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

6 months to
6 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 4,531 4,181 4,028
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.15% 17.14% 10.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.15% 18.79% 12.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,787 2,620 2,457
10th Percentile £267 £250 £232
25th Percentile £388 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £588 £610 £638
90th Percentile £721 £708 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% -0.05% -4.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 264 210 366
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.48 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.81 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% +26.51% -65.00%
75th Percentile £56.19 £43.29 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £63.75
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £22.94 £17.00
% change year-on-year -7.36% +34.93% -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 34,459 22,249 31,937
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.78% 91.20% 86.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,987 14,574 20,950
10th Percentile £319 £310 £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 2,148 932 2,245
10th Percentile £15.36 £14.67 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.46 £30.00 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +51.53% -16.77% -0.96%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.95
% change year-on-year +43.29% -19.33% +0.42%

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 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 6 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 6 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 -11 1,922 £505 -3.81% 1,083
North of England -5 766 £450 -8.07% 664
South East -6 654 £488 -2.50% 807
Midlands -5 520 £450 +0.45% 455
North West -5 367 £410 -16.33% 366
West Midlands -5 353 £475 +3.26% 279
Yorkshire -5 351 £469 -1.26% 216
South West 0 323 £500 - 298
East of England -4 214 £450 - 273
East Midlands 0 166 £443 +11.04% 177
North East -4 55 £425 -11.23% 88
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
1 194 (4.28%) Confluence
2 128 (2.82%) SharePoint
3 86 (1.90%) Microsoft Exchange
4 61 (1.35%) Apache Spark
5 47 (1.04%) Apache
6 38 (0.84%) SAS
7 33 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
8 26 (0.57%) CMS
9 19 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.26%) nginx
11 10 (0.22%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.15%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.15%) 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 (0.066%) OpenStack
Applications
1 271 (5.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 212 (4.68%) Microsoft Office
3 98 (2.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
5 66 (1.46%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.22%) Sketch
9 8 (0.18%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Trello
11 6 (0.13%) AutoCAD
11 6 (0.13%) Revit
12 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
12 5 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 5 (0.11%) Maya
12 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.088%) CATIA
13 4 (0.088%) CPLEX
14 3 (0.066%) InVision
14 3 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 95 (2.10%) 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%) iTrent
9 10 (0.22%) NetSuite
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
10 9 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
10 9 (0.20%) Shopify
11 8 (0.18%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
12 7 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 936 (20.66%) Azure
2 693 (15.29%) AWS
3 357 (7.88%) Power Platform
4 307 (6.78%) Microsoft 365
5 305 (6.73%) GCP
6 216 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
7 184 (4.06%) GitHub
8 137 (3.02%) Entra ID
9 128 (2.82%) Serverless
10 116 (2.56%) SaaS
11 89 (1.96%) GitHub Actions
12 80 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
13 78 (1.72%) Amazon S3
14 68 (1.50%) Azure Data Factory
15 66 (1.46%) OpenShift
16 61 (1.35%) Snowflake
17 60 (1.32%) Power Automate
18 57 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
19 48 (1.06%) Google Workspace
20 47 (1.04%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 163 (3.60%) DNS
