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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 32 40
Rank change year-on-year +20 +8 +36
Contract jobs citing Continuous Improvement 696 189 201
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 10.60% 5.32% 4.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.13% 5.97% 5.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 398 107 103
10th Percentile £331 £314 £363
25th Percentile £432 £412 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £500 £504
Median % change year-on-year +7.50% -0.79% -9.39%
75th Percentile £610 £600 £638
90th Percentile £700 £635 £651
England median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 60 18 9
10th Percentile £13.92 £12.50 £13.25
25th Percentile £19.78 £15.13 £25.99
Median hourly rate £56.49 £15.25 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +270.39% -70.95% -10.00%
75th Percentile £85.00 £58.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £87.96 £61.65 £60.73
England median hourly rate £30.22 £21.30 £42.50
% change year-on-year +41.88% -49.88% -34.62%

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 5,301 3,165 3,662
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.71% 89.10% 82.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,128 1,975 2,184
10th Percentile £279 £215 £255
25th Percentile £420 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -1.96% -2.49%
75th Percentile £617 £588 £625
90th Percentile £713 £650 £688
England median daily rate £525 £512 £525
% change year-on-year +2.64% -2.57% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 650 316 211
10th Percentile £13.44 £13.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £16.34 £16.10 £30.21
Median hourly rate £47.77 £22.35 £58.38
Median % change year-on-year +113.78% -61.72% +7.37%
75th Percentile £69.69 £49.06 £70.84
90th Percentile £87.84 £69.20 £78.75
England median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +63.02% -41.51% -3.37%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +21 321 £550 +12.24% 567
Berkshire +20 220 £550 +17.33% 293
Hampshire +19 206 £575 +9.52% 284
Buckinghamshire +9 79 £575 +8.24% 148
Surrey +25 69 £450 -10.00% 140
West Sussex +8 45 £475 +23.38% 93
Middlesex - 25 - - 9
Oxfordshire -11 22 £640 -3.40% 130
Kent +3 13 £405 - 62
East Sussex +3 3 £575 +17.95% 60
Sussex -3 2 £600 - 10
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 35 (5.03%) SharePoint
2 14 (2.01%) Confluence
3 4 (0.57%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.29%) Oracle Application Server
4 2 (0.29%) 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%) SharePoint 2010
5 1 (0.14%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 70 (10.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (4.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 27 (3.88%) Microsoft Project
4 16 (2.30%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.29%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.29%) 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 15 (2.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.72%) Primavera
3 4 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.57%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.43%) Maximo
4 3 (0.43%) NEC Housing
4 3 (0.43%) SAP BRIM
4 3 (0.43%) SAP PSCD
4 3 (0.43%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.29%) iTrent
5 2 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.29%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.29%) SAP FI-CA
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 Convergent Charging
6 1 (0.14%) SAP MM
6 1 (0.14%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 132 (18.97%) Azure
2 105 (15.09%) AWS
3 37 (5.32%) Power Platform
4 33 (4.74%) GCP
5 25 (3.59%) Azure DevOps
6 24 (3.45%) GitHub
6 24 (3.45%) SaaS
7 23 (3.30%) Entra ID
8 18 (2.59%) Microsoft 365
9 15 (2.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 15 (2.16%) Azure Monitor
9 15 (2.16%) Serverless
10 14 (2.01%) GitHub Actions
11 13 (1.87%) OpenShift
12 11 (1.58%) Datadog
13 8 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
