Continuous Improvement Job Trends

Continual Improvement
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Continuous Improvement skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 10 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 13 27
Rank change year-on-year +4 +14 +25
Permanent jobs citing Continuous Improvement 9,885 4,853 4,358
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 8.37% 9.82% 6.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.44% 11.04% 7.29%
Number of salaries quoted 5,965 2,345 1,751
10th Percentile £33,724 £31,250 £35,000
25th Percentile £42,000 £41,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £57,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £77,500
90th Percentile £92,500 £95,000 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £52,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year - - -4.55%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Continuous Improvement falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 86,418 43,977 59,769
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.19% 88.96% 82.26%
Number of salaries quoted 59,113 24,503 32,039
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,250 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

Continuous Improvement
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Continuous Improvement relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Continuous Improvement job vacancy trend in the UK

Continuous Improvement
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Continuous Improvement.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Continuous Improvement over the 6 months to 10 October 2026.

Salary histogram for Continuous Improvement in the UK

Continuous Improvement
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Continuous Improvement within the UK over the 6 months to 10 October 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +6 8,444 £55,000 -4.35% 10,754
UK excluding London -1 7,062 £52,500 - 7,059
Work from Home +14 3,084 £60,700 +1.17% 4,249
London +9 2,204 £72,500 - 4,342
North of England +17 1,898 £50,000 -1.96% 1,759
South East -2 1,469 £56,000 +4.67% 1,598
Midlands +2 1,315 £50,000 +5.26% 1,157
North West +31 1,015 £52,500 +5.00% 996
South West +7 848 £54,000 +2.37% 797
West Midlands -1 786 £45,497 -13.34% 670
East of England +22 587 £51,359 +22.95% 675
Yorkshire +8 560 £47,000 -14.55% 545
East Midlands +4 526 £54,527 +40.86% 486
Northern Ireland +5 393 £50,000 -37.50% 260
North East +1 334 £51,500 +3.00% 226
Scotland -7 293 £55,000 -18.52% 665
Wales +2 277 £53,171 -2.51% 212

Continuous Improvement
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
1 458 (4.63%) SharePoint
2 254 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
3 159 (1.61%) Confluence
4 71 (0.72%) CMS
5 45 (0.46%) Apache
6 38 (0.38%) Apache Spark
7 29 (0.29%) IIS
8 28 (0.28%) nginx
9 25 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
10 19 (0.19%) WordPress
11 17 (0.17%) SAS
12 14 (0.14%) Moodle
13 13 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 10 (0.10%) CICS
14 10 (0.10%) Headless CMS
15 9 (0.091%) Drupal
16 7 (0.071%) OpenEdge
16 7 (0.071%) OpenStack
17 6 (0.061%) SharePoint Server
17 6 (0.061%) WebLogic
Applications
1 597 (6.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 455 (4.60%) Microsoft Office
3 149 (1.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 89 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
5 53 (0.54%) AutoCAD
6 41 (0.41%) MS Visio
