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 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 1 1 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 +2 0
Contract jobs citing Social Skills 8,104 9,684 12,012
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 27.72% 22.21% 20.13%
As % of the General category 43.89% 38.15% 34.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,094 6,029 7,935
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% +0.38%
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 422 793 467
10th Percentile £13.00 £12.25 £13.07
25th Percentile £15.84 £14.06 £14.25
Median hourly rate £24.00 £18.35 £25.52
Median % change year-on-year +30.79% -28.10% +34.32%
75th Percentile £49.94 £39.95 £61.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £63.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £16.12 £19.00
% change year-on-year +36.48% -15.16% +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 18,465 25,387 34,897
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 63.16% 58.23% 58.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,795 16,033 24,201
10th Percentile £300 £270 £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 £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £763 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -4.23% -0.80% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 794 1,939 1,062
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.78 £13.42
25th Percentile £17.85 £15.50 £18.09
Median hourly rate £28.00 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% -14.29% +59.71%
75th Percentile £56.00 £51.91 £61.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £28.13 £30.54
% change year-on-year -10.58% -7.91% +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 30 April 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 30 April 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 30 April 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 6,801 £501 -2.67% 12,416
UK excluding London +1 3,804 £475 - 7,135
London 0 3,392 £538 -2.27% 5,937
Work from Home +1 2,560 £500 -2.44% 6,055
South East +1 921 £500 +4.17% 1,696
North of England 0 893 £475 - 1,958
Midlands 0 606 £460 +2.11% 1,281
North West 0 515 £490 +3.16% 1,161
Scotland +2 511 £450 - 493
West Midlands 0 458 £475 - 782
South West +1 446 £500 -4.76% 851
East of England 0 320 £480 +6.67% 694
Yorkshire 0 308 £449 -0.33% 597
East Midlands 0 137 £400 +48.70% 492
Wales 0 76 £406 -4.41% 189
North East -1 69 £470 -10.05% 221
Northern Ireland -1 57 £400 -4.19% 156
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 (4.23%) SharePoint
2 268 (3.31%) Confluence
3 111 (1.37%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (0.73%) Apache Spark
5 56 (0.69%) CMS
6 52 (0.64%) 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 18 (0.22%) 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
1 477 (5.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 451 (5.57%) Microsoft Office
3 243 (3.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 123 (1.52%) MS Visio
5 106 (1.31%) 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 (0.099%) Oracle Smart View
15 7 (0.086%) Autodesk Smoke
15 7 (0.086%) Camtasia
15 7 (0.086%) InfoPath
15 7 (0.086%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 250 (3.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 63 (0.78%) Oracle EBS
3 59 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
4 37 (0.46%) Oracle EBS R12
5 34 (0.42%) SAP HR
6 31 (0.38%) SAP FI
7 30 (0.37%) SAP CO
8 28 (0.35%) SAP FI/CO
8 28 (0.35%) 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 1,227 (15.14%) Azure
2 806 (9.95%) AWS
3 520 (6.42%) Microsoft 365
4 475 (5.86%) Power Platform
5 295 (3.64%) GCP
6 216 (2.67%) Entra ID
7 206 (2.54%) Azure DevOps
8 182 (2.25%) GitHub
9 160 (1.97%) SaaS
10 135 (1.67%) PowerApps
11 125 (1.54%) Serverless
12 112 (1.38%) Dynamics 365
13 109 (1.35%) Power Automate
14 93 (1.15%) Cloud Computing
15 86 (1.06%) Amazon S3
16 85 (1.05%) Figma
17 79 (0.97%) AWS Lambda
17 79 (0.97%) Snowflake
18 71 (0.88%) OneDrive
