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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,555 4,166 4,057
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.25% 17.09% 10.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.25% 18.74% 12.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,808 2,605 2,474
10th Percentile £275 £250 £233
25th Percentile £389 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £594 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £505
% change year-on-year -4.00% -1.04% -3.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 268 208 369
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.39 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.80 £22.00 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.63% +25.71% -63.84%
75th Percentile £55.19 £38.88 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £65.80
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £22.32 £17.50
% change year-on-year -4.79% +27.54% -63.25%

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 34,370 22,228 32,118
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.91% 91.19% 86.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,972 14,556 21,057
10th Percentile £316 £309 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,137 921 2,257
10th Percentile £15.34 £14.70 £12.97
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £30.00 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -16.67% -3.59%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.50
% change year-on-year +43.29% -18.31% -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 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 3 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 3 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 -12 1,943 £512 -2.51% 1,024
North of England -6 764 £450 -7.98% 651
South East -6 656 £488 -2.50% 748
Midlands -4 520 £450 +2.27% 450
North West -5 365 £404 -17.65% 359
West Midlands -5 355 £475 +5.56% 280
Yorkshire -5 352 £460 -3.16% 219
South West 0 328 £500 - 274
East of England -4 212 £450 - 256
East Midlands 0 164 £443 +11.20% 171
North East -7 54 £425 -11.23% 82
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
1 195 (4.28%) Confluence
2 129 (2.83%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 62 (1.36%) Apache Spark
5 48 (1.05%) Apache
6 38 (0.83%) SAS
7 34 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
8 22 (0.48%) CMS
9 18 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.26%) nginx
11 11 (0.24%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.15%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) CICS
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
16 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 3 (0.066%) OpenStack
Applications
1 270 (5.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 210 (4.61%) Microsoft Office
3 99 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
5 65 (1.43%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.22%) Sketch
9 8 (0.18%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Trello
11 6 (0.13%) AutoCAD
11 6 (0.13%) Revit
12 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
12 5 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 5 (0.11%) Maya
12 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.088%) CATIA
14 3 (0.066%) CPLEX
14 3 (0.066%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 95 (2.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 23 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.42%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
4 17 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 14 (0.31%) NEC Housing
7 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 11 (0.24%) NetSuite
8 11 (0.24%) Teamcenter
8 11 (0.24%) Workday HCM
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
10 9 (0.20%) Shopify
11 8 (0.18%) iTrent
11 8 (0.18%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
11 8 (0.18%) Remedy ITSM
12 7 (0.15%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 931 (20.44%) Azure
2 695 (15.26%) AWS
3 354 (7.77%) Power Platform
4 306 (6.72%) GCP
4 306 (6.72%) Microsoft 365
5 216 (4.74%) Azure DevOps
6 183 (4.02%) GitHub
7 139 (3.05%) Entra ID
8 130 (2.85%) Serverless
9 115 (2.52%) SaaS
10 88 (1.93%) GitHub Actions
11 80 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
12 79 (1.73%) Amazon S3
13 69 (1.51%) Azure Data Factory
14 66 (1.45%) OpenShift
15 61 (1.34%) Power Automate
