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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -5 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,454 4,120 3,949
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.69% 17.33% 10.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.60% 18.98% 12.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,666 2,592 2,402
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £394 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £511
Median % change year-on-year - -2.17% -2.65%
75th Percentile £600 £601 £637
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 307 211 377
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.06 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.39 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% +31.79% -68.02%
75th Percentile £49.38 £32.37 £36.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.96
UK median hourly rate £20.88 £22.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -5.11% +35.55% -67.54%

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 35,337 21,704 31,436
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.82% 91.29% 85.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,449 14,185 20,585
10th Percentile £325 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £512 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.14% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,203 923 2,285
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £15.95
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.71% -23.29% -2.67%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £27.45 £36.02
% change year-on-year +52.79% -23.80% -2.64%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -11 1,868 £520 - 1,195
North of England -8 738 £450 -7.83% 643
South East -7 650 £492 -1.60% 681
Midlands -8 499 £467 +6.84% 379
North West -8 353 £425 -13.27% 360
Yorkshire -6 349 £467 -1.79% 210
West Midlands -10 349 £474 +4.48% 243
South West -1 331 £500 -3.61% 277
East of England -3 238 £450 -5.26% 256
East Midlands -1 149 £443 +18.17% 137
North East -14 44 £425 -5.56% 84
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
1 197 (4.42%) Confluence
2 136 (3.05%) SharePoint
3 82 (1.84%) Microsoft Exchange
4 50 (1.12%) Apache Spark
5 36 (0.81%) Apache
6 35 (0.79%) SAS
7 34 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.61%) CMS
9 21 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.27%) nginx
11 10 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.22%) WebLogic
12 8 (0.18%) Camunda
12 8 (0.18%) CICS
12 8 (0.18%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.16%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 4 (0.090%) Jupyter
Applications
1 268 (6.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 211 (4.74%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.53%) Microsoft Project
5 61 (1.37%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.25%) Sketch
9 8 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.18%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.16%) Revit
10 7 (0.16%) Trello
11 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.11%) CATIA
12 5 (0.11%) Maya
13 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.090%) CPLEX
14 3 (0.067%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 100 (2.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.45%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
6 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
6 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 13 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 12 (0.27%) NEC Housing
7 12 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
7 12 (0.27%) Teamcenter
8 11 (0.25%) SAP SD
9 9 (0.20%) iTrent
10 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
10 8 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
11 7 (0.16%) Loan IQ
11 7 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 7 (0.16%) Shopify
11 7 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 914 (20.52%) Azure
2 652 (14.64%) AWS
3 357 (8.02%) Power Platform
4 311 (6.98%) Microsoft 365
5 281 (6.31%) GCP
6 213 (4.78%) Azure DevOps
7 167 (3.75%) GitHub
8 140 (3.14%) Entra ID
9 114 (2.56%) SaaS
9 114 (2.56%) Serverless
10 78 (1.75%) GitHub Actions
11 65 (1.46%) Azure Data Factory
11 65 (1.46%) Snowflake
12 64 (1.44%) Amazon S3
12 64 (1.44%) AWS Lambda
13 63 (1.41%) OpenShift
14 60 (1.35%) Dynamics 365
