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

6 months to
16 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 4,979 4,334 3,957
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.80% 15.61% 12.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.75% 17.17% 14.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,838 2,647 2,301
10th Percentile £239 £245 £260
25th Percentile £375 £375 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.46% -2.40% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
90th Percentile £715 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 444 267 210
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.25 £15.00
Median hourly rate £19.48 £18.85 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.34% +16.14% -69.76%
75th Percentile £41.31 £35.00 £30.00
90th Percentile £73.93 £64.25 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £18.63 £19.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year -5.10% +20.92% -69.76%

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 39,062 25,238 28,145
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.72% 90.90% 86.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,917 16,041 17,545
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -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 2,725 1,497 1,306
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £14.92
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £68.00 £49.75 £66.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -11 2,155 £525 +5.00% 6,654
South East -3 789 £480 +6.67% 1,800
North of England -11 724 £445 -6.32% 1,787
Midlands -6 590 £450 +2.33% 1,304
West Midlands -8 425 £450 -4.05% 820
North West -9 361 £445 -6.32% 1,013
South West -4 343 £498 +10.56% 929
Yorkshire -8 295 £450 -6.25% 552
East of England 0 271 £425 -15.00% 860
East Midlands +2 162 £475 +26.67% 483
North East -16 70 £375 -16.67% 244
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
1 225 (4.52%) SharePoint
2 220 (4.42%) Confluence
3 106 (2.13%) Microsoft Exchange
4 48 (0.96%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.66%) Apache
7 27 (0.54%) CMS
8 25 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
8 25 (0.50%) SAS
9 14 (0.28%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.26%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.20%) CICS
11 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 7 (0.14%) IIS
13 6 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 6 (0.12%) ArcGIS
13 6 (0.12%) WordPress
14 5 (0.10%) Mule
14 5 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
Applications
1 286 (5.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 243 (4.88%) Microsoft Office
3 106 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 61 (1.23%) Microsoft Project
5 48 (0.96%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.32%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.30%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 14 (0.28%) Revit
11 9 (0.18%) Sketch
11 9 (0.18%) Trello
12 8 (0.16%) Windchill
13 7 (0.14%) Navisworks
14 6 (0.12%) CPLEX
15 4 (0.080%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.080%) CATIA
16 3 (0.060%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.060%) DaVinci Resolve
16 3 (0.060%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 117 (2.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
3 31 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 27 (0.54%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
6 21 (0.42%) Workday HCM
7 18 (0.36%) SAP GRC
8 15 (0.30%) iTrent
9 14 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
10 13 (0.26%) SAP SD
11 11 (0.22%) Teamcenter
12 10 (0.20%) Aladdin
12 10 (0.20%) Finacle
13 9 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
13 9 (0.18%) Shopify
14 8 (0.16%) Primavera
15 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
15 7 (0.14%) SAP ERP
15 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
16 6 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 996 (20.00%) Azure
2 710 (14.26%) AWS
3 476 (9.56%) Microsoft 365
4 416 (8.36%) Power Platform
5 281 (5.64%) GCP
6 245 (4.92%) Azure DevOps
7 211 (4.24%) Entra ID
8 173 (3.47%) GitHub
9 132 (2.65%) SaaS
10 114 (2.29%) Serverless
11 104 (2.09%) Power Automate
12 84 (1.69%) Microsoft Copilot
13 77 (1.55%) Dynamics 365
14 76 (1.53%) PowerApps
