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

6 months to
21 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 4,579 4,153 4,018
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.58% 16.94% 10.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.58% 18.60% 12.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,826 2,615 2,464
10th Percentile £280 £256 £213
25th Percentile £393 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £718 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 263 201 366
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.93 £15.62 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.81 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% +26.51% -63.84%
75th Percentile £59.50 £44.61 £40.19
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £66.94
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £24.00 £17.50
% change year-on-year -11.46% +37.14% -63.16%

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 33,718 22,322 32,052
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.24% 91.07% 86.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,550 14,669 21,082
10th Percentile £315 £310 £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 £521 £525
% change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,104 894 2,218
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.84 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.32 £18.51 £15.86
Median hourly rate £41.94 £31.64 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.55% -9.60% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67.25 £64.31 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.18 £72.33
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +25.00% -14.29% -6.67%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -10 1,979 £512 -2.51% 958
North of England -5 781 £450 -5.26% 602
South East -5 664 £492 -1.60% 744
Midlands -5 502 £450 - 477
North West -5 375 £425 -12.82% 324
Yorkshire -5 358 £460 -3.06% 196
West Midlands -6 347 £475 +2.70% 272
South West -3 313 £500 - 290
East of England -4 206 £450 - 292
East Midlands -1 155 £420 +13.59% 205
North East 0 57 £425 -16.26% 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
1 206 (4.50%) Confluence
2 132 (2.88%) SharePoint
3 103 (2.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.40%) Apache Spark
5 50 (1.09%) Apache
6 42 (0.92%) SAS
7 33 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
8 23 (0.50%) CMS
9 18 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.26%) nginx
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.15%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.15%) JBoss
14 6 (0.13%) Camunda
14 6 (0.13%) CICS
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 280 (6.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 211 (4.61%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.57%) Microsoft Project
5 69 (1.51%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 20 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Trello
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) AutoCAD
11 5 (0.11%) Maya
11 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.087%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.066%) CATIA
13 3 (0.066%) CPLEX
13 3 (0.066%) InVision
13 3 (0.066%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.066%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 83 (1.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.44%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.33%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 14 (0.31%) NEC Housing
7 13 (0.28%) Workday HCM
8 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.24%) iTrent
10 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.20%) Shopify
11 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
12 8 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
12 8 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
12 8 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 7 (0.15%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 954 (20.83%) Azure
2 709 (15.48%) AWS
3 346 (7.56%) Power Platform
4 319 (6.97%) GCP
5 309 (6.75%) Microsoft 365
6 215 (4.70%) Azure DevOps
7 194 (4.24%) GitHub
8 154 (3.36%) Entra ID
9 141 (3.08%) Serverless
10 121 (2.64%) SaaS
11 95 (2.07%) GitHub Actions
12 87 (1.90%) Amazon S3
13 86 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
14 73 (1.59%) OpenShift
15 69 (1.51%) Azure Data Factory
