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

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 8
Rank change year-on-year -7 +3 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,085 4,305 4,026
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.92% 15.40% 12.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.88% 16.94% 14.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,857 2,627 2,314
10th Percentile £257 £250 £265
25th Percentile £385 £377 £397
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 £712
UK median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 505 274 195
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.52
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £19.48 £18.86 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.29% +16.20% -69.09%
75th Percentile £40.00 £34.48 £31.37
90th Percentile £71.85 £63.93 £63.25
UK median hourly rate £18.49 £20.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.55% +23.23% -68.76%

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 39,476 25,411 27,744
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.80% 90.93% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,882 16,117 16,935
10th Percentile £325 £295 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £642
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,976 1,567 1,167
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.50 £17.87 £20.50
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.47 £45.75 £67.01
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.35 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £37.87 £25.15 £41.50
% change year-on-year +50.56% -39.40% -2.92%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 2,175 £525 +5.00% 5,534
South East -3 825 £475 +5.56% 1,922
North of England -9 743 £450 -5.26% 1,747
Midlands -5 617 £450 +0.67% 1,192
West Midlands -8 439 £450 -5.76% 720
North West -8 369 £450 -1.64% 885
South West -7 318 £503 +10.14% 860
East of England 0 299 £450 -12.11% 874
Yorkshire -6 296 £473 -4.55% 608
East Midlands +2 174 £446 +19.00% 472
North East -9 80 £375 -16.67% 268
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
1 238 (4.68%) SharePoint
2 227 (4.46%) Confluence
3 96 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 51 (1.00%) Apache Spark
5 43 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
6 41 (0.81%) Apache
7 27 (0.53%) CMS
8 22 (0.43%) SAS
9 19 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.29%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.20%) CICS
12 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 7 (0.14%) IIS
14 7 (0.14%) WordPress
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.098%) Appian
16 5 (0.098%) Mule
16 5 (0.098%) Tomcat
Applications
1 300 (5.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 243 (4.78%) Microsoft Office
3 116 (2.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 65 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
5 50 (0.98%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.35%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 16 (0.31%) AutoCAD
8 16 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.31%) Revit
9 10 (0.20%) Navisworks
9 10 (0.20%) Windchill
10 9 (0.18%) Sketch
11 8 (0.16%) Trello
12 6 (0.12%) CPLEX
13 4 (0.079%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.059%) Acrobat
14 3 (0.059%) DaVinci Resolve
14 3 (0.059%) NUKE
15 2 (0.039%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 113 (2.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 52 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
4 28 (0.55%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.49%) Workday HCM
6 17 (0.33%) SAP GRC
7 15 (0.29%) Teamcenter
8 14 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
9 12 (0.24%) Aladdin
9 12 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
10 11 (0.22%) iTrent
10 11 (0.22%) SAP SD
11 10 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.20%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
12 9 (0.18%) Finacle
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
12 9 (0.18%) SAP FI
13 8 (0.16%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,016 (19.98%) Azure
2 705 (13.86%) AWS
3 480 (9.44%) Microsoft 365
4 414 (8.14%) Power Platform
5 298 (5.86%) GCP
6 254 (5.00%) Azure DevOps
7 215 (4.23%) Entra ID
8 188 (3.70%) GitHub
9 123 (2.42%) SaaS
10 115 (2.26%) Serverless
11 110 (2.16%) Power Automate
12 88 (1.73%) Microsoft Copilot
13 86 (1.69%) Dynamics 365
