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

6 months to
1 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -8 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,442 4,195 3,959
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.62% 17.30% 10.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.49% 18.95% 12.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,642 2,628 2,406
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £390 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £637
90th Percentile £725 £719 £738
UK median daily rate £494 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.20% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 314 225 380
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.90 £15.13 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.18 £21.39 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -1.01% +31.79% -68.02%
75th Percentile £51.25 £32.50 £37.56
90th Percentile £74.26 £65.00 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £20.48 £22.14 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.52% +36.41% -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 35,555 22,136 31,595
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.01% 91.31% 85.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,555 14,385 20,625
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,223 969 2,319
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.60 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.34% -23.73% -
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £27.97 £36.50
% change year-on-year +51.98% -23.38% -0.11%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 1,881 £520 - 1,116
North of England -9 727 £450 -7.22% 584
South East -6 649 £488 -2.50% 703
Midlands -9 497 £463 +6.49% 362
West Midlands -9 352 £469 +3.88% 225
Yorkshire -6 349 £460 -3.16% 189
North West -8 339 £424 -13.22% 322
South West -3 318 £500 -2.44% 283
East of England -3 244 £450 -5.63% 275
East Midlands -2 144 £443 +18.96% 139
North East -14 47 £388 -13.89% 84
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 (4.50%) Confluence
2 135 (3.04%) SharePoint
3 79 (1.78%) Microsoft Exchange
4 52 (1.17%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.83%) Apache
6 36 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.72%) SAS
8 28 (0.63%) CMS
9 22 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 11 (0.25%) WebLogic
12 10 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 10 (0.23%) ArcGIS
12 10 (0.23%) CICS
13 8 (0.18%) Camunda
13 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.14%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 272 (6.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 207 (4.66%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (2.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 65 (1.46%) Microsoft Project
5 61 (1.37%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.25%) Sketch
9 9 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.20%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.16%) Revit
10 7 (0.16%) Trello
11 6 (0.14%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.11%) CATIA
12 5 (0.11%) Maya
13 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.090%) CPLEX
14 3 (0.068%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 100 (2.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.41%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
6 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
6 13 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 12 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
7 12 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 12 (0.27%) Teamcenter
8 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
8 11 (0.25%) SAP SD
9 9 (0.20%) iTrent
10 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
10 8 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
11 7 (0.16%) Loan IQ
11 7 (0.16%) Oracle HRMS
11 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 914 (20.58%) Azure
2 654 (14.72%) AWS
3 358 (8.06%) Power Platform
4 310 (6.98%) Microsoft 365
5 280 (6.30%) GCP
6 209 (4.71%) Azure DevOps
7 164 (3.69%) GitHub
8 139 (3.13%) Entra ID
9 117 (2.63%) SaaS
10 116 (2.61%) Serverless
11 77 (1.73%) GitHub Actions
