Public Sector Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Public Sector
England > West Midlands

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Public Sector in contract job vacancies in the West Midlands. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Public Sector over the 6 months leading up to 27 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 16 11
Rank change year-on-year +1 -5 -5
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 279 131 183
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 10.20% 9.31% 9.71%
As % of the General category 18.53% 15.18% 17.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 187 81 125
10th Percentile £357 £300 £210
25th Percentile £413 £393 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £567 £575
90th Percentile £647 £613 £650
England median daily rate £500 £519 £525
% change year-on-year -3.61% -1.19% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 6 6
10th Percentile £16.97 - £12.82
25th Percentile £17.09 £14.70 £13.95
Median hourly rate £23.00 £16.42 £19.80
Median % change year-on-year +40.12% -17.08% +12.34%
75th Percentile £25.00 £22.23 £41.88
90th Percentile £36.07 £40.43 £63.64
England median hourly rate £22.00 £25.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year -13.73% +21.43% +5.00%

All General Skills
West Midlands

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 general skills in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 1,506 863 1,058
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 55.04% 61.34% 56.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 972 554 723
10th Percentile £268 £200 £220
25th Percentile £400 £375 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% - -
75th Percentile £582 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 35 96
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.28 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.94 £14.70 £13.79
Median hourly rate £21.01 £20.00 £18.25
Median % change year-on-year +5.05% +9.59% +3.58%
75th Percentile £27.21 £30.34 £39.92
90th Percentile £38.75 £46.40 £58.75
England median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £26.00
% change year-on-year -21.76% +17.12% -15.09%

Public Sector
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Public Sector relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Public Sector job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Public Sector
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Public Sector.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Public Sector

Public Sector
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Public Sector in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 27 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Public Sector in the West Midlands

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Public Sector.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Public Sector

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Public Sector in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 27 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Public Sector in the West Midlands

Public Sector
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

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 West Midlands region over the 6 months to 27 February 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
Birmingham +2 97 £500 +2.04% 22
Warwickshire +26 53 £550 +4.76% 1
Shropshire -17 53 £490 -7.11% 11
Coventry -9 26 £475 +15.15% 1
Solihull -7 11 £335 -19.28% 5
Staffordshire +1 8 £413 -23.15% 2
Worcestershire -24 1 £363 -30.95% 1
Public Sector
England

