Social Skills Contract Job Trends in England

Social Skills (Interpersonal, Communication)
UK > England

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Social Skills in contract job vacancies in England. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Social Skills over the 6 months leading up to 10 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 1 1
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Social Skills 9,771 8,149 7,092
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.45% 29.28% 21.36%
As % of the General category 38.70% 45.66% 37.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,878 5,107 4,511
10th Percentile £256 £220 £240
25th Percentile £400 £375 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 754 526 456
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.00 £14.06
25th Percentile £15.72 £15.12 £15.62
Median hourly rate £22.81 £22.05 £27.24
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -19.04% +36.18%
75th Percentile £43.96 £47.50 £50.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £73.13 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £21.50 £20.20 £25.00
% change year-on-year +6.44% -19.20% +25.00%

All General Skills
England

Social 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 25,248 17,847 19,125
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.43% 64.13% 57.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,043 11,377 12,327
10th Percentile £313 £278 £300
25th Percentile £419 £402 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -4.65% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £660
90th Percentile £750 £750 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,997 956 1,233
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.25 £14.45
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.48 £18.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +36.24%
75th Percentile £63.10 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £74.38 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +27.24% -34.02% +27.07%

Social Skills
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Social Skills job vacancy trend in England

Social Skills
Daily Rate Trend in England

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

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

Social Skills
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Social Skills in England over the 6 months to 10 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Social Skills in England

Social Skills
Hourly Rate Trend in England

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

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

Social Skills
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Social Skills in England over the 6 months to 10 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Social Skills in England

Social 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 Social Skills within the England region over the 6 months to 10 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 0 4,418 £525 - 4,296
North of England 0 1,562 £492 +3.58% 1,523
South East -2 1,452 £500 +5.26% 1,941
Midlands -1 967 £475 +6.26% 1,060
North West 0 777 £492 -1.60% 800
West Midlands -1 735 £475 +2.70% 635
South West 0 699 £510 +7.37% 737
Yorkshire 0 651 £500 +11.11% 528
East of England 0 465 £450 -5.63% 615
East Midlands 0 224 £460 +22.67% 426
North East -2 150 £440 -9.28% 212
Social Skills
UK