15 57 (1.28%) Power Automate
16 51 (1.15%) PowerApps
17 45 (1.01%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 171 (3.84%) DNS
2 144 (3.23%) Firewall
3 100 (2.25%) TCP/IP
3 100 (2.25%) VPN
4 89 (2.00%) DHCP
5 86 (1.93%) WAN
6 76 (1.71%) Network Security
7 68 (1.53%) LAN
8 62 (1.39%) SAN
9 56 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
10 43 (0.97%) VLAN
11 39 (0.88%) BGP
12 36 (0.81%) OSPF
13 32 (0.72%) SD-WAN
14 28 (0.63%) Wireless
15 26 (0.58%) VoIP
16 23 (0.52%) VXLAN
17 19 (0.43%) Internet
18 18 (0.40%) BIG-IP
19 17 (0.38%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (6.26%) Power BI
2 177 (3.97%) SQL Server
3 139 (3.12%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
5 108 (2.42%) Relational Database
6 87 (1.95%) Metadata
7 80 (1.80%) MongoDB
8 79 (1.77%) Tableau
9 75 (1.68%) NoSQL
10 69 (1.55%) Data Lake
11 53 (1.19%) Oracle Reports
12 46 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 44 (0.99%) Oracle Database
14 42 (0.94%) Big Data
15 38 (0.85%) MySQL
16 27 (0.61%) Power Query
17 26 (0.58%) Delta Lake
18 24 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
18 24 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
18 24 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 446 (10.01%) JIRA
2 249 (5.59%) Git
3 157 (3.52%) Jenkins
4 102 (2.29%) GitLab
5 57 (1.28%) Selenium
6 33 (0.74%) Postman
7 25 (0.56%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.54%) Cucumber
9 23 (0.52%) Bitbucket
10 22 (0.49%) JUnit
11 18 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
12 17 (0.38%) Cypress.io
13 16 (0.36%) Mockito
14 14 (0.31%) Maven
14 14 (0.31%) SonarQube
15 12 (0.27%) SpecFlow
15 12 (0.27%) WebDriver
16 11 (0.25%) JMeter
16 11 (0.25%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,284 (51.28%) Social Skills
2 1,742 (39.11%) Analytical Skills
3 1,026 (23.04%) Finance
4 381 (8.55%) Public Sector
5 345 (7.75%) Banking
6 202 (4.54%) Organisational Skills
7 171 (3.84%) Retail
8 163 (3.66%) Documentation Skills
9 125 (2.81%) Legal
10 98 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
11 97 (2.18%) Influencing Skills
12 93 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 91 (2.04%) Front Office
14 86 (1.93%) Marketing
15 78 (1.75%) Manufacturing
16 74 (1.66%) Telecoms
17 68 (1.53%) Investment Banking
18 61 (1.37%) Law
19 44 (0.99%) Back Office
19 44 (0.99%) Military
Job Titles
1 656 (14.73%) Analyst
2 475 (10.66%) Developer
3 370 (8.31%) Senior
4 324 (7.27%) Architect
5 279 (6.26%) Lead
6 247 (5.55%) Business Analyst
7 211 (4.74%) Data Engineer
8 205 (4.60%) Consultant
9 167 (3.75%) Project Manager
10 122 (2.74%) IT Support
11 113 (2.54%) Data Analyst
11 113 (2.54%) Support Engineer
12 89 (2.00%) Solutions Architect
13 86 (1.93%) Administrator
14 85 (1.91%) Software Engineer
15 77 (1.73%) IT Engineer
16 76 (1.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 76 (1.71%) Java Developer
17 74 (1.66%) Support Analyst
18 71 (1.59%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (5.61%) REST
2 130 (2.92%) .NET
3 127 (2.85%) Kafka
3 127 (2.85%) SOAP
4 119 (2.67%) React
5 116 (2.60%) RESTful
6 113 (2.54%) Spring
7 100 (2.25%) CSS
8 92 (2.07%) HTML
9 89 (2.00%) Middleware
10 88 (1.98%) LDAP
11 85 (1.91%) JSON
12 84 (1.89%) Spring Boot
13 81 (1.82%) AngularJS
14 79 (1.77%) XML
15 78 (1.75%) Node.js
16 56 (1.26%) PySpark
17 55 (1.23%) Web Services
18 54 (1.21%) OAuth
19 45 (1.01%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 221 (4.96%) Product Ownership
2 209 (4.69%) Onboarding
3 166 (3.73%) Data Centre
4 165 (3.70%) Cloud Native
5 142 (3.19%) Self-Motivation
6 127 (2.85%) Analytical Mindset
7 118 (2.65%) Management Information System
8 113 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
9 104 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
10 102 (2.29%) Data Protection Act
11 95 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
12 93 (2.09%) Virtual Team
13 83 (1.86%) Data Structures
14 65 (1.46%) Security Posture
15 52 (1.17%) AI Agents
16 47 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 47 (1.06%) Mobile App
17 45 (1.01%) Algorithms
18 44 (0.99%) Driving Licence
19 42 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 518 (11.63%) Windows
2 252 (5.66%) Linux
3 106 (2.38%) Windows 10
4 91 (2.04%) Windows Server
5 86 (1.93%) Unix
6 80 (1.80%) Apple iOS
7 77 (1.73%) Android
8 68 (1.53%) Mac OS
9 45 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.47%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.36%) VMS
