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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 30 43
Rank change year-on-year +19 +13 +27
Contract jobs citing Continuous Improvement 736 205 203
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 11.17% 5.67% 4.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.75% 6.38% 5.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 418 121 106
10th Percentile £329 £322 £363
25th Percentile £431 £413 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +7.50% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £600 £638
90th Percentile £708 £650 £651
England median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 20 9
10th Percentile £13.99 - £13.25
25th Percentile £17.96 £12.50 £25.99
Median hourly rate £50.00 £15.25 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +227.87% -70.95% -23.54%
75th Percentile £85.00 £58.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £59.22 £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 5,352 3,211 3,586
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 81.21% 88.87% 83.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,088 2,015 2,165
10th Percentile £275 £213 £259
25th Percentile £417 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £620 £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 703 330 181
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £16.33 £16.17 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £20.79 £58.49
Median % change year-on-year +116.45% -64.46% +7.58%
75th Percentile £70.00 £41.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £69.65 £75.00
England median hourly rate £38.72 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +53.96% -40.82% -5.56%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +21 347 £571 +19.48% 115
Berkshire +24 240 £550 +18.92% 72
Hampshire +24 213 £575 +9.52% 57
Buckinghamshire +5 83 £577 +4.91% 28
Surrey +26 71 £425 -15.00% 39
West Sussex +4 49 £459 -5.85% 17
Middlesex - 25 - - 3
Oxfordshire -7 24 £640 -3.40% 20
Kent +9 19 £468 -21.15% 16
East Sussex +2 3 £575 +17.95% 4
Sussex -3 2 £600 - 5
Isle of Wight - 1 £400 -
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 40 (5.43%) SharePoint
2 14 (1.90%) Confluence
3 6 (0.82%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.27%) Oracle Application Server
4 2 (0.27%) 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 74 (10.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (5.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 29 (3.94%) Microsoft Project
4 18 (2.45%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.27%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.27%) 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 11 (1.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.68%) Primavera
3 4 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
3 4 (0.54%) SAP BRIM
3 4 (0.54%) SAP PSCD
4 3 (0.41%) Maximo
4 3 (0.41%) NEC Housing
4 3 (0.41%) SAP FI
4 3 (0.41%) SAP FI-CA
4 3 (0.41%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.27%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.14%) Cloudability
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
Cloud Services
1 143 (19.43%) Azure
2 103 (13.99%) AWS
3 37 (5.03%) Azure DevOps
4 36 (4.89%) Power Platform
5 34 (4.62%) GCP
6 28 (3.80%) GitHub
7 23 (3.13%) Entra ID
8 21 (2.85%) SaaS
9 18 (2.45%) Microsoft 365
10 17 (2.31%) Azure Monitor
10 17 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
11 15 (2.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 15 (2.04%) OpenShift
11 15 (2.04%) Serverless
12 11 (1.49%) Datadog
13 8 (1.09%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
14 6 (0.82%) Azure AKS
14 6 (0.82%) Microsoft Purview
14 6 (0.82%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 29 (3.94%) DNS
2 23 (3.13%) Network Security
3 16 (2.17%) Firewall
4 13 (1.77%) DHCP
5 11 (1.49%) Broadband
5 11 (1.49%) LAN
6 10 (1.36%) TCP/IP
7 6 (0.82%) SD-WAN
