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 16 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 352 359 385
Rank change year-on-year +7 +26 +43
Contract jobs citing Critical Thinking 128 189 270
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.53% 0.52% 0.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.58% 0.60% 0.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 79 121 182
10th Percentile £304 £254 £350
25th Percentile £412 £363 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £486
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% +8.02% -4.71%
75th Percentile £609 £625 £600
90th Percentile £725 £750 £751
UK median daily rate £550 £525 £500
% change year-on-year +4.76% +5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 5 17
10th Percentile - £23.60 £19.73
25th Percentile - £25.50 £20.22
Median hourly rate £95.00 £26.00 £21.67
Median % change year-on-year +265.38% +19.98% -63.75%
75th Percentile - £35.00 £50.42
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £95.00 £26.00 £21.67
% change year-on-year +265.38% +19.98% -63.75%

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 22,142 31,440 43,538
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 91.23% 86.46% 90.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,483 20,583 30,556
10th Percentile £306 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £450
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 £515 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% +3.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 937 2,239 1,538
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.87 £10.63
25th Percentile £18.13 £15.97 £16.25
Median hourly rate £28.75 £36.50 £37.30
Median % change year-on-year -21.23% -2.14% +49.20%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £36.05 £36.00
% change year-on-year -22.32% +0.13% +40.19%

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 16 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
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 16 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 -8 45 £450 -20.88% 335
South West +66 43 £569 +5.81% 26
South East +43 13 £563 +4.65% 98
North of England +7 10 £507 -12.44% 61
East of England +24 8 £500 - 37
Yorkshire +17 7 £507 -22.00% 9
Midlands -9 5 £463 +69.72% 30
West Midlands +4 3 £463 -23.81% 20
North West -6 3 £544 -0.73% 47
East Midlands -7 2 - - 10
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 25 (19.53%) Confluence
2 9 (7.03%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (5.47%) SAS
4 5 (3.91%) SharePoint
5 4 (3.13%) Skype for Business
6 2 (1.56%) Apache
6 2 (1.56%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.78%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.78%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.78%) CMS
7 1 (0.78%) JBoss
7 1 (0.78%) nginx
7 1 (0.78%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.78%) WebSphere
Applications
1 26 (20.31%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (9.38%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (8.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (4.69%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.78%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (6.25%) SAP Oil and Gas
2 7 (5.47%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (1.56%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.78%) Dynamics NAV
4 1 (0.78%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.78%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.78%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 13 (10.16%) Power Platform
2 11 (8.59%) Azure
3 10 (7.81%) AWS
4 8 (6.25%) GCP
5 7 (5.47%) Adobe Analytics
