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

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,561 4,165 4,059
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.48% 16.93% 10.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.48% 18.59% 12.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,824 2,618 2,493
10th Percentile £280 £256 £225
25th Percentile £390 £400 £376
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -2.25% -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £594 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £479 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.20% -0.05% -4.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 201 363
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.81 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% +26.51% -63.84%
75th Percentile £59.50 £44.61 £40.13
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £68.10
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £23.90 £17.50
% change year-on-year -11.09% +36.57% -63.16%

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 33,845 22,404 32,231
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.18% 91.08% 86.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,654 14,697 21,192
10th Percentile £315 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,105 910 2,231
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.70 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £30.62 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.82% -12.53% -6.67%
75th Percentile £67.25 £63.75 £59.22
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £29.07 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.60% -16.94% -6.67%

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 24 April 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 24 April 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 24 April 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 -10 1,975 £513 -2.38% 663
North of England -5 766 £447 -5.89% 516
South East -5 662 £488 -2.50% 697
Midlands -3 498 £450 +1.12% 406
North West -6 363 £402 -17.54% 290
Yorkshire -5 357 £450 -5.21% 158
West Midlands -6 339 £475 +5.20% 229
South West -1 317 £500 - 264
East of England -4 206 £450 - 247
East Midlands -1 158 £425 +14.09% 177
North East -3 53 £425 -16.67% 77
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
1 196 (4.30%) Confluence
2 125 (2.74%) SharePoint
3 92 (2.02%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.40%) Apache Spark
5 52 (1.14%) Apache
6 39 (0.86%) SAS
7 34 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
8 23 (0.50%) CMS
9 18 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.26%) nginx
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.15%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.15%) JBoss
14 6 (0.13%) Camunda
14 6 (0.13%) CICS
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 279 (6.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 212 (4.65%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (2.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
5 64 (1.40%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 20 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.22%) Sketch
9 8 (0.18%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Trello
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) AutoCAD
11 5 (0.11%) Maya
11 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.088%) Revit
13 3 (0.066%) CATIA
13 3 (0.066%) CPLEX
13 3 (0.066%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 88 (1.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.42%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
6 14 (0.31%) NEC Housing
6 14 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 13 (0.29%) Workday HCM
8 11 (0.24%) NetSuite
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
10 9 (0.20%) Shopify
10 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
11 8 (0.18%) Remedy ITSM
12 7 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 7 (0.15%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 949 (20.81%) Azure
2 706 (15.48%) AWS
3 348 (7.63%) Power Platform
4 313 (6.86%) GCP
5 306 (6.71%) Microsoft 365
6 217 (4.76%) Azure DevOps
7 193 (4.23%) GitHub
8 151 (3.31%) Entra ID
9 139 (3.05%) Serverless
10 118 (2.59%) SaaS
11 94 (2.06%) GitHub Actions
12 85 (1.86%) Amazon S3
12 85 (1.86%) AWS Lambda
13 69 (1.51%) Azure Data Factory
13 69 (1.51%) OpenShift
14 64 (1.40%) Snowflake
15 59 (1.29%) Power Automate
