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 26 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,588 4,272 4,047
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.57% 16.95% 10.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.39% 18.54% 12.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,708 2,661 2,437
10th Percentile £263 £250 £254
25th Percentile £381 £381 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £591 £600 £625
90th Percentile £716 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £491 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.80% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 245 369
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.06
25th Percentile £16.01 £15.13 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.25 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +0.47% +30.93% -68.49%
75th Percentile £43.01 £34.48 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.70 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.44 £21.90 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.67% +34.94% -68.79%

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 37,044 23,037 31,936
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.35% 91.39% 85.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,386 14,872 20,693
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £417 £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 £502 £525
% change year-on-year +2.54% -4.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,321 1,118 2,341
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -34.02% +8.48%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £72.90
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%

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 26 June 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 26 June 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 26 June 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 -11 1,944 £519 +3.85% 833
North of England -10 722 £445 -6.32% 574
South East -5 707 £488 -2.50% 737
Midlands -8 522 £455 +7.06% 415
West Midlands -8 380 £465 +3.33% 228
North West -11 352 £441 -7.11% 320
Yorkshire -6 326 £450 -5.26% 188
South West -4 323 £500 - 290
East of England -2 256 £450 -3.64% 237
East Midlands -2 140 £449 +22.21% 187
North East -13 50 £366 -18.61% 83
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
1 200 (4.36%) Confluence
2 150 (3.27%) SharePoint
3 86 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.22%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.83%) Apache
5 38 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.70%) SAS
7 29 (0.63%) CMS
8 28 (0.61%) Oracle Workflow
9 17 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 11 (0.24%) nginx
10 11 (0.24%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.22%) CICS
12 9 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Camunda
14 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 266 (5.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 206 (4.49%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (1.37%) MS Visio
5 57 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
6 30 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.31%) AutoCAD
9 12 (0.26%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 11 (0.24%) Revit
11 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
12 7 (0.15%) Trello
13 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
13 6 (0.13%) Sketch
14 5 (0.11%) CATIA
14 5 (0.11%) Maya
15 3 (0.065%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.065%) Navisworks
15 3 (0.065%) Oracle Smart View
16 2 (0.044%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 116 (2.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
4 19 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
5 17 (0.37%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.33%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.31%) Workday HCM
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
12 9 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
13 8 (0.17%) NEC Housing
13 8 (0.17%) SAP HCM
14 7 (0.15%) Loan IQ
14 7 (0.15%) SAP GRC
14 7 (0.15%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 926 (20.18%) Azure
2 682 (14.86%) AWS
3 367 (8.00%) Power Platform
4 335 (7.30%) Microsoft 365
5 260 (5.67%) GCP
6 219 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
7 154 (3.36%) Entra ID
8 152 (3.31%) GitHub
9 127 (2.77%) SaaS
10 125 (2.72%) Serverless