14 84 (1.65%) PowerApps
15 77 (1.51%) GitHub Actions
16 71 (1.40%) OneDrive
16 71 (1.40%) Snowflake
17 59 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
18 56 (1.10%) OpenShift
19 51 (1.00%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 205 (4.03%) DNS
2 177 (3.48%) Firewall
3 151 (2.97%) VPN
4 120 (2.36%) DHCP
5 112 (2.20%) TCP/IP
6 105 (2.06%) Network Security
7 98 (1.93%) WAN
8 84 (1.65%) LAN
9 72 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
10 60 (1.18%) Wireless
11 49 (0.96%) SAN
12 47 (0.92%) VLAN
13 45 (0.88%) BGP
14 44 (0.87%) VoIP
15 30 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
16 26 (0.51%) SD-WAN
17 25 (0.49%) MPLS
18 23 (0.45%) SSL
19 22 (0.43%) Broadband
20 21 (0.41%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 306 (6.02%) Power BI
2 192 (3.78%) SQL Server
3 160 (3.15%) Relational Database
4 151 (2.97%) Data Warehouse
5 132 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
6 92 (1.81%) Metadata
7 86 (1.69%) MongoDB
8 81 (1.59%) NoSQL
9 73 (1.44%) Tableau
10 66 (1.30%) Data Lake
11 55 (1.08%) MySQL
12 54 (1.06%) Oracle Database
13 36 (0.71%) Big Data
14 33 (0.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 27 (0.53%) BigQuery
15 27 (0.53%) Delta Lake
15 27 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
16 25 (0.49%) Db2
17 23 (0.45%) DynamoDB
17 23 (0.45%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 452 (8.89%) JIRA
2 342 (6.73%) Git
3 185 (3.64%) Jenkins
4 133 (2.62%) GitLab
5 73 (1.44%) Selenium
6 44 (0.87%) Cucumber
7 40 (0.79%) Maven
8 38 (0.75%) JUnit
9 35 (0.69%) Cypress.io
10 34 (0.67%) Postman
11 30 (0.59%) Bitbucket
11 30 (0.59%) Gradle
12 27 (0.53%) SonarQube
13 25 (0.49%) REST Assured
14 23 (0.45%) JMeter
15 20 (0.39%) Mockito
16 19 (0.37%) Gatling
17 17 (0.33%) WebDriver
18 15 (0.29%) Visual Studio
19 14 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,701 (53.12%) Social Skills
2 2,202 (43.30%) Analytical Skills
3 1,184 (23.28%) Finance
4 520 (10.23%) Public Sector
5 418 (8.22%) Banking
6 284 (5.59%) Organisational Skills
7 260 (5.11%) Manufacturing
8 173 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
9 168 (3.30%) Influencing Skills
10 162 (3.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 162 (3.19%) Retail
11 120 (2.36%) Legal
12 114 (2.24%) Marketing
13 111 (2.18%) Presentation Skills
14 107 (2.10%) Telecoms
15 105 (2.06%) Front Office
16 87 (1.71%) Investment Banking
17 74 (1.46%) Aerospace
18 61 (1.20%) Local Government
18 61 (1.20%) Military
Job Titles
1 670 (13.18%) Analyst
2 591 (11.62%) Developer
3 493 (9.70%) Senior
4 385 (7.57%) Lead
5 280 (5.51%) Architect
6 231 (4.54%) Business Analyst
7 230 (4.52%) Consultant
8 222 (4.37%) IT Support
9 200 (3.93%) Support Engineer
10 173 (3.40%) Data Engineer
11 150 (2.95%) Administrator
12 147 (2.89%) Project Manager
13 132 (2.60%) IT Engineer
14 104 (2.05%) Data Analyst
15 101 (1.99%) IT Support Engineer
16 98 (1.93%) Java Developer
17 97 (1.91%) DevOps Engineer
18 95 (1.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 90 (1.77%) Network Engineer
20 84 (1.65%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 342 (6.73%) REST
2 312 (6.14%) Terraform
3 176 (3.46%) .NET
4 156 (3.07%) RESTful
5 149 (2.93%) React
6 144 (2.83%) SOAP
7 124 (2.44%) Kafka
8 120 (2.36%) HTML
9 118 (2.32%) CSS
10 115 (2.26%) JSON
10 115 (2.26%) XML
11 113 (2.22%) Spring
12 100 (1.97%) Middleware
12 100 (1.97%) Web Services
13 93 (1.83%) Spring Boot
14 83 (1.63%) Node.js
15 80 (1.57%) AngularJS
16 74 (1.46%) OAuth
17 57 (1.12%) PySpark
18 55 (1.08%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 306 (6.02%) Onboarding
2 265 (5.21%) Cloud Native
3 237 (4.66%) Product Ownership
4 205 (4.03%) Management Information System
5 199 (3.91%) Self-Motivation
6 191 (3.76%) Enterprise Software
7 149 (2.93%) Data Centre
8 125 (2.46%) Data Structures
8 125 (2.46%) Distributed Systems
9 113 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
10 107 (2.10%) Analytical Mindset
11 104 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
12 80 (1.57%) Virtual Team
13 79 (1.55%) Driving Licence
14 74 (1.46%) AI Agents
15 67 (1.32%) CMDB
16 56 (1.10%) PKI
17 55 (1.08%) NHS
18 53 (1.04%) Algorithms
19 50 (0.98%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 682 (13.41%) Windows
2 279 (5.49%) Linux
3 202 (3.97%) Windows Server
4 126 (2.48%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.93%) Unix
6 83 (1.63%) Apple iOS
7 77 (1.51%) Mac OS
8 71 (1.40%) Android
9 51 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.33%) VMS
