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

6 months to
12 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 5,000 4,366 3,942
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.79% 15.69% 11.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.71% 17.27% 13.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,850 2,662 2,310
10th Percentile £238 £250 £260
25th Percentile £375 £375 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
90th Percentile £716 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 440 278 209
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £15.87 £15.25 £15.00
Median hourly rate £19.57 £18.90 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% +16.42% -69.76%
75th Percentile £42.00 £35.00 £30.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.78
UK median hourly rate £18.75 £20.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.25% +23.23% -69.42%

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 39,332 25,280 28,365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.86% 90.86% 86.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,139 16,057 17,805
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
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 2,708 1,495 1,348
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.36 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.79 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +0.58%
75th Percentile £68.00 £49.88 £66.53
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.65 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.92%

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 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 12 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 12 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 2,172 £525 +5.00% 3,156
South East -4 799 £475 +5.56% 1,288
North of England -12 721 £445 -6.32% 1,072
Midlands -5 590 £450 +2.27% 859
West Midlands -8 422 £450 -4.05% 507
North West -9 364 £445 -6.32% 535
South West -4 341 £500 +11.11% 635
Yorkshire -9 290 £450 -6.25% 383
East of England 0 270 £425 -15.00% 523
East Midlands +1 165 £475 +26.67% 352
North East -19 69 £375 -16.67% 173
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
1 230 (4.60%) SharePoint
2 224 (4.48%) Confluence
3 108 (2.16%) Microsoft Exchange
4 49 (0.98%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.68%) Apache
7 28 (0.56%) CMS
8 27 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
9 23 (0.46%) SAS
10 13 (0.26%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.26%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.20%) CICS
11 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 7 (0.14%) IIS
13 6 (0.12%) ArcGIS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 6 (0.12%) WordPress
14 5 (0.10%) Appian
14 5 (0.10%) Mule
14 5 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 288 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 243 (4.86%) Microsoft Office
3 108 (2.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
5 52 (1.04%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.32%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.30%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 14 (0.28%) Revit
11 9 (0.18%) Sketch
11 9 (0.18%) Trello
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.12%) Navisworks
13 6 (0.12%) Windchill
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
15 4 (0.080%) Adobe XD
16 3 (0.060%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.060%) DaVinci Resolve
16 3 (0.060%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 118 (2.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.52%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
6 22 (0.44%) 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%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.20%) Aladdin
11 10 (0.20%) Finacle
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
12 9 (0.18%) Shopify
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.14%) Primavera
13 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.14%) SAP ERP
13 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,009 (20.18%) Azure
2 714 (14.28%) AWS
3 474 (9.48%) Microsoft 365
4 422 (8.44%) Power Platform
5 284 (5.68%) GCP
6 251 (5.02%) Azure DevOps
7 208 (4.16%) Entra ID
8 169 (3.38%) GitHub
9 130 (2.60%) SaaS
10 112 (2.24%) Serverless
11 105 (2.10%) Power Automate
12 85 (1.70%) Microsoft Copilot
13 76 (1.52%) Dynamics 365
13 76 (1.52%) PowerApps
