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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -5 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,448 4,178 3,942
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.92% 17.27% 10.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.89% 18.92% 12.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,713 2,627 2,391
10th Percentile £265 £250 £238
25th Percentile £393 £400 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £638
90th Percentile £725 £708 £738
UK median daily rate £485 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.00% -0.05% -4.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 277 211 373
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.35 £14.16
Median hourly rate £22.79 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.91% +26.51% -65.00%
75th Percentile £55.00 £44.00 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £63.75
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £22.14 £16.50
% change year-on-year -4.02% +34.18% -66.46%

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 34,498 22,079 31,531
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.70% 91.24% 86.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,001 14,439 20,650
10th Percentile £320 £308 £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 £505 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,129 933 2,247
10th Percentile £15.34 £14.44 £12.90
25th Percentile £20.38 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £29.07 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.68% -20.36% -2.67%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.01 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +47.83% -21.23% +0.29%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -12 1,883 £520 -0.95% 1,024
North of England -8 737 £450 -8.07% 694
South East -6 649 £492 -1.60% 792
Midlands -6 498 £469 +4.69% 439
North West -7 355 £417 -14.83% 368
West Midlands -8 344 £478 +3.38% 257
Yorkshire -6 340 £467 -3.81% 234
South West 0 331 £500 -1.23% 302
East of England -3 224 £450 -3.54% 280
East Midlands -1 153 £443 +18.79% 182
North East -10 50 £425 -16.26% 99
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 (4.45%) Confluence
2 134 (3.01%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 55 (1.24%) Apache Spark
5 42 (0.94%) Apache
6 40 (0.90%) SAS
7 32 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
8 25 (0.56%) CMS
9 19 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 10 (0.22%) 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 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.11%) CICS
16 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 4 (0.090%) WebSphere
Applications
1 266 (5.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 209 (4.70%) Microsoft Office
3 100 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (1.57%) Microsoft Project
5 60 (1.35%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 7 (0.16%) Trello
10 6 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.13%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 6 (0.13%) Revit
11 5 (0.11%) Maya
11 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.090%) CATIA
12 4 (0.090%) CPLEX
13 3 (0.067%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 95 (2.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.45%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
6 14 (0.31%) NEC Housing
6 14 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
7 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 11 (0.25%) Teamcenter
8 11 (0.25%) Workday HCM
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
10 9 (0.20%) NetSuite
10 9 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
10 9 (0.20%) Shopify
11 8 (0.18%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.18%) SAP SD
12 7 (0.16%) Fidessa
12 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 897 (20.17%) Azure
2 678 (15.24%) AWS
3 349 (7.85%) Power Platform
4 303 (6.81%) Microsoft 365
5 281 (6.32%) GCP
6 211 (4.74%) Azure DevOps
7 180 (4.05%) GitHub
8 134 (3.01%) Entra ID
9 123 (2.77%) Serverless
10 116 (2.61%) SaaS
11 87 (1.96%) GitHub Actions
12 75 (1.69%) Amazon S3
13 74 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
14 64 (1.44%) Azure Data Factory
15 61 (1.37%) OpenShift
16 60 (1.35%) Snowflake
17 58 (1.30%) Dynamics 365
18 57 (1.28%) Power Automate
19 44 (0.99%) Amazon EC2
