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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,613 4,382 4,058
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.50% 16.79% 10.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.30% 18.44% 12.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,707 2,722 2,447
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £380 £380 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 253 360
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £16.17 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.28 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +0.33% +31.12% -68.02%
75th Percentile £42.09 £38.42 £33.24
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.85 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £21.90 £16.23
% change year-on-year -8.68% +34.94% -68.49%

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 37,490 23,760 31,971
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.37% 91.05% 85.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,605 15,276 20,748
10th Percentile £325 £300 £305
25th Percentile £419 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.98% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,362 1,184 2,308
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.23 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.79 £17.95 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% +1.65%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.45%

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 3 July 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 3 July 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 3 July 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 1,952 £512 +2.36% 1,282
South East -5 722 £482 -3.17% 834
North of England -11 722 £446 -6.05% 695
Midlands -7 530 £463 +8.82% 454
West Midlands -8 384 £467 +3.74% 247
North West -12 354 £446 -8.05% 383
Yorkshire -7 327 £450 -5.26% 219
South West -4 320 £500 - 338
East of England -2 259 £450 -4.76% 289
East Midlands -1 144 £449 +22.21% 208
North East -21 47 £356 -20.83% 110
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
1 200 (4.34%) Confluence
2 152 (3.30%) SharePoint
3 89 (1.93%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.21%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.80%) Apache
5 37 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 31 (0.67%) CMS
6 31 (0.67%) SAS
7 25 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
8 18 (0.39%) WebLogic
9 13 (0.28%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.24%) nginx
11 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.22%) CICS
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Camunda
13 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 260 (5.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 212 (4.60%) Microsoft Office
3 91 (1.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.47%) MS Visio
5 57 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
6 29 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.30%) AutoCAD
9 12 (0.26%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 11 (0.24%) Revit
11 8 (0.17%) 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 3 (0.065%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.065%) Navisworks
15 3 (0.065%) Oracle Smart View
16 2 (0.043%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 113 (2.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
4 21 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
5 16 (0.35%) Aladdin
5 16 (0.35%) NetSuite
5 16 (0.35%) Workday HCM
6 12 (0.26%) SAP SD
7 11 (0.24%) iTrent
7 11 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 11 (0.24%) Teamcenter
8 10 (0.22%) Finacle
8 10 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
8 10 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
9 8 (0.17%) Loan IQ
9 8 (0.17%) NEC Housing
9 8 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
9 8 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
10 7 (0.15%) SAP GRC
10 7 (0.15%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 932 (20.20%) Azure
2 672 (14.57%) AWS
3 377 (8.17%) Power Platform
4 342 (7.41%) Microsoft 365
5 256 (5.55%) GCP
6 225 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
7 162 (3.51%) Entra ID
8 152 (3.30%) GitHub
9 124 (2.69%) SaaS
10 120 (2.60%) Serverless
11 73 (1.58%) AWS Lambda
12 71 (1.54%) Amazon S3
13 68 (1.47%) GitHub Actions
14 66 (1.43%) Power Automate
15 63 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
