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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 6 8
Rank change year-on-year -5 +2 +5
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,153 4,321 4,082
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.00% 15.35% 12.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.95% 16.89% 14.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,898 2,619 2,363
10th Percentile £260 £255 £265
25th Percentile £388 £381 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £713 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £495 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +2.06% -3.00% -0.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 521 278 183
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.84
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £19.33 £18.96 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +1.95% +16.82% -68.32%
75th Percentile £37.50 £33.39 £32.29
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.51 £63.50
UK median hourly rate £18.25 £20.00 £17.00
% change year-on-year -8.75% +17.65% -66.26%

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 39,799 25,590 27,763
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.96% 90.90% 86.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,011 16,250 16,937
10th Percentile £325 £294 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,071 1,598 1,107
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.53 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.87 £20.50
Median hourly rate £38.72 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.96% -40.82% -5.56%
75th Percentile £67.25 £44.78 £66.61
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.50 £74.18
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 2,195 £525 +5.00% 513
South East -3 835 £475 +5.56% 481
North of England -8 765 £450 -5.26% 409
Midlands -5 615 £450 +2.33% 301
West Midlands -8 444 £450 -5.26% 169
North West -8 378 £450 -1.64% 197
South West -6 322 £503 +8.65% 284
East of England 0 305 £423 -15.50% 177
Yorkshire -5 303 £475 -4.04% 144
East Midlands +2 167 £425 +11.71% 132
North East -4 86 £375 -16.67% 76
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
1 243 (4.72%) SharePoint
2 229 (4.44%) Confluence
3 89 (1.73%) Microsoft Exchange
4 54 (1.05%) Apache Spark
5 43 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
6 42 (0.82%) Apache
7 27 (0.52%) CMS
8 22 (0.43%) SAS
9 18 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.31%) WebLogic
10 16 (0.31%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.21%) Jupyter
12 10 (0.19%) CICS
13 9 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 7 (0.14%) IIS
14 7 (0.14%) WordPress
15 6 (0.12%) Tomcat
16 5 (0.097%) FactoryTalk
16 5 (0.097%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.097%) WebLogic Portal
Applications
1 315 (6.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 243 (4.72%) Microsoft Office
3 126 (2.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
5 52 (1.01%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.37%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 16 (0.31%) Revit
9 15 (0.29%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.29%) Chatbot
10 11 (0.21%) Navisworks
10 11 (0.21%) Windchill
11 9 (0.17%) Sketch
12 8 (0.16%) Trello
13 5 (0.097%) CPLEX
14 4 (0.078%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.058%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.058%) DaVinci Resolve
15 3 (0.058%) NUKE
16 2 (0.039%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 108 (2.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (1.03%) Dynamics CRM
3 27 (0.52%) NetSuite
3 27 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.50%) Workday HCM
5 24 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
6 17 (0.33%) SAP GRC
7 15 (0.29%) Teamcenter
8 13 (0.25%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
9 11 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
9 11 (0.21%) SAP SD
10 10 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
10 10 (0.19%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.17%) iTrent
11 9 (0.17%) SAP FI
11 9 (0.17%) SAP PSCD
12 8 (0.16%) Finacle
12 8 (0.16%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,023 (19.85%) Azure
2 690 (13.39%) AWS
3 483 (9.37%) Microsoft 365
4 416 (8.07%) Power Platform
5 291 (5.65%) GCP
6 258 (5.01%) Azure DevOps
7 215 (4.17%) Entra ID
8 194 (3.76%) GitHub
9 119 (2.31%) Serverless
10 118 (2.29%) SaaS
11 113 (2.19%) Power Automate
