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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -5 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,461 4,164 3,954
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.67% 17.40% 10.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.56% 19.06% 12.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,658 2,613 2,412
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £393 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £635
90th Percentile £725 £717 £738
UK median daily rate £493 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 313 219 377
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.19 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.39 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% +31.79% -68.02%
75th Percentile £51.25 £33.13 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.21 £65.05 £61.96
UK median hourly rate £20.88 £22.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -5.11% +35.55% -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 35,508 21,848 31,547
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.90% 91.31% 85.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,529 14,223 20,659
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £622 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £512 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,216 949 2,294
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.84
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.18 £36.84
Median % change year-on-year +66.78% -23.51% -1.29%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.30 £27.59 £36.50
% change year-on-year +53.34% -24.42% +1.04%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 1,888 £520 - 504
North of England -9 734 £450 -7.83% 502
South East -7 645 £492 -1.60% 640
Midlands -9 500 £465 +6.78% 318
Yorkshire -6 352 £465 -2.11% 162
West Midlands -10 352 £472 +4.12% 194
North West -8 345 £425 -13.62% 273
South West -2 324 £500 -3.61% 209
East of England -3 238 £450 -5.01% 218
East Midlands -2 147 £443 +18.96% 126
North East -16 45 £413 -8.33% 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
1 199 (4.46%) Confluence
2 139 (3.12%) SharePoint
3 81 (1.82%) Microsoft Exchange
4 51 (1.14%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.83%) Apache
5 37 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.76%) SAS
7 27 (0.61%) CMS
8 22 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
9 12 (0.27%) nginx
10 10 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
10 10 (0.22%) CICS
10 10 (0.22%) WebLogic
11 8 (0.18%) Camunda
11 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
12 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
13 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 5 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 271 (6.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 209 (4.69%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 65 (1.46%) Microsoft Project
5 61 (1.37%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.25%) Sketch
9 9 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.18%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.16%) Revit
11 7 (0.16%) Trello
12 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
13 5 (0.11%) CATIA
13 5 (0.11%) Maya
14 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
14 4 (0.090%) CPLEX
15 3 (0.067%) LaTeX
15 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 102 (2.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
5 16 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
6 15 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
7 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 13 (0.29%) Workday HCM
8 12 (0.27%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
8 12 (0.27%) Teamcenter
9 11 (0.25%) SAP SD
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
11 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
12 7 (0.16%) Loan IQ
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 7 (0.16%) Shopify
12 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 914 (20.49%) Azure
2 651 (14.59%) AWS
3 359 (8.05%) Power Platform
4 314 (7.04%) Microsoft 365
5 278 (6.23%) GCP
6 213 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
7 166 (3.72%) GitHub
8 140 (3.14%) Entra ID
9 117 (2.62%) SaaS
10 115 (2.58%) Serverless
11 78 (1.75%) GitHub Actions
12 64 (1.43%) Amazon S3
12 64 (1.43%) AWS Lambda
12 64 (1.43%) OpenShift
12 64 (1.43%) Snowflake
13 63 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
