Continuous Improvement Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Continual Improvement
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring Continuous Improvement skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 20 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 20 35 50
Rank change year-on-year +15 +15 +27
Contract jobs citing Continuous Improvement 206 88 71
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 9.12% 5.29% 3.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.46% 6.15% 4.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 138 44 41
10th Percentile £343 £400 £408
25th Percentile £421 £475 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £519 £488
Median % change year-on-year -0.72% +6.41% +6.85%
75th Percentile £550 £600 £585
90th Percentile £614 £721 £638
England median daily rate £500 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -5.66% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 2 0
10th Percentile £13.69 £20.26 -
25th Percentile £14.19 £26.26 -
Median hourly rate £18.42 £36.88 -
Median % change year-on-year -50.05% - -
75th Percentile £23.94 £48.13 -
90th Percentile £47.50 £54.50 -
England median hourly rate £23.33 £33.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year -30.87% -48.08% -

All Process and Methodology Skills
West Midlands

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 in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,969 1,430 1,563
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 87.12% 85.89% 85.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,244 903 1,062
10th Percentile £263 £223 £263
25th Percentile £400 £400 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -
75th Percentile £582 £612 £600
90th Percentile £674 £713 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 49 49
10th Percentile £13.25 £14.70 £14.46
25th Percentile £16.11 £16.75 £17.50
Median hourly rate £20.25 £22.00 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.95% -4.35% +29.94%
75th Percentile £27.21 £33.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £38.01 £52.50 £67.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +23.61%

Continuous Improvement
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

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

Continuous Improvement job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Continuous Improvement
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

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

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

Continuous Improvement
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Continuous Improvement in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 20 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Continuous Improvement in the West Midlands

Continuous Improvement
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

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

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

Continuous Improvement
Hourly Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Continuous Improvement in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 20 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Continuous Improvement in the West Midlands

Continuous Improvement
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

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 West Midlands region over the 6 months to 20 December 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
Shropshire +2 76 £520 -9.57% 16
Birmingham +12 45 £425 -18.07% 47
Warwickshire -1 32 £513 -4.65% 33
Worcestershire -8 16 £575 +15.00% 6
Coventry -8 11 £513 +28.13% 3
Staffordshire +3 5 - - 16
Solihull - 4 £358 - 3
Walsall +5 2 - - 1
Wolverhampton - 2 £160 - 4
Smethwick - 2 - - 1
Continuous Improvement
England

