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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,830 4,416 3,850
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.56% 16.00% 11.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.46% 17.62% 13.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,748 2,695 2,304
10th Percentile £236 £255 £263
25th Percentile £375 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -1.60% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £614
90th Percentile £716 £700 £722
UK median daily rate £495 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +1.98% -2.92% -3.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 410 283 237
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.48
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £14.50
Median hourly rate £20.52 £19.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +7.97% +17.07% -70.49%
75th Percentile £43.47 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £64.75 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £19.92 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.59% +22.70% -70.49%

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 38,772 25,064 28,481
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.81% 90.82% 85.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,937 15,945 18,292
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £422
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,579 1,483 1,510
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.75 £17.87 £18.13
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £69.65 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £40.50
% change year-on-year +63.02% -37.90% -4.71%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 2,109 £525 +5.00% 4,601
South East -5 780 £475 - 1,478
North of England -12 707 £445 -6.32% 1,376
Midlands -7 537 £450 +2.39% 943
West Midlands -9 384 £450 -2.70% 577
North West -12 355 £445 -6.32% 752
South West -3 333 £495 +10.00% 830
Yorkshire -10 289 £450 -5.26% 449
East of England +1 259 £450 -10.00% 692
East Midlands -1 150 £463 +23.33% 368
North East -15 66 £375 -16.67% 195
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
1 224 (4.64%) SharePoint
2 209 (4.33%) Confluence
3 113 (2.34%) Microsoft Exchange
4 50 (1.04%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.68%) Apache
7 27 (0.56%) CMS
7 27 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
8 24 (0.50%) 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%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 6 (0.12%) IIS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 5 (0.10%) Mule
14 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 279 (5.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 234 (4.84%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (2.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 62 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
5 54 (1.12%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.31%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 13 (0.27%) Revit
11 9 (0.19%) Sketch
11 9 (0.19%) Trello
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.12%) Windchill
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
14 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
15 4 (0.083%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.083%) Photoshop
16 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.062%) Maya
Business Applications
1 116 (2.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.58%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
5 24 (0.50%) NetSuite
6 18 (0.37%) Workday HCM
7 16 (0.33%) SAP GRC
8 14 (0.29%) iTrent
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.27%) Aladdin
10 12 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
12 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
13 8 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
14 7 (0.14%) Loan IQ
14 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
14 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
14 7 (0.14%) Shopify
14 7 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 994 (20.58%) Azure
2 702 (14.53%) AWS
3 448 (9.28%) Microsoft 365
4 397 (8.22%) Power Platform
5 282 (5.84%) GCP
6 249 (5.16%) Azure DevOps
7 207 (4.29%) Entra ID
8 162 (3.35%) GitHub
9 129 (2.67%) SaaS
10 113 (2.34%) Serverless
11 92 (1.90%) Power Automate
12 69 (1.43%) GitHub Actions
12 69 (1.43%) Microsoft Copilot
12 69 (1.43%) OneDrive
