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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,740 4,491 4,071
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.60% 16.64% 10.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.40% 18.33% 12.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,780 2,785 2,452
10th Percentile £262 £250 £250
25th Percentile £381 £376 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 357 261 357
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.85 £11.00
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.49 £21.25 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +1.13% +30.93% -68.79%
75th Percentile £44.09 £38.42 £33.07
90th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.56 £21.39 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.90% +31.79% -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 38,237 24,502 31,943
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.52% 90.81% 85.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,096 15,746 20,754
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £733 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,381 1,253 2,276
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.98 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -6.07%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.01 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.37 £70.16 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%

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 9 July 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 9 July 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 9 July 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 1,998 £512 +2.36% 1,075
South East -5 744 £481 -1.84% 764
North of England -10 739 £448 -5.79% 679
Midlands -7 544 £464 +9.18% 424
West Midlands -9 396 £467 +3.74% 227
North West -11 367 £449 -7.43% 359
South West -3 342 £503 +0.50% 310
Yorkshire -7 330 £450 -5.26% 220
East of England -2 263 £473 - 258
East Midlands -1 146 £450 +22.62% 197
North East -18 48 £356 -20.83% 116
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 (4.47%) Confluence
2 155 (3.27%) SharePoint
3 89 (1.88%) Microsoft Exchange
4 57 (1.20%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.80%) Apache
5 38 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 31 (0.65%) CMS
6 31 (0.65%) SAS
7 27 (0.57%) Oracle Workflow
8 18 (0.38%) WebLogic
9 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.23%) nginx
11 10 (0.21%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.21%) CICS
12 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Camunda
13 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 252 (5.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 215 (4.54%) Microsoft Office
3 88 (1.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (1.48%) MS Visio
5 60 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
6 29 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.30%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 11 (0.23%) Revit
11 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
12 7 (0.15%) Trello
13 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
13 6 (0.13%) Sketch
14 5 (0.11%) CATIA
14 5 (0.11%) Maya
15 3 (0.063%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.063%) Navisworks
15 3 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
16 2 (0.042%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 116 (2.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
4 21 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
5 19 (0.40%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.34%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.32%) NetSuite
8 13 (0.27%) SAP SD
9 11 (0.23%) iTrent
9 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
9 11 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 11 (0.23%) Teamcenter
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
10 10 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
11 8 (0.17%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.17%) NEC Housing
11 8 (0.17%) SAP GRC
11 8 (0.17%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 945 (19.94%) Azure
2 691 (14.58%) AWS
3 375 (7.91%) Power Platform
4 348 (7.34%) Microsoft 365
5 264 (5.57%) GCP
6 229 (4.83%) Azure DevOps
7 170 (3.59%) Entra ID
8 157 (3.31%) GitHub
9 125 (2.64%) SaaS
10 122 (2.57%) Serverless
11 75 (1.58%) AWS Lambda
12 73 (1.54%) Amazon S3
13 69 (1.46%) GitHub Actions
14 67 (1.41%) Power Automate
