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 25 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 38 40
Rank change year-on-year +18 +2 +28
Contract jobs citing Continuous Improvement 424 144 242
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 7.11% 4.92% 4.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 8.85% 5.38% 5.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 245 87 131
10th Percentile £325 £312 £363
25th Percentile £425 £412 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £650
90th Percentile £688 £625 £688
England median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -7.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 8 17
10th Percentile £31.15 £15.13 £18.35
25th Percentile £80.50 £18.71 £24.00
Median hourly rate £87.96 £62.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +41.87% +65.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £88.00 £70.22 £43.75
90th Percentile £91.80 £80.97 £57.60
England median hourly rate £55.00 £50.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +10.00% +36.99% -28.78%

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 4,793 2,676 4,637
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.37% 91.42% 83.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,117 1,723 2,693
10th Percentile £280 £250 £255
25th Percentile £412 £385 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -0.20% -0.79%
75th Percentile £610 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £656 £700
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 439 174 445
10th Percentile £15.05 £13.33 £13.00
25th Percentile £22.79 £15.00 £18.20
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.82 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +103.35% -45.65% -5.00%
75th Percentile £82.25 £61.71 £62.50
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £76.86
England median hourly rate £45.00 £28.18 £36.50
% change year-on-year +59.69% -22.79% -2.46%

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 25 May 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 25 May 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 25 May 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 +10 207 £518 +3.50% 166
Berkshire +26 159 £510 +3.98% 97
Hampshire +18 126 £550 - 82
Buckinghamshire -21 40 £521 -5.23% 41
Surrey +10 36 £475 +5.56% 39
West Sussex -11 19 £488 +25.81% 19
East Sussex +4 10 £600 +9.09% 10
Oxfordshire -17 8 £725 +190.00% 32
Middlesex - 3 - - 11
Kent -9 2 £463 -18.50% 20
Sussex - 2 £600 - 2
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 10 (2.36%) Confluence
1 10 (2.36%) SharePoint
2 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.24%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.24%) SharePoint 2010
3 1 (0.24%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 28 (6.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (2.36%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (1.65%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (1.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.94%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.24%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 14 (3.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (1.89%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.71%) iTrent
3 3 (0.71%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.47%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.47%) SAP SD
4 2 (0.47%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.24%) Primavera
5 1 (0.24%) SAP BPC
5 1 (0.24%) SAP BRIM
5 1 (0.24%) SAP Business One
5 1 (0.24%) SAP Convergent Charging
5 1 (0.24%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.24%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 58 (13.68%) Azure
2 40 (9.43%) AWS
3 23 (5.42%) Power Platform
4 13 (3.07%) GCP
5 12 (2.83%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (1.65%) SaaS
6 7 (1.65%) Serverless
7 6 (1.42%) Entra ID
7 6 (1.42%) GitHub
7 6 (1.42%) GitHub Actions
7 6 (1.42%) OpenShift
