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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,824 4,459 3,746
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.69% 16.15% 11.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.54% 17.80% 13.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,782 2,740 2,316
10th Percentile £236 £255 £260
25th Percentile £380 £380 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.30% -1.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +0.51% -2.50% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 391 279 251
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £16.01 £15.19 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £20.50 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% +26.31% -69.76%
75th Percentile £47.75 £36.50 £32.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £65.05 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.02 £21.24 £16.23
% change year-on-year -10.48% +30.87% -70.01%

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 38,456 25,047 28,792
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.21% 90.72% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,987 16,039 18,801
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
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 £758
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,460 1,391 1,685
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.87 £18.16
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.90% -4.71%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 2,068 £520 +4.00% 2,397
South East -4 769 £475 -3.06% 1,113
North of England -9 735 £450 -5.26% 910
Midlands -6 544 £450 +5.88% 680
West Midlands -9 393 £450 - 395
North West -12 347 £450 -7.98% 493
South West 0 340 £500 +5.26% 487
Yorkshire -7 334 £450 -5.26% 305
East of England +1 258 £450 -4.51% 408
East Midlands 0 148 £473 +27.19% 285
North East -17 59 £375 -16.67% 121
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
1 219 (4.54%) Confluence
2 195 (4.04%) SharePoint
3 104 (2.16%) Microsoft Exchange
4 55 (1.14%) Apache Spark
5 36 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.68%) Apache
7 30 (0.62%) SAS
8 27 (0.56%) CMS
9 26 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.39%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.23%) CICS
13 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.10%) Mule
15 5 (0.10%) nginx
15 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 260 (5.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 233 (4.83%) Microsoft Office
3 83 (1.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 67 (1.39%) MS Visio
5 65 (1.35%) Microsoft Project
6 26 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.29%) AutoCAD
10 12 (0.25%) Revit
11 11 (0.23%) Trello
12 9 (0.19%) Sketch
13 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
15 4 (0.083%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.083%) Navisworks
15 4 (0.083%) Photoshop
16 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.062%) Maya
16 3 (0.062%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 115 (2.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 25 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.46%) NetSuite
6 18 (0.37%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.31%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.27%) iTrent
10 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
11 10 (0.21%) SAP GRC
12 9 (0.19%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
13 8 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
14 7 (0.15%) Loan IQ
14 7 (0.15%) Oracle HRMS
14 7 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 954 (19.78%) Azure
2 696 (14.43%) AWS
3 396 (8.21%) Microsoft 365
4 388 (8.04%) Power Platform
5 277 (5.74%) GCP
6 236 (4.89%) Azure DevOps
7 192 (3.98%) Entra ID
8 158 (3.28%) GitHub
9 129 (2.67%) SaaS
10 117 (2.43%) Serverless
11 81 (1.68%) Power Automate
12 74 (1.53%) GitHub Actions
13 68 (1.41%) AWS Lambda
14 63 (1.31%) Dynamics 365
15 61 (1.26%) Amazon S3
15 61 (1.26%) Azure Data Factory
16 60 (1.24%) PowerApps
17 56 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
17 56 (1.16%) Snowflake
18 54 (1.12%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 213 (4.42%) DNS
2 178 (3.69%) Firewall
3 143 (2.96%) VPN
4 126 (2.61%) DHCP