11 17 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.29%) Solaris
13 12 (0.24%) zOS
14 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.16%) AIX
15 8 (0.16%) CentOS
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.098%) Mac OS X
18 4 (0.079%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,400 (27.53%) Agile
2 1,277 (25.11%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,175 (23.11%) Continuous Improvement
4 878 (17.27%) CI/CD
5 781 (15.36%) DevOps
6 710 (13.96%) AI
7 584 (11.48%) Decision-Making
8 568 (11.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 528 (10.38%) Migration
10 486 (9.56%) Analytics
11 480 (9.44%) Customer Service
12 453 (8.91%) ITIL
13 431 (8.48%) Test Automation
14 410 (8.06%) Validation
15 357 (7.02%) Business Intelligence
16 355 (6.98%) Scrum
17 352 (6.92%) Data Modelling
18 347 (6.82%) Technical Leadership
19 339 (6.67%) Roadmaps
20 337 (6.63%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 892 (17.54%) SQL
2 771 (15.16%) Python
3 370 (7.28%) Java
4 311 (6.12%) JavaScript
5 307 (6.04%) PowerShell
6 206 (4.05%) C#
7 150 (2.95%) Bash
8 137 (2.69%) TypeScript
9 80 (1.57%) PL/SQL
10 47 (0.92%) Shell Script
10 47 (0.92%) T-SQL
11 42 (0.83%) C++
11 42 (0.83%) Go
12 30 (0.59%) Bicep
13 29 (0.57%) Scala
14 26 (0.51%) Groovy
15 25 (0.49%) Kotlin
16 23 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 20 (0.39%) PHP
17 20 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 1,130 (22.22%) Security Cleared
2 797 (15.67%) SC Cleared
3 620 (12.19%) Degree
4 226 (4.44%) DV Cleared
5 184 (3.62%) Computer Science Degree
6 147 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
7 132 (2.60%) Microsoft Certification
8 82 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
9 81 (1.59%) PMI Certification
10 76 (1.49%) Azure Certification
10 76 (1.49%) PMP
11 74 (1.46%) CISSP
12 54 (1.06%) DBS Check
13 51 (1.00%) Master's Degree
14 50 (0.98%) AWS Certification
15 45 (0.88%) A+ Certification
16 43 (0.85%) CISM
17 40 (0.79%) CCNA
18 39 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
19 34 (0.67%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 375 (7.37%) Data Quality
2 356 (7.00%) QA
3 123 (2.42%) GDPR
4 120 (2.36%) Accessibility
5 111 (2.18%) SLA
6 88 (1.73%) PMO
7 85 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 62 (1.22%) NIST
9 55 (1.08%) GRC
10 32 (0.63%) WCAG
11 21 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
12 18 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 17 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
14 16 (0.31%) NCSC
15 15 (0.29%) PCI DSS
16 13 (0.26%) GxP
17 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
17 11 (0.22%) IFRS
17 11 (0.22%) ISO 9001
18 10 (0.20%) COBIT
System Software
1 400 (7.87%) Active Directory
2 313 (6.16%) Docker
3 156 (3.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 64 (1.26%) VMware ESXi
5 62 (1.22%) Hyper-V
6 53 (1.04%) vSphere
7 51 (1.00%) VMware NSX
8 36 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
9 26 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
10 24 (0.47%) IAG
10 24 (0.47%) vCloud
11 17 (0.33%) Firmware
12 10 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.12%) NFS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.098%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 5 (0.098%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.098%) XenApp
14 5 (0.098%) XenDesktop
15 4 (0.079%) RACF
Systems Management
1 356 (7.00%) Kubernetes
2 165 (3.24%) Ansible
3 133 (2.62%) Microsoft Intune
4 92 (1.81%) Grafana
5 84 (1.65%) SCCM
6 74 (1.46%) Prometheus
7 46 (0.90%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.73%) SCOM
9 24 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
10 21 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
11 20 (0.39%) Control-M
12 18 (0.35%) WSUS
13 14 (0.28%) FortiGate
14 13 (0.26%) Nessus
15 12 (0.24%) VxRail
16 11 (0.22%) Istio
17 10 (0.20%) Kibana
18 9 (0.18%) NetBackup
19 8 (0.16%) McAfee ePO
19 8 (0.16%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,236 (24.31%) Microsoft
2 339 (6.67%) Oracle
3 317 (6.23%) SAP
4 305 (6.00%) ServiceNow
5 200 (3.93%) VMware
6 150 (2.95%) Google
7 126 (2.48%) Databricks
8 121 (2.38%) Salesforce
9 120 (2.36%) Cisco
10 103 (2.03%) Splunk
11 71 (1.40%) Workday
12 63 (1.24%) Dynatrace
13 60 (1.18%) Apple
14 56 (1.10%) Adobe
15 53 (1.04%) IBM
16 50 (0.98%) Red Hat
17 43 (0.85%) CyberArk
18 38 (0.75%) Palo Alto
19 36 (0.71%) MuleSoft
20 31 (0.61%) Remedy