8 5 (1.18%) Amazon EKS
9 4 (0.94%) Amazon S3
9 4 (0.94%) AWS Lambda
9 4 (0.94%) dbt
9 4 (0.94%) Microsoft 365
10 3 (0.71%) OCI
10 3 (0.71%) PaaS
10 3 (0.71%) SuccessFactors
10 3 (0.71%) Viva Engage
Communications & Networking
1 12 (2.83%) Firewall
2 10 (2.36%) LAN
2 10 (2.36%) Network Security
3 8 (1.89%) VPN
4 6 (1.42%) VLAN
5 5 (1.18%) TCP/IP
6 4 (0.94%) DNS
6 4 (0.94%) WAN
7 3 (0.71%) BGP
7 3 (0.71%) IPv4
7 3 (0.71%) IPv6
7 3 (0.71%) OSPF
7 3 (0.71%) SD-WAN
7 3 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
7 3 (0.71%) Wireless
8 2 (0.47%) Cisco ASA
8 2 (0.47%) DHCP
8 2 (0.47%) MPLS
8 2 (0.47%) Multicast
8 2 (0.47%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (5.19%) Power BI
2 9 (2.12%) Metadata
3 6 (1.42%) Data Warehouse
3 6 (1.42%) Tableau
4 4 (0.94%) Data Lake
4 4 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
4 4 (0.94%) SQL Server
5 3 (0.71%) DynamoDB
5 3 (0.71%) Metadata Repository
5 3 (0.71%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (0.71%) Redis
5 3 (0.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 2 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (0.47%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
6 2 (0.47%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 1 (0.24%) Ataccama
7 1 (0.24%) GIS
7 1 (0.24%) SAP HANA
7 1 (0.24%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 27 (6.37%) Rational DOORS
2 14 (3.30%) JIRA
3 8 (1.89%) GitLab
4 7 (1.65%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.71%) Git
5 3 (0.71%) Hudson
5 3 (0.71%) Selenium
6 2 (0.47%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.47%) SpecFlow
6 2 (0.47%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.24%) Balsamiq
7 1 (0.24%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.24%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.24%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.24%) ERwin
7 1 (0.24%) Postman
7 1 (0.24%) WebDriver
General
1 183 (43.16%) Social Skills
2 98 (23.11%) Finance
3 89 (20.99%) Analytical Skills
4 49 (11.56%) Aerospace
5 48 (11.32%) Public Sector
6 18 (4.25%) Organisational Skills
7 15 (3.54%) Legal
8 14 (3.30%) Telecoms
9 13 (3.07%) Influencing Skills
9 13 (3.07%) Law
9 13 (3.07%) Retail
10 11 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 9 (2.12%) French Language
11 9 (2.12%) Spanish Language
12 6 (1.42%) Documentation Skills
13 5 (1.18%) Marketing
14 4 (0.94%) Aviation
14 4 (0.94%) Billing
14 4 (0.94%) Military
15 3 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 59 (13.92%) Analyst
2 43 (10.14%) Lead
3 42 (9.91%) Delivery Manager
4 41 (9.67%) Senior
5 35 (8.25%) Product Manager
6 30 (7.08%) Architect
7 29 (6.84%) Product Delivery Manager
8 23 (5.42%) IT Manager
9 22 (5.19%) Systems Delivery Manager
9 22 (5.19%) Systems Manager
10 14 (3.30%) Project Manager
10 14 (3.30%) Service Manager
11 13 (3.07%) Senior Analyst
12 11 (2.59%) Data Analyst
12 11 (2.59%) Financial Analyst
13 10 (2.36%) Consultant
13 10 (2.36%) Engineering Manager
13 10 (2.36%) Senior Financial Analyst
13 10 (2.36%) Solutions Architect
13 10 (2.36%) Systems Accountant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (2.12%) OAuth
2 6 (1.42%) .NET
2 6 (1.42%) OAuth2
2 6 (1.42%) RESTful
2 6 (1.42%) SAML
2 6 (1.42%) SOAP
3 5 (1.18%) GraphQL
3 5 (1.18%) LDAP
3 5 (1.18%) OpenID
3 5 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
4 4 (0.94%) EDI
4 4 (0.94%) REST
5 3 (0.71%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (0.71%) JSON
5 3 (0.71%) JWT
5 3 (0.71%) Kafka
5 3 (0.71%) Keycloak
5 3 (0.71%) Middleware
5 3 (0.71%) Playwright
5 3 (0.71%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 54 (12.74%) Product Ownership
2 26 (6.13%) Data Structures
3 20 (4.72%) Onboarding
4 18 (4.25%) Data Centre
5 16 (3.77%) Management Information System
6 15 (3.54%) Legacy Systems
7 12 (2.83%) Security Posture
8 11 (2.59%) Analytical Mindset
8 11 (2.59%) Cloud Native
8 11 (2.59%) Operational Technology
9 9 (2.12%) PMI
10 8 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
