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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -5 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,420 4,183 3,935
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.75% 17.23% 10.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.70% 18.87% 12.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,682 2,624 2,389
10th Percentile £266 £250 £250
25th Percentile £394 £400 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £502
% change year-on-year -2.50% -0.40% -4.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 284 216 375
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.80 £15.39 £14.16
Median hourly rate £22.00 £22.14 £16.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.63% +34.18% -67.00%
75th Percentile £51.45 £45.33 £40.58
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.13 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.50
% change year-on-year -5.91% +35.27% -67.00%

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 34,792 22,163 31,446
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.62% 91.27% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,183 14,469 20,624
10th Percentile £325 £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 £510 £514 £525
% change year-on-year -0.88% -2.10% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,136 960 2,252
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.42 £12.93
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.20 £15.99
Median hourly rate £46.11 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.37% -21.23% -1.75%
75th Percentile £67.84 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.17 £36.05
% change year-on-year +50.90% -21.86% +0.13%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -13 1,862 £520 -0.95% 1,025
North of England -8 739 £450 -8.16% 696
South East -6 641 £493 -1.50% 788
Midlands -8 492 £467 +6.23% 434
North West -7 350 £424 -13.87% 379
Yorkshire -7 347 £474 -0.21% 238
West Midlands -8 339 £475 +2.70% 260
South West -1 331 £500 -1.23% 304
East of England -3 229 £450 -3.54% 307
East Midlands -1 152 £444 +20.75% 174
North East -11 50 £425 -16.26% 89
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
1 193 (4.37%) Confluence
2 134 (3.03%) SharePoint
3 81 (1.83%) Microsoft Exchange
4 55 (1.24%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.88%) Apache
6 35 (0.79%) SAS
7 31 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
8 25 (0.57%) CMS
9 20 (0.45%) 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 4 (0.090%) Jupyter
Applications
1 261 (5.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 206 (4.66%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 67 (1.52%) Microsoft Project
5 60 (1.36%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.63%) 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%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 96 (2.17%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.48%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
6 14 (0.32%) NEC Housing
6 14 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
7 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
7 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 11 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
8 11 (0.25%) Teamcenter
8 11 (0.25%) Workday HCM
9 10 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
9 10 (0.23%) SAP SD
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
11 8 (0.18%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
11 8 (0.18%) Shopify
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
12 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 890 (20.14%) Azure
2 664 (15.02%) AWS
3 346 (7.83%) Power Platform
4 300 (6.79%) Microsoft 365
5 276 (6.24%) GCP
6 214 (4.84%) Azure DevOps
7 175 (3.96%) GitHub
8 133 (3.01%) Entra ID
9 123 (2.78%) Serverless
10 113 (2.56%) 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
