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

6 months to
16 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 4,496 4,220 4,043
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.49% 17.09% 10.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.32% 18.70% 12.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,662 2,634 2,431
10th Percentile £263 £250 £254
25th Percentile £388 £388 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £599 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £719 £730
UK median daily rate £493 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 327 237 376
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.39 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% +31.79% -68.02%
75th Percentile £42.65 £34.48 £35.91
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.51 £22.14 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.36% +36.41% -68.49%

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 36,481 22,561 31,958
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.14% 91.35% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,067 14,578 20,676
10th Percentile £325 £302 £300
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.46% -0.98% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £506 £525
% change year-on-year +1.28% -3.62% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,283 1,053 2,381
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.81 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £27.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +70.91% -26.67% +7.05%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £26.32 £37.18
% change year-on-year +67.02% -29.21% +6.23%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 1,921 £520 +1.96% 1,249
North of England -10 713 £450 -5.26% 1,178
South East -6 674 £488 -2.50% 1,375
Midlands -10 504 £465 +9.29% 795
West Midlands -11 361 £469 +4.22% 412
North West -10 343 £433 -8.95% 594
Yorkshire -7 328 £455 -4.16% 392
South West -5 321 £500 - 547
East of England -2 242 £450 -3.54% 702
East Midlands -1 142 £447 +21.80% 383
North East -19 48 £370 -17.78% 204
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
1 201 (4.47%) Confluence
2 137 (3.05%) SharePoint
3 84 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 52 (1.16%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.78%) Apache
6 34 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.71%) SAS
8 29 (0.65%) CMS
9 25 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.27%) nginx
12 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
12 10 (0.22%) CICS
13 9 (0.20%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.18%) Camunda
14 8 (0.18%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
15 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 268 (5.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 195 (4.34%) Microsoft Office
3 91 (2.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 61 (1.36%) Microsoft Project
5 59 (1.31%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.29%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 10 (0.22%) Revit
11 7 (0.16%) CPLEX
11 7 (0.16%) Sketch
11 7 (0.16%) Trello
12 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
13 5 (0.11%) CATIA
13 5 (0.11%) Maya
14 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.067%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.067%) LaTeX
15 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 108 (2.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
4 18 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
6 14 (0.31%) Workday HCM
7 12 (0.27%) NetSuite
8 11 (0.24%) NEC Housing
8 11 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
8 11 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 10 (0.22%) SAP SD
9 10 (0.22%) Teamcenter
10 9 (0.20%) iTrent
10 9 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
10 9 (0.20%) SAP HCM
11 7 (0.16%) Finacle
11 7 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
11 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 7 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 918 (20.42%) Azure
2 669 (14.88%) AWS
3 360 (8.01%) Power Platform
4 319 (7.10%) Microsoft 365
5 264 (5.87%) GCP
6 211 (4.69%) Azure DevOps
7 160 (3.56%) GitHub
8 148 (3.29%) Entra ID
9 125 (2.78%) Serverless
10 123 (2.74%) SaaS
11 78 (1.73%) GitHub Actions
12 75 (1.67%) Amazon S3
13 74 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
14 63 (1.40%) Snowflake
15 61 (1.36%) Azure Data Factory