12 65 (1.46%) Amazon S3
12 65 (1.46%) AWS Lambda
13 64 (1.44%) OpenShift
14 63 (1.42%) Azure Data Factory
14 63 (1.42%) Snowflake
15 59 (1.33%) Dynamics 365
16 58 (1.31%) Power Automate
17 50 (1.13%) PowerApps
18 44 (0.99%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 170 (3.83%) DNS
2 139 (3.13%) Firewall
3 101 (2.27%) TCP/IP
4 99 (2.23%) VPN
5 88 (1.98%) DHCP
6 85 (1.91%) WAN
7 75 (1.69%) Network Security
8 67 (1.51%) LAN
9 63 (1.42%) SAN
10 55 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
11 43 (0.97%) VLAN
12 38 (0.86%) BGP
13 35 (0.79%) OSPF
14 33 (0.74%) SD-WAN
15 29 (0.65%) Wireless
16 26 (0.59%) VoIP
17 24 (0.54%) VXLAN
18 19 (0.43%) Internet
19 18 (0.41%) BIG-IP
20 17 (0.38%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (6.28%) Power BI
2 177 (3.98%) SQL Server
3 136 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
5 111 (2.50%) Relational Database
6 82 (1.85%) Metadata
7 81 (1.82%) MongoDB
8 77 (1.73%) Tableau
9 73 (1.64%) NoSQL
10 67 (1.51%) Data Lake
11 50 (1.13%) Oracle Reports
12 46 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 45 (1.01%) Oracle Database
14 41 (0.92%) Big Data
15 38 (0.86%) MySQL
16 27 (0.61%) Power Query
17 26 (0.59%) Amazon RDS
17 26 (0.59%) Delta Lake
18 24 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
19 23 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 452 (10.18%) JIRA
2 250 (5.63%) Git
3 155 (3.49%) Jenkins
4 104 (2.34%) GitLab
5 57 (1.28%) Selenium
6 33 (0.74%) Postman
7 25 (0.56%) REST Assured
8 23 (0.52%) Bitbucket
8 23 (0.52%) Cucumber
9 21 (0.47%) JUnit
10 18 (0.41%) Cypress.io
11 17 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
12 16 (0.36%) Mockito
13 14 (0.32%) Maven
13 14 (0.32%) SonarQube
14 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
15 11 (0.25%) JMeter
15 11 (0.25%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.25%) SpecFlow
15 11 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,299 (51.76%) Social Skills
2 1,751 (39.42%) Analytical Skills
3 1,022 (23.01%) Finance
4 375 (8.44%) Public Sector
5 346 (7.79%) Banking
6 201 (4.52%) Organisational Skills
7 172 (3.87%) Retail
8 166 (3.74%) Documentation Skills
9 125 (2.81%) Legal
10 103 (2.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 99 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
12 91 (2.05%) Front Office
13 88 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
14 86 (1.94%) Marketing
15 76 (1.71%) Manufacturing
16 75 (1.69%) Telecoms
17 67 (1.51%) Investment Banking
18 63 (1.42%) Law
19 46 (1.04%) Back Office
20 43 (0.97%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 650 (14.63%) Analyst
2 454 (10.22%) Developer
3 361 (8.13%) Senior
4 325 (7.32%) Architect
5 284 (6.39%) Lead
6 247 (5.56%) Business Analyst
7 207 (4.66%) Data Engineer
8 202 (4.55%) Consultant
9 161 (3.62%) Project Manager
10 129 (2.90%) IT Support
11 116 (2.61%) Support Engineer
12 107 (2.41%) Data Analyst
13 91 (2.05%) Administrator
14 88 (1.98%) Solutions Architect
15 86 (1.94%) Software Engineer
16 78 (1.76%) IT Engineer
17 76 (1.71%) Support Analyst
18 74 (1.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 72 (1.62%) Java Developer
20 71 (1.60%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (5.65%) REST
2 137 (3.08%) .NET
3 127 (2.86%) SOAP
4 124 (2.79%) Kafka
5 121 (2.72%) React
6 113 (2.54%) RESTful
7 106 (2.39%) Spring
8 102 (2.30%) CSS
9 93 (2.09%) Middleware
10 92 (2.07%) HTML
11 88 (1.98%) LDAP
12 87 (1.96%) JSON
13 79 (1.78%) AngularJS
13 79 (1.78%) XML
14 78 (1.76%) Spring Boot
15 76 (1.71%) Node.js
16 56 (1.26%) Web Services
17 53 (1.19%) PySpark
18 50 (1.13%) OAuth
19 45 (1.01%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 221 (4.98%) Product Ownership
2 207 (4.66%) Onboarding
3 170 (3.83%) Cloud Native
4 167 (3.76%) Data Centre
5 143 (3.22%) Self-Motivation
6 129 (2.90%) Analytical Mindset
7 123 (2.77%) Management Information System
8 117 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
9 106 (2.39%) Distributed Systems
10 102 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
11 97 (2.18%) Enterprise Software
12 92 (2.07%) Virtual Team
13 79 (1.78%) Data Structures
14 67 (1.51%) Security Posture
15 54 (1.22%) AI Agents
16 48 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 44 (0.99%) Algorithms
