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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 40 44
Rank change year-on-year +17 +4 +29
Contract jobs citing Continuous Improvement 401 146 229
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.89% 4.88% 4.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 8.47% 5.33% 4.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 94 119
10th Percentile £306 £316 £400
25th Percentile £412 £416 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -
75th Percentile £586 £597 £650
90th Percentile £666 £668 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 9 19
10th Percentile £27.31 £20.78 £17.93
25th Percentile £80.69 £21.00 £21.18
Median hourly rate £88.00 £61.76 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +42.49% +64.69% -6.25%
75th Percentile - £67.50 £49.38
90th Percentile £96.25 £80.10 £63.30
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 4,733 2,741 4,688
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 81.34% 91.55% 84.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,081 1,744 2,727
10th Percentile £285 £251 £243
25th Percentile £408 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -0.10% -1.86%
75th Percentile £613 £600 £623
90th Percentile £713 £675 £700
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 432 171 431
10th Percentile £15.29 £13.85 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £16.34 £18.20
Median hourly rate £51.00 £28.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +82.14% -41.05% -5.00%
75th Percentile £81.00 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £76.86
England median hourly rate £44.00 £30.45 £35.00
% change year-on-year +44.50% -13.00% -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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +16 201 £500 - 107
Berkshire +26 171 £467 -6.60% 47
Hampshire +10 111 £508 -7.73% 84
Surrey +9 37 £519 +9.21% 53
Buckinghamshire -15 28 £518 -5.91% 27
West Sussex -8 18 £488 +25.81% 24
East Sussex +2 10 £600 +9.09% 10
Sussex - 3 - - 5
Oxfordshire -19 2 £413 +65.10% 35
Middlesex - 2 - - 10
Kent -10 1 £400 -27.27% 19
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 (2.49%) Confluence
2 8 (2.00%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.25%) 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 24 (5.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (3.24%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (1.50%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (1.25%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.75%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 10 (2.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (2.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.75%) iTrent
3 3 (0.75%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.50%) 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 69 (17.21%) Azure
2 53 (13.22%) AWS
3 27 (6.73%) GCP
4 24 (5.99%) Power Platform
5 12 (2.99%) Azure DevOps
5 12 (2.99%) SaaS
6 8 (2.00%) Microsoft 365
7 6 (1.50%) Amazon EKS
7 6 (1.50%) Serverless
8 5 (1.25%) Entra ID
8 5 (1.25%) PaaS
9 4 (1.00%) dbt
9 4 (1.00%) GitHub
9 4 (1.00%) GitHub Actions
9 4 (1.00%) Google Workspace
9 4 (1.00%) IaaS
9 4 (1.00%) OpenShift
10 3 (0.75%) Azure Functions
10 3 (0.75%) Azure Logic Apps
10 3 (0.75%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 14 (3.49%) Firewall
2 13 (3.24%) Network Security
3 12 (2.99%) VPN
4 6 (1.50%) VLAN
5 5 (1.25%) TCP/IP
5 5 (1.25%) WAN
6 4 (1.00%) Broadband
6 4 (1.00%) DNS
6 4 (1.00%) MPLS
6 4 (1.00%) SD-WAN