15 62 (1.31%) Azure Data Factory
16 61 (1.29%) Snowflake
17 59 (1.24%) Dynamics 365
18 58 (1.22%) OpenShift
18 58 (1.22%) PowerApps
19 45 (0.95%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 201 (4.24%) DNS
2 167 (3.52%) Firewall
3 123 (2.59%) VPN
4 118 (2.49%) TCP/IP
5 107 (2.26%) DHCP
6 97 (2.05%) WAN
7 87 (1.84%) Network Security
8 84 (1.77%) LAN
9 66 (1.39%) SAN
10 63 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
11 47 (0.99%) VLAN
12 45 (0.95%) BGP
12 45 (0.95%) Wireless
13 37 (0.78%) OSPF
14 34 (0.72%) SD-WAN
15 29 (0.61%) VoIP
16 28 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
17 24 (0.51%) VXLAN
18 22 (0.46%) MPLS
19 19 (0.40%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 294 (6.20%) Power BI
2 209 (4.41%) SQL Server
3 143 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
4 130 (2.74%) Relational Database
5 128 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
6 93 (1.96%) MongoDB
7 82 (1.73%) NoSQL
8 79 (1.67%) Tableau
9 78 (1.65%) Data Lake
10 77 (1.62%) Metadata
11 52 (1.10%) Oracle Database
12 46 (0.97%) Big Data
12 46 (0.97%) MySQL
12 46 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 37 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
14 27 (0.57%) Power Query
15 26 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
15 26 (0.55%) Delta Lake
16 25 (0.53%) RDBMS
17 23 (0.49%) Db2
Development Applications
1 475 (10.02%) JIRA
2 269 (5.68%) Git
3 167 (3.52%) Jenkins
4 112 (2.36%) GitLab
5 64 (1.35%) Selenium
6 39 (0.82%) Postman
7 33 (0.70%) REST Assured
8 28 (0.59%) Cypress.io
9 25 (0.53%) Cucumber
10 24 (0.51%) JUnit
11 21 (0.44%) Bitbucket
12 20 (0.42%) Mockito
13 18 (0.38%) WebDriver
14 17 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
15 14 (0.30%) Gradle
15 14 (0.30%) JMeter
15 14 (0.30%) Maven
15 14 (0.30%) SonarQube
16 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
17 10 (0.21%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,449 (51.67%) Social Skills
2 1,936 (40.84%) Analytical Skills
3 1,106 (23.33%) Finance
4 421 (8.88%) Public Sector
5 365 (7.70%) Banking
6 193 (4.07%) Documentation Skills
6 193 (4.07%) Organisational Skills
7 178 (3.76%) Retail
8 131 (2.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 118 (2.49%) Influencing Skills
10 115 (2.43%) Legal
11 112 (2.36%) Manufacturing
12 107 (2.26%) Presentation Skills
13 101 (2.13%) Front Office
14 93 (1.96%) Marketing
15 90 (1.90%) Telecoms
16 75 (1.58%) Investment Banking
17 58 (1.22%) Law
18 53 (1.12%) Back Office
19 48 (1.01%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 663 (13.99%) Analyst
2 522 (11.01%) Developer
3 410 (8.65%) Senior
4 340 (7.17%) Architect
4 340 (7.17%) Lead
5 241 (5.08%) Business Analyst
6 215 (4.54%) Data Engineer
7 207 (4.37%) Consultant
8 162 (3.42%) IT Support
9 152 (3.21%) Project Manager
10 151 (3.19%) Support Engineer
11 102 (2.15%) Data Analyst
12 101 (2.13%) Administrator
13 99 (2.09%) IT Engineer
14 95 (2.00%) Java Developer
15 92 (1.94%) Software Engineer
15 92 (1.94%) Solutions Architect
16 83 (1.75%) Technical Support
17 81 (1.71%) Support Analyst
18 77 (1.62%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (5.63%) REST
2 148 (3.12%) .NET
3 133 (2.81%) Kafka
4 126 (2.66%) RESTful
5 125 (2.64%) Spring
6 124 (2.62%) React
7 119 (2.51%) SOAP
8 106 (2.24%) JSON
9 95 (2.00%) CSS
9 95 (2.00%) Middleware
10 91 (1.92%) Spring Boot
11 90 (1.90%) XML
12 84 (1.77%) HTML
13 79 (1.67%) Node.js
14 75 (1.58%) AngularJS
15 57 (1.20%) OAuth
15 57 (1.20%) PySpark
16 56 (1.18%) LDAP
17 54 (1.14%) Web Services
18 46 (0.97%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 234 (4.94%) Onboarding
2 225 (4.75%) Product Ownership
3 207 (4.37%) Cloud Native
4 175 (3.69%) Data Centre
5 171 (3.61%) Self-Motivation
6 141 (2.97%) Analytical Mindset
7 134 (2.83%) Distributed Systems
8 130 (2.74%) Management Information System
9 121 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
10 114 (2.41%) Data Protection Act
11 110 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
12 106 (2.24%) Data Structures
13 97 (2.05%) Virtual Team
14 58 (1.22%) Driving Licence
15 55 (1.16%) AI Agents
15 55 (1.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 54 (1.14%) Algorithms
17 52 (1.10%) CMDB
18 49 (1.03%) Derivative
18 49 (1.03%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 606 (12.78%) Windows
2 264 (5.57%) Linux
3 118 (2.49%) Windows Server
4 109 (2.30%) Windows 10
5 100 (2.11%) Unix
6 79 (1.67%) Mac OS
7 76 (1.60%) Apple iOS
8 71 (1.50%) Android
