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 31 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 40 36
Rank change year-on-year +28 -4 +31
Contract jobs citing Continuous Improvement 657 174 218
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 9.91% 4.91% 4.61%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.29% 5.49% 5.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 375 100 112
10th Percentile £335 £332 £356
25th Percentile £428 £446 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £506 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% -3.57% -6.67%
75th Percentile £605 £600 £638
90th Percentile £700 £653 £688
England median daily rate £518 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.50% -4.76% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 60 9 11
10th Percentile £31.35 - £18.35
25th Percentile £59.49 £15.13 £25.00
Median hourly rate £85.00 £15.25 £30.83
Median % change year-on-year +457.38% -50.53% -30.49%
75th Percentile £88.00 £30.25 £58.75
90th Percentile - £70.16 £60.06
England median hourly rate £35.00 £28.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year +22.81% -43.00% -16.67%

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 5,347 3,169 3,898
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.65% 89.34% 82.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,254 1,971 2,344
10th Percentile £280 £238 £260
25th Percentile £420 £393 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.91% -0.66%
75th Percentile £619 £600 £638
90th Percentile £713 £669 £700
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 609 309 294
10th Percentile £13.48 £13.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £19.00 £15.50 £27.13
Median hourly rate £52.50 £22.07 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +137.88% -61.52% +13.09%
75th Percentile £70.50 £53.50 £70.39
90th Percentile £87.96 £69.65 £76.86
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +2.63%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 +23 303 £550 +4.76% 265
Berkshire +33 210 £538 +2.38% 128
Hampshire +20 194 £550 +1.85% 175
Buckinghamshire -3 75 £566 +2.86% 74
Surrey +18 68 £450 -10.00% 63
West Sussex +4 39 £490 -2.00% 34
Middlesex - 23 - - 10
Oxfordshire -11 18 £650 +44.44% 68
Kent +4 7 £405 - 44
East Sussex +3 4 £575 +17.95% 25
Sussex - 1 £600 - 13
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 33 (5.02%) SharePoint
2 17 (2.59%) Confluence
3 4 (0.61%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.30%) Oracle Application Server
4 2 (0.30%) Smallworld
5 1 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.15%) Apache
5 1 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.15%) Apache Superset
5 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.15%) SharePoint 2010
5 1 (0.15%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 61 (9.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (4.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 25 (3.81%) Microsoft Project
4 16 (2.44%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.30%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.15%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.15%) Houdini
6 1 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.15%) NUKE
6 1 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 18 (2.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.76%) Primavera
3 4 (0.61%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.46%) iTrent
4 3 (0.46%) Maximo
4 3 (0.46%) NEC Housing
4 3 (0.46%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.30%) SAP SD
5 2 (0.30%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.15%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.15%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.15%) SAP BPC
6 1 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
6 1 (0.15%) SAP Business One
6 1 (0.15%) SAP Convergent Charging
6 1 (0.15%) SAP MM
6 1 (0.15%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 124 (18.87%) Azure
2 89 (13.55%) AWS
3 33 (5.02%) GCP
3 33 (5.02%) Power Platform
4 25 (3.81%) SaaS
5 23 (3.50%) GitHub
6 22 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
7 21 (3.20%) Entra ID
