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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -5 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,440 4,216 3,934
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.84% 17.23% 10.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.80% 18.89% 12.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,700 2,650 2,389
10th Percentile £266 £250 £250
25th Percentile £394 £400 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £502
% change year-on-year -2.50% -0.40% -4.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 281 216 375
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.39 £14.16
Median hourly rate £22.00 £22.07 £16.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.32% +33.76% -65.91%
75th Percentile £55.00 £43.69 £40.58
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.13 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £22.14 £16.50
% change year-on-year -5.15% +34.18% -65.91%

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 34,677 22,323 31,499
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.63% 91.22% 86.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,105 14,603 20,624
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £505 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,142 946 2,251
10th Percentile £15.31 £14.41 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £15.97
Median hourly rate £47.00 £29.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.07% -20.55% +0.69%
75th Percentile £67.96 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.18 £36.02
% change year-on-year +50.82% -21.77% +1.04%

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 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 18 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 18 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 -12 1,874 £520 -0.95% 1,013
North of England -7 733 £450 -8.16% 667
South East -6 651 £492 -1.60% 785
Midlands -7 498 £469 +6.59% 426
North West -7 353 £424 -13.43% 352
West Midlands -9 343 £475 +2.70% 258
Yorkshire -6 338 £470 -3.09% 230
South West -1 331 £500 -3.61% 312
East of England -3 227 £450 -3.54% 284
East Midlands -1 154 £443 +20.41% 168
North East -10 50 £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
1 197 (4.44%) Confluence
2 132 (2.97%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 54 (1.22%) Apache Spark
5 41 (0.92%) Apache
6 38 (0.86%) SAS
7 32 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
8 26 (0.59%) CMS
9 19 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 10 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 9 (0.20%) ArcGIS
13 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.16%) Camunda
14 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.11%) CICS
16 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 4 (0.090%) WebSphere
Applications
1 265 (5.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 206 (4.64%) Microsoft Office
3 97 (2.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 67 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
5 59 (1.33%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 7 (0.16%) Trello
10 6 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.14%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.14%) AutoCAD
10 6 (0.14%) Revit
11 5 (0.11%) Maya
11 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.090%) CATIA
12 4 (0.090%) CPLEX
13 3 (0.068%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.068%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 95 (2.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.47%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
6 14 (0.32%) NEC Housing
6 14 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
7 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 11 (0.25%) Teamcenter
8 11 (0.25%) Workday HCM
9 10 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
10 9 (0.20%) NetSuite
10 9 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
10 9 (0.20%) Shopify
11 8 (0.18%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.18%) SAP SD
12 7 (0.16%) Fidessa
12 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 898 (20.23%) Azure
2 676 (15.23%) AWS
3 348 (7.84%) Power Platform
4 303 (6.82%) Microsoft 365
5 280 (6.31%) GCP
6 211 (4.75%) Azure DevOps
7 179 (4.03%) GitHub
8 133 (3.00%) Entra ID
9 118 (2.66%) Serverless
10 117 (2.64%) SaaS
11 87 (1.96%) GitHub Actions
12 72 (1.62%) Amazon S3
13 70 (1.58%) AWS Lambda
