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

6 months to
10 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 4,437 4,227 4,021
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.50% 17.28% 10.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.34% 18.91% 12.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,646 2,649 2,435
10th Percentile £263 £250 £252
25th Percentile £389 £388 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year - -0.20% -4.57%
75th Percentile £599 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £720 £738
UK median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 317 234 382
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.01
25th Percentile £15.99 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.00 £21.39 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -1.82% +31.79% -69.03%
75th Percentile £42.38 £33.85 £36.30
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.05 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £22.14 £16.23
% change year-on-year -9.67% +36.41% -69.09%

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 35,948 22,351 32,031
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.10% 91.35% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,764 14,463 20,809
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £407 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,246 1,016 2,371
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.81
25th Percentile £20.75 £18.12 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +67.86% -25.33% +4.17%
75th Percentile £68.00 £58.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.28 £36.50
% change year-on-year +61.14% -25.26% +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 10 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 10 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 10 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 1,894 £520 +0.97% 856
North of England -10 707 £450 -5.26% 625
South East -6 665 £488 -2.50% 758
Midlands -9 497 £466 +7.60% 399
West Midlands -9 352 £473 +4.30% 238
North West -10 338 £425 -10.53% 354
Yorkshire -6 328 £455 -4.16% 200
South West -4 315 £500 - 291
East of England -2 239 £450 -3.64% 282
East Midlands -2 144 £444 +20.91% 163
North East -13 47 £375 -16.67% 81
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 (4.42%) Confluence
2 135 (3.04%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 53 (1.19%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.79%) Apache
5 35 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.72%) SAS
7 28 (0.63%) CMS
8 24 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
9 13 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 10 (0.23%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.23%) CICS
12 8 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 8 (0.18%) Camunda
12 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.16%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
13 7 (0.16%) WebSphere
14 6 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 267 (6.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 193 (4.35%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (2.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 60 (1.35%) Microsoft Project
5 59 (1.33%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.29%) AutoCAD
9 10 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 10 (0.23%) Revit
10 7 (0.16%) Sketch
10 7 (0.16%) Trello
11 6 (0.14%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.11%) CATIA
12 5 (0.11%) CPLEX
12 5 (0.11%) Maya
13 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
14 3 (0.068%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.068%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 106 (2.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
3 17 (0.38%) Aladdin
3 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
3 17 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
4 14 (0.32%) Workday HCM
5 12 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
6 11 (0.25%) NetSuite
6 11 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
7 10 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
7 10 (0.23%) SAP SD
7 10 (0.23%) Teamcenter
8 9 (0.20%) iTrent
9 8 (0.18%) SAP HCM
10 7 (0.16%) Loan IQ
10 7 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
10 7 (0.16%) Oracle HRMS
10 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 919 (20.71%) Azure
2 664 (14.97%) AWS
3 352 (7.93%) Power Platform
4 317 (7.14%) Microsoft 365
5 273 (6.15%) GCP
6 206 (4.64%) Azure DevOps
7 159 (3.58%) GitHub
8 145 (3.27%) Entra ID
