Social Skills Contracts

Social Skills (Interpersonal, Communication)
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Social Skills in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Social Skills 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 1 1 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 +2 0
Contract jobs citing Social Skills 8,137 9,676 12,009
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 27.80% 22.21% 20.12%
As % of the General category 44.03% 38.15% 34.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,114 6,017 7,934
10th Percentile £235 £213 £247
25th Percentile £400 £385 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% +0.48%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £488
% change year-on-year - -2.56% +8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 429 792 467
10th Percentile £13.00 £12.25 £13.07
25th Percentile £15.62 £14.06 £14.25
Median hourly rate £23.59 £18.35 £25.52
Median % change year-on-year +28.56% -28.10% +34.32%
75th Percentile £48.57 £39.96 £61.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £63.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.97 £16.09 £19.00
% change year-on-year +30.33% -15.32% +18.75%

All General Skills
UK

Social Skills falls under the General Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring common skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 18,479 25,363 34,892
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 63.12% 58.23% 58.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,802 16,004 24,197
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £409 £413 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% +2.80%
75th Percentile £640 £650 £675
90th Percentile £763 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 794 1,943 1,063
10th Percentile £14.00 £12.78 £13.43
25th Percentile £17.44 £15.50 £18.09
Median hourly rate £27.50 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -14.29% +59.31%
75th Percentile £56.00 £52.20 £61.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.71 £28.42 £30.54
% change year-on-year -13.05% -6.94% +65.08%

Social Skills
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Social Skills as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Social Skills in the UK

Social Skills
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Social Skills.

Daily rate trend for Social Skills in the UK

Social Skills
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Social Skills over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Social Skills in the UK

Social Skills
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Social Skills.

Hourly rate trend for Social Skills in the UK

Social Skills
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Social Skills over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Social Skills in the UK

Social Skills
Top 18 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Social Skills within the UK 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
England 0 6,827 £501 -2.72% 15,040
UK excluding London +1 3,825 £475 - 9,583
London 0 3,397 £538 -2.27% 7,379
Work from Home +1 2,556 £500 -2.44% 7,109
South East +1 927 £500 +4.17% 3,125
North of England 0 899 £475 - 2,276
Midlands 0 607 £454 +0.82% 1,518
North West 0 521 £491 +3.37% 1,340
Scotland +2 512 £450 - 575
West Midlands 0 458 £475 - 868
South West +1 450 £500 -4.76% 1,041
East of England 0 323 £479 +6.39% 1,034
Yorkshire 0 308 £450 - 706
East Midlands 0 138 £398 +47.77% 572
Wales 0 75 £400 -10.61% 228
North East -1 69 £470 -10.48% 262
Northern Ireland -1 58 £400 -4.19% 177
Channel Islands - 3 £425 - 3

