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

6 months to
26 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,555 4,146 4,071
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.40% 16.94% 10.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.40% 18.59% 12.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,819 2,602 2,502
10th Percentile £280 £250 £230
25th Percentile £390 £400 £377
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £594 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £477 £500 £501
% change year-on-year -4.70% -0.10% -4.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 204 365
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.62 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.81 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% +26.51% -60.10%
75th Percentile £59.50 £43.69 £40.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £64.50
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £23.00 £17.50
% change year-on-year -7.61% +31.43% -59.71%

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 33,993 22,301 32,213
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.07% 91.14% 86.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,750 14,633 21,159
10th Percentile £316 £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 £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.42% -0.36% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,113 919 2,234
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.74 £12.88
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.61 £30.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.22% -13.00% -6.67%
75th Percentile £67.25 £63.75 £59.99
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £29.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.22% -16.71% -6.67%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -11 1,963 £513 -2.38% 659
North of England -5 768 £447 -5.89% 537
South East -5 665 £488 -2.50% 690
Midlands -6 500 £450 +1.98% 413
North West -6 364 £402 -17.28% 303
Yorkshire -5 359 £451 -5.16% 165
West Midlands -6 339 £475 +5.56% 237
South West -2 319 £500 - 257
East of England -4 206 £450 - 235
East Midlands 0 160 £434 +17.48% 176
North East -4 52 £425 -16.67% 78
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 (4.30%) Confluence
2 125 (2.74%) SharePoint
3 92 (2.02%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.38%) Apache Spark
5 50 (1.10%) Apache
6 39 (0.86%) SAS
7 34 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
8 23 (0.50%) CMS
9 18 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.29%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.26%) nginx
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.15%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.13%) Camunda
14 6 (0.13%) CICS
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.11%) JBoss
15 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 279 (6.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 212 (4.65%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (2.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
5 64 (1.41%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.22%) Sketch
9 8 (0.18%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Trello
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) AutoCAD
11 5 (0.11%) Maya
11 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.088%) Revit
13 3 (0.066%) CATIA
13 3 (0.066%) CPLEX
13 3 (0.066%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 88 (1.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.42%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 17 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
6 15 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
7 14 (0.31%) NEC Housing
8 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 13 (0.29%) Workday HCM
9 11 (0.24%) NetSuite
10 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.20%) iTrent
11 9 (0.20%) Shopify
11 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
12 8 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
12 8 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
13 7 (0.15%) Fidessa
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 7 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 944 (20.72%) Azure
2 703 (15.43%) AWS
3 348 (7.64%) Power Platform
4 314 (6.89%) GCP
5 303 (6.65%) Microsoft 365
6 216 (4.74%) Azure DevOps
7 192 (4.22%) GitHub
8 151 (3.32%) Entra ID
9 138 (3.03%) Serverless
10 118 (2.59%) SaaS
11 94 (2.06%) GitHub Actions
12 85 (1.87%) Amazon S3
