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

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,477 4,227 4,021
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.51% 17.28% 10.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.35% 18.91% 12.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,667 2,649 2,435
10th Percentile £263 £250 £252
25th Percentile £388 £388 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year - -0.20% -4.57%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £720 £738
UK median daily rate £494 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.30% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 321 234 382
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.01
25th Percentile £15.99 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.39 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% +31.79% -69.03%
75th Percentile £42.65 £33.85 £36.30
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.05 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.44 £22.14 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.68% +36.41% -69.09%

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 36,262 22,351 32,031
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.14% 91.35% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,961 14,463 20,809
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £407 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,273 1,016 2,371
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.81
25th Percentile £20.82 £18.12 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +69.64% -25.33% +4.17%
75th Percentile £68.00 £58.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.28 £36.50
% change year-on-year +61.14% -25.26% +1.39%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 1,914 £520 +0.97% 791
North of England -10 709 £450 -5.26% 595
South East -6 671 £488 -2.50% 706
Midlands -10 500 £465 +7.39% 409
West Midlands -10 355 £472 +4.19% 246
North West -10 340 £433 -8.95% 341
Yorkshire -6 328 £455 -4.16% 186
South West -4 319 £500 - 298
East of England -2 242 £450 -3.64% 261
East Midlands -2 144 £444 +20.91% 165
North East -15 47 £375 -16.67% 78
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
1 197 (4.40%) Confluence
2 137 (3.06%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
4 54 (1.21%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.78%) Apache
5 35 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.71%) SAS
7 28 (0.63%) CMS
8 24 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
9 13 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.22%) CICS
12 8 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 8 (0.18%) Camunda
12 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.16%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
13 7 (0.16%) WebSphere
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 268 (5.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 193 (4.31%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (2.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 60 (1.34%) Microsoft Project
5 59 (1.32%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.29%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.25%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 10 (0.22%) Revit
11 7 (0.16%) Sketch
11 7 (0.16%) Trello
12 6 (0.13%) CPLEX
12 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
13 5 (0.11%) CATIA
13 5 (0.11%) Maya
14 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.067%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.067%) LaTeX
15 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 107 (2.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.38%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
5 14 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
5 14 (0.31%) Workday HCM
6 12 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
7 11 (0.25%) NetSuite
7 11 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
8 10 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
8 10 (0.22%) SAP SD
8 10 (0.22%) Teamcenter
9 9 (0.20%) iTrent
9 9 (0.20%) SAP HCM
10 7 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
10 7 (0.16%) Oracle HRMS
10 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 7 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 927 (20.71%) Azure
2 673 (15.03%) AWS
3 355 (7.93%) Power Platform
4 321 (7.17%) Microsoft 365
5 274 (6.12%) GCP
6 209 (4.67%) Azure DevOps
7 159 (3.55%) GitHub
8 146 (3.26%) Entra ID
9 126 (2.81%) Serverless
10 121 (2.70%) SaaS
11 76 (1.70%) Amazon S3
11 76 (1.70%) GitHub Actions
12 75 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