11 75 (1.63%) AWS Lambda
12 74 (1.61%) Amazon S3
13 72 (1.57%) GitHub Actions
14 63 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
15 61 (1.33%) Power Automate
16 60 (1.31%) Snowflake
17 57 (1.24%) Dynamics 365
18 54 (1.18%) OpenShift
19 51 (1.11%) PowerApps
20 42 (0.92%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 184 (4.01%) DNS
2 145 (3.16%) Firewall
3 108 (2.35%) VPN
4 107 (2.33%) TCP/IP
5 99 (2.16%) DHCP
6 87 (1.90%) WAN
7 82 (1.79%) Network Security
8 71 (1.55%) LAN
9 64 (1.39%) SAN
10 59 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
11 44 (0.96%) VLAN
12 41 (0.89%) BGP
13 35 (0.76%) OSPF
13 35 (0.76%) Wireless
14 34 (0.74%) SD-WAN
15 29 (0.63%) VoIP
16 24 (0.52%) VXLAN
17 21 (0.46%) Structured Cabling
18 20 (0.44%) MPLS
19 18 (0.39%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 291 (6.34%) Power BI
2 191 (4.16%) SQL Server
3 135 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
4 123 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
4 123 (2.68%) Relational Database
5 90 (1.96%) MongoDB
6 82 (1.79%) NoSQL
7 79 (1.72%) Tableau
8 78 (1.70%) Data Lake
9 75 (1.63%) Metadata
10 49 (1.07%) Oracle Database
11 45 (0.98%) Big Data
11 45 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 41 (0.89%) MySQL
13 39 (0.85%) Oracle Reports
14 27 (0.59%) Power Query
15 25 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
15 25 (0.54%) RDBMS
16 24 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
16 24 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 459 (10.00%) JIRA
2 253 (5.51%) Git
3 158 (3.44%) Jenkins
4 112 (2.44%) GitLab
5 59 (1.29%) Selenium
6 36 (0.78%) Postman
7 31 (0.68%) REST Assured
8 25 (0.54%) Cypress.io
9 24 (0.52%) Cucumber
10 23 (0.50%) Bitbucket
10 23 (0.50%) JUnit
11 19 (0.41%) Mockito
12 16 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
12 16 (0.35%) WebDriver
13 14 (0.31%) SonarQube
14 12 (0.26%) Gradle
14 12 (0.26%) JMeter
14 12 (0.26%) Maven
14 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
15 10 (0.22%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,374 (51.74%) Social Skills
2 1,842 (40.15%) Analytical Skills
3 1,077 (23.47%) Finance
4 388 (8.46%) Public Sector
5 353 (7.69%) Banking
6 190 (4.14%) Organisational Skills
7 183 (3.99%) Documentation Skills
8 174 (3.79%) Retail
9 127 (2.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 117 (2.55%) Legal
11 106 (2.31%) Influencing Skills
11 106 (2.31%) Presentation Skills
12 99 (2.16%) Front Office
13 95 (2.07%) Manufacturing
14 84 (1.83%) Telecoms
15 83 (1.81%) Marketing
16 73 (1.59%) Investment Banking
17 58 (1.26%) Law
18 54 (1.18%) Back Office
19 45 (0.98%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 663 (14.45%) Analyst
2 489 (10.66%) Developer
3 386 (8.41%) Senior
4 341 (7.43%) Architect
5 312 (6.80%) Lead
6 241 (5.25%) Business Analyst
7 215 (4.69%) Data Engineer
8 205 (4.47%) Consultant
9 158 (3.44%) IT Support
10 149 (3.25%) Project Manager
11 139 (3.03%) Support Engineer
12 104 (2.27%) Data Analyst
13 96 (2.09%) IT Engineer
14 95 (2.07%) Administrator
14 95 (2.07%) Solutions Architect
15 88 (1.92%) Software Engineer
16 87 (1.90%) Java Developer
17 80 (1.74%) Support Analyst
18 79 (1.72%) Technical Support
19 72 (1.57%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (5.51%) REST
2 144 (3.14%) .NET
3 132 (2.88%) Kafka
4 123 (2.68%) React
4 123 (2.68%) Spring
5 117 (2.55%) SOAP
6 115 (2.51%) RESTful
7 103 (2.24%) JSON
8 96 (2.09%) CSS
9 93 (2.03%) Middleware
10 89 (1.94%) Spring Boot
11 88 (1.92%) XML
12 82 (1.79%) HTML
13 73 (1.59%) AngularJS
13 73 (1.59%) Node.js
14 65 (1.42%) LDAP
15 57 (1.24%) OAuth
15 57 (1.24%) PySpark
16 52 (1.13%) Web Services
17 45 (0.98%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 224 (4.88%) Product Ownership
2 218 (4.75%) Onboarding
3 198 (4.32%) Cloud Native
4 166 (3.62%) Data Centre
5 161 (3.51%) Self-Motivation
6 138 (3.01%) Analytical Mindset
7 128 (2.79%) Distributed Systems
8 124 (2.70%) Management Information System
9 121 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
10 109 (2.38%) Data Protection Act
11 108 (2.35%) Enterprise Software
12 96 (2.09%) Data Structures
13 95 (2.07%) Virtual Team
14 57 (1.24%) AI Agents
14 57 (1.24%) Security Posture
15 53 (1.16%) Algorithms
15 53 (1.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 48 (1.05%) Driving Licence
17 47 (1.02%) CMDB
18 43 (0.94%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 575 (12.53%) Windows
2 250 (5.45%) Linux
