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 3 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,404 4,146 3,961
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.56% 17.32% 10.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.42% 18.96% 12.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,621 2,592 2,406
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £389 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £637
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 312 226 380
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.80 £15.16 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.39 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% +31.79% -68.96%
75th Percentile £51.25 £33.44 £37.56
90th Percentile £74.26 £65.13 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £20.44 £22.14 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.68% +36.41% -68.73%

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 35,462 21,869 31,644
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.04% 91.35% 85.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,467 14,201 20,640
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% - -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 2,230 965 2,327
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.69 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.60 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.34% -23.73% +0.54%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.91 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.69 £27.85 £36.50
% change year-on-year +53.27% -23.70% +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 3 June 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 3 June 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 3 June 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 1,873 £520 -0.38% 1,389
North of England -10 708 £450 -7.22% 719
South East -6 651 £488 -2.50% 788
Midlands -9 493 £463 +6.32% 426
West Midlands -10 348 £469 +3.88% 263
Yorkshire -6 337 £460 -3.16% 241
North West -7 334 £425 -13.09% 399
South West -3 314 £500 - 318
East of England -2 241 £450 -5.26% 307
East Midlands -2 144 £443 +18.96% 163
North East -16 45 £375 -16.67% 89
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 (4.54%) Confluence
2 135 (3.07%) SharePoint
3 81 (1.84%) Microsoft Exchange
4 53 (1.20%) Apache Spark
5 36 (0.82%) Apache
6 35 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.73%) SAS
8 28 (0.64%) CMS
9 22 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 11 (0.25%) WebLogic
12 10 (0.23%) ArcGIS
12 10 (0.23%) CICS
13 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.18%) Camunda
14 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
15 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
16 6 (0.14%) Jupyter
16 6 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
17 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 268 (6.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 197 (4.47%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (2.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
5 60 (1.36%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.25%) Sketch
9 10 (0.23%) AutoCAD
10 9 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 8 (0.18%) Revit
12 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
12 7 (0.16%) Trello
13 6 (0.14%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.11%) CATIA
14 5 (0.11%) Maya
15 4 (0.091%) Acrobat
15 4 (0.091%) CPLEX
16 3 (0.068%) LaTeX
16 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 101 (2.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.41%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
6 14 (0.32%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
8 12 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
8 12 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.27%) Teamcenter
9 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
9 11 (0.25%) SAP SD
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
11 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
12 7 (0.16%) Loan IQ
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle HRMS
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 913 (20.73%) Azure
2 646 (14.67%) AWS
3 352 (7.99%) Power Platform
4 309 (7.02%) Microsoft 365
5 273 (6.20%) GCP
6 209 (4.75%) Azure DevOps
7 161 (3.66%) GitHub
8 140 (3.18%) Entra ID
9 117 (2.66%) SaaS
10 114 (2.59%) Serverless
11 76 (1.73%) GitHub Actions
12 64 (1.45%) AWS Lambda
13 63 (1.43%) Amazon S3