13 68 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
14 65 (1.35%) PowerApps
15 61 (1.26%) Azure Data Factory
16 59 (1.22%) Snowflake
17 58 (1.20%) AWS Lambda
18 54 (1.12%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 207 (4.29%) DNS
2 174 (3.60%) Firewall
3 158 (3.27%) VPN
4 122 (2.53%) DHCP
5 119 (2.46%) TCP/IP
6 110 (2.28%) WAN
7 91 (1.88%) LAN
8 87 (1.80%) Network Security
9 70 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
10 62 (1.28%) SAN
11 57 (1.18%) Wireless
12 50 (1.04%) VLAN
13 46 (0.95%) BGP
14 37 (0.77%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.75%) VoIP
16 33 (0.68%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.60%) MPLS
18 27 (0.56%) OSPF
19 22 (0.46%) 5G
20 21 (0.43%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (6.29%) Power BI
2 198 (4.10%) SQL Server
3 160 (3.31%) Data Warehouse
4 151 (3.13%) Relational Database
5 131 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
6 88 (1.82%) Metadata
7 83 (1.72%) NoSQL
8 81 (1.68%) Tableau
9 76 (1.57%) MongoDB
10 72 (1.49%) Data Lake
11 48 (0.99%) Big Data
11 48 (0.99%) MySQL
11 48 (0.99%) Oracle Database
12 33 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 31 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
14 26 (0.54%) Db2
15 25 (0.52%) Power Query
16 23 (0.48%) BigQuery
17 22 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
17 22 (0.46%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 440 (9.11%) JIRA
2 297 (6.15%) Git
3 150 (3.11%) Jenkins
4 118 (2.44%) GitLab
5 68 (1.41%) Selenium
6 36 (0.75%) Cypress.io
7 35 (0.72%) Postman
8 26 (0.54%) Bitbucket
8 26 (0.54%) Maven
9 25 (0.52%) Cucumber
9 25 (0.52%) REST Assured
10 23 (0.48%) Gradle
10 23 (0.48%) JUnit
11 20 (0.41%) JMeter
12 16 (0.33%) WebDriver
13 15 (0.31%) Gatling
13 15 (0.31%) SonarQube
14 13 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 13 (0.27%) Mockito
14 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 2,574 (53.29%) Social Skills
2 2,082 (43.11%) Analytical Skills
3 1,144 (23.69%) Finance
4 472 (9.77%) Public Sector
5 405 (8.39%) Banking
6 229 (4.74%) Organisational Skills
7 180 (3.73%) Documentation Skills
7 180 (3.73%) Retail
8 168 (3.48%) Manufacturing
9 158 (3.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 145 (3.00%) Influencing Skills
11 114 (2.36%) Front Office
12 109 (2.26%) Legal
13 105 (2.17%) Telecoms
14 104 (2.15%) Marketing
15 103 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
16 80 (1.66%) Investment Banking
17 61 (1.26%) Law
18 55 (1.14%) Financial Institution
19 53 (1.10%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 655 (13.56%) Analyst
2 555 (11.49%) Developer
3 436 (9.03%) Senior
4 373 (7.72%) Lead
5 302 (6.25%) Architect
6 219 (4.53%) Business Analyst
7 212 (4.39%) Consultant
8 197 (4.08%) IT Support
9 194 (4.02%) Support Engineer
10 188 (3.89%) Data Engineer
11 134 (2.77%) Project Manager
12 132 (2.73%) IT Engineer
13 119 (2.46%) Administrator
14 102 (2.11%) Data Analyst
15 97 (2.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 95 (1.97%) Java Developer
17 90 (1.86%) IT Support Engineer
18 88 (1.82%) Support Analyst
19 87 (1.80%) DevOps Engineer
19 87 (1.80%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 304 (6.29%) REST
2 289 (5.98%) Terraform
3 159 (3.29%) .NET
4 148 (3.06%) RESTful
5 138 (2.86%) React
6 137 (2.84%) SOAP
7 116 (2.40%) Kafka
8 112 (2.32%) JSON
8 112 (2.32%) Spring
9 108 (2.24%) CSS
10 107 (2.22%) XML
11 104 (2.15%) HTML
12 93 (1.93%) Middleware
13 83 (1.72%) Spring Boot
14 82 (1.70%) Web Services
15 78 (1.61%) AngularJS
15 78 (1.61%) Node.js
16 77 (1.59%) OAuth
17 63 (1.30%) PySpark
18 48 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 280 (5.80%) Onboarding
2 241 (4.99%) Product Ownership
3 240 (4.97%) Cloud Native
4 192 (3.98%) Self-Motivation
5 158 (3.27%) Data Centre
6 156 (3.23%) Enterprise Software
7 154 (3.19%) Management Information System
8 145 (3.00%) Distributed Systems
9 129 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
10 124 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
11 121 (2.51%) Data Structures
12 111 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
13 86 (1.78%) Virtual Team
14 67 (1.39%) AI Agents
15 66 (1.37%) CMDB
15 66 (1.37%) Driving Licence
16 53 (1.10%) Algorithms
16 53 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 52 (1.08%) PKI
18 50 (1.04%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 667 (13.81%) Windows
2 263 (5.45%) Linux
3 184 (3.81%) Windows Server
