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

6 months to
19 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 4,601 4,150 4,040
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.65% 16.95% 10.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.66% 18.61% 12.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,847 2,616 2,480
10th Percentile £281 £256 £213
25th Percentile £394 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £718 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £508
% change year-on-year -4.00% -1.48% -3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 201 368
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.68 £15.62 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.80 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.97% +26.51% -59.71%
75th Percentile £57.06 £44.61 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £66.16
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £24.00 £17.50
% change year-on-year -11.46% +37.14% -58.90%

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 33,684 22,303 32,266
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.31% 91.07% 86.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,561 14,661 21,238
10th Percentile £314 £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 £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,090 892 2,221
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.84 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.27 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £41.86 £31.64 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.29% -9.60% -6.17%
75th Percentile £67.25 £63.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.23 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +25.00% -14.29% -2.78%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 -9 1,987 £510 -2.86% 1,016
North of England -5 783 £450 -5.26% 651
South East -5 663 £492 -1.60% 764
Midlands -3 515 £450 - 490
North West -5 381 £425 -12.82% 343
West Midlands -5 363 £475 +2.70% 277
Yorkshire -4 356 £465 -2.00% 221
South West -2 317 £500 -1.23% 308
East of England -4 205 £450 - 306
East Midlands -1 152 £420 +13.59% 213
North East -1 55 £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
1 207 (4.50%) Confluence
2 134 (2.91%) SharePoint
3 99 (2.15%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.39%) Apache Spark
5 57 (1.24%) SAS
6 50 (1.09%) Apache
7 33 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
8 23 (0.50%) CMS
9 18 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.26%) nginx
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.15%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.15%) JBoss
14 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
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
Applications
1 282 (6.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 209 (4.54%) Microsoft Office
3 106 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
5 71 (1.54%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.13%) Trello
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) AutoCAD
11 5 (0.11%) Maya
11 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.087%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.065%) CATIA
13 3 (0.065%) CPLEX
13 3 (0.065%) InVision
13 3 (0.065%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.065%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 83 (1.80%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.46%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.33%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 14 (0.30%) NEC Housing
7 13 (0.28%) Workday HCM
8 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.24%) iTrent
10 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.20%) Shopify
11 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
12 8 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
12 8 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
12 8 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 7 (0.15%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 955 (20.76%) Azure
2 710 (15.43%) AWS
3 345 (7.50%) Power Platform
4 319 (6.93%) GCP
5 308 (6.69%) Microsoft 365
6 216 (4.69%) Azure DevOps
7 193 (4.19%) GitHub
8 152 (3.30%) Entra ID
9 143 (3.11%) Serverless
10 126 (2.74%) SaaS
11 96 (2.09%) GitHub Actions
12 89 (1.93%) Amazon S3
