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 8 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,509 4,163 4,011
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.13% 17.18% 10.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.12% 18.83% 12.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,765 2,607 2,445
10th Percentile £265 £250 £236
25th Percentile £387 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £590 £609 £638
90th Percentile £725 £710 £738
UK median daily rate £478 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -4.40% -1.96% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 266 209 367
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.44 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.80 £22.00 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.63% +25.71% -65.00%
75th Percentile £57.06 £43.00 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.75 £63.75
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £22.32 £17.00
% change year-on-year -4.79% +31.29% -64.88%

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 34,360 22,106 31,891
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.81% 91.23% 86.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,945 14,454 20,903
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,132 926 2,241
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.56 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £46.47 £29.15 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.40% -20.14% -2.14%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.19 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +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 8 May 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 8 May 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 8 May 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 1,910 £512 -2.51% 942
North of England -6 753 £450 -7.98% 614
South East -6 654 £488 -2.50% 737
Midlands -5 520 £450 +0.67% 407
North West -5 364 £410 -16.16% 347
West Midlands -4 355 £475 +3.15% 245
Yorkshire -6 343 £460 -3.16% 199
South West -1 321 £500 -1.23% 265
East of England -4 216 £450 - 252
East Midlands 0 164 £444 +15.26% 163
North East -9 53 £425 -11.23% 74
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
1 193 (4.28%) Confluence
2 132 (2.93%) SharePoint
3 86 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 58 (1.29%) Apache Spark
5 47 (1.04%) Apache
6 38 (0.84%) SAS
7 34 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
8 26 (0.58%) CMS
9 19 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 10 (0.22%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) CICS
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 3 (0.067%) OpenStack
Applications
1 266 (5.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 207 (4.59%) Microsoft Office
3 97 (2.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
5 66 (1.46%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.22%) Sketch
9 8 (0.18%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.16%) Trello
11 6 (0.13%) AutoCAD
11 6 (0.13%) Revit
12 5 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 5 (0.11%) Maya
12 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.089%) CATIA
13 4 (0.089%) CPLEX
14 3 (0.067%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 95 (2.11%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.42%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
4 17 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 14 (0.31%) NEC Housing
7 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 11 (0.24%) Teamcenter
8 11 (0.24%) Workday HCM
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
10 9 (0.20%) NetSuite
10 9 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
10 9 (0.20%) Shopify
11 8 (0.18%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 929 (20.60%) Azure
2 695 (15.41%) AWS
3 350 (7.76%) Power Platform
4 308 (6.83%) Microsoft 365
5 297 (6.59%) GCP
6 220 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
7 185 (4.10%) GitHub
8 139 (3.08%) Entra ID
9 126 (2.79%) Serverless
10 117 (2.59%) SaaS
11 91 (2.02%) GitHub Actions
12 79 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 77 (1.71%) Amazon S3
14 68 (1.51%) Azure Data Factory
15 63 (1.40%) OpenShift
15 63 (1.40%) Snowflake
16 61 (1.35%) Power Automate
