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 31 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 20 16 15
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 2,565 3,982 5,433
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 8.80% 9.28% 9.68%
As % of the General category 13.88% 16.11% 16.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,779 2,668 4,090
10th Percentile £315 £275 £275
25th Percentile £413 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.17% -2.65% +5.00%
75th Percentile £596 £625 £630
90th Percentile £688 £701 £721
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 193 85
10th Percentile £15.12 £12.75 £13.66
25th Percentile £18.20 £15.39 £16.85
Median hourly rate £22.27 £22.00 £20.42
Median % change year-on-year +1.23% +7.74% +2.10%
75th Percentile £33.00 £48.75 £27.30
90th Percentile £64.65 £69.35 £47.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.27 £21.62 £20.00
% change year-on-year -1.60% +8.08% +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 18,479 24,712 32,855
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 63.36% 57.60% 58.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,679 15,544 22,797
10th Percentile £281 £275 £313
25th Percentile £405 £413 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% +1.85%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £756 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 818 1,977 985
10th Percentile £13.50 £12.78 £13.41
25th Percentile £16.95 £15.50 £17.50
Median hourly rate £28.00 £30.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% -7.69% +44.44%
75th Percentile £55.00 £52.50 £61.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £66.45 £72.01
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.34 £28.25 £27.50
% change year-on-year -13.84% +2.73% +41.03%

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 31 May 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 31 May 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 31 May 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 1,933 £523 -0.33% 1,802
UK excluding London -2 1,311 £475 -5.00% 1,178
London -7 890 £525 - 776
Work from Home -5 853 £500 -2.44% 1,097
Scotland -4 334 £450 - 93
North of England -2 325 £475 -5.00% 343
South East -1 235 £525 +14.13% 210
South West -2 214 £550 -5.50% 180
North West -6 178 £500 - 197
Midlands -9 129 £463 +2.78% 220
West Midlands -5 105 £458 -8.38% 127
North East +10 75 £465 -7.00% 56
Yorkshire -9 74 £460 -8.00% 92
Wales +10 38 £425 -15.00% 39
East of England -5 27 £450 - 51
East Midlands -23 24 £475 +20.10% 89
Northern Ireland -11 18 £520 -13.33% 31
Channel Islands - 2 £298 - 35

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 93 (3.63%) Confluence
2 87 (3.39%) SharePoint
3 57 (2.22%) Microsoft Exchange
4 20 (0.78%) Apache
5 11 (0.43%) Apache Spark
5 11 (0.43%) Skype for Business
6 10 (0.39%) CMS
6 10 (0.39%) IIS
7 8 (0.31%) Anypoint
7 8 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (0.31%) ArcGIS
7 8 (0.31%) Exchange Server 2013
7 8 (0.31%) Jupyter
8 7 (0.27%) Camunda
8 7 (0.27%) Drupal
9 6 (0.23%) nginx
10 5 (0.19%) Mule
10 5 (0.19%) WordPress
11 4 (0.16%) Tomcat
11 4 (0.16%) Umbraco
Applications
1 98 (3.82%) Microsoft Office
2 65 (2.53%) Microsoft Excel
3 26 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 25 (0.97%) Trello
5 21 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
6 16 (0.62%) MS Visio
7 9 (0.35%) Oracle Smart View
8 8 (0.31%) Adobe XD
8 8 (0.31%) Sketch
