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 9 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 31 43
Rank change year-on-year +19 +12 +32
Contract jobs citing Continuous Improvement 708 194 205
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 10.87% 5.42% 4.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.44% 6.12% 5.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 407 112 107
10th Percentile £337 £316 £363
25th Percentile £434 £412 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +7.50% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £600 £638
90th Percentile £700 £650 £651
England median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 19 9
10th Percentile £13.42 £12.50 £13.25
25th Percentile £17.19 £13.81 £25.99
Median hourly rate £55.00 £15.25 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +260.66% -70.95% -10.00%
75th Percentile £84.00 £58.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £87.99 £60.43 £60.73
England median hourly rate £29.00 £20.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +41.46% -41.43% -46.15%

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 5,267 3,169 3,611
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.88% 88.59% 83.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,061 1,981 2,163
10th Percentile £275 £213 £255
25th Percentile £424 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £619 £588 £625
90th Percentile £713 £650 £688
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 671 326 191
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £30.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £21.32 £58.49
Median % change year-on-year +122.80% -63.55% +9.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £46.78 £70.09
90th Percentile £88.00 £69.20 £75.40
England median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -4.49%

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 9 October 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 9 October 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 9 October 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 +21 333 £565 +17.71% 572
Berkshire +22 227 £550 +17.33% 285
Hampshire +18 206 £575 +9.52% 318
Buckinghamshire +5 83 £577 +4.91% 154
Surrey +21 68 £425 -15.00% 153
West Sussex +7 46 £467 +21.30% 100
Middlesex - 25 - - 4
Oxfordshire -12 23 £640 -3.40% 140
Kent +4 17 £468 -21.15% 75
East Sussex +3 3 £575 +17.95% 61
Sussex -3 2 £600 - 13
Isle of Wight - 1 £400 - 6
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 36 (5.08%) SharePoint
2 14 (1.98%) Confluence
3 4 (0.56%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.28%) Oracle Application Server
4 2 (0.28%) Smallworld
5 1 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.14%) Apache
5 1 (0.14%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.14%) Apache Superset
5 1 (0.14%) CMS
5 1 (0.14%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (0.14%) SharePoint 2010
5 1 (0.14%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 70 (9.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (4.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 28 (3.95%) Microsoft Project
4 17 (2.40%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.28%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.14%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.14%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.14%) Houdini
6 1 (0.14%) MicroStation
6 1 (0.14%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.14%) NUKE
6 1 (0.14%) Revit
Business Applications
1 12 (1.69%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.71%) Primavera
3 4 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.56%) Oracle ERP
3 4 (0.56%) SAP BRIM
3 4 (0.56%) SAP PSCD
4 3 (0.42%) Maximo
4 3 (0.42%) NEC Housing
4 3 (0.42%) SAP FI
4 3 (0.42%) SAP FI-CA
4 3 (0.42%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.14%) SAP BPC
6 1 (0.14%) SAP Convergent Charging
6 1 (0.14%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.14%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 136 (19.21%) Azure
2 103 (14.55%) AWS
3 36 (5.08%) Power Platform
4 33 (4.66%) GCP
5 31 (4.38%) Azure DevOps
6 25 (3.53%) GitHub
7 23 (3.25%) Entra ID
8 22 (3.11%) SaaS