13 63 (1.43%) Snowflake
14 62 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
15 59 (1.34%) Dynamics 365
16 54 (1.23%) OpenShift
17 53 (1.20%) Power Automate
18 46 (1.04%) PowerApps
19 44 (1.00%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 169 (3.84%) DNS
2 138 (3.13%) Firewall
3 102 (2.32%) TCP/IP
4 101 (2.29%) VPN
5 88 (2.00%) DHCP
6 85 (1.93%) WAN
7 73 (1.66%) Network Security
8 67 (1.52%) LAN
9 61 (1.39%) SAN
10 55 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
11 43 (0.98%) VLAN
12 38 (0.86%) BGP
13 35 (0.79%) OSPF
14 33 (0.75%) SD-WAN
15 29 (0.66%) Wireless
16 26 (0.59%) VoIP
17 24 (0.54%) VXLAN
18 19 (0.43%) Internet
19 18 (0.41%) BIG-IP
20 17 (0.39%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 273 (6.20%) Power BI
2 173 (3.93%) SQL Server
3 132 (3.00%) Data Warehouse
4 113 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
5 110 (2.50%) Relational Database
6 81 (1.84%) Metadata
7 79 (1.79%) MongoDB
8 76 (1.73%) Tableau
9 73 (1.66%) NoSQL
10 67 (1.52%) Data Lake
11 49 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
12 44 (1.00%) Oracle Database
12 44 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 41 (0.93%) Big Data
14 36 (0.82%) MySQL
15 27 (0.61%) Power Query
16 26 (0.59%) Amazon RDS
16 26 (0.59%) Delta Lake
17 23 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
17 23 (0.52%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 449 (10.20%) JIRA
2 249 (5.65%) Git
3 148 (3.36%) Jenkins
4 101 (2.29%) GitLab
5 57 (1.29%) Selenium
6 33 (0.75%) Postman
7 25 (0.57%) REST Assured
8 23 (0.52%) Bitbucket
9 22 (0.50%) Cucumber
10 21 (0.48%) JUnit
11 18 (0.41%) Cypress.io
12 17 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
13 16 (0.36%) Mockito
14 14 (0.32%) Maven
14 14 (0.32%) SonarQube
15 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
16 11 (0.25%) JMeter
16 11 (0.25%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.25%) SpecFlow
16 11 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,286 (51.91%) Social Skills
2 1,749 (39.71%) Analytical Skills
3 1,021 (23.18%) Finance
4 372 (8.45%) Public Sector
5 346 (7.86%) Banking
6 196 (4.45%) Organisational Skills
7 173 (3.93%) Retail
8 163 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
9 124 (2.82%) Legal
10 104 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 98 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
12 91 (2.07%) Front Office
13 88 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
14 86 (1.95%) Marketing
15 76 (1.73%) Manufacturing
16 75 (1.70%) Telecoms
17 66 (1.50%) Investment Banking
18 62 (1.41%) Law
19 48 (1.09%) Back Office
20 42 (0.95%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 652 (14.80%) Analyst
2 446 (10.13%) Developer
3 359 (8.15%) Senior
4 326 (7.40%) Architect
5 284 (6.45%) Lead
6 246 (5.59%) Business Analyst
7 207 (4.70%) Data Engineer
8 199 (4.52%) Consultant
9 159 (3.61%) Project Manager
10 132 (3.00%) IT Support
11 119 (2.70%) Support Engineer
12 106 (2.41%) Data Analyst
13 90 (2.04%) Administrator
14 87 (1.98%) Solutions Architect
15 85 (1.93%) Software Engineer
16 81 (1.84%) IT Engineer
17 77 (1.75%) Support Analyst
18 73 (1.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 71 (1.61%) Java Developer
20 70 (1.59%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 252 (5.72%) REST
2 137 (3.11%) .NET
3 127 (2.88%) SOAP
4 121 (2.75%) Kafka
5 118 (2.68%) React
6 111 (2.52%) RESTful
7 103 (2.34%) Spring
8 101 (2.29%) CSS
9 94 (2.13%) Middleware
10 91 (2.07%) HTML
11 88 (2.00%) LDAP
12 86 (1.95%) JSON
13 78 (1.77%) XML
14 76 (1.73%) AngularJS
15 75 (1.70%) Spring Boot
16 71 (1.61%) Node.js
17 56 (1.27%) Web Services
18 54 (1.23%) PySpark
19 50 (1.14%) OAuth
20 45 (1.02%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 213 (4.84%) Product Ownership
2 206 (4.68%) Onboarding
3 169 (3.84%) Cloud Native
4 166 (3.77%) Data Centre
5 141 (3.20%) Self-Motivation
6 128 (2.91%) Analytical Mindset
7 120 (2.72%) Management Information System
8 117 (2.66%) Legacy Systems
9 107 (2.43%) Distributed Systems
10 101 (2.29%) Data Protection Act
11 99 (2.25%) Enterprise Software
12 92 (2.09%) Virtual Team
13 79 (1.79%) Data Structures
14 68 (1.54%) Security Posture
15 53 (1.20%) AI Agents
16 49 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 44 (1.00%) Algorithms
17 44 (1.00%) Driving Licence
18 42 (0.95%) Mobile App
19 39 (0.89%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 528 (11.99%) Windows
2 243 (5.52%) Linux
3 106 (2.41%) Windows 10
4 90 (2.04%) Windows Server
5 84 (1.91%) Unix
