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

6 months to
7 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 4,541 4,173 4,041
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.15% 17.12% 10.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.15% 18.77% 12.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,792 2,617 2,466
10th Percentile £266 £250 £233
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 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £710 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £505
% change year-on-year -4.00% -1.04% -3.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 265 209 368
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.44 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.81 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% +26.51% -65.00%
75th Percentile £55.75 £43.39 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £64.13
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £22.88 £17.00
% change year-on-year -7.10% +34.56% -65.45%

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 34,525 22,234 32,111
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.79% 91.21% 86.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,016 14,552 21,077
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 £615 £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 2,153 931 2,253
10th Percentile £15.35 £14.66 £12.94
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £30.00 £36.34
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -17.43% -2.19%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.96
% change year-on-year +43.29% -19.35% -0.11%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 1,930 £510 -2.86% 1,047
North of England -6 759 £450 -8.16% 718
South East -6 658 £488 -2.50% 809
Midlands -4 522 £450 +0.22% 462
North West -5 368 £408 -17.01% 397
West Midlands -5 355 £475 +3.26% 276
Yorkshire -5 343 £468 -1.47% 237
South West -1 323 £500 -1.23% 306
East of England -4 214 £450 - 298
East Midlands 0 166 £443 +11.04% 187
North East -5 55 £425 -11.23% 90
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 (4.25%) Confluence
2 131 (2.88%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.92%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (1.30%) Apache Spark
5 47 (1.04%) Apache
6 38 (0.84%) SAS
7 34 (0.75%) 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
1 273 (6.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 211 (4.65%) Microsoft Office
3 98 (2.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
5 66 (1.45%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.48%) 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%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 5 (0.11%) Maya
12 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.088%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.088%) CATIA
13 4 (0.088%) CPLEX
14 3 (0.066%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 96 (2.11%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.42%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
4 17 (0.37%) 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%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 935 (20.59%) Azure
2 694 (15.28%) AWS
3 357 (7.86%) Power Platform
4 307 (6.76%) Microsoft 365
5 302 (6.65%) GCP
6 219 (4.82%) Azure DevOps
7 187 (4.12%) GitHub
8 139 (3.06%) Entra ID
9 126 (2.77%) Serverless
10 116 (2.55%) SaaS
11 91 (2.00%) GitHub Actions
12 79 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 77 (1.70%) Amazon S3
14 68 (1.50%) Azure Data Factory
15 65 (1.43%) OpenShift
16 63 (1.39%) Snowflake
17 61 (1.34%) Power Automate
18 57 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
19 47 (1.04%) Google Workspace
19 47 (1.04%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 165 (3.63%) DNS
2 153 (3.37%) Firewall
3 105 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 95 (2.09%) VPN
