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

6 months to
28 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 4,568 4,142 4,059
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.38% 16.94% 10.98%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.39% 18.58% 12.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,823 2,598 2,487
10th Percentile £275 £250 £231
25th Percentile £388 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £595 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 204 366
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.90 £15.62 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.81 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% +26.51% -60.10%
75th Percentile £60.50 £43.69 £41.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £63.75
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £23.00 £17.50
% change year-on-year -7.61% +31.43% -59.71%

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 34,120 22,289 31,993
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.96% 91.13% 86.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,809 14,625 20,976
10th Percentile £318 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,143 919 2,227
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.74 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.38 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £44.00 £30.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.50% -13.00% -6.67%
75th Percentile £67.25 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £40.25 £29.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +38.08% -16.71% -6.27%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -10 1,965 £513 -2.38% 696
North of England -6 769 £447 -5.89% 536
South East -5 666 £488 -2.50% 668
Midlands -4 507 £450 +1.98% 406
North West -6 364 £402 -17.28% 308
Yorkshire -5 360 £455 -4.16% 159
West Midlands -6 342 £475 +5.56% 244
South West -2 319 £500 - 241
East of England -4 208 £450 - 221
East Midlands 0 164 £443 +19.84% 162
North East -7 52 £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
1 196 (4.29%) Confluence
2 125 (2.74%) SharePoint
3 92 (2.01%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.38%) Apache Spark
5 51 (1.12%) Apache
6 39 (0.85%) SAS
7 34 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
8 23 (0.50%) CMS
9 18 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.26%) nginx
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.15%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.13%) Camunda
14 6 (0.13%) CICS
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.11%) JBoss
15 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 278 (6.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 214 (4.68%) Microsoft Office
3 102 (2.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.58%) 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
12 4 (0.088%) Revit
13 3 (0.066%) CATIA
13 3 (0.066%) CPLEX
13 3 (0.066%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 88 (1.93%) 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 15 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.33%) 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
11 9 (0.20%) iTrent
11 9 (0.20%) Shopify
11 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
12 8 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
12 8 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
13 7 (0.15%) Fidessa
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 7 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 943 (20.64%) Azure
2 701 (15.35%) AWS
3 349 (7.64%) Power Platform
4 310 (6.79%) GCP
5 307 (6.72%) Microsoft 365
6 217 (4.75%) Azure DevOps
7 195 (4.27%) GitHub
8 150 (3.28%) Entra ID
9 137 (3.00%) Serverless
10 118 (2.58%) SaaS
11 93 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
12 84 (1.84%) AWS Lambda
13 82 (1.80%) Amazon S3
14 69 (1.51%) OpenShift
15 68 (1.49%) Azure Data Factory
16 62 (1.36%) Snowflake
17 61 (1.34%) Power Automate
18 55 (1.20%) Dynamics 365
19 51 (1.12%) Google Workspace
20 47 (1.03%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 160 (3.50%) DNS
1 160 (3.50%) Firewall
