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

6 months to
19 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 4,424 4,192 3,934
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.78% 17.23% 10.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.74% 18.89% 12.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,686 2,631 2,389
10th Percentile £265 £250 £250
25th Percentile £393 £400 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £608 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £485 £500 £502
% change year-on-year -3.00% -0.40% -4.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 281 217 375
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.87 £15.44 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £22.14 £16.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.57% +34.18% -65.91%
75th Percentile £51.27 £44.61 £40.58
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.00 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £22.14 £16.50
% change year-on-year -5.15% +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 34,728 22,194 31,472
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.62% 91.24% 86.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,149 14,504 20,626
10th Percentile £322 £306 £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 £507 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -1.65% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,129 949 2,251
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.38 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.22 £15.97
Median hourly rate £45.78 £29.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +57.86% -20.55% +0.29%
75th Percentile £67.84 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.40 £28.18 £36.02
% change year-on-year +50.46% -21.77% +0.06%

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 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 19 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 19 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 1,867 £520 -0.95% 970
North of England -8 735 £450 -8.16% 676
South East -6 643 £490 -2.05% 779
Midlands -7 492 £467 +5.50% 421
North West -7 350 £422 -13.90% 369
Yorkshire -7 343 £469 -3.30% 229
West Midlands -10 337 £475 +2.70% 254
South West -1 333 £500 -2.44% 299
East of England -3 227 £450 -3.54% 293
East Midlands -1 154 £443 +20.41% 167
North East -10 50 £425 -16.26% 86
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
1 195 (4.41%) Confluence
2 134 (3.03%) SharePoint
3 81 (1.83%) Microsoft Exchange
4 54 (1.22%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.90%) Apache
6 36 (0.81%) SAS
7 32 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
8 26 (0.59%) CMS
9 19 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 10 (0.23%) 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 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.11%) CICS
16 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 3 (0.068%) IIS
Applications
1 263 (5.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 206 (4.66%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (2.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 67 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
5 60 (1.36%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 7 (0.16%) Trello
10 6 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.14%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.14%) AutoCAD
10 6 (0.14%) 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 (0.068%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 96 (2.17%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.47%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
6 14 (0.32%) NEC Housing
6 14 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
7 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 11 (0.25%) Teamcenter
8 11 (0.25%) Workday HCM
9 10 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
10 9 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
10 9 (0.20%) SAP SD
10 9 (0.20%) Shopify
11 8 (0.18%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
12 7 (0.16%) Fidessa
12 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 892 (20.16%) Azure
2 664 (15.01%) AWS
3 346 (7.82%) Power Platform
4 302 (6.83%) Microsoft 365
5 274 (6.19%) GCP
6 213 (4.81%) Azure DevOps
7 175 (3.96%) GitHub
8 134 (3.03%) Entra ID
9 120 (2.71%) Serverless
10 113 (2.55%) SaaS
11 84 (1.90%) GitHub Actions
12 72 (1.63%) Amazon S3
13 69 (1.56%) AWS Lambda
14 66 (1.49%) Azure Data Factory
