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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -8 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,585 4,240 4,040
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.58% 16.97% 10.78%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.41% 18.58% 12.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,717 2,652 2,425
10th Percentile £263 £250 £254
25th Percentile £383 £382 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £497 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.64% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £625
90th Percentile £715 £720 £738
UK median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 246 375
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.16 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.28 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +0.33% +31.12% -68.02%
75th Percentile £42.51 £34.87 £36.11
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.13 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.44 £22.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.09% +35.55% -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 36,943 22,820 31,966
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.26% 91.36% 85.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,357 14,745 20,676
10th Percentile £325 £300 £303
25th Percentile £415 £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 £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £502 £525
% change year-on-year +2.09% -4.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,312 1,098 2,392
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £27.06 £37.63
Median % change year-on-year +73.67% -28.07% +7.07%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £74.13 £72.50
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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -12 1,943 £519 +3.71% 740
North of England -11 726 £447 -5.89% 553
South East -6 704 £488 -2.50% 727
Midlands -9 514 £459 +7.94% 406
West Midlands -8 374 £466 +3.54% 225
North West -11 350 £440 -7.37% 301
Yorkshire -6 332 £450 -5.26% 182
South West -4 324 £500 - 252
East of England -2 257 £450 -3.54% 229
East Midlands -2 138 £449 +21.13% 181
North East -18 50 £370 -17.78% 86
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
1 205 (4.47%) Confluence
2 148 (3.23%) SharePoint
3 84 (1.83%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.22%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.83%) Apache
6 37 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.70%) SAS
8 29 (0.63%) CMS
9 27 (0.59%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.24%) nginx
11 11 (0.24%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
12 10 (0.22%) CICS
12 10 (0.22%) 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
1 270 (5.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 205 (4.47%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (2.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (1.37%) Microsoft Project
5 59 (1.29%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.46%) 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 4 (0.087%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.065%) LaTeX
16 3 (0.065%) Navisworks
16 3 (0.065%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 115 (2.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.44%) 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 9 (0.20%) Finacle
11 9 (0.20%) iTrent
11 9 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
11 9 (0.20%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.17%) NEC Housing
13 7 (0.15%) Loan IQ
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 922 (20.11%) Azure
2 683 (14.90%) AWS
3 367 (8.00%) Power Platform
4 332 (7.24%) Microsoft 365
5 259 (5.65%) GCP
6 211 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
7 157 (3.42%) GitHub
8 152 (3.32%) Entra ID
9 131 (2.86%) SaaS
10 126 (2.75%) Serverless
11 77 (1.68%) Amazon S3
12 76 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
12 76 (1.66%) GitHub Actions
13 61 (1.33%) Azure Data Factory
14 59 (1.29%) Snowflake
15 58 (1.26%) Power Automate
16 55 (1.20%) Dynamics 365
17 52 (1.13%) OpenShift
18 50 (1.09%) PowerApps
19 41 (0.89%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 179 (3.90%) DNS
