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

6 months to
6 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 4,448 4,182 3,972
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.55% 17.30% 10.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.40% 18.94% 12.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,655 2,612 2,409
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £388 £398 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £630
90th Percentile £725 £720 £738
UK median daily rate £494 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.30% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 313 230 377
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.99 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.65 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -1.36% +33.36% -69.03%
75th Percentile £44.09 £33.85 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £66.15 £61.96
UK median hourly rate £20.48 £22.14 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.52% +36.41% -69.03%

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 35,884 22,080 31,645
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.08% 91.32% 85.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,739 14,300 20,579
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,242 984 2,330
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.82
25th Percentile £20.80 £18.12 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £28.53 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +66.52% -23.93% +1.99%
75th Percentile £68.00 £59.45 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.00 £74.63 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.76 £36.50
% change year-on-year +58.36% -23.95% +1.39%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 1,894 £520 +0.97% 1,339
North of England -10 711 £450 -5.26% 723
South East -6 662 £488 -2.50% 775
Midlands -10 497 £463 +6.99% 421
West Midlands -10 352 £471 +4.56% 263
North West -9 337 £444 -6.53% 409
Yorkshire -6 334 £460 -3.16% 234
South West -3 317 £500 -1.23% 326
East of England -2 241 £450 -4.26% 308
East Midlands -2 144 £443 +20.41% 160
North East -13 46 £375 -16.67% 92
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 (4.50%) Confluence
2 133 (2.99%) SharePoint
3 82 (1.84%) Microsoft Exchange
4 53 (1.19%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.79%) Apache
5 35 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.72%) SAS
7 28 (0.63%) CMS
8 23 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
9 13 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.22%) CICS
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.18%) Camunda
13 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.13%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 268 (6.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 197 (4.43%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
5 60 (1.35%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.25%) Sketch
9 10 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 10 (0.22%) AutoCAD
10 8 (0.18%) Revit
11 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.16%) Trello
12 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
13 5 (0.11%) CATIA
13 5 (0.11%) CPLEX
13 5 (0.11%) Maya
14 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.067%) LaTeX
15 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 104 (2.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
4 17 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
5 15 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
6 14 (0.31%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
8 12 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
8 12 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.27%) Teamcenter
9 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
9 11 (0.25%) SAP SD
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
10 9 (0.20%) NetSuite
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
12 7 (0.16%) Loan IQ
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle HRMS
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 916 (20.59%) Azure
2 651 (14.64%) AWS
3 353 (7.94%) Power Platform
4 319 (7.17%) Microsoft 365
5 273 (6.14%) GCP
6 209 (4.70%) Azure DevOps
7 162 (3.64%) GitHub
8 142 (3.19%) Entra ID
9 119 (2.68%) SaaS
10 118 (2.65%) Serverless
11 77 (1.73%) GitHub Actions
12 68 (1.53%) AWS Lambda
13 67 (1.51%) Amazon S3
14 63 (1.42%) Snowflake
15 62 (1.39%) Azure Data Factory
16 57 (1.28%) Dynamics 365
17 55 (1.24%) OpenShift
17 55 (1.24%) Power Automate
