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 30 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,569 4,136 4,083
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.33% 17.00% 10.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.33% 18.64% 12.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,814 2,589 2,499
10th Percentile £277 £250 £232
25th Percentile £388 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £511
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% -2.15% -2.67%
75th Percentile £594 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% -0.05% -4.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 265 203 367
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.53 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.81 £22.00 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% +25.71% -61.69%
75th Percentile £57.50 £39.75 £40.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £63.75
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £22.14 £17.50
% change year-on-year -4.02% +26.51% -60.10%

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 34,270 22,183 32,209
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.00% 91.18% 86.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,910 14,537 21,121
10th Percentile £318 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £617 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £521 £525
% change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,134 920 2,242
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.75 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.38 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £30.00 £35.68
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -15.92% -4.85%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.35 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £29.07 £35.00
% change year-on-year +42.95% -16.94% -6.17%

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 30 April 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 30 April 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 30 April 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 1,959 £513 -2.38% 688
North of England -6 770 £448 -7.73% 537
South East -5 659 £488 -2.50% 647
Midlands -4 513 £450 +0.67% 409
North West -5 363 £402 -17.54% 300
Yorkshire -5 359 £460 -3.16% 168
West Midlands -6 349 £475 +5.44% 247
South West -1 324 £500 - 252
East of England -4 212 £450 - 239
East Midlands 0 163 £443 +15.47% 162
North East -4 55 £425 -16.67% 78
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
1 197 (4.31%) Confluence
2 129 (2.82%) SharePoint
3 89 (1.95%) Microsoft Exchange
4 62 (1.36%) Apache Spark
5 50 (1.09%) Apache
6 38 (0.83%) SAS
7 34 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
8 22 (0.48%) CMS
9 18 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.26%) nginx
10 12 (0.26%) WebLogic
11 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 7 (0.15%) ArcGIS
13 6 (0.13%) Camunda
13 6 (0.13%) CICS
13 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
13 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 4 (0.088%) JBoss
Applications
1 275 (6.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 215 (4.71%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (2.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 74 (1.62%) Microsoft Project
5 65 (1.42%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.22%) Sketch
9 8 (0.18%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Trello
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) AutoCAD
11 5 (0.11%) Maya
11 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.11%) Revit
12 4 (0.088%) CATIA
13 3 (0.066%) CPLEX
13 3 (0.066%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 90 (1.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 23 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.42%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
5 17 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
6 16 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
6 16 (0.35%) Oracle Payables
7 14 (0.31%) NEC Housing
8 13 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 13 (0.28%) Workday HCM
9 11 (0.24%) NetSuite
10 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
10 10 (0.22%) Teamcenter
11 9 (0.20%) iTrent
11 9 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
11 9 (0.20%) Shopify
12 8 (0.18%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
12 8 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
13 7 (0.15%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 936 (20.49%) Azure
