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

6 months to
12 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 4,466 4,168 3,993
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.00% 17.14% 10.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.99% 18.80% 12.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,733 2,614 2,432
10th Percentile £266 £250 £235
25th Percentile £388 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £598 £606 £638
90th Percentile £725 £707 £738
UK median daily rate £481 £500 £502
% change year-on-year -3.75% -0.40% -4.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 208 370
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.39 £14.04
Median hourly rate £22.01 £22.07 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.27% +26.11% -65.00%
75th Percentile £55.00 £43.69 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.88 £63.75
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £22.14 £16.50
% change year-on-year -4.02% +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 34,368 22,176 31,806
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.67% 91.22% 86.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,897 14,509 20,833
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 £616 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £505 £519 £525
% change year-on-year -2.69% -1.24% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,148 935 2,251
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.45 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £29.07 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.68% -20.36% -2.67%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.40 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.40 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +47.48% -21.23% +0.29%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 1,898 £519 -1.23% 947
North of England -8 742 £450 -7.98% 630
South East -7 648 £493 -1.50% 763
Midlands -6 508 £464 +4.04% 425
North West -6 359 £410 -16.16% 347
West Midlands -7 352 £475 +2.87% 260
Yorkshire -6 339 £460 -5.15% 205
South West -1 323 £500 - 290
East of England -6 214 £450 - 265
East Midlands -1 155 £434 +16.05% 166
North East -9 51 £425 -11.23% 86
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
1 196 (4.39%) Confluence
2 131 (2.93%) SharePoint
3 85 (1.90%) Microsoft Exchange
4 57 (1.28%) Apache Spark
5 42 (0.94%) Apache
6 40 (0.90%) SAS
7 33 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
8 26 (0.58%) CMS
9 19 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 10 (0.22%) 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 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.11%) CICS
16 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 3 (0.067%) JBoss
Applications
1 269 (6.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 210 (4.70%) Microsoft Office
3 98 (2.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
5 65 (1.46%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 8 (0.18%) Sketch
9 7 (0.16%) Trello
10 6 (0.13%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 6 (0.13%) 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 (0.067%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 95 (2.13%) 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%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
6 14 (0.31%) NEC Housing
7 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 11 (0.25%) Teamcenter
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
9 10 (0.22%) Workday HCM
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
10 9 (0.20%) NetSuite
10 9 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
10 9 (0.20%) Shopify
11 8 (0.18%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 8 (0.18%) SAP SD
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 903 (20.22%) Azure
2 682 (15.27%) AWS
3 348 (7.79%) Power Platform
4 302 (6.76%) Microsoft 365
5 285 (6.38%) GCP
6 213 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
7 180 (4.03%) GitHub
8 134 (3.00%) Entra ID
9 125 (2.80%) Serverless
10 117 (2.62%) SaaS
11 89 (1.99%) GitHub Actions
12 78 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 76 (1.70%) Amazon S3
14 66 (1.48%) Azure Data Factory