16 61 (1.33%) Snowflake
17 59 (1.29%) Power Automate
18 54 (1.18%) Dynamics 365
19 52 (1.14%) Google Workspace
20 49 (1.07%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 168 (3.67%) Firewall
2 163 (3.56%) DNS
3 107 (2.34%) TCP/IP
4 103 (2.25%) Network Security
5 99 (2.16%) VPN
6 86 (1.88%) WAN
7 85 (1.86%) DHCP
8 67 (1.46%) LAN
9 54 (1.18%) SAN
10 52 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
11 48 (1.05%) BGP
12 46 (1.00%) VLAN
13 37 (0.81%) OSPF
14 30 (0.66%) VoIP
15 28 (0.61%) SD-WAN
16 25 (0.55%) Wireless
17 24 (0.52%) Internet
18 22 (0.48%) VXLAN
19 19 (0.41%) MPLS
20 18 (0.39%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 275 (6.01%) Power BI
2 175 (3.82%) SQL Server
3 134 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
4 118 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
5 105 (2.29%) Relational Database
6 92 (2.01%) Metadata
7 84 (1.83%) MongoDB
8 82 (1.79%) NoSQL
9 76 (1.66%) Tableau
10 71 (1.55%) Data Lake
11 59 (1.29%) Oracle Reports
12 52 (1.14%) Big Data
13 47 (1.03%) Oracle Database
14 43 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 41 (0.90%) MySQL
16 34 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
17 31 (0.68%) Power Query
18 29 (0.63%) DynamoDB
19 28 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
20 27 (0.59%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 464 (10.13%) JIRA
2 271 (5.92%) Git
3 191 (4.17%) Jenkins
4 125 (2.73%) GitLab
5 65 (1.42%) Selenium
6 35 (0.76%) JUnit
6 35 (0.76%) Postman
7 28 (0.61%) Bitbucket
8 26 (0.57%) Cucumber
9 21 (0.46%) Maven
10 19 (0.41%) Cypress.io
10 19 (0.41%) REST Assured
10 19 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
11 18 (0.39%) Mockito
12 16 (0.35%) JMeter
13 14 (0.31%) SonarQube
13 14 (0.31%) SpecFlow
14 13 (0.28%) CircleCI
15 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
15 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 2,405 (52.52%) Social Skills
2 1,783 (38.94%) Analytical Skills
3 1,070 (23.37%) Finance
4 424 (9.26%) Public Sector
5 362 (7.91%) Banking
6 197 (4.30%) Organisational Skills
7 168 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
8 166 (3.63%) Retail
9 145 (3.17%) Legal
10 122 (2.66%) Influencing Skills
11 120 (2.62%) Presentation Skills
12 103 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 91 (1.99%) Front Office
14 80 (1.75%) Marketing
15 67 (1.46%) Telecoms
16 63 (1.38%) Investment Banking
17 61 (1.33%) Manufacturing
18 52 (1.14%) Law
19 50 (1.09%) Military
20 45 (0.98%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 663 (14.48%) Analyst
2 533 (11.64%) Developer
3 389 (8.50%) Senior
4 340 (7.43%) Architect
5 296 (6.46%) Lead
6 265 (5.79%) Business Analyst
7 211 (4.61%) Consultant
8 205 (4.48%) Data Engineer
9 178 (3.89%) Project Manager
10 110 (2.40%) IT Support
11 105 (2.29%) Support Engineer
12 100 (2.18%) Data Analyst
13 95 (2.07%) Java Developer
14 91 (1.99%) Administrator
15 90 (1.97%) Solutions Architect
16 87 (1.90%) Software Engineer
17 74 (1.62%) Python Developer
18 73 (1.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 73 (1.59%) IT Analyst
19 69 (1.51%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (5.83%) REST
2 145 (3.17%) Kafka
3 137 (2.99%) SOAP
4 133 (2.90%) RESTful
5 125 (2.73%) .NET
5 125 (2.73%) Spring
6 118 (2.58%) React
7 98 (2.14%) Node.js
8 95 (2.07%) Spring Boot
9 92 (2.01%) CSS
10 91 (1.99%) AngularJS
11 90 (1.97%) HTML
11 90 (1.97%) LDAP
12 88 (1.92%) JSON
13 86 (1.88%) XML
14 81 (1.77%) Middleware
15 67 (1.46%) OAuth
16 57 (1.24%) Oracle Fusion
17 56 (1.22%) PySpark
18 53 (1.16%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 242 (5.28%) Product Ownership
2 202 (4.41%) Onboarding
3 174 (3.80%) Cloud Native
4 150 (3.28%) Data Centre
5 136 (2.97%) Management Information System
6 133 (2.90%) Self-Motivation
7 126 (2.75%) Analytical Mindset
8 101 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
9 97 (2.12%) Distributed Systems
10 94 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
11 91 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
12 90 (1.97%) Data Structures
13 83 (1.81%) Virtual Team
14 68 (1.49%) Security Posture
15 59 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
16 56 (1.22%) Mobile App
17 52 (1.14%) Algorithms
17 52 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 46 (1.00%) AI Agents
19 44 (0.96%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 514 (11.23%) Windows
2 278 (6.07%) Linux
