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 20 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 41 47
Rank change year-on-year +17 +6 +24
Contract jobs citing Continuous Improvement 394 146 225
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.89% 4.88% 4.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 8.45% 5.32% 4.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 228 95 112
10th Percentile £306 £318 £400
25th Percentile £412 £416 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - +0.96%
75th Percentile £586 £594 £650
90th Percentile £663 £665 £688
England median daily rate £500 £519 £525
% change year-on-year -3.58% -1.22% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 9 20
10th Percentile £15.53 £20.78 £18.14
25th Percentile £80.50 £21.00 £22.59
Median hourly rate £86.70 £61.76 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +40.38% +64.69% -6.25%
75th Percentile £88.00 £67.50 £46.56
90th Percentile £95.75 £80.10 £62.40
England median hourly rate £54.50 £56.38 £37.50
% change year-on-year -3.33% +50.33% -37.50%

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 4,663 2,742 4,788
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 81.56% 91.61% 85.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,039 1,754 2,793
10th Percentile £282 £253 £231
25th Percentile £406 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% - -0.99%
75th Percentile £613 £600 £619
90th Percentile £713 £675 £699
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 422 168 433
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £13.00
25th Percentile £20.50 £16.80 £18.20
Median hourly rate £47.50 £28.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +69.64% -37.78% -6.41%
75th Percentile £81.00 £62.31 £62.47
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £76.86
England median hourly rate £41.94 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year +32.55% -9.60% -6.67%

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 20 April 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 20 April 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 20 April 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 +14 200 £500 - 99
Berkshire +29 169 £467 -6.60% 51
Hampshire +14 110 £503 -8.64% 76
Surrey +12 36 £525 +10.53% 43
Buckinghamshire -6 29 £509 -7.50% 27
West Sussex -8 14 £506 +30.65% 23
East Sussex +5 11 £600 +9.09% 21
Sussex - 4 - - 3
Oxfordshire -18 2 £413 +65.10% 22
Middlesex - 2 - - 20
Kent -9 1 £400 -27.27% 33
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 (2.54%) Confluence
2 8 (2.03%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.27%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.25%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.25%) SharePoint 2010
4 1 (0.25%) SharePoint 2013
4 1 (0.25%) Tomcat
Applications
1 21 (5.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (3.81%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (1.52%) Microsoft Project
3 6 (1.52%) MS Visio
4 5 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.76%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 9 (2.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (2.03%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.76%) iTrent
3 3 (0.76%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.51%) SAP SD
5 1 (0.25%) assyst
5 1 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.25%) Oracle BRM
5 1 (0.25%) Primavera
5 1 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.25%) SAP Business One
5 1 (0.25%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.25%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.25%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.25%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 70 (17.77%) Azure
2 56 (14.21%) AWS
3 29 (7.36%) GCP
4 21 (5.33%) Power Platform
5 12 (3.05%) Azure DevOps
5 12 (3.05%) SaaS
6 9 (2.28%) Microsoft 365
7 6 (1.52%) Amazon EKS
7 6 (1.52%) Google Workspace
7 6 (1.52%) Serverless
8 5 (1.27%) PaaS
