Continuous Improvement Contract Job Trends in England

Continual Improvement
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Continuous Improvement skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 34 53
Rank change year-on-year +13 +19 +12
Contract jobs citing Continuous Improvement 4,015 1,534 1,236
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.76% 5.52% 3.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.29% 6.08% 4.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,479 981 767
10th Percentile £325 £313 £353
25th Percentile £425 £402 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -5.19%
75th Percentile £610 £605 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 237 74 57
10th Percentile £16.75 £6.00 £18.35
25th Percentile £22.20 £15.13 £26.73
Median hourly rate £45.50 £28.75 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.26% -45.24% -16.00%
75th Percentile £83.00 £57.81 £63.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £43.65 £28.79 £55.00
% change year-on-year +51.62% -47.65% -13.04%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

Continuous Improvement falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 39,024 25,239 28,517
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.10% 90.81% 85.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,245 16,077 18,561
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £628 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,548 1,443 1,638
10th Percentile £14.42 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.87 £18.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.75
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.17% +3.59%
75th Percentile £68.55 £50.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.13 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +67.50% -38.57% -1.35%

Continuous Improvement
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Continuous Improvement relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Continuous Improvement job vacancy trend in England

Continuous Improvement
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Continuous Improvement.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Continuous Improvement in England over the 6 months to 16 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Continuous Improvement in England

Continuous Improvement
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Continuous Improvement.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Continuous Improvement in England over the 6 months to 16 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Continuous Improvement in England

Continuous Improvement
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Continuous Improvement within the England region over the 6 months to 16 August 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
London +17 1,658 £525 - 739
North of England +8 658 £500 +11.11% 636
South East +21 638 £525 +3.70% 733
Midlands +11 532 £475 +14.46% 498
West Midlands +16 437 £481 -3.80% 307
South West +13 323 £525 +5.00% 339
North West +9 299 £500 +12.74% 317
Yorkshire +17 292 £500 +0.50% 215
East of England +15 142 £500 - 237
East Midlands -1 89 £425 +18.72% 191
North East +4 73 £475 -9.52% 120
Continuous Improvement
UK