17 44 (0.99%) Driving Licence
18 42 (0.95%) Mobile App
19 41 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 524 (11.80%) Windows
2 253 (5.70%) Linux
3 106 (2.39%) Windows 10
4 90 (2.03%) Windows Server
5 86 (1.94%) Unix
6 81 (1.82%) Apple iOS
7 77 (1.73%) Android
8 68 (1.53%) Mac OS
9 46 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.50%) Ubuntu
11 15 (0.34%) VMS
12 14 (0.32%) 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 1,181 (26.59%) Agile
2 726 (16.34%) Continuous Improvement
3 712 (16.03%) CI/CD
4 676 (15.22%) DevOps
5 671 (15.11%) Stakeholder Management
6 518 (11.66%) AI
7 510 (11.48%) Decision-Making
8 502 (11.30%) Migration
9 483 (10.87%) Analytics
10 407 (9.16%) Project Management
11 389 (8.76%) Customer Service
12 386 (8.69%) ITIL
13 385 (8.67%) Data Modelling
13 385 (8.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 357 (8.04%) Validation
15 356 (8.01%) Business Intelligence
16 334 (7.52%) Test Automation
17 315 (7.09%) Change Management
18 308 (6.93%) Scrum
19 279 (6.28%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 801 (18.03%) Python
1 801 (18.03%) SQL
2 335 (7.54%) Java
3 273 (6.15%) PowerShell
4 220 (4.95%) JavaScript
5 172 (3.87%) C#
6 113 (2.54%) TypeScript
7 106 (2.39%) Bash
8 69 (1.55%) PL/SQL
9 61 (1.37%) C++
10 42 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 41 (0.92%) Go
12 36 (0.81%) C
13 35 (0.79%) T-SQL
14 31 (0.70%) Bicep
14 31 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 28 (0.63%) Apex Code
15 28 (0.63%) R
16 25 (0.56%) Perl
17 23 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 968 (21.79%) Security Cleared
2 648 (14.59%) SC Cleared
3 554 (12.47%) Degree
4 186 (4.19%) DV Cleared
5 179 (4.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 120 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
7 115 (2.59%) Microsoft Certification
8 107 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
9 90 (2.03%) CISSP
10 78 (1.76%) PMP
11 66 (1.49%) PMI Certification
12 62 (1.40%) CCNA
13 61 (1.37%) CISM
14 60 (1.35%) A+ Certification
14 60 (1.35%) Azure Certification
15 59 (1.33%) Master's Degree
16 53 (1.19%) Network+ Certification
17 43 (0.97%) MCSE
18 35 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
19 27 (0.61%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 296 (6.66%) Data Quality
2 233 (5.25%) QA
3 134 (3.02%) GDPR
4 86 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 82 (1.85%) SLA
6 80 (1.80%) PMO
7 76 (1.71%) Accessibility
8 73 (1.64%) NIST
9 42 (0.95%) GRC
10 23 (0.52%) PCI DSS
11 22 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
11 22 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 15 (0.34%) ISO 20022
12 15 (0.34%) NCSC
12 15 (0.34%) WCAG
13 14 (0.32%) PSD2
14 12 (0.27%) COBIT
14 12 (0.27%) HL7
14 12 (0.27%) IFRS
15 11 (0.25%) HIPAA
System Software
1 336 (7.56%) Active Directory
2 274 (6.17%) Docker
3 99 (2.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.83%) vSphere
5 35 (0.79%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.68%) Hyper-V
7 27 (0.61%) VMware ESXi
8 25 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
9 21 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
10 18 (0.41%) 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 (0.068%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 337 (7.59%) Kubernetes
2 239 (5.38%) Terraform
3 159 (3.58%) Ansible
4 124 (2.79%) Microsoft Intune
5 99 (2.23%) Grafana
6 84 (1.89%) Prometheus
7 63 (1.42%) SCCM
8 44 (0.99%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.83%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.59%) Kibana
12 23 (0.52%) Control-M
13 22 (0.50%) 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 (0.32%) SCOM
19 11 (0.25%) WSUS
20 10 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 829 (18.66%) Microsoft
2 300 (6.75%) Oracle
3 247 (5.56%) SAP
4 215 (4.84%) ServiceNow
5 172 (3.87%) VMware
6 122 (2.75%) Google
7 121 (2.72%) Databricks
8 117 (2.63%) Splunk
9 101 (2.27%) Cisco
9 101 (2.27%) Salesforce
10 66 (1.49%) CyberArk
11 62 (1.40%) Workday
12 61 (1.37%) BeyondTrust
12 61 (1.37%) Dell
13 59 (1.33%) Red Hat
14 49 (1.10%) Adobe
15 43 (0.97%) Citrix
15 43 (0.97%) Dynatrace
16 41 (0.92%) MuleSoft
17 40 (0.90%) F5