Public Sector
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 18 (6.45%) SAS
2 17 (6.09%) Confluence
3 11 (3.94%) SharePoint
4 5 (1.79%) WebLogic
5 2 (0.72%) nginx
5 2 (0.72%) SugarCRM
6 1 (0.36%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.36%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.36%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 6 (2.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.08%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.72%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 2 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.36%) Adobe Illustrator
4 1 (0.36%) Adobe XD
4 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Smart View
4 1 (0.36%) Photoshop
4 1 (0.36%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 3 (1.08%) NEC Housing
1 3 (1.08%) SAP ERP
1 3 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.72%) Maximo
2 2 (0.72%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.36%) MIS ActiveH
3 1 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.36%) Primavera
3 1 (0.36%) SAP HR
3 1 (0.36%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 52 (18.64%) AWS
2 43 (15.41%) Azure
3 15 (5.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 15 (5.38%) Amazon S3
4 14 (5.02%) Power Platform
5 13 (4.66%) Amazon EC2
5 13 (4.66%) AWS KMS
6 11 (3.94%) Route 53
7 9 (3.23%) Amazon SQS
7 9 (3.23%) Azure DevOps
8 7 (2.51%) Microsoft 365
8 7 (2.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 6 (2.15%) GitHub
9 6 (2.15%) SaaS
10 5 (1.79%) Entra ID
10 5 (1.79%) GCP
11 4 (1.43%) Azure Logic Apps
11 4 (1.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 4 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
11 4 (1.43%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 11 (3.94%) Firewall
2 6 (2.15%) VPN
3 5 (1.79%) DNS
3 5 (1.79%) Wireless
4 3 (1.08%) FTP
4 3 (1.08%) HTTP
4 3 (1.08%) LAN
4 3 (1.08%) Network Security
4 3 (1.08%) SMTP
4 3 (1.08%) SSH
4 3 (1.08%) WAN
5 2 (0.72%) BGP
5 2 (0.72%) IMAP
5 2 (0.72%) IPsec
5 2 (0.72%) MPLS
5 2 (0.72%) OpenLDAP
5 2 (0.72%) SSL
5 2 (0.72%) VLAN
6 1 (0.36%) Intrusion Detection
6 1 (0.36%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (6.09%) PostgreSQL
2 15 (5.38%) Amazon RDS
2 15 (5.38%) Pentaho
3 13 (4.66%) Power BI
4 11 (3.94%) Amazon Aurora
5 9 (3.23%) DynamoDB
5 9 (3.23%) Oracle Reports
6 6 (2.15%) MongoDB
7 5 (1.79%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.43%) Electronic Patient Records
8 4 (1.43%) MySQL
8 4 (1.43%) SAS Enterprise Guide
9 3 (1.08%) NoSQL
9 3 (1.08%) Oracle Database
9 3 (1.08%) SQL Server
9 3 (1.08%) Tableau
10 2 (0.72%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.72%) QlikView
10 2 (0.72%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 33 (11.83%) Git
2 27 (9.68%) Jenkins
3 26 (9.32%) JIRA
4 12 (4.30%) JUnit
5 10 (3.58%) Maven
5 10 (3.58%) Mockito
6 9 (3.23%) SonarQube
7 7 (2.51%) DbUnit
7 7 (2.51%) jMock
8 5 (1.79%) Bitbucket Server
8 5 (1.79%) GitLab
9 3 (1.08%) Toad
9 3 (1.08%) Vagrant
10 2 (0.72%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.72%) Selenium
11 1 (0.36%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.36%) Bitbucket
11 1 (0.36%) MSTest
11 1 (0.36%) TeamCity
11 1 (0.36%) TestNG
General
1 80 (28.67%) Social Skills
2 31 (11.11%) Finance
3 25 (8.96%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (5.38%) Local Government
5 14 (5.02%) Police
6 12 (4.30%) Legal
7 8 (2.87%) Influencing Skills
7 8 (2.87%) Organisational Skills
8 6 (2.15%) Manufacturing
8 6 (2.15%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (1.79%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.79%) Law
10 4 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.43%) Military
10 4 (1.43%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.72%) Banking
11 2 (0.72%) Retail
12 1 (0.36%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.36%) Automotive
12 1 (0.36%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 38 (13.62%) Developer
2 32 (11.47%) Analyst
3 25 (8.96%) Architect
3 25 (8.96%) Senior
4 21 (7.53%) Lead
5 18 (6.45%) Data Engineer
5 18 (6.45%) Java Developer
6 16 (5.73%) Consultant
7 12 (4.30%) Solutions Architect
8 11 (3.94%) Business Analyst
9 10 (3.58%) Release Manager
10 9 (3.23%) Accountant
10 9 (3.23%) Senior Accountant
11 8 (2.87%) Senior Developer
12 7 (2.51%) DevOps Engineer
12 7 (2.51%) Senior Systems Accountant
12 7 (2.51%) Systems Accountant
13 6 (2.15%) Full-Stack Developer
13 6 (2.15%) Head of Infrastructure
13 6 (2.15%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (6.45%) REST
