Continuous Improvement Contract Job Trends in the South East

Continual Improvement
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring Continuous Improvement skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 35 39
Rank change year-on-year +21 +4 +27
Contract jobs citing Continuous Improvement 636 181 228
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 9.45% 5.14% 4.63%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.69% 5.72% 5.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 363 104 120
10th Percentile £326 £325 £363
25th Percentile £425 £446 £454
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £510
Median % change year-on-year - +2.89% -2.81%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £700 £650 £688
England median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 12 15
10th Percentile £46.30 - £18.35
25th Percentile £74.99 £15.13 £25.00
Median hourly rate £85.00 £17.58 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +383.50% -58.64% -13.27%
75th Percentile £88.00 £67.50 £56.88
90th Percentile - £69.89 £59.54
England median hourly rate £45.00 £28.75 £52.50
% change year-on-year +56.52% -45.24% -16.00%

All Process & Methodology Skills
South East

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 the South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 5,439 3,163 4,070
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.82% 89.86% 82.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,349 1,977 2,484
10th Percentile £280 £250 £255
25th Percentile £419 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.91% -0.58%
75th Percentile £613 £600 £638
90th Percentile £706 £671 £700
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 598 294 322
10th Percentile £14.21 £13.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £21.35 £15.13 £26.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £21.41 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +156.89% -62.67% +14.70%
75th Percentile £78.75 £50.00 £70.14
90th Percentile £88.00 £70.92 £76.86
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +2.87%

Continuous Improvement
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Continuous Improvement job vacancy trend in the South East

Continuous Improvement
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Continuous Improvement.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Continuous Improvement in the South East over the 6 months to 14 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Continuous Improvement in the South East

Continuous Improvement
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Continuous Improvement.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Continuous Improvement in the South East over the 6 months to 14 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Continuous Improvement in the South East

Continuous Improvement
Contract Job Locations in the South East

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 South East region over the 6 months to 14 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
Thames Valley +23 301 £537 +4.78% 252
Berkshire +30 216 £525 +2.44% 114
Hampshire +21 184 £550 -4.35% 182
Buckinghamshire -7 68 £569 +7.11% 80
Surrey +18 62 £450 -10.00% 64
West Sussex -1 39 £483 +1.58% 27
Middlesex - 19 - - 12
Oxfordshire -17 17 £650 +44.44% 65
Kent +5 7 £405 - 53
East Sussex +4 5 £615 +11.82% 19
Sussex - 1 £600 - 7
Continuous Improvement
England

