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

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,589 4,249 4,050
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.57% 16.93% 10.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.39% 18.52% 12.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,713 2,653 2,436
10th Percentile £263 £250 £254
25th Percentile £381 £381 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £625
90th Percentile £716 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 244 373
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £16.01 £15.12 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.27 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +0.40% +31.02% -68.49%
75th Percentile £42.65 £34.61 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.78 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.44 £21.95 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.88% +35.24% -68.79%

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 37,051 22,942 31,995
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.33% 91.40% 85.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,408 14,828 20,735
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £416 £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 £514 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.78% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,328 1,099 2,362
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.76
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £26.45 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +77.69% -29.47% +6.72%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.48
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 1,950 £519 +3.71% 759
North of England -11 721 £445 -6.26% 568
South East -6 705 £488 -2.50% 727
Midlands -9 517 £450 +5.88% 417
West Midlands -9 376 £464 +3.11% 229
North West -11 351 £441 -7.11% 310
Yorkshire -6 327 £450 -5.26% 189
South West -4 324 £500 - 260
East of England -2 259 £450 -3.64% 242
East Midlands -2 139 £449 +22.21% 188
North East -17 49 £363 -19.44% 87
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 (4.34%) Confluence
2 149 (3.25%) SharePoint
3 86 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.22%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.83%) Apache
5 38 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.70%) SAS
7 29 (0.63%) CMS
8 27 (0.59%) Oracle Workflow
9 17 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 11 (0.24%) nginx
10 11 (0.24%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.22%) CICS
12 9 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Camunda
14 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 267 (5.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 207 (4.51%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 61 (1.33%) MS Visio
5 57 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
6 31 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.31%) 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 (0.044%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 116 (2.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
4 19 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
5 17 (0.37%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.33%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.31%) Workday HCM
8 13 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
9 12 (0.26%) SAP SD
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
10 11 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 11 (0.24%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.22%) Finacle
12 9 (0.20%) iTrent
12 9 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
12 9 (0.20%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.17%) NEC Housing
14 7 (0.15%) Loan IQ
14 7 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
14 7 (0.15%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 923 (20.11%) Azure
2 683 (14.88%) AWS
3 367 (8.00%) Power Platform
4 335 (7.30%) Microsoft 365
5 260 (5.67%) GCP
6 216 (4.71%) Azure DevOps
7 154 (3.36%) Entra ID
8 153 (3.33%) GitHub
9 128 (2.79%) SaaS
10 126 (2.75%) Serverless
11 77 (1.68%) Amazon S3
12 76 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
13 73 (1.59%) GitHub Actions
14 61 (1.33%) Power Automate
15 60 (1.31%) Azure Data Factory
16 59 (1.29%) Snowflake
17 56 (1.22%) Dynamics 365