13 84 (1.84%) AWS Lambda
14 69 (1.51%) Azure Data Factory
15 68 (1.49%) OpenShift
16 63 (1.38%) Snowflake
17 60 (1.32%) Power Automate
18 56 (1.23%) Dynamics 365
19 51 (1.12%) Google Workspace
20 48 (1.05%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 160 (3.51%) DNS
2 159 (3.49%) Firewall
3 103 (2.26%) TCP/IP
4 98 (2.15%) VPN
5 97 (2.13%) Network Security
6 83 (1.82%) WAN
7 81 (1.78%) DHCP
8 64 (1.41%) LAN
9 54 (1.19%) SAN
10 51 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
11 41 (0.90%) BGP
12 39 (0.86%) VLAN
13 36 (0.79%) OSPF
14 29 (0.64%) VoIP
15 28 (0.61%) SD-WAN
16 22 (0.48%) Internet
16 22 (0.48%) VXLAN
17 21 (0.46%) Wireless
18 19 (0.42%) MPLS
19 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (6.08%) Power BI
2 178 (3.91%) SQL Server
3 142 (3.12%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (2.50%) PostgreSQL
5 106 (2.33%) Relational Database
6 95 (2.09%) Metadata
7 81 (1.78%) MongoDB
8 80 (1.76%) Tableau
9 78 (1.71%) NoSQL
10 68 (1.49%) Data Lake
11 58 (1.27%) Oracle Reports
12 51 (1.12%) Big Data
13 47 (1.03%) Oracle Database
13 47 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 42 (0.92%) MySQL
15 32 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
16 29 (0.64%) Power Query
17 27 (0.59%) BigQuery
17 27 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
18 26 (0.57%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 457 (10.03%) JIRA
2 265 (5.82%) Git
3 185 (4.06%) Jenkins
4 122 (2.68%) GitLab
5 61 (1.34%) Selenium
6 34 (0.75%) Postman
7 28 (0.61%) Bitbucket
7 28 (0.61%) JUnit
8 27 (0.59%) Cucumber
9 21 (0.46%) Maven
10 19 (0.42%) Cypress.io
10 19 (0.42%) REST Assured
11 18 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
12 17 (0.37%) Mockito
13 16 (0.35%) JMeter
14 14 (0.31%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.31%) SpecFlow
15 13 (0.29%) CircleCI
16 12 (0.26%) WebDriver
16 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 2,382 (52.29%) Social Skills
2 1,777 (39.01%) Analytical Skills
3 1,065 (23.38%) Finance
4 416 (9.13%) Public Sector
5 359 (7.88%) Banking
6 201 (4.41%) Organisational Skills
7 169 (3.71%) Retail
8 166 (3.64%) Documentation Skills
9 137 (3.01%) Legal
10 119 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
10 119 (2.61%) Presentation Skills
11 100 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 88 (1.93%) Front Office
13 82 (1.80%) Marketing
14 74 (1.62%) Telecoms
15 63 (1.38%) Manufacturing
16 61 (1.34%) Investment Banking
17 53 (1.16%) Law
18 48 (1.05%) Military
19 47 (1.03%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 663 (14.56%) Analyst
2 526 (11.55%) Developer
3 383 (8.41%) Senior
4 341 (7.49%) Architect
5 296 (6.50%) Lead
6 262 (5.75%) Business Analyst
7 209 (4.59%) Data Engineer
8 206 (4.52%) Consultant
9 177 (3.89%) Project Manager
10 108 (2.37%) Data Analyst
10 108 (2.37%) IT Support
11 102 (2.24%) Support Engineer
12 92 (2.02%) Administrator
12 92 (2.02%) Solutions Architect
13 91 (2.00%) Java Developer
14 83 (1.82%) Software Engineer
15 74 (1.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 72 (1.58%) IT Analyst
17 69 (1.51%) Python Developer
18 67 (1.47%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (5.86%) REST
2 140 (3.07%) SOAP
3 139 (3.05%) Kafka
4 128 (2.81%) .NET
5 127 (2.79%) RESTful
6 122 (2.68%) Spring
7 119 (2.61%) React
8 102 (2.24%) Node.js
9 97 (2.13%) CSS
10 94 (2.06%) AngularJS
11 93 (2.04%) HTML
11 93 (2.04%) Spring Boot
12 92 (2.02%) LDAP
13 87 (1.91%) JSON
14 86 (1.89%) XML
15 83 (1.82%) Middleware
16 69 (1.51%) OAuth
17 57 (1.25%) PySpark
18 54 (1.19%) Oracle Fusion
19 51 (1.12%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 229 (5.03%) Product Ownership
2 205 (4.50%) Onboarding
3 175 (3.84%) Cloud Native
4 146 (3.21%) Data Centre
5 134 (2.94%) Management Information System
6 133 (2.92%) Self-Motivation
7 123 (2.70%) Analytical Mindset
8 101 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
8 101 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
9 98 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
10 93 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
11 92 (2.02%) Data Structures
12 83 (1.82%) Virtual Team
13 67 (1.47%) Security Posture
14 59 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
15 56 (1.23%) Mobile App
16 50 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 49 (1.08%) Algorithms
18 48 (1.05%) AI Agents
19 42 (0.92%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 505 (11.09%) Windows
2 265 (5.82%) Linux
3 107 (2.35%) Windows 10
4 84 (1.84%) Unix