2 103 (2.25%) TCP/IP
3 98 (2.15%) VPN
4 97 (2.12%) Network Security
5 84 (1.84%) WAN
6 81 (1.77%) DHCP
7 65 (1.42%) LAN
8 54 (1.18%) SAN
9 51 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
10 42 (0.92%) BGP
11 40 (0.88%) VLAN
12 37 (0.81%) OSPF
13 29 (0.63%) VoIP
14 28 (0.61%) SD-WAN
15 22 (0.48%) Internet
15 22 (0.48%) VXLAN
15 22 (0.48%) Wireless
16 19 (0.42%) MPLS
17 18 (0.39%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (6.06%) Power BI
2 179 (3.92%) SQL Server
3 142 (3.11%) Data Warehouse
4 116 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
5 108 (2.36%) Relational Database
6 96 (2.10%) Metadata
7 79 (1.73%) MongoDB
7 79 (1.73%) Tableau
8 78 (1.71%) NoSQL
9 68 (1.49%) Data Lake
10 59 (1.29%) Oracle Reports
11 51 (1.12%) Big Data
12 47 (1.03%) Oracle Database
12 47 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 40 (0.88%) MySQL
14 31 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
15 29 (0.63%) Power Query
16 27 (0.59%) BigQuery
16 27 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
17 26 (0.57%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 456 (9.98%) JIRA
2 267 (5.85%) Git
3 184 (4.03%) Jenkins
4 121 (2.65%) GitLab
5 62 (1.36%) Selenium
6 34 (0.74%) Postman
7 28 (0.61%) Bitbucket
7 28 (0.61%) Cucumber
7 28 (0.61%) JUnit
8 21 (0.46%) Maven
9 20 (0.44%) REST Assured
10 19 (0.42%) Cypress.io
11 18 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
12 17 (0.37%) Mockito
13 16 (0.35%) JMeter
14 15 (0.33%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.33%) SpecFlow
15 12 (0.26%) WebDriver
15 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
16 11 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,390 (52.32%) Social Skills
2 1,786 (39.10%) Analytical Skills
3 1,070 (23.42%) Finance
4 417 (9.13%) Public Sector
5 361 (7.90%) Banking
6 202 (4.42%) Organisational Skills
7 171 (3.74%) Retail
8 166 (3.63%) Documentation Skills
9 138 (3.02%) Legal
10 119 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
10 119 (2.61%) Presentation Skills
11 97 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 89 (1.95%) Front Office
13 81 (1.77%) Marketing
14 74 (1.62%) Telecoms
15 63 (1.38%) Manufacturing
16 62 (1.36%) Investment Banking
17 54 (1.18%) Law
18 48 (1.05%) Military
19 47 (1.03%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 666 (14.58%) Analyst
2 532 (11.65%) Developer
3 386 (8.45%) Senior
4 340 (7.44%) Architect
5 295 (6.46%) Lead
6 262 (5.74%) Business Analyst
7 207 (4.53%) Data Engineer
8 205 (4.49%) Consultant
9 177 (3.87%) Project Manager
10 110 (2.41%) IT Support
11 108 (2.36%) Data Analyst
12 103 (2.25%) Support Engineer
13 92 (2.01%) Administrator
14 91 (1.99%) Java Developer
14 91 (1.99%) Solutions Architect
15 85 (1.86%) Software Engineer
16 75 (1.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 72 (1.58%) IT Analyst
18 70 (1.53%) Python Developer
19 67 (1.47%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (5.82%) REST
2 139 (3.04%) Kafka
2 139 (3.04%) SOAP
3 129 (2.82%) .NET
3 129 (2.82%) RESTful
4 124 (2.71%) Spring
5 120 (2.63%) React
6 102 (2.23%) Node.js
7 98 (2.15%) CSS
8 93 (2.04%) AngularJS
8 93 (2.04%) HTML
8 93 (2.04%) Spring Boot
9 92 (2.01%) LDAP
10 87 (1.90%) JSON
10 87 (1.90%) XML
11 83 (1.82%) Middleware
12 69 (1.51%) OAuth
13 58 (1.27%) PySpark
14 52 (1.14%) Oracle Fusion
15 50 (1.09%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 230 (5.04%) Product Ownership
2 208 (4.55%) Onboarding
3 177 (3.87%) Cloud Native
4 151 (3.31%) Data Centre
5 135 (2.96%) Management Information System
6 133 (2.91%) Self-Motivation
7 123 (2.69%) Analytical Mindset
8 103 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
9 99 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
10 98 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
11 94 (2.06%) Enterprise Software
12 92 (2.01%) Data Structures
13 84 (1.84%) Virtual Team
14 67 (1.47%) Security Posture
15 58 (1.27%) Hybrid Cloud
16 56 (1.23%) Mobile App
17 52 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 48 (1.05%) AI Agents
18 48 (1.05%) Algorithms
19 42 (0.92%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 510 (11.16%) Windows
