Social Skills Contract Job Trends

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 17 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 1 1
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Social Skills 10,404 7,934 9,346
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 27.89% 24.94% 21.60%
As % of the General category 46.40% 40.51% 36.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,503 4,667 6,010
10th Percentile £225 £226 £220
25th Percentile £393 £388 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £625
90th Percentile £714 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -1.53% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 725 309 563
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.60 £13.00
25th Percentile £15.75 £16.37 £14.25
Median hourly rate £19.91 £24.18 £18.95
Median % change year-on-year -17.66% +27.60% -6.42%
75th Percentile £31.86 £44.04 £49.00
90th Percentile £63.25 £69.50 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.87 £24.00 £17.00
% change year-on-year -21.38% +41.18% -8.11%

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 general skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 22,421 19,586 25,516
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 60.10% 61.57% 58.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,109 11,683 16,675
10th Percentile £283 £285 £270
25th Percentile £400 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £727 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,372 660 1,289
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.48 £13.48
25th Percentile £16.48 £19.94 £15.75
Median hourly rate £23.00 £27.50 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.36% -5.17% +16.00%
75th Percentile £46.00 £53.75 £56.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.38 £26.50 £27.08
% change year-on-year -19.32% -2.15% +20.37%

Social Skills
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Social Skills job vacancy trend in the UK

Social Skills
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Social Skills.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Social Skills

Social Skills
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Social Skills over the 6 months to 17 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Social Skills in the UK

Social Skills
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Social Skills.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Social Skills

Social Skills
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Social Skills over the 6 months to 17 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Social Skills in the UK

Social Skills
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 Social Skills within the UK over the 6 months to 17 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 0 9,033 £500 -2.91% 7,123
UK excluding London 0 5,284 £468 -1.53% 6,584
London +1 4,041 £525 -4.55% 1,551
Work from Home 0 2,910 £500 - 3,082
North of England 0 1,391 £450 -6.74% 1,323
South East -1 1,312 £475 -5.00% 2,201
Midlands 0 958 £475 +5.56% 933
North West 0 698 £430 -9.47% 623
West Midlands 0 674 £488 +2.63% 477
Yorkshire 0 587 £474 -0.42% 514
South West 0 575 £500 - 793
East of England 0 519 £480 +1.05% 867
Scotland 0 415 £450 +2.86% 287
East Midlands 0 285 £430 +7.50% 443
North East 0 122 £450 -18.18% 206
Wales 0 119 £325 -22.39% 283
Northern Ireland +1 70 £475 +10.14% 100
Channel Islands +1 2 - - 1

