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

6 months to
11 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,677 4,089 4,055
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.95% 16.80% 10.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.96% 18.47% 12.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,897 2,585 2,497
10th Percentile £287 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -1.96% -3.09%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £721 £718 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 195 362
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.62 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.00 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.63% +26.51% -58.90%
75th Percentile £54.38 £46.31 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.74 £69.50 £71.01
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £24.42 £17.50
% change year-on-year -12.98% +39.54% -56.79%

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 33,512 22,139 32,406
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.65% 90.95% 86.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,469 14,586 21,356
10th Percentile £313 £313 £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 £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,076 869 2,188
10th Percentile £15.44 £14.84 £12.86
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.87 £15.85
Median hourly rate £40.52 £32.05 £33.78
Median % change year-on-year +26.43% -5.11% -9.93%
75th Percentile £66.00 £64.52 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.50 £76.25 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £36.71 £31.04 £33.07
% change year-on-year +18.27% -6.12% -8.15%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -8 2,031 £511 -2.69% 986
North of England -5 788 £450 -7.98% 662
South East -5 674 £492 -1.60% 802
Midlands -3 517 £450 - 478
North West -5 390 £425 -13.18% 365
West Midlands -5 369 £475 +2.43% 278
Yorkshire -4 351 £470 -1.05% 222
South West -2 316 £506 - 308
East of England -3 217 £450 - 288
East Midlands -1 149 £418 +12.91% 199
North East -2 56 £438 -13.79% 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
1 207 (4.43%) Confluence
2 138 (2.95%) SharePoint
3 102 (2.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 62 (1.33%) Apache Spark
5 58 (1.24%) SAS
6 49 (1.05%) Apache
7 32 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
8 26 (0.56%) CMS
9 18 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
9 18 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 12 (0.26%) nginx
11 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.15%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.15%) JBoss
14 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.13%) Camunda
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 288 (6.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 211 (4.51%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (2.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 75 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
5 73 (1.56%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.51%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Trello
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) Maya
11 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.064%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.064%) CATIA
12 3 (0.064%) InVision
12 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
13 2 (0.043%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 82 (1.75%) SAP S/4HANA
2 22 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.43%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 17 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
6 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 14 (0.30%) NEC Housing
8 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.28%) Workday HCM
9 12 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
11 10 (0.21%) iTrent
11 10 (0.21%) NetSuite
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
13 8 (0.17%) SAP SD
13 8 (0.17%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 977 (20.89%) Azure
2 729 (15.59%) AWS
3 342 (7.31%) Power Platform
4 328 (7.01%) GCP
5 307 (6.56%) Microsoft 365
6 221 (4.73%) Azure DevOps
7 203 (4.34%) GitHub
8 153 (3.27%) Entra ID
9 145 (3.10%) Serverless
10 137 (2.93%) SaaS
11 100 (2.14%) GitHub Actions
12 90 (1.92%) AWS Lambda
13 89 (1.90%) Amazon S3
14 85 (1.82%) OpenShift
