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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -8 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,415 4,156 3,945
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.57% 17.32% 10.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.43% 18.97% 12.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,634 2,592 2,402
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 £636
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 312 227 375
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.80 £15.19 £14.08
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.39 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% +31.79% -68.96%
75th Percentile £45.88 £33.13 £38.38
90th Percentile £74.26 £65.10 £62.14
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 35,523 21,911 31,466
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.02% 91.34% 85.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,505 14,200 20,503
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.55% -0.36% -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 2,228 974 2,317
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.83
25th Percentile £20.69 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.53 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.77% -23.93% +0.54%
75th Percentile £68.00 £59.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.71 £27.64 £36.50
% change year-on-year +54.50% -24.27% +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 4 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 4 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 4 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 1,879 £520 - 1,465
North of England -10 712 £450 -6.49% 711
South East -6 652 £488 -2.50% 793
Midlands -9 492 £463 +6.32% 430
West Midlands -11 348 £469 +3.88% 266
North West -8 337 £443 -9.41% 393
Yorkshire -6 335 £463 -2.63% 238
South West -3 315 £500 -4.76% 342
East of England -2 240 £450 -4.76% 302
East Midlands -3 143 £443 +20.24% 162
North East -15 46 £375 -16.67% 90
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 (4.53%) Confluence
2 134 (3.04%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.88%) Microsoft Exchange
4 53 (1.20%) Apache Spark
5 36 (0.82%) Apache
6 35 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.72%) SAS
8 28 (0.63%) CMS
9 22 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
10 12 (0.27%) WebLogic
11 10 (0.23%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.23%) CICS
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.18%) Camunda
13 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.14%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 266 (6.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 196 (4.44%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
5 60 (1.36%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.25%) Sketch
9 10 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 10 (0.23%) AutoCAD
10 8 (0.18%) Revit
11 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.16%) Trello
12 6 (0.14%) Photoshop
13 5 (0.11%) CATIA
13 5 (0.11%) CPLEX
13 5 (0.11%) Maya
14 4 (0.091%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.068%) LaTeX
15 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 102 (2.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.41%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
5 16 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
6 15 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.32%) Workday HCM
8 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
9 12 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 12 (0.27%) Teamcenter
10 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
10 11 (0.25%) SAP SD
11 9 (0.20%) iTrent
12 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
12 8 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
13 7 (0.16%) Loan IQ