18 47 (1.06%) PowerApps
19 46 (1.03%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 171 (3.84%) DNS
2 140 (3.15%) Firewall
3 103 (2.32%) TCP/IP
3 103 (2.32%) VPN
4 89 (2.00%) DHCP
5 85 (1.91%) WAN
6 74 (1.66%) Network Security
7 68 (1.53%) LAN
8 60 (1.35%) SAN
9 56 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
10 46 (1.03%) VLAN
11 39 (0.88%) BGP
12 36 (0.81%) OSPF
13 33 (0.74%) SD-WAN
14 29 (0.65%) Wireless
15 27 (0.61%) VoIP
16 24 (0.54%) VXLAN
17 19 (0.43%) Internet
18 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
18 18 (0.40%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 275 (6.18%) Power BI
2 177 (3.98%) SQL Server
3 133 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
4 116 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
5 113 (2.54%) Relational Database
6 84 (1.89%) MongoDB
7 81 (1.82%) Metadata
8 76 (1.71%) Tableau
9 74 (1.66%) NoSQL
10 67 (1.51%) Data Lake
11 49 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
12 46 (1.03%) Oracle Database
13 44 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 42 (0.94%) Big Data
15 37 (0.83%) MySQL
16 27 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
16 27 (0.61%) Power Query
17 26 (0.58%) Delta Lake
18 23 (0.52%) Pentaho
18 23 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 452 (10.16%) JIRA
2 250 (5.62%) Git
3 148 (3.33%) Jenkins
4 104 (2.34%) GitLab
5 58 (1.30%) Selenium
6 33 (0.74%) Postman
7 26 (0.58%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.54%) Bitbucket
9 22 (0.49%) Cucumber
10 21 (0.47%) JUnit
11 18 (0.40%) Cypress.io
12 17 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
13 16 (0.36%) Mockito
14 14 (0.31%) Maven
14 14 (0.31%) SonarQube
15 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
15 12 (0.27%) Zephyr
16 11 (0.25%) JMeter
16 11 (0.25%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.25%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,311 (51.96%) Social Skills
2 1,773 (39.86%) Analytical Skills
3 1,028 (23.11%) Finance
4 373 (8.39%) Public Sector
5 348 (7.82%) Banking
6 195 (4.38%) Organisational Skills
7 174 (3.91%) Retail
8 166 (3.73%) Documentation Skills
9 124 (2.79%) Legal
10 107 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 98 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
12 92 (2.07%) Front Office
13 87 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
14 86 (1.93%) Marketing
15 78 (1.75%) Manufacturing
16 74 (1.66%) Telecoms
17 67 (1.51%) Investment Banking
18 62 (1.39%) Law
19 49 (1.10%) Back Office
20 42 (0.94%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 656 (14.75%) Analyst
2 454 (10.21%) Developer
3 364 (8.18%) Senior
4 332 (7.46%) Architect
5 290 (6.52%) Lead
6 248 (5.58%) Business Analyst
7 207 (4.65%) Data Engineer
8 202 (4.54%) Consultant
9 159 (3.57%) Project Manager
10 137 (3.08%) IT Support
11 123 (2.77%) Support Engineer
12 105 (2.36%) Data Analyst
13 92 (2.07%) Administrator
14 89 (2.00%) Solutions Architect
15 85 (1.91%) Software Engineer
16 84 (1.89%) IT Engineer
17 78 (1.75%) Support Analyst
18 75 (1.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 72 (1.62%) Java Developer
20 71 (1.60%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 255 (5.73%) REST
2 140 (3.15%) .NET
3 127 (2.86%) SOAP
4 126 (2.83%) Kafka
5 122 (2.74%) React
6 113 (2.54%) RESTful
7 105 (2.36%) Spring
8 103 (2.32%) CSS
9 95 (2.14%) Middleware
10 91 (2.05%) HTML
11 88 (1.98%) JSON
11 88 (1.98%) LDAP
12 78 (1.75%) XML
13 77 (1.73%) AngularJS
13 77 (1.73%) Spring Boot
14 73 (1.64%) Node.js
15 56 (1.26%) Web Services
16 55 (1.24%) PySpark
17 51 (1.15%) OAuth
18 45 (1.01%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 213 (4.79%) Product Ownership
2 212 (4.77%) Onboarding
3 173 (3.89%) Cloud Native
4 164 (3.69%) Data Centre
5 144 (3.24%) Self-Motivation
6 130 (2.92%) Analytical Mindset
7 120 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
7 120 (2.70%) Management Information System
8 108 (2.43%) Distributed Systems
9 106 (2.38%) Data Protection Act
10 104 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
11 92 (2.07%) Virtual Team
12 78 (1.75%) Data Structures
13 70 (1.57%) Security Posture
14 54 (1.21%) AI Agents
15 49 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 46 (1.03%) Algorithms
17 44 (0.99%) Driving Licence
18 42 (0.94%) Mobile App
19 39 (0.88%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 543 (12.21%) Windows
2 244 (5.49%) Linux
3 108 (2.43%) Windows 10
4 98 (2.20%) Windows Server
5 85 (1.91%) Unix
6 81 (1.82%) Apple iOS
7 76 (1.71%) Android