18 54 (1.18%) OpenShift
19 51 (1.11%) PowerApps
20 42 (0.92%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 184 (4.01%) DNS
2 145 (3.16%) Firewall
3 108 (2.35%) VPN
4 106 (2.31%) TCP/IP
5 99 (2.16%) DHCP
6 89 (1.94%) WAN
7 80 (1.74%) Network Security
8 73 (1.59%) LAN
9 64 (1.39%) SAN
10 59 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
11 45 (0.98%) VLAN
12 41 (0.89%) BGP
13 35 (0.76%) OSPF
14 34 (0.74%) SD-WAN
15 33 (0.72%) Wireless
16 30 (0.65%) VoIP
17 24 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 21 (0.46%) Structured Cabling
19 20 (0.44%) MPLS
20 18 (0.39%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 291 (6.34%) Power BI
2 190 (4.14%) SQL Server
3 135 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
4 123 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
4 123 (2.68%) Relational Database
5 90 (1.96%) MongoDB
6 82 (1.79%) NoSQL
7 79 (1.72%) Tableau
8 78 (1.70%) Data Lake
9 75 (1.63%) Metadata
10 51 (1.11%) Oracle Database
11 45 (0.98%) Big Data
11 45 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 42 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
13 41 (0.89%) MySQL
14 28 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
14 28 (0.61%) Power Query
15 25 (0.54%) RDBMS
16 24 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
16 24 (0.52%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 456 (9.94%) JIRA
2 251 (5.47%) Git
3 157 (3.42%) Jenkins
4 112 (2.44%) GitLab
5 56 (1.22%) Selenium
6 36 (0.78%) Postman
7 28 (0.61%) REST Assured
8 25 (0.54%) Cucumber
9 23 (0.50%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.50%) JUnit
10 22 (0.48%) Cypress.io
11 19 (0.41%) Mockito
12 16 (0.35%) WebDriver
13 15 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
14 14 (0.31%) SonarQube
15 12 (0.26%) Gradle
15 12 (0.26%) JMeter
15 12 (0.26%) Maven
15 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
16 10 (0.22%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,377 (51.80%) Social Skills
2 1,837 (40.03%) Analytical Skills
3 1,074 (23.40%) Finance
4 387 (8.43%) Public Sector
5 352 (7.67%) Banking
6 191 (4.16%) Organisational Skills
7 184 (4.01%) Documentation Skills
8 175 (3.81%) Retail
9 128 (2.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 118 (2.57%) Legal
11 107 (2.33%) Presentation Skills
12 101 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
13 99 (2.16%) Front Office
14 94 (2.05%) Manufacturing
15 84 (1.83%) Marketing
16 83 (1.81%) Telecoms
17 73 (1.59%) Investment Banking
18 57 (1.24%) Law
19 54 (1.18%) Back Office
20 45 (0.98%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 660 (14.38%) Analyst
2 486 (10.59%) Developer
3 387 (8.43%) Senior
4 337 (7.34%) Architect
5 313 (6.82%) Lead
6 240 (5.23%) Business Analyst
7 216 (4.71%) Data Engineer
8 206 (4.49%) Consultant
9 157 (3.42%) IT Support
10 149 (3.25%) Project Manager
11 138 (3.01%) Support Engineer
12 104 (2.27%) Data Analyst
13 96 (2.09%) Administrator
14 95 (2.07%) IT Engineer
15 94 (2.05%) Solutions Architect
16 88 (1.92%) Software Engineer
17 86 (1.87%) Java Developer
18 80 (1.74%) Support Analyst
19 79 (1.72%) Technical Support
20 73 (1.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (5.51%) REST
2 142 (3.09%) .NET
3 133 (2.90%) Kafka
4 122 (2.66%) React
5 121 (2.64%) Spring
6 117 (2.55%) SOAP
7 114 (2.48%) RESTful
8 103 (2.24%) JSON
9 98 (2.14%) CSS
10 94 (2.05%) Middleware
11 89 (1.94%) XML
12 88 (1.92%) Spring Boot
13 83 (1.81%) HTML
14 72 (1.57%) AngularJS
14 72 (1.57%) Node.js
15 67 (1.46%) LDAP
16 57 (1.24%) PySpark
17 56 (1.22%) OAuth
18 51 (1.11%) Web Services
19 45 (0.98%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 222 (4.84%) Product Ownership
2 218 (4.75%) Onboarding
3 196 (4.27%) Cloud Native
4 166 (3.62%) Data Centre
5 160 (3.49%) Self-Motivation
6 138 (3.01%) Analytical Mindset
7 127 (2.77%) Distributed Systems
8 125 (2.72%) Management Information System
9 120 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
10 108 (2.35%) Data Protection Act
10 108 (2.35%) Enterprise Software
11 96 (2.09%) Data Structures
12 95 (2.07%) Virtual Team
13 58 (1.26%) Security Posture
14 57 (1.24%) AI Agents
15 53 (1.15%) Algorithms
15 53 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 47 (1.02%) CMDB
16 47 (1.02%) Driving Licence
17 43 (0.94%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 575 (12.53%) Windows
2 252 (5.49%) Linux
3 110 (2.40%) Windows 10