Social Skills
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
1 451 (4.33%) Confluence
2 433 (4.16%) SharePoint
3 200 (1.92%) Microsoft Exchange
4 98 (0.94%) CMS
5 72 (0.69%) Apache
6 63 (0.61%) Apache Spark
7 58 (0.56%) SAS
8 57 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
9 42 (0.40%) Skype for Business
10 32 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 28 (0.27%) nginx
12 21 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 18 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 17 (0.16%) CICS
15 16 (0.15%) WordPress
16 15 (0.14%) Appian
16 15 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 14 (0.13%) Anypoint
17 14 (0.13%) Mattermost
Applications
1 645 (6.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 574 (5.52%) Microsoft Office
3 288 (2.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 215 (2.07%) Microsoft Project
5 166 (1.60%) MS Visio
6 81 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
7 30 (0.29%) Sketch
8 28 (0.27%) Trello
9 26 (0.25%) Chatbot
10 24 (0.23%) Adobe XD
11 19 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 17 (0.16%) Photoshop
13 15 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
14 9 (0.087%) Mozilla Thunderbird
15 8 (0.077%) Adobe After Effects
15 8 (0.077%) InDesign
15 8 (0.077%) ProjectWise
16 7 (0.067%) Acrobat
16 7 (0.067%) InVision
16 7 (0.067%) Notion
Business Applications
1 303 (2.91%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 87 (0.84%) Oracle EBS
4 63 (0.61%) Oracle Payables
5 52 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
6 43 (0.41%) Oracle General Ledger
7 37 (0.36%) NetSuite
7 37 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
8 36 (0.35%) SAP ERP
9 33 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
10 32 (0.31%) SAP EWM
11 29 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
12 28 (0.27%) Oracle EBS R12
12 28 (0.27%) SAP HCM
12 28 (0.27%) SAP PP
13 27 (0.26%) Workday HCM
14 25 (0.24%) Endur
15 23 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
16 22 (0.21%) Oracle Cash Management
17 21 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 1,886 (18.13%) Azure
2 1,355 (13.02%) AWS
3 705 (6.78%) Microsoft 365
4 636 (6.11%) Power Platform
5 596 (5.73%) GCP
6 359 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
7 327 (3.14%) GitHub
8 288 (2.77%) SaaS
9 266 (2.56%) Entra ID
10 238 (2.29%) Serverless
11 207 (1.99%) Dynamics 365
12 170 (1.63%) Power Automate
13 157 (1.51%) GitHub Actions
14 149 (1.43%) OCI
15 145 (1.39%) Amazon S3
16 137 (1.32%) PowerApps
17 130 (1.25%) AWS Lambda
18 128 (1.23%) OpenShift
19 126 (1.21%) Azure Data Factory
20 116 (1.11%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 334 (3.21%) Firewall
2 215 (2.07%) DNS
3 182 (1.75%) VPN
4 174 (1.67%) Network Security
5 143 (1.37%) WAN
6 141 (1.36%) TCP/IP
7 130 (1.25%) LAN
8 107 (1.03%) DHCP
9 96 (0.92%) Wi-Fi
10 89 (0.86%) Wireless
11 71 (0.68%) HTTP
12 66 (0.63%) BGP
13 63 (0.61%) Skype
14 61 (0.59%) Internet
15 50 (0.48%) VLAN
16 47 (0.45%) MPLS
16 47 (0.45%) SSH
17 42 (0.40%) Wireshark
18 40 (0.38%) SD-WAN
19 36 (0.35%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 507 (4.87%) Power BI
2 233 (2.24%) SQL Server
3 221 (2.12%) Data Warehouse
4 212 (2.04%) Relational Database
5 200 (1.92%) PostgreSQL
6 165 (1.59%) Metadata
7 163 (1.57%) NoSQL
8 134 (1.29%) Tableau
9 114 (1.10%) Data Lake
10 108 (1.04%) MongoDB
11 103 (0.99%) MySQL
11 103 (0.99%) Oracle Database
12 81 (0.78%) Big Data
12 81 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
13 75 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
14 62 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
14 62 (0.60%) DynamoDB
15 61 (0.59%) BigQuery
16 50 (0.48%) Power Query
17 47 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 826 (7.94%) JIRA
2 373 (3.59%) Git
3 314 (3.02%) Jenkins
