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

6 months to
24 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 4,596 4,249 4,031
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.58% 16.97% 10.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.40% 18.57% 12.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,724 2,656 2,422
10th Percentile £263 £250 £254
25th Percentile £381 £381 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £497 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £625
90th Percentile £716 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 245 372
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £16.01 £15.13 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.24 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +0.52% +30.87% -68.49%
75th Percentile £42.65 £34.48 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.70 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.44 £21.95 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.88% +35.24% -68.79%

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 37,051 22,887 31,886
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.28% 91.38% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,430 14,787 20,644
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £502 £525
% change year-on-year +2.09% -4.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,322 1,108 2,367
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.78
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £26.50 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +77.36% -30.26% +8.14%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 1,952 £520 +4.00% 884
North of England -11 726 £447 -5.89% 579
South East -6 705 £488 -2.50% 739
Midlands -9 516 £453 +6.47% 414
West Midlands -9 375 £465 +3.22% 232
North West -11 352 £440 -7.37% 319
Yorkshire -6 331 £450 -5.26% 190
South West -4 324 £500 - 266
East of England -2 257 £450 -3.54% 240
East Midlands -1 139 £449 +22.04% 182
North East -19 49 £363 -19.44% 87
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
1 202 (4.40%) Confluence
2 149 (3.24%) SharePoint
3 84 (1.83%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.22%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.83%) Apache
5 38 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.70%) SAS
7 29 (0.63%) CMS
8 27 (0.59%) Oracle Workflow
9 17 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 11 (0.24%) nginx
10 11 (0.24%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.22%) CICS
12 9 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Camunda
14 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 269 (5.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 205 (4.46%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (1.37%) Microsoft Project
5 61 (1.33%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.30%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 11 (0.24%) Revit
10 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
11 7 (0.15%) Trello
12 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
12 6 (0.13%) Sketch
13 5 (0.11%) CATIA
13 5 (0.11%) Maya
14 4 (0.087%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.065%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.065%) Navisworks
15 3 (0.065%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 116 (2.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
4 19 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
5 17 (0.37%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.33%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.30%) Workday HCM
8 13 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
9 12 (0.26%) SAP SD
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
10 11 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 11 (0.24%) Teamcenter
11 9 (0.20%) Finacle
11 9 (0.20%) iTrent
11 9 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
11 9 (0.20%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.17%) NEC Housing
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 7 (0.15%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 925 (20.13%) Azure
2 684 (14.88%) AWS
3 368 (8.01%) Power Platform
4 332 (7.22%) Microsoft 365
5 261 (5.68%) GCP
6 215 (4.68%) Azure DevOps
7 155 (3.37%) GitHub
8 151 (3.29%) Entra ID
9 131 (2.85%) SaaS
10 127 (2.76%) Serverless
11 77 (1.68%) Amazon S3
12 76 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