Continuous Improvement
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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
1 203 (5.06%) Confluence
2 167 (4.16%) SharePoint
3 42 (1.05%) Microsoft Exchange
4 36 (0.90%) SAS
5 25 (0.62%) CMS
6 23 (0.57%) Apache Spark
7 22 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 13 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
9 12 (0.30%) Apache
10 11 (0.27%) WebLogic
11 8 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 7 (0.17%) IIS
12 7 (0.17%) WordPress
13 6 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
14 4 (0.100%) Tuxedo
15 3 (0.075%) Appian
15 3 (0.075%) ArcGIS
15 3 (0.075%) Camunda
15 3 (0.075%) Jupyter
15 3 (0.075%) OpenStack
Applications
1 226 (5.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 118 (2.94%) Microsoft Office
3 81 (2.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 75 (1.87%) Microsoft Project
5 36 (0.90%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 8 (0.20%) Navisworks
8 8 (0.20%) Revit
8 8 (0.20%) Trello
9 6 (0.15%) CATIA
10 5 (0.12%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.12%) ProjectWise
11 2 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.050%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.050%) InDesign
11 2 (0.050%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.050%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.025%) EngageOne
12 1 (0.025%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 82 (2.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 20 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.45%) NetSuite
4 15 (0.37%) Primavera
5 14 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
5 14 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
6 13 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
7 10 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
8 9 (0.22%) Workday HCM
9 8 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
9 8 (0.20%) SAP SD
10 7 (0.17%) Actimize
10 7 (0.17%) Magento
11 6 (0.15%) iTrent
11 6 (0.15%) Loan IQ
11 6 (0.15%) NEC Housing
11 6 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
11 6 (0.15%) SAP MM
11 6 (0.15%) SAP QM
12 5 (0.12%) Integrated Workplace Management System
Cloud Services
1 813 (20.25%) Azure
2 647 (16.11%) AWS
3 326 (8.12%) Power Platform
4 235 (5.85%) Azure DevOps
5 224 (5.58%) GCP
6 203 (5.06%) GitHub
6 203 (5.06%) Microsoft 365
7 146 (3.64%) Entra ID
8 120 (2.99%) GitHub Actions
9 115 (2.86%) Serverless
10 110 (2.74%) SaaS
11 85 (2.12%) Dynamics 365
12 81 (2.02%) AWS Lambda
13 76 (1.89%) Amazon S3
14 70 (1.74%) Power Automate
15 68 (1.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 60 (1.49%) Amazon EKS
17 54 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
17 54 (1.34%) PowerApps
18 53 (1.32%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 111 (2.76%) Network Security
2 101 (2.52%) Firewall
3 94 (2.34%) DNS
4 56 (1.39%) WAN
5 52 (1.30%) LAN
6 47 (1.17%) VPN
7 45 (1.12%) TCP/IP
8 43 (1.07%) DHCP
9 26 (0.65%) BGP
10 25 (0.62%) SD-WAN
10 25 (0.62%) Wireless
11 23 (0.57%) OSPF
11 23 (0.57%) VLAN
12 21 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
13 19 (0.47%) VXLAN
14 15 (0.37%) Cisco Nexus
15 14 (0.35%) NX-OS
16 13 (0.32%) VoIP
17 12 (0.30%) MPLS
18 10 (0.25%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 258 (6.43%) Power BI
2 92 (2.29%) Metadata
3 86 (2.14%) SQL Server
4 72 (1.79%) Data Warehouse
5 71 (1.77%) PostgreSQL
6 60 (1.49%) Relational Database
7 46 (1.15%) Tableau
8 37 (0.92%) NoSQL
9 31 (0.77%) MongoDB
10 30 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
10 30 (0.75%) Power Query
11 24 (0.60%) Big Data
12 23 (0.57%) Data Lake
12 23 (0.57%) Delta Lake
12 23 (0.57%) MySQL
12 23 (0.57%) Oracle Database
13 22 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
14 19 (0.47%) Pentaho
15 17 (0.42%) BigQuery
16 15 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 397 (9.89%) JIRA
2 212 (5.28%) Git
3 188 (4.68%) Jenkins
4 124 (3.09%) GitLab
5 76 (1.89%) Selenium
6 60 (1.49%) Cucumber
7 37 (0.92%) JUnit
8 32 (0.80%) Postman
9 30 (0.75%) Cypress.io
10 29 (0.72%) Rational DOORS
11 27 (0.67%) WebDriver
12 25 (0.62%) JMeter
13 24 (0.60%) REST Assured
14 22 (0.55%) Bitbucket
15 21 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
16 18 (0.45%) Maven
17 17 (0.42%) SonarQube
18 16 (0.40%) Visual Studio
19 15 (0.37%) Gradle
20 14 (0.35%) Zephyr
General
1 1,777 (44.26%) Social Skills
2 1,049 (26.13%) Finance
3 877 (21.84%) Analytical Skills
4 641 (15.97%) Public Sector
5 283 (7.05%) Banking
6 202 (5.03%) Organisational Skills
7 141 (3.51%) Influencing Skills
8 139 (3.46%) Legal
9 121 (3.01%) Retail
10 109 (2.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 100 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
12 98 (2.44%) Manufacturing
13 94 (2.34%) Aerospace
14 84 (2.09%) Local Government
15 77 (1.92%) Law
16 65 (1.62%) Military
17 64 (1.59%) Marketing
18 59 (1.47%) Telecoms
19 53 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
20 46 (1.15%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 491 (12.23%) Lead
2 428 (10.66%) Senior
3 427 (10.64%) Analyst
4 321 (8.00%) Developer
5 254 (6.33%) Architect
6 162 (4.03%) Consultant
7 151 (3.76%) Delivery Manager
8 139 (3.46%) Project Manager
9 108 (2.69%) Product Manager
10 103 (2.57%) DevOps Engineer
11 94 (2.34%) Data Engineer
12 90 (2.24%) Business Analyst
13 85 (2.12%) Scrum Master
14 76 (1.89%) Senior Manager
15 74 (1.84%) Software Engineer
16 70 (1.74%) Data Analyst
17 69 (1.72%) Solutions Architect
18 67 (1.67%) IT Manager
19 66 (1.64%) Java Developer
19 66 (1.64%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 171 (4.26%) REST
2 124 (3.09%) Spring
3 109 (2.71%) RESTful
4 105 (2.62%) React
