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

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,536 4,166 4,009
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.13% 17.14% 10.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.12% 18.79% 12.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,784 2,611 2,438
10th Percentile £265 £250 £240
25th Percentile £388 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £594 £606 £638
90th Percentile £725 £706 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -4.00% -1.96% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 265 207 370
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.35 £14.04
Median hourly rate £22.79 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.91% +26.51% -65.00%
75th Percentile £55.75 £43.19 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £63.75
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £22.32 £17.00
% change year-on-year -4.79% +31.29% -64.88%

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 34,571 22,170 31,878
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.83% 91.23% 86.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,077 14,511 20,880
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £501 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.70% -1.00% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,146 929 2,248
10th Percentile £15.36 £14.50 £12.91
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £46.65 £29.07 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.47% -20.36% -2.25%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.40 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +1.39%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 1,932 £513 -2.38% 1,005
North of England -7 753 £450 -7.98% 630
South East -7 654 £488 -2.50% 771
Midlands -5 523 £450 +0.45% 404
North West -5 364 £410 -16.16% 359
West Midlands -5 357 £474 +2.49% 249
Yorkshire -6 343 £460 -5.15% 202
South West -1 323 £500 - 272
East of England -4 216 £450 - 256
East Midlands 0 165 £443 +17.00% 156
North East -9 53 £425 -11.23% 74
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
1 196 (4.32%) Confluence
2 132 (2.91%) SharePoint
3 85 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 58 (1.28%) Apache Spark
5 47 (1.04%) Apache
6 40 (0.88%) SAS
7 34 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.60%) CMS
9 19 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.26%) nginx
11 10 (0.22%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.15%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) CICS
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 3 (0.066%) OpenStack
Applications
1 268 (5.91%) Microsoft Excel
2 207 (4.56%) Microsoft Office
3 98 (2.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
5 66 (1.46%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.22%) Sketch
9 8 (0.18%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Trello
11 6 (0.13%) AutoCAD
11 6 (0.13%) Revit
12 5 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 5 (0.11%) Maya
12 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.088%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.088%) CATIA
13 4 (0.088%) CPLEX
14 3 (0.066%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 95 (2.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.44%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
4 17 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 14 (0.31%) NEC Housing
7 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 11 (0.24%) Teamcenter
8 11 (0.24%) Workday HCM
9 10 (0.22%) 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%) Oracle General Ledger
12 7 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
12 7 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 931 (20.52%) Azure
2 698 (15.39%) AWS
3 352 (7.76%) Power Platform
4 308 (6.79%) Microsoft 365
5 298 (6.57%) GCP
6 221 (4.87%) Azure DevOps
7 185 (4.08%) GitHub
8 139 (3.06%) Entra ID
9 126 (2.78%) Serverless
10 119 (2.62%) SaaS
11 91 (2.01%) GitHub Actions
12 79 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 77 (1.70%) Amazon S3
14 69 (1.52%) Azure Data Factory
15 63 (1.39%) OpenShift
15 63 (1.39%) Snowflake
16 62 (1.37%) Power Automate
17 59 (1.30%) Dynamics 365
18 48 (1.06%) Google Workspace
18 48 (1.06%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 163 (3.59%) DNS
