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

6 months to
11 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 4,501 4,190 3,992
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.07% 17.11% 10.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.06% 18.76% 12.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,756 2,626 2,431
10th Percentile £267 £250 £235
25th Percentile £388 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.44% -2.75%
75th Percentile £594 £608 £638
90th Percentile £725 £707 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £503
% change year-on-year -4.00% -0.60% -4.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 208 370
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.39 £14.04
Median hourly rate £22.01 £22.07 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.27% +26.11% -65.00%
75th Percentile £55.00 £43.10 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.88 £63.75
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £22.14 £16.50
% change year-on-year -4.02% +34.18% -65.91%

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 34,470 22,336 31,802
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.75% 91.22% 86.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,971 14,617 20,828
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £501 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.75% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,149 942 2,251
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.50 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £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 £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.13 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +46.52% -21.23% +0.69%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -11 1,911 £513 -2.38% 977
North of England -7 747 £449 -8.23% 600
South East -6 654 £492 -1.60% 758
Midlands -5 518 £453 +1.46% 404
North West -6 360 £410 -16.16% 343
West Midlands -5 355 £474 +2.76% 243
Yorkshire -6 341 £460 -5.15% 190
South West -1 324 £500 - 283
East of England -6 214 £450 - 268
East Midlands 0 162 £443 +18.56% 162
North East -7 53 £425 -11.23% 73
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 (4.35%) Confluence
2 132 (2.93%) SharePoint
3 85 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 57 (1.27%) Apache Spark
5 43 (0.96%) Apache
6 40 (0.89%) SAS
7 33 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
8 26 (0.58%) CMS
9 19 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 10 (0.22%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) CICS
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 3 (0.067%) Jupyter
Applications
1 267 (5.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 210 (4.67%) Microsoft Office
3 98 (2.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
5 66 (1.47%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
9 7 (0.16%) Trello
10 6 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 6 (0.13%) Revit
11 5 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) Maya
11 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.089%) CATIA
12 4 (0.089%) CPLEX
13 3 (0.067%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 96 (2.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.44%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
6 14 (0.31%) NEC Housing
7 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 11 (0.24%) Teamcenter
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
9 10 (0.22%) Workday HCM
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%) Oracle General Ledger
11 8 (0.18%) SAP SD
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 914 (20.31%) Azure
2 689 (15.31%) AWS
3 347 (7.71%) Power Platform
4 306 (6.80%) Microsoft 365
5 292 (6.49%) GCP
6 215 (4.78%) Azure DevOps
7 183 (4.07%) GitHub
8 136 (3.02%) Entra ID
9 125 (2.78%) Serverless
10 118 (2.62%) SaaS
11 90 (2.00%) GitHub Actions
12 78 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 76 (1.69%) Amazon S3
14 69 (1.53%) Azure Data Factory
15 62 (1.38%) OpenShift
15 62 (1.38%) Power Automate
15 62 (1.38%) Snowflake
16 59 (1.31%) Dynamics 365
17 48 (1.07%) PowerApps
18 47 (1.04%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 162 (3.60%) DNS
2 148 (3.29%) Firewall
3 104 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 95 (2.11%) VPN
