Influencing Skills Contract Job Trends in England

Influencing Skills
UK > England

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Influencing Skills in contract job vacancies in England. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Influencing Skills over the 6 months leading up to 20 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 188 254 211
Rank change year-on-year +66 -43 -53
Contract jobs citing Influencing Skills 469 262 410
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.47% 0.99% 1.11%
As % of the General category 2.43% 1.59% 1.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 307 146 281
10th Percentile £360 £319 £400
25th Percentile £450 £487 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £574 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.17% +4.36% -
75th Percentile £675 £673 £650
90th Percentile £825 £770 £760
UK median daily rate £556 £550 £550
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 8 12
10th Percentile £31.49 - £22.24
25th Percentile £35.60 £25.26 £27.63
Median hourly rate £37.00 £32.50 £34.75
Median % change year-on-year +13.85% -6.47% -43.50%
75th Percentile £53.66 £75.00 £41.32
90th Percentile £85.84 £81.00 £52.78
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £31.25 £34.75
% change year-on-year +18.40% -10.07% -43.50%

All General Skills
England

Influencing Skills 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 England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 19,319 16,497 21,712
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 60.48% 62.30% 58.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,325 9,934 14,490
10th Percentile £286 £300 £270
25th Percentile £402 £413 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.37% -2.91% -
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,196 552 1,222
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.62 £13.50
25th Percentile £16.62 £19.00 £15.34
Median hourly rate £23.00 £30.00 £28.42
Median % change year-on-year -23.33% +5.56% +9.31%
75th Percentile £46.00 £57.53 £56.49
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.65 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £27.50 £28.25
% change year-on-year -16.36% -2.65% +13.00%

Influencing Skills
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Influencing Skills job vacancy trend in England

Influencing Skills
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Influencing Skills.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Influencing Skills

Influencing Skills
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Influencing Skills in England over the 6 months to 20 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Influencing Skills in England

Influencing Skills
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Influencing Skills.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Influencing Skills

Influencing Skills
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Influencing Skills in England over the 6 months to 20 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Influencing Skills in England

Influencing Skills
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 Influencing Skills within the England region over the 6 months to 20 January 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 +56 227 £600 +3.67% 78
North of England -18 73 £475 -11.13% 44
Midlands -19 65 £458 -25.73% 23
South East +14 64 £600 +23.08% 98
West Midlands -18 49 £450 -28.00% 19
North West -8 45 £475 -5.00% 12
South West +7 23 £663 +32.65% 18
Yorkshire -35 23 £563 -0.44% 27
East Midlands -18 16 £465 -11.43% 4
East of England -19 7 £595 +15.70% 26
North East - 5 £285 - 7
Influencing Skills
UK

