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

6 months to
19 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 5,051 4,350 4,017
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.85% 15.64% 12.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.80% 17.21% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,875 2,658 2,337
10th Percentile £249 £250 £262
25th Percentile £380 £375 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
90th Percentile £717 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -0.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 462 271 213
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.25 £15.00
Median hourly rate £19.57 £18.85 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.82% +16.14% -70.01%
75th Percentile £41.44 £34.74 £30.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £63.75 £62.32
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 39,448 25,281 28,365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.75% 90.90% 86.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,130 16,062 17,635
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
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 2,805 1,509 1,303
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £17.79 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £66.55
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% -1.91%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 2,183 £525 +5.00% 5,188
South East -3 797 £478 +6.22% 1,664
North of England -10 735 £445 -6.32% 1,465
Midlands -5 609 £450 +2.39% 1,150
West Midlands -7 436 £450 -4.05% 708
North West -9 364 £448 -5.79% 803
South West -5 342 £500 +11.11% 788
Yorkshire -8 299 £450 -6.25% 466
East of England 0 275 £450 -10.00% 758
East Midlands +2 170 £475 +26.67% 442
North East -18 74 £375 -16.67% 213
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
1 226 (4.47%) Confluence
1 226 (4.47%) SharePoint
2 105 (2.08%) Microsoft Exchange
3 49 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 40 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
5 32 (0.63%) Apache
6 27 (0.53%) CMS
7 26 (0.51%) SAS
8 25 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
9 14 (0.28%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.26%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.22%) CICS
12 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.14%) IIS
14 6 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 6 (0.12%) WordPress
15 5 (0.099%) Appian
15 5 (0.099%) ArcGIS
15 5 (0.099%) Mule
15 5 (0.099%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 294 (5.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 247 (4.89%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (2.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 62 (1.23%) Microsoft Project
5 48 (0.95%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.32%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.30%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 15 (0.30%) Revit
10 9 (0.18%) Navisworks
10 9 (0.18%) Sketch
10 9 (0.18%) Trello
11 8 (0.16%) Windchill
12 6 (0.12%) CPLEX
13 4 (0.079%) Adobe XD
13 4 (0.079%) CATIA
14 3 (0.059%) Acrobat
14 3 (0.059%) DaVinci Resolve
14 3 (0.059%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 120 (2.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (0.99%) Dynamics CRM
3 31 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
4 27 (0.53%) NetSuite
5 26 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
6 21 (0.42%) Workday HCM
7 18 (0.36%) SAP GRC
8 15 (0.30%) iTrent
9 13 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
9 13 (0.26%) SAP SD
10 11 (0.22%) Aladdin
10 11 (0.22%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.20%) Finacle
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
12 9 (0.18%) Shopify
13 8 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
13 8 (0.16%) Primavera
13 8 (0.16%) SAP HCM
14 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.14%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,008 (19.96%) Azure
2 719 (14.23%) AWS
3 482 (9.54%) Microsoft 365
4 422 (8.35%) Power Platform
5 291 (5.76%) GCP
6 250 (4.95%) Azure DevOps
7 212 (4.20%) Entra ID
8 178 (3.52%) GitHub
9 134 (2.65%) SaaS
10 118 (2.34%) Serverless
11 107 (2.12%) Power Automate
12 87 (1.72%) Microsoft Copilot
13 79 (1.56%) Dynamics 365
14 77 (1.52%) PowerApps
15 72 (1.43%) GitHub Actions
