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 16 August 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Aug 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 1 1 2
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Social Skills 9,706 8,327 11,003
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 29.29% 21.47% 21.15%
As % of the General category 46.14% 37.41% 35.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,916 5,204 7,258
10th Percentile £219 £222 £250
25th Percentile £368 £380 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £475 £488
% change year-on-year -3.16% -2.56% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 616 501 461
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.00 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.12 £15.62 £14.25
Median hourly rate £20.95 £24.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.77% +24.35% +5.26%
75th Percentile £43.82 £48.75 £56.30
90th Percentile £68.75 £65.00 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.87 £22.56 £17.50
% change year-on-year -16.36% +28.91% +6.06%

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 21,037 22,260 30,671
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 63.49% 57.40% 58.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,056 13,993 20,961
10th Percentile £275 £290 £312
25th Percentile £400 £413 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £626 £650 £675
90th Percentile £749 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,152 1,365 1,033
10th Percentile £13.25 £14.06 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.23 £17.00 £16.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £38.12 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -34.02% +38.62% +12.24%
75th Percentile £50.75 £58.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £71.48 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.14 £38.12 £25.00
% change year-on-year -41.92% +52.48% +25.00%

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 16 August 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 16 August 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 16 August 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 8,170 £500 -2.44% 14,183
UK excluding London +1 4,751 £460 -3.16% 8,699
London 0 3,929 £525 -3.67% 6,901
Work from Home +1 2,855 £500 - 6,153
North of England 0 1,187 £475 -4.90% 2,081
South East +1 1,128 £475 -5.00% 2,757
Midlands 0 835 £447 -0.67% 1,260
North West 0 622 £500 +2.41% 1,150
West Midlands 0 621 £475 +5.56% 819
Scotland +1 613 £450 +5.88% 615
Yorkshire 0 504 £450 -10.00% 756
South West +1 447 £475 -9.52% 906
East of England 0 403 £481 +6.94% 824
East Midlands 0 208 £368 -9.14% 434
Wales 0 101 £331 -17.21% 229
Northern Ireland -1 79 £400 +18.52% 223
North East -3 61 £498 +4.74% 214
Channel Islands - 4 £425 - 1

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
1 360 (3.71%) Confluence
2 327 (3.37%) SharePoint
3 110 (1.13%) Microsoft Exchange
4 73 (0.75%) Apache
4 73 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
5 71 (0.73%) Apache Spark
6 69 (0.71%) CMS
7 35 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
8 29 (0.30%) SAS
9 27 (0.28%) WebLogic
10 26 (0.27%) OpenStack
11 24 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 19 (0.20%) CICS
13 18 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 17 (0.18%) Anypoint
14 17 (0.18%) JBoss
15 16 (0.16%) Skype for Business
16 15 (0.15%) ArcGIS
16 15 (0.15%) IIS
17 14 (0.14%) IBM Domino
Applications
1 588 (6.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 478 (4.92%) Microsoft Office