7 6 (0.82%) VPN
7 6 (0.82%) WAN
8 5 (0.68%) Intranet
8 5 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (0.68%) Wireless
9 4 (0.54%) DNSSEC
9 4 (0.54%) Intrusion Detection
9 4 (0.54%) Radio Access Network
9 4 (0.54%) Software-Defined Networking
10 3 (0.41%) MQTT
10 3 (0.41%) VLAN
11 2 (0.27%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (4.48%) Power BI
2 18 (2.45%) Metadata
3 17 (2.31%) Relational Database
4 11 (1.49%) Data Warehouse
5 10 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
6 8 (1.09%) Spark SQL
7 6 (0.82%) DynamoDB
8 4 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (0.54%) Big Data
8 4 (0.54%) Tableau
9 3 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (0.41%) Geospatial Data
9 3 (0.41%) GIS
9 3 (0.41%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.41%) Oracle Reports
10 2 (0.27%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.27%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.27%) Oracle ODI
10 2 (0.27%) Redis
10 2 (0.27%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 36 (4.89%) Git
2 33 (4.48%) JIRA
3 22 (2.99%) GitLab
3 22 (2.99%) Jenkins
4 15 (2.04%) Selenium
5 8 (1.09%) MSI
6 5 (0.68%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.41%) Gatling
7 3 (0.41%) JMeter
7 3 (0.41%) LoadRunner
8 2 (0.27%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.27%) REST Assured
8 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.14%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.14%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.14%) Hudson
9 1 (0.14%) Mockito
9 1 (0.14%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.14%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.14%) TestRail
General
1 355 (48.23%) Social Skills
2 205 (27.85%) Analytical Skills
3 122 (16.58%) Finance
4 78 (10.60%) Public Sector
5 71 (9.65%) Aerospace
6 51 (6.93%) Organisational Skills
7 45 (6.11%) Manufacturing
8 37 (5.03%) Influencing Skills
9 25 (3.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 22 (2.99%) Telecoms
11 21 (2.85%) Legal
12 18 (2.45%) Electronics
13 17 (2.31%) Documentation Skills
14 16 (2.17%) Retail
15 15 (2.04%) Military
16 14 (1.90%) Presentation Skills
17 13 (1.77%) French Language
17 13 (1.77%) Marketing
17 13 (1.77%) Spanish Language
18 9 (1.22%) Games
Job Titles
1 97 (13.18%) Lead
2 74 (10.05%) Analyst
3 69 (9.38%) Senior
4 60 (8.15%) Architect
5 51 (6.93%) Delivery Manager
6 31 (4.21%) Product Manager
7 26 (3.53%) Consultant
8 20 (2.72%) Product Delivery Manager
9 19 (2.58%) IT Manager
9 19 (2.58%) Senior Manager
10 18 (2.45%) Data Analyst
10 18 (2.45%) Project Manager
10 18 (2.45%) Security Analyst
10 18 (2.45%) Service Manager
11 17 (2.31%) Technical Manager
12 15 (2.04%) Developer
12 15 (2.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 14 (1.90%) Engineering Manager
13 14 (1.90%) PMO Planner
13 14 (1.90%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (8.02%) Terraform
2 16 (2.17%) REST
3 13 (1.77%) ARM Templates
4 12 (1.63%) .NET
4 12 (1.63%) Middleware
4 12 (1.63%) PySpark
4 12 (1.63%) RESTful
5 10 (1.36%) OAuth
5 10 (1.36%) SOAP
6 9 (1.22%) Kafka
7 8 (1.09%) React
7 8 (1.09%) SAML
8 7 (0.95%) OpenID
9 6 (0.82%) EDI
9 6 (0.82%) GraphQL
9 6 (0.82%) HTML
9 6 (0.82%) JSON
9 6 (0.82%) LDAP
10 5 (0.68%) CSS
10 5 (0.68%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 68 (9.24%) Product Ownership
2 50 (6.79%) Management Information System
3 43 (5.84%) Onboarding
4 40 (5.43%) Cloud Native
5 23 (3.13%) Operational Technology
6 19 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
7 18 (2.45%) Security Posture
8 17 (2.31%) Hybrid Cloud
9 16 (2.17%) Cyber Threat
9 16 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
10 15 (2.04%) Data Centre
11 14 (1.90%) CMDB
12 13 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
12 13 (1.77%) Security Operations Centre
13 12 (1.63%) Virtual Team
14 11 (1.49%) PMI
14 11 (1.49%) Social Media
15 9 (1.22%) Animation
15 9 (1.22%) Data Structures
