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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,561 4,235 4,075
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.56% 17.01% 10.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.38% 18.61% 12.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,707 2,652 2,443
10th Percentile £263 £250 £254
25th Percentile £388 £384 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £599 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £725 £736
UK median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.54% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 332 241 378
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.13 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.28 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +0.33% +31.12% -68.73%
75th Percentile £43.01 £35.00 £35.53
90th Percentile £74.23 £68.75 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.44 £22.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.09% +35.55% -68.96%

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 36,836 22,759 32,181
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.26% 91.40% 85.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,282 14,723 20,802
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £502 £525
% change year-on-year +2.19% -4.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,303 1,078 2,398
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.10 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.50 £27.40 £37.63
Median % change year-on-year +73.36% -27.18% +4.81%
75th Percentile £68.75 £56.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year +72.39% -32.00% +7.05%

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 20 June 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 20 June 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 20 June 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 1,935 £520 +4.00% 796
North of England -11 725 £448 -5.79% 604
South East -6 699 £488 -2.50% 761
Midlands -9 509 £463 +8.82% 421
West Midlands -10 368 £468 +3.98% 238
North West -10 350 £425 -10.53% 344
Yorkshire -6 331 £460 -3.16% 184
South West -4 321 £500 - 287
East of England -2 255 £450 -3.54% 227
East Midlands -2 139 £447 +21.63% 184
North East -16 50 £370 -17.78% 91
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
1 206 (4.52%) Confluence
2 146 (3.20%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.82%) Microsoft Exchange
4 55 (1.21%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.81%) Apache
5 37 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.70%) SAS
7 29 (0.64%) CMS
8 26 (0.57%) Oracle Workflow
9 16 (0.35%) WebLogic
10 11 (0.24%) nginx
11 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.22%) CICS
11 10 (0.22%) Jupyter
11 10 (0.22%) WebSphere
12 8 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 8 (0.18%) Camunda
13 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 271 (5.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 201 (4.41%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (2.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
5 59 (1.29%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.31%) AutoCAD
9 12 (0.26%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 11 (0.24%) Revit
11 8 (0.18%) CPLEX
12 7 (0.15%) Trello
13 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
13 6 (0.13%) Sketch
14 5 (0.11%) CATIA
14 5 (0.11%) Maya
15 4 (0.088%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.066%) Adobe XD
16 3 (0.066%) LaTeX
16 3 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 112 (2.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
3 19 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
4 18 (0.39%) Aladdin
5 14 (0.31%) NetSuite
5 14 (0.31%) Workday HCM
6 13 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
7 12 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 11 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
8 11 (0.24%) SAP SD
8 11 (0.24%) Teamcenter
9 9 (0.20%) iTrent
9 9 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
9 9 (0.20%) SAP HCM
10 8 (0.18%) Finacle
10 8 (0.18%) NEC Housing
11 7 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
11 7 (0.15%) Oracle HRMS
11 7 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 919 (20.15%) Azure
2 677 (14.84%) AWS
3 366 (8.02%) Power Platform
4 330 (7.24%) Microsoft 365
5 258 (5.66%) GCP
6 209 (4.58%) Azure DevOps
7 156 (3.42%) GitHub
8 150 (3.29%) Entra ID
9 129 (2.83%) SaaS
10 126 (2.76%) Serverless
