Problem-Solving Contract Job Trends in England

Problem Solving
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Problem-Solving skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 1 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,617 4,308 4,016
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.53% 16.80% 10.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.34% 18.43% 12.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,715 2,676 2,410
10th Percentile £263 £242 £250
25th Percentile £381 £379 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.50% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £725 £731
UK median daily rate £489 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.25% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 249 361
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.13 £11.00
25th Percentile £16.17 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.28 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +0.33% +31.12% -68.02%
75th Percentile £42.38 £38.42 £35.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £66.30 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £21.95 £16.23
% change year-on-year -8.88% +35.24% -68.49%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

Problem-Solving 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 England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 37,409 23,372 31,772
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.35% 91.17% 85.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,567 15,052 20,589
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £418 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £729 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +2.79% -4.57% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,348 1,165 2,330
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.97 £17.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £46.90 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.48% -34.02% +1.65%
75th Percentile £68.50 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £72.93
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.81%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Problem-Solving relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Problem-Solving job vacancy trend in England

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Problem-Solving.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in England over the 6 months to 1 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Problem-Solving in England

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Problem-Solving.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Problem-Solving in England over the 6 months to 1 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in England

Problem-Solving
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Problem-Solving within the England region over the 6 months to 1 July 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
London -12 1,953 £513 +2.50% 1,410
North of England -11 728 £447 -5.89% 717
South East -5 718 £487 -0.66% 852
Midlands -7 525 £453 +6.47% 488
West Midlands -8 381 £465 +3.22% 272
North West -12 353 £445 -6.75% 395
Yorkshire -6 333 £450 -5.26% 232
South West -4 323 £500 - 347
East of England -2 257 £450 -4.26% 300
East Midlands -2 142 £449 +22.21% 217
North East -16 48 £356 -20.83% 109
Problem-Solving
UK