19 44 (0.99%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 167 (3.75%) DNS
2 149 (3.35%) Firewall
3 106 (2.38%) TCP/IP
4 99 (2.23%) VPN
5 89 (2.00%) DHCP
6 84 (1.89%) WAN
7 76 (1.71%) Network Security
8 64 (1.44%) LAN
9 63 (1.42%) SAN
10 54 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
11 43 (0.97%) VLAN
12 40 (0.90%) BGP
13 36 (0.81%) OSPF
14 30 (0.67%) SD-WAN
15 25 (0.56%) Wireless
16 23 (0.52%) VoIP
17 22 (0.49%) VXLAN
18 19 (0.43%) Internet
19 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
20 17 (0.38%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 275 (6.18%) Power BI
2 175 (3.93%) SQL Server
3 137 (3.08%) Data Warehouse
4 116 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
5 110 (2.47%) Relational Database
6 89 (2.00%) Metadata
7 75 (1.69%) MongoDB
7 75 (1.69%) NoSQL
8 73 (1.64%) Tableau
9 64 (1.44%) Data Lake
10 52 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
11 47 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 46 (1.03%) Big Data
13 45 (1.01%) Oracle Database
14 41 (0.92%) MySQL
15 30 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
16 29 (0.65%) Power Query
17 27 (0.61%) Pentaho
18 25 (0.56%) Delta Lake
18 25 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 456 (10.25%) JIRA
2 258 (5.80%) Git
3 176 (3.96%) Jenkins
4 120 (2.70%) GitLab
5 58 (1.30%) Selenium
6 32 (0.72%) Postman
7 27 (0.61%) Cucumber
8 25 (0.56%) Bitbucket
9 22 (0.49%) JUnit
9 22 (0.49%) REST Assured
10 19 (0.43%) Cypress.io
11 17 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
12 16 (0.36%) Mockito
13 15 (0.34%) JMeter
13 15 (0.34%) Maven
13 15 (0.34%) SonarQube
13 15 (0.34%) SpecFlow
14 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
14 12 (0.27%) Zephyr
15 11 (0.25%) Appium
General
1 2,303 (51.78%) Social Skills
2 1,731 (38.92%) Analytical Skills
3 1,028 (23.11%) Finance
4 395 (8.88%) Public Sector
5 343 (7.71%) Banking
6 203 (4.56%) Organisational Skills
7 171 (3.84%) Retail
8 163 (3.66%) Documentation Skills
9 127 (2.86%) Legal
10 110 (2.47%) Presentation Skills
11 92 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
12 91 (2.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 88 (1.98%) Front Office
14 82 (1.84%) Marketing
15 73 (1.64%) Telecoms
16 66 (1.48%) Manufacturing
17 65 (1.46%) Investment Banking
18 58 (1.30%) Law
19 49 (1.10%) Military
20 42 (0.94%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 649 (14.59%) Analyst
2 497 (11.17%) Developer
3 383 (8.61%) Senior
4 321 (7.22%) Architect
5 281 (6.32%) Lead
6 250 (5.62%) Business Analyst
7 211 (4.74%) Data Engineer
8 198 (4.45%) Consultant
9 171 (3.84%) Project Manager
10 113 (2.54%) IT Support
11 109 (2.45%) Data Analyst
11 109 (2.45%) Support Engineer
12 88 (1.98%) Software Engineer
13 86 (1.93%) Solutions Architect
14 84 (1.89%) Java Developer
15 77 (1.73%) Administrator
15 77 (1.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 75 (1.69%) IT Engineer
17 70 (1.57%) Network Engineer
18 68 (1.53%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 252 (5.67%) REST
2 130 (2.92%) Kafka
3 128 (2.88%) SOAP
4 121 (2.72%) .NET
5 120 (2.70%) Spring
6 119 (2.68%) RESTful
7 116 (2.61%) React
8 99 (2.23%) CSS
9 97 (2.18%) LDAP
10 92 (2.07%) HTML
10 92 (2.07%) Spring Boot
11 89 (2.00%) Middleware
12 87 (1.96%) AngularJS
12 87 (1.96%) Node.js
13 84 (1.89%) JSON
14 81 (1.82%) XML
15 57 (1.28%) OAuth
15 57 (1.28%) PySpark
16 53 (1.19%) Web Services
17 47 (1.06%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 221 (4.97%) Product Ownership
2 209 (4.70%) Onboarding
3 166 (3.73%) Data Centre
4 164 (3.69%) Cloud Native
5 135 (3.04%) Self-Motivation
6 129 (2.90%) Analytical Mindset
7 123 (2.77%) Management Information System
8 105 (2.36%) Distributed Systems
9 103 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
10 102 (2.29%) Data Protection Act
11 91 (2.05%) Virtual Team
12 88 (1.98%) Data Structures
13 85 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
14 63 (1.42%) Security Posture
15 55 (1.24%) Mobile App
16 51 (1.15%) AI Agents
17 50 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
18 45 (1.01%) Algorithms
18 45 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 43 (0.97%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 507 (11.40%) Windows
2 264 (5.94%) Linux
3 104 (2.34%) Windows 10
4 85 (1.91%) Windows Server
5 84 (1.89%) Android
5 84 (1.89%) Apple iOS
5 84 (1.89%) Unix
6 66 (1.48%) Mac OS
7 46 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 22 (0.49%) Ubuntu
