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

6 months to
13 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 4,426 4,164 3,961
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.98% 17.26% 10.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.97% 18.92% 12.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,705 2,611 2,405
10th Percentile £263 £250 £234
25th Percentile £388 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £598 £606 £638
90th Percentile £725 £704 £738
UK median daily rate £484 £500 £502
% change year-on-year -3.30% -0.40% -4.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 271 208 369
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.25 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.21 £22.07 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.63% +26.11% -65.00%
75th Percentile £55.38 £39.35 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.88 £63.75
UK median hourly rate £21.13 £22.14 £16.50
% change year-on-year -4.58% +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 34,138 22,003 31,618
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.68% 91.23% 86.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,766 14,379 20,694
10th Percentile £319 £308 £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 £618 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £505 £516 £525
% change year-on-year -2.13% -1.71% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,120 924 2,243
10th Percentile £15.31 £14.42 £12.88
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.47 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £29.02 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.96% -20.49% -2.25%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.60 £36.50
% change year-on-year +48.60% -21.64% +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 13 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 13 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 13 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 1,881 £520 -0.95% 969
North of England -8 734 £450 -7.98% 667
South East -7 641 £492 -1.60% 754
Midlands -6 499 £469 +4.69% 420
North West -6 355 £417 -14.83% 367
West Midlands -9 343 £475 +2.70% 255
Yorkshire -6 337 £463 -3.65% 223
South West -1 324 £500 -2.44% 301
East of England -3 219 £450 -1.80% 257
East Midlands -1 155 £434 +16.44% 166
North East -10 49 £425 -11.23% 84
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
1 193 (4.36%) Confluence
2 130 (2.94%) SharePoint
3 84 (1.90%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.27%) Apache Spark
5 42 (0.95%) Apache
6 40 (0.90%) SAS
7 33 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
8 25 (0.56%) CMS
9 19 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 10 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.14%) Camunda
15 6 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.11%) CICS
16 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 3 (0.068%) JBoss
Applications
1 265 (5.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 209 (4.72%) Microsoft Office
3 99 (2.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
5 60 (1.36%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 8 (0.18%) Sketch
9 7 (0.16%) Trello
10 6 (0.14%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.14%) AutoCAD
10 6 (0.14%) Revit
11 5 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
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%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 95 (2.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 23 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.45%) 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
9 10 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
9 10 (0.23%) Workday HCM
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
10 9 (0.20%) Shopify
11 8 (0.18%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
11 8 (0.18%) Remedy ITSM
11 8 (0.18%) SAP SD
12 7 (0.16%) Fidessa
12 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 893 (20.18%) Azure
2 676 (15.27%) AWS
3 346 (7.82%) Power Platform
4 300 (6.78%) Microsoft 365
5 287 (6.48%) GCP
6 209 (4.72%) Azure DevOps
7 176 (3.98%) GitHub
8 135 (3.05%) Entra ID
9 124 (2.80%) Serverless
10 116 (2.62%) SaaS
11 87 (1.97%) GitHub Actions
12 76 (1.72%) Amazon S3
13 75 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