9 6 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
10 3 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
10 3 (0.12%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.078%) Adobe After Effects
11 2 (0.078%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.078%) Adobe Premiere
11 2 (0.078%) CINEMA 4D
11 2 (0.078%) Final Cut Pro
11 2 (0.078%) InVision
11 2 (0.078%) ProjectWise
11 2 (0.078%) Revit
Business Applications
1 28 (1.09%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.74%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.51%) Oracle EBS
4 10 (0.39%) SAP PSCD
5 9 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
6 8 (0.31%) SAP HR
7 7 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
7 7 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
7 7 (0.27%) SAP Hybris
8 5 (0.19%) Oracle Payroll
8 5 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
8 5 (0.19%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.16%) iTrent
9 4 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
9 4 (0.16%) Primavera
9 4 (0.16%) SAP Payroll
10 3 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
10 3 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 3 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
10 3 (0.12%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 466 (18.17%) AWS
2 415 (16.18%) Azure
3 144 (5.61%) Power Platform
4 140 (5.46%) Microsoft 365
5 122 (4.76%) Serverless
6 104 (4.05%) Amazon S3
7 92 (3.59%) GCP
8 86 (3.35%) AWS Lambda
9 83 (3.24%) Azure DevOps
10 62 (2.42%) GitHub
11 58 (2.26%) SaaS
12 53 (2.07%) Entra ID
13 52 (2.03%) AWS CloudFormation
14 50 (1.95%) Amazon EC2
15 48 (1.87%) Dynamics 365
15 48 (1.87%) PowerApps
16 46 (1.79%) Amazon SQS
17 45 (1.75%) Power Automate
18 44 (1.72%) OCI
19 38 (1.48%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 96 (3.74%) Firewall
2 61 (2.38%) VPN
3 54 (2.11%) DNS
4 35 (1.36%) DHCP
5 33 (1.29%) WAN
6 32 (1.25%) Network Security
7 23 (0.90%) LAN
8 22 (0.86%) BGP
9 21 (0.82%) IPsec
10 20 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
11 15 (0.58%) OSPF
12 13 (0.51%) SMTP
13 12 (0.47%) Cisco ISE
13 12 (0.47%) Wireless
14 11 (0.43%) EIGRP
14 11 (0.43%) Internet
14 11 (0.43%) SAN
14 11 (0.43%) Skype
15 10 (0.39%) MPLS
15 10 (0.39%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (4.60%) PostgreSQL
2 89 (3.47%) Power BI
3 67 (2.61%) Amazon RDS
3 67 (2.61%) MongoDB
4 61 (2.38%) Relational Database
5 55 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
6 50 (1.95%) SQL Server
7 49 (1.91%) NoSQL
8 44 (1.72%) MySQL
9 36 (1.40%) Tableau
10 34 (1.33%) Metadata
11 30 (1.17%) Oracle Database
12 23 (0.90%) Amazon Aurora
13 22 (0.86%) Big Data
13 22 (0.86%) DynamoDB
13 22 (0.86%) GIS
14 19 (0.74%) Redis
15 18 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
16 16 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
16 16 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 144 (5.61%) JIRA
2 113 (4.41%) Git
3 109 (4.25%) Jenkins
4 80 (3.12%) GitLab
5 48 (1.87%) JUnit
6 39 (1.52%) Mockito
7 33 (1.29%) SonarQube
8 27 (1.05%) Selenium
9 26 (1.01%) Gradle
10 24 (0.94%) Cypress.io
10 24 (0.94%) Liquibase
11 23 (0.90%) Maven
12 22 (0.86%) Cucumber
13 12 (0.47%) Postman
14 11 (0.43%) REST Assured
15 9 (0.35%) Bitbucket
16 8 (0.31%) Burp Suite
16 8 (0.31%) CircleCI
16 8 (0.31%) JMeter
16 8 (0.31%) Metasploit
General
1 681 (26.55%) Social Skills
2 392 (15.28%) Finance
3 276 (10.76%) Analytical Skills
4 192 (7.49%) Telecoms
5 188 (7.33%) Marketing