14 61 (1.37%) Dynamics 365
15 59 (1.32%) Power Automate
16 53 (1.19%) PowerApps
17 44 (0.99%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 169 (3.79%) DNS
2 141 (3.16%) Firewall
3 100 (2.24%) TCP/IP
4 99 (2.22%) VPN
5 88 (1.97%) DHCP
6 84 (1.88%) WAN
7 75 (1.68%) Network Security
8 67 (1.50%) LAN
9 63 (1.41%) SAN
10 55 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
11 43 (0.96%) VLAN
12 37 (0.83%) BGP
13 34 (0.76%) OSPF
14 32 (0.72%) SD-WAN
15 29 (0.65%) Wireless
16 26 (0.58%) VoIP
17 23 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 19 (0.43%) Internet
19 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
20 17 (0.38%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (6.25%) Power BI
2 179 (4.01%) SQL Server
3 138 (3.09%) Data Warehouse
4 113 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
5 110 (2.47%) Relational Database
6 85 (1.91%) Metadata
7 80 (1.79%) MongoDB
8 79 (1.77%) Tableau
9 73 (1.64%) NoSQL
10 68 (1.52%) Data Lake
11 51 (1.14%) Oracle Reports
12 47 (1.05%) Oracle Database
13 46 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 43 (0.96%) Big Data
15 38 (0.85%) MySQL
16 27 (0.61%) Power Query
17 26 (0.58%) Delta Lake
18 25 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
19 24 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
19 24 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 450 (10.09%) JIRA
2 252 (5.65%) Git
3 156 (3.50%) Jenkins
4 102 (2.29%) GitLab
5 57 (1.28%) Selenium
6 33 (0.74%) Postman
7 25 (0.56%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.54%) Cucumber
9 23 (0.52%) Bitbucket
10 22 (0.49%) JUnit
11 17 (0.38%) Cypress.io
11 17 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
12 16 (0.36%) Mockito
13 14 (0.31%) Maven
13 14 (0.31%) SonarQube
14 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
15 11 (0.25%) JMeter
15 11 (0.25%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.25%) SpecFlow
15 11 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,306 (51.69%) Social Skills
2 1,751 (39.25%) Analytical Skills
3 1,032 (23.13%) Finance
4 373 (8.36%) Public Sector
5 347 (7.78%) Banking
6 200 (4.48%) Organisational Skills
7 172 (3.86%) Retail
8 166 (3.72%) Documentation Skills
9 124 (2.78%) Legal
10 97 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
11 95 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 91 (2.04%) Front Office
12 91 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
13 89 (2.00%) Marketing
14 78 (1.75%) Manufacturing
15 74 (1.66%) Telecoms
16 69 (1.55%) Investment Banking
17 61 (1.37%) Law
18 46 (1.03%) Back Office
19 44 (0.99%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 654 (14.66%) Analyst
2 465 (10.42%) Developer
3 368 (8.25%) Senior
4 323 (7.24%) Architect
5 283 (6.34%) Lead
6 246 (5.51%) Business Analyst
7 210 (4.71%) Data Engineer
8 207 (4.64%) Consultant
9 163 (3.65%) Project Manager
10 127 (2.85%) IT Support
11 116 (2.60%) Support Engineer
12 110 (2.47%) Data Analyst
13 90 (2.02%) Administrator
14 88 (1.97%) Solutions Architect
15 86 (1.93%) Software Engineer
16 79 (1.77%) IT Engineer
17 76 (1.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 76 (1.70%) Support Analyst
18 74 (1.66%) Java Developer
19 71 (1.59%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (5.60%) REST
2 135 (3.03%) .NET
3 126 (2.82%) SOAP
4 125 (2.80%) Kafka
5 120 (2.69%) React
6 115 (2.58%) RESTful
7 109 (2.44%) Spring
8 101 (2.26%) CSS
9 92 (2.06%) HTML
10 91 (2.04%) Middleware
11 87 (1.95%) LDAP
12 85 (1.91%) JSON
13 80 (1.79%) AngularJS
13 80 (1.79%) Spring Boot
14 79 (1.77%) XML
15 78 (1.75%) Node.js
16 55 (1.23%) Web Services
17 53 (1.19%) PySpark
18 51 (1.14%) OAuth
19 45 (1.01%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 224 (5.02%) Product Ownership
2 207 (4.64%) Onboarding
3 167 (3.74%) Data Centre
4 165 (3.70%) Cloud Native
5 142 (3.18%) Self-Motivation
6 130 (2.91%) Analytical Mindset
7 121 (2.71%) Management Information System
8 118 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
9 105 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
10 102 (2.29%) Data Protection Act
11 95 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
12 92 (2.06%) Virtual Team
13 81 (1.82%) Data Structures
14 64 (1.43%) Security Posture
15 54 (1.21%) AI Agents
16 48 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 44 (0.99%) Algorithms
17 44 (0.99%) Driving Licence
17 44 (0.99%) Mobile App
18 41 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 522 (11.70%) Windows
2 253 (5.67%) Linux
