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 30 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 17 11
Rank change year-on-year +2 -6 -5
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 247 131 186
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 10.05% 8.45% 10.05%
As % of the General category 17.89% 13.53% 18.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 168 78 123
10th Percentile £344 £288 £206
25th Percentile £428 £393 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £578 £553 £588
90th Percentile £644 £596 £650
England median daily rate £500 £523 £535
% change year-on-year -4.31% -2.34% -0.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 8 8
10th Percentile £17.03 - £13.24
25th Percentile £18.44 £14.70 £14.07
Median hourly rate £23.03 £20.87 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.35% -40.39% +98.64%
75th Percentile £25.00 £28.77 £69.06
90th Percentile £30.92 £41.68 £72.93
England median hourly rate £22.00 £25.50 £20.85
% change year-on-year -13.73% +22.29% +4.89%

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 1,381 968 1,018
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 56.21% 62.41% 55.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 895 593 680
10th Percentile £240 £200 £219
25th Percentile £400 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £508 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% +1.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £605 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 37 87
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.70 £11.10
25th Percentile £15.81 £18.13 £14.71
Median hourly rate £20.25 £23.82 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.99% +5.87% +27.70%
75th Percentile £27.21 £30.68 £43.13
90th Percentile £35.54 £42.00 £69.25
England median hourly rate £22.81 £30.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -23.97% +15.38% +1.13%

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 30 January 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 30 January 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 30 January 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 +5 92 £475 -3.06% 44
Shropshire -13 51 £515 -4.63% 14
Warwickshire +25 50 £575 +9.52% 14
Coventry -8 23 £463 +1.37% 3
Staffordshire 0 5 £413 -17.50% 6
Solihull -7 4 £363 -3.97% 1
Worcestershire -27 1 £363 +13.73%
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 20 (8.10%) Confluence
2 19 (7.69%) SAS
3 9 (3.64%) SharePoint
4 8 (3.24%) nginx
5 6 (2.43%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (1.21%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.81%) SugarCRM
8 1 (0.40%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.40%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.40%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 7 (2.83%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 6 (2.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (2.02%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (1.21%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.40%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.40%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.40%) Oracle Smart View
5 1 (0.40%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.40%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 5 (2.02%) SAP ERP
2 2 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.81%) Maximo
2 2 (0.81%) SAP FI
2 2 (0.81%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.40%) MIS ActiveH
3 1 (0.40%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.40%) Primavera
3 1 (0.40%) SAP HR
3 1 (0.40%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 47 (19.03%) AWS
2 42 (17.00%) Azure
3 14 (5.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 13 (5.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 13 (5.26%) Amazon S3