6 5 (3.91%) GitHub
7 4 (3.13%) Power Automate
8 3 (2.34%) Azure AKS
8 3 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (2.34%) Azure Monitor
8 3 (2.34%) dbt
9 2 (1.56%) Azure Data Factory
9 2 (1.56%) Azure Machine Learning
9 2 (1.56%) Azure Sentinel
9 2 (1.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 2 (1.56%) Dynamics 365
9 2 (1.56%) Microsoft 365
9 2 (1.56%) Smartsheet
10 1 (0.78%) PowerApps
10 1 (0.78%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 10 (7.81%) Skype
2 8 (6.25%) DNS
2 8 (6.25%) VPN
3 6 (4.69%) DHCP
3 6 (4.69%) Firewall
4 5 (3.91%) Unified Communications
5 3 (2.34%) BGP
5 3 (2.34%) Wireless
6 2 (1.56%) Cisco ASA
6 2 (1.56%) Cisco ISE
6 2 (1.56%) FTP
6 2 (1.56%) HTTP
6 2 (1.56%) iSCSI
6 2 (1.56%) OSPF
6 2 (1.56%) SAN
6 2 (1.56%) SMTP
6 2 (1.56%) SSL
6 2 (1.56%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.78%) Cisco Nexus
7 1 (0.78%) SWIFTNet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (10.16%) Power BI
2 11 (8.59%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (7.03%) Relational Database
4 5 (3.91%) Metadata
5 2 (1.56%) Data Vault
5 2 (1.56%) Tableau
6 1 (0.78%) Big Data
6 1 (0.78%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.78%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.78%) GIS
6 1 (0.78%) Hadoop
6 1 (0.78%) KDB
6 1 (0.78%) Looker
6 1 (0.78%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.78%) SAP BW
6 1 (0.78%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 27 (21.09%) JIRA
2 6 (4.69%) Bitbucket
2 6 (4.69%) Git
3 4 (3.13%) Jenkins
4 2 (1.56%) GitLab
5 1 (0.78%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 1 (0.78%) Gradle
5 1 (0.78%) Hudson
5 1 (0.78%) IntelliJ
5 1 (0.78%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.78%) Team Foundation Server
5 1 (0.78%) TeamCity
5 1 (0.78%) Terragrunt
5 1 (0.78%) webpack
General
1 88 (68.75%) Social Skills
2 56 (43.75%) Analytical Skills
2 56 (43.75%) Finance
3 24 (18.75%) Public Sector
4 17 (13.28%) Banking
5 14 (10.94%) Marketing
6 11 (8.59%) Organisational Skills
6 11 (8.59%) Presentation Skills
7 9 (7.03%) Influencing Skills
7 9 (7.03%) Manufacturing
8 4 (3.13%) Pharmaceutical
9 3 (2.34%) Front Office
10 2 (1.56%) Automotive
10 2 (1.56%) Billing
10 2 (1.56%) Brand Awareness
10 2 (1.56%) Financial Institution
10 2 (1.56%) Investment Banking
10 2 (1.56%) Italian Language
10 2 (1.56%) Legal
10 2 (1.56%) Military
Job Titles
1 14 (10.94%) Lead
2 13 (10.16%) Analyst
2 13 (10.16%) Senior
3 12 (9.38%) Virtualisation Engineer
4 9 (7.03%) Coordinator
4 9 (7.03%) Project Manager
5 7 (5.47%) Analytics Manager
5 7 (5.47%) Data Analytics Manager
5 7 (5.47%) Data Manager
5 7 (5.47%) Insight Manager
5 7 (5.47%) Security Assurance Coordinator
5 7 (5.47%) Strategy Manager
6 6 (4.69%) Business Analyst
6 6 (4.69%) Consultant
7 5 (3.91%) Data Engineer
7 5 (3.91%) SAP Manager
8 4 (3.13%) Algorithm Engineer
8 4 (3.13%) Project Manager - SAP S/4HANA
8 4 (3.13%) Software Engineer - Algorithmic Trading
8 4 (3.13%) Wintel Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (9.38%) Flash
2 4 (3.13%) AngularJS
2 4 (3.13%) CSS
2 4 (3.13%) HTML
2 4 (3.13%) PySpark
3 3 (2.34%) JSON
3 3 (2.34%) REST
3 3 (2.34%) YAML
4 2 (1.56%) .NET
4 2 (1.56%) Ajax
4 2 (1.56%) Kafka
4 2 (1.56%) Middleware
4 2 (1.56%) OpenTelemetry
4 2 (1.56%) React
4 2 (1.56%) RESTful
4 2 (1.56%) Spring
4 2 (1.56%) Web Services
5 1 (0.78%) ARM Templates
5 1 (0.78%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (0.78%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 14 (10.94%) Management Information System
2 12 (9.38%) Clustering
3 11 (8.59%) PKI
4 10 (7.81%) Data Centre
5 8 (6.25%) Life Science
5 8 (6.25%) Renewable Energy