3 107 (2.40%) Windows 10
4 90 (2.02%) Windows Server
5 86 (1.93%) Unix
6 80 (1.79%) Apple iOS
7 77 (1.73%) Android
8 67 (1.50%) Mac OS
9 45 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.49%) Ubuntu
11 15 (0.34%) VMS
12 14 (0.31%) CentOS
13 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 11 (0.25%) zOS
15 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.18%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.16%) Debian
17 5 (0.11%) Solaris
17 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.090%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,182 (26.50%) Agile
2 724 (16.23%) Continuous Improvement
3 709 (15.89%) CI/CD
4 677 (15.18%) DevOps
5 672 (15.06%) Stakeholder Management
6 515 (11.54%) AI
7 509 (11.41%) Decision-Making
8 502 (11.25%) Migration
9 486 (10.89%) Analytics
10 410 (9.19%) Project Management
11 389 (8.72%) Data Modelling
12 386 (8.65%) Customer Service
13 384 (8.61%) ITIL
14 379 (8.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 358 (8.03%) Validation
16 357 (8.00%) Business Intelligence
17 336 (7.53%) Test Automation
18 319 (7.15%) Change Management
19 306 (6.86%) Scrum
20 277 (6.21%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 806 (18.07%) Python
2 805 (18.05%) SQL
3 338 (7.58%) Java
4 272 (6.10%) PowerShell
5 222 (4.98%) JavaScript
6 173 (3.88%) C#
7 114 (2.56%) TypeScript
8 105 (2.35%) Bash
9 69 (1.55%) PL/SQL
10 62 (1.39%) C++
11 42 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 41 (0.92%) Go
13 36 (0.81%) C
14 35 (0.78%) T-SQL
15 32 (0.72%) Bicep
15 32 (0.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 30 (0.67%) R
17 29 (0.65%) Apex Code
18 25 (0.56%) Perl
19 23 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 972 (21.79%) Security Cleared
2 650 (14.57%) SC Cleared
3 551 (12.35%) Degree
4 188 (4.21%) DV Cleared
5 177 (3.97%) Computer Science Degree
6 121 (2.71%) BPSS Clearance
7 114 (2.56%) Microsoft Certification
8 105 (2.35%) Cisco Certification
9 88 (1.97%) CISSP
10 78 (1.75%) PMP
11 66 (1.48%) PMI Certification
12 61 (1.37%) CCNA
13 60 (1.34%) Azure Certification
14 59 (1.32%) A+ Certification
14 59 (1.32%) CISM
15 56 (1.26%) Master's Degree
16 53 (1.19%) Network+ Certification
17 43 (0.96%) MCSE
18 35 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
19 27 (0.61%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 300 (6.72%) Data Quality
2 231 (5.18%) QA
3 137 (3.07%) GDPR
4 86 (1.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 83 (1.86%) SLA
6 80 (1.79%) PMO
7 75 (1.68%) Accessibility
8 73 (1.64%) NIST
9 41 (0.92%) GRC
10 24 (0.54%) PCI DSS
11 22 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
11 22 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 15 (0.34%) ISO 20022
12 15 (0.34%) WCAG
13 14 (0.31%) NCSC
13 14 (0.31%) PSD2
14 12 (0.27%) COBIT
14 12 (0.27%) HIPAA
14 12 (0.27%) HL7
14 12 (0.27%) IFRS
System Software
1 334 (7.49%) Active Directory
2 274 (6.14%) Docker
3 100 (2.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.83%) vSphere
5 34 (0.76%) VMware NSX
6 31 (0.69%) Hyper-V
7 26 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
8 25 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
9 20 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
10 18 (0.40%) vCloud
11 17 (0.38%) Firmware
12 11 (0.25%) Squid
13 7 (0.16%) IAG
13 7 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.11%) RACF
15 4 (0.090%) ACF2
15 4 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.090%) NFS
15 4 (0.090%) Snort
16 3 (0.067%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 336 (7.53%) Kubernetes
2 237 (5.31%) Terraform
3 158 (3.54%) Ansible
4 122 (2.73%) Microsoft Intune
5 100 (2.24%) Grafana
6 84 (1.88%) Prometheus
7 62 (1.39%) SCCM
8 44 (0.99%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.83%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.58%) Kibana
12 23 (0.52%) Control-M
13 22 (0.49%) Puppet
14 21 (0.47%) Nessus
15 20 (0.45%) Argo
16 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 14 (0.31%) SCOM
19 11 (0.25%) WSUS
20 9 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 831 (18.63%) Microsoft
2 300 (6.72%) Oracle
3 249 (5.58%) SAP
4 213 (4.77%) ServiceNow
5 174 (3.90%) VMware
6 122 (2.73%) Databricks
7 121 (2.71%) Google
8 117 (2.62%) Splunk
9 103 (2.31%) Salesforce
10 102 (2.29%) Cisco
11 66 (1.48%) CyberArk
12 62 (1.39%) Workday
13 61 (1.37%) BeyondTrust
13 61 (1.37%) Dell
14 59 (1.32%) Red Hat
15 49 (1.10%) Adobe
16 43 (0.96%) Citrix
16 43 (0.96%) Dynatrace
17 41 (0.92%) MuleSoft
18 40 (0.90%) F5