9 18 (2.54%) Microsoft 365
10 16 (2.26%) Azure Monitor
11 15 (2.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 15 (2.12%) Serverless
12 14 (1.98%) GitHub Actions
13 13 (1.84%) OpenShift
14 11 (1.55%) Datadog
15 8 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
15 8 (1.13%) AWS Lambda
16 7 (0.99%) OCI
17 6 (0.85%) Azure AKS
17 6 (0.85%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 29 (4.10%) DNS
2 23 (3.25%) Network Security
3 16 (2.26%) Firewall
4 13 (1.84%) DHCP
5 11 (1.55%) Broadband
5 11 (1.55%) LAN
6 10 (1.41%) TCP/IP
7 6 (0.85%) SD-WAN
7 6 (0.85%) VPN
7 6 (0.85%) WAN
8 5 (0.71%) Intranet
8 5 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (0.71%) Wireless
9 4 (0.56%) DNSSEC
9 4 (0.56%) Intrusion Detection
9 4 (0.56%) Radio Access Network
9 4 (0.56%) Software-Defined Networking
10 3 (0.42%) MQTT
10 3 (0.42%) VLAN
11 2 (0.28%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (4.66%) Power BI
2 18 (2.54%) Metadata
3 17 (2.40%) Relational Database
4 12 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
5 10 (1.41%) PostgreSQL
6 7 (0.99%) Spark SQL
7 6 (0.85%) DynamoDB
8 5 (0.71%) Tableau
9 4 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
9 4 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
10 3 (0.42%) Big Data
10 3 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
10 3 (0.42%) Geospatial Data
10 3 (0.42%) GIS
10 3 (0.42%) NoSQL
11 2 (0.28%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 2 (0.28%) Oracle ODI
11 2 (0.28%) Redis
11 2 (0.28%) SQL Server
12 1 (0.14%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 33 (4.66%) Git
2 32 (4.52%) JIRA
3 20 (2.82%) GitLab
3 20 (2.82%) Jenkins
4 15 (2.12%) Selenium
5 8 (1.13%) MSI
6 5 (0.71%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.28%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.28%) Gatling
7 2 (0.28%) JMeter
7 2 (0.28%) LoadRunner
7 2 (0.28%) REST Assured
7 2 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.14%) ERwin
8 1 (0.14%) Hudson
8 1 (0.14%) JUnit
8 1 (0.14%) Mockito
8 1 (0.14%) SoapUI
8 1 (0.14%) Subversion
8 1 (0.14%) TestRail
General
1 341 (48.16%) Social Skills
2 197 (27.82%) Analytical Skills
3 116 (16.38%) Finance
4 75 (10.59%) Public Sector
5 60 (8.47%) Aerospace
6 50 (7.06%) Organisational Skills
7 39 (5.51%) Manufacturing
8 34 (4.80%) Influencing Skills
9 23 (3.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 22 (3.11%) Telecoms
11 19 (2.68%) Legal
12 17 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
12 17 (2.40%) Retail
13 14 (1.98%) Electronics
13 14 (1.98%) French Language
13 14 (1.98%) Presentation Skills
13 14 (1.98%) Spanish Language
14 13 (1.84%) Marketing
14 13 (1.84%) Military
15 9 (1.27%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 94 (13.28%) Lead
2 76 (10.73%) Analyst
3 67 (9.46%) Senior
4 61 (8.62%) Architect
5 47 (6.64%) Delivery Manager
6 28 (3.95%) Product Manager
7 26 (3.67%) Consultant
8 19 (2.68%) Data Analyst
8 19 (2.68%) Project Manager
8 19 (2.68%) Senior Manager
9 18 (2.54%) IT Manager
9 18 (2.54%) Security Analyst
9 18 (2.54%) Service Manager
10 17 (2.40%) Product Delivery Manager
10 17 (2.40%) Technical Manager
11 15 (2.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 14 (1.98%) 2nd Line Support
12 14 (1.98%) Developer
12 14 (1.98%) Solutions Architect
12 14 (1.98%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (7.77%) Terraform
2 15 (2.12%) REST
3 12 (1.69%) .NET
3 12 (1.69%) ARM Templates
4 11 (1.55%) Middleware
5 10 (1.41%) OAuth
5 10 (1.41%) PySpark
5 10 (1.41%) RESTful
5 10 (1.41%) SOAP
6 9 (1.27%) Kafka
7 8 (1.13%) SAML
8 7 (0.99%) OpenID
8 7 (0.99%) React
9 6 (0.85%) EDI
9 6 (0.85%) GraphQL
9 6 (0.85%) HTML
9 6 (0.85%) JSON
9 6 (0.85%) LDAP
10 5 (0.71%) CSS
10 5 (0.71%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 63 (8.90%) Product Ownership
2 44 (6.21%) Management Information System
3 42 (5.93%) Onboarding
4 39 (5.51%) Cloud Native
5 23 (3.25%) Operational Technology
6 18 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
6 18 (2.54%) Security Posture
7 17 (2.40%) Hybrid Cloud
8 16 (2.26%) Cyber Threat
9 15 (2.12%) Data Centre
9 15 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (1.98%) CMDB
11 13 (1.84%) Security Operations Centre
