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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,427 4,162 3,950
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.55% 17.28% 10.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.41% 18.92% 12.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,642 2,594 2,398
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £388 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £629
90th Percentile £725 £720 £738
UK median daily rate £494 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.20% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 312 229 375
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.96 £15.25 £14.08
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.39 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% +31.79% -69.03%
75th Percentile £45.88 £33.75 £38.38
90th Percentile £74.26 £65.40 £62.14
UK median hourly rate £20.44 £22.14 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.68% +36.41% -69.03%

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 35,679 21,999 31,507
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.05% 91.35% 85.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,608 14,249 20,517
10th Percentile £325 £304 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,238 979 2,317
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.83
25th Percentile £20.76 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £28.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -24.00% +1.35%
75th Percentile £68.00 £59.60 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.93 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.53 £36.50
% change year-on-year +59.68% -24.58% +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 5 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 5 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 5 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 1,884 £520 +0.48% 1,365
North of England -10 708 £450 -5.26% 728
South East -6 658 £488 -2.50% 766
Midlands -9 496 £463 +7.31% 435
West Midlands -10 351 £469 +4.22% 263
North West -9 335 £444 -9.20% 407
Yorkshire -7 333 £460 -3.16% 239
South West -3 316 £500 -4.76% 329
East of England -2 239 £450 -4.26% 311
East Midlands -2 144 £443 +20.41% 172
North East -14 46 £375 -16.67% 94
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
1 198 (4.47%) Confluence
2 133 (3.00%) SharePoint
3 82 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
4 53 (1.20%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.79%) Apache
5 35 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.72%) SAS
7 28 (0.63%) CMS
8 23 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
9 12 (0.27%) nginx
9 12 (0.27%) WebLogic
10 10 (0.23%) ArcGIS
10 10 (0.23%) CICS
11 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 8 (0.18%) Camunda
12 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.14%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 265 (5.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 197 (4.45%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
5 59 (1.33%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.25%) Sketch
9 10 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 10 (0.23%) AutoCAD
10 8 (0.18%) Revit
11 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.16%) Trello
12 6 (0.14%) Photoshop
13 5 (0.11%) CATIA
13 5 (0.11%) CPLEX
13 5 (0.11%) Maya
14 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.068%) LaTeX
15 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 103 (2.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.41%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
4 17 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
5 15 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
6 14 (0.32%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
8 12 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
8 12 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.27%) Teamcenter
9 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
9 11 (0.25%) SAP SD
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
11 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
12 7 (0.16%) Loan IQ
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle HRMS
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 912 (20.60%) Azure
2 645 (14.57%) AWS
3 350 (7.91%) Power Platform
4 316 (7.14%) Microsoft 365
5 269 (6.08%) GCP
6 209 (4.72%) Azure DevOps
7 162 (3.66%) GitHub
8 141 (3.19%) Entra ID
9 118 (2.67%) SaaS
10 116 (2.62%) Serverless
11 77 (1.74%) GitHub Actions