4 227 (2.18%) GitLab
5 97 (0.93%) JUnit
6 94 (0.90%) Selenium
7 65 (0.62%) Cucumber
8 63 (0.61%) Postman
9 46 (0.44%) Eclipse
10 39 (0.37%) Bitbucket
11 37 (0.36%) Cypress.io
12 34 (0.33%) Maven
12 34 (0.33%) SonarQube
13 32 (0.31%) Oracle APEX
13 32 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
14 31 (0.30%) Liquibase
15 29 (0.28%) REST Assured
16 27 (0.26%) Burp Suite
17 26 (0.25%) Browser DevTools
17 26 (0.25%) Metasploit
General
1 2,536 (24.38%) Finance
2 1,951 (18.75%) Analytical Skills
3 1,151 (11.06%) Public Sector
4 848 (8.15%) Banking
5 533 (5.12%) Organisational Skills
6 485 (4.66%) Documentation Skills
7 340 (3.27%) Legal
8 337 (3.24%) Manufacturing
9 323 (3.10%) Marketing
10 317 (3.05%) Presentation Skills
11 285 (2.74%) Influencing Skills
12 249 (2.39%) Retail
13 242 (2.33%) Telecoms
14 183 (1.76%) Front Office
15 178 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 163 (1.57%) Investment Banking
17 151 (1.45%) Financial Institution
18 128 (1.23%) Military
19 123 (1.18%) Law
20 102 (0.98%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,477 (14.20%) Analyst
2 896 (8.61%) Architect
3 862 (8.29%) Developer
4 808 (7.77%) Senior
5 738 (7.09%) Lead
6 731 (7.03%) Consultant
7 693 (6.66%) Business Analyst
8 576 (5.54%) Project Manager
9 348 (3.34%) IT Support
10 347 (3.34%) Support Engineer
11 287 (2.76%) Solutions Architect
12 189 (1.82%) IT Engineer
13 187 (1.80%) Administrator
14 182 (1.75%) Data Engineer
15 176 (1.69%) SAP Consultant
16 165 (1.59%) Data Analyst
17 155 (1.49%) Designer
18 147 (1.41%) Senior Developer
18 147 (1.41%) Tester
19 142 (1.36%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 418 (4.02%) REST
2 240 (2.31%) RESTful
3 224 (2.15%) .NET
4 216 (2.08%) SOAP
5 214 (2.06%) React
6 211 (2.03%) Kafka
7 183 (1.76%) HTML
8 182 (1.75%) Spring
9 168 (1.61%) Node.js
10 164 (1.58%) CSS
11 156 (1.50%) Oracle Fusion
12 143 (1.37%) AngularJS
13 138 (1.33%) XML
14 137 (1.32%) Spring Boot
15 128 (1.23%) JSON
16 125 (1.20%) OAuth
17 109 (1.05%) LDAP
18 106 (1.02%) Middleware
19 88 (0.85%) Web Services
20 85 (0.82%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 471 (4.53%) Product Ownership
2 448 (4.31%) Onboarding
3 313 (3.01%) Management Information System
4 298 (2.86%) Cloud Native
5 219 (2.10%) Self-Motivation
6 190 (1.83%) Data Centre
7 186 (1.79%) Legacy Systems
8 180 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
9 176 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
10 172 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
11 162 (1.56%) Data Structures
12 159 (1.53%) Security Posture
13 146 (1.40%) Virtual Team
14 144 (1.38%) Driving Licence
15 136 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
16 128 (1.23%) NHS
17 107 (1.03%) Hybrid Cloud
18 98 (0.94%) Algorithms
19 95 (0.91%) Mobile App
20 90 (0.87%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,062 (10.21%) Windows
2 574 (5.52%) Linux
3 318 (3.06%) Windows 10
4 180 (1.73%) Unix
5 143 (1.37%) Windows Server
6 104 (1.00%) Android
7 91 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 82 (0.79%) Apple iOS
9 77 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 33 (0.32%) VMS
11 23 (0.22%) Ubuntu
12 19 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 16 (0.15%) CentOS
14 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
16 13 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
17 12 (0.12%) AIX
18 11 (0.11%) Windows 7
19 10 (0.096%) Kali Linux
20 9 (0.087%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,885 (27.73%) Problem-Solving
2 2,610 (25.09%) Agile
3 2,209 (21.23%) Stakeholder Management
4 1,502 (14.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 1,304 (12.53%) DevOps
6 1,207 (11.60%) CI/CD
7 1,199 (11.52%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,072 (10.30%) Migration
9 979 (9.41%) Project Management
10 889 (8.54%) Analytics
