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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -8 +4 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,837 4,437 3,766
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.62% 16.05% 11.29%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.48% 17.68% 13.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,761 2,705 2,323
10th Percentile £250 £254 £263
25th Percentile £375 £375 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.51% -1.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £598 £600 £622
90th Percentile £713 £720 £725
UK median daily rate £492 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% -2.50% -2.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 404 281 242
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% +24.80% -69.76%
75th Percentile £43.83 £34.48 £32.18
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £21.10 £16.23
% change year-on-year -9.95% +30.01% -70.25%

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 38,759 25,103 28,648
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.06% 90.80% 85.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,089 16,021 18,628
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,530 1,424 1,656
10th Percentile £14.55 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.87 £18.50
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +3.24%
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.50
% change year-on-year +68.99% -39.40% -1.55%

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 13 August 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 13 August 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 13 August 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 2,086 £525 +5.00% 4,524
South East -4 769 £480 +1.05% 1,419
North of England -11 718 £447 -5.89% 1,279
Midlands -5 547 £450 +4.90% 826
West Midlands -10 397 £450 -1.50% 514
South West -1 352 £500 +5.26% 703
North West -11 341 £450 -6.25% 702
Yorkshire -8 319 £450 -5.26% 414
East of England +1 258 £450 -10.00% 582
East Midlands -1 147 £473 +27.19% 311
North East -17 63 £375 -16.67% 183
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
1 212 (4.38%) Confluence
2 205 (4.24%) SharePoint
3 108 (2.23%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.16%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.70%) Apache
7 33 (0.68%) SAS
8 28 (0.58%) Oracle Workflow
9 27 (0.56%) CMS
10 16 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.23%) CICS
13 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
16 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
17 5 (0.10%) Appian
17 5 (0.10%) Mule
17 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
17 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 274 (5.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 242 (5.00%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (1.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (1.30%) MS Visio
5 62 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
6 26 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.43%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.27%) Revit
10 11 (0.23%) Trello
11 9 (0.19%) Sketch
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 5 (0.10%) CATIA
13 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
14 4 (0.083%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.083%) Photoshop
15 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.062%) Maya
16 2 (0.041%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 113 (2.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.45%) NetSuite
6 16 (0.33%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.29%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.27%) iTrent
8 13 (0.27%) SAP SD
9 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
9 11 (0.23%) SAP GRC
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 9 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
12 8 (0.17%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.14%) SAP ERP
13 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
13 7 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 971 (20.07%) Azure
2 696 (14.39%) AWS
3 415 (8.58%) Microsoft 365
4 390 (8.06%) Power Platform
5 277 (5.73%) GCP
6 238 (4.92%) Azure DevOps
7 208 (4.30%) Entra ID
8 163 (3.37%) GitHub
9 134 (2.77%) SaaS
10 112 (2.32%) Serverless
11 84 (1.74%) Power Automate