19 64 (0.79%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 283 (3.49%) Firewall
2 199 (2.46%) VPN
3 193 (2.38%) Network Security
4 140 (1.73%) DNS
5 131 (1.62%) WAN
6 122 (1.51%) LAN
7 117 (1.44%) TCP/IP
8 80 (0.99%) BGP
9 77 (0.95%) Wireless
10 73 (0.90%) OSPF
11 69 (0.85%) DHCP
12 63 (0.78%) VLAN
12 63 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
13 57 (0.70%) SSL
14 54 (0.67%) Wireshark
15 53 (0.65%) Internet
15 53 (0.65%) SAN
15 53 (0.65%) SD-WAN
16 43 (0.53%) LTE
17 41 (0.51%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 362 (4.47%) Power BI
2 205 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
3 204 (2.52%) SQL Server
4 153 (1.89%) Tableau
5 151 (1.86%) Relational Database
6 146 (1.80%) PostgreSQL
7 113 (1.39%) MongoDB
8 83 (1.02%) NoSQL
9 78 (0.96%) Oracle Database
10 76 (0.94%) Big Data
10 76 (0.94%) MySQL
11 64 (0.79%) DB2
12 57 (0.70%) Metadata
13 52 (0.64%) Data Lake
14 48 (0.59%) Amazon RDS
15 44 (0.54%) Oracle Reports
16 43 (0.53%) Hadoop
17 41 (0.51%) BigQuery
18 38 (0.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 37 (0.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 553 (6.82%) JIRA
2 230 (2.84%) Git
3 194 (2.39%) Jenkins
4 126 (1.55%) GitLab
5 77 (0.95%) Selenium
6 71 (0.88%) JUnit
7 47 (0.58%) Postman
8 46 (0.57%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.47%) Bitbucket
9 38 (0.47%) SonarQube
10 37 (0.46%) 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 (0.35%) TeamCity
16 23 (0.28%) LoadRunner
16 23 (0.28%) Visual Studio
17 20 (0.25%) Maven
17 20 (0.25%) MSI
General
1 1,993 (24.59%) Finance
2 1,990 (24.56%) Analytical Skills
3 693 (8.55%) Public Sector
4 682 (8.42%) Banking
5 414 (5.11%) Presentation Skills
6 347 (4.28%) Organisational Skills
7 287 (3.54%) Marketing
8 277 (3.42%) Legal
9 254 (3.13%) Retail
10 220 (2.71%) Investment Banking
11 210 (2.59%) Manufacturing
12 207 (2.55%) Telecoms
13 197 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 192 (2.37%) Influencing Skills
15 186 (2.30%) Front Office
16 163 (2.01%) Documentation Skills
17 122 (1.51%) Financial Institution
18 103 (1.27%) Pharmaceutical
19 96 (1.18%) Law
20 86 (1.06%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,110 (13.70%) Analyst
2 860 (10.61%) Developer
3 767 (9.46%) Architect
4 672 (8.29%) Senior
5 546 (6.74%) Consultant
6 535 (6.60%) Lead
7 497 (6.13%) Project Manager
8 452 (5.58%) Business Analyst
9 267 (3.29%) Support Engineer
10 234 (2.89%) Solutions Architect
11 163 (2.01%) Data Analyst
12 149 (1.84%) SAP Consultant
13 136 (1.68%) IT Support
14 135 (1.67%) Data Engineer
15 134 (1.65%) Java Developer
16 132 (1.63%) Network Engineer
17 129 (1.59%) Desktop Engineer
18 123 (1.52%) Designer
18 123 (1.52%) Senior Developer
19 120 (1.48%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 238 (2.94%) .NET
2 187 (2.31%) HTML
3 185 (2.28%) CSS
4 167 (2.06%) Kafka
5 157 (1.94%) React
6 131 (1.62%) REST
7 115 (1.42%) Web Services
8 114 (1.41%) AngularJS
9 107 (1.32%) RESTful
10 103 (1.27%) Spring
11 86 (1.06%) Middleware
12 78 (0.96%) Node.js
13 68 (0.84%) JSON
14 67 (0.83%) XML
15 57 (0.70%) Oracle Fusion
15 57 (0.70%) SOAP
16 56 (0.69%) Spring Boot
17 52 (0.64%) ASP.NET
18 41 (0.51%) LDAP
19 38 (0.47%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 309 (3.81%) Management Information System
2 252 (3.11%) Product Ownership
3 247 (3.05%) Self-Motivation
4 201 (2.48%) Onboarding
5 153 (1.89%) Data Centre
6 138 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
7 134 (1.65%) Data Structures
8 130 (1.60%) Cloud Native
9 121 (1.49%) Algorithms
10 119 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
11 114 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
12 104 (1.28%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 102 (1.26%) Analytical Mindset
14 86 (1.06%) Virtual Team
15 80 (0.99%) Security Posture
16 76 (0.94%) Driving Licence
17 70 (0.86%) Distributed Systems
17 70 (0.86%) Public Cloud
18 69 (0.85%) Equities
19 67 (0.83%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 841 (10.38%) Windows
2 477 (5.89%) Linux
3 211 (2.60%) Windows 10
4 194 (2.39%) Unix
5 178 (2.20%) Windows Server
