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

6 months to
22 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 4,588 4,169 4,021
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.57% 16.99% 10.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.58% 18.66% 12.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,839 2,620 2,466
10th Percentile £280 £256 £213
25th Percentile £393 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £509
% change year-on-year -4.00% -1.72% -3.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 202 366
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.90 £15.62 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.81 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% +26.51% -63.84%
75th Percentile £61.55 £44.31 £40.19
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £66.94
UK median hourly rate £21.63 £23.90 £17.50
% change year-on-year -9.52% +36.57% -63.16%

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 33,784 22,346 32,054
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.23% 91.09% 86.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,591 14,669 21,080
10th Percentile £315 £310 £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 £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.89% -0.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,113 899 2,221
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.82 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.51 £15.89
Median hourly rate £42.00 £31.64 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.74% -9.60% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67.25 £64.50 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.10 £72.45
UK median hourly rate £39.00 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +30.00% -14.29% -6.67%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 -10 1,980 £513 -2.38% 755
North of England -5 786 £450 -5.26% 559
South East -5 665 £492 -1.60% 732
Midlands -5 501 £450 +2.10% 441
North West -5 378 £424 -12.95% 301
Yorkshire -5 361 £450 -5.21% 175
West Midlands -6 344 £475 +5.20% 246
South West 0 315 £500 - 293
East of England -4 207 £450 - 271
East Midlands -1 157 £420 +13.59% 195
North East -1 57 £425 -16.26% 91
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
1 204 (4.45%) Confluence
2 132 (2.88%) SharePoint
3 102 (2.22%) Microsoft Exchange
4 65 (1.42%) Apache Spark
5 51 (1.11%) Apache
6 40 (0.87%) SAS
7 33 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
8 24 (0.52%) CMS
9 18 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.26%) nginx
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.15%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.15%) JBoss
14 6 (0.13%) Camunda
14 6 (0.13%) CICS
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 278 (6.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 215 (4.69%) Microsoft Office
3 102 (2.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.57%) Microsoft Project
5 68 (1.48%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 20 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Trello
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) AutoCAD
11 5 (0.11%) Maya
11 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.087%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.065%) CATIA
13 3 (0.065%) CPLEX
13 3 (0.065%) InVision
13 3 (0.065%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.065%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 85 (1.85%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.41%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.33%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 14 (0.31%) NEC Housing
7 13 (0.28%) Workday HCM
8 11 (0.24%) iTrent
8 11 (0.24%) NetSuite
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
10 9 (0.20%) Shopify
10 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
11 8 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
11 8 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
11 8 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
12 7 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 7 (0.15%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 959 (20.90%) Azure
2 711 (15.50%) AWS
3 348 (7.59%) Power Platform
4 319 (6.95%) GCP
5 313 (6.82%) Microsoft 365
6 218 (4.75%) Azure DevOps
7 195 (4.25%) GitHub
8 155 (3.38%) Entra ID
9 139 (3.03%) Serverless
10 119 (2.59%) SaaS
11 95 (2.07%) GitHub Actions
12 84 (1.83%) Amazon S3
12 84 (1.83%) AWS Lambda