7 40 (0.40%) Revit
8 39 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
9 37 (0.37%) EPLAN
10 27 (0.27%) SOLIDWORKS
11 26 (0.26%) Navisworks
12 21 (0.21%) Chatbot
13 13 (0.13%) Solid Edge
14 12 (0.12%) Windchill
15 9 (0.091%) Trello
16 8 (0.081%) Fusion 360
17 7 (0.071%) Siemens NX
18 6 (0.061%) CATIA
18 6 (0.061%) Maple
18 6 (0.061%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 198 (2.00%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (0.74%) SAP S/4HANA
3 72 (0.73%) NetSuite
4 35 (0.35%) Workday HCM
5 33 (0.33%) Dynamics GP
6 28 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 25 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
8 24 (0.24%) Primavera
9 20 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
10 18 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 17 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
11 17 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
12 14 (0.14%) Infor M3
13 13 (0.13%) IBM Planning Analytics
13 13 (0.13%) Sage X3
13 13 (0.13%) SAP CO
13 13 (0.13%) SAP FI
14 12 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
14 12 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
15 11 (0.11%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 1,757 (17.77%) Azure
2 1,095 (11.08%) AWS
3 936 (9.47%) Microsoft 365
4 754 (7.63%) Power Platform
5 555 (5.61%) SaaS
6 471 (4.76%) Entra ID
7 370 (3.74%) GCP
8 336 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
9 314 (3.18%) Dynamics 365
10 238 (2.41%) GitHub
11 220 (2.23%) Serverless
12 210 (2.12%) Power Automate
13 187 (1.89%) PowerApps
14 135 (1.37%) Microsoft Copilot
14 135 (1.37%) OneDrive
15 127 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
16 104 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
17 92 (0.93%) Amazon S3
18 87 (0.88%) AWS Lambda
19 81 (0.82%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 389 (3.94%) Firewall
2 319 (3.23%) DNS
3 222 (2.25%) DHCP
4 210 (2.12%) VPN
5 194 (1.96%) TCP/IP
6 176 (1.78%) WAN
7 150 (1.52%) Network Security
8 145 (1.47%) LAN
9 135 (1.37%) Wi-Fi
10 125 (1.26%) Wireless
11 81 (0.82%) VLAN
12 58 (0.59%) Broadband
13 55 (0.56%) SD-WAN
14 51 (0.52%) VoIP
15 30 (0.30%) Profibus
16 27 (0.27%) BGP
17 20 (0.20%) OSPF
18 19 (0.19%) HTTP
18 19 (0.19%) Internet
18 19 (0.19%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 527 (5.33%) Power BI
2 286 (2.89%) SQL Server
3 152 (1.54%) PostgreSQL
4 118 (1.19%) Tableau
5 114 (1.15%) MySQL
6 94 (0.95%) Metadata
6 94 (0.95%) MongoDB
6 94 (0.95%) Relational Database
7 84 (0.85%) NoSQL
8 83 (0.84%) Data Warehouse
9 60 (0.61%) Data Lake
10 56 (0.57%) Redis
11 53 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
12 52 (0.53%) Electronic Patient Records
13 47 (0.48%) Power Query
14 44 (0.45%) Big Data
15 40 (0.40%) Azure SQL Database
16 38 (0.38%) Metabase
17 37 (0.37%) SQL Server Reporting Services
18 33 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 405 (4.10%) JIRA
2 348 (3.52%) Git
3 142 (1.44%) Jenkins
4 140 (1.42%) GitLab
5 49 (0.50%) Selenium
6 47 (0.48%) Cypress.io
7 41 (0.41%) Claude Code
8 34 (0.34%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.29%) TeamCity
10 28 (0.28%) JUnit
10 28 (0.28%) Postman
11 25 (0.25%) Maven
12 19 (0.19%) LabVIEW
12 19 (0.19%) Rational DOORS
13 18 (0.18%) Gatling
14 16 (0.16%) JMeter
14 16 (0.16%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.14%) Bitbucket
15 14 (0.14%) Subversion
15 14 (0.14%) Zephyr
General
1 4,362 (44.13%) Social Skills
2 2,514 (25.43%) Finance
