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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +5
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,042 4,323 4,018
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.83% 15.47% 12.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.79% 17.00% 14.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,842 2,637 2,299
10th Percentile £251 £250 £263
25th Percentile £381 £375 £399
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £603 £603
90th Percentile £716 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 490 269 202
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £15.51
Median hourly rate £19.48 £18.87 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.23% +16.27% -69.42%
75th Percentile £40.00 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £70.73 £63.40 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £18.50 £20.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.50% +23.23% -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 39,431 25,424 27,856
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.70% 90.99% 86.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,955 16,149 17,033
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.64% -2.57% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,897 1,546 1,199
10th Percentile £13.87 £14.42 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £46.55 £67.01
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £39.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +55.07% -40.82% -

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 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 1 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 1 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 2,152 £525 +4.95% 4,841
South East -3 813 £475 +5.56% 1,737
North of England -11 730 £450 -5.26% 1,703
Midlands -6 616 £450 +2.39% 1,193
West Midlands -8 441 £450 -5.26% 740
North West -10 360 £450 -4.05% 887
South West -5 329 £500 +11.11% 905
Yorkshire -7 297 £475 -4.04% 585
East of England 0 289 £450 -10.00% 810
East Midlands +2 171 £450 +20.00% 453
North East -12 75 £375 -16.67% 249
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
1 233 (4.62%) SharePoint
2 222 (4.40%) Confluence
3 98 (1.94%) Microsoft Exchange
4 50 (0.99%) Apache Spark
5 41 (0.81%) Apache
6 40 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.52%) CMS
8 22 (0.44%) SAS
9 21 (0.42%) 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 5 (0.099%) Appian
15 5 (0.099%) Mule
15 5 (0.099%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.099%) Tomcat
Applications
1 295 (5.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 243 (4.82%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (2.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (1.25%) Microsoft Project
5 50 (0.99%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 17 (0.34%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.32%) Revit
9 9 (0.18%) Navisworks
9 9 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.18%) Trello
9 9 (0.18%) Windchill
10 6 (0.12%) CPLEX
11 4 (0.079%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.060%) Acrobat
12 3 (0.060%) DaVinci Resolve
12 3 (0.060%) NUKE
13 2 (0.040%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 115 (2.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
4 27 (0.54%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
6 24 (0.48%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.34%) SAP GRC
8 14 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
8 14 (0.28%) Teamcenter
9 13 (0.26%) iTrent
10 12 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
10 12 (0.24%) SAP SD
11 11 (0.22%) Aladdin
12 10 (0.20%) Finacle
12 10 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
12 10 (0.20%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
13 9 (0.18%) SAP PSCD
14 8 (0.16%) Primavera
14 8 (0.16%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,003 (19.89%) Azure
2 688 (13.65%) AWS
3 488 (9.68%) Microsoft 365
4 417 (8.27%) Power Platform
5 294 (5.83%) GCP
6 247 (4.90%) Azure DevOps
7 215 (4.26%) Entra ID
8 177 (3.51%) GitHub
9 130 (2.58%) SaaS
10 112 (2.22%) Serverless
11 110 (2.18%) Power Automate
12 88 (1.75%) Microsoft Copilot
13 83 (1.65%) Dynamics 365
14 81 (1.61%) PowerApps
15 71 (1.41%) OneDrive
16 70 (1.39%) GitHub Actions