1 164 (3.71%) DNS
2 143 (3.24%) Firewall
3 100 (2.26%) TCP/IP
4 99 (2.24%) VPN
5 85 (1.92%) DHCP
6 84 (1.90%) WAN
7 77 (1.74%) Network Security
8 65 (1.47%) LAN
9 62 (1.40%) SAN
10 54 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
11 42 (0.95%) VLAN
12 40 (0.90%) BGP
13 36 (0.81%) OSPF
14 30 (0.68%) SD-WAN
15 25 (0.57%) Wireless
16 24 (0.54%) VoIP
17 22 (0.50%) VXLAN
18 19 (0.43%) Internet
19 18 (0.41%) BIG-IP
20 17 (0.38%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 273 (6.18%) Power BI
2 175 (3.96%) SQL Server
3 137 (3.10%) Data Warehouse
4 115 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
5 108 (2.44%) Relational Database
6 88 (1.99%) Metadata
7 79 (1.79%) MongoDB
8 76 (1.72%) NoSQL
9 74 (1.67%) Tableau
10 66 (1.49%) Data Lake
11 53 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
12 47 (1.06%) Big Data
12 47 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 45 (1.02%) Oracle Database
14 40 (0.90%) MySQL
15 27 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
16 26 (0.59%) Power Query
17 25 (0.57%) Delta Lake
17 25 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
18 23 (0.52%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 440 (9.95%) JIRA
2 250 (5.66%) Git
3 169 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 111 (2.51%) GitLab
5 60 (1.36%) Selenium
6 32 (0.72%) 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%) Mockito
14 15 (0.34%) JMeter
14 15 (0.34%) Maven
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 2,283 (51.65%) Social Skills
2 1,728 (39.10%) Analytical Skills
3 1,017 (23.01%) Finance
4 393 (8.89%) Public Sector
5 339 (7.67%) Banking
6 200 (4.52%) Organisational Skills
7 168 (3.80%) Retail
8 160 (3.62%) Documentation Skills
9 127 (2.87%) Legal
10 106 (2.40%) Presentation Skills
11 96 (2.17%) Influencing Skills
12 92 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 88 (1.99%) Front Office
14 82 (1.86%) Marketing
15 71 (1.61%) Telecoms
16 67 (1.52%) Manufacturing
17 65 (1.47%) Investment Banking
18 60 (1.36%) Law
19 46 (1.04%) Military
20 43 (0.97%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 644 (14.57%) Analyst
2 492 (11.13%) Developer
3 377 (8.53%) Senior
4 318 (7.19%) Architect
5 277 (6.27%) Lead
6 243 (5.50%) Business Analyst
7 207 (4.68%) Data Engineer
8 197 (4.46%) Consultant
9 170 (3.85%) Project Manager
10 116 (2.62%) IT Support
11 110 (2.49%) Support Engineer
12 108 (2.44%) Data Analyst
13 87 (1.97%) Solutions Architect
14 85 (1.92%) Software Engineer
15 79 (1.79%) Administrator
15 79 (1.79%) Java Developer
16 76 (1.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 76 (1.72%) IT Engineer
17 71 (1.61%) IT Analyst
17 71 (1.61%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 252 (5.70%) REST
2 133 (3.01%) Kafka
3 129 (2.92%) SOAP
4 124 (2.81%) .NET
5 119 (2.69%) React
6 117 (2.65%) RESTful
7 116 (2.62%) Spring
8 99 (2.24%) CSS
9 92 (2.08%) HTML
9 92 (2.08%) Middleware
10 90 (2.04%) LDAP
11 87 (1.97%) Spring Boot
12 85 (1.92%) AngularJS
12 85 (1.92%) Node.js
13 84 (1.90%) JSON
14 81 (1.83%) XML
15 58 (1.31%) PySpark
16 55 (1.24%) OAuth
17 52 (1.18%) Web Services
18 49 (1.11%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 216 (4.89%) Product Ownership
2 207 (4.68%) Onboarding
3 166 (3.76%) Data Centre
4 164 (3.71%) Cloud Native
5 140 (3.17%) Self-Motivation
6 125 (2.83%) Analytical Mindset
7 121 (2.74%) Management Information System
8 107 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
9 106 (2.40%) Distributed Systems
10 105 (2.38%) Data Protection Act
11 91 (2.06%) Virtual Team
12 86 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
13 84 (1.90%) Data Structures
14 64 (1.45%) Security Posture
15 50 (1.13%) AI Agents
15 50 (1.13%) Mobile App
16 47 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
17 46 (1.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 45 (1.02%) Algorithms
19 42 (0.95%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 505 (11.43%) Windows