2 147 (3.21%) Firewall
3 109 (2.38%) TCP/IP
4 107 (2.33%) VPN
5 97 (2.12%) DHCP
6 90 (1.96%) WAN
7 78 (1.70%) Network Security
8 72 (1.57%) LAN
9 62 (1.35%) SAN
10 60 (1.31%) Wi-Fi
11 45 (0.98%) VLAN
12 41 (0.89%) BGP
13 36 (0.79%) SD-WAN
14 35 (0.76%) OSPF
15 32 (0.70%) Wireless
16 27 (0.59%) VoIP
17 24 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 21 (0.46%) Structured Cabling
19 19 (0.41%) MPLS
20 18 (0.39%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 291 (6.35%) Power BI
2 187 (4.08%) SQL Server
3 135 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
4 123 (2.68%) Relational Database
5 121 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
6 91 (1.98%) MongoDB
7 82 (1.79%) NoSQL
8 80 (1.74%) Tableau
9 77 (1.68%) Data Lake
10 76 (1.66%) Metadata
11 49 (1.07%) Oracle Database
12 48 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 44 (0.96%) Big Data
14 42 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
15 40 (0.87%) MySQL
16 28 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
16 28 (0.61%) Power Query
17 24 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
17 24 (0.52%) Delta Lake
17 24 (0.52%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 463 (10.10%) JIRA
2 249 (5.43%) Git
3 153 (3.34%) Jenkins
4 111 (2.42%) GitLab
5 54 (1.18%) Selenium
6 34 (0.74%) Postman
7 28 (0.61%) REST Assured
8 25 (0.55%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.50%) Cucumber
10 22 (0.48%) JUnit
11 20 (0.44%) Cypress.io
12 18 (0.39%) Mockito
13 15 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
14 14 (0.31%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.31%) WebDriver
15 12 (0.26%) JMeter
15 12 (0.26%) Maven
15 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
16 11 (0.24%) Gradle
17 10 (0.22%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,367 (51.62%) Social Skills
2 1,833 (39.98%) Analytical Skills
3 1,070 (23.34%) Finance
4 382 (8.33%) Public Sector
5 352 (7.68%) Banking
6 192 (4.19%) Organisational Skills
7 182 (3.97%) Documentation Skills
8 174 (3.79%) Retail
9 123 (2.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 118 (2.57%) Legal
11 107 (2.33%) Presentation Skills
12 96 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
13 94 (2.05%) Front Office
14 90 (1.96%) Manufacturing
15 85 (1.85%) Marketing
16 84 (1.83%) Telecoms
17 69 (1.50%) Investment Banking
18 59 (1.29%) Law
19 51 (1.11%) Back Office
20 45 (0.98%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 658 (14.35%) Analyst
2 486 (10.60%) Developer
3 381 (8.31%) Senior
4 337 (7.35%) Architect
5 310 (6.76%) Lead
6 237 (5.17%) Business Analyst
7 214 (4.67%) Data Engineer
8 207 (4.51%) Consultant
9 154 (3.36%) IT Support
10 151 (3.29%) Project Manager
11 135 (2.94%) Support Engineer
12 104 (2.27%) Data Analyst
13 96 (2.09%) Solutions Architect
14 95 (2.07%) Administrator
15 92 (2.01%) IT Engineer
16 89 (1.94%) Software Engineer
17 82 (1.79%) Java Developer
18 79 (1.72%) Support Analyst
18 79 (1.72%) Technical Support
19 72 (1.57%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (5.47%) REST
2 143 (3.12%) .NET
3 130 (2.84%) Kafka
4 122 (2.66%) React
5 117 (2.55%) Spring
6 116 (2.53%) SOAP
7 115 (2.51%) RESTful
8 103 (2.25%) JSON
9 97 (2.12%) CSS
10 93 (2.03%) Middleware
11 87 (1.90%) XML
12 86 (1.88%) Spring Boot
13 82 (1.79%) HTML
14 73 (1.59%) Node.js
15 72 (1.57%) AngularJS
16 69 (1.50%) LDAP
17 55 (1.20%) OAuth
18 54 (1.18%) PySpark
19 53 (1.16%) Web Services
20 45 (0.98%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 223 (4.86%) Onboarding
2 219 (4.78%) Product Ownership
3 194 (4.23%) Cloud Native
4 165 (3.60%) Data Centre
5 156 (3.40%) Self-Motivation
6 132 (2.88%) Analytical Mindset
7 126 (2.75%) Distributed Systems
8 125 (2.73%) Management Information System
9 120 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
10 109 (2.38%) Data Protection Act
11 107 (2.33%) Enterprise Software
12 94 (2.05%) Data Structures
13 93 (2.03%) Virtual Team
14 59 (1.29%) Security Posture
15 57 (1.24%) AI Agents
16 54 (1.18%) Algorithms
17 51 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 47 (1.03%) Driving Licence
19 44 (0.96%) CMDB
20 42 (0.92%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 575 (12.54%) Windows
2 252 (5.50%) Linux
3 112 (2.44%) Windows 10
4 105 (2.29%) Windows Server
5 88 (1.92%) Unix
