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

6 months to
28 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 4,597 4,294 4,056
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.57% 16.86% 10.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.38% 18.48% 12.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,710 2,666 2,429
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 £715 £723 £738
UK median daily rate £491 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.80% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 341 250 365
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.17 £11.03
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% -68.79%
75th Percentile £42.38 £38.32 £35.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £66.15 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.44 £21.65 £16.23
% change year-on-year -5.57% +33.36% -69.09%

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 37,130 23,233 31,970
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.37% 91.23% 85.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,419 14,972 20,715
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
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 £729 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £504 £525
% change year-on-year +2.23% -4.05% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,325 1,147 2,335
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +84.31% -33.11% +1.65%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £73.55
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +2.63%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 1,947 £514 +2.80% 747
North of England -9 720 £447 -5.89% 547
South East -5 710 £488 -2.50% 734
Midlands -9 522 £455 +7.06% 408
West Midlands -7 380 £465 +3.33% 226
North West -11 349 £443 -6.79% 299
Yorkshire -6 327 £450 -5.26% 181
South West -5 326 £500 - 264
East of England -2 258 £450 -4.26% 235
East Midlands -1 140 £449 +22.21% 182
North East -16 50 £366 -18.61% 86
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 (4.35%) Confluence
2 150 (3.26%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.22%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.83%) Apache
5 38 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.70%) 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 (0.20%) 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 (5.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 206 (4.48%) Microsoft Office
3 91 (1.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (1.37%) 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 (0.044%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 114 (2.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
4 19 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
5 17 (0.37%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.33%) 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%) NEC Housing
12 8 (0.17%) SAP HCM
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 7 (0.15%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 922 (20.06%) Azure
2 679 (14.77%) AWS
3 367 (7.98%) Power Platform
4 337 (7.33%) Microsoft 365
5 258 (5.61%) GCP
6 218 (4.74%) Azure DevOps
7 156 (3.39%) Entra ID
8 151 (3.28%) GitHub
9 128 (2.78%) SaaS
10 125 (2.72%) Serverless
11 75 (1.63%) AWS Lambda
12 74 (1.61%) Amazon S3
13 71 (1.54%) GitHub Actions
14 63 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
15 61 (1.33%) Power Automate
16 60 (1.31%) Snowflake
17 57 (1.24%) Dynamics 365
18 54 (1.17%) OpenShift
19 51 (1.11%) PowerApps
20 42 (0.91%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 184 (4.00%) DNS
2 146 (3.18%) Firewall
3 109 (2.37%) TCP/IP
4 108 (2.35%) VPN
5 98 (2.13%) DHCP
6 88 (1.91%) WAN
7 82 (1.78%) Network Security
8 72 (1.57%) LAN
9 65 (1.41%) SAN
10 60 (1.31%) Wi-Fi
11 44 (0.96%) VLAN
12 41 (0.89%) BGP
13 35 (0.76%) OSPF
13 35 (0.76%) Wireless
14 34 (0.74%) SD-WAN
15 29 (0.63%) VoIP
16 24 (0.52%) VXLAN
17 22 (0.48%) Structured Cabling