15 61 (1.38%) OpenShift
16 60 (1.36%) Dynamics 365
17 59 (1.33%) Snowflake
18 57 (1.29%) Power Automate
19 46 (1.04%) PowerApps
20 45 (1.02%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 163 (3.68%) DNS
2 143 (3.23%) Firewall
3 101 (2.28%) TCP/IP
4 99 (2.24%) VPN
5 84 (1.90%) DHCP
5 84 (1.90%) WAN
6 75 (1.70%) Network Security
7 65 (1.47%) LAN
8 62 (1.40%) SAN
9 54 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
10 42 (0.95%) VLAN
11 40 (0.90%) BGP
12 36 (0.81%) OSPF
13 30 (0.68%) SD-WAN
14 25 (0.57%) Wireless
15 24 (0.54%) VoIP
16 22 (0.50%) VXLAN
17 19 (0.43%) Internet
18 18 (0.41%) BIG-IP
19 17 (0.38%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 273 (6.17%) Power BI
2 174 (3.93%) SQL Server
3 137 (3.10%) Data Warehouse
4 113 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
5 109 (2.46%) Relational Database
6 88 (1.99%) Metadata
7 78 (1.76%) MongoDB
8 75 (1.70%) NoSQL
9 73 (1.65%) Tableau
10 65 (1.47%) Data Lake
11 53 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
12 47 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 45 (1.02%) Big Data
13 45 (1.02%) Oracle Database
14 39 (0.88%) MySQL
15 27 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
15 27 (0.61%) Power Query
16 25 (0.57%) Delta Lake
16 25 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
17 23 (0.52%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 439 (9.92%) JIRA
2 251 (5.67%) Git
3 169 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 111 (2.51%) GitLab
5 60 (1.36%) Selenium
6 33 (0.75%) Postman
7 26 (0.59%) Cucumber
8 25 (0.57%) REST Assured
9 24 (0.54%) Bitbucket
10 23 (0.52%) JUnit
11 20 (0.45%) Cypress.io
12 17 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
13 16 (0.36%) Maven
13 16 (0.36%) Mockito
14 15 (0.34%) JMeter
14 15 (0.34%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.32%) SpecFlow
16 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
17 11 (0.25%) Rational Rhapsody
17 11 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,289 (51.74%) Social Skills
2 1,731 (39.13%) Analytical Skills
3 1,017 (22.99%) Finance
4 396 (8.95%) Public Sector
5 339 (7.66%) Banking
6 200 (4.52%) Organisational Skills
7 169 (3.82%) Retail
8 159 (3.59%) Documentation Skills
9 127 (2.87%) Legal
10 107 (2.42%) Presentation Skills
11 93 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
12 92 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 88 (1.99%) Front Office
14 82 (1.85%) Marketing
15 71 (1.60%) Telecoms
16 66 (1.49%) Manufacturing
17 64 (1.45%) Investment Banking
18 59 (1.33%) Law
19 48 (1.08%) Military
20 43 (0.97%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 645 (14.58%) Analyst
2 497 (11.23%) Developer
3 380 (8.59%) Senior
4 318 (7.19%) Architect
5 277 (6.26%) Lead
6 244 (5.52%) Business Analyst
7 208 (4.70%) Data Engineer
8 197 (4.45%) Consultant
9 170 (3.84%) Project Manager
10 116 (2.62%) IT Support
11 111 (2.51%) Support Engineer
12 108 (2.44%) Data Analyst
13 87 (1.97%) Solutions Architect
14 86 (1.94%) Software Engineer
15 82 (1.85%) Java Developer
16 78 (1.76%) Administrator
17 76 (1.72%) IT Engineer
18 75 (1.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 72 (1.63%) Network Engineer
20 71 (1.60%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (5.67%) REST
2 129 (2.92%) Kafka
2 129 (2.92%) SOAP
3 123 (2.78%) .NET
4 119 (2.69%) Spring
5 117 (2.64%) RESTful
6 116 (2.62%) React
7 100 (2.26%) CSS
8 92 (2.08%) HTML
8 92 (2.08%) LDAP
9 91 (2.06%) Middleware
10 90 (2.03%) Spring Boot
11 88 (1.99%) AngularJS
12 84 (1.90%) JSON
12 84 (1.90%) Node.js
13 81 (1.83%) XML
14 58 (1.31%) PySpark
15 55 (1.24%) OAuth
16 52 (1.18%) Web Services
17 47 (1.06%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 215 (4.86%) Product Ownership
2 207 (4.68%) Onboarding
3 167 (3.77%) Data Centre
4 161 (3.64%) Cloud Native
5 136 (3.07%) Self-Motivation
6 126 (2.85%) Analytical Mindset
7 121 (2.74%) Management Information System
8 105 (2.37%) Data Protection Act
9 104 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
10 103 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
11 90 (2.03%) Virtual Team
12 87 (1.97%) Data Structures
12 87 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
13 64 (1.45%) Security Posture
14 51 (1.15%) AI Agents
14 51 (1.15%) Mobile App
15 47 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
16 46 (1.04%) Algorithms
17 45 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 41 (0.93%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 504 (11.39%) Windows
2 255 (5.76%) Linux
