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

6 months to
1 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 4,850 4,390 3,904
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.62% 15.92% 11.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.52% 17.54% 13.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,765 2,685 2,318
10th Percentile £235 £255 £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 +3.57% -3.45% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 415 280 229
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.79
25th Percentile £15.99 £15.12 £14.84
Median hourly rate £20.44 £19.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +7.58% +17.07% -70.37%
75th Percentile £43.75 £34.61 £30.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £19.92 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.59% +22.70% -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 38,738 25,035 28,393
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.83% 90.79% 85.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,882 15,942 18,107
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% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,595 1,467 1,443
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.87 £18.63
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 £41.09 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +63.39% -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 1 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 1 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 1 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 2,127 £525 +5.00% 4,873
South East -5 782 £475 +2.59% 1,482
North of England -12 707 £443 -6.74% 1,458
Midlands -6 544 £450 +0.67% 999
West Midlands -8 390 £450 -4.05% 625
North West -8 358 £445 -6.32% 811
South West -3 327 £490 +8.89% 872
Yorkshire -12 286 £450 -5.26% 460
East of England +1 256 £450 -10.00% 686
East Midlands -1 151 £475 +26.67% 376
North East -15 66 £375 -16.67% 210
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 (4.58%) SharePoint
2 210 (4.33%) Confluence
3 107 (2.21%) Microsoft Exchange
4 48 (0.99%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.66%) 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%) Mule
14 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 280 (5.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 234 (4.82%) Microsoft Office
3 102 (2.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
5 54 (1.11%) 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 (0.082%) Adobe XD
16 3 (0.062%) DaVinci Resolve
16 3 (0.062%) NUKE
16 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%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
10 10 (0.21%) Teamcenter
11 8 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
12 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
12 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
12 7 (0.14%) Shopify
13 6 (0.12%) Maximo
13 6 (0.12%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 994 (20.49%) Azure
2 708 (14.60%) AWS
3 453 (9.34%) Microsoft 365
4 406 (8.37%) Power Platform
5 280 (5.77%) GCP
6 244 (5.03%) Azure DevOps
7 209 (4.31%) Entra ID
8 161 (3.32%) GitHub
9 130 (2.68%) SaaS
10 112 (2.31%) Serverless
11 95 (1.96%) Power Automate
12 73 (1.51%) Microsoft Copilot
13 71 (1.46%) OneDrive
14 69 (1.42%) Dynamics 365
14 69 (1.42%) PowerApps
15 67 (1.38%) GitHub Actions
16 61 (1.26%) Snowflake
17 60 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
18 57 (1.18%) AWS Lambda
19 52 (1.07%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 207 (4.27%) DNS
2 177 (3.65%) Firewall
3 162 (3.34%) VPN
4 123 (2.54%) DHCP
5 121 (2.49%) TCP/IP
6 110 (2.27%) WAN
7 91 (1.88%) LAN
8 88 (1.81%) 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%) 5G
20 21 (0.43%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (6.41%) Power BI
2 195 (4.02%) SQL Server
3 161 (3.32%) Data Warehouse
4 155 (3.20%) Relational Database
5 134 (2.76%) PostgreSQL
6 90 (1.86%) Metadata
7 81 (1.67%) Tableau
8 80 (1.65%) NoSQL
9 73 (1.51%) MongoDB
10 71 (1.46%) Data Lake
11 49 (1.01%) Big Data
12 48 (0.99%) MySQL
12 48 (0.99%) Oracle Database
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%) Amazon Redshift
17 22 (0.45%) BigQuery
17 22 (0.45%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 434 (8.95%) JIRA
2 294 (6.06%) Git
3 149 (3.07%) Jenkins
4 116 (2.39%) GitLab
5 66 (1.36%) Selenium
6 36 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 35 (0.72%) Postman
8 27 (0.56%) Maven
9 25 (0.52%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.52%) Cucumber
10 24 (0.49%) JUnit
10 24 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.47%) Gradle
12 20 (0.41%) JMeter
13 17 (0.35%) SonarQube
14 16 (0.33%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.31%) Gatling
16 14 (0.29%) Mockito
17 13 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
17 13 (0.27%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,590 (53.40%) Social Skills
2 2,107 (43.44%) Analytical Skills
3 1,142 (23.55%) Finance
4 479 (9.88%) Public Sector
5 401 (8.27%) Banking
6 231 (4.76%) Organisational Skills
7 181 (3.73%) Documentation Skills
8 176 (3.63%) Retail
9 170 (3.51%) Manufacturing
10 159 (3.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 152 (3.13%) Influencing Skills
12 114 (2.35%) Front Office
13 107 (2.21%) Legal
14 106 (2.19%) Telecoms
15 104 (2.14%) Presentation Skills
16 101 (2.08%) Marketing
17 81 (1.67%) Investment Banking
18 62 (1.28%) Law
19 55 (1.13%) Financial Institution
20 53 (1.09%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 667 (13.75%) Analyst