13 8 (1.15%) OCI
14 7 (1.01%) Azure AKS
15 6 (0.86%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 29 (4.17%) DNS
2 23 (3.30%) Network Security
3 17 (2.44%) Firewall
4 13 (1.87%) DHCP
4 13 (1.87%) LAN
5 11 (1.58%) Broadband
6 9 (1.29%) TCP/IP
7 8 (1.15%) WAN
8 7 (1.01%) SD-WAN
8 7 (1.01%) VPN
8 7 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (0.86%) Wireless
10 5 (0.72%) Intranet
10 5 (0.72%) Software-Defined Networking
11 4 (0.57%) DNSSEC
11 4 (0.57%) Radio Access Network
12 3 (0.43%) Intrusion Detection
12 3 (0.43%) MQTT
12 3 (0.43%) VLAN
13 2 (0.29%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (4.89%) Power BI
2 17 (2.44%) Metadata
3 16 (2.30%) Relational Database
4 13 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
5 11 (1.58%) PostgreSQL
6 7 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
6 7 (1.01%) Spark SQL
7 6 (0.86%) DynamoDB
7 6 (0.86%) Tableau
8 4 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.43%) Big Data
9 3 (0.43%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (0.43%) Geospatial Data
9 3 (0.43%) GIS
9 3 (0.43%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.43%) Redis
10 2 (0.29%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.29%) Oracle ODI
11 1 (0.14%) Data Lake
11 1 (0.14%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 32 (4.60%) Git
1 32 (4.60%) JIRA
2 21 (3.02%) GitLab
3 20 (2.87%) Jenkins
4 15 (2.16%) Selenium
5 8 (1.15%) MSI
6 5 (0.72%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.29%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.29%) Gatling
7 2 (0.29%) JMeter
7 2 (0.29%) LoadRunner
7 2 (0.29%) REST Assured
7 2 (0.29%) 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%) SpecFlow
8 1 (0.14%) Subversion
General
1 334 (47.99%) Social Skills
2 195 (28.02%) Analytical Skills
3 120 (17.24%) Finance
4 77 (11.06%) Public Sector
5 55 (7.90%) Aerospace
6 49 (7.04%) Organisational Skills
7 34 (4.89%) Influencing Skills
8 33 (4.74%) Manufacturing
9 25 (3.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 21 (3.02%) Telecoms
11 19 (2.73%) Retail
12 18 (2.59%) Legal
13 16 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
14 15 (2.16%) French Language
14 15 (2.16%) Spanish Language
15 14 (2.01%) Presentation Skills
16 13 (1.87%) Military
17 12 (1.72%) Electronics
18 9 (1.29%) Local Government
18 9 (1.29%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 89 (12.79%) Lead
2 79 (11.35%) Analyst
3 66 (9.48%) Senior
4 62 (8.91%) Architect
5 44 (6.32%) Delivery Manager
6 28 (4.02%) Product Manager
7 24 (3.45%) Consultant
8 22 (3.16%) Data Analyst
9 19 (2.73%) Senior Manager
10 18 (2.59%) Project Manager
11 17 (2.44%) IT Manager
11 17 (2.44%) Product Delivery Manager
12 16 (2.30%) Security Analyst
12 16 (2.30%) Service Manager
13 15 (2.16%) 2nd Line Support
13 15 (2.16%) 2nd Line Technical Support
13 15 (2.16%) Technical Support
14 14 (2.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 14 (2.01%) Solutions Architect
14 14 (2.01%) Technical Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (7.90%) Terraform
2 15 (2.16%) REST
3 11 (1.58%) .NET
3 11 (1.58%) ARM Templates
4 10 (1.44%) Kafka
4 10 (1.44%) OAuth
4 10 (1.44%) PySpark
4 10 (1.44%) RESTful
4 10 (1.44%) SOAP
5 9 (1.29%) Middleware
6 8 (1.15%) SAML
7 7 (1.01%) OpenID
7 7 (1.01%) React
8 6 (0.86%) EDI
8 6 (0.86%) GraphQL
8 6 (0.86%) HTML
8 6 (0.86%) JSON
8 6 (0.86%) LDAP
9 5 (0.72%) CSS
9 5 (0.72%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 61 (8.76%) Product Ownership
2 39 (5.60%) Cloud Native
2 39 (5.60%) Onboarding
3 36 (5.17%) Management Information System
4 23 (3.30%) Operational Technology
5 18 (2.59%) Hybrid Cloud
5 18 (2.59%) Security Posture
6 17 (2.44%) Data Centre
7 16 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
8 15 (2.16%) CMDB
9 14 (2.01%) Cyber Threat
10 12 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
10 12 (1.72%) PMI
10 12 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
10 12 (1.72%) Virtual Team
11 11 (1.58%) Security Operations Centre
11 11 (1.58%) Social Media
12 9 (1.29%) Analytical Mindset
13 8 (1.15%) Graphic Design
