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

6 months to
26 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 4,430 4,124 3,950
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.67% 17.33% 10.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.59% 18.98% 12.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,661 2,591 2,402
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £394 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £511
Median % change year-on-year - -2.17% -2.65%
75th Percentile £600 £601 £637
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 301 210 378
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.87 £15.12 £14.16
Median hourly rate £22.00 £21.39 £16.37
Median % change year-on-year +2.85% +30.71% -67.27%
75th Percentile £51.25 £32.43 £36.69
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.03 £61.87
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £22.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.55% +35.55% -67.54%

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 35,194 21,730 31,440
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.78% 91.29% 86.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,373 14,199 20,591
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £510 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,179 923 2,284
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.22 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £15.99
Median hourly rate £45.59 £28.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.80% -23.29% -2.67%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.11
90th Percentile £81.01 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.28 £27.45 £36.00
% change year-on-year +54.01% -23.75% -3.49%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -11 1,856 £520 - 1,236
North of England -8 738 £450 -7.69% 677
South East -7 637 £493 -1.40% 706
Midlands -9 500 £469 +6.60% 418
North West -8 350 £425 -13.27% 371
West Midlands -9 350 £475 +3.26% 260
Yorkshire -7 346 £469 -1.26% 232
South West -2 331 £500 -4.76% 302
East of England -3 236 £450 -5.63% 265
East Midlands -1 149 £443 +18.56% 159
North East -10 50 £413 -8.33% 85
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
1 198 (4.47%) Confluence
2 136 (3.07%) SharePoint
3 82 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
4 51 (1.15%) Apache Spark
5 36 (0.81%) Apache
6 35 (0.79%) SAS
7 33 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
8 25 (0.56%) CMS
9 21 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 10 (0.23%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 8 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 8 (0.18%) CICS
12 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.16%) Camunda
13 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 4 (0.090%) Jupyter
Applications
1 262 (5.91%) Microsoft Excel
2 207 (4.67%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (2.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.53%) Microsoft Project
5 61 (1.38%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.25%) Sketch
9 8 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.16%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.16%) Trello
11 6 (0.14%) Photoshop
11 6 (0.14%) Revit
12 5 (0.11%) CATIA
12 5 (0.11%) Maya
13 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.090%) CPLEX
14 3 (0.068%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 98 (2.21%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.45%) Aladdin
4 19 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
6 13 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
6 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
6 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 12 (0.27%) NEC Housing
7 12 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 12 (0.27%) Workday HCM
8 11 (0.25%) SAP SD
9 9 (0.20%) iTrent
9 9 (0.20%) Oracle Assets
10 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
10 8 (0.18%) Shopify
11 7 (0.16%) Loan IQ
11 7 (0.16%) Oracle HRMS
11 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 905 (20.43%) Azure
2 651 (14.70%) AWS
3 351 (7.92%) Power Platform
4 309 (6.98%) Microsoft 365
5 278 (6.28%) GCP
6 214 (4.83%) Azure DevOps
7 168 (3.79%) GitHub
8 139 (3.14%) Entra ID
9 116 (2.62%) Serverless
10 112 (2.53%) SaaS
11 79 (1.78%) GitHub Actions
12 65 (1.47%) Azure Data Factory
13 64 (1.44%) Amazon S3
13 64 (1.44%) AWS Lambda
