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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -7 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,868 4,469 3,715
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.70% 16.19% 11.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.54% 17.84% 12.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,813 2,753 2,306
10th Percentile £250 £250 £254
25th Percentile £380 £375 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.40% -1.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £711 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +0.51% -2.50% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 395 279 255
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.73 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.05 £15.25 £14.45
Median hourly rate £21.00 £21.10 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -0.47% +30.01% -69.09%
75th Percentile £47.75 £38.21 £32.11
90th Percentile £74.70 £65.70 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.18 £21.24 £16.23
% change year-on-year -9.70% +30.87% -69.09%

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 38,823 25,045 28,976
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.31% 90.74% 85.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,257 16,045 18,963
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £419
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 £523 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,475 1,380 1,752
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.87 £17.80
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.03
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -40.16% -1.11%
75th Percentile £68.75 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 £520 +4.00% 1,974
South East -4 774 £480 -2.29% 999
North of England -8 750 £450 -5.26% 853
Midlands -6 553 £450 +5.88% 566
West Midlands -9 399 £450 - 340
North West -11 355 £450 -7.98% 455
South West -1 341 £500 +5.26% 445
Yorkshire -7 339 £450 -5.26% 286
East of England +1 259 £450 -3.74% 365
East Midlands 0 152 £460 +25.17% 226
North East -16 61 £373 -17.22% 123
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
1 222 (4.56%) Confluence
2 187 (3.84%) SharePoint
3 99 (2.03%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.15%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.70%) Apache
7 31 (0.64%) SAS
8 29 (0.60%) CMS
9 27 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.39%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.23%) CICS
13 8 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
13 8 (0.16%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.10%) Camunda
15 5 (0.10%) Mule
15 5 (0.10%) nginx
15 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
Applications
1 255 (5.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 232 (4.77%) Microsoft Office
3 81 (1.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (1.42%) MS Visio
5 65 (1.34%) Microsoft Project
6 26 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.29%) AutoCAD
10 12 (0.25%) Revit
10 12 (0.25%) Trello
11 9 (0.18%) Sketch
12 8 (0.16%) CPLEX
13 5 (0.10%) CATIA
13 5 (0.10%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.082%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.082%) Maya
14 4 (0.082%) Navisworks
15 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.062%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 116 (2.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 25 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.45%) NetSuite
6 20 (0.41%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.31%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.27%) iTrent
10 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
11 10 (0.21%) SAP GRC
11 10 (0.21%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.18%) Teamcenter
13 8 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
13 8 (0.16%) SAP Payroll
13 8 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
14 7 (0.14%) Loan IQ
14 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
Cloud Services
1 948 (19.47%) Azure
2 700 (14.38%) AWS
3 392 (8.05%) Microsoft 365
4 382 (7.85%) Power Platform
5 278 (5.71%) GCP
6 232 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
7 187 (3.84%) Entra ID
8 164 (3.37%) GitHub
9 128 (2.63%) SaaS
10 118 (2.42%) Serverless
11 78 (1.60%) Power Automate
12 76 (1.56%) GitHub Actions
13 69 (1.42%) AWS Lambda
14 62 (1.27%) Dynamics 365
15 61 (1.25%) Amazon S3
