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 have cited Public Sector over the 6 months to 10 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period over the previous 2 years.

6 months to
10 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 14 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +3
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 4,118 5,643 7,793
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 9.58% 9.75% 8.93%
As % of the General category 16.50% 16.65% 15.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,756 4,288 6,070
10th Percentile £278 £275 £263
25th Percentile £413 £415 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% +5.00% +5.82%
75th Percentile £633 £625 £588
90th Percentile £725 £713 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 180 89 177
10th Percentile £12.75 £13.91 £13.00
25th Percentile £15.39 £16.85 £16.00
Median hourly rate £21.00 £20.00 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% - +5.54%
75th Percentile £49.25 £26.00 £27.00
90th Percentile £68.83 £47.00 £63.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.74 £20.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +3.70% - +11.11%

All General Skills
UK

Public Sector is in the General Skills category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for common skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 24,955 33,889 49,124
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.03% 58.54% 56.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,747 23,499 34,070
10th Percentile £275 £313 £320
25th Percentile £413 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +2.33% +7.50%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £650
90th Percentile £775 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +10.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,935 1,038 1,413
10th Percentile £12.76 £13.41 £12.50
25th Percentile £15.50 £17.75 £15.00
Median hourly rate £30.16 £33.91 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.06% +54.14% -2.22%
75th Percentile £52.89 £61.25 £47.40
90th Percentile £65.55 £72.50 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £29.00 £18.82
% change year-on-year -1.72% +54.07% -5.50%

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 10 May 2024.

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 10 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Public Sector in the UK

Public Sector
Top 17 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 10 May 2024. 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 -1 3,200 £525 -2.33% 1,007
UK excluding London -1 2,174 £500 - 760
London +9 1,501 £530 -5.78% 313
Work from Home -2 1,483 £515 -4.63% 521
Scotland +1 594 £454 -0.49% 78
North of England -6 479 £520 -1.05% 188
South East -3 423 £453 -9.50% 171
South West 0 376 £570 +1.33% 104
North West -1 315 £525 +1.60% 111
Midlands -3 229 £450 -10.00% 126
West Midlands -7 169 £500 -6.98% 95
Yorkshire -10 141 £525 -3.89% 56
East Midlands -7 59 £310 -47.41% 30
East of England -39 57 £413 -31.25% 64
North East -1 37 £525 -4.55% 21
Wales -3 27 £500 +17.65% 31
Northern Ireland +9 16 £625 +357.88% 15

