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

6 months to
15 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 4,654 4,099 4,020
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.87% 16.80% 10.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.89% 18.46% 12.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,885 2,579 2,472
10th Percentile £284 £256 £213
25th Percentile £394 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -1.96% -3.50%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £717 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 263 201 364
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.62 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.79 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.91% +26.51% -61.69%
75th Percentile £56.63 £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 33,504 22,203 32,130
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.48% 91.02% 86.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,453 14,593 21,161
10th Percentile £313 £313 £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 2,080 880 2,196
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.83 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.07 £18.51 £15.75
Median hourly rate £41.56 £31.76 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.84% -6.59% -9.33%
75th Percentile £66.50 £64.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.28 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £30.78 £33.07
% change year-on-year +20.21% -6.91% -8.79%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 2,026 £510 -2.86% 748
North of England -5 781 £450 -8.07% 543
South East -5 664 £493 -1.50% 727
Midlands -3 514 £450 - 414
North West -5 386 £425 -13.27% 288
West Midlands -4 368 £475 +1.28% 245
Yorkshire -4 349 £468 -1.47% 173
South West -2 316 £513 +2.50% 269
East of England -3 216 £450 - 264
East Midlands -1 147 £419 +13.25% 170
North East -4 55 £438 -14.22% 94
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
1 212 (4.56%) Confluence
2 139 (2.99%) SharePoint
3 102 (2.19%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.35%) Apache Spark
5 60 (1.29%) SAS
6 49 (1.05%) Apache
7 34 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
8 26 (0.56%) CMS
9 18 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.34%) 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
1 288 (6.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 211 (4.53%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (2.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 74 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
5 71 (1.53%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.52%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) 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 (0.064%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.064%) CATIA
12 3 (0.064%) CPLEX
12 3 (0.064%) InVision
12 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 82 (1.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 23 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.43%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.39%) 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 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
10 10 (0.21%) 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
12 8 (0.17%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 971 (20.86%) Azure
2 721 (15.49%) AWS
3 349 (7.50%) Power Platform
4 322 (6.92%) GCP
5 310 (6.66%) Microsoft 365
6 221 (4.75%) Azure DevOps
7 200 (4.30%) GitHub
8 152 (3.27%) Entra ID
9 145 (3.12%) Serverless
10 129 (2.77%) SaaS
11 99 (2.13%) GitHub Actions
12 91 (1.96%) AWS Lambda
13 90 (1.93%) Amazon S3
14 85 (1.83%) OpenShift
15 69 (1.48%) Azure Data Factory
16 64 (1.38%) Snowflake
17 58 (1.25%) Power Automate
18 53 (1.14%) Google Workspace
19 51 (1.10%) Dynamics 365
20 50 (1.07%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 174 (3.74%) Firewall
2 169 (3.63%) DNS
3 108 (2.32%) TCP/IP
4 104 (2.23%) Network Security
5 99 (2.13%) VPN
6 89 (1.91%) WAN
7 85 (1.83%) DHCP
8 71 (1.53%) LAN
9 56 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
