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

6 months to
30 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 4,492 4,163 3,961
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.69% 17.33% 10.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.58% 18.97% 12.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,676 2,611 2,408
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £393 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £512
Median % change year-on-year - -2.41% -2.41%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £635
90th Percentile £725 £719 £738
UK median daily rate £494 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.20% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 316 221 378
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.80 £15.13 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.39 £16.37
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% +30.71% -68.42%
75th Percentile £51.26 £33.75 £39.19
90th Percentile £74.26 £65.00 £61.87
UK median hourly rate £20.66 £22.14 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.68% +36.41% -68.49%

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 35,705 21,941 31,586
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.00% 91.32% 85.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,665 14,273 20,637
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,224 953 2,305
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.84
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.55 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.62% -23.21% -0.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.30 £27.97 £36.50
% change year-on-year +51.26% -23.38% -1.35%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 1,901 £522 +0.29% 465
North of England -9 736 £450 -7.22% 498
South East -7 654 £492 -1.60% 639
Midlands -8 503 £465 +6.78% 319
West Midlands -9 354 £472 +4.12% 196
Yorkshire -6 352 £465 -2.11% 161
North West -8 345 £425 -13.09% 271
South West -2 324 £500 -2.44% 202
East of England -3 242 £450 -5.26% 215
East Midlands -1 148 £443 +18.96% 125
North East -11 47 £388 -13.89% 77
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
1 200 (4.45%) Confluence
2 141 (3.14%) SharePoint
3 82 (1.83%) Microsoft Exchange
4 52 (1.16%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.85%) Apache
6 37 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
7 34 (0.76%) SAS
8 28 (0.62%) CMS
9 22 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 11 (0.24%) WebLogic
12 10 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
12 10 (0.22%) CICS
13 8 (0.18%) Camunda
13 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.13%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 272 (6.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 209 (4.65%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (2.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 65 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
5 61 (1.36%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.24%) Sketch
9 9 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.20%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.16%) Revit
10 7 (0.16%) Trello
11 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.11%) CATIA
12 5 (0.11%) Maya
13 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.089%) CPLEX
14 3 (0.067%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 102 (2.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
5 16 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
6 15 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
7 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 13 (0.29%) Workday HCM
8 12 (0.27%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
8 12 (0.27%) Teamcenter
9 11 (0.24%) SAP SD
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
10 9 (0.20%) NetSuite
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
12 7 (0.16%) Loan IQ
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 7 (0.16%) Shopify
12 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 921 (20.50%) Azure
2 658 (14.65%) AWS
3 361 (8.04%) Power Platform
4 316 (7.03%) Microsoft 365
5 282 (6.28%) GCP
6 213 (4.74%) Azure DevOps
7 166 (3.70%) GitHub
8 141 (3.14%) Entra ID
9 117 (2.60%) SaaS
10 116 (2.58%) Serverless
11 78 (1.74%) GitHub Actions
12 65 (1.45%) Amazon S3
12 65 (1.45%) AWS Lambda
13 64 (1.42%) OpenShift
14 63 (1.40%) Azure Data Factory
14 63 (1.40%) Snowflake
