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

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,850 4,419 3,901
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.60% 15.92% 11.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.49% 17.54% 13.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,765 2,706 2,320
10th Percentile £229 £255 £263
25th Percentile £375 £375 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
90th Percentile £718 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £484 £500
% change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -3.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 415 281 229
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.79
25th Percentile £15.99 £15.12 £14.84
Median hourly rate £20.44 £19.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +7.58% +17.07% -70.25%
75th Percentile £43.75 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £19.83 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.19% +22.18% -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 38,818 25,195 28,384
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.84% 90.79% 85.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,932 16,050 18,115
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,599 1,473 1,445
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.87 £18.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +2.63%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +3.56%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 2,125 £525 +5.00% 2,283
South East -5 782 £475 - 1,104
North of England -12 706 £443 -6.74% 946
Midlands -6 540 £450 +0.90% 688
West Midlands -9 386 £450 -4.05% 406
North West -9 357 £444 -6.53% 487
South West -3 331 £490 +8.89% 619
Yorkshire -11 286 £450 -5.26% 321
East of England +1 260 £450 -10.00% 415
East Midlands -1 151 £475 +26.67% 281
North East -12 66 £375 -16.67% 156
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
1 224 (4.62%) SharePoint
2 209 (4.31%) Confluence
3 109 (2.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 49 (1.01%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 31 (0.64%) Apache
7 27 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
8 26 (0.54%) CMS
9 24 (0.49%) SAS
10 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.19%) CICS
12 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 6 (0.12%) IIS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.10%) Appian
15 5 (0.10%) Camunda
15 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
Applications
1 277 (5.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 235 (4.85%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (2.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
5 54 (1.11%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.31%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 13 (0.27%) Revit
11 9 (0.19%) Sketch
11 9 (0.19%) Trello
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.12%) Windchill
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
14 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
15 4 (0.082%) Adobe XD
16 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.062%) NUKE
16 3 (0.062%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 117 (2.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.58%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.54%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
6 18 (0.37%) SAP GRC
6 18 (0.37%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.29%) iTrent
8 13 (0.27%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.27%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
10 10 (0.21%) Teamcenter
11 8 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
12 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
12 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
12 7 (0.14%) Shopify
12 7 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
13 6 (0.12%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 994 (20.49%) Azure
2 703 (14.49%) AWS
3 455 (9.38%) Microsoft 365
4 404 (8.33%) Power Platform
5 281 (5.79%) GCP
6 244 (5.03%) Azure DevOps
7 211 (4.35%) Entra ID
8 161 (3.32%) GitHub
9 129 (2.66%) SaaS
10 112 (2.31%) Serverless
11 93 (1.92%) Power Automate
12 71 (1.46%) Microsoft Copilot
12 71 (1.46%) OneDrive
13 69 (1.42%) Dynamics 365
14 67 (1.38%) GitHub Actions
14 67 (1.38%) PowerApps
15 60 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
