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

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -3 +5 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,684 4,031 4,079
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.27% 16.63% 10.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.26% 18.31% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,910 2,555 2,525
10th Percentile £297 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -2.44% -4.21%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 189 362
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.82 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £16.95 £14.04
Median hourly rate £20.77 £23.80 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.73% +32.22% -58.14%
75th Percentile £47.69 £48.00 £43.69
90th Percentile £74.26 £73.50 £71.01
UK median hourly rate £20.75 £25.00 £17.61
% change year-on-year -17.00% +42.01% -56.53%

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 32,858 22,016 32,689
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.08% 90.81% 86.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,074 14,505 21,608
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 2,007 857 2,166
10th Percentile £15.34 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.27 £20.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £37.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.85% - -13.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.36
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.63 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £32.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +10.94% -1.54% -11.33%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -7 2,041 £510 -2.86% 986
North of England -5 777 £450 -5.26% 662
South East -5 670 £496 -0.75% 802
Midlands -4 513 £450 +0.45% 478
North West -4 388 £425 -10.53% 365
West Midlands -2 372 £475 +2.98% 278
Yorkshire -2 342 £469 -1.26% 222
South West -2 323 £514 -0.96% 308
East of England -3 226 £450 - 288
East Midlands -2 142 £410 +10.07% 199
North East -3 56 £450 - 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
1 205 (4.38%) Confluence
2 143 (3.05%) SharePoint
3 101 (2.16%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (1.26%) Apache Spark
5 57 (1.22%) SAS
6 48 (1.02%) Apache
7 33 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.58%) CMS
9 16 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
9 16 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.30%) nginx
11 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
12 8 (0.17%) Skype for Business
13 7 (0.15%) Camunda
14 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.13%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.13%) JBoss
14 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
15 5 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 290 (6.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 208 (4.44%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (2.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
4 73 (1.56%) MS Visio
5 26 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
6 22 (0.47%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.19%) Sketch
8 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
8 8 (0.17%) Trello
9 6 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.11%) Maya
10 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.064%) CATIA
11 3 (0.064%) InVision
11 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
11 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
12 2 (0.043%) Adobe Captivate
12 2 (0.043%) Notion
Business Applications
1 77 (1.64%) SAP S/4HANA
2 21 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.43%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
6 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 13 (0.28%) NEC Housing
7 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
7 13 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
7 13 (0.28%) Workday HCM
8 11 (0.23%) NetSuite
8 11 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
8 11 (0.23%) Oracle Receivables
9 10 (0.21%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 8 (0.17%) SAP ERP
10 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
11 7 (0.15%) Fidessa
11 7 (0.15%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 990 (21.14%) Azure
2 732 (15.63%) AWS
3 339 (7.24%) Power Platform
4 326 (6.96%) GCP
5 295 (6.30%) Microsoft 365
6 224 (4.78%) Azure DevOps
7 213 (4.55%) GitHub
8 152 (3.25%) Serverless
9 147 (3.14%) Entra ID
10 124 (2.65%) SaaS
11 105 (2.24%) GitHub Actions
