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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 34 38
Rank change year-on-year +20 +4 +29
Contract jobs citing Continuous Improvement 609 182 224
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 9.20% 5.22% 4.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.36% 5.79% 5.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 354 107 119
10th Percentile £325 £325 £363
25th Percentile £425 £450 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -1.18%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £644
90th Percentile £688 £635 £688
England median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 13 16
10th Percentile £49.40 - £18.35
25th Percentile £80.50 £15.13 £25.49
Median hourly rate £85.20 £19.91 £34.50
Median % change year-on-year +327.93% -42.29% -29.59%
75th Percentile £88.00 £67.50 £54.06
90th Percentile - £70.16 £58.75
England median hourly rate £47.75 £28.75 £50.00
% change year-on-year +66.09% -42.50% -13.04%

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 5,361 3,141 4,113
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.95% 90.08% 82.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,315 1,957 2,488
10th Percentile £280 £250 £255
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% +0.31%
75th Percentile £613 £600 £638
90th Percentile £700 £675 £700
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 568 287 327
10th Percentile £15.31 £13.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £26.19 £15.13 £26.03
Median hourly rate £57.79 £21.58 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +167.83% -62.38% +14.70%
75th Percentile £80.09 £50.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £74.25 £76.91
England median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +78.93% -40.82% -

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +13 284 £533 +6.60% 266
Berkshire +26 208 £510 +1.90% 140
Hampshire +21 179 £550 -8.33% 183
Surrey +13 62 £450 -10.00% 91
Buckinghamshire -11 60 £566 +2.86% 69
West Sussex -2 38 £490 +8.89% 30
Oxfordshire -9 16 £650 +44.44% 59
Middlesex - 15 - - 6
Kent +6 6 £405 - 53
East Sussex +3 5 £615 +11.82% 15
Sussex - 1 £600 - 5
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 28 (4.60%) SharePoint
2 16 (2.63%) Confluence
3 4 (0.66%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.33%) Oracle Application Server
5 1 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.16%) SharePoint 2010
5 1 (0.16%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 50 (8.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 21 (3.45%) Microsoft Project
3 19 (3.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (1.81%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.33%) 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 (2.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.99%) Primavera
3 4 (0.66%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.49%) iTrent
4 3 (0.49%) Maximo
4 3 (0.49%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.49%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.33%) NEC Housing
5 2 (0.33%) SAP SD
5 2 (0.33%) 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 ERP
6 1 (0.16%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.16%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 110 (18.06%) Azure
2 74 (12.15%) AWS
3 35 (5.75%) Power Platform
4 32 (5.25%) GCP
5 20 (3.28%) Entra ID
6 19 (3.12%) GitHub
6 19 (3.12%) SaaS
7 18 (2.96%) Azure DevOps
8 15 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
9 13 (2.13%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (1.81%) Serverless
11 9 (1.48%) Azure Monitor
12 8 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (1.31%) Datadog
12 8 (1.31%) OCI
12 8 (1.31%) OpenShift
13 7 (1.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 7 (1.15%) Amazon EKS
14 6 (0.99%) Azure AKS
14 6 (0.99%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 26 (4.27%) DNS