9 123 (2.77%) Serverless
10 118 (2.66%) SaaS
11 76 (1.71%) GitHub Actions
12 74 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
13 73 (1.65%) Amazon S3
14 62 (1.40%) Snowflake
15 60 (1.35%) Azure Data Factory
16 55 (1.24%) Dynamics 365
16 55 (1.24%) Power Automate
17 50 (1.13%) OpenShift
18 48 (1.08%) PowerApps
19 45 (1.01%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 172 (3.88%) DNS
2 139 (3.13%) Firewall
3 104 (2.34%) TCP/IP
3 104 (2.34%) VPN
4 91 (2.05%) DHCP
5 87 (1.96%) WAN
6 71 (1.60%) Network Security
7 69 (1.56%) LAN
8 60 (1.35%) SAN
9 59 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
10 45 (1.01%) VLAN
11 40 (0.90%) BGP
12 37 (0.83%) OSPF
13 36 (0.81%) SD-WAN
14 28 (0.63%) VoIP
14 28 (0.63%) Wireless
15 25 (0.56%) VXLAN
16 19 (0.43%) Internet
16 19 (0.43%) MPLS
17 18 (0.41%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (6.24%) Power BI
2 178 (4.01%) SQL Server
3 137 (3.09%) Data Warehouse
4 119 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
5 113 (2.55%) Relational Database
6 87 (1.96%) MongoDB
7 81 (1.83%) Metadata
8 77 (1.74%) Tableau
9 76 (1.71%) NoSQL
10 74 (1.67%) Data Lake
11 46 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
12 44 (0.99%) Oracle Database
12 44 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 43 (0.97%) Big Data
14 38 (0.86%) MySQL
15 27 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
15 27 (0.61%) Power Query
16 24 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
17 23 (0.52%) Pentaho
17 23 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 448 (10.10%) JIRA
2 247 (5.57%) Git
3 148 (3.34%) Jenkins
4 104 (2.34%) GitLab
5 55 (1.24%) Selenium
6 33 (0.74%) Postman
7 26 (0.59%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.54%) Bitbucket
9 21 (0.47%) Cucumber
9 21 (0.47%) JUnit
10 18 (0.41%) Cypress.io
11 16 (0.36%) Mockito
11 16 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
12 13 (0.29%) Maven
12 13 (0.29%) SonarQube
13 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
13 12 (0.27%) Zephyr
14 11 (0.25%) JMeter
15 10 (0.23%) Rational DOORS
15 10 (0.23%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,301 (51.86%) Social Skills
2 1,760 (39.67%) Analytical Skills
3 1,021 (23.01%) Finance
4 365 (8.23%) Public Sector
5 343 (7.73%) Banking
6 187 (4.21%) Organisational Skills
7 172 (3.88%) Retail
8 169 (3.81%) Documentation Skills
9 120 (2.70%) Legal
10 112 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 93 (2.10%) Presentation Skills
12 91 (2.05%) Front Office
13 90 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
14 88 (1.98%) Marketing
15 82 (1.85%) Manufacturing
16 79 (1.78%) Telecoms
17 68 (1.53%) Investment Banking
18 58 (1.31%) Law
19 49 (1.10%) Back Office
20 41 (0.92%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 659 (14.85%) Analyst
2 456 (10.28%) Developer
3 367 (8.27%) Senior
4 328 (7.39%) Architect
5 289 (6.51%) Lead
6 246 (5.54%) Business Analyst
7 209 (4.71%) Data Engineer
8 206 (4.64%) Consultant
9 153 (3.45%) Project Manager
10 139 (3.13%) IT Support
11 122 (2.75%) Support Engineer
12 102 (2.30%) Data Analyst
13 96 (2.16%) Administrator
14 90 (2.03%) Solutions Architect
15 84 (1.89%) IT Engineer
16 83 (1.87%) Software Engineer
17 79 (1.78%) Support Analyst
18 75 (1.69%) Java Developer
19 73 (1.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 72 (1.62%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 257 (5.79%) REST
2 140 (3.16%) .NET
3 127 (2.86%) SOAP
4 126 (2.84%) Kafka
5 119 (2.68%) React
6 107 (2.41%) RESTful
7 106 (2.39%) Spring
8 98 (2.21%) CSS
9 92 (2.07%) JSON
10 89 (2.01%) Middleware
11 88 (1.98%) LDAP
12 85 (1.92%) HTML
13 83 (1.87%) XML
14 78 (1.76%) Spring Boot
15 71 (1.60%) AngularJS
16 70 (1.58%) Node.js
17 56 (1.26%) Web Services
18 53 (1.19%) OAuth
18 53 (1.19%) PySpark
19 45 (1.01%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 209 (4.71%) Onboarding
1 209 (4.71%) Product Ownership
2 175 (3.94%) Cloud Native
3 168 (3.79%) Data Centre
4 146 (3.29%) Self-Motivation
5 127 (2.86%) Analytical Mindset
6 120 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
6 120 (2.70%) Management Information System
7 111 (2.50%) Distributed Systems
8 107 (2.41%) Data Protection Act
8 107 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
9 93 (2.10%) Virtual Team
10 77 (1.74%) Data Structures
11 69 (1.56%) Security Posture
12 56 (1.26%) AI Agents
13 51 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 45 (1.01%) Algorithms
14 45 (1.01%) Driving Licence
15 42 (0.95%) Mobile App
16 40 (0.90%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 544 (12.26%) Windows
2 245 (5.52%) Linux