13 7 (0.16%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 917 (20.77%) Azure
2 647 (14.65%) AWS
3 350 (7.93%) Power Platform
4 315 (7.13%) Microsoft 365
5 271 (6.14%) GCP
6 210 (4.76%) Azure DevOps
7 161 (3.65%) GitHub
8 142 (3.22%) Entra ID
9 118 (2.67%) SaaS
10 116 (2.63%) Serverless
11 76 (1.72%) GitHub Actions
12 66 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
13 65 (1.47%) Amazon S3
14 63 (1.43%) Snowflake
15 62 (1.40%) Azure Data Factory
16 59 (1.34%) Dynamics 365
17 55 (1.25%) OpenShift
18 53 (1.20%) Power Automate
19 46 (1.04%) PowerApps
20 44 (1.00%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 169 (3.83%) DNS
2 139 (3.15%) Firewall
3 103 (2.33%) VPN
4 102 (2.31%) TCP/IP
5 88 (1.99%) DHCP
6 86 (1.95%) WAN
7 74 (1.68%) Network Security
8 69 (1.56%) LAN
9 61 (1.38%) SAN
10 56 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
11 45 (1.02%) VLAN
12 39 (0.88%) BGP
13 36 (0.82%) OSPF
14 33 (0.75%) SD-WAN
15 29 (0.66%) Wireless
16 27 (0.61%) VoIP
17 24 (0.54%) VXLAN
18 19 (0.43%) Internet
18 19 (0.43%) MPLS
19 18 (0.41%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 271 (6.14%) Power BI
2 173 (3.92%) SQL Server
3 132 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
5 110 (2.49%) Relational Database
6 82 (1.86%) MongoDB
7 80 (1.81%) Metadata
8 75 (1.70%) Tableau
9 74 (1.68%) 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
1 451 (10.22%) JIRA
2 251 (5.69%) Git
3 148 (3.35%) Jenkins
4 102 (2.31%) GitLab
5 57 (1.29%) Selenium
6 33 (0.75%) Postman
7 25 (0.57%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.54%) 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 2,293 (51.94%) Social Skills
2 1,757 (39.80%) Analytical Skills
3 1,020 (23.10%) Finance
4 374 (8.47%) Public Sector
5 346 (7.84%) Banking
6 196 (4.44%) Organisational Skills
7 174 (3.94%) Retail
8 164 (3.71%) Documentation Skills
9 124 (2.81%) Legal
10 106 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 98 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
12 90 (2.04%) Front Office
13 88 (1.99%) Influencing Skills
14 86 (1.95%) Marketing
15 76 (1.72%) Manufacturing
16 74 (1.68%) Telecoms
17 66 (1.49%) Investment Banking
18 62 (1.40%) Law
19 48 (1.09%) Back Office
20 42 (0.95%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 653 (14.79%) Analyst
2 448 (10.15%) Developer
3 358 (8.11%) Senior
4 327 (7.41%) Architect
5 285 (6.46%) Lead
6 248 (5.62%) Business Analyst
7 206 (4.67%) Data Engineer
8 199 (4.51%) Consultant
9 159 (3.60%) Project Manager
10 135 (3.06%) IT Support
11 121 (2.74%) Support Engineer
12 105 (2.38%) Data Analyst
13 90 (2.04%) Administrator
14 88 (1.99%) Solutions Architect
15 85 (1.93%) Software Engineer
16 83 (1.88%) IT Engineer
17 77 (1.74%) Support Analyst
18 73 (1.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 72 (1.63%) Java Developer
20 70 (1.59%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 254 (5.75%) REST
2 137 (3.10%) .NET
3 128 (2.90%) SOAP
4 124 (2.81%) Kafka
5 118 (2.67%) React
6 111 (2.51%) RESTful
7 105 (2.38%) Spring
8 101 (2.29%) CSS
9 95 (2.15%) Middleware
10 90 (2.04%) HTML
11 88 (1.99%) LDAP
12 86 (1.95%) JSON
13 78 (1.77%) XML
14 77 (1.74%) Spring Boot
15 76 (1.72%) AngularJS
16 72 (1.63%) Node.js
17 57 (1.29%) Web Services
18 54 (1.22%) PySpark
19 50 (1.13%) OAuth
20 45 (1.02%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 213 (4.82%) Product Ownership
2 207 (4.69%) Onboarding
3 171 (3.87%) Cloud Native
4 165 (3.74%) Data Centre
5 142 (3.22%) Self-Motivation
6 130 (2.94%) Analytical Mindset
7 120 (2.72%) Management Information System
8 117 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
9 107 (2.42%) Distributed Systems
10 104 (2.36%) Data Protection Act
11 101 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
12 92 (2.08%) Virtual Team
13 78 (1.77%) Data Structures
14 68 (1.54%) Security Posture
15 53 (1.20%) AI Agents
16 49 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 45 (1.02%) Algorithms