17 57 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
18 47 (1.04%) Google Workspace
19 46 (1.02%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 164 (3.64%) DNS
2 153 (3.39%) Firewall
3 105 (2.33%) TCP/IP
4 95 (2.11%) VPN
5 85 (1.89%) Network Security
5 85 (1.89%) WAN
6 83 (1.84%) DHCP
7 64 (1.42%) LAN
7 64 (1.42%) SAN
8 51 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
9 42 (0.93%) VLAN
10 41 (0.91%) BGP
11 36 (0.80%) OSPF
12 30 (0.67%) SD-WAN
13 25 (0.55%) Wireless
14 24 (0.53%) VoIP
15 22 (0.49%) VXLAN
16 21 (0.47%) Internet
17 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
18 17 (0.38%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (6.14%) Power BI
2 180 (3.99%) SQL Server
3 142 (3.15%) Data Warehouse
4 119 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
5 108 (2.40%) Relational Database
6 95 (2.11%) Metadata
7 76 (1.69%) MongoDB
7 76 (1.69%) NoSQL
7 76 (1.69%) Tableau
8 65 (1.44%) Data Lake
9 57 (1.26%) Oracle Reports
10 49 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 48 (1.06%) Big Data
12 47 (1.04%) Oracle Database
13 45 (1.00%) MySQL
14 32 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
15 31 (0.69%) Power Query
16 26 (0.58%) BigQuery
16 26 (0.58%) Delta Lake
16 26 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 452 (10.02%) JIRA
2 264 (5.85%) Git
3 173 (3.84%) Jenkins
4 121 (2.68%) GitLab
5 56 (1.24%) Selenium
6 32 (0.71%) Postman
7 26 (0.58%) Cucumber
8 25 (0.55%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.51%) JUnit
10 19 (0.42%) Cypress.io
10 19 (0.42%) REST Assured
11 16 (0.35%) Maven
11 16 (0.35%) Mockito
11 16 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
12 15 (0.33%) JMeter
12 15 (0.33%) SonarQube
12 15 (0.33%) SpecFlow
13 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
13 12 (0.27%) Zephyr
14 11 (0.24%) Appium
General
1 2,354 (52.21%) Social Skills
2 1,761 (39.06%) Analytical Skills
3 1,040 (23.06%) Finance
4 395 (8.76%) Public Sector
5 352 (7.81%) Banking
6 206 (4.57%) Organisational Skills
7 170 (3.77%) Retail
8 164 (3.64%) Documentation Skills
9 131 (2.91%) Legal
10 118 (2.62%) Presentation Skills
11 99 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
12 94 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 87 (1.93%) Front Office
14 81 (1.80%) Marketing
15 70 (1.55%) Telecoms
16 62 (1.38%) Manufacturing
17 61 (1.35%) Investment Banking
18 58 (1.29%) Law
19 46 (1.02%) Financial Institution
19 46 (1.02%) Military
Job Titles
1 660 (14.64%) Analyst
2 513 (11.38%) Developer
3 386 (8.56%) Senior
4 330 (7.32%) Architect
5 286 (6.34%) Lead
6 258 (5.72%) Business Analyst
7 211 (4.68%) Data Engineer
8 203 (4.50%) Consultant
9 174 (3.86%) Project Manager
10 112 (2.48%) IT Support
10 112 (2.48%) Support Engineer
11 105 (2.33%) Data Analyst
12 88 (1.95%) Solutions Architect
13 85 (1.89%) Administrator
14 83 (1.84%) Java Developer
14 83 (1.84%) Software Engineer
15 78 (1.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 76 (1.69%) IT Engineer
17 71 (1.57%) Network Engineer
18 70 (1.55%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (5.57%) REST
2 137 (3.04%) Kafka
3 130 (2.88%) SOAP
4 126 (2.79%) .NET
5 123 (2.73%) RESTful
6 119 (2.64%) React
7 116 (2.57%) Spring
8 99 (2.20%) LDAP
9 98 (2.17%) CSS
10 92 (2.04%) AngularJS
10 92 (2.04%) Node.js
11 91 (2.02%) HTML
11 91 (2.02%) Spring Boot
12 89 (1.97%) Middleware
13 84 (1.86%) JSON
14 83 (1.84%) XML
15 61 (1.35%) OAuth
16 58 (1.29%) PySpark
17 52 (1.15%) Oracle Fusion
18 51 (1.13%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 228 (5.06%) Product Ownership
2 213 (4.72%) Onboarding
3 170 (3.77%) Cloud Native
4 165 (3.66%) Data Centre
5 136 (3.02%) Self-Motivation
6 131 (2.91%) Analytical Mindset
7 126 (2.79%) Management Information System
8 104 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
9 103 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
10 102 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
11 89 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
12 88 (1.95%) Data Structures
13 87 (1.93%) Virtual Team
14 62 (1.38%) Security Posture
15 58 (1.29%) Mobile App
16 53 (1.18%) Hybrid Cloud
17 51 (1.13%) AI Agents
18 46 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 43 (0.95%) Algorithms
19 43 (0.95%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 511 (11.33%) Windows
2 267 (5.92%) Linux