Social 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
1 431 (4.41%) Confluence
2 396 (4.05%) SharePoint
3 125 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
4 102 (1.04%) CMS
5 80 (0.82%) Apache Spark
6 58 (0.59%) Apache
7 50 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
8 43 (0.44%) SAS
9 41 (0.42%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 23 (0.24%) IIS
11 20 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
12 17 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 15 (0.15%) WebLogic
14 13 (0.13%) Jupyter
14 13 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
15 12 (0.12%) WordPress
16 11 (0.11%) CICS
17 9 (0.092%) nginx
17 9 (0.092%) WebSphere
18 8 (0.082%) Drupal
Applications
1 609 (6.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 414 (4.24%) Microsoft Office
3 215 (2.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 146 (1.49%) Microsoft Project
5 118 (1.21%) MS Visio
6 72 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
7 39 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 32 (0.33%) Revit
9 30 (0.31%) AutoCAD
10 29 (0.30%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 16 (0.16%) Trello
12 15 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
13 14 (0.14%) Photoshop
13 14 (0.14%) Sketch
14 10 (0.10%) Adobe Illustrator
14 10 (0.10%) Navisworks
15 9 (0.092%) Adobe XD
16 6 (0.061%) InDesign
16 6 (0.061%) Windchill
17 5 (0.051%) CATIA
Business Applications
1 221 (2.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 91 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 59 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
4 33 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 28 (0.29%) Workday HCM
6 23 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
7 22 (0.23%) NetSuite
7 22 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
7 22 (0.23%) Primavera
8 20 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
9 19 (0.19%) iTrent
9 19 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
10 18 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
10 18 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 16 (0.16%) Shopify
12 15 (0.15%) Endur
12 15 (0.15%) Maximo
13 14 (0.14%) Finacle
13 14 (0.14%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
13 14 (0.14%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 1,846 (18.89%) Azure
2 1,281 (13.11%) AWS
3 787 (8.05%) Microsoft 365
4 694 (7.10%) Power Platform
5 485 (4.96%) GCP
6 393 (4.02%) Azure DevOps
7 364 (3.73%) Entra ID
8 332 (3.40%) GitHub
9 259 (2.65%) SaaS
10 197 (2.02%) Serverless
11 177 (1.81%) Power Automate
12 159 (1.63%) Dynamics 365
13 158 (1.62%) PowerApps
14 153 (1.57%) Amazon S3
15 150 (1.54%) Snowflake
16 149 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
17 130 (1.33%) AWS Lambda
18 116 (1.19%) OneDrive
19 112 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
20 108 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 271 (2.77%) Firewall
2 220 (2.25%) DNS
3 201 (2.06%) VPN
4 189 (1.93%) Network Security
5 183 (1.87%) TCP/IP
6 154 (1.58%) WAN
7 152 (1.56%) LAN
8 134 (1.37%) DHCP
8 134 (1.37%) Wi-Fi
9 98 (1.00%) Wireless
10 71 (0.73%) Structured Cabling
10 71 (0.73%) VLAN
11 64 (0.65%) BGP
12 59 (0.60%) SAN
13 46 (0.47%) SD-WAN
14 43 (0.44%) MPLS
15 41 (0.42%) NAS
16 40 (0.41%) HTTP
16 40 (0.41%) Internet
17 35 (0.36%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 534 (5.47%) Power BI
2 298 (3.05%) SQL Server
3 269 (2.75%) Data Warehouse
4 174 (1.78%) Metadata
5 157 (1.61%) PostgreSQL
6 139 (1.42%) Relational Database
7 126 (1.29%) Data Lake
8 119 (1.22%) Tableau
9 92 (0.94%) NoSQL
10 78 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
11 76 (0.78%) Big Data
12 67 (0.69%) Oracle Database
13 65 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
14 60 (0.61%) MySQL
15 58 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 54 (0.55%) MongoDB
17 53 (0.54%) DynamoDB
17 53 (0.54%) Power Query