18 44 (1.00%) Driving Licence
19 42 (0.95%) Mobile App
20 39 (0.88%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 533 (12.07%) Windows
2 245 (5.55%) Linux
3 108 (2.45%) Windows 10
4 92 (2.08%) Windows Server
5 85 (1.93%) Unix
6 81 (1.83%) Apple iOS
7 76 (1.72%) Android
8 73 (1.65%) 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 1,169 (26.48%) Agile
2 733 (16.60%) Continuous Improvement
3 705 (15.97%) CI/CD
4 682 (15.45%) Stakeholder Management
5 672 (15.22%) DevOps
6 509 (11.53%) AI
7 499 (11.30%) Decision-Making
8 496 (11.23%) Migration
9 473 (10.71%) Analytics
10 398 (9.01%) Project Management
11 395 (8.95%) ITIL
12 392 (8.88%) Customer Service
13 386 (8.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 380 (8.61%) Data Modelling
15 353 (8.00%) Validation
16 348 (7.88%) Business Intelligence
17 335 (7.59%) Test Automation
18 311 (7.04%) Change Management
19 308 (6.98%) Scrum
20 279 (6.32%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 797 (18.05%) SQL
2 792 (17.94%) Python
3 332 (7.52%) Java
4 276 (6.25%) PowerShell
5 218 (4.94%) JavaScript
6 169 (3.83%) C#
7 110 (2.49%) TypeScript
8 100 (2.27%) Bash
9 67 (1.52%) 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 (0.63%) Apex Code
17 28 (0.63%) R
18 25 (0.57%) Perl
19 22 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 961 (21.77%) Security Cleared
2 642 (14.54%) SC Cleared
3 544 (12.32%) Degree
4 184 (4.17%) DV Cleared
5 178 (4.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 120 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
7 116 (2.63%) Microsoft Certification
8 109 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
9 92 (2.08%) CISSP
10 79 (1.79%) PMP
11 67 (1.52%) PMI Certification
12 62 (1.40%) CISM
13 61 (1.38%) Azure Certification
13 61 (1.38%) CCNA
14 60 (1.36%) A+ Certification
15 57 (1.29%) Master's Degree
16 52 (1.18%) Network+ Certification
17 43 (0.97%) MCSE
18 36 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
19 28 (0.63%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 290 (6.57%) Data Quality
2 232 (5.25%) QA
3 138 (3.13%) GDPR
4 88 (1.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 82 (1.86%) SLA
6 80 (1.81%) Accessibility
7 79 (1.79%) PMO
8 73 (1.65%) 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%) COBIT
14 14 (0.32%) PSD2
15 12 (0.27%) HL7
15 12 (0.27%) IFRS
16 11 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 341 (7.72%) Active Directory
2 269 (6.09%) Docker
3 100 (2.27%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.86%) vSphere
5 34 (0.77%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.68%) Hyper-V
7 28 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
8 25 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
9 21 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
10 18 (0.41%) Firmware
10 18 (0.41%) vCloud
11 11 (0.25%) Squid
12 7 (0.16%) IAG
13 6 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.091%) ACF2
14 4 (0.091%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.091%) NFS
14 4 (0.091%) RACF
14 4 (0.091%) Snort
15 3 (0.068%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 327 (7.41%) Kubernetes
2 233 (5.28%) Terraform
3 152 (3.44%) Ansible
4 128 (2.90%) Microsoft Intune
5 96 (2.17%) Grafana
6 80 (1.81%) Prometheus
7 65 (1.47%) SCCM
8 45 (1.02%) 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
16 15 (0.34%) SCOM
17 11 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
17 11 (0.25%) WSUS
Vendors
1 824 (18.66%) Microsoft
2 294 (6.66%) Oracle
3 250 (5.66%) SAP
4 223 (5.05%) ServiceNow
5 170 (3.85%) VMware
6 124 (2.81%) Google
7 121 (2.74%) Databricks
8 116 (2.63%) Splunk
9 103 (2.33%) Salesforce
10 102 (2.31%) Cisco
11 67 (1.52%) CyberArk
12 63 (1.43%) Workday
13 61 (1.38%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.31%) Dell
14 58 (1.31%) Red Hat
15 50 (1.13%) Adobe
16 45 (1.02%) Dynatrace
17 44 (1.00%) Citrix
18 42 (0.95%) MuleSoft
19 40 (0.91%) F5