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

6 months to
16 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 4,631 4,104 4,043
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.80% 16.82% 10.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.80% 18.48% 12.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,879 2,579 2,489
10th Percentile £283 £256 £213
25th Percentile £394 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £512
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -2.38% -3.36%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £501
% change year-on-year -4.00% -0.20% -4.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 260 201 364
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.80 £15.62 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.80 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.97% +26.51% -61.69%
75th Percentile £58.50 £44.61 £40.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £67.72
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £24.09 £17.50
% change year-on-year -11.79% +37.66% -60.10%

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 33,547 22,212 32,344
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.44% 91.02% 86.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,492 14,606 21,309
10th Percentile £314 £311 £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 £613 £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 2,069 881 2,207
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.84 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.09 £18.51 £15.76
Median hourly rate £41.56 £31.76 £34.21
Median % change year-on-year +30.84% -7.16% -8.77%
75th Percentile £66.25 £64.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.25 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £37.16 £30.45 £33.55
% change year-on-year +22.04% -9.24% -7.45%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 2,011 £509 -3.05% 1,007
North of England -5 780 £450 -7.98% 634
South East -4 665 £493 -1.40% 778
Midlands -4 513 £453 +0.78% 465
North West -5 383 £425 -13.09% 333
West Midlands -4 366 £475 +2.15% 270
Yorkshire -4 351 £467 -1.79% 217
South West -1 317 £506 +1.25% 288
East of England -3 212 £450 - 295
East Midlands -1 148 £420 +14.44% 195
North East -4 55 £438 -14.22% 97
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 (4.51%) Confluence
2 139 (3.00%) SharePoint
3 101 (2.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.36%) Apache Spark
5 61 (1.32%) SAS
6 49 (1.06%) Apache
7 32 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
8 26 (0.56%) CMS
9 18 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.26%) nginx
12 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.15%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.15%) JBoss
15 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 285 (6.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 211 (4.56%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (2.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
5 71 (1.53%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.13%) Trello
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) Maya
11 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.065%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.065%) CATIA
12 3 (0.065%) CPLEX
12 3 (0.065%) InVision
12 3 (0.065%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.065%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 82 (1.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.43%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 14 (0.30%) NEC Housing
6 14 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
7 13 (0.28%) Workday HCM
8 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.24%) iTrent
10 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
10 10 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
11 9 (0.19%) Shopify
11 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
12 8 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
12 8 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
12 8 (0.17%) SAP ERP
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 967 (20.88%) Azure
2 718 (15.50%) AWS
3 348 (7.51%) Power Platform
4 316 (6.82%) GCP
5 310 (6.69%) Microsoft 365
6 220 (4.75%) Azure DevOps
7 197 (4.25%) GitHub
8 153 (3.30%) Entra ID
9 146 (3.15%) Serverless
10 127 (2.74%) SaaS
11 97 (2.09%) GitHub Actions
12 92 (1.99%) AWS Lambda
13 91 (1.97%) Amazon S3
14 85 (1.84%) OpenShift
15 69 (1.49%) Azure Data Factory
