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

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,981 4,296 4,007
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.80% 15.58% 12.21%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.78% 17.14% 14.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,820 2,628 2,328
10th Percentile £248 £250 £262
25th Percentile £375 £375 £397
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £601 £612
90th Percentile £716 £701 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +3.90% -3.75% -0.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 466 271 212
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.25 £15.00
Median hourly rate £19.57 £18.85 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.82% +16.14% -70.25%
75th Percentile £41.25 £34.48 £30.31
90th Percentile £74.00 £63.40 £63.63
UK median hourly rate £18.75 £19.25 £16.23
% change year-on-year -2.60% +18.61% -70.01%

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 38,989 25,060 28,269
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.56% 90.87% 86.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,802 15,892 17,554
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £627 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,803 1,513 1,284
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.74 £17.69 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -2.27%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.71 £66.61
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +0.58%

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 21 September 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 21 September 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 21 September 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 2,142 £525 +4.95% 6,634
South East -4 791 £479 +6.44% 1,887
North of England -9 719 £447 -5.89% 1,801
Midlands -5 604 £450 +2.86% 1,322
West Midlands -8 431 £450 -5.26% 824
North West -11 356 £450 -4.05% 1,019
South West -4 337 £500 +11.11% 947
Yorkshire -6 293 £450 -7.69% 565
East of England +1 281 £438 -12.50% 887
East Midlands +2 170 £475 +26.67% 497
North East -16 72 £375 -16.67% 237
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
1 225 (4.52%) SharePoint
2 223 (4.48%) Confluence
3 103 (2.07%) Microsoft Exchange
4 49 (0.98%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.64%) Apache
7 27 (0.54%) CMS
8 25 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
8 25 (0.50%) SAS
9 14 (0.28%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.26%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.22%) CICS
12 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.14%) IIS
14 6 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 6 (0.12%) WordPress
15 5 (0.10%) Appian
15 5 (0.10%) ArcGIS
15 5 (0.10%) Mule
15 5 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 290 (5.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 246 (4.94%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (2.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 61 (1.22%) Microsoft Project
5 46 (0.92%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.32%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.30%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 15 (0.30%) Revit
10 9 (0.18%) Navisworks
10 9 (0.18%) Sketch
10 9 (0.18%) Trello
11 8 (0.16%) Windchill
12 6 (0.12%) CPLEX
13 4 (0.080%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.060%) Acrobat
14 3 (0.060%) CATIA
14 3 (0.060%) DaVinci Resolve
14 3 (0.060%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 116 (2.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
3 31 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 27 (0.54%) NetSuite
5 26 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
6 21 (0.42%) Workday HCM
7 18 (0.36%) SAP GRC
8 15 (0.30%) iTrent
9 13 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
9 13 (0.26%) SAP SD
10 11 (0.22%) Aladdin
10 11 (0.22%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.20%) Finacle
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
13 8 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
13 8 (0.16%) Primavera
13 8 (0.16%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.16%) Shopify
14 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 990 (19.88%) Azure
2 704 (14.13%) AWS
3 476 (9.56%) Microsoft 365
4 420 (8.43%) Power Platform
5 287 (5.76%) GCP
6 241 (4.84%) Azure DevOps
7 211 (4.24%) Entra ID
8 174 (3.49%) GitHub