16 59 (1.28%) Snowflake
17 58 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
17 58 (1.26%) PowerApps
18 55 (1.19%) OpenShift
19 42 (0.91%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 191 (4.14%) DNS
2 148 (3.21%) Firewall
3 114 (2.47%) VPN
4 109 (2.36%) TCP/IP
5 101 (2.19%) DHCP
6 85 (1.84%) WAN
7 83 (1.80%) Network Security
8 72 (1.56%) LAN
9 65 (1.41%) SAN
10 62 (1.34%) Wi-Fi
11 45 (0.98%) VLAN
12 43 (0.93%) BGP
13 39 (0.85%) Wireless
14 37 (0.80%) OSPF
15 32 (0.69%) SD-WAN
16 30 (0.65%) VoIP
17 24 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 23 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
19 20 (0.43%) MPLS
20 18 (0.39%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 296 (6.42%) Power BI
2 202 (4.38%) SQL Server
3 140 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
4 123 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
5 122 (2.64%) Relational Database
6 93 (2.02%) MongoDB
7 82 (1.78%) NoSQL
8 79 (1.71%) Tableau
9 77 (1.67%) Data Lake
10 76 (1.65%) Metadata
11 50 (1.08%) Oracle Database
12 46 (1.00%) Big Data
12 46 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 42 (0.91%) MySQL
14 35 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
15 27 (0.59%) Power Query
16 25 (0.54%) Delta Lake
16 25 (0.54%) RDBMS
17 23 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
17 23 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 461 (9.99%) JIRA
2 262 (5.68%) Git
3 162 (3.51%) Jenkins
4 111 (2.41%) GitLab
5 60 (1.30%) Selenium
6 37 (0.80%) Postman
7 32 (0.69%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.52%) Cucumber
8 24 (0.52%) Cypress.io
9 22 (0.48%) JUnit
10 21 (0.46%) Bitbucket
11 20 (0.43%) Mockito
12 16 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
12 16 (0.35%) WebDriver
13 14 (0.30%) SonarQube
14 13 (0.28%) JMeter
14 13 (0.28%) Maven
14 13 (0.28%) Zephyr
15 12 (0.26%) Gradle
16 10 (0.22%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,381 (51.62%) Social Skills
2 1,880 (40.75%) Analytical Skills
3 1,082 (23.46%) Finance
4 401 (8.69%) Public Sector
5 354 (7.67%) Banking
6 192 (4.16%) Organisational Skills
7 186 (4.03%) Documentation Skills
8 176 (3.82%) Retail
9 128 (2.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 113 (2.45%) Legal
11 111 (2.41%) Influencing Skills
12 108 (2.34%) Presentation Skills
13 101 (2.19%) Front Office
14 100 (2.17%) Manufacturing
15 87 (1.89%) Marketing
16 85 (1.84%) Telecoms
17 76 (1.65%) Investment Banking
18 56 (1.21%) Law
19 54 (1.17%) Back Office
20 45 (0.98%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 659 (14.29%) Analyst
2 499 (10.82%) Developer
3 394 (8.54%) Senior
4 340 (7.37%) Architect
5 314 (6.81%) Lead
6 240 (5.20%) Business Analyst
7 210 (4.55%) Data Engineer
8 204 (4.42%) Consultant
9 162 (3.51%) IT Support
10 151 (3.27%) Project Manager
11 147 (3.19%) Support Engineer
12 103 (2.23%) Data Analyst
13 98 (2.12%) Administrator
13 98 (2.12%) IT Engineer
14 94 (2.04%) Solutions Architect
15 90 (1.95%) Java Developer
16 85 (1.84%) Software Engineer
17 82 (1.78%) Technical Support
18 81 (1.76%) Support Analyst
19 74 (1.60%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 260 (5.64%) REST
2 146 (3.16%) .NET
3 132 (2.86%) Kafka
4 124 (2.69%) Spring
5 121 (2.62%) React
6 119 (2.58%) RESTful
7 118 (2.56%) SOAP
8 105 (2.28%) JSON
9 94 (2.04%) Middleware
10 93 (2.02%) CSS
11 90 (1.95%) Spring Boot
12 88 (1.91%) XML
13 80 (1.73%) HTML
14 75 (1.63%) Node.js
15 74 (1.60%) AngularJS
16 58 (1.26%) LDAP
17 57 (1.24%) PySpark
18 56 (1.21%) OAuth
19 52 (1.13%) Web Services
20 46 (1.00%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 221 (4.79%) Onboarding
2 219 (4.75%) Product Ownership
3 202 (4.38%) Cloud Native
4 169 (3.66%) Data Centre
5 167 (3.62%) Self-Motivation
6 143 (3.10%) Analytical Mindset
7 132 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
8 122 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
8 122 (2.64%) Management Information System
9 110 (2.38%) Data Protection Act
9 110 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
10 103 (2.23%) Data Structures
11 96 (2.08%) Virtual Team
12 56 (1.21%) AI Agents
13 55 (1.19%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 53 (1.15%) Algorithms
15 51 (1.11%) Security Posture
16 48 (1.04%) Driving Licence
17 47 (1.02%) CMDB
17 47 (1.02%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 590 (12.79%) Windows
2 254 (5.51%) Linux
3 112 (2.43%) Windows Server
4 108 (2.34%) Windows 10
5 95 (2.06%) Unix
6 78 (1.69%) Mac OS
