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

6 months to
2 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 4,848 4,354 3,904
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.63% 15.90% 11.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.53% 17.52% 13.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,762 2,654 2,319
10th Percentile £235 £254 £263
25th Percentile £375 £375 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
90th Percentile £716 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -2.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 418 279 228
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.79
25th Percentile £15.99 £15.19 £14.84
Median hourly rate £20.35 £19.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +7.08% +17.07% -70.25%
75th Percentile £43.75 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £19.83 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.19% +22.18% -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 38,700 24,856 28,392
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.86% 90.77% 85.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,864 15,818 18,112
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,605 1,463 1,438
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.87 £18.56
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +2.41%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 2,126 £525 +5.00% 5,013
South East -5 783 £475 +2.70% 1,475
North of England -11 705 £443 -6.74% 1,441
Midlands -6 547 £450 +0.90% 1,019
West Midlands -8 392 £450 -4.05% 634
North West -9 358 £444 -6.53% 810
South West -3 329 £483 +7.22% 893
Yorkshire -12 284 £450 -5.26% 452
East of England +1 254 £450 -10.00% 703
East Midlands -1 152 £475 +26.67% 387
North East -14 65 £375 -16.67% 203
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
1 220 (4.54%) SharePoint
2 213 (4.39%) Confluence
3 106 (2.19%) Microsoft Exchange
4 49 (1.01%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
6 31 (0.64%) Apache
7 27 (0.56%) CMS
7 27 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
8 23 (0.47%) SAS
9 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.23%) WebLogic
11 9 (0.19%) CICS
11 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
12 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 6 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 6 (0.12%) IIS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 5 (0.10%) Appian
14 5 (0.10%) Camunda
14 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 278 (5.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 233 (4.81%) Microsoft Office
3 100 (2.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
5 52 (1.07%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.33%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.31%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.27%) Revit
10 9 (0.19%) Sketch
10 9 (0.19%) Trello
11 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
12 6 (0.12%) Windchill
13 5 (0.10%) CATIA
13 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
14 4 (0.083%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.062%) DaVinci Resolve
15 3 (0.062%) NUKE
15 3 (0.062%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 117 (2.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.54%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
6 18 (0.37%) SAP GRC
6 18 (0.37%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.31%) iTrent
8 13 (0.27%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
8 13 (0.27%) SAP SD
9 10 (0.21%) Finacle
9 10 (0.21%) Teamcenter
10 8 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
11 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
11 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
11 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
11 7 (0.14%) Shopify
12 6 (0.12%) Maximo
12 6 (0.12%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 987 (20.36%) Azure
2 706 (14.56%) AWS
3 454 (9.36%) Microsoft 365
4 403 (8.31%) Power Platform
5 273 (5.63%) GCP
6 244 (5.03%) Azure DevOps
7 208 (4.29%) Entra ID
8 159 (3.28%) GitHub
9 131 (2.70%) SaaS
10 109 (2.25%) Serverless
11 94 (1.94%) Power Automate
12 74 (1.53%) Microsoft Copilot
13 72 (1.49%) OneDrive
14 69 (1.42%) Dynamics 365
15 68 (1.40%) PowerApps
16 66 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
17 62 (1.28%) Snowflake
18 61 (1.26%) Azure Data Factory