16 55 (1.21%) Dynamics 365
17 52 (1.14%) Google Workspace
18 49 (1.07%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 161 (3.53%) DNS
1 161 (3.53%) Firewall
2 104 (2.28%) TCP/IP
3 98 (2.15%) Network Security
3 98 (2.15%) VPN
4 83 (1.82%) WAN
5 82 (1.80%) DHCP
6 64 (1.40%) LAN
7 54 (1.18%) SAN
8 51 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
9 41 (0.90%) BGP
10 39 (0.86%) VLAN
11 36 (0.79%) OSPF
12 29 (0.64%) VoIP
13 28 (0.61%) SD-WAN
14 22 (0.48%) Internet
14 22 (0.48%) VXLAN
15 21 (0.46%) Wireless
16 19 (0.42%) MPLS
17 18 (0.39%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (6.14%) Power BI
2 178 (3.90%) SQL Server
3 140 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (2.50%) PostgreSQL
5 105 (2.30%) Relational Database
6 95 (2.08%) Metadata
7 84 (1.84%) MongoDB
8 80 (1.75%) NoSQL
8 80 (1.75%) Tableau
9 69 (1.51%) Data Lake
10 58 (1.27%) Oracle Reports
11 53 (1.16%) Big Data
12 47 (1.03%) Oracle Database
13 45 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 42 (0.92%) MySQL
15 32 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
16 30 (0.66%) Power Query
17 27 (0.59%) BigQuery
17 27 (0.59%) DynamoDB
17 27 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 457 (10.02%) JIRA
2 265 (5.81%) Git
3 187 (4.10%) Jenkins
4 124 (2.72%) GitLab
5 63 (1.38%) Selenium
6 34 (0.75%) Postman
7 30 (0.66%) JUnit
8 28 (0.61%) Bitbucket
9 27 (0.59%) Cucumber
10 21 (0.46%) Maven
11 19 (0.42%) Cypress.io
11 19 (0.42%) REST Assured
11 19 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
12 17 (0.37%) Mockito
13 16 (0.35%) JMeter
14 14 (0.31%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.31%) SpecFlow
15 13 (0.29%) CircleCI
16 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
16 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 2,390 (52.40%) Social Skills
2 1,774 (38.89%) Analytical Skills
3 1,068 (23.42%) Finance
4 418 (9.16%) Public Sector
5 361 (7.91%) Banking
6 199 (4.36%) Organisational Skills
7 167 (3.66%) Retail
8 166 (3.64%) Documentation Skills
9 138 (3.03%) Legal
10 121 (2.65%) Influencing Skills
11 119 (2.61%) Presentation Skills
12 100 (2.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 89 (1.95%) Front Office
14 82 (1.80%) Marketing
15 73 (1.60%) Telecoms
16 61 (1.34%) Investment Banking
17 60 (1.32%) Manufacturing
18 52 (1.14%) Law
19 49 (1.07%) Military
20 47 (1.03%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 665 (14.58%) Analyst
2 525 (11.51%) Developer
3 385 (8.44%) Senior
4 342 (7.50%) Architect
5 297 (6.51%) Lead
6 262 (5.74%) Business Analyst
7 209 (4.58%) Data Engineer
8 207 (4.54%) Consultant
9 176 (3.86%) Project Manager
10 110 (2.41%) IT Support
11 108 (2.37%) Data Analyst
12 104 (2.28%) Support Engineer
13 92 (2.02%) Java Developer
13 92 (2.02%) Solutions Architect
14 91 (2.00%) Administrator
15 84 (1.84%) Software Engineer
16 74 (1.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 73 (1.60%) IT Analyst
18 71 (1.56%) Python Developer
19 68 (1.49%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (5.92%) REST
2 142 (3.11%) SOAP
3 140 (3.07%) Kafka
4 131 (2.87%) RESTful
5 127 (2.78%) .NET
6 124 (2.72%) Spring
7 120 (2.63%) React
8 99 (2.17%) Node.js
9 96 (2.10%) CSS
10 94 (2.06%) AngularJS
10 94 (2.06%) HTML
11 93 (2.04%) Spring Boot
12 92 (2.02%) LDAP
13 91 (2.00%) JSON
14 88 (1.93%) XML
15 83 (1.82%) Middleware
16 70 (1.53%) OAuth
17 57 (1.25%) PySpark
18 54 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
19 52 (1.14%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 228 (5.00%) Product Ownership
2 206 (4.52%) Onboarding
3 175 (3.84%) Cloud Native
4 146 (3.20%) Data Centre
5 136 (2.98%) Management Information System
6 132 (2.89%) Self-Motivation
7 124 (2.72%) Analytical Mindset
8 101 (2.21%) Distributed Systems
9 100 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
10 97 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
11 94 (2.06%) Data Structures
12 93 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
13 83 (1.82%) Virtual Team
14 67 (1.47%) Security Posture
15 59 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
16 55 (1.21%) Mobile App
17 51 (1.12%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 49 (1.07%) Algorithms
19 47 (1.03%) AI Agents
20 42 (0.92%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 509 (11.16%) Windows
2 269 (5.90%) Linux
3 107 (2.35%) Windows 10
4 85 (1.86%) Unix
5 80 (1.75%) Android
6 79 (1.73%) Windows Server
7 73 (1.60%) Apple iOS