12 66 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
13 65 (1.47%) Amazon S3
14 63 (1.42%) Snowflake
15 62 (1.40%) Azure Data Factory
16 57 (1.29%) Dynamics 365
17 55 (1.24%) OpenShift
18 54 (1.22%) Power Automate
19 46 (1.04%) Google Workspace
19 46 (1.04%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 171 (3.86%) DNS
2 140 (3.16%) Firewall
3 103 (2.33%) TCP/IP
3 103 (2.33%) VPN
4 89 (2.01%) DHCP
5 85 (1.92%) WAN
6 74 (1.67%) Network Security
7 68 (1.54%) LAN
8 60 (1.36%) SAN
9 55 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
10 46 (1.04%) VLAN
11 39 (0.88%) BGP
12 36 (0.81%) OSPF
13 33 (0.75%) SD-WAN
14 29 (0.66%) Wireless
15 27 (0.61%) VoIP
16 24 (0.54%) VXLAN
17 19 (0.43%) Internet
18 18 (0.41%) BIG-IP
18 18 (0.41%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 272 (6.14%) Power BI
2 174 (3.93%) SQL Server
3 132 (2.98%) Data Warehouse
4 115 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
5 112 (2.53%) Relational Database
6 83 (1.87%) MongoDB
7 81 (1.83%) Metadata
8 75 (1.69%) Tableau
9 74 (1.67%) NoSQL
10 67 (1.51%) Data Lake
11 49 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
12 46 (1.04%) Oracle Database
13 44 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 41 (0.93%) Big Data
15 36 (0.81%) MySQL
16 27 (0.61%) Power Query
17 26 (0.59%) Amazon RDS
17 26 (0.59%) Delta Lake
18 23 (0.52%) Pentaho
18 23 (0.52%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 450 (10.16%) JIRA
2 250 (5.65%) Git
3 147 (3.32%) Jenkins
4 102 (2.30%) GitLab
5 58 (1.31%) Selenium
6 33 (0.75%) Postman
7 25 (0.56%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.54%) Bitbucket
9 22 (0.50%) Cucumber
10 21 (0.47%) JUnit
11 18 (0.41%) Cypress.io
12 17 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
13 16 (0.36%) Mockito
14 14 (0.32%) Maven
14 14 (0.32%) SonarQube
15 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
15 12 (0.27%) Zephyr
16 11 (0.25%) JMeter
16 11 (0.25%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.25%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,297 (51.89%) Social Skills
2 1,763 (39.82%) Analytical Skills
3 1,024 (23.13%) Finance
4 373 (8.43%) Public Sector
5 346 (7.82%) Banking
6 195 (4.40%) Organisational Skills
7 174 (3.93%) Retail
8 165 (3.73%) Documentation Skills
9 124 (2.80%) Legal
10 105 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 96 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
12 92 (2.08%) Front Office
13 87 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
14 86 (1.94%) Marketing
15 77 (1.74%) Manufacturing
16 74 (1.67%) Telecoms
17 66 (1.49%) Investment Banking
18 61 (1.38%) Law
19 49 (1.11%) Back Office
20 42 (0.95%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 653 (14.75%) Analyst
2 450 (10.16%) Developer
3 362 (8.18%) Senior
4 330 (7.45%) Architect
5 287 (6.48%) Lead
6 247 (5.58%) Business Analyst
7 206 (4.65%) Data Engineer
8 200 (4.52%) Consultant
9 158 (3.57%) Project Manager
10 137 (3.09%) IT Support
11 123 (2.78%) Support Engineer
12 105 (2.37%) Data Analyst
13 92 (2.08%) Administrator
14 89 (2.01%) Solutions Architect
15 85 (1.92%) Software Engineer
16 84 (1.90%) IT Engineer
17 78 (1.76%) Support Analyst
18 74 (1.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 72 (1.63%) Java Developer
20 71 (1.60%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (5.71%) REST
2 139 (3.14%) .NET
3 126 (2.85%) SOAP
4 125 (2.82%) Kafka
5 121 (2.73%) React
6 113 (2.55%) RESTful
7 105 (2.37%) Spring
8 102 (2.30%) CSS
9 93 (2.10%) Middleware
10 90 (2.03%) HTML
11 88 (1.99%) LDAP
12 86 (1.94%) JSON
13 77 (1.74%) Spring Boot
13 77 (1.74%) XML
14 76 (1.72%) AngularJS
15 72 (1.63%) Node.js
16 56 (1.26%) Web Services
17 55 (1.24%) PySpark
18 50 (1.13%) OAuth
19 45 (1.02%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 212 (4.79%) Onboarding
1 212 (4.79%) Product Ownership
2 171 (3.86%) Cloud Native
3 163 (3.68%) Data Centre
4 144 (3.25%) Self-Motivation
5 130 (2.94%) Analytical Mindset
6 120 (2.71%) Management Information System
7 119 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
8 108 (2.44%) Distributed Systems
9 105 (2.37%) Data Protection Act
10 102 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
11 91 (2.06%) Virtual Team
12 77 (1.74%) Data Structures
13 69 (1.56%) Security Posture
14 54 (1.22%) AI Agents
15 49 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 45 (1.02%) Algorithms
17 44 (0.99%) Driving Licence
18 42 (0.95%) Mobile App
19 39 (0.88%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 542 (12.24%) Windows
2 244 (5.51%) Linux
3 108 (2.44%) Windows 10
4 97 (2.19%) Windows Server