3 107 (2.34%) Windows 10
4 88 (1.92%) Windows Server
5 82 (1.79%) Unix
6 80 (1.75%) Android
7 73 (1.59%) Apple iOS
8 58 (1.27%) Mac OS
9 55 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.41%) VMS
11 17 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.26%) CentOS
13 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.20%) zOS
15 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
16 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.13%) Debian
18 4 (0.087%) AIX
18 4 (0.087%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,287 (28.11%) Agile
2 778 (16.99%) CI/CD
3 727 (15.88%) Continuous Improvement
4 722 (15.77%) DevOps
5 685 (14.96%) Stakeholder Management
6 534 (11.66%) Analytics
7 507 (11.07%) Decision-Making
8 505 (11.03%) Migration
9 489 (10.68%) AI
10 446 (9.74%) Project Management
11 402 (8.78%) Data Modelling
12 389 (8.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 368 (8.04%) Test Automation
14 364 (7.95%) Validation
15 363 (7.93%) Business Intelligence
16 357 (7.80%) Customer Service
16 357 (7.80%) ITIL
17 345 (7.53%) Change Management
18 339 (7.40%) Scrum
19 309 (6.75%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 882 (19.26%) Python
2 828 (18.08%) SQL
3 381 (8.32%) Java
4 298 (6.51%) PowerShell
5 232 (5.07%) JavaScript
6 168 (3.67%) C#
7 144 (3.14%) TypeScript
8 134 (2.93%) Bash
9 79 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 57 (1.24%) C++
11 45 (0.98%) Go
12 42 (0.92%) Shell Script
13 38 (0.83%) Bicep
14 37 (0.81%) C
15 34 (0.74%) Perl
16 33 (0.72%) R
16 33 (0.72%) T-SQL
17 30 (0.66%) Apex Code
18 29 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 28 (0.61%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,032 (22.54%) Security Cleared
2 712 (15.55%) SC Cleared
3 569 (12.43%) Degree
4 206 (4.50%) Computer Science Degree
5 187 (4.08%) DV Cleared
6 129 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
7 102 (2.23%) Cisco Certification
8 98 (2.14%) CISSP
8 98 (2.14%) Microsoft Certification
9 90 (1.97%) PMP
10 79 (1.73%) PMI Certification
11 68 (1.49%) Master's Degree
12 64 (1.40%) Azure Certification
13 61 (1.33%) CISM
14 54 (1.18%) CCNA
15 42 (0.92%) A+ Certification
16 40 (0.87%) Network+ Certification
17 38 (0.83%) CCNP
17 38 (0.83%) MCSE
18 30 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 303 (6.62%) Data Quality
2 279 (6.09%) QA
3 153 (3.34%) GDPR
4 93 (2.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 85 (1.86%) PMO
6 84 (1.83%) NIST
7 74 (1.62%) Accessibility
8 67 (1.46%) SLA
9 45 (0.98%) GRC
10 28 (0.61%) PCI DSS
11 25 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.46%) PSD2
14 20 (0.44%) WCAG
15 18 (0.39%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.33%) HL7
17 14 (0.31%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.31%) NCSC
18 13 (0.28%) IFRS
19 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 355 (7.75%) Active Directory
2 335 (7.32%) Docker
3 111 (2.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.87%) vSphere
5 32 (0.70%) VMware NSX
6 29 (0.63%) Hyper-V
7 18 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.37%) Firmware
8 17 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.24%) RACF
9 11 (0.24%) Squid
9 11 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
10 10 (0.22%) vCloud
11 9 (0.20%) ACF2
12 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.13%) IAG
14 4 (0.087%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.087%) NFS
14 4 (0.087%) Snort
Systems Management
1 398 (8.69%) Kubernetes
2 265 (5.79%) Terraform
3 162 (3.54%) Ansible
4 124 (2.71%) Microsoft Intune
5 104 (2.27%) Grafana
6 80 (1.75%) Prometheus
7 73 (1.59%) SCCM
8 39 (0.85%) vCenter Server
9 33 (0.72%) FortiGate
9 33 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
10 29 (0.63%) Kibana
11 28 (0.61%) Puppet
12 27 (0.59%) Argo
13 23 (0.50%) Control-M
14 22 (0.48%) Nessus
15 19 (0.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.33%) vRealize
18 14 (0.31%) WSUS
19 11 (0.24%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 852 (18.61%) Microsoft
2 319 (6.97%) Oracle
3 232 (5.07%) SAP
4 202 (4.41%) ServiceNow
5 191 (4.17%) VMware
6 145 (3.17%) Google
7 144 (3.14%) Databricks
8 117 (2.56%) Cisco
9 116 (2.53%) Splunk
10 104 (2.27%) Salesforce
11 74 (1.62%) Red Hat
12 69 (1.51%) CyberArk
13 64 (1.40%) BeyondTrust
14 59 (1.29%) Citrix
15 58 (1.27%) Dell
15 58 (1.27%) Workday
16 46 (1.00%) Adobe
17 42 (0.92%) HP
17 42 (0.92%) IBM
17 42 (0.92%) Informatica