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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -8 +4 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,846 4,446 3,765
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.63% 16.06% 11.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.49% 17.69% 13.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,774 2,719 2,320
10th Percentile £250 £255 £262
25th Percentile £375 £375 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.51% -1.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £595 £600 £622
90th Percentile £713 £719 £725
UK median daily rate £492 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +0.92% -2.50% -2.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 406 281 242
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.13 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% +24.80% -69.76%
75th Percentile £44.00 £35.00 £32.18
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £21.24 £16.23
% change year-on-year -10.55% +30.87% -70.25%

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 38,794 25,132 28,630
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.10% 90.79% 85.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,129 16,058 18,629
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,535 1,418 1,653
10th Percentile £14.56 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.87 £18.50
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +3.61%
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.08
% change year-on-year +68.99% -38.77% -1.96%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 12 August 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 2,084 £525 +5.00% 4,621
South East -4 767 £477 -0.31% 1,438
North of England -9 727 £447 -5.89% 1,324
Midlands -5 549 £450 +4.65% 837
West Midlands -10 399 £450 -1.50% 528
South West -1 354 £500 +5.26% 687
North West -12 345 £450 -6.25% 751
Yorkshire -7 324 £450 -5.16% 412
East of England +1 259 £450 -10.00% 591
East Midlands 0 147 £475 +26.67% 309
North East -16 63 £375 -16.67% 181
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
1 212 (4.37%) Confluence
2 206 (4.25%) SharePoint
3 110 (2.27%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.16%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.70%) Apache
7 32 (0.66%) SAS
8 28 (0.58%) Oracle Workflow
9 27 (0.56%) CMS
10 18 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.23%) CICS
13 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
16 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
17 5 (0.10%) Appian
17 5 (0.10%) Mule
17 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
17 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 273 (5.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 240 (4.95%) Microsoft Office
3 90 (1.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.32%) MS Visio
5 62 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
6 27 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.27%) Revit
10 11 (0.23%) Trello
11 9 (0.19%) Sketch
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 5 (0.10%) CATIA
13 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
14 4 (0.083%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.083%) Photoshop
15 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.062%) Maya
16 2 (0.041%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 116 (2.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.45%) NetSuite
6 16 (0.33%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.29%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.27%) iTrent
8 13 (0.27%) SAP SD
9 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
9 11 (0.23%) SAP GRC
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 8 (0.17%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
11 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
12 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
12 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.14%) SAP ERP
12 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
12 7 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 969 (20.00%) Azure
2 697 (14.38%) AWS
3 416 (8.58%) Microsoft 365
4 392 (8.09%) Power Platform
5 275 (5.67%) GCP
6 239 (4.93%) Azure DevOps
7 208 (4.29%) Entra ID
8 163 (3.36%) GitHub
9 134 (2.77%) SaaS
10 114 (2.35%) Serverless
11 84 (1.73%) Power Automate
12 75 (1.55%) GitHub Actions
13 65 (1.34%) AWS Lambda
13 65 (1.34%) Dynamics 365
14 61 (1.26%) Azure Data Factory