14 72 (1.44%) OneDrive
15 70 (1.40%) GitHub Actions
16 62 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
17 61 (1.22%) Snowflake
18 53 (1.06%) AWS Lambda
19 48 (0.96%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 208 (4.16%) DNS
2 177 (3.54%) Firewall
3 161 (3.22%) VPN
4 125 (2.50%) DHCP
5 119 (2.38%) TCP/IP
6 104 (2.08%) WAN
7 89 (1.78%) Network Security
8 87 (1.74%) LAN
9 73 (1.46%) Wi-Fi
10 58 (1.16%) SAN
10 58 (1.16%) Wireless
11 51 (1.02%) VLAN
12 43 (0.86%) BGP
13 37 (0.74%) VoIP
14 33 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
15 32 (0.64%) SD-WAN
16 27 (0.54%) MPLS
17 23 (0.46%) OSPF
17 23 (0.46%) SSL
18 18 (0.36%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 321 (6.42%) Power BI
2 200 (4.00%) SQL Server
3 162 (3.24%) Relational Database
4 158 (3.16%) Data Warehouse
5 141 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
6 92 (1.84%) Metadata
7 80 (1.60%) Tableau
8 78 (1.56%) NoSQL
9 76 (1.52%) MongoDB
10 73 (1.46%) Data Lake
11 53 (1.06%) MySQL
12 51 (1.02%) Oracle Database
13 43 (0.86%) Big Data
14 33 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 31 (0.62%) Oracle Reports
16 28 (0.56%) Db2
16 28 (0.56%) Power Query
17 25 (0.50%) Delta Lake
18 23 (0.46%) BigQuery
18 23 (0.46%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 457 (9.14%) JIRA
2 323 (6.46%) Git
3 165 (3.30%) Jenkins
4 121 (2.42%) GitLab
5 70 (1.40%) Selenium
6 35 (0.70%) Cypress.io
6 35 (0.70%) JUnit
6 35 (0.70%) Postman
7 34 (0.68%) Maven
8 31 (0.62%) Cucumber
9 26 (0.52%) Gradle
9 26 (0.52%) REST Assured
10 25 (0.50%) Bitbucket
11 24 (0.48%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.42%) Mockito
13 20 (0.40%) JMeter
14 17 (0.34%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.30%) Gatling
16 14 (0.28%) Visual Studio
17 13 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,688 (53.76%) Social Skills
2 2,169 (43.38%) Analytical Skills
3 1,159 (23.18%) Finance
4 496 (9.92%) Public Sector
5 413 (8.26%) Banking
6 246 (4.92%) Organisational Skills
7 197 (3.94%) Manufacturing
8 179 (3.58%) Retail
9 177 (3.54%) Documentation Skills
10 161 (3.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 161 (3.22%) Influencing Skills
11 116 (2.32%) Front Office
12 113 (2.26%) Legal
13 110 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
14 104 (2.08%) Marketing
15 102 (2.04%) Telecoms
16 83 (1.66%) Investment Banking
17 62 (1.24%) Law
18 59 (1.18%) Aerospace
19 58 (1.16%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 690 (13.80%) Analyst
2 573 (11.46%) Developer
3 456 (9.12%) Senior
4 382 (7.64%) Lead
5 306 (6.12%) Architect
6 230 (4.60%) Business Analyst
7 213 (4.26%) Consultant
8 212 (4.24%) IT Support
9 198 (3.96%) Support Engineer
10 185 (3.70%) Data Engineer
11 135 (2.70%) IT Engineer
12 129 (2.58%) Administrator
12 129 (2.58%) Project Manager
13 109 (2.18%) Data Analyst
14 102 (2.04%) Java Developer
15 99 (1.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 97 (1.94%) DevOps Engineer
17 95 (1.90%) IT Support Engineer
18 92 (1.84%) Solutions Architect
19 87 (1.74%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 320 (6.40%) REST
2 301 (6.02%) Terraform
3 173 (3.46%) .NET
4 154 (3.08%) RESTful
5 145 (2.90%) SOAP
6 144 (2.88%) React
7 120 (2.40%) Kafka
8 114 (2.28%) Spring
9 112 (2.24%) CSS
9 112 (2.24%) HTML
9 112 (2.24%) JSON
10 109 (2.18%) XML
11 95 (1.90%) Middleware
12 91 (1.82%) Spring Boot
12 91 (1.82%) Web Services
13 84 (1.68%) AngularJS
14 78 (1.56%) Node.js
15 75 (1.50%) OAuth
16 60 (1.20%) PySpark
17 50 (1.00%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 294 (5.88%) Onboarding
2 255 (5.10%) Product Ownership
3 251 (5.02%) Cloud Native
4 201 (4.02%) Self-Motivation
5 179 (3.58%) Management Information System
6 173 (3.46%) Enterprise Software
7 148 (2.96%) Data Centre
8 141 (2.82%) Distributed Systems
9 128 (2.56%) Data Structures
10 122 (2.44%) Analytical Mindset
11 119 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
12 110 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
13 89 (1.78%) Virtual Team
14 71 (1.42%) AI Agents
14 71 (1.42%) Driving Licence
15 65 (1.30%) CMDB
16 55 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 54 (1.08%) Algorithms
17 54 (1.08%) PKI
18 49 (0.98%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 683 (13.66%) Windows
2 277 (5.54%) Linux
3 196 (3.92%) Windows Server
4 128 (2.56%) Windows 10
5 94 (1.88%) Unix
6 84 (1.68%) Apple iOS
7 79 (1.58%) Mac OS
8 73 (1.46%) Android
