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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +5
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,029 4,288 3,987
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.80% 15.45% 12.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.76% 16.98% 14.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,847 2,618 2,273
10th Percentile £250 £250 £263
25th Percentile £381 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £603 £601
90th Percentile £716 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -0.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 483 266 202
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.31 £15.51
Median hourly rate £19.48 £18.86 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.29% +16.20% -69.76%
75th Percentile £40.00 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £72.75 £63.40 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £18.50 £20.13 £16.23
% change year-on-year -8.11% +24.01% -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 39,415 25,251 27,687
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.67% 91.00% 86.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,982 16,042 16,911
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.71% -2.64% -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 2,873 1,537 1,195
10th Percentile £13.88 £14.39 £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 £67.47 £47.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.35 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £38.86 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +54.51% -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 30 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 30 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 30 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 2,151 £525 +3.42% 4,397
South East -3 810 £475 +5.56% 1,588
North of England -11 728 £450 -5.26% 1,591
Midlands -6 615 £450 +2.33% 1,147
West Midlands -8 439 £450 -5.26% 690
North West -9 357 £450 -4.05% 820
South West -5 325 £500 +11.11% 820
Yorkshire -7 300 £479 -3.23% 544
East of England 0 287 £450 -10.00% 717
East Midlands +2 172 £450 +20.00% 457
North East -13 73 £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
1 234 (4.65%) SharePoint
2 222 (4.41%) Confluence
3 99 (1.97%) Microsoft Exchange
4 46 (0.91%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 36 (0.72%) Apache
7 26 (0.52%) CMS
8 23 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 23 (0.46%) SAS
9 17 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 16 (0.32%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.20%) CICS
11 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.14%) IIS
13 7 (0.14%) WordPress
14 5 (0.099%) Appian
14 5 (0.099%) Mule
14 5 (0.099%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.099%) Tomcat
Applications
1 295 (5.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 243 (4.83%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (2.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 59 (1.17%) Microsoft Project
5 49 (0.97%) 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 (0.080%) 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
1 116 (2.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
4 27 (0.54%) NetSuite
5 26 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
6 24 (0.48%) Workday HCM
7 18 (0.36%) SAP GRC
8 14 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
9 13 (0.26%) iTrent
9 13 (0.26%) Teamcenter
10 12 (0.24%) SAP SD
11 11 (0.22%) Aladdin
11 11 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
12 10 (0.20%) Finacle
12 10 (0.20%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
13 9 (0.18%) SAP PSCD
14 8 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
14 8 (0.16%) Primavera
14 8 (0.16%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 991 (19.71%) Azure
2 692 (13.76%) AWS
3 483 (9.60%) Microsoft 365
4 415 (8.25%) Power Platform
5 292 (5.81%) GCP
6 243 (4.83%) Azure DevOps
7 211 (4.20%) Entra ID
8 177 (3.52%) GitHub
9 130 (2.59%) SaaS
10 112 (2.23%) Serverless
11 110 (2.19%) Power Automate
12 88 (1.75%) Microsoft Copilot
13 84 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
14 81 (1.61%) PowerApps