15 69 (1.48%) Azure Data Factory
16 64 (1.37%) Snowflake
17 56 (1.20%) Power Automate
18 53 (1.13%) Google Workspace
19 51 (1.09%) PaaS
20 50 (1.07%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 178 (3.81%) Firewall
2 172 (3.68%) DNS
3 109 (2.33%) TCP/IP
4 105 (2.25%) Network Security
5 102 (2.18%) VPN
6 89 (1.90%) WAN
7 86 (1.84%) DHCP
8 71 (1.52%) LAN
9 54 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
10 51 (1.09%) SAN
11 46 (0.98%) BGP
12 41 (0.88%) VLAN
13 34 (0.73%) OSPF
14 31 (0.66%) VoIP
15 28 (0.60%) SD-WAN
16 25 (0.53%) Internet
17 24 (0.51%) Wireless
18 20 (0.43%) MPLS
19 19 (0.41%) VXLAN
20 18 (0.38%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 272 (5.82%) Power BI
2 174 (3.72%) SQL Server
3 140 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
4 123 (2.63%) Relational Database
5 118 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
6 92 (1.97%) Metadata
7 83 (1.77%) MongoDB
8 82 (1.75%) NoSQL
9 75 (1.60%) Tableau
10 71 (1.52%) Data Lake
11 60 (1.28%) Oracle Database
12 57 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
13 52 (1.11%) Big Data
14 46 (0.98%) MySQL
15 43 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 35 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
17 32 (0.68%) Pentaho
18 30 (0.64%) DynamoDB
19 29 (0.62%) Power Query
20 28 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 470 (10.05%) JIRA
2 307 (6.56%) Git
3 221 (4.73%) Jenkins
4 143 (3.06%) GitLab
5 74 (1.58%) Selenium
6 47 (1.00%) JUnit
7 34 (0.73%) Postman
8 28 (0.60%) Cucumber
9 27 (0.58%) Bitbucket
10 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 22 (0.47%) Maven
11 22 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
12 20 (0.43%) Cypress.io
13 18 (0.38%) Mockito
14 15 (0.32%) JMeter
14 15 (0.32%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.30%) SpecFlow
16 13 (0.28%) CircleCI
17 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
17 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,477 (52.96%) Social Skills
2 1,789 (38.25%) Analytical Skills
3 1,079 (23.07%) Finance
4 443 (9.47%) Public Sector
5 371 (7.93%) Banking
6 195 (4.17%) Organisational Skills
7 177 (3.78%) Documentation Skills
8 161 (3.44%) Retail
9 154 (3.29%) Legal
10 124 (2.65%) Presentation Skills
11 119 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
12 103 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 97 (2.07%) Front Office
14 82 (1.75%) Marketing
15 71 (1.52%) Telecoms
16 65 (1.39%) Investment Banking
17 58 (1.24%) Manufacturing
18 52 (1.11%) Law
19 50 (1.07%) Military
20 44 (0.94%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 678 (14.50%) Analyst
2 573 (12.25%) Developer
3 397 (8.49%) Senior
4 340 (7.27%) Architect
5 308 (6.59%) Lead
6 277 (5.92%) Business Analyst
7 222 (4.75%) Consultant
8 206 (4.40%) Data Engineer
9 183 (3.91%) Project Manager
10 109 (2.33%) IT Support
10 109 (2.33%) Support Engineer
11 99 (2.12%) Data Analyst
11 99 (2.12%) Java Developer
12 94 (2.01%) Solutions Architect
13 91 (1.95%) Software Engineer
14 89 (1.90%) Administrator
15 79 (1.69%) Python Developer
16 74 (1.58%) IT Analyst
17 70 (1.50%) Senior Developer
18 69 (1.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 305 (6.52%) REST
2 150 (3.21%) SOAP
3 145 (3.10%) Kafka
4 143 (3.06%) RESTful
5 134 (2.87%) .NET
6 132 (2.82%) Spring
7 121 (2.59%) React
8 104 (2.22%) Node.js
9 99 (2.12%) Spring Boot
10 96 (2.05%) AngularJS
11 94 (2.01%) LDAP
12 93 (1.99%) CSS
12 93 (1.99%) XML
13 91 (1.95%) HTML
14 90 (1.92%) JSON
15 84 (1.80%) Middleware
16 70 (1.50%) OAuth
17 59 (1.26%) Oracle Fusion
17 59 (1.26%) Web Services
18 57 (1.22%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 240 (5.13%) Product Ownership
2 205 (4.38%) Onboarding
3 175 (3.74%) Cloud Native
4 141 (3.01%) Data Centre
5 136 (2.91%) Management Information System
6 129 (2.76%) Self-Motivation
7 125 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
8 102 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
9 97 (2.07%) Data Structures
10 96 (2.05%) Distributed Systems
11 94 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
12 91 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
13 80 (1.71%) Virtual Team
14 69 (1.48%) Security Posture
15 61 (1.30%) Mobile App
16 60 (1.28%) Hybrid Cloud
17 59 (1.26%) Algorithms
18 57 (1.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 47 (1.00%) NHS
20 46 (0.98%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 521 (11.14%) Windows
2 288 (6.16%) Linux
