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

6 months to
18 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 4,599 4,142 4,039
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.67% 16.91% 10.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.67% 18.57% 12.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,845 2,610 2,487
10th Percentile £281 £256 £213
25th Percentile £394 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £508
% change year-on-year -4.00% -1.48% -3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 198 366
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.62 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.80 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.97% +26.51% -59.30%
75th Percentile £57.06 £47.15 £40.19
90th Percentile £75.00 £69.13 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £24.18 £17.50
% change year-on-year -12.12% +38.17% -57.70%

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 33,651 22,305 32,263
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.36% 91.07% 86.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,531 14,664 21,253
10th Percentile £313 £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 £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,083 886 2,215
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.80 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.27 £18.51 £15.75
Median hourly rate £41.86 £31.64 £34.21
Median % change year-on-year +32.29% -7.51% -6.66%
75th Percentile £67.13 £63.75 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.38 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £33.78
% change year-on-year +25.00% -11.18% -5.92%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -9 1,987 £510 -2.86% 931
North of England -5 783 £450 -5.26% 616
South East -5 664 £492 -1.60% 736
Midlands -4 512 £450 - 466
North West -5 381 £425 -12.82% 327
West Midlands -4 363 £475 +2.70% 272
Yorkshire -4 356 £465 -2.11% 203
South West -2 318 £500 - 294
East of England -4 204 £450 - 276
East Midlands -1 150 £420 +13.59% 194
North East -2 55 £425 -16.26% 98
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
1 207 (4.50%) Confluence
2 134 (2.91%) SharePoint
3 99 (2.15%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.39%) Apache Spark
5 57 (1.24%) SAS
6 50 (1.09%) Apache
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%) Anypoint
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
Applications
1 282 (6.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 210 (4.57%) Microsoft Office
3 106 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.57%) Microsoft Project
5 71 (1.54%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.13%) 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 (0.065%) CATIA
13 3 (0.065%) CPLEX
13 3 (0.065%) InVision
13 3 (0.065%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.065%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 83 (1.80%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.46%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.37%) 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 (0.30%) 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%) Remedy ITSM
11 9 (0.20%) Shopify
11 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
12 8 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
12 8 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 7 (0.15%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 954 (20.74%) Azure
2 710 (15.44%) AWS
3 343 (7.46%) Power Platform
4 318 (6.91%) GCP
5 308 (6.70%) Microsoft 365
6 217 (4.72%) Azure DevOps
7 193 (4.20%) GitHub
8 152 (3.31%) Entra ID
9 143 (3.11%) Serverless
10 126 (2.74%) SaaS
11 96 (2.09%) GitHub Actions
12 89 (1.94%) Amazon S3
13 88 (1.91%) AWS Lambda
14 82 (1.78%) OpenShift
15 69 (1.50%) Azure Data Factory
16 62 (1.35%) Snowflake
17 57 (1.24%) Power Automate
18 54 (1.17%) Dynamics 365
19 52 (1.13%) Google Workspace
20 49 (1.07%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 175 (3.81%) Firewall