6 80 (1.82%) Apple iOS
7 75 (1.70%) Android
8 72 (1.63%) Mac OS
9 46 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 14 (0.32%) CentOS
11 14 (0.32%) VMS
12 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.23%) zOS
14 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.18%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.14%) Debian
16 5 (0.11%) Solaris
16 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.091%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,167 (26.50%) Agile
2 726 (16.49%) Continuous Improvement
3 703 (15.96%) CI/CD
4 676 (15.35%) Stakeholder Management
5 668 (15.17%) DevOps
6 511 (11.60%) AI
7 499 (11.33%) Decision-Making
8 497 (11.29%) Migration
9 473 (10.74%) Analytics
10 399 (9.06%) Project Management
11 391 (8.88%) ITIL
12 390 (8.86%) Customer Service
13 384 (8.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 380 (8.63%) Data Modelling
15 355 (8.06%) Validation
16 350 (7.95%) Business Intelligence
17 333 (7.56%) Test Automation
18 312 (7.08%) Change Management
19 308 (6.99%) Scrum
20 276 (6.27%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 798 (18.12%) SQL
2 788 (17.89%) Python
3 330 (7.49%) Java
4 275 (6.24%) PowerShell
5 217 (4.93%) JavaScript
6 170 (3.86%) C#
7 110 (2.50%) TypeScript
8 100 (2.27%) Bash
9 68 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 60 (1.36%) C++
11 41 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 38 (0.86%) Go
13 36 (0.82%) C
14 34 (0.77%) T-SQL
15 31 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 30 (0.68%) Bicep
17 28 (0.64%) Apex Code
17 28 (0.64%) R
18 25 (0.57%) Perl
19 22 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 960 (21.80%) Security Cleared
2 643 (14.60%) SC Cleared
3 543 (12.33%) Degree
4 181 (4.11%) DV Cleared
5 178 (4.04%) Computer Science Degree
6 118 (2.68%) BPSS Clearance
7 114 (2.59%) Microsoft Certification
8 107 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
9 91 (2.07%) CISSP
10 79 (1.79%) PMP
11 67 (1.52%) PMI Certification
12 62 (1.41%) CISM
13 61 (1.39%) Azure Certification
13 61 (1.39%) CCNA
14 60 (1.36%) A+ Certification
15 58 (1.32%) Master's Degree
16 52 (1.18%) Network+ Certification
17 42 (0.95%) MCSE
18 35 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
19 27 (0.61%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 292 (6.63%) Data Quality
2 231 (5.25%) QA
3 136 (3.09%) GDPR
4 87 (1.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 81 (1.84%) SLA
6 79 (1.79%) PMO
7 76 (1.73%) Accessibility
8 74 (1.68%) NIST
9 42 (0.95%) GRC
10 23 (0.52%) PCI DSS
11 22 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 15 (0.34%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.34%) NCSC
13 15 (0.34%) WCAG
14 14 (0.32%) PSD2
15 13 (0.30%) COBIT
16 12 (0.27%) HL7
16 12 (0.27%) IFRS
17 11 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 336 (7.63%) Active Directory
2 265 (6.02%) Docker
3 99 (2.25%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.84%) vSphere
5 34 (0.77%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.68%) Hyper-V
7 27 (0.61%) VMware ESXi
8 25 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
9 21 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
10 18 (0.41%) vCloud
11 16 (0.36%) Firmware
12 11 (0.25%) Squid
13 7 (0.16%) IAG
14 6 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.091%) ACF2
15 4 (0.091%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.091%) NFS
15 4 (0.091%) RACF
15 4 (0.091%) Snort
16 3 (0.068%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 323 (7.33%) Kubernetes
2 230 (5.22%) Terraform
3 151 (3.43%) Ansible
4 125 (2.84%) Microsoft Intune
5 96 (2.18%) Grafana
6 80 (1.82%) Prometheus
7 64 (1.45%) SCCM
8 44 (1.00%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.84%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
11 25 (0.57%) Kibana
12 23 (0.52%) Control-M
13 21 (0.48%) Nessus
14 20 (0.45%) Argo
14 20 (0.45%) Puppet
15 17 (0.39%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 14 (0.32%) SCOM
18 11 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
18 11 (0.25%) WSUS
Vendors
1 821 (18.64%) Microsoft
2 295 (6.70%) Oracle
3 247 (5.61%) SAP
4 217 (4.93%) ServiceNow
5 170 (3.86%) VMware
6 124 (2.82%) Google
7 121 (2.75%) Databricks
8 115 (2.61%) Splunk
9 103 (2.34%) Salesforce
10 101 (2.29%) Cisco
11 67 (1.52%) CyberArk
12 63 (1.43%) Workday
13 61 (1.39%) BeyondTrust
14 59 (1.34%) Dell
15 58 (1.32%) Red Hat
16 49 (1.11%) Adobe
17 43 (0.98%) Citrix
17 43 (0.98%) Dynatrace
18 42 (0.95%) MuleSoft
19 39 (0.89%) F5