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

6 months to
9 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 4,475 4,203 3,992
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.55% 17.25% 10.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.40% 18.89% 12.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,669 2,620 2,413
10th Percentile £263 £250 £252
25th Percentile £388 £393 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £506
Median % change year-on-year - -1.15% -3.66%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £719 £738
UK median daily rate £493 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.40% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 318 233 381
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.99 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.18 £21.39 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -1.01% +31.79% -68.73%
75th Percentile £42.58 £33.75 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £65.85 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £22.14 £16.23
% change year-on-year -9.67% +36.41% -68.73%

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 36,103 22,244 31,795
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.13% 91.27% 85.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,869 14,374 20,646
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,268 1,001 2,353
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.81
25th Percentile £20.79 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.25 £28.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +65.79% -24.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £68.00 £58.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.00 £73.75 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £36.50
% change year-on-year +59.85% -24.66% +1.67%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -11 1,911 £520 +0.97% 888
North of England -10 715 £450 -5.26% 614
South East -6 667 £488 -2.50% 767
Midlands -9 502 £464 +7.66% 391
West Midlands -10 354 £471 +4.56% 230
North West -9 343 £434 -8.63% 339
Yorkshire -6 332 £460 -3.16% 205
South West -4 315 £500 -2.44% 295
East of England -2 244 £450 -4.26% 283
East Midlands -1 147 £443 +20.74% 163
North East -15 46 £375 -16.67% 83
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
1 201 (4.49%) Confluence
2 134 (2.99%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
4 53 (1.18%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.78%) Apache
5 35 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.72%) SAS
7 28 (0.63%) CMS
8 24 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
9 13 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.22%) CICS
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.18%) Camunda
13 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.13%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 271 (6.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 196 (4.38%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
5 59 (1.32%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.27%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.25%) Sketch
10 10 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 9 (0.20%) Revit
12 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
12 7 (0.16%) Trello
13 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.11%) CATIA
14 5 (0.11%) CPLEX
14 5 (0.11%) Maya
15 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.067%) LaTeX
16 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 107 (2.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
4 17 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
5 15 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
6 14 (0.31%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
8 12 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
8 12 (0.27%) SAP SD
8 12 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.27%) Teamcenter
9 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
9 11 (0.25%) NetSuite
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
11 8 (0.18%) SAP HCM
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 7 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
12 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 918 (20.51%) Azure
2 659 (14.73%) AWS
3 355 (7.93%) Power Platform
4 321 (7.17%) Microsoft 365
5 274 (6.12%) GCP
6 208 (4.65%) Azure DevOps
7 161 (3.60%) GitHub
8 146 (3.26%) Entra ID
9 123 (2.75%) SaaS
10 122 (2.73%) Serverless
11 77 (1.72%) GitHub Actions
12 72 (1.61%) Amazon S3