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
1 151 (3.67%) SharePoint
2 118 (2.87%) Confluence
3 71 (1.72%) Microsoft Exchange
4 40 (0.97%) CMS
5 18 (0.44%) nginx
6 16 (0.39%) ArcGIS
7 15 (0.36%) Apache
8 13 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2013
8 13 (0.32%) Skype for Business
9 11 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2003
9 11 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2007
9 11 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2010
10 10 (0.24%) Apache Airflow
10 10 (0.24%) IIS
11 9 (0.22%) Apache Spark
12 7 (0.17%) JBoss
12 7 (0.17%) Site Server
12 7 (0.17%) WordPress
13 6 (0.15%) SAS
14 5 (0.12%) OpenStack
Applications
1 119 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
2 104 (2.53%) Microsoft Excel
3 41 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 31 (0.75%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.19%) Sketch
8 6 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 5 (0.12%) Trello
10 4 (0.097%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.073%) Acrobat
11 3 (0.073%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.049%) Adobe Captivate
12 2 (0.049%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.049%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.049%) Camtasia
12 2 (0.049%) InVision
12 2 (0.049%) Lectora
12 2 (0.049%) UserZoom
13 1 (0.024%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 24 (0.58%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 18 (0.44%) Dynamics CRM
3 17 (0.41%) Primavera
4 16 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
5 15 (0.36%) Dynamics AX
6 14 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
7 11 (0.27%) SAP PSCD
7 11 (0.27%) Teamcenter
8 10 (0.24%) Oracle Cash Management
8 10 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
9 8 (0.19%) SAP BRIM
9 8 (0.19%) SAP Hybris
10 7 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 6 (0.15%) Loan IQ
11 6 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
11 6 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
11 6 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
11 6 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
12 5 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
13 4 (0.097%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 587 (14.25%) Azure
2 369 (8.96%) AWS
3 221 (5.37%) Microsoft 365
4 187 (4.54%) Azure DevOps
5 180 (4.37%) Power Platform
6 97 (2.36%) Serverless
7 82 (1.99%) PaaS
7 82 (1.99%) SaaS
8 72 (1.75%) Entra ID
9 67 (1.63%) Amazon S3
10 66 (1.60%) IaaS
11 63 (1.53%) AWS Lambda
11 63 (1.53%) GitHub
12 57 (1.38%) Cloud Computing
13 53 (1.29%) OCI
13 53 (1.29%) Power Automate
14 48 (1.17%) Dynamics 365
15 47 (1.14%) GCP
16 45 (1.09%) PowerApps
17 39 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 143 (3.47%) Firewall
2 116 (2.82%) WAN
3 93 (2.26%) LAN
4 57 (1.38%) VPN
5 51 (1.24%) Network Security
6 46 (1.12%) Wireless
7 44 (1.07%) DNS
8 33 (0.80%) BGP
9 28 (0.68%) IPsec
9 28 (0.68%) SAN
10 27 (0.66%) Internet
10 27 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
11 24 (0.58%) Intranet
12 23 (0.56%) DHCP
12 23 (0.56%) TCP/IP
13 22 (0.53%) MPLS
13 22 (0.53%) VoIP
14 21 (0.51%) HTTP
15 20 (0.49%) Intrusion Detection
15 20 (0.49%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 144 (3.50%) SQL Server
2 130 (3.16%) Power BI
3 120 (2.91%) PostgreSQL
4 83 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
5 66 (1.60%) Metadata
6 57 (1.38%) Relational Database
7 47 (1.14%) Oracle Database
8 46 (1.12%) Data Lake
9 43 (1.04%) NoSQL
10 41 (1.00%) GIS
11 36 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
12 35 (0.85%) MongoDB
13 31 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
14 30 (0.73%) MySQL
15 29 (0.70%) Big Data
16 24 (0.58%) Metadata Repository
17 21 (0.51%) Data Vault