5 80 (1.76%) Android
6 78 (1.71%) Windows Server
7 73 (1.60%) Apple iOS
8 57 (1.25%) Mac OS
9 46 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.44%) VMS
11 19 (0.42%) Ubuntu
12 14 (0.31%) CentOS
13 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.20%) zOS
15 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
16 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.13%) Debian
17 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.088%) AIX
18 4 (0.088%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,274 (27.97%) Agile
2 764 (16.77%) CI/CD
3 717 (15.74%) Continuous Improvement
4 716 (15.72%) DevOps
5 686 (15.06%) Stakeholder Management
6 540 (11.86%) Analytics
7 511 (11.22%) Decision-Making
8 508 (11.15%) Migration
9 502 (11.02%) AI
10 435 (9.55%) Project Management
11 406 (8.91%) Data Modelling
12 386 (8.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 367 (8.06%) Validation
14 362 (7.95%) Business Intelligence
15 360 (7.90%) Test Automation
16 356 (7.82%) ITIL
17 353 (7.75%) Customer Service
18 334 (7.33%) Change Management
19 331 (7.27%) Scrum
20 303 (6.65%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 871 (19.12%) Python
2 824 (18.09%) SQL
3 378 (8.30%) Java
4 287 (6.30%) PowerShell
5 237 (5.20%) JavaScript
6 166 (3.64%) C#
7 140 (3.07%) TypeScript
8 119 (2.61%) Bash
9 81 (1.78%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.23%) C++
11 45 (0.99%) Go
12 43 (0.94%) Shell Script
13 38 (0.83%) Bicep
14 37 (0.81%) C
15 36 (0.79%) R
16 34 (0.75%) T-SQL
17 32 (0.70%) Apex Code
18 29 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 27 (0.59%) Perl
20 26 (0.57%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,021 (22.41%) Security Cleared
2 702 (15.41%) SC Cleared
3 562 (12.34%) Degree
4 202 (4.43%) Computer Science Degree
5 183 (4.02%) DV Cleared
6 129 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
7 100 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
8 95 (2.09%) CISSP
9 94 (2.06%) Cisco Certification
10 86 (1.89%) PMP
11 75 (1.65%) PMI Certification
12 67 (1.47%) Master's Degree
13 63 (1.38%) Azure Certification
14 61 (1.34%) CISM
15 49 (1.08%) CCNA
16 47 (1.03%) A+ Certification
17 42 (0.92%) Network+ Certification
18 37 (0.81%) MCSE
19 29 (0.64%) CCNP
19 29 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 301 (6.61%) Data Quality
2 280 (6.15%) QA
3 152 (3.34%) GDPR
4 93 (2.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 87 (1.91%) PMO
6 83 (1.82%) NIST
7 73 (1.60%) Accessibility
8 67 (1.47%) SLA
9 45 (0.99%) GRC
10 28 (0.61%) PCI DSS
11 26 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.46%) WCAG
14 20 (0.44%) PSD2
15 18 (0.40%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.33%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.31%) HL7
17 14 (0.31%) NCSC
18 13 (0.29%) IFRS
19 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 346 (7.60%) Active Directory
2 322 (7.07%) Docker
3 104 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.79%) vSphere
5 31 (0.68%) VMware NSX
6 28 (0.61%) Hyper-V
7 18 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.37%) Firmware
8 17 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.24%) RACF
9 11 (0.24%) Squid
9 11 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
10 10 (0.22%) vCloud
11 9 (0.20%) ACF2
12 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.13%) IAG
14 4 (0.088%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.088%) NFS
14 4 (0.088%) Snort
Systems Management
1 388 (8.52%) Kubernetes
2 267 (5.86%) Terraform
3 161 (3.53%) Ansible
4 121 (2.66%) Microsoft Intune
5 102 (2.24%) Grafana
6 78 (1.71%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.58%) SCCM
8 39 (0.86%) vCenter Server
9 33 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
10 32 (0.70%) FortiGate
11 28 (0.61%) Kibana
12 26 (0.57%) Argo
12 26 (0.57%) Puppet
13 23 (0.50%) Control-M
14 20 (0.44%) Nessus
15 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
16 14 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 14 (0.31%) WSUS
17 12 (0.26%) vRealize
18 11 (0.24%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 849 (18.64%) Microsoft
2 319 (7.00%) Oracle
3 239 (5.25%) SAP
4 199 (4.37%) ServiceNow
5 178 (3.91%) VMware
6 143 (3.14%) Google
7 139 (3.05%) Databricks
8 115 (2.52%) Splunk
9 109 (2.39%) Cisco
10 108 (2.37%) Salesforce
11 70 (1.54%) CyberArk
12 65 (1.43%) BeyondTrust
13 62 (1.36%) Red Hat
14 59 (1.30%) Workday
15 55 (1.21%) Dell
16 51 (1.12%) Citrix
17 48 (1.05%) Adobe
18 42 (0.92%) F5
18 42 (0.92%) Informatica
19 41 (0.90%) IBM