13 63 (1.41%) Snowflake
14 61 (1.36%) Azure Data Factory
15 56 (1.25%) Dynamics 365
15 56 (1.25%) Power Automate
16 50 (1.12%) OpenShift
17 49 (1.09%) PowerApps
18 45 (1.01%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 174 (3.89%) DNS
2 140 (3.13%) Firewall
3 106 (2.37%) TCP/IP
4 104 (2.32%) VPN
5 92 (2.05%) DHCP
6 87 (1.94%) WAN
7 72 (1.61%) Network Security
8 69 (1.54%) LAN
9 60 (1.34%) SAN
10 59 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
11 45 (1.01%) VLAN
12 40 (0.89%) BGP
13 37 (0.83%) OSPF
14 36 (0.80%) SD-WAN
15 29 (0.65%) VoIP
16 28 (0.63%) Wireless
17 25 (0.56%) VXLAN
18 19 (0.42%) Internet
18 19 (0.42%) MPLS
19 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (6.25%) Power BI
2 180 (4.02%) SQL Server
3 137 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
4 121 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
5 115 (2.57%) Relational Database
6 88 (1.97%) MongoDB
7 81 (1.81%) Metadata
8 78 (1.74%) NoSQL
9 77 (1.72%) Tableau
10 76 (1.70%) Data Lake
11 46 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
12 45 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 44 (0.98%) Big Data
13 44 (0.98%) Oracle Database
14 38 (0.85%) MySQL
15 28 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
16 27 (0.60%) Power Query
17 24 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
18 23 (0.51%) Pentaho
18 23 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 449 (10.03%) JIRA
2 248 (5.54%) Git
3 148 (3.31%) Jenkins
4 104 (2.32%) GitLab
5 55 (1.23%) Selenium
6 33 (0.74%) Postman
7 27 (0.60%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.54%) Bitbucket
9 22 (0.49%) Cucumber
10 21 (0.47%) JUnit
11 18 (0.40%) Cypress.io
12 16 (0.36%) Mockito
12 16 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
13 13 (0.29%) Maven
13 13 (0.29%) SonarQube
14 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
14 12 (0.27%) Zephyr
15 11 (0.25%) JMeter
16 10 (0.22%) Rational DOORS
16 10 (0.22%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,324 (51.91%) Social Skills
2 1,773 (39.60%) Analytical Skills
3 1,033 (23.07%) Finance
4 367 (8.20%) Public Sector
5 345 (7.71%) Banking
6 187 (4.18%) Organisational Skills
7 173 (3.86%) Retail
8 169 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
9 121 (2.70%) Legal
10 113 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 95 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
12 91 (2.03%) Front Office
12 91 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
13 88 (1.97%) Marketing
14 82 (1.83%) Manufacturing
15 79 (1.76%) Telecoms
16 70 (1.56%) Investment Banking
17 60 (1.34%) Law
18 49 (1.09%) Back Office
19 41 (0.92%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 662 (14.79%) Analyst
2 467 (10.43%) Developer
3 372 (8.31%) Senior
4 332 (7.42%) Architect
5 293 (6.54%) Lead
6 247 (5.52%) Business Analyst
7 209 (4.67%) Data Engineer
8 207 (4.62%) Consultant
9 154 (3.44%) Project Manager
10 142 (3.17%) IT Support
11 125 (2.79%) Support Engineer
12 103 (2.30%) Data Analyst
13 96 (2.14%) Administrator
14 91 (2.03%) Solutions Architect
15 86 (1.92%) IT Engineer
16 84 (1.88%) Software Engineer
17 79 (1.76%) Support Analyst
18 78 (1.74%) Java Developer
19 73 (1.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 72 (1.61%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 260 (5.81%) REST
2 143 (3.19%) .NET
3 129 (2.88%) Kafka
4 128 (2.86%) SOAP
5 122 (2.73%) React
6 110 (2.46%) Spring
7 108 (2.41%) RESTful
8 99 (2.21%) CSS
9 94 (2.10%) JSON
10 92 (2.05%) Middleware
11 88 (1.97%) LDAP
12 86 (1.92%) HTML
13 83 (1.85%) XML
14 80 (1.79%) Spring Boot
15 74 (1.65%) Node.js
16 73 (1.63%) AngularJS
17 56 (1.25%) Web Services
18 54 (1.21%) OAuth
19 53 (1.18%) PySpark
20 45 (1.01%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 211 (4.71%) Onboarding
2 210 (4.69%) Product Ownership
3 177 (3.95%) Cloud Native
4 169 (3.77%) Data Centre
5 150 (3.35%) Self-Motivation
6 130 (2.90%) Analytical Mindset
7 122 (2.73%) Management Information System
8 120 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
9 115 (2.57%) Distributed Systems
10 108 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
11 107 (2.39%) Data Protection Act
12 95 (2.12%) Virtual Team
13 81 (1.81%) Data Structures
14 69 (1.54%) Security Posture
15 57 (1.27%) AI Agents
16 53 (1.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 48 (1.07%) Algorithms
18 45 (1.01%) Driving Licence
19 42 (0.94%) Derivative
19 42 (0.94%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 548 (12.24%) Windows
2 247 (5.52%) Linux
3 108 (2.41%) Windows 10
4 99 (2.21%) Windows Server
5 86 (1.92%) Unix
6 81 (1.81%) Apple iOS
7 75 (1.68%) Mac OS