2 555 (11.44%) Developer
3 440 (9.07%) Senior
4 371 (7.65%) Lead
5 301 (6.21%) Architect
6 222 (4.58%) Business Analyst
7 213 (4.39%) Consultant
8 201 (4.14%) IT Support
9 193 (3.98%) Support Engineer
10 189 (3.90%) Data Engineer
11 133 (2.74%) IT Engineer
12 130 (2.68%) Project Manager
13 119 (2.45%) Administrator
14 106 (2.19%) Data Analyst
15 97 (2.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 95 (1.96%) 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%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 304 (6.27%) REST
2 293 (6.04%) Terraform
3 161 (3.32%) .NET
4 148 (3.05%) RESTful
5 137 (2.82%) React
5 137 (2.82%) SOAP
6 114 (2.35%) Kafka
7 112 (2.31%) JSON
8 110 (2.27%) Spring
9 108 (2.23%) XML
10 107 (2.21%) CSS
11 104 (2.14%) HTML
12 95 (1.96%) Middleware
13 83 (1.71%) Spring Boot
13 83 (1.71%) Web Services
14 78 (1.61%) AngularJS
14 78 (1.61%) OAuth
15 77 (1.59%) Node.js
16 62 (1.28%) PySpark
17 48 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 277 (5.71%) Onboarding
2 245 (5.05%) Product Ownership
3 243 (5.01%) Cloud Native
4 191 (3.94%) Self-Motivation
5 162 (3.34%) Management Information System
6 161 (3.32%) Enterprise Software
7 154 (3.18%) Data Centre
8 141 (2.91%) Distributed Systems
9 127 (2.62%) Analytical Mindset
10 125 (2.58%) Data Structures
11 120 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
12 110 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
13 85 (1.75%) Virtual Team
14 69 (1.42%) AI Agents
15 68 (1.40%) Driving Licence
16 67 (1.38%) CMDB
17 53 (1.09%) 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 90 (1.86%) Unix
6 80 (1.65%) Apple iOS
6 80 (1.65%) Mac OS
7 71 (1.46%) Android
8 43 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 20 (0.41%) Ubuntu
10 18 (0.37%) VMS
11 17 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 11 (0.23%) zOS
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 8 (0.16%) CentOS
14 8 (0.16%) Solaris
15 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
16 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.082%) AIX
17 4 (0.082%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,333 (27.48%) Agile
2 1,075 (22.16%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,055 (21.75%) Stakeholder Management
4 807 (16.64%) CI/CD
5 760 (15.67%) DevOps
6 666 (13.73%) AI
7 557 (11.48%) Decision-Making
8 546 (11.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 510 (10.52%) Analytics
10 509 (10.49%) Migration
11 479 (9.88%) ITIL
12 461 (9.51%) Customer Service
13 384 (7.92%) Validation
14 383 (7.90%) Test Automation
15 379 (7.81%) Business Intelligence
16 358 (7.38%) Data Modelling
17 341 (7.03%) Roadmaps
18 334 (6.89%) Scrum
19 331 (6.82%) ITSM
20 320 (6.60%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 880 (18.14%) SQL
2 799 (16.47%) Python
3 359 (7.40%) Java
4 301 (6.21%) PowerShell
5 282 (5.81%) JavaScript
6 177 (3.65%) C#
7 149 (3.07%) Bash
8 111 (2.29%) TypeScript
9 82 (1.69%) PL/SQL
10 50 (1.03%) C++
11 48 (0.99%) T-SQL
12 36 (0.74%) Go
13 35 (0.72%) Shell Script
14 33 (0.68%) Bicep
15 29 (0.60%) Scala
16 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
17 26 (0.54%) C
17 26 (0.54%) R
18 25 (0.52%) Apex Code
18 25 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,055 (21.75%) Security Cleared
2 725 (14.95%) SC Cleared
3 594 (12.25%) Degree
4 204 (4.21%) DV Cleared
5 187 (3.86%) Computer Science Degree
6 146 (3.01%) Microsoft Certification
7 112 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
8 91 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
9 77 (1.59%) Azure Certification
10 72 (1.48%) 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 (0.82%) CISM
17 40 (0.82%) DBS Check
18 37 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 367 (7.57%) Data Quality
2 335 (6.91%) QA
3 126 (2.60%) GDPR
4 112 (2.31%) Accessibility
5 110 (2.27%) SLA
6 87 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 84 (1.73%) PMO
8 72 (1.48%) NIST
9 61 (1.26%) GRC
10 31 (0.64%) 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%) HIPAA
17 10 (0.21%) NCSC
System Software
1 400 (8.25%) Active Directory
2 302 (6.23%) Docker
3 149 (3.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.26%) VMware ESXi
5 60 (1.24%) Hyper-V
6 53 (1.09%) VMware NSX
7 46 (0.95%) vSphere
8 34 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
9 29 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 27 (0.56%) vCloud
11 25 (0.52%) IAG
12 16 (0.33%) Firmware
13 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
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%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 339 (6.99%) Kubernetes
2 165 (3.40%) Ansible
3 126 (2.60%) Microsoft Intune
4 89 (1.84%) SCCM
5 88 (1.81%) Grafana
6 67 (1.38%) Prometheus
7 55 (1.13%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.76%) SCOM
9 25 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
10 23 (0.47%) Control-M
11 22 (0.45%) WSUS
12 21 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
13 14 (0.29%) Argo
13 14 (0.29%) FortiGate
14 11 (0.23%) Istio
14 11 (0.23%) Kibana
14 11 (0.23%) Nessus
15 10 (0.21%) Puppet
16 9 (0.19%) Progress Chef
16 9 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,108 (22.85%) Microsoft
2 342 (7.05%) Oracle
3 321 (6.62%) ServiceNow
4 294 (6.06%) SAP
5 200 (4.12%) VMware
6 139 (2.87%) Google
7 133 (2.74%) Salesforce
8 115 (2.37%) Databricks
9 108 (2.23%) Cisco
10 100 (2.06%) Splunk
11 71 (1.46%) Workday
12 67 (1.38%) Dynatrace
13 62 (1.28%) 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 34 (0.70%) Citrix