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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -4 +4 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,624 4,131 4,057
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.75% 16.90% 10.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.76% 18.57% 12.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,871 2,597 2,498
10th Percentile £283 £254 £213
25th Percentile £394 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £512
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.27% -3.20%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £501
% change year-on-year -4.00% -0.15% -4.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 200 365
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.81 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% +26.51% -61.69%
75th Percentile £59.50 £45.46 £40.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.88 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £22.00 £24.18 £17.50
% change year-on-year -9.02% +38.17% -60.10%

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 33,609 22,244 32,354
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.41% 91.01% 86.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,526 14,625 21,310
10th Percentile £313 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £524 £525
% change year-on-year -4.51% -0.26% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,074 884 2,215
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.84 £12.84
25th Percentile £20.27 £18.51 £15.75
Median hourly rate £41.90 £31.70 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.17% -6.76% -9.33%
75th Percentile £67.19 £63.94 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.18 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £30.43 £33.07
% change year-on-year +23.25% -7.98% -8.15%

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 17 April 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 17 April 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 17 April 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 -8 2,011 £512 -2.51% 910
North of England -5 778 £450 -6.25% 620
South East -5 663 £492 -1.60% 733
Midlands -4 515 £450 +0.22% 470
North West -5 382 £425 -11.55% 326
West Midlands -5 365 £476 +2.86% 277
Yorkshire -4 350 £468 -1.47% 210
South West -2 317 £500 -2.44% 299
East of England -4 207 £450 - 290
East Midlands -1 151 £420 +14.44% 193
North East -3 55 £425 -16.67% 97
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
1 209 (4.52%) Confluence
2 135 (2.92%) SharePoint
3 100 (2.16%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.38%) Apache Spark
5 62 (1.34%) SAS
6 50 (1.08%) Apache
7 33 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
8 24 (0.52%) CMS
9 18 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.26%) nginx
12 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.15%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.15%) JBoss
15 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) CICS
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 280 (6.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 211 (4.56%) Microsoft Office
3 106 (2.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
5 72 (1.56%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.13%) Trello
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) Maya
11 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.087%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.065%) CATIA
13 3 (0.065%) CPLEX
13 3 (0.065%) InVision
13 3 (0.065%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.065%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 82 (1.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.45%) Aladdin
4 17 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 14 (0.30%) NEC Housing
7 13 (0.28%) Workday HCM
8 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.24%) iTrent
10 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
10 10 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
11 9 (0.19%) Shopify
11 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
12 8 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
12 8 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
12 8 (0.17%) SAP ERP
13 7 (0.15%) Loan IQ
Cloud Services
1 962 (20.80%) Azure
2 720 (15.57%) AWS
3 348 (7.53%) Power Platform
4 319 (6.90%) GCP
5 309 (6.68%) Microsoft 365
6 217 (4.69%) Azure DevOps
7 193 (4.17%) GitHub
8 152 (3.29%) Entra ID