13 88 (1.91%) AWS Lambda
14 82 (1.78%) OpenShift
15 69 (1.50%) Azure Data Factory
16 62 (1.35%) Snowflake
17 58 (1.26%) Power Automate
18 55 (1.20%) Dynamics 365
19 52 (1.13%) Google Workspace
20 49 (1.06%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 174 (3.78%) Firewall
2 167 (3.63%) DNS
3 107 (2.33%) TCP/IP
4 101 (2.20%) Network Security
5 99 (2.15%) VPN
6 87 (1.89%) WAN
7 84 (1.83%) DHCP
8 68 (1.48%) LAN
9 54 (1.17%) SAN
10 51 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
11 46 (1.00%) BGP
12 44 (0.96%) VLAN
13 35 (0.76%) OSPF
14 30 (0.65%) VoIP
15 28 (0.61%) SD-WAN
16 24 (0.52%) Internet
16 24 (0.52%) Wireless
17 21 (0.46%) VXLAN
18 19 (0.41%) MPLS
19 18 (0.39%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 274 (5.96%) Power BI
2 175 (3.80%) SQL Server
3 135 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
4 119 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
5 108 (2.35%) Relational Database
6 93 (2.02%) Metadata
7 84 (1.83%) MongoDB
8 83 (1.80%) NoSQL
9 76 (1.65%) Tableau
10 71 (1.54%) Data Lake
11 60 (1.30%) Oracle Reports
12 57 (1.24%) Oracle Database
13 52 (1.13%) Big Data
14 44 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 41 (0.89%) MySQL
16 34 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
17 33 (0.72%) Pentaho
18 30 (0.65%) DynamoDB
18 30 (0.65%) Power Query
19 28 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 468 (10.17%) JIRA
2 289 (6.28%) Git
3 206 (4.48%) Jenkins
4 135 (2.93%) GitLab
5 74 (1.61%) Selenium
6 43 (0.93%) JUnit
7 36 (0.78%) Postman
8 28 (0.61%) Bitbucket
9 26 (0.57%) Cucumber
10 21 (0.46%) Maven
11 20 (0.43%) REST Assured
12 19 (0.41%) Cypress.io
12 19 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
13 18 (0.39%) Mockito
14 16 (0.35%) JMeter
15 15 (0.33%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.30%) SonarQube
17 13 (0.28%) CircleCI
18 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
18 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 2,417 (52.53%) Social Skills
2 1,780 (38.69%) Analytical Skills
3 1,072 (23.30%) Finance
4 430 (9.35%) Public Sector
5 361 (7.85%) Banking
6 193 (4.19%) Organisational Skills
7 170 (3.69%) Documentation Skills
8 162 (3.52%) Retail
9 147 (3.19%) Legal
10 122 (2.65%) Influencing Skills
10 122 (2.65%) Presentation Skills
11 102 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 92 (2.00%) Front Office
13 80 (1.74%) Marketing
14 67 (1.46%) Telecoms
15 63 (1.37%) Investment Banking
16 60 (1.30%) Manufacturing
17 52 (1.13%) Law
18 50 (1.09%) Military
19 45 (0.98%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 664 (14.43%) Analyst
2 543 (11.80%) Developer
3 389 (8.45%) Senior
4 337 (7.32%) Architect
5 301 (6.54%) Lead
6 265 (5.76%) Business Analyst
7 211 (4.59%) Consultant
8 208 (4.52%) Data Engineer
9 178 (3.87%) Project Manager
10 110 (2.39%) IT Support
11 105 (2.28%) Support Engineer
12 100 (2.17%) Data Analyst
13 96 (2.09%) Java Developer
14 91 (1.98%) Administrator
14 91 (1.98%) Solutions Architect
15 86 (1.87%) Software Engineer
16 76 (1.65%) Python Developer
17 73 (1.59%) IT Analyst
18 71 (1.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 68 (1.48%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 284 (6.17%) REST
2 145 (3.15%) Kafka
3 141 (3.06%) SOAP
4 135 (2.93%) RESTful
5 127 (2.76%) Spring
6 124 (2.70%) .NET
7 119 (2.59%) React
8 99 (2.15%) Node.js
9 96 (2.09%) Spring Boot
10 92 (2.00%) AngularJS
10 92 (2.00%) CSS
11 90 (1.96%) HTML
12 89 (1.93%) JSON
12 89 (1.93%) XML
13 88 (1.91%) LDAP
14 82 (1.78%) Middleware
15 70 (1.52%) OAuth
16 57 (1.24%) Oracle Fusion
17 56 (1.22%) PySpark
18 54 (1.17%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 240 (5.22%) Product Ownership
2 202 (4.39%) Onboarding
3 175 (3.80%) Cloud Native
4 148 (3.22%) Data Centre
5 133 (2.89%) Management Information System
6 130 (2.83%) Self-Motivation
7 125 (2.72%) Analytical Mindset
8 101 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
9 97 (2.11%) Distributed Systems
10 93 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
11 90 (1.96%) Legacy Systems
12 89 (1.93%) Data Structures
13 81 (1.76%) Virtual Team
14 68 (1.48%) Security Posture
15 58 (1.26%) Hybrid Cloud
15 58 (1.26%) Mobile App
16 53 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 52 (1.13%) Algorithms
18 46 (1.00%) AI Agents
