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

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 19 11
Rank change year-on-year +3 -8 -6
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 234 130 184
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 9.88% 8.31% 10.22%
As % of the General category 17.38% 13.32% 18.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 154 78 123
10th Percentile £313 £288 £206
25th Percentile £425 £393 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £567 £548 £600
90th Percentile £645 £589 £655
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 8 9
10th Percentile £16.97 - £13.66
25th Percentile £17.09 £14.70 £18.00
Median hourly rate £23.00 £20.87 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.23% -16.54% +41.88%
75th Percentile £25.00 £28.77 £68.75
90th Percentile £35.45 £41.68 £71.96
England median hourly rate £22.00 £25.25 £20.00
% change year-on-year -12.87% +26.25% +0.63%

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 1,346 976 983
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 56.84% 62.40% 54.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 869 604 662
10th Percentile £219 £200 £220
25th Percentile £400 £375 £383
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -
75th Percentile £584 £611 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
England median daily rate £500 £532 £550
% change year-on-year -5.97% -3.32% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 38 72
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.70 £13.02
25th Percentile £15.94 £18.22 £15.70
Median hourly rate £19.50 £23.82 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.14% +5.87% +27.70%
75th Percentile £27.21 £30.51 £42.81
90th Percentile £35.60 £46.38 £67.75
England median hourly rate £23.00 £30.00 £28.13
% change year-on-year -23.33% +6.67% +8.90%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 90 £475 -5.00% 34
Shropshire -13 48 £519 -1.71% 16
Warwickshire +22 40 £600 +14.29% 17
Coventry -7 24 £463 +1.37% 2
Staffordshire 0 5 £413 -17.50% 8
Solihull -5 4 £363 -3.97%
Worcestershire -27 2 £363 +13.73% 2
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 21 (8.97%) Confluence
2 19 (8.12%) SAS
3 9 (3.85%) nginx
3 9 (3.85%) SharePoint
4 5 (2.14%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (1.71%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.85%) SugarCRM
7 1 (0.43%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.43%) Apache
7 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.43%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 8 (3.42%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 6 (2.56%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (2.14%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (1.28%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.43%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.43%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.43%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.43%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.43%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 5 (2.14%) SAP ERP
2 2 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.85%) Maximo
2 2 (0.85%) SAP FI
2 2 (0.85%) SAP HR
2 2 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.43%) MIS ActiveH
3 1 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.43%) Primavera
3 1 (0.43%) SAP PM
3 1 (0.43%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 49 (20.94%) AWS
2 44 (18.80%) Azure
3 16 (6.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 15 (6.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 15 (6.41%) Amazon S3
5 14 (5.98%) AWS KMS
6 13 (5.56%) Amazon EC2
6 13 (5.56%) Amazon ELB