7 77 (1.67%) Apple iOS
8 71 (1.54%) Android
9 44 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 18 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 12 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
12 11 (0.24%) VMS
12 11 (0.24%) zOS
13 9 (0.20%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.17%) CentOS
15 7 (0.15%) Solaris
15 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.11%) Debian
16 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.087%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,215 (26.34%) Agile
2 853 (18.49%) Continuous Improvement
3 800 (17.34%) Stakeholder Management
4 742 (16.08%) CI/CD
5 723 (15.67%) DevOps
6 573 (12.42%) AI
7 526 (11.40%) Decision-Making
8 516 (11.19%) Migration
9 502 (10.88%) Analytics
10 454 (9.84%) ITIL
11 438 (9.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 418 (9.06%) Customer Service
13 378 (8.19%) Validation
14 376 (8.15%) Business Intelligence
15 365 (7.91%) Data Modelling
16 356 (7.72%) Project Management
17 348 (7.54%) Test Automation
18 322 (6.98%) Change Management
19 317 (6.87%) Scrum
20 314 (6.81%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 856 (18.56%) SQL
2 793 (17.19%) Python
3 357 (7.74%) Java
4 258 (5.59%) PowerShell
5 232 (5.03%) JavaScript
6 168 (3.64%) C#
7 117 (2.54%) Bash
8 108 (2.34%) TypeScript
9 77 (1.67%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.28%) C++
11 49 (1.06%) T-SQL
12 43 (0.93%) Shell Script
13 42 (0.91%) C
13 42 (0.91%) Go
14 35 (0.76%) Bicep
15 34 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 29 (0.63%) Apex Code
17 28 (0.61%) R
18 22 (0.48%) Kotlin
19 21 (0.46%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,009 (21.87%) Security Cleared
2 669 (14.50%) SC Cleared
3 571 (12.38%) Degree
4 198 (4.29%) DV Cleared
5 174 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
6 130 (2.82%) Microsoft Certification
7 115 (2.49%) BPSS Clearance
7 115 (2.49%) Cisco Certification
8 88 (1.91%) CISSP
9 75 (1.63%) PMP
10 67 (1.45%) A+ Certification
11 66 (1.43%) CCNA
12 65 (1.41%) PMI Certification
13 63 (1.37%) Azure Certification
14 57 (1.24%) CISM
15 51 (1.11%) Master's Degree
16 50 (1.08%) Network+ Certification
17 42 (0.91%) MCSE
18 37 (0.80%) AWS Certification
18 37 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 321 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 265 (5.74%) QA
3 144 (3.12%) GDPR
4 100 (2.17%) SLA
5 90 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 87 (1.89%) Accessibility
7 75 (1.63%) NIST
8 69 (1.50%) PMO
9 43 (0.93%) GRC
10 25 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
10 25 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 21 (0.46%) PCI DSS
12 15 (0.33%) NCSC
13 14 (0.30%) WCAG
14 13 (0.28%) HIPAA
14 13 (0.28%) ISO 20022
15 12 (0.26%) COBIT
15 12 (0.26%) PSD2
16 11 (0.24%) Def Stans
16 11 (0.24%) IFRS
System Software
1 347 (7.52%) Active Directory
2 292 (6.33%) Docker
3 109 (2.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.87%) vSphere
5 39 (0.85%) VMware ESXi
5 39 (0.85%) VMware NSX
6 31 (0.67%) Hyper-V
7 28 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
8 23 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
9 20 (0.43%) vCloud
10 19 (0.41%) Firmware
11 13 (0.28%) IAG
12 11 (0.24%) Squid
13 6 (0.13%) NFS
13 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.087%) ACF2
14 4 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.087%) RACF
14 4 (0.087%) Snort
14 4 (0.087%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 352 (7.63%) Kubernetes
2 269 (5.83%) Terraform
3 156 (3.38%) Ansible
4 125 (2.71%) Microsoft Intune
5 102 (2.21%) Grafana
6 88 (1.91%) Prometheus
7 71 (1.54%) SCCM
8 51 (1.11%) vCenter Server
9 35 (0.76%) FortiGate
9 35 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
10 27 (0.59%) Control-M
11 22 (0.48%) Nessus
12 20 (0.43%) Argo
12 20 (0.43%) SCOM
13 18 (0.39%) IBM Guardium
14 17 (0.37%) WSUS
15 16 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
15 16 (0.35%) Kibana
16 12 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 11 (0.24%) Puppet
Vendors
1 894 (19.38%) Microsoft
2 324 (7.02%) Oracle
3 290 (6.29%) ServiceNow
4 280 (6.07%) SAP
5 176 (3.82%) VMware
6 140 (3.03%) Google
7 121 (2.62%) Splunk
8 112 (2.43%) Salesforce
9 109 (2.36%) Databricks
10 99 (2.15%) Cisco
11 75 (1.63%) Workday
12 61 (1.32%) Dynatrace
13 58 (1.26%) Red Hat
14 54 (1.17%) Dell
15 47 (1.02%) Citrix
16 46 (1.00%) Adobe
16 46 (1.00%) Apple
17 42 (0.91%) MuleSoft
18 41 (0.89%) CyberArk
19 36 (0.78%) Informatica