15 60 (1.24%) OneDrive
15 60 (1.24%) PowerApps
16 59 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
17 58 (1.20%) Amazon S3
17 58 (1.20%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 218 (4.50%) DNS
2 181 (3.74%) Firewall
3 147 (3.03%) VPN
4 131 (2.70%) DHCP
5 126 (2.60%) TCP/IP
6 115 (2.37%) WAN
7 99 (2.04%) LAN
8 85 (1.75%) Network Security
9 72 (1.49%) Wi-Fi
10 65 (1.34%) SAN
11 55 (1.13%) VLAN
12 53 (1.09%) Wireless
13 52 (1.07%) BGP
14 37 (0.76%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.74%) OSPF
16 33 (0.68%) Structured Cabling
16 33 (0.68%) VoIP
17 29 (0.60%) VXLAN
18 28 (0.58%) MPLS
19 22 (0.45%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 303 (6.25%) Power BI
2 199 (4.11%) SQL Server
3 158 (3.26%) Data Warehouse
4 140 (2.89%) Relational Database
5 128 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
6 86 (1.77%) NoSQL
7 85 (1.75%) MongoDB
8 84 (1.73%) Metadata
9 81 (1.67%) Tableau
10 78 (1.61%) Data Lake
11 50 (1.03%) Big Data
11 50 (1.03%) Oracle Database
12 48 (0.99%) MySQL
13 39 (0.80%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 36 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
15 28 (0.58%) Pentaho
16 27 (0.56%) Db2
16 27 (0.56%) Power Query
17 23 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
17 23 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 448 (9.24%) JIRA
2 297 (6.13%) Git
3 155 (3.20%) Jenkins
4 114 (2.35%) GitLab
5 66 (1.36%) Selenium
6 34 (0.70%) Cypress.io
6 34 (0.70%) Postman
7 27 (0.56%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.54%) Maven
9 25 (0.52%) REST Assured
10 22 (0.45%) Bitbucket
10 22 (0.45%) JUnit
11 21 (0.43%) Gradle
12 20 (0.41%) JMeter
13 18 (0.37%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.31%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 14 (0.29%) Gatling
15 14 (0.29%) Mockito
15 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
16 13 (0.27%) SonarQube
General
1 2,537 (52.35%) Social Skills
2 2,063 (42.57%) Analytical Skills
3 1,135 (23.42%) Finance
4 467 (9.64%) Public Sector
5 390 (8.05%) Banking
6 221 (4.56%) Organisational Skills
7 192 (3.96%) Retail
8 177 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
9 166 (3.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 155 (3.20%) Manufacturing
11 133 (2.74%) Influencing Skills
12 112 (2.31%) Marketing
13 110 (2.27%) Presentation Skills
14 109 (2.25%) Front Office
15 107 (2.21%) Legal
16 96 (1.98%) Telecoms
17 74 (1.53%) Investment Banking
18 60 (1.24%) Law
19 57 (1.18%) Financial Institution
20 56 (1.16%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 662 (13.66%) Analyst
2 535 (11.04%) Developer
3 436 (9.00%) Senior
4 378 (7.80%) Lead
5 320 (6.60%) Architect
6 224 (4.62%) Business Analyst
7 213 (4.40%) Consultant
8 209 (4.31%) Data Engineer
9 192 (3.96%) IT Support
10 175 (3.61%) Support Engineer
11 143 (2.95%) Project Manager
12 123 (2.54%) IT Engineer
13 118 (2.43%) Administrator
14 104 (2.15%) Data Analyst
15 96 (1.98%) Java Developer
16 92 (1.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 88 (1.82%) Solutions Architect
18 86 (1.77%) Software Engineer
19 83 (1.71%) Support Analyst
20 82 (1.69%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 285 (5.88%) REST
2 145 (2.99%) .NET
3 136 (2.81%) RESTful
4 133 (2.74%) React
5 129 (2.66%) SOAP
6 119 (2.46%) Kafka
7 117 (2.41%) Spring
8 112 (2.31%) JSON
9 101 (2.08%) CSS
10 99 (2.04%) XML
11 92 (1.90%) Middleware
12 91 (1.88%) HTML
13 81 (1.67%) Spring Boot
14 78 (1.61%) Node.js
15 74 (1.53%) AngularJS
16 72 (1.49%) Web Services
17 69 (1.42%) OAuth
18 55 (1.13%) PySpark
19 49 (1.01%) Playwright
20 43 (0.89%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 275 (5.67%) Onboarding
2 231 (4.77%) Product Ownership
3 219 (4.52%) Cloud Native
4 182 (3.76%) Self-Motivation
5 178 (3.67%) Data Centre
6 147 (3.03%) Management Information System
7 145 (2.99%) Enterprise Software
8 140 (2.89%) Distributed Systems
9 138 (2.85%) Analytical Mindset
10 121 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
11 117 (2.41%) Data Structures
12 111 (2.29%) Data Protection Act
13 89 (1.84%) Virtual Team
14 63 (1.30%) Driving Licence
15 61 (1.26%) AI Agents
15 61 (1.26%) CMDB
16 58 (1.20%) Algorithms
16 58 (1.20%) PKI
17 54 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 46 (0.95%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 676 (13.95%) Windows
2 255 (5.26%) Linux
3 167 (3.45%) Windows Server
4 121 (2.50%) Windows 10
5 95 (1.96%) Unix
6 79 (1.63%) Apple iOS