12 93 (1.80%) Microsoft Copilot
13 89 (1.73%) PowerApps
14 88 (1.71%) Dynamics 365
15 82 (1.59%) GitHub Actions
16 73 (1.42%) OneDrive
17 72 (1.40%) Snowflake
18 61 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
19 57 (1.11%) OpenShift
20 51 (0.99%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 200 (3.88%) DNS
2 180 (3.49%) Firewall
3 150 (2.91%) VPN
4 114 (2.21%) DHCP
5 113 (2.19%) TCP/IP
6 105 (2.04%) Network Security
7 103 (2.00%) WAN
8 88 (1.71%) LAN
9 71 (1.38%) Wi-Fi
10 64 (1.24%) Wireless
11 48 (0.93%) VLAN
11 48 (0.93%) VoIP
12 46 (0.89%) BGP
13 43 (0.83%) SAN
14 28 (0.54%) SD-WAN
15 27 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
16 26 (0.50%) MPLS
17 23 (0.45%) Broadband
17 23 (0.45%) SSL
18 22 (0.43%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 300 (5.82%) Power BI
2 188 (3.65%) SQL Server
3 155 (3.01%) Relational Database
4 149 (2.89%) Data Warehouse
5 131 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
6 86 (1.67%) Metadata
6 86 (1.67%) MongoDB
7 76 (1.47%) NoSQL
8 72 (1.40%) Tableau
9 64 (1.24%) Data Lake
10 55 (1.07%) MySQL
11 53 (1.03%) Oracle Database
12 37 (0.72%) Big Data
13 33 (0.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 27 (0.52%) Delta Lake
15 25 (0.49%) Db2
15 25 (0.49%) Oracle Reports
16 23 (0.45%) BigQuery
16 23 (0.45%) DynamoDB
16 23 (0.45%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 457 (8.87%) JIRA
2 351 (6.81%) Git
3 193 (3.75%) Jenkins
4 136 (2.64%) GitLab
5 72 (1.40%) Selenium
6 45 (0.87%) Cucumber
7 42 (0.82%) Maven
8 40 (0.78%) JUnit
9 37 (0.72%) Cypress.io
10 33 (0.64%) Postman
11 32 (0.62%) Gradle
12 30 (0.58%) Bitbucket
13 28 (0.54%) SonarQube
14 26 (0.50%) REST Assured
15 24 (0.47%) JMeter
16 23 (0.45%) Mockito
17 20 (0.39%) Gatling
18 17 (0.33%) WebDriver
19 16 (0.31%) Visual Studio
20 14 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,745 (53.27%) Social Skills
2 2,253 (43.72%) Analytical Skills
3 1,215 (23.58%) Finance
4 532 (10.32%) Public Sector
5 434 (8.42%) Banking
6 285 (5.53%) Organisational Skills
7 277 (5.38%) Manufacturing
8 175 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
9 172 (3.34%) Influencing Skills
10 166 (3.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 154 (2.99%) Retail
12 128 (2.48%) Legal
13 113 (2.19%) Marketing
14 112 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
14 112 (2.17%) Telecoms
15 107 (2.08%) Front Office
16 91 (1.77%) Investment Banking
17 82 (1.59%) Aerospace
18 64 (1.24%) Military
19 62 (1.20%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 677 (13.14%) Analyst
2 594 (11.53%) Developer
3 503 (9.76%) Senior
4 390 (7.57%) Lead
5 276 (5.36%) Architect
6 244 (4.74%) Business Analyst
7 238 (4.62%) Consultant
8 224 (4.35%) IT Support
9 203 (3.94%) Support Engineer
10 176 (3.42%) Data Engineer
11 153 (2.97%) Administrator
12 152 (2.95%) Project Manager
13 130 (2.52%) IT Engineer
14 103 (2.00%) IT Support Engineer
15 102 (1.98%) Data Analyst
16 101 (1.96%) DevOps Engineer
17 99 (1.92%) Java Developer
18 92 (1.79%) Network Engineer
19 90 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 86 (1.67%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 355 (6.89%) REST
2 317 (6.15%) Terraform
3 183 (3.55%) .NET
4 164 (3.18%) RESTful
5 147 (2.85%) React
5 147 (2.85%) SOAP
6 125 (2.43%) Kafka
7 118 (2.29%) HTML
8 115 (2.23%) JSON
9 114 (2.21%) CSS
10 113 (2.19%) Spring
11 112 (2.17%) XML
12 105 (2.04%) Web Services
13 104 (2.02%) Middleware
14 94 (1.82%) Spring Boot
15 85 (1.65%) Node.js
16 80 (1.55%) AngularJS
17 78 (1.51%) OAuth
18 62 (1.20%) PySpark
19 56 (1.09%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 312 (6.05%) Onboarding
2 267 (5.18%) Cloud Native
3 248 (4.81%) Product Ownership
4 212 (4.11%) Management Information System
5 201 (3.90%) Self-Motivation
6 199 (3.86%) Enterprise Software
7 148 (2.87%) Data Centre
8 128 (2.48%) Data Structures
9 127 (2.46%) Distributed Systems
10 112 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
10 112 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
11 105 (2.04%) Analytical Mindset
12 90 (1.75%) Virtual Team
13 82 (1.59%) AI Agents
14 77 (1.49%) Driving Licence
15 67 (1.30%) CMDB
16 59 (1.14%) Mobile App
17 56 (1.09%) NHS
17 56 (1.09%) PKI
18 55 (1.07%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 673 (13.06%) Windows
2 275 (5.34%) Linux
3 196 (3.80%) Windows Server
4 126 (2.45%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.88%) Unix
6 82 (1.59%) Apple iOS
6 82 (1.59%) macOS
7 71 (1.38%) Android