2 154 (3.40%) Firewall
3 103 (2.27%) TCP/IP
4 94 (2.07%) VPN
5 87 (1.92%) Network Security
6 84 (1.85%) WAN
7 81 (1.79%) DHCP
8 64 (1.41%) LAN
9 63 (1.39%) SAN
10 51 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
11 41 (0.90%) BGP
12 40 (0.88%) VLAN
13 36 (0.79%) OSPF
14 29 (0.64%) SD-WAN
15 25 (0.55%) VoIP
16 23 (0.51%) Wireless
17 22 (0.49%) Internet
17 22 (0.49%) VXLAN
18 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
19 17 (0.38%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 283 (6.25%) Power BI
2 183 (4.04%) SQL Server
3 142 (3.13%) Data Warehouse
4 116 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
5 110 (2.43%) Relational Database
6 95 (2.10%) Metadata
7 77 (1.70%) MongoDB
7 77 (1.70%) Tableau
8 76 (1.68%) NoSQL
9 66 (1.46%) Data Lake
10 57 (1.26%) Oracle Reports
11 50 (1.10%) Big Data
12 49 (1.08%) Oracle Database
12 49 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 44 (0.97%) MySQL
14 31 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
14 31 (0.68%) Power Query
15 26 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
15 26 (0.57%) Delta Lake
15 26 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 453 (10.00%) JIRA
2 264 (5.83%) Git
3 176 (3.88%) Jenkins
4 118 (2.60%) GitLab
5 56 (1.24%) Selenium
6 32 (0.71%) Postman
7 26 (0.57%) Cucumber
8 25 (0.55%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.51%) JUnit
10 19 (0.42%) Cypress.io
10 19 (0.42%) REST Assured
11 18 (0.40%) Maven
12 16 (0.35%) Mockito
12 16 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
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%) Appium
General
1 2,363 (52.15%) Social Skills
2 1,765 (38.95%) Analytical Skills
3 1,053 (23.24%) Finance
4 402 (8.87%) Public Sector
5 358 (7.90%) Banking
6 207 (4.57%) Organisational Skills
7 169 (3.73%) Retail
8 163 (3.60%) Documentation Skills
9 134 (2.96%) Legal
10 118 (2.60%) Presentation Skills
11 102 (2.25%) Influencing Skills
12 94 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 87 (1.92%) Front Office
14 83 (1.83%) Marketing
15 71 (1.57%) Telecoms
16 65 (1.43%) Manufacturing
17 61 (1.35%) Investment Banking
18 59 (1.30%) Law
19 47 (1.04%) Military
20 46 (1.02%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 664 (14.65%) Analyst
2 518 (11.43%) Developer
3 383 (8.45%) Senior
4 328 (7.24%) Architect
5 293 (6.47%) Lead
6 259 (5.72%) Business Analyst
7 211 (4.66%) Data Engineer
8 200 (4.41%) Consultant
9 173 (3.82%) Project Manager
10 111 (2.45%) Support Engineer
11 110 (2.43%) IT Support
12 105 (2.32%) Data Analyst
13 87 (1.92%) Administrator
13 87 (1.92%) Solutions Architect
14 86 (1.90%) Software Engineer
15 84 (1.85%) Java Developer
16 77 (1.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 73 (1.61%) IT Engineer
18 69 (1.52%) IT Analyst
18 69 (1.52%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (5.52%) REST
2 134 (2.96%) Kafka
3 129 (2.85%) SOAP
4 124 (2.74%) .NET
5 123 (2.71%) RESTful
6 118 (2.60%) Spring
7 117 (2.58%) React
8 99 (2.18%) CSS
9 97 (2.14%) LDAP
10 94 (2.07%) Node.js
11 92 (2.03%) HTML
12 91 (2.01%) AngularJS
12 91 (2.01%) Spring Boot
13 85 (1.88%) Middleware
14 84 (1.85%) JSON
15 83 (1.83%) XML
16 60 (1.32%) OAuth
17 57 (1.26%) PySpark
18 51 (1.13%) Oracle Fusion
19 49 (1.08%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 233 (5.14%) Product Ownership
2 210 (4.63%) Onboarding
3 170 (3.75%) Cloud Native
4 165 (3.64%) Data Centre
5 135 (2.98%) Self-Motivation
6 133 (2.94%) Analytical Mindset
7 129 (2.85%) Management Information System
8 102 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
9 100 (2.21%) Distributed Systems
10 99 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
11 89 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
12 88 (1.94%) Data Structures
13 85 (1.88%) Virtual Team
14 64 (1.41%) Security Posture
15 57 (1.26%) Mobile App
16 55 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
17 49 (1.08%) AI Agents
18 47 (1.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 45 (0.99%) Algorithms
20 43 (0.95%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 516 (11.39%) Windows
2 272 (6.00%) Linux
3 104 (2.30%) Windows 10
4 86 (1.90%) Unix
5 85 (1.88%) Android
6 80 (1.77%) Apple iOS
6 80 (1.77%) Windows Server
7 59 (1.30%) Mac OS
8 46 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 21 (0.46%) Ubuntu
9 21 (0.46%) VMS
10 15 (0.33%) CentOS