10 52 (1.12%) SAN
11 45 (0.97%) BGP
12 43 (0.92%) VLAN
13 33 (0.71%) OSPF
14 31 (0.67%) VoIP
15 29 (0.62%) SD-WAN
16 24 (0.52%) Internet
16 24 (0.52%) Wireless
17 20 (0.43%) MPLS
18 19 (0.41%) VXLAN
19 18 (0.39%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 278 (5.97%) Power BI
2 175 (3.76%) SQL Server
3 143 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
4 121 (2.60%) Relational Database
5 120 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
6 95 (2.04%) Metadata
7 87 (1.87%) NoSQL
8 84 (1.80%) MongoDB
9 77 (1.65%) Tableau
10 71 (1.53%) Data Lake
11 60 (1.29%) Oracle Database
11 60 (1.29%) Oracle Reports
12 52 (1.12%) Big Data
13 45 (0.97%) MySQL
13 45 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 35 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
15 34 (0.73%) Pentaho
16 30 (0.64%) DynamoDB
17 29 (0.62%) Power Query
18 28 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 473 (10.16%) JIRA
2 304 (6.53%) Git
3 221 (4.75%) Jenkins
4 142 (3.05%) GitLab
5 76 (1.63%) Selenium
6 46 (0.99%) JUnit
7 36 (0.77%) Postman
8 27 (0.58%) Bitbucket
8 27 (0.58%) Cucumber
9 22 (0.47%) Maven
9 22 (0.47%) REST Assured
9 22 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
10 20 (0.43%) Cypress.io
11 18 (0.39%) Mockito
12 15 (0.32%) JMeter
12 15 (0.32%) SonarQube
13 14 (0.30%) SpecFlow
14 13 (0.28%) CircleCI
15 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
15 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,458 (52.81%) Social Skills
2 1,785 (38.35%) Analytical Skills
3 1,077 (23.14%) Finance
4 433 (9.30%) Public Sector
5 368 (7.91%) Banking
6 198 (4.25%) Organisational Skills
7 168 (3.61%) Documentation Skills
8 164 (3.52%) Retail
9 151 (3.24%) Legal
10 123 (2.64%) Influencing Skills
11 121 (2.60%) Presentation Skills
12 105 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 93 (2.00%) Front Office
14 83 (1.78%) Marketing
15 71 (1.53%) Telecoms
16 62 (1.33%) Investment Banking
17 58 (1.25%) Manufacturing
18 51 (1.10%) Law
19 50 (1.07%) Military
20 43 (0.92%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 671 (14.42%) Analyst
2 559 (12.01%) Developer
3 395 (8.49%) Senior
4 342 (7.35%) Architect
5 308 (6.62%) Lead
6 271 (5.82%) Business Analyst
7 216 (4.64%) Consultant
8 209 (4.49%) Data Engineer
9 186 (4.00%) Project Manager
10 111 (2.39%) IT Support
11 109 (2.34%) Support Engineer
12 99 (2.13%) Data Analyst
13 98 (2.11%) Java Developer
14 94 (2.02%) Solutions Architect
15 91 (1.96%) Software Engineer
16 90 (1.93%) Administrator
17 78 (1.68%) Python Developer
18 74 (1.59%) IT Analyst
19 69 (1.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 67 (1.44%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 296 (6.36%) REST
2 146 (3.14%) Kafka
3 145 (3.12%) SOAP
4 140 (3.01%) RESTful
5 130 (2.79%) Spring
6 128 (2.75%) .NET
7 121 (2.60%) React
8 103 (2.21%) Node.js
9 99 (2.13%) Spring Boot
10 97 (2.08%) AngularJS
11 94 (2.02%) CSS
12 92 (1.98%) HTML
13 91 (1.96%) XML
14 88 (1.89%) JSON
14 88 (1.89%) LDAP
15 83 (1.78%) Middleware
16 70 (1.50%) OAuth
17 59 (1.27%) Web Services
18 58 (1.25%) Oracle Fusion
19 56 (1.20%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 235 (5.05%) Product Ownership
2 200 (4.30%) Onboarding
3 177 (3.80%) Cloud Native
4 141 (3.03%) Data Centre
5 134 (2.88%) Management Information System
6 131 (2.81%) Self-Motivation
7 125 (2.69%) Analytical Mindset
8 101 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
9 96 (2.06%) Data Structures
9 96 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
10 95 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
11 90 (1.93%) Legacy Systems
12 81 (1.74%) Virtual Team
13 68 (1.46%) Security Posture
14 61 (1.31%) Mobile App
15 59 (1.27%) Algorithms
15 59 (1.27%) Hybrid Cloud
16 54 (1.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 45 (0.97%) AI Agents
18 44 (0.95%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 523 (11.24%) Windows
2 285 (6.12%) Linux
3 108 (2.32%) Windows 10
4 92 (1.98%) Windows Server
5 83 (1.78%) Unix
6 76 (1.63%) Android
7 71 (1.53%) Apple iOS
8 57 (1.22%) Mac OS
9 54 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.43%) VMS