12 75 (1.55%) GitHub Actions
13 64 (1.32%) Dynamics 365
14 63 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
15 62 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
16 61 (1.26%) OneDrive
17 60 (1.24%) PowerApps
18 59 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
19 58 (1.20%) Snowflake
20 56 (1.16%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 215 (4.44%) DNS
2 182 (3.76%) Firewall
3 147 (3.04%) VPN
4 130 (2.69%) DHCP
5 125 (2.58%) TCP/IP
6 114 (2.36%) WAN
7 99 (2.05%) LAN
8 86 (1.78%) Network Security
9 72 (1.49%) Wi-Fi
10 65 (1.34%) SAN
11 56 (1.16%) Wireless
12 55 (1.14%) VLAN
13 52 (1.08%) BGP
14 37 (0.76%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.74%) OSPF
16 33 (0.68%) Structured Cabling
16 33 (0.68%) VoIP
17 29 (0.60%) VXLAN
18 28 (0.58%) MPLS
19 23 (0.48%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 303 (6.26%) Power BI
2 193 (3.99%) SQL Server
3 156 (3.23%) Data Warehouse
4 142 (2.94%) Relational Database
5 129 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
6 86 (1.78%) Metadata
6 86 (1.78%) NoSQL
7 82 (1.70%) MongoDB
8 79 (1.63%) Tableau
9 77 (1.59%) Data Lake
10 50 (1.03%) Big Data
11 49 (1.01%) Oracle Database
12 48 (0.99%) MySQL
13 37 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
14 35 (0.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 29 (0.60%) Pentaho
16 27 (0.56%) Db2
16 27 (0.56%) Power Query
17 23 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
18 22 (0.45%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 446 (9.22%) JIRA
2 297 (6.14%) Git
3 155 (3.20%) Jenkins
4 114 (2.36%) GitLab
5 66 (1.36%) Selenium
6 34 (0.70%) Cypress.io
7 32 (0.66%) Postman
8 27 (0.56%) Cucumber
8 27 (0.56%) Maven
9 25 (0.52%) REST Assured
10 23 (0.48%) JUnit
11 22 (0.45%) Bitbucket
11 22 (0.45%) Gradle
12 20 (0.41%) JMeter
13 18 (0.37%) WebDriver
14 14 (0.29%) Gatling
14 14 (0.29%) Mockito
14 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 13 (0.27%) SonarQube
General
1 2,534 (52.39%) Social Skills
2 2,065 (42.69%) Analytical Skills
3 1,129 (23.34%) Finance
4 470 (9.72%) Public Sector
5 390 (8.06%) Banking
6 222 (4.59%) Organisational Skills
7 190 (3.93%) Retail
8 177 (3.66%) Documentation Skills
9 166 (3.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 156 (3.23%) Manufacturing
11 134 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
12 112 (2.32%) Marketing
13 111 (2.29%) Presentation Skills
14 110 (2.27%) Front Office
15 107 (2.21%) Legal
16 100 (2.07%) Telecoms
17 74 (1.53%) Investment Banking
18 61 (1.26%) Law
19 57 (1.18%) Financial Institution
20 56 (1.16%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 659 (13.62%) Analyst
2 537 (11.10%) Developer
3 435 (8.99%) Senior
4 376 (7.77%) Lead
5 319 (6.59%) Architect
6 225 (4.65%) Business Analyst
7 210 (4.34%) Consultant
8 208 (4.30%) Data Engineer
9 191 (3.95%) IT Support
10 172 (3.56%) Support Engineer
11 141 (2.92%) Project Manager
12 123 (2.54%) IT Engineer
13 116 (2.40%) Administrator
14 103 (2.13%) Data Analyst
15 98 (2.03%) Java Developer
16 92 (1.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 88 (1.82%) Solutions Architect
18 85 (1.76%) Software Engineer
19 83 (1.72%) Support Analyst
20 82 (1.70%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 286 (5.91%) REST
2 146 (3.02%) .NET
3 139 (2.87%) RESTful
4 134 (2.77%) React
5 126 (2.60%) SOAP
6 119 (2.46%) Kafka
7 118 (2.44%) Spring
8 110 (2.27%) JSON
9 102 (2.11%) CSS
10 99 (2.05%) XML
11 92 (1.90%) HTML
11 92 (1.90%) Middleware
12 82 (1.70%) Spring Boot
13 78 (1.61%) Node.js
14 76 (1.57%) AngularJS
15 73 (1.51%) Web Services
16 69 (1.43%) OAuth
17 57 (1.18%) PySpark
18 49 (1.01%) Playwright
19 43 (0.89%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 274 (5.66%) Onboarding
2 232 (4.80%) Product Ownership
3 219 (4.53%) Cloud Native
4 184 (3.80%) Self-Motivation
5 175 (3.62%) Data Centre
6 148 (3.06%) Enterprise Software
7 146 (3.02%) Management Information System
8 141 (2.92%) Distributed Systems
9 140 (2.89%) Analytical Mindset
10 119 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
11 117 (2.42%) Data Structures
12 112 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
13 89 (1.84%) Virtual Team
14 63 (1.30%) Driving Licence
15 61 (1.26%) AI Agents
15 61 (1.26%) CMDB
16 58 (1.20%) Algorithms
16 58 (1.20%) PKI
17 55 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 44 (0.91%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 673 (13.91%) Windows
