61%) AWS Certified Developer
20 16 (0.58%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 149 (5.37%) Accessibility
2 88 (3.17%) QA
3 57 (2.05%) Data Quality
4 49 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 45 (1.62%) GDPR
6 42 (1.51%) WCAG
7 40 (1.44%) SLA
8 36 (1.30%) NCSC
9 33 (1.19%) NIST
10 32 (1.15%) PMO
11 22 (0.79%) Disclosure Scotland
11 22 (0.79%) GRC
12 12 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
12 12 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
13 11 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 9 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 8 (0.29%) Def Stans
15 8 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 8 (0.29%) JSP 440
15 8 (0.29%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 168 (6.05%) Docker
2 167 (6.02%) Active Directory
3 62 (2.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (1.08%) VMware ESXi
5 29 (1.04%) Hyper-V
6 25 (0.90%) VMware NSX
7 17 (0.61%) BitLocker
8 14 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
8 14 (0.50%) vSphere
9 9 (0.32%) Terminal Services
10 8 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
10 8 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.22%) Firmware
11 6 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.18%) NFS
12 5 (0.18%) Postfix
13 4 (0.14%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 4 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.11%) IAG
14 3 (0.11%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 184 (6.63%) Kubernetes
2 174 (6.27%) Terraform
3 67 (2.41%) Ansible
4 61 (2.20%) Microsoft Intune
5 36 (1.30%) Grafana
5 36 (1.30%) SCCM
6 30 (1.08%) Prometheus
7 24 (0.86%) vCenter Server
8 20 (0.72%) Puppet
9 14 (0.50%) Packer
10 12 (0.43%) WSUS
11 11 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
11 11 (0.40%) vMotion
12 9 (0.32%) FortiGate
13 8 (0.29%) Nagios
14 7 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
15 6 (0.22%) Istio
15 6 (0.22%) Progress Chef
15 6 (0.22%) vRealize
16 5 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 424 (15.27%) Microsoft
2 246 (8.86%) SAP
3 192 (6.92%) Oracle
4 93 (3.35%) VMware
5 90 (3.24%) ServiceNow
6 88 (3.17%) Cisco
7 81 (2.92%) Google
8 56 (2.02%) Virgin Media
9 52 (1.87%) Databricks
10 35 (1.26%) HP
11 31 (1.12%) Atlassian
12 28 (1.01%) Salesforce
13 26 (0.94%) Juniper
13 26 (0.94%) Palo Alto
14 23 (0.83%) Adobe
15 22 (0.79%) Splunk
16 21 (0.76%) Citrix
16 21 (0.76%) Dell
17 15 (0.54%) IBM
18 14 (0.50%) CheckPoint