4 126 (2.61%) TCP/IP
5 108 (2.24%) WAN
6 96 (1.99%) LAN
7 82 (1.70%) Network Security
8 72 (1.49%) Wi-Fi
9 66 (1.37%) SAN
10 58 (1.20%) VLAN
11 53 (1.10%) Wireless
12 50 (1.04%) BGP
13 37 (0.77%) OSPF
14 34 (0.70%) SD-WAN
15 33 (0.68%) VoIP
16 32 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
17 26 (0.54%) MPLS
18 25 (0.52%) VXLAN
19 21 (0.44%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 303 (6.28%) Power BI
2 208 (4.31%) SQL Server
3 157 (3.25%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.80%) PostgreSQL
5 134 (2.78%) Relational Database
6 97 (2.01%) MongoDB
7 83 (1.72%) NoSQL
8 82 (1.70%) Data Lake
9 79 (1.64%) Metadata
10 78 (1.62%) Tableau
11 50 (1.04%) Big Data
12 49 (1.02%) Oracle Database
13 48 (1.00%) MySQL
14 46 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 38 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
16 28 (0.58%) Db2
17 27 (0.56%) Power Query
18 25 (0.52%) Pentaho
19 24 (0.50%) BigQuery
20 23 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 465 (9.64%) JIRA
2 289 (5.99%) Git
3 157 (3.25%) Jenkins
4 108 (2.24%) GitLab
5 65 (1.35%) Selenium
6 32 (0.66%) Cypress.io
6 32 (0.66%) Postman
7 27 (0.56%) Cucumber
7 27 (0.56%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.50%) Bitbucket
8 24 (0.50%) Maven
9 22 (0.46%) JUnit
10 20 (0.41%) Gradle
11 19 (0.39%) Mockito
12 18 (0.37%) WebDriver
13 17 (0.35%) JMeter
14 16 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 13 (0.27%) Gatling
15 13 (0.27%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 2,505 (51.93%) Social Skills
2 2,034 (42.16%) Analytical Skills
3 1,129 (23.40%) Finance
4 467 (9.68%) Public Sector
5 382 (7.92%) Banking
6 210 (4.35%) Organisational Skills
7 199 (4.13%) Retail
8 178 (3.69%) Documentation Skills
9 164 (3.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 133 (2.76%) Manufacturing
11 129 (2.67%) Influencing Skills
12 109 (2.26%) Legal
12 109 (2.26%) Marketing
12 109 (2.26%) Presentation Skills
13 104 (2.16%) Front Office
14 91 (1.89%) Telecoms
15 71 (1.47%) Investment Banking
16 58 (1.20%) Law
17 56 (1.16%) Financial Institution
18 52 (1.08%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 670 (13.89%) Analyst
2 543 (11.26%) Developer
3 439 (9.10%) Senior
4 375 (7.77%) Lead
5 325 (6.74%) Architect
6 232 (4.81%) Business Analyst
7 215 (4.46%) Consultant
8 213 (4.42%) Data Engineer
9 181 (3.75%) IT Support
10 167 (3.46%) Support Engineer
11 141 (2.92%) Project Manager
12 115 (2.38%) IT Engineer
13 113 (2.34%) Administrator
14 104 (2.16%) Data Analyst
15 100 (2.07%) Java Developer
16 91 (1.89%) Solutions Architect
17 89 (1.84%) Software Engineer
18 85 (1.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 81 (1.68%) DevOps Engineer
20 80 (1.66%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (5.76%) REST
2 142 (2.94%) .NET
3 136 (2.82%) RESTful
4 130 (2.69%) React
5 129 (2.67%) SOAP
6 127 (2.63%) Kafka
7 117 (2.43%) Spring
8 114 (2.36%) JSON
9 103 (2.14%) CSS
10 96 (1.99%) XML
11 91 (1.89%) HTML
11 91 (1.89%) Middleware
12 81 (1.68%) Spring Boot
13 79 (1.64%) Node.js
14 76 (1.58%) AngularJS
15 71 (1.47%) OAuth
16 66 (1.37%) Web Services
17 56 (1.16%) PySpark
18 47 (0.97%) Playwright
19 45 (0.93%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 270 (5.60%) Onboarding
2 230 (4.77%) Product Ownership
3 211 (4.37%) Cloud Native
4 179 (3.71%) Self-Motivation
5 177 (3.67%) Data Centre
6 141 (2.92%) Distributed Systems
7 139 (2.88%) Analytical Mindset
8 138 (2.86%) Management Information System
9 136 (2.82%) Enterprise Software
10 118 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
11 114 (2.36%) Data Protection Act
12 113 (2.34%) Data Structures
13 94 (1.95%) Virtual Team
14 69 (1.43%) Driving Licence
15 61 (1.26%) AI Agents
16 58 (1.20%) Algorithms
17 56 (1.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 54 (1.12%) PKI
19 53 (1.10%) CMDB
20 45 (0.93%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 647 (13.41%) Windows
2 255 (5.29%) Linux
3 150 (3.11%) Windows Server
4 116 (2.40%) Windows 10
5 96 (1.99%) Unix
6 77 (1.60%) Apple iOS
6 77 (1.60%) Mac OS
7 72 (1.49%) Android
8 41 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 18 (0.37%) Ubuntu
10 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
11 14 (0.29%) VMS
12 12 (0.25%) zOS
13 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.17%) Solaris
