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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -8 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,751 4,493 4,016
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.62% 16.53% 10.98%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.43% 18.23% 12.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,772 2,779 2,437
10th Percentile £260 £250 £250
25th Percentile £383 £381 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.82% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £706 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £492 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -0.61% -1.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 361 273 339
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.50 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.49 £21.28 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% +31.12% -69.09%
75th Percentile £47.50 £43.39 £33.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.75 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.56 £21.39 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.90% +31.79% -69.09%

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 38,234 24,648 31,320
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.43% 90.68% 85.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,071 15,798 20,362
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £735 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,374 1,309 2,214
10th Percentile £15.57 £14.39 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.98 £16.25
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -34.02% -8.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.70 £73.60
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.29%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 2,017 £512 +2.45% 979
South East -5 748 £481 -3.80% 757
North of England -9 737 £449 -5.53% 620
Midlands -7 540 £450 +5.88% 377
West Midlands -8 391 £463 +2.78% 204
North West -10 371 £450 -8.07% 321
South West -2 334 £500 +2.56% 302
Yorkshire -7 321 £450 -5.26% 217
East of England -2 261 £450 -5.26% 249
East Midlands -1 147 £450 +20.00% 172
North East -22 51 £370 -17.78% 92
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
1 214 (4.50%) Confluence
2 171 (3.60%) SharePoint
3 90 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 58 (1.22%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
6 37 (0.78%) Apache
7 32 (0.67%) CMS
8 28 (0.59%) SAS
9 27 (0.57%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.23%) nginx
13 10 (0.21%) ArcGIS
13 10 (0.21%) CICS
14 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 8 (0.17%) Camunda
16 7 (0.15%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
17 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
17 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 250 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (4.69%) Microsoft Office
3 86 (1.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.49%) MS Visio
5 60 (1.26%) Microsoft Project
6 28 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.51%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.32%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.27%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.23%) Revit
11 9 (0.19%) Sketch
12 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
12 8 (0.17%) Trello
13 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.11%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.11%) CATIA
14 5 (0.11%) Maya
15 3 (0.063%) Navisworks
15 3 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
16 2 (0.042%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 117 (2.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
4 22 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.38%) Aladdin
6 17 (0.36%) NetSuite
7 16 (0.34%) Workday HCM
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.25%) iTrent
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
10 10 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
10 10 (0.21%) SAP HCM
10 10 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 10 (0.21%) Teamcenter
11 9 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
11 9 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
11 9 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
11 9 (0.19%) SAP GRC
12 8 (0.17%) NEC Housing
13 7 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 940 (19.79%) Azure
2 688 (14.48%) AWS
3 377 (7.94%) Power Platform
4 357 (7.51%) Microsoft 365
5 265 (5.58%) GCP
