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

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -8 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,767 4,473 3,863
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.60% 16.35% 11.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.43% 18.02% 12.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,774 2,759 2,385
10th Percentile £256 £250 £250
25th Percentile £381 £376 £383
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £490 £500
% change year-on-year - -2.00% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 369 276 290
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.82 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.39 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.24 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +0.52% +30.87% -69.09%
75th Percentile £51.25 £38.82 £33.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.13 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.67 £21.28 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.59% +31.12% -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 38,365 24,818 30,014
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.35% 90.70% 85.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,059 15,915 19,627
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £633 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,375 1,336 1,933
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.23 £13.60
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.98 £17.25
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -37.13% -8.32%
75th Percentile £69.63 £52.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.35 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -6.98%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -13 2,016 £519 +3.71% 1,461
South East -5 753 £488 -2.50% 884
North of England -9 747 £450 -5.26% 763
Midlands -7 548 £450 +5.88% 511
West Midlands -9 399 £450 - 284
North West -10 365 £450 -6.25% 389
South West -2 335 £500 +5.26% 392
Yorkshire -7 331 £450 -5.26% 258
East of England -2 257 £450 -3.74% 321
East Midlands 0 147 £450 +20.00% 227
North East -14 57 £370 -17.78% 124
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
1 214 (4.49%) Confluence
2 180 (3.78%) SharePoint
3 93 (1.95%) Microsoft Exchange
4 53 (1.11%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.67%) Apache
7 29 (0.61%) CMS
7 29 (0.61%) SAS
8 26 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
9 19 (0.40%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.21%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.21%) CICS
12 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
13 6 (0.13%) Camunda
13 6 (0.13%) nginx
13 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
14 4 (0.084%) IIS
Applications
1 251 (5.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (4.62%) Microsoft Office
3 86 (1.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.43%) MS Visio
5 62 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
6 26 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.52%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.27%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.23%) Revit
11 9 (0.19%) Trello
12 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
12 8 (0.17%) Sketch
13 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
14 5 (0.10%) Maya
15 4 (0.084%) Adobe XD
16 3 (0.063%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.063%) Navisworks
16 3 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 120 (2.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
4 24 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.46%) NetSuite
6 19 (0.40%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.36%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.25%) iTrent
10 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 10 (0.21%) SAP GRC
11 10 (0.21%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.21%) Teamcenter
12 9 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
12 9 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
13 7 (0.15%) Loan IQ
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
13 7 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 926 (19.43%) Azure
2 686 (14.39%) AWS
3 375 (7.87%) Power Platform
4 372 (7.80%) Microsoft 365
5 266 (5.58%) GCP
6 224 (4.70%) Azure DevOps
7 187 (3.92%) Entra ID
8 167 (3.50%) GitHub
9 125 (2.62%) SaaS
10 112 (2.35%) Serverless
11 79 (1.66%) GitHub Actions
12 74 (1.55%) Power Automate