15 71 (1.43%) GitHub Actions
15 71 (1.43%) OneDrive
16 62 (1.25%) Snowflake
17 61 (1.23%) Azure Data Factory
18 55 (1.10%) AWS Lambda
19 51 (1.02%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 211 (4.24%) DNS
2 176 (3.53%) Firewall
3 162 (3.25%) VPN
4 124 (2.49%) DHCP
5 120 (2.41%) TCP/IP
6 101 (2.03%) WAN
7 89 (1.79%) Network Security
8 86 (1.73%) LAN
9 75 (1.51%) Wi-Fi
10 58 (1.16%) Wireless
11 55 (1.10%) SAN
12 50 (1.00%) VLAN
13 42 (0.84%) BGP
14 37 (0.74%) VoIP
15 32 (0.64%) Structured Cabling
16 29 (0.58%) SD-WAN
17 25 (0.50%) MPLS
18 23 (0.46%) SSL
19 22 (0.44%) OSPF
20 18 (0.36%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 316 (6.35%) Power BI
2 198 (3.98%) SQL Server
3 159 (3.19%) Relational Database
4 155 (3.11%) Data Warehouse
5 139 (2.79%) PostgreSQL
6 91 (1.83%) Metadata
7 78 (1.57%) Tableau
8 77 (1.55%) NoSQL
9 75 (1.51%) MongoDB
10 70 (1.41%) Data Lake
11 52 (1.04%) MySQL
11 52 (1.04%) Oracle Database
12 39 (0.78%) Big Data
13 33 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 32 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
15 27 (0.54%) Db2
16 25 (0.50%) Delta Lake
16 25 (0.50%) Power Query
17 24 (0.48%) BigQuery
17 24 (0.48%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 454 (9.12%) JIRA
2 326 (6.55%) Git
3 169 (3.39%) Jenkins
4 121 (2.43%) GitLab
5 70 (1.41%) Selenium
6 36 (0.72%) Maven
7 35 (0.70%) JUnit
8 34 (0.68%) Cypress.io
8 34 (0.68%) Postman
9 33 (0.66%) Cucumber
10 26 (0.52%) Gradle
11 25 (0.50%) Bitbucket
11 25 (0.50%) REST Assured
11 25 (0.50%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.42%) Mockito
13 19 (0.38%) JMeter
14 16 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.30%) Gatling
16 14 (0.28%) Visual Studio
17 13 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,680 (53.83%) Social Skills
2 2,158 (43.34%) Analytical Skills
3 1,154 (23.18%) Finance
4 497 (9.98%) Public Sector
5 414 (8.31%) Banking
6 251 (5.04%) Organisational Skills
7 200 (4.02%) Manufacturing
8 179 (3.60%) Documentation Skills
9 175 (3.51%) Retail
10 164 (3.29%) Influencing Skills
11 159 (3.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 116 (2.33%) Front Office
13 113 (2.27%) Legal
14 108 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
15 105 (2.11%) Marketing
16 100 (2.01%) Telecoms
17 83 (1.67%) Investment Banking
18 62 (1.25%) Law
19 58 (1.16%) Aerospace
19 58 (1.16%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 691 (13.88%) Analyst
2 580 (11.65%) Developer
3 459 (9.22%) Senior
4 381 (7.65%) Lead
5 297 (5.97%) Architect
6 233 (4.68%) Business Analyst
7 214 (4.30%) IT Support
8 210 (4.22%) Consultant
9 196 (3.94%) Support Engineer
10 180 (3.62%) Data Engineer
11 136 (2.73%) IT Engineer
12 132 (2.65%) Administrator
13 130 (2.61%) Project Manager
14 109 (2.19%) Data Analyst
15 106 (2.13%) Java Developer
16 98 (1.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 96 (1.93%) DevOps Engineer
18 95 (1.91%) IT Support Engineer
19 90 (1.81%) Solutions Architect
20 87 (1.75%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (6.53%) REST
2 300 (6.03%) Terraform
3 173 (3.47%) .NET
4 155 (3.11%) RESTful
5 148 (2.97%) SOAP
6 142 (2.85%) React
7 120 (2.41%) Kafka
8 116 (2.33%) Spring
9 113 (2.27%) JSON
10 112 (2.25%) CSS
10 112 (2.25%) HTML
11 111 (2.23%) XML
12 95 (1.91%) Middleware
13 94 (1.89%) Spring Boot
13 94 (1.89%) Web Services
14 84 (1.69%) AngularJS
15 77 (1.55%) Node.js
15 77 (1.55%) OAuth
16 58 (1.16%) PySpark
17 50 (1.00%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 293 (5.88%) Onboarding
2 251 (5.04%) Product Ownership
3 250 (5.02%) Cloud Native
4 203 (4.08%) Self-Motivation
5 179 (3.60%) Management Information System
6 177 (3.55%) Enterprise Software
7 149 (2.99%) Data Centre
8 139 (2.79%) Distributed Systems
9 126 (2.53%) Data Structures
10 120 (2.41%) Analytical Mindset
11 114 (2.29%) Legacy Systems
12 109 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
13 89 (1.79%) Virtual Team
14 72 (1.45%) AI Agents
15 70 (1.41%) Driving Licence
16 63 (1.27%) CMDB
17 55 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 55 (1.10%) PKI
18 52 (1.04%) Algorithms
19 48 (0.96%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 682 (13.70%) Windows
2 275 (5.52%) Linux
3 196 (3.94%) Windows Server
4 129 (2.59%) Windows 10
5 93 (1.87%) Unix
6 84 (1.69%) Apple iOS
7 80 (1.61%) Mac OS