15 60 (1.24%) Snowflake
16 57 (1.18%) AWS Lambda
17 52 (1.07%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 207 (4.27%) DNS
2 177 (3.65%) Firewall
3 162 (3.34%) VPN
4 123 (2.54%) DHCP
5 121 (2.49%) TCP/IP
6 110 (2.27%) WAN
7 91 (1.88%) LAN
8 88 (1.81%) Network Security
9 73 (1.51%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.26%) SAN
11 58 (1.20%) Wireless
12 50 (1.03%) VLAN
13 45 (0.93%) BGP
14 37 (0.76%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.74%) VoIP
16 33 (0.68%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.60%) MPLS
18 26 (0.54%) OSPF
19 22 (0.45%) 5G
20 21 (0.43%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (6.39%) Power BI
2 196 (4.04%) SQL Server
3 161 (3.32%) Data Warehouse
4 151 (3.11%) Relational Database
5 132 (2.72%) PostgreSQL
6 88 (1.81%) Metadata
7 81 (1.67%) Tableau
8 80 (1.65%) NoSQL
9 75 (1.55%) MongoDB
10 72 (1.48%) Data Lake
11 50 (1.03%) Oracle Database
12 48 (0.99%) Big Data
13 47 (0.97%) MySQL
14 34 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 31 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
16 26 (0.54%) Db2
17 24 (0.49%) Power Query
18 23 (0.47%) Pentaho
19 22 (0.45%) Delta Lake
19 22 (0.45%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 434 (8.95%) JIRA
2 296 (6.10%) Git
3 147 (3.03%) Jenkins
4 117 (2.41%) GitLab
5 67 (1.38%) Selenium
6 36 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 35 (0.72%) Postman
8 25 (0.52%) Bitbucket
8 25 (0.52%) Cucumber
8 25 (0.52%) Maven
9 24 (0.49%) REST Assured
10 23 (0.47%) Gradle
11 22 (0.45%) JUnit
12 20 (0.41%) JMeter
13 16 (0.33%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.31%) Gatling
14 15 (0.31%) SonarQube
15 13 (0.27%) Mockito
16 12 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 12 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,588 (53.36%) Social Skills
2 2,101 (43.32%) Analytical Skills
3 1,140 (23.51%) Finance
4 477 (9.84%) Public Sector
5 403 (8.31%) Banking
6 230 (4.74%) Organisational Skills
7 181 (3.73%) Documentation Skills
8 178 (3.67%) Retail
9 171 (3.53%) Manufacturing
10 158 (3.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 150 (3.09%) Influencing Skills
12 113 (2.33%) Front Office
13 107 (2.21%) Legal
14 106 (2.19%) Telecoms
15 102 (2.10%) Marketing
16 101 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
17 80 (1.65%) Investment Banking
18 62 (1.28%) Law
19 55 (1.13%) Financial Institution
20 53 (1.09%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 662 (13.65%) Analyst
2 551 (11.36%) Developer
3 436 (8.99%) Senior
4 372 (7.67%) Lead
5 301 (6.21%) Architect
6 219 (4.52%) Business Analyst
7 213 (4.39%) Consultant
8 202 (4.16%) IT Support
9 194 (4.00%) Support Engineer
10 190 (3.92%) Data Engineer
11 133 (2.74%) IT Engineer
11 133 (2.74%) Project Manager
12 121 (2.49%) Administrator
13 103 (2.12%) Data Analyst
14 98 (2.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 94 (1.94%) Java Developer
16 92 (1.90%) IT Support Engineer
17 89 (1.84%) DevOps Engineer
18 88 (1.81%) Solutions Architect
19 86 (1.77%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 301 (6.21%) REST
2 293 (6.04%) Terraform
3 158 (3.26%) .NET
4 146 (3.01%) RESTful
5 136 (2.80%) React
6 134 (2.76%) SOAP
7 115 (2.37%) Kafka
8 112 (2.31%) JSON
9 108 (2.23%) Spring
10 106 (2.19%) CSS
10 106 (2.19%) XML
11 103 (2.12%) HTML
12 94 (1.94%) Middleware
13 82 (1.69%) Web Services
14 81 (1.67%) Spring Boot
15 77 (1.59%) Node.js
16 76 (1.57%) OAuth
17 75 (1.55%) AngularJS
18 63 (1.30%) PySpark
19 48 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 276 (5.69%) Onboarding
2 242 (4.99%) Product Ownership
3 241 (4.97%) Cloud Native
4 192 (3.96%) Self-Motivation
5 161 (3.32%) Management Information System
6 158 (3.26%) Data Centre
6 158 (3.26%) Enterprise Software
7 143 (2.95%) Distributed Systems
8 129 (2.66%) Analytical Mindset
9 125 (2.58%) Data Structures
10 121 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
11 110 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
12 86 (1.77%) Virtual Team
13 70 (1.44%) Driving Licence
14 69 (1.42%) AI Agents
15 67 (1.38%) CMDB
16 53 (1.09%) Algorithms
16 53 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 53 (1.09%) PKI
17 50 (1.03%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 671 (13.84%) Windows
2 265 (5.46%) Linux
3 189 (3.90%) Windows Server
4 131 (2.70%) Windows 10
5 92 (1.90%) Unix
6 80 (1.65%) Apple iOS
7 78 (1.61%) Mac OS