Influencing Skills
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 24 (5.12%) Confluence
2 11 (2.35%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.71%) Apache
3 8 (1.71%) JBoss
3 8 (1.71%) WebLogic
4 4 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (0.85%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.43%) CMS
5 2 (0.43%) NetWeaver
5 2 (0.43%) SAP EP
6 1 (0.21%) ArcGIS
6 1 (0.21%) nginx
Applications
1 35 (7.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 23 (4.90%) Microsoft Office
3 15 (3.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 13 (2.77%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (1.28%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.43%) Sketch
7 1 (0.21%) Adobe After Effects
7 1 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.21%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.21%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.21%) Blender
7 1 (0.21%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.21%) InVision
7 1 (0.21%) OmniGraffle
7 1 (0.21%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 12 (2.56%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.28%) Workday HCM
3 3 (0.64%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.43%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.43%) SAP CO
4 2 (0.43%) SAP CRM
4 2 (0.43%) SAP FI
4 2 (0.43%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.21%) Endur
5 1 (0.21%) HFM
5 1 (0.21%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.21%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.21%) SAP MM
5 1 (0.21%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 1 (0.21%) SAP PS
5 1 (0.21%) Sonata
Cloud Services
1 76 (16.20%) Azure
2 50 (10.66%) AWS
3 29 (6.18%) GCP
4 27 (5.76%) Azure DevOps
4 27 (5.76%) Power Platform
5 24 (5.12%) Microsoft 365
6 20 (4.26%) SaaS
7 15 (3.20%) Entra ID
8 9 (1.92%) Cloud Computing
9 6 (1.28%) OpenShift
10 5 (1.07%) GitHub
10 5 (1.07%) Snowflake
10 5 (1.07%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 4 (0.85%) dbt
11 4 (0.85%) Figma
11 4 (0.85%) IaaS
11 4 (0.85%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 4 (0.85%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 4 (0.85%) SuccessFactors
12 3 (0.64%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.49%) DNS
2 6 (1.28%) Firewall
3 5 (1.07%) DHCP
3 5 (1.07%) Network Security
4 4 (0.85%) Cisco ASA
5 3 (0.64%) BGP
5 3 (0.64%) Cisco ISE
5 3 (0.64%) EIGRP
5 3 (0.64%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 3 (0.64%) IPv4
5 3 (0.64%) IPv6
5 3 (0.64%) LAN
5 3 (0.64%) MPLS
5 3 (0.64%) OSPF
5 3 (0.64%) VLAN
5 3 (0.64%) VPN
5 3 (0.64%) VXLAN
5 3 (0.64%) WAN
5 3 (0.64%) Wireless
5 3 (0.64%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (5.76%) Power BI
2 10 (2.13%) Metadata
3 9 (1.92%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (1.92%) Oracle Reports
4 8 (1.71%) MongoDB
5 7 (1.49%) Data Lake
6 5 (1.07%) Oracle BI Publisher
6 5 (1.07%) SQL Server
6 5 (1.07%) Tableau
7 3 (0.64%) BigQuery
7 3 (0.64%) Data Vault
7 3 (0.64%) Star Schema
8 2 (0.43%) Amazon Athena
8 2 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.43%) GIS
8 2 (0.43%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.21%) BusinessObjects
9 1 (0.21%) DTS
9 1 (0.21%) PostgreSQL
9 1 (0.21%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 42 (8.96%) JIRA
2 10 (2.13%) Git
3 9 (1.92%) Jenkins
3 9 (1.92%) Selenium
4 8 (1.71%) Eclipse
4 8 (1.71%) IntelliJ
4 8 (1.71%) JUnit
5 7 (1.49%) GitLab
6 5 (1.07%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.43%) IBM UrbanCode
8 1 (0.21%) Axure RP
General
1 261 (55.65%) Social Skills
2 143 (30.49%) Finance
3 105 (22.39%) Analytical Skills
4 50 (10.66%) Public Sector
5 39 (8.32%) Presentation Skills
6 37 (7.89%) Banking
7 23 (4.90%) Retail
8 20 (4.26%) Organisational Skills
9 17 (3.62%) Documentation Skills
9 17 (3.62%) Marketing
10 16 (3.41%) Legal
11 12 (2.56%) Local Government
12 10 (2.13%) Manufacturing
13 8 (1.71%) Front Office
14 7 (1.49%) Law
14 7 (1.49%) Publishing
15 6 (1.28%) Automotive
15 6 (1.28%) Back Office
16 5 (1.07%) Aerospace
16 5 (1.07%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 80 (17.06%) Lead
2 72 (15.35%) Analyst
3 64 (13.65%) Architect
4 57 (12.15%) Business Analyst
5 44 (9.38%) Senior
6 31 (6.61%) Project Manager
7 23 (4.90%) Solutions Architect
8 22 (4.69%) Programme Manager
9 18 (3.84%) Change Manager
10 11 (2.35%) Product Manager
10 11 (2.35%) Senior Analyst
11 10 (2.13%) Consultant
12 9 (1.92%) Designer
12 9 (1.92%) Lead Architect
12 9 (1.92%) Product Owner
12 9 (1.92%) Senior Business Analyst
13 8 (1.71%) Senior Manager
13 8 (1.71%) Software Engineer
14 7 (1.49%) Delivery Manager
14 7 (1.49%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (2.56%) XML
2 11 (2.35%) REST
3 10 (2.13%) HTML