15 71 (1.41%) OneDrive
16 69 (1.37%) GitHub Actions
17 65 (1.29%) Snowflake
18 59 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
19 52 (1.03%) OpenShift
20 50 (0.99%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 203 (4.04%) DNS
2 179 (3.56%) Firewall
3 158 (3.14%) VPN
4 123 (2.45%) DHCP
5 113 (2.25%) TCP/IP
6 102 (2.03%) WAN
7 101 (2.01%) Network Security
8 87 (1.73%) LAN
9 72 (1.43%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.21%) Wireless
11 55 (1.09%) SAN
12 48 (0.95%) VLAN
13 45 (0.89%) BGP
14 42 (0.84%) VoIP
15 30 (0.60%) Structured Cabling
16 29 (0.58%) SD-WAN
17 26 (0.52%) MPLS
18 24 (0.48%) SSL
19 21 (0.42%) OSPF
19 21 (0.42%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 309 (6.14%) Power BI
2 188 (3.74%) SQL Server
3 155 (3.08%) Relational Database
4 150 (2.98%) Data Warehouse
5 133 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
6 85 (1.69%) Metadata
7 81 (1.61%) MongoDB
8 78 (1.55%) NoSQL
9 73 (1.45%) Tableau
10 69 (1.37%) Data Lake
11 53 (1.05%) MySQL
11 53 (1.05%) Oracle Database
12 33 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 32 (0.64%) Big Data
13 32 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
14 27 (0.54%) BigQuery
15 26 (0.52%) Db2
16 25 (0.50%) Power Query
17 24 (0.48%) Delta Lake
17 24 (0.48%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 445 (8.85%) JIRA
2 325 (6.46%) Git
3 174 (3.46%) Jenkins
4 126 (2.51%) GitLab
5 72 (1.43%) Selenium
6 41 (0.82%) Cucumber
7 37 (0.74%) Maven
8 36 (0.72%) JUnit
9 35 (0.70%) Cypress.io
9 35 (0.70%) Postman
10 28 (0.56%) 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%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,673 (53.15%) Social Skills
2 2,188 (43.51%) Analytical Skills
3 1,164 (23.15%) Finance
4 506 (10.06%) Public Sector
5 409 (8.13%) Banking
6 269 (5.35%) Organisational Skills
7 239 (4.75%) Manufacturing
8 176 (3.50%) Documentation Skills
9 164 (3.26%) Retail
10 163 (3.24%) Influencing Skills
11 162 (3.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 117 (2.33%) Legal
13 113 (2.25%) Front Office
13 113 (2.25%) Marketing
14 109 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
15 107 (2.13%) Telecoms
16 78 (1.55%) Investment Banking
17 63 (1.25%) Aerospace
18 62 (1.23%) Law
19 59 (1.17%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 668 (13.28%) Analyst
2 571 (11.35%) Developer
3 469 (9.33%) Senior
4 377 (7.50%) Lead
5 289 (5.75%) Architect
6 231 (4.59%) Business Analyst
7 217 (4.31%) IT Support
8 216 (4.30%) Consultant
9 201 (4.00%) Support Engineer
10 171 (3.40%) Data Engineer
11 143 (2.84%) Administrator
11 143 (2.84%) Project Manager
12 137 (2.72%) IT Engineer
13 107 (2.13%) Data Analyst
14 101 (2.01%) IT Support Engineer
15 100 (1.99%) Java Developer
16 98 (1.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 97 (1.93%) DevOps Engineer
18 93 (1.85%) Network Engineer
19 83 (1.65%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (6.60%) REST
2 304 (6.04%) Terraform
3 172 (3.42%) .NET
4 149 (2.96%) RESTful
4 149 (2.96%) SOAP
5 143 (2.84%) React
6 119 (2.37%) Kafka
7 117 (2.33%) CSS
7 117 (2.33%) HTML
7 117 (2.33%) JSON
8 116 (2.31%) XML
9 109 (2.17%) Spring
10 100 (1.99%) Middleware
11 98 (1.95%) Web Services
12 89 (1.77%) Spring Boot
13 81 (1.61%) AngularJS
13 81 (1.61%) Node.js
14 75 (1.49%) OAuth
15 57 (1.13%) PySpark
16 52 (1.03%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 299 (5.95%) Onboarding
2 259 (5.15%) Cloud Native
3 240 (4.77%) Product Ownership
4 199 (3.96%) Self-Motivation
5 196 (3.90%) Management Information System
6 184 (3.66%) Enterprise Software
7 154 (3.06%) Data Centre
8 129 (2.57%) Distributed Systems
9 125 (2.49%) Data Structures
10 114 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
11 113 (2.25%) Analytical Mindset
12 108 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
13 85 (1.69%) Virtual Team
14 78 (1.55%) Driving Licence
15 74 (1.47%) AI Agents
16 66 (1.31%) CMDB
17 58 (1.15%) PKI
18 51 (1.01%) NHS
19 50 (0.99%) Mobile App
20 49 (0.97%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 696 (13.84%) Windows
2 282 (5.61%) Linux
3 203 (4.04%) Windows Server
4 124 (2.47%) Windows 10
5 96 (1.91%) Unix
6 82 (1.63%) Apple iOS
6 82 (1.63%) Mac OS
7 72 (1.43%) Android