9 46 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.42%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.34%) VMS
11 17 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.24%) zOS
13 9 (0.18%) Solaris
13 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 8 (0.16%) CentOS
15 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
16 5 (0.10%) Rocky
17 4 (0.080%) AIX
17 4 (0.080%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,390 (27.80%) Agile
2 1,162 (23.24%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,128 (22.56%) Continuous Improvement
4 830 (16.60%) CI/CD
5 781 (15.62%) DevOps
6 697 (13.94%) AI
7 581 (11.62%) Decision-Making
8 557 (11.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 521 (10.42%) Migration
10 510 (10.20%) Analytics
11 488 (9.76%) Customer Service
12 482 (9.64%) ITIL
13 403 (8.06%) Test Automation
14 395 (7.90%) Validation
15 386 (7.72%) Business Intelligence
16 355 (7.10%) Scrum
17 353 (7.06%) Data Modelling
18 342 (6.84%) ITSM
18 342 (6.84%) Roadmaps
19 327 (6.54%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 896 (17.92%) SQL
2 800 (16.00%) Python
3 367 (7.34%) Java
4 306 (6.12%) PowerShell
5 297 (5.94%) JavaScript
6 195 (3.90%) C#
7 148 (2.96%) Bash
8 126 (2.52%) TypeScript
9 87 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 50 (1.00%) T-SQL
11 49 (0.98%) C++
12 39 (0.78%) Go
13 38 (0.76%) Shell Script
14 33 (0.66%) Bicep
15 32 (0.64%) Scala
16 27 (0.54%) R
17 26 (0.52%) Kotlin
18 25 (0.50%) C
18 25 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 24 (0.48%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,103 (22.06%) Security Cleared
2 765 (15.30%) SC Cleared
3 606 (12.12%) Degree
4 215 (4.30%) DV Cleared
5 182 (3.64%) Computer Science Degree
6 148 (2.96%) Microsoft Certification
7 126 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
8 86 (1.72%) Cisco Certification
9 78 (1.56%) Azure Certification
10 77 (1.54%) PMP
11 76 (1.52%) PMI Certification
12 70 (1.40%) CISSP
13 57 (1.14%) A+ Certification
14 50 (1.00%) Master's Degree
15 48 (0.96%) CCNA
16 45 (0.90%) DBS Check
17 41 (0.82%) AWS Certification
18 39 (0.78%) CISM
18 39 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
18 39 (0.78%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 383 (7.66%) Data Quality
2 349 (6.98%) QA
3 121 (2.42%) GDPR
4 115 (2.30%) Accessibility
4 115 (2.30%) SLA
5 87 (1.74%) PMO
6 86 (1.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 69 (1.38%) NIST
8 61 (1.22%) GRC
9 32 (0.64%) WCAG
10 23 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 18 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
12 15 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
13 13 (0.26%) COBIT
13 13 (0.26%) GxP
13 13 (0.26%) PCI DSS
14 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 11 (0.22%) IFRS
15 10 (0.20%) HIPAA
15 10 (0.20%) NCSC
System Software
1 401 (8.02%) Active Directory
2 312 (6.24%) Docker
3 152 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 63 (1.26%) Hyper-V
4 63 (1.26%) VMware ESXi
5 51 (1.02%) VMware NSX
6 47 (0.94%) vSphere
7 34 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
8 30 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (0.54%) IAG
9 27 (0.54%) vCloud
10 16 (0.32%) Firmware
11 8 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
12 6 (0.12%) NFS
12 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.080%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 4 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.080%) XenApp
13 4 (0.080%) XenDesktop
14 3 (0.060%) Squid
Systems Management
1 345 (6.90%) Kubernetes
2 166 (3.32%) Ansible
3 128 (2.56%) Microsoft Intune
4 92 (1.84%) SCCM
5 91 (1.82%) Grafana
6 71 (1.42%) Prometheus
7 55 (1.10%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.74%) SCOM
9 23 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
10 22 (0.44%) WSUS
11 20 (0.40%) Control-M
12 13 (0.26%) Argo
12 13 (0.26%) FortiGate
13 11 (0.22%) Istio
13 11 (0.22%) Kibana
13 11 (0.22%) Puppet
14 10 (0.20%) Nessus
14 10 (0.20%) VxRail
15 9 (0.18%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,167 (23.34%) Microsoft
2 349 (6.98%) Oracle
3 325 (6.50%) ServiceNow
4 307 (6.14%) SAP
5 201 (4.02%) VMware
6 138 (2.76%) Google
7 131 (2.62%) Salesforce
8 122 (2.44%) Databricks
9 109 (2.18%) Cisco
10 99 (1.98%) Splunk
11 73 (1.46%) Workday
12 66 (1.32%) Dynatrace
13 57 (1.14%) Apple
14 52 (1.04%) Adobe
15 47 (0.94%) IBM
16 44 (0.88%) CyberArk
16 44 (0.88%) Red Hat
17 40 (0.80%) MuleSoft
18 36 (0.72%) Dell
19 35 (0.70%) Citrix