18 20 (0.44%) MPLS
19 18 (0.39%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 291 (6.33%) Power BI
2 192 (4.18%) SQL Server
3 136 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
4 124 (2.70%) Relational Database
5 122 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
6 91 (1.98%) MongoDB
7 83 (1.81%) NoSQL
8 78 (1.70%) Data Lake
8 78 (1.70%) Tableau
9 75 (1.63%) Metadata
10 49 (1.07%) Oracle Database
11 46 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 45 (0.98%) Big Data
13 41 (0.89%) MySQL
14 39 (0.85%) Oracle Reports
15 27 (0.59%) Power Query
16 25 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
16 25 (0.54%) RDBMS
17 24 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
17 24 (0.52%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 458 (9.96%) JIRA
2 255 (5.55%) Git
3 158 (3.44%) Jenkins
4 111 (2.41%) GitLab
5 59 (1.28%) Selenium
6 36 (0.78%) Postman
7 31 (0.67%) REST Assured
8 25 (0.54%) Cypress.io
9 24 (0.52%) Cucumber
10 22 (0.48%) Bitbucket
10 22 (0.48%) JUnit
11 19 (0.41%) Mockito
12 16 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
12 16 (0.35%) WebDriver
13 14 (0.30%) SonarQube
14 12 (0.26%) Gradle
14 12 (0.26%) JMeter
14 12 (0.26%) Maven
14 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
15 10 (0.22%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,368 (51.51%) Social Skills
2 1,852 (40.29%) Analytical Skills
3 1,077 (23.43%) Finance
4 388 (8.44%) Public Sector
5 353 (7.68%) Banking
6 189 (4.11%) Organisational Skills
7 183 (3.98%) Documentation Skills
8 175 (3.81%) Retail
9 127 (2.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 117 (2.55%) Legal
11 107 (2.33%) Presentation Skills
12 106 (2.31%) Influencing Skills
13 99 (2.15%) Front Office
14 97 (2.11%) Manufacturing
15 85 (1.85%) Marketing
15 85 (1.85%) Telecoms
16 74 (1.61%) Investment Banking
17 58 (1.26%) Law
18 54 (1.17%) Back Office
19 46 (1.00%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 659 (14.34%) Analyst
2 491 (10.68%) Developer
3 387 (8.42%) Senior
4 340 (7.40%) Architect
5 310 (6.74%) Lead
6 237 (5.16%) Business Analyst
7 215 (4.68%) Data Engineer
8 207 (4.50%) Consultant
9 158 (3.44%) IT Support
10 146 (3.18%) Project Manager
11 141 (3.07%) Support Engineer
12 104 (2.26%) Data Analyst
13 97 (2.11%) IT Engineer
14 96 (2.09%) Administrator
15 95 (2.07%) Solutions Architect
16 88 (1.91%) Java Developer
17 87 (1.89%) Software Engineer
18 79 (1.72%) Support Analyst
18 79 (1.72%) Technical Support
19 71 (1.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (5.42%) REST
2 145 (3.15%) .NET
3 133 (2.89%) Kafka
4 124 (2.70%) React
4 124 (2.70%) Spring
5 116 (2.52%) RESTful
6 112 (2.44%) SOAP
7 101 (2.20%) JSON
8 97 (2.11%) Middleware
9 96 (2.09%) CSS
10 90 (1.96%) Spring Boot
11 86 (1.87%) XML
12 82 (1.78%) HTML
13 73 (1.59%) AngularJS
14 72 (1.57%) Node.js
15 62 (1.35%) LDAP
16 57 (1.24%) PySpark
17 55 (1.20%) OAuth
18 52 (1.13%) Web Services
19 45 (0.98%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 222 (4.83%) Product Ownership
2 219 (4.76%) Onboarding
3 197 (4.29%) Cloud Native
4 168 (3.65%) Data Centre
5 161 (3.50%) Self-Motivation
6 137 (2.98%) Analytical Mindset
7 129 (2.81%) Distributed Systems
8 125 (2.72%) Management Information System
9 121 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
10 109 (2.37%) Data Protection Act
11 105 (2.28%) Enterprise Software
12 98 (2.13%) Data Structures
13 95 (2.07%) Virtual Team
14 55 (1.20%) AI Agents
15 54 (1.17%) Algorithms
15 54 (1.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 53 (1.15%) Security Posture
17 48 (1.04%) Driving Licence
18 47 (1.02%) CMDB
19 44 (0.96%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 580 (12.62%) Windows
2 253 (5.50%) Linux
3 110 (2.39%) Windows 10
4 106 (2.31%) Windows Server
5 91 (1.98%) Unix
6 77 (1.68%) Apple iOS
7 75 (1.63%) Mac OS
8 70 (1.52%) Android
9 47 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.46%) Ubuntu
11 11 (0.24%) CentOS
11 11 (0.24%) VMS
11 11 (0.24%) zOS
