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

6 months to
28 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 4,466 4,140 3,939
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.69% 17.37% 10.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.60% 19.03% 12.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,666 2,599 2,401
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £393 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £636
90th Percentile £725 £716 £738
UK median daily rate £493 £500 £501
% change year-on-year -1.50% -0.10% -4.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 311 214 376
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.12 £14.12
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.39 £16.37
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% +30.71% -67.75%
75th Percentile £51.25 £33.44 £37.56
90th Percentile £74.26 £65.18 £62.05
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 35,433 21,759 31,490
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.85% 91.31% 85.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,494 14,185 20,632
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.25% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £512 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.19% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,215 937 2,283
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.84
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £46.43 £28.18 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.76% -22.79% -2.46%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.28 £27.52 £36.00
% change year-on-year +53.64% -23.57% -1.09%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 1,889 £520 - 1,021
North of England -8 737 £450 -7.98% 593
South East -6 647 £490 -2.05% 675
Midlands -9 500 £464 +6.06% 366
Yorkshire -6 352 £467 -1.79% 186
West Midlands -10 350 £471 +2.99% 232
North West -8 349 £424 -13.74% 336
South West -2 325 £500 -3.61% 256
East of England -3 236 £450 -5.01% 249
East Midlands -1 149 £443 +18.56% 135
North East -16 44 £425 -5.56% 82
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
1 198 (4.43%) Confluence
2 138 (3.09%) SharePoint
3 82 (1.84%) Microsoft Exchange
4 50 (1.12%) Apache Spark
5 36 (0.81%) Apache
6 35 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
6 35 (0.78%) SAS
7 27 (0.60%) 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%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 4 (0.090%) Jupyter
Applications
1 271 (6.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 211 (4.72%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 67 (1.50%) Microsoft Project
5 61 (1.37%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.60%) 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
1 101 (2.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.45%) 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%) Oracle HRMS
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 7 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
12 7 (0.16%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 917 (20.53%) Azure
2 653 (14.62%) AWS
3 362 (8.11%) Power Platform
4 314 (7.03%) Microsoft 365
5 279 (6.25%) GCP
6 215 (4.81%) Azure DevOps
7 167 (3.74%) GitHub
8 140 (3.13%) Entra ID
9 115 (2.58%) SaaS
10 114 (2.55%) Serverless
11 78 (1.75%) GitHub Actions
12 65 (1.46%) Azure Data Factory
12 65 (1.46%) Snowflake
13 64 (1.43%) Amazon S3
13 64 (1.43%) AWS Lambda
13 64 (1.43%) OpenShift
14 62 (1.39%) Dynamics 365
15 59 (1.32%) Power Automate
16 53 (1.19%) PowerApps
17 44 (0.99%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 170 (3.81%) DNS
2 142 (3.18%) Firewall
3 100 (2.24%) TCP/IP
4 99 (2.22%) VPN
5 89 (1.99%) DHCP
6 84 (1.88%) WAN
7 76 (1.70%) 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 28 (0.63%) 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
1 281 (6.29%) Power BI
2 178 (3.99%) SQL Server
3 142 (3.18%) Data Warehouse
4 113 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
5 109 (2.44%) Relational Database
6 87 (1.95%) Metadata
7 80 (1.79%) MongoDB
7 80 (1.79%) Tableau
8 77 (1.72%) NoSQL
9 69 (1.55%) Data Lake
10 52 (1.16%) Oracle Reports
11 47 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 45 (1.01%) Oracle Database
13 42 (0.94%) Big Data
14 37 (0.83%) MySQL
15 27 (0.60%) Power Query
16 26 (0.58%) Delta Lake
17 25 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
18 24 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
18 24 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 448 (10.03%) JIRA
2 252 (5.64%) Git
3 158 (3.54%) Jenkins
4 101 (2.26%) 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%) SpecFlow
14 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
15 11 (0.25%) JMeter
15 11 (0.25%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,305 (51.61%) Social Skills
2 1,752 (39.23%) Analytical Skills
3 1,034 (23.15%) Finance
4 377 (8.44%) Public Sector
5 344 (7.70%) Banking
6 204 (4.57%) Organisational Skills
7 171 (3.83%) Retail
8 166 (3.72%) Documentation Skills
9 125 (2.80%) Legal
10 97 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