5 85 (1.89%) WAN
6 83 (1.84%) DHCP
7 79 (1.76%) Network Security
8 64 (1.42%) LAN
8 64 (1.42%) SAN
9 52 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
10 42 (0.93%) VLAN
11 41 (0.91%) BGP
12 36 (0.80%) OSPF
13 30 (0.67%) SD-WAN
14 25 (0.56%) VoIP
14 25 (0.56%) Wireless
15 22 (0.49%) VXLAN
16 21 (0.47%) Internet
17 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
18 17 (0.38%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 273 (6.07%) Power BI
2 178 (3.95%) SQL Server
3 144 (3.20%) Data Warehouse
4 118 (2.62%) PostgreSQL
5 110 (2.44%) Relational Database
6 94 (2.09%) Metadata
7 76 (1.69%) MongoDB
8 75 (1.67%) NoSQL
8 75 (1.67%) Tableau
9 64 (1.42%) Data Lake
10 57 (1.27%) Oracle Reports
11 49 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 47 (1.04%) Big Data
12 47 (1.04%) Oracle Database
13 44 (0.98%) MySQL
14 31 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
14 31 (0.69%) Power Query
15 27 (0.60%) Pentaho
16 26 (0.58%) BigQuery
16 26 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 456 (10.13%) JIRA
2 262 (5.82%) Git
3 173 (3.84%) Jenkins
4 120 (2.67%) GitLab
5 56 (1.24%) Selenium
6 32 (0.71%) Postman
7 26 (0.58%) Cucumber
8 25 (0.56%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.51%) JUnit
10 19 (0.42%) Cypress.io
10 19 (0.42%) REST Assured
11 16 (0.36%) Maven
11 16 (0.36%) Mockito
11 16 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
12 15 (0.33%) JMeter
12 15 (0.33%) SonarQube
12 15 (0.33%) SpecFlow
13 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
13 12 (0.27%) Zephyr
14 11 (0.24%) Appium
General
1 2,353 (52.28%) Social Skills
2 1,756 (39.01%) Analytical Skills
3 1,042 (23.15%) Finance
4 402 (8.93%) Public Sector
5 354 (7.86%) Banking
6 206 (4.58%) Organisational Skills
7 171 (3.80%) Retail
8 162 (3.60%) Documentation Skills
9 129 (2.87%) Legal
10 119 (2.64%) Presentation Skills
11 98 (2.18%) Influencing Skills
12 95 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 90 (2.00%) Front Office
14 82 (1.82%) Marketing
15 71 (1.58%) Telecoms
16 65 (1.44%) Investment Banking
17 63 (1.40%) Manufacturing
18 58 (1.29%) Law
19 48 (1.07%) Military
20 45 (1.00%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 663 (14.73%) Analyst
2 511 (11.35%) Developer
3 387 (8.60%) Senior
4 331 (7.35%) Architect
5 286 (6.35%) Lead
6 259 (5.75%) Business Analyst
7 213 (4.73%) Data Engineer
8 200 (4.44%) Consultant
9 174 (3.87%) Project Manager
10 112 (2.49%) IT Support
11 111 (2.47%) Support Engineer
12 107 (2.38%) Data Analyst
13 90 (2.00%) Solutions Architect
14 85 (1.89%) Java Developer
14 85 (1.89%) Software Engineer
15 83 (1.84%) Administrator
16 77 (1.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 77 (1.71%) IT Engineer
17 71 (1.58%) Network Engineer
18 70 (1.56%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 254 (5.64%) REST
2 136 (3.02%) Kafka
3 132 (2.93%) SOAP
4 124 (2.75%) .NET
5 122 (2.71%) RESTful
6 118 (2.62%) React
6 118 (2.62%) Spring
7 98 (2.18%) CSS
7 98 (2.18%) LDAP
8 91 (2.02%) HTML
8 91 (2.02%) Spring Boot
9 90 (2.00%) AngularJS
9 90 (2.00%) Middleware
10 89 (1.98%) Node.js
11 84 (1.87%) JSON
12 83 (1.84%) XML
13 60 (1.33%) OAuth
14 58 (1.29%) PySpark
15 53 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
16 51 (1.13%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 226 (5.02%) Product Ownership
2 209 (4.64%) Onboarding
3 168 (3.73%) Cloud Native
4 166 (3.69%) Data Centre
5 137 (3.04%) Self-Motivation
6 130 (2.89%) Analytical Mindset
7 126 (2.80%) Management Information System
8 106 (2.36%) Distributed Systems
9 104 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
10 101 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
11 90 (2.00%) Virtual Team
12 88 (1.96%) Data Structures
13 87 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
14 62 (1.38%) Security Posture
15 57 (1.27%) Mobile App
16 52 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
17 50 (1.11%) AI Agents
18 47 (1.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 45 (1.00%) Algorithms
20 43 (0.96%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 509 (11.31%) Windows
2 263 (5.84%) Linux
3 103 (2.29%) Windows 10
4 89 (1.98%) Android
5 85 (1.89%) Unix
6 84 (1.87%) Windows Server
7 83 (1.84%) Apple iOS
8 60 (1.33%) Mac OS
9 46 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.47%) Ubuntu