3 10 (2.13%) Spring
4 9 (1.92%) Kafka
4 9 (1.92%) SOAP
5 8 (1.71%) EJB
5 8 (1.71%) Hibernate
5 8 (1.71%) HTML5
5 8 (1.71%) J2EE
5 8 (1.71%) J2SE
5 8 (1.71%) JSON
5 8 (1.71%) Play Framework
5 8 (1.71%) SailPoint
6 7 (1.49%) .NET
7 5 (1.07%) OpenID
7 5 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
8 4 (0.85%) LDAP
8 4 (0.85%) Middleware
8 4 (0.85%) VML
Miscellaneous
1 45 (9.59%) Product Ownership
2 28 (5.97%) Management Information System
3 19 (4.05%) Onboarding
4 12 (2.56%) Cloud Native
5 10 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (1.92%) Analytical Mindset
7 8 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
8 7 (1.49%) Data Centre
8 7 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
8 7 (1.49%) Learning Management System
8 7 (1.49%) NHS
9 6 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (1.28%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.07%) e-Learning
10 5 (1.07%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.07%) Reinsurance
11 4 (0.85%) Cyber Threat
11 4 (0.85%) Fixed Income
11 4 (0.85%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 12 (2.56%) Unix
2 11 (2.35%) Windows
3 6 (1.28%) VMS
4 5 (1.07%) Linux
5 4 (0.85%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.43%) Android
6 2 (0.43%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.21%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.21%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 187 (39.87%) Stakeholder Management
2 171 (36.46%) Agile
3 133 (28.36%) Problem-Solving
4 120 (25.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 104 (22.17%) Continuous Improvement
6 87 (18.55%) Roadmaps
7 78 (16.63%) Decision-Making
8 66 (14.07%) Change Management
8 66 (14.07%) Project Management
9 63 (13.43%) DevOps
10 59 (12.58%) Project Delivery
11 57 (12.15%) Scrum
12 55 (11.73%) AI
13 52 (11.09%) Strategic Thinking
14 51 (10.87%) Risk Management
15 47 (10.02%) Mentoring
16 41 (8.74%) Analytics
16 41 (8.74%) Coaching
17 40 (8.53%) Waterfall
18 39 (8.32%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 25 (5.33%) Python
2 24 (5.12%) Java
3 23 (4.90%) SQL
4 9 (1.92%) PowerShell
5 8 (1.71%) Scala
6 4 (0.85%) Bash
6 4 (0.85%) C#
6 4 (0.85%) JavaScript
6 4 (0.85%) Ruby
7 2 (0.43%) ABAP
7 2 (0.43%) R
8 1 (0.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (0.21%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.21%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 81 (17.27%) Security Cleared
2 73 (15.57%) Degree
3 69 (14.71%) SC Cleared
4 11 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
4 11 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (2.13%) CISSP
5 10 (2.13%) PMI Certification
6 9 (1.92%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.71%) ITIL Certification
7 8 (1.71%) Master's Degree
7 8 (1.71%) PMP
8 6 (1.28%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.28%) CBAP
8 6 (1.28%) ISEB
9 5 (1.07%) APMG
9 5 (1.07%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (1.07%) CISM
9 5 (1.07%) IIBA
9 5 (1.07%) ISTQB
9 5 (1.07%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (5.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 21 (4.48%) GDPR
3 19 (4.05%) QA
4 18 (3.84%) Data Quality
5 15 (3.20%) NIST
6 12 (2.56%) Accessibility
7 10 (2.13%) PMO
8 9 (1.92%) GRC
9 8 (1.71%) NCSC
10 6 (1.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 5 (1.07%) ISO 9001
11 5 (1.07%) PCI DSS
11 5 (1.07%) SLA
12 4 (0.85%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.64%) COBIT
13 3 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials
13 3 (0.64%) WCAG
14 2 (0.43%) ISO 22301
15 1 (0.21%) Basel III
15 1 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 13 (2.77%) Docker
2 12 (2.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (1.92%) Active Directory
4 5 (1.07%) VMware NSX
5 2 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.43%) vSphere
6 1 (0.21%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 23 (4.90%) Terraform
2 16 (3.41%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.71%) Puppet
4 6 (1.28%) Ansible
5 4 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
5 4 (0.85%) SCCM
6 2 (0.43%) Rancher
7 1 (0.21%) Argo
7 1 (0.21%) Consul
7 1 (0.21%) Packer
7 1 (0.21%) Podman
7 1 (0.21%) RSA Archer
7 1 (0.21%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.21%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 47 (10.02%) Microsoft
2 31 (6.61%) SAP
3 23 (4.90%) Oracle
4 21 (4.48%) ServiceNow
5 19 (4.05%) Workday
6 16 (3.41%) Salesforce
7 12 (2.56%) VMware
8 11 (2.35%) Ariba
9 9 (1.92%) Google
10 8 (1.71%) webMethods
11 6 (1.28%) Citrix
11 6 (1.28%) CyberArk
11 6 (1.28%) Databricks
11 6 (1.28%) F5
12 5 (1.07%) Cisco
12 5 (1.07%) Palo Alto
13 4 (0.85%) Avaloq
13 4 (0.85%) Fortinet
13 4 (0.85%) IFS
13 4 (0.85%) Splunk