16 62 (1.34%) Snowflake
17 58 (1.25%) Power Automate
18 53 (1.14%) Dynamics 365
19 52 (1.12%) Google Workspace
20 50 (1.08%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 175 (3.78%) Firewall
2 171 (3.69%) DNS
3 108 (2.33%) TCP/IP
4 105 (2.27%) Network Security
5 98 (2.12%) VPN
6 89 (1.92%) WAN
7 87 (1.88%) DHCP
8 71 (1.53%) LAN
9 56 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
10 54 (1.17%) SAN
11 46 (0.99%) BGP
12 45 (0.97%) VLAN
13 34 (0.73%) OSPF
14 30 (0.65%) VoIP
15 29 (0.63%) SD-WAN
16 24 (0.52%) Internet
16 24 (0.52%) Wireless
17 20 (0.43%) MPLS
17 20 (0.43%) VXLAN
18 18 (0.39%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 276 (5.96%) Power BI
2 174 (3.76%) SQL Server
3 140 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
4 120 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
5 117 (2.53%) Relational Database
6 96 (2.07%) Metadata
7 84 (1.81%) MongoDB
7 84 (1.81%) NoSQL
8 76 (1.64%) Tableau
9 71 (1.53%) Data Lake
10 61 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
11 58 (1.25%) Oracle Database
12 53 (1.14%) Big Data
13 44 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 42 (0.91%) MySQL
15 35 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
15 35 (0.76%) Pentaho
16 30 (0.65%) DynamoDB
16 30 (0.65%) Power Query
17 28 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 470 (10.15%) JIRA
2 299 (6.46%) Git
3 218 (4.71%) Jenkins
4 141 (3.04%) GitLab
5 76 (1.64%) Selenium
6 46 (0.99%) JUnit
7 36 (0.78%) Postman
8 27 (0.58%) Bitbucket
8 27 (0.58%) Cucumber
9 22 (0.48%) Maven
9 22 (0.48%) REST Assured
10 21 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
11 20 (0.43%) Cypress.io
12 18 (0.39%) Mockito
13 15 (0.32%) JMeter
13 15 (0.32%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.30%) SpecFlow
15 13 (0.28%) CircleCI
16 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
16 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,445 (52.80%) Social Skills
2 1,784 (38.52%) Analytical Skills
3 1,075 (23.21%) Finance
4 433 (9.35%) Public Sector
5 364 (7.86%) Banking
6 195 (4.21%) Organisational Skills
7 171 (3.69%) Documentation Skills
8 163 (3.52%) Retail
9 150 (3.24%) Legal
10 123 (2.66%) Influencing Skills
11 120 (2.59%) Presentation Skills
12 103 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 91 (1.97%) Front Office
14 83 (1.79%) Marketing
15 69 (1.49%) Telecoms
16 61 (1.32%) Investment Banking
17 59 (1.27%) Manufacturing
18 51 (1.10%) Law
19 50 (1.08%) Military
20 43 (0.93%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 664 (14.34%) Analyst
2 551 (11.90%) Developer
3 394 (8.51%) Senior
4 344 (7.43%) Architect
5 308 (6.65%) Lead
6 267 (5.77%) Business Analyst
7 214 (4.62%) Consultant
8 207 (4.47%) Data Engineer
9 184 (3.97%) Project Manager
10 110 (2.38%) IT Support
11 108 (2.33%) Support Engineer
12 98 (2.12%) Data Analyst
13 97 (2.09%) Java Developer
14 96 (2.07%) Solutions Architect
15 90 (1.94%) Administrator
16 89 (1.92%) Software Engineer
17 80 (1.73%) Python Developer
18 73 (1.58%) IT Analyst
19 71 (1.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 70 (1.51%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 294 (6.35%) REST
2 145 (3.13%) Kafka
3 142 (3.07%) SOAP
4 137 (2.96%) RESTful
5 129 (2.79%) Spring
6 128 (2.76%) .NET
7 121 (2.61%) React
8 101 (2.18%) Node.js
9 98 (2.12%) Spring Boot
10 95 (2.05%) AngularJS
11 94 (2.03%) CSS
12 92 (1.99%) HTML
13 89 (1.92%) XML
14 88 (1.90%) LDAP
15 87 (1.88%) JSON
16 83 (1.79%) Middleware
17 71 (1.53%) OAuth
18 58 (1.25%) Oracle Fusion
19 56 (1.21%) PySpark
19 56 (1.21%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 232 (5.01%) Product Ownership
2 199 (4.30%) Onboarding
3 178 (3.84%) Cloud Native
4 146 (3.15%) Data Centre
5 134 (2.89%) Management Information System
6 131 (2.83%) Self-Motivation
7 126 (2.72%) Analytical Mindset
8 101 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
9 96 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
10 95 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
11 92 (1.99%) Data Structures
11 92 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
12 81 (1.75%) Virtual Team
13 69 (1.49%) Security Posture
14 61 (1.32%) Mobile App
15 59 (1.27%) Hybrid Cloud
16 56 (1.21%) Algorithms
17 53 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 45 (0.97%) AI Agents
19 44 (0.95%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 520 (11.23%) Windows
2 281 (6.07%) Linux
3 106 (2.29%) Windows 10
4 93 (2.01%) Windows Server
5 82 (1.77%) Unix
6 78 (1.68%) Android