8 17 (2.59%) Microsoft 365
9 15 (2.28%) Azure Monitor
10 13 (1.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 13 (1.98%) GitHub Actions
10 13 (1.98%) OpenShift
10 13 (1.98%) Serverless
11 12 (1.83%) Datadog
12 8 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (1.22%) OCI
13 7 (1.07%) Azure AKS
14 6 (0.91%) AWS Lambda
14 6 (0.91%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 27 (4.11%) DNS
2 25 (3.81%) Network Security
3 17 (2.59%) Firewall
4 13 (1.98%) LAN
5 11 (1.67%) DHCP
6 9 (1.37%) Broadband
6 9 (1.37%) TCP/IP
7 8 (1.22%) WAN
8 7 (1.07%) SD-WAN
8 7 (1.07%) VPN
8 7 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (0.91%) Wireless
10 5 (0.76%) Intranet
11 4 (0.61%) DNSSEC
11 4 (0.61%) Radio Access Network
11 4 (0.61%) Software-Defined Networking
12 3 (0.46%) Intrusion Detection
12 3 (0.46%) MQTT
12 3 (0.46%) VLAN
13 2 (0.30%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (4.57%) Power BI
2 13 (1.98%) Metadata
3 12 (1.83%) Data Warehouse
4 10 (1.52%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (1.07%) Oracle Reports
5 7 (1.07%) Relational Database
6 6 (0.91%) Spark SQL
6 6 (0.91%) Tableau
7 4 (0.61%) DynamoDB
7 4 (0.61%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (0.61%) GIS
7 4 (0.61%) Redis
8 3 (0.46%) Big Data
8 3 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (0.46%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.30%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.30%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.30%) Oracle ODI
9 2 (0.30%) SAP HANA
9 2 (0.30%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 30 (4.57%) JIRA
2 19 (2.89%) Git
2 19 (2.89%) GitLab
3 17 (2.59%) Jenkins
3 17 (2.59%) Rational DOORS
4 6 (0.91%) Selenium
5 5 (0.76%) MSI
5 5 (0.76%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.30%) Cucumber
6 2 (0.30%) Hudson
6 2 (0.30%) REST Assured
6 2 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.15%) Mockito
7 1 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
7 1 (0.15%) Postman
7 1 (0.15%) RStudio
7 1 (0.15%) SoapUI
7 1 (0.15%) SpecFlow
7 1 (0.15%) Subversion
7 1 (0.15%) TestRail
General
1 303 (46.12%) Social Skills
2 189 (28.77%) Analytical Skills
3 117 (17.81%) Finance
4 72 (10.96%) Public Sector
5 58 (8.83%) Aerospace
6 43 (6.54%) Organisational Skills
7 30 (4.57%) Influencing Skills
8 21 (3.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 21 (3.20%) Retail
9 20 (3.04%) Legal
9 20 (3.04%) Telecoms
10 16 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
10 16 (2.44%) French Language
10 16 (2.44%) Spanish Language
11 13 (1.98%) Military
11 13 (1.98%) Presentation Skills
12 12 (1.83%) Manufacturing
13 8 (1.22%) Games
13 8 (1.22%) Law
14 7 (1.07%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 86 (13.09%) Analyst
2 82 (12.48%) Lead
3 63 (9.59%) Architect
4 61 (9.28%) Senior
5 46 (7.00%) Delivery Manager
6 40 (6.09%) Product Manager
7 28 (4.26%) Product Delivery Manager
8 24 (3.65%) Consultant
9 22 (3.35%) Data Analyst
10 16 (2.44%) 2nd Line Support
10 16 (2.44%) 2nd Line Technical Support
10 16 (2.44%) IT Manager
10 16 (2.44%) Project Manager
10 16 (2.44%) Security Analyst
10 16 (2.44%) Technical Support
11 15 (2.28%) Senior Analyst
11 15 (2.28%) Solutions Architect
11 15 (2.28%) Systems Manager
12 14 (2.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 14 (2.13%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (7.91%) Terraform
2 14 (2.13%) REST
3 11 (1.67%) .NET
3 11 (1.67%) ARM Templates
4 10 (1.52%) OAuth
4 10 (1.52%) RESTful
4 10 (1.52%) SOAP
5 9 (1.37%) Kafka
5 9 (1.37%) PySpark
6 8 (1.22%) SAML
7 7 (1.07%) EDI
7 7 (1.07%) OpenID
8 6 (0.91%) JSON
8 6 (0.91%) LDAP
9 5 (0.76%) GraphQL
9 5 (0.76%) HTML
9 5 (0.76%) Keycloak
9 5 (0.76%) Middleware
9 5 (0.76%) OAuth2
9 5 (0.76%) React
Miscellaneous
1 72 (10.96%) Product Ownership
2 39 (5.94%) Cloud Native
3 34 (5.18%) Onboarding
4 31 (4.72%) Management Information System
5 24 (3.65%) Operational Technology
6 20 (3.04%) Data Structures
6 20 (3.04%) Security Posture
7 18 (2.74%) Hybrid Cloud
8 15 (2.28%) CMDB
9 14 (2.13%) Cyber Threat
9 14 (2.13%) Data Centre
10 13 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
11 12 (1.83%) PMI