11 6 (1.42%) CMDB
11 6 (1.42%) Taxonomies
11 6 (1.42%) Virtual Team
12 5 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
13 4 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
13 4 (0.94%) Life Science
13 4 (0.94%) PKI
13 4 (0.94%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 16 (3.77%) Windows
2 6 (1.42%) Linux
3 2 (0.47%) Apple iOS
3 2 (0.47%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.24%) Android
4 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 125 (29.48%) Agile
2 103 (24.29%) Stakeholder Management
3 93 (21.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 72 (16.98%) Problem-Solving
5 70 (16.51%) ITIL
6 54 (12.74%) Service Management
7 52 (12.26%) Roadmaps
8 51 (12.03%) Decision-Making
9 45 (10.61%) ITSM
10 44 (10.38%) Change Management
11 41 (9.67%) Cybersecurity
11 41 (9.67%) PRINCE2
12 40 (9.43%) Computer Science
12 40 (9.43%) Configuration Management
12 40 (9.43%) DevOps
12 40 (9.43%) Scaled Agile Framework
13 39 (9.20%) Risk Management
14 36 (8.49%) CI/CD
14 36 (8.49%) Project Delivery
14 36 (8.49%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 26 (6.13%) SQL
2 16 (3.77%) Python
3 14 (3.30%) Java
4 10 (2.36%) PowerShell
5 6 (1.42%) C#
6 4 (0.94%) Bash
6 4 (0.94%) Bicep
7 3 (0.71%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.47%) Apex Code
8 2 (0.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 2 (0.47%) PL/SQL
8 2 (0.47%) T-SQL
8 2 (0.47%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.24%) ABAP
9 1 (0.24%) C
9 1 (0.24%) Objective-C
9 1 (0.24%) Swift
9 1 (0.24%) VB
Qualifications
1 199 (46.93%) Security Cleared
2 101 (23.82%) SC Cleared
3 78 (18.40%) Degree
4 50 (11.79%) DV Cleared
5 22 (5.19%) ACCA
5 22 (5.19%) CIMA
6 19 (4.48%) PMI Certification
7 11 (2.59%) PMP
8 10 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
9 9 (2.12%) CCNP
10 8 (1.89%) Azure Certification
11 6 (1.42%) CISSP
11 6 (1.42%) Computer Science Degree
12 5 (1.18%) CCNA
13 3 (0.71%) AWS Certification
13 3 (0.71%) CESG Certified Professional
13 3 (0.71%) CISM
13 3 (0.71%) ISTQB
13 3 (0.71%) JNCIS
14 2 (0.47%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (6.84%) Data Quality
2 22 (5.19%) QA
3 19 (4.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 17 (4.01%) NIST
4 17 (4.01%) PMO
5 12 (2.83%) GDPR
5 12 (2.83%) SLA
6 11 (2.59%) NCSC
7 7 (1.65%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (1.42%) Accessibility
9 4 (0.94%) GRC
10 3 (0.71%) Def Stans
10 3 (0.71%) ISO 22301
10 3 (0.71%) ISO 31000
10 3 (0.71%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.24%) IFRS
12 1 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.24%) SOC 2
System Software
1 14 (3.30%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (2.83%) Active Directory
3 10 (2.36%) Docker
4 5 (1.18%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.94%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.47%) Firmware
6 2 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.24%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.24%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 16 (3.77%) Kubernetes
2 13 (3.07%) Terraform
3 9 (2.12%) Ansible
4 6 (1.42%) Grafana
5 5 (1.18%) Prometheus
5 5 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.94%) Nagios
6 4 (0.94%) Nessus
7 3 (0.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 3 (0.71%) Argo
7 3 (0.71%) OpenVAS
7 3 (0.71%) Rancher
8 2 (0.47%) Cisco Prime
8 2 (0.47%) Iperf
8 2 (0.47%) Nmap
8 2 (0.47%) SCCM
9 1 (0.24%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.24%) QRadar
9 1 (0.24%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 33 (7.78%) Microsoft
1 33 (7.78%) SAP
2 30 (7.08%) ServiceNow
3 25 (5.90%) IBM
4 24 (5.66%) Oracle
5 21 (4.95%) VMware
6 9 (2.12%) Cisco
6 9 (2.12%) Google
6 9 (2.12%) Salesforce
7 7 (1.65%) Juniper
7 7 (1.65%) SolarWinds
8 6 (1.42%) Palo Alto
8 6 (1.42%) Virgin Media
9 5 (1.18%) Databricks
9 5 (1.18%) Red Hat
9 5 (1.18%) Remedy
9 5 (1.18%) Splunk
10 4 (0.94%) F5
10 4 (0.94%) Qualys
10 4 (0.94%) Rapid7