Continuous Improvement
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 31 (4.87%) SharePoint
2 18 (2.83%) Confluence
3 4 (0.63%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.31%) Oracle Application Server
5 1 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.16%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.16%) SharePoint 2010
5 1 (0.16%) SharePoint 2013
5 1 (0.16%) Smallworld
Applications
1 55 (8.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 24 (3.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 22 (3.46%) Microsoft Project
4 14 (2.20%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.31%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.16%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.16%) Houdini
6 1 (0.16%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.16%) NUKE
6 1 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 15 (2.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.94%) Primavera
3 4 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.47%) iTrent
4 3 (0.47%) Maximo
4 3 (0.47%) NEC Housing
4 3 (0.47%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.47%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.31%) SAP SD
5 2 (0.31%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.16%) SAP BPC
6 1 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
6 1 (0.16%) SAP Business One
6 1 (0.16%) SAP Convergent Charging
6 1 (0.16%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.16%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 117 (18.40%) Azure
2 77 (12.11%) AWS
3 32 (5.03%) GCP
3 32 (5.03%) Power Platform
4 22 (3.46%) Azure DevOps
4 22 (3.46%) SaaS
5 21 (3.30%) Entra ID
5 21 (3.30%) GitHub
6 15 (2.36%) Microsoft 365
7 13 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
8 12 (1.89%) Azure Monitor
8 12 (1.89%) OpenShift
9 10 (1.57%) Datadog
10 9 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 9 (1.42%) Serverless
11 8 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (1.26%) OCI
12 7 (1.10%) Amazon EKS
13 6 (0.94%) Azure AKS
13 6 (0.94%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 27 (4.25%) DNS
2 25 (3.93%) Network Security
3 16 (2.52%) Firewall
4 13 (2.04%) LAN
5 10 (1.57%) DHCP
6 8 (1.26%) Broadband
6 8 (1.26%) TCP/IP
7 7 (1.10%) WAN
8 6 (0.94%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.94%) VPN
8 6 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.94%) Wireless
9 4 (0.63%) DNSSEC
10 3 (0.47%) Intranet
10 3 (0.47%) Intrusion Detection
10 3 (0.47%) MQTT
10 3 (0.47%) Radio Access Network
10 3 (0.47%) VLAN
11 2 (0.31%) Cisco Nexus
11 2 (0.31%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (4.56%) Power BI
2 12 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
3 11 (1.73%) Metadata
4 8 (1.26%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
5 7 (1.10%) Tableau
6 6 (0.94%) Spark SQL
7 4 (0.63%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (0.63%) GIS
7 4 (0.63%) Redis
8 3 (0.47%) Big Data
8 3 (0.47%) DynamoDB
8 3 (0.47%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (0.47%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.31%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.31%) Oracle ODI
9 2 (0.31%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.31%) SAP HANA
9 2 (0.31%) SQL Server
10 1 (0.16%) Couchbase
Development Applications
1 30 (4.72%) JIRA
2 27 (4.25%) Rational DOORS
3 17 (2.67%) GitLab
4 16 (2.52%) Jenkins
5 12 (1.89%) Git
6 5 (0.79%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.47%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.47%) Hudson
7 3 (0.47%) MSI
8 2 (0.31%) REST Assured
8 2 (0.31%) Selenium
8 2 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.31%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.16%) Balsamiq
9 1 (0.16%) Mockito
9 1 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
9 1 (0.16%) Postman
9 1 (0.16%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.16%) Subversion
9 1 (0.16%) TestRail
General
1 284 (44.65%) Social Skills
2 176 (27.67%) Analytical Skills
3 118 (18.55%) Finance
4 70 (11.01%) Public Sector
5 65 (10.22%) Aerospace
6 37 (5.82%) Organisational Skills
7 31 (4.87%) Influencing Skills
8 21 (3.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 21 (3.30%) Retail
9 18 (2.83%) Legal
9 18 (2.83%) Telecoms
10 16 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
10 16 (2.52%) French Language
10 16 (2.52%) Spanish Language
11 11 (1.73%) Military
12 10 (1.57%) Manufacturing
12 10 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
13 8 (1.26%) Games
13 8 (1.26%) Law
14 7 (1.10%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 85 (13.36%) Analyst
2 75 (11.79%) Lead
3 63 (9.91%) Senior
4 57 (8.96%) Architect
5 45 (7.08%) Delivery Manager
6 42 (6.60%) Product Manager
7 31 (4.87%) Product Delivery Manager
8 23 (3.62%) Systems Manager
9 22 (3.46%) Data Analyst
9 22 (3.46%) IT Manager
9 22 (3.46%) Systems Delivery Manager
10 21 (3.30%) Consultant
11 16 (2.52%) 2nd Line Support
11 16 (2.52%) 2nd Line Technical Support
11 16 (2.52%) Project Manager
11 16 (2.52%) Senior Analyst
11 16 (2.52%) Technical Support
12 15 (2.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 15 (2.36%) Solutions Architect