8 51 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 20 (0.40%) Ubuntu
10 18 (0.36%) VMS
11 17 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.30%) Solaris
13 12 (0.24%) zOS
14 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.16%) AIX
15 8 (0.16%) CentOS
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.080%) HPUX
17 4 (0.080%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,369 (27.22%) Agile
2 1,237 (24.60%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,139 (22.65%) Continuous Improvement
4 835 (16.60%) CI/CD
5 759 (15.09%) DevOps
6 700 (13.92%) AI
7 573 (11.39%) Decision-Making
8 562 (11.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 536 (10.66%) Migration
10 492 (9.78%) Customer Service
11 488 (9.70%) Analytics
12 463 (9.21%) ITIL
13 415 (8.25%) Test Automation
14 402 (7.99%) Validation
15 364 (7.24%) Business Intelligence
16 353 (7.02%) Scrum
17 345 (6.86%) Data Modelling
18 340 (6.76%) ITSM
19 336 (6.68%) Roadmaps
19 336 (6.68%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 885 (17.60%) SQL
2 758 (15.07%) Python
3 373 (7.42%) Java
4 309 (6.14%) JavaScript
5 299 (5.95%) PowerShell
6 198 (3.94%) C#
7 145 (2.88%) Bash
8 133 (2.64%) TypeScript
9 82 (1.63%) PL/SQL
10 47 (0.93%) T-SQL
11 44 (0.87%) Go
12 43 (0.86%) Shell Script
13 42 (0.84%) C++
14 30 (0.60%) Scala
15 29 (0.58%) Bicep
16 25 (0.50%) Groovy
16 25 (0.50%) Kotlin
17 23 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 20 (0.40%) Apex Code
18 20 (0.40%) R
Qualifications
1 1,113 (22.13%) Security Cleared
2 783 (15.57%) SC Cleared
3 609 (12.11%) Degree
4 218 (4.33%) DV Cleared
5 177 (3.52%) Computer Science Degree
6 140 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
6 140 (2.78%) Microsoft Certification
7 87 (1.73%) Cisco Certification
8 75 (1.49%) Azure Certification
8 75 (1.49%) CISSP
9 74 (1.47%) PMI Certification
10 69 (1.37%) PMP
11 51 (1.01%) A+ Certification
12 50 (0.99%) DBS Check
13 49 (0.97%) Master's Degree
14 48 (0.95%) AWS Certification
15 45 (0.89%) CCNA
16 43 (0.86%) CISM
17 39 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
18 35 (0.70%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 371 (7.38%) Data Quality
2 352 (7.00%) QA
3 118 (2.35%) GDPR
4 114 (2.27%) Accessibility
4 114 (2.27%) SLA
5 88 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 84 (1.67%) PMO
7 65 (1.29%) NIST
8 54 (1.07%) GRC
9 31 (0.62%) WCAG
10 22 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
11 19 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 17 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
13 16 (0.32%) PCI DSS
14 14 (0.28%) NCSC
15 13 (0.26%) GxP
16 12 (0.24%) IFRS
17 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
18 10 (0.20%) COBIT
19 9 (0.18%) HIPAA
System Software
1 401 (7.97%) Active Directory
2 308 (6.12%) Docker
3 159 (3.16%) 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 32 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
9 29 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
10 25 (0.50%) IAG
10 25 (0.50%) vCloud
11 17 (0.34%) Firmware
12 10 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.12%) NFS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.099%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 5 (0.099%) XenApp
14 5 (0.099%) XenDesktop
15 4 (0.080%) FreeRADIUS
15 4 (0.080%) RACF
Systems Management
1 341 (6.78%) Kubernetes
2 160 (3.18%) Ansible
3 131 (2.60%) Microsoft Intune
4 91 (1.81%) Grafana
5 84 (1.67%) SCCM
6 73 (1.45%) Prometheus
7 49 (0.97%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.74%) SCOM
9 25 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
10 23 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
11 20 (0.40%) Control-M
12 19 (0.38%) 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%) Argo
17 9 (0.18%) NetBackup
18 8 (0.16%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,216 (24.18%) Microsoft
2 341 (6.78%) Oracle
3 315 (6.26%) SAP
3 315 (6.26%) ServiceNow
4 205 (4.08%) VMware
5 149 (2.96%) Google
6 124 (2.47%) Salesforce
7 122 (2.43%) Cisco
8 117 (2.33%) Databricks
9 102 (2.03%) Splunk
10 72 (1.43%) Workday
11 64 (1.27%) Dynatrace
12 58 (1.15%) Apple
13 56 (1.11%) IBM
14 55 (1.09%) Adobe
15 49 (0.97%) Red Hat
16 44 (0.87%) CyberArk
17 36 (0.72%) Dell
17 36 (0.72%) MuleSoft
17 36 (0.72%) Palo Alto