14 62 (1.40%) Snowflake
15 61 (1.38%) OpenShift
16 59 (1.33%) Dynamics 365
17 56 (1.26%) Power Automate
18 48 (1.08%) PowerApps
19 45 (1.02%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 169 (3.81%) DNS
2 144 (3.25%) Firewall
3 100 (2.26%) TCP/IP
4 99 (2.23%) VPN
5 88 (1.99%) DHCP
6 85 (1.92%) WAN
7 77 (1.74%) Network Security
8 68 (1.53%) LAN
9 62 (1.40%) SAN
10 56 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
11 43 (0.97%) VLAN
12 39 (0.88%) BGP
13 36 (0.81%) OSPF
14 31 (0.70%) SD-WAN
15 28 (0.63%) Wireless
16 26 (0.59%) VoIP
17 23 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 19 (0.43%) Internet
19 18 (0.41%) BIG-IP
20 17 (0.38%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 276 (6.23%) Power BI
2 175 (3.95%) SQL Server
3 138 (3.12%) Data Warehouse
4 113 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
5 108 (2.44%) Relational Database
6 87 (1.96%) Metadata
7 79 (1.78%) MongoDB
8 76 (1.72%) Tableau
9 75 (1.69%) NoSQL
10 69 (1.56%) Data Lake
11 53 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
12 46 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 44 (0.99%) Oracle Database
14 43 (0.97%) Big Data
15 38 (0.86%) MySQL
16 27 (0.61%) Power Query
17 26 (0.59%) Delta Lake
18 24 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
18 24 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
18 24 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 443 (10.00%) JIRA
2 246 (5.55%) Git
3 155 (3.50%) Jenkins
4 100 (2.26%) GitLab
5 56 (1.26%) Selenium
6 32 (0.72%) Postman
7 25 (0.56%) REST Assured
8 23 (0.52%) Cucumber
9 22 (0.50%) Bitbucket
9 22 (0.50%) JUnit
10 17 (0.38%) Cypress.io
10 17 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
11 16 (0.36%) Mockito
12 14 (0.32%) SonarQube
13 12 (0.27%) Maven
13 12 (0.27%) SpecFlow
13 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
14 11 (0.25%) JMeter
14 11 (0.25%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,268 (51.20%) Social Skills
2 1,737 (39.21%) Analytical Skills
3 1,019 (23.00%) Finance
4 383 (8.65%) Public Sector
5 345 (7.79%) Banking
6 201 (4.54%) Organisational Skills
7 169 (3.81%) Retail
8 161 (3.63%) Documentation Skills
9 125 (2.82%) Legal
10 98 (2.21%) Presentation Skills
11 95 (2.14%) Influencing Skills
12 94 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 90 (2.03%) Front Office
14 83 (1.87%) Marketing
15 76 (1.72%) Manufacturing
16 74 (1.67%) Telecoms
17 68 (1.53%) Investment Banking
18 61 (1.38%) Law
19 44 (0.99%) Military
20 43 (0.97%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 652 (14.72%) Analyst
2 477 (10.77%) Developer
3 363 (8.19%) Senior
4 318 (7.18%) Architect
5 275 (6.21%) Lead
6 248 (5.60%) Business Analyst
7 209 (4.72%) Data Engineer
8 203 (4.58%) Consultant
9 167 (3.77%) Project Manager
10 121 (2.73%) IT Support
11 114 (2.57%) Data Analyst
12 112 (2.53%) Support Engineer
13 87 (1.96%) Solutions Architect
14 85 (1.92%) Software Engineer
15 84 (1.90%) Administrator
16 77 (1.74%) Java Developer
17 76 (1.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 76 (1.72%) IT Engineer
18 72 (1.63%) Support Analyst
19 71 (1.60%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (5.67%) REST
2 129 (2.91%) .NET
3 127 (2.87%) Kafka
3 127 (2.87%) SOAP
4 119 (2.69%) React
5 118 (2.66%) RESTful
6 114 (2.57%) Spring
7 100 (2.26%) CSS
8 92 (2.08%) HTML
9 91 (2.05%) Middleware
10 88 (1.99%) LDAP
11 86 (1.94%) JSON
12 85 (1.92%) Spring Boot
13 82 (1.85%) AngularJS
14 79 (1.78%) XML
15 77 (1.74%) Node.js
16 55 (1.24%) PySpark
17 54 (1.22%) OAuth
17 54 (1.22%) Web Services
18 45 (1.02%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 219 (4.94%) Product Ownership
2 206 (4.65%) Onboarding
3 166 (3.75%) Data Centre
4 159 (3.59%) Cloud Native
5 140 (3.16%) Self-Motivation
6 127 (2.87%) Analytical Mindset
7 117 (2.64%) Management Information System
8 113 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
9 104 (2.35%) Data Protection Act
10 103 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
11 93 (2.10%) Virtual Team
12 91 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
13 82 (1.85%) Data Structures
14 65 (1.47%) Security Posture
15 53 (1.20%) AI Agents
16 47 (1.06%) Mobile App
17 46 (1.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 45 (1.02%) Algorithms
19 44 (0.99%) Driving Licence
20 42 (0.95%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 513 (11.58%) Windows
2 254 (5.73%) Linux
3 106 (2.39%) Windows 10