8 73 (1.47%) Android
9 45 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.42%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.32%) VMS
13 12 (0.24%) zOS
14 9 (0.18%) Solaris
14 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.16%) CentOS
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Rocky
18 4 (0.080%) AIX
18 4 (0.080%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,391 (27.94%) Agile
2 1,164 (23.38%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,130 (22.70%) Continuous Improvement
4 830 (16.67%) CI/CD
5 776 (15.59%) DevOps
6 698 (14.02%) AI
7 583 (11.71%) Decision-Making
8 560 (11.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 513 (10.30%) Migration
10 512 (10.28%) Analytics
11 485 (9.74%) Customer Service
12 472 (9.48%) ITIL
13 405 (8.13%) Test Automation
14 391 (7.85%) Validation
15 379 (7.61%) Business Intelligence
16 356 (7.15%) Scrum
17 350 (7.03%) Data Modelling
18 343 (6.89%) Roadmaps
19 336 (6.75%) ITSM
20 327 (6.57%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 898 (18.04%) SQL
2 790 (15.87%) Python
3 370 (7.43%) Java
4 302 (6.07%) PowerShell
5 300 (6.03%) JavaScript
6 197 (3.96%) C#
7 147 (2.95%) Bash
8 126 (2.53%) TypeScript
9 86 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 50 (1.00%) T-SQL
11 48 (0.96%) C++
12 41 (0.82%) Go
13 39 (0.78%) Shell Script
14 32 (0.64%) Bicep
15 30 (0.60%) Scala
16 25 (0.50%) C
16 25 (0.50%) Groovy
16 25 (0.50%) Kotlin
16 25 (0.50%) R
17 24 (0.48%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,100 (22.09%) Security Cleared
2 768 (15.42%) SC Cleared
3 596 (11.97%) Degree
4 214 (4.30%) DV Cleared
5 181 (3.64%) Computer Science Degree
6 145 (2.91%) Microsoft Certification
7 131 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
8 87 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
9 77 (1.55%) Azure Certification
10 72 (1.45%) PMI Certification
11 70 (1.41%) PMP
12 69 (1.39%) CISSP
13 57 (1.14%) A+ Certification
14 49 (0.98%) Master's Degree
15 48 (0.96%) CCNA
16 47 (0.94%) DBS Check
17 43 (0.86%) AWS Certification
18 39 (0.78%) CISM
18 39 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
18 39 (0.78%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 380 (7.63%) Data Quality
2 347 (6.97%) QA
3 119 (2.39%) GDPR
4 115 (2.31%) Accessibility
5 114 (2.29%) SLA
6 89 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 86 (1.73%) PMO
8 68 (1.37%) NIST
9 60 (1.21%) GRC
10 32 (0.64%) WCAG
11 22 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
13 17 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
14 14 (0.28%) GxP
14 14 (0.28%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.24%) COBIT
16 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 11 (0.22%) IFRS
16 11 (0.22%) NCSC
17 10 (0.20%) HIPAA
System Software
1 401 (8.05%) Active Directory
2 309 (6.21%) Docker
3 151 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 63 (1.27%) VMware ESXi
5 62 (1.25%) Hyper-V
6 52 (1.04%) VMware NSX
7 47 (0.94%) vSphere
8 33 (0.66%) Virtual Desktop
9 30 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 27 (0.54%) IAG
11 26 (0.52%) vCloud
12 16 (0.32%) Firmware
13 8 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.080%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 4 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.080%) XenApp
15 4 (0.080%) XenDesktop
16 3 (0.060%) RACF
Systems Management
1 343 (6.89%) Kubernetes
2 165 (3.31%) Ansible
3 131 (2.63%) Microsoft Intune
4 90 (1.81%) Grafana
4 90 (1.81%) SCCM
5 70 (1.41%) Prometheus
6 54 (1.08%) vCenter Server
7 37 (0.74%) SCOM
8 24 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
9 23 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
10 22 (0.44%) WSUS
11 20 (0.40%) Control-M
12 13 (0.26%) Argo
12 13 (0.26%) FortiGate
13 11 (0.22%) Istio
13 11 (0.22%) Kibana
13 11 (0.22%) Puppet
14 10 (0.20%) Nessus
14 10 (0.20%) VxRail
15 9 (0.18%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,171 (23.52%) Microsoft
2 350 (7.03%) Oracle
3 319 (6.41%) ServiceNow
4 303 (6.09%) SAP
5 199 (4.00%) VMware
6 140 (2.81%) Google
7 134 (2.69%) Salesforce
8 119 (2.39%) Databricks
9 109 (2.19%) Cisco
10 99 (1.99%) Splunk
11 70 (1.41%) Workday
12 66 (1.33%) Dynatrace
13 57 (1.14%) Apple
14 54 (1.08%) Adobe
15 47 (0.94%) IBM
16 44 (0.88%) CyberArk
17 43 (0.86%) Red Hat
18 40 (0.80%) MuleSoft
19 35 (0.70%) Dell
20 34 (0.68%) Citrix