9 145 (3.14%) Serverless
10 127 (2.75%) SaaS
11 96 (2.08%) GitHub Actions
12 91 (1.97%) Amazon S3
12 91 (1.97%) AWS Lambda
13 84 (1.82%) OpenShift
14 69 (1.49%) Azure Data Factory
15 63 (1.36%) Snowflake
16 57 (1.23%) Power Automate
17 52 (1.12%) Dynamics 365
17 52 (1.12%) Google Workspace
18 49 (1.06%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 175 (3.78%) Firewall
2 169 (3.65%) DNS
3 108 (2.34%) TCP/IP
4 103 (2.23%) Network Security
5 99 (2.14%) VPN
6 88 (1.90%) WAN
7 86 (1.86%) DHCP
8 70 (1.51%) LAN
9 54 (1.17%) SAN
10 53 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
11 46 (0.99%) BGP
12 45 (0.97%) VLAN
13 34 (0.74%) OSPF
14 29 (0.63%) VoIP
15 28 (0.61%) SD-WAN
16 24 (0.52%) Internet
16 24 (0.52%) Wireless
17 20 (0.43%) VXLAN
18 19 (0.41%) MPLS
19 18 (0.39%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (5.99%) Power BI
2 174 (3.76%) SQL Server
3 139 (3.01%) Data Warehouse
4 120 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
5 112 (2.42%) Relational Database
6 96 (2.08%) Metadata
7 84 (1.82%) MongoDB
8 83 (1.79%) NoSQL
9 76 (1.64%) Tableau
10 71 (1.54%) Data Lake
11 61 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
12 57 (1.23%) Oracle Database
13 53 (1.15%) Big Data
14 44 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 41 (0.89%) MySQL
16 35 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
16 35 (0.76%) Pentaho
17 30 (0.65%) DynamoDB
17 30 (0.65%) Power Query
18 28 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 472 (10.21%) JIRA
2 299 (6.47%) Git
3 213 (4.61%) Jenkins
4 139 (3.01%) GitLab
5 78 (1.69%) Selenium
6 46 (0.99%) JUnit
7 36 (0.78%) Postman
8 28 (0.61%) Bitbucket
9 26 (0.56%) Cucumber
10 21 (0.45%) Maven
10 21 (0.45%) REST Assured
11 20 (0.43%) Cypress.io
12 19 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
13 18 (0.39%) Mockito
14 16 (0.35%) JMeter
15 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.30%) SonarQube
17 13 (0.28%) CircleCI
18 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
18 12 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 2,434 (52.64%) Social Skills
2 1,786 (38.62%) Analytical Skills
3 1,076 (23.27%) Finance
4 432 (9.34%) Public Sector
5 367 (7.94%) Banking
6 192 (4.15%) Organisational Skills
7 172 (3.72%) Documentation Skills
8 162 (3.50%) Retail
9 148 (3.20%) Legal
10 124 (2.68%) Influencing Skills
11 122 (2.64%) Presentation Skills
12 103 (2.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 92 (1.99%) Front Office
14 82 (1.77%) Marketing
15 68 (1.47%) Telecoms
16 64 (1.38%) Investment Banking
17 59 (1.28%) Manufacturing
18 51 (1.10%) Law
19 50 (1.08%) Military
20 44 (0.95%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 665 (14.38%) Analyst
2 546 (11.81%) Developer
3 392 (8.48%) Senior
4 341 (7.37%) Architect
5 309 (6.68%) Lead
6 266 (5.75%) Business Analyst
7 211 (4.56%) Consultant
8 208 (4.50%) Data Engineer
9 181 (3.91%) Project Manager
10 109 (2.36%) IT Support
11 105 (2.27%) Support Engineer
12 100 (2.16%) Data Analyst
13 96 (2.08%) Java Developer
14 94 (2.03%) Solutions Architect
15 90 (1.95%) Administrator
16 86 (1.86%) Software Engineer
17 79 (1.71%) Python Developer
18 73 (1.58%) IT Analyst
19 71 (1.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 68 (1.47%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (6.29%) REST
2 144 (3.11%) Kafka
3 141 (3.05%) SOAP
4 136 (2.94%) RESTful
5 127 (2.75%) Spring
6 125 (2.70%) .NET
7 119 (2.57%) React
8 100 (2.16%) Node.js
9 96 (2.08%) Spring Boot
10 94 (2.03%) AngularJS
11 91 (1.97%) CSS
12 90 (1.95%) HTML
13 88 (1.90%) JSON
13 88 (1.90%) LDAP
13 88 (1.90%) XML
14 82 (1.77%) Middleware
15 71 (1.54%) OAuth
16 58 (1.25%) Web Services
17 57 (1.23%) Oracle Fusion
17 57 (1.23%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 239 (5.17%) Product Ownership
2 201 (4.35%) Onboarding
3 177 (3.83%) Cloud Native
4 147 (3.18%) Data Centre
5 134 (2.90%) Management Information System
6 129 (2.79%) Self-Motivation
7 126 (2.72%) Analytical Mindset
8 103 (2.23%) Data Protection Act
9 96 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
10 94 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
11 92 (1.99%) Data Structures
12 91 (1.97%) Legacy Systems
13 82 (1.77%) Virtual Team
14 68 (1.47%) Security Posture
15 59 (1.28%) Hybrid Cloud
15 59 (1.28%) Mobile App
16 54 (1.17%) Algorithms
17 53 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 46 (0.99%) AI Agents
19 44 (0.95%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 517 (11.18%) Windows