1 26 (4.27%) Network Security
2 17 (2.79%) Firewall
3 14 (2.30%) LAN
4 10 (1.64%) DHCP
5 8 (1.31%) Broadband
5 8 (1.31%) TCP/IP
6 7 (1.15%) WAN
6 7 (1.15%) Wireless
7 6 (0.99%) SD-WAN
7 6 (0.99%) VPN
7 6 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
8 4 (0.66%) DNSSEC
9 3 (0.49%) Intranet
9 3 (0.49%) Intrusion Detection
9 3 (0.49%) MQTT
9 3 (0.49%) Radio Access Network
9 3 (0.49%) VLAN
10 2 (0.33%) Cisco Nexus
10 2 (0.33%) Modbus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (5.25%) Power BI
2 13 (2.13%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (1.48%) Metadata
4 8 (1.31%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.31%) Tableau
5 7 (1.15%) Oracle Reports
6 6 (0.99%) Spark SQL
7 4 (0.66%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (0.66%) GIS
7 4 (0.66%) Redis
7 4 (0.66%) SQL Server
8 3 (0.49%) Big Data
8 3 (0.49%) DynamoDB
8 3 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (0.49%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.33%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.33%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.33%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.33%) Oracle ODI
9 2 (0.33%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 29 (4.76%) JIRA
2 27 (4.43%) Rational DOORS
3 15 (2.46%) GitLab
4 13 (2.13%) Jenkins
5 11 (1.81%) Git
6 5 (0.82%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.49%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.49%) Hudson
8 2 (0.33%) MSI
8 2 (0.33%) REST Assured
8 2 (0.33%) Selenium
8 2 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.33%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.16%) Balsamiq
9 1 (0.16%) ERwin
9 1 (0.16%) JUnit
9 1 (0.16%) Mockito
9 1 (0.16%) Postman
9 1 (0.16%) Subversion
9 1 (0.16%) TestRail
General
1 270 (44.33%) Social Skills
2 169 (27.75%) Analytical Skills
3 118 (19.38%) Finance
4 64 (10.51%) Public Sector
5 60 (9.85%) Aerospace
6 34 (5.58%) Organisational Skills
7 23 (3.78%) Influencing Skills
8 21 (3.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 21 (3.45%) Retail
9 16 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
9 16 (2.63%) French Language
9 16 (2.63%) Spanish Language
10 15 (2.46%) Telecoms
11 14 (2.30%) Legal
12 9 (1.48%) Law
12 9 (1.48%) Military
13 8 (1.31%) Games
13 8 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
14 6 (0.99%) Local Government
14 6 (0.99%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 87 (14.29%) Analyst
2 74 (12.15%) Lead
3 63 (10.34%) Senior
4 54 (8.87%) Architect
5 43 (7.06%) Delivery Manager
6 40 (6.57%) Product Manager
7 29 (4.76%) Product Delivery Manager
8 24 (3.94%) IT Manager
9 22 (3.61%) Data Analyst
9 22 (3.61%) Systems Delivery Manager
9 22 (3.61%) Systems Manager
10 18 (2.96%) Consultant
11 16 (2.63%) 2nd Line Support
11 16 (2.63%) 2nd Line Technical Support
11 16 (2.63%) Senior Analyst
11 16 (2.63%) Technical Support
12 15 (2.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 15 (2.46%) Solutions Architect
13 14 (2.30%) Project Manager
13 14 (2.30%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (2.13%) REST
2 12 (1.97%) RESTful
3 11 (1.81%) .NET
3 11 (1.81%) OAuth
3 11 (1.81%) SOAP
4 9 (1.48%) Kafka
5 8 (1.31%) ARM Templates
5 8 (1.31%) JSON
5 8 (1.31%) PySpark
5 8 (1.31%) SAML
6 7 (1.15%) EDI
6 7 (1.15%) OpenID
7 6 (0.99%) GraphQL
7 6 (0.99%) LDAP
7 6 (0.99%) OAuth2
7 6 (0.99%) XML
8 5 (0.82%) HTML
8 5 (0.82%) Keycloak
8 5 (0.82%) Middleware
8 5 (0.82%) React
Miscellaneous
1 77 (12.64%) Product Ownership
2 34 (5.58%) Onboarding
3 31 (5.09%) Cloud Native
4 28 (4.60%) Management Information System
5 25 (4.11%) Data Structures
6 23 (3.78%) Operational Technology
7 19 (3.12%) Security Posture
8 16 (2.63%) Data Centre
9 15 (2.46%) Hybrid Cloud
10 14 (2.30%) Analytical Mindset
11 12 (1.97%) Cyber Threat
11 12 (1.97%) Self-Motivation
12 11 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
12 11 (1.81%) PMI
13 10 (1.64%) CMDB