8 50 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 19 (0.37%) Ubuntu
10 18 (0.35%) VMS
10 18 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
11 13 (0.25%) Solaris
12 12 (0.23%) zOS
13 8 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
13 8 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 7 (0.14%) CentOS
15 6 (0.12%) AIX
16 5 (0.097%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
17 4 (0.078%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,420 (27.56%) Agile
2 1,346 (26.12%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,226 (23.79%) Continuous Improvement
4 898 (17.43%) CI/CD
5 797 (15.47%) DevOps
6 716 (13.89%) AI
7 591 (11.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 580 (11.26%) Decision-Making
9 524 (10.17%) Migration
10 478 (9.28%) Analytics
11 476 (9.24%) Customer Service
12 457 (8.87%) ITIL
13 444 (8.62%) Test Automation
14 423 (8.21%) Validation
15 364 (7.06%) Scrum
16 354 (6.87%) Roadmaps
17 352 (6.83%) Technical Leadership
18 350 (6.79%) Business Intelligence
19 349 (6.77%) Data Modelling
20 346 (6.71%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 892 (17.31%) SQL
2 769 (14.92%) Python
3 364 (7.06%) Java
4 316 (6.13%) JavaScript
5 307 (5.96%) PowerShell
6 209 (4.06%) C#
7 151 (2.93%) Bash
8 139 (2.70%) TypeScript
9 76 (1.47%) PL/SQL
10 48 (0.93%) Shell Script
11 46 (0.89%) T-SQL
12 41 (0.80%) Go
13 38 (0.74%) C++
14 30 (0.58%) Scala
15 29 (0.56%) Bicep
15 29 (0.56%) Kotlin
16 27 (0.52%) Groovy
17 23 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 20 (0.39%) Apex Code
18 20 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 1,141 (22.14%) Security Cleared
2 808 (15.68%) SC Cleared
3 638 (12.38%) Degree
4 234 (4.54%) DV Cleared
5 192 (3.73%) Computer Science Degree
6 153 (2.97%) BPSS Clearance
7 126 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
8 84 (1.63%) Cisco Certification
9 81 (1.57%) PMI Certification
10 78 (1.51%) Azure Certification
11 76 (1.47%) PMP
12 73 (1.42%) CISSP
13 57 (1.11%) DBS Check
14 54 (1.05%) Master's Degree
15 50 (0.97%) AWS Certification
16 44 (0.85%) CISM
17 41 (0.80%) A+ Certification
18 40 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
19 36 (0.70%) CCNA
19 36 (0.70%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 385 (7.47%) Data Quality
2 362 (7.03%) QA
3 127 (2.46%) Accessibility
4 122 (2.37%) GDPR
5 111 (2.15%) SLA
6 96 (1.86%) PMO
7 79 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 60 (1.16%) NIST
9 54 (1.05%) GRC
10 33 (0.64%) WCAG
11 22 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
12 20 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
13 16 (0.31%) NCSC
13 16 (0.31%) PCI DSS
13 16 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 14 (0.27%) GxP
15 12 (0.23%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 12 (0.23%) IFRS
15 12 (0.23%) ISO 9001
16 10 (0.19%) COBIT
System Software
1 394 (7.65%) Active Directory
2 321 (6.23%) Docker
3 152 (2.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.18%) VMware ESXi
5 58 (1.13%) Hyper-V
6 53 (1.03%) vSphere
7 51 (0.99%) VMware NSX
8 36 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
9 25 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
10 24 (0.47%) vCloud
11 23 (0.45%) IAG
12 16 (0.31%) Firmware
13 10 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 6 (0.12%) XenApp
14 6 (0.12%) XenDesktop
15 5 (0.097%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.097%) NFS
15 5 (0.097%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.078%) RACF
Systems Management
1 362 (7.03%) Kubernetes
2 162 (3.14%) Ansible
3 132 (2.56%) Microsoft Intune
4 90 (1.75%) Grafana
5 87 (1.69%) SCCM
6 72 (1.40%) Prometheus
7 44 (0.85%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.72%) SCOM
9 25 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
10 23 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
11 19 (0.37%) Control-M
12 16 (0.31%) FortiGate
13 15 (0.29%) WSUS
14 12 (0.23%) Nessus
14 12 (0.23%) VxRail
15 11 (0.21%) Istio
16 10 (0.19%) Kibana
17 9 (0.17%) Functional Safety
17 9 (0.17%) NetBackup
18 8 (0.16%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,268 (24.61%) Microsoft
2 330 (6.40%) Oracle
3 312 (6.05%) SAP
4 301 (5.84%) ServiceNow
5 195 (3.78%) VMware
6 151 (2.93%) Google
7 129 (2.50%) Databricks
8 124 (2.41%) Cisco
9 120 (2.33%) Salesforce
10 109 (2.12%) Splunk
11 69 (1.34%) Dynatrace
12 66 (1.28%) Workday
13 59 (1.14%) Apple
14 58 (1.13%) IBM
15 52 (1.01%) Adobe
16 49 (0.95%) Red Hat
17 42 (0.82%) CyberArk
18 39 (0.76%) Palo Alto
19 34 (0.66%) MuleSoft
20 31 (0.60%) F5