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 4 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 15 20
Rank change year-on-year +5 +5 -8
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 422 169 131
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.32% 9.62% 6.93%
As % of the General category 23.38% 15.12% 12.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 312 114 85
10th Percentile £358 £266 £268
25th Percentile £425 £406 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year +3.37% +1.06% -8.29%
75th Percentile £576 £528 £550
90th Percentile £665 £588 £650
England median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -3.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 2 9
10th Percentile £17.74 £18.65 £18.00
25th Percentile £20.31 £19.29 £18.50
Median hourly rate £21.50 £20.74 £26.13
Median % change year-on-year +3.65% -20.60% +37.50%
75th Percentile £75.00 £22.34 £35.00
90th Percentile - £23.08 £60.80
England median hourly rate £21.35 £21.95 £24.09
% change year-on-year -2.73% -8.88% +19.85%

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 1,805 1,118 1,058
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 52.70% 63.63% 56.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,106 706 688
10th Percentile £319 £225 £218
25th Percentile £410 £386 £374
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £503
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -5.47% -4.29%
75th Percentile £582 £575 £626
90th Percentile £675 £638 £738
England median daily rate £525 £500 £538
% change year-on-year +5.00% -6.98% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 144 88 58
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.55 £18.43 £15.16
Median hourly rate £26.27 £29.17 £23.16
Median % change year-on-year -9.93% +25.93% +12.98%
75th Percentile £38.13 £40.30 £31.08
90th Percentile £67.84 £50.00 £49.13
England median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +25.25% -34.02% +38.62%

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 4 September 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 4 September 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 4 September 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
Shropshire +6 206 £500 -2.91% 44
Birmingham -7 82 £525 +10.53% 136
Coventry +8 42 £425 -8.11% 4
Warwickshire -11 19 £450 -6.74% 4
Solihull -15 16 £493 +6.49% 4
Staffordshire +5 15 £850 +51.79% 4
Worcestershire +7 10 £450 -
Dudley -3 3 £375 -
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 34 (8.06%) SAS
2 26 (6.16%) Confluence
3 17 (4.03%) Apache Airflow
4 12 (2.84%) SharePoint
5 5 (1.18%) Tuxedo
6 4 (0.95%) Apache
6 4 (0.95%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.24%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.24%) IIS
8 1 (0.24%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 9 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 13 (3.08%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (1.90%) ContrOCC
3 7 (1.66%) Oracle Receivables
4 6 (1.42%) Oracle General Ledger
4 6 (1.42%) Oracle Payables
5 5 (1.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 4 (0.95%) SAP PSCD
7 3 (0.71%) SAP ERP
8 2 (0.47%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.47%) Oracle Payroll
9 1 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
9 1 (0.24%) Oracle Cash Management
9 1 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
9 1 (0.24%) Primavera
9 1 (0.24%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.24%) SAP HR
9 1 (0.24%) SAP Hybris
9 1 (0.24%) SAP IS-U
9 1 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 95 (22.51%) AWS
