Critical Thinking Contracts in the South West

Critical Thinking
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South West requiring Critical Thinking skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Critical Thinking over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 70 140 137
Rank change year-on-year +70 -3 +14
Contract jobs citing Critical Thinking 41 17 30
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South West 2.44% 0.53% 0.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.70% 0.64% 0.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 30 16 28
10th Percentile £511 £513 £461
25th Percentile £525 £517 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £569 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.81% -2.27% +4.76%
75th Percentile £613 £669 £628
90th Percentile £726 £775 £673
England median daily rate £550 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +4.76% - +2.94%

All Process and Methodology Skills
South West

Critical Thinking 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 West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,516 2,656 3,250
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 90.35% 83.03% 89.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 965 1,696 2,395
10th Percentile £235 £220 £313
25th Percentile £400 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £549
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.37% +9.80%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £644
90th Percentile £688 £700 £719
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 145 336 335
10th Percentile £18.33 £13.86 £9.80
25th Percentile £20.48 £27.50 £17.00
Median hourly rate £63.00 £50.00 £61.50
Median % change year-on-year +26.00% -18.70% +26.16%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.30
90th Percentile £70.00 £77.50 £83.36
England median hourly rate £29.07 £36.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -19.25% -4.00% +53.06%

Critical Thinking
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Job postings citing Critical Thinking as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South West.

Job vacancy trend for Critical Thinking in the South West

Critical Thinking
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the South West

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Critical Thinking in the South West.

Daily rate trend for Critical Thinking in the South West

Critical Thinking
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Critical Thinking in the South West over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Critical Thinking in the South West

Critical Thinking
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Critical Thinking in the South West.

Hourly rate trend for Critical Thinking in the South West

Critical Thinking
Contract Job Locations in the South West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Critical Thinking within the South West region over the 6 months to 1 May 2025. 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
Wiltshire +38 22 £575 +6.98% 6
Bristol +26 8 £575 -36.11% 10
Dorset - 8 £550 - 6
Devon - 2 £160 - 10
Gloucestershire - 1 - - 8
Critical Thinking
England

Critical Thinking
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 21 (51.22%) Confluence
2 9 (21.95%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (17.07%) SAS
4 4 (9.76%) Skype for Business
5 3 (7.32%) SharePoint
Applications
1 24 (58.54%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 7 (17.07%) Adobe Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 9 (21.95%) Skype
2 6 (14.63%) VPN
3 5 (12.20%) DHCP
3 5 (12.20%) DNS
4 4 (9.76%) Unified Communications
5 2 (4.88%) iSCSI
5 2 (4.88%) SAN
6 1 (2.44%) BGP
6 1 (2.44%) OSPF
6 1 (2.44%) VLAN
6 1 (2.44%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (17.07%) Data Warehouse
1 7 (17.07%) Relational Database
2 1 (2.44%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 21 (51.22%) JIRA
2 5 (12.20%) Bitbucket
3 1 (2.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
3 1 (2.44%) Git
3 1 (2.44%) Jenkins
General
1 40 (97.56%) Social Skills
2 30 (73.17%) Analytical Skills
3 21 (51.22%) Public Sector
4 9 (21.95%) Finance
5 8 (19.51%) Marketing
6 7 (17.07%) Banking
7 2 (4.88%) Military
8 1 (2.44%) Electronics
8 1 (2.44%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (2.44%) Manufacturing
8 1 (2.44%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (2.44%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 12 (29.27%) Virtualisation Engineer
2 7 (17.07%) Analytics Manager
2 7 (17.07%) Data Analytics Manager
2 7 (17.07%) Data Manager
2 7 (17.07%) Insight Manager
2 7 (17.07%) Strategy Manager
3 6 (14.63%) Coordinator
3 6 (14.63%) Security Assurance Coordinator
4 4 (9.76%) Senior
4 4 (9.76%) Senior Wintel Engineer
4 4 (9.76%) Wintel Engineer
5 2 (4.88%) Test Engineer
6 1 (2.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 1 (2.44%) Integration Engineer
6 1 (2.44%) IT Manager
6 1 (2.44%) IT Project Manager
6 1 (2.44%) Project Manager
6 1 (2.44%) Telephony Engineer
6 1 (2.44%) Test and Integration Engineer
6 1 (2.44%) Voice Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (29.27%) Flash
2 1 (2.44%) Elastic Stack
2 1 (2.44%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 12 (29.27%) Clustering
2 11 (26.83%) PKI
3 7 (17.07%) Data Centre
4 2 (4.88%) Educational Technology
4 2 (4.88%) Management Information System
5 1 (2.44%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 13 (31.71%) Windows
1 13 (31.71%) Windows Server
2 9 (21.95%) Windows Server 2012
3 8 (19.51%) Windows 10
4 3 (7.32%) Windows Server 2016
5 2 (4.88%) VMS
6 1 (2.44%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (56.10%) Agile
2 22 (53.66%) Service Management
3 21 (51.22%) System Testing
4 18 (43.90%) NsoIT
4 18 (43.90%) Waterfall
5 15 (36.59%) Computer Science
5 15 (36.59%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 13 (31.71%) Validation
7 12 (29.27%) High Availability
7 12 (29.27%) Power Management
8 10 (24.39%) Network Virtualisation
9 9 (21.95%) ITIL
10 8 (19.51%) Migration
11 7 (17.07%) Analytics
11 7 (17.07%) Business Transformation
11 7 (17.07%) Data Extraction
11 7 (17.07%) Data Visualisation
11 7 (17.07%) ETL
11 7 (17.07%) Visualisation
11 7 (17.07%) Web Analytics
Programming Languages
1 16 (39.02%) SQL
2 8 (19.51%) PowerShell
3 7 (17.07%) R
4 1 (2.44%) Python
Qualifications
1 29 (70.73%) SC Cleared
1 29 (70.73%) Security Cleared
2 25 (60.98%) Degree
3 16 (39.02%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 13 (31.71%) Cisco Certification
4 13 (31.71%) Master's Degree
5 12 (29.27%) CCNA
6 10 (24.39%) DV Cleared
6 10 (24.39%) Microsoft Certification
7 9 (21.95%) MCSE
8 6 (14.63%) MCSA
9 3 (7.32%) CCNP
10 2 (4.88%) CESG Certified Professional
10 2 (4.88%) CISA
10 2 (4.88%) CISSP
11 1 (2.44%) OCA
11 1 (2.44%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (14.63%) JSP 440
1 6 (14.63%) RMADS
2 2 (4.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (2.44%) Data Quality
System Software
1 16 (39.02%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (29.27%) VMware ESXi
2 12 (29.27%) VMware NSX
3 9 (21.95%) Active Directory
4 3 (7.32%) Hyper-V
4 3 (7.32%) Microsoft Virtual Server
4 3 (7.32%) Virtual Servers
5 1 (2.44%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 13 (31.71%) vCenter Server
2 7 (17.07%) WSUS
3 2 (4.88%) SCOM
4 1 (2.44%) Ansible
4 1 (2.44%) PowerCLI
4 1 (2.44%) Terraform
Vendors
1 18 (43.90%) Atlassian
2 16 (39.02%) VMware
3 14 (34.15%) Microsoft
4 13 (31.71%) Cisco
5 7 (17.07%) Adobe
5 7 (17.07%) Teradata
6 4 (9.76%) Veeam
7 3 (7.32%) SolarWinds
8 1 (2.44%) Oracle
8 1 (2.44%) SAP