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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 5 8
Rank change year-on-year -6 +3 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,062 4,294 4,054
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.94% 15.35% 12.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.90% 16.88% 14.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,840 2,616 2,332
10th Percentile £259 £250 £265
25th Percentile £388 £375 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.51% -2.45% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £713 £700 £711
UK median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.20% -3.10% -0.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 506 276 195
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.52
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £19.37 £18.86 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +2.68% +16.20% -69.76%
75th Percentile £39.88 £34.48 £31.37
90th Percentile £70.25 £63.88 £63.25
UK median hourly rate £18.25 £20.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -8.75% +23.23% -69.42%

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 39,226 25,436 27,906
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.80% 90.90% 86.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,709 16,124 17,045
10th Percentile £325 £294 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £641
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 2,969 1,568 1,160
10th Percentile £13.70 £14.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.43 £17.87 £20.28
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.69
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.09% -4.07%
75th Percentile £67.25 £45.80 £67.14
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.33
% change year-on-year +49.11% -37.63% -7.56%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 2,160 £525 +5.00% 5,396
South East -3 826 £475 +5.56% 1,715
North of England -9 742 £450 -5.26% 1,675
Midlands -6 612 £450 +1.47% 1,107
West Midlands -8 438 £450 -5.26% 671
North West -9 370 £450 -1.48% 832
South West -6 318 £505 +12.22% 824
East of England 0 294 £438 -14.55% 825
Yorkshire -6 293 £473 -4.55% 589
East Midlands +2 170 £443 +18.00% 436
North East -10 81 £375 -16.67% 270
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 (4.70%) SharePoint
2 230 (4.54%) Confluence
3 92 (1.82%) Microsoft Exchange
4 52 (1.03%) 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 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.34%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.32%) 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
15 6 (0.12%) Tomcat
16 5 (0.099%) Appian
16 5 (0.099%) Mule
Applications
1 302 (5.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 242 (4.78%) Microsoft Office
3 118 (2.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.26%) Microsoft Project
5 50 (0.99%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.36%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 16 (0.32%) AutoCAD
8 16 (0.32%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.32%) 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 (0.040%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 111 (2.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 52 (1.03%) 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 (0.34%) SAP GRC
7 15 (0.30%) Teamcenter
8 14 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
9 12 (0.24%) Aladdin
9 12 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
10 11 (0.22%) SAP SD
11 10 (0.20%) iTrent
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 (20.07%) Azure
2 702 (13.87%) AWS
3 477 (9.42%) Microsoft 365
4 412 (8.14%) Power Platform
5 297 (5.87%) GCP
6 253 (5.00%) Azure DevOps
7 216 (4.27%) Entra ID
8 187 (3.69%) GitHub
9 117 (2.31%) SaaS
10 116 (2.29%) Serverless
11 110 (2.17%) Power Automate
12 89 (1.76%) Microsoft Copilot
13 86 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
14 84 (1.66%) PowerApps
15 77 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
16 71 (1.40%) OneDrive
17 70 (1.38%) Snowflake
18 59 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
19 56 (1.11%) OpenShift
20 51 (1.01%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 200 (3.95%) DNS