2 267 (5.85%) Linux
3 108 (2.36%) Windows 10
4 85 (1.86%) Unix
5 83 (1.82%) Android
6 79 (1.73%) Windows Server
7 75 (1.64%) Apple iOS
8 57 (1.25%) Mac OS
9 47 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.44%) Ubuntu
10 20 (0.44%) VMS
11 14 (0.31%) CentOS
12 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.20%) zOS
14 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.15%) Debian
15 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.088%) AIX
17 4 (0.088%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,280 (28.02%) Agile
2 763 (16.70%) CI/CD
3 721 (15.78%) Continuous Improvement
4 718 (15.72%) DevOps
5 687 (15.04%) Stakeholder Management
6 534 (11.69%) Analytics
7 514 (11.25%) Decision-Making
8 508 (11.12%) Migration
9 502 (10.99%) AI
10 434 (9.50%) Project Management
11 406 (8.89%) Data Modelling
12 386 (8.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 367 (8.03%) Validation
14 363 (7.95%) Business Intelligence
15 362 (7.92%) ITIL
16 360 (7.88%) Test Automation
17 354 (7.75%) Customer Service
18 337 (7.38%) Change Management
19 334 (7.31%) Scrum
20 307 (6.72%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 876 (19.18%) Python
2 823 (18.02%) SQL
3 379 (8.30%) Java
4 287 (6.28%) PowerShell
5 239 (5.23%) JavaScript
6 169 (3.70%) C#
7 140 (3.06%) TypeScript
8 120 (2.63%) Bash
9 80 (1.75%) PL/SQL
10 58 (1.27%) C++
11 44 (0.96%) Go
12 43 (0.94%) Shell Script
13 37 (0.81%) Bicep
13 37 (0.81%) C
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 27 (0.59%) Perl
19 26 (0.57%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,027 (22.48%) Security Cleared
2 708 (15.50%) SC Cleared
3 566 (12.39%) Degree
4 205 (4.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 185 (4.05%) DV Cleared
6 129 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
7 100 (2.19%) Microsoft Certification
8 95 (2.08%) CISSP
9 94 (2.06%) Cisco Certification
10 86 (1.88%) PMP
11 75 (1.64%) PMI Certification
12 67 (1.47%) Master's Degree
13 62 (1.36%) Azure Certification
14 61 (1.34%) CISM
15 50 (1.09%) CCNA
16 47 (1.03%) A+ Certification
17 42 (0.92%) Network+ Certification
18 38 (0.83%) MCSE
19 29 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
20 28 (0.61%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 301 (6.59%) Data Quality
2 278 (6.09%) QA
3 150 (3.28%) GDPR
4 93 (2.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 87 (1.90%) PMO
6 82 (1.80%) NIST
7 73 (1.60%) Accessibility
8 68 (1.49%) SLA
9 45 (0.99%) GRC
10 28 (0.61%) PCI DSS
11 26 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.46%) WCAG
14 20 (0.44%) PSD2
15 18 (0.39%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.33%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.31%) HL7
17 14 (0.31%) NCSC
18 13 (0.28%) IFRS
19 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 345 (7.55%) Active Directory
2 325 (7.11%) Docker
3 105 (2.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.88%) vSphere
5 31 (0.68%) VMware NSX
6 29 (0.63%) Hyper-V
7 18 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.37%) Firmware
8 17 (0.37%) 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
1 392 (8.58%) Kubernetes
2 265 (5.80%) Terraform
3 166 (3.63%) Ansible
4 121 (2.65%) Microsoft Intune
5 103 (2.25%) Grafana
6 77 (1.69%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.58%) SCCM
8 39 (0.85%) vCenter Server
9 33 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
10 32 (0.70%) FortiGate
11 28 (0.61%) Kibana
12 26 (0.57%) Argo
12 26 (0.57%) Puppet
13 23 (0.50%) Control-M
14 20 (0.44%) Nessus
15 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
16 14 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 14 (0.31%) WSUS
17 12 (0.26%) HP ALM
17 12 (0.26%) vRealize
Vendors
1 854 (18.70%) Microsoft
2 319 (6.98%) Oracle
3 238 (5.21%) SAP
4 201 (4.40%) ServiceNow
5 183 (4.01%) VMware
6 143 (3.13%) Google
7 137 (3.00%) Databricks
8 112 (2.45%) Splunk
9 108 (2.36%) Cisco
9 108 (2.36%) Salesforce
10 70 (1.53%) CyberArk
11 65 (1.42%) BeyondTrust
12 62 (1.36%) Red Hat
13 59 (1.29%) Workday
14 55 (1.20%) Dell
15 51 (1.12%) Citrix
16 48 (1.05%) Adobe
17 42 (0.92%) F5
17 42 (0.92%) IBM
17 42 (0.92%) Informatica