12 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
13 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.13%) Solaris
16 5 (0.11%) Debian
17 4 (0.087%) AIX
17 4 (0.087%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,210 (26.32%) Agile
2 831 (18.08%) Continuous Improvement
3 773 (16.82%) Stakeholder Management
4 744 (16.18%) CI/CD
5 716 (15.58%) DevOps
6 563 (12.25%) AI
7 516 (11.22%) Decision-Making
8 510 (11.09%) Migration
9 502 (10.92%) Analytics
10 439 (9.55%) ITIL
11 420 (9.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 413 (8.98%) Customer Service
13 377 (8.20%) Validation
14 372 (8.09%) Business Intelligence
15 366 (7.96%) Data Modelling
16 365 (7.94%) Project Management
17 350 (7.61%) Test Automation
18 322 (7.00%) Change Management
19 318 (6.92%) Scrum
20 307 (6.68%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 856 (18.62%) SQL
2 805 (17.51%) Python
3 349 (7.59%) Java
4 257 (5.59%) PowerShell
5 233 (5.07%) JavaScript
6 172 (3.74%) C#
7 109 (2.37%) Bash
8 107 (2.33%) TypeScript
9 78 (1.70%) PL/SQL
10 60 (1.31%) C++
11 46 (1.00%) T-SQL
12 42 (0.91%) C
13 41 (0.89%) Go
13 41 (0.89%) Shell Script
14 35 (0.76%) Bicep
15 32 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 28 (0.61%) R
17 27 (0.59%) Apex Code
18 21 (0.46%) Scala
19 19 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,001 (21.78%) Security Cleared
2 669 (14.55%) SC Cleared
3 563 (12.25%) Degree
4 196 (4.26%) DV Cleared
5 175 (3.81%) Computer Science Degree
6 129 (2.81%) Microsoft Certification
7 118 (2.57%) BPSS Clearance
8 111 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
9 89 (1.94%) CISSP
10 73 (1.59%) PMP
11 65 (1.41%) A+ Certification
11 65 (1.41%) Azure Certification
12 64 (1.39%) CCNA
13 63 (1.37%) PMI Certification
14 60 (1.31%) CISM
15 52 (1.13%) Master's Degree
16 50 (1.09%) Network+ Certification
17 42 (0.91%) MCSE
18 37 (0.80%) AWS Certification
19 34 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 320 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 255 (5.55%) QA
3 142 (3.09%) GDPR
4 95 (2.07%) SLA
5 90 (1.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 88 (1.91%) Accessibility
7 74 (1.61%) NIST
8 71 (1.54%) PMO
9 45 (0.98%) GRC
10 25 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 22 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.46%) PCI DSS
13 15 (0.33%) 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
1 342 (7.44%) Active Directory
2 290 (6.31%) Docker
3 105 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.85%) vSphere
5 37 (0.80%) VMware NSX
6 36 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
7 30 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 26 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
10 19 (0.41%) Firmware
10 19 (0.41%) vCloud
11 11 (0.24%) IAG
11 11 (0.24%) Squid
12 6 (0.13%) NFS
12 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.087%) ACF2
13 4 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.087%) RACF
13 4 (0.087%) Snort
13 4 (0.087%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 348 (7.57%) Kubernetes
2 264 (5.74%) Terraform
3 154 (3.35%) Ansible
4 124 (2.70%) Microsoft Intune
5 100 (2.18%) Grafana
6 87 (1.89%) Prometheus
7 71 (1.54%) 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 (0.46%) Nessus
13 20 (0.44%) Argo
14 18 (0.39%) Kibana
15 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
15 17 (0.37%) SCOM
15 17 (0.37%) WSUS
16 15 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
17 14 (0.30%) Puppet
18 12 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 878 (19.10%) Microsoft
2 325 (7.07%) Oracle
3 274 (5.96%) SAP
4 270 (5.87%) ServiceNow
5 170 (3.70%) VMware
6 136 (2.96%) Google
7 117 (2.55%) Splunk
8 111 (2.41%) Databricks
9 108 (2.35%) Salesforce
10 101 (2.20%) Cisco
11 72 (1.57%) Workday
12 61 (1.33%) Red Hat
13 58 (1.26%) Dynatrace
14 54 (1.17%) Dell
15 47 (1.02%) Adobe
16 46 (1.00%) Citrix
17 43 (0.94%) Apple
18 42 (0.91%) CyberArk
19 41 (0.89%) MuleSoft
20 37 (0.80%) Informatica