15 61 (1.37%) OpenShift
15 61 (1.37%) Snowflake
16 60 (1.34%) Power Automate
17 58 (1.30%) Dynamics 365
18 47 (1.05%) Google Workspace
19 45 (1.01%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 160 (3.58%) DNS
2 148 (3.31%) Firewall
3 104 (2.33%) TCP/IP
4 95 (2.13%) VPN
5 85 (1.90%) WAN
6 83 (1.86%) DHCP
7 77 (1.72%) Network Security
8 64 (1.43%) LAN
8 64 (1.43%) SAN
9 52 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
10 42 (0.94%) VLAN
11 41 (0.92%) BGP
12 36 (0.81%) OSPF
13 30 (0.67%) SD-WAN
14 25 (0.56%) VoIP
14 25 (0.56%) Wireless
15 22 (0.49%) VXLAN
16 21 (0.47%) Internet
17 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
18 17 (0.38%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 276 (6.18%) Power BI
2 177 (3.96%) SQL Server
3 140 (3.13%) Data Warehouse
4 118 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
5 110 (2.46%) Relational Database
6 91 (2.04%) Metadata
7 75 (1.68%) MongoDB
7 75 (1.68%) NoSQL
8 74 (1.66%) Tableau
9 64 (1.43%) Data Lake
10 56 (1.25%) Oracle Reports
11 47 (1.05%) Big Data
11 47 (1.05%) Oracle Database
12 46 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 44 (0.99%) MySQL
14 31 (0.69%) Power Query
15 30 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
16 27 (0.60%) Pentaho
17 26 (0.58%) BigQuery
17 26 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 454 (10.17%) JIRA
2 258 (5.78%) Git
3 170 (3.81%) Jenkins
4 120 (2.69%) GitLab
5 56 (1.25%) Selenium
6 32 (0.72%) Postman
7 26 (0.58%) Cucumber
8 25 (0.56%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.52%) 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 2,326 (52.08%) Social Skills
2 1,742 (39.01%) Analytical Skills
3 1,033 (23.13%) Finance
4 399 (8.93%) Public Sector
5 351 (7.86%) Banking
6 204 (4.57%) Organisational Skills
7 169 (3.78%) Retail
8 159 (3.56%) Documentation Skills
9 128 (2.87%) Legal
10 118 (2.64%) Presentation Skills
11 96 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
12 94 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 90 (2.02%) Front Office
14 83 (1.86%) Marketing
15 72 (1.61%) Telecoms
16 64 (1.43%) Investment Banking
17 63 (1.41%) Manufacturing
18 58 (1.30%) Law
19 48 (1.07%) Military
20 42 (0.94%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 655 (14.67%) Analyst
2 509 (11.40%) Developer
3 382 (8.55%) Senior
4 328 (7.34%) Architect
5 280 (6.27%) Lead
6 250 (5.60%) Business Analyst
7 213 (4.77%) Data Engineer
8 198 (4.43%) Consultant
9 170 (3.81%) Project Manager
10 113 (2.53%) IT Support
11 110 (2.46%) Support Engineer
12 109 (2.44%) Data Analyst
13 88 (1.97%) Solutions Architect
14 86 (1.93%) Software Engineer
15 85 (1.90%) Java Developer
16 83 (1.86%) Administrator
17 77 (1.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 77 (1.72%) IT Engineer
18 71 (1.59%) Network Engineer
19 70 (1.57%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (5.67%) REST
2 132 (2.96%) Kafka
2 132 (2.96%) SOAP
3 123 (2.75%) .NET
4 122 (2.73%) RESTful
5 119 (2.66%) React
6 118 (2.64%) Spring
7 99 (2.22%) CSS
8 96 (2.15%) LDAP
9 91 (2.04%) HTML
10 90 (2.02%) Middleware
10 90 (2.02%) Spring Boot
11 89 (1.99%) AngularJS
12 88 (1.97%) Node.js
13 84 (1.88%) JSON
14 83 (1.86%) XML
15 60 (1.34%) OAuth
16 58 (1.30%) PySpark
17 52 (1.16%) Oracle Fusion
17 52 (1.16%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 223 (4.99%) Product Ownership
2 206 (4.61%) Onboarding
3 166 (3.72%) Data Centre
4 162 (3.63%) Cloud Native
5 135 (3.02%) Self-Motivation
6 127 (2.84%) Analytical Mindset
7 122 (2.73%) Management Information System
8 106 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
9 103 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
10 101 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
11 89 (1.99%) Virtual Team
12 87 (1.95%) Data Structures
13 86 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
14 62 (1.39%) Security Posture
15 57 (1.28%) Mobile App
16 51 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
17 50 (1.12%) AI Agents
18 48 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 45 (1.01%) Algorithms
20 43 (0.96%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 506 (11.33%) Windows
2 264 (5.91%) Linux
3 103 (2.31%) Windows 10
4 89 (1.99%) Android
5 84 (1.88%) Unix