6 169 (6.59%) Manufacturing
7 162 (6.32%) Electronics
8 123 (4.80%) Military
9 93 (3.63%) Local Government
10 48 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 47 (1.83%) Law
11 47 (1.83%) Organisational Skills
12 40 (1.56%) Documentation Skills
13 38 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
14 35 (1.36%) Police
15 32 (1.25%) Legal
16 29 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
17 27 (1.05%) Banking
18 16 (0.62%) Fire and Rescue
19 14 (0.55%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 382 (14.89%) Developer
2 336 (13.10%) Architect
3 251 (9.79%) Analyst
4 249 (9.71%) Senior
5 151 (5.89%) Lead
6 121 (4.72%) Business Analyst
7 119 (4.64%) Consultant
8 79 (3.08%) Project Manager
9 73 (2.85%) Designer
10 72 (2.81%) DevOps Engineer
11 70 (2.73%) Data Engineer
11 70 (2.73%) Java Developer
12 64 (2.50%) Support Engineer
13 60 (2.34%) Technical Architect
14 56 (2.18%) Security Architect
15 53 (2.07%) Delivery Manager
16 49 (1.91%) Senior Developer
17 48 (1.87%) Administrator
17 48 (1.87%) Solutions Architect
18 44 (1.72%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (4.95%) React
2 98 (3.82%) Kafka
3 93 (3.63%) HTML
3 93 (3.63%) Node.js
3 93 (3.63%) Spring
3 93 (3.63%) Spring Boot
4 89 (3.47%) .NET
5 77 (3.00%) CSS
5 77 (3.00%) REST
6 65 (2.53%) RESTful
7 55 (2.14%) AngularJS
8 51 (1.99%) SOAP
9 50 (1.95%) Oracle Fusion
10 45 (1.75%) Web Services
11 36 (1.40%) JSON
12 35 (1.36%) Swagger
13 34 (1.33%) OpenAPI
14 32 (1.25%) XML
15 31 (1.21%) .NET Core
16 30 (1.17%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 96 (3.74%) Onboarding
2 86 (3.35%) Management Information System
3 81 (3.16%) Product Ownership
4 53 (2.07%) NHS
5 44 (1.72%) PKI
6 41 (1.60%) Data Centre
7 40 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
8 30 (1.17%) Driving Licence
9 29 (1.13%) Cloud Native
10 28 (1.09%) Hybrid Cloud
11 26 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
12 24 (0.94%) CMDB
13 23 (0.90%) Clustering
13 23 (0.90%) Public Cloud
14 22 (0.86%) Enterprise Software
15 20 (0.78%) Social Media
16 19 (0.74%) Distributed Systems
17 18 (0.70%) Security Operations Centre
17 18 (0.70%) Security Posture
18 14 (0.55%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 209 (8.15%) Windows
2 122 (4.76%) Linux
3 69 (2.69%) Windows Server
4 51 (1.99%) Windows 10
5 22 (0.86%) Unix
6 20 (0.78%) Mac OS
7 19 (0.74%) Apple iOS
8 18 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 17 (0.66%) Android
10 14 (0.55%) Windows Server 2012
11 12 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
12 10 (0.39%) VMS
12 10 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.23%) Ubuntu
13 6 (0.23%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.16%) AIX
16 3 (0.12%) CentOS
16 3 (0.12%) Mac OS X
16 3 (0.12%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 690 (26.90%) Agile
2 366 (14.27%) DevOps
3 365 (14.23%) Problem-Solving
4 299 (11.66%) CI/CD
5 291 (11.35%) Stakeholder Management
6 261 (10.18%) Business Intelligence
7 193 (7.52%) Microservices
8 188 (7.33%) ITIL
8 188 (7.33%) Programme Management
9 187 (7.29%) Project Management
10 183 (7.13%) Migration
11 166 (6.47%) Digital Marketing
12 159 (6.20%) Test Automation
13 154 (6.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 154 (6.00%) User Experience
14 153 (5.96%) Containerisation
15 142 (5.54%) Decision-Making
16 136 (5.30%) Service Management
17 132 (5.15%) Analytics
17 132 (5.15%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 306 (11.93%) SQL
