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

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 41 36
Rank change year-on-year +27 -5 +31
Contract jobs citing Continuous Improvement 637 170 221
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 9.51% 4.82% 4.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.81% 5.37% 5.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 367 99 114
10th Percentile £331 £325 £357
25th Percentile £425 £444 £451
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £510
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% +0.44% -7.23%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £700 £650 £688
England median daily rate £514 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.80% -4.76% -7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 11 14
10th Percentile £38.75 - £18.35
25th Percentile £66.25 £15.13 £24.50
Median hourly rate £85.40 £15.25 £36.66
Median % change year-on-year +460.00% -58.40% -23.62%
75th Percentile £88.00 £48.88 £57.50
90th Percentile - £70.16 £59.67
England median hourly rate £36.66 £28.75 £50.00
% change year-on-year +27.51% -42.50% -20.00%

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 5,392 3,163 3,937
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.51% 89.63% 82.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,320 1,973 2,380
10th Percentile £280 £241 £255
25th Percentile £420 £394 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% +0.39%
75th Percentile £615 £600 £638
90th Percentile £707 £675 £700
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 598 305 312
10th Percentile £13.97 £13.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £15.50 £26.25
Median hourly rate £53.95 £24.00 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +124.79% -58.15% +14.70%
75th Percentile £73.25 £51.10 £70.05
90th Percentile £88.00 £70.81 £76.86
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% +2.41%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 +22 295 £550 +4.76% 318
Berkshire +31 209 £525 - 132
Hampshire +22 185 £550 +0.92% 182
Buckinghamshire -6 69 £574 +7.95% 102
Surrey +21 66 £450 -10.00% 97
West Sussex +1 40 £495 -1.00% 42
Middlesex - 20 - - 26
Oxfordshire -15 17 £650 +44.44% 87
Kent +3 7 £405 - 56
East Sussex +4 4 £575 +17.95% 40
Sussex - 1 £600 - 8
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 29 (4.55%) SharePoint
2 16 (2.51%) Confluence
3 4 (0.63%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.31%) Oracle Application Server
4 2 (0.31%) Smallworld
5 1 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.16%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.16%) SharePoint 2010
5 1 (0.16%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 54 (8.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 24 (3.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 23 (3.61%) Microsoft Project
4 14 (2.20%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.31%) 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 17 (2.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.94%) Primavera
3 4 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.47%) iTrent
4 3 (0.47%) Maximo
4 3 (0.47%) NEC Housing
4 3 (0.47%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.31%) SAP SD
5 2 (0.31%) 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 MM
6 1 (0.16%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.16%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 117 (18.37%) Azure
2 80 (12.56%) AWS
3 32 (5.02%) GCP
4 31 (4.87%) Power Platform
5 24 (3.77%) SaaS
6 22 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
6 22 (3.45%) GitHub
7 20 (3.14%) Entra ID
8 17 (2.67%) Microsoft 365
9 13 (2.04%) Azure Monitor
9 13 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (1.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 11 (1.73%) Datadog
10 11 (1.73%) OpenShift
10 11 (1.73%) Serverless
11 8 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (1.26%) OCI
12 7 (1.10%) Amazon EKS
13 6 (0.94%) Azure AKS
