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 15 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,991 4,271 3,928
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.79% 15.61% 12.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.75% 17.18% 14.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,853 2,605 2,293
10th Percentile £250 £241 £262
25th Percentile £375 £375 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
90th Percentile £715 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 441 266 211
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.25 £15.00
Median hourly rate £19.40 £18.86 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +2.86% +16.20% -69.76%
75th Percentile £40.00 £35.00 £30.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £64.38 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £18.39 £20.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -8.08% +23.23% -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 39,157 24,863 28,050
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.69% 90.87% 86.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,010 15,784 17,561
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £648
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,714 1,478 1,320
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.29 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.79 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -1.81%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.74 £66.53
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%

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 15 September 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 15 September 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 15 September 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 -11 2,164 £525 +5.00% 6,470
South East -3 790 £480 +6.67% 1,799
North of England -11 727 £447 -5.89% 1,756
Midlands -6 592 £450 +2.33% 1,256
West Midlands -8 426 £450 -4.05% 783
North West -7 365 £450 -5.26% 988
South West -5 340 £490 +8.89% 932
Yorkshire -8 294 £450 -6.25% 547
East of England 0 272 £438 -12.50% 880
East Midlands +1 163 £475 +26.67% 472
North East -16 70 £375 -16.67% 246
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
1 226 (4.53%) SharePoint
2 224 (4.49%) Confluence
3 107 (2.14%) Microsoft Exchange
4 48 (0.96%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.66%) Apache
7 27 (0.54%) CMS
8 26 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
9 24 (0.48%) SAS
10 14 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.26%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.20%) CICS
12 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.14%) IIS
14 6 (0.12%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.12%) WordPress
15 5 (0.10%) Mule
15 5 (0.10%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
Applications
1 288 (5.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 244 (4.89%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (2.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 62 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
5 48 (0.96%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.32%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.30%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 14 (0.28%) Revit
11 9 (0.18%) Sketch
11 9 (0.18%) Trello
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
12 7 (0.14%) Windchill
13 6 (0.12%) Navisworks
14 4 (0.080%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.080%) CATIA
15 3 (0.060%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.060%) DaVinci Resolve
15 3 (0.060%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 117 (2.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.52%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
6 21 (0.42%) Workday HCM
7 18 (0.36%) SAP GRC
8 15 (0.30%) iTrent
9 14 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
10 13 (0.26%) SAP SD
11 11 (0.22%) Teamcenter
12 10 (0.20%) Aladdin
12 10 (0.20%) Finacle
13 9 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
13 9 (0.18%) Shopify
14 7 (0.14%) Primavera
14 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.14%) SAP ERP
14 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
15 6 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,002 (20.08%) Azure
2 711 (14.25%) AWS
3 477 (9.56%) Microsoft 365
4 419 (8.40%) Power Platform
5 280 (5.61%) GCP
6 249 (4.99%) Azure DevOps
7 210 (4.21%) Entra ID
8 173 (3.47%) GitHub
9 132 (2.64%) SaaS