3 2,004 (20.27%) Analytical Skills
4 1,216 (12.30%) Manufacturing
5 805 (8.14%) Legal
6 774 (7.83%) Public Sector
7 718 (7.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 704 (7.12%) Organisational Skills
9 634 (6.41%) Law
10 577 (5.84%) Influencing Skills
11 534 (5.40%) Retail
12 470 (4.75%) Marketing
13 373 (3.77%) Aerospace
14 297 (3.00%) Presentation Skills
15 269 (2.72%) Electronics
16 268 (2.71%) Banking
17 157 (1.59%) Telecoms
18 131 (1.33%) Pharmaceutical
19 128 (1.29%) Documentation Skills
20 109 (1.10%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 1,608 (16.27%) Senior
2 1,095 (11.08%) Lead
3 941 (9.52%) Analyst
4 659 (6.67%) Developer
5 360 (3.64%) Senior Manager
6 334 (3.38%) IT Manager
7 332 (3.36%) Consultant
8 317 (3.21%) Architect
9 290 (2.93%) Software Engineer
10 285 (2.88%) IT Support
11 267 (2.70%) Support Analyst
12 263 (2.66%) Support Engineer
13 260 (2.63%) Service Manager
14 236 (2.39%) Delivery Manager
15 225 (2.28%) Senior Developer
16 209 (2.11%) Senior Analyst
17 196 (1.98%) Team Leader
18 180 (1.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 174 (1.76%) Project Manager
20 170 (1.72%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 443 (4.48%) Terraform
2 360 (3.64%) .NET
3 234 (2.37%) React
4 206 (2.08%) HTML
5 201 (2.03%) REST
6 178 (1.80%) Node.js
7 167 (1.69%) CSS
8 131 (1.33%) RESTful
9 126 (1.27%) Spring
10 120 (1.21%) Spring Boot
11 112 (1.13%) Kafka
12 82 (0.83%) AngularJS
13 73 (0.74%) Playwright
14 70 (0.71%) Oracle Fusion
15 69 (0.70%) ASP.NET
16 67 (0.68%) Vue
17 57 (0.58%) OAuth
17 57 (0.58%) SOAP
18 53 (0.54%) PySpark
19 51 (0.52%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 642 (6.49%) Onboarding
2 509 (5.15%) Cloud Native
3 503 (5.09%) Management Information System
4 413 (4.18%) Product Ownership
5 294 (2.97%) Driving Licence
6 254 (2.57%) Self-Motivation
7 205 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
8 204 (2.06%) Enterprise Software
9 183 (1.85%) Data Centre
10 169 (1.71%) Security Posture
11 155 (1.57%) Virtual Team
12 141 (1.43%) FMCG
13 131 (1.33%) Robotics
14 127 (1.28%) Analytical Mindset
15 116 (1.17%) Social Media
16 107 (1.08%) Legacy Systems
17 101 (1.02%) AI Agents
18 97 (0.98%) Hybrid Cloud
18 97 (0.98%) NHS
18 97 (0.98%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 771 (7.80%) Windows
2 457 (4.62%) Linux
3 348 (3.52%) Windows Server
4 91 (0.92%) Unix
5 89 (0.90%) Mac OS
6 73 (0.74%) Windows 10
7 65 (0.66%) Android
8 44 (0.45%) Apple iOS
9 30 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 28 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
11 25 (0.25%) VMS
12 21 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.19%) Ubuntu
14 16 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
15 10 (0.10%) Debian
16 5 (0.051%) CentOS
16 5 (0.051%) Kali Linux
16 5 (0.051%) OpenVMS
16 5 (0.051%) Rocky
17 3 (0.030%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,004 (30.39%) Problem-Solving
2 2,151 (21.76%) Agile
3 2,092 (21.16%) Stakeholder Management
4 1,649 (16.68%) Decision-Making
5 1,506 (15.24%) AI
6 1,486 (15.03%) Mentoring
7 1,339 (13.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,327 (13.42%) CI/CD
9 1,138 (11.51%) DevOps
10 1,113 (11.26%) Roadmaps
11 1,031 (10.43%) Coaching
12 1,027 (10.39%) ITIL
13 947 (9.58%) Service Delivery
14 945 (9.56%) Project Delivery
15 894 (9.04%) Analytics
16 890 (9.00%) Cybersecurity
17 878 (8.88%) Risk Management
17 878 (8.88%) Software Engineering
18 840 (8.50%) Collaborative Working