11 95 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 94 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
13 90 (2.02%) Front Office
14 88 (1.97%) Marketing
15 77 (1.72%) Manufacturing
16 74 (1.66%) Telecoms
17 68 (1.52%) Investment Banking
18 61 (1.37%) Law
19 44 (0.99%) Back Office
20 43 (0.96%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 656 (14.69%) Analyst
2 468 (10.48%) Developer
3 372 (8.33%) Senior
4 325 (7.28%) Architect
5 282 (6.31%) Lead
6 247 (5.53%) Business Analyst
7 212 (4.75%) Data Engineer
8 206 (4.61%) Consultant
9 166 (3.72%) Project Manager
10 124 (2.78%) IT Support
11 113 (2.53%) Support Engineer
12 112 (2.51%) Data Analyst
13 89 (1.99%) Administrator
13 89 (1.99%) Solutions Architect
14 85 (1.90%) Software Engineer
15 78 (1.75%) IT Engineer
16 76 (1.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 76 (1.70%) Java Developer
17 75 (1.68%) Support Analyst
18 71 (1.59%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 248 (5.55%) REST
2 132 (2.96%) .NET
3 128 (2.87%) Kafka
4 126 (2.82%) SOAP
5 121 (2.71%) React
6 116 (2.60%) RESTful
7 114 (2.55%) Spring
8 100 (2.24%) CSS
9 91 (2.04%) HTML
9 91 (2.04%) Middleware
10 87 (1.95%) LDAP
11 86 (1.93%) JSON
12 85 (1.90%) Spring Boot
13 81 (1.81%) AngularJS
14 79 (1.77%) XML
15 78 (1.75%) Node.js
16 55 (1.23%) PySpark
16 55 (1.23%) Web Services
17 54 (1.21%) OAuth
18 45 (1.01%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 222 (4.97%) Product Ownership
2 207 (4.64%) Onboarding
3 167 (3.74%) Data Centre
4 166 (3.72%) Cloud Native
5 142 (3.18%) Self-Motivation
6 128 (2.87%) Analytical Mindset
7 121 (2.71%) Management Information System
8 117 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
9 104 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
10 102 (2.28%) Data Protection Act
11 95 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
12 93 (2.08%) Virtual Team
13 82 (1.84%) Data Structures
14 65 (1.46%) Security Posture
15 54 (1.21%) AI Agents
16 48 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 47 (1.05%) Mobile App
18 44 (0.99%) Algorithms
18 44 (0.99%) Driving Licence
19 42 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 518 (11.60%) 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 (1.72%) 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 1,184 (26.51%) Agile
2 728 (16.30%) Continuous Improvement
3 708 (15.85%) CI/CD
4 682 (15.27%) DevOps
5 672 (15.05%) Stakeholder Management
6 514 (11.51%) AI
7 510 (11.42%) Decision-Making
8 501 (11.22%) Migration
9 484 (10.84%) Analytics
10 415 (9.29%) Project Management
11 390 (8.73%) Data Modelling
12 385 (8.62%) ITIL
13 383 (8.58%) Customer Service
14 378 (8.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 360 (8.06%) Business Intelligence
16 355 (7.95%) Validation
17 337 (7.55%) Test Automation
18 318 (7.12%) Change Management
19 306 (6.85%) Scrum
20 280 (6.27%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 809 (18.11%) Python
2 807 (18.07%) SQL
3 344 (7.70%) Java
4 274 (6.14%) PowerShell
5 222 (4.97%) JavaScript
6 171 (3.83%) C#
7 115 (2.58%) TypeScript
8 105 (2.35%) Bash
9 68 (1.52%) PL/SQL
10 62 (1.39%) C++
11 42 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 41 (0.92%) Go
13 36 (0.81%) C
13 36 (0.81%) T-SQL
14 32 (0.72%) Bicep
14 32 (0.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 30 (0.67%) R
16 29 (0.65%) Apex Code
17 25 (0.56%) Perl
18 24 (0.54%) Scala
Qualifications
1 977 (21.88%) Security Cleared
2 652 (14.60%) SC Cleared
3 553 (12.38%) Degree
4 189 (4.23%) DV Cleared
5 176 (3.94%) Computer Science Degree
6 118 (2.64%) BPSS Clearance
7 115 (2.58%) Microsoft Certification
8 105 (2.35%) Cisco Certification
9 89 (1.99%) CISSP
10 78 (1.75%) PMP
11 66 (1.48%) PMI Certification
12 61 (1.37%) Azure Certification
12 61 (1.37%) CCNA
13 60 (1.34%) CISM
14 59 (1.32%) A+ Certification
15 56 (1.25%) Master's Degree
16 54 (1.21%) Network+ Certification
17 43 (0.96%) MCSE
18 34 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
19 27 (0.60%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 303 (6.78%) Data Quality
2 230 (5.15%) QA
3 138 (3.09%) GDPR
4 88 (1.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 82 (1.84%) PMO
5 82 (1.84%) SLA
6 75 (1.68%) Accessibility
7 74 (1.66%) NIST
8 41 (0.92%) GRC
9 25 (0.56%) PCI DSS
10 22 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
11 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 15 (0.34%) ISO 20022
12 15 (0.34%) WCAG
13 14 (0.31%) NCSC
13 14 (0.31%) PSD2
14 13 (0.29%) HIPAA
15 12 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
15 12 (0.27%) HL7
15 12 (0.27%) IFRS
System Software
1 335 (7.50%) Active Directory
2 275 (6.16%) 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
1 338 (7.57%) Kubernetes
2 236 (5.28%) 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
1 832 (18.63%) Microsoft
2 298 (6.67%) Oracle
3 247 (5.53%) SAP
4 212 (4.75%) ServiceNow
5 174 (3.90%) VMware
6 124 (2.78%) Databricks
7 120 (2.69%) Google
8 116 (2.60%) Splunk
9 105 (2.35%) Salesforce
10 102 (2.28%) 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 42 (0.94%) MuleSoft
18 40 (0.90%) F5