2 153 (3.37%) Firewall
3 105 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 96 (2.12%) VPN
5 85 (1.87%) Network Security
5 85 (1.87%) WAN
6 83 (1.83%) DHCP
7 64 (1.41%) LAN
7 64 (1.41%) SAN
8 52 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
9 42 (0.93%) VLAN
10 41 (0.90%) BGP
11 36 (0.79%) OSPF
12 30 (0.66%) SD-WAN
13 25 (0.55%) VoIP
13 25 (0.55%) Wireless
14 22 (0.49%) VXLAN
15 21 (0.46%) Internet
16 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
17 17 (0.37%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (6.11%) Power BI
2 180 (3.97%) SQL Server
3 144 (3.17%) Data Warehouse
4 119 (2.62%) PostgreSQL
5 111 (2.45%) Relational Database
6 95 (2.09%) Metadata
7 76 (1.68%) MongoDB
7 76 (1.68%) NoSQL
7 76 (1.68%) Tableau
8 65 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 58 (1.28%) Oracle Reports
10 49 (1.08%) Oracle Database
10 49 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 48 (1.06%) Big Data
12 45 (0.99%) MySQL
13 32 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
14 31 (0.68%) Power Query
15 27 (0.60%) Pentaho
16 26 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
16 26 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 456 (10.05%) JIRA
2 264 (5.82%) Git
3 173 (3.81%) Jenkins
4 121 (2.67%) GitLab
5 56 (1.23%) Selenium
6 32 (0.71%) Postman
7 26 (0.57%) Cucumber
8 25 (0.55%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.51%) JUnit
10 19 (0.42%) Cypress.io
10 19 (0.42%) REST Assured
11 16 (0.35%) Maven
11 16 (0.35%) Mockito
11 16 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
12 15 (0.33%) JMeter
12 15 (0.33%) SonarQube
12 15 (0.33%) SpecFlow
13 12 (0.26%) WebDriver
13 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
14 11 (0.24%) Appium
General
1 2,368 (52.20%) Social Skills
2 1,772 (39.07%) Analytical Skills
3 1,050 (23.15%) Finance
4 403 (8.88%) Public Sector
5 356 (7.85%) Banking
6 206 (4.54%) Organisational Skills
7 172 (3.79%) Retail
8 164 (3.62%) Documentation Skills
9 130 (2.87%) Legal
10 119 (2.62%) Presentation Skills
11 98 (2.16%) Influencing Skills
12 96 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 90 (1.98%) Front Office
14 82 (1.81%) Marketing
15 71 (1.57%) Telecoms
16 64 (1.41%) Investment Banking
17 62 (1.37%) Manufacturing
18 58 (1.28%) Law
19 47 (1.04%) Military
20 46 (1.01%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 667 (14.70%) Analyst
2 518 (11.42%) Developer
3 389 (8.58%) Senior
4 332 (7.32%) Architect
5 287 (6.33%) Lead
6 262 (5.78%) Business Analyst
7 214 (4.72%) Data Engineer
8 203 (4.48%) Consultant
9 175 (3.86%) Project Manager
10 113 (2.49%) IT Support
10 113 (2.49%) Support Engineer
11 107 (2.36%) Data Analyst
12 89 (1.96%) Solutions Architect
13 84 (1.85%) Java Developer
13 84 (1.85%) Software Engineer
14 83 (1.83%) Administrator
15 78 (1.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 77 (1.70%) IT Engineer
17 71 (1.57%) Network Engineer
18 70 (1.54%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (5.53%) REST
2 137 (3.02%) Kafka
3 130 (2.87%) SOAP
4 127 (2.80%) .NET
5 124 (2.73%) RESTful
6 121 (2.67%) React
7 116 (2.56%) Spring
8 99 (2.18%) LDAP
9 98 (2.16%) CSS
10 93 (2.05%) Node.js
11 92 (2.03%) AngularJS
12 91 (2.01%) HTML
12 91 (2.01%) Spring Boot
13 89 (1.96%) Middleware
14 84 (1.85%) JSON
15 83 (1.83%) XML
16 61 (1.34%) OAuth
17 58 (1.28%) PySpark
18 53 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
19 51 (1.12%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 229 (5.05%) Product Ownership
2 214 (4.72%) Onboarding
3 170 (3.75%) Cloud Native
4 166 (3.66%) Data Centre
5 137 (3.02%) Self-Motivation
6 131 (2.89%) Analytical Mindset
7 126 (2.78%) Management Information System
8 105 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
8 105 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
9 104 (2.29%) Data Protection Act
10 89 (1.96%) Data Structures
10 89 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
10 89 (1.96%) Virtual Team
11 62 (1.37%) Security Posture
12 58 (1.28%) Mobile App
13 53 (1.17%) Hybrid Cloud
14 51 (1.12%) AI Agents
15 47 (1.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 44 (0.97%) Algorithms
17 43 (0.95%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 514 (11.33%) Windows
2 270 (5.95%) Linux
3 104 (2.29%) Windows 10
4 88 (1.94%) Android
4 88 (1.94%) Unix
