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 4 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 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 4,625 4,413 4,055
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.52% 16.75% 10.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.32% 18.41% 12.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,716 2,741 2,438
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £381 £375 £376
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.54% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 256 361
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.03 £11.00
25th Percentile £16.23 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.25 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% +30.90% -67.54%
75th Percentile £42.09 £38.42 £33.07
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.63 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.69 £21.39 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.96% +31.79% -67.54%

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 37,549 23,970 31,947
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.39% 91.01% 85.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,634 15,421 20,733
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.98% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,360 1,193 2,304
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.85 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% +1.65%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 1,955 £512 +2.40% 1,282
South East -5 726 £481 -1.94% 834
North of England -11 724 £447 -5.89% 695
Midlands -7 532 £465 +9.29% 454
West Midlands -9 388 £469 +4.22% 247
North West -12 357 £447 -7.74% 383
Yorkshire -7 326 £450 -5.26% 219
South West -4 322 £500 - 338
East of England -2 260 £450 -3.74% 289
East Midlands -1 142 £450 +22.62% 208
North East -19 47 £356 -20.83% 110
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 (4.32%) Confluence
2 152 (3.29%) SharePoint
3 89 (1.92%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.21%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.80%) Apache
5 37 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 31 (0.67%) CMS
6 31 (0.67%) SAS
7 25 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
8 18 (0.39%) WebLogic
9 13 (0.28%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.24%) nginx
11 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.22%) CICS
12 9 (0.19%) 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
1 259 (5.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 213 (4.61%) Microsoft Office
3 90 (1.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.47%) MS Visio
5 58 (1.25%) Microsoft Project
6 29 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.30%) 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 (0.043%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 114 (2.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
4 21 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
5 16 (0.35%) Aladdin
5 16 (0.35%) NetSuite
5 16 (0.35%) Workday HCM
6 13 (0.28%) SAP SD
7 11 (0.24%) iTrent
7 11 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
7 11 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 11 (0.24%) Teamcenter
8 10 (0.22%) Finacle
8 10 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
9 8 (0.17%) Loan IQ
9 8 (0.17%) NEC Housing
9 8 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
9 8 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
10 7 (0.15%) SAP GRC
10 7 (0.15%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 931 (20.13%) Azure
2 669 (14.46%) AWS
3 377 (8.15%) Power Platform
4 345 (7.46%) Microsoft 365
5 256 (5.54%) GCP
6 225 (4.86%) Azure DevOps
7 165 (3.57%) Entra ID
8 152 (3.29%) GitHub
9 124 (2.68%) SaaS
10 120 (2.59%) Serverless
11 73 (1.58%) AWS Lambda
12 71 (1.54%) Amazon S3
13 68 (1.47%) GitHub Actions
14 66 (1.43%) Power Automate
15 63 (1.36%) Azure Data Factory
16 59 (1.28%) Snowflake
17 58 (1.25%) Dynamics 365
17 58 (1.25%) PowerApps
18 56 (1.21%) OpenShift
19 43 (0.93%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 192 (4.15%) DNS
2 151 (3.26%) Firewall
3 116 (2.51%) VPN
4 110 (2.38%) TCP/IP
5 101 (2.18%) DHCP
6 88 (1.90%) WAN
7 84 (1.82%) Network Security
8 74 (1.60%) LAN