12 14 (0.31%) CentOS
13 13 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
14 10 (0.22%) zOS
15 8 (0.18%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.18%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.16%) Debian
17 5 (0.11%) Solaris
17 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.090%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,190 (26.72%) Agile
2 721 (16.19%) Continuous Improvement
3 706 (15.85%) CI/CD
4 677 (15.20%) DevOps
5 666 (14.95%) Stakeholder Management
6 508 (11.41%) AI
7 503 (11.29%) Decision-Making
8 497 (11.16%) Migration
9 482 (10.82%) Analytics
10 415 (9.32%) Project Management
11 389 (8.73%) Data Modelling
12 384 (8.62%) ITIL
13 381 (8.55%) Customer Service
14 371 (8.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 358 (8.04%) Business Intelligence
16 356 (7.99%) Validation
17 337 (7.57%) Test Automation
18 319 (7.16%) Change Management
19 309 (6.94%) Scrum
20 278 (6.24%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 808 (18.14%) Python
2 799 (17.94%) SQL
3 344 (7.72%) Java
4 276 (6.20%) PowerShell
5 221 (4.96%) JavaScript
6 168 (3.77%) C#
7 112 (2.51%) TypeScript
8 104 (2.33%) Bash
9 68 (1.53%) PL/SQL
10 62 (1.39%) C++
11 42 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 41 (0.92%) Go
13 36 (0.81%) C
14 34 (0.76%) T-SQL
15 32 (0.72%) Bicep
16 31 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 30 (0.67%) R
18 29 (0.65%) Apex Code
19 25 (0.56%) Perl
20 23 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 984 (22.09%) Security Cleared
2 656 (14.73%) SC Cleared
3 552 (12.39%) Degree
4 194 (4.36%) DV Cleared
5 175 (3.93%) Computer Science Degree
6 118 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
7 115 (2.58%) Microsoft Certification
8 107 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
9 89 (2.00%) CISSP
10 79 (1.77%) PMP
11 67 (1.50%) PMI Certification
12 62 (1.39%) CCNA
13 60 (1.35%) Azure Certification
13 60 (1.35%) CISM
14 59 (1.32%) A+ Certification
15 54 (1.21%) Master's Degree
15 54 (1.21%) Network+ Certification
16 43 (0.97%) MCSE
17 32 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
18 29 (0.65%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 300 (6.74%) Data Quality
2 229 (5.14%) QA
3 136 (3.05%) GDPR
4 87 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 81 (1.82%) PMO
5 81 (1.82%) SLA
6 74 (1.66%) Accessibility
6 74 (1.66%) NIST
7 40 (0.90%) GRC
8 25 (0.56%) PCI DSS
9 22 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
10 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 15 (0.34%) ISO 20022
11 15 (0.34%) NCSC
11 15 (0.34%) WCAG
12 14 (0.31%) PSD2
13 13 (0.29%) HIPAA
13 13 (0.29%) IFRS
14 12 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
14 12 (0.27%) HL7
System Software
1 337 (7.57%) Active Directory
2 274 (6.15%) Docker
3 100 (2.25%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.81%) vSphere
5 34 (0.76%) VMware NSX
6 30 (0.67%) Hyper-V
7 25 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
7 25 (0.56%) VMware ESXi
8 19 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (0.40%) vCloud
10 17 (0.38%) Firmware
11 11 (0.25%) Squid
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.13%) IAG
14 4 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.090%) RACF
14 4 (0.090%) Snort
15 3 (0.067%) ACF2
15 3 (0.067%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.067%) NFS
Systems Management
1 337 (7.57%) Kubernetes
2 235 (5.28%) Terraform
3 156 (3.50%) Ansible
4 121 (2.72%) Microsoft Intune
5 100 (2.25%) Grafana
6 84 (1.89%) Prometheus
7 65 (1.46%) SCCM
8 44 (0.99%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.83%) FortiGate
10 33 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.58%) Kibana
12 23 (0.52%) Control-M
13 22 (0.49%) Puppet
14 21 (0.47%) Nessus
15 19 (0.43%) Argo
16 17 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 15 (0.34%) SCOM
18 11 (0.25%) WSUS
19 9 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 825 (18.52%) Microsoft
2 299 (6.71%) Oracle
3 247 (5.55%) SAP
4 212 (4.76%) ServiceNow
5 175 (3.93%) VMware
6 124 (2.78%) Databricks
7 119 (2.67%) Google
8 116 (2.60%) Splunk
9 105 (2.36%) Salesforce
10 103 (2.31%) Cisco
11 66 (1.48%) CyberArk
12 62 (1.39%) Workday
13 61 (1.37%) BeyondTrust
14 60 (1.35%) Dell
15 58 (1.30%) Red Hat
16 48 (1.08%) Adobe
17 43 (0.97%) Citrix
17 43 (0.97%) Dynatrace
18 42 (0.94%) MuleSoft
19 41 (0.92%) F5