3 105 (2.25%) Windows 10
4 92 (1.97%) Windows Server
5 86 (1.84%) Unix
6 75 (1.60%) Android
7 70 (1.50%) Apple iOS
8 56 (1.20%) Mac OS
9 54 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.43%) VMS
11 17 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.26%) CentOS
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.17%) zOS
15 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.13%) Debian
17 4 (0.086%) Windows 8
18 3 (0.064%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,342 (28.69%) Agile
2 830 (17.75%) CI/CD
3 767 (16.40%) DevOps
4 738 (15.78%) Continuous Improvement
5 713 (15.24%) Stakeholder Management
6 565 (12.08%) Analytics
7 510 (10.90%) Migration
8 503 (10.75%) Decision-Making
9 486 (10.39%) AI
10 452 (9.66%) Project Management
11 418 (8.94%) Data Modelling
12 407 (8.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 395 (8.45%) Test Automation
14 373 (7.98%) Business Intelligence
15 368 (7.87%) Validation
16 362 (7.74%) ITIL
17 360 (7.70%) Scrum
18 355 (7.59%) Customer Service
19 349 (7.46%) Change Management
20 311 (6.65%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 922 (19.71%) Python
2 856 (18.30%) SQL
3 398 (8.51%) Java
4 312 (6.67%) PowerShell
5 238 (5.09%) JavaScript
6 181 (3.87%) C#
7 150 (3.21%) TypeScript
8 141 (3.01%) Bash
9 82 (1.75%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.30%) C++
11 45 (0.96%) Go
12 44 (0.94%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.83%) Bicep
13 39 (0.83%) T-SQL
14 37 (0.79%) C
15 35 (0.75%) Perl
16 31 (0.66%) Apex Code
17 30 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 30 (0.64%) R
17 30 (0.64%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,056 (22.58%) Security Cleared
2 722 (15.44%) SC Cleared
3 576 (12.32%) Degree
4 207 (4.43%) Computer Science Degree
5 194 (4.15%) DV Cleared
6 127 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
7 101 (2.16%) Cisco Certification
8 99 (2.12%) CISSP
9 97 (2.07%) PMP
10 95 (2.03%) Microsoft Certification
11 88 (1.88%) PMI Certification
12 70 (1.50%) Master's Degree
13 64 (1.37%) Azure Certification
14 63 (1.35%) CISM
15 51 (1.09%) CCNA
16 40 (0.86%) A+ Certification
16 40 (0.86%) CCNP
17 36 (0.77%) Network+ Certification
18 35 (0.75%) MCSE
19 33 (0.71%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 312 (6.67%) Data Quality
2 298 (6.37%) QA
3 151 (3.23%) GDPR
4 94 (2.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 89 (1.90%) NIST
5 89 (1.90%) PMO
6 82 (1.75%) Accessibility
7 67 (1.43%) SLA
8 42 (0.90%) GRC
9 31 (0.66%) PCI DSS
10 25 (0.53%) PSD2
11 24 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
13 20 (0.43%) WCAG
14 18 (0.38%) ISO 20022
15 16 (0.34%) HL7
15 16 (0.34%) ISO 8583
16 13 (0.28%) HIPAA
17 12 (0.26%) IFRS
17 12 (0.26%) NCSC
System Software
1 369 (7.89%) Active Directory
1 369 (7.89%) Docker
2 108 (2.31%) VMware Infrastructure
3 41 (0.88%) vSphere
4 33 (0.71%) VMware NSX
5 30 (0.64%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
7 17 (0.36%) Firmware
7 17 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (0.24%) RACF
9 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
9 10 (0.21%) vCloud
9 10 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
10 9 (0.19%) ACF2
10 9 (0.19%) Squid
11 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.13%) IAG
13 4 (0.086%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.086%) NFS
13 4 (0.086%) Snort
Systems Management
1 426 (9.11%) Kubernetes
2 269 (5.75%) Terraform
3 164 (3.51%) Ansible
4 124 (2.65%) Microsoft Intune
5 103 (2.20%) Grafana
6 80 (1.71%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.54%) SCCM
8 39 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
9 38 (0.81%) vCenter Server
10 32 (0.68%) FortiGate
11 29 (0.62%) Kibana
12 28 (0.60%) Puppet
13 26 (0.56%) Argo
14 23 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 20 (0.43%) Control-M
16 19 (0.41%) Nessus
17 15 (0.32%) vRealize
18 14 (0.30%) IBM Guardium
19 11 (0.24%) Consul
19 11 (0.24%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 857 (18.32%) Microsoft
2 332 (7.10%) Oracle
3 230 (4.92%) SAP
4 202 (4.32%) ServiceNow
5 193 (4.13%) VMware
6 149 (3.19%) Google
7 145 (3.10%) Databricks
8 118 (2.52%) Splunk
9 110 (2.35%) Cisco
9 110 (2.35%) Salesforce
10 74 (1.58%) CyberArk
11 73 (1.56%) Red Hat
12 68 (1.45%) BeyondTrust
13 57 (1.22%) Citrix
14 55 (1.18%) Workday
15 54 (1.15%) Dell
16 46 (0.98%) Adobe
16 46 (0.98%) Talend
17 44 (0.94%) IBM
18 43 (0.92%) Informatica