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

6 months to
18 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 4,864 4,425 3,783
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.63% 16.03% 11.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.52% 17.65% 13.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,780 2,690 2,331
10th Percentile £238 £250 £263
25th Percentile £375 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -1.60% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £622
90th Percentile £713 £717 £725
UK median daily rate £495 £486 £500
% change year-on-year +1.89% -2.84% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 408 282 237
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.48
25th Percentile £16.01 £15.12 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% +24.80% -70.25%
75th Percentile £43.75 £34.48 £31.13
90th Percentile £74.00 £64.88 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.02 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.12% +24.80% -70.37%

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 38,860 25,068 28,450
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.96% 90.79% 85.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,105 15,945 18,530
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £627 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,559 1,442 1,597
10th Percentile £14.28 £14.20 £14.15
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.87 £18.16
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +5.94%
75th Percentile £68.55 £50.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +67.00% -38.57% +0.86%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 2,106 £525 +5.00% 1,042
South East -4 779 £480 +1.05% 1,012
North of England -11 724 £445 -6.32% 785
Midlands -6 545 £450 +4.53% 602
West Midlands -9 390 £450 -2.17% 364
South West 0 349 £500 +6.67% 449
North West -12 348 £450 -5.76% 391
Yorkshire -8 316 £450 -5.26% 274
East of England +1 252 £450 -10.00% 327
East Midlands 0 152 £470 +27.72% 239
North East -14 65 £373 -17.22% 136
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 (4.40%) Confluence
1 214 (4.40%) SharePoint
2 113 (2.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 57 (1.17%) Apache Spark
4 37 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
5 33 (0.68%) Apache
5 33 (0.68%) SAS
6 29 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
7 28 (0.58%) CMS
8 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
9 11 (0.23%) CICS
9 11 (0.23%) WebLogic
10 8 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 8 (0.16%) Jupyter
11 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
12 6 (0.12%) IIS
12 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 5 (0.10%) Mule
13 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
13 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 280 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 231 (4.75%) Microsoft Office
3 98 (2.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 62 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
4 62 (1.27%) MS Visio
5 27 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
6 20 (0.41%) Chatbot
7 16 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
8 13 (0.27%) Revit
9 11 (0.23%) Trello
10 9 (0.19%) Sketch
11 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
12 5 (0.10%) CATIA
12 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
12 5 (0.10%) Windchill
13 4 (0.082%) Adobe XD
13 4 (0.082%) Photoshop
14 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
14 3 (0.062%) Maya
Business Applications
1 113 (2.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
5 23 (0.47%) NetSuite
6 16 (0.33%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.29%) SAP GRC
8 13 (0.27%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.27%) iTrent
8 13 (0.27%) SAP SD
9 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 9 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
12 8 (0.16%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.16%) Teamcenter
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
13 7 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
14 6 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 986 (20.27%) Azure
2 701 (14.41%) AWS
3 429 (8.82%) Microsoft 365
4 396 (8.14%) Power Platform
5 282 (5.80%) GCP
6 241 (4.95%) Azure DevOps
7 215 (4.42%) Entra ID
8 159 (3.27%) GitHub
9 133 (2.73%) SaaS