15 61 (1.36%) Dynamics 365
16 60 (1.34%) Power Automate
17 53 (1.18%) PowerApps
18 44 (0.98%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 170 (3.78%) DNS
2 141 (3.14%) Firewall
3 100 (2.23%) TCP/IP
3 100 (2.23%) VPN
4 88 (1.96%) DHCP
5 85 (1.89%) WAN
6 75 (1.67%) Network Security
7 67 (1.49%) LAN
8 63 (1.40%) SAN
9 55 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
10 43 (0.96%) VLAN
11 38 (0.85%) BGP
12 35 (0.78%) OSPF
13 33 (0.73%) SD-WAN
14 29 (0.65%) Wireless
15 26 (0.58%) VoIP
16 24 (0.53%) VXLAN
17 19 (0.42%) Internet
18 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
18 18 (0.40%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 281 (6.26%) Power BI
2 179 (3.98%) SQL Server
3 138 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
5 111 (2.47%) Relational Database
6 85 (1.89%) Metadata
7 81 (1.80%) MongoDB
8 79 (1.76%) Tableau
9 73 (1.63%) NoSQL
10 68 (1.51%) Data Lake
11 52 (1.16%) Oracle Reports
12 47 (1.05%) Oracle Database
13 46 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 43 (0.96%) Big Data
15 38 (0.85%) MySQL
16 27 (0.60%) Power Query
17 26 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
17 26 (0.58%) Delta Lake
18 24 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
19 23 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 453 (10.08%) JIRA
2 253 (5.63%) Git
3 157 (3.50%) Jenkins
4 105 (2.34%) GitLab
5 57 (1.27%) Selenium
6 33 (0.73%) Postman
7 25 (0.56%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.53%) Cucumber
9 23 (0.51%) Bitbucket
10 22 (0.49%) JUnit
11 18 (0.40%) Cypress.io
12 17 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
13 16 (0.36%) Mockito
14 14 (0.31%) Maven
14 14 (0.31%) SonarQube
15 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
16 11 (0.24%) JMeter
16 11 (0.24%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.24%) SpecFlow
16 11 (0.24%) Zephyr
General
1 2,322 (51.69%) Social Skills
2 1,768 (39.36%) Analytical Skills
3 1,038 (23.11%) Finance
4 380 (8.46%) Public Sector
5 350 (7.79%) Banking
6 202 (4.50%) Organisational Skills
7 173 (3.85%) Retail
8 166 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
9 126 (2.80%) Legal
10 103 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 99 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
12 91 (2.03%) Front Office
12 91 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
13 89 (1.98%) Marketing
14 78 (1.74%) Manufacturing
15 75 (1.67%) Telecoms
16 69 (1.54%) Investment Banking
17 62 (1.38%) Law
18 46 (1.02%) Back Office
19 44 (0.98%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 657 (14.63%) Analyst
2 469 (10.44%) Developer
3 372 (8.28%) Senior
4 328 (7.30%) Architect
5 286 (6.37%) Lead
6 247 (5.50%) Business Analyst
7 209 (4.65%) Consultant
7 209 (4.65%) Data Engineer
8 163 (3.63%) Project Manager
9 127 (2.83%) IT Support
10 117 (2.60%) Support Engineer
11 111 (2.47%) Data Analyst
12 91 (2.03%) Administrator
13 89 (1.98%) Solutions Architect
14 86 (1.91%) Software Engineer
15 79 (1.76%) IT Engineer
16 76 (1.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 76 (1.69%) Support Analyst
17 74 (1.65%) Java Developer
18 71 (1.58%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 254 (5.65%) REST
2 137 (3.05%) .NET
3 129 (2.87%) SOAP
4 125 (2.78%) Kafka
5 122 (2.72%) React
6 116 (2.58%) RESTful
7 110 (2.45%) Spring
8 103 (2.29%) CSS
9 94 (2.09%) Middleware
10 93 (2.07%) HTML
11 88 (1.96%) LDAP
12 87 (1.94%) JSON
13 81 (1.80%) Spring Boot
14 80 (1.78%) AngularJS
15 79 (1.76%) Node.js
15 79 (1.76%) XML
16 56 (1.25%) Web Services
17 53 (1.18%) OAuth
17 53 (1.18%) PySpark
18 45 (1.00%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 224 (4.99%) Product Ownership
2 207 (4.61%) Onboarding
3 169 (3.76%) Cloud Native
4 168 (3.74%) Data Centre
5 142 (3.16%) Self-Motivation
6 130 (2.89%) Analytical Mindset
7 122 (2.72%) Management Information System
8 118 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
9 106 (2.36%) Distributed Systems
10 102 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
11 97 (2.16%) Enterprise Software
12 92 (2.05%) Virtual Team
13 81 (1.80%) Data Structures
14 67 (1.49%) Security Posture
15 54 (1.20%) AI Agents
16 48 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 44 (0.98%) Algorithms
17 44 (0.98%) Driving Licence
17 44 (0.98%) Mobile App
18 41 (0.91%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 526 (11.71%) Windows
2 254 (5.65%) Linux
3 107 (2.38%) Windows 10