12 76 (1.65%) GitHub Actions
13 61 (1.33%) Azure Data Factory
14 60 (1.31%) Power Automate
15 59 (1.28%) Snowflake
16 56 (1.22%) Dynamics 365
17 52 (1.13%) OpenShift
18 50 (1.09%) PowerApps
19 41 (0.89%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 182 (3.96%) DNS
2 145 (3.15%) Firewall
3 110 (2.39%) TCP/IP
4 107 (2.33%) VPN
5 98 (2.13%) DHCP
6 91 (1.98%) WAN
7 80 (1.74%) Network Security
8 73 (1.59%) LAN
9 63 (1.37%) SAN
10 60 (1.31%) Wi-Fi
11 45 (0.98%) VLAN
12 41 (0.89%) BGP
13 36 (0.78%) SD-WAN
14 35 (0.76%) OSPF
15 32 (0.70%) Wireless
16 29 (0.63%) VoIP
17 24 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 21 (0.46%) Structured Cabling
19 19 (0.41%) MPLS
20 18 (0.39%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 292 (6.35%) Power BI
2 189 (4.11%) SQL Server
3 134 (2.92%) Data Warehouse
4 122 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
4 122 (2.65%) Relational Database
5 90 (1.96%) MongoDB
6 82 (1.78%) NoSQL
7 79 (1.72%) Tableau
8 77 (1.68%) Data Lake
9 75 (1.63%) Metadata
10 49 (1.07%) Oracle Database
11 45 (0.98%) Big Data
11 45 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 42 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
13 41 (0.89%) MySQL
14 28 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
14 28 (0.61%) Power Query
15 24 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
15 24 (0.52%) Delta Lake
15 24 (0.52%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 460 (10.01%) JIRA
2 248 (5.40%) Git
3 154 (3.35%) Jenkins
4 112 (2.44%) GitLab
5 56 (1.22%) Selenium
6 36 (0.78%) Postman
7 28 (0.61%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.52%) Cucumber
9 23 (0.50%) Bitbucket
10 22 (0.48%) Cypress.io
10 22 (0.48%) JUnit
11 18 (0.39%) Mockito
12 16 (0.35%) WebDriver
13 15 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
14 14 (0.30%) SonarQube
15 12 (0.26%) JMeter
15 12 (0.26%) Maven
15 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
16 11 (0.24%) Gradle
17 10 (0.22%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,375 (51.68%) Social Skills
2 1,842 (40.08%) Analytical Skills
3 1,076 (23.41%) Finance
4 387 (8.42%) Public Sector
5 353 (7.68%) Banking
6 191 (4.16%) Organisational Skills
7 184 (4.00%) Documentation Skills
8 174 (3.79%) Retail
9 128 (2.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 119 (2.59%) Legal
11 107 (2.33%) Presentation Skills
12 98 (2.13%) Front Office
12 98 (2.13%) Influencing Skills
13 93 (2.02%) Manufacturing
14 85 (1.85%) Marketing
15 83 (1.81%) Telecoms
16 71 (1.54%) Investment Banking
17 58 (1.26%) Law
18 53 (1.15%) Back Office
19 46 (1.00%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 663 (14.43%) Analyst
2 483 (10.51%) Developer
3 382 (8.31%) Senior
4 338 (7.35%) Architect
5 313 (6.81%) Lead
6 240 (5.22%) Business Analyst
7 216 (4.70%) Data Engineer
8 208 (4.53%) Consultant
9 154 (3.35%) IT Support
10 151 (3.29%) Project Manager
11 136 (2.96%) Support Engineer
12 104 (2.26%) Data Analyst
13 96 (2.09%) Solutions Architect
14 95 (2.07%) Administrator
15 93 (2.02%) IT Engineer
16 88 (1.91%) Software Engineer
17 82 (1.78%) Java Developer
18 79 (1.72%) Support Analyst
18 79 (1.72%) Technical Support
19 72 (1.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 252 (5.48%) REST
2 142 (3.09%) .NET
3 131 (2.85%) Kafka
4 122 (2.65%) React
5 117 (2.55%) SOAP
5 117 (2.55%) Spring
6 115 (2.50%) RESTful
7 104 (2.26%) JSON
8 98 (2.13%) CSS
9 94 (2.05%) Middleware
10 89 (1.94%) XML
11 86 (1.87%) Spring Boot
12 83 (1.81%) HTML
13 72 (1.57%) AngularJS
13 72 (1.57%) Node.js
14 68 (1.48%) LDAP
15 55 (1.20%) OAuth
15 55 (1.20%) PySpark
16 51 (1.11%) Web Services
17 45 (0.98%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 221 (4.81%) Onboarding
1 221 (4.81%) Product Ownership
2 193 (4.20%) Cloud Native
3 165 (3.59%) Data Centre
4 157 (3.42%) Self-Motivation
5 137 (2.98%) Analytical Mindset
6 127 (2.76%) Distributed Systems
6 127 (2.76%) Management Information System
7 120 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
8 108 (2.35%) Data Protection Act
8 108 (2.35%) Enterprise Software
9 96 (2.09%) Virtual Team
10 95 (2.07%) Data Structures
11 59 (1.28%) Security Posture
12 57 (1.24%) AI Agents
13 53 (1.15%) Algorithms
14 52 (1.13%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 48 (1.04%) CMDB
16 47 (1.02%) Driving Licence
17 42 (0.91%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 575 (12.51%) Windows