10 109 (2.24%) Serverless
11 87 (1.79%) Power Automate
12 72 (1.48%) GitHub Actions
13 65 (1.34%) OneDrive
14 64 (1.32%) Dynamics 365
15 62 (1.27%) Microsoft Copilot
15 62 (1.27%) PowerApps
16 61 (1.25%) Azure Data Factory
17 60 (1.23%) AWS Lambda
18 56 (1.15%) Snowflake
19 55 (1.13%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 212 (4.36%) DNS
2 179 (3.68%) Firewall
3 154 (3.17%) VPN
4 125 (2.57%) DHCP
5 114 (2.34%) TCP/IP
6 110 (2.26%) WAN
7 93 (1.91%) LAN
8 89 (1.83%) Network Security
9 72 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
10 64 (1.32%) SAN
11 58 (1.19%) Wireless
12 55 (1.13%) VLAN
13 48 (0.99%) BGP
14 37 (0.76%) SD-WAN
15 34 (0.70%) VoIP
16 33 (0.68%) Structured Cabling
17 30 (0.62%) MPLS
18 29 (0.60%) OSPF
19 23 (0.47%) VXLAN
20 22 (0.45%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 307 (6.31%) Power BI
2 199 (4.09%) SQL Server
3 154 (3.17%) Data Warehouse
4 146 (3.00%) Relational Database
5 134 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
6 90 (1.85%) NoSQL
7 86 (1.77%) Metadata
8 80 (1.64%) MongoDB
9 79 (1.62%) Tableau
10 72 (1.48%) Data Lake
11 50 (1.03%) Big Data
12 49 (1.01%) MySQL
12 49 (1.01%) Oracle Database
13 37 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
14 34 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 29 (0.60%) Pentaho
16 27 (0.56%) Db2
16 27 (0.56%) Power Query
17 22 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
17 22 (0.45%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 450 (9.25%) JIRA
2 303 (6.23%) Git
3 156 (3.21%) Jenkins
4 119 (2.45%) GitLab
5 66 (1.36%) Selenium
6 34 (0.70%) Cypress.io
7 32 (0.66%) Postman
8 26 (0.53%) Maven
9 25 (0.51%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.51%) Cucumber
9 25 (0.51%) REST Assured
10 23 (0.47%) JUnit
11 22 (0.45%) Gradle
12 19 (0.39%) JMeter
13 18 (0.37%) WebDriver
14 14 (0.29%) Gatling
14 14 (0.29%) Mockito
14 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.27%) SonarQube
16 12 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,554 (52.51%) Social Skills
2 2,089 (42.95%) Analytical Skills
3 1,152 (23.68%) Finance
4 478 (9.83%) Public Sector
5 401 (8.24%) Banking
6 223 (4.58%) Organisational Skills
7 188 (3.87%) Retail
8 182 (3.74%) Documentation Skills
9 158 (3.25%) Manufacturing
10 157 (3.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 138 (2.84%) Influencing Skills
12 110 (2.26%) Front Office
13 109 (2.24%) Marketing
14 107 (2.20%) Legal
15 100 (2.06%) Telecoms
16 98 (2.01%) Presentation Skills
17 76 (1.56%) Investment Banking
18 58 (1.19%) Law
19 57 (1.17%) Financial Institution
20 55 (1.13%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 672 (13.82%) Analyst
2 549 (11.29%) Developer
3 437 (8.98%) Senior
4 380 (7.81%) Lead
5 319 (6.56%) Architect
6 224 (4.61%) Business Analyst
7 211 (4.34%) Consultant
8 208 (4.28%) Data Engineer
9 197 (4.05%) IT Support
10 185 (3.80%) Support Engineer
11 140 (2.88%) Project Manager
12 130 (2.67%) IT Engineer
13 116 (2.38%) Administrator
14 105 (2.16%) Data Analyst
15 97 (1.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 95 (1.95%) Java Developer
17 88 (1.81%) IT Support Engineer
17 88 (1.81%) Solutions Architect
17 88 (1.81%) Support Analyst
18 83 (1.71%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 288 (5.92%) REST
2 154 (3.17%) .NET
3 146 (3.00%) RESTful
4 136 (2.80%) React
5 127 (2.61%) SOAP
6 119 (2.45%) Kafka
7 113 (2.32%) Spring
8 110 (2.26%) JSON
9 105 (2.16%) CSS
10 102 (2.10%) XML
11 96 (1.97%) HTML
12 93 (1.91%) Middleware
13 79 (1.62%) Spring Boot
14 78 (1.60%) Node.js
14 78 (1.60%) Web Services
15 76 (1.56%) AngularJS
16 73 (1.50%) OAuth
17 63 (1.30%) PySpark
18 47 (0.97%) Playwright
19 45 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 278 (5.72%) Onboarding
2 236 (4.85%) Product Ownership
3 223 (4.58%) Cloud Native
4 189 (3.89%) Self-Motivation
5 170 (3.50%) Data Centre
6 156 (3.21%) Management Information System
7 151 (3.10%) Enterprise Software
8 145 (2.98%) Distributed Systems
9 140 (2.88%) Analytical Mindset
10 125 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
11 121 (2.49%) Data Structures
12 107 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
13 89 (1.83%) Virtual Team
14 65 (1.34%) Driving Licence
15 62 (1.27%) CMDB
16 61 (1.25%) AI Agents
17 57 (1.17%) Algorithms
18 54 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 53 (1.09%) PKI
20 46 (0.95%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 678 (13.94%) Windows
