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

6 months to
21 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 4,418 4,176 3,939
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.72% 17.24% 10.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.66% 18.89% 12.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,676 2,621 2,394
10th Percentile £273 £250 £250
25th Percentile £394 £400 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £512
Median % change year-on-year - -2.41% -2.41%
75th Percentile £600 £605 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 287 217 374
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £22.14 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.57% +30.24% -66.00%
75th Percentile £51.27 £38.00 £40.74
90th Percentile £74.26 £66.60 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £22.14 £16.50
% change year-on-year -5.15% +34.18% -67.00%

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 34,902 22,108 31,434
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.66% 91.30% 86.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,235 14,434 20,613
10th Percentile £325 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £510 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,141 960 2,249
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.42 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.22 £16.00
Median hourly rate £46.80 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.78% -21.23% -0.11%
75th Percentile £67.84 £62.24 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +51.79% -23.29% +1.39%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -13 1,858 £520 -0.95% 930
North of England -8 738 £450 -8.16% 648
South East -6 643 £495 -1.00% 751
Midlands -7 494 £469 +6.65% 418
Yorkshire -7 348 £472 -0.63% 225
North West -7 348 £424 -13.74% 351
West Midlands -10 339 £475 +2.70% 256
South West -1 329 £500 -2.44% 290
East of England -3 229 £450 -3.64% 310
East Midlands -1 154 £445 +21.36% 162
North East -9 50 £425 -16.26% 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
1 196 (4.44%) Confluence
2 131 (2.97%) SharePoint
3 80 (1.81%) Microsoft Exchange
4 54 (1.22%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.84%) Apache
6 35 (0.79%) SAS
7 31 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
8 24 (0.54%) CMS
9 20 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 10 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 9 (0.20%) ArcGIS
13 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.16%) Camunda
14 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.14%) CICS
15 6 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 4 (0.091%) WebSphere
Applications
1 263 (5.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 204 (4.62%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.54%) Microsoft Project
5 62 (1.40%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 7 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.16%) Trello
10 6 (0.14%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.14%) AutoCAD
10 6 (0.14%) Revit
11 5 (0.11%) CATIA
11 5 (0.11%) Maya
11 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.091%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.091%) CPLEX
13 3 (0.068%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 98 (2.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.48%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
6 14 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
7 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
7 13 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
7 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.27%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.27%) Teamcenter
9 11 (0.25%) Workday HCM
10 10 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
10 10 (0.23%) SAP SD
11 9 (0.20%) iTrent
12 8 (0.18%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
12 8 (0.18%) Shopify
13 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 7 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 889 (20.12%) Azure
2 655 (14.83%) AWS
3 346 (7.83%) Power Platform
4 298 (6.75%) Microsoft 365
5 276 (6.25%) GCP
6 213 (4.82%) Azure DevOps
7 175 (3.96%) GitHub
8 134 (3.03%) Entra ID
9 121 (2.74%) Serverless
10 112 (2.54%) SaaS
11 84 (1.90%) GitHub Actions
12 72 (1.63%) Amazon S3
13 67 (1.52%) AWS Lambda
14 66 (1.49%) Azure Data Factory
15 61 (1.38%) OpenShift
