Analytical Mindset Contract Job Trends

Analytical Mindset
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Analytical Mindset in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Analytical Mindset over the 6 months leading up to 26 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 293 406 412
Rank change year-on-year +113 +6 +162
Contract jobs citing Analytical Mindset 331 131 197
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.88% 0.42% 0.44%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.57% 1.29% 1.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 229 80 112
10th Percentile £302 £225 £150
25th Percentile £371 £263 £281
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £463
Median % change year-on-year - +8.11% -5.61%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £578
90th Percentile £675 £625 £642
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £413
% change year-on-year - +9.02% +113.03%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 2 41
10th Percentile - - £14.00
25th Percentile £18.25 £11.75 £16.25
Median hourly rate £38.75 £13.50 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +187.04% -22.86% -72.00%
75th Percentile £68.25 £15.25 £20.25
90th Percentile £79.38 - £25.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £13.50 £17.50
% change year-on-year +381.48% -22.86% -21.03%

All Generic Skills
UK

Analytical Mindset falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 12,871 10,146 13,609
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.12% 32.43% 30.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,130 6,009 8,883
10th Percentile £280 £263 £253
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £538
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% -1.40% -3.15%
75th Percentile £625 £660 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 617 308 734
10th Percentile £15.00 £19.03 £14.02
25th Percentile £18.50 £23.60 £17.43
Median hourly rate £28.09 £35.00 £33.36
Median % change year-on-year -19.74% +4.93% +48.59%
75th Percentile £61.50 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.20 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -15.38% -7.14% +69.04%

Analytical Mindset
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Analytical Mindset relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Analytical Mindset job vacancy trend in the UK

Analytical Mindset
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Analytical Mindset.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Analytical Mindset

Analytical Mindset
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Analytical Mindset over the 6 months to 26 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Analytical Mindset in the UK

Analytical Mindset
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Analytical Mindset.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Analytical Mindset

Analytical Mindset
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Analytical Mindset over the 6 months to 26 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Analytical Mindset in the UK

Analytical Mindset
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Analytical Mindset within the UK over the 6 months to 26 January 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
England +78 294 £475 -5.00% 289
London +76 153 £500 -4.76% 68
UK excluding London +36 146 £450 - 269
Work from Home +57 100 £425 +14.79% 169
South East +13 57 £378 -16.11% 90
Midlands -15 33 £420 - 38
West Midlands -19 21 £470 - 22
North of England -45 21 £550 +66.67% 46
Scotland +18 13 £500 +11.11% 11
East Midlands -15 12 £375 - 16
East of England -13 11 £603 +20.63% 40
North West -24 10 £550 +57.14% 20
South West -15 9 £500 +17.65% 36
Yorkshire -39 9 £563 +90.68% 21
Wales - 6 £588 - 11
North East - 3 £550 - 5