15 61 (1.34%) Snowflake
16 56 (1.23%) Dynamics 365
17 48 (1.05%) Google Workspace
18 47 (1.03%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 162 (3.56%) DNS
2 156 (3.42%) Firewall
3 103 (2.26%) TCP/IP
4 94 (2.06%) VPN
5 88 (1.93%) Network Security
6 86 (1.89%) WAN
7 80 (1.76%) DHCP
8 66 (1.45%) LAN
9 63 (1.38%) SAN
10 52 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
11 42 (0.92%) BGP
12 40 (0.88%) VLAN
13 37 (0.81%) OSPF
14 30 (0.66%) SD-WAN
15 26 (0.57%) VoIP
16 23 (0.50%) Wireless
17 22 (0.48%) Internet
17 22 (0.48%) VXLAN
18 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
18 18 (0.40%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (6.15%) Power BI
2 180 (3.95%) SQL Server
3 142 (3.12%) Data Warehouse
4 115 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
5 110 (2.41%) Relational Database
6 96 (2.11%) Metadata
7 78 (1.71%) Tableau
8 77 (1.69%) MongoDB
9 75 (1.65%) NoSQL
10 67 (1.47%) Data Lake
11 57 (1.25%) Oracle Reports
12 50 (1.10%) Big Data
13 47 (1.03%) Oracle Database
13 47 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 44 (0.97%) MySQL
15 31 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
16 30 (0.66%) Power Query
17 27 (0.59%) BigQuery
18 26 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
18 26 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 459 (10.08%) JIRA
2 268 (5.88%) Git
3 178 (3.91%) Jenkins
4 118 (2.59%) GitLab
5 57 (1.25%) Selenium
6 34 (0.75%) Postman
7 27 (0.59%) Bitbucket
7 27 (0.59%) Cucumber
8 24 (0.53%) JUnit
9 21 (0.46%) REST Assured
10 20 (0.44%) Maven
11 18 (0.40%) Cypress.io
12 17 (0.37%) Mockito
13 16 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
14 15 (0.33%) JMeter
14 15 (0.33%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.33%) SpecFlow
15 12 (0.26%) WebDriver
15 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
16 11 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,370 (52.03%) Social Skills
2 1,775 (38.97%) Analytical Skills
3 1,060 (23.27%) Finance
4 406 (8.91%) Public Sector
5 360 (7.90%) Banking
6 203 (4.46%) Organisational Skills
7 169 (3.71%) Retail
8 164 (3.60%) Documentation Skills
9 137 (3.01%) Legal
10 119 (2.61%) Presentation Skills
11 106 (2.33%) Influencing Skills
12 94 (2.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 90 (1.98%) Front Office
14 84 (1.84%) Marketing
15 74 (1.62%) Telecoms
16 67 (1.47%) Manufacturing
17 61 (1.34%) Investment Banking
18 57 (1.25%) Law
19 47 (1.03%) Financial Institution
19 47 (1.03%) Military
Job Titles
1 668 (14.67%) Analyst
2 529 (11.61%) Developer
3 384 (8.43%) Senior
4 331 (7.27%) Architect
5 293 (6.43%) Lead
6 263 (5.77%) Business Analyst
7 211 (4.63%) Data Engineer
8 203 (4.46%) Consultant
9 177 (3.89%) Project Manager
10 109 (2.39%) Support Engineer
11 108 (2.37%) IT Support
12 105 (2.31%) Data Analyst
13 90 (1.98%) Solutions Architect
14 88 (1.93%) Administrator
14 88 (1.93%) Java Developer
15 85 (1.87%) Software Engineer
16 77 (1.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 72 (1.58%) IT Engineer
18 70 (1.54%) IT Analyst
18 70 (1.54%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 255 (5.60%) REST
2 133 (2.92%) Kafka
3 131 (2.88%) SOAP
4 126 (2.77%) RESTful
5 124 (2.72%) .NET
6 120 (2.63%) Spring
7 118 (2.59%) React
8 99 (2.17%) CSS
9 97 (2.13%) Node.js
10 95 (2.09%) LDAP
11 92 (2.02%) HTML
11 92 (2.02%) Spring Boot
12 91 (2.00%) AngularJS
13 87 (1.91%) JSON
14 85 (1.87%) XML
15 84 (1.84%) Middleware
16 63 (1.38%) OAuth
17 57 (1.25%) PySpark
18 50 (1.10%) Oracle Fusion
19 49 (1.08%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 234 (5.14%) Product Ownership
2 208 (4.57%) Onboarding
3 174 (3.82%) Cloud Native
4 162 (3.56%) Data Centre
5 136 (2.99%) Self-Motivation
6 135 (2.96%) Analytical Mindset
7 132 (2.90%) Management Information System
8 101 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
9 100 (2.20%) Distributed Systems
9 100 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
10 91 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
11 89 (1.95%) Data Structures
12 86 (1.89%) Virtual Team
13 66 (1.45%) Security Posture
14 56 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
14 56 (1.23%) Mobile App
15 50 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 49 (1.08%) AI Agents
17 45 (0.99%) Algorithms
18 44 (0.97%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 509 (11.17%) Windows
2 269 (5.91%) Linux
3 105 (2.31%) Windows 10
4 85 (1.87%) Unix
5 84 (1.84%) Android