4 91 (2.05%) Windows Server
5 86 (1.94%) Unix
6 79 (1.78%) Apple iOS
7 76 (1.72%) Android
8 66 (1.49%) Mac OS
9 45 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.47%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.36%) VMS
12 14 (0.32%) CentOS
13 13 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
14 10 (0.23%) zOS
15 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.18%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.16%) Debian
17 5 (0.11%) Solaris
17 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.090%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,190 (26.86%) Agile
2 717 (16.19%) Continuous Improvement
3 698 (15.76%) CI/CD
4 672 (15.17%) DevOps
5 663 (14.97%) Stakeholder Management
6 506 (11.42%) Decision-Making
7 503 (11.35%) AI
8 497 (11.22%) Migration
9 478 (10.79%) Analytics
10 418 (9.44%) Project Management
11 389 (8.78%) Data Modelling
12 382 (8.62%) ITIL
13 378 (8.53%) Customer Service
14 372 (8.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 359 (8.10%) Validation
16 355 (8.01%) Business Intelligence
17 331 (7.47%) Test Automation
18 323 (7.29%) Change Management
19 307 (6.93%) Scrum
20 277 (6.25%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 795 (17.95%) Python
2 794 (17.92%) SQL
3 338 (7.63%) Java
4 271 (6.12%) PowerShell
5 220 (4.97%) JavaScript
6 169 (3.81%) C#
7 114 (2.57%) TypeScript
8 103 (2.33%) Bash
9 69 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 62 (1.40%) C++
11 42 (0.95%) Shell Script
12 41 (0.93%) Go
13 36 (0.81%) C
14 33 (0.74%) T-SQL
15 32 (0.72%) Bicep
16 31 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 31 (0.70%) R
17 29 (0.65%) Apex Code
18 25 (0.56%) Perl
19 23 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 983 (22.19%) Security Cleared
2 656 (14.81%) SC Cleared
3 540 (12.19%) Degree
4 193 (4.36%) DV Cleared
5 170 (3.84%) Computer Science Degree
6 117 (2.64%) BPSS Clearance
7 114 (2.57%) Microsoft Certification
8 107 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
9 88 (1.99%) CISSP
10 78 (1.76%) PMP
11 66 (1.49%) PMI Certification
12 62 (1.40%) CCNA
13 59 (1.33%) A+ Certification
13 59 (1.33%) Azure Certification
13 59 (1.33%) CISM
14 54 (1.22%) Network+ Certification
15 52 (1.17%) Master's Degree
16 43 (0.97%) MCSE
17 32 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
18 29 (0.65%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 298 (6.73%) Data Quality
2 232 (5.24%) QA
3 135 (3.05%) GDPR
4 87 (1.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 81 (1.83%) SLA
6 79 (1.78%) PMO
7 75 (1.69%) Accessibility
8 74 (1.67%) NIST
9 40 (0.90%) GRC
10 25 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 22 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.47%) 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
1 337 (7.61%) Active Directory
2 273 (6.16%) Docker
3 101 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.84%) vSphere
5 34 (0.77%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.68%) Hyper-V
7 25 (0.56%) VMware ESXi
8 24 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
9 19 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
10 18 (0.41%) vCloud
11 17 (0.38%) Firmware
12 11 (0.25%) Squid
13 7 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.14%) IAG
15 4 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.090%) RACF
15 4 (0.090%) Snort
16 3 (0.068%) ACF2
16 3 (0.068%) NFS
16 3 (0.068%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 334 (7.54%) Kubernetes
2 232 (5.24%) Terraform
3 155 (3.50%) Ansible
4 120 (2.71%) Microsoft Intune
5 98 (2.21%) Grafana
6 82 (1.85%) Prometheus
7 66 (1.49%) SCCM
8 44 (0.99%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.84%) FortiGate
10 32 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.59%) Kibana
12 23 (0.52%) Control-M
13 22 (0.50%) Puppet
14 21 (0.47%) Nessus
15 19 (0.43%) Argo
16 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 15 (0.34%) SCOM
18 11 (0.25%) WSUS
19 9 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 816 (18.42%) Microsoft
2 300 (6.77%) Oracle
3 242 (5.46%) SAP
4 210 (4.74%) ServiceNow
5 176 (3.97%) VMware
6 124 (2.80%) Databricks
7 117 (2.64%) Google
8 116 (2.62%) Splunk
9 104 (2.35%) Cisco
10 102 (2.30%) Salesforce
11 66 (1.49%) CyberArk
12 61 (1.38%) BeyondTrust
12 61 (1.38%) Dell
12 61 (1.38%) Workday
13 58 (1.31%) Red Hat
14 46 (1.04%) Adobe
15 43 (0.97%) Dynatrace
16 42 (0.95%) Citrix
17 41 (0.93%) F5
17 41 (0.93%) MuleSoft