2 167 (3.63%) DNS
3 108 (2.35%) TCP/IP
4 103 (2.24%) Network Security
5 99 (2.15%) VPN
6 88 (1.91%) WAN
7 84 (1.83%) DHCP
8 69 (1.50%) LAN
9 54 (1.17%) SAN
10 52 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
11 46 (1.00%) BGP
12 45 (0.98%) VLAN
13 35 (0.76%) OSPF
14 30 (0.65%) VoIP
15 28 (0.61%) SD-WAN
16 24 (0.52%) Internet
16 24 (0.52%) Wireless
17 21 (0.46%) VXLAN
18 19 (0.41%) MPLS
19 18 (0.39%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 273 (5.94%) Power BI
2 175 (3.81%) SQL Server
3 135 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
4 119 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
5 108 (2.35%) Relational Database
6 93 (2.02%) Metadata
7 84 (1.83%) MongoDB
8 83 (1.80%) NoSQL
9 76 (1.65%) Tableau
10 71 (1.54%) Data Lake
11 60 (1.30%) Oracle Reports
12 57 (1.24%) Oracle Database
13 52 (1.13%) Big Data
14 44 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 41 (0.89%) MySQL
16 34 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
17 33 (0.72%) Pentaho
18 30 (0.65%) DynamoDB
18 30 (0.65%) Power Query
19 28 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 468 (10.18%) JIRA
2 289 (6.28%) Git
3 206 (4.48%) Jenkins
4 135 (2.94%) GitLab
5 74 (1.61%) Selenium
6 43 (0.93%) JUnit
7 36 (0.78%) Postman
8 28 (0.61%) Bitbucket
9 26 (0.57%) Cucumber
10 21 (0.46%) Maven
11 20 (0.43%) REST Assured
12 19 (0.41%) Cypress.io
12 19 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
13 18 (0.39%) Mockito
14 16 (0.35%) JMeter
15 15 (0.33%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.30%) SonarQube
17 13 (0.28%) CircleCI
18 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
18 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 2,416 (52.53%) Social Skills
2 1,780 (38.70%) Analytical Skills
3 1,074 (23.35%) Finance
4 430 (9.35%) Public Sector
5 361 (7.85%) Banking
6 194 (4.22%) Organisational Skills
7 170 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
8 161 (3.50%) Retail
9 147 (3.20%) Legal
10 123 (2.67%) Influencing Skills
11 122 (2.65%) Presentation Skills
12 102 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 92 (2.00%) Front Office
14 80 (1.74%) Marketing
15 67 (1.46%) Telecoms
16 63 (1.37%) Investment Banking
17 60 (1.30%) Manufacturing
18 52 (1.13%) Law
19 51 (1.11%) Military
20 45 (0.98%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 664 (14.44%) Analyst
2 543 (11.81%) Developer
3 389 (8.46%) Senior
4 338 (7.35%) Architect
5 301 (6.54%) Lead
6 265 (5.76%) Business Analyst
7 211 (4.59%) Consultant
8 207 (4.50%) Data Engineer
9 178 (3.87%) Project Manager
10 109 (2.37%) IT Support
11 105 (2.28%) Support Engineer
12 100 (2.17%) Data Analyst
13 96 (2.09%) Java Developer
14 92 (2.00%) Solutions Architect
15 91 (1.98%) Administrator
16 86 (1.87%) Software Engineer
17 76 (1.65%) Python Developer
18 73 (1.59%) IT Analyst
19 71 (1.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 68 (1.48%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 284 (6.18%) REST
2 145 (3.15%) Kafka
3 141 (3.07%) SOAP
4 135 (2.94%) RESTful
5 127 (2.76%) Spring
6 124 (2.70%) .NET
7 119 (2.59%) React
8 99 (2.15%) Node.js
9 96 (2.09%) Spring Boot
10 92 (2.00%) AngularJS
11 91 (1.98%) CSS
12 90 (1.96%) HTML
13 89 (1.94%) JSON
13 89 (1.94%) XML
14 88 (1.91%) LDAP
15 82 (1.78%) Middleware
16 70 (1.52%) OAuth
17 57 (1.24%) Oracle Fusion
18 56 (1.22%) PySpark
19 54 (1.17%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 240 (5.22%) Product Ownership
2 202 (4.39%) Onboarding
3 176 (3.83%) Cloud Native
4 148 (3.22%) Data Centre
5 134 (2.91%) Management Information System
6 130 (2.83%) Self-Motivation
7 125 (2.72%) Analytical Mindset
8 101 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
9 97 (2.11%) Distributed Systems
10 93 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
11 90 (1.96%) Legacy Systems
12 89 (1.94%) Data Structures
13 81 (1.76%) Virtual Team
14 68 (1.48%) Security Posture
15 58 (1.26%) Hybrid Cloud
15 58 (1.26%) Mobile App
16 53 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 52 (1.13%) Algorithms