Social Skills
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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
1 343 (4.22%) SharePoint
2 273 (3.36%) Confluence
3 109 (1.34%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (0.73%) Apache Spark
5 56 (0.69%) CMS
6 54 (0.66%) Apache
7 36 (0.44%) SAS
8 34 (0.42%) Apache Airflow
9 21 (0.26%) IIS
9 21 (0.26%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 19 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
11 16 (0.20%) Skype for Business
11 16 (0.20%) Tomcat
12 14 (0.17%) Drupal
12 14 (0.17%) WordPress
13 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 12 (0.15%) JBoss
14 12 (0.15%) OpenStack
15 10 (0.12%) GemFire
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 476 (5.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 450 (5.53%) Microsoft Office
3 242 (2.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 124 (1.52%) MS Visio
5 106 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
6 47 (0.58%) Trello
7 42 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
8 25 (0.31%) Sketch
9 22 (0.27%) Adobe XD
10 17 (0.21%) Chatbot
11 16 (0.20%) Photoshop
12 10 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 9 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
13 9 (0.11%) Adobe Premiere
13 9 (0.11%) AutoCAD
14 8 (0.098%) Oracle Smart View
15 7 (0.086%) Camtasia
15 7 (0.086%) InfoPath
15 7 (0.086%) Windchill
16 6 (0.074%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 251 (3.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 66 (0.81%) Oracle EBS
3 59 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
4 39 (0.48%) Oracle EBS R12
5 35 (0.43%) SAP HR
6 32 (0.39%) SAP FI
7 31 (0.38%) SAP CO
8 29 (0.36%) SAP FI/CO
8 29 (0.36%) SAP Payroll
9 26 (0.32%) Maximo
10 23 (0.28%) Endur
11 20 (0.25%) SAP EWM
11 20 (0.25%) SAP PP
12 18 (0.22%) SAP MM
12 18 (0.22%) Shopify
13 17 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
13 17 (0.21%) Primavera
13 17 (0.21%) SAP Oil and Gas
13 17 (0.21%) Workday HCM
14 16 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
Cloud Services
1 1,232 (15.14%) Azure
2 806 (9.91%) AWS
3 517 (6.35%) Microsoft 365
4 475 (5.84%) Power Platform
5 294 (3.61%) GCP
6 218 (2.68%) Entra ID
7 205 (2.52%) Azure DevOps
8 181 (2.22%) GitHub
9 161 (1.98%) SaaS
10 135 (1.66%) PowerApps
11 124 (1.52%) Serverless
12 110 (1.35%) Dynamics 365
12 110 (1.35%) Power Automate
13 94 (1.16%) Cloud Computing
14 84 (1.03%) Amazon S3
14 84 (1.03%) Figma
15 79 (0.97%) Snowflake
16 78 (0.96%) AWS Lambda
17 71 (0.87%) OneDrive
18 63 (0.77%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 280 (3.44%) Firewall
2 200 (2.46%) VPN
3 192 (2.36%) Network Security
4 140 (1.72%) DNS
5 132 (1.62%) WAN
6 122 (1.50%) LAN
7 118 (1.45%) TCP/IP
8 81 (1.00%) BGP
9 78 (0.96%) Wireless
10 74 (0.91%) OSPF
11 69 (0.85%) DHCP
12 64 (0.79%) VLAN
13 62 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (0.70%) SSL
15 55 (0.68%) Wireshark
16 54 (0.66%) SAN
17 53 (0.65%) SD-WAN
18 51 (0.63%) Internet
19 44 (0.54%) LTE
20 42 (0.52%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 362 (4.45%) Power BI
2 205 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
3 204 (2.51%) SQL Server
4 153 (1.88%) Tableau
5 150 (1.84%) Relational Database
6 147 (1.81%) PostgreSQL
7 115 (1.41%) MongoDB
8 81 (1.00%) NoSQL
8 81 (1.00%) Oracle Database
9 78 (0.96%) MySQL
10 77 (0.95%) Big Data
11 64 (0.79%) DB2
12 58 (0.71%) Metadata
13 50 (0.61%) Data Lake
14 47 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
15 44 (0.54%) Oracle Reports
16 43 (0.53%) Hadoop
17 40 (0.49%) BigQuery
18 38 (0.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 37 (0.45%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 559 (6.87%) JIRA
2 230 (2.83%) Git
3 197 (2.42%) Jenkins