3 253 (2.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 141 (1.45%) MS Visio
5 137 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
6 38 (0.39%) Trello
7 36 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
8 22 (0.23%) Sketch
9 18 (0.19%) Chatbot
10 14 (0.14%) Adobe XD
10 14 (0.14%) Photoshop
11 12 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
11 12 (0.12%) Simulink
12 11 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
13 10 (0.10%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 10 (0.10%) Windchill
14 9 (0.093%) Oracle Smart View
15 8 (0.082%) AutoCAD
16 7 (0.072%) Maya
16 7 (0.072%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 296 (3.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 99 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
3 96 (0.99%) Oracle EBS
4 46 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
5 45 (0.46%) Oracle EBS R12
6 41 (0.42%) Endur
7 36 (0.37%) Oracle General Ledger
8 30 (0.31%) Oracle Assets
8 30 (0.31%) SAP HR
9 29 (0.30%) Workday HCM
10 27 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
10 27 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
11 24 (0.25%) Maximo
11 24 (0.25%) Teamcenter
12 23 (0.24%) Oracle Financials
12 23 (0.24%) SAP HCM
13 22 (0.23%) SAP PP
14 21 (0.22%) Aladdin
15 20 (0.21%) SAP ERP
15 20 (0.21%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 1,434 (14.77%) Azure
2 1,101 (11.34%) AWS
3 589 (6.07%) Power Platform
4 551 (5.68%) Microsoft 365
5 424 (4.37%) GCP
6 286 (2.95%) Azure DevOps
7 236 (2.43%) SaaS
8 223 (2.30%) GitHub
9 214 (2.20%) Entra ID
10 182 (1.88%) Serverless
11 159 (1.64%) Dynamics 365
12 146 (1.50%) PowerApps
13 136 (1.40%) Amazon S3
14 126 (1.30%) Power Automate
15 114 (1.17%) AWS Lambda
16 97 (1.00%) Snowflake
17 93 (0.96%) OCI
18 81 (0.83%) AWS CloudFormation
18 81 (0.83%) Cloud Computing
19 76 (0.78%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 320 (3.30%) Firewall
2 196 (2.02%) VPN
3 194 (2.00%) DNS
4 192 (1.98%) Network Security
5 143 (1.47%) WAN
6 140 (1.44%) TCP/IP
7 130 (1.34%) LAN
8 95 (0.98%) BGP
9 91 (0.94%) Wireless
10 85 (0.88%) DHCP
11 79 (0.81%) OSPF
12 69 (0.71%) Internet
13 67 (0.69%) HTTP
14 64 (0.66%) VLAN
15 60 (0.62%) Broadband
15 60 (0.62%) SSL
16 59 (0.61%) SD-WAN
17 55 (0.57%) SAN
18 46 (0.47%) Wi-Fi
19 45 (0.46%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 457 (4.71%) Power BI
2 250 (2.58%) SQL Server
3 236 (2.43%) Data Warehouse
4 214 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
5 207 (2.13%) Relational Database
6 161 (1.66%) Tableau
7 112 (1.15%) NoSQL
8 110 (1.13%) MongoDB
8 110 (1.13%) Oracle Database
9 94 (0.97%) Metadata
10 86 (0.89%) MySQL
11 82 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
12 73 (0.75%) Data Lake
13 69 (0.71%) DB2
14 66 (0.68%) Big Data
14 66 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
15 61 (0.63%) BigQuery
16 60 (0.62%) Redis
17 56 (0.58%) Power Query
18 51 (0.53%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 764 (7.87%) JIRA
2 315 (3.25%) Git
3 278 (2.86%) Jenkins
4 156 (1.61%) GitLab
5 99 (1.02%) JUnit
5 99 (1.02%) Selenium
6 66 (0.68%) Postman
7 60 (0.62%) Cucumber
8 57 (0.59%) SonarQube
9 44 (0.45%) Cypress.io
10 43 (0.44%) REST Assured
11 41 (0.42%) Bitbucket
12 37 (0.38%) Visual Studio
13 34 (0.35%) Eclipse
14 33 (0.34%) Maven
15 28 (0.29%) Subversion
16 26 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
16 26 (0.27%) TeamCity
17 23 (0.24%) Gradle
17 23 (0.24%) Liquibase
General
1 2,538 (26.15%) Finance
