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

6 months to
23 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 4,765 4,466 3,889
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.62% 16.33% 11.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.44% 18.02% 12.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,766 2,750 2,397
10th Percentile £257 £250 £250
25th Percentile £381 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £492 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +0.41% -2.00% -2.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 369 276 294
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.82 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.44 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.25 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% +30.90% -69.09%
75th Percentile £51.25 £40.86 £32.30
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.13 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £21.39 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.50% +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 38,297 24,783 30,176
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.34% 90.63% 85.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,016 15,884 19,726
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £634 £645
90th Percentile £737 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,362 1,330 1,950
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.29 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.99 £17.25
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -37.13% -6.43%
75th Percentile £69.75 £53.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.23 £71.46 £74.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £39.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -36.33% -7.06%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 2,012 £513 +2.50% 1,294
South East -5 754 £488 -2.50% 775
North of England -9 750 £450 -5.26% 632
Midlands -8 544 £450 +5.88% 414
West Midlands -9 396 £450 - 237
North West -10 371 £450 -8.07% 326
South West -1 336 £500 +5.26% 335
Yorkshire -7 328 £450 -5.26% 214
East of England -2 255 £450 -3.74% 283
East Midlands 0 146 £450 +20.00% 177
North East -15 57 £370 -17.78% 102
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
1 216 (4.53%) Confluence
2 180 (3.78%) SharePoint
3 91 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 52 (1.09%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.67%) Apache
7 29 (0.61%) CMS
8 27 (0.57%) SAS
9 26 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.40%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.21%) ArcGIS
12 10 (0.21%) CICS
13 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 7 (0.15%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) nginx
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
16 4 (0.084%) IIS
Applications
1 249 (5.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (4.64%) Microsoft Office
3 86 (1.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (1.45%) MS Visio
5 63 (1.32%) Microsoft Project
6 27 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.27%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.23%) Revit
11 9 (0.19%) Trello
12 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
12 8 (0.17%) Sketch
13 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
14 5 (0.10%) Maya
15 4 (0.084%) Adobe XD
16 3 (0.063%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.063%) Navisworks
16 3 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 118 (2.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 27 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
4 24 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
5 20 (0.42%) NetSuite
6 18 (0.38%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.36%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.25%) iTrent
10 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 10 (0.21%) SAP GRC
11 10 (0.21%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.21%) Teamcenter
12 9 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
12 9 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
13 7 (0.15%) Loan IQ
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
13 7 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 923 (19.37%) Azure
2 681 (14.29%) AWS
3 372 (7.81%) Power Platform
4 370 (7.76%) Microsoft 365
5 264 (5.54%) GCP
6 222 (4.66%) Azure DevOps
7 188 (3.95%) Entra ID
8 168 (3.53%) GitHub
9 126 (2.64%) SaaS
10 111 (2.33%) Serverless
11 79 (1.66%) GitHub Actions