13 6 (0.94%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 26 (4.08%) DNS
2 25 (3.92%) Network Security
3 16 (2.51%) Firewall
4 13 (2.04%) LAN
5 10 (1.57%) DHCP
6 8 (1.26%) Broadband
6 8 (1.26%) TCP/IP
7 7 (1.10%) WAN
8 6 (0.94%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.94%) VPN
8 6 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.94%) Wireless
9 5 (0.78%) Intranet
10 4 (0.63%) DNSSEC
10 4 (0.63%) Radio Access Network
11 3 (0.47%) Intrusion Detection
11 3 (0.47%) MQTT
11 3 (0.47%) VLAN
12 2 (0.31%) Cisco Nexus
12 2 (0.31%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (4.40%) Power BI
2 12 (1.88%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (1.57%) Metadata
4 9 (1.41%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
6 6 (0.94%) Spark SQL
6 6 (0.94%) Tableau
7 4 (0.63%) DynamoDB
7 4 (0.63%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (0.63%) GIS
7 4 (0.63%) Redis
8 3 (0.47%) Big Data
8 3 (0.47%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (0.47%) NoSQL
8 3 (0.47%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.31%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.31%) Oracle ODI
9 2 (0.31%) SAP HANA
9 2 (0.31%) SQL Server
10 1 (0.16%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 29 (4.55%) JIRA
2 25 (3.92%) Rational DOORS
3 18 (2.83%) GitLab
4 16 (2.51%) Jenkins
5 14 (2.20%) Git
6 5 (0.78%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.47%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.47%) MSI
8 2 (0.31%) Hudson
8 2 (0.31%) REST Assured
8 2 (0.31%) Selenium
8 2 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.16%) Mockito
9 1 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
9 1 (0.16%) Postman
9 1 (0.16%) RStudio
9 1 (0.16%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.16%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.16%) Subversion
9 1 (0.16%) TestRail
General
1 286 (44.90%) Social Skills
2 181 (28.41%) Analytical Skills
3 116 (18.21%) Finance
4 69 (10.83%) Public Sector
5 60 (9.42%) Aerospace
6 39 (6.12%) Organisational Skills
7 29 (4.55%) Influencing Skills
8 21 (3.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 21 (3.30%) Retail
9 19 (2.98%) Legal
9 19 (2.98%) Telecoms
10 16 (2.51%) Documentation Skills
10 16 (2.51%) French Language
10 16 (2.51%) Spanish Language
11 11 (1.73%) Presentation Skills
12 9 (1.41%) Military
13 8 (1.26%) Games
13 8 (1.26%) Law
13 8 (1.26%) Manufacturing
14 7 (1.10%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 87 (13.66%) Analyst
2 79 (12.40%) Lead
3 61 (9.58%) Senior
4 59 (9.26%) Architect
5 48 (7.54%) Delivery Manager
6 42 (6.59%) Product Manager
7 31 (4.87%) Product Delivery Manager
8 23 (3.61%) Consultant
9 22 (3.45%) Systems Manager
10 21 (3.30%) Data Analyst
10 21 (3.30%) Systems Delivery Manager
11 18 (2.83%) IT Manager
12 17 (2.67%) Project Manager
13 16 (2.51%) 2nd Line Support
13 16 (2.51%) 2nd Line Technical Support
13 16 (2.51%) Security Analyst
13 16 (2.51%) Senior Analyst
13 16 (2.51%) Technical Support
14 15 (2.35%) Solutions Architect
15 14 (2.20%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (7.22%) Terraform
2 14 (2.20%) REST
3 11 (1.73%) OAuth
3 11 (1.73%) RESTful
3 11 (1.73%) SOAP
4 10 (1.57%) .NET
5 9 (1.41%) ARM Templates
5 9 (1.41%) Kafka
5 9 (1.41%) PySpark
6 8 (1.26%) SAML
7 7 (1.10%) EDI
7 7 (1.10%) OpenID
8 6 (0.94%) GraphQL
8 6 (0.94%) JSON
8 6 (0.94%) LDAP
8 6 (0.94%) OAuth2
9 5 (0.78%) HTML
9 5 (0.78%) Keycloak
9 5 (0.78%) Middleware
9 5 (0.78%) React
Miscellaneous
1 79 (12.40%) Product Ownership
2 36 (5.65%) Cloud Native
3 33 (5.18%) Onboarding
4 30 (4.71%) Management Information System
5 27 (4.24%) Data Structures
6 24 (3.77%) Operational Technology
7 19 (2.98%) Security Posture
8 16 (2.51%) Hybrid Cloud
9 14 (2.20%) CMDB
9 14 (2.20%) Cyber Threat
10 13 (2.04%) Analytical Mindset
10 13 (2.04%) Data Centre
11 12 (1.88%) PMI
11 12 (1.88%) Security Operations Centre
12 11 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