2 176 (3.48%) Firewall
3 149 (2.94%) VPN
4 115 (2.27%) DHCP
5 111 (2.19%) TCP/IP
6 105 (2.07%) Network Security
7 99 (1.96%) WAN
8 84 (1.66%) LAN
9 72 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
10 60 (1.19%) Wireless
11 46 (0.91%) VLAN
12 45 (0.89%) BGP
12 45 (0.89%) SAN
13 43 (0.85%) VoIP
14 29 (0.57%) Structured Cabling
15 27 (0.53%) SD-WAN
16 25 (0.49%) MPLS
17 22 (0.43%) Broadband
17 22 (0.43%) SSL
18 21 (0.41%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 303 (5.99%) Power BI
2 188 (3.71%) SQL Server
3 158 (3.12%) Relational Database
4 151 (2.98%) Data Warehouse
5 132 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
6 90 (1.78%) Metadata
7 86 (1.70%) MongoDB
8 81 (1.60%) NoSQL
9 72 (1.42%) Tableau
10 65 (1.28%) Data Lake
11 54 (1.07%) MySQL
11 54 (1.07%) Oracle Database
12 37 (0.73%) Big Data
13 33 (0.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 27 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
15 26 (0.51%) BigQuery
15 26 (0.51%) Delta Lake
16 25 (0.49%) Db2
17 23 (0.45%) DynamoDB
17 23 (0.45%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 452 (8.93%) JIRA
2 343 (6.78%) Git
3 186 (3.67%) Jenkins
4 133 (2.63%) GitLab
5 74 (1.46%) Selenium
6 45 (0.89%) Cucumber
7 41 (0.81%) Maven
8 39 (0.77%) JUnit
9 36 (0.71%) 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 21 (0.41%) Mockito
16 19 (0.38%) Gatling
17 17 (0.34%) WebDriver
18 15 (0.30%) Visual Studio
19 14 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,702 (53.38%) Social Skills
2 2,199 (43.44%) Analytical Skills
3 1,180 (23.31%) Finance
4 521 (10.29%) Public Sector
5 419 (8.28%) Banking
6 283 (5.59%) Organisational Skills
7 260 (5.14%) Manufacturing
8 173 (3.42%) Documentation Skills
9 167 (3.30%) Influencing Skills
10 163 (3.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 160 (3.16%) Retail
12 122 (2.41%) Legal
13 114 (2.25%) Marketing
14 110 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
15 108 (2.13%) Telecoms
16 105 (2.07%) Front Office
17 87 (1.72%) Investment Banking
18 75 (1.48%) Aerospace
19 62 (1.22%) Military
20 59 (1.17%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 667 (13.18%) Analyst
2 585 (11.56%) Developer
3 494 (9.76%) Senior
4 384 (7.59%) Lead
5 278 (5.49%) Architect
6 231 (4.56%) Business Analyst
6 231 (4.56%) Consultant
7 223 (4.41%) IT Support
8 198 (3.91%) Support Engineer
9 172 (3.40%) Data Engineer
10 151 (2.98%) Administrator
11 149 (2.94%) Project Manager
12 131 (2.59%) IT Engineer
13 102 (2.02%) Data Analyst
14 101 (2.00%) IT Support Engineer
15 98 (1.94%) Java Developer
16 96 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
17 91 (1.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 91 (1.80%) Network Engineer
18 83 (1.64%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 344 (6.80%) REST
2 310 (6.12%) Terraform
3 175 (3.46%) .NET
4 156 (3.08%) RESTful
5 147 (2.90%) React
6 144 (2.84%) SOAP
7 123 (2.43%) Kafka
8 119 (2.35%) HTML
9 116 (2.29%) CSS
10 115 (2.27%) JSON
11 114 (2.25%) XML
12 110 (2.17%) Spring
13 101 (2.00%) Middleware
13 101 (2.00%) Web Services
14 90 (1.78%) Spring Boot
15 84 (1.66%) Node.js
16 82 (1.62%) AngularJS
17 77 (1.52%) OAuth
18 58 (1.15%) PySpark
19 55 (1.09%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 304 (6.01%) Onboarding
2 266 (5.25%) Cloud Native
3 238 (4.70%) Product Ownership
4 206 (4.07%) Management Information System
5 199 (3.93%) Self-Motivation
6 191 (3.77%) Enterprise Software
7 151 (2.98%) Data Centre
8 126 (2.49%) Data Structures
9 125 (2.47%) Distributed Systems
10 112 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
11 108 (2.13%) Analytical Mindset
12 106 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
13 79 (1.56%) Virtual Team
14 78 (1.54%) Driving Licence
15 74 (1.46%) AI Agents
16 67 (1.32%) CMDB
17 56 (1.11%) PKI
18 54 (1.07%) Algorithms
19 53 (1.05%) NHS
20 49 (0.97%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 676 (13.35%) Windows
2 277 (5.47%) Linux
3 196 (3.87%) Windows Server
4 124 (2.45%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.96%) Unix
6 82 (1.62%) Apple iOS
7 76 (1.50%) Mac OS
8 70 (1.38%) Android
9 50 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.34%) VMS
11 17 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 14 (0.28%) Solaris