16 59 (1.34%) Dynamics 365
16 59 (1.34%) Snowflake
17 57 (1.29%) Power Automate
18 46 (1.04%) PowerApps
19 45 (1.02%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 166 (3.76%) DNS
2 142 (3.21%) Firewall
3 100 (2.26%) TCP/IP
4 96 (2.17%) VPN
5 86 (1.95%) DHCP
6 83 (1.88%) WAN
7 77 (1.74%) Network Security
8 65 (1.47%) LAN
9 62 (1.40%) SAN
10 55 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
11 42 (0.95%) VLAN
12 39 (0.88%) BGP
13 35 (0.79%) OSPF
14 30 (0.68%) SD-WAN
15 27 (0.61%) Wireless
16 25 (0.57%) VoIP
17 22 (0.50%) VXLAN
18 19 (0.43%) Internet
19 18 (0.41%) BIG-IP
20 17 (0.38%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 273 (6.18%) Power BI
2 175 (3.96%) SQL Server
3 137 (3.10%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
5 107 (2.42%) Relational Database
6 88 (1.99%) Metadata
7 79 (1.79%) MongoDB
8 76 (1.72%) NoSQL
9 75 (1.70%) Tableau
10 66 (1.49%) Data Lake
11 53 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
12 47 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 46 (1.04%) Big Data
14 44 (1.00%) Oracle Database
15 39 (0.88%) MySQL
16 27 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
17 26 (0.59%) Power Query
18 25 (0.57%) Delta Lake
18 25 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
19 23 (0.52%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 443 (10.03%) JIRA
2 249 (5.64%) Git
3 167 (3.78%) Jenkins
4 107 (2.42%) GitLab
5 60 (1.36%) Selenium
6 32 (0.72%) Postman
7 25 (0.57%) Cucumber
7 25 (0.57%) REST Assured
8 23 (0.52%) Bitbucket
8 23 (0.52%) JUnit
9 19 (0.43%) Cypress.io
10 17 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
11 16 (0.36%) Mockito
12 15 (0.34%) SonarQube
13 14 (0.32%) JMeter
13 14 (0.32%) Maven
13 14 (0.32%) SpecFlow
14 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
15 11 (0.25%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,277 (51.54%) Social Skills
2 1,726 (39.07%) Analytical Skills
3 1,018 (23.04%) Finance
4 393 (8.90%) Public Sector
5 339 (7.67%) Banking
6 199 (4.50%) Organisational Skills
7 171 (3.87%) Retail
8 160 (3.62%) Documentation Skills
9 125 (2.83%) Legal
10 104 (2.35%) Presentation Skills
11 96 (2.17%) Influencing Skills
12 89 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 88 (1.99%) Front Office
14 82 (1.86%) Marketing
15 72 (1.63%) Telecoms
16 69 (1.56%) Manufacturing
17 65 (1.47%) Investment Banking
18 60 (1.36%) Law
19 45 (1.02%) Military
20 43 (0.97%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 648 (14.67%) Analyst
2 486 (11.00%) Developer
3 373 (8.44%) Senior
4 317 (7.18%) Architect
5 278 (6.29%) Lead
6 247 (5.59%) Business Analyst
7 207 (4.69%) Data Engineer
8 196 (4.44%) Consultant
9 171 (3.87%) Project Manager
10 115 (2.60%) IT Support
11 110 (2.49%) Data Analyst
11 110 (2.49%) Support Engineer
12 86 (1.95%) Solutions Architect
13 85 (1.92%) Software Engineer
14 81 (1.83%) Administrator
15 79 (1.79%) Java Developer
16 76 (1.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 76 (1.72%) IT Engineer
17 70 (1.58%) IT Analyst
17 70 (1.58%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (5.66%) REST
2 131 (2.97%) Kafka
3 128 (2.90%) SOAP
4 126 (2.85%) .NET
5 119 (2.69%) React
6 117 (2.65%) RESTful
6 117 (2.65%) Spring
7 98 (2.22%) CSS
8 91 (2.06%) Middleware
9 90 (2.04%) HTML
9 90 (2.04%) LDAP
10 88 (1.99%) Spring Boot
11 85 (1.92%) AngularJS
12 84 (1.90%) JSON
13 83 (1.88%) Node.js
14 81 (1.83%) XML
15 58 (1.31%) PySpark
16 55 (1.24%) OAuth
17 52 (1.18%) Web Services
18 49 (1.11%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 217 (4.91%) Product Ownership
2 208 (4.71%) Onboarding
3 164 (3.71%) Cloud Native
3 164 (3.71%) Data Centre
4 139 (3.15%) Self-Motivation
5 126 (2.85%) Analytical Mindset
6 119 (2.69%) Management Information System
7 107 (2.42%) Distributed Systems
7 107 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
8 106 (2.40%) Data Protection Act
9 92 (2.08%) Virtual Team
10 87 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
11 86 (1.95%) Data Structures
12 64 (1.45%) Security Posture
13 51 (1.15%) AI Agents
14 50 (1.13%) Mobile App
15 46 (1.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 45 (1.02%) Hybrid Cloud
17 44 (1.00%) Algorithms
18 43 (0.97%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 505 (11.43%) Windows
2 252 (5.70%) Linux
3 106 (2.40%) Windows 10
4 89 (2.01%) Windows Server
5 83 (1.88%) Unix
6 79 (1.79%) Apple iOS
7 77 (1.74%) Android