18 46 (1.00%) AI Agents
19 44 (0.96%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 518 (11.26%) Windows
2 276 (6.00%) Linux
3 107 (2.33%) Windows 10
4 93 (2.02%) Windows Server
5 81 (1.76%) Unix
6 80 (1.74%) Android
7 73 (1.59%) Apple iOS
8 58 (1.26%) Mac OS
9 54 (1.17%) 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%) Windows 8
19 3 (0.065%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,307 (28.42%) Agile
2 797 (17.33%) CI/CD
3 741 (16.11%) DevOps
4 726 (15.79%) Continuous Improvement
5 698 (15.18%) Stakeholder Management
6 548 (11.92%) Analytics
7 509 (11.07%) Migration
8 501 (10.89%) Decision-Making
9 484 (10.52%) AI
10 448 (9.74%) Project Management
11 407 (8.85%) Data Modelling
12 397 (8.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 384 (8.35%) Test Automation
14 373 (8.11%) Validation
15 366 (7.96%) Business Intelligence
16 356 (7.74%) Customer Service
17 354 (7.70%) ITIL
18 349 (7.59%) Scrum
19 342 (7.44%) Change Management
20 305 (6.63%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 896 (19.48%) Python
2 837 (18.20%) SQL
3 387 (8.41%) Java
4 300 (6.52%) PowerShell
5 234 (5.09%) JavaScript
6 173 (3.76%) C#
7 145 (3.15%) TypeScript
8 134 (2.91%) Bash
9 79 (1.72%) PL/SQL
10 57 (1.24%) C++
11 45 (0.98%) Go
12 42 (0.91%) Shell Script
13 38 (0.83%) Bicep
14 37 (0.80%) C
15 36 (0.78%) T-SQL
16 34 (0.74%) Perl
17 33 (0.72%) R
18 30 (0.65%) Apex Code
19 29 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
20 28 (0.61%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,050 (22.83%) Security Cleared
2 725 (15.76%) SC Cleared
3 566 (12.31%) Degree
4 204 (4.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 193 (4.20%) DV Cleared
6 129 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (2.24%) Cisco Certification
7 103 (2.24%) Microsoft Certification
8 94 (2.04%) CISSP
9 91 (1.98%) PMP
10 80 (1.74%) PMI Certification
11 68 (1.48%) Master's Degree
12 64 (1.39%) Azure Certification
13 59 (1.28%) CISM
14 54 (1.17%) CCNA
15 42 (0.91%) A+ Certification
16 40 (0.87%) Network+ Certification
17 39 (0.85%) CCNP
18 38 (0.83%) MCSE
19 30 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 306 (6.65%) Data Quality
2 284 (6.18%) QA
3 148 (3.22%) GDPR
4 91 (1.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 87 (1.89%) PMO
6 83 (1.80%) NIST
7 76 (1.65%) Accessibility
8 66 (1.44%) SLA
9 44 (0.96%) GRC
10 27 (0.59%) PCI DSS
11 24 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
11 24 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.46%) PSD2
13 20 (0.43%) WCAG
14 18 (0.39%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.33%) HL7
16 14 (0.30%) NCSC
17 13 (0.28%) IFRS
18 12 (0.26%) HIPAA
18 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 357 (7.76%) Active Directory
2 348 (7.57%) Docker
3 111 (2.41%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.87%) vSphere
5 32 (0.70%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.65%) 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
1 411 (8.94%) Kubernetes
2 264 (5.74%) Terraform
3 161 (3.50%) Ansible
4 124 (2.70%) Microsoft Intune
5 104 (2.26%) Grafana
6 80 (1.74%) Prometheus
7 74 (1.61%) SCCM
8 39 (0.85%) vCenter Server
9 38 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
10 33 (0.72%) FortiGate
11 29 (0.63%) Kibana
12 28 (0.61%) Puppet
13 27 (0.59%) Argo
14 24 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 23 (0.50%) Control-M
16 22 (0.48%) Nessus
17 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
18 15 (0.33%) vRealize
19 13 (0.28%) WSUS
20 11 (0.24%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 853 (18.55%) Microsoft
2 329 (7.15%) Oracle
3 230 (5.00%) SAP
4 197 (4.28%) ServiceNow
5 194 (4.22%) VMware
6 145 (3.15%) Databricks
6 145 (3.15%) Google
7 115 (2.50%) Cisco
7 115 (2.50%) Splunk
8 105 (2.28%) Salesforce
9 73 (1.59%) Red Hat
10 69 (1.50%) CyberArk
11 64 (1.39%) BeyondTrust
12 58 (1.26%) Citrix
13 57 (1.24%) Dell
14 56 (1.22%) Workday
15 47 (1.02%) Talend
16 46 (1.00%) Adobe
17 42 (0.91%) IBM
17 42 (0.91%) Informatica