Continuous Improvement
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 25 (12.14%) SAS
2 23 (11.17%) WebLogic
3 22 (10.68%) Apache
4 8 (3.88%) Confluence
4 8 (3.88%) JBoss
4 8 (3.88%) SharePoint
5 5 (2.43%) OpenStack
Applications
1 15 (7.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (5.83%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (4.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (1.46%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.49%) Revit
6 1 (0.49%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (1.94%) Maximo
1 4 (1.94%) SAP HR
1 4 (1.94%) SAP PM
2 2 (0.97%) Dynamics NAV
2 2 (0.97%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.49%) CA PPM
Cloud Services
1 45 (21.84%) AWS
2 40 (19.42%) Azure
3 17 (8.25%) Azure Monitor
4 12 (5.83%) Power Platform
5 9 (4.37%) Amazon EKS
5 9 (4.37%) Cloud Computing
6 8 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
6 8 (3.88%) GitHub
6 8 (3.88%) OpenShift
6 8 (3.88%) Salesforce Service Cloud
7 7 (3.40%) Azure AKS
7 7 (3.40%) GitHub Actions
8 6 (2.91%) Datadog
8 6 (2.91%) GCP
9 5 (2.43%) AWS CloudFormation
9 5 (2.43%) Azure Data Factory
9 5 (2.43%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 5 (2.43%) Microsoft 365
9 5 (2.43%) npm
9 5 (2.43%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (3.40%) Network Security
2 6 (2.91%) Firewall
3 4 (1.94%) VPN
4 2 (0.97%) Broadband
5 1 (0.49%) BGP
5 1 (0.49%) Intranet
5 1 (0.49%) IP Telephony
5 1 (0.49%) LAN
5 1 (0.49%) OSPF
5 1 (0.49%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.49%) VoIP
5 1 (0.49%) VSAN
5 1 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.49%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (13.11%) Pentaho
2 13 (6.31%) Oracle Database
3 9 (4.37%) MongoDB
4 8 (3.88%) Power BI
5 6 (2.91%) MySQL
5 6 (2.91%) SAS Enterprise Guide
6 4 (1.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 2 (0.97%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.49%) Metadata
8 1 (0.49%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.49%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 47 (22.82%) Git
1 47 (22.82%) JIRA
2 33 (16.02%) Jenkins
3 19 (9.22%) Selenium
4 13 (6.31%) JUnit
5 10 (4.85%) GitLab
6 8 (3.88%) Eclipse
6 8 (3.88%) IntelliJ
7 7 (3.40%) CircleCI
8 6 (2.91%) Postman
9 5 (2.43%) Artifactory
9 5 (2.43%) Bitbucket
9 5 (2.43%) Cypress.io
9 5 (2.43%) Gradle
9 5 (2.43%) Maven
9 5 (2.43%) Snyk
9 5 (2.43%) SonarQube
9 5 (2.43%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (2.43%) webpack
10 2 (0.97%) SoapUI
General
1 100 (48.54%) Social Skills
2 40 (19.42%) Finance
3 27 (13.11%) Analytical Skills
4 21 (10.19%) Public Sector
5 10 (4.85%) Influencing Skills
6 9 (4.37%) Organisational Skills
7 7 (3.40%) Banking
8 6 (2.91%) Manufacturing
9 5 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 5 (2.43%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.94%) Legal
10 4 (1.94%) Telecoms
11 3 (1.46%) Aeronautics
12 2 (0.97%) Publishing
13 1 (0.49%) Aerospace
13 1 (0.49%) Automotive
13 1 (0.49%) Electronics
13 1 (0.49%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.49%) Military
Job Titles
1 23 (11.17%) Analyst
2 12 (5.83%) Data Engineer
3 11 (5.34%) Monitoring Engineer
3 11 (5.34%) Platform Engineer
4 9 (4.37%) DevOps Engineer
4 9 (4.37%) Lead
4 9 (4.37%) Senior
5 8 (3.88%) Delivery Manager
5 8 (3.88%) Scrum Master
6 7 (3.40%) Developer
7 6 (2.91%) Architect
7 6 (2.91%) Business Analyst
8 5 (2.43%) DBA
8 5 (2.43%) Oracle DBA
8 5 (2.43%) SAS Engineer
9 4 (1.94%) Accountant
9 4 (1.94%) IT Security Officer
9 4 (1.94%) Operations Analyst
9 4 (1.94%) Salesforce Technical Architect
9 4 (1.94%) Security Officer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (8.25%) REST
2 13 (6.31%) JSON
3 11 (5.34%) Play Framework
4 9 (4.37%) Spring
5 8 (3.88%) EJB
5 8 (3.88%) Hibernate
5 8 (3.88%) HTML
5 8 (3.88%) HTML5
5 8 (3.88%) J2EE
5 8 (3.88%) J2SE
5 8 (3.88%) SOAP
5 8 (3.88%) XML
6 5 (2.43%) Elastic Stack
6 5 (2.43%) GraphQL
6 5 (2.43%) YAML
7 4 (1.94%) Lightning Web Components
7 4 (1.94%) RESTful
7 4 (1.94%) SAP PI