16 71 (1.41%) OneDrive
17 64 (1.27%) Snowflake
18 62 (1.23%) Azure Data Factory
19 55 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
20 53 (1.05%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 210 (4.16%) DNS
2 180 (3.56%) Firewall
3 160 (3.17%) VPN
4 127 (2.51%) DHCP
5 121 (2.40%) TCP/IP
6 101 (2.00%) WAN
7 96 (1.90%) Network Security
8 86 (1.70%) LAN
9 74 (1.47%) Wi-Fi
10 60 (1.19%) Wireless
11 59 (1.17%) SAN
12 51 (1.01%) VLAN
13 46 (0.91%) BGP
14 38 (0.75%) VoIP
15 32 (0.63%) Structured Cabling
16 29 (0.57%) SD-WAN
17 26 (0.51%) MPLS
18 24 (0.48%) SSL
19 23 (0.46%) OSPF
20 20 (0.40%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 318 (6.30%) Power BI
2 197 (3.90%) SQL Server
3 155 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
3 155 (3.07%) Relational Database
4 134 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
5 91 (1.80%) Metadata
6 77 (1.52%) NoSQL
6 77 (1.52%) Tableau
7 76 (1.50%) MongoDB
8 70 (1.39%) Data Lake
9 52 (1.03%) Oracle Database
10 51 (1.01%) MySQL
11 38 (0.75%) Big Data
12 32 (0.63%) Oracle Reports
13 31 (0.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 27 (0.53%) Db2
15 26 (0.51%) BigQuery
15 26 (0.51%) Power Query
16 25 (0.49%) Delta Lake
17 24 (0.48%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 456 (9.03%) JIRA
2 332 (6.57%) Git
3 171 (3.39%) Jenkins
4 126 (2.49%) GitLab
5 71 (1.41%) Selenium
6 36 (0.71%) Cucumber
7 35 (0.69%) Maven
7 35 (0.69%) Postman
8 34 (0.67%) Cypress.io
8 34 (0.67%) JUnit
9 28 (0.55%) Bitbucket
10 26 (0.51%) Gradle
11 25 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 25 (0.49%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.40%) JMeter
12 20 (0.40%) Mockito
13 17 (0.34%) WebDriver
14 16 (0.32%) Gatling
15 15 (0.30%) Visual Studio
16 14 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,693 (53.32%) Social Skills
2 2,198 (43.52%) Analytical Skills
3 1,162 (23.01%) Finance
4 500 (9.90%) Public Sector
5 421 (8.33%) Banking
6 256 (5.07%) Organisational Skills
7 212 (4.20%) Manufacturing
8 182 (3.60%) Documentation Skills
9 176 (3.48%) Retail
10 170 (3.37%) Influencing Skills
11 164 (3.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 119 (2.36%) Front Office
13 113 (2.24%) Legal
14 108 (2.14%) Marketing
15 107 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
16 105 (2.08%) Telecoms
17 82 (1.62%) Investment Banking
18 64 (1.27%) Law
19 62 (1.23%) Aerospace
20 58 (1.15%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 697 (13.80%) Analyst
2 586 (11.60%) Developer
3 475 (9.40%) Senior
4 379 (7.50%) Lead
5 302 (5.98%) Architect
6 234 (4.63%) Business Analyst
7 216 (4.28%) IT Support
8 208 (4.12%) Consultant
9 198 (3.92%) Support Engineer
10 180 (3.56%) Data Engineer
11 138 (2.73%) IT Engineer
12 130 (2.57%) Administrator
13 129 (2.55%) Project Manager
14 108 (2.14%) Data Analyst
15 103 (2.04%) Java Developer
16 102 (2.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 97 (1.92%) IT Support Engineer
18 96 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
19 89 (1.76%) Solutions Architect
20 87 (1.72%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 334 (6.61%) REST
2 305 (6.04%) Terraform
3 174 (3.44%) .NET
4 151 (2.99%) RESTful
5 150 (2.97%) SOAP
6 144 (2.85%) React
7 121 (2.40%) Kafka
8 116 (2.30%) HTML
8 116 (2.30%) JSON
9 115 (2.28%) CSS
10 113 (2.24%) Spring
11 109 (2.16%) XML
12 96 (1.90%) Middleware
12 96 (1.90%) Web Services
13 92 (1.82%) Spring Boot
14 84 (1.66%) AngularJS
15 78 (1.54%) Node.js
16 77 (1.52%) OAuth
17 57 (1.13%) PySpark
18 50 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 298 (5.90%) Onboarding
2 255 (5.05%) Cloud Native
3 249 (4.93%) Product Ownership
4 201 (3.98%) Self-Motivation
5 186 (3.68%) Management Information System
6 179 (3.54%) Enterprise Software
7 153 (3.03%) Data Centre
8 139 (2.75%) Distributed Systems
9 126 (2.49%) Data Structures
10 121 (2.40%) Analytical Mindset
11 115 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
12 109 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
13 87 (1.72%) Virtual Team
14 77 (1.52%) Driving Licence
15 75 (1.48%) AI Agents
16 66 (1.31%) CMDB
17 58 (1.15%) PKI
18 55 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 49 (0.97%) Algorithms
19 49 (0.97%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 697 (13.80%) Windows
2 283 (5.60%) Linux
3 204 (4.04%) Windows Server
4 130 (2.57%) Windows 10