11 77 (1.69%) Amazon S3
12 76 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
13 75 (1.64%) GitHub Actions
14 61 (1.34%) Azure Data Factory
15 60 (1.32%) Snowflake
16 57 (1.25%) Power Automate
17 55 (1.21%) Dynamics 365
18 49 (1.07%) OpenShift
18 49 (1.07%) PowerApps
19 42 (0.92%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 174 (3.81%) DNS
2 142 (3.11%) Firewall
3 107 (2.35%) VPN
4 105 (2.30%) TCP/IP
5 92 (2.02%) DHCP
6 90 (1.97%) WAN
7 78 (1.71%) Network Security
8 72 (1.58%) LAN
9 60 (1.32%) SAN
9 60 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
10 45 (0.99%) VLAN
11 41 (0.90%) BGP
12 36 (0.79%) SD-WAN
13 35 (0.77%) OSPF
14 31 (0.68%) Wireless
15 26 (0.57%) VoIP
16 24 (0.53%) VXLAN
17 21 (0.46%) Structured Cabling
18 19 (0.42%) MPLS
19 18 (0.39%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 291 (6.38%) Power BI
2 183 (4.01%) SQL Server
3 137 (3.00%) Data Warehouse
4 120 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
4 120 (2.63%) Relational Database
5 93 (2.04%) MongoDB
6 82 (1.80%) NoSQL
7 80 (1.75%) Tableau
8 78 (1.71%) Data Lake
8 78 (1.71%) Metadata
9 48 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 47 (1.03%) Oracle Database
11 44 (0.96%) Big Data
12 42 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
13 39 (0.86%) MySQL
14 28 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
14 28 (0.61%) Power Query
15 24 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
15 24 (0.53%) Pentaho
16 23 (0.50%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 462 (10.13%) JIRA
2 246 (5.39%) Git
3 152 (3.33%) Jenkins
4 109 (2.39%) GitLab
5 54 (1.18%) Selenium
6 34 (0.75%) Postman
7 28 (0.61%) REST Assured
8 25 (0.55%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.50%) Cucumber
10 21 (0.46%) JUnit
11 20 (0.44%) Cypress.io
12 17 (0.37%) Mockito
13 16 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
14 14 (0.31%) WebDriver
15 13 (0.29%) SonarQube
16 12 (0.26%) JMeter
16 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
17 11 (0.24%) Maven
18 10 (0.22%) Rational Rhapsody
18 10 (0.22%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,359 (51.72%) Social Skills
2 1,817 (39.84%) Analytical Skills
3 1,061 (23.26%) Finance
4 379 (8.31%) Public Sector
5 347 (7.61%) Banking
6 191 (4.19%) Organisational Skills
7 179 (3.92%) Documentation Skills
8 173 (3.79%) Retail
9 122 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 118 (2.59%) Legal
11 104 (2.28%) Presentation Skills
12 96 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
13 95 (2.08%) Front Office
14 87 (1.91%) Manufacturing
15 84 (1.84%) Telecoms
16 83 (1.82%) Marketing
17 68 (1.49%) Investment Banking
18 59 (1.29%) Law
19 50 (1.10%) Back Office
20 44 (0.96%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 658 (14.43%) Analyst
2 490 (10.74%) Developer
3 382 (8.38%) Senior
4 333 (7.30%) Architect
5 306 (6.71%) Lead
6 238 (5.22%) Business Analyst
7 214 (4.69%) Data Engineer
8 209 (4.58%) Consultant
9 153 (3.35%) Project Manager
10 152 (3.33%) IT Support
11 132 (2.89%) Support Engineer
12 103 (2.26%) Data Analyst
13 96 (2.10%) Solutions Architect
14 93 (2.04%) Administrator
15 89 (1.95%) IT Engineer
16 87 (1.91%) Software Engineer
17 81 (1.78%) Java Developer
18 79 (1.73%) Support Analyst
19 77 (1.69%) Technical Support
20 73 (1.60%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 254 (5.57%) REST
2 142 (3.11%) .NET
3 132 (2.89%) Kafka
4 122 (2.67%) React
5 120 (2.63%) SOAP
6 116 (2.54%) Spring
7 114 (2.50%) RESTful
8 102 (2.24%) JSON
9 97 (2.13%) CSS
10 92 (2.02%) Middleware
11 86 (1.89%) XML
12 85 (1.86%) Spring Boot
13 82 (1.80%) HTML
14 74 (1.62%) AngularJS
15 73 (1.60%) Node.js
16 72 (1.58%) LDAP
17 55 (1.21%) OAuth
17 55 (1.21%) Web Services
18 53 (1.16%) PySpark
19 45 (0.99%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 220 (4.82%) Product Ownership
2 217 (4.76%) Onboarding
3 193 (4.23%) Cloud Native
4 164 (3.60%) Data Centre
5 155 (3.40%) Self-Motivation
6 133 (2.92%) Analytical Mindset
7 126 (2.76%) Management Information System
8 124 (2.72%) Distributed Systems
9 121 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
10 111 (2.43%) Enterprise Software
11 109 (2.39%) Data Protection Act
12 93 (2.04%) Virtual Team
13 92 (2.02%) Data Structures
14 62 (1.36%) Security Posture
15 57 (1.25%) AI Agents
16 54 (1.18%) Algorithms
17 52 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 47 (1.03%) Driving Licence
19 44 (0.96%) CMDB
20 43 (0.94%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 565 (12.39%) Windows
2 250 (5.48%) Linux