16 56 (1.25%) Dynamics 365
17 55 (1.22%) Power Automate
18 52 (1.16%) OpenShift
19 48 (1.07%) PowerApps
20 42 (0.93%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 174 (3.87%) DNS
2 141 (3.14%) Firewall
3 104 (2.31%) TCP/IP
3 104 (2.31%) VPN
4 90 (2.00%) DHCP
5 88 (1.96%) WAN
6 75 (1.67%) Network Security
7 71 (1.58%) LAN
8 60 (1.33%) SAN
9 59 (1.31%) Wi-Fi
10 45 (1.00%) VLAN
11 40 (0.89%) BGP
12 37 (0.82%) SD-WAN
13 35 (0.78%) OSPF
14 30 (0.67%) Wireless
15 25 (0.56%) VoIP
15 25 (0.56%) VXLAN
16 19 (0.42%) Internet
16 19 (0.42%) MPLS
16 19 (0.42%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 285 (6.34%) Power BI
2 180 (4.00%) SQL Server
3 142 (3.16%) Data Warehouse
4 122 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
5 119 (2.65%) Relational Database
6 92 (2.05%) MongoDB
7 80 (1.78%) Metadata
7 80 (1.78%) Tableau
8 79 (1.76%) Data Lake
9 78 (1.73%) NoSQL
10 47 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 46 (1.02%) Oracle Database
12 43 (0.96%) Big Data
12 43 (0.96%) Oracle Reports
13 38 (0.85%) MySQL
14 28 (0.62%) Power Query
15 27 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
16 24 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
16 24 (0.53%) Pentaho
16 24 (0.53%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 456 (10.14%) JIRA
2 244 (5.43%) Git
3 151 (3.36%) Jenkins
4 108 (2.40%) GitLab
5 55 (1.22%) Selenium
6 33 (0.73%) Postman
7 28 (0.62%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.53%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.51%) Cucumber
10 21 (0.47%) JUnit
11 20 (0.44%) Cypress.io
12 17 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
13 16 (0.36%) Mockito
14 14 (0.31%) WebDriver
15 13 (0.29%) Maven
15 13 (0.29%) SonarQube
16 12 (0.27%) Zephyr
17 11 (0.24%) JMeter
18 10 (0.22%) Gradle
18 10 (0.22%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,322 (51.65%) Social Skills
2 1,794 (39.90%) Analytical Skills
3 1,046 (23.27%) Finance
4 367 (8.16%) Public Sector
5 349 (7.76%) Banking
6 188 (4.18%) Organisational Skills
7 173 (3.85%) Retail
8 172 (3.83%) Documentation Skills
9 120 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 120 (2.67%) Legal
10 100 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
11 96 (2.14%) Influencing Skills
12 91 (2.02%) Front Office
13 85 (1.89%) Marketing
14 83 (1.85%) Manufacturing
15 81 (1.80%) Telecoms
16 67 (1.49%) Investment Banking
17 60 (1.33%) Law
18 50 (1.11%) Back Office
19 44 (0.98%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 661 (14.70%) Analyst
2 472 (10.50%) Developer
3 378 (8.41%) Senior
4 330 (7.34%) Architect
5 297 (6.61%) Lead
6 243 (5.40%) Business Analyst
7 210 (4.67%) Data Engineer
8 209 (4.65%) Consultant
9 153 (3.40%) Project Manager
10 145 (3.23%) IT Support
11 129 (2.87%) Support Engineer
12 104 (2.31%) Data Analyst
13 94 (2.09%) Administrator
13 94 (2.09%) Solutions Architect
14 89 (1.98%) IT Engineer
15 84 (1.87%) Software Engineer
16 81 (1.80%) Java Developer
17 79 (1.76%) Support Analyst
18 74 (1.65%) Technical Support
19 72 (1.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 254 (5.65%) REST
2 142 (3.16%) .NET
3 130 (2.89%) Kafka
4 124 (2.76%) SOAP
5 120 (2.67%) React
6 114 (2.54%) Spring
7 112 (2.49%) RESTful
8 98 (2.18%) JSON
9 97 (2.16%) CSS
10 93 (2.07%) Middleware
11 85 (1.89%) XML
12 84 (1.87%) HTML
12 84 (1.87%) Spring Boot
13 79 (1.76%) LDAP
14 75 (1.67%) Node.js
15 71 (1.58%) AngularJS
16 55 (1.22%) Web Services
17 53 (1.18%) OAuth
18 52 (1.16%) PySpark
19 45 (1.00%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 218 (4.85%) Onboarding
2 214 (4.76%) Product Ownership
3 186 (4.14%) Cloud Native
4 168 (3.74%) Data Centre
5 153 (3.40%) Self-Motivation
6 129 (2.87%) Analytical Mindset
7 127 (2.82%) Management Information System
8 122 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
9 120 (2.67%) Distributed Systems
10 110 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
11 108 (2.40%) Data Protection Act
12 96 (2.14%) Virtual Team
13 87 (1.94%) Data Structures
14 65 (1.45%) Security Posture
15 56 (1.25%) AI Agents
16 51 (1.13%) Algorithms
16 51 (1.13%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 48 (1.07%) Driving Licence
18 42 (0.93%) Derivative
18 42 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 554 (12.32%) Windows
2 245 (5.45%) Linux
3 109 (2.42%) Windows 10
4 100 (2.22%) Windows Server
5 86 (1.91%) Unix
6 78 (1.73%) Apple iOS
7 74 (1.65%) Mac OS
8 72 (1.60%) Android