2 693 (15.17%) AWS
3 353 (7.73%) Power Platform
4 307 (6.72%) GCP
4 307 (6.72%) Microsoft 365
5 216 (4.73%) Azure DevOps
6 188 (4.11%) GitHub
7 144 (3.15%) Entra ID
8 130 (2.85%) Serverless
9 115 (2.52%) SaaS
10 89 (1.95%) GitHub Actions
11 80 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
12 78 (1.71%) Amazon S3
13 69 (1.51%) Azure Data Factory
14 67 (1.47%) OpenShift
15 63 (1.38%) Snowflake
16 61 (1.34%) Power Automate
17 56 (1.23%) Dynamics 365
18 51 (1.12%) Google Workspace
19 47 (1.03%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 160 (3.50%) DNS
2 158 (3.46%) Firewall
3 103 (2.25%) TCP/IP
4 97 (2.12%) VPN
5 95 (2.08%) Network Security
6 87 (1.90%) WAN
7 80 (1.75%) DHCP
8 65 (1.42%) LAN
9 59 (1.29%) SAN
10 50 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
11 42 (0.92%) BGP
12 40 (0.88%) VLAN
13 37 (0.81%) OSPF
14 31 (0.68%) SD-WAN
15 27 (0.59%) VoIP
16 22 (0.48%) VXLAN
17 21 (0.46%) Internet
17 21 (0.46%) Wireless
18 19 (0.42%) MPLS
19 18 (0.39%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (6.11%) Power BI
2 180 (3.94%) SQL Server
3 143 (3.13%) Data Warehouse
4 115 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
5 110 (2.41%) Relational Database
6 96 (2.10%) Metadata
7 79 (1.73%) Tableau
8 78 (1.71%) MongoDB
9 74 (1.62%) NoSQL
10 67 (1.47%) Data Lake
11 58 (1.27%) Oracle Reports
12 50 (1.09%) Big Data
13 48 (1.05%) Oracle Database
14 47 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.96%) MySQL
16 31 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
17 28 (0.61%) Power Query
18 26 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
18 26 (0.57%) BigQuery
18 26 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 457 (10.00%) JIRA
2 267 (5.84%) Git
3 178 (3.90%) Jenkins
4 121 (2.65%) GitLab
5 59 (1.29%) Selenium
6 33 (0.72%) Postman
7 28 (0.61%) Bitbucket
8 27 (0.59%) Cucumber
9 25 (0.55%) JUnit
10 20 (0.44%) Maven
10 20 (0.44%) REST Assured
11 18 (0.39%) Cypress.io
11 18 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
12 17 (0.37%) Mockito
13 15 (0.33%) JMeter
13 15 (0.33%) SonarQube
13 15 (0.33%) SpecFlow
14 12 (0.26%) WebDriver
14 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
15 11 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,387 (52.24%) Social Skills
2 1,779 (38.94%) Analytical Skills
3 1,070 (23.42%) Finance
4 411 (9.00%) Public Sector
5 361 (7.90%) Banking
6 204 (4.46%) Organisational Skills
7 169 (3.70%) Retail
8 164 (3.59%) Documentation Skills
9 137 (3.00%) Legal
10 120 (2.63%) Presentation Skills
11 115 (2.52%) Influencing Skills
12 98 (2.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 91 (1.99%) Front Office
14 83 (1.82%) Marketing
15 76 (1.66%) Telecoms
16 61 (1.34%) Investment Banking
16 61 (1.34%) Manufacturing
17 54 (1.18%) Law
18 48 (1.05%) Military
19 47 (1.03%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 670 (14.66%) Analyst
2 530 (11.60%) Developer
3 388 (8.49%) Senior
4 337 (7.38%) Architect
5 297 (6.50%) Lead
6 265 (5.80%) Business Analyst
7 207 (4.53%) Data Engineer
8 204 (4.46%) Consultant
9 176 (3.85%) Project Manager
10 109 (2.39%) Data Analyst
10 109 (2.39%) IT Support
11 106 (2.32%) Support Engineer
12 93 (2.04%) Administrator
13 90 (1.97%) Solutions Architect
14 89 (1.95%) Java Developer
15 84 (1.84%) Software Engineer
16 78 (1.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 72 (1.58%) IT Analyst
18 71 (1.55%) Python Developer
19 70 (1.53%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 260 (5.69%) REST
2 137 (3.00%) SOAP
3 135 (2.95%) Kafka
4 128 (2.80%) RESTful
5 123 (2.69%) .NET
6 122 (2.67%) Spring
7 119 (2.60%) React
8 98 (2.14%) CSS
9 97 (2.12%) Node.js
10 93 (2.04%) Spring Boot
11 92 (2.01%) AngularJS
12 91 (1.99%) HTML
13 90 (1.97%) LDAP
14 87 (1.90%) JSON
15 85 (1.86%) XML
16 84 (1.84%) Middleware
17 64 (1.40%) OAuth
18 57 (1.25%) PySpark
19 50 (1.09%) Oracle Fusion
19 50 (1.09%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 234 (5.12%) Product Ownership
2 209 (4.57%) Onboarding
3 175 (3.83%) Cloud Native
4 159 (3.48%) Data Centre
5 136 (2.98%) Management Information System
6 135 (2.95%) Self-Motivation
7 130 (2.85%) Analytical Mindset
8 100 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
8 100 (2.19%) Distributed Systems
9 99 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
10 92 (2.01%) Data Structures
10 92 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
11 85 (1.86%) Virtual Team
12 67 (1.47%) Security Posture
13 56 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
13 56 (1.23%) Mobile App
14 51 (1.12%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 49 (1.07%) AI Agents