6 99 (1.22%) Apple iOS
7 78 (0.96%) Mac OS
8 67 (0.83%) 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 2,948 (36.38%) Problem-Solving
2 1,853 (22.87%) Agile
3 1,352 (16.68%) Stakeholder Management
4 1,112 (13.72%) Project Management
5 722 (8.91%) DevOps
5 722 (8.91%) Migration
6 643 (7.93%) Analytics
7 585 (7.22%) CI/CD
8 582 (7.18%) Decision-Making
9 577 (7.12%) Continuous Improvement
10 575 (7.10%) ITIL
11 574 (7.08%) Computer Science
12 520 (6.42%) Risk Management
13 511 (6.31%) Customer Service
14 491 (6.06%) Collaborative Working
15 487 (6.01%) Roadmaps
16 484 (5.97%) Business Intelligence
17 470 (5.80%) Change Management
18 441 (5.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 426 (5.26%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,020 (12.59%) SQL
2 924 (11.40%) Python
3 500 (6.17%) Java
4 368 (4.54%) JavaScript
5 362 (4.47%) PowerShell
6 270 (3.33%) C#
7 136 (1.68%) Bash
8 132 (1.63%) TypeScript
9 124 (1.53%) C++
10 109 (1.35%) PL/SQL
11 91 (1.12%) Shell Script
12 61 (0.75%) R
13 56 (0.69%) Scala
14 54 (0.67%) Perl
15 49 (0.60%) ABAP
16 44 (0.54%) PHP
17 41 (0.51%) VBA
18 39 (0.48%) C
19 37 (0.46%) Bicep
20 34 (0.42%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,228 (15.15%) Security Cleared
2 1,160 (14.31%) Degree
3 987 (12.18%) SC Cleared
4 343 (4.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 187 (2.31%) PMI Certification
6 182 (2.25%) Cisco Certification
7 179 (2.21%) DV Cleared
8 173 (2.13%) PMP
9 155 (1.91%) CISSP
10 153 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
11 131 (1.62%) Master's Degree
12 123 (1.52%) AWS Certification
13 121 (1.49%) CCNP
14 110 (1.36%) Azure Certification
15 104 (1.28%) BPSS Clearance
16 98 (1.21%) CISM
17 84 (1.04%) CCNA
18 81 (1.00%) ITIL Certification
19 73 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
20 55 (0.68%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (5.49%) QA
2 270 (3.33%) Data Quality
3 188 (2.32%) GDPR
4 185 (2.28%) PMO
5 163 (2.01%) SLA
6 159 (1.96%) Accessibility
7 144 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 141 (1.74%) NIST
9 60 (0.74%) PCI DSS
10 59 (0.73%) GRC
11 42 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
12 40 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
13 37 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 31 (0.38%) HIPAA
15 27 (0.33%) NCSC
16 26 (0.32%) MiFID
17 21 (0.26%) WCAG
18 18 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
19 17 (0.21%) GxP
20 16 (0.20%) SOC 2
System Software
1 478 (5.90%) Active Directory
2 253 (3.12%) Docker
3 133 (1.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.43%) VMware NSX
5 33 (0.41%) vSphere
6 32 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
7 30 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
8 29 (0.36%) Hyper-V
9 24 (0.30%) Firmware
9 24 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.17%) Time Sharing Option
11 12 (0.15%) Veritas Cluster Server
12 11 (0.14%) BitLocker
13 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 8 (0.099%) GridGain
15 8 (0.099%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.074%) Oracle RAC
17 5 (0.062%) NFS
18 4 (0.049%) RACF
Systems Management
1 342 (4.22%) Kubernetes
2 285 (3.52%) Terraform
3 262 (3.23%) Ansible
4 153 (1.89%) Microsoft Intune
5 134 (1.65%) SCCM
6 60 (0.74%) Grafana
7 49 (0.60%) Jamf Pro
8 43 (0.53%) Prometheus
9 37 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
10 36 (0.44%) Puppet
11 30 (0.37%) Progress Chef
12 24 (0.30%) vCenter Server
13 23 (0.28%) WSUS
14 21 (0.26%) Argo
14 21 (0.26%) FortiGate
15 16 (0.20%) Kibana
15 16 (0.20%) SCOM
16 13 (0.16%) NetBackup
17 12 (0.15%) Oracle RMAN
18 11 (0.14%) QRadar
Vendors
1 1,482 (18.29%) Microsoft
2 648 (8.00%) SAP
3 485 (5.98%) Oracle
4 391 (4.82%) ServiceNow
5 283 (3.49%) Cisco
6 257 (3.17%) Google
7 184 (2.27%) VMware
8 174 (2.15%) Salesforce
9 116 (1.43%) Databricks
10 113 (1.39%) Adobe
11 92 (1.14%) IBM
12 84 (1.04%) Splunk
13 82 (1.01%) Apple
14 73 (0.90%) Dell
15 72 (0.89%) Atlassian
15 72 (0.89%) Workday
16 69 (0.85%) Ariba
17 68 (0.84%) Palo Alto
18 67 (0.83%) Citrix
19 64 (0.79%) Juniper