Analytical Mindset
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 21 (6.34%) Confluence
2 7 (2.11%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.21%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.60%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 2 (0.60%) Anypoint
4 2 (0.60%) CMS
5 1 (0.30%) Apache
5 1 (0.30%) Camunda
5 1 (0.30%) SAS
Applications
1 51 (15.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (3.02%) MS Visio
3 8 (2.42%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (2.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.91%) Navisworks
6 3 (0.91%) Revit
7 2 (0.60%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.60%) Autodesk Smoke
7 2 (0.60%) ProjectWise
7 2 (0.60%) Sketch
8 1 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.30%) Notion
8 1 (0.30%) Siemens NX
8 1 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.30%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (3.02%) NetSuite
2 5 (1.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.51%) Shopify
3 4 (1.21%) Payment Gateway
3 4 (1.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 2 (0.60%) Oracle EBS R12
4 2 (0.60%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.30%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.30%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.30%) IntelliMatch
5 1 (0.30%) Maximo
5 1 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.30%) SAP EHS
5 1 (0.30%) Summit
5 1 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.30%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 50 (15.11%) Azure
2 38 (11.48%) AWS
3 34 (10.27%) Power Platform
4 12 (3.63%) GitHub
5 11 (3.32%) GCP
6 10 (3.02%) Contentsquare
6 10 (3.02%) SaaS
7 9 (2.72%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (2.42%) Dynamics 365
9 5 (1.51%) Azure Data Factory
9 5 (1.51%) Collibra
9 5 (1.51%) Snowflake
10 4 (1.21%) Cloud Computing
10 4 (1.21%) GitHub Copilot
10 4 (1.21%) Lucidchart
11 3 (0.91%) Adobe Analytics
11 3 (0.91%) Figma
11 3 (0.91%) Google Analytics
11 3 (0.91%) Microsoft 365
11 3 (0.91%) WhatsApp
Communications & Networking
1 22 (6.65%) DNS
2 18 (5.44%) TCP/IP
3 14 (4.23%) Network Security
3 14 (4.23%) VLAN
4 12 (3.63%) SAN
5 11 (3.32%) DHCP
6 9 (2.72%) Firewall
6 9 (2.72%) HTTP
6 9 (2.72%) SSL
7 5 (1.51%) BGP
7 5 (1.51%) FTP
7 5 (1.51%) LAN
7 5 (1.51%) SMTP
8 3 (0.91%) Software-Defined Networking
9 2 (0.60%) MPLS
9 2 (0.60%) SMS
9 2 (0.60%) SNMP
9 2 (0.60%) TACACS
9 2 (0.60%) WAN
10 1 (0.30%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (10.27%) Power BI
2 10 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (2.72%) Tableau
4 8 (2.42%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
4 8 (2.42%) SQL Server
5 5 (1.51%) BigQuery
5 5 (1.51%) Data Lake
5 5 (1.51%) Electronic Patient Records
5 5 (1.51%) NoSQL
5 5 (1.51%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (1.21%) Big Data
6 4 (1.21%) Metadata
7 3 (0.91%) Data Mart
7 3 (0.91%) MSDE
7 3 (0.91%) Neo4j
8 2 (0.60%) Looker
8 2 (0.60%) Pinecone
8 2 (0.60%) Power Query
8 2 (0.60%) Relational Database
8 2 (0.60%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 33 (9.97%) JIRA
2 4 (1.21%) Bitbucket
2 4 (1.21%) Git
3 3 (0.91%) IntelliJ
3 3 (0.91%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.91%) PyCharm
3 3 (0.91%) Visual Studio
3 3 (0.91%) Visual Studio Code
3 3 (0.91%) Visual Website Optimizer
4 2 (0.60%) MLflow
4 2 (0.60%) MSBuild
4 2 (0.60%) SonarQube
4 2 (0.60%) Team Foundation Server
5 1 (0.30%) Eclipse
5 1 (0.30%) JMeter
5 1 (0.30%) Locust
General
1 330 (99.70%) Analytical Skills
2 170 (51.36%) Social Skills
3 121 (36.56%) Finance
4 30 (9.06%) Public Sector
5 29 (8.76%) Banking
6 25 (7.55%) Marketing
7 20 (6.04%) Legal
8 18 (5.44%) Manufacturing
9 12 (3.63%) Financial Institution
9 12 (3.63%) Investment Banking
10 11 (3.32%) Organisational Skills
11 10 (3.02%) Publishing
12 9 (2.72%) Influencing Skills
12 9 (2.72%) Retail
12 9 (2.72%) Telecoms
13 8 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
14 7 (2.11%) Electronics
15 5 (1.51%) Back Office
15 5 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 5 (1.51%) Military
Job Titles
1 76 (22.96%) Analyst
2 35 (10.57%) Business Analyst
3 26 (7.85%) Lead
4 20 (6.04%) Senior
5 18 (5.44%) Data Analyst
6 16 (4.83%) Developer
7 15 (4.53%) Consultant
8 14 (4.23%) Support Engineer
9 13 (3.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 12 (3.63%) Architect
11 11 (3.32%) Field Engineer
11 11 (3.32%) Field Service Engineer
11 11 (3.32%) Infrastructure Support
11 11 (3.32%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
11 11 (3.32%) Product Manager
11 11 (3.32%) Project Leader