16 60 (1.23%) Azure Data Factory
17 59 (1.21%) PowerApps
18 58 (1.19%) OpenShift
19 56 (1.15%) Snowflake
20 55 (1.13%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 212 (4.35%) DNS
2 178 (3.66%) Firewall
3 141 (2.90%) VPN
4 124 (2.55%) DHCP
4 124 (2.55%) TCP/IP
5 107 (2.20%) WAN
6 95 (1.95%) LAN
7 82 (1.68%) Network Security
8 72 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
9 66 (1.36%) SAN
10 59 (1.21%) VLAN
11 53 (1.09%) Wireless
12 50 (1.03%) BGP
13 37 (0.76%) OSPF
14 34 (0.70%) SD-WAN
14 34 (0.70%) VoIP
15 32 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
16 26 (0.53%) MPLS
17 25 (0.51%) VXLAN
18 22 (0.45%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 301 (6.18%) Power BI
2 212 (4.35%) SQL Server
3 158 (3.25%) Data Warehouse
4 139 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
5 134 (2.75%) Relational Database
6 99 (2.03%) MongoDB
7 85 (1.75%) NoSQL
8 82 (1.68%) Data Lake
8 82 (1.68%) Metadata
9 78 (1.60%) Tableau
10 52 (1.07%) Big Data
11 50 (1.03%) MySQL
11 50 (1.03%) Oracle Database
12 44 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 37 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
14 28 (0.58%) Db2
15 26 (0.53%) Power Query
16 24 (0.49%) BigQuery
16 24 (0.49%) Pentaho
17 23 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 474 (9.74%) JIRA
2 286 (5.88%) Git
3 163 (3.35%) Jenkins
4 106 (2.18%) GitLab
5 68 (1.40%) Selenium
6 34 (0.70%) Cypress.io
6 34 (0.70%) Postman
7 28 (0.58%) Cucumber
7 28 (0.58%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.49%) Bitbucket
8 24 (0.49%) Maven
9 23 (0.47%) JUnit
10 20 (0.41%) Gradle
11 19 (0.39%) Mockito
12 18 (0.37%) WebDriver
13 16 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 16 (0.33%) JMeter
14 13 (0.27%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
15 12 (0.25%) SonarQube
General
1 2,521 (51.79%) Social Skills
2 2,050 (42.11%) Analytical Skills
3 1,147 (23.56%) Finance
4 473 (9.72%) Public Sector
5 387 (7.95%) Banking
6 209 (4.29%) Organisational Skills
7 199 (4.09%) Retail
8 179 (3.68%) Documentation Skills
9 161 (3.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 133 (2.73%) Manufacturing
11 132 (2.71%) Influencing Skills
12 112 (2.30%) Legal
13 109 (2.24%) Presentation Skills
14 107 (2.20%) Marketing
15 106 (2.18%) Front Office
16 93 (1.91%) Telecoms
17 72 (1.48%) Investment Banking
18 58 (1.19%) Law
19 56 (1.15%) Financial Institution
20 52 (1.07%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 682 (14.01%) Analyst
2 546 (11.22%) Developer
3 441 (9.06%) Senior
4 378 (7.76%) Lead
5 332 (6.82%) Architect
6 239 (4.91%) Business Analyst
7 214 (4.40%) Consultant
8 209 (4.29%) Data Engineer
9 177 (3.64%) IT Support
10 164 (3.37%) Support Engineer
11 148 (3.04%) Project Manager
12 113 (2.32%) Administrator
13 112 (2.30%) IT Engineer
14 107 (2.20%) Data Analyst
15 103 (2.12%) Java Developer
16 92 (1.89%) Software Engineer
17 91 (1.87%) Solutions Architect
18 83 (1.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 81 (1.66%) Support Analyst
20 79 (1.62%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 282 (5.79%) REST
2 143 (2.94%) .NET
3 136 (2.79%) RESTful
4 132 (2.71%) Kafka
5 131 (2.69%) React
6 129 (2.65%) SOAP
7 121 (2.49%) Spring
8 116 (2.38%) JSON
9 105 (2.16%) CSS
10 96 (1.97%) HTML
10 96 (1.97%) XML
11 91 (1.87%) Middleware
12 86 (1.77%) Spring Boot
13 81 (1.66%) AngularJS
13 81 (1.66%) Node.js
14 71 (1.46%) OAuth
15 64 (1.31%) Web Services
16 56 (1.15%) PySpark
17 47 (0.97%) Playwright
18 45 (0.92%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 267 (5.48%) Onboarding
2 234 (4.81%) Product Ownership
3 215 (4.42%) Cloud Native
4 184 (3.78%) Self-Motivation
5 176 (3.62%) Data Centre
6 142 (2.92%) Distributed Systems
7 138 (2.83%) Management Information System
8 137 (2.81%) Analytical Mindset
8 137 (2.81%) Enterprise Software
9 119 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
10 116 (2.38%) Data Protection Act
11 115 (2.36%) Data Structures
12 96 (1.97%) Virtual Team
13 68 (1.40%) Driving Licence
14 60 (1.23%) Algorithms
15 59 (1.21%) AI Agents
16 56 (1.15%) CMDB
16 56 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 54 (1.11%) PKI
18 45 (0.92%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 644 (13.23%) Windows
2 252 (5.18%) Linux
3 146 (3.00%) Windows Server
4 117 (2.40%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.99%) Unix
6 76 (1.56%) Mac OS
7 75 (1.54%) Apple iOS
8 72 (1.48%) Android