3 103 (2.28%) Windows 10
4 87 (1.93%) Unix
5 85 (1.89%) Android
6 84 (1.86%) Windows Server
7 82 (1.82%) Apple iOS
8 58 (1.29%) Mac OS
9 46 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.47%) Ubuntu
11 19 (0.42%) 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 (0.16%) Debian
16 7 (0.16%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.089%) AIX
17 4 (0.089%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.089%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,244 (27.59%) Agile
2 752 (16.68%) CI/CD
3 711 (15.77%) Continuous Improvement
4 710 (15.75%) DevOps
5 670 (14.86%) Stakeholder Management
6 509 (11.29%) Migration
7 505 (11.20%) Analytics
7 505 (11.20%) Decision-Making
8 500 (11.09%) AI
9 428 (9.49%) Project Management
10 403 (8.94%) Data Modelling
11 371 (8.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 368 (8.16%) Validation
13 366 (8.12%) ITIL
14 364 (8.07%) Business Intelligence
15 359 (7.96%) Customer Service
16 356 (7.90%) Test Automation
17 329 (7.30%) Change Management
18 322 (7.14%) Scrum
19 289 (6.41%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 845 (18.74%) Python
2 814 (18.05%) SQL
3 359 (7.96%) Java
4 288 (6.39%) PowerShell
5 235 (5.21%) JavaScript
6 169 (3.75%) C#
7 138 (3.06%) TypeScript
8 112 (2.48%) Bash
9 80 (1.77%) PL/SQL
10 60 (1.33%) C++
11 44 (0.98%) Go
12 43 (0.95%) Shell Script
13 37 (0.82%) C
14 35 (0.78%) Bicep
14 35 (0.78%) T-SQL
15 34 (0.75%) R
16 32 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 31 (0.69%) Apex Code
18 27 (0.60%) Perl
19 24 (0.53%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,022 (22.67%) Security Cleared
2 696 (15.44%) SC Cleared
3 542 (12.02%) Degree
4 191 (4.24%) Computer Science Degree
5 190 (4.21%) DV Cleared
6 124 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
7 108 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
8 106 (2.35%) Microsoft Certification
9 91 (2.02%) CISSP
10 81 (1.80%) PMP
11 71 (1.57%) PMI Certification
12 63 (1.40%) CISM
13 61 (1.35%) Azure Certification
14 60 (1.33%) CCNA
15 59 (1.31%) Master's Degree
16 56 (1.24%) A+ Certification
17 53 (1.18%) Network+ Certification
18 43 (0.95%) MCSE
19 31 (0.69%) CCNP
20 30 (0.67%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 304 (6.74%) Data Quality
2 267 (5.92%) QA
3 147 (3.26%) GDPR
4 97 (2.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 86 (1.91%) PMO
6 84 (1.86%) NIST
7 71 (1.57%) Accessibility
8 67 (1.49%) SLA
9 42 (0.93%) GRC
10 27 (0.60%) PCI DSS
11 24 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 19 (0.42%) ISO 20022
13 19 (0.42%) PSD2
14 18 (0.40%) WCAG
15 15 (0.33%) NCSC
16 14 (0.31%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.31%) IFRS
17 12 (0.27%) HL7
17 12 (0.27%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 345 (7.65%) Active Directory
2 301 (6.68%) Docker
3 109 (2.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.89%) vSphere
5 33 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.67%) Hyper-V
7 22 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.44%) Firmware
9 18 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
10 13 (0.29%) vCloud
11 11 (0.24%) RACF
11 11 (0.24%) Squid
12 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
13 9 (0.20%) ACF2
14 7 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.13%) IAG
16 4 (0.089%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.089%) NFS
16 4 (0.089%) Snort
Systems Management
1 371 (8.23%) Kubernetes
2 248 (5.50%) Terraform
3 159 (3.53%) Ansible
4 115 (2.55%) Microsoft Intune
5 100 (2.22%) Grafana
6 77 (1.71%) Prometheus
7 69 (1.53%) SCCM
8 42 (0.93%) vCenter Server
9 36 (0.80%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.60%) Kibana
12 24 (0.53%) Argo
12 24 (0.53%) Puppet
13 23 (0.51%) Control-M
14 20 (0.44%) Nessus
15 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 13 (0.29%) WSUS
18 12 (0.27%) CA Endevor
18 12 (0.27%) SCOM
Vendors
1 830 (18.41%) Microsoft
2 316 (7.01%) Oracle
3 238 (5.28%) SAP
4 195 (4.32%) ServiceNow
5 186 (4.13%) VMware
6 135 (2.99%) Databricks
7 132 (2.93%) Google
8 116 (2.57%) Splunk
9 111 (2.46%) Cisco
10 101 (2.24%) Salesforce
11 75 (1.66%) CyberArk
12 69 (1.53%) BeyondTrust
13 63 (1.40%) Dell
14 60 (1.33%) Red Hat
15 59 (1.31%) Workday
16 50 (1.11%) Citrix
17 45 (1.00%) Adobe
18 42 (0.93%) F5
19 41 (0.91%) HP
19 41 (0.91%) MuleSoft