11 19 (0.42%) VMS
12 15 (0.33%) CentOS
13 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.20%) zOS
15 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
16 7 (0.16%) Debian
16 7 (0.16%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.089%) AIX
17 4 (0.089%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.089%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,236 (27.46%) Agile
2 744 (16.53%) CI/CD
3 709 (15.75%) Continuous Improvement
4 701 (15.57%) DevOps
5 667 (14.82%) Stakeholder Management
6 508 (11.29%) Decision-Making
7 507 (11.26%) Migration
8 499 (11.09%) AI
9 496 (11.02%) Analytics
10 430 (9.55%) Project Management
11 405 (9.00%) Data Modelling
12 370 (8.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 365 (8.11%) Validation
14 363 (8.06%) ITIL
15 362 (8.04%) Customer Service
16 361 (8.02%) Business Intelligence
17 358 (7.95%) Test Automation
18 325 (7.22%) Change Management
19 321 (7.13%) Scrum
20 290 (6.44%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 836 (18.57%) Python
2 821 (18.24%) SQL
3 361 (8.02%) Java
4 283 (6.29%) PowerShell
5 236 (5.24%) JavaScript
6 169 (3.75%) C#
7 138 (3.07%) TypeScript
8 109 (2.42%) Bash
9 80 (1.78%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.36%) C++
11 44 (0.98%) Go
11 44 (0.98%) Shell Script
12 37 (0.82%) C
13 35 (0.78%) T-SQL
14 34 (0.76%) Bicep
15 33 (0.73%) R
16 32 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 31 (0.69%) Apex Code
18 27 (0.60%) Perl
19 24 (0.53%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,019 (22.64%) Security Cleared
2 692 (15.37%) SC Cleared
3 542 (12.04%) Degree
4 190 (4.22%) DV Cleared
5 187 (4.15%) Computer Science Degree
6 122 (2.71%) BPSS Clearance
7 108 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
7 108 (2.40%) Microsoft Certification
8 89 (1.98%) CISSP
9 82 (1.82%) PMP
10 70 (1.56%) PMI Certification
11 62 (1.38%) Azure Certification
11 62 (1.38%) CISM
12 60 (1.33%) CCNA
13 58 (1.29%) Master's Degree
14 56 (1.24%) A+ Certification
15 53 (1.18%) Network+ Certification
16 43 (0.96%) MCSE
17 31 (0.69%) CCNP
18 30 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 302 (6.71%) Data Quality
2 261 (5.80%) QA
3 145 (3.22%) GDPR
4 96 (2.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 85 (1.89%) PMO
6 83 (1.84%) NIST
7 70 (1.56%) Accessibility
8 68 (1.51%) SLA
9 42 (0.93%) GRC
10 25 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 24 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
11 24 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.42%) ISO 20022
13 17 (0.38%) PSD2
13 17 (0.38%) WCAG
14 15 (0.33%) NCSC
15 14 (0.31%) IFRS
16 13 (0.29%) HIPAA
16 13 (0.29%) HL7
17 12 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 340 (7.55%) Active Directory
2 297 (6.60%) Docker
3 109 (2.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.89%) vSphere
5 34 (0.76%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.67%) Hyper-V
7 21 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.44%) Firmware
9 19 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
10 18 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
11 14 (0.31%) vCloud
12 11 (0.24%) RACF
12 11 (0.24%) Squid
13 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
14 9 (0.20%) ACF2
15 7 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.13%) IAG
17 4 (0.089%) Microsoft App-V
17 4 (0.089%) NFS
17 4 (0.089%) Snort
Systems Management
1 366 (8.13%) Kubernetes
2 243 (5.40%) Terraform
3 157 (3.49%) Ansible
4 113 (2.51%) Microsoft Intune
5 100 (2.22%) Grafana
6 77 (1.71%) Prometheus
7 68 (1.51%) SCCM
8 42 (0.93%) vCenter Server
9 36 (0.80%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.58%) Kibana
12 23 (0.51%) Argo
12 23 (0.51%) Puppet
13 22 (0.49%) Control-M
14 20 (0.44%) Nessus
15 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 13 (0.29%) WSUS
18 12 (0.27%) CA Endevor
18 12 (0.27%) SCOM
Vendors
1 823 (18.28%) Microsoft
2 315 (7.00%) Oracle
3 240 (5.33%) SAP
4 194 (4.31%) ServiceNow
5 185 (4.11%) VMware
6 134 (2.98%) Databricks
7 129 (2.87%) Google
8 116 (2.58%) Splunk
9 110 (2.44%) Cisco
10 103 (2.29%) Salesforce
11 73 (1.62%) CyberArk
12 68 (1.51%) BeyondTrust
13 63 (1.40%) Dell
14 60 (1.33%) Red Hat
15 59 (1.31%) Workday
16 47 (1.04%) Citrix
17 44 (0.98%) Adobe
18 42 (0.93%) HP
18 42 (0.93%) Informatica
18 42 (0.93%) MuleSoft