13 10 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
14 9 (1.48%) Security Operations Centre
15 8 (1.31%) Animation
15 8 (1.31%) Graphic Design
Operating Systems
1 65 (10.67%) Windows
2 29 (4.76%) Linux
3 20 (3.28%) Windows Server
4 7 (1.15%) Windows Server 2019
5 4 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
6 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.16%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 216 (35.47%) Agile
2 155 (25.45%) Stakeholder Management
3 154 (25.29%) Problem-Solving
4 152 (24.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 101 (16.58%) ITIL
6 92 (15.11%) Decision-Making
7 86 (14.12%) Service Delivery
8 83 (13.63%) Roadmaps
9 75 (12.32%) Cybersecurity
10 74 (12.15%) Service Management
11 72 (11.82%) CI/CD
12 70 (11.49%) DevOps
13 69 (11.33%) ITSM
14 59 (9.69%) Change Management
14 59 (9.69%) PRINCE2
14 59 (9.69%) Project Delivery
15 57 (9.36%) Computer Science
16 55 (9.03%) Project Management
17 52 (8.54%) Risk Management
18 51 (8.37%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 58 (9.52%) SQL
2 56 (9.20%) Python
3 38 (6.24%) PowerShell
4 22 (3.61%) Bash
5 18 (2.96%) Java
6 10 (1.64%) C#
7 8 (1.31%) Bicep
8 7 (1.15%) JavaScript
9 5 (0.82%) TypeScript
10 4 (0.66%) Apex Code
10 4 (0.66%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 3 (0.49%) Go
11 3 (0.49%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.49%) Rust
12 2 (0.33%) ABAP
12 2 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.33%) T-SQL
13 1 (0.16%) Perl
13 1 (0.16%) VBA
Qualifications
1 304 (49.92%) Security Cleared
2 151 (24.79%) SC Cleared
3 113 (18.56%) Degree
4 101 (16.58%) DV Cleared
5 32 (5.25%) PMI Certification
6 23 (3.78%) PMP
7 17 (2.79%) ACCA
7 17 (2.79%) Azure Certification
7 17 (2.79%) CIMA
8 15 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
9 13 (2.13%) AWS Certification
9 13 (2.13%) CISSP
9 13 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
10 10 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
11 8 (1.31%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
12 7 (1.15%) CCNP
13 6 (0.99%) ITIL Certification
13 6 (0.99%) Master's Degree
14 5 (0.82%) CCNA
14 5 (0.82%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (8.05%) QA
2 45 (7.39%) Data Quality
3 44 (7.22%) PMO
4 33 (5.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 23 (3.78%) NIST
6 18 (2.96%) GDPR
7 16 (2.63%) NCSC
7 16 (2.63%) SLA
8 9 (1.48%) Cyber Essentials
9 7 (1.15%) GRC
9 7 (1.15%) ISO 9001
10 4 (0.66%) Accessibility
10 4 (0.66%) ISO 31000
11 3 (0.49%) Def Stans
11 3 (0.49%) ISO 22301
11 3 (0.49%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
12 2 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 2 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.16%) COBIT
System Software
1 28 (4.60%) Active Directory
2 25 (4.11%) Docker
3 24 (3.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.82%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.82%) vSphere
5 4 (0.66%) IAG
5 4 (0.66%) VMware NSX
6 3 (0.49%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 41 (6.73%) Terraform
2 38 (6.24%) Kubernetes
3 27 (4.43%) Ansible
4 11 (1.81%) Grafana
5 8 (1.31%) Prometheus
5 8 (1.31%) Puppet
6 7 (1.15%) Microsoft Intune
7 6 (0.99%) SCCM
8 5 (0.82%) Progress Chef
9 4 (0.66%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (0.66%) WMI
10 3 (0.49%) Argo
10 3 (0.49%) Podman
10 3 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.33%) CASB
11 2 (0.33%) CSIRT
11 2 (0.33%) Nessus
11 2 (0.33%) Rancher
11 2 (0.33%) vCenter Server
12 1 (0.16%) SCOM
Vendors
1 98 (16.09%) Microsoft
2 49 (8.05%) ServiceNow
3 45 (7.39%) SAP
4 33 (5.42%) VMware
5 26 (4.27%) Oracle
6 25 (4.11%) IBM
7 14 (2.30%) Databricks
7 14 (2.30%) Google
7 14 (2.30%) Salesforce
8 12 (1.97%) Juniper
9 9 (1.48%) Cisco
10 8 (1.31%) Dynatrace
10 8 (1.31%) Workday
11 7 (1.15%) Splunk
12 6 (0.99%) Baan
12 6 (0.99%) Red Hat
12 6 (0.99%) SolarWinds
12 6 (0.99%) Virgin Media
13 5 (0.82%) Aruba
14 4 (0.66%) Infoblox