Critical Thinking Contracts in England

Critical Thinking
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England requiring Critical Thinking skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Critical Thinking over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 353 350 404
Rank change year-on-year -3 +54 +37
Contract jobs citing Critical Thinking 132 194 262
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.54% 0.52% 0.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.59% 0.60% 0.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 81 126 168
10th Percentile £305 £244 £324
25th Percentile £425 £344 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% - +2.94%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £600
90th Percentile £725 £750 £829
UK median daily rate £550 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +4.76% - +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 5 18
10th Percentile £48.20 £23.60 £19.86
25th Percentile £56.00 £25.50 £20.22
Median hourly rate £69.00 £26.00 £24.34
Median % change year-on-year +165.38% +6.84% -54.51%
75th Percentile £82.00 £35.00 £45.99
90th Percentile £89.80 - £50.42
UK median hourly rate £43.00 £26.00 £21.67
% change year-on-year +65.38% +19.98% -59.50%

All Process and Methodology Skills
England

Critical Thinking 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 22,202 32,193 45,529
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 91.16% 86.56% 90.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,534 21,105 31,969
10th Percentile £310 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% +2.33%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £750 £750 £765
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 921 2,246 1,592
10th Percentile £14.42 £12.92 £10.87
25th Percentile £18.20 £16.01 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.07 £36.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.25% -4.00% +53.06%
75th Percentile £63.75 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £35.65 £37.30
% change year-on-year -18.65% -4.42% +49.20%

Critical Thinking
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Critical Thinking as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Critical Thinking in England

Critical Thinking
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Critical Thinking in England.

Daily rate trend for Critical Thinking in England

Critical Thinking
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Critical Thinking in England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Critical Thinking in England

Critical Thinking
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Critical Thinking in England.

Hourly rate trend for Critical Thinking in England

Critical Thinking
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Critical Thinking in England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Critical Thinking in England

Critical Thinking
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 Critical Thinking within the England region over the 6 months to 1 May 2025. 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 +5 51 £508 -9.78% 435
South West +70 41 £569 +5.81% 53
South East +37 12 £563 +4.65% 123
North of England +9 11 £504 -13.04% 98
East of England +29 8 £500 - 55
Yorkshire +11 7 £507 -22.00% 20
Midlands -3 5 £463 +68.18% 57
North West +4 4 £500 -8.76% 70
West Midlands +6 3 £463 -23.81% 38
East Midlands -7 2 - - 15
Critical Thinking
UK