8 71 (1.46%) Android
9 42 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.41%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.37%) VMS
12 17 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 11 (0.23%) zOS
14 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.16%) CentOS
15 8 (0.16%) Solaris
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
18 4 (0.082%) Debian
18 4 (0.082%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,331 (27.44%) Agile
2 1,071 (22.08%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,052 (21.69%) Stakeholder Management
4 803 (16.56%) CI/CD
5 762 (15.71%) DevOps
6 664 (13.69%) AI
7 554 (11.42%) Decision-Making
8 544 (11.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 509 (10.49%) Migration
10 505 (10.41%) Analytics
11 482 (9.94%) ITIL
12 463 (9.55%) Customer Service
13 385 (7.94%) Test Automation
14 383 (7.90%) Validation
15 379 (7.81%) Business Intelligence
16 353 (7.28%) Data Modelling
17 340 (7.01%) Roadmaps
18 334 (6.89%) Scrum
19 333 (6.87%) ITSM
20 324 (6.68%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 873 (18.00%) SQL
2 798 (16.45%) Python
3 360 (7.42%) Java
4 302 (6.23%) PowerShell
5 283 (5.84%) JavaScript
6 174 (3.59%) C#
7 149 (3.07%) Bash
8 108 (2.23%) TypeScript
9 81 (1.67%) PL/SQL
10 49 (1.01%) C++
11 47 (0.97%) T-SQL
12 36 (0.74%) Go
12 36 (0.74%) Shell Script
13 34 (0.70%) Bicep
14 29 (0.60%) Scala
15 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
16 26 (0.54%) C
16 26 (0.54%) R
17 25 (0.52%) Apex Code
18 24 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,059 (21.84%) Security Cleared
2 723 (14.91%) SC Cleared
3 597 (12.31%) Degree
4 208 (4.29%) DV Cleared
5 187 (3.86%) Computer Science Degree
6 146 (3.01%) Microsoft Certification
7 110 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
8 91 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
9 78 (1.61%) Azure Certification
10 73 (1.51%) PMP
11 70 (1.44%) PMI Certification
12 68 (1.40%) CISSP
13 60 (1.24%) A+ Certification
14 52 (1.07%) CCNA
15 50 (1.03%) Master's Degree
16 41 (0.85%) Network+ Certification
17 40 (0.82%) AWS Certification
17 40 (0.82%) CISM
17 40 (0.82%) DBS Check
18 39 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 362 (7.46%) Data Quality
2 333 (6.87%) QA
3 126 (2.60%) GDPR
4 111 (2.29%) Accessibility
5 110 (2.27%) SLA
6 87 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 84 (1.73%) PMO
8 72 (1.48%) NIST
9 62 (1.28%) GRC
10 30 (0.62%) WCAG
11 25 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.29%) GxP
13 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.27%) COBIT
14 13 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
15 12 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
16 10 (0.21%) IFRS
16 10 (0.21%) NCSC
System Software
1 405 (8.35%) Active Directory
2 299 (6.16%) Docker
3 150 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 60 (1.24%) Hyper-V
4 60 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
5 53 (1.09%) VMware NSX
6 46 (0.95%) vSphere
7 34 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
8 29 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
9 28 (0.58%) vCloud
10 25 (0.52%) IAG
11 16 (0.33%) Firmware
12 7 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.12%) NFS
14 5 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.062%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.062%) Squid
16 2 (0.041%) KVM
Systems Management
1 337 (6.95%) Kubernetes
2 166 (3.42%) Ansible
3 128 (2.64%) Microsoft Intune
4 88 (1.81%) SCCM
5 83 (1.71%) Grafana
6 63 (1.30%) Prometheus
7 57 (1.18%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.76%) SCOM
9 25 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.45%) Control-M
10 22 (0.45%) WSUS
11 20 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
12 14 (0.29%) Argo
12 14 (0.29%) FortiGate
13 11 (0.23%) Istio
13 11 (0.23%) Kibana
14 10 (0.21%) Nessus
14 10 (0.21%) Puppet
15 9 (0.19%) Progress Chef
15 9 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,107 (22.82%) Microsoft
2 340 (7.01%) Oracle
3 322 (6.64%) ServiceNow
4 294 (6.06%) SAP
5 201 (4.14%) VMware
6 140 (2.89%) Google
7 133 (2.74%) Salesforce
8 112 (2.31%) Databricks
9 108 (2.23%) Cisco
10 98 (2.02%) Splunk
11 70 (1.44%) Workday
12 67 (1.38%) Dynatrace
13 61 (1.26%) Apple
14 54 (1.11%) Adobe
15 46 (0.95%) CyberArk
15 46 (0.95%) IBM
16 43 (0.89%) Red Hat
17 39 (0.80%) MuleSoft
18 38 (0.78%) Dell
19 34 (0.70%) Citrix