9 65 (1.41%) SAN
10 62 (1.34%) Wi-Fi
11 45 (0.97%) VLAN
12 43 (0.93%) BGP
13 39 (0.84%) Wireless
14 37 (0.80%) OSPF
15 34 (0.74%) SD-WAN
16 30 (0.65%) VoIP
17 24 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
17 24 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 20 (0.43%) MPLS
19 19 (0.41%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 296 (6.40%) Power BI
2 203 (4.39%) SQL Server
3 141 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
4 124 (2.68%) Relational Database
5 122 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
6 93 (2.01%) MongoDB
7 82 (1.77%) NoSQL
8 79 (1.71%) Tableau
9 78 (1.69%) Data Lake
10 76 (1.64%) Metadata
11 50 (1.08%) Oracle Database
12 46 (0.99%) Big Data
12 46 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 42 (0.91%) MySQL
14 35 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
15 27 (0.58%) Power Query
16 25 (0.54%) Delta Lake
16 25 (0.54%) RDBMS
17 23 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
17 23 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 460 (9.95%) JIRA
2 264 (5.71%) Git
3 163 (3.52%) Jenkins
4 110 (2.38%) GitLab
5 61 (1.32%) Selenium
6 37 (0.80%) Postman
7 32 (0.69%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.52%) Cucumber
8 24 (0.52%) Cypress.io
9 22 (0.48%) JUnit
10 21 (0.45%) Bitbucket
11 20 (0.43%) Mockito
12 16 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
12 16 (0.35%) WebDriver
13 14 (0.30%) SonarQube
14 13 (0.28%) Gradle
14 13 (0.28%) JMeter
14 13 (0.28%) Maven
14 13 (0.28%) Zephyr
15 10 (0.22%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,387 (51.61%) Social Skills
2 1,887 (40.80%) Analytical Skills
3 1,089 (23.55%) Finance
4 400 (8.65%) Public Sector
5 355 (7.68%) Banking
6 190 (4.11%) Organisational Skills
7 187 (4.04%) Documentation Skills
8 175 (3.78%) Retail
9 128 (2.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 116 (2.51%) Legal
11 110 (2.38%) Influencing Skills
12 107 (2.31%) Presentation Skills
13 102 (2.21%) Manufacturing
14 101 (2.18%) Front Office
15 89 (1.92%) Marketing
16 85 (1.84%) Telecoms
17 76 (1.64%) Investment Banking
18 56 (1.21%) Law
19 54 (1.17%) Back Office
20 45 (0.97%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 656 (14.18%) Analyst
2 502 (10.85%) Developer
3 397 (8.58%) Senior
4 339 (7.33%) Architect
5 312 (6.75%) Lead
6 237 (5.12%) Business Analyst
7 210 (4.54%) Data Engineer
8 207 (4.48%) Consultant
9 161 (3.48%) IT Support
10 150 (3.24%) Project Manager
11 147 (3.18%) Support Engineer
12 103 (2.23%) Data Analyst
13 100 (2.16%) Administrator
14 98 (2.12%) IT Engineer
15 94 (2.03%) Solutions Architect
16 92 (1.99%) Java Developer
17 85 (1.84%) Software Engineer
18 82 (1.77%) Technical Support
19 80 (1.73%) Support Analyst
20 75 (1.62%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 262 (5.66%) REST
2 146 (3.16%) .NET
3 131 (2.83%) Kafka
4 124 (2.68%) Spring
5 121 (2.62%) React
5 121 (2.62%) RESTful
6 119 (2.57%) SOAP
7 106 (2.29%) JSON
8 95 (2.05%) Middleware
9 93 (2.01%) CSS
10 90 (1.95%) Spring Boot
11 89 (1.92%) XML
12 80 (1.73%) HTML
13 74 (1.60%) AngularJS
13 74 (1.60%) Node.js
14 57 (1.23%) PySpark
15 56 (1.21%) LDAP
15 56 (1.21%) OAuth
16 53 (1.15%) Web Services
17 46 (0.99%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 223 (4.82%) Onboarding
2 219 (4.74%) Product Ownership
3 201 (4.35%) Cloud Native
4 171 (3.70%) Data Centre
5 169 (3.65%) Self-Motivation
6 143 (3.09%) Analytical Mindset
7 131 (2.83%) Distributed Systems
8 122 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
8 122 (2.64%) Management Information System
9 112 (2.42%) Data Protection Act
10 109 (2.36%) Enterprise Software
11 104 (2.25%) Data Structures
12 96 (2.08%) Virtual Team
13 55 (1.19%) AI Agents
13 55 (1.19%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 53 (1.15%) Algorithms
15 50 (1.08%) Security Posture
16 48 (1.04%) Driving Licence
17 47 (1.02%) CMDB
17 47 (1.02%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 593 (12.82%) Windows
2 256 (5.54%) Linux
3 112 (2.42%) Windows Server
4 109 (2.36%) Windows 10
5 97 (2.10%) Unix
6 80 (1.73%) Mac OS
7 77 (1.66%) Apple iOS
8 72 (1.56%) Android
9 44 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 18 (0.39%) Ubuntu
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 8 (0.17%) CentOS
14 7 (0.15%) Solaris