10 114 (2.28%) Serverless
11 105 (2.10%) Power Automate
12 85 (1.70%) Microsoft Copilot
13 77 (1.54%) Dynamics 365
14 76 (1.52%) PowerApps
15 71 (1.42%) GitHub Actions
15 71 (1.42%) OneDrive
16 62 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
16 62 (1.24%) Snowflake
17 55 (1.10%) AWS Lambda
18 49 (0.98%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 209 (4.19%) DNS
2 174 (3.49%) Firewall
3 159 (3.19%) VPN
4 124 (2.48%) DHCP
5 118 (2.36%) TCP/IP
6 101 (2.02%) WAN
7 88 (1.76%) Network Security
8 86 (1.72%) LAN
9 75 (1.50%) Wi-Fi
10 58 (1.16%) Wireless
11 56 (1.12%) SAN
12 51 (1.02%) VLAN
13 42 (0.84%) BGP
14 37 (0.74%) VoIP
15 32 (0.64%) Structured Cabling
16 29 (0.58%) SD-WAN
17 25 (0.50%) MPLS
18 23 (0.46%) SSL
19 22 (0.44%) OSPF
20 18 (0.36%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 319 (6.39%) Power BI
2 199 (3.99%) SQL Server
3 162 (3.25%) Relational Database
4 155 (3.11%) Data Warehouse
5 140 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
6 91 (1.82%) Metadata
7 79 (1.58%) NoSQL
8 78 (1.56%) Tableau
9 76 (1.52%) MongoDB
10 71 (1.42%) Data Lake
11 53 (1.06%) MySQL
12 51 (1.02%) Oracle Database
13 39 (0.78%) Big Data
14 33 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 32 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
16 28 (0.56%) Db2
17 27 (0.54%) Power Query
18 25 (0.50%) Delta Lake
19 24 (0.48%) Pentaho
20 23 (0.46%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 457 (9.16%) JIRA
2 326 (6.53%) Git
3 167 (3.35%) Jenkins
4 120 (2.40%) GitLab
5 69 (1.38%) Selenium
6 36 (0.72%) Maven
7 35 (0.70%) JUnit
8 34 (0.68%) Cypress.io
8 34 (0.68%) Postman
9 33 (0.66%) Cucumber
10 26 (0.52%) Gradle
11 25 (0.50%) Bitbucket
11 25 (0.50%) REST Assured
11 25 (0.50%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.42%) Mockito
13 19 (0.38%) JMeter
14 16 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.30%) Gatling
16 14 (0.28%) Visual Studio
17 13 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,687 (53.84%) Social Skills
2 2,162 (43.32%) Analytical Skills
3 1,155 (23.14%) Finance
4 499 (10.00%) Public Sector
5 414 (8.29%) Banking
6 251 (5.03%) Organisational Skills
7 200 (4.01%) Manufacturing
8 177 (3.55%) Documentation Skills
9 176 (3.53%) Retail
10 163 (3.27%) Influencing Skills
11 159 (3.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 116 (2.32%) Front Office
13 111 (2.22%) Legal
14 109 (2.18%) Presentation Skills
15 103 (2.06%) Marketing
16 100 (2.00%) Telecoms
17 83 (1.66%) Investment Banking
18 62 (1.24%) Law
19 58 (1.16%) Back Office
20 57 (1.14%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 689 (13.80%) Analyst
2 577 (11.56%) Developer
3 460 (9.22%) Senior
4 383 (7.67%) Lead
5 303 (6.07%) Architect
6 232 (4.65%) Business Analyst
7 213 (4.27%) IT Support
8 209 (4.19%) Consultant
9 196 (3.93%) Support Engineer
10 180 (3.61%) Data Engineer
11 135 (2.70%) IT Engineer
12 132 (2.64%) Administrator
13 130 (2.60%) Project Manager
14 108 (2.16%) Data Analyst
15 105 (2.10%) Java Developer
16 99 (1.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 96 (1.92%) DevOps Engineer
18 95 (1.90%) IT Support Engineer
19 91 (1.82%) Solutions Architect
20 87 (1.74%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 324 (6.49%) REST
2 301 (6.03%) Terraform
3 172 (3.45%) .NET
4 156 (3.13%) RESTful
5 148 (2.97%) SOAP
6 142 (2.85%) React
7 119 (2.38%) Kafka
8 115 (2.30%) Spring
9 112 (2.24%) CSS
9 112 (2.24%) HTML
9 112 (2.24%) JSON
10 109 (2.18%) XML
11 95 (1.90%) Middleware
12 93 (1.86%) Spring Boot
13 92 (1.84%) Web Services
14 84 (1.68%) AngularJS
15 77 (1.54%) Node.js
15 77 (1.54%) OAuth
16 58 (1.16%) PySpark
17 50 (1.00%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 294 (5.89%) Onboarding
2 253 (5.07%) Product Ownership
3 252 (5.05%) Cloud Native
4 202 (4.05%) Self-Motivation
5 180 (3.61%) Management Information System
6 176 (3.53%) Enterprise Software
7 150 (3.01%) Data Centre
8 141 (2.83%) Distributed Systems
9 128 (2.56%) Data Structures
10 120 (2.40%) Analytical Mindset
11 116 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
12 109 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
13 89 (1.78%) Virtual Team
14 73 (1.46%) AI Agents
15 70 (1.40%) Driving Licence
16 65 (1.30%) CMDB
17 55 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 55 (1.10%) PKI
18 53 (1.06%) Algorithms
19 48 (0.96%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 681 (13.64%) Windows
2 276 (5.53%) Linux
3 196 (3.93%) Windows Server
4 127 (2.54%) Windows 10
5 93 (1.86%) Unix