11 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 9 (0.20%) zOS
13 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.15%) Debian
14 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.088%) Rocky
15 4 (0.088%) Windows 8
15 4 (0.088%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,258 (27.76%) Agile
2 754 (16.64%) CI/CD
3 717 (15.82%) Continuous Improvement
4 712 (15.71%) DevOps
5 677 (14.94%) Stakeholder Management
6 513 (11.32%) Analytics
6 513 (11.32%) Migration
7 508 (11.21%) Decision-Making
8 503 (11.10%) AI
9 426 (9.40%) Project Management
10 402 (8.87%) Data Modelling
11 375 (8.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 370 (8.17%) Business Intelligence
13 368 (8.12%) Validation
14 362 (7.99%) Customer Service
15 361 (7.97%) ITIL
16 357 (7.88%) Test Automation
17 336 (7.42%) Change Management
18 324 (7.15%) Scrum
19 293 (6.47%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 858 (18.94%) Python
2 821 (18.12%) SQL
3 364 (8.03%) Java
4 285 (6.29%) PowerShell
5 233 (5.14%) JavaScript
6 168 (3.71%) C#
7 139 (3.07%) TypeScript
8 116 (2.56%) Bash
9 81 (1.79%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.30%) C++
11 44 (0.97%) Go
12 43 (0.95%) Shell Script
13 37 (0.82%) C
13 37 (0.82%) T-SQL
14 36 (0.79%) R
15 34 (0.75%) Bicep
16 32 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 31 (0.68%) Apex Code
18 27 (0.60%) Perl
19 23 (0.51%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,020 (22.51%) Security Cleared
2 694 (15.32%) SC Cleared
3 552 (12.18%) Degree
4 197 (4.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 189 (4.17%) DV Cleared
6 124 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
7 109 (2.41%) Microsoft Certification
8 107 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
9 93 (2.05%) CISSP
10 82 (1.81%) PMP
11 72 (1.59%) PMI Certification
12 63 (1.39%) CISM
13 60 (1.32%) Azure Certification
13 60 (1.32%) CCNA
14 59 (1.30%) Master's Degree
15 55 (1.21%) A+ Certification
16 51 (1.13%) Network+ Certification
17 45 (0.99%) MCSE
18 31 (0.68%) CCNP
19 28 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 303 (6.69%) Data Quality
2 271 (5.98%) QA
3 149 (3.29%) GDPR
4 96 (2.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 86 (1.90%) PMO
6 84 (1.85%) NIST
7 75 (1.66%) Accessibility
8 66 (1.46%) SLA
9 42 (0.93%) GRC
10 28 (0.62%) PCI DSS
11 25 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.46%) WCAG
14 19 (0.42%) PSD2
15 18 (0.40%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.33%) IFRS
17 14 (0.31%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.31%) HL7
17 14 (0.31%) NCSC
18 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 340 (7.50%) Active Directory
2 308 (6.80%) Docker
3 108 (2.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.90%) vSphere
5 33 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 29 (0.64%) Hyper-V
7 20 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.42%) Firmware
9 18 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
10 17 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
11 12 (0.26%) vCloud
12 11 (0.24%) RACF
12 11 (0.24%) Squid
13 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
14 9 (0.20%) ACF2
15 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.13%) IAG
17 4 (0.088%) BitLocker
17 4 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
17 4 (0.088%) Snort
Systems Management
1 378 (8.34%) Kubernetes
2 256 (5.65%) Terraform
3 161 (3.55%) Ansible
4 116 (2.56%) Microsoft Intune
5 103 (2.27%) Grafana
6 77 (1.70%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.59%) SCCM
8 42 (0.93%) vCenter Server
9 35 (0.77%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.57%) Argo
11 26 (0.57%) Kibana
12 24 (0.53%) Puppet
13 23 (0.51%) Control-M
14 20 (0.44%) Nessus
15 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
16 14 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 13 (0.29%) WSUS
18 12 (0.26%) CA Endevor
19 11 (0.24%) SCOM
Vendors
1 842 (18.58%) Microsoft
2 322 (7.11%) Oracle
3 242 (5.34%) SAP
4 198 (4.37%) ServiceNow
5 185 (4.08%) VMware
6 138 (3.05%) Databricks
7 137 (3.02%) Google
8 115 (2.54%) Splunk
9 110 (2.43%) Cisco
10 108 (2.38%) Salesforce
11 75 (1.66%) CyberArk
12 69 (1.52%) BeyondTrust
13 64 (1.41%) Dell
14 60 (1.32%) Red Hat
15 59 (1.30%) Workday
16 50 (1.10%) Citrix
17 49 (1.08%) Adobe
18 42 (0.93%) F5
18 42 (0.93%) HP
19 41 (0.90%) MuleSoft