12 11 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
12 11 (1.67%) Security Operations Centre
12 11 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
13 9 (1.37%) Social Media
14 8 (1.22%) Graphic Design
Operating Systems
1 71 (10.81%) Windows
2 33 (5.02%) Linux
3 22 (3.35%) Windows Server
4 7 (1.07%) Windows Server 2019
5 4 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
6 1 (0.15%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.15%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 239 (36.38%) Agile
2 183 (27.85%) Problem-Solving
3 181 (27.55%) Stakeholder Management
4 158 (24.05%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 115 (17.50%) ITIL
6 103 (15.68%) Decision-Making
7 96 (14.61%) Roadmaps
8 89 (13.55%) Service Delivery
9 88 (13.39%) DevOps
10 83 (12.63%) Service Management
11 82 (12.48%) CI/CD
12 80 (12.18%) Cybersecurity
13 70 (10.65%) ITSM
14 69 (10.50%) Project Delivery
15 67 (10.20%) Change Management
15 67 (10.20%) PRINCE2
16 59 (8.98%) Project Management
17 57 (8.68%) AI
17 57 (8.68%) Validation
18 55 (8.37%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 72 (10.96%) Python
2 65 (9.89%) SQL
3 47 (7.15%) PowerShell
4 27 (4.11%) Bash
5 16 (2.44%) Java
6 9 (1.37%) Bicep
7 7 (1.07%) C#
7 7 (1.07%) JavaScript
8 6 (0.91%) Apex Code
9 5 (0.76%) TypeScript
10 4 (0.61%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.46%) Go
11 3 (0.46%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.46%) Rust
12 2 (0.30%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.30%) Magik
13 1 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.15%) Groovy
13 1 (0.15%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.15%) R
Qualifications
1 328 (49.92%) Security Cleared
2 170 (25.88%) SC Cleared
3 122 (18.57%) Degree
4 116 (17.66%) DV Cleared
5 35 (5.33%) PMI Certification
6 24 (3.65%) PMP
7 19 (2.89%) Azure Certification
7 19 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
8 17 (2.59%) ACCA
8 17 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
8 17 (2.59%) CIMA
9 15 (2.28%) CISSP
10 14 (2.13%) AWS Certification
11 13 (1.98%) ITIL Certification
12 10 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
13 9 (1.37%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 6 (0.91%) CCNP
14 6 (0.91%) CISM
14 6 (0.91%) Master's Degree
14 6 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 54 (8.22%) QA
2 52 (7.91%) PMO
3 50 (7.61%) Data Quality
4 31 (4.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 21 (3.20%) NIST
6 20 (3.04%) GDPR
7 17 (2.59%) SLA
8 15 (2.28%) NCSC
9 8 (1.22%) Cyber Essentials
9 8 (1.22%) ISO 9001
10 7 (1.07%) GRC
11 6 (0.91%) ISO 22301
12 3 (0.46%) Accessibility
12 3 (0.46%) Def Stans
12 3 (0.46%) ISO 31000
12 3 (0.46%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
13 2 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 2 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 1 (0.15%) COBIT
System Software
1 29 (4.41%) Active Directory
2 26 (3.96%) Docker
2 26 (3.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (1.22%) IAG
4 6 (0.91%) vSphere
5 5 (0.76%) Virtual Desktop
5 5 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.76%) VMware NSX
6 4 (0.61%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 48 (7.31%) Kubernetes
2 37 (5.63%) Ansible
3 12 (1.83%) Grafana
4 8 (1.22%) Microsoft Intune
4 8 (1.22%) Prometheus
4 8 (1.22%) Puppet
4 8 (1.22%) WMI
5 7 (1.07%) SCCM
6 5 (0.76%) Progress Chef
7 4 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 3 (0.46%) Argo
8 3 (0.46%) Podman
8 3 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.30%) CASB
9 2 (0.30%) CSIRT
9 2 (0.30%) Istio
9 2 (0.30%) MOM
9 2 (0.30%) Rancher
9 2 (0.30%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.15%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 125 (19.03%) Microsoft
2 48 (7.31%) SAP
3 45 (6.85%) ServiceNow
4 34 (5.18%) VMware
5 25 (3.81%) Oracle
6 18 (2.74%) Salesforce
7 17 (2.59%) IBM
8 16 (2.44%) Databricks
9 14 (2.13%) Google
10 12 (1.83%) Dynatrace
11 11 (1.67%) Juniper
12 8 (1.22%) Cisco
12 8 (1.22%) Nexthink
12 8 (1.22%) Workday
13 7 (1.07%) Red Hat
13 7 (1.07%) Splunk
14 6 (0.91%) Baan
14 6 (0.91%) Virgin Media
15 5 (0.76%) SolarWinds
16 4 (0.61%) Infoblox