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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,717 4,071 4,060
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.03% 16.72% 10.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.03% 18.39% 12.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,924 2,570 2,505
10th Percentile £288 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £511
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.15% -2.67%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 261 196 365
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.31 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.83 £14.16
Median hourly rate £22.00 £22.14 £17.71
Median % change year-on-year -0.63% +25.01% -57.99%
75th Percentile £53.75 £45.46 £42.50
90th Percentile £74.68 £69.38 £70.30
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £24.42 £17.50
% change year-on-year -12.98% +39.54% -56.79%

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 33,625 22,142 32,435
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.72% 90.94% 86.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,563 14,591 21,374
10th Percentile £313 £313 £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 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,074 866 2,196
10th Percentile £15.41 £14.95 £12.96
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.92 £15.93
Median hourly rate £40.00 £32.03 £34.11
Median % change year-on-year +24.90% -6.10% -9.05%
75th Percentile £65.81 £64.52 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.85 £75.88 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £36.71 £31.04 £33.07
% change year-on-year +18.27% -6.12% -8.15%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -8 2,055 £513 -2.38% 986
North of England -5 793 £450 -8.07% 662
South East -5 675 £492 -1.60% 802
Midlands -4 519 £450 +0.22% 478
North West -5 392 £425 -13.27% 365
West Midlands -5 372 £475 +2.70% 278
Yorkshire -4 353 £471 -0.95% 222
South West -2 317 £506 +1.25% 308
East of England -3 223 £450 - 288
East Midlands -1 148 £415 +12.24% 199
North East -3 57 £438 -13.79% 92
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
1 209 (4.43%) Confluence
2 140 (2.97%) SharePoint
3 103 (2.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 62 (1.31%) Apache Spark
5 58 (1.23%) SAS
6 49 (1.04%) Apache
7 32 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
8 26 (0.55%) CMS
9 18 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
9 18 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 12 (0.25%) nginx
11 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.15%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.15%) JBoss
14 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.13%) Skype for Business
14 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 287 (6.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 211 (4.47%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (2.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 76 (1.61%) Microsoft Project
5 73 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.51%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.17%) Trello
10 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.11%) Maya
10 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.064%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.064%) CATIA
11 3 (0.064%) InVision
11 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
11 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
12 2 (0.042%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 82 (1.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 22 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.42%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 17 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
6 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 14 (0.30%) NEC Housing
8 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.28%) Workday HCM
9 12 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
10 11 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.23%) Oracle Receivables
11 10 (0.21%) iTrent
11 10 (0.21%) NetSuite
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
13 8 (0.17%) SAP SD
13 8 (0.17%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 990 (20.99%) Azure
2 745 (15.79%) AWS
3 344 (7.29%) Power Platform
4 332 (7.04%) GCP
5 307 (6.51%) Microsoft 365
6 225 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
7 207 (4.39%) GitHub
8 155 (3.29%) Entra ID
9 148 (3.14%) Serverless
