Continuous Improvement Contract Job Trends

Continual Improvement
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Continuous Improvement skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 32 51
Rank change year-on-year +10 +19 +11
Contract jobs citing Continuous Improvement 4,891 1,902 1,463
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.01% 5.77% 3.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.67% 6.38% 4.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,995 1,218 875
10th Percentile £338 £313 £336
25th Percentile £425 £405 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £609 £600 £638
90th Percentile £725 £712 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 275 71 48
10th Percentile £14.22 £6.00 £15.50
25th Percentile £19.00 £15.13 £25.01
Median hourly rate £34.85 £27.21 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.08% -45.58% -23.08%
75th Percentile £72.25 £52.95 £63.75
90th Percentile £86.60 £75.00 £68.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.85 £20.50 £53.75
% change year-on-year +70.00% -61.86% -17.31%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 45,839 29,816 32,769
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.46% 90.52% 85.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,855 18,531 20,147
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,070 1,799 1,460
10th Percentile £13.84 £14.25 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.36 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.68 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +83.63% -47.37% +5.81%

Continuous Improvement
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Continuous Improvement job vacancy trend in the UK

Continuous Improvement
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Continuous Improvement.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Continuous Improvement over the 6 months to 16 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Continuous Improvement in the UK

Continuous Improvement
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Continuous Improvement.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Continuous Improvement over the 6 months to 16 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Continuous Improvement in the UK

Continuous Improvement
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

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 UK over the 6 months to 16 September 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 +13 4,227 £520 +4.00% 10,666
UK excluding London +18 2,726 £500 +2.56% 6,930
London +12 1,711 £525 - 4,619
Work from Home +13 1,406 £500 - 4,296
North of England +8 700 £500 +11.11% 1,750
South East +29 655 £538 +7.50% 1,653
Midlands +11 565 £474 +5.33% 1,109
West Midlands +15 455 £475 -5.94% 643
South West +21 371 £525 +5.00% 762
North West +13 329 £513 +14.65% 1,014
Yorkshire +17 289 £500 +0.50% 522
Scotland +8 258 £488 -2.50% 666
East of England +11 156 £500 - 640
East Midlands +7 104 £430 +20.11% 466
North East +10 88 £488 +2.63% 239
Wales +23 56 £600 +17.88% 179
Northern Ireland +8 14 £550 -12.00% 233
Channel Islands - 4 £525 - 10