9 41 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 23 (0.51%) Ubuntu
11 14 (0.31%) CentOS
12 12 (0.27%) VMS
12 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.22%) zOS
14 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.18%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.11%) Debian
15 5 (0.11%) Solaris
15 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.089%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,169 (26.00%) Agile
2 771 (17.15%) Continuous Improvement
3 728 (16.19%) CI/CD
4 719 (15.99%) Stakeholder Management
5 693 (15.41%) DevOps
6 546 (12.14%) AI
7 513 (11.41%) Migration
8 505 (11.23%) Decision-Making
9 487 (10.83%) Analytics
10 406 (9.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 405 (9.01%) Customer Service
12 404 (8.99%) ITIL
13 386 (8.59%) Project Management
14 379 (8.43%) Data Modelling
15 366 (8.14%) Business Intelligence
16 363 (8.07%) Validation
17 339 (7.54%) Test Automation
18 321 (7.14%) Change Management
19 314 (6.98%) Scrum
20 292 (6.49%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 832 (18.51%) SQL
2 812 (18.06%) Python
3 344 (7.65%) Java
4 276 (6.14%) PowerShell
5 223 (4.96%) JavaScript
6 172 (3.83%) C#
7 106 (2.36%) TypeScript
8 100 (2.22%) Bash
9 77 (1.71%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.31%) C++
11 41 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 40 (0.89%) Go
12 40 (0.89%) T-SQL
13 39 (0.87%) C
14 32 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 30 (0.67%) Bicep
16 29 (0.65%) R
17 26 (0.58%) Apex Code
18 25 (0.56%) Perl
19 22 (0.49%) Scala
Qualifications
1 960 (21.35%) Security Cleared
2 642 (14.28%) SC Cleared
3 548 (12.19%) Degree
4 189 (4.20%) DV Cleared
5 174 (3.87%) Computer Science Degree
6 126 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
7 125 (2.78%) Microsoft Certification
8 108 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
9 88 (1.96%) CISSP
10 78 (1.73%) PMP
11 67 (1.49%) PMI Certification
12 66 (1.47%) Azure Certification
13 62 (1.38%) A+ Certification
13 62 (1.38%) CISM
14 60 (1.33%) CCNA
15 54 (1.20%) Master's Degree
16 52 (1.16%) Network+ Certification
17 44 (0.98%) MCSE
18 35 (0.78%) AWS Certification
19 34 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 307 (6.83%) Data Quality
2 237 (5.27%) QA
3 138 (3.07%) GDPR
4 89 (1.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 85 (1.89%) SLA
6 78 (1.73%) Accessibility
7 75 (1.67%) NIST
7 75 (1.67%) PMO
8 44 (0.98%) GRC
9 23 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
10 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 20 (0.44%) PCI DSS
12 16 (0.36%) NCSC
13 15 (0.33%) COBIT
13 15 (0.33%) ISO 20022
14 14 (0.31%) WCAG
15 13 (0.29%) PSD2
16 12 (0.27%) HL7
17 11 (0.24%) HIPAA
17 11 (0.24%) IFRS
System Software
1 347 (7.72%) Active Directory
2 280 (6.23%) Docker
3 100 (2.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.87%) vSphere
5 37 (0.82%) VMware NSX
6 34 (0.76%) VMware ESXi
7 29 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 26 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
9 23 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
10 19 (0.42%) vCloud
11 18 (0.40%) Firmware
12 11 (0.24%) Squid
13 7 (0.16%) IAG
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.089%) ACF2
15 4 (0.089%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.089%) NFS
15 4 (0.089%) RACF
15 4 (0.089%) Snort
16 3 (0.067%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 337 (7.50%) Kubernetes
2 252 (5.60%) Terraform
3 150 (3.34%) Ansible
4 129 (2.87%) Microsoft Intune
5 96 (2.14%) Grafana
6 82 (1.82%) Prometheus
7 69 (1.53%) SCCM
8 48 (1.07%) vCenter Server
9 38 (0.85%) FortiGate
10 31 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (0.51%) Control-M
12 21 (0.47%) Argo
12 21 (0.47%) Nessus
13 20 (0.44%) Kibana
14 19 (0.42%) Puppet
15 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
15 17 (0.38%) SCOM
16 15 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
17 14 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 13 (0.29%) WSUS
Vendors
1 836 (18.59%) Microsoft
2 311 (6.92%) Oracle
3 259 (5.76%) SAP
4 248 (5.52%) ServiceNow
5 166 (3.69%) VMware
6 130 (2.89%) Google
7 118 (2.62%) Splunk
8 115 (2.56%) Databricks
9 107 (2.38%) Salesforce
10 100 (2.22%) Cisco
11 68 (1.51%) Workday
12 58 (1.29%) CyberArk
12 58 (1.29%) Dell
13 54 (1.20%) Red Hat
14 53 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
15 50 (1.11%) Dynatrace
16 48 (1.07%) Adobe
17 46 (1.02%) Citrix
18 41 (0.91%) Apple
19 38 (0.85%) Informatica