13 14 (2.20%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (2.04%) REST
2 11 (1.73%) .NET
2 11 (1.73%) OAuth
2 11 (1.73%) RESTful
2 11 (1.73%) SOAP
3 9 (1.42%) ARM Templates
3 9 (1.42%) Kafka
4 8 (1.26%) PySpark
4 8 (1.26%) SAML
5 7 (1.10%) EDI
5 7 (1.10%) OpenID
6 6 (0.94%) GraphQL
6 6 (0.94%) JSON
6 6 (0.94%) LDAP
6 6 (0.94%) OAuth2
7 5 (0.79%) HTML
7 5 (0.79%) Keycloak
7 5 (0.79%) Middleware
7 5 (0.79%) React
8 4 (0.63%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 80 (12.58%) Product Ownership
2 35 (5.50%) Cloud Native
3 34 (5.35%) Onboarding
4 31 (4.87%) Management Information System
5 27 (4.25%) Data Structures
6 24 (3.77%) Operational Technology
7 18 (2.83%) Security Posture
8 16 (2.52%) Hybrid Cloud
9 15 (2.36%) Data Centre
10 14 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
11 13 (2.04%) Analytical Mindset
12 12 (1.89%) CMDB
12 12 (1.89%) Cyber Threat
13 11 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
13 11 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
13 11 (1.73%) PMI
13 11 (1.73%) Self-Motivation
14 10 (1.57%) Security Operations Centre
15 8 (1.26%) Animation
15 8 (1.26%) Graphic Design
Operating Systems
1 67 (10.53%) Windows
2 33 (5.19%) Linux
3 21 (3.30%) Windows Server
4 7 (1.10%) Windows Server 2019
5 5 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
6 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.16%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 226 (35.53%) Agile
2 169 (26.57%) Stakeholder Management
3 165 (25.94%) Problem-Solving
4 160 (25.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 110 (17.30%) ITIL
6 97 (15.25%) Decision-Making
7 90 (14.15%) Roadmaps
8 87 (13.68%) Service Delivery
9 82 (12.89%) DevOps
10 81 (12.74%) Cybersecurity
11 79 (12.42%) Service Management
12 76 (11.95%) CI/CD
13 71 (11.16%) ITSM
14 66 (10.38%) PRINCE2
15 63 (9.91%) Computer Science
16 62 (9.75%) Change Management
16 62 (9.75%) Project Delivery
17 59 (9.28%) Project Management
18 56 (8.81%) Scaled Agile Framework
19 54 (8.49%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 60 (9.43%) Python
2 59 (9.28%) SQL
3 40 (6.29%) PowerShell
4 26 (4.09%) Bash
5 17 (2.67%) Java
6 8 (1.26%) C#
7 7 (1.10%) Bicep
7 7 (1.10%) JavaScript
8 5 (0.79%) Apex Code
8 5 (0.79%) TypeScript
9 4 (0.63%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.47%) Go
10 3 (0.47%) PL/SQL
10 3 (0.47%) Rust
11 2 (0.31%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.16%) ABAP
12 1 (0.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.16%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.16%) Magik
12 1 (0.16%) VBA
Qualifications
1 322 (50.63%) Security Cleared
2 162 (25.47%) SC Cleared
3 125 (19.65%) Degree
4 105 (16.51%) DV Cleared
5 35 (5.50%) PMI Certification
6 26 (4.09%) PMP
7 18 (2.83%) Azure Certification
8 17 (2.67%) ACCA
8 17 (2.67%) CIMA
8 17 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
9 16 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
10 15 (2.36%) CISSP
11 13 (2.04%) AWS Certification
12 10 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
13 9 (1.42%) ITIL Certification
13 9 (1.42%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 6 (0.94%) CCNP
14 6 (0.94%) CISM
14 6 (0.94%) Master's Degree
15 5 (0.79%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 53 (8.33%) QA
2 50 (7.86%) Data Quality
3 47 (7.39%) PMO
4 33 (5.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 21 (3.30%) NIST
6 18 (2.83%) GDPR
7 16 (2.52%) NCSC
7 16 (2.52%) SLA
8 8 (1.26%) Cyber Essentials
8 8 (1.26%) ISO 9001
9 7 (1.10%) GRC
9 7 (1.10%) ISO 22301
10 4 (0.63%) Accessibility
10 4 (0.63%) ISO 31000
11 2 (0.31%) Def Stans
11 2 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
11 2 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 2 (0.31%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.16%) COBIT
System Software
1 29 (4.56%) Active Directory
2 27 (4.25%) Docker
3 24 (3.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.94%) IAG
5 5 (0.79%) Virtual Desktop
5 5 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.79%) vSphere
6 4 (0.63%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.47%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 45 (7.08%) Terraform
2 44 (6.92%) Kubernetes
3 32 (5.03%) Ansible
4 11 (1.73%) Grafana
5 8 (1.26%) Microsoft Intune
5 8 (1.26%) Prometheus
5 8 (1.26%) Puppet
6 7 (1.10%) SCCM
7 5 (0.79%) Progress Chef
7 5 (0.79%) WMI
8 4 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 3 (0.47%) Argo
9 3 (0.47%) Podman
9 3 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.31%) CASB
10 2 (0.31%) CSIRT
10 2 (0.31%) Rancher
10 2 (0.31%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.16%) Amdocs OSS
11 1 (0.16%) QRadar
Vendors
1 109 (17.14%) Microsoft
2 48 (7.55%) ServiceNow
3 45 (7.08%) SAP
4 33 (5.19%) VMware
5 26 (4.09%) Oracle
6 25 (3.93%) IBM
7 17 (2.67%) Salesforce
8 14 (2.20%) Databricks
8 14 (2.20%) Google
9 11 (1.73%) Juniper
10 10 (1.57%) Dynatrace
11 8 (1.26%) Cisco
11 8 (1.26%) Workday
12 7 (1.10%) Red Hat
12 7 (1.10%) Splunk
13 6 (0.94%) Baan
13 6 (0.94%) Nexthink
13 6 (0.94%) Virgin Media
14 5 (0.79%) SolarWinds
15 4 (0.63%) Infoblox