2 254 (5.53%) Linux
3 110 (2.39%) Windows 10
4 106 (2.31%) Windows Server
5 88 (1.91%) Unix
6 78 (1.70%) Apple iOS
7 75 (1.63%) Mac OS
8 72 (1.57%) Android
9 49 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 23 (0.50%) Ubuntu
11 14 (0.30%) CentOS
12 11 (0.24%) VMS
12 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.22%) zOS
14 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.13%) Solaris
17 5 (0.11%) Debian
18 4 (0.087%) AIX
18 4 (0.087%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,197 (26.04%) Agile
2 827 (17.99%) Continuous Improvement
3 768 (16.71%) Stakeholder Management
4 744 (16.19%) CI/CD
5 715 (15.56%) DevOps
6 558 (12.14%) AI
7 524 (11.40%) Decision-Making
8 510 (11.10%) Migration
9 501 (10.90%) Analytics
10 432 (9.40%) ITIL
11 414 (9.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 409 (8.90%) Customer Service
13 376 (8.18%) Project Management
13 376 (8.18%) Validation
14 374 (8.14%) Business Intelligence
15 369 (8.03%) Data Modelling
16 345 (7.51%) Test Automation
17 323 (7.03%) Change Management
18 315 (6.85%) Scrum
19 301 (6.55%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 855 (18.60%) SQL
2 813 (17.69%) Python
3 341 (7.42%) Java
4 265 (5.77%) PowerShell
5 231 (5.03%) JavaScript
6 169 (3.68%) C#
7 107 (2.33%) Bash
7 107 (2.33%) TypeScript
8 78 (1.70%) PL/SQL
9 59 (1.28%) C++
10 43 (0.94%) T-SQL
11 42 (0.91%) C
12 41 (0.89%) Shell Script
13 40 (0.87%) Go
14 33 (0.72%) Bicep
15 31 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 28 (0.61%) R
17 25 (0.54%) Apex Code
18 22 (0.48%) Scala
19 21 (0.46%) Perl
Qualifications
1 996 (21.67%) Security Cleared
2 666 (14.49%) SC Cleared
3 561 (12.21%) Degree
4 194 (4.22%) DV Cleared
5 177 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
6 131 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
7 123 (2.68%) BPSS Clearance
8 108 (2.35%) Cisco Certification
9 89 (1.94%) CISSP
10 75 (1.63%) PMP
11 67 (1.46%) Azure Certification
12 65 (1.41%) A+ Certification
13 63 (1.37%) PMI Certification
14 62 (1.35%) CISM
15 61 (1.33%) CCNA
16 53 (1.15%) Master's Degree
17 50 (1.09%) Network+ Certification
18 43 (0.94%) MCSE
19 36 (0.78%) AWS Certification
20 33 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 317 (6.90%) Data Quality
2 247 (5.37%) QA
3 139 (3.02%) GDPR
4 94 (2.05%) SLA
5 89 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 85 (1.85%) Accessibility
7 78 (1.70%) PMO
8 76 (1.65%) NIST
9 46 (1.00%) GRC
10 23 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 22 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
12 20 (0.44%) PCI DSS
13 16 (0.35%) COBIT
14 15 (0.33%) NCSC
14 15 (0.33%) WCAG
15 13 (0.28%) ISO 20022
16 12 (0.26%) HIPAA
16 12 (0.26%) PSD2
17 11 (0.24%) Def Stans
17 11 (0.24%) IFRS
System Software
1 343 (7.46%) Active Directory
2 281 (6.11%) Docker
3 105 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.85%) vSphere
5 37 (0.81%) VMware NSX
6 36 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
7 30 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 26 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (0.44%) Firmware
11 19 (0.41%) vCloud
12 11 (0.24%) Squid
13 10 (0.22%) IAG
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.11%) NFS
16 4 (0.087%) ACF2
16 4 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.087%) RACF
16 4 (0.087%) Snort
17 3 (0.065%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 338 (7.35%) Kubernetes
2 260 (5.66%) Terraform
3 155 (3.37%) Ansible
4 127 (2.76%) Microsoft Intune
5 98 (2.13%) Grafana
6 85 (1.85%) Prometheus
7 70 (1.52%) SCCM
8 48 (1.04%) vCenter Server
9 39 (0.85%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
11 24 (0.52%) Control-M
12 21 (0.46%) Nessus
13 20 (0.44%) Argo
14 19 (0.41%) Kibana
15 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
15 17 (0.37%) Puppet
15 17 (0.37%) SCOM
16 16 (0.35%) WSUS
17 15 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
18 13 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 874 (19.02%) Microsoft
2 321 (6.98%) Oracle
3 268 (5.83%) SAP
4 267 (5.81%) ServiceNow
5 170 (3.70%) VMware
6 135 (2.94%) Google
7 116 (2.52%) Splunk
8 112 (2.44%) Databricks
9 107 (2.33%) Salesforce
10 102 (2.22%) Cisco
11 70 (1.52%) Workday
12 63 (1.37%) Red Hat
13 56 (1.22%) Dynatrace
14 54 (1.17%) Dell
15 48 (1.04%) Adobe
15 48 (1.04%) CyberArk
16 46 (1.00%) Citrix
17 43 (0.94%) Apple
18 41 (0.89%) BeyondTrust
19 39 (0.85%) MuleSoft