13 8 (1.15%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 79 (11.35%) Windows
2 37 (5.32%) Linux
3 23 (3.30%) Windows Server
4 7 (1.01%) Windows Server 2019
5 5 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.29%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
7 1 (0.14%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.14%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 257 (36.93%) Agile
2 211 (30.32%) Problem-Solving
3 201 (28.88%) Stakeholder Management
4 157 (22.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 127 (18.25%) ITIL
6 113 (16.24%) Roadmaps
7 106 (15.23%) Decision-Making
8 97 (13.94%) CI/CD
8 97 (13.94%) DevOps
8 97 (13.94%) Service Delivery
9 92 (13.22%) Service Management
10 85 (12.21%) Project Delivery
11 84 (12.07%) Cybersecurity
12 79 (11.35%) Change Management
13 75 (10.78%) Validation
14 72 (10.34%) ITSM
15 69 (9.91%) Infrastructure as Code
16 67 (9.63%) PRINCE2
17 65 (9.34%) AI
18 64 (9.20%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 86 (12.36%) Python
2 75 (10.78%) SQL
3 52 (7.47%) PowerShell
4 28 (4.02%) Bash
5 17 (2.44%) Java
6 9 (1.29%) Bicep
6 9 (1.29%) JavaScript
7 7 (1.01%) C#
8 6 (0.86%) Apex Code
8 6 (0.86%) TypeScript
9 5 (0.72%) Go
10 4 (0.57%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.43%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.43%) Rust
12 2 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.29%) Magik
13 1 (0.14%) ABAP
13 1 (0.14%) Groovy
13 1 (0.14%) Perl
13 1 (0.14%) VBA
Qualifications
1 344 (49.43%) Security Cleared
2 193 (27.73%) SC Cleared
3 127 (18.25%) DV Cleared
4 113 (16.24%) Degree
5 38 (5.46%) PMI Certification
6 28 (4.02%) PMP
7 22 (3.16%) Computer Science Degree
8 19 (2.73%) Azure Certification
8 19 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
9 16 (2.30%) CISSP
10 14 (2.01%) AWS Certification
10 14 (2.01%) ITIL Certification
11 13 (1.87%) ACCA
11 13 (1.87%) CIMA
12 11 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
13 9 (1.29%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 7 (1.01%) Master's Degree
14 7 (1.01%) PRINCE2 Certification
15 6 (0.86%) CCNP
15 6 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (8.76%) QA
2 57 (8.19%) PMO
3 51 (7.33%) Data Quality
4 32 (4.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 22 (3.16%) NIST
6 20 (2.87%) GDPR
7 18 (2.59%) SLA
8 13 (1.87%) ISO 9001
8 13 (1.87%) NCSC
9 8 (1.15%) GRC
10 7 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
11 5 (0.72%) Def Stans
11 5 (0.72%) ISO 22301
11 5 (0.72%) NIST 800
12 3 (0.43%) Accessibility
12 3 (0.43%) COSHH
13 2 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
13 2 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
13 2 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 2 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 33 (4.74%) Active Directory
2 27 (3.88%) Docker
2 27 (3.88%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (1.15%) IAG
4 7 (1.01%) VMware NSX
4 7 (1.01%) vSphere
5 6 (0.86%) Hyper-V
6 5 (0.72%) Virtual Desktop
6 5 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 2 (0.29%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 51 (7.33%) Kubernetes
2 36 (5.17%) Ansible
3 12 (1.72%) Grafana
4 11 (1.58%) WMI
5 10 (1.44%) Microsoft Intune
6 8 (1.15%) Prometheus
6 8 (1.15%) Puppet
7 7 (1.01%) SCCM
8 5 (0.72%) Progress Chef
9 4 (0.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 3 (0.43%) Argo
10 3 (0.43%) MOM
10 3 (0.43%) Podman
10 3 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.29%) CASB
11 2 (0.29%) CSIRT
11 2 (0.29%) Istio
11 2 (0.29%) Rancher
11 2 (0.29%) vRealize
11 2 (0.29%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 148 (21.26%) Microsoft
2 45 (6.47%) ServiceNow
3 42 (6.03%) SAP
4 33 (4.74%) VMware
5 22 (3.16%) Oracle
6 17 (2.44%) Databricks
6 17 (2.44%) Salesforce
7 14 (2.01%) Google
8 11 (1.58%) Dynatrace
8 11 (1.58%) Juniper
9 8 (1.15%) Cisco
9 8 (1.15%) Nexthink
10 7 (1.01%) Workday
11 6 (0.86%) Baan
11 6 (0.86%) Red Hat
11 6 (0.86%) Splunk
11 6 (0.86%) Virgin Media
12 5 (0.72%) SolarWinds
13 4 (0.57%) Aruba
13 4 (0.57%) Infoblox