16 48 (1.05%) Algorithms
17 42 (0.92%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 511 (11.18%) Windows
2 270 (5.91%) Linux
3 106 (2.32%) Windows 10
4 86 (1.88%) Unix
5 81 (1.77%) Android
6 80 (1.75%) Windows Server
7 75 (1.64%) Apple iOS
8 57 (1.25%) Mac OS
9 47 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.46%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.44%) VMS
12 15 (0.33%) CentOS
13 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.20%) zOS
15 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
16 7 (0.15%) Debian
16 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.088%) AIX
18 4 (0.088%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,276 (27.93%) Agile
2 749 (16.39%) CI/CD
3 727 (15.91%) Continuous Improvement
4 711 (15.56%) DevOps
5 689 (15.08%) Stakeholder Management
6 525 (11.49%) Analytics
7 515 (11.27%) Migration
8 509 (11.14%) Decision-Making
9 502 (10.99%) AI
10 431 (9.43%) Project Management
11 405 (8.86%) Data Modelling
12 385 (8.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 367 (8.03%) Business Intelligence
14 366 (8.01%) Validation
15 365 (7.99%) ITIL
16 357 (7.81%) Customer Service
17 355 (7.77%) Test Automation
18 337 (7.38%) Change Management
19 333 (7.29%) Scrum
20 306 (6.70%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 861 (18.84%) Python
2 822 (17.99%) SQL
3 372 (8.14%) Java
4 284 (6.22%) PowerShell
5 237 (5.19%) JavaScript
6 166 (3.63%) C#
7 141 (3.09%) TypeScript
8 115 (2.52%) Bash
9 80 (1.75%) PL/SQL
10 58 (1.27%) C++
11 45 (0.98%) Go
12 44 (0.96%) Shell Script
13 37 (0.81%) C
14 36 (0.79%) Bicep
14 36 (0.79%) R
15 34 (0.74%) T-SQL
16 32 (0.70%) Apex Code
17 29 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 28 (0.61%) Perl
19 24 (0.53%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,026 (22.46%) Security Cleared
2 706 (15.45%) SC Cleared
3 571 (12.50%) Degree
4 206 (4.51%) Computer Science Degree
5 187 (4.09%) DV Cleared
6 127 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
7 106 (2.32%) Microsoft Certification
8 100 (2.19%) Cisco Certification
9 93 (2.04%) CISSP
10 85 (1.86%) PMP
11 74 (1.62%) PMI Certification
12 64 (1.40%) Master's Degree
13 60 (1.31%) Azure Certification
14 59 (1.29%) CISM
15 56 (1.23%) CCNA
16 53 (1.16%) A+ Certification
17 46 (1.01%) Network+ Certification
18 42 (0.92%) MCSE
19 29 (0.63%) CCNP
19 29 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 303 (6.63%) Data Quality
2 278 (6.08%) QA
3 148 (3.24%) GDPR
4 89 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 86 (1.88%) PMO
6 78 (1.71%) NIST
7 76 (1.66%) Accessibility
8 68 (1.49%) SLA
9 47 (1.03%) GRC
10 27 (0.59%) PCI DSS
11 26 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.46%) WCAG
14 19 (0.42%) PSD2
15 18 (0.39%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.33%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.31%) HL7
17 14 (0.31%) IFRS
17 14 (0.31%) NCSC
18 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 339 (7.42%) Active Directory
2 316 (6.92%) Docker
3 104 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.88%) vSphere
5 31 (0.68%) VMware NSX
6 29 (0.63%) Hyper-V
7 20 (0.44%) Firmware
8 18 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
9 15 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.24%) RACF
10 11 (0.24%) Squid
11 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
11 10 (0.22%) vCloud
12 9 (0.20%) ACF2
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.13%) IAG
15 4 (0.088%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.088%) NFS
15 4 (0.088%) Snort
Systems Management
1 387 (8.47%) Kubernetes
2 255 (5.58%) Terraform
3 162 (3.55%) Ansible
4 119 (2.60%) Microsoft Intune
5 103 (2.25%) Grafana
6 77 (1.69%) Prometheus
7 71 (1.55%) SCCM
8 39 (0.85%) vCenter Server
9 35 (0.77%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
11 29 (0.63%) Kibana
12 26 (0.57%) Argo
13 25 (0.55%) Puppet
14 23 (0.50%) Control-M
15 20 (0.44%) Nessus
16 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
17 14 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 14 (0.31%) WSUS
18 12 (0.26%) CA Endevor
18 12 (0.26%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 856 (18.73%) Microsoft
2 319 (6.98%) Oracle
3 239 (5.23%) SAP
4 204 (4.46%) ServiceNow
5 182 (3.98%) VMware
6 144 (3.15%) Google
7 134 (2.93%) Databricks
8 115 (2.52%) Splunk
9 112 (2.45%) Cisco
10 110 (2.41%) Salesforce
11 68 (1.49%) CyberArk
12 63 (1.38%) BeyondTrust
13 61 (1.34%) Red Hat
14 60 (1.31%) Workday
15 59 (1.29%) Dell
16 51 (1.12%) Citrix
17 48 (1.05%) Adobe
18 42 (0.92%) F5
18 42 (0.92%) IBM
18 42 (0.92%) Informatica