4 92 (2.05%) Windows Server
5 86 (1.91%) Unix
6 80 (1.78%) Apple iOS
7 77 (1.71%) Android
8 67 (1.49%) Mac OS
9 46 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.49%) Ubuntu
11 15 (0.33%) VMS
12 14 (0.31%) CentOS
13 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 11 (0.24%) 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 (0.089%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,192 (26.54%) Agile
2 733 (16.32%) Continuous Improvement
3 716 (15.94%) CI/CD
4 683 (15.20%) DevOps
5 679 (15.12%) Stakeholder Management
6 520 (11.58%) AI
7 513 (11.42%) Decision-Making
8 504 (11.22%) Migration
9 490 (10.91%) Analytics
10 412 (9.17%) Project Management
11 388 (8.64%) Customer Service
11 388 (8.64%) Data Modelling
12 387 (8.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 386 (8.59%) ITIL
14 360 (8.01%) Validation
15 359 (7.99%) Business Intelligence
16 339 (7.55%) Test Automation
17 320 (7.12%) Change Management
18 308 (6.86%) Scrum
19 281 (6.26%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 811 (18.05%) Python
2 809 (18.01%) SQL
3 342 (7.61%) Java
4 275 (6.12%) PowerShell
5 224 (4.99%) JavaScript
6 173 (3.85%) C#
7 115 (2.56%) TypeScript
8 106 (2.36%) Bash
9 70 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 62 (1.38%) C++
11 42 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 41 (0.91%) Go
13 36 (0.80%) C
14 35 (0.78%) T-SQL
15 32 (0.71%) Bicep
15 32 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 30 (0.67%) R
17 29 (0.65%) Apex Code
18 25 (0.56%) Perl
19 23 (0.51%) Scala
Qualifications
1 976 (21.73%) Security Cleared
2 652 (14.51%) SC Cleared
3 557 (12.40%) Degree
4 189 (4.21%) DV Cleared
5 181 (4.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 122 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
7 114 (2.54%) Microsoft Certification
8 105 (2.34%) Cisco Certification
9 89 (1.98%) CISSP
10 78 (1.74%) PMP
11 66 (1.47%) PMI Certification
12 61 (1.36%) Azure Certification
12 61 (1.36%) CCNA
13 60 (1.34%) CISM
14 59 (1.31%) A+ Certification
14 59 (1.31%) Master's Degree
15 53 (1.18%) Network+ Certification
16 43 (0.96%) MCSE
17 35 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
18 27 (0.60%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 299 (6.66%) Data Quality
2 235 (5.23%) QA
3 138 (3.07%) GDPR
4 87 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 83 (1.85%) SLA
6 80 (1.78%) PMO
7 76 (1.69%) Accessibility
8 74 (1.65%) NIST
9 41 (0.91%) GRC
10 24 (0.53%) PCI DSS
11 22 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
11 22 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 15 (0.33%) ISO 20022
12 15 (0.33%) NCSC
12 15 (0.33%) WCAG
13 14 (0.31%) PSD2
14 12 (0.27%) COBIT
14 12 (0.27%) HIPAA
14 12 (0.27%) HL7
14 12 (0.27%) IFRS
System Software
1 337 (7.50%) Active Directory
2 277 (6.17%) Docker
3 101 (2.25%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.82%) vSphere
5 35 (0.78%) VMware NSX
6 31 (0.69%) Hyper-V
7 27 (0.60%) VMware ESXi
8 25 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
9 21 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
10 19 (0.42%) vCloud
11 17 (0.38%) Firmware
12 11 (0.24%) Squid
13 7 (0.16%) IAG
13 7 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.11%) RACF
15 4 (0.089%) ACF2
15 4 (0.089%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.089%) NFS
15 4 (0.089%) Snort
16 3 (0.067%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 339 (7.55%) Kubernetes
2 240 (5.34%) Terraform
3 159 (3.54%) Ansible
4 123 (2.74%) Microsoft Intune
5 100 (2.23%) Grafana
6 85 (1.89%) Prometheus
7 63 (1.40%) SCCM
8 45 (1.00%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.82%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.58%) Kibana
12 23 (0.51%) Control-M
13 22 (0.49%) Puppet
14 21 (0.47%) Nessus
15 20 (0.45%) Argo
16 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
17 16 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 15 (0.33%) SCOM
19 11 (0.24%) WSUS
20 9 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 835 (18.59%) Microsoft
2 305 (6.79%) Oracle
3 250 (5.57%) SAP
4 215 (4.79%) ServiceNow
5 175 (3.90%) VMware
6 122 (2.72%) Google
7 121 (2.69%) Databricks
8 118 (2.63%) Splunk
9 103 (2.29%) Salesforce
10 102 (2.27%) Cisco
11 66 (1.47%) CyberArk
12 62 (1.38%) Workday
13 61 (1.36%) BeyondTrust
13 61 (1.36%) Dell
14 59 (1.31%) Red Hat
15 49 (1.09%) Adobe
16 43 (0.96%) Citrix
16 43 (0.96%) Dynatrace
17 41 (0.91%) MuleSoft
18 40 (0.89%) F5