19 44 (0.96%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 518 (11.26%) Windows
2 276 (6.00%) Linux
3 107 (2.33%) Windows 10
4 93 (2.02%) Windows Server
5 81 (1.76%) Unix
6 80 (1.74%) Android
7 73 (1.59%) Apple iOS
8 58 (1.26%) Mac OS
9 54 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.41%) VMS
11 17 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.26%) CentOS
13 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.20%) zOS
15 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
16 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.13%) Debian
18 4 (0.087%) Windows 8
19 3 (0.065%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,308 (28.43%) Agile
2 798 (17.34%) CI/CD
3 740 (16.08%) DevOps
4 728 (15.82%) Continuous Improvement
5 698 (15.17%) Stakeholder Management
6 549 (11.93%) Analytics
7 508 (11.04%) Migration
8 502 (10.91%) Decision-Making
9 484 (10.52%) AI
10 448 (9.74%) Project Management
11 408 (8.87%) Data Modelling
12 395 (8.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 384 (8.35%) Test Automation
14 373 (8.11%) Validation
15 367 (7.98%) Business Intelligence
16 356 (7.74%) Customer Service
17 354 (7.69%) ITIL
18 350 (7.61%) Scrum
19 342 (7.43%) Change Management
20 308 (6.69%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 897 (19.50%) Python
2 838 (18.21%) SQL
3 387 (8.41%) Java
4 301 (6.54%) PowerShell
5 235 (5.11%) JavaScript
6 173 (3.76%) C#
7 145 (3.15%) TypeScript
8 135 (2.93%) Bash
9 79 (1.72%) PL/SQL
10 57 (1.24%) C++
11 45 (0.98%) Go
12 42 (0.91%) Shell Script
13 38 (0.83%) Bicep
14 37 (0.80%) C
15 36 (0.78%) T-SQL
16 34 (0.74%) Perl
17 33 (0.72%) R
18 30 (0.65%) Apex Code
19 29 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
20 28 (0.61%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,048 (22.78%) Security Cleared
2 724 (15.74%) SC Cleared
3 568 (12.35%) Degree
4 206 (4.48%) Computer Science Degree
5 191 (4.15%) DV Cleared
6 129 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (2.24%) Microsoft Certification
8 102 (2.22%) Cisco Certification
9 95 (2.06%) CISSP
10 91 (1.98%) PMP
11 80 (1.74%) PMI Certification
12 68 (1.48%) Master's Degree
13 63 (1.37%) Azure Certification
14 59 (1.28%) CISM
15 54 (1.17%) CCNA
16 42 (0.91%) A+ Certification
17 40 (0.87%) Network+ Certification
18 38 (0.83%) CCNP
18 38 (0.83%) MCSE
19 30 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 307 (6.67%) Data Quality
2 284 (6.17%) QA
3 149 (3.24%) GDPR
4 92 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 87 (1.89%) PMO
6 84 (1.83%) NIST
7 76 (1.65%) Accessibility
8 66 (1.43%) SLA
9 44 (0.96%) GRC
10 28 (0.61%) PCI DSS
11 24 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
12 23 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 21 (0.46%) PSD2
14 20 (0.43%) WCAG
15 18 (0.39%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.33%) HL7
17 14 (0.30%) NCSC
18 13 (0.28%) IFRS
19 12 (0.26%) HIPAA
19 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 357 (7.76%) Active Directory
2 349 (7.59%) Docker
3 110 (2.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.87%) vSphere
5 32 (0.70%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.65%) Hyper-V
7 18 (0.39%) 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 (0.087%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.087%) NFS
14 4 (0.087%) Snort
Systems Management
1 412 (8.95%) Kubernetes
2 263 (5.72%) Terraform
3 161 (3.50%) Ansible
4 124 (2.70%) Microsoft Intune
5 104 (2.26%) Grafana
6 80 (1.74%) Prometheus
7 74 (1.61%) SCCM
8 39 (0.85%) vCenter Server
9 38 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
10 33 (0.72%) FortiGate
11 29 (0.63%) Kibana
12 28 (0.61%) Puppet
13 27 (0.59%) Argo
14 24 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 23 (0.50%) Control-M
16 22 (0.48%) Nessus
17 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
18 15 (0.33%) vRealize
19 13 (0.28%) WSUS
20 11 (0.24%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 854 (18.56%) Microsoft
2 329 (7.15%) Oracle
3 231 (5.02%) SAP
4 197 (4.28%) ServiceNow
5 193 (4.19%) VMware
6 145 (3.15%) Databricks
6 145 (3.15%) Google
7 116 (2.52%) Splunk
8 115 (2.50%) Cisco
9 105 (2.28%) Salesforce
10 73 (1.59%) Red Hat
11 69 (1.50%) CyberArk
12 64 (1.39%) BeyondTrust
13 58 (1.26%) Citrix
14 57 (1.24%) Dell
15 56 (1.22%) Workday
16 47 (1.02%) Talend
17 46 (1.00%) Adobe
18 42 (0.91%) IBM
18 42 (0.91%) Informatica