17 67 (1.33%) Snowflake
18 61 (1.21%) Azure Data Factory
19 55 (1.09%) OpenShift
20 54 (1.07%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 201 (3.99%) DNS
2 179 (3.55%) Firewall
3 157 (3.11%) VPN
4 122 (2.42%) DHCP
5 113 (2.24%) TCP/IP
6 102 (2.02%) Network Security
7 101 (2.00%) WAN
8 87 (1.73%) LAN
9 72 (1.43%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.21%) Wireless
11 55 (1.09%) SAN
12 47 (0.93%) VLAN
13 45 (0.89%) BGP
14 42 (0.83%) VoIP
15 30 (0.60%) Structured Cabling
16 28 (0.56%) SD-WAN
17 25 (0.50%) MPLS
18 24 (0.48%) SSL
19 21 (0.42%) OSPF
19 21 (0.42%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (6.17%) Power BI
2 187 (3.71%) SQL Server
3 155 (3.07%) Relational Database
4 149 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
5 131 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
6 90 (1.79%) Metadata
7 81 (1.61%) MongoDB
8 80 (1.59%) NoSQL
9 72 (1.43%) Tableau
10 67 (1.33%) Data Lake
11 53 (1.05%) MySQL
11 53 (1.05%) Oracle Database
12 36 (0.71%) Big Data
13 33 (0.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 30 (0.60%) Oracle Reports
15 27 (0.54%) BigQuery
16 26 (0.52%) Db2
17 24 (0.48%) Delta Lake
18 23 (0.46%) Pentaho
18 23 (0.46%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 448 (8.89%) JIRA
2 325 (6.45%) Git
3 175 (3.47%) Jenkins
4 129 (2.56%) GitLab
5 72 (1.43%) Selenium
6 41 (0.81%) Cucumber
7 37 (0.73%) Maven
8 36 (0.71%) JUnit
9 35 (0.69%) Cypress.io
9 35 (0.69%) Postman
10 29 (0.58%) Bitbucket
11 27 (0.54%) Gradle
12 26 (0.52%) SonarQube
13 24 (0.48%) REST Assured
14 22 (0.44%) JMeter
15 20 (0.40%) Mockito
16 18 (0.36%) Gatling
17 17 (0.34%) WebDriver
18 15 (0.30%) Visual Studio
19 13 (0.26%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,682 (53.19%) Social Skills
2 2,190 (43.44%) Analytical Skills
3 1,168 (23.17%) Finance
4 508 (10.08%) Public Sector
5 410 (8.13%) Banking
6 273 (5.41%) Organisational Skills
7 244 (4.84%) Manufacturing
8 175 (3.47%) Documentation Skills
9 164 (3.25%) Influencing Skills
10 163 (3.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 163 (3.23%) Retail
11 115 (2.28%) Legal
12 114 (2.26%) Marketing
13 110 (2.18%) Front Office
14 108 (2.14%) Presentation Skills
15 104 (2.06%) Telecoms
16 82 (1.63%) Investment Banking
17 67 (1.33%) Aerospace
18 62 (1.23%) Law
19 61 (1.21%) Military
Job Titles
1 673 (13.35%) Analyst
2 577 (11.44%) Developer
3 482 (9.56%) Senior
4 377 (7.48%) Lead
5 284 (5.63%) Architect
6 235 (4.66%) Business Analyst
7 218 (4.32%) IT Support
8 216 (4.28%) Consultant
9 200 (3.97%) Support Engineer
10 176 (3.49%) Data Engineer
11 147 (2.92%) Project Manager
12 143 (2.84%) Administrator
13 136 (2.70%) IT Engineer
14 108 (2.14%) Data Analyst
15 101 (2.00%) IT Support Engineer
16 100 (1.98%) Java Developer
17 96 (1.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 94 (1.86%) DevOps Engineer
19 93 (1.84%) Network Engineer
20 84 (1.67%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 336 (6.66%) REST
2 307 (6.09%) Terraform
3 173 (3.43%) .NET
4 152 (3.01%) RESTful
5 147 (2.92%) SOAP
6 143 (2.84%) React
7 121 (2.40%) Kafka
8 117 (2.32%) CSS
8 117 (2.32%) HTML
8 117 (2.32%) JSON
9 116 (2.30%) XML
10 109 (2.16%) Spring
11 99 (1.96%) Middleware
12 97 (1.92%) Web Services
13 89 (1.77%) Spring Boot
14 80 (1.59%) AngularJS
14 80 (1.59%) Node.js
15 75 (1.49%) OAuth
16 57 (1.13%) PySpark
17 52 (1.03%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 298 (5.91%) Onboarding
2 258 (5.12%) Cloud Native
3 240 (4.76%) Product Ownership
4 198 (3.93%) Management Information System
5 197 (3.91%) Self-Motivation
6 187 (3.71%) Enterprise Software
7 154 (3.05%) Data Centre
8 125 (2.48%) Data Structures
8 125 (2.48%) Distributed Systems
9 118 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
10 112 (2.22%) Analytical Mindset
11 109 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
12 83 (1.65%) Virtual Team
13 78 (1.55%) Driving Licence
14 74 (1.47%) AI Agents
15 66 (1.31%) CMDB
16 58 (1.15%) PKI
17 53 (1.05%) NHS
18 52 (1.03%) Algorithms
19 50 (0.99%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 698 (13.84%) Windows
2 279 (5.53%) Linux
3 202 (4.01%) Windows Server
4 126 (2.50%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.94%) Unix
6 84 (1.67%) Apple iOS
7 81 (1.61%) Mac OS
8 72 (1.43%) Android
9 50 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.36%) VMS