6 228 (4.80%) Azure DevOps
7 178 (3.75%) Entra ID
8 159 (3.35%) GitHub
9 127 (2.67%) SaaS
10 118 (2.48%) Serverless
11 74 (1.56%) AWS Lambda
12 72 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
13 71 (1.49%) Amazon S3
13 71 (1.49%) Power Automate
14 60 (1.26%) Azure Data Factory
15 59 (1.24%) PowerApps
16 58 (1.22%) OpenShift
17 57 (1.20%) Dynamics 365
17 57 (1.20%) Snowflake
18 50 (1.05%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 207 (4.36%) DNS
2 176 (3.70%) Firewall
3 129 (2.72%) VPN
4 123 (2.59%) TCP/IP
5 112 (2.36%) DHCP
6 97 (2.04%) WAN
7 88 (1.85%) Network Security
8 86 (1.81%) LAN
9 68 (1.43%) SAN
10 67 (1.41%) Wi-Fi
11 49 (1.03%) VLAN
12 48 (1.01%) BGP
13 46 (0.97%) Wireless
14 39 (0.82%) OSPF
15 33 (0.69%) SD-WAN
16 30 (0.63%) VoIP
17 28 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
18 24 (0.51%) VXLAN
19 23 (0.48%) MPLS
20 20 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 298 (6.27%) Power BI
2 214 (4.50%) SQL Server
3 149 (3.14%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (2.88%) PostgreSQL
5 133 (2.80%) Relational Database
6 92 (1.94%) MongoDB
7 81 (1.70%) NoSQL
8 80 (1.68%) Data Lake
9 77 (1.62%) Tableau
10 75 (1.58%) Metadata
11 53 (1.12%) Oracle Database
12 48 (1.01%) Big Data
12 48 (1.01%) MySQL
12 48 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 36 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
14 27 (0.57%) Power Query
15 26 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
15 26 (0.55%) Db2
16 25 (0.53%) RDBMS
17 22 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 471 (9.91%) JIRA
2 276 (5.81%) Git
3 161 (3.39%) Jenkins
4 107 (2.25%) GitLab
5 68 (1.43%) Selenium
6 39 (0.82%) Postman
7 31 (0.65%) Cypress.io
7 31 (0.65%) REST Assured
8 25 (0.53%) Cucumber
8 25 (0.53%) JUnit
9 21 (0.44%) Mockito
10 20 (0.42%) Bitbucket
11 19 (0.40%) Gradle
12 18 (0.38%) Maven
12 18 (0.38%) WebDriver
13 15 (0.32%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.29%) JMeter
14 14 (0.29%) Sonatype Nexus
15 12 (0.25%) Zephyr
16 10 (0.21%) Gatling
General
1 2,455 (51.67%) Social Skills
2 1,978 (41.63%) Analytical Skills
3 1,109 (23.34%) Finance
4 433 (9.11%) Public Sector
5 367 (7.72%) Banking
6 196 (4.13%) Organisational Skills
7 195 (4.10%) Documentation Skills
8 184 (3.87%) Retail
9 132 (2.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 124 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
11 119 (2.50%) Manufacturing
12 110 (2.32%) Legal
13 107 (2.25%) Presentation Skills
14 96 (2.02%) Front Office
14 96 (2.02%) Marketing
15 92 (1.94%) Telecoms
16 73 (1.54%) Investment Banking
17 58 (1.22%) Law
18 53 (1.12%) Back Office
19 48 (1.01%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 674 (14.19%) Analyst
2 530 (11.16%) Developer
3 411 (8.65%) Senior
4 355 (7.47%) Lead
5 338 (7.11%) Architect
6 243 (5.11%) Business Analyst
7 205 (4.31%) Consultant
8 204 (4.29%) Data Engineer
9 165 (3.47%) IT Support
10 157 (3.30%) Support Engineer
11 150 (3.16%) Project Manager
12 104 (2.19%) Data Analyst
13 103 (2.17%) Administrator
13 103 (2.17%) IT Engineer
14 98 (2.06%) Java Developer
15 92 (1.94%) Solutions Architect
16 90 (1.89%) Software Engineer
17 82 (1.73%) Support Analyst
18 78 (1.64%) Technical Support
19 77 (1.62%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (5.70%) REST
2 145 (3.05%) .NET
3 132 (2.78%) RESTful
4 131 (2.76%) Kafka
5 128 (2.69%) Spring
6 125 (2.63%) React
7 122 (2.57%) SOAP
8 109 (2.29%) JSON
9 100 (2.10%) CSS
10 94 (1.98%) Middleware
10 94 (1.98%) XML
11 93 (1.96%) Spring Boot
12 90 (1.89%) HTML
13 79 (1.66%) Node.js
14 78 (1.64%) AngularJS
15 60 (1.26%) OAuth
16 58 (1.22%) Web Services
17 56 (1.18%) PySpark
18 54 (1.14%) LDAP
19 46 (0.97%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 240 (5.05%) Onboarding
2 227 (4.78%) Product Ownership
3 201 (4.23%) Cloud Native
4 177 (3.73%) Data Centre
4 177 (3.73%) Self-Motivation
5 138 (2.90%) Analytical Mindset
6 136 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
7 131 (2.76%) Management Information System
8 120 (2.53%) Data Protection Act
9 118 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
10 114 (2.40%) Enterprise Software
11 109 (2.29%) Data Structures
12 98 (2.06%) Virtual Team
13 59 (1.24%) Driving Licence
14 55 (1.16%) AI Agents
15 53 (1.12%) Algorithms
15 53 (1.12%) CMDB
16 51 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 49 (1.03%) Security Posture
18 47 (0.99%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 609 (12.82%) Windows
2 258 (5.43%) Linux
3 117 (2.46%) Windows Server
4 110 (2.32%) Windows 10
5 100 (2.10%) Unix