11 730 (7.02%) Roadmaps
12 724 (6.96%) Change Management
13 715 (6.87%) Business Intelligence
14 709 (6.81%) ITIL
15 679 (6.53%) Decision-Making
16 664 (6.38%) AI
17 654 (6.29%) Customer Service
18 640 (6.15%) Project Delivery
19 635 (6.10%) Scrum
20 630 (6.06%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,301 (12.50%) Python
2 1,196 (11.50%) SQL
3 618 (5.94%) Java
4 540 (5.19%) PowerShell
5 452 (4.34%) JavaScript
6 269 (2.59%) C#
7 193 (1.86%) Bash
8 192 (1.85%) TypeScript
9 105 (1.01%) Shell Script
10 95 (0.91%) PL/SQL
11 82 (0.79%) Go
12 79 (0.76%) C++
13 77 (0.74%) Perl
14 61 (0.59%) R
15 49 (0.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 48 (0.46%) Scala
17 45 (0.43%) ABAP
18 38 (0.37%) PHP
19 37 (0.36%) Bicep
20 36 (0.35%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 2,083 (20.02%) Security Cleared
2 1,639 (15.75%) SC Cleared
3 1,265 (12.16%) Degree
4 310 (2.98%) Computer Science Degree
5 268 (2.58%) DV Cleared
6 252 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
7 242 (2.33%) PMI Certification
8 204 (1.96%) PMP
9 195 (1.87%) Master's Degree
10 184 (1.77%) CISSP
11 147 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
12 132 (1.27%) AWS Certification
13 121 (1.16%) CISM
14 116 (1.11%) Azure Certification
15 113 (1.09%) Cisco Certification
16 79 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
17 77 (0.74%) CCNP
18 60 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
19 51 (0.49%) ISTQB
20 49 (0.47%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 566 (5.44%) QA
2 434 (4.17%) GDPR
3 384 (3.69%) Data Quality
4 295 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 260 (2.50%) PMO
6 238 (2.29%) NIST
7 233 (2.24%) Accessibility
8 219 (2.10%) SLA
9 91 (0.87%) GRC
10 76 (0.73%) PCI DSS
11 69 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 60 (0.58%) NCSC
13 52 (0.50%) WCAG
14 45 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
15 40 (0.38%) IFRS
16 39 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
16 39 (0.37%) HIPAA
17 30 (0.29%) MiFID
18 29 (0.28%) NIST 800
19 24 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 674 (6.48%) Active Directory
2 511 (4.91%) Docker
3 170 (1.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 51 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
5 40 (0.38%) vSphere
6 39 (0.37%) VMware NSX
7 38 (0.37%) Firmware
7 38 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
8 37 (0.36%) Hyper-V
9 22 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
10 19 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 15 (0.14%) Dovecot
11 15 (0.14%) Postfix
12 12 (0.12%) Time Sharing Option
13 11 (0.11%) RACF
14 10 (0.096%) ACF2
14 10 (0.096%) Squid
15 9 (0.087%) BitLocker
15 9 (0.087%) DFS Replication
16 8 (0.077%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 587 (5.64%) Kubernetes
2 473 (4.55%) Terraform
3 330 (3.17%) Ansible
4 193 (1.86%) Microsoft Intune
5 186 (1.79%) Grafana
6 171 (1.64%) SCCM
7 149 (1.43%) Prometheus
8 70 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
9 50 (0.48%) Kibana
10 43 (0.41%) Puppet
11 37 (0.36%) SCOM
12 36 (0.35%) Argo
13 34 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
14 32 (0.31%) OPNET
15 30 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 29 (0.28%) Nmap
17 22 (0.21%) Nessus
18 21 (0.20%) CA Endevor
18 21 (0.20%) HP SiteScope
19 20 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 1,991 (19.14%) Microsoft
2 750 (7.21%) SAP
3 725 (6.97%) Oracle
4 503 (4.83%) ServiceNow
5 304 (2.92%) Google
6 295 (2.84%) Splunk
7 270 (2.60%) Salesforce
8 246 (2.36%) VMware
9 235 (2.26%) Cisco
10 193 (1.86%) Databricks
11 113 (1.09%) Workday
12 112 (1.08%) Adobe
13 103 (0.99%) CyberArk
14 98 (0.94%) Remedy
15 91 (0.87%) IBM
16 86 (0.83%) Citrix
17 83 (0.80%) Apple
18 81 (0.78%) Atlassian
19 77 (0.74%) HP
19 77 (0.74%) Red Hat