13 12 (0.24%) zOS
14 8 (0.16%) CentOS
14 8 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
15 7 (0.14%) AIX
15 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.079%) HPUX
16 4 (0.079%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,394 (27.54%) Agile
2 1,280 (25.29%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,173 (23.17%) Continuous Improvement
4 872 (17.23%) CI/CD
5 778 (15.37%) DevOps
6 707 (13.97%) AI
7 579 (11.44%) Decision-Making
8 572 (11.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 526 (10.39%) Migration
10 480 (9.48%) Analytics
11 477 (9.42%) Customer Service
12 454 (8.97%) ITIL
13 433 (8.55%) Test Automation
14 409 (8.08%) Validation
15 357 (7.05%) Scrum
16 352 (6.95%) Business Intelligence
17 348 (6.87%) Data Modelling
18 347 (6.85%) Technical Leadership
19 343 (6.78%) Roadmaps
20 337 (6.66%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 884 (17.46%) SQL
2 767 (15.15%) Python
3 367 (7.25%) Java
4 312 (6.16%) JavaScript
5 309 (6.10%) PowerShell
6 202 (3.99%) C#
7 150 (2.96%) Bash
8 138 (2.73%) TypeScript
9 81 (1.60%) PL/SQL
10 47 (0.93%) Shell Script
10 47 (0.93%) T-SQL
11 42 (0.83%) Go
12 41 (0.81%) C++
13 30 (0.59%) Bicep
14 28 (0.55%) Scala
15 26 (0.51%) Groovy
16 25 (0.49%) Kotlin
17 22 (0.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 20 (0.40%) C
19 19 (0.38%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,124 (22.20%) Security Cleared
2 796 (15.73%) SC Cleared
3 621 (12.27%) Degree
4 222 (4.39%) DV Cleared
5 185 (3.65%) Computer Science Degree
6 146 (2.88%) BPSS Clearance
7 129 (2.55%) Microsoft Certification
8 81 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
8 81 (1.60%) PMI Certification
9 76 (1.50%) PMP
10 75 (1.48%) Azure Certification
10 75 (1.48%) CISSP
11 54 (1.07%) DBS Check
12 51 (1.01%) Master's Degree
13 50 (0.99%) AWS Certification
14 45 (0.89%) A+ Certification
15 43 (0.85%) CISM
16 39 (0.77%) CCNA
16 39 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
17 34 (0.67%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (7.43%) Data Quality
2 355 (7.01%) QA
3 124 (2.45%) GDPR
4 120 (2.37%) Accessibility
5 109 (2.15%) SLA
6 88 (1.74%) PMO
7 84 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 62 (1.22%) NIST
9 55 (1.09%) GRC
10 32 (0.63%) WCAG
11 20 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
12 18 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 17 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
14 16 (0.32%) NCSC
15 15 (0.30%) PCI DSS
16 13 (0.26%) GxP
17 12 (0.24%) ISO 9001
18 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
18 11 (0.22%) IFRS
19 10 (0.20%) COBIT
System Software
1 396 (7.82%) Active Directory
2 312 (6.16%) Docker
3 151 (2.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.21%) VMware ESXi
5 58 (1.15%) Hyper-V
6 53 (1.05%) vSphere
7 51 (1.01%) VMware NSX
8 36 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
9 25 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
10 24 (0.47%) IAG
10 24 (0.47%) vCloud
11 18 (0.36%) Firmware
12 10 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.12%) XenApp
13 6 (0.12%) XenDesktop
14 5 (0.099%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.099%) NFS
15 4 (0.079%) RACF
Systems Management
1 354 (6.99%) Kubernetes
2 162 (3.20%) Ansible
3 131 (2.59%) Microsoft Intune
4 91 (1.80%) Grafana
5 84 (1.66%) SCCM
6 73 (1.44%) Prometheus
7 44 (0.87%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.73%) SCOM
9 24 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
10 23 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
11 21 (0.41%) Control-M
12 16 (0.32%) WSUS
13 15 (0.30%) FortiGate
14 13 (0.26%) Nessus
15 12 (0.24%) VxRail
16 11 (0.22%) Istio
17 10 (0.20%) Kibana
18 8 (0.16%) McAfee ePO
18 8 (0.16%) NetBackup
18 8 (0.16%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,234 (24.38%) Microsoft
2 337 (6.66%) Oracle
3 310 (6.12%) SAP
4 307 (6.06%) ServiceNow
5 195 (3.85%) VMware
6 149 (2.94%) Google
7 125 (2.47%) Databricks
8 121 (2.39%) Salesforce
9 119 (2.35%) Cisco
10 104 (2.05%) Splunk
11 69 (1.36%) Workday
12 63 (1.24%) Dynatrace
13 59 (1.17%) Apple
14 55 (1.09%) Adobe
14 55 (1.09%) IBM
15 48 (0.95%) Red Hat
16 46 (0.91%) CyberArk
17 39 (0.77%) Palo Alto
18 35 (0.69%) MuleSoft
19 31 (0.61%) Remedy