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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,619 4,295 4,018
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.55% 16.84% 10.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.37% 18.47% 12.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,716 2,665 2,412
10th Percentile £263 £240 £250
25th Percentile £381 £380 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £590 £600 £625
90th Percentile £714 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 343 250 361
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.17 £11.00
25th Percentile £16.17 £15.16 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.27 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +0.40% +31.02% -68.49%
75th Percentile £42.38 £38.32 £35.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £66.15 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £21.90 £16.23
% change year-on-year -8.68% +34.94% -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 37,351 23,260 31,773
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.35% 91.20% 85.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,546 14,980 20,587
10th Percentile £325 £300 £305
25th Percentile £418 £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 £515 £504 £525
% change year-on-year +2.18% -4.00% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,338 1,158 2,330
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.23 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.32% -33.83% +1.65%
75th Percentile £68.38 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £72.93
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +4.17%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 1,957 £513 +2.65% 774
North of England -10 728 £447 -5.89% 562
South East -5 714 £488 -2.01% 733
Midlands -8 523 £455 +7.06% 404
West Midlands -8 380 £465 +3.22% 232
North West -12 351 £444 -6.53% 310
Yorkshire -6 333 £450 -5.26% 180
South West -5 324 £500 - 272
East of England -2 258 £450 -4.26% 238
East Midlands -2 141 £450 +22.62% 173
North East -17 50 £366 -18.61% 91
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 (4.33%) Confluence
2 152 (3.29%) SharePoint
3 88 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.21%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.82%) Apache
5 38 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
6 31 (0.67%) SAS
7 29 (0.63%) CMS
8 28 (0.61%) Oracle Workflow
9 18 (0.39%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.28%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
12 10 (0.22%) CICS
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.17%) Camunda
15 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 264 (5.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 209 (4.52%) Microsoft Office
3 91 (1.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.39%) MS Visio
5 58 (1.26%) Microsoft Project
6 30 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.48%) 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%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 112 (2.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
4 19 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
5 16 (0.35%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.32%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.30%) NetSuite
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
11 10 (0.22%) iTrent
11 10 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
12 8 (0.17%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.17%) NEC Housing
12 8 (0.17%) SAP HCM
13 7 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
13 7 (0.15%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 932 (20.18%) Azure
2 682 (14.77%) AWS
3 375 (8.12%) Power Platform
4 339 (7.34%) Microsoft 365
5 258 (5.59%) GCP
6 223 (4.83%) Azure DevOps
7 159 (3.44%) Entra ID
8 151 (3.27%) GitHub
9 129 (2.79%) SaaS
10 123 (2.66%) Serverless
11 74 (1.60%) AWS Lambda
12 73 (1.58%) Amazon S3
13 71 (1.54%) GitHub Actions
14 62 (1.34%) Azure Data Factory
14 62 (1.34%) Power Automate
15 59 (1.28%) Snowflake
16 58 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
17 54 (1.17%) OpenShift
17 54 (1.17%) PowerApps
18 43 (0.93%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 187 (4.05%) DNS