12 17 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.30%) Solaris
14 12 (0.24%) zOS
15 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
16 8 (0.16%) AIX
16 8 (0.16%) CentOS
17 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.079%) Rocky
18 4 (0.079%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,375 (27.27%) Agile
2 1,246 (24.71%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,146 (22.73%) Continuous Improvement
4 842 (16.70%) CI/CD
5 766 (15.19%) DevOps
6 703 (13.94%) AI
7 577 (11.44%) Decision-Making
8 565 (11.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 533 (10.57%) Migration
10 492 (9.76%) Customer Service
11 485 (9.62%) Analytics
12 462 (9.16%) ITIL
13 422 (8.37%) Test Automation
14 408 (8.09%) Validation
15 367 (7.28%) Business Intelligence
16 351 (6.96%) Scrum
17 348 (6.90%) Data Modelling
18 339 (6.72%) ITSM
18 339 (6.72%) Technical Leadership
19 336 (6.66%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 891 (17.67%) SQL
2 762 (15.11%) Python
3 371 (7.36%) Java
4 310 (6.15%) JavaScript
5 302 (5.99%) PowerShell
6 201 (3.99%) C#
7 147 (2.92%) Bash
8 131 (2.60%) TypeScript
9 80 (1.59%) PL/SQL
10 47 (0.93%) T-SQL
11 44 (0.87%) Go
11 44 (0.87%) Shell Script
12 42 (0.83%) C++
13 30 (0.60%) Bicep
13 30 (0.60%) Scala
14 25 (0.50%) Groovy
14 25 (0.50%) Kotlin
15 23 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 20 (0.40%) Apex Code
16 20 (0.40%) R
Qualifications
1 1,115 (22.11%) Security Cleared
2 780 (15.47%) SC Cleared
3 616 (12.22%) Degree
4 221 (4.38%) DV Cleared
5 179 (3.55%) Computer Science Degree
6 140 (2.78%) Microsoft Certification
7 138 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
8 87 (1.73%) Cisco Certification
9 77 (1.53%) PMI Certification
10 76 (1.51%) Azure Certification
11 74 (1.47%) CISSP
12 73 (1.45%) PMP
13 52 (1.03%) DBS Check
14 51 (1.01%) A+ Certification
15 50 (0.99%) Master's Degree
16 47 (0.93%) AWS Certification
17 45 (0.89%) CCNA
18 43 (0.85%) CISM
19 39 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
20 35 (0.69%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 374 (7.42%) Data Quality
2 352 (6.98%) QA
3 119 (2.36%) GDPR
4 117 (2.32%) Accessibility
5 114 (2.26%) SLA
6 88 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 85 (1.69%) PMO
8 65 (1.29%) NIST
9 53 (1.05%) GRC
10 32 (0.63%) WCAG
11 22 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
12 19 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 17 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
14 16 (0.32%) PCI DSS
15 14 (0.28%) NCSC
16 13 (0.26%) GxP
17 12 (0.24%) IFRS
18 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
19 10 (0.20%) COBIT
19 10 (0.20%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 406 (8.05%) Active Directory
2 306 (6.07%) Docker
3 158 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 65 (1.29%) VMware ESXi
5 62 (1.23%) Hyper-V
6 54 (1.07%) vSphere
7 52 (1.03%) VMware NSX
8 35 (0.69%) Virtual Desktop
9 28 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
10 25 (0.50%) vCloud
11 24 (0.48%) IAG
12 17 (0.34%) Firmware
13 10 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.099%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 5 (0.099%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.099%) XenApp
15 5 (0.099%) XenDesktop
16 4 (0.079%) FreeRADIUS
Systems Management
1 344 (6.82%) Kubernetes
2 165 (3.27%) Ansible
3 134 (2.66%) Microsoft Intune
4 92 (1.82%) Grafana
5 85 (1.69%) SCCM
6 73 (1.45%) Prometheus
7 49 (0.97%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.73%) SCOM
9 25 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
10 23 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
11 21 (0.42%) Control-M
12 18 (0.36%) WSUS
13 14 (0.28%) FortiGate
14 13 (0.26%) Nessus
15 12 (0.24%) VxRail
16 11 (0.22%) Istio
16 11 (0.22%) Kibana
17 9 (0.18%) NetBackup
18 8 (0.16%) McAfee ePO
18 8 (0.16%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,219 (24.18%) Microsoft
2 340 (6.74%) Oracle
3 315 (6.25%) SAP
4 313 (6.21%) ServiceNow
5 204 (4.05%) VMware
6 149 (2.96%) Google
7 124 (2.46%) Salesforce
8 122 (2.42%) Cisco
9 118 (2.34%) Databricks
10 102 (2.02%) Splunk
11 72 (1.43%) Workday
12 63 (1.25%) Dynatrace
13 61 (1.21%) Apple
14 55 (1.09%) Adobe
15 54 (1.07%) IBM
16 49 (0.97%) Red Hat
17 44 (0.87%) CyberArk
18 37 (0.73%) MuleSoft
18 37 (0.73%) Palo Alto
19 36 (0.71%) Dell