4 134 (2.77%) Windows 10
5 95 (1.97%) Unix
6 79 (1.64%) Mac OS
7 78 (1.61%) Apple iOS
8 70 (1.45%) Android
9 41 (0.85%) 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 8 (0.17%) CentOS
14 8 (0.17%) Solaris
14 8 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
15 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
16 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.083%) AIX
17 4 (0.083%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,327 (27.47%) Agile
2 1,060 (21.95%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,033 (21.39%) Stakeholder Management
4 810 (16.77%) CI/CD
5 766 (15.86%) DevOps
6 661 (13.69%) AI
7 538 (11.14%) Decision-Making
8 535 (11.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 509 (10.54%) Migration
10 503 (10.41%) Analytics
11 477 (9.88%) ITIL
12 458 (9.48%) Customer Service
13 386 (7.99%) Test Automation
14 383 (7.93%) Validation
15 374 (7.74%) Business Intelligence
16 355 (7.35%) Data Modelling
17 337 (6.98%) Roadmaps
18 336 (6.96%) Scrum
19 327 (6.77%) ITSM
20 320 (6.63%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 871 (18.03%) SQL
2 797 (16.50%) Python
3 364 (7.54%) Java
4 295 (6.11%) PowerShell
5 287 (5.94%) JavaScript
6 174 (3.60%) C#
7 147 (3.04%) Bash
8 110 (2.28%) TypeScript
9 82 (1.70%) PL/SQL
10 49 (1.01%) C++
11 46 (0.95%) T-SQL
12 36 (0.75%) Shell Script
13 35 (0.72%) Bicep
13 35 (0.72%) Go
14 29 (0.60%) Scala
15 27 (0.56%) Apex Code
15 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
15 27 (0.56%) R
16 25 (0.52%) C
17 24 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,036 (21.45%) Security Cleared
2 702 (14.53%) SC Cleared
3 593 (12.28%) Degree
4 205 (4.24%) DV Cleared
5 185 (3.83%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.98%) Microsoft Certification
7 108 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
8 94 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
9 74 (1.53%) Azure Certification
10 71 (1.47%) PMP
11 68 (1.41%) PMI Certification
12 67 (1.39%) CISSP
13 61 (1.26%) A+ Certification
14 53 (1.10%) CCNA
15 51 (1.06%) Master's Degree
16 42 (0.87%) Network+ Certification
17 41 (0.85%) CISM
18 39 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
19 37 (0.77%) AWS Certification
19 37 (0.77%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 358 (7.41%) Data Quality
2 329 (6.81%) QA
3 125 (2.59%) GDPR
4 111 (2.30%) Accessibility
5 109 (2.26%) SLA
6 88 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 86 (1.78%) PMO
8 73 (1.51%) NIST
9 59 (1.22%) GRC
10 30 (0.62%) WCAG
11 25 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.29%) GxP
13 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.27%) COBIT
14 13 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
15 12 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
16 10 (0.21%) IFRS
16 10 (0.21%) NCSC
System Software
1 402 (8.32%) Active Directory
2 300 (6.21%) Docker
3 149 (3.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 58 (1.20%) Hyper-V
4 58 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
5 50 (1.04%) VMware NSX
6 46 (0.95%) vSphere
7 34 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
8 28 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
9 26 (0.54%) vCloud
10 24 (0.50%) IAG
11 16 (0.33%) Firmware
12 8 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
15 5 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
16 3 (0.062%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.062%) Squid
17 2 (0.041%) UAG
Systems Management
1 335 (6.94%) Kubernetes
2 163 (3.37%) Ansible
3 125 (2.59%) Microsoft Intune
4 87 (1.80%) SCCM
5 83 (1.72%) Grafana
6 63 (1.30%) Prometheus
7 56 (1.16%) vCenter Server
8 33 (0.68%) SCOM
9 25 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.46%) Control-M
10 22 (0.46%) WSUS
11 20 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
12 15 (0.31%) FortiGate
13 14 (0.29%) Argo
14 11 (0.23%) Kibana
15 10 (0.21%) Istio
15 10 (0.21%) Puppet
16 9 (0.19%) Progress Chef
16 9 (0.19%) VxRail
17 8 (0.17%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,095 (22.67%) Microsoft
2 338 (7.00%) Oracle
3 326 (6.75%) ServiceNow
4 295 (6.11%) SAP
5 198 (4.10%) VMware
6 140 (2.90%) Google
7 134 (2.77%) Salesforce
8 112 (2.32%) Databricks
9 109 (2.26%) Cisco
10 94 (1.95%) Splunk
11 71 (1.47%) Workday
12 68 (1.41%) Dynatrace
13 61 (1.26%) Apple
14 54 (1.12%) Adobe
15 48 (0.99%) IBM
16 46 (0.95%) CyberArk
17 42 (0.87%) Red Hat
18 40 (0.83%) Dell
19 39 (0.81%) MuleSoft
20 36 (0.75%) Citrix