2 150 (3.25%) Firewall
3 112 (2.42%) TCP/IP
3 112 (2.42%) VPN
4 99 (2.14%) DHCP
5 90 (1.95%) WAN
6 83 (1.80%) Network Security
7 74 (1.60%) LAN
8 65 (1.41%) SAN
9 61 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
10 45 (0.97%) VLAN
11 42 (0.91%) BGP
12 37 (0.80%) Wireless
13 36 (0.78%) OSPF
14 34 (0.74%) SD-WAN
15 30 (0.65%) VoIP
16 24 (0.52%) VXLAN
17 22 (0.48%) Structured Cabling
18 20 (0.43%) MPLS
19 18 (0.39%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (6.43%) Power BI
2 199 (4.31%) SQL Server
3 138 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
4 124 (2.68%) Relational Database
5 122 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
6 91 (1.97%) MongoDB
7 83 (1.80%) NoSQL
8 79 (1.71%) Tableau
9 77 (1.67%) Data Lake
10 75 (1.62%) Metadata
11 49 (1.06%) Oracle Database
12 47 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 46 (1.00%) Big Data
14 42 (0.91%) MySQL
15 39 (0.84%) Oracle Reports
16 27 (0.58%) Power Query
17 25 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
17 25 (0.54%) RDBMS
18 24 (0.52%) Delta Lake
18 24 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 459 (9.94%) JIRA
2 255 (5.52%) Git
3 157 (3.40%) Jenkins
4 110 (2.38%) GitLab
5 60 (1.30%) Selenium
6 37 (0.80%) Postman
7 32 (0.69%) REST Assured
8 25 (0.54%) Cucumber
8 25 (0.54%) Cypress.io
9 22 (0.48%) Bitbucket
9 22 (0.48%) JUnit
10 19 (0.41%) Mockito
11 17 (0.37%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
13 14 (0.30%) SonarQube
14 13 (0.28%) Maven
14 13 (0.28%) Zephyr
15 12 (0.26%) Gradle
15 12 (0.26%) JMeter
16 10 (0.22%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,382 (51.57%) Social Skills
2 1,873 (40.55%) Analytical Skills
3 1,084 (23.47%) Finance
4 394 (8.53%) Public Sector
5 355 (7.69%) Banking
6 191 (4.14%) Organisational Skills
7 185 (4.01%) Documentation Skills
8 175 (3.79%) Retail
9 129 (2.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 117 (2.53%) Legal
11 107 (2.32%) Presentation Skills
12 105 (2.27%) Influencing Skills
13 101 (2.19%) Front Office
14 96 (2.08%) Manufacturing
15 86 (1.86%) Marketing
15 86 (1.86%) Telecoms
16 75 (1.62%) Investment Banking
17 58 (1.26%) Law
18 54 (1.17%) Back Office
19 46 (1.00%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 662 (14.33%) Analyst
2 498 (10.78%) Developer
3 389 (8.42%) Senior
4 341 (7.38%) Architect
5 312 (6.75%) Lead
6 239 (5.17%) Business Analyst
7 213 (4.61%) Data Engineer
8 205 (4.44%) Consultant
9 159 (3.44%) IT Support
10 149 (3.23%) Project Manager
11 142 (3.07%) Support Engineer
12 104 (2.25%) Data Analyst
13 98 (2.12%) Administrator
14 96 (2.08%) IT Engineer
15 95 (2.06%) Solutions Architect
16 88 (1.91%) Java Developer
17 86 (1.86%) Software Engineer
18 81 (1.75%) Support Analyst
19 80 (1.73%) Technical Support
20 72 (1.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (5.43%) REST
2 145 (3.14%) .NET
3 132 (2.86%) Kafka
4 124 (2.68%) React
4 124 (2.68%) Spring
5 117 (2.53%) RESTful
6 112 (2.42%) SOAP
7 103 (2.23%) JSON
8 97 (2.10%) Middleware
9 96 (2.08%) CSS
10 90 (1.95%) Spring Boot
11 87 (1.88%) XML
12 82 (1.78%) HTML
13 73 (1.58%) AngularJS
14 72 (1.56%) Node.js
15 61 (1.32%) LDAP
16 56 (1.21%) PySpark
17 55 (1.19%) OAuth
18 52 (1.13%) Web Services
19 45 (0.97%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 224 (4.85%) Onboarding
2 220 (4.76%) Product Ownership
3 200 (4.33%) Cloud Native
4 169 (3.66%) Data Centre
5 161 (3.49%) Self-Motivation
6 137 (2.97%) Analytical Mindset
7 129 (2.79%) Distributed Systems
8 126 (2.73%) Management Information System
9 121 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
10 108 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
11 107 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
12 101 (2.19%) Data Structures
13 95 (2.06%) Virtual Team
14 56 (1.21%) AI Agents
15 54 (1.17%) Algorithms
15 54 (1.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 53 (1.15%) Security Posture
17 49 (1.06%) Driving Licence
18 48 (1.04%) CMDB
19 45 (0.97%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 584 (12.64%) Windows
2 254 (5.50%) Linux
3 109 (2.36%) Windows 10
4 108 (2.34%) Windows Server
5 91 (1.97%) Unix
6 77 (1.67%) Apple iOS
7 76 (1.65%) Mac OS
8 71 (1.54%) Android
9 47 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.45%) Ubuntu
11 11 (0.24%) CentOS
11 11 (0.24%) VMS