5 86 (1.89%) Network Security
6 83 (1.83%) DHCP
6 83 (1.83%) WAN
7 64 (1.41%) SAN
8 63 (1.39%) LAN
9 51 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
10 41 (0.90%) BGP
10 41 (0.90%) VLAN
11 36 (0.79%) OSPF
12 29 (0.64%) SD-WAN
13 25 (0.55%) VoIP
13 25 (0.55%) Wireless
14 22 (0.48%) Internet
14 22 (0.48%) VXLAN
15 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
16 17 (0.37%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 284 (6.25%) Power BI
2 181 (3.99%) SQL Server
3 142 (3.13%) Data Warehouse
4 117 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
5 110 (2.42%) Relational Database
6 95 (2.09%) Metadata
7 77 (1.70%) Tableau
8 75 (1.65%) MongoDB
9 74 (1.63%) NoSQL
10 65 (1.43%) Data Lake
11 57 (1.26%) Oracle Reports
12 49 (1.08%) Big Data
12 49 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 48 (1.06%) Oracle Database
14 44 (0.97%) MySQL
15 32 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
16 31 (0.68%) Power Query
17 26 (0.57%) BigQuery
17 26 (0.57%) Delta Lake
17 26 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 453 (9.98%) JIRA
2 266 (5.86%) Git
3 176 (3.88%) Jenkins
4 122 (2.69%) GitLab
5 56 (1.23%) Selenium
6 32 (0.70%) 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 2,362 (52.01%) Social Skills
2 1,767 (38.91%) Analytical Skills
3 1,054 (23.21%) Finance
4 402 (8.85%) Public Sector
5 359 (7.91%) Banking
6 209 (4.60%) Organisational Skills
7 170 (3.74%) Retail
8 164 (3.61%) Documentation Skills
9 133 (2.93%) Legal
10 118 (2.60%) Presentation Skills
11 101 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
12 95 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 89 (1.96%) Front Office
14 84 (1.85%) Marketing
15 71 (1.56%) Telecoms
16 64 (1.41%) Manufacturing
17 61 (1.34%) Investment Banking
18 60 (1.32%) Law
19 47 (1.04%) Financial Institution
19 47 (1.04%) Military
Job Titles
1 667 (14.69%) Analyst
2 517 (11.39%) Developer
3 387 (8.52%) Senior
4 331 (7.29%) Architect
5 294 (6.47%) Lead
6 262 (5.77%) Business Analyst
7 211 (4.65%) Data Engineer
8 202 (4.45%) Consultant
9 173 (3.81%) Project Manager
10 114 (2.51%) Support Engineer
11 111 (2.44%) IT Support
12 105 (2.31%) Data Analyst
13 88 (1.94%) Solutions Architect
14 86 (1.89%) Administrator
15 85 (1.87%) Java Developer
16 83 (1.83%) Software Engineer
17 78 (1.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 75 (1.65%) IT Engineer
19 70 (1.54%) Network Engineer
20 69 (1.52%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (5.57%) REST
2 137 (3.02%) Kafka
3 131 (2.88%) SOAP
4 124 (2.73%) .NET
5 122 (2.69%) RESTful
6 118 (2.60%) React
6 118 (2.60%) Spring
7 99 (2.18%) CSS
8 97 (2.14%) LDAP
9 93 (2.05%) Node.js
10 92 (2.03%) AngularJS
10 92 (2.03%) HTML
11 91 (2.00%) Spring Boot
12 89 (1.96%) Middleware
13 84 (1.85%) JSON
13 84 (1.85%) XML
14 61 (1.34%) OAuth
15 58 (1.28%) PySpark
16 51 (1.12%) Oracle Fusion
17 50 (1.10%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 233 (5.13%) Product Ownership
2 210 (4.62%) Onboarding
3 171 (3.77%) Cloud Native
4 166 (3.66%) Data Centre
5 135 (2.97%) Self-Motivation
6 132 (2.91%) Analytical Mindset
7 130 (2.86%) Management Information System
8 105 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
9 102 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
10 100 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
11 88 (1.94%) Data Structures
11 88 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
12 86 (1.89%) Virtual Team
13 64 (1.41%) Security Posture
14 58 (1.28%) Mobile App
15 54 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
16 50 (1.10%) AI Agents
17 48 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 45 (0.99%) Algorithms
19 44 (0.97%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 517 (11.39%) Windows
2 273 (6.01%) Linux
3 106 (2.33%) Windows 10
4 87 (1.92%) Unix
5 85 (1.87%) Android
6 84 (1.85%) Windows Server
7 81 (1.78%) Apple iOS
8 60 (1.32%) Mac OS
9 47 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.46%) Ubuntu