18 46 (0.47%) BigQuery
19 45 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 830 (8.49%) JIRA
2 376 (3.85%) Git
3 250 (2.56%) Jenkins
4 175 (1.79%) GitLab
5 84 (0.86%) Selenium
6 65 (0.67%) Postman
7 61 (0.62%) Bitbucket
8 57 (0.58%) Cucumber
9 48 (0.49%) JUnit
10 47 (0.48%) Zephyr
11 39 (0.40%) JMeter
12 34 (0.35%) Maven
13 33 (0.34%) REST Assured
13 33 (0.34%) WebDriver
14 31 (0.32%) SonarQube
15 30 (0.31%) Cypress.io
16 28 (0.29%) Gatling
17 27 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
17 27 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
18 26 (0.27%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,529 (25.88%) Finance
2 1,955 (20.01%) Analytical Skills
3 1,111 (11.37%) Public Sector
4 714 (7.31%) Banking
5 682 (6.98%) Organisational Skills
6 429 (4.39%) Documentation Skills
7 399 (4.08%) Retail
8 396 (4.05%) Legal
9 326 (3.34%) Influencing Skills
10 296 (3.03%) Manufacturing
11 287 (2.94%) Marketing
12 275 (2.81%) Presentation Skills
13 240 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 202 (2.07%) Telecoms
15 147 (1.50%) Front Office
16 136 (1.39%) Local Government
17 122 (1.25%) Law
18 111 (1.14%) Investment Banking
19 99 (1.01%) Aerospace
19 99 (1.01%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,304 (13.35%) Analyst
2 945 (9.67%) Architect
3 869 (8.89%) Senior
4 831 (8.50%) Lead
5 660 (6.75%) Developer
6 557 (5.70%) Business Analyst
7 549 (5.62%) Consultant
8 514 (5.26%) Project Manager
9 337 (3.45%) IT Support
10 307 (3.14%) Support Engineer
11 305 (3.12%) Solutions Architect
12 276 (2.82%) Data Engineer
13 220 (2.25%) IT Engineer
14 213 (2.18%) Administrator
15 182 (1.86%) Senior Manager
16 180 (1.84%) IT Support Engineer
17 175 (1.79%) Designer
18 164 (1.68%) Data Analyst
19 157 (1.61%) Delivery Manager
20 155 (1.59%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 319 (3.26%) REST
2 247 (2.53%) .NET
3 190 (1.94%) React
4 145 (1.48%) Spring
5 138 (1.41%) Kafka
6 135 (1.38%) HTML
7 133 (1.36%) JSON
8 129 (1.32%) RESTful
9 123 (1.26%) SOAP
10 119 (1.22%) CSS
10 119 (1.22%) Middleware
10 119 (1.22%) XML
11 109 (1.12%) Oracle Fusion
12 106 (1.08%) PySpark
13 103 (1.05%) AngularJS
14 99 (1.01%) Spring Boot
15 98 (1.00%) Node.js
16 96 (0.98%) Web Services
17 87 (0.89%) OAuth
18 55 (0.56%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 536 (5.49%) Onboarding
2 502 (5.14%) Product Ownership
3 409 (4.19%) Cloud Native
4 273 (2.79%) Management Information System
5 252 (2.58%) Data Centre
6 249 (2.55%) Self-Motivation
7 216 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
8 213 (2.18%) Virtual Team
9 207 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
10 206 (2.11%) Distributed Systems
11 194 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
12 181 (1.85%) Analytical Mindset
13 178 (1.82%) Data Structures
14 120 (1.23%) Operational Technology
15 111 (1.14%) Security Posture
16 107 (1.10%) NHS
17 105 (1.07%) CMDB
18 102 (1.04%) AI Agents
18 102 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
19 97 (0.99%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 1,006 (10.30%) Windows
2 349 (3.57%) Linux
3 284 (2.91%) Windows 10
4 176 (1.80%) Windows Server
5 122 (1.25%) Unix
6 120 (1.23%) Apple iOS
7 100 (1.02%) Android
8 65 (0.67%) Mac OS
9 53 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
11 16 (0.16%) AIX
12 15 (0.15%) Solaris
12 15 (0.15%) Ubuntu
12 15 (0.15%) zOS
13 14 (0.14%) VMS
14 10 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.082%) Windows Server 2012
16 7 (0.072%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.061%) CentOS
18 5 (0.051%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,971 (30.41%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,579 (26.39%) Agile
3 2,540 (26.00%) Problem-Solving
4 1,743 (17.84%) Continuous Improvement
5 1,552 (15.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 1,251 (12.80%) CI/CD
7 1,234 (12.63%) DevOps