1 18 (6.45%) Spring Boot
2 17 (6.09%) Spring
3 16 (5.73%) AngularJS
4 14 (5.02%) RESTful
5 11 (3.94%) SOAP
5 11 (3.94%) Web Services
6 10 (3.58%) Hibernate
6 10 (3.58%) JPA
6 10 (3.58%) Oracle Fusion
7 9 (3.23%) ActiveMQ
7 9 (3.23%) CSS
7 9 (3.23%) Spring Batch
7 9 (3.23%) Spring Cloud
7 9 (3.23%) Spring Integration
8 8 (2.87%) Node.js
8 8 (2.87%) React
9 7 (2.51%) HTML
9 7 (2.51%) PowerMock
10 6 (2.15%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 17 (6.09%) Management Information System
2 10 (3.58%) Data Structures
2 10 (3.58%) Product Ownership
3 8 (2.87%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
4 6 (2.15%) NHS
5 5 (1.79%) Analytical Mindset
5 5 (1.79%) Cloud Native
5 5 (1.79%) Driving Licence
5 5 (1.79%) Replication
6 4 (1.43%) Hybrid Cloud
6 4 (1.43%) Onboarding
7 3 (1.08%) Mobile App
8 2 (0.72%) Data Centre
8 2 (0.72%) e-Learning
8 2 (0.72%) PKI
8 2 (0.72%) Private Cloud
8 2 (0.72%) Public Cloud
8 2 (0.72%) Security Operations Centre
8 2 (0.72%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 19 (6.81%) Linux
2 11 (3.94%) Windows
3 3 (1.08%) Amazon Linux
3 3 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (1.08%) VMS
4 2 (0.72%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.72%) Unix
5 1 (0.36%) Mac OS X
5 1 (0.36%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 76 (27.24%) Agile
2 49 (17.56%) DevOps
3 43 (15.41%) CI/CD
4 41 (14.70%) Stakeholder Management
5 35 (12.54%) Continuous Improvement
6 34 (12.19%) Problem-Solving
7 30 (10.75%) Migration
8 27 (9.68%) Scrum
9 25 (8.96%) Records Management
10 24 (8.60%) Analytics
10 24 (8.60%) Data Modelling
11 22 (7.89%) Change Management
11 22 (7.89%) Containerisation
11 22 (7.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 20 (7.17%) Microservices
13 19 (6.81%) ETL
14 18 (6.45%) Business Intelligence
14 18 (6.45%) Project Delivery
14 18 (6.45%) TDD
15 17 (6.09%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 66 (23.66%) SQL
2 32 (11.47%) Java
3 21 (7.53%) Python
4 14 (5.02%) JavaScript
5 7 (2.51%) PL/SQL
6 6 (2.15%) Bash
6 6 (2.15%) PowerShell
7 5 (1.79%) C#
8 4 (1.43%) Groovy
8 4 (1.43%) Scala
8 4 (1.43%) TypeScript
9 3 (1.08%) Perl
9 3 (1.08%) PHP
9 3 (1.08%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.72%) Go
11 1 (0.36%) ABAP
11 1 (0.36%) COBOL
11 1 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.36%) R
11 1 (0.36%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 132 (47.31%) Security Cleared
2 76 (27.24%) SC Cleared
3 9 (3.23%) AWS Certification
3 9 (3.23%) Azure Certification
4 8 (2.87%) DV Cleared
5 7 (2.51%) BPSS Clearance
5 7 (2.51%) Degree
6 4 (1.43%) Cisco Certification
6 4 (1.43%) Microsoft Certification
7 3 (1.08%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (1.08%) CCNP
7 3 (1.08%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (1.08%) DBS Check
8 2 (0.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 2 (0.72%) ACCA
8 2 (0.72%) CCNA
8 2 (0.72%) CIMA
8 2 (0.72%) CISSP
9 1 (0.36%) CIPFA
9 1 (0.36%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.38%) Data Quality
1 15 (5.38%) QA
2 6 (2.15%) Accessibility
2 6 (2.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (1.08%) GDPR
3 3 (1.08%) NIST
3 3 (1.08%) PCI DSS
3 3 (1.08%) WCAG
4 2 (0.72%) SLA
5 1 (0.36%) COBIT
5 1 (0.36%) Government Security Classifications
5 1 (0.36%) NCSC
5 1 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 29 (10.39%) Docker
2 8 (2.87%) Postfix
3 7 (2.51%) Active Directory
4 6 (2.15%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (1.08%) DFS Replication
6 2 (0.72%) Dovecot
6 2 (0.72%) Squid
6 2 (0.72%) vSphere
7 1 (0.36%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.36%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 22 (7.89%) Kubernetes
2 13 (4.66%) Grafana
3 11 (3.94%) Terraform
4 6 (2.15%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.08%) Ansible
6 2 (0.72%) EMC NetWorker
6 2 (0.72%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.72%) Kibana
6 2 (0.72%) Nessus
6 2 (0.72%) Proxmox
6 2 (0.72%) vRealize
6 2 (0.72%) VxRail
7 1 (0.36%) logstash
7 1 (0.36%) QRadar
7 1 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 41 (14.70%) Oracle
2 20 (7.17%) Microsoft
3 17 (6.09%) Talend
4 12 (4.30%) SAP
5 11 (3.94%) Jaspersoft
6 10 (3.58%) Denodo
7 8 (2.87%) ServiceNow
8 7 (2.51%) Ariba
8 7 (2.51%) Atlassian
8 7 (2.51%) Cisco
8 7 (2.51%) Salesforce
8 7 (2.51%) VMware
9 6 (2.15%) Informatica
9 6 (2.15%) Splunk
10 5 (1.79%) IBM
11 3 (1.08%) Dell
11 3 (1.08%) F5
11 3 (1.08%) Juniper
11 3 (1.08%) NEC
11 3 (1.08%) SolarWinds