19 808 (8.17%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 928 (9.39%) SQL
2 908 (9.19%) Python
3 499 (5.05%) JavaScript
4 481 (4.87%) C#
5 395 (4.00%) Java
6 393 (3.98%) PowerShell
7 329 (3.33%) TypeScript
8 151 (1.53%) Bash
9 106 (1.07%) C++
10 79 (0.80%) Go
11 68 (0.69%) C
12 57 (0.58%) Bicep
13 51 (0.52%) Shell Script
14 42 (0.42%) PHP
15 33 (0.33%) Apex Code
15 33 (0.33%) Kotlin
16 30 (0.30%) Rust
17 29 (0.29%) T-SQL
18 28 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 28 (0.28%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,481 (14.98%) Degree
2 1,109 (11.22%) Security Cleared
3 678 (6.86%) SC Cleared
4 270 (2.73%) DV Cleared
5 250 (2.53%) HNC
6 246 (2.49%) CISSP
7 219 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
8 213 (2.15%) DBS Check
9 192 (1.94%) HND
10 190 (1.92%) ACCA
11 183 (1.85%) CISM
12 180 (1.82%) CIMA
13 162 (1.64%) Microsoft Certification
14 159 (1.61%) Azure Certification
15 154 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
16 144 (1.46%) NVQ Level 3
17 141 (1.43%) PMI Certification
18 115 (1.16%) PMP
19 108 (1.09%) Cisco Certification
20 105 (1.06%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 834 (8.44%) QA
2 456 (4.61%) Data Quality
3 382 (3.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 380 (3.84%) Accessibility
5 358 (3.62%) GDPR
6 287 (2.90%) SLA
7 189 (1.91%) NIST
8 157 (1.59%) Cyber Essentials
9 145 (1.47%) ISO 9001
10 143 (1.45%) PMO
11 123 (1.24%) GRC
12 92 (0.93%) PCI DSS
13 86 (0.87%) Actionable Recommendations
14 63 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 61 (0.62%) WCAG
16 49 (0.50%) GMP
16 49 (0.50%) NCSC
17 43 (0.44%) ISO 22301
18 42 (0.42%) GxP
18 42 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 602 (6.09%) Active Directory
2 352 (3.56%) Docker
3 158 (1.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.51%) Hyper-V
5 78 (0.79%) Firmware
6 36 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
7 29 (0.29%) Embedded Firmware
8 26 (0.26%) vSphere
9 24 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
10 23 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
11 11 (0.11%) VMware NSX
12 6 (0.061%) Squid
12 6 (0.061%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.040%) DFS Replication
13 4 (0.040%) VMware Server
14 3 (0.030%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 3 (0.030%) IAG
15 2 (0.020%) Oracle RAC
15 2 (0.020%) Terminal Services
15 2 (0.020%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 410 (4.15%) Kubernetes
2 305 (3.09%) Microsoft Intune
3 158 (1.60%) Ansible
4 123 (1.24%) Grafana
5 67 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
6 66 (0.67%) Prometheus
7 42 (0.42%) SCCM
8 35 (0.35%) Argo
9 32 (0.32%) FortiGate
9 32 (0.32%) Puppet
10 18 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
11 16 (0.16%) Progress Chef
12 15 (0.15%) QRadar
13 14 (0.14%) Functional Safety
13 14 (0.14%) Nessus
13 14 (0.14%) Proxmox
14 13 (0.13%) Kibana
14 13 (0.13%) Packer
15 9 (0.091%) Istio
15 9 (0.091%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,317 (23.44%) Microsoft
2 330 (3.34%) SAP
3 328 (3.32%) Oracle
4 234 (2.37%) ServiceNow
5 222 (2.25%) Google
6 221 (2.24%) VMware
7 217 (2.20%) Salesforce
8 167 (1.69%) Cisco
9 126 (1.27%) YouTube
10 117 (1.18%) Workday
11 112 (1.13%) Databricks
12 107 (1.08%) Siemens
13 80 (0.81%) Sage
14 71 (0.72%) Splunk
15 70 (0.71%) CyberArk
16 59 (0.60%) Adobe
17 55 (0.56%) Palo Alto
18 54 (0.55%) IBM
19 53 (0.54%) Fortinet
20 47 (0.48%) Veeam