15 9 (1.22%) Interactive Media
Operating Systems
1 76 (10.33%) Windows
2 39 (5.30%) Linux
3 23 (3.13%) Windows Server
4 7 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
5 2 (0.27%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
6 1 (0.14%) macOS
6 1 (0.14%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 258 (35.05%) Agile
2 233 (31.66%) Problem-Solving
3 223 (30.30%) Stakeholder Management
4 162 (22.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 127 (17.26%) ITIL
6 124 (16.85%) Roadmaps
7 113 (15.35%) Decision-Making
8 109 (14.81%) CI/CD
9 107 (14.54%) DevOps
10 97 (13.18%) Service Delivery
11 95 (12.91%) Service Management
12 94 (12.77%) Project Delivery
13 86 (11.68%) Cybersecurity
14 81 (11.01%) Change Management
15 76 (10.33%) Validation
16 73 (9.92%) Infrastructure as Code
17 72 (9.78%) Analytics
18 70 (9.51%) ITSM
19 69 (9.38%) PRINCE2
20 68 (9.24%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 89 (12.09%) Python
2 73 (9.92%) SQL
3 53 (7.20%) PowerShell
4 32 (4.35%) Bash
5 18 (2.45%) Java
6 10 (1.36%) Bicep
7 9 (1.22%) JavaScript
8 8 (1.09%) C#
9 6 (0.82%) Apex Code
9 6 (0.82%) TypeScript
10 5 (0.68%) Go
11 4 (0.54%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.41%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.41%) Rust
13 2 (0.27%) Magik
14 1 (0.14%) C++
14 1 (0.14%) Groovy
14 1 (0.14%) Kotlin
14 1 (0.14%) Perl
Qualifications
1 370 (50.27%) Security Cleared
2 207 (28.13%) SC Cleared
3 144 (19.57%) DV Cleared
4 123 (16.71%) Degree
5 34 (4.62%) PMI Certification
6 26 (3.53%) Computer Science Degree
7 25 (3.40%) PMP
8 24 (3.26%) Azure Certification
9 23 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
10 16 (2.17%) CISSP
11 14 (1.90%) AWS Certification
11 14 (1.90%) ITIL Certification
12 9 (1.22%) Cisco Certification
12 9 (1.22%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
13 8 (1.09%) ACCA
13 8 (1.09%) CIMA
14 7 (0.95%) ISTQB
14 7 (0.95%) Master's Degree
14 7 (0.95%) PRINCE2 Certification
15 6 (0.82%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (9.65%) QA
2 64 (8.70%) PMO
3 53 (7.20%) Data Quality
4 31 (4.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 22 (2.99%) NIST
6 20 (2.72%) SLA
7 19 (2.58%) GDPR
8 15 (2.04%) ISO 9001
8 15 (2.04%) NCSC
9 8 (1.09%) GRC
10 7 (0.95%) Accessibility
10 7 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
11 5 (0.68%) Def Stans
11 5 (0.68%) ISO 22301
11 5 (0.68%) NIST 800
12 4 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
12 4 (0.54%) COSHH
13 3 (0.41%) GMP
14 2 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
14 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 32 (4.35%) Active Directory
2 30 (4.08%) Docker
3 23 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.09%) IAG
5 6 (0.82%) vSphere
6 5 (0.68%) Hyper-V
6 5 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
7 4 (0.54%) VMware NSX
8 3 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 2 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 53 (7.20%) Kubernetes
2 38 (5.16%) Ansible
3 11 (1.49%) Grafana
3 11 (1.49%) Microsoft Intune
3 11 (1.49%) WMI
4 8 (1.09%) Puppet
4 8 (1.09%) SCCM
5 7 (0.95%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.68%) Progress Chef
7 4 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 3 (0.41%) MOM
8 3 (0.41%) Podman
8 3 (0.41%) QRadar
9 2 (0.27%) Argo
9 2 (0.27%) CASB
9 2 (0.27%) CSIRT
9 2 (0.27%) Istio
9 2 (0.27%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.27%) vRealize
9 2 (0.27%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 159 (21.60%) Microsoft
2 43 (5.84%) SAP
3 41 (5.57%) ServiceNow
4 27 (3.67%) VMware
5 20 (2.72%) Oracle
6 19 (2.58%) Databricks
7 18 (2.45%) Salesforce
8 14 (1.90%) Google
9 11 (1.49%) Dynatrace
10 10 (1.36%) Juniper
11 8 (1.09%) Nexthink
11 8 (1.09%) Red Hat
12 7 (0.95%) Splunk
13 6 (0.82%) Adobe
13 6 (0.82%) Baan
13 6 (0.82%) Cisco
13 6 (0.82%) Virgin Media
14 5 (0.68%) CrowdStrike
14 5 (0.68%) Workday
15 4 (0.54%) Okta