3 107 (2.41%) Windows 10
4 98 (2.21%) Windows Server
5 86 (1.94%) Unix
6 80 (1.80%) Apple iOS
7 74 (1.67%) Android
7 74 (1.67%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 21 (0.47%) Ubuntu
10 13 (0.29%) CentOS
10 13 (0.29%) VMS
10 13 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
11 10 (0.23%) zOS
12 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
12 8 (0.18%) Windows 7
13 5 (0.11%) Debian
13 5 (0.11%) Solaris
13 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.090%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,152 (25.96%) Agile
2 741 (16.70%) Continuous Improvement
3 710 (16.00%) CI/CD
4 688 (15.51%) Stakeholder Management
5 674 (15.19%) DevOps
6 526 (11.85%) AI
7 503 (11.34%) Migration
8 494 (11.13%) Decision-Making
9 478 (10.77%) Analytics
10 402 (9.06%) ITIL
11 399 (8.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 398 (8.97%) Customer Service
13 385 (8.68%) Project Management
14 376 (8.47%) Data Modelling
15 360 (8.11%) Business Intelligence
15 360 (8.11%) Validation
16 333 (7.51%) Test Automation
17 315 (7.10%) Change Management
18 313 (7.05%) Scrum
19 279 (6.29%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 811 (18.28%) SQL
2 803 (18.10%) Python
3 337 (7.60%) Java
4 278 (6.27%) PowerShell
5 218 (4.91%) JavaScript
6 171 (3.85%) C#
7 107 (2.41%) TypeScript
8 98 (2.21%) Bash
9 72 (1.62%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.33%) C++
11 42 (0.95%) Shell Script
12 39 (0.88%) Go
13 37 (0.83%) T-SQL
14 36 (0.81%) C
15 32 (0.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 29 (0.65%) Bicep
16 29 (0.65%) R
17 26 (0.59%) Apex Code
18 25 (0.56%) Perl
19 22 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 955 (21.52%) Security Cleared
2 641 (14.45%) SC Cleared
3 537 (12.10%) Degree
4 183 (4.12%) DV Cleared
5 172 (3.88%) Computer Science Degree
6 125 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
7 121 (2.73%) Microsoft Certification
8 109 (2.46%) Cisco Certification
9 88 (1.98%) CISSP
10 75 (1.69%) PMP
11 65 (1.46%) Azure Certification
12 64 (1.44%) PMI Certification
13 61 (1.37%) A+ Certification
13 61 (1.37%) CCNA
13 61 (1.37%) CISM
14 52 (1.17%) Network+ Certification
15 51 (1.15%) Master's Degree
16 44 (0.99%) MCSE
17 34 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
18 31 (0.70%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 302 (6.81%) Data Quality
2 229 (5.16%) QA
3 136 (3.07%) GDPR
4 88 (1.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 83 (1.87%) SLA
6 78 (1.76%) PMO
7 76 (1.71%) Accessibility
8 75 (1.69%) NIST
9 42 (0.95%) GRC
10 22 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
11 20 (0.45%) PCI DSS
11 20 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 15 (0.34%) ISO 20022
12 15 (0.34%) NCSC
13 14 (0.32%) COBIT
13 14 (0.32%) PSD2
14 13 (0.29%) WCAG
15 12 (0.27%) HL7
16 11 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
16 11 (0.25%) HIPAA
System Software
1 348 (7.84%) Active Directory
2 269 (6.06%) Docker
3 102 (2.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.88%) vSphere
5 36 (0.81%) VMware NSX
6 32 (0.72%) Hyper-V
6 32 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
7 26 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (0.41%) Firmware
9 18 (0.41%) vCloud
10 11 (0.25%) Squid
11 7 (0.16%) IAG
12 6 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.090%) ACF2
13 4 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.090%) NFS
13 4 (0.090%) RACF
13 4 (0.090%) Snort
14 3 (0.068%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 328 (7.39%) Kubernetes
2 243 (5.48%) Terraform
3 151 (3.40%) Ansible
4 129 (2.91%) Microsoft Intune
5 93 (2.10%) Grafana
6 80 (1.80%) Prometheus
7 67 (1.51%) SCCM
8 46 (1.04%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.83%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (0.52%) Control-M
12 21 (0.47%) Nessus
13 20 (0.45%) Argo
13 20 (0.45%) Kibana
14 19 (0.43%) Puppet
15 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
16 16 (0.36%) SCOM
17 15 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 13 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
18 13 (0.29%) WSUS
Vendors
1 829 (18.68%) Microsoft
2 304 (6.85%) Oracle
3 255 (5.75%) SAP
4 235 (5.30%) ServiceNow
5 171 (3.85%) VMware
6 129 (2.91%) Google
7 116 (2.61%) Databricks
8 114 (2.57%) Splunk
9 105 (2.37%) Salesforce
10 101 (2.28%) Cisco
11 68 (1.53%) Workday
12 66 (1.49%) CyberArk
13 61 (1.37%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.31%) Dell
14 58 (1.31%) Red Hat
15 47 (1.06%) Adobe
15 47 (1.06%) Citrix
16 46 (1.04%) Dynatrace
17 39 (0.88%) Apple
17 39 (0.88%) F5