Problem-Solving
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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
1 201 (4.35%) Confluence
2 149 (3.23%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.88%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.21%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.80%) Apache
5 37 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 31 (0.67%) SAS
7 30 (0.65%) CMS
8 28 (0.61%) Oracle Workflow
9 18 (0.39%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.28%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
12 10 (0.22%) CICS
13 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Camunda
13 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 262 (5.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 208 (4.51%) Microsoft Office
3 91 (1.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (1.43%) MS Visio
5 59 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
6 29 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.30%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 11 (0.24%) Revit
10 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
11 7 (0.15%) Trello
12 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
12 6 (0.13%) Sketch
13 5 (0.11%) CATIA
13 5 (0.11%) Maya
14 3 (0.065%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.065%) Navisworks
14 3 (0.065%) Oracle Smart View
15 2 (0.043%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 114 (2.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
4 19 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
5 16 (0.35%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.32%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.30%) NetSuite
8 13 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
9 12 (0.26%) SAP SD
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
10 11 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 11 (0.24%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.22%) Finacle
11 10 (0.22%) iTrent
11 10 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
12 8 (0.17%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.17%) NEC Housing
12 8 (0.17%) SAP HCM
13 7 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
13 7 (0.15%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 932 (20.19%) Azure
2 678 (14.68%) AWS
3 375 (8.12%) Power Platform
4 335 (7.26%) Microsoft 365
5 257 (5.57%) GCP
6 226 (4.89%) Azure DevOps
7 158 (3.42%) Entra ID
8 154 (3.34%) GitHub
9 128 (2.77%) SaaS
10 123 (2.66%) Serverless
11 74 (1.60%) AWS Lambda
12 73 (1.58%) Amazon S3
12 73 (1.58%) GitHub Actions
13 63 (1.36%) Azure Data Factory
13 63 (1.36%) Power Automate
14 59 (1.28%) Snowflake
15 58 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
16 55 (1.19%) OpenShift
16 55 (1.19%) PowerApps
17 43 (0.93%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 187 (4.05%) DNS
2 147 (3.18%) Firewall
3 111 (2.40%) TCP/IP
4 110 (2.38%) VPN
5 99 (2.14%) DHCP
6 90 (1.95%) WAN
7 83 (1.80%) Network Security
8 74 (1.60%) LAN
9 65 (1.41%) SAN
10 61 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
11 45 (0.97%) VLAN
12 42 (0.91%) BGP
13 37 (0.80%) Wireless
14 36 (0.78%) OSPF
15 34 (0.74%) SD-WAN
16 30 (0.65%) VoIP
17 24 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 23 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
19 20 (0.43%) MPLS
20 18 (0.39%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (6.43%) Power BI
2 200 (4.33%) SQL Server
3 140 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
4 122 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
4 122 (2.64%) Relational Database
5 92 (1.99%) MongoDB
6 82 (1.78%) NoSQL
7 79 (1.71%) Tableau
8 77 (1.67%) Data Lake
9 76 (1.65%) Metadata
10 50 (1.08%) Oracle Database
11 46 (1.00%) Big Data
11 46 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 42 (0.91%) MySQL
13 38 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
14 28 (0.61%) Power Query
15 25 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
15 25 (0.54%) Delta Lake
15 25 (0.54%) RDBMS
16 23 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 462 (10.01%) JIRA
2 261 (5.65%) Git
3 160 (3.47%) Jenkins
4 110 (2.38%) GitLab
5 60 (1.30%) Selenium
6 37 (0.80%) Postman
7 32 (0.69%) REST Assured
8 25 (0.54%) Cypress.io
9 24 (0.52%) Cucumber
10 22 (0.48%) JUnit
11 21 (0.45%) Bitbucket
12 20 (0.43%) Mockito
13 17 (0.37%) WebDriver
14 16 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
15 14 (0.30%) SonarQube
16 13 (0.28%) Maven
16 13 (0.28%) Zephyr
17 12 (0.26%) Gradle
17 12 (0.26%) JMeter
18 10 (0.22%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,378 (51.51%) Social Skills
2 1,879 (40.70%) Analytical Skills
3 1,083 (23.46%) Finance
4 397 (8.60%) Public Sector
5 353 (7.65%) Banking
6 193 (4.18%) Organisational Skills
7 186 (4.03%) Documentation Skills
8 175 (3.79%) Retail
9 129 (2.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 113 (2.45%) Legal
11 108 (2.34%) Influencing Skills
11 108 (2.34%) Presentation Skills
12 100 (2.17%) Front Office
13 97 (2.10%) Manufacturing
14 87 (1.88%) Marketing
15 86 (1.86%) Telecoms
16 75 (1.62%) Investment Banking
17 57 (1.23%) Law
18 54 (1.17%) Back Office
19 46 (1.00%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 655 (14.19%) Analyst
2 500 (10.83%) Developer
3 391 (8.47%) Senior
4 342 (7.41%) Architect
5 315 (6.82%) Lead
6 237 (5.13%) Business Analyst
7 213 (4.61%) Data Engineer
8 205 (4.44%) Consultant
9 159 (3.44%) IT Support
10 154 (3.34%) Project Manager
11 142 (3.08%) Support Engineer
12 103 (2.23%) Data Analyst
13 98 (2.12%) Administrator
14 96 (2.08%) IT Engineer
15 95 (2.06%) Solutions Architect
16 89 (1.93%) Java Developer
17 85 (1.84%) Software Engineer
18 81 (1.75%) Technical Support
19 80 (1.73%) Support Analyst
20 74 (1.60%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 256 (5.54%) REST