13 68 (1.43%) AWS Lambda
14 64 (1.34%) Amazon S3
15 60 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
15 60 (1.26%) PowerApps
16 59 (1.24%) OpenShift
17 57 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
18 54 (1.13%) Snowflake
19 52 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 207 (4.34%) DNS
2 174 (3.65%) Firewall
3 132 (2.77%) VPN
4 120 (2.52%) DHCP
4 120 (2.52%) TCP/IP
5 102 (2.14%) WAN
6 91 (1.91%) LAN
7 84 (1.76%) Network Security
8 72 (1.51%) Wi-Fi
9 66 (1.38%) SAN
10 54 (1.13%) VLAN
11 50 (1.05%) Wireless
12 48 (1.01%) BGP
13 38 (0.80%) OSPF
14 35 (0.73%) SD-WAN
15 33 (0.69%) VoIP
16 30 (0.63%) Structured Cabling
17 25 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 24 (0.50%) MPLS
19 20 (0.42%) 4G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 296 (6.21%) Power BI
2 211 (4.43%) SQL Server
3 152 (3.19%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (2.87%) PostgreSQL
5 133 (2.79%) Relational Database
6 92 (1.93%) MongoDB
7 81 (1.70%) Data Lake
7 81 (1.70%) NoSQL
8 79 (1.66%) Metadata
9 76 (1.59%) Tableau
10 56 (1.17%) Oracle Database
11 51 (1.07%) Big Data
12 48 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 47 (0.99%) MySQL
14 34 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
15 26 (0.55%) Db2
16 25 (0.52%) Power Query
17 24 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
18 23 (0.48%) RDBMS
19 22 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 474 (9.94%) JIRA
2 275 (5.77%) Git
3 163 (3.42%) Jenkins
4 102 (2.14%) GitLab
5 65 (1.36%) Selenium
6 33 (0.69%) Postman
7 30 (0.63%) Cypress.io
8 28 (0.59%) REST Assured
9 27 (0.57%) Cucumber
10 21 (0.44%) JUnit
10 21 (0.44%) Maven
11 20 (0.42%) Bitbucket
12 19 (0.40%) Gradle
13 18 (0.38%) Mockito
14 17 (0.36%) WebDriver
15 13 (0.27%) JMeter
15 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
16 12 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 12 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
16 12 (0.25%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,448 (51.35%) Social Skills
2 1,983 (41.60%) Analytical Skills
3 1,111 (23.31%) Finance
4 454 (9.52%) Public Sector
5 374 (7.85%) Banking
6 198 (4.15%) Organisational Skills
7 185 (3.88%) Documentation Skills
7 185 (3.88%) Retail
8 142 (2.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 131 (2.75%) Influencing Skills
10 120 (2.52%) Manufacturing
11 111 (2.33%) Legal
12 105 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
13 99 (2.08%) Marketing
14 98 (2.06%) Front Office
15 97 (2.03%) Telecoms
16 70 (1.47%) Investment Banking
17 59 (1.24%) Law
18 53 (1.11%) Back Office
19 49 (1.03%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 668 (14.01%) Analyst
2 534 (11.20%) Developer
3 420 (8.81%) Senior
4 367 (7.70%) Lead
5 330 (6.92%) Architect
6 236 (4.95%) Business Analyst
7 205 (4.30%) Consultant
8 201 (4.22%) Data Engineer
9 168 (3.52%) IT Support
10 158 (3.31%) Support Engineer
11 150 (3.15%) Project Manager
12 109 (2.29%) Data Analyst
13 105 (2.20%) Administrator
14 101 (2.12%) IT Engineer
15 100 (2.10%) Java Developer
16 90 (1.89%) Software Engineer
17 88 (1.85%) Solutions Architect
18 81 (1.70%) Support Analyst
19 78 (1.64%) DevOps Engineer
20 77 (1.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 272 (5.71%) REST
2 143 (3.00%) .NET
3 130 (2.73%) Kafka
3 130 (2.73%) RESTful
4 125 (2.62%) Spring
5 124 (2.60%) SOAP
6 123 (2.58%) React
7 114 (2.39%) JSON
8 104 (2.18%) CSS
9 96 (2.01%) XML
10 93 (1.95%) HTML
11 89 (1.87%) Middleware
11 89 (1.87%) Spring Boot
12 78 (1.64%) Node.js
13 76 (1.59%) AngularJS
14 63 (1.32%) OAuth
15 61 (1.28%) Web Services
16 54 (1.13%) PySpark
17 47 (0.99%) LDAP
17 47 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 250 (5.24%) Onboarding
2 232 (4.87%) Product Ownership
3 207 (4.34%) Cloud Native
4 181 (3.80%) Self-Motivation
5 174 (3.65%) Data Centre
6 138 (2.89%) Analytical Mindset
6 138 (2.89%) Distributed Systems
7 133 (2.79%) Management Information System
8 128 (2.69%) Enterprise Software
9 119 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
10 117 (2.45%) Data Protection Act
11 111 (2.33%) Data Structures
12 98 (2.06%) Virtual Team
13 63 (1.32%) Driving Licence
14 56 (1.17%) AI Agents
15 54 (1.13%) Algorithms
15 54 (1.13%) CMDB
16 52 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 50 (1.05%) PKI
18 47 (0.99%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 622 (13.05%) Windows
2 258 (5.41%) Linux
3 126 (2.64%) Windows Server
4 108 (2.27%) Windows 10
5 98 (2.06%) Unix
6 78 (1.64%) Mac OS