7 12 (5.13%) Microsoft 365
8 11 (4.70%) Power Platform
9 9 (3.85%) Amazon ECS
10 8 (3.42%) GitHub
10 8 (3.42%) Route 53
11 7 (2.99%) PaaS
12 6 (2.56%) Azure DevOps
12 6 (2.56%) Dynamics 365
13 5 (2.14%) Amazon Glacier
13 5 (2.14%) SaaS
13 5 (2.14%) Serverless
14 4 (1.71%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 21 (8.97%) Firewall
2 16 (6.84%) DNS
3 13 (5.56%) FTP
3 13 (5.56%) HTTP
3 13 (5.56%) SMTP
3 13 (5.56%) SSH
4 12 (5.13%) VPN
5 10 (4.27%) WAN
6 8 (3.42%) IMAP
6 8 (3.42%) OpenLDAP
7 7 (2.99%) IPsec
8 6 (2.56%) BGP
8 6 (2.56%) MPLS
8 6 (2.56%) Wireless
9 4 (1.71%) LAN
10 3 (1.28%) SD-WAN
10 3 (1.28%) SSL
11 2 (0.85%) Cisco IPT
11 2 (0.85%) Internet
11 2 (0.85%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (5.98%) Amazon RDS
2 12 (5.13%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (4.27%) Power BI
3 10 (4.27%) SAS Enterprise Guide
4 9 (3.85%) Pentaho
5 8 (3.42%) Amazon Aurora
6 7 (2.99%) Oracle Database
7 6 (2.56%) Relational Database
7 6 (2.56%) SAS Visual Analytics
8 4 (1.71%) Electronic Patient Records
8 4 (1.71%) MongoDB
9 3 (1.28%) MySQL
10 2 (0.85%) Data Hub
10 2 (0.85%) Metadata
10 2 (0.85%) NoSQL
10 2 (0.85%) Oracle Reports
10 2 (0.85%) QlikView
10 2 (0.85%) SAP BW
10 2 (0.85%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.43%) DocumentDB
Development Applications
1 32 (13.68%) JIRA
2 31 (13.25%) Git
3 27 (11.54%) Jenkins
4 13 (5.56%) Vagrant
5 5 (2.14%) GitLab
6 3 (1.28%) Toad
7 2 (0.85%) JUnit
7 2 (0.85%) Selenium
8 1 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.43%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.43%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.43%) Maven
8 1 (0.43%) Mockito
8 1 (0.43%) MSI
8 1 (0.43%) Oracle Forms
General
1 66 (28.21%) Social Skills
2 20 (8.55%) Finance
3 14 (5.98%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (4.70%) Presentation Skills
5 8 (3.42%) Organisational Skills
5 8 (3.42%) Police
6 7 (2.99%) Legal
6 7 (2.99%) Telecoms
7 6 (2.56%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (2.56%) Local Government
8 5 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.71%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.71%) Military
10 3 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.28%) Law
11 2 (0.85%) Banking
11 2 (0.85%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.85%) Retail
12 1 (0.43%) Electronics
12 1 (0.43%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 28 (11.97%) Analyst
2 22 (9.40%) Developer
2 22 (9.40%) Lead
3 20 (8.55%) Architect
4 19 (8.12%) DevOps Engineer
5 16 (6.84%) AWS Engineer
5 16 (6.84%) Senior
6 14 (5.98%) AWS DevOps
6 14 (5.98%) AWS DevOps Engineer
6 14 (5.98%) Consultant
6 14 (5.98%) Platform Engineer
7 13 (5.56%) Cloud Platform Engineer
8 12 (5.13%) Release Manager
9 9 (3.85%) Support Engineer
10 8 (3.42%) AWS Platform Engineer
10 8 (3.42%) Business Analyst
10 8 (3.42%) Data Engineer
10 8 (3.42%) Network Engineer
11 7 (2.99%) 2nd Line Engineer
11 7 (2.99%) DevOps Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (4.27%) LDAP
1 10 (4.27%) REST
2 9 (3.85%) CSS
2 9 (3.85%) React
2 9 (3.85%) RESTful
3 7 (2.99%) HTML
4 6 (2.56%) AngularJS
4 6 (2.56%) XML
5 5 (2.14%) .NET
5 5 (2.14%) Playwright
6 4 (1.71%) EDI
6 4 (1.71%) Oracle Fusion
6 4 (1.71%) Play Framework
6 4 (1.71%) Spring
6 4 (1.71%) Spring Boot
7 3 (1.28%) JSON
7 3 (1.28%) Material-UI
7 3 (1.28%) OAuth
7 3 (1.28%) OAuth2
7 3 (1.28%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 15 (6.41%) Replication
2 12 (5.13%) Management Information System
3 9 (3.85%) Legacy Systems
3 9 (3.85%) Product Ownership
4 7 (2.99%) Onboarding
5 6 (2.56%) Cloud Native
5 6 (2.56%) PKI
6 5 (2.14%) Driving Licence
6 5 (2.14%) NHS
7 4 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