8 74 (1.65%) Android
9 44 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.49%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.29%) CentOS
11 13 (0.29%) VMS
11 13 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 10 (0.22%) zOS
13 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
13 8 (0.18%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.11%) Debian
14 5 (0.11%) Solaris
14 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.089%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,163 (25.98%) Agile
2 750 (16.75%) Continuous Improvement
3 719 (16.06%) CI/CD
4 698 (15.59%) Stakeholder Management
5 683 (15.26%) DevOps
6 532 (11.88%) AI
7 508 (11.35%) Migration
8 498 (11.12%) Decision-Making
9 484 (10.81%) Analytics
10 405 (9.05%) Customer Service
10 405 (9.05%) ITIL
11 403 (9.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 385 (8.60%) Project Management
13 378 (8.44%) Data Modelling
14 363 (8.11%) Business Intelligence
15 362 (8.09%) Validation
16 334 (7.46%) Test Automation
17 316 (7.06%) Change Management
18 315 (7.04%) Scrum
19 282 (6.30%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 824 (18.41%) SQL
2 813 (18.16%) Python
3 341 (7.62%) Java
4 281 (6.28%) PowerShell
5 223 (4.98%) JavaScript
6 175 (3.91%) C#
7 110 (2.46%) TypeScript
8 98 (2.19%) Bash
9 75 (1.68%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.36%) C++
11 42 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 39 (0.87%) Go
13 38 (0.85%) C
13 38 (0.85%) T-SQL
14 32 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 29 (0.65%) Bicep
15 29 (0.65%) R
16 26 (0.58%) Apex Code
17 25 (0.56%) Perl
18 22 (0.49%) Scala
Qualifications
1 963 (21.51%) Security Cleared
2 646 (14.43%) SC Cleared
3 542 (12.11%) Degree
4 184 (4.11%) DV Cleared
5 174 (3.89%) Computer Science Degree
6 125 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
7 122 (2.73%) Microsoft Certification
8 109 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
9 88 (1.97%) CISSP
10 75 (1.68%) PMP
11 65 (1.45%) Azure Certification
12 64 (1.43%) PMI Certification
13 61 (1.36%) A+ Certification
13 61 (1.36%) CCNA
13 61 (1.36%) CISM
14 52 (1.16%) Network+ Certification
15 51 (1.14%) Master's Degree
16 44 (0.98%) MCSE
17 35 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
18 31 (0.69%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 303 (6.77%) Data Quality
2 232 (5.18%) QA
3 137 (3.06%) GDPR
4 89 (1.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 84 (1.88%) SLA
6 78 (1.74%) PMO
7 77 (1.72%) Accessibility
8 75 (1.68%) NIST
9 43 (0.96%) GRC
10 22 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
11 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.45%) PCI DSS
13 15 (0.34%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.34%) NCSC
14 14 (0.31%) COBIT
14 14 (0.31%) PSD2
15 13 (0.29%) WCAG
16 12 (0.27%) HL7
17 11 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
17 11 (0.25%) HIPAA
System Software
1 352 (7.86%) Active Directory
2 271 (6.05%) Docker
3 103 (2.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.89%) vSphere
5 36 (0.80%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
7 32 (0.71%) Hyper-V
8 27 (0.60%) Virtual Desktop
9 24 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
10 18 (0.40%) Firmware
10 18 (0.40%) vCloud
11 11 (0.25%) Squid
12 7 (0.16%) IAG
13 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.089%) ACF2
14 4 (0.089%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.089%) NFS
14 4 (0.089%) RACF
14 4 (0.089%) Snort
15 3 (0.067%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 328 (7.33%) Kubernetes
2 246 (5.49%) Terraform
3 152 (3.40%) Ansible
4 130 (2.90%) Microsoft Intune
5 94 (2.10%) Grafana
6 80 (1.79%) Prometheus
7 68 (1.52%) SCCM
8 47 (1.05%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.83%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (0.51%) Control-M
12 21 (0.47%) Kibana
12 21 (0.47%) Nessus
13 20 (0.45%) Argo
14 19 (0.42%) Puppet
15 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
16 16 (0.36%) SCOM
17 15 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 14 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
19 13 (0.29%) WSUS
Vendors
1 833 (18.61%) Microsoft
2 306 (6.83%) Oracle
3 257 (5.74%) SAP
4 238 (5.32%) ServiceNow
5 172 (3.84%) VMware
6 130 (2.90%) Google
7 118 (2.64%) Databricks
8 114 (2.55%) Splunk
9 105 (2.35%) Salesforce
10 101 (2.26%) Cisco
11 68 (1.52%) Workday
12 66 (1.47%) CyberArk
13 61 (1.36%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.30%) Dell
14 58 (1.30%) Red Hat
15 48 (1.07%) Adobe
16 47 (1.05%) Citrix
17 46 (1.03%) Dynatrace
18 39 (0.87%) Apple
18 39 (0.87%) F5