2 278 (6.01%) Linux
3 106 (2.29%) Windows 10
4 92 (1.99%) Windows Server
5 82 (1.77%) Unix
6 78 (1.69%) Android
7 72 (1.56%) Apple iOS
8 56 (1.21%) Mac OS
9 54 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.43%) VMS
11 17 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.26%) CentOS
13 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.19%) zOS
15 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 7 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.13%) Debian
18 4 (0.087%) Windows 8
19 3 (0.065%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,320 (28.55%) Agile
2 807 (17.45%) CI/CD
3 748 (16.18%) DevOps
4 730 (15.79%) Continuous Improvement
5 707 (15.29%) Stakeholder Management
6 561 (12.13%) Analytics
7 513 (11.09%) Migration
8 506 (10.94%) Decision-Making
9 487 (10.53%) AI
10 451 (9.75%) Project Management
11 412 (8.91%) Data Modelling
12 396 (8.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 392 (8.48%) Test Automation
14 373 (8.07%) Business Intelligence
15 371 (8.02%) Validation
16 356 (7.70%) ITIL
17 355 (7.68%) Customer Service
18 354 (7.66%) Scrum
19 345 (7.46%) Change Management
20 307 (6.64%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 907 (19.62%) Python
2 846 (18.30%) SQL
3 389 (8.41%) Java
4 301 (6.51%) PowerShell
5 234 (5.06%) JavaScript
6 174 (3.76%) C#
7 146 (3.16%) TypeScript
8 137 (2.96%) Bash
9 79 (1.71%) PL/SQL
10 58 (1.25%) C++
11 44 (0.95%) Go
11 44 (0.95%) Shell Script
12 39 (0.84%) Bicep
13 37 (0.80%) C
13 37 (0.80%) T-SQL
14 35 (0.76%) Perl
15 31 (0.67%) R
16 30 (0.65%) Apex Code
17 29 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 28 (0.61%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,061 (22.95%) Security Cleared
2 731 (15.81%) SC Cleared
3 571 (12.35%) Degree
4 206 (4.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 195 (4.22%) DV Cleared
6 128 (2.77%) BPSS Clearance
7 104 (2.25%) Cisco Certification
8 101 (2.18%) Microsoft Certification
9 94 (2.03%) CISSP
10 92 (1.99%) PMP
11 80 (1.73%) PMI Certification
12 69 (1.49%) Master's Degree
13 65 (1.41%) Azure Certification
14 59 (1.28%) CISM
15 54 (1.17%) CCNA
16 42 (0.91%) A+ Certification
17 40 (0.87%) CCNP
17 40 (0.87%) Network+ Certification
18 38 (0.82%) MCSE
19 32 (0.69%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 313 (6.77%) Data Quality
2 284 (6.14%) QA
3 148 (3.20%) GDPR
4 91 (1.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 88 (1.90%) PMO
6 83 (1.79%) NIST
7 77 (1.67%) Accessibility
8 64 (1.38%) SLA
9 42 (0.91%) GRC
10 27 (0.58%) PCI DSS
11 24 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.45%) PSD2
14 19 (0.41%) WCAG
15 18 (0.39%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.32%) HL7
17 14 (0.30%) NCSC
18 13 (0.28%) IFRS
19 12 (0.26%) HIPAA
19 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 359 (7.76%) Active Directory
2 356 (7.70%) Docker
3 110 (2.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.87%) vSphere
5 32 (0.69%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.65%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.37%) Firmware
8 17 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.24%) RACF
9 11 (0.24%) Squid
9 11 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
10 10 (0.22%) vCloud
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.13%) IAG
14 4 (0.087%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.087%) NFS
14 4 (0.087%) Snort
Systems Management
1 419 (9.06%) Kubernetes
2 268 (5.80%) Terraform
3 161 (3.48%) Ansible
4 123 (2.66%) Microsoft Intune
5 105 (2.27%) Grafana
6 81 (1.75%) Prometheus
7 73 (1.58%) SCCM
8 39 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
8 39 (0.84%) vCenter Server
9 33 (0.71%) FortiGate
10 29 (0.63%) Kibana
11 28 (0.61%) Puppet
12 27 (0.58%) Argo
13 24 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 23 (0.50%) Control-M
15 22 (0.48%) Nessus
16 17 (0.37%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.32%) vRealize
18 13 (0.28%) WSUS
19 11 (0.24%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 855 (18.49%) Microsoft
2 332 (7.18%) Oracle
3 229 (4.95%) SAP
4 196 (4.24%) ServiceNow
5 193 (4.17%) VMware
6 148 (3.20%) Google
7 147 (3.18%) Databricks
8 114 (2.47%) Splunk
9 113 (2.44%) Cisco
10 106 (2.29%) Salesforce
11 73 (1.58%) Red Hat
12 69 (1.49%) CyberArk
13 64 (1.38%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.25%) Citrix
15 57 (1.23%) Dell
16 56 (1.21%) Workday
17 49 (1.06%) Talend
18 47 (1.02%) Adobe
19 43 (0.93%) IBM
19 43 (0.93%) Informatica