12 89 (1.90%) AWS Lambda
13 87 (1.86%) Amazon S3
14 84 (1.79%) OpenShift
15 71 (1.52%) Azure Data Factory
16 65 (1.39%) Snowflake
17 57 (1.22%) PaaS
18 55 (1.17%) Google Workspace
19 53 (1.13%) Power Automate
20 51 (1.09%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 177 (3.78%) Firewall
2 170 (3.63%) DNS
3 110 (2.35%) TCP/IP
4 103 (2.20%) Network Security
5 98 (2.09%) VPN
6 91 (1.94%) WAN
7 84 (1.79%) DHCP
8 74 (1.58%) LAN
9 58 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
10 46 (0.98%) BGP
11 43 (0.92%) SAN
12 41 (0.88%) VLAN
13 34 (0.73%) OSPF
14 29 (0.62%) VoIP
15 27 (0.58%) SD-WAN
16 23 (0.49%) Wireless
17 21 (0.45%) Internet
18 20 (0.43%) MPLS
19 18 (0.38%) BIG-IP
19 18 (0.38%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 270 (5.76%) Power BI
2 169 (3.61%) SQL Server
3 139 (2.97%) Data Warehouse
4 122 (2.60%) Relational Database
5 119 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
6 90 (1.92%) Metadata
7 88 (1.88%) MongoDB
8 80 (1.71%) NoSQL
9 76 (1.62%) Tableau
10 71 (1.52%) Data Lake
11 59 (1.26%) Oracle Database
12 55 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
13 52 (1.11%) Big Data
14 47 (1.00%) MySQL
15 46 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 35 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
17 32 (0.68%) Pentaho
18 30 (0.64%) DynamoDB
19 29 (0.62%) Power Query
20 28 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 470 (10.03%) JIRA
2 316 (6.75%) Git
3 233 (4.97%) Jenkins
4 149 (3.18%) GitLab
5 76 (1.62%) Selenium
6 48 (1.02%) JUnit
7 37 (0.79%) Postman
8 33 (0.70%) Cucumber
9 30 (0.64%) Bitbucket
10 23 (0.49%) Cypress.io
10 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 22 (0.47%) Maven
11 22 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
12 18 (0.38%) Mockito
13 15 (0.32%) JMeter
13 15 (0.32%) SonarQube
13 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
14 13 (0.28%) CircleCI
15 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
15 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,506 (53.50%) Social Skills
2 1,780 (38.00%) Analytical Skills
3 1,064 (22.72%) Finance
4 457 (9.76%) Public Sector
5 378 (8.07%) Banking
6 193 (4.12%) Organisational Skills
7 171 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
8 160 (3.42%) Legal
9 154 (3.29%) Retail
10 124 (2.65%) Presentation Skills
11 119 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
12 105 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (2.09%) Front Office
14 84 (1.79%) Marketing
15 71 (1.52%) Telecoms
16 68 (1.45%) Investment Banking
17 56 (1.20%) Manufacturing
18 52 (1.11%) Military
19 49 (1.05%) Law
20 42 (0.90%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 677 (14.45%) Analyst
2 583 (12.45%) Developer
3 392 (8.37%) Senior
4 344 (7.34%) Architect
5 309 (6.60%) Lead
6 264 (5.64%) Business Analyst
7 227 (4.85%) Consultant
8 200 (4.27%) Data Engineer
9 192 (4.10%) Project Manager
10 114 (2.43%) Support Engineer
11 109 (2.33%) IT Support
12 95 (2.03%) Solutions Architect
13 94 (2.01%) Java Developer
14 93 (1.99%) Data Analyst
15 91 (1.94%) Software Engineer
16 85 (1.81%) Administrator
17 79 (1.69%) Python Developer
18 75 (1.60%) IT Analyst
19 74 (1.58%) Senior Developer
20 68 (1.45%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 303 (6.47%) REST
2 153 (3.27%) SOAP
3 150 (3.20%) RESTful
4 147 (3.14%) Kafka
5 139 (2.97%) .NET
6 130 (2.78%) Spring
7 121 (2.58%) React
8 113 (2.41%) Node.js
9 98 (2.09%) AngularJS
10 97 (2.07%) Spring Boot
11 93 (1.99%) XML
12 92 (1.96%) JSON
13 90 (1.92%) LDAP
14 88 (1.88%) CSS
15 87 (1.86%) HTML
15 87 (1.86%) Middleware
16 71 (1.52%) OAuth
17 59 (1.26%) Oracle Fusion
18 58 (1.24%) Web Services
19 56 (1.20%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 234 (5.00%) Product Ownership
2 200 (4.27%) Onboarding
3 185 (3.95%) Cloud Native
4 141 (3.01%) Management Information System
5 136 (2.90%) Data Centre
6 127 (2.71%) Analytical Mindset
7 122 (2.60%) Self-Motivation
8 101 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
9 99 (2.11%) Data Structures
10 94 (2.01%) Distributed Systems
11 93 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
12 86 (1.84%) Legacy Systems
13 79 (1.69%) Virtual Team
14 69 (1.47%) Security Posture
15 66 (1.41%) Algorithms
16 63 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
17 61 (1.30%) Mobile App
18 56 (1.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 52 (1.11%) CMDB
20 46 (0.98%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 504 (10.76%) Windows
2 287 (6.13%) Linux
3 102 (2.18%) Windows 10
4 86 (1.84%) Unix
4 86 (1.84%) Windows Server