19 56 (1.16%) AWS Lambda
20 51 (1.05%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 206 (4.25%) DNS
2 176 (3.63%) Firewall
3 161 (3.32%) VPN
4 125 (2.58%) DHCP
5 118 (2.43%) TCP/IP
6 109 (2.25%) WAN
7 91 (1.88%) LAN
8 88 (1.82%) Network Security
9 71 (1.46%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.26%) SAN
11 58 (1.20%) Wireless
12 50 (1.03%) VLAN
13 45 (0.93%) BGP
14 37 (0.76%) SD-WAN
15 35 (0.72%) VoIP
16 31 (0.64%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.60%) MPLS
18 26 (0.54%) OSPF
19 22 (0.45%) SSL
20 19 (0.39%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 309 (6.37%) Power BI
2 194 (4.00%) SQL Server
3 160 (3.30%) Data Warehouse
4 159 (3.28%) Relational Database
5 137 (2.83%) PostgreSQL
6 90 (1.86%) Metadata
7 80 (1.65%) Tableau
8 77 (1.59%) NoSQL
9 72 (1.49%) MongoDB
10 71 (1.46%) Data Lake
11 49 (1.01%) Oracle Database
12 48 (0.99%) Big Data
12 48 (0.99%) MySQL
13 34 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 32 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
15 26 (0.54%) Db2
16 25 (0.52%) Power Query
17 22 (0.45%) Delta Lake
17 22 (0.45%) Pentaho
17 22 (0.45%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 436 (8.99%) JIRA
2 296 (6.11%) Git
3 152 (3.14%) Jenkins
4 116 (2.39%) GitLab
5 66 (1.36%) Selenium
6 35 (0.72%) Cypress.io
6 35 (0.72%) Postman
7 30 (0.62%) Maven
8 27 (0.56%) JUnit
9 25 (0.52%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.52%) Cucumber
10 24 (0.50%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.47%) Gradle
12 20 (0.41%) JMeter
12 20 (0.41%) SonarQube
13 17 (0.35%) Mockito
14 16 (0.33%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.31%) Gatling
16 13 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
16 13 (0.27%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,589 (53.40%) Social Skills
2 2,112 (43.56%) Analytical Skills
3 1,134 (23.39%) Finance
4 481 (9.92%) Public Sector
5 401 (8.27%) Banking
6 233 (4.81%) Organisational Skills
7 180 (3.71%) Documentation Skills
8 174 (3.59%) Retail
9 172 (3.55%) Manufacturing
10 159 (3.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 155 (3.20%) Influencing Skills
12 115 (2.37%) Front Office
13 108 (2.23%) Legal
14 106 (2.19%) Presentation Skills
15 105 (2.17%) Telecoms
16 100 (2.06%) Marketing
17 83 (1.71%) Investment Banking
18 63 (1.30%) Law
19 55 (1.13%) Financial Institution
20 54 (1.11%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 666 (13.74%) Analyst
2 555 (11.45%) Developer
3 442 (9.12%) Senior
4 370 (7.63%) Lead
5 302 (6.23%) Architect
6 224 (4.62%) Business Analyst
7 212 (4.37%) Consultant
8 203 (4.19%) IT Support
9 191 (3.94%) Support Engineer
10 189 (3.90%) Data Engineer
11 133 (2.74%) IT Engineer
12 129 (2.66%) Project Manager
13 118 (2.43%) Administrator
14 107 (2.21%) Data Analyst
15 97 (2.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 96 (1.98%) Java Developer
17 92 (1.90%) IT Support Engineer
18 90 (1.86%) DevOps Engineer
19 87 (1.79%) Solutions Architect
20 85 (1.75%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 307 (6.33%) REST
2 291 (6.00%) Terraform
3 163 (3.36%) .NET
4 149 (3.07%) RESTful
5 140 (2.89%) SOAP
6 136 (2.81%) React
7 116 (2.39%) Kafka
8 111 (2.29%) Spring
9 110 (2.27%) JSON
10 108 (2.23%) XML
11 107 (2.21%) CSS
12 104 (2.15%) HTML
13 95 (1.96%) Middleware
14 86 (1.77%) Spring Boot
14 86 (1.77%) Web Services
15 81 (1.67%) AngularJS
16 77 (1.59%) Node.js
17 76 (1.57%) OAuth
18 61 (1.26%) PySpark
19 49 (1.01%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 280 (5.78%) Onboarding
2 247 (5.09%) Product Ownership
3 246 (5.07%) Cloud Native
4 193 (3.98%) Self-Motivation
5 163 (3.36%) Enterprise Software
6 162 (3.34%) Management Information System
7 152 (3.14%) Data Centre
8 142 (2.93%) Distributed Systems
9 127 (2.62%) Data Structures
10 126 (2.60%) Analytical Mindset
11 119 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
12 110 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
13 85 (1.75%) Virtual Team
14 69 (1.42%) AI Agents
15 67 (1.38%) CMDB
15 67 (1.38%) Driving Licence
16 55 (1.13%) Algorithms
17 53 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 53 (1.09%) PKI
18 50 (1.03%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 671 (13.84%) Windows
2 263 (5.42%) Linux
3 190 (3.92%) Windows Server
4 127 (2.62%) Windows 10
5 91 (1.88%) Unix
6 80 (1.65%) Apple iOS
7 79 (1.63%) Mac OS
8 71 (1.46%) Android