9 4 (1.02%) dbt
9 4 (1.02%) Entra ID
9 4 (1.02%) GitHub
9 4 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
9 4 (1.02%) IaaS
9 4 (1.02%) OpenShift
10 3 (0.76%) Azure Machine Learning
10 3 (0.76%) SuccessFactors
10 3 (0.76%) Viva Engage
Communications & Networking
1 13 (3.30%) Firewall
1 13 (3.30%) Network Security
2 12 (3.05%) VPN
3 5 (1.27%) TCP/IP
3 5 (1.27%) VLAN
3 5 (1.27%) WAN
4 4 (1.02%) Broadband
4 4 (1.02%) DNS
4 4 (1.02%) MPLS
4 4 (1.02%) SD-WAN
5 3 (0.76%) BGP
5 3 (0.76%) IPv4
5 3 (0.76%) IPv6
5 3 (0.76%) LAN
5 3 (0.76%) OSPF
5 3 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
6 2 (0.51%) DHCP
6 2 (0.51%) Intranet
6 2 (0.51%) Intrusion Detection
6 2 (0.51%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (4.31%) Power BI
2 6 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
2 6 (1.52%) Metadata
2 6 (1.52%) Oracle Reports
3 4 (1.02%) Data Lake
3 4 (1.02%) SQL Server
3 4 (1.02%) Tableau
4 3 (0.76%) Metadata Repository
4 3 (0.76%) Pinecone
4 3 (0.76%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (0.76%) Redis
4 3 (0.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 3 (0.76%) Weaviate
5 2 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.51%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.51%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.51%) SQL Server Analysis Services
5 2 (0.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 1 (0.25%) Geospatial Data
6 1 (0.25%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 27 (6.85%) Rational DOORS
2 17 (4.31%) JIRA
3 8 (2.03%) GitLab
4 6 (1.52%) Jenkins
5 5 (1.27%) Git
6 4 (1.02%) Selenium
7 2 (0.51%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.51%) Hudson
7 2 (0.51%) Oracle APEX
7 2 (0.51%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (0.51%) SpecFlow
7 2 (0.51%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.25%) Balsamiq
8 1 (0.25%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.25%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.25%) JMeter
8 1 (0.25%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.25%) Subversion
8 1 (0.25%) WebDriver
General
1 176 (44.67%) Social Skills
2 90 (22.84%) Analytical Skills
3 87 (22.08%) Finance
4 46 (11.68%) Public Sector
5 44 (11.17%) Aerospace
6 17 (4.31%) Influencing Skills
7 16 (4.06%) Legal
7 16 (4.06%) Organisational Skills
8 14 (3.55%) Law
9 13 (3.30%) Telecoms
10 9 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 9 (2.28%) Retail
11 6 (1.52%) Manufacturing
11 6 (1.52%) Marketing
12 4 (1.02%) Billing
12 4 (1.02%) Documentation Skills
12 4 (1.02%) Military
12 4 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.76%) Automotive
13 3 (0.76%) French Language
Job Titles
1 45 (11.42%) Delivery Manager
1 45 (11.42%) Lead
2 39 (9.90%) Senior
3 38 (9.64%) Analyst
4 35 (8.88%) Product Manager
5 29 (7.36%) Product Delivery Manager
6 24 (6.09%) IT Manager
7 22 (5.58%) Systems Delivery Manager
7 22 (5.58%) Systems Manager
8 18 (4.57%) Service Manager
9 14 (3.55%) Architect
10 13 (3.30%) Consultant
11 12 (3.05%) Project Manager
12 11 (2.79%) Senior Analyst
13 10 (2.54%) Accountant
13 10 (2.54%) Service Delivery Manager
13 10 (2.54%) Systems Accountant
14 9 (2.28%) Designer
14 9 (2.28%) Support Officer
14 9 (2.28%) Transformation Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (1.52%) .NET
2 5 (1.27%) Oracle Fusion
3 4 (1.02%) Node.js
3 4 (1.02%) RESTful
4 3 (0.76%) Faiss
4 3 (0.76%) Kafka
4 3 (0.76%) Keycloak
4 3 (0.76%) Playwright
4 3 (0.76%) Spring
4 3 (0.76%) Spring Boot
4 3 (0.76%) YAML
5 2 (0.51%) ADO
5 2 (0.51%) Elastic Stack
5 2 (0.51%) JSON
5 2 (0.51%) OAuth
5 2 (0.51%) OAuth2
5 2 (0.51%) Unity (Game Engine)
5 2 (0.51%) Unreal Engine
5 2 (0.51%) XML
6 1 (0.25%) EDI
Miscellaneous
1 47 (11.93%) Product Ownership
2 24 (6.09%) Data Structures
3 17 (4.31%) Data Centre
3 17 (4.31%) Management Information System
4 16 (4.06%) Legacy Systems
4 16 (4.06%) Onboarding
5 13 (3.30%) Analytical Mindset
6 11 (2.79%) Cloud Native
7 9 (2.28%) PMI
7 9 (2.28%) Security Posture