11 11 (3.32%) Project Manager
12 9 (2.72%) IT Engineer
12 9 (2.72%) Senior Analyst
13 7 (2.11%) Operations Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (2.42%) JSON
2 7 (2.11%) LDAP
2 7 (2.11%) PyTorch
3 6 (1.81%) REST
3 6 (1.81%) scikit-learn
3 6 (1.81%) TensorFlow
4 4 (1.21%) EDI
4 4 (1.21%) HTML
4 4 (1.21%) Node.js
4 4 (1.21%) Pandas
5 3 (0.91%) .NET
5 3 (0.91%) Dask
5 3 (0.91%) Google JAX
5 3 (0.91%) JAX
5 3 (0.91%) LightGBM
5 3 (0.91%) Middleware
5 3 (0.91%) PySpark
5 3 (0.91%) XGBoost
5 3 (0.91%) XML
5 3 (0.91%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 21 (6.34%) Management Information System
2 19 (5.74%) Product Ownership
3 16 (4.83%) Data Centre
4 8 (2.42%) Onboarding
4 8 (2.42%) Self-Motivation
5 7 (2.11%) Derivative
6 6 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
6 6 (1.81%) NHS
7 5 (1.51%) CSOC
7 5 (1.51%) Cyber Threat
7 5 (1.51%) Cyberattack
7 5 (1.51%) PMI
7 5 (1.51%) Security Operations Centre
8 4 (1.21%) Algorithms
8 4 (1.21%) Fixed Income
8 4 (1.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 4 (1.21%) Social Media
9 3 (0.91%) Contract for Difference
9 3 (0.91%) Digital Media
9 3 (0.91%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 34 (10.27%) Windows
2 27 (8.16%) Linux
3 8 (2.42%) Windows Server
4 3 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.60%) VMS
6 1 (0.30%) Unix
6 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (40.48%) Problem-Solving
2 97 (29.31%) Agile
3 87 (26.28%) Stakeholder Management
4 63 (19.03%) Continuous Improvement
4 63 (19.03%) Decision-Making
4 63 (19.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 49 (14.80%) Analytics
6 46 (13.90%) Business Intelligence
7 45 (13.60%) Roadmaps
8 33 (9.97%) Data Governance
8 33 (9.97%) Risk Management
9 32 (9.67%) Actionable Insight
9 32 (9.67%) ITIL
10 29 (8.76%) AI
11 28 (8.46%) Change Management
12 27 (8.16%) User Experience
12 27 (8.16%) Visualisation
13 25 (7.55%) Validation
14 24 (7.25%) Scrum
15 23 (6.95%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 79 (23.87%) SQL
2 46 (13.90%) Python
3 26 (7.85%) PowerShell
4 13 (3.93%) Java
5 12 (3.63%) C#
6 8 (2.42%) TypeScript
7 5 (1.51%) Bash
7 5 (1.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 4 (1.21%) JavaScript
9 3 (0.91%) Korn
9 3 (0.91%) VBA
10 2 (0.60%) BeanShell
10 2 (0.60%) C++
10 2 (0.60%) Go
10 2 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.60%) R
10 2 (0.60%) RPG
10 2 (0.60%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.30%) PHP
11 1 (0.30%) Scala
Qualifications
1 57 (17.22%) Degree
2 49 (14.80%) Security Cleared
3 37 (11.18%) SC Cleared
4 21 (6.34%) Microsoft Certification
4 21 (6.34%) Network+ Certification
5 16 (4.83%) PMI Certification
6 14 (4.23%) DV Cleared
6 14 (4.23%) Master's Degree
7 12 (3.63%) Cisco Certification
7 12 (3.63%) PMP
8 11 (3.32%) Azure Certification
8 11 (3.32%) Server+ Certification
9 10 (3.02%) A+ Certification
9 10 (3.02%) CCNA
9 10 (3.02%) Computer Science Degree
9 10 (3.02%) MCSE
10 6 (1.81%) CBAP
10 6 (1.81%) CSPO
11 5 (1.51%) CISSP
12 3 (0.91%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (9.67%) Data Quality
2 28 (8.46%) GDPR
2 28 (8.46%) QA
3 10 (3.02%) Accessibility
4 9 (2.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 8 (2.42%) SLA
6 5 (1.51%) NIST
6 5 (1.51%) PMO
7 4 (1.21%) HIPAA
7 4 (1.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (1.21%) MiFID
8 3 (0.91%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.91%) ISO 19650
8 3 (0.91%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.91%) Solvency II
9 2 (0.60%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.60%) EMIR
9 2 (0.60%) GRC
9 2 (0.60%) WCAG
10 1 (0.30%) COBIT
System Software
1 13 (3.93%) Hyper-V
1 13 (3.93%) VMware Infrastructure
2 11 (3.32%) Active Directory
3 9 (2.72%) Docker
4 4 (1.21%) NDS
4 4 (1.21%) NetIQ eDirectory
5 3 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.60%) KVM
6 2 (0.60%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.30%) Xen
Systems Management
1 12 (3.63%) Kubernetes
2 10 (3.02%) Ansible
3 8 (2.42%) Terraform
4 4 (1.21%) SCCM
4 4 (1.21%) SCOM
4 4 (1.21%) vCenter Server
5 2 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (0.60%) vRealize
6 1 (0.30%) Kibana
6 1 (0.30%) Suricata
Vendors
1 56 (16.92%) Microsoft
2 26 (7.85%) SAP
3 17 (5.14%) VMware
4 16 (4.83%) ServiceNow
5 14 (4.23%) Adobe
6 13 (3.93%) Oracle
7 10 (3.02%) Dell
7 10 (3.02%) Google
8 9 (2.72%) Salesforce
9 8 (2.42%) Databricks
10 5 (1.51%) BMC
10 5 (1.51%) Informatica
10 5 (1.51%) Murex
11 4 (1.21%) CyberArk
11 4 (1.21%) NetIQ
11 4 (1.21%) Sparx
11 4 (1.21%) Splunk
12 3 (0.91%) Amplitude
12 3 (0.91%) Optimizely
12 3 (0.91%) Zuora