5 85 (1.92%) Unix
6 81 (1.83%) Apple iOS
7 76 (1.72%) Android
8 73 (1.65%) Mac OS
9 46 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.45%) Ubuntu
11 14 (0.32%) CentOS
11 14 (0.32%) VMS
12 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.23%) zOS
14 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.18%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.11%) Debian
15 5 (0.11%) Solaris
15 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.090%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,167 (26.36%) Agile
2 735 (16.60%) Continuous Improvement
3 703 (15.88%) CI/CD
4 681 (15.38%) Stakeholder Management
5 667 (15.07%) DevOps
6 510 (11.52%) AI
7 496 (11.20%) Decision-Making
7 496 (11.20%) Migration
8 473 (10.68%) Analytics
9 399 (9.01%) ITIL
10 394 (8.90%) Project Management
11 392 (8.85%) Customer Service
12 390 (8.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 380 (8.58%) Data Modelling
14 353 (7.97%) Validation
15 349 (7.88%) Business Intelligence
16 338 (7.63%) Test Automation
17 312 (7.05%) Change Management
18 309 (6.98%) Scrum
19 279 (6.30%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 799 (18.05%) SQL
2 795 (17.96%) Python
3 332 (7.50%) Java
4 281 (6.35%) PowerShell
5 220 (4.97%) JavaScript
6 171 (3.86%) C#
7 111 (2.51%) TypeScript
8 99 (2.24%) Bash
9 68 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 60 (1.36%) C++
11 40 (0.90%) Shell Script
12 38 (0.86%) Go
13 37 (0.84%) C
14 34 (0.77%) T-SQL
15 31 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 30 (0.68%) Bicep
17 28 (0.63%) R
18 27 (0.61%) Apex Code
19 25 (0.56%) Perl
20 22 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 967 (21.84%) Security Cleared
2 643 (14.52%) SC Cleared
3 539 (12.18%) Degree
4 187 (4.22%) DV Cleared
5 177 (4.00%) Computer Science Degree
6 120 (2.71%) BPSS Clearance
7 119 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
8 109 (2.46%) Cisco Certification
9 92 (2.08%) CISSP
10 79 (1.78%) PMP
11 66 (1.49%) PMI Certification
12 62 (1.40%) Azure Certification
12 62 (1.40%) CISM
13 61 (1.38%) CCNA
14 60 (1.36%) A+ Certification
15 56 (1.26%) Master's Degree
16 52 (1.17%) Network+ Certification
17 44 (0.99%) MCSE
18 36 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
19 28 (0.63%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 290 (6.55%) Data Quality
2 231 (5.22%) QA
3 138 (3.12%) GDPR
4 88 (1.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 82 (1.85%) SLA
6 81 (1.83%) Accessibility
7 78 (1.76%) PMO
8 74 (1.67%) NIST
9 42 (0.95%) GRC
10 23 (0.52%) PCI DSS
11 22 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 15 (0.34%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.34%) NCSC
13 15 (0.34%) WCAG
14 14 (0.32%) COBIT
14 14 (0.32%) PSD2
15 12 (0.27%) HL7
16 11 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
16 11 (0.25%) HIPAA
System Software
1 345 (7.79%) Active Directory
2 269 (6.08%) Docker
3 102 (2.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.86%) vSphere
5 36 (0.81%) VMware NSX
6 31 (0.70%) Hyper-V
6 31 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
7 25 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
8 22 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
9 19 (0.43%) vCloud
10 18 (0.41%) Firmware
11 11 (0.25%) Squid
12 7 (0.16%) IAG
13 6 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.090%) ACF2
14 4 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.090%) NFS
14 4 (0.090%) RACF
14 4 (0.090%) Snort
15 3 (0.068%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 328 (7.41%) Kubernetes
2 234 (5.29%) Terraform
3 153 (3.46%) Ansible
4 128 (2.89%) Microsoft Intune
5 95 (2.15%) Grafana
6 79 (1.78%) Prometheus
7 68 (1.54%) SCCM
8 48 (1.08%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.84%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
11 24 (0.54%) Kibana
12 23 (0.52%) Control-M
13 21 (0.47%) Nessus
14 20 (0.45%) Argo
15 19 (0.43%) Puppet
16 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
16 17 (0.38%) SCOM
17 15 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 13 (0.29%) WSUS
19 11 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 827 (18.68%) Microsoft
2 298 (6.73%) Oracle
3 251 (5.67%) SAP
4 225 (5.08%) ServiceNow
5 172 (3.89%) VMware
6 127 (2.87%) Google
7 121 (2.73%) Databricks
8 114 (2.58%) Splunk
9 103 (2.33%) Salesforce
10 101 (2.28%) Cisco
11 67 (1.51%) CyberArk
12 63 (1.42%) Workday
13 61 (1.38%) BeyondTrust
14 57 (1.29%) Dell
14 57 (1.29%) Red Hat
15 50 (1.13%) Adobe
16 47 (1.06%) Citrix
17 45 (1.02%) Dynatrace
18 41 (0.93%) MuleSoft
19 40 (0.90%) F5