11 17 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.26%) CentOS
13 9 (0.19%) 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 (0.064%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,325 (28.47%) Agile
2 815 (17.51%) CI/CD
3 759 (16.31%) DevOps
4 727 (15.62%) Continuous Improvement
5 706 (15.17%) Stakeholder Management
6 563 (12.10%) Analytics
7 512 (11.00%) Migration
8 505 (10.85%) Decision-Making
9 490 (10.53%) AI
10 457 (9.82%) Project Management
11 420 (9.02%) Data Modelling
12 400 (8.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 397 (8.53%) Test Automation
14 376 (8.08%) Business Intelligence
15 367 (7.89%) Validation
16 358 (7.69%) Customer Service
17 355 (7.63%) ITIL
18 353 (7.58%) Scrum
19 349 (7.50%) Change Management
20 308 (6.62%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 911 (19.57%) Python
2 855 (18.37%) SQL
3 396 (8.51%) Java
4 301 (6.47%) PowerShell
5 236 (5.07%) JavaScript
6 174 (3.74%) C#
7 150 (3.22%) TypeScript
8 139 (2.99%) Bash
9 79 (1.70%) PL/SQL
10 60 (1.29%) C++
11 46 (0.99%) Go
12 43 (0.92%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.84%) Bicep
14 37 (0.80%) C
15 36 (0.77%) T-SQL
16 35 (0.75%) Perl
17 30 (0.64%) R
18 29 (0.62%) Apex Code
18 29 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 29 (0.62%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,059 (22.75%) Security Cleared
2 729 (15.66%) SC Cleared
3 572 (12.29%) Degree
4 205 (4.40%) Computer Science Degree
5 193 (4.15%) DV Cleared
6 129 (2.77%) BPSS Clearance
7 102 (2.19%) Cisco Certification
8 98 (2.11%) PMP
9 97 (2.08%) Microsoft Certification
10 93 (2.00%) CISSP
11 85 (1.83%) PMI Certification
12 68 (1.46%) Master's Degree
13 64 (1.38%) Azure Certification
14 58 (1.25%) CISM
15 52 (1.12%) CCNA
16 41 (0.88%) A+ Certification
17 40 (0.86%) CCNP
18 38 (0.82%) Network+ Certification
19 36 (0.77%) MCSE
20 33 (0.71%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 315 (6.77%) Data Quality
2 291 (6.25%) QA
3 150 (3.22%) GDPR
4 90 (1.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 88 (1.89%) PMO
6 83 (1.78%) NIST
7 81 (1.74%) Accessibility
8 64 (1.38%) SLA
9 42 (0.90%) GRC
10 27 (0.58%) PCI DSS
11 24 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.45%) PSD2
14 20 (0.43%) WCAG
15 18 (0.39%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.32%) HL7
17 13 (0.28%) HIPAA
17 13 (0.28%) IFRS
18 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
18 12 (0.26%) NCSC
System Software
1 370 (7.95%) Docker
2 361 (7.76%) Active Directory
3 108 (2.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.86%) vSphere
5 31 (0.67%) VMware NSX
6 29 (0.62%) Hyper-V
7 20 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.37%) Firmware
8 17 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.24%) RACF
10 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
10 10 (0.21%) vCloud
10 10 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
11 9 (0.19%) Squid
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
1 426 (9.15%) Kubernetes
2 268 (5.76%) Terraform
3 164 (3.52%) Ansible
4 123 (2.64%) Microsoft Intune
5 105 (2.26%) Grafana
6 81 (1.74%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.55%) SCCM
8 39 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
9 38 (0.82%) vCenter Server
10 32 (0.69%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.64%) Kibana
12 28 (0.60%) Puppet
13 26 (0.56%) Argo
14 23 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.45%) Control-M
16 20 (0.43%) Nessus
17 15 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.32%) vRealize
18 12 (0.26%) WSUS
19 11 (0.24%) Consul
Vendors
1 854 (18.35%) Microsoft
2 335 (7.20%) Oracle
3 231 (4.96%) SAP
4 200 (4.30%) ServiceNow
5 190 (4.08%) VMware
6 150 (3.22%) Google
7 147 (3.16%) Databricks
8 116 (2.49%) Splunk
9 110 (2.36%) Cisco
10 109 (2.34%) Salesforce
11 73 (1.57%) Red Hat
12 67 (1.44%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.35%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.25%) Citrix
15 57 (1.22%) Workday
16 55 (1.18%) Dell
17 48 (1.03%) Talend
18 47 (1.01%) Adobe
19 44 (0.95%) IBM
20 43 (0.92%) Informatica