5 8 (6.25%) Self-Motivation
6 7 (5.47%) Distributed Systems
7 6 (4.69%) Data Structures
8 5 (3.91%) Algorithms
8 5 (3.91%) PMI
9 4 (3.13%) e-Learning
9 4 (3.13%) Hedge funds
9 4 (3.13%) Learning Management System
9 4 (3.13%) Onboarding
9 4 (3.13%) Product Ownership
10 3 (2.34%) Cloud Native
10 3 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (2.34%) Educational Technology
11 2 (1.56%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 14 (10.94%) Windows
2 13 (10.16%) Windows Server
3 9 (7.03%) Windows Server 2012
4 8 (6.25%) Windows 10
5 6 (4.69%) Linux
6 3 (2.34%) Windows Server 2016
7 2 (1.56%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 67 (52.34%) Agile
2 61 (47.66%) Problem-Solving
3 34 (26.56%) Project Management
4 32 (25.00%) Waterfall
5 31 (24.22%) Stakeholder Management
6 29 (22.66%) Computer Science
7 28 (21.88%) Analytics
8 22 (17.19%) Service Management
9 21 (16.41%) System Testing
10 18 (14.06%) Continuous Improvement
10 18 (14.06%) NsoIT
10 18 (14.06%) Time Management
11 17 (13.28%) Change Management
11 17 (13.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 16 (12.50%) Collaborative Working
12 16 (12.50%) Migration
12 16 (12.50%) Validation
13 15 (11.72%) PRINCE2
14 14 (10.94%) ITIL
15 13 (10.16%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 25 (19.53%) SQL
2 14 (10.94%) Python
3 12 (9.38%) PowerShell
4 8 (6.25%) R
5 7 (5.47%) Java
6 4 (3.13%) C++
6 4 (3.13%) JavaScript
7 3 (2.34%) Bicep
8 2 (1.56%) C#
8 2 (1.56%) Kusto Query Language
8 2 (1.56%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.78%) JCL
9 1 (0.78%) REXX
Qualifications
1 54 (42.19%) Degree
2 33 (25.78%) Security Cleared
3 32 (25.00%) SC Cleared
4 21 (16.41%) Master's Degree
5 16 (12.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 15 (11.72%) Cisco Certification
7 13 (10.16%) Microsoft Certification
8 12 (9.38%) CCNA
9 11 (8.59%) DV Cleared
10 10 (7.81%) Computer Science Degree
10 10 (7.81%) PMI Certification
11 9 (7.03%) MCSE
12 6 (4.69%) CISSP
12 6 (4.69%) MCSA
13 5 (3.91%) PMP
14 4 (3.13%) CCNP
14 4 (3.13%) CISA
15 3 (2.34%) CESG Certified Professional
15 3 (2.34%) CRISC
16 2 (1.56%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (8.59%) PMO
2 8 (6.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (5.47%) JSP 440
3 7 (5.47%) RMADS
4 5 (3.91%) NIST
5 4 (3.13%) Data Quality
5 4 (3.13%) GDPR
5 4 (3.13%) PMBOK
6 3 (2.34%) GRC
7 2 (1.56%) Accessibility
7 2 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27005
7 2 (1.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.78%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.78%) COBIT
8 1 (0.78%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.78%) P3O
8 1 (0.78%) QA
8 1 (0.78%) WCAG
System Software
1 16 (12.50%) VMware Infrastructure
2 13 (10.16%) VMware ESXi
3 12 (9.38%) VMware NSX
4 10 (7.81%) Active Directory
5 3 (2.34%) Hyper-V
5 3 (2.34%) Microsoft Virtual Server
5 3 (2.34%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (1.56%) Docker
7 1 (0.78%) IAG
7 1 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 14 (10.94%) vCenter Server
2 7 (5.47%) WSUS
3 5 (3.91%) Terraform
4 4 (3.13%) Ansible
5 3 (2.34%) Kubernetes
5 3 (2.34%) SCOM
6 2 (1.56%) Grafana
7 1 (0.78%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.78%) PowerCLI
7 1 (0.78%) Puppet
Vendors
1 34 (26.56%) Microsoft
2 18 (14.06%) Atlassian
3 17 (13.28%) Cisco
4 16 (12.50%) VMware
5 10 (7.81%) SAP
6 8 (6.25%) Adobe
7 7 (5.47%) Teradata
8 4 (3.13%) Fortinet
8 4 (3.13%) Salesforce
8 4 (3.13%) SolarWinds
8 4 (3.13%) Veeam
9 2 (1.56%) IBM
9 2 (1.56%) Infoblox
9 2 (1.56%) Oracle
9 2 (1.56%) Wrike
10 1 (0.78%) Checkmarx
10 1 (0.78%) Citrix
10 1 (0.78%) Dell
10 1 (0.78%) HP
10 1 (0.78%) Sybase