17 21 (0.51%) Tableau
18 20 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
19 18 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 179 (4.35%) JIRA
2 100 (2.43%) Git
3 66 (1.60%) Jenkins
4 40 (0.97%) GitLab
5 35 (0.85%) Selenium
6 31 (0.75%) JUnit
6 31 (0.75%) Visual Studio
7 22 (0.53%) Cypress.io
8 17 (0.41%) Cucumber
9 16 (0.39%) ERwin
9 16 (0.39%) Postman
9 16 (0.39%) PVCS
10 15 (0.36%) Maven
11 14 (0.34%) JMeter
12 13 (0.32%) SpecFlow
12 13 (0.32%) WebDriver
13 9 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
14 8 (0.19%) Artifactory
14 8 (0.19%) Rational DOORS
15 7 (0.17%) Oracle APEX
General
1 839 (20.37%) Social Skills
2 695 (16.88%) Finance
3 333 (8.09%) Telecoms
4 323 (7.84%) Marketing
5 314 (7.63%) Analytical Skills
6 307 (7.46%) Manufacturing
7 303 (7.36%) Electronics
8 100 (2.43%) Local Government
9 79 (1.92%) Presentation Skills
10 73 (1.77%) Organisational Skills
11 51 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
12 45 (1.09%) Legal
13 43 (1.04%) Back Office
14 41 (1.00%) Police
15 38 (0.92%) Retail
16 37 (0.90%) Publishing
17 33 (0.80%) Military
18 30 (0.73%) Banking
18 30 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 30 (0.73%) Law
Job Titles
1 571 (13.87%) Architect
2 501 (12.17%) Senior
3 437 (10.61%) Developer
4 403 (9.79%) Analyst
5 271 (6.58%) Lead
6 253 (6.14%) Project Manager
7 234 (5.68%) Consultant
8 146 (3.55%) Business Analyst
9 125 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
10 116 (2.82%) Network Engineer
11 97 (2.36%) Data Engineer
12 92 (2.23%) Delivery Manager
13 90 (2.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 90 (2.19%) Senior Developer
14 88 (2.14%) Technical Architect
15 86 (2.09%) DevOps Engineer
16 85 (2.06%) Data Architect
17 84 (2.04%) Senior Manager
18 81 (1.97%) Designer
19 80 (1.94%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (3.62%) .NET
2 109 (2.65%) REST
3 99 (2.40%) HTML
4 85 (2.06%) CSS
5 76 (1.85%) React
6 74 (1.80%) Node.js
7 72 (1.75%) Spring
8 68 (1.65%) XML
9 65 (1.58%) Spring Boot
10 50 (1.21%) JSON
11 46 (1.12%) Web Services
12 42 (1.02%) AngularJS
13 40 (0.97%) RESTful
13 40 (0.97%) SAML
14 39 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
15 38 (0.92%) Kafka
16 37 (0.90%) OpenID
17 33 (0.80%) OAuth
18 32 (0.78%) .NET Core
19 31 (0.75%) AWS CDK
Miscellaneous
1 150 (3.64%) Management Information System
2 122 (2.96%) Product Ownership
3 99 (2.40%) Data Centre
4 90 (2.19%) NHS
5 80 (1.94%) Onboarding
6 49 (1.19%) Data Structures
6 49 (1.19%) PKI
7 45 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
7 45 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
8 40 (0.97%) Replication
9 36 (0.87%) Data Protection Act
10 33 (0.80%) Greenfield Project
11 32 (0.78%) Cloud Native
11 32 (0.78%) Virtual Team
12 31 (0.75%) Driving Licence
13 30 (0.73%) Cyber Threat
13 30 (0.73%) Reference Data
14 27 (0.66%) Public Cloud
15 26 (0.63%) Analytical Mindset
16 25 (0.61%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 315 (7.65%) Windows
2 187 (4.54%) Linux
3 90 (2.19%) Windows Server
4 81 (1.97%) Windows 10
5 61 (1.48%) Unix
6 36 (0.87%) Windows Server 2016
7 34 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
8 32 (0.78%) Apple iOS
9 31 (0.75%) Android
10 26 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 23 (0.56%) Windows Server 2012
12 17 (0.41%) Windows 7
13 14 (0.34%) Windows Server 2008
14 11 (0.27%) Windows Server 2003
15 10 (0.24%) Mac OS X
15 10 (0.24%) Ubuntu
15 10 (0.24%) zOS
16 7 (0.17%) VMS
17 6 (0.15%) Windows Vista
18 5 (0.12%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 883 (21.44%) Agile
2 469 (11.39%) Business Intelligence
3 441 (10.71%) DevOps
4 375 (9.11%) Programme Management
5 365 (8.86%) Stakeholder Management
6 344 (8.35%) Problem-Solving
7 335 (8.14%) Project Management