5 12 (4.86%) AWS KMS
6 11 (4.45%) Amazon EC2
6 11 (4.45%) Amazon ELB
6 11 (4.45%) Microsoft 365
6 11 (4.45%) Power Platform
7 8 (3.24%) Amazon ECS
8 7 (2.83%) GitHub
8 7 (2.83%) PaaS
8 7 (2.83%) Route 53
9 6 (2.43%) Azure DevOps
10 5 (2.02%) Dynamics 365
10 5 (2.02%) Entra ID
10 5 (2.02%) SaaS
10 5 (2.02%) Serverless
11 4 (1.62%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 19 (7.69%) Firewall
2 14 (5.67%) DNS
3 12 (4.86%) VPN
4 11 (4.45%) FTP
4 11 (4.45%) HTTP
4 11 (4.45%) SMTP
4 11 (4.45%) SSH
5 10 (4.05%) WAN
6 7 (2.83%) IMAP
6 7 (2.83%) IPsec
6 7 (2.83%) OpenLDAP
7 6 (2.43%) BGP
7 6 (2.43%) MPLS
7 6 (2.43%) Wireless
8 4 (1.62%) LAN
9 3 (1.21%) SD-WAN
9 3 (1.21%) SSL
10 2 (0.81%) DMVPN
10 2 (0.81%) Internet
10 2 (0.81%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (4.86%) Amazon RDS
1 12 (4.86%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (4.05%) Power BI
2 10 (4.05%) SAS Enterprise Guide
3 9 (3.64%) Pentaho
4 7 (2.83%) Amazon Aurora
4 7 (2.83%) Oracle Database
5 6 (2.43%) MongoDB
5 6 (2.43%) Relational Database
5 6 (2.43%) SAS Visual Analytics
6 4 (1.62%) Electronic Patient Records
7 3 (1.21%) MySQL
7 3 (1.21%) NoSQL
7 3 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
8 2 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.81%) QlikView
8 2 (0.81%) SAP BW
8 2 (0.81%) SQL Server
8 2 (0.81%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 2 (0.81%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 30 (12.15%) Git
1 30 (12.15%) JIRA
2 24 (9.72%) Jenkins
3 11 (4.45%) Vagrant
4 5 (2.02%) GitLab
5 3 (1.21%) Toad
6 2 (0.81%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.81%) JUnit
7 1 (0.40%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.40%) Liquibase
7 1 (0.40%) Maven
7 1 (0.40%) Mockito
7 1 (0.40%) MSI
7 1 (0.40%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.40%) Selenium
General
1 67 (27.13%) Social Skills
2 24 (9.72%) Finance
3 15 (6.07%) Analytical Skills
3 15 (6.07%) Police
4 10 (4.05%) Presentation Skills
5 8 (3.24%) Organisational Skills
6 7 (2.83%) Legal
6 7 (2.83%) Local Government
6 7 (2.83%) Telecoms
7 6 (2.43%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (2.02%) Law
9 4 (1.62%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.62%) Military
10 2 (0.81%) Banking
10 2 (0.81%) General Ledger
10 2 (0.81%) Retail
11 1 (0.40%) Digital Healthcare
11 1 (0.40%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 30 (12.15%) Analyst
2 23 (9.31%) Developer
3 20 (8.10%) Architect
3 20 (8.10%) Lead
3 20 (8.10%) Senior
4 15 (6.07%) Consultant
4 15 (6.07%) DevOps Engineer
5 12 (4.86%) AWS Engineer
5 12 (4.86%) Release Manager
6 11 (4.45%) Cloud Platform Engineer
6 11 (4.45%) Platform Engineer
7 10 (4.05%) AWS DevOps
7 10 (4.05%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 9 (3.64%) Data Engineer
8 9 (3.64%) Solutions Architect
8 9 (3.64%) Support Engineer
9 8 (3.24%) Business Analyst
9 8 (3.24%) Network Engineer
10 7 (2.83%) 2nd Line Support
10 7 (2.83%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (4.05%) REST
1 10 (4.05%) RESTful
2 9 (3.64%) CSS
2 9 (3.64%) LDAP
2 9 (3.64%) React
3 7 (2.83%) HTML
4 6 (2.43%) AngularJS
4 6 (2.43%) XML
5 5 (2.02%) .NET
5 5 (2.02%) Oracle Fusion
5 5 (2.02%) Spring
5 5 (2.02%) Spring Boot
6 4 (1.62%) EDI
6 4 (1.62%) Middleware
6 4 (1.62%) Play Framework
6 4 (1.62%) Playwright
7 3 (1.21%) Elastic Stack
7 3 (1.21%) Material-UI
7 3 (1.21%) OAuth2
7 3 (1.21%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 13 (5.26%) Management Information System
1 13 (5.26%) Replication
2 9 (3.64%) Legacy Systems
3 8 (3.24%) Product Ownership
4 6 (2.43%) Cloud Native
4 6 (2.43%) Onboarding
4 6 (2.43%) PKI
5 5 (2.02%) Driving Licence
5 5 (2.02%) NHS
6 4 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