Critical Thinking
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England 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 24 (18.18%) Confluence
2 9 (6.82%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (5.30%) SAS
3 7 (5.30%) SharePoint
4 4 (3.03%) Skype for Business
5 2 (1.52%) Apache
5 2 (1.52%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.76%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.76%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.76%) CMS
6 1 (0.76%) JBoss
6 1 (0.76%) nginx
6 1 (0.76%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.76%) WebSphere
Applications
1 25 (18.94%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (7.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (6.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (4.55%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.76%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (5.30%) SAP Oil and Gas
1 7 (5.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (1.52%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.76%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.76%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.76%) Oracle Financials
3 1 (0.76%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.76%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 17 (12.88%) Power Platform
2 14 (10.61%) Azure
3 12 (9.09%) AWS
4 8 (6.06%) GCP
5 7 (5.30%) Adobe Analytics
6 6 (4.55%) GitHub
7 5 (3.79%) Power Automate
8 3 (2.27%) Azure AKS
8 3 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (2.27%) Azure Monitor
8 3 (2.27%) Copilot Studio
8 3 (2.27%) dbt
8 3 (2.27%) Microsoft 365
8 3 (2.27%) Microsoft Copilot
8 3 (2.27%) PowerApps
9 2 (1.52%) Azure Machine Learning
9 2 (1.52%) Azure Sentinel
9 2 (1.52%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 2 (1.52%) Dynamics 365
9 2 (1.52%) Smartsheet
Communications & Networking
1 10 (7.58%) Skype
2 8 (6.06%) DNS
2 8 (6.06%) Firewall
3 7 (5.30%) VPN
4 6 (4.55%) DHCP
5 5 (3.79%) Unified Communications
6 3 (2.27%) BGP
6 3 (2.27%) Cisco ISE
6 3 (2.27%) Wireless
7 2 (1.52%) Cisco ASA
7 2 (1.52%) FTP
7 2 (1.52%) HTTP
7 2 (1.52%) iSCSI
7 2 (1.52%) OSPF
7 2 (1.52%) SAN
7 2 (1.52%) SMTP
7 2 (1.52%) SSL
7 2 (1.52%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.76%) Cisco Nexus
8 1 (0.76%) SWIFTNet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (12.88%) Power BI
2 11 (8.33%) Data Warehouse
2 11 (8.33%) Relational Database
3 5 (3.79%) Metadata
4 4 (3.03%) Tableau
5 3 (2.27%) Snowflake Schema
6 2 (1.52%) BusinessObjects
6 2 (1.52%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
6 2 (1.52%) Data Vault
6 2 (1.52%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.76%) Big Data
7 1 (0.76%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.76%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.76%) GIS
7 1 (0.76%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.76%) KDB
7 1 (0.76%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.76%) SAP BW
7 1 (0.76%) SAP HANA
7 1 (0.76%) Tableau Server
Development Applications
1 26 (19.70%) JIRA
2 7 (5.30%) Git
3 6 (4.55%) Bitbucket
4 3 (2.27%) Jenkins
5 2 (1.52%) GitLab
6 1 (0.76%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.76%) Gradle
6 1 (0.76%) Hudson
6 1 (0.76%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.76%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.76%) Team Foundation Server
6 1 (0.76%) TeamCity
6 1 (0.76%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.76%) webpack
General
1 92 (69.70%) Social Skills
2 58 (43.94%) Analytical Skills
3 54 (40.91%) Finance
4 23 (17.42%) Public Sector
5 19 (14.39%) Banking
6 14 (10.61%) Presentation Skills
7 12 (9.09%) Marketing
8 10 (7.58%) Organisational Skills
9 8 (6.06%) Influencing Skills
9 8 (6.06%) Manufacturing
10 5 (3.79%) Front Office
11 4 (3.03%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (2.27%) Financial Institution
12 3 (2.27%) Telecoms
13 2 (1.52%) Automotive
13 2 (1.52%) Billing
13 2 (1.52%) Investment Banking
13 2 (1.52%) Legal
13 2 (1.52%) Military
Job Titles
1 16 (12.12%) Analyst
2 14 (10.61%) Lead
3 12 (9.09%) Senior
3 12 (9.09%) Virtualisation Engineer
4 10 (7.58%) Analytics Manager
5 8 (6.06%) Coordinator
5 8 (6.06%) Project Manager
6 7 (5.30%) Business Analyst
6 7 (5.30%) Consultant
6 7 (5.30%) Data Analytics Manager
6 7 (5.30%) Data Manager
6 7 (5.30%) Insight Manager
6 7 (5.30%) Strategy Manager
7 6 (4.55%) Security Assurance Coordinator
8 5 (3.79%) Data Engineer
8 5 (3.79%) Developer