7 4 (1.94%) Visualforce
8 3 (1.46%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 17 (8.25%) Product Ownership
2 8 (3.88%) Onboarding
3 6 (2.91%) Self-Motivation
4 5 (2.43%) Analytical Mindset
4 5 (2.43%) Enterprise Cloud
4 5 (2.43%) Private Cloud
5 4 (1.94%) Operational Technology
5 4 (1.94%) Security Operations Centre
5 4 (1.94%) Security Posture
6 3 (1.46%) Driving Licence
6 3 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
6 3 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (0.97%) CMDB
7 2 (0.97%) Legacy Applications
7 2 (0.97%) Management Information System
7 2 (0.97%) Renewable Energy
8 1 (0.49%) Cyber Threat
8 1 (0.49%) Data Centre
8 1 (0.49%) Educational Technology
8 1 (0.49%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 26 (12.62%) Unix
1 26 (12.62%) Windows
2 23 (11.17%) Linux
3 10 (4.85%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.97%) Android
4 2 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.49%) Mac OS X
5 1 (0.49%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 98 (47.57%) Agile
2 75 (36.41%) Problem-Solving
3 59 (28.64%) CI/CD
4 56 (27.18%) DevOps
5 54 (26.21%) Analytics
6 53 (25.73%) Scrum
7 51 (24.76%) Business Intelligence
8 40 (19.42%) Stakeholder Management
9 38 (18.45%) Test Automation
10 35 (16.99%) ETL
11 33 (16.02%) Data Modelling
11 33 (16.02%) Deployment Automation
12 31 (15.05%) Incident Response
13 30 (14.56%) Service Management
14 28 (13.59%) Decision-Making
15 27 (13.11%) Mentoring
16 26 (12.62%) Data Pipeline
17 25 (12.14%) Business Analytics
17 25 (12.14%) Data Integration
17 25 (12.14%) Data Virtualisation
Programming Languages
1 61 (29.61%) SQL
2 14 (6.80%) Java
3 13 (6.31%) Scala
4 12 (5.83%) Python
5 5 (2.43%) Shell Script
6 4 (1.94%) Apex Code
7 2 (0.97%) Bash
7 2 (0.97%) C#
7 2 (0.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 2 (0.97%) JavaScript
7 2 (0.97%) PowerShell
8 1 (0.49%) C++
8 1 (0.49%) Go
8 1 (0.49%) Groovy
8 1 (0.49%) Kotlin
8 1 (0.49%) Perl
8 1 (0.49%) R
8 1 (0.49%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 67 (32.52%) Security Cleared
2 55 (26.70%) SC Cleared
3 19 (9.22%) Degree
4 10 (4.85%) AWS Certification
5 9 (4.37%) Microsoft Certification
6 7 (3.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 7 (3.40%) Azure Certification
7 6 (2.91%) DV Cleared
8 4 (1.94%) ACCA
8 4 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
8 4 (1.94%) CIMA
9 3 (1.46%) CISSP
9 3 (1.46%) DBS Check
9 3 (1.46%) PRINCE2 Certification
10 2 (0.97%) CCNA
10 2 (0.97%) CCNP
10 2 (0.97%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.97%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.97%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.97%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (16.50%) Data Quality
2 12 (5.83%) QA
3 10 (4.85%) PMO
4 8 (3.88%) Accessibility
5 6 (2.91%) ISO 19650
6 5 (2.43%) SLA
7 3 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.97%) ISO 9001
8 2 (0.97%) ITGC
8 2 (0.97%) NIST
9 1 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.49%) GDPR
9 1 (0.49%) GRC
9 1 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.49%) WCAG
System Software
1 45 (21.84%) Docker
2 8 (3.88%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.49%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.49%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 40 (19.42%) Kubernetes
2 13 (6.31%) Puppet
3 11 (5.34%) Ansible
4 9 (4.37%) Terraform
5 6 (2.91%) Grafana
5 6 (2.91%) Prometheus
6 5 (2.43%) Podman
6 5 (2.43%) Progress Chef
7 3 (1.46%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.49%) Tivoli
8 1 (0.49%) vRealize
8 1 (0.49%) VxRail
Vendors
1 50 (24.27%) Oracle
2 34 (16.50%) Microsoft
3 27 (13.11%) Talend
4 25 (12.14%) Denodo
4 25 (12.14%) Splunk
5 20 (9.71%) AppDynamics
5 20 (9.71%) Cisco
6 19 (9.22%) Dynatrace
7 13 (6.31%) SAP
8 12 (5.83%) Salesforce
9 8 (3.88%) ServiceNow
9 8 (3.88%) webMethods
10 3 (1.46%) IBM
10 3 (1.46%) Planview
11 2 (0.97%) BMC
11 2 (0.97%) Databricks
11 2 (0.97%) Google
11 2 (0.97%) Informatica
11 2 (0.97%) Red Hat
11 2 (0.97%) VMware