2 93 (22.04%) Azure
3 38 (9.00%) Azure DevOps
4 34 (8.06%) Power Platform
5 32 (7.58%) Power Automate
6 27 (6.40%) Dynamics 365
7 18 (4.27%) GitHub
7 18 (4.27%) PowerApps
8 13 (3.08%) Azure Data Factory
8 13 (3.08%) Serverless
9 11 (2.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 11 (2.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 11 (2.61%) PaaS
10 10 (2.37%) Amazon EC2
10 10 (2.37%) Amazon S3
10 10 (2.37%) Azure Functions
11 8 (1.90%) AWS KMS
11 8 (1.90%) GitHub Actions
11 8 (1.90%) Route 53
11 8 (1.90%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.18%) Firewall
2 2 (0.47%) LAN
2 2 (0.47%) SSL
2 2 (0.47%) VPN
2 2 (0.47%) WAN
3 1 (0.24%) DNS
3 1 (0.24%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.24%) Internet
3 1 (0.24%) SMTP
3 1 (0.24%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (5.45%) Data Warehouse
1 23 (5.45%) Pentaho
2 21 (4.98%) Oracle Database
3 20 (4.74%) SQL Server
4 18 (4.27%) Power BI
4 18 (4.27%) SAS Visual Analytics
5 17 (4.03%) SAS Enterprise Guide
6 16 (3.79%) PostgreSQL
7 15 (3.55%) Metadata
7 15 (3.55%) Relational Database
8 12 (2.84%) Data Lake
9 10 (2.37%) NoSQL
9 10 (2.37%) Oracle Reports
10 8 (1.90%) Amazon Aurora
10 8 (1.90%) Amazon RDS
10 8 (1.90%) DynamoDB
11 7 (1.66%) Ingres
11 7 (1.66%) MongoDB
12 6 (1.42%) RDBMS
13 5 (1.18%) BusinessObjects
Development Applications
1 39 (9.24%) Git
2 38 (9.00%) JIRA
3 30 (7.11%) Jenkins
4 24 (5.69%) GitLab
5 17 (4.03%) JUnit
6 16 (3.79%) SonarQube
7 15 (3.55%) Mockito
7 15 (3.55%) Selenium
8 14 (3.32%) Maven
9 13 (3.08%) Postman
10 10 (2.37%) WebDriver
11 9 (2.13%) Cucumber
11 9 (2.13%) Cypress.io
11 9 (2.13%) Team Foundation Server
12 7 (1.66%) JMeter
13 6 (1.42%) Bitbucket Server
13 6 (1.42%) DbUnit
13 6 (1.42%) jMock
14 5 (1.18%) Oracle Forms
15 3 (0.71%) Visual Studio
General
1 136 (32.23%) Social Skills
2 62 (14.69%) Analytical Skills
2 62 (14.69%) Finance
3 37 (8.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 29 (6.87%) Local Government
5 23 (5.45%) Influencing Skills
6 14 (3.32%) Organisational Skills
7 11 (2.61%) Military
8 8 (1.90%) Legal
9 7 (1.66%) Presentation Skills
10 6 (1.42%) Police
11 5 (1.18%) Banking
11 5 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.95%) General Ledger
13 2 (0.47%) Advertising
13 2 (0.47%) Law
13 2 (0.47%) Manufacturing
13 2 (0.47%) Retail
14 1 (0.24%) Billing
14 1 (0.24%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 77 (18.25%) Developer
2 65 (15.40%) Senior
3 62 (14.69%) Architect
4 49 (11.61%) Analyst
5 48 (11.37%) Lead
6 43 (10.19%) Data Engineer
7 37 (8.77%) Data Architect
8 23 (5.45%) Business Analyst
9 22 (5.21%) Java Developer
10 21 (4.98%) Senior Developer
11 15 (3.55%) Dynamics 365 Developer
12 13 (3.08%) Test Analyst
13 12 (2.84%) Senior Analyst
14 11 (2.61%) DevOps Engineer
14 11 (2.61%) Senior Java Developer
15 10 (2.37%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
15 10 (2.37%) HR Director
15 10 (2.37%) Release Manager
15 10 (2.37%) Technical Architect
16 9 (2.13%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (6.64%) SOAP
2 27 (6.40%) REST
3 24 (5.69%) Spring
4 21 (4.98%) Spring Boot
5 19 (4.50%) JSON
6 17 (4.03%) Oracle Fusion
7 15 (3.55%) ActiveMQ
7 15 (3.55%) RESTful
8 14 (3.32%) AngularJS
8 14 (3.32%) Hibernate
8 14 (3.32%) JPA
8 14 (3.32%) Web Services
9 13 (3.08%) Spring Cloud
10 11 (2.61%) Gherkin
10 11 (2.61%) XML
11 10 (2.37%) Kafka
11 10 (2.37%) Terraform
12 8 (1.90%) Playwright
12 8 (1.90%) React
12 8 (1.90%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 34 (8.06%) Product Ownership
2 32 (7.58%) Cloud Native
3 21 (4.98%) Management Information System