11 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
11 11 (0.24%) zOS
12 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
13 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
14 6 (0.13%) Solaris
15 5 (0.11%) Debian
15 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.087%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,215 (26.30%) Agile
2 837 (18.12%) Continuous Improvement
3 780 (16.89%) Stakeholder Management
4 743 (16.09%) CI/CD
5 721 (15.61%) DevOps
6 568 (12.30%) AI
7 520 (11.26%) Decision-Making
8 513 (11.11%) Migration
9 503 (10.89%) Analytics
10 445 (9.63%) ITIL
11 421 (9.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 415 (8.98%) Customer Service
13 380 (8.23%) Validation
14 376 (8.14%) Business Intelligence
15 369 (7.99%) Project Management
16 365 (7.90%) Data Modelling
17 346 (7.49%) Test Automation
18 322 (6.97%) Change Management
19 320 (6.93%) Scrum
20 310 (6.71%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 857 (18.55%) SQL
2 805 (17.43%) Python
3 351 (7.60%) Java
4 259 (5.61%) PowerShell
5 232 (5.02%) JavaScript
6 171 (3.70%) C#
7 109 (2.36%) Bash
8 108 (2.34%) TypeScript
9 78 (1.69%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.32%) C++
11 47 (1.02%) T-SQL
12 42 (0.91%) C
12 42 (0.91%) Go
13 41 (0.89%) Shell Script
14 35 (0.76%) Bicep
15 32 (0.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 29 (0.63%) R
17 28 (0.61%) Apex Code
18 21 (0.45%) Kotlin
18 21 (0.45%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,000 (21.65%) Security Cleared
2 666 (14.42%) SC Cleared
3 572 (12.38%) Degree
4 196 (4.24%) DV Cleared
5 178 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
6 132 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
7 117 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
8 114 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
9 89 (1.93%) CISSP
10 73 (1.58%) PMP
11 67 (1.45%) A+ Certification
12 66 (1.43%) CCNA
13 65 (1.41%) Azure Certification
14 63 (1.36%) PMI Certification
15 60 (1.30%) CISM
16 52 (1.13%) Master's Degree
17 50 (1.08%) Network+ Certification
18 42 (0.91%) MCSE
19 37 (0.80%) AWS Certification
20 34 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 320 (6.93%) Data Quality
2 256 (5.54%) QA
3 143 (3.10%) GDPR
4 96 (2.08%) SLA
5 90 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 88 (1.91%) Accessibility
7 74 (1.60%) NIST
8 71 (1.54%) PMO
9 45 (0.97%) GRC
10 25 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 23 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.45%) PCI DSS
13 15 (0.32%) NCSC
14 14 (0.30%) COBIT
14 14 (0.30%) WCAG
15 13 (0.28%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.28%) ISO 20022
16 12 (0.26%) PSD2
17 11 (0.24%) Def Stans
17 11 (0.24%) IFRS
System Software
1 341 (7.38%) Active Directory
2 290 (6.28%) Docker
3 106 (2.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.87%) vSphere
5 37 (0.80%) VMware NSX
6 36 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
7 30 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 28 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
10 19 (0.41%) Firmware
10 19 (0.41%) vCloud
11 12 (0.26%) 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
1 348 (7.53%) Kubernetes
2 263 (5.69%) Terraform
3 154 (3.33%) Ansible
4 126 (2.73%) Microsoft Intune
5 100 (2.16%) Grafana
6 87 (1.88%) Prometheus
7 70 (1.52%) SCCM
8 48 (1.04%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.80%) FortiGate
10 35 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
11 25 (0.54%) Control-M
12 21 (0.45%) Nessus
13 20 (0.43%) Argo
14 18 (0.39%) Kibana
14 18 (0.39%) SCOM
15 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
15 17 (0.37%) WSUS
16 16 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
17 14 (0.30%) Puppet
18 12 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 887 (19.20%) Microsoft
2 326 (7.06%) Oracle
3 274 (5.93%) SAP
3 274 (5.93%) ServiceNow
4 171 (3.70%) VMware
5 137 (2.97%) Google
6 117 (2.53%) Splunk
7 109 (2.36%) Databricks
7 109 (2.36%) Salesforce
8 103 (2.23%) Cisco
9 72 (1.56%) Workday
10 61 (1.32%) Red Hat
11 59 (1.28%) Dynatrace
12 55 (1.19%) Dell
13 47 (1.02%) Adobe
13 47 (1.02%) Citrix
14 44 (0.95%) Apple
15 41 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 41 (0.89%) MuleSoft
16 37 (0.80%) Informatica