7 77 (1.62%) Apple iOS
8 72 (1.51%) Android
9 40 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 12 (0.25%) VMS
11 12 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 11 (0.23%) zOS
13 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.15%) Solaris
15 6 (0.13%) CentOS
16 4 (0.084%) AIX
16 4 (0.084%) HPUX
16 4 (0.084%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.084%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,290 (27.06%) Agile
2 939 (19.70%) Continuous Improvement
3 891 (18.69%) Stakeholder Management
4 778 (16.32%) CI/CD
5 738 (15.48%) DevOps
6 618 (12.96%) AI
7 536 (11.24%) Decision-Making
8 511 (10.72%) Migration
9 498 (10.45%) Analytics
10 479 (10.05%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 471 (9.88%) ITIL
12 433 (9.08%) Customer Service
13 383 (8.03%) Business Intelligence
14 376 (7.89%) Validation
15 365 (7.66%) Test Automation
16 363 (7.61%) Data Modelling
17 346 (7.26%) Project Management
18 336 (7.05%) Roadmaps
19 330 (6.92%) Change Management
20 324 (6.80%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 862 (18.08%) SQL
2 791 (16.59%) Python
3 364 (7.64%) Java
4 268 (5.62%) PowerShell
5 255 (5.35%) JavaScript
6 157 (3.29%) C#
7 132 (2.77%) Bash
8 104 (2.18%) TypeScript
9 84 (1.76%) PL/SQL
10 50 (1.05%) C++
10 50 (1.05%) T-SQL
11 44 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 36 (0.76%) Go
13 34 (0.71%) Bicep
13 34 (0.71%) C
14 31 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 27 (0.57%) Apex Code
15 27 (0.57%) Kotlin
16 25 (0.52%) R
17 24 (0.50%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,054 (22.11%) Security Cleared
2 703 (14.75%) SC Cleared
3 587 (12.31%) Degree
4 212 (4.45%) DV Cleared
5 164 (3.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 130 (2.73%) Microsoft Certification
7 114 (2.39%) Cisco Certification
8 108 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
9 79 (1.66%) CISSP
10 77 (1.62%) PMP
11 70 (1.47%) PMI Certification
12 67 (1.41%) Azure Certification
13 63 (1.32%) CCNA
14 62 (1.30%) A+ Certification
15 51 (1.07%) CISM
16 50 (1.05%) Master's Degree
17 42 (0.88%) Network+ Certification
18 40 (0.84%) MCSE
19 37 (0.78%) AWS Certification
19 37 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 335 (7.03%) Data Quality
2 287 (6.02%) QA
3 140 (2.94%) GDPR
4 105 (2.20%) Accessibility
5 104 (2.18%) SLA
6 86 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 74 (1.55%) PMO
8 70 (1.47%) NIST
9 46 (0.96%) GRC
10 27 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 25 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.50%) WCAG
13 14 (0.29%) NCSC
13 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.27%) GxP
15 11 (0.23%) COBIT
15 11 (0.23%) HIPAA
15 11 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.21%) HL7
16 10 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 371 (7.78%) Active Directory
2 308 (6.46%) Docker
3 120 (2.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 47 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 46 (0.96%) VMware ESXi
5 46 (0.96%) vSphere
6 38 (0.80%) Hyper-V
7 30 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
8 26 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
9 21 (0.44%) vCloud
10 20 (0.42%) Firmware
11 18 (0.38%) IAG
12 10 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.13%) NFS
13 6 (0.13%) Squid
14 4 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.084%) Snort
15 2 (0.042%) SRDF
15 2 (0.042%) UAG
15 2 (0.042%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 362 (7.59%) Kubernetes
2 287 (6.02%) Terraform
3 163 (3.42%) Ansible
4 123 (2.58%) Microsoft Intune
5 98 (2.06%) Grafana
6 83 (1.74%) Prometheus
7 73 (1.53%) SCCM
8 55 (1.15%) vCenter Server
9 30 (0.63%) Control-M
9 30 (0.63%) FortiGate
9 30 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.46%) SCOM
11 20 (0.42%) Argo
12 19 (0.40%) Nessus
13 18 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
14 17 (0.36%) IBM Guardium
15 16 (0.34%) WSUS
16 12 (0.25%) Kibana
17 9 (0.19%) Puppet
17 9 (0.19%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 946 (19.84%) Microsoft
2 347 (7.28%) Oracle
3 310 (6.50%) ServiceNow
4 293 (6.15%) SAP
5 189 (3.96%) VMware
6 148 (3.10%) Google
7 123 (2.58%) Splunk
8 118 (2.48%) Salesforce
9 111 (2.33%) Cisco
10 100 (2.10%) Databricks
11 78 (1.64%) Workday
12 65 (1.36%) Dynatrace
13 53 (1.11%) Adobe
13 53 (1.11%) Red Hat
14 51 (1.07%) Apple
15 48 (1.01%) Dell
16 47 (0.99%) Citrix
16 47 (0.99%) CyberArk
17 43 (0.90%) MuleSoft
18 38 (0.80%) Juniper