9 41 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 18 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 14 (0.29%) VMS
13 12 (0.25%) zOS
14 9 (0.18%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.16%) Solaris
16 6 (0.12%) CentOS
16 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
18 4 (0.082%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,324 (27.20%) Agile
2 990 (20.34%) Continuous Improvement
3 930 (19.10%) Stakeholder Management
4 798 (16.39%) CI/CD
5 757 (15.55%) DevOps
6 642 (13.19%) AI
7 546 (11.22%) Decision-Making
8 511 (10.50%) Analytics
9 508 (10.44%) Migration
10 498 (10.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 477 (9.80%) ITIL
12 450 (9.24%) Customer Service
13 390 (8.01%) Business Intelligence
14 380 (7.81%) Validation
15 374 (7.68%) Data Modelling
16 373 (7.66%) Test Automation
17 342 (7.03%) Project Management
17 342 (7.03%) Roadmaps
18 338 (6.94%) Scrum
19 322 (6.61%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 866 (17.79%) SQL
2 802 (16.47%) Python
3 374 (7.68%) Java
4 274 (5.63%) JavaScript
5 267 (5.48%) PowerShell
6 162 (3.33%) C#
7 135 (2.77%) Bash
8 110 (2.26%) TypeScript
9 84 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 52 (1.07%) C++
10 52 (1.07%) T-SQL
11 40 (0.82%) Shell Script
12 35 (0.72%) Go
13 34 (0.70%) Bicep
14 32 (0.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 31 (0.64%) C
16 30 (0.62%) Kotlin
17 28 (0.58%) Apex Code
18 26 (0.53%) R
19 25 (0.51%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,071 (22.00%) Security Cleared
2 719 (14.77%) SC Cleared
3 597 (12.26%) Degree
4 215 (4.42%) DV Cleared
5 174 (3.57%) Computer Science Degree
6 140 (2.88%) Microsoft Certification
7 115 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
8 111 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
9 77 (1.58%) CISSP
10 74 (1.52%) PMP
11 69 (1.42%) PMI Certification
12 67 (1.38%) Azure Certification
13 64 (1.31%) CCNA
14 62 (1.27%) A+ Certification
15 52 (1.07%) Master's Degree
16 49 (1.01%) CISM
17 42 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
18 40 (0.82%) MCSE
19 37 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
20 36 (0.74%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 340 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 301 (6.18%) QA
3 135 (2.77%) GDPR
4 110 (2.26%) Accessibility
5 109 (2.24%) SLA
6 86 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (1.64%) PMO
8 71 (1.46%) NIST
9 49 (1.01%) GRC
10 28 (0.58%) WCAG
11 27 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.29%) GxP
13 14 (0.29%) NCSC
14 13 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
14 13 (0.27%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.25%) COBIT
16 11 (0.23%) 21 CFR Part 11
17 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
17 10 (0.21%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 374 (7.68%) Active Directory
2 312 (6.41%) Docker
3 130 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 50 (1.03%) VMware ESXi
5 49 (1.01%) VMware NSX
6 47 (0.97%) vSphere
7 44 (0.90%) Hyper-V
8 30 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
9 28 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
10 22 (0.45%) vCloud
11 20 (0.41%) Firmware
12 18 (0.37%) IAG
13 11 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.12%) Squid
15 4 (0.082%) Microsoft App-V
16 3 (0.062%) Snort
16 3 (0.062%) Virtual Servers
17 2 (0.041%) BitLocker
17 2 (0.041%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 363 (7.46%) Kubernetes
2 291 (5.98%) Terraform
3 163 (3.35%) Ansible
4 126 (2.59%) Microsoft Intune
5 96 (1.97%) Grafana
6 82 (1.68%) Prometheus
7 77 (1.58%) SCCM
8 58 (1.19%) vCenter Server
9 29 (0.60%) FortiGate
10 28 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.55%) Control-M
12 24 (0.49%) SCOM
13 20 (0.41%) Argo
14 18 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
15 17 (0.35%) WSUS
16 15 (0.31%) Nessus
17 13 (0.27%) IBM Guardium
17 13 (0.27%) Kibana
18 11 (0.23%) Puppet
19 10 (0.21%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 983 (20.19%) Microsoft
2 343 (7.05%) Oracle
3 316 (6.49%) ServiceNow
4 291 (5.98%) SAP
5 198 (4.07%) VMware
6 150 (3.08%) Google
7 122 (2.51%) Salesforce
8 117 (2.40%) Cisco
8 117 (2.40%) Splunk
9 107 (2.20%) Databricks
10 81 (1.66%) Workday
11 68 (1.40%) Dynatrace
12 54 (1.11%) Adobe
13 53 (1.09%) Red Hat
14 52 (1.07%) Apple
15 48 (0.99%) Citrix
16 47 (0.97%) Dell
17 45 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 44 (0.90%) MuleSoft
19 41 (0.84%) Juniper