13 72 (1.57%) OpenShift
14 69 (1.50%) Azure Data Factory
15 63 (1.37%) Snowflake
16 60 (1.31%) Power Automate
17 54 (1.18%) Dynamics 365
18 52 (1.13%) Google Workspace
19 50 (1.09%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 168 (3.66%) Firewall
2 162 (3.53%) DNS
3 106 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 103 (2.24%) Network Security
5 99 (2.16%) VPN
6 84 (1.83%) DHCP
6 84 (1.83%) WAN
7 65 (1.42%) LAN
8 54 (1.18%) SAN
9 51 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
10 47 (1.02%) BGP
11 46 (1.00%) VLAN
12 36 (0.78%) OSPF
13 30 (0.65%) VoIP
14 28 (0.61%) SD-WAN
15 24 (0.52%) Internet
15 24 (0.52%) Wireless
16 22 (0.48%) VXLAN
17 19 (0.41%) MPLS
18 18 (0.39%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 275 (5.99%) Power BI
2 176 (3.84%) SQL Server
3 134 (2.92%) Data Warehouse
4 116 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
5 103 (2.24%) Relational Database
6 93 (2.03%) Metadata
7 85 (1.85%) MongoDB
8 82 (1.79%) NoSQL
9 79 (1.72%) Tableau
10 70 (1.53%) Data Lake
11 58 (1.26%) Oracle Reports
12 53 (1.16%) Big Data
13 47 (1.02%) Oracle Database
14 44 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 40 (0.87%) MySQL
16 31 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
16 31 (0.68%) Power Query
17 28 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
18 27 (0.59%) BigQuery
19 26 (0.57%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 466 (10.16%) JIRA
2 269 (5.86%) Git
3 189 (4.12%) Jenkins
4 124 (2.70%) GitLab
5 63 (1.37%) Selenium
6 34 (0.74%) Postman
7 30 (0.65%) JUnit
8 28 (0.61%) Bitbucket
9 26 (0.57%) Cucumber
10 21 (0.46%) Maven
11 19 (0.41%) Cypress.io
11 19 (0.41%) REST Assured
11 19 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
12 17 (0.37%) Mockito
13 16 (0.35%) JMeter
14 14 (0.31%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.31%) SpecFlow
15 13 (0.28%) CircleCI
16 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
16 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 2,410 (52.53%) Social Skills
2 1,788 (38.97%) Analytical Skills
3 1,073 (23.39%) Finance
4 421 (9.18%) Public Sector
5 366 (7.98%) Banking
6 198 (4.32%) Organisational Skills
7 167 (3.64%) Retail
8 164 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
9 145 (3.16%) Legal
10 123 (2.68%) Influencing Skills
11 120 (2.62%) Presentation Skills
12 102 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 93 (2.03%) Front Office
14 81 (1.77%) Marketing
15 69 (1.50%) Telecoms
16 64 (1.39%) Investment Banking
17 61 (1.33%) Manufacturing
18 52 (1.13%) Law
19 49 (1.07%) Military
20 46 (1.00%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 668 (14.56%) Analyst
2 530 (11.55%) Developer
3 390 (8.50%) Senior
4 341 (7.43%) Architect
5 296 (6.45%) Lead
6 265 (5.78%) Business Analyst
7 209 (4.56%) Data Engineer
8 208 (4.53%) Consultant
9 177 (3.86%) Project Manager
10 111 (2.42%) IT Support
11 104 (2.27%) Data Analyst
12 103 (2.24%) Support Engineer
13 92 (2.01%) Java Developer
14 91 (1.98%) Administrator
15 90 (1.96%) Solutions Architect
16 87 (1.90%) Software Engineer
17 74 (1.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 74 (1.61%) IT Analyst
17 74 (1.61%) Python Developer
18 69 (1.50%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (5.84%) REST
2 143 (3.12%) Kafka
3 139 (3.03%) SOAP
4 132 (2.88%) RESTful
5 130 (2.83%) .NET
6 122 (2.66%) Spring
7 120 (2.62%) React
8 98 (2.14%) Node.js
9 94 (2.05%) CSS
10 93 (2.03%) AngularJS
11 92 (2.01%) Spring Boot
12 91 (1.98%) HTML
12 91 (1.98%) JSON
12 91 (1.98%) LDAP
13 88 (1.92%) XML
14 81 (1.77%) Middleware
15 69 (1.50%) OAuth
16 58 (1.26%) PySpark
17 56 (1.22%) Oracle Fusion
18 53 (1.16%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 241 (5.25%) Product Ownership
2 205 (4.47%) Onboarding
3 174 (3.79%) Cloud Native
4 149 (3.25%) Data Centre
5 137 (2.99%) Management Information System
6 135 (2.94%) Self-Motivation
7 125 (2.72%) Analytical Mindset
8 101 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
9 99 (2.16%) Distributed Systems
10 94 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
11 93 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
12 91 (1.98%) Data Structures
13 83 (1.81%) Virtual Team
14 68 (1.48%) Security Posture
15 60 (1.31%) Hybrid Cloud
16 55 (1.20%) Mobile App
17 52 (1.13%) Algorithms
17 52 (1.13%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 46 (1.00%) AI Agents
19 43 (0.94%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 522 (11.38%) Windows