2 262 (5.39%) Linux
3 176 (3.62%) Windows Server
4 129 (2.65%) Windows 10
5 95 (1.95%) Unix
6 84 (1.73%) Apple iOS
7 80 (1.64%) Mac OS
8 77 (1.58%) Android
9 39 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.41%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.31%) VMS
13 12 (0.25%) zOS
14 8 (0.16%) Solaris
15 7 (0.14%) CentOS
15 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
16 5 (0.10%) Debian
16 5 (0.10%) Mac OS X
16 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,346 (27.67%) Agile
2 1,042 (21.42%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,000 (20.56%) Stakeholder Management
4 814 (16.74%) CI/CD
5 773 (15.89%) DevOps
6 646 (13.28%) AI
7 527 (10.83%) Decision-Making
8 525 (10.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 518 (10.65%) Analytics
10 515 (10.59%) Migration
11 485 (9.97%) ITIL
12 450 (9.25%) Customer Service
13 396 (8.14%) Validation
14 393 (8.08%) Business Intelligence
14 393 (8.08%) Test Automation
15 367 (7.55%) Data Modelling
16 346 (7.11%) Scrum
17 333 (6.85%) Roadmaps
18 325 (6.68%) ITSM
19 322 (6.62%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 882 (18.13%) SQL
2 809 (16.63%) Python
3 363 (7.46%) Java
4 288 (5.92%) PowerShell
5 277 (5.69%) JavaScript
6 166 (3.41%) C#
7 140 (2.88%) Bash
8 106 (2.18%) TypeScript
9 80 (1.64%) PL/SQL
10 58 (1.19%) C++
11 45 (0.93%) T-SQL
12 36 (0.74%) Go
12 36 (0.74%) Shell Script
13 33 (0.68%) Bicep
14 31 (0.64%) C
15 28 (0.58%) Scala
16 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
17 26 (0.53%) Apex Code
17 26 (0.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 26 (0.53%) R
Qualifications
1 1,047 (21.53%) Security Cleared
2 708 (14.56%) SC Cleared
3 594 (12.21%) Degree
4 200 (4.11%) DV Cleared
5 187 (3.84%) Computer Science Degree
6 148 (3.04%) Microsoft Certification
7 110 (2.26%) Cisco Certification
8 108 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
9 74 (1.52%) Azure Certification
9 74 (1.52%) CISSP
10 73 (1.50%) PMP
11 69 (1.42%) PMI Certification
12 64 (1.32%) A+ Certification
13 60 (1.23%) CCNA
14 52 (1.07%) Master's Degree
15 46 (0.95%) CISM
16 44 (0.90%) Network+ Certification
17 40 (0.82%) MCSE
18 39 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
19 37 (0.76%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 363 (7.46%) Data Quality
2 314 (6.46%) QA
3 130 (2.67%) GDPR
4 112 (2.30%) Accessibility
5 108 (2.22%) SLA
6 87 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 78 (1.60%) PMO
8 71 (1.46%) NIST
9 54 (1.11%) GRC
10 29 (0.60%) WCAG
11 27 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.43%) 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
15 12 (0.25%) NCSC
16 11 (0.23%) IFRS
17 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 408 (8.39%) Active Directory
2 312 (6.41%) Docker
3 147 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 58 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 56 (1.15%) Hyper-V
6 49 (1.01%) VMware NSX
7 46 (0.95%) vSphere
8 34 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
9 29 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 25 (0.51%) vCloud
11 22 (0.45%) IAG
12 21 (0.43%) Firmware
13 9 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.12%) NFS
16 5 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
17 4 (0.082%) Squid
18 3 (0.062%) BitLocker
18 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
19 2 (0.041%) UAG
Systems Management
1 341 (7.01%) Kubernetes
2 285 (5.86%) Terraform
3 163 (3.35%) Ansible
4 138 (2.84%) Microsoft Intune
5 89 (1.83%) SCCM
6 81 (1.67%) Grafana
7 68 (1.40%) Prometheus
8 55 (1.13%) vCenter Server
9 31 (0.64%) SCOM
10 26 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (0.47%) Control-M
12 22 (0.45%) WSUS
13 21 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
14 19 (0.39%) FortiGate
15 14 (0.29%) Argo
16 12 (0.25%) Puppet
17 11 (0.23%) Progress Chef
18 10 (0.21%) Kibana
19 9 (0.19%) Nessus
19 9 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,074 (22.08%) Microsoft
2 344 (7.07%) Oracle
3 324 (6.66%) ServiceNow
4 296 (6.09%) SAP
5 206 (4.24%) VMware
6 146 (3.00%) Google
7 130 (2.67%) Salesforce
8 113 (2.32%) Cisco
9 109 (2.24%) Databricks
10 101 (2.08%) Splunk
11 74 (1.52%) Workday
12 70 (1.44%) Dynatrace
13 61 (1.25%) Apple
14 56 (1.15%) Adobe
15 45 (0.93%) CyberArk
15 45 (0.93%) Dell
16 44 (0.90%) Citrix
17 43 (0.88%) IBM
17 43 (0.88%) Red Hat
18 42 (0.86%) MuleSoft