9 15 (0.34%) CentOS
9 15 (0.34%) VMS
10 11 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
11 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
11 8 (0.18%) zOS
12 7 (0.16%) Debian
12 7 (0.16%) Windows 7
13 4 (0.090%) Rocky
13 4 (0.090%) Windows 8
13 4 (0.090%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,214 (27.29%) Agile
2 733 (16.48%) CI/CD
3 704 (15.83%) Continuous Improvement
4 695 (15.63%) DevOps
5 659 (14.82%) Stakeholder Management
6 501 (11.26%) Decision-Making
7 499 (11.22%) AI
8 497 (11.17%) Migration
9 488 (10.97%) Analytics
10 424 (9.53%) Project Management
11 395 (8.88%) Data Modelling
12 373 (8.39%) ITIL
13 364 (8.18%) Customer Service
13 364 (8.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 357 (8.03%) Validation
15 356 (8.00%) Business Intelligence
16 355 (7.98%) Test Automation
17 323 (7.26%) Change Management
18 319 (7.17%) Scrum
19 284 (6.38%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 826 (18.57%) Python
2 801 (18.01%) SQL
3 359 (8.07%) Java
4 278 (6.25%) PowerShell
5 230 (5.17%) JavaScript
6 167 (3.75%) C#
7 132 (2.97%) TypeScript
8 113 (2.54%) Bash
9 72 (1.62%) PL/SQL
10 62 (1.39%) C++
11 44 (0.99%) Go
12 41 (0.92%) Shell Script
13 37 (0.83%) C
14 35 (0.79%) T-SQL
15 34 (0.76%) Bicep
16 32 (0.72%) R
17 31 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 28 (0.63%) Apex Code
19 26 (0.58%) Perl
20 23 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 999 (22.46%) Security Cleared
2 672 (15.11%) SC Cleared
3 549 (12.34%) Degree
4 191 (4.29%) DV Cleared
5 186 (4.18%) Computer Science Degree
6 120 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
7 108 (2.43%) Microsoft Certification
8 107 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
9 88 (1.98%) CISSP
10 83 (1.87%) PMP
11 71 (1.60%) PMI Certification
12 60 (1.35%) Azure Certification
12 60 (1.35%) CCNA
12 60 (1.35%) CISM
13 58 (1.30%) Master's Degree
14 56 (1.26%) A+ Certification
15 53 (1.19%) Network+ Certification
16 43 (0.97%) MCSE
17 31 (0.70%) AWS Certification
17 31 (0.70%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 296 (6.65%) Data Quality
2 251 (5.64%) QA
3 141 (3.17%) GDPR
4 93 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 83 (1.87%) NIST
6 82 (1.84%) PMO
7 72 (1.62%) Accessibility
8 71 (1.60%) SLA
9 43 (0.97%) GRC
10 25 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 23 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
11 23 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.43%) ISO 20022
13 17 (0.38%) PSD2
14 15 (0.34%) NCSC
14 15 (0.34%) WCAG
15 13 (0.29%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.29%) HL7
15 13 (0.29%) IFRS
16 12 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 341 (7.67%) Active Directory
2 299 (6.72%) Docker
3 103 (2.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.79%) vSphere
5 33 (0.74%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.67%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.43%) Firmware
8 19 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
8 19 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (0.34%) vCloud
10 11 (0.25%) Squid
11 7 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.13%) IAG
13 5 (0.11%) RACF
14 4 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.090%) NFS
14 4 (0.090%) Snort
15 3 (0.067%) ACF2
15 3 (0.067%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 358 (8.05%) Kubernetes
2 238 (5.35%) Terraform
3 159 (3.57%) Ansible
4 116 (2.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 101 (2.27%) Grafana
6 80 (1.80%) Prometheus
7 67 (1.51%) SCCM
8 41 (0.92%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.83%) FortiGate
10 34 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.58%) Kibana
12 23 (0.52%) Puppet
13 22 (0.49%) Argo
13 22 (0.49%) Control-M
14 20 (0.45%) Nessus
15 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 12 (0.27%) SCOM
18 11 (0.25%) WSUS
19 10 (0.22%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 818 (18.39%) Microsoft
2 311 (6.99%) Oracle
3 243 (5.46%) SAP
4 201 (4.52%) ServiceNow
5 180 (4.05%) VMware
6 132 (2.97%) Databricks
7 122 (2.74%) Google
8 118 (2.65%) Splunk
9 107 (2.41%) Cisco
10 101 (2.27%) Salesforce
11 72 (1.62%) CyberArk
12 67 (1.51%) BeyondTrust
13 61 (1.37%) Dell
14 60 (1.35%) Workday
15 59 (1.33%) Red Hat
16 45 (1.01%) Adobe
16 45 (1.01%) Citrix
17 43 (0.97%) MuleSoft
18 42 (0.94%) F5
19 41 (0.92%) HP