2 280 (6.10%) Linux
3 108 (2.35%) Windows 10
4 90 (1.96%) Windows Server
5 82 (1.79%) Unix
6 80 (1.74%) Android
7 73 (1.59%) Apple iOS
8 58 (1.26%) Mac OS
9 56 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.41%) VMS
11 17 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.26%) CentOS
13 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.20%) zOS
15 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
16 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.13%) Debian
18 4 (0.087%) AIX
18 4 (0.087%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,287 (28.05%) Agile
2 776 (16.91%) CI/CD
3 723 (15.76%) Continuous Improvement
3 723 (15.76%) DevOps
4 688 (15.00%) Stakeholder Management
5 538 (11.73%) Analytics
6 508 (11.07%) Decision-Making
7 507 (11.05%) Migration
8 494 (10.77%) AI
9 445 (9.70%) Project Management
10 403 (8.78%) Data Modelling
11 390 (8.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 364 (7.93%) Test Automation
13 363 (7.91%) Validation
14 362 (7.89%) Business Intelligence
15 361 (7.87%) ITIL
16 357 (7.78%) Customer Service
17 340 (7.41%) Change Management
17 340 (7.41%) Scrum
18 310 (6.76%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 887 (19.33%) Python
2 827 (18.03%) SQL
3 377 (8.22%) Java
4 302 (6.58%) PowerShell
5 234 (5.10%) JavaScript
6 171 (3.73%) C#
7 145 (3.16%) TypeScript
8 134 (2.92%) Bash
9 79 (1.72%) PL/SQL
10 57 (1.24%) C++
11 45 (0.98%) Go
12 42 (0.92%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.85%) Bicep
14 37 (0.81%) C
15 36 (0.78%) R
16 34 (0.74%) Perl
17 33 (0.72%) T-SQL
18 30 (0.65%) Apex Code
19 29 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 29 (0.63%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,035 (22.56%) Security Cleared
2 717 (15.63%) SC Cleared
3 569 (12.40%) Degree
4 206 (4.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 187 (4.08%) DV Cleared
6 129 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (2.24%) Cisco Certification
8 100 (2.18%) CISSP
8 100 (2.18%) Microsoft Certification
9 89 (1.94%) PMP
10 78 (1.70%) PMI Certification
11 68 (1.48%) Master's Degree
12 64 (1.39%) Azure Certification
13 62 (1.35%) CISM
14 55 (1.20%) CCNA
15 45 (0.98%) A+ Certification
16 41 (0.89%) Network+ Certification
17 38 (0.83%) CCNP
17 38 (0.83%) MCSE
18 30 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 301 (6.56%) Data Quality
2 280 (6.10%) QA
3 154 (3.36%) GDPR
4 93 (2.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 85 (1.85%) PMO
6 84 (1.83%) NIST
7 72 (1.57%) Accessibility
8 67 (1.46%) SLA
9 45 (0.98%) GRC
10 28 (0.61%) PCI DSS
11 26 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.46%) PSD2
13 21 (0.46%) WCAG
14 18 (0.39%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.33%) HIPAA
15 15 (0.33%) HL7
16 14 (0.31%) NCSC
17 13 (0.28%) IFRS
18 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 355 (7.74%) Active Directory
2 335 (7.30%) Docker
3 112 (2.44%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.85%) vSphere
5 31 (0.68%) VMware NSX
6 29 (0.63%) Hyper-V
7 18 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.37%) Firmware
8 17 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.24%) RACF
9 11 (0.24%) Squid
9 11 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
10 10 (0.22%) vCloud
11 9 (0.20%) ACF2
12 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.13%) IAG
14 4 (0.087%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.087%) NFS
14 4 (0.087%) Snort
Systems Management
1 398 (8.67%) Kubernetes
2 268 (5.84%) Terraform
3 164 (3.57%) Ansible
4 123 (2.68%) Microsoft Intune
5 104 (2.27%) Grafana
6 80 (1.74%) Prometheus
7 76 (1.66%) SCCM
8 39 (0.85%) vCenter Server
9 33 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
10 32 (0.70%) FortiGate
11 29 (0.63%) Kibana
12 28 (0.61%) Puppet
13 27 (0.59%) Argo
14 23 (0.50%) Control-M
15 22 (0.48%) Nessus
16 19 (0.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
18 15 (0.33%) vRealize
19 14 (0.31%) WSUS
20 11 (0.24%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 863 (18.81%) Microsoft
2 318 (6.93%) Oracle
3 235 (5.12%) SAP
4 204 (4.45%) ServiceNow
5 191 (4.16%) VMware
6 145 (3.16%) Google
7 143 (3.12%) Databricks
8 117 (2.55%) Cisco
9 116 (2.53%) Splunk
10 104 (2.27%) Salesforce
11 75 (1.63%) Red Hat
12 69 (1.50%) CyberArk
13 64 (1.39%) BeyondTrust
14 60 (1.31%) Workday
15 59 (1.29%) Citrix
16 58 (1.26%) Dell
17 47 (1.02%) Adobe
18 42 (0.92%) HP
18 42 (0.92%) IBM
18 42 (0.92%) Informatica