4 14 (3.32%) Legacy Systems
5 13 (3.08%) Enterprise Software
6 10 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
7 9 (2.13%) Data Structures
8 7 (1.66%) Taxonomies
9 6 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
9 6 (1.42%) Data Fabric
9 6 (1.42%) Enterprise Cloud
9 6 (1.42%) Low-Code
9 6 (1.42%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.18%) BYOD
10 5 (1.18%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (0.71%) Autonomous Agent
11 3 (0.71%) Freedom of Information
11 3 (0.71%) NHS
12 2 (0.47%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.61%) Linux
2 8 (1.90%) Unix
3 5 (1.18%) Windows
4 2 (0.47%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 218 (51.66%) Agile
2 110 (26.07%) DevOps
3 105 (24.88%) Continuous Improvement
4 100 (23.70%) CI/CD
5 99 (23.46%) Stakeholder Management
6 82 (19.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 76 (18.01%) Analytics
8 74 (17.54%) Scrum
9 73 (17.30%) Problem-Solving
10 67 (15.88%) Migration
11 58 (13.74%) Data Integration
11 58 (13.74%) Decision-Making
12 57 (13.51%) Data Modelling
13 50 (11.85%) Technical Leadership
14 44 (10.43%) Digital Transformation Programme
15 43 (10.19%) AI
16 42 (9.95%) Microservices
16 42 (9.95%) Test Automation
17 41 (9.72%) ETL
17 41 (9.72%) Sprint Planning
Programming Languages
1 69 (16.35%) SQL
2 46 (10.90%) Java
3 34 (8.06%) JavaScript
4 21 (4.98%) C#
5 20 (4.74%) Python
6 13 (3.08%) Scala
6 13 (3.08%) TypeScript
7 9 (2.13%) PL/SQL
8 8 (1.90%) VB
8 8 (1.90%) VB6
9 5 (1.18%) C
10 4 (0.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 4 (0.95%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.71%) ABAP
11 3 (0.71%) Bash
11 3 (0.71%) Kotlin
11 3 (0.71%) R
11 3 (0.71%) VBA
12 2 (0.47%) Bicep
12 2 (0.47%) ProC
Qualifications
1 194 (45.97%) Security Cleared
2 170 (40.28%) SC Cleared
3 69 (16.35%) BPSS Clearance
4 21 (4.98%) Microsoft Certification
5 19 (4.50%) Degree
6 13 (3.08%) ISTQB
7 6 (1.42%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 4 (0.95%) ACCA
8 4 (0.95%) Azure Certification
8 4 (0.95%) CIMA
8 4 (0.95%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (0.95%) SAS Certification
9 3 (0.71%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.71%) CCA
9 3 (0.71%) CCAB
9 3 (0.71%) CISM
9 3 (0.71%) CISSP
9 3 (0.71%) DV Cleared
10 2 (0.47%) APMG
11 1 (0.24%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (10.66%) QA
2 40 (9.48%) Accessibility
3 34 (8.06%) Data Quality
4 19 (4.50%) WCAG
5 16 (3.79%) GDPR
6 8 (1.90%) SLA
7 7 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (1.18%) GRC
9 4 (0.95%) NCSC
10 3 (0.71%) PMO
11 2 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.47%) NIST
12 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.24%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 36 (8.53%) Docker
2 5 (1.18%) Postfix
3 4 (0.95%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.24%) etcd
4 1 (0.24%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 26 (6.16%) Kubernetes
2 18 (4.27%) Grafana
3 15 (3.55%) Prometheus
4 4 (0.95%) Ansible
5 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.24%) CASB
6 1 (0.24%) Fluentd
6 1 (0.24%) SCCM
6 1 (0.24%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 69 (16.35%) Oracle
2 47 (11.14%) Microsoft
3 23 (5.45%) Talend
4 13 (3.08%) Denodo
5 10 (2.37%) Databricks
5 10 (2.37%) Informatica
6 9 (2.13%) ServiceNow
7 8 (1.90%) Jaspersoft
7 8 (1.90%) Liquidlogic
7 8 (1.90%) SAP
8 7 (1.66%) Atlassian
8 7 (1.66%) Pega
9 6 (1.42%) Dynatrace
10 5 (1.18%) Actian
11 4 (0.95%) Blue Prism
12 3 (0.71%) UiPath
13 2 (0.47%) Alteryx
13 2 (0.47%) MuleSoft
13 2 (0.47%) OneLogin
13 2 (0.47%) Sparx