5 100 (2.49%) Kafka
6 96 (2.39%) .NET
6 96 (2.39%) Spring Boot
7 67 (1.67%) Node.js
8 66 (1.64%) HTML
9 62 (1.54%) Playwright
10 56 (1.39%) CSS
11 53 (1.32%) JSON
12 52 (1.30%) AngularJS
13 50 (1.25%) Middleware
14 45 (1.12%) Web Services
15 44 (1.10%) SOAP
16 39 (0.97%) OAuth
17 37 (0.92%) Oracle Fusion
18 33 (0.82%) PySpark
19 31 (0.77%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 441 (10.98%) Product Ownership
2 240 (5.98%) Onboarding
3 228 (5.68%) Cloud Native
4 159 (3.96%) Management Information System
5 99 (2.47%) Data Protection Act
6 91 (2.27%) Enterprise Software
7 88 (2.19%) Legacy Systems
8 84 (2.09%) Distributed Systems
9 77 (1.92%) Data Centre
10 70 (1.74%) Data Structures
11 68 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
11 68 (1.69%) Operational Technology
12 66 (1.64%) Virtual Team
13 62 (1.54%) CMDB
13 62 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
14 60 (1.49%) Security Posture
15 50 (1.25%) AI Agents
16 49 (1.22%) Security Operations Centre
17 45 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
18 42 (1.05%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 284 (7.07%) Windows
2 205 (5.11%) Linux
3 64 (1.59%) Windows Server
4 54 (1.34%) Windows 10
5 50 (1.25%) Unix
6 41 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 33 (0.82%) Android
8 27 (0.67%) Apple iOS
9 24 (0.60%) Mac OS
10 13 (0.32%) Solaris
11 11 (0.27%) AIX
12 9 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
13 5 (0.12%) Amazon Linux
13 5 (0.12%) HPUX
13 5 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.12%) SUSE
13 5 (0.12%) zOS
14 4 (0.100%) VMS
15 2 (0.050%) CentOS
15 2 (0.050%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,490 (37.11%) Agile
2 1,070 (26.65%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,040 (25.90%) Problem-Solving
4 806 (20.07%) DevOps
4 806 (20.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 735 (18.31%) CI/CD
6 645 (16.06%) Decision-Making
7 514 (12.80%) Roadmaps
8 507 (12.63%) AI
9 435 (10.83%) Analytics
10 416 (10.36%) ITIL
11 399 (9.94%) Scrum
12 397 (9.89%) Change Management
13 393 (9.79%) Test Automation
14 362 (9.02%) Mentoring
15 335 (8.34%) Cybersecurity
16 334 (8.32%) Risk Management
17 331 (8.24%) Project Delivery
18 317 (7.90%) Infrastructure as Code
19 316 (7.87%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 503 (12.53%) Python
2 474 (11.81%) SQL
3 268 (6.67%) Java
4 189 (4.71%) PowerShell
5 171 (4.26%) JavaScript
6 129 (3.21%) Bash
7 121 (3.01%) C#
8 92 (2.29%) TypeScript
9 41 (1.02%) PL/SQL
10 39 (0.97%) Bicep
11 29 (0.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 23 (0.57%) Apex Code
12 23 (0.57%) Kotlin
13 22 (0.55%) Scala
14 21 (0.52%) Go
14 21 (0.52%) Shell Script
14 21 (0.52%) VBA
15 20 (0.50%) T-SQL
16 18 (0.45%) Groovy
16 18 (0.45%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,154 (28.74%) Security Cleared
2 828 (20.62%) SC Cleared
3 409 (10.19%) Degree
4 215 (5.35%) DV Cleared
5 123 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
6 101 (2.52%) PMI Certification
7 94 (2.34%) PMP
8 92 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
9 80 (1.99%) CISSP
10 62 (1.54%) AWS Certification
11 61 (1.52%) Azure Certification
12 54 (1.34%) Cisco Certification
13 47 (1.17%) CISM
14 39 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
15 34 (0.85%) ISTQB
16 33 (0.82%) CCNP
17 32 (0.80%) ACCA
18 31 (0.77%) Master's Degree
19 29 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
20 28 (0.70%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 348 (8.67%) QA
2 302 (7.52%) Data Quality
3 190 (4.73%) PMO
4 152 (3.79%) Accessibility
5 112 (2.79%) GDPR
6 106 (2.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 97 (2.42%) SLA
8 91 (2.27%) NIST
9 59 (1.47%) GRC
10 55 (1.37%) NCSC
11 33 (0.82%) WCAG
12 23 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
13 20 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
14 15 (0.37%) PCI DSS
14 15 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 13 (0.32%) ISO 22301
16 12 (0.30%) COBIT
17 11 (0.27%) NIST 800
18 10 (0.25%) ISO 19650
19 9 (0.22%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 260 (6.48%) Docker
2 179 (4.46%) Active Directory
3 61 (1.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
5 21 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
5 21 (0.52%) vSphere
6 20 (0.50%) VMware NSX
7 16 (0.40%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.37%) IAG
9 12 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
10 7 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
11 3 (0.075%) Firmware
11 3 (0.075%) VMware Workstation
12 2 (0.050%) FreeRADIUS
12 2 (0.050%) GPFS
12 2 (0.050%) NFS
12 2 (0.050%) Snort
12 2 (0.050%) Squid
12 2 (0.050%) zsh
13 1 (0.025%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 326 (8.12%) Kubernetes
2 307 (7.65%) Terraform
3 141 (3.51%) Ansible
4 100 (2.49%) Grafana
5 90 (2.24%) Prometheus
6 64 (1.59%) Microsoft Intune
7 42 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
8 35 (0.87%) SCCM
9 18 (0.45%) Puppet
10 16 (0.40%) Argo
11 12 (0.30%) Istio
11 12 (0.30%) Progress Chef
12 9 (0.22%) QRadar
13 8 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 8 (0.20%) Control-M
13 8 (0.20%) WMI
14 7 (0.17%) Kibana
14 7 (0.17%) Oracle RMAN
14 7 (0.17%) vCenter Server
15 6 (0.15%) Data Guard
Vendors
1 715 (17.81%) Microsoft
2 272 (6.77%) ServiceNow
3 237 (5.90%) Oracle
4 214 (5.33%) SAP
5 111 (2.76%) Google
6 101 (2.52%) Salesforce
7 83 (2.07%) VMware
8 78 (1.94%) Cisco
9 70 (1.74%) Databricks
10 65 (1.62%) IBM
11 54 (1.34%) Splunk
12 47 (1.17%) Dynatrace
13 41 (1.02%) Red Hat
14 37 (0.92%) Workday
15 33 (0.82%) Okta
16 28 (0.70%) HP
17 27 (0.67%) Apple
18 22 (0.55%) Atlassian
19 21 (0.52%) Palo Alto
20 20 (0.50%) F5