10 138 (2.93%) SaaS
11 102 (2.16%) GitHub Actions
12 90 (1.91%) AWS Lambda
13 89 (1.89%) Amazon S3
14 86 (1.82%) OpenShift
15 70 (1.48%) Azure Data Factory
16 65 (1.38%) Snowflake
17 56 (1.19%) Power Automate
18 54 (1.14%) PaaS
19 53 (1.12%) Google Workspace
20 51 (1.08%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 180 (3.82%) Firewall
2 173 (3.67%) DNS
3 111 (2.35%) TCP/IP
4 106 (2.25%) Network Security
5 103 (2.18%) VPN
6 90 (1.91%) WAN
7 87 (1.84%) DHCP
8 72 (1.53%) LAN
9 55 (1.17%) Wi-Fi
10 51 (1.08%) SAN
11 46 (0.98%) BGP
12 42 (0.89%) VLAN
13 34 (0.72%) OSPF
14 31 (0.66%) VoIP
15 28 (0.59%) SD-WAN
16 25 (0.53%) Internet
17 24 (0.51%) Wireless
18 20 (0.42%) MPLS
19 19 (0.40%) VXLAN
20 18 (0.38%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 274 (5.81%) Power BI
2 175 (3.71%) SQL Server
3 141 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
4 123 (2.61%) Relational Database
5 120 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
6 93 (1.97%) Metadata
7 83 (1.76%) MongoDB
7 83 (1.76%) NoSQL
8 77 (1.63%) Tableau
9 73 (1.55%) Data Lake
10 60 (1.27%) Oracle Database
11 57 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
12 52 (1.10%) Big Data
13 46 (0.98%) MySQL
14 43 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 35 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
16 32 (0.68%) Pentaho
17 30 (0.64%) DynamoDB
18 29 (0.61%) Power Query
19 28 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 474 (10.05%) JIRA
2 310 (6.57%) Git
3 222 (4.71%) Jenkins
4 143 (3.03%) GitLab
5 74 (1.57%) Selenium
6 47 (1.00%) JUnit
7 34 (0.72%) Postman
8 28 (0.59%) Cucumber
9 27 (0.57%) Bitbucket
10 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 22 (0.47%) Maven
11 22 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
12 20 (0.42%) Cypress.io
13 18 (0.38%) Mockito
14 15 (0.32%) JMeter
14 15 (0.32%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
15 13 (0.28%) CircleCI
16 12 (0.25%) Artifactory
16 12 (0.25%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,504 (53.08%) Social Skills
2 1,808 (38.33%) Analytical Skills
3 1,084 (22.98%) Finance
4 448 (9.50%) Public Sector
5 374 (7.93%) Banking
6 193 (4.09%) Organisational Skills
7 177 (3.75%) Documentation Skills
8 162 (3.43%) Retail
9 154 (3.26%) Legal
10 124 (2.63%) Presentation Skills
11 120 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
12 105 (2.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 97 (2.06%) Front Office
14 84 (1.78%) Marketing
15 72 (1.53%) Telecoms
16 66 (1.40%) Investment Banking
17 58 (1.23%) Manufacturing
18 52 (1.10%) Law
18 52 (1.10%) Military
19 45 (0.95%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 690 (14.63%) Analyst
2 581 (12.32%) Developer
3 404 (8.56%) Senior
4 342 (7.25%) Architect
5 310 (6.57%) Lead
6 280 (5.94%) Business Analyst
7 224 (4.75%) Consultant
8 205 (4.35%) Data Engineer
9 185 (3.92%) Project Manager
10 111 (2.35%) Support Engineer
11 109 (2.31%) IT Support
12 99 (2.10%) Data Analyst
12 99 (2.10%) Java Developer
13 94 (1.99%) Solutions Architect
14 91 (1.93%) Software Engineer
15 88 (1.87%) Administrator
16 79 (1.67%) Python Developer
17 74 (1.57%) IT Analyst
18 72 (1.53%) Senior Developer
19 70 (1.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 307 (6.51%) REST
2 150 (3.18%) SOAP
3 145 (3.07%) Kafka
3 145 (3.07%) RESTful
4 137 (2.90%) .NET
5 134 (2.84%) Spring
6 123 (2.61%) React
7 106 (2.25%) Node.js
8 101 (2.14%) Spring Boot
9 97 (2.06%) AngularJS
10 94 (1.99%) CSS
10 94 (1.99%) LDAP
11 93 (1.97%) XML
12 92 (1.95%) HTML
13 90 (1.91%) JSON
14 86 (1.82%) Middleware
15 70 (1.48%) OAuth
16 60 (1.27%) Oracle Fusion
16 60 (1.27%) Web Services
17 57 (1.21%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 243 (5.15%) Product Ownership
2 205 (4.35%) Onboarding
3 179 (3.79%) Cloud Native
4 142 (3.01%) Data Centre
5 136 (2.88%) Management Information System
6 129 (2.73%) Self-Motivation
7 126 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
8 102 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
9 98 (2.08%) Data Structures
10 96 (2.04%) Distributed Systems
10 96 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
11 92 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
12 80 (1.70%) Virtual Team
13 70 (1.48%) Security Posture
14 61 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
14 61 (1.29%) Mobile App
15 60 (1.27%) Algorithms
16 57 (1.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 48 (1.02%) NHS
18 46 (0.98%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 526 (11.15%) Windows