Continuous Improvement
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
1 232 (4.74%) Confluence
2 208 (4.25%) SharePoint
3 51 (1.04%) Microsoft Exchange
4 33 (0.67%) CMS
5 31 (0.63%) Apache Spark
6 27 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.53%) SAS
8 22 (0.45%) Apache
9 16 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.25%) WebLogic
11 10 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 8 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 7 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
13 7 (0.14%) WordPress
14 6 (0.12%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.12%) IIS
15 5 (0.10%) CICS
16 4 (0.082%) Jupyter
16 4 (0.082%) OpenStack
16 4 (0.082%) WebLogic Portal
Applications
1 291 (5.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 151 (3.09%) Microsoft Office
3 108 (2.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 75 (1.53%) Microsoft Project
5 39 (0.80%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.22%) Navisworks
7 11 (0.22%) Revit
8 10 (0.20%) ProjectWise
9 9 (0.18%) AutoCAD
9 9 (0.18%) CATIA
9 9 (0.18%) Trello
10 8 (0.16%) Chatbot
11 5 (0.10%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.10%) Sketch
12 3 (0.061%) Adobe Illustrator
12 3 (0.061%) InDesign
12 3 (0.061%) Photoshop
13 2 (0.041%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.041%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 84 (1.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 19 (0.39%) Primavera
5 16 (0.33%) NetSuite
5 16 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
6 14 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
6 14 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
8 11 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
9 10 (0.20%) Magento
9 10 (0.20%) SAP MM
9 10 (0.20%) SAP SD
10 9 (0.18%) SAP QM
11 8 (0.16%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 8 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
11 8 (0.16%) Teamcenter
12 7 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
12 7 (0.14%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 7 (0.14%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 947 (19.36%) Azure
2 795 (16.25%) AWS
3 390 (7.97%) Power Platform
4 296 (6.05%) Azure DevOps
5 242 (4.95%) Microsoft 365
6 236 (4.83%) GCP
7 228 (4.66%) GitHub
8 163 (3.33%) Entra ID
9 161 (3.29%) Serverless
10 137 (2.80%) SaaS
11 135 (2.76%) GitHub Actions
12 112 (2.29%) AWS Lambda
13 107 (2.19%) Amazon S3
14 98 (2.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 88 (1.80%) Dynamics 365
16 86 (1.76%) Power Automate
17 78 (1.59%) AWS CloudFormation
18 70 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
19 68 (1.39%) Microsoft Copilot
20 66 (1.35%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 121 (2.47%) Network Security
2 114 (2.33%) DNS
3 102 (2.09%) Firewall
4 62 (1.27%) WAN
5 57 (1.17%) LAN
6 53 (1.08%) TCP/IP
7 52 (1.06%) DHCP
8 50 (1.02%) VPN
9 25 (0.51%) Wireless
10 23 (0.47%) BGP
10 23 (0.47%) SD-WAN
10 23 (0.47%) Wi-Fi
11 22 (0.45%) VLAN
12 19 (0.39%) OSPF
13 14 (0.29%) Cisco Nexus
13 14 (0.29%) VoIP
13 14 (0.29%) VXLAN
14 13 (0.27%) Broadband
15 12 (0.25%) Unified Communications
16 11 (0.22%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (6.07%) Power BI
2 123 (2.51%) Metadata
3 115 (2.35%) SQL Server
4 98 (2.00%) Relational Database
5 96 (1.96%) PostgreSQL
6 87 (1.78%) Data Warehouse
7 53 (1.08%) MongoDB
8 49 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
9 45 (0.92%) NoSQL
10 44 (0.90%) Tableau
11 35 (0.72%) Data Lake
12 34 (0.70%) Power Query
13 33 (0.67%) MySQL
14 31 (0.63%) Oracle Database
15 29 (0.59%) Delta Lake
16 25 (0.51%) Big Data
17 24 (0.49%) Oracle Reports
18 20 (0.41%) DynamoDB
19 18 (0.37%) BigQuery