8 57 (1.25%) Mac OS
9 47 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.44%) VMS
11 19 (0.42%) Ubuntu
12 14 (0.31%) CentOS
13 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.20%) zOS
15 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
16 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.13%) Debian
18 4 (0.088%) AIX
18 4 (0.088%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,277 (28.00%) Agile
2 767 (16.82%) CI/CD
3 724 (15.87%) DevOps
4 717 (15.72%) Continuous Improvement
5 684 (15.00%) Stakeholder Management
6 541 (11.86%) Analytics
7 512 (11.23%) Decision-Making
8 509 (11.16%) Migration
9 498 (10.92%) AI
10 436 (9.56%) Project Management
11 405 (8.88%) Data Modelling
12 385 (8.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 366 (8.02%) Validation
14 364 (7.98%) Business Intelligence
15 360 (7.89%) Test Automation
16 358 (7.85%) ITIL
17 355 (7.78%) Customer Service
18 333 (7.30%) Change Management
18 333 (7.30%) Scrum
19 307 (6.73%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 876 (19.21%) Python
2 827 (18.13%) SQL
3 382 (8.38%) Java
4 287 (6.29%) PowerShell
5 234 (5.13%) JavaScript
6 168 (3.68%) C#
7 143 (3.14%) TypeScript
8 120 (2.63%) Bash
9 79 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.23%) C++
11 45 (0.99%) Go
12 44 (0.96%) Shell Script
13 38 (0.83%) Bicep
14 37 (0.81%) C
15 36 (0.79%) R
16 34 (0.75%) T-SQL
17 32 (0.70%) Apex Code
18 30 (0.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 28 (0.61%) Scala
20 27 (0.59%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,024 (22.45%) Security Cleared
2 705 (15.46%) SC Cleared
3 563 (12.34%) Degree
4 206 (4.52%) Computer Science Degree
5 186 (4.08%) DV Cleared
6 127 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
7 101 (2.21%) Microsoft Certification
8 96 (2.10%) CISSP
9 93 (2.04%) Cisco Certification
10 85 (1.86%) PMP
11 74 (1.62%) PMI Certification
12 67 (1.47%) Master's Degree
13 64 (1.40%) Azure Certification
14 61 (1.34%) CISM
15 48 (1.05%) CCNA
16 46 (1.01%) A+ Certification
17 42 (0.92%) Network+ Certification
18 38 (0.83%) MCSE
19 30 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
20 29 (0.64%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 301 (6.60%) Data Quality
2 280 (6.14%) QA
3 151 (3.31%) GDPR
4 93 (2.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 86 (1.89%) PMO
6 83 (1.82%) NIST
7 71 (1.56%) Accessibility
8 67 (1.47%) SLA
9 45 (0.99%) GRC
10 26 (0.57%) PCI DSS
10 26 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 24 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.46%) WCAG
13 20 (0.44%) PSD2
14 17 (0.37%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.33%) HIPAA
15 15 (0.33%) HL7
16 14 (0.31%) NCSC
17 13 (0.29%) IFRS
18 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 348 (7.63%) Active Directory
2 328 (7.19%) Docker
3 105 (2.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.79%) vSphere
5 31 (0.68%) VMware NSX
6 29 (0.64%) Hyper-V
7 18 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.37%) Firmware
8 17 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.24%) RACF
9 11 (0.24%) Squid
9 11 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
10 10 (0.22%) vCloud
11 9 (0.20%) ACF2
12 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.13%) IAG
14 4 (0.088%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.088%) NFS
14 4 (0.088%) Snort
Systems Management
1 390 (8.55%) Kubernetes
2 267 (5.85%) Terraform
3 163 (3.57%) Ansible
4 121 (2.65%) Microsoft Intune
5 103 (2.26%) Grafana
6 79 (1.73%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.58%) SCCM
8 39 (0.86%) vCenter Server
9 33 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
10 32 (0.70%) FortiGate
11 28 (0.61%) Kibana
11 28 (0.61%) Puppet
12 27 (0.59%) Argo
13 23 (0.50%) Control-M
14 20 (0.44%) Nessus
15 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
16 14 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 14 (0.31%) WSUS
17 12 (0.26%) vRealize
18 11 (0.24%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 851 (18.66%) Microsoft
2 318 (6.97%) Oracle
3 238 (5.22%) SAP
4 197 (4.32%) ServiceNow
5 179 (3.92%) VMware
6 144 (3.16%) Google
7 140 (3.07%) Databricks
8 116 (2.54%) Splunk
9 109 (2.39%) Cisco
10 105 (2.30%) Salesforce
11 70 (1.53%) CyberArk
12 65 (1.43%) BeyondTrust
13 63 (1.38%) Red Hat
14 57 (1.25%) Workday
15 55 (1.21%) Dell
16 51 (1.12%) Citrix
17 48 (1.05%) Adobe
18 42 (0.92%) F5
18 42 (0.92%) Informatica
19 40 (0.88%) IBM