9 134 (2.69%) SaaS
10 113 (2.27%) Serverless
11 106 (2.13%) Power Automate
12 87 (1.75%) Microsoft Copilot
13 79 (1.59%) Dynamics 365
14 76 (1.53%) PowerApps
15 71 (1.43%) OneDrive
16 68 (1.37%) GitHub Actions
17 64 (1.28%) Snowflake
18 59 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
19 53 (1.06%) AWS Lambda
20 51 (1.02%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 205 (4.12%) DNS
2 175 (3.51%) Firewall
3 157 (3.15%) VPN
4 125 (2.51%) DHCP
5 117 (2.35%) TCP/IP
6 99 (1.99%) WAN
7 94 (1.89%) Network Security
8 84 (1.69%) LAN
9 72 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
10 58 (1.16%) Wireless
11 57 (1.14%) SAN
12 51 (1.02%) VLAN
13 44 (0.88%) BGP
14 38 (0.76%) VoIP
15 32 (0.64%) Structured Cabling
16 29 (0.58%) SD-WAN
17 26 (0.52%) MPLS
18 24 (0.48%) SSL
19 21 (0.42%) OSPF
20 20 (0.40%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 318 (6.38%) Power BI
2 192 (3.85%) SQL Server
3 155 (3.11%) Data Warehouse
3 155 (3.11%) Relational Database
4 132 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
5 91 (1.83%) Metadata
6 76 (1.53%) MongoDB
6 76 (1.53%) NoSQL
7 75 (1.51%) Tableau
8 69 (1.39%) Data Lake
9 52 (1.04%) Oracle Database
10 50 (1.00%) MySQL
11 37 (0.74%) Big Data
12 32 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
13 31 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 27 (0.54%) Db2
15 26 (0.52%) BigQuery
15 26 (0.52%) Power Query
16 25 (0.50%) Delta Lake
17 24 (0.48%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 449 (9.01%) JIRA
2 330 (6.63%) Git
3 168 (3.37%) Jenkins
4 123 (2.47%) GitLab
5 70 (1.41%) Selenium
6 36 (0.72%) Cucumber
7 35 (0.70%) Maven
7 35 (0.70%) Postman
8 34 (0.68%) Cypress.io
8 34 (0.68%) JUnit
9 28 (0.56%) Bitbucket
10 26 (0.52%) Gradle
11 25 (0.50%) SonarQube
12 24 (0.48%) REST Assured
13 20 (0.40%) JMeter
13 20 (0.40%) Mockito
14 17 (0.34%) WebDriver
15 16 (0.32%) Gatling
16 15 (0.30%) Visual Studio
17 14 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,662 (53.44%) Social Skills
2 2,173 (43.63%) Analytical Skills
3 1,142 (22.93%) Finance
4 495 (9.94%) Public Sector
5 411 (8.25%) Banking
6 254 (5.10%) Organisational Skills
7 216 (4.34%) Manufacturing
8 179 (3.59%) Documentation Skills
9 175 (3.51%) Retail
10 168 (3.37%) Influencing Skills
11 162 (3.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 115 (2.31%) Front Office
13 114 (2.29%) Legal
14 108 (2.17%) Marketing
15 106 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
16 105 (2.11%) Telecoms
17 77 (1.55%) Investment Banking
18 64 (1.28%) Law
19 61 (1.22%) Aerospace
20 55 (1.10%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 683 (13.71%) Analyst
2 580 (11.64%) Developer
3 463 (9.30%) Senior
4 372 (7.47%) Lead
5 294 (5.90%) Architect
6 228 (4.58%) Business Analyst
7 217 (4.36%) IT Support
8 202 (4.06%) Consultant
9 197 (3.96%) Support Engineer
10 178 (3.57%) Data Engineer
11 136 (2.73%) IT Engineer
12 135 (2.71%) Administrator
13 129 (2.59%) Project Manager
14 107 (2.15%) Data Analyst
15 101 (2.03%) Java Developer
16 99 (1.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 98 (1.97%) IT Support Engineer
18 92 (1.85%) DevOps Engineer
19 87 (1.75%) Support Analyst
20 86 (1.73%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 330 (6.63%) REST
2 297 (5.96%) Terraform
3 170 (3.41%) .NET
4 149 (2.99%) RESTful
5 148 (2.97%) SOAP
6 142 (2.85%) React
7 120 (2.41%) Kafka
8 115 (2.31%) JSON
9 114 (2.29%) HTML
10 113 (2.27%) CSS
11 111 (2.23%) Spring
12 109 (2.19%) XML
13 96 (1.93%) Web Services
14 94 (1.89%) Middleware
15 90 (1.81%) Spring Boot
16 83 (1.67%) AngularJS
17 78 (1.57%) Node.js
18 76 (1.53%) OAuth
19 56 (1.12%) PySpark
20 49 (0.98%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 290 (5.82%) Onboarding
2 254 (5.10%) Cloud Native
3 241 (4.84%) Product Ownership
4 197 (3.96%) Self-Motivation
5 185 (3.71%) Management Information System
6 176 (3.53%) Enterprise Software
7 149 (2.99%) Data Centre
8 132 (2.65%) Distributed Systems
9 126 (2.53%) Data Structures
10 118 (2.37%) Analytical Mindset
11 113 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
12 108 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
13 85 (1.71%) Virtual Team
14 78 (1.57%) Driving Licence
15 72 (1.45%) AI Agents
16 67 (1.35%) CMDB
17 58 (1.16%) PKI
18 52 (1.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 49 (0.98%) NHS
20 48 (0.96%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 694 (13.93%) Windows
2 276 (5.54%) Linux
3 204 (4.10%) Windows Server
4 128 (2.57%) Windows 10