20 17 (0.35%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 450 (9.20%) JIRA
2 314 (6.42%) Git
3 227 (4.64%) Jenkins
4 159 (3.25%) GitLab
5 97 (1.98%) Selenium
6 48 (0.98%) Cucumber
7 45 (0.92%) JUnit
8 43 (0.88%) Postman
9 42 (0.86%) Maven
10 41 (0.84%) Cypress.io
11 30 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 28 (0.57%) Bitbucket
12 28 (0.57%) Gradle
13 27 (0.55%) REST Assured
14 21 (0.43%) WebDriver
15 20 (0.41%) Mockito
16 19 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
17 18 (0.37%) Visual Studio
18 16 (0.33%) Gatling
19 15 (0.31%) Claude Code
General
1 2,184 (44.65%) Social Skills
2 1,154 (23.59%) Finance
3 1,069 (21.86%) Analytical Skills
4 837 (17.11%) Public Sector
5 326 (6.67%) Banking
6 250 (5.11%) Organisational Skills
7 195 (3.99%) Influencing Skills
8 168 (3.43%) Legal
9 160 (3.27%) Manufacturing
10 136 (2.78%) Retail
11 135 (2.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 116 (2.37%) Documentation Skills
13 99 (2.02%) Aerospace
14 87 (1.78%) Military
15 84 (1.72%) Local Government
16 81 (1.66%) Presentation Skills
17 78 (1.59%) Law
18 73 (1.49%) Marketing
19 64 (1.31%) Telecoms
20 53 (1.08%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 569 (11.63%) Lead
2 510 (10.43%) Senior
3 509 (10.41%) Analyst
4 432 (8.83%) Developer
5 275 (5.62%) Architect
6 206 (4.21%) Consultant
7 166 (3.39%) Delivery Manager
8 160 (3.27%) Project Manager
9 158 (3.23%) DevOps Engineer
10 118 (2.41%) Business Analyst
11 113 (2.31%) Product Manager
12 108 (2.21%) Data Engineer
13 94 (1.92%) Java Developer
14 93 (1.90%) Scrum Master
15 91 (1.86%) Senior Developer
16 90 (1.84%) Software Engineer
17 88 (1.80%) Support Engineer
18 81 (1.66%) Senior Manager
19 78 (1.59%) IT Manager
20 77 (1.57%) Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 379 (7.75%) Terraform
2 230 (4.70%) REST
3 166 (3.39%) RESTful
4 156 (3.19%) Spring
5 143 (2.92%) Spring Boot
6 141 (2.88%) React
7 129 (2.64%) Kafka
8 120 (2.45%) .NET
9 97 (1.98%) Node.js
10 87 (1.78%) HTML
11 79 (1.62%) Playwright
12 77 (1.57%) CSS
13 67 (1.37%) JSON
14 66 (1.35%) AngularJS
14 66 (1.35%) Web Services
15 64 (1.31%) SOAP
16 56 (1.14%) OAuth
17 53 (1.08%) Middleware
18 51 (1.04%) PySpark
18 51 (1.04%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 524 (10.71%) Product Ownership
2 285 (5.83%) Cloud Native
3 273 (5.58%) Onboarding
4 205 (4.19%) Management Information System
5 129 (2.64%) Data Protection Act
6 126 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
7 100 (2.04%) Distributed Systems
8 93 (1.90%) CMDB
9 86 (1.76%) Legacy Systems
9 86 (1.76%) Virtual Team
10 85 (1.74%) Self-Motivation
11 82 (1.68%) Security Posture
12 77 (1.57%) Operational Technology
13 76 (1.55%) Data Centre
14 67 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
15 60 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
16 59 (1.21%) AI Agents
17 55 (1.12%) Data Structures
18 50 (1.02%) Security Operations Centre
19 47 (0.96%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 353 (7.22%) Windows
2 255 (5.21%) Linux
3 97 (1.98%) Windows Server
4 66 (1.35%) Unix
5 58 (1.19%) Windows 10
6 56 (1.14%) Android
7 48 (0.98%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 26 (0.53%) Mac OS
10 13 (0.27%) Solaris
11 11 (0.22%) AIX
12 10 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
13 8 (0.16%) zOS
14 6 (0.12%) Amazon Linux
14 6 (0.12%) VMS
15 5 (0.10%) HPUX
15 5 (0.10%) Oracle Linux
15 5 (0.10%) SUSE
15 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
16 3 (0.061%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,820 (37.21%) Agile
2 1,434 (29.32%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,273 (26.03%) Problem-Solving
4 959 (19.61%) DevOps
5 953 (19.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 925 (18.91%) CI/CD