3 110 (2.41%) Windows 10
4 104 (2.28%) Windows Server
5 86 (1.89%) Unix
6 78 (1.71%) Apple iOS
7 74 (1.62%) Mac OS
8 71 (1.56%) Android
9 46 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 23 (0.50%) Ubuntu
11 14 (0.31%) CentOS
12 13 (0.29%) VMS
13 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 10 (0.22%) zOS
15 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
16 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.13%) Solaris
18 5 (0.11%) Debian
19 4 (0.088%) AIX
19 4 (0.088%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,201 (26.33%) Agile
2 806 (17.67%) Continuous Improvement
3 752 (16.49%) Stakeholder Management
4 742 (16.27%) CI/CD
5 704 (15.44%) DevOps
6 549 (12.04%) AI
7 515 (11.29%) Decision-Making
8 507 (11.12%) Migration
9 497 (10.90%) Analytics
10 428 (9.38%) ITIL
11 407 (8.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 405 (8.88%) Customer Service
13 379 (8.31%) Project Management
14 374 (8.20%) Business Intelligence
14 374 (8.20%) Data Modelling
15 368 (8.07%) Validation
16 344 (7.54%) Test Automation
17 327 (7.17%) Change Management
18 315 (6.91%) Scrum
19 297 (6.51%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 848 (18.59%) SQL
2 814 (17.85%) Python
3 341 (7.48%) Java
4 269 (5.90%) PowerShell
5 232 (5.09%) JavaScript
6 174 (3.81%) C#
7 107 (2.35%) TypeScript
8 101 (2.21%) Bash
9 78 (1.71%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.29%) C++
11 43 (0.94%) T-SQL
12 41 (0.90%) C
13 40 (0.88%) Shell Script
14 38 (0.83%) Go
15 31 (0.68%) Bicep
15 31 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 29 (0.64%) R
17 26 (0.57%) Apex Code
18 24 (0.53%) Perl
19 22 (0.48%) Scala
Qualifications
1 984 (21.57%) Security Cleared
2 656 (14.38%) SC Cleared
3 555 (12.17%) Degree
4 195 (4.28%) DV Cleared
5 174 (3.81%) Computer Science Degree
6 126 (2.76%) Microsoft Certification
7 124 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
8 106 (2.32%) Cisco Certification
9 90 (1.97%) CISSP
10 75 (1.64%) PMP
11 66 (1.45%) Azure Certification
12 63 (1.38%) A+ Certification
12 63 (1.38%) CISM
12 63 (1.38%) PMI Certification
13 60 (1.32%) CCNA
14 54 (1.18%) Master's Degree
15 50 (1.10%) Network+ Certification
16 43 (0.94%) MCSE
17 35 (0.77%) AWS Certification
17 35 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 309 (6.77%) Data Quality
2 241 (5.28%) QA
3 138 (3.03%) GDPR
4 91 (2.00%) SLA
5 90 (1.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 83 (1.82%) Accessibility
7 77 (1.69%) PMO
8 76 (1.67%) NIST
9 44 (0.96%) GRC
10 23 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 22 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
12 20 (0.44%) PCI DSS
13 16 (0.35%) COBIT
14 15 (0.33%) NCSC
15 13 (0.29%) ISO 20022
15 13 (0.29%) WCAG
16 12 (0.26%) HIPAA
16 12 (0.26%) PSD2
17 11 (0.24%) IFRS
18 10 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 349 (7.65%) Active Directory
2 278 (6.10%) Docker
3 104 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.86%) vSphere
5 37 (0.81%) VMware NSX
6 35 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
7 28 (0.61%) Hyper-V
8 26 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
9 25 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
10 19 (0.42%) Firmware
10 19 (0.42%) vCloud
11 11 (0.24%) Squid
12 9 (0.20%) IAG
13 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.088%) ACF2
14 4 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.088%) NFS
14 4 (0.088%) RACF
14 4 (0.088%) Snort
15 3 (0.066%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 337 (7.39%) Kubernetes
2 256 (5.61%) Terraform
3 157 (3.44%) Ansible
4 127 (2.78%) Microsoft Intune
5 95 (2.08%) Grafana
6 83 (1.82%) Prometheus
7 70 (1.53%) SCCM
8 49 (1.07%) vCenter Server
9 39 (0.86%) FortiGate
10 31 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
11 24 (0.53%) Control-M
12 21 (0.46%) Nessus
13 20 (0.44%) Argo
14 19 (0.42%) Kibana
15 18 (0.39%) Puppet
16 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
16 17 (0.37%) SCOM
17 15 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
18 14 (0.31%) WSUS
19 13 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 855 (18.75%) Microsoft
2 313 (6.86%) Oracle
3 263 (5.77%) SAP
4 262 (5.74%) ServiceNow
5 171 (3.75%) VMware
6 129 (2.83%) Google
7 114 (2.50%) Databricks
8 113 (2.48%) Splunk
9 107 (2.35%) Salesforce
10 99 (2.17%) Cisco
11 68 (1.49%) Workday
12 59 (1.29%) Red Hat
13 54 (1.18%) Dell
14 52 (1.14%) Dynatrace
15 51 (1.12%) CyberArk
16 49 (1.07%) Adobe
17 46 (1.01%) BeyondTrust
17 46 (1.01%) Citrix
18 40 (0.88%) Apple
18 40 (0.88%) MuleSoft