5 94 (1.86%) Unix
6 83 (1.64%) Apple iOS
7 81 (1.60%) 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 13 (0.26%) zOS
14 11 (0.22%) Solaris
15 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
16 8 (0.16%) CentOS
17 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
18 6 (0.12%) AIX
19 4 (0.079%) HPUX
19 4 (0.079%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,394 (27.60%) Agile
2 1,198 (23.72%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,153 (22.83%) Continuous Improvement
4 845 (16.73%) CI/CD
5 780 (15.44%) DevOps
6 710 (14.06%) AI
7 591 (11.70%) Decision-Making
8 572 (11.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 523 (10.35%) Migration
10 513 (10.16%) Analytics
11 492 (9.74%) Customer Service
12 479 (9.48%) ITIL
13 417 (8.26%) Test Automation
14 402 (7.96%) Validation
15 381 (7.54%) Business Intelligence
16 356 (7.05%) Data Modelling
17 351 (6.95%) Scrum
18 344 (6.81%) Roadmaps
19 340 (6.73%) ITSM
20 333 (6.59%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 899 (17.80%) SQL
2 796 (15.76%) Python
3 371 (7.35%) Java
4 304 (6.02%) JavaScript
5 303 (6.00%) PowerShell
6 198 (3.92%) C#
7 146 (2.89%) Bash
8 131 (2.59%) TypeScript
9 86 (1.70%) PL/SQL
10 49 (0.97%) T-SQL
11 47 (0.93%) C++
12 43 (0.85%) Shell Script
13 42 (0.83%) Go
14 32 (0.63%) Bicep
15 30 (0.59%) Scala
16 27 (0.53%) Groovy
17 26 (0.51%) Kotlin
18 25 (0.49%) C
18 25 (0.49%) R
19 24 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,112 (22.02%) Security Cleared
2 782 (15.48%) SC Cleared
3 609 (12.06%) Degree
4 215 (4.26%) DV Cleared
5 184 (3.64%) Computer Science Degree
6 148 (2.93%) Microsoft Certification
7 130 (2.57%) BPSS Clearance
8 90 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
9 80 (1.58%) Azure Certification
10 75 (1.48%) CISSP
11 71 (1.41%) PMI Certification
12 69 (1.37%) PMP
13 57 (1.13%) A+ Certification
14 50 (0.99%) DBS Check
15 48 (0.95%) AWS Certification
15 48 (0.95%) CCNA
15 48 (0.95%) Master's Degree
16 44 (0.87%) CISM
17 39 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
17 39 (0.77%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 385 (7.62%) Data Quality
2 350 (6.93%) QA
3 120 (2.38%) GDPR
4 117 (2.32%) SLA
5 114 (2.26%) Accessibility
6 94 (1.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 84 (1.66%) PMO
8 73 (1.45%) NIST
9 60 (1.19%) GRC
10 32 (0.63%) WCAG
11 22 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
11 22 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 17 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.30%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.26%) GxP
14 13 (0.26%) IFRS
14 13 (0.26%) NCSC
15 12 (0.24%) COBIT
16 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
17 10 (0.20%) HIPAA
System Software
1 405 (8.02%) Active Directory
2 315 (6.24%) Docker
3 155 (3.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 65 (1.29%) VMware ESXi
5 62 (1.23%) Hyper-V
6 51 (1.01%) VMware NSX
7 48 (0.95%) vSphere
8 33 (0.65%) Virtual Desktop
9 30 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
10 27 (0.53%) IAG
11 26 (0.51%) vCloud
12 16 (0.32%) Firmware
13 10 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.079%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 4 (0.079%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.079%) RACF
15 4 (0.079%) XenApp
15 4 (0.079%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 348 (6.89%) Kubernetes
2 167 (3.31%) Ansible
3 131 (2.59%) Microsoft Intune
4 93 (1.84%) Grafana
5 89 (1.76%) SCCM
6 75 (1.48%) Prometheus
7 50 (0.99%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.73%) SCOM
9 24 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
10 23 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
10 23 (0.46%) WSUS
11 21 (0.42%) Control-M
12 13 (0.26%) FortiGate
12 13 (0.26%) Nessus
13 12 (0.24%) VxRail
14 11 (0.22%) Istio
14 11 (0.22%) Kibana
14 11 (0.22%) Puppet
15 9 (0.18%) Podman
15 9 (0.18%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,191 (23.58%) Microsoft
2 346 (6.85%) Oracle
3 324 (6.41%) ServiceNow
4 309 (6.12%) SAP
5 203 (4.02%) VMware
6 149 (2.95%) Google
7 130 (2.57%) Salesforce
8 123 (2.44%) Databricks
9 115 (2.28%) Cisco
10 100 (1.98%) Splunk
11 70 (1.39%) Workday
12 69 (1.37%) Dynatrace
13 57 (1.13%) Apple
14 53 (1.05%) Adobe
15 51 (1.01%) IBM
16 45 (0.89%) Red Hat
17 44 (0.87%) CyberArk
18 39 (0.77%) MuleSoft
19 38 (0.75%) Dell
20 34 (0.67%) Citrix