6 77 (1.62%) Mac OS
7 76 (1.60%) Apple iOS
8 71 (1.49%) Android
9 42 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
12 11 (0.23%) VMS
12 11 (0.23%) zOS
13 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.15%) CentOS
14 7 (0.15%) Solaris
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.084%) AIX
17 4 (0.084%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,268 (26.69%) Agile
2 915 (19.26%) Continuous Improvement
3 864 (18.19%) Stakeholder Management
4 771 (16.23%) CI/CD
5 740 (15.58%) DevOps
6 609 (12.82%) AI
7 537 (11.30%) Decision-Making
8 511 (10.76%) Migration
9 500 (10.52%) Analytics
10 477 (10.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 473 (9.96%) ITIL
12 428 (9.01%) Customer Service
13 383 (8.06%) Business Intelligence
14 377 (7.94%) Validation
15 373 (7.85%) Data Modelling
16 360 (7.58%) Test Automation
17 351 (7.39%) Project Management
18 334 (7.03%) Roadmaps
19 333 (7.01%) Change Management
20 327 (6.88%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 859 (18.08%) SQL
2 796 (16.75%) Python
3 367 (7.72%) Java
4 262 (5.51%) PowerShell
5 245 (5.16%) JavaScript
6 161 (3.39%) C#
7 126 (2.65%) Bash
8 110 (2.32%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.75%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.18%) C++
11 49 (1.03%) T-SQL
12 45 (0.95%) Shell Script
13 41 (0.86%) C
14 38 (0.80%) Go
15 33 (0.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 32 (0.67%) Bicep
17 31 (0.65%) Apex Code
18 27 (0.57%) R
19 26 (0.55%) Kotlin
20 21 (0.44%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,049 (22.08%) Security Cleared
2 689 (14.50%) SC Cleared
3 590 (12.42%) Degree
4 213 (4.48%) DV Cleared
5 174 (3.66%) Computer Science Degree
6 131 (2.76%) Microsoft Certification
7 116 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
8 115 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
9 86 (1.81%) CISSP
10 75 (1.58%) PMP
11 69 (1.45%) PMI Certification
12 67 (1.41%) Azure Certification
13 66 (1.39%) A+ Certification
13 66 (1.39%) CCNA
14 56 (1.18%) Master's Degree
15 54 (1.14%) CISM
16 46 (0.97%) Network+ Certification
17 41 (0.86%) AWS Certification
17 41 (0.86%) MCSE
18 37 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 332 (6.99%) Data Quality
2 281 (5.91%) QA
3 144 (3.03%) GDPR
4 103 (2.17%) SLA
5 98 (2.06%) Accessibility
6 85 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 75 (1.58%) PMO
8 71 (1.49%) NIST
9 44 (0.93%) GRC
10 25 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 24 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
12 18 (0.38%) PCI DSS
12 18 (0.38%) WCAG
13 14 (0.29%) HIPAA
14 13 (0.27%) NCSC
15 12 (0.25%) GxP
16 11 (0.23%) COBIT
16 11 (0.23%) Def Stans
16 11 (0.23%) ISO 20022
17 10 (0.21%) HL7
System Software
1 356 (7.49%) Active Directory
2 302 (6.36%) Docker
3 119 (2.50%) VMware Infrastructure
4 47 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 45 (0.95%) vSphere
6 43 (0.91%) VMware ESXi
7 34 (0.72%) Hyper-V
8 29 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
9 26 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
10 21 (0.44%) vCloud
11 19 (0.40%) Firmware
12 17 (0.36%) IAG
13 11 (0.23%) Squid
14 8 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.15%) NFS
16 4 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.084%) Snort
17 3 (0.063%) BitLocker
18 2 (0.042%) KVM
18 2 (0.042%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 364 (7.66%) Kubernetes
2 284 (5.98%) Terraform
3 162 (3.41%) Ansible
4 124 (2.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 104 (2.19%) Grafana
6 91 (1.92%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.52%) SCCM
8 53 (1.12%) vCenter Server
9 36 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
10 34 (0.72%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.63%) Control-M
12 22 (0.46%) SCOM
13 20 (0.42%) Argo
13 20 (0.42%) Nessus
14 19 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
15 18 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
16 16 (0.34%) Kibana
16 16 (0.34%) WSUS
17 11 (0.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 10 (0.21%) Puppet
Vendors
1 928 (19.53%) Microsoft
2 343 (7.22%) Oracle
3 303 (6.38%) ServiceNow
4 291 (6.13%) SAP
5 186 (3.91%) VMware
6 145 (3.05%) Google
7 122 (2.57%) Splunk
8 120 (2.53%) Salesforce
9 108 (2.27%) Cisco
10 101 (2.13%) Databricks
11 75 (1.58%) Workday
12 64 (1.35%) Dynatrace
13 59 (1.24%) Red Hat
14 53 (1.12%) Adobe
15 50 (1.05%) Apple
15 50 (1.05%) Dell
16 46 (0.97%) Citrix
17 45 (0.95%) CyberArk
18 42 (0.88%) MuleSoft
19 39 (0.82%) Juniper