9 44 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.42%) Ubuntu
11 12 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 11 (0.23%) VMS
12 11 (0.23%) zOS
13 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.17%) CentOS
15 7 (0.15%) Solaris
16 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.11%) Debian
17 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.084%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,252 (26.41%) Agile
2 883 (18.63%) Continuous Improvement
3 833 (17.57%) Stakeholder Management
4 767 (16.18%) CI/CD
5 746 (15.74%) DevOps
6 591 (12.47%) AI
7 535 (11.29%) Decision-Making
8 516 (10.89%) Migration
9 508 (10.72%) Analytics
10 469 (9.89%) ITIL
11 450 (9.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 426 (8.99%) Customer Service
13 382 (8.06%) Validation
14 381 (8.04%) Business Intelligence
15 377 (7.95%) Data Modelling
16 362 (7.64%) Test Automation
17 358 (7.55%) Project Management
18 333 (7.03%) Change Management
19 331 (6.98%) Roadmaps
20 328 (6.92%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 869 (18.33%) SQL
2 815 (17.19%) Python
3 371 (7.83%) Java
4 264 (5.57%) PowerShell
5 242 (5.11%) JavaScript
6 171 (3.61%) C#
7 123 (2.59%) Bash
8 112 (2.36%) TypeScript
9 82 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.24%) C++
11 49 (1.03%) T-SQL
12 45 (0.95%) Shell Script
13 43 (0.91%) Go
14 42 (0.89%) C
15 35 (0.74%) Bicep
16 34 (0.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 30 (0.63%) Apex Code
18 28 (0.59%) R
19 24 (0.51%) Kotlin
20 21 (0.44%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,045 (22.05%) Security Cleared
2 687 (14.49%) SC Cleared
3 587 (12.38%) Degree
4 212 (4.47%) DV Cleared
5 179 (3.78%) Computer Science Degree
6 134 (2.83%) Microsoft Certification
7 116 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
8 115 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
9 89 (1.88%) CISSP
10 76 (1.60%) PMP
11 67 (1.41%) A+ Certification
11 67 (1.41%) PMI Certification
12 66 (1.39%) CCNA
13 64 (1.35%) Azure Certification
14 57 (1.20%) CISM
15 52 (1.10%) Master's Degree
16 49 (1.03%) Network+ Certification
17 42 (0.89%) MCSE
18 37 (0.78%) AWS Certification
18 37 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 334 (7.05%) Data Quality
2 281 (5.93%) QA
3 141 (2.97%) GDPR
4 100 (2.11%) SLA
5 90 (1.90%) Accessibility
5 90 (1.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 74 (1.56%) NIST
7 73 (1.54%) PMO
8 45 (0.95%) GRC
9 26 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
10 24 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 20 (0.42%) PCI DSS
12 15 (0.32%) WCAG
13 13 (0.27%) HIPAA
13 13 (0.27%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.27%) NCSC
14 12 (0.25%) GxP
14 12 (0.25%) PSD2
15 11 (0.23%) COBIT
15 11 (0.23%) Def Stans
System Software
1 355 (7.49%) Active Directory
2 301 (6.35%) Docker
3 116 (2.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 44 (0.93%) vSphere
6 41 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
7 34 (0.72%) Hyper-V
8 28 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
9 23 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
10 21 (0.44%) vCloud
11 19 (0.40%) Firmware
12 15 (0.32%) IAG
13 11 (0.23%) Squid
14 7 (0.15%) NFS
14 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.084%) ACF2
15 4 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.084%) RACF
15 4 (0.084%) Snort
15 4 (0.084%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 361 (7.62%) Kubernetes
2 280 (5.91%) Terraform
3 164 (3.46%) Ansible
4 127 (2.68%) Microsoft Intune
5 103 (2.17%) Grafana
6 89 (1.88%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.52%) SCCM
8 53 (1.12%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
10 35 (0.74%) FortiGate
11 29 (0.61%) Control-M
12 22 (0.46%) Nessus
13 21 (0.44%) SCOM
14 20 (0.42%) Argo
15 18 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
15 18 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
16 17 (0.36%) WSUS
17 16 (0.34%) Kibana
18 12 (0.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
19 11 (0.23%) Puppet
Vendors
1 913 (19.26%) Microsoft
2 340 (7.17%) Oracle
3 297 (6.27%) ServiceNow
4 287 (6.05%) SAP
5 186 (3.92%) VMware
6 141 (2.97%) Google
7 124 (2.62%) Splunk
8 119 (2.51%) Salesforce
9 108 (2.28%) Databricks
10 104 (2.19%) Cisco
11 74 (1.56%) Workday
12 62 (1.31%) Dynatrace
13 59 (1.24%) Red Hat
14 54 (1.14%) Dell
15 49 (1.03%) Apple
16 48 (1.01%) Adobe
16 48 (1.01%) Citrix
17 43 (0.91%) MuleSoft
18 42 (0.89%) CyberArk
19 38 (0.80%) Juniper