12 11 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
12 11 (1.73%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (1.26%) Animation
13 8 (1.26%) Graphic Design
Operating Systems
1 68 (10.68%) Windows
2 32 (5.02%) Linux
3 21 (3.30%) Windows Server
4 7 (1.10%) Windows Server 2019
5 4 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
6 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.16%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 232 (36.42%) Agile
2 172 (27.00%) Problem-Solving
2 172 (27.00%) Stakeholder Management
3 156 (24.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 109 (17.11%) ITIL
5 97 (15.23%) Decision-Making
6 86 (13.50%) Service Delivery
7 85 (13.34%) Roadmaps
8 84 (13.19%) DevOps
9 80 (12.56%) Cybersecurity
10 77 (12.09%) Service Management
11 75 (11.77%) CI/CD
12 70 (10.99%) PRINCE2
13 69 (10.83%) ITSM
14 66 (10.36%) Project Delivery
15 62 (9.73%) Change Management
16 60 (9.42%) Project Management
17 59 (9.26%) Computer Science
18 57 (8.95%) Scaled Agile Framework
19 54 (8.48%) AI
Programming Languages
1 62 (9.73%) Python
2 61 (9.58%) SQL
3 40 (6.28%) PowerShell
4 25 (3.92%) Bash
5 17 (2.67%) Java
6 7 (1.10%) Bicep
6 7 (1.10%) C#
6 7 (1.10%) JavaScript
7 5 (0.78%) Apex Code
7 5 (0.78%) TypeScript
8 4 (0.63%) Shell Script
9 3 (0.47%) Go
9 3 (0.47%) PL/SQL
9 3 (0.47%) Rust
10 2 (0.31%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.31%) Magik
11 1 (0.16%) ABAP
11 1 (0.16%) Groovy
11 1 (0.16%) Perl
11 1 (0.16%) VBA
Qualifications
1 317 (49.76%) Security Cleared
2 162 (25.43%) SC Cleared
3 124 (19.47%) Degree
4 106 (16.64%) DV Cleared
5 35 (5.49%) PMI Certification
6 25 (3.92%) PMP
7 17 (2.67%) ACCA
7 17 (2.67%) Azure Certification
7 17 (2.67%) BPSS Clearance
7 17 (2.67%) CIMA
7 17 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (2.35%) CISSP
9 13 (2.04%) AWS Certification
10 11 (1.73%) ITIL Certification
11 10 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
12 9 (1.41%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
13 6 (0.94%) CCNP
13 6 (0.94%) CISM
13 6 (0.94%) Master's Degree
14 5 (0.78%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 53 (8.32%) QA
2 49 (7.69%) Data Quality
3 47 (7.38%) PMO
4 31 (4.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 20 (3.14%) NIST
6 18 (2.83%) GDPR
7 17 (2.67%) SLA
8 16 (2.51%) NCSC
9 8 (1.26%) Cyber Essentials
9 8 (1.26%) ISO 9001
10 7 (1.10%) GRC
11 6 (0.94%) ISO 22301
12 3 (0.47%) Accessibility
12 3 (0.47%) ISO 31000
13 2 (0.31%) Def Stans
13 2 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
13 2 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 2 (0.31%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 1 (0.16%) COBIT
System Software
1 28 (4.40%) Active Directory
2 27 (4.24%) Docker
3 24 (3.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (1.10%) IAG
5 5 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 5 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.78%) vSphere
6 4 (0.63%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.47%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 44 (6.91%) Kubernetes
2 33 (5.18%) Ansible
3 11 (1.73%) Grafana
4 8 (1.26%) Microsoft Intune
4 8 (1.26%) Prometheus
4 8 (1.26%) Puppet
5 7 (1.10%) SCCM
6 6 (0.94%) WMI
7 5 (0.78%) Progress Chef
8 4 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 3 (0.47%) Argo
9 3 (0.47%) Podman
9 3 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.31%) CASB
10 2 (0.31%) CSIRT
10 2 (0.31%) Rancher
10 2 (0.31%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.16%) Amdocs OSS
11 1 (0.16%) Istio
11 1 (0.16%) QRadar
Vendors
1 112 (17.58%) Microsoft
2 47 (7.38%) SAP
3 45 (7.06%) ServiceNow
4 33 (5.18%) VMware
5 26 (4.08%) Oracle
6 25 (3.92%) IBM
7 16 (2.51%) Databricks
7 16 (2.51%) Salesforce
8 14 (2.20%) Google
9 11 (1.73%) Dynatrace
9 11 (1.73%) Juniper
10 8 (1.26%) Cisco
10 8 (1.26%) Workday
11 7 (1.10%) Nexthink
11 7 (1.10%) Splunk
12 6 (0.94%) Baan
12 6 (0.94%) Red Hat
12 6 (0.94%) Virgin Media
13 5 (0.78%) SolarWinds
14 4 (0.63%) Infoblox