7 3 (0.75%) BGP
7 3 (0.75%) DHCP
7 3 (0.75%) IPv4
7 3 (0.75%) IPv6
7 3 (0.75%) LAN
7 3 (0.75%) OSPF
7 3 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
7 3 (0.75%) Wireless
8 2 (0.50%) Intranet
8 2 (0.50%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (4.99%) Power BI
2 6 (1.50%) Data Warehouse
2 6 (1.50%) Metadata
3 5 (1.25%) Oracle Reports
3 5 (1.25%) Tableau
4 4 (1.00%) Data Lake
4 4 (1.00%) SQL Server
5 3 (0.75%) Metadata Repository
5 3 (0.75%) Pinecone
5 3 (0.75%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (0.75%) Redis
5 3 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 3 (0.75%) Weaviate
6 2 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (0.50%) DynamoDB
6 2 (0.50%) SQL Server Analysis Services
6 2 (0.50%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 1 (0.25%) Geospatial Data
7 1 (0.25%) GIS
7 1 (0.25%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 27 (6.73%) Rational DOORS
2 17 (4.24%) JIRA
3 8 (2.00%) GitLab
4 6 (1.50%) Jenkins
5 5 (1.25%) Git
6 4 (1.00%) Selenium
7 2 (0.50%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.50%) Hudson
7 2 (0.50%) SpecFlow
7 2 (0.50%) 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%) Oracle APEX
8 1 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.25%) Subversion
8 1 (0.25%) WebDriver
General
1 179 (44.64%) Social Skills
2 92 (22.94%) Analytical Skills
3 90 (22.44%) Finance
4 48 (11.97%) Public Sector
5 44 (10.97%) Aerospace
6 17 (4.24%) Influencing Skills
7 16 (3.99%) Legal
8 15 (3.74%) Organisational Skills
9 14 (3.49%) Law
9 14 (3.49%) Telecoms
10 11 (2.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 10 (2.49%) Retail
12 6 (1.50%) Marketing
13 5 (1.25%) Manufacturing
14 4 (1.00%) Billing
14 4 (1.00%) Documentation Skills
14 4 (1.00%) French Language
14 4 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
14 4 (1.00%) Spanish Language
15 3 (0.75%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 46 (11.47%) Lead
2 45 (11.22%) Delivery Manager
3 42 (10.47%) Senior
4 41 (10.22%) Analyst
5 35 (8.73%) Product Manager
6 29 (7.23%) Product Delivery Manager
7 22 (5.49%) IT Manager
7 22 (5.49%) Systems Delivery Manager
7 22 (5.49%) Systems Manager
8 17 (4.24%) Service Manager
9 14 (3.49%) Architect
10 13 (3.24%) Project Manager
11 12 (2.99%) Consultant
11 12 (2.99%) Senior Analyst
12 10 (2.49%) Accountant
12 10 (2.49%) Designer
12 10 (2.49%) Financial Analyst
12 10 (2.49%) Systems Accountant
13 9 (2.24%) Senior Financial Analyst
13 9 (2.24%) Transformation Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (1.50%) .NET
2 5 (1.25%) Oracle Fusion
3 4 (1.00%) Node.js
3 4 (1.00%) RESTful
4 3 (0.75%) EDI
4 3 (0.75%) Faiss
4 3 (0.75%) Kafka
4 3 (0.75%) Keycloak
4 3 (0.75%) Playwright
4 3 (0.75%) Spring
4 3 (0.75%) Spring Boot
4 3 (0.75%) YAML
5 2 (0.50%) ADO
5 2 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
5 2 (0.50%) JSON
5 2 (0.50%) Unity (Game Engine)
5 2 (0.50%) Unreal Engine
5 2 (0.50%) XML
6 1 (0.25%) OAuth
6 1 (0.25%) SAP ALE
Miscellaneous
1 47 (11.72%) Product Ownership
2 24 (5.99%) Data Structures
3 18 (4.49%) Data Centre
4 17 (4.24%) Management Information System
4 17 (4.24%) Onboarding
5 16 (3.99%) Legacy Systems
6 13 (3.24%) Analytical Mindset
7 11 (2.74%) Cloud Native
8 9 (2.24%) PMI
8 9 (2.24%) Security Posture
9 8 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
9 8 (2.00%) Security Operations Centre
10 7 (1.75%) CMDB
10 7 (1.75%) PKI
11 6 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
11 6 (1.50%) Taxonomies
11 6 (1.50%) Virtual Team
12 5 (1.25%) Hybrid Cloud