12 12 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
12 12 (1.69%) Virtual Team
13 11 (1.55%) PMI
13 11 (1.55%) Social Media
14 9 (1.27%) Animation
14 9 (1.27%) Interactive Media
15 8 (1.13%) Graphic Design
Operating Systems
1 77 (10.88%) Windows
2 37 (5.23%) Linux
3 23 (3.25%) Windows Server
4 7 (0.99%) Windows Server 2019
5 5 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.28%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
7 1 (0.14%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.14%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 257 (36.30%) Agile
2 219 (30.93%) Problem-Solving
3 208 (29.38%) Stakeholder Management
4 159 (22.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 126 (17.80%) ITIL
6 116 (16.38%) Roadmaps
7 108 (15.25%) Decision-Making
8 101 (14.27%) DevOps
9 99 (13.98%) CI/CD
10 96 (13.56%) Service Delivery
11 93 (13.14%) Service Management
12 92 (12.99%) Project Delivery
13 87 (12.29%) Cybersecurity
14 80 (11.30%) Change Management
15 76 (10.73%) Validation
16 71 (10.03%) ITSM
17 69 (9.75%) Infrastructure as Code
17 69 (9.75%) PRINCE2
18 68 (9.60%) Analytics
19 66 (9.32%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 85 (12.01%) Python
2 74 (10.45%) SQL
3 52 (7.34%) PowerShell
4 29 (4.10%) Bash
5 17 (2.40%) Java
6 9 (1.27%) Bicep
6 9 (1.27%) JavaScript
7 8 (1.13%) C#
8 6 (0.85%) Apex Code
8 6 (0.85%) TypeScript
9 5 (0.71%) Go
10 4 (0.56%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.42%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.42%) Rust
12 2 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.28%) Magik
13 1 (0.14%) ABAP
13 1 (0.14%) C++
13 1 (0.14%) Perl
13 1 (0.14%) VBA
Qualifications
1 349 (49.29%) Security Cleared
2 195 (27.54%) SC Cleared
3 134 (18.93%) DV Cleared
4 117 (16.53%) Degree
5 35 (4.94%) PMI Certification
6 26 (3.67%) PMP
7 23 (3.25%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (2.82%) Azure Certification
8 20 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
9 16 (2.26%) CISSP
10 14 (1.98%) AWS Certification
10 14 (1.98%) ITIL Certification
11 9 (1.27%) ACCA
11 9 (1.27%) CIMA
11 9 (1.27%) Cisco Certification
11 9 (1.27%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
12 7 (0.99%) Master's Degree
12 7 (0.99%) PRINCE2 Certification
13 6 (0.85%) CISM
13 6 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (9.32%) QA
2 59 (8.33%) PMO
3 48 (6.78%) Data Quality
4 32 (4.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 22 (3.11%) NIST
6 19 (2.68%) GDPR
6 19 (2.68%) SLA
7 15 (2.12%) ISO 9001
7 15 (2.12%) NCSC
8 8 (1.13%) GRC
9 7 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
10 5 (0.71%) Def Stans
10 5 (0.71%) ISO 22301
10 5 (0.71%) NIST 800
11 4 (0.56%) Accessibility
11 4 (0.56%) COSHH
12 3 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.42%) GMP
13 2 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 2 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 32 (4.52%) Active Directory
2 27 (3.81%) Docker
3 23 (3.25%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.13%) IAG
5 6 (0.85%) vSphere
6 5 (0.71%) Hyper-V
6 5 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
7 4 (0.56%) VMware NSX
8 3 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 2 (0.28%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 50 (7.06%) Kubernetes
2 36 (5.08%) Ansible
3 11 (1.55%) Grafana
3 11 (1.55%) Microsoft Intune
3 11 (1.55%) WMI
4 8 (1.13%) Puppet
4 8 (1.13%) SCCM
5 7 (0.99%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.71%) Progress Chef
7 4 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 3 (0.42%) MOM
8 3 (0.42%) Podman
8 3 (0.42%) QRadar
9 2 (0.28%) Argo
9 2 (0.28%) CASB
9 2 (0.28%) CSIRT
9 2 (0.28%) Istio
9 2 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.28%) vRealize
9 2 (0.28%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 153 (21.61%) Microsoft
2 43 (6.07%) ServiceNow
3 42 (5.93%) SAP
4 27 (3.81%) VMware
5 21 (2.97%) Oracle
6 18 (2.54%) Salesforce
7 17 (2.40%) Databricks
8 14 (1.98%) Google
9 11 (1.55%) Dynatrace
10 10 (1.41%) Juniper
11 8 (1.13%) Nexthink
12 7 (0.99%) Splunk
13 6 (0.85%) Adobe
13 6 (0.85%) Baan
13 6 (0.85%) Cisco
13 6 (0.85%) Red Hat
13 6 (0.85%) Virgin Media
14 5 (0.71%) CrowdStrike
14 5 (0.71%) Workday
15 4 (0.56%) Okta