8 65 (1.47%) Mac OS
9 45 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.36%) VMS
12 14 (0.32%) CentOS
13 13 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.18%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.18%) zOS
15 7 (0.16%) Debian
16 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.091%) Rocky
17 4 (0.091%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,201 (27.18%) Agile
2 711 (16.09%) CI/CD
2 711 (16.09%) Continuous Improvement
3 682 (15.44%) DevOps
4 661 (14.96%) Stakeholder Management
5 502 (11.36%) Decision-Making
6 498 (11.27%) AI
6 498 (11.27%) Migration
7 473 (10.71%) Analytics
8 421 (9.53%) Project Management
9 389 (8.80%) Data Modelling
10 375 (8.49%) ITIL
11 369 (8.35%) Customer Service
12 362 (8.19%) Validation
13 361 (8.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 351 (7.94%) Business Intelligence
15 344 (7.79%) Test Automation
16 327 (7.40%) Change Management
17 312 (7.06%) Scrum
18 279 (6.32%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 802 (18.15%) Python
2 790 (17.88%) SQL
3 346 (7.83%) Java
4 266 (6.02%) PowerShell
5 223 (5.05%) JavaScript
6 169 (3.83%) C#
7 123 (2.78%) TypeScript
8 105 (2.38%) Bash
9 70 (1.58%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.38%) C++
11 40 (0.91%) Go
12 38 (0.86%) Shell Script
13 37 (0.84%) C
14 34 (0.77%) T-SQL
15 33 (0.75%) Bicep
16 31 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 31 (0.70%) R
17 28 (0.63%) Apex Code
18 25 (0.57%) Perl
19 23 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 985 (22.30%) Security Cleared
2 657 (14.87%) SC Cleared
3 546 (12.36%) Degree
4 190 (4.30%) DV Cleared
5 180 (4.07%) Computer Science Degree
6 120 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
7 108 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
8 106 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
9 84 (1.90%) CISSP
10 79 (1.79%) PMP
11 66 (1.49%) PMI Certification
12 61 (1.38%) Azure Certification
13 60 (1.36%) CCNA
14 57 (1.29%) A+ Certification
14 57 (1.29%) Master's Degree
15 55 (1.24%) CISM
16 54 (1.22%) Network+ Certification
17 43 (0.97%) MCSE
18 30 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
19 29 (0.66%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 296 (6.70%) Data Quality
2 236 (5.34%) QA
3 133 (3.01%) GDPR
4 86 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 78 (1.77%) PMO
6 76 (1.72%) NIST
7 74 (1.67%) Accessibility
8 73 (1.65%) SLA
9 43 (0.97%) GRC
10 24 (0.54%) PCI DSS
11 22 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 16 (0.36%) ISO 20022
14 15 (0.34%) NCSC
14 15 (0.34%) PSD2
15 14 (0.32%) WCAG
16 13 (0.29%) HIPAA
16 13 (0.29%) HL7
17 12 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
17 12 (0.27%) IFRS
System Software
1 332 (7.51%) Active Directory
2 285 (6.45%) Docker
3 100 (2.26%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.79%) vSphere
5 32 (0.72%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.68%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 22 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
9 19 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
10 18 (0.41%) Firmware
11 17 (0.38%) vCloud
12 11 (0.25%) Squid
13 7 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.14%) IAG
15 4 (0.091%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.091%) RACF
15 4 (0.091%) Snort
16 3 (0.068%) ACF2
16 3 (0.068%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.068%) NFS
Systems Management
1 340 (7.70%) Kubernetes
2 231 (5.23%) Terraform
3 156 (3.53%) Ansible
4 115 (2.60%) Microsoft Intune
5 96 (2.17%) Grafana
6 80 (1.81%) Prometheus
7 66 (1.49%) SCCM
8 42 (0.95%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.84%) FortiGate
10 34 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.61%) Kibana
12 23 (0.52%) Puppet
13 22 (0.50%) Control-M
14 21 (0.48%) Nessus
15 19 (0.43%) 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 9 (0.20%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 807 (18.27%) Microsoft
2 305 (6.90%) Oracle
3 242 (5.48%) SAP
4 206 (4.66%) ServiceNow
5 175 (3.96%) VMware
6 131 (2.97%) Databricks
7 120 (2.72%) Splunk
8 118 (2.67%) Google
9 105 (2.38%) Cisco
10 100 (2.26%) Salesforce
11 66 (1.49%) CyberArk
12 61 (1.38%) BeyondTrust
12 61 (1.38%) Dell
13 60 (1.36%) Workday
14 58 (1.31%) Red Hat
15 44 (1.00%) Adobe
16 43 (0.97%) Dynatrace
17 42 (0.95%) Citrix
17 42 (0.95%) F5
18 41 (0.93%) MuleSoft