12 75 (1.57%) Power Automate
13 69 (1.45%) AWS Lambda
14 65 (1.36%) Amazon S3
15 61 (1.28%) PowerApps
16 60 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
17 59 (1.24%) OpenShift
18 58 (1.22%) Azure Data Factory
19 54 (1.13%) Snowflake
20 52 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 208 (4.37%) DNS
2 177 (3.71%) Firewall
3 132 (2.77%) VPN
4 122 (2.56%) TCP/IP
5 120 (2.52%) DHCP
6 102 (2.14%) WAN
7 91 (1.91%) LAN
8 85 (1.78%) Network Security
9 72 (1.51%) Wi-Fi
10 68 (1.43%) SAN
11 54 (1.13%) VLAN
12 50 (1.05%) Wireless
13 49 (1.03%) BGP
14 39 (0.82%) OSPF
15 35 (0.73%) SD-WAN
16 32 (0.67%) VoIP
17 30 (0.63%) Structured Cabling
18 25 (0.52%) MPLS
18 25 (0.52%) VXLAN
19 20 (0.42%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 293 (6.15%) Power BI
2 211 (4.43%) SQL Server
3 148 (3.11%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (2.88%) PostgreSQL
5 133 (2.79%) Relational Database
6 94 (1.97%) MongoDB
7 81 (1.70%) NoSQL
8 78 (1.64%) Data Lake
9 76 (1.59%) Metadata
9 76 (1.59%) Tableau
10 55 (1.15%) Oracle Database
11 51 (1.07%) Big Data
12 49 (1.03%) MySQL
13 48 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 34 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
15 26 (0.55%) Db2
16 25 (0.52%) Power Query
17 24 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
18 23 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
18 23 (0.48%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 475 (9.97%) JIRA
2 277 (5.81%) Git
3 163 (3.42%) Jenkins
4 104 (2.18%) GitLab
5 66 (1.39%) Selenium
6 34 (0.71%) Postman
7 30 (0.63%) Cypress.io
8 28 (0.59%) REST Assured
9 27 (0.57%) Cucumber
10 22 (0.46%) JUnit
11 21 (0.44%) Maven
12 20 (0.42%) Bitbucket
13 19 (0.40%) Gradle
13 19 (0.40%) Mockito
14 17 (0.36%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.31%) JMeter
16 13 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
16 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
17 12 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 12 (0.25%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,443 (51.27%) Social Skills
2 1,982 (41.59%) Analytical Skills
3 1,110 (23.29%) Finance
4 443 (9.30%) Public Sector
5 372 (7.81%) Banking
6 198 (4.16%) Organisational Skills
7 185 (3.88%) Documentation Skills
7 185 (3.88%) Retail
8 141 (2.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 130 (2.73%) Influencing Skills
10 120 (2.52%) Manufacturing
11 111 (2.33%) Legal
12 105 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
13 98 (2.06%) Marketing
13 98 (2.06%) Telecoms
14 96 (2.01%) Front Office
15 71 (1.49%) Investment Banking
16 58 (1.22%) Law
17 53 (1.11%) Back Office
18 49 (1.03%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 666 (13.98%) Analyst
2 533 (11.19%) Developer
3 419 (8.79%) Senior
4 360 (7.56%) Lead
5 327 (6.86%) Architect
6 235 (4.93%) Business Analyst
7 205 (4.30%) Consultant
8 201 (4.22%) Data Engineer
9 168 (3.53%) IT Support
10 157 (3.29%) Support Engineer
11 154 (3.23%) Project Manager
12 107 (2.25%) Data Analyst
13 104 (2.18%) Administrator
14 102 (2.14%) IT Engineer
15 101 (2.12%) Java Developer
16 91 (1.91%) Software Engineer
17 88 (1.85%) Solutions Architect
18 81 (1.70%) Support Analyst
19 78 (1.64%) DevOps Engineer
20 77 (1.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (5.62%) REST
2 141 (2.96%) .NET
3 134 (2.81%) RESTful
4 131 (2.75%) Kafka
5 128 (2.69%) Spring
6 125 (2.62%) React
7 122 (2.56%) SOAP
8 111 (2.33%) JSON
9 104 (2.18%) CSS
10 94 (1.97%) XML
11 93 (1.95%) HTML
12 92 (1.93%) Spring Boot
13 90 (1.89%) Middleware
14 78 (1.64%) Node.js
15 76 (1.59%) AngularJS
16 61 (1.28%) OAuth
16 61 (1.28%) Web Services
17 54 (1.13%) PySpark
18 48 (1.01%) LDAP
19 47 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 249 (5.23%) Onboarding
2 234 (4.91%) Product Ownership
3 203 (4.26%) Cloud Native
4 181 (3.80%) Self-Motivation
5 176 (3.69%) Data Centre
6 140 (2.94%) Analytical Mindset
7 138 (2.90%) Distributed Systems
8 131 (2.75%) Management Information System
9 124 (2.60%) Enterprise Software
10 120 (2.52%) Data Protection Act
10 120 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
11 110 (2.31%) Data Structures
12 101 (2.12%) Virtual Team
13 63 (1.32%) Driving Licence
14 54 (1.13%) Algorithms
14 54 (1.13%) CMDB
15 53 (1.11%) AI Agents
16 52 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 50 (1.05%) PKI
18 47 (0.99%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 619 (12.99%) Windows
2 258 (5.41%) Linux
3 126 (2.64%) Windows Server
4 107 (2.25%) Windows 10
5 98 (2.06%) Unix
6 77 (1.62%) Apple iOS