8 318 (7.72%) Migration
9 305 (7.41%) Digital Marketing
10 240 (5.83%) CI/CD
10 240 (5.83%) ITIL
11 225 (5.46%) Roadmaps
12 207 (5.03%) Project Delivery
13 203 (4.93%) Scrum
14 200 (4.86%) PRINCE2
15 191 (4.64%) Change Management
16 179 (4.35%) Service Management
17 177 (4.30%) Cybersecurity
18 175 (4.25%) Analytics
18 175 (4.25%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 281 (6.82%) SQL
2 229 (5.56%) Python
3 197 (4.78%) Java
4 165 (4.01%) JavaScript
5 146 (3.55%) PowerShell
6 144 (3.50%) C#
7 71 (1.72%) TypeScript
8 45 (1.09%) Bash
9 41 (1.00%) C++
10 39 (0.95%) C
10 39 (0.95%) PL/SQL
11 29 (0.70%) T-SQL
12 27 (0.66%) Bicep
13 25 (0.61%) Shell Script
14 23 (0.56%) PHP
15 20 (0.49%) Ruby
16 16 (0.39%) R
17 15 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 14 (0.34%) ABAP
18 14 (0.34%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,709 (41.50%) Security Cleared
2 1,139 (27.66%) SC Cleared
3 415 (10.08%) DV Cleared
4 307 (7.46%) Degree
5 69 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
6 60 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (1.43%) Microsoft Certification
8 46 (1.12%) CCNA
9 39 (0.95%) CISSP
9 39 (0.95%) ITIL Certification
10 35 (0.85%) Master's Degree
11 34 (0.83%) Computer Science Degree
12 31 (0.75%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
13 28 (0.68%) CCNP
14 20 (0.49%) MCSE
14 20 (0.49%) PMP
15 18 (0.44%) CISM
15 18 (0.44%) HNC
15 18 (0.44%) ISTQB
15 18 (0.44%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 117 (2.84%) Accessibility
2 103 (2.50%) QA
3 89 (2.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 84 (2.04%) Disclosure Scotland
5 74 (1.80%) SLA
6 71 (1.72%) PMO
7 64 (1.55%) Data Quality
8 58 (1.41%) GDPR
9 52 (1.26%) NIST
10 32 (0.78%) NCSC
11 29 (0.70%) WCAG
12 15 (0.36%) JSP 440
12 15 (0.36%) PCI DSS
13 13 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
13 13 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
14 11 (0.27%) HL7
14 11 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 10 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 9 (0.22%) ISO 22301
16 9 (0.22%) NIST 800
System Software
1 231 (5.61%) Active Directory
2 110 (2.67%) Docker
3 64 (1.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.80%) VMware NSX
5 24 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
6 22 (0.53%) Hyper-V
7 16 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
8 15 (0.36%) NFS
9 14 (0.34%) Firmware
10 12 (0.29%) vSphere
11 10 (0.24%) BitLocker
11 10 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
12 8 (0.19%) HDFS
12 8 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.12%) ACF2
13 5 (0.12%) RACF
14 4 (0.097%) IAG
14 4 (0.097%) Time Sharing Option
15 3 (0.073%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.073%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 137 (3.33%) Terraform
2 116 (2.82%) Kubernetes
3 87 (2.11%) Ansible
4 43 (1.04%) SCCM
5 32 (0.78%) Grafana
6 30 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
7 29 (0.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 24 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
9 20 (0.49%) Puppet
9 20 (0.49%) vCenter Server
10 16 (0.39%) FortiGate
11 15 (0.36%) Prometheus
12 14 (0.34%) Kibana
12 14 (0.34%) Progress Chef
13 10 (0.24%) OPNET
13 10 (0.24%) SCOM
14 9 (0.22%) Red Hat Satellite
15 8 (0.19%) vRealize
16 7 (0.17%) Packer
16 7 (0.17%) VxRail
Vendors
1 560 (13.60%) Microsoft
2 383 (9.30%) SAP
3 195 (4.74%) Oracle
4 118 (2.87%) ServiceNow
5 101 (2.45%) VMware
6 97 (2.36%) Cisco
7 61 (1.48%) Dell
8 51 (1.24%) Juniper
9 43 (1.04%) Google
10 41 (1.00%) Sparx
11 40 (0.97%) Atlassian
12 36 (0.87%) Palo Alto
13 31 (0.75%) Adobe
14 29 (0.70%) Splunk
15 27 (0.66%) IBM
16 26 (0.63%) Citrix
17 24 (0.58%) Fortinet
18 23 (0.56%) Red Hat
18 23 (0.56%) Veeam
19 22 (0.53%) CyberArk