6 80 (1.76%) Windows Server
7 78 (1.71%) Apple iOS
8 57 (1.25%) Mac OS
9 47 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.46%) Ubuntu
10 21 (0.46%) VMS
11 15 (0.33%) CentOS
12 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.20%) zOS
14 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.15%) Debian
15 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.088%) AIX
16 4 (0.088%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.088%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,269 (27.86%) Agile
2 752 (16.51%) CI/CD
3 722 (15.85%) Continuous Improvement
4 712 (15.63%) DevOps
5 684 (15.02%) Stakeholder Management
6 517 (11.35%) Analytics
6 517 (11.35%) Migration
7 508 (11.15%) Decision-Making
8 506 (11.11%) AI
9 430 (9.44%) Project Management
10 400 (8.78%) Data Modelling
11 383 (8.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 368 (8.08%) Business Intelligence
13 367 (8.06%) Validation
14 362 (7.95%) ITIL
15 360 (7.90%) Customer Service
15 360 (7.90%) Test Automation
16 334 (7.33%) Change Management
17 329 (7.22%) Scrum
18 298 (6.54%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 857 (18.81%) Python
2 818 (17.96%) SQL
3 371 (8.14%) Java
4 284 (6.23%) PowerShell
5 232 (5.09%) JavaScript
6 168 (3.69%) C#
7 140 (3.07%) TypeScript
8 115 (2.52%) Bash
9 78 (1.71%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.30%) C++
11 44 (0.97%) Go
11 44 (0.97%) Shell Script
12 37 (0.81%) C
12 37 (0.81%) R
13 35 (0.77%) Bicep
14 34 (0.75%) T-SQL
15 32 (0.70%) Apex Code
16 31 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 28 (0.61%) Perl
18 24 (0.53%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,028 (22.57%) Security Cleared
2 702 (15.41%) SC Cleared
3 560 (12.29%) Degree
4 200 (4.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 189 (4.15%) DV Cleared
6 125 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
7 109 (2.39%) Microsoft Certification
8 105 (2.31%) Cisco Certification
9 92 (2.02%) CISSP
10 84 (1.84%) PMP
11 74 (1.62%) PMI Certification
12 61 (1.34%) CISM
12 61 (1.34%) Master's Degree
13 60 (1.32%) CCNA
14 58 (1.27%) Azure Certification
15 56 (1.23%) A+ Certification
16 51 (1.12%) Network+ Certification
17 45 (0.99%) MCSE
18 30 (0.66%) CCNP
19 28 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 300 (6.59%) Data Quality
2 276 (6.06%) QA
3 146 (3.21%) GDPR
4 93 (2.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 85 (1.87%) PMO
6 82 (1.80%) NIST
7 75 (1.65%) Accessibility
8 68 (1.49%) SLA
9 42 (0.92%) GRC
10 28 (0.61%) PCI DSS
11 25 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.46%) WCAG
14 19 (0.42%) PSD2
15 18 (0.40%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.33%) HL7
17 14 (0.31%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.31%) IFRS
17 14 (0.31%) NCSC
18 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 338 (7.42%) Active Directory
2 312 (6.85%) Docker
3 104 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.88%) vSphere
5 32 (0.70%) VMware NSX
6 29 (0.64%) Hyper-V
7 20 (0.44%) Firmware
8 18 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
9 16 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.24%) RACF
10 11 (0.24%) Squid
10 11 (0.24%) vCloud
11 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.20%) ACF2
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.13%) IAG
15 4 (0.088%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.088%) NFS
15 4 (0.088%) Snort
Systems Management
1 383 (8.41%) Kubernetes
2 255 (5.60%) Terraform
3 160 (3.51%) Ansible
4 117 (2.57%) Microsoft Intune
5 103 (2.26%) Grafana
6 77 (1.69%) Prometheus
7 70 (1.54%) SCCM
8 40 (0.88%) vCenter Server
9 35 (0.77%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.57%) Argo
11 26 (0.57%) Kibana
12 24 (0.53%) Puppet
13 23 (0.50%) Control-M
14 20 (0.44%) Nessus
15 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
16 14 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 13 (0.29%) WSUS
18 12 (0.26%) CA Endevor
19 11 (0.24%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 845 (18.55%) Microsoft
2 317 (6.96%) Oracle
3 243 (5.33%) SAP
4 199 (4.37%) ServiceNow
5 181 (3.97%) VMware
6 140 (3.07%) Google
7 135 (2.96%) Databricks
8 114 (2.50%) Splunk
9 111 (2.44%) Cisco
9 111 (2.44%) Salesforce
10 72 (1.58%) CyberArk
11 67 (1.47%) BeyondTrust
12 63 (1.38%) Dell
13 61 (1.34%) Red Hat
14 57 (1.25%) Workday
15 50 (1.10%) Citrix
16 49 (1.08%) Adobe
17 42 (0.92%) IBM
17 42 (0.92%) Informatica
17 42 (0.92%) MuleSoft