8 1,132 (11.59%) AI
9 1,119 (11.45%) Migration
10 995 (10.18%) Decision-Making
11 914 (9.35%) Analytics
12 821 (8.40%) Roadmaps
13 809 (8.28%) Project Management
14 792 (8.11%) ITIL
15 734 (7.51%) Project Delivery
16 729 (7.46%) Customer Service
17 705 (7.22%) Validation
18 665 (6.81%) Data Modelling
19 651 (6.66%) Change Management
20 641 (6.56%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,185 (12.13%) SQL
2 1,036 (10.60%) Python
3 488 (4.99%) Java
4 327 (3.35%) PowerShell
5 310 (3.17%) JavaScript
6 286 (2.93%) C#
7 165 (1.69%) TypeScript
8 164 (1.68%) Bash
9 72 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 71 (0.73%) C++
11 69 (0.71%) T-SQL
12 68 (0.70%) PL/SQL
13 48 (0.49%) Apex Code
13 48 (0.49%) C
14 47 (0.48%) Scala
15 45 (0.46%) Bicep
16 44 (0.45%) Shell Script
17 43 (0.44%) VBA
18 40 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 35 (0.36%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 2,110 (21.59%) Security Cleared
2 1,580 (16.17%) SC Cleared
3 1,002 (10.25%) Degree
4 378 (3.87%) DV Cleared
5 316 (3.23%) BPSS Clearance
6 237 (2.43%) Computer Science Degree
7 202 (2.07%) CISSP
8 193 (1.98%) PMP
9 190 (1.94%) PMI Certification
10 183 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
11 164 (1.68%) Microsoft Certification
12 139 (1.42%) Azure Certification
13 131 (1.34%) CISM
14 101 (1.03%) AWS Certification
15 83 (0.85%) Master's Degree
16 80 (0.82%) DBS Check
17 78 (0.80%) CCNP
18 76 (0.78%) ISTQB
19 70 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
20 68 (0.70%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 584 (5.98%) Data Quality
2 552 (5.65%) QA
3 313 (3.20%) PMO
4 281 (2.88%) GDPR
5 255 (2.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 246 (2.52%) NIST
7 237 (2.43%) Accessibility
8 200 (2.05%) SLA
9 136 (1.39%) GRC
10 68 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials
11 67 (0.69%) NCSC
12 66 (0.68%) WCAG
13 56 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 54 (0.55%) PCI DSS
15 51 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
16 35 (0.36%) COBIT
17 27 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 25 (0.26%) Def Stans
19 24 (0.25%) JSP 440
20 20 (0.20%) GxP
System Software
1 594 (6.08%) Active Directory
2 380 (3.89%) Docker
3 165 (1.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 53 (0.54%) vSphere
5 44 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
6 43 (0.44%) VMware NSX
7 40 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
8 36 (0.37%) Hyper-V
9 34 (0.35%) Firmware
9 34 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
10 19 (0.19%) IAG
11 15 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
12 11 (0.11%) NFS
13 6 (0.061%) Time Sharing Option
14 5 (0.051%) KVM
14 5 (0.051%) RACF
15 4 (0.041%) ACF2
15 4 (0.041%) Embedded Firmware
15 4 (0.041%) Postfix
16 3 (0.031%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 437 (4.47%) Kubernetes
2 430 (4.40%) Terraform
3 247 (2.53%) Microsoft Intune
4 214 (2.19%) Ansible
5 121 (1.24%) Grafana
6 116 (1.19%) SCCM
7 94 (0.96%) Prometheus
8 56 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
9 36 (0.37%) vCenter Server
10 35 (0.36%) Puppet
11 34 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
12 25 (0.26%) Progress Chef
13 22 (0.23%) Argo
14 18 (0.18%) FortiGate
15 17 (0.17%) WSUS
16 15 (0.15%) Oracle RMAN
17 14 (0.14%) Dell DRAC
17 14 (0.14%) NetBackup
17 14 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
18 12 (0.12%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,987 (20.34%) Microsoft
2 569 (5.82%) ServiceNow
3 564 (5.77%) SAP
4 531 (5.43%) Oracle
5 296 (3.03%) Salesforce
6 246 (2.52%) Databricks
7 245 (2.51%) Google
8 241 (2.47%) VMware
9 238 (2.44%) Cisco
10 127 (1.30%) Adobe
11 126 (1.29%) Splunk
11 126 (1.29%) Workday
12 91 (0.93%) IBM
13 83 (0.85%) CyberArk
14 68 (0.70%) Remedy
15 66 (0.68%) Citrix
16 61 (0.62%) MuleSoft
17 57 (0.58%) Red Hat
18 56 (0.57%) Juniper
19 55 (0.56%) Apple