10 21 (0.46%) VMS
11 16 (0.35%) CentOS
12 11 (0.24%) 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 4 (0.088%) AIX
16 4 (0.088%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.088%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,256 (27.66%) Agile
2 758 (16.69%) CI/CD
3 714 (15.72%) DevOps
4 713 (15.70%) Continuous Improvement
5 677 (14.91%) Stakeholder Management
6 515 (11.34%) Migration
7 512 (11.28%) Analytics
8 507 (11.16%) Decision-Making
9 500 (11.01%) AI
10 427 (9.40%) Project Management
11 403 (8.87%) Data Modelling
12 373 (8.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 371 (8.17%) Business Intelligence
14 370 (8.15%) Validation
15 363 (7.99%) ITIL
16 362 (7.97%) Customer Service
17 361 (7.95%) Test Automation
18 332 (7.31%) Change Management
19 326 (7.18%) Scrum
20 289 (6.36%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 855 (18.83%) Python
2 822 (18.10%) SQL
3 365 (8.04%) Java
4 287 (6.32%) PowerShell
5 237 (5.22%) JavaScript
6 168 (3.70%) C#
7 138 (3.04%) TypeScript
8 115 (2.53%) Bash
9 80 (1.76%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.30%) C++
11 44 (0.97%) Go
12 43 (0.95%) Shell Script
13 37 (0.81%) C
14 35 (0.77%) R
14 35 (0.77%) T-SQL
15 34 (0.75%) Bicep
16 32 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 31 (0.68%) Apex Code
18 27 (0.59%) Perl
19 24 (0.53%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,025 (22.57%) Security Cleared
2 697 (15.35%) SC Cleared
3 550 (12.11%) Degree
4 196 (4.32%) Computer Science Degree
5 192 (4.23%) DV Cleared
6 124 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
7 109 (2.40%) 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 61 (1.34%) Azure Certification
14 60 (1.32%) CCNA
15 59 (1.30%) Master's Degree
16 56 (1.23%) A+ Certification
17 52 (1.15%) Network+ Certification
18 45 (0.99%) MCSE
19 31 (0.68%) CCNP
20 29 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 302 (6.65%) Data Quality
2 270 (5.95%) QA
3 148 (3.26%) GDPR
4 96 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 86 (1.89%) PMO
6 84 (1.85%) NIST
7 74 (1.63%) Accessibility
8 67 (1.48%) SLA
9 42 (0.92%) GRC
10 27 (0.59%) PCI DSS
11 25 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.46%) WCAG
14 19 (0.42%) ISO 20022
14 19 (0.42%) PSD2
15 15 (0.33%) IFRS
16 14 (0.31%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.31%) NCSC
17 12 (0.26%) HL7
17 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 344 (7.58%) Active Directory
2 306 (6.74%) Docker
3 110 (2.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.90%) vSphere
5 34 (0.75%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.66%) Hyper-V
7 22 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.42%) 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 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.13%) IAG
16 4 (0.088%) BitLocker
16 4 (0.088%) NFS
16 4 (0.088%) Snort
Systems Management
1 376 (8.28%) Kubernetes
2 256 (5.64%) Terraform
3 163 (3.59%) Ansible
4 117 (2.58%) Microsoft Intune
5 104 (2.29%) Grafana
6 78 (1.72%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.59%) SCCM
8 43 (0.95%) vCenter Server
9 35 (0.77%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.59%) Kibana
12 25 (0.55%) Argo
13 24 (0.53%) Puppet
14 23 (0.51%) Control-M
15 20 (0.44%) Nessus
16 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
17 14 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 13 (0.29%) WSUS
19 12 (0.26%) CA Endevor
19 12 (0.26%) SCOM
Vendors
1 841 (18.52%) Microsoft
2 321 (7.07%) Oracle
3 243 (5.35%) SAP
4 199 (4.38%) ServiceNow
5 188 (4.14%) VMware
6 135 (2.97%) Databricks
7 133 (2.93%) Google
8 116 (2.55%) Splunk
9 110 (2.42%) Cisco
10 108 (2.38%) Salesforce
11 75 (1.65%) CyberArk
12 69 (1.52%) BeyondTrust
13 63 (1.39%) Dell
14 61 (1.34%) Red Hat
15 60 (1.32%) Workday
16 50 (1.10%) Citrix
17 47 (1.04%) Adobe
18 42 (0.92%) F5
18 42 (0.92%) MuleSoft
19 41 (0.90%) HP