9 4 (3.03%) Architect
9 4 (3.03%) SAP Project Manager
9 4 (3.03%) Security Engineer
9 4 (3.03%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (9.09%) Flash
2 5 (3.79%) CSS
2 5 (3.79%) HTML
2 5 (3.79%) YAML
3 4 (3.03%) AngularJS
3 4 (3.03%) PySpark
4 3 (2.27%) JSON
4 3 (2.27%) REST
5 2 (1.52%) .NET
5 2 (1.52%) Ajax
5 2 (1.52%) Kafka
5 2 (1.52%) Middleware
5 2 (1.52%) OpenTelemetry
5 2 (1.52%) React
5 2 (1.52%) RESTful
5 2 (1.52%) Spring
5 2 (1.52%) Web Services
5 2 (1.52%) ZeroMQ
6 1 (0.76%) ARM Templates
6 1 (0.76%) Material-UI
Miscellaneous
1 13 (9.85%) Management Information System
2 12 (9.09%) Clustering
3 11 (8.33%) PKI
4 9 (6.82%) Data Centre
5 7 (5.30%) Distributed Systems
5 7 (5.30%) Life Science
5 7 (5.30%) Renewable Energy
5 7 (5.30%) Self-Motivation
6 6 (4.55%) Data Structures
7 5 (3.79%) Algorithms
7 5 (3.79%) PMI
8 4 (3.03%) Cloud Native
8 4 (3.03%) e-Learning
8 4 (3.03%) Hedge funds
8 4 (3.03%) Learning Management System
8 4 (3.03%) Onboarding
8 4 (3.03%) Product Ownership
9 3 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (2.27%) Fixed Income
9 3 (2.27%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 14 (10.61%) Windows
2 13 (9.85%) Windows Server
3 9 (6.82%) Windows Server 2012
4 8 (6.06%) Windows 10
5 6 (4.55%) Linux
6 3 (2.27%) Windows Server 2016
7 2 (1.52%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (53.03%) Agile
2 67 (50.76%) Problem-Solving
3 33 (25.00%) Project Management
4 30 (22.73%) Computer Science
4 30 (22.73%) Waterfall
5 29 (21.97%) Analytics
5 29 (21.97%) Stakeholder Management
6 22 (16.67%) Service Management
7 21 (15.91%) System Testing
8 18 (13.64%) Continuous Improvement
8 18 (13.64%) NsoIT
8 18 (13.64%) Time Management
9 17 (12.88%) Change Management
9 17 (12.88%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 16 (12.12%) Migration
10 16 (12.12%) Validation
11 15 (11.36%) Collaborative Working
11 15 (11.36%) ITIL
11 15 (11.36%) PRINCE2
12 13 (9.85%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 33 (25.00%) SQL
2 20 (15.15%) Python
3 14 (10.61%) PowerShell
4 9 (6.82%) R
5 7 (5.30%) Java
6 5 (3.79%) Bicep
6 5 (3.79%) JavaScript
7 4 (3.03%) C++
8 2 (1.52%) C#
8 2 (1.52%) Kusto Query Language
8 2 (1.52%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.76%) JCL
9 1 (0.76%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.76%) REXX
Qualifications
1 56 (42.42%) Degree
2 32 (24.24%) Security Cleared
3 31 (23.48%) SC Cleared
4 22 (16.67%) Master's Degree
5 16 (12.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 15 (11.36%) Cisco Certification
7 13 (9.85%) Microsoft Certification
8 12 (9.09%) CCNA
9 11 (8.33%) Computer Science Degree
10 10 (7.58%) DV Cleared
10 10 (7.58%) PMI Certification
11 9 (6.82%) MCSE
12 6 (4.55%) MCSA
13 5 (3.79%) CISSP
13 5 (3.79%) PMP
14 4 (3.03%) CCNP
15 3 (2.27%) CISA
15 3 (2.27%) CRISC
16 2 (1.52%) AWS Certification
16 2 (1.52%) CESG Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (8.33%) PMO
2 7 (5.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (4.55%) JSP 440
3 6 (4.55%) RMADS
4 5 (3.79%) Data Quality
4 5 (3.79%) NIST
5 4 (3.03%) GDPR
5 4 (3.03%) PMBOK
6 3 (2.27%) GRC
7 2 (1.52%) Accessibility
7 2 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27005
7 2 (1.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.76%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.76%) COBIT
8 1 (0.76%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.76%) P3O
8 1 (0.76%) QA
8 1 (0.76%) WCAG
System Software
1 16 (12.12%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (9.09%) VMware ESXi
2 12 (9.09%) VMware NSX
3 10 (7.58%) Active Directory
4 3 (2.27%) Hyper-V
4 3 (2.27%) Microsoft Virtual Server
4 3 (2.27%) Virtual Servers
5 2 (1.52%) Docker
5 2 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.76%) IAG
6 1 (0.76%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 13 (9.85%) vCenter Server
2 7 (5.30%) WSUS
3 5 (3.79%) Terraform
4 3 (2.27%) Ansible
4 3 (2.27%) Kubernetes
5 2 (1.52%) Grafana
5 2 (1.52%) SCOM
6 1 (0.76%) FortiGate
6 1 (0.76%) PowerCLI
6 1 (0.76%) Puppet
Vendors
1 36 (27.27%) Microsoft
2 18 (13.64%) Atlassian
3 17 (12.88%) Cisco
4 16 (12.12%) VMware
5 11 (8.33%) SAP
6 8 (6.06%) Adobe
7 7 (5.30%) Teradata
8 6 (4.55%) Salesforce
9 4 (3.03%) Fortinet
9 4 (3.03%) Veeam
10 3 (2.27%) Oracle
10 3 (2.27%) SolarWinds
10 3 (2.27%) Sybase
11 2 (1.52%) CheckPoint
11 2 (1.52%) Infoblox
11 2 (1.52%) Palo Alto
11 2 (1.52%) Planview
11 2 (1.52%) Wrike
12 1 (0.76%) Checkmarx
12 1 (0.76%) Dynatrace