5 69 (1.47%) Android
6 62 (1.32%) Apple iOS
7 55 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 49 (1.05%) Mac OS
9 21 (0.45%) VMS
10 17 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 11 (0.23%) CentOS
12 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
12 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
13 7 (0.15%) Mac OS X
13 7 (0.15%) zOS
14 6 (0.13%) Debian
14 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.085%) Windows 8
15 4 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,357 (28.97%) Agile
2 838 (17.89%) CI/CD
3 770 (16.44%) DevOps
4 747 (15.95%) Continuous Improvement
5 724 (15.46%) Stakeholder Management
6 566 (12.08%) Analytics
7 494 (10.55%) Migration
8 490 (10.46%) Decision-Making
9 473 (10.10%) AI
10 463 (9.88%) Project Management
11 417 (8.90%) Data Modelling
11 417 (8.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 404 (8.63%) Test Automation
13 370 (7.90%) Scrum
14 367 (7.84%) Business Intelligence
15 366 (7.81%) Validation
16 360 (7.69%) ITIL
17 354 (7.56%) Change Management
18 345 (7.37%) Customer Service
19 314 (6.70%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 925 (19.75%) Python
2 839 (17.91%) SQL
3 399 (8.52%) Java
4 316 (6.75%) PowerShell
5 239 (5.10%) JavaScript
6 182 (3.89%) C#
7 157 (3.35%) TypeScript
8 140 (2.99%) Bash
9 81 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 63 (1.35%) C++
11 44 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 43 (0.92%) Go
13 39 (0.83%) T-SQL
14 38 (0.81%) Bicep
15 36 (0.77%) Perl
16 35 (0.75%) C
17 32 (0.68%) Apex Code
18 31 (0.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 29 (0.62%) R
19 29 (0.62%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,073 (22.91%) Security Cleared
2 736 (15.71%) SC Cleared
3 582 (12.43%) Degree
4 211 (4.50%) Computer Science Degree
5 207 (4.42%) DV Cleared
6 123 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (2.20%) PMP
8 99 (2.11%) Cisco Certification
9 95 (2.03%) CISSP
9 95 (2.03%) PMI Certification
10 89 (1.90%) Microsoft Certification
11 78 (1.67%) Master's Degree
12 64 (1.37%) Azure Certification
13 62 (1.32%) CISM
14 47 (1.00%) CCNA
15 43 (0.92%) CCNP
16 37 (0.79%) A+ Certification
17 35 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
18 33 (0.70%) AWS Certification
19 31 (0.66%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 309 (6.60%) QA
2 306 (6.53%) Data Quality
3 155 (3.31%) GDPR
4 92 (1.96%) PMO
5 90 (1.92%) NIST
6 86 (1.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 84 (1.79%) Accessibility
8 65 (1.39%) SLA
9 44 (0.94%) GRC
10 31 (0.66%) PCI DSS
11 26 (0.56%) PSD2
12 24 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 22 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.43%) WCAG
15 18 (0.38%) ISO 20022
16 16 (0.34%) ISO 8583
17 15 (0.32%) HL7
18 13 (0.28%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.28%) SEPA
19 12 (0.26%) IFRS
System Software
1 384 (8.20%) Docker
2 355 (7.58%) Active Directory
3 104 (2.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.85%) vSphere
5 32 (0.68%) VMware NSX
6 27 (0.58%) Hyper-V
7 24 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 15 (0.32%) Firmware
10 11 (0.23%) RACF
11 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
11 10 (0.21%) vCloud
12 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 9 (0.19%) Squid
13 8 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.11%) IAG
16 4 (0.085%) Snort
17 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
17 3 (0.064%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 436 (9.31%) Kubernetes
2 270 (5.76%) Terraform
3 165 (3.52%) Ansible
4 121 (2.58%) Microsoft Intune
5 107 (2.28%) Grafana
6 82 (1.75%) Prometheus
7 71 (1.52%) SCCM
8 38 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
9 35 (0.75%) vCenter Server
10 32 (0.68%) FortiGate
11 31 (0.66%) Kibana
12 30 (0.64%) Puppet
13 27 (0.58%) Argo
14 24 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 19 (0.41%) Control-M
15 19 (0.41%) Nessus
16 14 (0.30%) IBM Guardium
16 14 (0.30%) vRealize
17 12 (0.26%) HP ALM
18 11 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 851 (18.17%) Microsoft
2 323 (6.90%) Oracle
3 214 (4.57%) SAP
4 203 (4.33%) ServiceNow
5 190 (4.06%) VMware
6 149 (3.18%) Google
7 146 (3.12%) Databricks
8 131 (2.80%) Splunk
9 109 (2.33%) Cisco
10 107 (2.28%) Salesforce
11 74 (1.58%) Red Hat
12 68 (1.45%) CyberArk
13 64 (1.37%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.24%) Citrix
15 49 (1.05%) Dell
15 49 (1.05%) Talend
15 49 (1.05%) Workday
16 47 (1.00%) Informatica
17 46 (0.98%) IBM
18 42 (0.90%) Adobe