14 65 (1.47%) Azure Data Factory
15 61 (1.38%) OpenShift
15 61 (1.38%) Snowflake
16 58 (1.31%) Dynamics 365
16 58 (1.31%) Power Automate
17 45 (1.02%) Google Workspace
18 44 (0.99%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 160 (3.62%) DNS
2 149 (3.37%) Firewall
3 101 (2.28%) TCP/IP
4 98 (2.21%) VPN
5 84 (1.90%) DHCP
5 84 (1.90%) WAN
6 77 (1.74%) Network Security
7 64 (1.45%) LAN
8 63 (1.42%) SAN
9 54 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
10 42 (0.95%) VLAN
11 40 (0.90%) BGP
12 36 (0.81%) OSPF
13 30 (0.68%) SD-WAN
14 25 (0.56%) VoIP
14 25 (0.56%) Wireless
15 22 (0.50%) VXLAN
16 21 (0.47%) Internet
17 18 (0.41%) BIG-IP
18 17 (0.38%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 272 (6.15%) Power BI
2 173 (3.91%) SQL Server
3 138 (3.12%) Data Warehouse
4 115 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
5 105 (2.37%) Relational Database
6 90 (2.03%) Metadata
7 74 (1.67%) NoSQL
8 72 (1.63%) MongoDB
8 72 (1.63%) Tableau
9 64 (1.45%) Data Lake
10 55 (1.24%) Oracle Reports
11 46 (1.04%) Big Data
11 46 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 45 (1.02%) Oracle Database
13 40 (0.90%) MySQL
14 30 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
14 30 (0.68%) Power Query
15 27 (0.61%) Pentaho
16 26 (0.59%) BigQuery
17 25 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 451 (10.19%) JIRA
2 256 (5.78%) Git
3 169 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 119 (2.69%) GitLab
5 56 (1.27%) Selenium
6 32 (0.72%) Postman
7 26 (0.59%) Cucumber
8 25 (0.56%) Bitbucket
9 22 (0.50%) JUnit
10 19 (0.43%) Cypress.io
10 19 (0.43%) REST Assured
11 16 (0.36%) Maven
11 16 (0.36%) Mockito
11 16 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
12 15 (0.34%) JMeter
12 15 (0.34%) SonarQube
12 15 (0.34%) SpecFlow
13 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
13 12 (0.27%) Zephyr
14 11 (0.25%) Appium
General
1 2,288 (51.69%) Social Skills
2 1,721 (38.88%) Analytical Skills
3 1,020 (23.05%) Finance
4 396 (8.95%) Public Sector
5 344 (7.77%) Banking
6 202 (4.56%) Organisational Skills
7 169 (3.82%) Retail
8 158 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
9 128 (2.89%) Legal
10 112 (2.53%) Presentation Skills
11 93 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 92 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
13 87 (1.97%) Front Office
14 81 (1.83%) Marketing
15 72 (1.63%) Telecoms
16 65 (1.47%) Manufacturing
17 62 (1.40%) Investment Banking
18 57 (1.29%) Law
19 48 (1.08%) Military
20 42 (0.95%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 651 (14.71%) Analyst
2 497 (11.23%) Developer
3 378 (8.54%) Senior
4 324 (7.32%) Architect
5 278 (6.28%) Lead
6 248 (5.60%) Business Analyst
7 212 (4.79%) Data Engineer
8 197 (4.45%) Consultant
9 169 (3.82%) Project Manager
10 111 (2.51%) IT Support
11 108 (2.44%) Data Analyst
12 107 (2.42%) Support Engineer
13 89 (2.01%) Software Engineer
14 86 (1.94%) Solutions Architect
15 85 (1.92%) Java Developer
16 78 (1.76%) Administrator
17 77 (1.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 74 (1.67%) IT Engineer
19 71 (1.60%) Network Engineer
20 69 (1.56%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 247 (5.58%) REST
2 128 (2.89%) Kafka
3 125 (2.82%) SOAP
4 120 (2.71%) .NET
4 120 (2.71%) RESTful
5 117 (2.64%) Spring
6 115 (2.60%) React
7 98 (2.21%) CSS
8 96 (2.17%) LDAP
9 91 (2.06%) HTML
10 89 (2.01%) Spring Boot
11 88 (1.99%) Middleware
12 87 (1.97%) AngularJS
13 85 (1.92%) Node.js
14 84 (1.90%) JSON
15 81 (1.83%) XML
16 57 (1.29%) PySpark
17 56 (1.27%) OAuth
18 53 (1.20%) Web Services
19 51 (1.15%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 219 (4.95%) Product Ownership
2 206 (4.65%) Onboarding
3 164 (3.71%) Data Centre
4 162 (3.66%) Cloud Native
5 134 (3.03%) Self-Motivation
6 128 (2.89%) Analytical Mindset
7 122 (2.76%) Management Information System
8 105 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
9 101 (2.28%) Data Protection Act
9 101 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
10 90 (2.03%) Virtual Team
11 86 (1.94%) Data Structures
12 84 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
13 63 (1.42%) Security Posture
14 55 (1.24%) Mobile App
15 50 (1.13%) AI Agents
15 50 (1.13%) Hybrid Cloud
16 47 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 45 (1.02%) Algorithms