4 125 (1.54%) GitLab
5 78 (0.96%) Selenium
6 73 (0.90%) JUnit
7 46 (0.57%) Cucumber
7 46 (0.57%) Postman
8 40 (0.49%) Bitbucket
9 39 (0.48%) SonarQube
10 37 (0.45%) JMeter
11 36 (0.44%) Cypress.io
12 34 (0.42%) Subversion
13 33 (0.41%) REST Assured
14 30 (0.37%) ERwin
15 28 (0.34%) TeamCity
16 24 (0.29%) Visual Studio
17 23 (0.28%) LoadRunner
18 20 (0.25%) Maven
18 20 (0.25%) MSI
General
1 2,003 (24.62%) Finance
2 1,998 (24.55%) Analytical Skills
3 699 (8.59%) Public Sector
4 690 (8.48%) Banking
5 412 (5.06%) Presentation Skills
6 350 (4.30%) Organisational Skills
7 283 (3.48%) Marketing
8 281 (3.45%) Legal
9 253 (3.11%) Retail
10 223 (2.74%) Investment Banking
11 211 (2.59%) Manufacturing
12 205 (2.52%) Telecoms
13 198 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 195 (2.40%) Influencing Skills
15 191 (2.35%) Front Office
16 165 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
17 125 (1.54%) Financial Institution
18 102 (1.25%) Pharmaceutical
19 97 (1.19%) Law
20 85 (1.04%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,117 (13.73%) Analyst
2 866 (10.64%) Developer
3 769 (9.45%) Architect
4 676 (8.31%) Senior
5 547 (6.72%) Consultant
6 536 (6.59%) Lead
7 500 (6.14%) Project Manager
8 456 (5.60%) Business Analyst
9 267 (3.28%) Support Engineer
10 236 (2.90%) Solutions Architect
11 164 (2.02%) Data Analyst
12 150 (1.84%) SAP Consultant
13 140 (1.72%) IT Support
14 135 (1.66%) Data Engineer
15 133 (1.63%) Java Developer
16 132 (1.62%) Network Engineer
17 130 (1.60%) Desktop Engineer
18 125 (1.54%) Administrator
19 123 (1.51%) Senior Developer
20 122 (1.50%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 239 (2.94%) .NET
2 191 (2.35%) HTML
3 187 (2.30%) CSS
4 167 (2.05%) Kafka
5 159 (1.95%) React
6 135 (1.66%) REST
7 117 (1.44%) Web Services
8 116 (1.43%) AngularJS
9 107 (1.31%) RESTful
10 104 (1.28%) Spring
11 85 (1.04%) Middleware
12 78 (0.96%) Node.js
13 70 (0.86%) JSON
13 70 (0.86%) XML
14 58 (0.71%) SOAP
15 57 (0.70%) Oracle Fusion
15 57 (0.70%) Spring Boot
16 52 (0.64%) ASP.NET
17 41 (0.50%) LDAP
18 38 (0.47%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 309 (3.80%) Management Information System
2 251 (3.08%) Product Ownership
3 247 (3.04%) Self-Motivation
4 201 (2.47%) Onboarding
5 152 (1.87%) Data Centre
6 138 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
6 138 (1.70%) Data Structures
7 129 (1.59%) Cloud Native
8 120 (1.47%) Algorithms
9 119 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
10 115 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
11 106 (1.30%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 102 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
13 88 (1.08%) Virtual Team
14 81 (1.00%) Security Posture
15 76 (0.93%) Driving Licence
16 71 (0.87%) Distributed Systems
16 71 (0.87%) Equities
16 71 (0.87%) Public Cloud
17 67 (0.82%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 846 (10.40%) Windows
2 482 (5.92%) Linux
3 210 (2.58%) Windows 10
4 193 (2.37%) Unix
5 178 (2.19%) Windows Server
6 100 (1.23%) Apple iOS
7 79 (0.97%) Mac OS
8 67 (0.82%) Android
9 66 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 27 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
11 25 (0.31%) Solaris
11 25 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
12 16 (0.20%) AIX
13 14 (0.17%) zOS
14 13 (0.16%) Mac OS X
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
15 9 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.086%) HPUX
16 7 (0.086%) VMS
17 6 (0.074%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,961 (36.39%) Problem-Solving
2 1,865 (22.92%) Agile
3 1,356 (16.66%) Stakeholder Management
4 1,120 (13.76%) Project Management
5 729 (8.96%) DevOps
6 725 (8.91%) Migration
7 644 (7.91%) Analytics
8 585 (7.19%) Decision-Making