6 4 (1.62%) Data Centre
6 4 (1.62%) Data Structures
6 4 (1.62%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (1.21%) Mobile App
8 2 (0.81%) e-Learning
8 2 (0.81%) Linux Command Line
8 2 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
8 2 (0.81%) Security Posture
8 2 (0.81%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.40%) Educational Technology
Operating Systems
1 21 (8.50%) Linux
1 21 (8.50%) Windows
2 11 (4.45%) Amazon Linux
2 11 (4.45%) VMS
3 7 (2.83%) Ubuntu
4 3 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.21%) Unix
5 1 (0.40%) Mac OS X
5 1 (0.40%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (22.27%) Agile
2 52 (21.05%) DevOps
3 47 (19.03%) CI/CD
4 34 (13.77%) Migration
5 32 (12.96%) Analytics
5 32 (12.96%) Problem-Solving
6 28 (11.34%) Continuous Improvement
7 26 (10.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 26 (10.53%) Stakeholder Management
8 24 (9.72%) Change Management
9 23 (9.31%) Records Management
10 21 (8.50%) Configuration Management
11 20 (8.10%) Data Modelling
12 16 (6.48%) Data Integration
12 16 (6.48%) Scrum
12 16 (6.48%) Test Automation
12 16 (6.48%) Validation
13 15 (6.07%) Business Intelligence
13 15 (6.07%) Containerisation
13 15 (6.07%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 48 (19.43%) SQL
2 28 (11.34%) Python
3 20 (8.10%) Java
4 15 (6.07%) PowerShell
5 14 (5.67%) JavaScript
6 12 (4.86%) Groovy
7 6 (2.43%) Perl
7 6 (2.43%) TypeScript
8 5 (2.02%) Scala
9 3 (1.21%) ABAP
9 3 (1.21%) Bash
9 3 (1.21%) C#
9 3 (1.21%) PHP
9 3 (1.21%) PL/SQL
9 3 (1.21%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.81%) Go
10 2 (0.81%) R
11 1 (0.40%) Bicep
11 1 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.40%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 114 (46.15%) Security Cleared
2 64 (25.91%) SC Cleared
3 14 (5.67%) Degree
4 11 (4.45%) AWS Certification
4 11 (4.45%) Azure Certification
5 7 (2.83%) DV Cleared
6 6 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (2.02%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (1.21%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 3 (1.21%) DBS Check
8 3 (1.21%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.81%) ACCA
9 2 (0.81%) CCA
9 2 (0.81%) CCNP
9 2 (0.81%) CIMA
9 2 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.40%) CCIE
10 1 (0.40%) CCNA
10 1 (0.40%) CCSP
10 1 (0.40%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.67%) Data Quality
2 12 (4.86%) QA
3 7 (2.83%) Accessibility
4 4 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (1.62%) WCAG
5 3 (1.21%) NIST
6 2 (0.81%) GDPR
6 2 (0.81%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.81%) SLA
7 1 (0.40%) NCSC
System Software
1 28 (11.34%) Docker
2 11 (4.45%) Active Directory
2 11 (4.45%) DFS Replication
3 7 (2.83%) Dovecot
3 7 (2.83%) Postfix
3 7 (2.83%) Squid
4 6 (2.43%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.81%) vSphere
6 1 (0.40%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.40%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 21 (8.50%) Kubernetes
2 20 (8.10%) Terraform
3 13 (5.26%) Prometheus
4 12 (4.86%) Grafana
5 7 (2.83%) Nessus
5 7 (2.83%) Proxmox
6 3 (1.21%) Ansible
7 2 (0.81%) EMC NetWorker
7 2 (0.81%) Kibana
7 2 (0.81%) vRealize
7 2 (0.81%) VxRail
8 1 (0.40%) FortiGate
8 1 (0.40%) logstash
8 1 (0.40%) QRadar
8 1 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 35 (14.17%) Oracle
2 24 (9.72%) Microsoft
3 13 (5.26%) SAP
3 13 (5.26%) ServiceNow
4 10 (4.05%) Talend
5 9 (3.64%) Juniper
6 8 (3.24%) Cisco
6 8 (3.24%) Denodo
7 7 (2.83%) Jaspersoft
7 7 (2.83%) VMware
8 6 (2.43%) Ariba
8 6 (2.43%) Splunk
9 5 (2.02%) IBM
9 5 (2.02%) Salesforce
10 4 (1.62%) F5
11 3 (1.21%) Databricks
11 3 (1.21%) Dell
11 3 (1.21%) SolarWinds
12 2 (0.81%) CheckPoint
12 2 (0.81%) Red Hat