8 8 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
8 8 (2.03%) Security Operations Centre
9 7 (1.78%) CMDB
9 7 (1.78%) PKI
9 7 (1.78%) Virtual Team
10 6 (1.52%) Taxonomies
11 5 (1.27%) e-Learning
11 5 (1.27%) Hybrid Cloud
11 5 (1.27%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 15 (3.81%) Windows
2 13 (3.30%) Linux
3 2 (0.51%) Apple iOS
3 2 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (0.51%) Unix
3 2 (0.51%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.25%) Android
4 1 (0.25%) Solaris
4 1 (0.25%) VMS
4 1 (0.25%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 104 (26.40%) Agile
2 95 (24.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
3 88 (22.34%) Stakeholder Management
4 87 (22.08%) ITIL
5 78 (19.80%) Problem-Solving
6 70 (17.77%) Service Management
7 63 (15.99%) ITSM
8 62 (15.74%) Change Management
9 51 (12.94%) Roadmaps
10 44 (11.17%) PRINCE2
11 42 (10.66%) Computer Science
12 40 (10.15%) Service Delivery
13 37 (9.39%) Configuration Management
13 37 (9.39%) Decision-Making
13 37 (9.39%) Performance Metrics
14 36 (9.14%) Scaled Agile Framework
15 34 (8.63%) Analytics
15 34 (8.63%) DevOps
15 34 (8.63%) Risk Management
16 33 (8.38%) Programme Management
Programming Languages
1 21 (5.33%) Python
2 16 (4.06%) SQL
3 13 (3.30%) Java
4 11 (2.79%) PowerShell
5 7 (1.78%) Bash
6 6 (1.52%) C#
7 4 (1.02%) Bicep
7 4 (1.02%) PL/SQL
8 3 (0.76%) JavaScript
9 2 (0.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (0.51%) T-SQL
9 2 (0.51%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.25%) ABAP
10 1 (0.25%) C
10 1 (0.25%) Objective-C
10 1 (0.25%) Perl
10 1 (0.25%) Swift
10 1 (0.25%) VB
Qualifications
1 185 (46.95%) Security Cleared
2 102 (25.89%) SC Cleared
3 75 (19.04%) Degree
4 38 (9.64%) DV Cleared
5 20 (5.08%) PMI Certification
6 18 (4.57%) ACCA
6 18 (4.57%) CIMA
7 12 (3.05%) PMP
8 10 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
9 9 (2.28%) CISSP
10 8 (2.03%) CCNP
11 7 (1.78%) Computer Science Degree
11 7 (1.78%) ISTQB
12 6 (1.52%) Azure Certification
13 5 (1.27%) CCNA
14 4 (1.02%) CISM
14 4 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
15 3 (0.76%) CCIE
15 3 (0.76%) JNCIS
15 3 (0.76%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (5.84%) Data Quality
2 22 (5.58%) QA
3 17 (4.31%) PMO
4 15 (3.81%) NIST
5 14 (3.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 11 (2.79%) SLA
7 10 (2.54%) GDPR
8 8 (2.03%) Cyber Essentials
8 8 (2.03%) NCSC
9 6 (1.52%) Accessibility
10 5 (1.27%) GRC
11 3 (0.76%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.76%) Def Stans
11 3 (0.76%) ISO 22301
11 3 (0.76%) ISO 31000
11 3 (0.76%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.25%) COBIT
12 1 (0.25%) IFRS
12 1 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.25%) SOC 2
System Software
1 14 (3.55%) VMware Infrastructure
2 10 (2.54%) Active Directory
3 8 (2.03%) Docker
4 6 (1.52%) VMware NSX
5 2 (0.51%) Firmware
5 2 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.51%) vSphere
6 1 (0.25%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 12 (3.05%) Kubernetes
2 10 (2.54%) Ansible
3 9 (2.28%) Terraform
4 6 (1.52%) Grafana
4 6 (1.52%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (1.27%) Prometheus
5 5 (1.27%) SCCM
6 4 (1.02%) Nagios
6 4 (1.02%) Nessus
7 3 (0.76%) Argo
7 3 (0.76%) OpenVAS
7 3 (0.76%) Rancher
8 2 (0.51%) Cisco Prime
8 2 (0.51%) Iperf
8 2 (0.51%) Nmap
9 1 (0.25%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.25%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.25%) Puppet
9 1 (0.25%) Red Hat Satellite
9 1 (0.25%) SELinux
Vendors
1 35 (8.88%) Microsoft
2 34 (8.63%) ServiceNow
3 26 (6.60%) Oracle
4 25 (6.35%) Google
4 25 (6.35%) IBM
4 25 (6.35%) SAP
5 23 (5.84%) VMware
6 10 (2.54%) Cisco
7 8 (2.03%) SolarWinds
8 7 (1.78%) Juniper
8 7 (1.78%) Palo Alto
9 6 (1.52%) Fortinet
9 6 (1.52%) Workday
10 5 (1.27%) BMC
10 5 (1.27%) Remedy
10 5 (1.27%) Salesforce
10 5 (1.27%) Splunk
11 4 (1.02%) CheckPoint
11 4 (1.02%) F5
11 4 (1.02%) Red Hat