2 270 (10.53%) Python
3 218 (8.50%) Java
4 195 (7.60%) JavaScript
5 117 (4.56%) PowerShell
6 84 (3.27%) TypeScript
7 82 (3.20%) C#
8 70 (2.73%) Bash
9 35 (1.36%) PL/SQL
10 27 (1.05%) Ruby
11 23 (0.90%) R
12 22 (0.86%) Shell Script
13 16 (0.62%) Bicep
13 16 (0.62%) Kotlin
14 14 (0.55%) C++
15 10 (0.39%) Perl
16 9 (0.35%) Groovy
17 8 (0.31%) VBA
18 7 (0.27%) PHP
18 7 (0.27%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,320 (51.46%) Security Cleared
2 957 (37.31%) SC Cleared
3 195 (7.60%) Degree
4 150 (5.85%) DV Cleared
5 48 (1.87%) AWS Certification
5 48 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
6 43 (1.68%) Computer Science Degree
7 40 (1.56%) Master's Degree
8 38 (1.48%) CISSP
8 38 (1.48%) Microsoft Certification
9 34 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
10 31 (1.21%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 29 (1.13%) ITIL Certification
12 27 (1.05%) Azure Certification
13 23 (0.90%) CCNA
14 18 (0.70%) CCNP
15 17 (0.66%) CISM
15 17 (0.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 14 (0.55%) DBS Check
17 12 (0.47%) CESG Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 137 (5.34%) Accessibility
2 80 (3.12%) QA
3 51 (1.99%) Data Quality
4 50 (1.95%) GDPR
5 43 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 39 (1.52%) NCSC
7 37 (1.44%) WCAG
8 35 (1.36%) NIST
8 35 (1.36%) SLA
9 27 (1.05%) PMO
10 21 (0.82%) GRC
11 19 (0.74%) Disclosure Scotland
12 14 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
13 13 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
14 10 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 10 (0.39%) JSP 440
14 10 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 8 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 8 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 7 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 182 (7.10%) Docker
2 155 (6.04%) Active Directory
3 56 (2.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (1.05%) VMware ESXi
5 23 (0.90%) Hyper-V
6 18 (0.70%) VMware NSX
7 16 (0.62%) BitLocker
8 14 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
9 13 (0.51%) vSphere
10 9 (0.35%) Terminal Services
11 8 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
11 8 (0.31%) Postfix
12 7 (0.27%) Firmware
12 7 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
13 6 (0.23%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 6 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
15 3 (0.12%) IAG
15 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 175 (6.82%) Kubernetes
2 169 (6.59%) Terraform
3 76 (2.96%) Ansible
4 55 (2.14%) Microsoft Intune
5 44 (1.72%) Grafana
6 34 (1.33%) Prometheus
7 27 (1.05%) SCCM
8 24 (0.94%) vCenter Server
9 17 (0.66%) Puppet
10 12 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
11 11 (0.43%) vMotion
12 10 (0.39%) Nagios
12 10 (0.39%) WSUS
13 8 (0.31%) Nmap
14 7 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
14 7 (0.27%) Progress Chef
14 7 (0.27%) SCOM
15 6 (0.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 5 (0.19%) Argo
16 5 (0.19%) Istio
Vendors
1 389 (15.17%) Microsoft
2 216 (8.42%) SAP
3 188 (7.33%) Oracle
4 88 (3.43%) ServiceNow
5 87 (3.39%) Cisco
6 82 (3.20%) Google
7 77 (3.00%) VMware
8 45 (1.75%) Virgin Media
9 35 (1.36%) Atlassian
10 33 (1.29%) Salesforce
11 32 (1.25%) HP
12 29 (1.13%) Splunk
13 28 (1.09%) Databricks
14 27 (1.05%) Adobe
15 26 (1.01%) Juniper
16 25 (0.97%) Palo Alto
17 22 (0.86%) SolarWinds
18 20 (0.78%) Citrix
19 19 (0.74%) Dell
20 16 (0.62%) F5