6 77 (1.62%) Mac OS
7 73 (1.53%) Android
8 40 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 19 (0.40%) Ubuntu
10 13 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
11 12 (0.25%) VMS
12 11 (0.23%) zOS
13 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.15%) Solaris
15 6 (0.13%) CentOS
16 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.084%) AIX
17 4 (0.084%) HPUX
17 4 (0.084%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,291 (27.09%) Agile
2 934 (19.60%) Continuous Improvement
3 885 (18.57%) Stakeholder Management
4 775 (16.26%) CI/CD
5 733 (15.38%) DevOps
6 616 (12.93%) AI
7 532 (11.16%) Decision-Making
8 508 (10.66%) Migration
9 497 (10.43%) Analytics
10 480 (10.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 470 (9.86%) ITIL
12 435 (9.13%) Customer Service
13 380 (7.97%) Business Intelligence
14 371 (7.79%) Validation
15 362 (7.60%) Test Automation
16 361 (7.58%) Data Modelling
17 351 (7.37%) Project Management
18 337 (7.07%) Roadmaps
19 329 (6.90%) Change Management
20 327 (6.86%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 854 (17.92%) SQL
2 782 (16.41%) Python
3 364 (7.64%) Java
4 269 (5.65%) PowerShell
5 253 (5.31%) JavaScript
6 155 (3.25%) C#
7 131 (2.75%) Bash
8 106 (2.22%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 50 (1.05%) C++
10 50 (1.05%) T-SQL
11 44 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 39 (0.82%) Go
13 34 (0.71%) Bicep
13 34 (0.71%) C
14 31 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 28 (0.59%) Apex Code
16 27 (0.57%) Kotlin
17 25 (0.52%) R
18 22 (0.46%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,050 (22.04%) Security Cleared
2 696 (14.61%) SC Cleared
3 588 (12.34%) Degree
4 214 (4.49%) DV Cleared
5 166 (3.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 131 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
7 117 (2.46%) Cisco Certification
8 109 (2.29%) BPSS Clearance
9 80 (1.68%) CISSP
10 77 (1.62%) PMP
11 70 (1.47%) PMI Certification
12 67 (1.41%) Azure Certification
13 65 (1.36%) CCNA
14 63 (1.32%) A+ Certification
15 52 (1.09%) CISM
16 50 (1.05%) Master's Degree
17 43 (0.90%) Network+ Certification
18 41 (0.86%) MCSE
19 37 (0.78%) AWS Certification
20 36 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 329 (6.90%) Data Quality
2 282 (5.92%) QA
3 142 (2.98%) GDPR
4 105 (2.20%) Accessibility
5 104 (2.18%) SLA
6 86 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 75 (1.57%) PMO
8 70 (1.47%) NIST
9 45 (0.94%) GRC
10 26 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
10 26 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 24 (0.50%) WCAG
12 15 (0.31%) NCSC
13 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.27%) GxP
15 11 (0.23%) COBIT
15 11 (0.23%) HIPAA
15 11 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.21%) HL7
16 10 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 370 (7.76%) Active Directory
2 306 (6.42%) Docker
3 122 (2.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 47 (0.99%) VMware NSX
4 47 (0.99%) vSphere
5 46 (0.97%) VMware ESXi
6 37 (0.78%) Hyper-V
7 30 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
8 27 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
9 21 (0.44%) vCloud
10 20 (0.42%) Firmware
11 18 (0.38%) IAG
12 9 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.15%) NFS
14 6 (0.13%) Squid
15 4 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.084%) Snort
16 2 (0.042%) SRDF
16 2 (0.042%) UAG
16 2 (0.042%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 363 (7.62%) Kubernetes
2 285 (5.98%) Terraform
3 163 (3.42%) Ansible
4 123 (2.58%) Microsoft Intune
5 100 (2.10%) Grafana
6 85 (1.78%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.51%) SCCM
8 55 (1.15%) vCenter Server
9 30 (0.63%) Control-M
9 30 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
10 29 (0.61%) FortiGate
11 22 (0.46%) SCOM
12 20 (0.42%) Argo
13 19 (0.40%) Nessus
14 18 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
15 17 (0.36%) IBM Guardium
16 16 (0.34%) WSUS
17 12 (0.25%) Kibana
18 9 (0.19%) Puppet
18 9 (0.19%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 943 (19.79%) Microsoft
2 342 (7.18%) Oracle
3 308 (6.46%) ServiceNow
4 291 (6.11%) SAP
5 190 (3.99%) VMware
6 147 (3.08%) Google
7 123 (2.58%) Splunk
8 117 (2.46%) Salesforce
9 112 (2.35%) Cisco
10 101 (2.12%) Databricks
11 77 (1.62%) Workday
12 65 (1.36%) Dynatrace
13 53 (1.11%) Adobe
13 53 (1.11%) Red Hat
14 51 (1.07%) Apple
15 49 (1.03%) Dell
16 47 (0.99%) Citrix
16 47 (0.99%) CyberArk
17 43 (0.90%) MuleSoft
18 39 (0.82%) Juniper