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 3 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -3 +5 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,673 4,040 4,090
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.19% 16.67% 10.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.17% 18.35% 12.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,893 2,558 2,522
10th Percentile £289 £257 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -2.44% -4.21%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 191 367
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.63 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £16.85 £14.16
Median hourly rate £20.79 £23.00 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.61% +27.78% -58.14%
75th Percentile £47.94 £46.31 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.55 £68.75 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £20.79 £24.88 £17.50
% change year-on-year -16.44% +42.17% -56.79%

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 32,977 22,016 32,582
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.99% 90.82% 86.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,149 14,501 21,512
10th Percentile £313 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,015 852 2,158
10th Percentile £15.38 £15.00 £12.92
25th Percentile £19.34 £19.96 £15.78
Median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% - -13.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.64 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £35.77 £31.76 £32.50
% change year-on-year +12.61% -2.28% -10.41%

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 3 April 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 3 April 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 3 April 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 -7 2,038 £512 -2.51% 986
North of England -5 784 £450 -5.26% 662
South East -5 663 £495 -1.00% 802
Midlands -4 513 £450 +0.90% 478
North West -5 391 £424 -10.66% 365
West Midlands -4 372 £475 +3.26% 278
Yorkshire -4 346 £471 -1.98% 222
South West -2 321 £520 +1.46% 308
East of England -3 221 £450 - 288
East Midlands -3 142 £410 +11.72% 199
North East -3 56 £438 -2.78% 92
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
1 207 (4.43%) Confluence
2 144 (3.08%) SharePoint
3 102 (2.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 61 (1.31%) Apache Spark
5 57 (1.22%) SAS
6 49 (1.05%) Apache
7 33 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.58%) CMS
9 17 (0.36%) WebLogic
10 16 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
11 13 (0.28%) nginx
12 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.17%) Skype for Business
14 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.13%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.13%) Camunda
14 6 (0.13%) JBoss
14 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 288 (6.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 208 (4.45%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (2.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
5 72 (1.54%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.17%) Trello
10 6 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Maya
11 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.064%) CATIA
12 3 (0.064%) InVision
12 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
13 2 (0.043%) Adobe Captivate
13 2 (0.043%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 77 (1.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 21 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.43%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.39%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
6 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 13 (0.28%) NEC Housing
7 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
7 13 (0.28%) Workday HCM
8 12 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
9 11 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
9 11 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
10 10 (0.21%) NetSuite
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 8 (0.17%) SAP ERP
11 8 (0.17%) SAP SD
11 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
12 7 (0.15%) Fidessa
Cloud Services
1 988 (21.14%) Azure
2 723 (15.47%) AWS
3 344 (7.36%) Power Platform
4 324 (6.93%) GCP
5 305 (6.53%) Microsoft 365
6 221 (4.73%) Azure DevOps
7 209 (4.47%) GitHub
8 153 (3.27%) Entra ID
9 151 (3.23%) Serverless
10 129 (2.76%) SaaS
11 103 (2.20%) GitHub Actions
12 89 (1.90%) AWS Lambda