2 290 (6.15%) Linux
3 105 (2.23%) Windows 10
4 92 (1.95%) Windows Server
5 87 (1.84%) Unix
6 75 (1.59%) Android
7 70 (1.48%) Apple iOS
8 56 (1.19%) Mac OS
9 55 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.45%) VMS
11 17 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.25%) CentOS
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.17%) zOS
15 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.13%) Debian
17 4 (0.085%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,358 (28.79%) Agile
2 837 (17.74%) CI/CD
3 776 (16.45%) DevOps
4 751 (15.92%) Continuous Improvement
5 723 (15.33%) Stakeholder Management
6 570 (12.08%) Analytics
7 514 (10.90%) Migration
8 504 (10.68%) Decision-Making
9 491 (10.41%) AI
10 456 (9.67%) Project Management
11 417 (8.84%) Data Modelling
12 409 (8.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 397 (8.42%) Test Automation
14 375 (7.95%) Business Intelligence
15 369 (7.82%) Validation
16 364 (7.72%) ITIL
16 364 (7.72%) Scrum
17 359 (7.61%) Customer Service
18 351 (7.44%) Change Management
19 312 (6.61%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 929 (19.69%) Python
2 861 (18.25%) SQL
3 402 (8.52%) Java
4 315 (6.68%) PowerShell
5 240 (5.09%) JavaScript
6 182 (3.86%) C#
7 151 (3.20%) TypeScript
8 142 (3.01%) Bash
9 82 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 62 (1.31%) C++
11 46 (0.98%) Go
12 44 (0.93%) Shell Script
13 40 (0.85%) Bicep
14 39 (0.83%) T-SQL
15 37 (0.78%) C
16 35 (0.74%) Perl
17 31 (0.66%) Apex Code
18 30 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 30 (0.64%) R
18 30 (0.64%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,070 (22.68%) Security Cleared
2 733 (15.54%) SC Cleared
3 580 (12.30%) Degree
4 208 (4.41%) Computer Science Degree
5 196 (4.16%) DV Cleared
6 127 (2.69%) BPSS Clearance
7 102 (2.16%) Cisco Certification
8 99 (2.10%) CISSP
9 98 (2.08%) PMP
10 97 (2.06%) Microsoft Certification
11 89 (1.89%) PMI Certification
12 70 (1.48%) Master's Degree
13 66 (1.40%) Azure Certification
14 63 (1.34%) CISM
15 51 (1.08%) CCNA
16 41 (0.87%) CCNP
17 40 (0.85%) A+ Certification
18 36 (0.76%) MCSE
18 36 (0.76%) Network+ Certification
19 33 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 311 (6.59%) Data Quality
2 302 (6.40%) QA
3 153 (3.24%) GDPR
4 94 (1.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 91 (1.93%) NIST
6 89 (1.89%) PMO
7 81 (1.72%) Accessibility
8 67 (1.42%) SLA
9 43 (0.91%) GRC
10 31 (0.66%) PCI DSS
11 26 (0.55%) PSD2
12 24 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 23 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
14 20 (0.42%) WCAG
15 19 (0.40%) ISO 20022
16 16 (0.34%) HL7
16 16 (0.34%) ISO 8583
17 14 (0.30%) HIPAA
18 12 (0.25%) IFRS
18 12 (0.25%) SEPA
System Software
1 373 (7.91%) Docker
2 372 (7.89%) Active Directory
3 108 (2.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.87%) vSphere
5 33 (0.70%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.64%) Hyper-V
7 20 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.36%) Firmware
8 17 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.23%) RACF
10 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
10 10 (0.21%) vCloud
10 10 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
11 9 (0.19%) Squid
12 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.13%) IAG
14 4 (0.085%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.085%) NFS
14 4 (0.085%) Snort
Systems Management
1 430 (9.12%) Kubernetes
2 272 (5.77%) Terraform
3 164 (3.48%) Ansible
4 124 (2.63%) Microsoft Intune
5 103 (2.18%) Grafana
6 80 (1.70%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.53%) SCCM
8 39 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
9 38 (0.81%) vCenter Server
10 32 (0.68%) FortiGate
11 29 (0.61%) Kibana
12 28 (0.59%) Puppet
13 27 (0.57%) Argo
14 23 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 20 (0.42%) Control-M
16 19 (0.40%) Nessus
17 15 (0.32%) vRealize
18 14 (0.30%) IBM Guardium
19 11 (0.23%) HP ALM
19 11 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 863 (18.30%) Microsoft
2 335 (7.10%) Oracle
3 230 (4.88%) SAP
4 205 (4.35%) ServiceNow
5 194 (4.11%) VMware
6 149 (3.16%) Google
7 146 (3.10%) Databricks
8 127 (2.69%) Splunk
9 111 (2.35%) Cisco
10 110 (2.33%) Salesforce
11 74 (1.57%) CyberArk
11 74 (1.57%) Red Hat
12 68 (1.44%) BeyondTrust
13 57 (1.21%) Citrix
14 55 (1.17%) Workday
15 54 (1.14%) Dell
16 46 (0.98%) Adobe
16 46 (0.98%) Talend
17 44 (0.93%) IBM
17 44 (0.93%) Informatica