2 254 (5.25%) Linux
3 166 (3.43%) Windows Server
4 123 (2.54%) Windows 10
5 93 (1.92%) Unix
6 79 (1.63%) Apple iOS
6 79 (1.63%) Mac OS
7 74 (1.53%) Android
8 38 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
10 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
11 15 (0.31%) VMS
12 12 (0.25%) zOS
13 8 (0.17%) Solaris
14 6 (0.12%) CentOS
14 6 (0.12%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
15 5 (0.10%) Debian
15 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,325 (27.39%) Agile
2 1,023 (21.15%) Continuous Improvement
3 966 (19.97%) Stakeholder Management
4 804 (16.62%) CI/CD
5 764 (15.79%) DevOps
6 643 (13.29%) AI
7 535 (11.06%) Decision-Making
8 515 (10.65%) Analytics
9 512 (10.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 502 (10.38%) Migration
11 479 (9.90%) ITIL
12 451 (9.32%) Customer Service
13 393 (8.12%) Business Intelligence
14 387 (8.00%) Test Automation
15 385 (7.96%) Validation
16 366 (7.57%) Data Modelling
17 340 (7.03%) Scrum
18 335 (6.93%) Roadmaps
19 319 (6.59%) Project Management
20 316 (6.53%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 879 (18.17%) SQL
2 796 (16.46%) Python
3 367 (7.59%) Java
4 283 (5.85%) PowerShell
5 275 (5.69%) JavaScript
6 161 (3.33%) C#
7 138 (2.85%) Bash
8 110 (2.27%) TypeScript
9 87 (1.80%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.16%) C++
11 44 (0.91%) T-SQL
12 36 (0.74%) Go
12 36 (0.74%) Shell Script
13 32 (0.66%) Bicep
14 31 (0.64%) C
15 28 (0.58%) Scala
16 27 (0.56%) Apex Code
16 27 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
17 26 (0.54%) R
Qualifications
1 1,052 (21.75%) Security Cleared
2 710 (14.68%) SC Cleared
3 602 (12.45%) Degree
4 202 (4.18%) DV Cleared
5 183 (3.78%) Computer Science Degree
6 148 (3.06%) Microsoft Certification
7 113 (2.34%) Cisco Certification
8 104 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
9 75 (1.55%) CISSP
10 74 (1.53%) Azure Certification
11 70 (1.45%) PMP
12 65 (1.34%) PMI Certification
13 63 (1.30%) A+ Certification
14 61 (1.26%) CCNA
15 49 (1.01%) Master's Degree
16 48 (0.99%) CISM
17 43 (0.89%) Network+ Certification
18 40 (0.83%) MCSE
19 37 (0.76%) AWS Certification
19 37 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 352 (7.28%) Data Quality
2 306 (6.33%) QA
3 132 (2.73%) GDPR
4 109 (2.25%) Accessibility
5 107 (2.21%) SLA
6 85 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 79 (1.63%) PMO
8 70 (1.45%) NIST
9 51 (1.05%) GRC
10 29 (0.60%) WCAG
11 28 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.31%) GxP
14 13 (0.27%) COBIT
14 13 (0.27%) NCSC
14 13 (0.27%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 12 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
16 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
16 10 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 394 (8.15%) Active Directory
2 307 (6.35%) Docker
3 140 (2.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 54 (1.12%) VMware ESXi
5 53 (1.10%) Hyper-V
6 47 (0.97%) VMware NSX
7 45 (0.93%) vSphere
8 32 (0.66%) Virtual Desktop
9 29 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 23 (0.48%) vCloud
11 21 (0.43%) Firmware
12 20 (0.41%) IAG
13 9 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.12%) NFS
16 5 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
17 4 (0.083%) Squid
18 3 (0.062%) BitLocker
18 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
19 2 (0.041%) UAG
Systems Management
1 341 (7.05%) Kubernetes
2 287 (5.93%) Terraform
3 163 (3.37%) Ansible
4 135 (2.79%) Microsoft Intune
5 84 (1.74%) SCCM
6 80 (1.65%) Grafana
7 68 (1.41%) Prometheus
8 53 (1.10%) vCenter Server
9 29 (0.60%) SCOM
10 27 (0.56%) FortiGate
10 27 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (0.48%) Control-M
12 21 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
12 21 (0.43%) WSUS
13 15 (0.31%) Argo
14 12 (0.25%) Puppet
15 11 (0.23%) Progress Chef
16 10 (0.21%) Kibana
17 9 (0.19%) Nessus
17 9 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,047 (21.65%) Microsoft
2 338 (6.99%) Oracle
3 324 (6.70%) ServiceNow
4 293 (6.06%) SAP
5 201 (4.16%) VMware
6 145 (3.00%) Google
7 129 (2.67%) Salesforce
8 121 (2.50%) Cisco
9 109 (2.25%) Splunk
10 106 (2.19%) Databricks
11 72 (1.49%) Workday
12 67 (1.39%) Dynatrace
13 57 (1.18%) Apple
14 55 (1.14%) Adobe
15 46 (0.95%) Citrix
16 45 (0.93%) CyberArk
17 44 (0.91%) Dell
18 43 (0.89%) IBM
18 43 (0.89%) MuleSoft
18 43 (0.89%) Red Hat