13 86 (1.84%) Amazon S3
14 84 (1.80%) OpenShift
15 73 (1.56%) Azure Data Factory
16 63 (1.35%) Snowflake
17 57 (1.22%) Power Automate
18 56 (1.20%) Google Workspace
18 56 (1.20%) PaaS
19 51 (1.09%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 181 (3.87%) Firewall
2 171 (3.66%) DNS
3 111 (2.38%) TCP/IP
4 104 (2.23%) Network Security
5 102 (2.18%) VPN
6 91 (1.95%) WAN
7 85 (1.82%) DHCP
8 73 (1.56%) LAN
9 57 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
10 46 (0.98%) BGP
11 43 (0.92%) SAN
12 41 (0.88%) VLAN
13 34 (0.73%) OSPF
14 30 (0.64%) VoIP
15 28 (0.60%) SD-WAN
16 24 (0.51%) Wireless
17 23 (0.49%) Internet
18 20 (0.43%) MPLS
19 19 (0.41%) HTTP
20 18 (0.39%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 273 (5.84%) Power BI
2 170 (3.64%) SQL Server
3 140 (3.00%) Data Warehouse
4 123 (2.63%) Relational Database
5 118 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
6 90 (1.93%) Metadata
7 85 (1.82%) MongoDB
8 81 (1.73%) NoSQL
9 75 (1.60%) Tableau
10 72 (1.54%) Data Lake
11 59 (1.26%) Oracle Database
12 55 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
13 52 (1.11%) Big Data
14 47 (1.01%) MySQL
15 46 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 35 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
17 32 (0.68%) Pentaho
18 30 (0.64%) DynamoDB
19 29 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
19 29 (0.62%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 470 (10.06%) JIRA
2 311 (6.66%) Git
3 224 (4.79%) Jenkins
4 144 (3.08%) GitLab
5 75 (1.60%) Selenium
6 49 (1.05%) JUnit
7 36 (0.77%) Postman
8 29 (0.62%) Cucumber
9 28 (0.60%) Bitbucket
10 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 22 (0.47%) Maven
11 22 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
12 20 (0.43%) Cypress.io
13 19 (0.41%) Mockito
14 15 (0.32%) JMeter
14 15 (0.32%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
15 13 (0.28%) CircleCI
16 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
16 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,496 (53.41%) Social Skills
2 1,773 (37.94%) Analytical Skills
3 1,063 (22.75%) Finance
4 448 (9.59%) Public Sector
5 378 (8.09%) Banking
6 192 (4.11%) Organisational Skills
7 175 (3.74%) Documentation Skills
8 159 (3.40%) Legal
9 154 (3.30%) Retail
10 123 (2.63%) Presentation Skills
11 118 (2.53%) Influencing Skills
12 107 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (2.10%) Front Office
14 82 (1.75%) Marketing
15 69 (1.48%) Telecoms
16 67 (1.43%) Investment Banking
17 54 (1.16%) Manufacturing
18 53 (1.13%) Military
19 51 (1.09%) Law
20 43 (0.92%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 676 (14.47%) Analyst
2 579 (12.39%) Developer
3 395 (8.45%) Senior
4 344 (7.36%) Architect
5 308 (6.59%) Lead
6 269 (5.76%) Business Analyst
7 226 (4.84%) Consultant
8 202 (4.32%) Data Engineer
9 188 (4.02%) Project Manager
10 112 (2.40%) Support Engineer
11 109 (2.33%) IT Support
12 98 (2.10%) Java Developer
13 95 (2.03%) Solutions Architect
14 94 (2.01%) Data Analyst
15 90 (1.93%) Software Engineer
16 86 (1.84%) Administrator
17 80 (1.71%) Python Developer
18 74 (1.58%) IT Analyst
18 74 (1.58%) Senior Developer
19 68 (1.46%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 300 (6.42%) REST
2 149 (3.19%) RESTful
2 149 (3.19%) SOAP
3 145 (3.10%) Kafka
4 138 (2.95%) .NET
5 132 (2.82%) Spring
6 121 (2.59%) React
7 107 (2.29%) Node.js
8 99 (2.12%) Spring Boot
9 96 (2.05%) AngularJS
10 93 (1.99%) LDAP
11 92 (1.97%) JSON
11 92 (1.97%) XML
12 87 (1.86%) CSS
12 87 (1.86%) Middleware
13 86 (1.84%) HTML
14 70 (1.50%) OAuth
15 59 (1.26%) Oracle Fusion
15 59 (1.26%) Web Services
16 56 (1.20%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 236 (5.05%) Product Ownership
2 199 (4.26%) Onboarding
3 181 (3.87%) Cloud Native
4 140 (3.00%) Management Information System
5 137 (2.93%) Data Centre
6 125 (2.67%) Self-Motivation
7 122 (2.61%) Analytical Mindset
8 104 (2.23%) Data Protection Act
9 97 (2.08%) Data Structures
10 95 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
11 92 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
12 85 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
13 77 (1.65%) Virtual Team
14 69 (1.48%) Security Posture
15 62 (1.33%) Algorithms
15 62 (1.33%) Hybrid Cloud
15 62 (1.33%) Mobile App
16 56 (1.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 46 (0.98%) CMDB
17 46 (0.98%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 517 (11.06%) Windows
2 285 (6.10%) Linux
3 104 (2.23%) Windows 10
4 87 (1.86%) Windows Server
5 84 (1.80%) Unix