9 584 (7.18%) CI/CD
10 583 (7.16%) Continuous Improvement
11 575 (7.07%) ITIL
12 574 (7.05%) Computer Science
13 526 (6.46%) Risk Management
14 518 (6.37%) Customer Service
15 494 (6.07%) Collaborative Working
16 491 (6.03%) Roadmaps
17 485 (5.96%) Business Intelligence
18 468 (5.75%) Change Management
19 445 (5.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 426 (5.24%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,022 (12.56%) SQL
2 924 (11.36%) Python
3 504 (6.19%) Java
4 374 (4.60%) JavaScript
5 360 (4.42%) PowerShell
6 271 (3.33%) C#
7 138 (1.70%) Bash
8 133 (1.63%) TypeScript
9 122 (1.50%) C++
10 112 (1.38%) PL/SQL
11 91 (1.12%) Shell Script
12 59 (0.73%) R
13 55 (0.68%) Scala
14 54 (0.66%) Perl
15 51 (0.63%) ABAP
16 44 (0.54%) PHP
17 40 (0.49%) VBA
18 39 (0.48%) C
19 38 (0.47%) Bicep
20 33 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,231 (15.13%) Security Cleared
2 1,162 (14.28%) Degree
3 990 (12.17%) SC Cleared
4 343 (4.22%) Computer Science Degree
5 189 (2.32%) PMI Certification
6 182 (2.24%) Cisco Certification
7 181 (2.22%) DV Cleared
8 175 (2.15%) PMP
9 158 (1.94%) CISSP
10 157 (1.93%) Microsoft Certification
11 130 (1.60%) Master's Degree
12 121 (1.49%) AWS Certification
12 121 (1.49%) CCNP
13 111 (1.36%) Azure Certification
14 104 (1.28%) BPSS Clearance
15 100 (1.23%) CISM
16 82 (1.01%) CCNA
17 80 (0.98%) ITIL Certification
18 72 (0.88%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
19 56 (0.69%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 446 (5.48%) QA
2 270 (3.32%) Data Quality
3 190 (2.34%) GDPR
4 186 (2.29%) PMO
5 163 (2.00%) SLA
6 159 (1.95%) Accessibility
7 147 (1.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 141 (1.73%) NIST
9 60 (0.74%) GRC
9 60 (0.74%) PCI DSS
10 42 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
11 39 (0.48%) Disclosure Scotland
12 37 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 31 (0.38%) HIPAA
14 26 (0.32%) MiFID
14 26 (0.32%) NCSC
15 21 (0.26%) WCAG
16 18 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
17 17 (0.21%) GxP
18 16 (0.20%) SOC 2
System Software
1 473 (5.81%) Active Directory
2 256 (3.15%) Docker
3 130 (1.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
4 33 (0.41%) VMware NSX
5 31 (0.38%) vSphere
6 30 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 29 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 24 (0.29%) Firmware
8 24 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
9 14 (0.17%) Time Sharing Option
10 12 (0.15%) Veritas Cluster Server
11 11 (0.14%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 11 (0.14%) BitLocker
12 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.098%) GridGain
13 8 (0.098%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.098%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.061%) NFS
15 4 (0.049%) RACF
Systems Management
1 346 (4.25%) Kubernetes
2 283 (3.48%) Terraform
3 260 (3.20%) Ansible
4 152 (1.87%) Microsoft Intune
5 138 (1.70%) SCCM
6 60 (0.74%) Grafana
7 49 (0.60%) Jamf Pro
8 43 (0.53%) Prometheus
9 37 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
10 36 (0.44%) Puppet
11 31 (0.38%) Progress Chef
12 24 (0.29%) vCenter Server
13 23 (0.28%) WSUS
14 21 (0.26%) FortiGate
15 20 (0.25%) Argo
16 16 (0.20%) Kibana
16 16 (0.20%) SCOM
17 13 (0.16%) NetBackup
18 12 (0.15%) Oracle RMAN
19 11 (0.14%) QRadar
Vendors
1 1,491 (18.32%) Microsoft
2 653 (8.03%) SAP
3 490 (6.02%) Oracle
4 398 (4.89%) ServiceNow
5 284 (3.49%) Cisco
6 256 (3.15%) Google
7 180 (2.21%) VMware
8 177 (2.18%) Salesforce
9 115 (1.41%) Adobe
9 115 (1.41%) Databricks
10 91 (1.12%) IBM
11 84 (1.03%) Splunk
12 83 (1.02%) Apple
13 74 (0.91%) Atlassian
14 73 (0.90%) Dell
15 71 (0.87%) Workday
16 69 (0.85%) Ariba
17 68 (0.84%) Palo Alto
18 67 (0.82%) Citrix
19 65 (0.80%) Juniper