6 79 (1.72%) Apple iOS
7 75 (1.64%) Mac OS
8 73 (1.59%) Android
9 48 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 23 (0.50%) Ubuntu
11 14 (0.31%) CentOS
12 11 (0.24%) VMS
12 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.22%) zOS
14 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.13%) Solaris
17 5 (0.11%) Debian
18 4 (0.087%) AIX
18 4 (0.087%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,196 (26.09%) Agile
2 817 (17.82%) Continuous Improvement
3 764 (16.66%) Stakeholder Management
4 744 (16.23%) CI/CD
5 708 (15.44%) DevOps
6 550 (12.00%) AI
7 520 (11.34%) Decision-Making
8 509 (11.10%) Migration
9 498 (10.86%) Analytics
10 433 (9.44%) ITIL
11 409 (8.92%) Customer Service
12 407 (8.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 380 (8.29%) Project Management
14 374 (8.16%) Business Intelligence
15 372 (8.11%) Validation
16 369 (8.05%) Data Modelling
17 343 (7.48%) Test Automation
18 326 (7.11%) Change Management
19 315 (6.87%) Scrum
20 298 (6.50%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 854 (18.63%) SQL
2 815 (17.78%) Python
3 340 (7.42%) Java
4 268 (5.85%) PowerShell
5 230 (5.02%) JavaScript
6 171 (3.73%) C#
7 106 (2.31%) TypeScript
8 105 (2.29%) Bash
9 78 (1.70%) PL/SQL
10 60 (1.31%) C++
11 43 (0.94%) T-SQL
12 42 (0.92%) C
13 41 (0.89%) Shell Script
14 39 (0.85%) Go
15 33 (0.72%) Bicep
16 31 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 29 (0.63%) R
18 26 (0.57%) Apex Code
19 22 (0.48%) Perl
19 22 (0.48%) Scala
Qualifications
1 993 (21.66%) Security Cleared
2 667 (14.55%) SC Cleared
3 560 (12.21%) Degree
4 193 (4.21%) DV Cleared
5 176 (3.84%) Computer Science Degree
6 130 (2.84%) Microsoft Certification
7 124 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
8 107 (2.33%) Cisco Certification
9 89 (1.94%) CISSP
10 76 (1.66%) PMP
11 67 (1.46%) Azure Certification
12 65 (1.42%) A+ Certification
13 64 (1.40%) PMI Certification
14 62 (1.35%) CISM
15 61 (1.33%) CCNA
16 53 (1.16%) Master's Degree
17 50 (1.09%) Network+ Certification
18 43 (0.94%) MCSE
19 35 (0.76%) AWS Certification
19 35 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 317 (6.91%) Data Quality
2 242 (5.28%) QA
3 138 (3.01%) GDPR
4 93 (2.03%) SLA
5 89 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 85 (1.85%) Accessibility
7 78 (1.70%) PMO
8 76 (1.66%) NIST
9 43 (0.94%) GRC
10 23 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 22 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
12 20 (0.44%) PCI DSS
13 16 (0.35%) COBIT
14 15 (0.33%) NCSC
15 13 (0.28%) ISO 20022
15 13 (0.28%) WCAG
16 12 (0.26%) HIPAA
16 12 (0.26%) PSD2
17 11 (0.24%) Def Stans
17 11 (0.24%) IFRS
System Software
1 346 (7.55%) Active Directory
2 281 (6.13%) Docker
3 105 (2.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.85%) vSphere
5 37 (0.81%) VMware NSX
6 36 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
7 29 (0.63%) Hyper-V
8 26 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
9 25 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (0.44%) Firmware
11 19 (0.41%) vCloud
12 11 (0.24%) Squid
13 9 (0.20%) IAG
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.11%) NFS
16 4 (0.087%) ACF2
16 4 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.087%) RACF
16 4 (0.087%) Snort
17 3 (0.065%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 338 (7.37%) Kubernetes
2 260 (5.67%) Terraform
3 155 (3.38%) Ansible
4 128 (2.79%) Microsoft Intune
5 97 (2.12%) Grafana
6 84 (1.83%) Prometheus
7 70 (1.53%) SCCM
8 48 (1.05%) vCenter Server
9 39 (0.85%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
11 24 (0.52%) Control-M
12 21 (0.46%) Nessus
13 20 (0.44%) Argo
13 20 (0.44%) Kibana
14 18 (0.39%) Puppet
15 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
15 17 (0.37%) SCOM
16 15 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
16 15 (0.33%) WSUS
17 13 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 873 (19.04%) Microsoft
2 319 (6.96%) Oracle
3 267 (5.82%) SAP
4 263 (5.74%) ServiceNow
5 170 (3.71%) VMware
6 133 (2.90%) Google
7 116 (2.53%) Splunk
8 112 (2.44%) Databricks
9 108 (2.36%) Salesforce
10 100 (2.18%) Cisco
11 68 (1.48%) Workday
12 62 (1.35%) Red Hat
13 54 (1.18%) Dell
13 54 (1.18%) Dynatrace
14 49 (1.07%) Adobe
14 49 (1.07%) CyberArk
15 46 (1.00%) Citrix
16 43 (0.94%) Apple
17 42 (0.92%) BeyondTrust
18 40 (0.87%) MuleSoft