5 84 (1.88%) Windows Server
6 83 (1.86%) Apple iOS
7 59 (1.32%) Mac OS
8 46 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 21 (0.47%) Ubuntu
10 19 (0.43%) VMS
11 15 (0.34%) CentOS
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%) AIX
15 4 (0.090%) Windows 8
15 4 (0.090%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,222 (27.36%) Agile
2 736 (16.48%) CI/CD
3 705 (15.79%) Continuous Improvement
4 694 (15.54%) DevOps
5 656 (14.69%) Stakeholder Management
6 506 (11.33%) Decision-Making
7 501 (11.22%) Migration
8 495 (11.08%) AI
9 493 (11.04%) Analytics
10 427 (9.56%) Project Management
11 404 (9.05%) Data Modelling
12 363 (8.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 362 (8.11%) Business Intelligence
13 362 (8.11%) ITIL
14 361 (8.08%) Customer Service
14 361 (8.08%) Validation
15 354 (7.93%) Test Automation
16 324 (7.25%) Change Management
17 318 (7.12%) Scrum
18 286 (6.40%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 827 (18.52%) Python
2 814 (18.23%) SQL
3 361 (8.08%) Java
4 280 (6.27%) PowerShell
5 235 (5.26%) JavaScript
6 169 (3.78%) C#
7 137 (3.07%) TypeScript
8 107 (2.40%) Bash
9 79 (1.77%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.37%) C++
11 44 (0.99%) Go
12 42 (0.94%) Shell Script
13 37 (0.83%) C
14 35 (0.78%) T-SQL
15 34 (0.76%) Bicep
16 33 (0.74%) R
17 32 (0.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 31 (0.69%) Apex Code
19 27 (0.60%) Perl
20 24 (0.54%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,010 (22.62%) Security Cleared
2 684 (15.32%) SC Cleared
3 542 (12.14%) Degree
4 189 (4.23%) DV Cleared
5 187 (4.19%) Computer Science Degree
6 122 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
7 108 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
7 108 (2.42%) Microsoft Certification
8 87 (1.95%) CISSP
9 82 (1.84%) PMP
10 70 (1.57%) PMI Certification
11 62 (1.39%) Azure Certification
12 60 (1.34%) CCNA
12 60 (1.34%) CISM
13 58 (1.30%) Master's Degree
14 56 (1.25%) A+ Certification
15 53 (1.19%) Network+ Certification
16 43 (0.96%) MCSE
17 31 (0.69%) CCNP
18 30 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 298 (6.67%) Data Quality
2 259 (5.80%) QA
3 143 (3.20%) GDPR
4 93 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 85 (1.90%) PMO
6 81 (1.81%) NIST
7 69 (1.55%) Accessibility
8 68 (1.52%) SLA
9 42 (0.94%) GRC
10 25 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 24 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
11 24 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.43%) ISO 20022
13 17 (0.38%) PSD2
14 16 (0.36%) WCAG
15 15 (0.34%) NCSC
16 14 (0.31%) IFRS
17 13 (0.29%) HIPAA
17 13 (0.29%) HL7
18 12 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 336 (7.52%) Active Directory
2 296 (6.63%) Docker
3 108 (2.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.87%) vSphere
5 33 (0.74%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.67%) Hyper-V
7 21 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.43%) Firmware
8 19 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
10 14 (0.31%) vCloud
11 11 (0.25%) RACF
11 11 (0.25%) Squid
12 9 (0.20%) ACF2
12 9 (0.20%) Time Sharing Option
13 7 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.13%) IAG
15 4 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.090%) NFS
15 4 (0.090%) Snort
Systems Management
1 362 (8.11%) Kubernetes
2 238 (5.33%) Terraform
3 156 (3.49%) Ansible
4 112 (2.51%) Microsoft Intune
5 99 (2.22%) Grafana
6 77 (1.72%) Prometheus
7 67 (1.50%) SCCM
8 41 (0.92%) vCenter Server
9 36 (0.81%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.58%) Kibana
12 23 (0.52%) Puppet
13 22 (0.49%) Argo
13 22 (0.49%) Control-M
14 20 (0.45%) Nessus
15 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 13 (0.29%) WSUS
18 12 (0.27%) CA Endevor
18 12 (0.27%) SCOM
Vendors
1 816 (18.27%) Microsoft
2 314 (7.03%) Oracle
3 238 (5.33%) SAP
4 194 (4.34%) ServiceNow
5 184 (4.12%) VMware
6 134 (3.00%) Databricks
7 128 (2.87%) Google
8 114 (2.55%) Splunk
9 110 (2.46%) Cisco
10 103 (2.31%) Salesforce
11 71 (1.59%) CyberArk
12 66 (1.48%) BeyondTrust
13 63 (1.41%) Dell
14 59 (1.32%) Red Hat
14 59 (1.32%) Workday
15 47 (1.05%) Citrix
16 43 (0.96%) Adobe
17 42 (0.94%) F5
17 42 (0.94%) HP
17 42 (0.94%) MuleSoft