6 79 (1.63%) Mac OS
7 73 (1.51%) Android
8 40 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
10 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
11 14 (0.29%) VMS
12 12 (0.25%) zOS
13 8 (0.17%) Solaris
14 6 (0.12%) CentOS
14 6 (0.12%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
15 5 (0.10%) Debian
15 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,321 (27.26%) Agile
2 1,023 (21.11%) Continuous Improvement
3 958 (19.77%) Stakeholder Management
4 805 (16.61%) CI/CD
5 762 (15.72%) DevOps
6 646 (13.33%) AI
7 539 (11.12%) Decision-Making
8 514 (10.61%) Analytics
9 513 (10.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 508 (10.48%) Migration
11 479 (9.88%) ITIL
12 455 (9.39%) Customer Service
13 392 (8.09%) Business Intelligence
14 384 (7.92%) Test Automation
14 384 (7.92%) Validation
15 369 (7.61%) Data Modelling
16 336 (6.93%) Scrum
17 335 (6.91%) Roadmaps
18 321 (6.62%) Project Management
19 316 (6.52%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 884 (18.24%) SQL
2 797 (16.45%) Python
3 367 (7.57%) Java
4 285 (5.88%) PowerShell
5 276 (5.70%) JavaScript
6 161 (3.32%) C#
7 140 (2.89%) Bash
8 108 (2.23%) TypeScript
9 87 (1.80%) PL/SQL
10 55 (1.13%) C++
11 47 (0.97%) T-SQL
12 39 (0.80%) Shell Script
13 36 (0.74%) Go
14 33 (0.68%) Bicep
15 31 (0.64%) C
16 30 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 28 (0.58%) Scala
18 27 (0.56%) Apex Code
18 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
19 26 (0.54%) R
Qualifications
1 1,054 (21.75%) Security Cleared
2 709 (14.63%) SC Cleared
3 600 (12.38%) Degree
4 205 (4.23%) DV Cleared
5 182 (3.76%) Computer Science Degree
6 147 (3.03%) Microsoft Certification
7 113 (2.33%) Cisco Certification
8 104 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
9 75 (1.55%) Azure Certification
9 75 (1.55%) CISSP
10 68 (1.40%) PMP
11 63 (1.30%) PMI Certification
12 62 (1.28%) A+ Certification
13 61 (1.26%) CCNA
14 48 (0.99%) CISM
14 48 (0.99%) Master's Degree
15 42 (0.87%) Network+ Certification
16 40 (0.83%) MCSE
17 37 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
18 36 (0.74%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 350 (7.22%) Data Quality
2 305 (6.29%) QA
3 132 (2.72%) GDPR
4 108 (2.23%) Accessibility
5 107 (2.21%) SLA
6 85 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 81 (1.67%) PMO
8 70 (1.44%) NIST
9 51 (1.05%) GRC
10 29 (0.60%) WCAG
11 28 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 25 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.31%) GxP
14 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.27%) COBIT
15 13 (0.27%) NCSC
16 12 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 12 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
17 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
17 10 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 397 (8.19%) Active Directory
2 306 (6.31%) Docker
3 142 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 54 (1.11%) Hyper-V
5 53 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
6 50 (1.03%) VMware NSX
7 47 (0.97%) vSphere
8 32 (0.66%) Virtual Desktop
9 29 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 23 (0.47%) vCloud
11 21 (0.43%) Firmware
12 20 (0.41%) IAG
13 10 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.12%) NFS
16 5 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
17 4 (0.083%) Squid
18 3 (0.062%) BitLocker
18 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
19 2 (0.041%) UAG
Systems Management
1 345 (7.12%) Kubernetes
2 288 (5.94%) Terraform
3 162 (3.34%) Ansible
4 135 (2.79%) Microsoft Intune
5 84 (1.73%) SCCM
6 81 (1.67%) Grafana
7 70 (1.44%) Prometheus
8 55 (1.13%) vCenter Server
9 29 (0.60%) SCOM
10 27 (0.56%) FortiGate
10 27 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
11 24 (0.50%) Control-M
12 21 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
12 21 (0.43%) WSUS
13 17 (0.35%) Argo
14 12 (0.25%) Puppet
15 11 (0.23%) Progress Chef
16 10 (0.21%) Kibana
16 10 (0.21%) Nessus
17 9 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,045 (21.56%) Microsoft
2 340 (7.02%) Oracle
3 323 (6.67%) ServiceNow
4 294 (6.07%) SAP
5 204 (4.21%) VMware
6 146 (3.01%) Google
7 128 (2.64%) Salesforce
8 121 (2.50%) Cisco
9 109 (2.25%) Splunk
10 105 (2.17%) Databricks
11 73 (1.51%) Workday
12 67 (1.38%) Dynatrace
13 57 (1.18%) Apple
14 55 (1.13%) Adobe
15 47 (0.97%) Citrix
16 46 (0.95%) Red Hat
17 45 (0.93%) CyberArk
17 45 (0.93%) Dell
18 43 (0.89%) IBM
18 43 (0.89%) MuleSoft