9 43 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.41%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.37%) VMS
12 17 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 11 (0.23%) zOS
14 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.17%) CentOS
15 8 (0.17%) Solaris
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
18 4 (0.083%) AIX
18 4 (0.083%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,340 (27.64%) Agile
2 1,083 (22.34%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,063 (21.93%) Stakeholder Management
4 805 (16.60%) CI/CD
5 761 (15.70%) DevOps
6 667 (13.76%) AI
7 558 (11.51%) Decision-Making
8 546 (11.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 508 (10.48%) Migration
10 503 (10.38%) Analytics
11 480 (9.90%) ITIL
12 462 (9.53%) Customer Service
13 390 (8.04%) Test Automation
14 384 (7.92%) Validation
15 377 (7.78%) Business Intelligence
16 358 (7.38%) Data Modelling
17 342 (7.05%) Roadmaps
18 339 (6.99%) Scrum
19 335 (6.91%) ITSM
20 316 (6.52%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 875 (18.05%) SQL
2 794 (16.38%) Python
3 361 (7.45%) Java
4 301 (6.21%) PowerShell
5 284 (5.86%) JavaScript
6 180 (3.71%) C#
7 145 (2.99%) Bash
8 114 (2.35%) TypeScript
9 84 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 50 (1.03%) C++
11 49 (1.01%) T-SQL
12 37 (0.76%) Go
13 35 (0.72%) Shell Script
14 31 (0.64%) Bicep
14 31 (0.64%) Scala
15 28 (0.58%) Kotlin
16 27 (0.56%) R
17 26 (0.54%) C
18 25 (0.52%) Apex Code
18 25 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,056 (21.78%) Security Cleared
2 727 (15.00%) SC Cleared
3 598 (12.33%) Degree
4 205 (4.23%) DV Cleared
5 188 (3.88%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.97%) Microsoft Certification
7 112 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
8 90 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
9 77 (1.59%) Azure Certification
10 72 (1.49%) PMP
11 69 (1.42%) PMI Certification
12 68 (1.40%) CISSP
13 60 (1.24%) A+ Certification
14 52 (1.07%) CCNA
15 49 (1.01%) Master's Degree
16 41 (0.85%) AWS Certification
16 41 (0.85%) Network+ Certification
17 40 (0.83%) CISM
17 40 (0.83%) DBS Check
18 37 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 367 (7.57%) Data Quality
2 336 (6.93%) QA
3 125 (2.58%) GDPR
4 112 (2.31%) SLA
5 109 (2.25%) Accessibility
6 88 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 85 (1.75%) PMO
8 73 (1.51%) NIST
9 62 (1.28%) GRC
10 30 (0.62%) WCAG
11 25 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.31%) GxP
14 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.27%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 13 (0.27%) COBIT
15 13 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
16 11 (0.23%) IFRS
17 10 (0.21%) HL7
17 10 (0.21%) NCSC
System Software
1 399 (8.23%) Active Directory
2 300 (6.19%) Docker
3 150 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.26%) Hyper-V
4 61 (1.26%) VMware ESXi
5 53 (1.09%) VMware NSX
6 46 (0.95%) vSphere
7 34 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
8 28 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (0.56%) vCloud
10 25 (0.52%) IAG
11 16 (0.33%) Firmware
12 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.12%) NFS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.062%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.062%) Squid
15 3 (0.062%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 334 (6.89%) Kubernetes
2 163 (3.36%) Ansible
3 126 (2.60%) Microsoft Intune
4 90 (1.86%) Grafana
5 88 (1.82%) SCCM
6 69 (1.42%) Prometheus
7 55 (1.13%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.76%) SCOM
9 23 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.45%) Control-M
10 22 (0.45%) WSUS
11 21 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
12 14 (0.29%) Argo
12 14 (0.29%) FortiGate
13 11 (0.23%) Istio
13 11 (0.23%) Kibana
14 10 (0.21%) Nessus
14 10 (0.21%) Puppet
15 9 (0.19%) Progress Chef
15 9 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,105 (22.79%) Microsoft
2 343 (7.08%) Oracle
3 324 (6.68%) ServiceNow
4 295 (6.08%) SAP
5 201 (4.15%) VMware
6 134 (2.76%) Salesforce
7 133 (2.74%) Google
8 118 (2.43%) Databricks
9 108 (2.23%) Cisco
10 100 (2.06%) Splunk
11 71 (1.46%) Workday
12 67 (1.38%) Dynatrace
13 61 (1.26%) Apple
14 54 (1.11%) Adobe
15 46 (0.95%) CyberArk
15 46 (0.95%) IBM
16 43 (0.89%) Red Hat
17 39 (0.80%) MuleSoft
18 38 (0.78%) Dell
19 35 (0.72%) Citrix