2 2,118 (21.82%) Analytical Skills
3 923 (9.51%) Banking
4 766 (7.89%) Public Sector
5 431 (4.44%) Organisational Skills
6 397 (4.09%) Presentation Skills
7 312 (3.21%) Legal
8 302 (3.11%) Marketing
9 299 (3.08%) Documentation Skills
10 284 (2.93%) Retail
11 283 (2.92%) Manufacturing
12 252 (2.60%) Investment Banking
13 246 (2.53%) Telecoms
14 244 (2.51%) Influencing Skills
15 226 (2.33%) Front Office
16 204 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 159 (1.64%) Financial Institution
18 118 (1.22%) Law
19 110 (1.13%) Pharmaceutical
20 90 (0.93%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,511 (15.57%) Analyst
2 911 (9.39%) Developer
3 801 (8.25%) Architect
4 743 (7.66%) Senior
5 670 (6.90%) Consultant
6 626 (6.45%) Business Analyst
7 582 (6.00%) Project Manager
8 575 (5.92%) Lead
9 301 (3.10%) Support Engineer
10 231 (2.38%) IT Support
11 217 (2.24%) Solutions Architect
12 202 (2.08%) Administrator
13 200 (2.06%) Data Analyst
14 165 (1.70%) SAP Consultant
15 164 (1.69%) Java Developer
16 153 (1.58%) Senior Analyst
17 149 (1.54%) Network Engineer
18 148 (1.52%) Data Engineer
19 146 (1.50%) Desktop Support
20 136 (1.40%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 277 (2.85%) .NET
2 239 (2.46%) REST
3 233 (2.40%) HTML
4 215 (2.22%) CSS
4 215 (2.22%) React
5 214 (2.20%) Kafka
6 199 (2.05%) RESTful
7 164 (1.69%) AngularJS
8 159 (1.64%) Spring
9 141 (1.45%) Web Services
10 118 (1.22%) SOAP
11 110 (1.13%) Node.js
12 109 (1.12%) XML
13 106 (1.09%) Spring Boot
14 104 (1.07%) Middleware
15 96 (0.99%) JSON
16 91 (0.94%) OAuth
17 68 (0.70%) LDAP
18 65 (0.67%) Oracle Fusion
19 64 (0.66%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 361 (3.72%) Product Ownership
2 353 (3.64%) Management Information System
3 286 (2.95%) Onboarding
4 268 (2.76%) Self-Motivation
5 233 (2.40%) Cloud Native
6 163 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
7 161 (1.66%) Data Structures
8 160 (1.65%) Data Centre
9 149 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
10 145 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
11 141 (1.45%) Virtual Team
12 135 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
13 128 (1.32%) Distributed Systems
14 126 (1.30%) Algorithms
15 114 (1.17%) Security Posture
16 106 (1.09%) Driving Licence
17 105 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 91 (0.94%) Mobile App
19 78 (0.80%) Equities
20 74 (0.76%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 928 (9.56%) Windows
2 586 (6.04%) Linux
3 209 (2.15%) Windows 10
4 206 (2.12%) Unix
5 130 (1.34%) Windows Server
6 109 (1.12%) Apple iOS
7 105 (1.08%) Android
8 95 (0.98%) Mac OS
9 74 (0.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.23%) Solaris
10 22 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
11 21 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
12 18 (0.19%) Windows 7
13 17 (0.18%) VMS
13 17 (0.18%) zOS
14 14 (0.14%) Ubuntu
15 12 (0.12%) AIX
15 12 (0.12%) Amazon Linux
15 12 (0.12%) CentOS
15 12 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,114 (32.08%) Problem-Solving
2 2,388 (24.60%) Agile
3 1,722 (17.74%) Stakeholder Management
4 1,063 (10.95%) Project Management
5 1,028 (10.59%) DevOps
6 899 (9.26%) Migration
7 873 (8.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 852 (8.78%) CI/CD
9 809 (8.34%) Continuous Improvement
10 738 (7.60%) Analytics
11 684 (7.05%) ITIL
12 647 (6.67%) Computer Science
13 645 (6.65%) Business Intelligence
14 631 (6.50%) Decision-Making
15 628 (6.47%) Customer Service
16 620 (6.39%) Scrum
17 594 (6.12%) Risk Management
17 594 (6.12%) Roadmaps