6 84 (1.68%) Apple iOS
7 80 (1.60%) Mac OS
8 73 (1.46%) Android
9 45 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.42%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.32%) VMS
13 12 (0.24%) zOS
14 9 (0.18%) Solaris
14 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.16%) CentOS
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Rocky
18 4 (0.080%) AIX
18 4 (0.080%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,396 (27.97%) Agile
2 1,168 (23.40%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,130 (22.64%) Continuous Improvement
4 831 (16.65%) CI/CD
5 780 (15.63%) DevOps
6 702 (14.07%) AI
7 581 (11.64%) Decision-Making
8 561 (11.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 516 (10.34%) Migration
10 512 (10.26%) Analytics
11 486 (9.74%) Customer Service
12 476 (9.54%) ITIL
13 403 (8.07%) Test Automation
14 393 (7.87%) Validation
15 382 (7.65%) Business Intelligence
16 357 (7.15%) Scrum
17 352 (7.05%) Data Modelling
18 341 (6.83%) Roadmaps
19 340 (6.81%) ITSM
20 327 (6.55%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 897 (17.97%) SQL
2 794 (15.91%) Python
3 369 (7.39%) Java
4 303 (6.07%) PowerShell
5 300 (6.01%) JavaScript
6 196 (3.93%) C#
7 147 (2.95%) Bash
8 126 (2.52%) TypeScript
9 88 (1.76%) PL/SQL
10 50 (1.00%) T-SQL
11 49 (0.98%) C++
12 40 (0.80%) Go
13 39 (0.78%) Shell Script
14 32 (0.64%) Bicep
15 30 (0.60%) Scala
16 26 (0.52%) R
17 25 (0.50%) C
17 25 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 25 (0.50%) Kotlin
18 24 (0.48%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,102 (22.08%) Security Cleared
2 768 (15.39%) SC Cleared
3 604 (12.10%) Degree
4 212 (4.25%) DV Cleared
5 184 (3.69%) Computer Science Degree
6 148 (2.97%) Microsoft Certification
7 131 (2.62%) BPSS Clearance
8 86 (1.72%) Cisco Certification
9 78 (1.56%) Azure Certification
10 72 (1.44%) PMI Certification
10 72 (1.44%) PMP
11 68 (1.36%) CISSP
12 57 (1.14%) A+ Certification
13 49 (0.98%) Master's Degree
14 48 (0.96%) CCNA
15 47 (0.94%) DBS Check
16 43 (0.86%) AWS Certification
17 39 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
17 39 (0.78%) Network+ Certification
18 38 (0.76%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 380 (7.61%) Data Quality
2 349 (6.99%) QA
3 118 (2.36%) GDPR
4 115 (2.30%) SLA
5 114 (2.28%) Accessibility
6 87 (1.74%) PMO
7 86 (1.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 69 (1.38%) NIST
9 61 (1.22%) GRC
10 32 (0.64%) WCAG
11 22 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 17 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
12 17 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
13 14 (0.28%) GxP
14 13 (0.26%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.24%) COBIT
16 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 11 (0.22%) IFRS
16 11 (0.22%) NCSC
17 10 (0.20%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 400 (8.01%) Active Directory
2 311 (6.23%) Docker
3 152 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 64 (1.28%) VMware ESXi
5 62 (1.24%) Hyper-V
6 52 (1.04%) VMware NSX
7 48 (0.96%) vSphere
8 34 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
9 30 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 27 (0.54%) IAG
11 26 (0.52%) vCloud
12 16 (0.32%) Firmware
13 8 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.080%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 4 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.080%) XenApp
15 4 (0.080%) XenDesktop
16 3 (0.060%) Squid
Systems Management
1 345 (6.91%) Kubernetes
2 164 (3.29%) Ansible
3 129 (2.58%) Microsoft Intune
4 91 (1.82%) SCCM
5 90 (1.80%) Grafana
6 70 (1.40%) Prometheus
7 54 (1.08%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.74%) SCOM
9 24 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
10 23 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
11 22 (0.44%) WSUS
12 20 (0.40%) Control-M
13 13 (0.26%) Argo
13 13 (0.26%) FortiGate
14 11 (0.22%) Istio
14 11 (0.22%) Kibana
14 11 (0.22%) Puppet
15 10 (0.20%) Nessus
15 10 (0.20%) VxRail
16 9 (0.18%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,172 (23.48%) Microsoft
2 351 (7.03%) Oracle
3 324 (6.49%) ServiceNow
4 303 (6.07%) SAP
5 200 (4.01%) VMware
6 139 (2.79%) Google
7 133 (2.66%) Salesforce
8 119 (2.38%) Databricks
9 109 (2.18%) Cisco
10 99 (1.98%) Splunk
11 72 (1.44%) Workday
12 66 (1.32%) Dynatrace
13 57 (1.14%) Apple
14 52 (1.04%) Adobe
15 47 (0.94%) IBM
16 44 (0.88%) CyberArk
17 43 (0.86%) Red Hat
18 40 (0.80%) MuleSoft
19 36 (0.72%) Dell
20 35 (0.70%) Citrix