6 72 (1.54%) Android
7 66 (1.41%) Apple iOS
8 53 (1.13%) Mac OS
9 52 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.45%) VMS
11 17 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.24%) CentOS
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 7 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.15%) zOS
15 6 (0.13%) Debian
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.086%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.086%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,342 (28.72%) Agile
2 828 (17.72%) CI/CD
3 766 (16.39%) DevOps
4 743 (15.90%) Continuous Improvement
5 716 (15.32%) Stakeholder Management
6 561 (12.01%) Analytics
7 501 (10.72%) Migration
8 484 (10.36%) Decision-Making
9 472 (10.10%) AI
10 462 (9.89%) Project Management
11 418 (8.95%) Data Modelling
12 415 (8.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 398 (8.52%) Test Automation
14 369 (7.90%) Business Intelligence
15 364 (7.79%) ITIL
16 363 (7.77%) Validation
17 361 (7.73%) Scrum
18 349 (7.47%) Change Management
18 349 (7.47%) Customer Service
19 312 (6.68%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 918 (19.64%) Python
2 844 (18.06%) SQL
3 398 (8.52%) Java
4 314 (6.72%) PowerShell
5 235 (5.03%) JavaScript
6 182 (3.89%) C#
7 151 (3.23%) TypeScript
8 140 (3.00%) Bash
9 81 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.31%) C++
11 44 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 43 (0.92%) Go
13 41 (0.88%) T-SQL
14 39 (0.83%) Bicep
15 36 (0.77%) Perl
16 35 (0.75%) C
17 32 (0.68%) Apex Code
18 30 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 29 (0.62%) R
19 29 (0.62%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,062 (22.73%) Security Cleared
2 725 (15.51%) SC Cleared
3 578 (12.37%) Degree
4 209 (4.47%) Computer Science Degree
5 201 (4.30%) DV Cleared
6 123 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
7 101 (2.16%) PMP
8 98 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
9 95 (2.03%) CISSP
10 92 (1.97%) PMI Certification
11 91 (1.95%) Microsoft Certification
12 71 (1.52%) Master's Degree
13 66 (1.41%) Azure Certification
14 62 (1.33%) CISM
15 47 (1.01%) CCNA
16 42 (0.90%) CCNP
17 37 (0.79%) A+ Certification
18 36 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
19 32 (0.68%) AWS Certification
20 31 (0.66%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 312 (6.68%) Data Quality
2 304 (6.51%) QA
3 153 (3.27%) GDPR
4 92 (1.97%) PMO
5 88 (1.88%) NIST
6 87 (1.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 84 (1.80%) Accessibility
8 65 (1.39%) SLA
9 43 (0.92%) GRC
10 31 (0.66%) PCI DSS
11 26 (0.56%) PSD2
12 23 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
12 23 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.43%) WCAG
14 18 (0.39%) ISO 20022
15 16 (0.34%) ISO 8583
16 15 (0.32%) HL7
17 14 (0.30%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.28%) SEPA
19 12 (0.26%) IFRS
System Software
1 381 (8.15%) Docker
2 363 (7.77%) Active Directory
3 105 (2.25%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.88%) vSphere
5 33 (0.71%) VMware NSX
6 27 (0.58%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 15 (0.32%) Firmware
10 11 (0.24%) RACF
11 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
11 10 (0.21%) vCloud
12 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 9 (0.19%) Squid
13 8 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.11%) IAG
16 4 (0.086%) BitLocker
16 4 (0.086%) Snort
17 3 (0.064%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 432 (9.24%) Kubernetes
2 264 (5.65%) Terraform
3 159 (3.40%) Ansible
4 124 (2.65%) Microsoft Intune
5 103 (2.20%) Grafana
6 81 (1.73%) Prometheus
7 73 (1.56%) SCCM
8 40 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
9 36 (0.77%) vCenter Server
10 32 (0.68%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.64%) Kibana
12 29 (0.62%) Puppet
13 26 (0.56%) Argo
14 24 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 19 (0.41%) Control-M
15 19 (0.41%) Nessus
16 14 (0.30%) IBM Guardium
16 14 (0.30%) vRealize
17 12 (0.26%) HP ALM
18 11 (0.24%) VxRail
Vendors
1 858 (18.36%) Microsoft
2 324 (6.93%) Oracle
3 215 (4.60%) SAP
4 202 (4.32%) ServiceNow
5 190 (4.07%) VMware
6 150 (3.21%) Google
7 146 (3.12%) Databricks
8 127 (2.72%) Splunk
9 108 (2.31%) Cisco
10 106 (2.27%) Salesforce
11 71 (1.52%) Red Hat
12 69 (1.48%) CyberArk
13 64 (1.37%) BeyondTrust
14 59 (1.26%) Citrix
15 49 (1.05%) Dell
15 49 (1.05%) Talend
15 49 (1.05%) Workday
16 46 (0.98%) Informatica
17 44 (0.94%) IBM
18 42 (0.90%) Adobe