2 254 (5.75%) Linux
3 106 (2.40%) Windows 10
4 86 (1.95%) Windows Server
5 84 (1.90%) Unix
6 80 (1.81%) Apple iOS
7 78 (1.76%) Android
8 66 (1.49%) Mac OS
9 45 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.38%) 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
15 7 (0.16%) Debian
15 7 (0.16%) zOS
16 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.090%) Rocky
17 4 (0.090%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,202 (27.19%) Agile
2 712 (16.11%) CI/CD
3 704 (15.93%) Continuous Improvement
4 686 (15.52%) DevOps
5 655 (14.82%) Stakeholder Management
6 501 (11.33%) Decision-Making
7 499 (11.29%) Migration
8 496 (11.22%) AI
9 475 (10.75%) Analytics
10 419 (9.48%) Project Management
11 390 (8.82%) Data Modelling
12 372 (8.42%) Customer Service
13 371 (8.39%) ITIL
14 363 (8.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 357 (8.08%) Validation
16 351 (7.94%) Business Intelligence
17 345 (7.81%) Test Automation
18 323 (7.31%) Change Management
19 314 (7.10%) Scrum
20 280 (6.33%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 809 (18.30%) Python
2 789 (17.85%) SQL
3 349 (7.90%) Java
4 267 (6.04%) PowerShell
5 224 (5.07%) JavaScript
6 168 (3.80%) C#
7 124 (2.81%) 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%) T-SQL
15 33 (0.75%) Bicep
16 31 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 31 (0.70%) R
17 29 (0.66%) Apex Code
18 26 (0.59%) Perl
19 23 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 984 (22.26%) Security Cleared
2 657 (14.86%) SC Cleared
3 545 (12.33%) Degree
4 193 (4.37%) DV Cleared
5 181 (4.10%) Computer Science Degree
6 119 (2.69%) BPSS Clearance
7 110 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
8 107 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
9 84 (1.90%) CISSP
10 80 (1.81%) PMP
11 67 (1.52%) PMI Certification
12 61 (1.38%) Azure Certification
13 60 (1.36%) CCNA
14 58 (1.31%) Master's Degree
15 57 (1.29%) A+ Certification
16 55 (1.24%) CISM
17 54 (1.22%) Network+ Certification
18 43 (0.97%) MCSE
19 30 (0.68%) CCNP
20 28 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 295 (6.67%) Data Quality
2 239 (5.41%) QA
3 134 (3.03%) GDPR
4 86 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 78 (1.76%) PMO
6 76 (1.72%) NIST
7 74 (1.67%) Accessibility
8 73 (1.65%) SLA
9 43 (0.97%) GRC
10 24 (0.54%) PCI DSS
11 23 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 16 (0.36%) ISO 20022
14 15 (0.34%) NCSC
14 15 (0.34%) PSD2
14 15 (0.34%) WCAG
15 13 (0.29%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.29%) HL7
15 13 (0.29%) IFRS
16 12 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 330 (7.47%) Active Directory
2 287 (6.49%) Docker
3 99 (2.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.79%) vSphere
5 31 (0.70%) VMware NSX
6 29 (0.66%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 21 (0.48%) 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 5 (0.11%) IAG
14 4 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.090%) RACF
14 4 (0.090%) Snort
15 3 (0.068%) ACF2
15 3 (0.068%) ISA Server
15 3 (0.068%) NFS
Systems Management
1 345 (7.81%) Kubernetes
2 232 (5.25%) Terraform
3 159 (3.60%) Ansible
4 114 (2.58%) Microsoft Intune
5 100 (2.26%) Grafana
6 82 (1.86%) 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 27 (0.61%) Kibana
12 23 (0.52%) Puppet
13 22 (0.50%) Control-M
14 21 (0.48%) 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 9 (0.20%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 809 (18.30%) Microsoft
2 306 (6.92%) Oracle
3 239 (5.41%) SAP
4 203 (4.59%) ServiceNow
5 173 (3.91%) VMware
6 132 (2.99%) Databricks
7 121 (2.74%) Splunk
8 119 (2.69%) Google
9 106 (2.40%) Cisco
10 101 (2.29%) Salesforce
11 66 (1.49%) CyberArk
12 61 (1.38%) BeyondTrust
12 61 (1.38%) Dell
13 60 (1.36%) Workday
14 59 (1.33%) Red Hat
15 44 (1.00%) Adobe
16 43 (0.97%) F5
17 42 (0.95%) Citrix
17 42 (0.95%) Dynatrace
18 41 (0.93%) MuleSoft