12 5 (1.25%) Mainframe
12 5 (1.25%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 13 (3.24%) Windows
2 11 (2.74%) Linux
3 2 (0.50%) Apple iOS
3 2 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (0.50%) Unix
4 1 (0.25%) Android
4 1 (0.25%) Solaris
4 1 (0.25%) VMS
4 1 (0.25%) Windows 10
4 1 (0.25%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (26.68%) Agile
2 95 (23.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
3 93 (23.19%) Stakeholder Management
4 87 (21.70%) ITIL
5 79 (19.70%) Problem-Solving
6 67 (16.71%) Service Management
7 61 (15.21%) ITSM
8 59 (14.71%) Change Management
9 52 (12.97%) Roadmaps
10 44 (10.97%) PRINCE2
11 41 (10.22%) Computer Science
12 40 (9.98%) Decision-Making
13 38 (9.48%) Service Delivery
14 37 (9.23%) Configuration Management
15 36 (8.98%) Analytics
15 36 (8.98%) ERP
15 36 (8.98%) Risk Management
15 36 (8.98%) Scaled Agile Framework
16 35 (8.73%) Cybersecurity
16 35 (8.73%) Performance Metrics
Programming Languages
1 20 (4.99%) Python
2 18 (4.49%) SQL
3 13 (3.24%) Java
4 10 (2.49%) PowerShell
5 7 (1.75%) Bash
6 6 (1.50%) C#
7 4 (1.00%) Bicep
8 3 (0.75%) JavaScript
8 3 (0.75%) PL/SQL
9 2 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (0.50%) T-SQL
9 2 (0.50%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.25%) ABAP
10 1 (0.25%) Apex Code
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
1 183 (45.64%) Security Cleared
2 98 (24.44%) SC Cleared
3 75 (18.70%) Degree
4 38 (9.48%) DV Cleared
5 20 (4.99%) ACCA
5 20 (4.99%) CIMA
5 20 (4.99%) PMI Certification
6 12 (2.99%) PMP
7 11 (2.74%) Cisco Certification
8 9 (2.24%) CCNP
8 9 (2.24%) CISSP
9 7 (1.75%) Azure Certification
9 7 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
9 7 (1.75%) ISTQB
10 5 (1.25%) CCNA
11 4 (1.00%) CISM
12 3 (0.75%) CCIE
12 3 (0.75%) JNCIS
12 3 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
12 3 (0.75%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (6.23%) Data Quality
2 22 (5.49%) QA
3 16 (3.99%) PMO
4 15 (3.74%) NIST
5 14 (3.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 13 (3.24%) SLA
7 10 (2.49%) GDPR
8 8 (2.00%) Cyber Essentials
8 8 (2.00%) NCSC
9 6 (1.50%) Accessibility
10 5 (1.25%) GRC
11 3 (0.75%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.75%) Def Stans
11 3 (0.75%) ISO 22301
11 3 (0.75%) ISO 31000
11 3 (0.75%) 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 (3.49%) VMware Infrastructure
2 10 (2.49%) Active Directory
3 9 (2.24%) Docker
4 6 (1.50%) VMware NSX
5 3 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.50%) Firmware
6 2 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.50%) vSphere
7 1 (0.25%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 13 (3.24%) Kubernetes
2 10 (2.49%) Ansible
2 10 (2.49%) Terraform
3 6 (1.50%) Grafana
3 6 (1.50%) Single Sign-On
4 5 (1.25%) Prometheus
4 5 (1.25%) SCCM
5 4 (1.00%) Nagios
5 4 (1.00%) Nessus
6 3 (0.75%) Argo
6 3 (0.75%) OpenVAS
6 3 (0.75%) Rancher
7 2 (0.50%) Cisco Prime
7 2 (0.50%) Iperf
7 2 (0.50%) Nmap
8 1 (0.25%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.25%) Puppet
8 1 (0.25%) QRadar
8 1 (0.25%) Red Hat Satellite
8 1 (0.25%) SELinux
Vendors
1 35 (8.73%) ServiceNow
2 32 (7.98%) Microsoft
3 28 (6.98%) SAP
4 27 (6.73%) Oracle
5 25 (6.23%) IBM
6 23 (5.74%) Google
6 23 (5.74%) VMware
7 11 (2.74%) Cisco
8 8 (2.00%) Juniper
8 8 (2.00%) Palo Alto
8 8 (2.00%) SolarWinds
9 7 (1.75%) Fortinet
10 6 (1.50%) Salesforce
10 6 (1.50%) Splunk
10 6 (1.50%) Workday
11 5 (1.25%) BMC
11 5 (1.25%) CheckPoint
11 5 (1.25%) Remedy
12 4 (1.00%) F5
12 4 (1.00%) Red Hat