4 107 (2.33%) Windows Server
5 88 (1.92%) Unix
6 78 (1.70%) Apple iOS
7 75 (1.63%) Mac OS
8 71 (1.55%) Android
9 49 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.28%) CentOS
12 11 (0.24%) VMS
12 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.22%) zOS
14 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.13%) Solaris
17 5 (0.11%) Debian
18 4 (0.087%) AIX
18 4 (0.087%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,197 (26.08%) Agile
2 829 (18.06%) Continuous Improvement
3 773 (16.84%) Stakeholder Management
4 742 (16.17%) CI/CD
5 716 (15.60%) DevOps
6 559 (12.18%) AI
7 522 (11.38%) Decision-Making
8 511 (11.14%) Migration
9 502 (10.94%) Analytics
10 435 (9.48%) ITIL
11 415 (9.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 409 (8.91%) Customer Service
13 375 (8.17%) Validation
14 373 (8.13%) Business Intelligence
15 367 (8.00%) Data Modelling
16 363 (7.91%) Project Management
17 347 (7.56%) Test Automation
18 318 (6.93%) Change Management
19 315 (6.86%) Scrum
20 301 (6.56%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 858 (18.70%) SQL
2 812 (17.69%) Python
3 346 (7.54%) Java
4 263 (5.73%) PowerShell
5 230 (5.01%) JavaScript
6 170 (3.70%) C#
7 108 (2.35%) Bash
8 105 (2.29%) TypeScript
9 79 (1.72%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.29%) C++
11 44 (0.96%) T-SQL
12 42 (0.92%) C
13 41 (0.89%) Go
13 41 (0.89%) Shell Script
14 33 (0.72%) Bicep
15 32 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 28 (0.61%) R
17 25 (0.54%) Apex Code
18 22 (0.48%) Scala
19 20 (0.44%) Perl
Qualifications
1 999 (21.77%) Security Cleared
2 667 (14.53%) SC Cleared
3 561 (12.22%) Degree
4 193 (4.21%) DV Cleared
5 176 (3.84%) Computer Science Degree
6 131 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
7 121 (2.64%) BPSS Clearance
8 109 (2.38%) Cisco Certification
9 87 (1.90%) CISSP
10 74 (1.61%) PMP
11 66 (1.44%) Azure Certification
12 65 (1.42%) A+ Certification
13 63 (1.37%) PMI Certification
14 62 (1.35%) CCNA
15 58 (1.26%) CISM
16 50 (1.09%) Master's Degree
16 50 (1.09%) Network+ Certification
17 43 (0.94%) MCSE
18 36 (0.78%) AWS Certification
19 34 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 320 (6.97%) Data Quality
2 250 (5.45%) QA
3 139 (3.03%) GDPR
4 94 (2.05%) SLA
5 89 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 86 (1.87%) Accessibility
7 74 (1.61%) NIST
8 73 (1.59%) PMO
9 44 (0.96%) GRC
10 24 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 22 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
12 20 (0.44%) PCI DSS
13 15 (0.33%) NCSC
13 15 (0.33%) WCAG
14 14 (0.31%) COBIT
15 13 (0.28%) ISO 20022
16 12 (0.26%) HIPAA
16 12 (0.26%) PSD2
17 11 (0.24%) Def Stans
17 11 (0.24%) IFRS
System Software
1 345 (7.52%) Active Directory
2 284 (6.19%) Docker
3 106 (2.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.85%) vSphere
5 37 (0.81%) VMware NSX
6 36 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
7 32 (0.70%) Hyper-V
8 26 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (0.44%) Firmware
11 19 (0.41%) vCloud
12 11 (0.24%) IAG
12 11 (0.24%) Squid
13 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.11%) NFS
15 4 (0.087%) ACF2
15 4 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.087%) RACF
15 4 (0.087%) Snort
16 3 (0.065%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 341 (7.43%) Kubernetes
2 260 (5.67%) Terraform
3 155 (3.38%) Ansible
4 125 (2.72%) Microsoft Intune
5 98 (2.14%) Grafana
6 85 (1.85%) Prometheus
7 70 (1.53%) SCCM
8 48 (1.05%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.81%) FortiGate
10 34 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
11 25 (0.54%) Control-M
12 21 (0.46%) Nessus
13 20 (0.44%) Argo
14 19 (0.41%) Kibana
15 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
15 17 (0.37%) SCOM
15 17 (0.37%) WSUS
16 16 (0.35%) Puppet
17 15 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
18 13 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 876 (19.09%) Microsoft
2 325 (7.08%) Oracle
3 271 (5.91%) SAP
3 271 (5.91%) ServiceNow
4 171 (3.73%) VMware
5 134 (2.92%) Google
6 116 (2.53%) Splunk
7 113 (2.46%) Databricks
8 107 (2.33%) Salesforce
9 100 (2.18%) Cisco
10 70 (1.53%) Workday
11 63 (1.37%) Red Hat
12 57 (1.24%) Dynatrace
13 54 (1.18%) Dell
14 47 (1.02%) Adobe
14 47 (1.02%) CyberArk
15 46 (1.00%) Citrix
16 43 (0.94%) Apple
17 40 (0.87%) BeyondTrust
18 39 (0.85%) MuleSoft