3 106 (2.40%) Windows 10
4 86 (1.94%) Windows Server
5 84 (1.90%) Unix
6 81 (1.83%) Apple iOS
7 80 (1.81%) Android
8 66 (1.49%) Mac OS
9 45 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.47%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.36%) VMS
12 14 (0.32%) CentOS
13 13 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.18%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.18%) zOS
15 7 (0.16%) Debian
16 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.090%) Rocky
17 4 (0.090%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,200 (27.12%) Agile
2 713 (16.12%) CI/CD
3 699 (15.80%) Continuous Improvement
4 683 (15.44%) DevOps
5 654 (14.78%) Stakeholder Management
6 498 (11.26%) Decision-Making
7 497 (11.23%) AI
7 497 (11.23%) Migration
8 480 (10.85%) Analytics
9 419 (9.47%) Project Management
10 393 (8.88%) Data Modelling
11 372 (8.41%) ITIL
12 371 (8.39%) Customer Service
13 359 (8.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 355 (8.02%) Validation
15 351 (7.93%) Business Intelligence
16 346 (7.82%) Test Automation
17 322 (7.28%) Change Management
18 313 (7.08%) Scrum
19 281 (6.35%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 813 (18.38%) Python
2 791 (17.88%) SQL
3 351 (7.93%) Java
4 270 (6.10%) PowerShell
5 226 (5.11%) JavaScript
6 168 (3.80%) C#
7 127 (2.87%) TypeScript
8 108 (2.44%) Bash
9 73 (1.65%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.38%) C++
11 41 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 40 (0.90%) Go
13 37 (0.84%) C
14 34 (0.77%) Bicep
14 34 (0.77%) T-SQL
15 32 (0.72%) R
16 31 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 29 (0.66%) Apex Code
18 26 (0.59%) Perl
19 23 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 991 (22.40%) Security Cleared
2 663 (14.99%) SC Cleared
3 545 (12.32%) Degree
4 194 (4.39%) DV Cleared
5 183 (4.14%) Computer Science Degree
6 120 (2.71%) BPSS Clearance
7 110 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
8 107 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
9 86 (1.94%) CISSP
10 81 (1.83%) PMP
11 68 (1.54%) PMI Certification
12 60 (1.36%) Azure Certification
12 60 (1.36%) CCNA
13 58 (1.31%) Master's Degree
14 57 (1.29%) A+ Certification
14 57 (1.29%) CISM
15 54 (1.22%) Network+ Certification
16 43 (0.97%) MCSE
17 30 (0.68%) CCNP
18 28 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 294 (6.65%) Data Quality
2 242 (5.47%) QA
3 138 (3.12%) GDPR
4 89 (2.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 79 (1.79%) NIST
6 78 (1.76%) PMO
7 75 (1.70%) Accessibility
8 73 (1.65%) SLA
9 44 (0.99%) GRC
10 25 (0.57%) PCI DSS
11 23 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
11 23 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 18 (0.41%) ISO 20022
13 16 (0.36%) WCAG
14 15 (0.34%) NCSC
14 15 (0.34%) PSD2
15 13 (0.29%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.29%) HL7
15 13 (0.29%) IFRS
16 12 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 332 (7.50%) Active Directory
2 284 (6.42%) Docker
3 98 (2.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.79%) vSphere
5 32 (0.72%) VMware NSX
6 28 (0.63%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
9 19 (0.43%) Firmware
9 19 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
10 16 (0.36%) vCloud
11 11 (0.25%) Squid
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.14%) IAG
14 5 (0.11%) RACF
15 4 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.090%) Snort
16 3 (0.068%) ACF2
16 3 (0.068%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.068%) NFS
Systems Management
1 343 (7.75%) Kubernetes
2 233 (5.27%) Terraform
3 156 (3.53%) Ansible
4 115 (2.60%) Microsoft Intune
5 101 (2.28%) Grafana
6 82 (1.85%) Prometheus
7 66 (1.49%) SCCM
8 41 (0.93%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.84%) FortiGate
10 34 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.59%) Kibana
12 23 (0.52%) Puppet
13 22 (0.50%) Control-M
14 21 (0.47%) Nessus
15 20 (0.45%) Argo
16 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 13 (0.29%) SCOM
19 11 (0.25%) WSUS
20 10 (0.23%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 811 (18.33%) Microsoft
2 304 (6.87%) Oracle
3 241 (5.45%) SAP
4 200 (4.52%) ServiceNow
5 173 (3.91%) VMware
6 134 (3.03%) Databricks
7 121 (2.74%) Splunk
8 119 (2.69%) Google
9 106 (2.40%) Cisco
10 101 (2.28%) Salesforce
11 68 (1.54%) CyberArk
12 63 (1.42%) BeyondTrust
13 61 (1.38%) Dell
14 60 (1.36%) Workday
15 59 (1.33%) Red Hat
16 45 (1.02%) Adobe
17 43 (0.97%) F5
18 42 (0.95%) Citrix
19 41 (0.93%) HP
19 41 (0.93%) MuleSoft