3 111 (2.42%) Windows 10
4 106 (2.31%) Windows Server
5 88 (1.92%) Unix
6 78 (1.70%) Apple iOS
7 74 (1.61%) Mac OS
8 71 (1.55%) Android
9 47 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.44%) Ubuntu
11 11 (0.24%) CentOS
11 11 (0.24%) VMS
11 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
11 11 (0.24%) zOS
12 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
13 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
14 6 (0.13%) Solaris
15 5 (0.11%) Debian
16 4 (0.087%) AIX
16 4 (0.087%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,209 (26.35%) Agile
2 831 (18.11%) Continuous Improvement
3 771 (16.80%) Stakeholder Management
4 743 (16.19%) CI/CD
5 716 (15.61%) DevOps
6 562 (12.25%) AI
7 521 (11.36%) Decision-Making
8 512 (11.16%) Migration
9 501 (10.92%) Analytics
10 435 (9.48%) ITIL
11 423 (9.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 408 (8.89%) Customer Service
13 379 (8.26%) Validation
14 372 (8.11%) Business Intelligence
15 368 (8.02%) Data Modelling
16 365 (7.96%) Project Management
17 351 (7.65%) Test Automation
18 321 (7.00%) Change Management
19 316 (6.89%) Scrum
20 304 (6.63%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 857 (18.68%) SQL
2 807 (17.59%) Python
3 348 (7.59%) Java
4 262 (5.71%) PowerShell
5 231 (5.03%) JavaScript
6 171 (3.73%) C#
7 108 (2.35%) Bash
8 106 (2.31%) TypeScript
9 77 (1.68%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.29%) C++
11 45 (0.98%) T-SQL
12 42 (0.92%) C
13 41 (0.89%) Go
13 41 (0.89%) Shell Script
14 35 (0.76%) Bicep
15 32 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 28 (0.61%) R
17 26 (0.57%) Apex Code
18 21 (0.46%) Scala
19 19 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,003 (21.86%) Security Cleared
2 672 (14.65%) SC Cleared
3 564 (12.29%) Degree
4 195 (4.25%) DV Cleared
5 177 (3.86%) Computer Science Degree
6 130 (2.83%) Microsoft Certification
7 122 (2.66%) BPSS Clearance
8 111 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
9 89 (1.94%) CISSP
10 74 (1.61%) PMP
11 65 (1.42%) A+ Certification
11 65 (1.42%) Azure Certification
12 64 (1.39%) CCNA
13 63 (1.37%) PMI Certification
14 60 (1.31%) CISM
15 51 (1.11%) Master's Degree
16 50 (1.09%) Network+ Certification
17 43 (0.94%) MCSE
18 37 (0.81%) AWS Certification
19 34 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 320 (6.97%) Data Quality
2 253 (5.51%) QA
3 141 (3.07%) GDPR
4 95 (2.07%) SLA
5 90 (1.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 88 (1.92%) Accessibility
7 74 (1.61%) NIST
8 72 (1.57%) PMO
9 45 (0.98%) GRC
10 25 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 22 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
12 20 (0.44%) PCI DSS
13 15 (0.33%) NCSC
14 14 (0.31%) COBIT
14 14 (0.31%) 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
1 345 (7.52%) Active Directory
2 287 (6.26%) Docker
3 106 (2.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.85%) vSphere
5 37 (0.81%) VMware NSX
6 36 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
7 31 (0.68%) Hyper-V
8 26 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (0.44%) Firmware
11 19 (0.41%) vCloud
12 11 (0.24%) IAG
12 11 (0.24%) Squid
13 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.11%) NFS
15 4 (0.087%) ACF2
15 4 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.087%) RACF
15 4 (0.087%) Snort
15 4 (0.087%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 345 (7.52%) Kubernetes
2 263 (5.73%) Terraform
3 154 (3.36%) Ansible
4 125 (2.72%) Microsoft Intune
5 99 (2.16%) Grafana
6 86 (1.87%) Prometheus
7 70 (1.53%) SCCM
8 48 (1.05%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.81%) FortiGate
10 34 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
11 25 (0.54%) Control-M
12 21 (0.46%) Nessus
13 20 (0.44%) Argo
14 18 (0.39%) Kibana
15 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
15 17 (0.37%) SCOM
15 17 (0.37%) WSUS
16 15 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
17 14 (0.31%) Puppet
18 13 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 876 (19.09%) Microsoft
2 323 (7.04%) Oracle
3 273 (5.95%) SAP
4 272 (5.93%) ServiceNow
5 171 (3.73%) VMware
6 136 (2.96%) Google
7 116 (2.53%) Splunk
8 112 (2.44%) Databricks
9 107 (2.33%) Salesforce
10 101 (2.20%) Cisco
11 72 (1.57%) Workday
12 61 (1.33%) Red Hat
13 57 (1.24%) Dynatrace
14 54 (1.18%) Dell
15 47 (1.02%) Adobe
16 46 (1.00%) Citrix
17 45 (0.98%) CyberArk
18 43 (0.94%) Apple
19 42 (0.92%) MuleSoft
20 38 (0.83%) BeyondTrust