18 43 (0.97%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 504 (11.39%) Windows
2 262 (5.92%) Linux
3 106 (2.39%) Windows 10
4 88 (1.99%) Android
5 84 (1.90%) Windows Server
6 83 (1.88%) Unix
7 82 (1.85%) Apple iOS
8 62 (1.40%) Mac OS
9 46 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.50%) Ubuntu
11 15 (0.34%) CentOS
11 15 (0.34%) VMS
12 11 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
13 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
13 8 (0.18%) zOS
14 7 (0.16%) Debian
14 7 (0.16%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.090%) Rocky
15 4 (0.090%) Windows 8
15 4 (0.090%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,210 (27.34%) Agile
2 733 (16.56%) CI/CD
3 700 (15.82%) Continuous Improvement
4 692 (15.63%) DevOps
5 652 (14.73%) Stakeholder Management
6 497 (11.23%) Decision-Making
7 493 (11.14%) Migration
8 491 (11.09%) AI
9 490 (11.07%) Analytics
10 423 (9.56%) Project Management
11 396 (8.95%) Data Modelling
12 365 (8.25%) Customer Service
12 365 (8.25%) ITIL
13 358 (8.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 358 (8.09%) Validation
14 356 (8.04%) Business Intelligence
15 353 (7.98%) Test Automation
16 317 (7.16%) Scrum
17 316 (7.14%) Change Management
18 283 (6.39%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 821 (18.55%) Python
2 800 (18.08%) SQL
3 354 (8.00%) Java
4 276 (6.24%) PowerShell
5 230 (5.20%) JavaScript
6 167 (3.77%) C#
7 135 (3.05%) TypeScript
8 109 (2.46%) Bash
9 73 (1.65%) PL/SQL
10 62 (1.40%) C++
11 43 (0.97%) Go
12 42 (0.95%) Shell Script
13 37 (0.84%) C
14 34 (0.77%) Bicep
14 34 (0.77%) T-SQL
15 32 (0.72%) R
16 31 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 28 (0.63%) Apex Code
18 26 (0.59%) Perl
19 23 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 997 (22.53%) Security Cleared
2 672 (15.18%) SC Cleared
3 541 (12.22%) Degree
4 190 (4.29%) DV Cleared
5 186 (4.20%) Computer Science Degree
6 121 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
7 108 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
8 107 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
9 87 (1.97%) CISSP
10 81 (1.83%) PMP
11 69 (1.56%) PMI Certification
12 61 (1.38%) Azure Certification
13 60 (1.36%) CCNA
13 60 (1.36%) CISM
14 57 (1.29%) Master's Degree
15 56 (1.27%) A+ Certification
16 53 (1.20%) Network+ Certification
17 43 (0.97%) MCSE
18 31 (0.70%) CCNP
19 30 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 294 (6.64%) Data Quality
2 253 (5.72%) QA
3 141 (3.19%) GDPR
4 93 (2.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 84 (1.90%) PMO
6 83 (1.88%) NIST
7 70 (1.58%) SLA
8 69 (1.56%) Accessibility
9 42 (0.95%) GRC
10 25 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 23 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
11 23 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.43%) 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
1 339 (7.66%) Active Directory
2 295 (6.67%) Docker
3 104 (2.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.79%) vSphere
5 32 (0.72%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.68%) Hyper-V
7 22 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.43%) Firmware
9 18 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (0.32%) vCloud
11 11 (0.25%) Squid
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.14%) IAG
13 6 (0.14%) RACF
14 4 (0.090%) ACF2
14 4 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.090%) NFS
14 4 (0.090%) Snort
14 4 (0.090%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 357 (8.07%) Kubernetes
2 239 (5.40%) Terraform
3 157 (3.55%) Ansible
4 112 (2.53%) Microsoft Intune
5 98 (2.21%) Grafana
6 77 (1.74%) Prometheus
7 67 (1.51%) SCCM
8 40 (0.90%) vCenter Server
9 36 (0.81%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.75%) 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 11 (0.25%) SCOM
18 11 (0.25%) WSUS
19 10 (0.23%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 812 (18.35%) Microsoft
2 310 (7.00%) Oracle
3 242 (5.47%) SAP
4 193 (4.36%) ServiceNow
5 180 (4.07%) VMware
6 132 (2.98%) Databricks
7 127 (2.87%) Google
8 113 (2.55%) Splunk
9 108 (2.44%) Cisco
10 101 (2.28%) Salesforce
11 71 (1.60%) CyberArk
12 66 (1.49%) BeyondTrust
13 61 (1.38%) Dell
14 59 (1.33%) Red Hat
14 59 (1.33%) Workday
15 44 (0.99%) Citrix
16 43 (0.97%) Adobe
16 43 (0.97%) MuleSoft
17 41 (0.93%) F5
17 41 (0.93%) HP