5 91 (1.83%) Unix
6 83 (1.67%) Apple iOS
7 81 (1.63%) Mac OS
8 72 (1.45%) Android
9 50 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.36%) VMS
12 17 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 13 (0.26%) zOS
14 11 (0.22%) Solaris
15 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
16 8 (0.16%) CentOS
17 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
18 6 (0.12%) AIX
19 4 (0.080%) HPUX
19 4 (0.080%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,365 (27.40%) Agile
2 1,186 (23.81%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,137 (22.83%) Continuous Improvement
4 833 (16.72%) CI/CD
5 759 (15.24%) DevOps
6 692 (13.89%) AI
7 578 (11.60%) Decision-Making
8 565 (11.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 518 (10.40%) Migration
10 503 (10.10%) Analytics
11 488 (9.80%) Customer Service
12 472 (9.48%) ITIL
13 409 (8.21%) Test Automation
14 397 (7.97%) Validation
15 378 (7.59%) Business Intelligence
16 354 (7.11%) Data Modelling
17 343 (6.89%) Scrum
18 339 (6.81%) ITSM
19 338 (6.79%) Roadmaps
20 331 (6.65%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 887 (17.81%) SQL
2 779 (15.64%) Python
3 366 (7.35%) Java
4 302 (6.06%) JavaScript
5 295 (5.92%) PowerShell
6 194 (3.89%) C#
7 142 (2.85%) Bash
8 130 (2.61%) TypeScript
9 85 (1.71%) PL/SQL
10 48 (0.96%) T-SQL
11 47 (0.94%) C++
12 40 (0.80%) Go
12 40 (0.80%) Shell Script
13 30 (0.60%) Scala
14 29 (0.58%) Bicep
15 27 (0.54%) Groovy
16 26 (0.52%) Kotlin
17 25 (0.50%) C
18 24 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 24 (0.48%) R
Qualifications
1 1,094 (21.96%) Security Cleared
2 765 (15.36%) SC Cleared
3 602 (12.09%) Degree
4 214 (4.30%) DV Cleared
5 179 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
7 130 (2.61%) BPSS Clearance
8 88 (1.77%) Cisco Certification
9 76 (1.53%) Azure Certification
10 72 (1.45%) CISSP
11 71 (1.43%) PMI Certification
12 68 (1.37%) PMP
13 55 (1.10%) A+ Certification
14 48 (0.96%) DBS Check
14 48 (0.96%) Master's Degree
15 47 (0.94%) AWS Certification
16 46 (0.92%) CCNA
17 42 (0.84%) CISM
18 39 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
19 37 (0.74%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (7.65%) Data Quality
2 345 (6.93%) QA
3 116 (2.33%) GDPR
3 116 (2.33%) SLA
4 110 (2.21%) Accessibility
5 89 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 82 (1.65%) PMO
7 68 (1.37%) NIST
8 57 (1.14%) GRC
9 31 (0.62%) WCAG
10 22 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
11 19 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 17 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.30%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.26%) GxP
14 13 (0.26%) IFRS
14 13 (0.26%) NCSC
15 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 11 (0.22%) COBIT
16 9 (0.18%) HIPAA
System Software
1 399 (8.01%) Active Directory
2 306 (6.14%) Docker
3 155 (3.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 65 (1.30%) VMware ESXi
5 62 (1.24%) Hyper-V
6 51 (1.02%) VMware NSX
7 48 (0.96%) vSphere
8 33 (0.66%) Virtual Desktop
9 30 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 26 (0.52%) IAG
10 26 (0.52%) vCloud
11 16 (0.32%) Firmware
12 10 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.12%) NFS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.080%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 4 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.080%) RACF
14 4 (0.080%) XenApp
14 4 (0.080%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 338 (6.79%) Kubernetes
2 161 (3.23%) Ansible
3 130 (2.61%) Microsoft Intune
4 90 (1.81%) Grafana
5 87 (1.75%) SCCM
6 73 (1.47%) Prometheus
7 50 (1.00%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.74%) SCOM
9 23 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
10 22 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
11 21 (0.42%) WSUS
12 19 (0.38%) Control-M
13 13 (0.26%) Nessus
14 12 (0.24%) FortiGate
14 12 (0.24%) VxRail
15 11 (0.22%) Istio
15 11 (0.22%) Kibana
16 9 (0.18%) Argo
16 9 (0.18%) Podman
17 8 (0.16%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,180 (23.69%) Microsoft
2 343 (6.89%) Oracle
3 319 (6.40%) ServiceNow
4 307 (6.16%) SAP
5 202 (4.06%) VMware
6 147 (2.95%) Google
7 128 (2.57%) Salesforce
8 119 (2.39%) Databricks
9 115 (2.31%) Cisco
10 99 (1.99%) Splunk
11 69 (1.39%) Workday
12 68 (1.37%) Dynatrace
13 57 (1.14%) Apple
14 52 (1.04%) Adobe
14 52 (1.04%) IBM
15 44 (0.88%) Red Hat
16 43 (0.86%) CyberArk
17 38 (0.76%) MuleSoft
18 36 (0.72%) Dell
19 33 (0.66%) Palo Alto