8 73 (1.64%) Mac OS
9 46 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.45%) Ubuntu
11 14 (0.31%) CentOS
11 14 (0.31%) VMS
12 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.22%) zOS
14 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.18%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.11%) Debian
15 5 (0.11%) Solaris
15 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.090%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,172 (26.35%) Agile
2 739 (16.61%) Continuous Improvement
3 708 (15.92%) CI/CD
4 687 (15.45%) Stakeholder Management
5 672 (15.11%) DevOps
6 517 (11.62%) AI
7 500 (11.24%) Migration
8 499 (11.22%) Decision-Making
9 477 (10.72%) Analytics
10 399 (8.97%) ITIL
11 396 (8.90%) Project Management
12 395 (8.88%) Customer Service
13 390 (8.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 381 (8.57%) Data Modelling
15 355 (7.98%) Validation
16 353 (7.94%) Business Intelligence
17 340 (7.64%) Test Automation
18 313 (7.04%) Change Management
18 313 (7.04%) Scrum
19 280 (6.29%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 807 (18.14%) SQL
2 801 (18.01%) Python
3 335 (7.53%) Java
4 281 (6.32%) PowerShell
5 223 (5.01%) JavaScript
6 172 (3.87%) C#
7 111 (2.50%) TypeScript
8 100 (2.25%) Bash
9 69 (1.55%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.37%) C++
11 40 (0.90%) Shell Script
12 38 (0.85%) Go
13 37 (0.83%) C
14 34 (0.76%) T-SQL
15 31 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 30 (0.67%) Bicep
17 29 (0.65%) R
18 27 (0.61%) Apex Code
19 25 (0.56%) Perl
20 22 (0.49%) Scala
Qualifications
1 972 (21.85%) Security Cleared
2 647 (14.55%) SC Cleared
3 544 (12.23%) Degree
4 188 (4.23%) DV Cleared
5 179 (4.02%) Computer Science Degree
6 120 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
7 119 (2.68%) Microsoft Certification
8 109 (2.45%) Cisco Certification
9 92 (2.07%) CISSP
10 79 (1.78%) PMP
11 66 (1.48%) PMI Certification
12 62 (1.39%) Azure Certification
12 62 (1.39%) CISM
13 61 (1.37%) CCNA
14 60 (1.35%) A+ Certification
15 57 (1.28%) Master's Degree
16 52 (1.17%) Network+ Certification
17 44 (0.99%) MCSE
18 36 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
19 28 (0.63%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 291 (6.54%) Data Quality
2 232 (5.22%) QA
3 138 (3.10%) GDPR
4 88 (1.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 82 (1.84%) SLA
6 81 (1.82%) Accessibility
7 78 (1.75%) PMO
8 74 (1.66%) NIST
9 42 (0.94%) GRC
10 23 (0.52%) PCI DSS
11 22 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 15 (0.34%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.34%) NCSC
13 15 (0.34%) WCAG
14 14 (0.31%) COBIT
14 14 (0.31%) PSD2
15 12 (0.27%) HL7
16 11 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
16 11 (0.25%) HIPAA
System Software
1 346 (7.78%) Active Directory
2 271 (6.09%) Docker
3 102 (2.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.85%) vSphere
5 36 (0.81%) VMware NSX
6 32 (0.72%) Hyper-V
7 31 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
8 25 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
9 22 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
10 19 (0.43%) vCloud
11 18 (0.40%) Firmware
12 11 (0.25%) Squid
13 7 (0.16%) IAG
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.090%) ACF2
15 4 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.090%) NFS
15 4 (0.090%) RACF
15 4 (0.090%) Snort
16 3 (0.067%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 332 (7.46%) Kubernetes
2 237 (5.33%) Terraform
3 154 (3.46%) Ansible
4 128 (2.88%) Microsoft Intune
5 96 (2.16%) Grafana
6 81 (1.82%) Prometheus
7 68 (1.53%) SCCM
8 48 (1.08%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.83%) FortiGate
10 34 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
11 24 (0.54%) Kibana
12 23 (0.52%) Control-M
13 21 (0.47%) Nessus
14 20 (0.45%) Argo
15 19 (0.43%) Puppet
16 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
16 17 (0.38%) SCOM
17 15 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 13 (0.29%) WSUS
19 11 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 833 (18.73%) Microsoft
2 301 (6.77%) Oracle
3 253 (5.69%) SAP
4 226 (5.08%) ServiceNow
5 173 (3.89%) VMware
6 129 (2.90%) Google
7 121 (2.72%) Databricks
8 114 (2.56%) Splunk
9 104 (2.34%) Salesforce
10 101 (2.27%) Cisco
11 67 (1.51%) CyberArk
12 64 (1.44%) Workday
13 62 (1.39%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.30%) Dell
15 57 (1.28%) Red Hat
16 50 (1.12%) Adobe
17 47 (1.06%) Citrix
18 45 (1.01%) Dynatrace
19 41 (0.92%) MuleSoft
20 40 (0.90%) F5