12 72 (1.61%) AWS Lambda
13 63 (1.41%) Snowflake
14 62 (1.39%) Azure Data Factory
15 58 (1.30%) Dynamics 365
16 56 (1.25%) Power Automate
17 51 (1.14%) OpenShift
18 49 (1.09%) PowerApps
19 46 (1.03%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 174 (3.89%) DNS
2 139 (3.11%) Firewall
3 104 (2.32%) TCP/IP
3 104 (2.32%) VPN
4 90 (2.01%) DHCP
5 85 (1.90%) WAN
6 73 (1.63%) Network Security
7 67 (1.50%) LAN
8 60 (1.34%) SAN
9 57 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
10 45 (1.01%) VLAN
11 40 (0.89%) BGP
12 37 (0.83%) OSPF
13 34 (0.76%) SD-WAN
14 28 (0.63%) Wireless
15 27 (0.60%) VoIP
16 25 (0.56%) VXLAN
17 19 (0.42%) Internet
17 19 (0.42%) MPLS
18 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (6.19%) Power BI
2 179 (4.00%) SQL Server
3 138 (3.08%) Data Warehouse
4 118 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
5 115 (2.57%) Relational Database
6 85 (1.90%) MongoDB
7 81 (1.81%) Metadata
8 76 (1.70%) Tableau
9 73 (1.63%) NoSQL
10 72 (1.61%) Data Lake
11 49 (1.09%) Oracle Reports
12 46 (1.03%) Oracle Database
13 45 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 42 (0.94%) Big Data
15 37 (0.83%) MySQL
16 27 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
16 27 (0.60%) Power Query
17 24 (0.54%) Delta Lake
18 23 (0.51%) Pentaho
18 23 (0.51%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 453 (10.12%) JIRA
2 251 (5.61%) Git
3 148 (3.31%) Jenkins
4 105 (2.35%) GitLab
5 58 (1.30%) Selenium
6 33 (0.74%) Postman
7 26 (0.58%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.54%) Bitbucket
9 22 (0.49%) Cucumber
10 21 (0.47%) JUnit
11 18 (0.40%) Cypress.io
12 17 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
13 16 (0.36%) Mockito
14 14 (0.31%) Maven
15 13 (0.29%) SonarQube
16 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
16 12 (0.27%) Zephyr
17 11 (0.25%) JMeter
17 11 (0.25%) Rational Rhapsody
17 11 (0.25%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,326 (51.98%) Social Skills
2 1,779 (39.75%) Analytical Skills
3 1,038 (23.20%) Finance
4 370 (8.27%) Public Sector
5 353 (7.89%) Banking
6 192 (4.29%) Organisational Skills
7 172 (3.84%) Retail
8 167 (3.73%) Documentation Skills
9 123 (2.75%) Legal
10 111 (2.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 97 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
12 91 (2.03%) Front Office
13 87 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
13 87 (1.94%) Marketing
14 81 (1.81%) Manufacturing
15 77 (1.72%) Telecoms
16 68 (1.52%) Investment Banking
17 61 (1.36%) Law
18 49 (1.09%) Back Office
19 42 (0.94%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 659 (14.73%) Analyst
2 462 (10.32%) Developer
3 369 (8.25%) Senior
4 333 (7.44%) Architect
5 294 (6.57%) Lead
6 249 (5.56%) Business Analyst
7 208 (4.65%) Data Engineer
8 206 (4.60%) Consultant
9 156 (3.49%) Project Manager
10 139 (3.11%) IT Support
11 124 (2.77%) Support Engineer
12 104 (2.32%) Data Analyst
13 95 (2.12%) Administrator
14 90 (2.01%) Solutions Architect
15 85 (1.90%) Software Engineer
16 84 (1.88%) IT Engineer
17 79 (1.77%) Support Analyst
18 75 (1.68%) Java Developer
19 73 (1.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 71 (1.59%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 256 (5.72%) REST
2 140 (3.13%) .NET
3 129 (2.88%) SOAP
4 126 (2.82%) Kafka
5 123 (2.75%) React
6 111 (2.48%) RESTful
7 106 (2.37%) Spring
8 103 (2.30%) CSS
9 94 (2.10%) Middleware
10 92 (2.06%) JSON
11 91 (2.03%) HTML
12 88 (1.97%) LDAP
13 83 (1.85%) XML
14 78 (1.74%) Spring Boot
15 76 (1.70%) AngularJS
16 73 (1.63%) Node.js
17 57 (1.27%) Web Services
18 54 (1.21%) PySpark
19 52 (1.16%) OAuth
20 45 (1.01%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 214 (4.78%) Onboarding
2 211 (4.72%) Product Ownership
3 175 (3.91%) Cloud Native
4 166 (3.71%) Data Centre
5 144 (3.22%) Self-Motivation
6 131 (2.93%) Analytical Mindset
7 121 (2.70%) Management Information System
8 120 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
9 108 (2.41%) Distributed Systems
10 107 (2.39%) Data Protection Act
10 107 (2.39%) Enterprise Software
11 93 (2.08%) Virtual Team
12 78 (1.74%) Data Structures
13 70 (1.56%) Security Posture
14 54 (1.21%) AI Agents
15 50 (1.12%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 45 (1.01%) Algorithms
16 45 (1.01%) Driving Licence
17 44 (0.98%) Mobile App
18 39 (0.87%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 545 (12.18%) Windows
2 246 (5.50%) Linux
3 107 (2.39%) Windows 10
4 99 (2.21%) Windows Server
5 87 (1.94%) Unix
6 82 (1.83%) Apple iOS
7 76 (1.70%) Android