14 66 (1.49%) Azure Data Factory
15 61 (1.37%) OpenShift
16 59 (1.33%) Dynamics 365
16 59 (1.33%) Snowflake
17 58 (1.31%) Power Automate
18 45 (1.01%) PowerApps
19 44 (0.99%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 166 (3.74%) DNS
2 148 (3.33%) Firewall
3 104 (2.34%) TCP/IP
4 100 (2.25%) VPN
5 87 (1.96%) DHCP
6 84 (1.89%) WAN
7 75 (1.69%) Network Security
8 65 (1.46%) LAN
9 62 (1.40%) SAN
10 54 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
11 42 (0.95%) VLAN
12 40 (0.90%) BGP
13 36 (0.81%) OSPF
14 30 (0.68%) SD-WAN
15 25 (0.56%) Wireless
16 23 (0.52%) VoIP
17 22 (0.50%) VXLAN
18 19 (0.43%) Internet
19 18 (0.41%) BIG-IP
20 17 (0.38%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 272 (6.13%) Power BI
2 177 (3.99%) SQL Server
3 138 (3.11%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
5 111 (2.50%) Relational Database
6 89 (2.00%) Metadata
7 78 (1.76%) MongoDB
8 75 (1.69%) NoSQL
9 73 (1.64%) Tableau
10 65 (1.46%) Data Lake
11 53 (1.19%) Oracle Reports
12 47 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 45 (1.01%) Big Data
13 45 (1.01%) Oracle Database
14 39 (0.88%) MySQL
15 28 (0.63%) Power Query
16 27 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
17 25 (0.56%) Delta Lake
17 25 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
17 25 (0.56%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 449 (10.11%) JIRA
2 253 (5.70%) Git
3 173 (3.90%) Jenkins
4 114 (2.57%) GitLab
5 59 (1.33%) Selenium
6 32 (0.72%) Postman
7 26 (0.59%) Cucumber
8 24 (0.54%) Bitbucket
8 24 (0.54%) REST Assured
9 22 (0.50%) JUnit
10 19 (0.43%) Cypress.io
11 17 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
12 16 (0.36%) Mockito
13 15 (0.34%) Maven
14 14 (0.32%) JMeter
14 14 (0.32%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.32%) SpecFlow
15 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
15 12 (0.27%) Zephyr
16 11 (0.25%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,299 (51.78%) Social Skills
2 1,730 (38.96%) Analytical Skills
3 1,024 (23.06%) Finance
4 394 (8.87%) Public Sector
5 340 (7.66%) Banking
6 202 (4.55%) Organisational Skills
7 167 (3.76%) Retail
8 163 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
9 127 (2.86%) Legal
10 108 (2.43%) Presentation Skills
11 92 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
12 90 (2.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 88 (1.98%) Front Office
14 82 (1.85%) Marketing
15 72 (1.62%) Telecoms
16 66 (1.49%) Manufacturing
17 64 (1.44%) Investment Banking
18 58 (1.31%) Law
19 49 (1.10%) Military
20 43 (0.97%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 645 (14.53%) Analyst
2 497 (11.19%) Developer
3 385 (8.67%) Senior
4 318 (7.16%) Architect
5 281 (6.33%) Lead
6 246 (5.54%) Business Analyst
7 210 (4.73%) Data Engineer
8 199 (4.48%) Consultant
9 170 (3.83%) Project Manager
10 115 (2.59%) IT Support
11 111 (2.50%) Support Engineer
12 108 (2.43%) Data Analyst
13 88 (1.98%) Software Engineer
14 86 (1.94%) Solutions Architect
15 82 (1.85%) Java Developer
16 78 (1.76%) Administrator
17 77 (1.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 75 (1.69%) IT Engineer
19 72 (1.62%) Network Engineer
20 69 (1.55%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (5.63%) REST
2 131 (2.95%) Kafka
3 127 (2.86%) SOAP
4 124 (2.79%) .NET
5 120 (2.70%) Spring
6 118 (2.66%) RESTful
7 116 (2.61%) React
8 100 (2.25%) CSS
9 97 (2.18%) LDAP
10 92 (2.07%) HTML
10 92 (2.07%) Spring Boot
11 89 (2.00%) Middleware
12 88 (1.98%) AngularJS
13 86 (1.94%) Node.js
14 84 (1.89%) JSON
15 80 (1.80%) XML
16 58 (1.31%) PySpark
17 56 (1.26%) OAuth
18 52 (1.17%) Web Services
19 47 (1.06%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 215 (4.84%) Product Ownership
2 211 (4.75%) Onboarding
3 166 (3.74%) Data Centre
4 165 (3.72%) Cloud Native
5 135 (3.04%) Self-Motivation
6 127 (2.86%) Analytical Mindset
7 121 (2.73%) Management Information System
8 104 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
8 104 (2.34%) Distributed Systems
9 103 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
10 90 (2.03%) Virtual Team
11 89 (2.00%) Data Structures
12 86 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
13 63 (1.42%) Security Posture
14 51 (1.15%) Mobile App
15 50 (1.13%) AI Agents
16 47 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
17 46 (1.04%) Algorithms
18 45 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 43 (0.97%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 507 (11.42%) Windows