7 4 (1.71%) Data Centre
7 4 (1.71%) Hybrid Cloud
8 3 (1.28%) Data Structures
8 3 (1.28%) Mobile App
8 3 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
9 2 (0.85%) e-Learning
9 2 (0.85%) Learning Management System
9 2 (0.85%) Linux Command Line
9 2 (0.85%) Security Operations Centre
9 2 (0.85%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 25 (10.68%) Windows
2 23 (9.83%) Linux
3 13 (5.56%) Amazon Linux
3 13 (5.56%) VMS
4 8 (3.42%) Ubuntu
5 4 (1.71%) Unix
6 2 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.43%) Mac OS X
7 1 (0.43%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (23.50%) DevOps
2 53 (22.65%) Agile
3 48 (20.51%) CI/CD
4 33 (14.10%) Problem-Solving
5 32 (13.68%) Migration
6 30 (12.82%) Analytics
7 26 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
7 26 (11.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 25 (10.68%) Change Management
9 24 (10.26%) Configuration Management
10 22 (9.40%) Stakeholder Management
11 20 (8.55%) Data Modelling
12 16 (6.84%) Business Intelligence
12 16 (6.84%) Data Integration
12 16 (6.84%) Scrum
12 16 (6.84%) Test Automation
12 16 (6.84%) Validation
13 15 (6.41%) Containerisation
14 14 (5.98%) Cloud Security
14 14 (5.98%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 46 (19.66%) SQL
2 30 (12.82%) Python
3 19 (8.12%) Java
4 18 (7.69%) PowerShell
5 14 (5.98%) Groovy
6 13 (5.56%) JavaScript
7 6 (2.56%) Perl
7 6 (2.56%) TypeScript
8 5 (2.14%) Scala
9 3 (1.28%) ABAP
9 3 (1.28%) Bash
9 3 (1.28%) C#
9 3 (1.28%) PHP
9 3 (1.28%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.85%) Go
10 2 (0.85%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.43%) Apex Code
11 1 (0.43%) C++
11 1 (0.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.43%) R
Qualifications
1 112 (47.86%) Security Cleared
2 62 (26.50%) SC Cleared
3 16 (6.84%) Degree
4 12 (5.13%) AWS Certification
4 12 (5.13%) Azure Certification
5 7 (2.99%) DV Cleared
6 5 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
6 5 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (1.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (1.28%) DBS Check
7 3 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.85%) ACCA
8 2 (0.85%) CCA
8 2 (0.85%) CCNP
8 2 (0.85%) CIMA
8 2 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (0.85%) PMI Certification
8 2 (0.85%) PMP
9 1 (0.43%) JNCIE
9 1 (0.43%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.56%) Data Quality
1 13 (5.56%) QA
2 7 (2.99%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (1.71%) WCAG
4 3 (1.28%) NIST
5 2 (0.85%) GDPR
5 2 (0.85%) PCI DSS
5 2 (0.85%) SLA
6 1 (0.43%) NCSC
System Software
1 32 (13.68%) Docker
2 13 (5.56%) DFS Replication
3 10 (4.27%) Active Directory
4 8 (3.42%) Dovecot
4 8 (3.42%) Postfix
4 8 (3.42%) Squid
5 7 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.85%) vSphere
7 1 (0.43%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.43%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 23 (9.83%) Terraform
2 19 (8.12%) Kubernetes
3 15 (6.41%) Prometheus
4 14 (5.98%) Grafana
5 8 (3.42%) Nessus
5 8 (3.42%) Proxmox
6 3 (1.28%) Ansible
7 2 (0.85%) EMC NetWorker
7 2 (0.85%) Kibana
7 2 (0.85%) vRealize
7 2 (0.85%) VxRail
8 1 (0.43%) FortiGate
8 1 (0.43%) logstash
8 1 (0.43%) QRadar
8 1 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 34 (14.53%) Oracle
2 20 (8.55%) Microsoft
3 15 (6.41%) ServiceNow
4 14 (5.98%) SAP
5 10 (4.27%) Talend
6 9 (3.85%) Cisco
6 9 (3.85%) Juniper
7 8 (3.42%) Denodo
7 8 (3.42%) Jaspersoft
7 8 (3.42%) VMware
8 6 (2.56%) Ariba
8 6 (2.56%) IBM
8 6 (2.56%) Salesforce
8 6 (2.56%) Splunk
9 4 (1.71%) F5
10 3 (1.28%) AppDynamics
10 3 (1.28%) Databricks
10 3 (1.28%) Dell
10 3 (1.28%) SolarWinds
11 2 (0.85%) MuleSoft