8 74 (1.65%) Mac OS
9 46 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.47%) Ubuntu
11 14 (0.31%) CentOS
12 13 (0.29%) VMS
12 13 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.22%) zOS
14 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.18%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.11%) Debian
15 5 (0.11%) Solaris
15 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.089%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,174 (26.23%) Agile
2 746 (16.67%) Continuous Improvement
3 717 (16.02%) CI/CD
4 691 (15.44%) Stakeholder Management
5 678 (15.15%) DevOps
6 526 (11.75%) AI
7 502 (11.22%) Migration
8 500 (11.17%) Decision-Making
9 481 (10.75%) Analytics
10 401 (8.96%) ITIL
11 400 (8.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 398 (8.89%) Customer Service
13 392 (8.76%) Project Management
14 380 (8.49%) Data Modelling
15 361 (8.07%) Validation
16 359 (8.02%) Business Intelligence
17 342 (7.64%) Test Automation
18 315 (7.04%) Change Management
18 315 (7.04%) Scrum
19 284 (6.35%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 816 (18.23%) SQL
2 806 (18.01%) Python
3 338 (7.55%) Java
4 281 (6.28%) PowerShell
5 224 (5.01%) JavaScript
6 172 (3.84%) C#
7 110 (2.46%) TypeScript
8 98 (2.19%) Bash
9 71 (1.59%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.36%) C++
11 42 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 38 (0.85%) C
12 38 (0.85%) Go
12 38 (0.85%) T-SQL
13 32 (0.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 29 (0.65%) Bicep
14 29 (0.65%) R
15 27 (0.60%) Apex Code
16 25 (0.56%) Perl
17 22 (0.49%) Scala
Qualifications
1 971 (21.70%) Security Cleared
2 649 (14.50%) SC Cleared
3 547 (12.22%) Degree
4 189 (4.22%) DV Cleared
5 175 (3.91%) Computer Science Degree
6 123 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
7 120 (2.68%) Microsoft Certification
8 109 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
9 91 (2.03%) CISSP
10 77 (1.72%) PMP
11 64 (1.43%) PMI Certification
12 61 (1.36%) A+ Certification
12 61 (1.36%) Azure Certification
12 61 (1.36%) CCNA
12 61 (1.36%) CISM
13 56 (1.25%) Master's Degree
14 52 (1.16%) Network+ Certification
15 44 (0.98%) MCSE
16 36 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
17 28 (0.63%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 301 (6.73%) Data Quality
2 233 (5.21%) QA
3 138 (3.08%) GDPR
4 87 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 83 (1.85%) SLA
6 79 (1.77%) Accessibility
7 78 (1.74%) PMO
8 74 (1.65%) NIST
9 44 (0.98%) GRC
10 22 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
10 22 (0.49%) PCI DSS
11 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 15 (0.34%) ISO 20022
12 15 (0.34%) NCSC
12 15 (0.34%) WCAG
13 14 (0.31%) COBIT
13 14 (0.31%) PSD2
14 12 (0.27%) HL7
15 11 (0.25%) Def Stans
15 11 (0.25%) HIPAA
System Software
1 349 (7.80%) Active Directory
2 271 (6.06%) Docker
3 102 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.87%) vSphere
5 36 (0.80%) VMware NSX
6 32 (0.72%) Hyper-V
6 32 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
7 25 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
9 19 (0.42%) vCloud
10 18 (0.40%) Firmware
11 11 (0.25%) Squid
12 7 (0.16%) IAG
13 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.089%) ACF2
14 4 (0.089%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.089%) NFS
14 4 (0.089%) RACF
14 4 (0.089%) Snort
15 3 (0.067%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 330 (7.37%) Kubernetes
2 241 (5.39%) Terraform
3 153 (3.42%) Ansible
4 130 (2.91%) Microsoft Intune
5 94 (2.10%) Grafana
6 80 (1.79%) Prometheus
7 69 (1.54%) SCCM
8 48 (1.07%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.83%) FortiGate
10 34 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
11 24 (0.54%) Kibana
12 23 (0.51%) Control-M
13 21 (0.47%) Nessus
14 20 (0.45%) Argo
15 19 (0.42%) Puppet
16 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
16 17 (0.38%) SCOM
17 15 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 13 (0.29%) WSUS
19 12 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 835 (18.66%) Microsoft
2 305 (6.82%) Oracle
3 257 (5.74%) SAP
4 232 (5.18%) ServiceNow
5 172 (3.84%) VMware
6 130 (2.91%) Google
7 120 (2.68%) Databricks
8 115 (2.57%) Splunk
9 105 (2.35%) Salesforce
10 99 (2.21%) Cisco
11 68 (1.52%) Workday
12 67 (1.50%) CyberArk
13 62 (1.39%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.30%) Dell
15 57 (1.27%) Red Hat
16 51 (1.14%) Adobe
17 47 (1.05%) Citrix
18 45 (1.01%) Dynatrace
19 42 (0.94%) MuleSoft
20 39 (0.87%) Apple