15 6 (0.12%) CentOS
15 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
16 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
17 4 (0.083%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,315 (27.26%) Agile
2 988 (20.48%) Continuous Improvement
3 925 (19.17%) Stakeholder Management
4 794 (16.46%) CI/CD
5 755 (15.65%) DevOps
6 642 (13.31%) AI
7 544 (11.28%) Decision-Making
8 510 (10.57%) Analytics
9 499 (10.34%) Migration
9 499 (10.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 472 (9.78%) ITIL
11 452 (9.37%) Customer Service
12 394 (8.17%) Business Intelligence
13 373 (7.73%) Validation
14 371 (7.69%) Data Modelling
15 369 (7.65%) Test Automation
16 341 (7.07%) Roadmaps
17 333 (6.90%) Scrum
18 331 (6.86%) Project Management
19 319 (6.61%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 869 (18.01%) SQL
2 797 (16.52%) Python
3 366 (7.59%) Java
4 273 (5.66%) PowerShell
5 268 (5.56%) JavaScript
6 161 (3.34%) C#
7 136 (2.82%) Bash
8 108 (2.24%) TypeScript
9 84 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 51 (1.06%) T-SQL
11 50 (1.04%) C++
12 40 (0.83%) Shell Script
13 35 (0.73%) Bicep
14 34 (0.70%) Go
15 33 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 30 (0.62%) C
17 29 (0.60%) Apex Code
17 29 (0.60%) Kotlin
18 26 (0.54%) R
19 25 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,065 (22.08%) Security Cleared
2 717 (14.86%) SC Cleared
3 591 (12.25%) Degree
4 213 (4.42%) DV Cleared
5 174 (3.61%) Computer Science Degree
6 143 (2.96%) Microsoft Certification
7 115 (2.38%) Cisco Certification
8 108 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
9 76 (1.58%) CISSP
10 70 (1.45%) Azure Certification
10 70 (1.45%) PMP
11 65 (1.35%) PMI Certification
12 64 (1.33%) CCNA
13 62 (1.29%) A+ Certification
14 48 (1.00%) CISM
15 47 (0.97%) Master's Degree
16 42 (0.87%) Network+ Certification
17 41 (0.85%) MCSE
18 37 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
19 36 (0.75%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 337 (6.99%) Data Quality
2 296 (6.14%) QA
3 134 (2.78%) GDPR
4 109 (2.26%) Accessibility
5 106 (2.20%) SLA
6 86 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 82 (1.70%) PMO
8 71 (1.47%) NIST
9 49 (1.02%) GRC
10 28 (0.58%) WCAG
11 27 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.29%) GxP
13 14 (0.29%) NCSC
14 13 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
14 13 (0.27%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.25%) COBIT
16 11 (0.23%) 21 CFR Part 11
17 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
17 10 (0.21%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 379 (7.86%) Active Directory
2 310 (6.43%) Docker
3 130 (2.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 52 (1.08%) VMware ESXi
5 48 (1.00%) VMware NSX
6 46 (0.95%) Hyper-V
6 46 (0.95%) vSphere
7 31 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
8 28 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
9 23 (0.48%) vCloud
10 20 (0.41%) Firmware
11 18 (0.37%) IAG
12 11 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.12%) NFS
13 6 (0.12%) Squid
14 4 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.083%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.062%) Snort
16 2 (0.041%) UAG
16 2 (0.041%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 355 (7.36%) Kubernetes
2 291 (6.03%) Terraform
3 162 (3.36%) Ansible
4 126 (2.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 90 (1.87%) Grafana
6 80 (1.66%) Prometheus
7 76 (1.58%) SCCM
8 56 (1.16%) vCenter Server
9 28 (0.58%) FortiGate
10 27 (0.56%) Control-M
10 27 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
11 25 (0.52%) SCOM
12 18 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
13 17 (0.35%) Argo
13 17 (0.35%) WSUS
14 15 (0.31%) Nessus
15 13 (0.27%) IBM Guardium
16 12 (0.25%) Puppet
17 11 (0.23%) Kibana
17 11 (0.23%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 998 (20.69%) Microsoft
2 338 (7.01%) Oracle
3 316 (6.55%) ServiceNow
4 289 (5.99%) SAP
5 197 (4.08%) VMware
6 150 (3.11%) Google
7 126 (2.61%) Salesforce
8 117 (2.43%) Cisco
9 113 (2.34%) Splunk
10 110 (2.28%) Databricks
11 77 (1.60%) Workday
12 67 (1.39%) Dynatrace
13 53 (1.10%) Adobe
14 52 (1.08%) Apple
15 50 (1.04%) Red Hat
16 47 (0.97%) Citrix
16 47 (0.97%) Dell
17 45 (0.93%) CyberArk
18 44 (0.91%) MuleSoft
19 41 (0.85%) Juniper