7 72 (1.55%) Apple iOS
8 56 (1.21%) Mac OS
9 54 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.43%) VMS
11 17 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.26%) CentOS
13 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.17%) zOS
15 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.13%) Debian
17 4 (0.086%) Windows 8
18 3 (0.065%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,323 (28.57%) Agile
2 811 (17.51%) CI/CD
3 755 (16.30%) DevOps
4 722 (15.59%) Continuous Improvement
5 703 (15.18%) Stakeholder Management
6 559 (12.07%) Analytics
7 515 (11.12%) Migration
8 503 (10.86%) Decision-Making
9 487 (10.52%) AI
10 452 (9.76%) Project Management
11 414 (8.94%) Data Modelling
12 399 (8.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 390 (8.42%) Test Automation
14 372 (8.03%) Business Intelligence
15 364 (7.86%) Validation
16 357 (7.71%) Customer Service
17 352 (7.60%) ITIL
17 352 (7.60%) Scrum
18 347 (7.49%) Change Management
19 310 (6.69%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 906 (19.56%) Python
2 848 (18.31%) SQL
3 392 (8.46%) Java
4 300 (6.48%) PowerShell
5 234 (5.05%) JavaScript
6 174 (3.76%) C#
7 148 (3.20%) TypeScript
8 138 (2.98%) Bash
9 79 (1.71%) PL/SQL
10 58 (1.25%) C++
11 45 (0.97%) Go
12 43 (0.93%) Shell Script
13 38 (0.82%) Bicep
14 37 (0.80%) C
15 36 (0.78%) T-SQL
16 35 (0.76%) Perl
17 29 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 29 (0.63%) R
18 28 (0.60%) Apex Code
18 28 (0.60%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,061 (22.91%) Security Cleared
2 729 (15.74%) SC Cleared
3 571 (12.33%) Degree
4 208 (4.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 195 (4.21%) DV Cleared
6 128 (2.76%) BPSS Clearance
7 104 (2.25%) Cisco Certification
8 101 (2.18%) Microsoft Certification
9 95 (2.05%) PMP
10 94 (2.03%) CISSP
11 82 (1.77%) PMI Certification
12 69 (1.49%) Master's Degree
13 65 (1.40%) Azure Certification
14 58 (1.25%) CISM
15 54 (1.17%) CCNA
16 43 (0.93%) A+ Certification
17 40 (0.86%) CCNP
17 40 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
18 38 (0.82%) MCSE
19 33 (0.71%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 312 (6.74%) Data Quality
2 286 (6.18%) QA
3 149 (3.22%) GDPR
4 90 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 88 (1.90%) PMO
6 84 (1.81%) NIST
7 80 (1.73%) Accessibility
8 64 (1.38%) SLA
9 42 (0.91%) GRC
10 27 (0.58%) PCI DSS
11 24 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.45%) PSD2
14 20 (0.43%) WCAG
15 18 (0.39%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.32%) HL7
17 14 (0.30%) NCSC
18 13 (0.28%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.28%) IFRS
19 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 364 (7.86%) Docker
2 361 (7.80%) Active Directory
3 110 (2.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.86%) vSphere
5 32 (0.69%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.65%) Hyper-V
7 20 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.37%) Firmware
8 17 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.24%) RACF
9 11 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.22%) Squid
10 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
10 10 (0.22%) vCloud
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.13%) IAG
14 4 (0.086%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.086%) NFS
14 4 (0.086%) Snort
Systems Management
1 424 (9.16%) Kubernetes
2 268 (5.79%) Terraform
3 164 (3.54%) Ansible
4 123 (2.66%) Microsoft Intune
5 106 (2.29%) Grafana
6 82 (1.77%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.55%) SCCM
8 39 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
8 39 (0.84%) vCenter Server
9 33 (0.71%) FortiGate
10 29 (0.63%) Kibana
11 28 (0.60%) Puppet
12 26 (0.56%) Argo
13 24 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 23 (0.50%) Control-M
15 22 (0.48%) Nessus
16 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.32%) vRealize
18 12 (0.26%) WSUS
19 11 (0.24%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 857 (18.51%) Microsoft
2 335 (7.23%) Oracle
3 230 (4.97%) SAP
4 197 (4.25%) ServiceNow
5 193 (4.17%) VMware
6 148 (3.20%) Google
7 146 (3.15%) Databricks
8 115 (2.48%) Splunk
9 113 (2.44%) Cisco
10 106 (2.29%) Salesforce
11 73 (1.58%) Red Hat
12 68 (1.47%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.36%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.25%) Citrix
15 57 (1.23%) Dell
15 57 (1.23%) Workday
16 49 (1.06%) Talend
17 47 (1.01%) Adobe
18 44 (0.95%) IBM
19 43 (0.93%) Informatica