14 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.11%) Debian
15 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.086%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,218 (26.34%) Agile
2 858 (18.55%) Continuous Improvement
3 802 (17.34%) Stakeholder Management
4 744 (16.09%) CI/CD
5 726 (15.70%) DevOps
6 576 (12.45%) AI
7 528 (11.42%) Decision-Making
8 515 (11.14%) Migration
9 505 (10.92%) Analytics
10 457 (9.88%) ITIL
11 438 (9.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 418 (9.04%) Customer Service
13 377 (8.15%) Validation
14 376 (8.13%) Business Intelligence
15 364 (7.87%) Data Modelling
16 355 (7.68%) Project Management
17 349 (7.55%) Test Automation
18 323 (6.98%) Change Management
19 318 (6.88%) Roadmaps
20 316 (6.83%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 858 (18.55%) SQL
2 793 (17.15%) Python
3 360 (7.78%) Java
4 256 (5.54%) PowerShell
5 234 (5.06%) JavaScript
6 168 (3.63%) C#
7 117 (2.53%) Bash
8 109 (2.36%) TypeScript
9 77 (1.66%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.28%) C++
11 49 (1.06%) T-SQL
12 43 (0.93%) Shell Script
13 42 (0.91%) C
13 42 (0.91%) Go
14 35 (0.76%) Bicep
15 34 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 29 (0.63%) Apex Code
17 28 (0.61%) R
18 23 (0.50%) Kotlin
19 21 (0.45%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,015 (21.95%) Security Cleared
2 675 (14.59%) SC Cleared
3 570 (12.32%) Degree
4 198 (4.28%) DV Cleared
5 174 (3.76%) Computer Science Degree
6 130 (2.81%) Microsoft Certification
7 115 (2.49%) Cisco Certification
8 112 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
9 88 (1.90%) CISSP
10 74 (1.60%) PMP
11 67 (1.45%) A+ Certification
12 66 (1.43%) CCNA
13 65 (1.41%) PMI Certification
14 64 (1.38%) Azure Certification
15 57 (1.23%) CISM
16 52 (1.12%) Master's Degree
17 50 (1.08%) Network+ Certification
18 42 (0.91%) MCSE
19 38 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
20 37 (0.80%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 322 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 266 (5.75%) QA
3 144 (3.11%) GDPR
4 101 (2.18%) SLA
5 90 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 87 (1.88%) Accessibility
7 75 (1.62%) NIST
8 68 (1.47%) PMO
9 43 (0.93%) GRC
10 25 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
10 25 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 21 (0.45%) PCI DSS
12 15 (0.32%) NCSC
13 14 (0.30%) WCAG
14 13 (0.28%) HIPAA
14 13 (0.28%) ISO 20022
15 12 (0.26%) COBIT
15 12 (0.26%) PSD2
16 11 (0.24%) Def Stans
16 11 (0.24%) IFRS
System Software
1 348 (7.52%) Active Directory
2 292 (6.31%) Docker
3 109 (2.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.89%) vSphere
5 40 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
5 40 (0.86%) VMware NSX
6 31 (0.67%) Hyper-V
7 28 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
8 23 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
9 20 (0.43%) vCloud
10 19 (0.41%) Firmware
11 13 (0.28%) IAG
12 11 (0.24%) Squid
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.13%) NFS
15 4 (0.086%) ACF2
15 4 (0.086%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.086%) RACF
15 4 (0.086%) Snort
15 4 (0.086%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 353 (7.63%) Kubernetes
2 270 (5.84%) Terraform
3 156 (3.37%) Ansible
4 126 (2.72%) Microsoft Intune
5 103 (2.23%) Grafana
6 89 (1.92%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.56%) SCCM
8 52 (1.12%) vCenter Server
9 36 (0.78%) FortiGate
9 36 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
10 27 (0.58%) Control-M
11 22 (0.48%) Nessus
12 20 (0.43%) Argo
12 20 (0.43%) SCOM
13 18 (0.39%) IBM Guardium
14 17 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
14 17 (0.37%) WSUS
15 16 (0.35%) Kibana
16 12 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 11 (0.24%) Puppet
Vendors
1 897 (19.39%) Microsoft
2 327 (7.07%) Oracle
3 290 (6.27%) ServiceNow
4 283 (6.12%) SAP
5 177 (3.83%) VMware
6 141 (3.05%) Google
7 122 (2.64%) Splunk
8 112 (2.42%) Salesforce
9 108 (2.34%) Databricks
10 100 (2.16%) Cisco
11 74 (1.60%) Workday
12 61 (1.32%) Dynatrace
13 58 (1.25%) Red Hat
14 54 (1.17%) Dell
15 48 (1.04%) Citrix
16 47 (1.02%) Apple
17 46 (0.99%) Adobe
18 41 (0.89%) MuleSoft
19 39 (0.84%) CyberArk
20 36 (0.78%) Informatica