2 261 (5.88%) Linux
3 105 (2.36%) Windows 10
4 86 (1.94%) Windows Server
5 84 (1.89%) Unix
6 81 (1.82%) Android
6 81 (1.82%) Apple iOS
7 66 (1.49%) Mac OS
8 46 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 22 (0.50%) Ubuntu
10 15 (0.34%) CentOS
10 15 (0.34%) VMS
11 13 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
12 8 (0.18%) Windows 7
12 8 (0.18%) zOS
13 7 (0.16%) Debian
14 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.090%) Rocky
15 4 (0.090%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,204 (27.12%) Agile
2 727 (16.37%) CI/CD
3 705 (15.88%) Continuous Improvement
4 690 (15.54%) DevOps
5 653 (14.71%) Stakeholder Management
6 499 (11.24%) Decision-Making
7 497 (11.19%) Migration
8 496 (11.17%) AI
9 480 (10.81%) Analytics
10 418 (9.41%) Project Management
11 394 (8.87%) Data Modelling
12 373 (8.40%) ITIL
13 366 (8.24%) Customer Service
14 363 (8.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 356 (8.02%) Validation
16 352 (7.93%) Business Intelligence
17 351 (7.91%) Test Automation
18 322 (7.25%) Change Management
19 316 (7.12%) Scrum
20 284 (6.40%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 822 (18.51%) Python
2 795 (17.91%) SQL
3 353 (7.95%) Java
4 277 (6.24%) PowerShell
5 226 (5.09%) JavaScript
6 167 (3.76%) C#
7 127 (2.86%) TypeScript
8 111 (2.50%) Bash
9 73 (1.64%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.37%) C++
11 42 (0.95%) Go
12 41 (0.92%) Shell Script
13 37 (0.83%) C
14 35 (0.79%) T-SQL
15 34 (0.77%) Bicep
16 32 (0.72%) R
17 31 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 28 (0.63%) Apex Code
19 26 (0.59%) Perl
20 23 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,001 (22.55%) Security Cleared
2 672 (15.14%) SC Cleared
3 546 (12.30%) Degree
4 194 (4.37%) DV Cleared
5 183 (4.12%) Computer Science Degree
6 120 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
7 109 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
8 108 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
9 89 (2.00%) CISSP
10 81 (1.82%) PMP
11 68 (1.53%) PMI Certification
12 60 (1.35%) CCNA
12 60 (1.35%) CISM
13 59 (1.33%) Azure Certification
14 58 (1.31%) Master's Degree
15 56 (1.26%) A+ Certification
16 54 (1.22%) Network+ Certification
17 43 (0.97%) MCSE
18 31 (0.70%) CCNP
19 28 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 295 (6.64%) Data Quality
2 248 (5.59%) QA
3 142 (3.20%) GDPR
4 93 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 83 (1.87%) NIST
6 78 (1.76%) PMO
7 73 (1.64%) Accessibility
8 71 (1.60%) SLA
9 44 (0.99%) GRC
10 25 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 23 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
11 23 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.45%) ISO 20022
13 17 (0.38%) PSD2
14 15 (0.34%) NCSC
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
1 340 (7.66%) Active Directory
2 293 (6.60%) Docker
3 103 (2.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.79%) vSphere
5 34 (0.77%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.68%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
9 19 (0.43%) Firmware
9 19 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
10 16 (0.36%) vCloud
11 11 (0.25%) Squid
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.14%) IAG
14 5 (0.11%) RACF
15 4 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.090%) NFS
15 4 (0.090%) Snort
16 3 (0.068%) ACF2
16 3 (0.068%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 351 (7.91%) Kubernetes
2 236 (5.32%) Terraform
3 159 (3.58%) Ansible
4 115 (2.59%) Microsoft Intune
5 103 (2.32%) Grafana
6 82 (1.85%) Prometheus
7 66 (1.49%) SCCM
8 41 (0.92%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.83%) FortiGate
10 34 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.59%) Kibana
12 23 (0.52%) Puppet
13 22 (0.50%) Control-M
14 21 (0.47%) Argo
15 20 (0.45%) Nessus
16 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 13 (0.29%) SCOM
19 11 (0.25%) WSUS
20 10 (0.23%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 816 (18.38%) Microsoft
2 310 (6.98%) Oracle
3 242 (5.45%) SAP
4 202 (4.55%) ServiceNow
5 179 (4.03%) VMware
6 134 (3.02%) Databricks
7 121 (2.73%) Splunk
8 119 (2.68%) Google
9 107 (2.41%) Cisco
10 100 (2.25%) Salesforce
11 72 (1.62%) CyberArk
12 67 (1.51%) BeyondTrust
13 61 (1.37%) Dell
14 60 (1.35%) Workday
15 59 (1.33%) Red Hat
16 45 (1.01%) Adobe
16 45 (1.01%) Citrix
17 43 (0.97%) F5
18 42 (0.95%) MuleSoft
19 41 (0.92%) Dynatrace