2 146 (3.16%) .NET
3 134 (2.90%) Kafka
4 124 (2.69%) Spring
5 123 (2.66%) React
6 119 (2.58%) RESTful
7 113 (2.45%) SOAP
8 104 (2.25%) JSON
9 96 (2.08%) CSS
9 96 (2.08%) Middleware
10 90 (1.95%) Spring Boot
11 87 (1.88%) XML
12 82 (1.78%) HTML
13 74 (1.60%) AngularJS
14 73 (1.58%) Node.js
15 60 (1.30%) LDAP
16 57 (1.23%) PySpark
17 56 (1.21%) OAuth
18 51 (1.10%) Web Services
19 46 (1.00%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 221 (4.79%) Onboarding
2 218 (4.72%) Product Ownership
3 200 (4.33%) Cloud Native
4 169 (3.66%) Data Centre
5 162 (3.51%) Self-Motivation
6 140 (3.03%) Analytical Mindset
7 129 (2.79%) Distributed Systems
8 122 (2.64%) Management Information System
9 120 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
10 109 (2.36%) Enterprise Software
11 108 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
12 102 (2.21%) Data Structures
13 93 (2.01%) Virtual Team
14 56 (1.21%) AI Agents
15 53 (1.15%) Algorithms
15 53 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 52 (1.13%) Security Posture
17 48 (1.04%) CMDB
17 48 (1.04%) Driving Licence
18 45 (0.97%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 582 (12.61%) Windows
2 256 (5.54%) Linux
3 108 (2.34%) Windows Server
4 107 (2.32%) Windows 10
5 92 (1.99%) Unix
6 77 (1.67%) Apple iOS
7 76 (1.65%) Mac OS
8 72 (1.56%) Android
9 47 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.45%) Ubuntu
11 11 (0.24%) CentOS
11 11 (0.24%) VMS
11 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
11 11 (0.24%) zOS
12 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
13 7 (0.15%) Solaris
13 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.11%) Debian
14 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.087%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,216 (26.34%) Agile
2 843 (18.26%) Continuous Improvement
3 787 (17.05%) Stakeholder Management
4 748 (16.20%) CI/CD
5 727 (15.75%) DevOps
6 570 (12.35%) AI
7 522 (11.31%) Decision-Making
8 514 (11.13%) Migration
9 503 (10.89%) Analytics
10 444 (9.62%) ITIL
11 429 (9.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 415 (8.99%) Customer Service
13 379 (8.21%) Validation
14 377 (8.17%) Business Intelligence
15 368 (7.97%) Project Management
16 366 (7.93%) Data Modelling
17 347 (7.52%) Test Automation
18 321 (6.95%) Change Management
19 318 (6.89%) Scrum
20 309 (6.69%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 857 (18.56%) SQL
2 800 (17.33%) Python
3 350 (7.58%) Java
4 257 (5.57%) PowerShell
5 234 (5.07%) JavaScript
6 168 (3.64%) C#
7 113 (2.45%) Bash
8 108 (2.34%) TypeScript
9 78 (1.69%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.28%) C++
11 48 (1.04%) T-SQL
12 42 (0.91%) C
12 42 (0.91%) Go
12 42 (0.91%) Shell Script
13 35 (0.76%) Bicep
14 34 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 29 (0.63%) Apex Code
16 28 (0.61%) R
17 22 (0.48%) Kotlin
18 21 (0.45%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,005 (21.77%) Security Cleared
2 669 (14.49%) SC Cleared
3 571 (12.37%) Degree
4 198 (4.29%) DV Cleared
5 175 (3.79%) Computer Science Degree
6 131 (2.84%) Microsoft Certification
7 116 (2.51%) BPSS Clearance
8 114 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
9 89 (1.93%) CISSP
10 74 (1.60%) PMP
11 67 (1.45%) A+ Certification
12 66 (1.43%) CCNA
13 65 (1.41%) Azure Certification
14 64 (1.39%) PMI Certification
15 60 (1.30%) CISM
16 52 (1.13%) Master's Degree
17 50 (1.08%) Network+ Certification
18 42 (0.91%) MCSE
19 37 (0.80%) AWS Certification
20 35 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 322 (6.97%) Data Quality
2 260 (5.63%) QA
3 143 (3.10%) GDPR
4 97 (2.10%) SLA
5 90 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 86 (1.86%) Accessibility
7 74 (1.60%) NIST
8 72 (1.56%) PMO
9 45 (0.97%) GRC
10 25 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 23 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.45%) PCI DSS
13 15 (0.32%) NCSC
14 14 (0.30%) COBIT
14 14 (0.30%) WCAG
15 13 (0.28%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.28%) ISO 20022
16 12 (0.26%) PSD2
17 11 (0.24%) Def Stans
17 11 (0.24%) IFRS
System Software
1 337 (7.30%) Active Directory
2 293 (6.35%) Docker
3 106 (2.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.87%) vSphere
5 37 (0.80%) VMware NSX
6 36 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
7 30 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 28 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
9 23 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
10 19 (0.41%) Firmware
10 19 (0.41%) vCloud
11 12 (0.26%) IAG
12 11 (0.24%) Squid
13 6 (0.13%) NFS
13 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.087%) ACF2
14 4 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.087%) RACF
14 4 (0.087%) Snort
14 4 (0.087%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 350 (7.58%) Kubernetes
2 267 (5.78%) Terraform
3 154 (3.34%) Ansible
4 125 (2.71%) Microsoft Intune
5 101 (2.19%) Grafana
6 88 (1.91%) Prometheus
7 69 (1.49%) SCCM
8 48 (1.04%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.80%) FortiGate
10 35 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.58%) Control-M
12 22 (0.48%) Nessus
13 20 (0.43%) Argo
14 18 (0.39%) IBM Guardium
14 18 (0.39%) SCOM
15 17 (0.37%) Kibana
15 17 (0.37%) WSUS
16 16 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
17 13 (0.28%) Puppet
18 12 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 883 (19.12%) Microsoft
2 326 (7.06%) Oracle
3 278 (6.02%) ServiceNow
4 275 (5.96%) SAP
5 171 (3.70%) VMware
6 139 (3.01%) Google
7 119 (2.58%) Splunk
8 110 (2.38%) Databricks
8 110 (2.38%) Salesforce
9 103 (2.23%) Cisco
10 72 (1.56%) Workday
11 61 (1.32%) Red Hat
12 59 (1.28%) Dynatrace
13 54 (1.17%) Dell
14 46 (1.00%) Adobe
14 46 (1.00%) Citrix
15 44 (0.95%) Apple
16 42 (0.91%) MuleSoft
17 41 (0.89%) CyberArk
18 36 (0.78%) Informatica