7 800 (16.36%) Decision-Making
8 633 (12.94%) Roadmaps
9 609 (12.45%) AI
10 524 (10.71%) Scrum
11 522 (10.67%) ITIL
12 505 (10.33%) Analytics
13 463 (9.47%) Change Management
14 461 (9.43%) Mentoring
15 457 (9.34%) Test Automation
16 438 (8.96%) Infrastructure as Code
17 437 (8.93%) Service Management
18 426 (8.71%) Risk Management
19 414 (8.46%) Technical Leadership
20 403 (8.24%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 643 (13.15%) Python
2 567 (11.59%) SQL
3 358 (7.32%) Java
4 249 (5.09%) PowerShell
5 235 (4.80%) JavaScript
6 181 (3.70%) Bash
7 155 (3.17%) C#
8 128 (2.62%) TypeScript
9 54 (1.10%) Bicep
10 42 (0.86%) PL/SQL
11 31 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 30 (0.61%) Scala
13 28 (0.57%) Go
13 28 (0.57%) T-SQL
14 27 (0.55%) Apex Code
14 27 (0.55%) Kotlin
15 25 (0.51%) Shell Script
16 21 (0.43%) Perl
17 20 (0.41%) Groovy
18 17 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,422 (29.07%) Security Cleared
2 1,017 (20.79%) SC Cleared
3 433 (8.85%) Degree
4 288 (5.89%) DV Cleared
5 187 (3.82%) BPSS Clearance
6 116 (2.37%) PMI Certification
7 106 (2.17%) PMP
8 99 (2.02%) Computer Science Degree
9 86 (1.76%) CISSP
10 71 (1.45%) AWS Certification
11 66 (1.35%) Azure Certification
12 60 (1.23%) CISM
13 57 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
14 51 (1.04%) Cisco Certification
15 44 (0.90%) ISTQB
15 44 (0.90%) ITIL Certification
16 33 (0.67%) ACCA
17 32 (0.65%) CIMA
18 31 (0.63%) Master's Degree
19 28 (0.57%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 436 (8.91%) QA
2 363 (7.42%) Data Quality
3 215 (4.40%) PMO
4 204 (4.17%) Accessibility
5 151 (3.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 131 (2.68%) NIST
7 125 (2.56%) SLA
8 124 (2.54%) GDPR
9 93 (1.90%) GRC
10 77 (1.57%) NCSC
11 60 (1.23%) WCAG
12 27 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
13 21 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 17 (0.35%) COBIT
14 17 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
15 16 (0.33%) ISO 22301
15 16 (0.33%) NIST 800
16 15 (0.31%) PCI DSS
17 14 (0.29%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 318 (6.50%) Docker
2 242 (4.95%) Active Directory
3 88 (1.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
5 28 (0.57%) vSphere
6 25 (0.51%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.47%) VMware NSX
8 22 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.35%) IAG
10 16 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.20%) Firmware
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.061%) Ceph
13 3 (0.061%) FreeRADIUS
13 3 (0.061%) Time Sharing Option
13 3 (0.061%) VMware Workstation
14 2 (0.041%) GPFS
14 2 (0.041%) KVM
14 2 (0.041%) Squid
14 2 (0.041%) zsh
Systems Management
1 382 (7.81%) Kubernetes
2 164 (3.35%) Ansible
3 122 (2.49%) Grafana
4 103 (2.11%) Prometheus
5 72 (1.47%) Microsoft Intune
6 50 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
7 45 (0.92%) SCCM
8 18 (0.37%) Puppet
9 15 (0.31%) Progress Chef
10 14 (0.29%) Istio
10 14 (0.29%) Kibana
11 12 (0.25%) Argo
11 12 (0.25%) Control-M
11 12 (0.25%) WMI
12 11 (0.22%) Oracle RMAN
13 10 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 10 (0.20%) QRadar
13 10 (0.20%) vCenter Server
14 7 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
14 7 (0.14%) Data Guard
Vendors
1 903 (18.46%) Microsoft
2 314 (6.42%) ServiceNow
3 302 (6.17%) Oracle
4 265 (5.42%) SAP
5 128 (2.62%) Salesforce
6 126 (2.58%) Google
7 111 (2.27%) VMware
8 86 (1.76%) Splunk
9 85 (1.74%) Databricks
10 81 (1.66%) Cisco
11 55 (1.12%) Dynatrace
12 49 (1.00%) CyberArk
13 47 (0.96%) IBM
14 43 (0.88%) Workday
15 41 (0.84%) Red Hat
16 33 (0.67%) Adobe
17 31 (0.63%) Ariba
18 30 (0.61%) Atlassian
18 30 (0.61%) Okta
19 28 (0.57%) Apple