18 578 (5.96%) Project Delivery
19 554 (5.71%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 1,229 (12.66%) SQL
2 1,130 (11.64%) Python
3 659 (6.79%) Java
4 413 (4.26%) JavaScript
5 340 (3.50%) PowerShell
6 309 (3.18%) C#
7 178 (1.83%) Bash
8 159 (1.64%) TypeScript
9 142 (1.46%) Shell Script
10 130 (1.34%) C++
11 123 (1.27%) PL/SQL
12 77 (0.79%) Perl
13 70 (0.72%) Go
14 64 (0.66%) R
15 59 (0.61%) ABAP
16 53 (0.55%) Scala
17 44 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 37 (0.38%) VBA
19 36 (0.37%) C
20 34 (0.35%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,447 (14.91%) Security Cleared
2 1,305 (13.45%) Degree
3 1,134 (11.68%) SC Cleared
4 373 (3.84%) Computer Science Degree
5 220 (2.27%) PMI Certification
6 211 (2.17%) PMP
7 207 (2.13%) DV Cleared
8 175 (1.80%) Cisco Certification
9 169 (1.74%) CISSP
10 166 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
11 149 (1.54%) AWS Certification
11 149 (1.54%) Microsoft Certification
12 142 (1.46%) Master's Degree
13 119 (1.23%) Azure Certification
13 119 (1.23%) CCNP
14 87 (0.90%) CISM
15 79 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
16 74 (0.76%) DBS Check
17 71 (0.73%) ACCA
17 71 (0.73%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 489 (5.04%) QA
2 334 (3.44%) Data Quality
3 299 (3.08%) GDPR
4 228 (2.35%) PMO
5 220 (2.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 218 (2.25%) SLA
7 209 (2.15%) NIST
8 165 (1.70%) Accessibility
9 74 (0.76%) PCI DSS
10 65 (0.67%) GRC
11 48 (0.49%) MiFID
12 44 (0.45%) NCSC
13 40 (0.41%) HIPAA
14 38 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
15 35 (0.36%) NIST 800
16 34 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 32 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
18 31 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
19 28 (0.29%) SEPA
20 27 (0.28%) WCAG
System Software
1 487 (5.02%) Active Directory
2 329 (3.39%) Docker
3 138 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.49%) vSphere
5 47 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
6 36 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 34 (0.35%) Firmware
8 33 (0.34%) Hyper-V
9 27 (0.28%) VMware NSX
10 22 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
12 13 (0.13%) BitLocker
12 13 (0.13%) Time Sharing Option
13 12 (0.12%) Dovecot
13 12 (0.12%) Postfix
14 9 (0.093%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 7 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.062%) DFS Replication
16 6 (0.062%) GridGain
16 6 (0.062%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 438 (4.51%) Kubernetes
2 359 (3.70%) Terraform
3 310 (3.19%) Ansible
4 160 (1.65%) SCCM
5 159 (1.64%) Microsoft Intune
6 100 (1.03%) Grafana
7 83 (0.86%) Prometheus
8 57 (0.59%) Jamf Pro
9 54 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 30 (0.31%) Puppet
11 26 (0.27%) FortiGate
12 25 (0.26%) HP ALM
13 24 (0.25%) Argo
13 24 (0.25%) Progress Chef
14 23 (0.24%) SCOM
15 21 (0.22%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.21%) Data Guard
16 20 (0.21%) ITRS Geneos
17 19 (0.20%) Kibana
18 15 (0.15%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,763 (18.16%) Microsoft
2 777 (8.01%) SAP
3 626 (6.45%) Oracle
4 487 (5.02%) ServiceNow
5 284 (2.93%) Google
6 279 (2.87%) Salesforce
7 250 (2.58%) Cisco
8 212 (2.18%) VMware
9 136 (1.40%) Splunk
10 125 (1.29%) Databricks
11 116 (1.20%) Adobe
12 115 (1.18%) IBM
13 105 (1.08%) Apple
14 103 (1.06%) Workday
15 98 (1.01%) Citrix
16 80 (0.82%) HP
17 72 (0.74%) Juniper
18 70 (0.72%) Red Hat
19 66 (0.68%) Palo Alto
20 65 (0.67%) CyberArk