5 84 (1.85%) Apple iOS
5 84 (1.85%) Windows Server
6 61 (1.34%) Mac OS
7 46 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 21 (0.46%) Ubuntu
9 19 (0.42%) VMS
10 15 (0.33%) CentOS
11 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 9 (0.20%) zOS
13 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.15%) Debian
14 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.088%) AIX
15 4 (0.088%) Windows 8
15 4 (0.088%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,249 (27.54%) Agile
2 753 (16.60%) CI/CD
3 714 (15.74%) Continuous Improvement
4 711 (15.67%) DevOps
5 673 (14.84%) Stakeholder Management
6 512 (11.29%) Decision-Making
6 512 (11.29%) Migration
7 506 (11.16%) Analytics
8 505 (11.13%) AI
9 431 (9.50%) Project Management
10 406 (8.95%) Data Modelling
11 374 (8.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 370 (8.16%) Validation
13 368 (8.11%) ITIL
14 365 (8.05%) Business Intelligence
15 361 (7.96%) Customer Service
16 357 (7.87%) Test Automation
17 331 (7.30%) Change Management
18 323 (7.12%) Scrum
19 291 (6.42%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 847 (18.67%) Python
2 824 (18.17%) SQL
3 362 (7.98%) Java
4 286 (6.31%) PowerShell
5 238 (5.25%) JavaScript
6 171 (3.77%) C#
7 139 (3.06%) TypeScript
8 112 (2.47%) Bash
9 83 (1.83%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.34%) C++
11 44 (0.97%) Go
11 44 (0.97%) Shell Script
12 37 (0.82%) C
13 35 (0.77%) Bicep
13 35 (0.77%) R
13 35 (0.77%) T-SQL
14 32 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 31 (0.68%) Apex Code
16 27 (0.60%) Perl
17 24 (0.53%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,029 (22.69%) Security Cleared
2 701 (15.45%) SC Cleared
3 547 (12.06%) Degree
4 191 (4.21%) Computer Science Degree
5 190 (4.19%) DV Cleared
6 124 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
7 108 (2.38%) Cisco Certification
7 108 (2.38%) Microsoft Certification
8 91 (2.01%) CISSP
9 82 (1.81%) PMP
10 72 (1.59%) PMI Certification
11 63 (1.39%) CISM
12 62 (1.37%) Azure Certification
13 60 (1.32%) CCNA
14 59 (1.30%) Master's Degree
15 56 (1.23%) A+ Certification
16 53 (1.17%) Network+ Certification
17 43 (0.95%) MCSE
18 31 (0.68%) CCNP
19 30 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 305 (6.72%) Data Quality
2 266 (5.86%) QA
3 148 (3.26%) GDPR
4 97 (2.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 86 (1.90%) PMO
6 84 (1.85%) NIST
7 72 (1.59%) Accessibility
8 67 (1.48%) SLA
9 42 (0.93%) GRC
10 27 (0.60%) PCI DSS
11 24 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
11 24 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.42%) ISO 20022
12 19 (0.42%) PSD2
13 18 (0.40%) WCAG
14 15 (0.33%) NCSC
15 14 (0.31%) HIPAA
15 14 (0.31%) IFRS
16 13 (0.29%) HL7
17 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 345 (7.61%) Active Directory
2 300 (6.61%) Docker
3 108 (2.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.88%) vSphere
5 33 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.66%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.44%) Firmware
9 18 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
10 13 (0.29%) vCloud
11 11 (0.24%) RACF
11 11 (0.24%) Squid
12 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
13 9 (0.20%) ACF2
14 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.13%) IAG
16 4 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.088%) NFS
16 4 (0.088%) Snort
Systems Management
1 370 (8.16%) Kubernetes
2 247 (5.45%) Terraform
3 158 (3.48%) Ansible
4 116 (2.56%) Microsoft Intune
5 100 (2.20%) Grafana
6 77 (1.70%) Prometheus
7 70 (1.54%) SCCM
8 42 (0.93%) vCenter Server
9 36 (0.79%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.60%) Kibana
12 24 (0.53%) Argo
12 24 (0.53%) Puppet
13 23 (0.51%) Control-M
14 20 (0.44%) Nessus
15 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 13 (0.29%) WSUS
18 12 (0.26%) CA Endevor
18 12 (0.26%) SCOM
Vendors
1 833 (18.36%) Microsoft
2 320 (7.05%) Oracle
3 239 (5.27%) SAP
4 196 (4.32%) ServiceNow
5 185 (4.08%) VMware
6 136 (3.00%) Databricks
7 133 (2.93%) Google
8 116 (2.56%) Splunk
9 110 (2.43%) Cisco
10 103 (2.27%) Salesforce
11 75 (1.65%) CyberArk
12 69 (1.52%) BeyondTrust
13 63 (1.39%) Dell
14 60 (1.32%) Red Hat
15 58 (1.28%) Workday
16 49 (1.08%) Citrix
17 45 (0.99%) Adobe
18 42 (0.93%) F5
18 42 (0.93%) Informatica
18 42 (0.93%) MuleSoft