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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -8 +4 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,853 4,451 3,765
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.64% 16.11% 11.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.51% 17.74% 13.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,774 2,722 2,320
10th Percentile £250 £255 £262
25th Percentile £375 £380 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -1.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £622
90th Percentile £713 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £490 £500
% change year-on-year - -2.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 410 280 243
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% +24.80% -69.76%
75th Percentile £44.00 £34.61 £32.75
90th Percentile £74.03 £65.03 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £21.17 £16.23
% change year-on-year -10.25% +30.44% -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 38,792 25,089 28,626
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.08% 90.79% 85.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,117 16,022 18,624
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £422
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 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,537 1,415 1,654
10th Percentile £14.56 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.87 £18.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +4.78%
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -1.35%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 2,086 £520 +4.00% 2,340
South East -3 769 £479 -2.24% 1,128
North of England -9 724 £450 -5.26% 883
Midlands -5 554 £450 +4.41% 633
West Midlands -10 401 £450 -1.50% 378
South West 0 352 £500 +5.26% 471
North West -12 342 £450 -8.16% 459
Yorkshire -7 324 £450 -5.26% 303
East of England +1 262 £450 -6.00% 396
East Midlands +1 150 £475 +26.67% 255
North East -16 63 £375 -16.67% 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
1 215 (4.43%) Confluence
2 205 (4.22%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 54 (1.11%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.68%) Apache
7 32 (0.66%) SAS
8 28 (0.58%) CMS
8 28 (0.58%) Oracle Workflow
9 18 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.23%) CICS
12 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.16%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.10%) Appian
16 5 (0.10%) Mule
16 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 269 (5.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 239 (4.92%) Microsoft Office
3 87 (1.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (1.30%) MS Visio
5 62 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
6 27 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.27%) Revit
10 11 (0.23%) Trello
11 9 (0.19%) Sketch
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 5 (0.10%) CATIA
13 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
14 4 (0.082%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.082%) Photoshop
15 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.062%) Maya
16 2 (0.041%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 116 (2.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 25 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.45%) NetSuite
6 16 (0.33%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.29%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.27%) iTrent
8 13 (0.27%) SAP SD
9 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
9 11 (0.23%) SAP GRC
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 8 (0.16%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
11 8 (0.16%) SAP HCM
11 8 (0.16%) Teamcenter
12 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
12 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.14%) SAP ERP
12 7 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 959 (19.76%) Azure
2 695 (14.32%) AWS
3 414 (8.53%) Microsoft 365
4 393 (8.10%) Power Platform
5 275 (5.67%) GCP
6 236 (4.86%) Azure DevOps
7 203 (4.18%) Entra ID
8 161 (3.32%) GitHub
9 132 (2.72%) SaaS
10 114 (2.35%) Serverless
11 85 (1.75%) Power Automate
12 75 (1.55%) GitHub Actions
13 65 (1.34%) AWS Lambda
13 65 (1.34%) Dynamics 365
14 63 (1.30%) Azure Data Factory
15 60 (1.24%) Microsoft Copilot
15 60 (1.24%) PowerApps
16 59 (1.22%) OneDrive
17 58 (1.20%) Amazon S3
17 58 (1.20%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 214 (4.41%) DNS
2 182 (3.75%) Firewall
3 145 (2.99%) VPN
4 129 (2.66%) DHCP
5 126 (2.60%) TCP/IP
6 114 (2.35%) WAN
7 98 (2.02%) LAN
8 85 (1.75%) Network Security
9 72 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
10 65 (1.34%) SAN
11 55 (1.13%) VLAN
12 53 (1.09%) Wireless
13 51 (1.05%) BGP
14 37 (0.76%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.74%) OSPF
16 33 (0.68%) VoIP
17 32 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
18 28 (0.58%) MPLS
18 28 (0.58%) VXLAN
19 22 (0.45%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (6.26%) Power BI
2 202 (4.16%) SQL Server
3 159 (3.28%) Data Warehouse
4 140 (2.88%) Relational Database
5 128 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
6 87 (1.79%) MongoDB
7 84 (1.73%) Metadata
8 83 (1.71%) NoSQL
9 81 (1.67%) Data Lake
9 81 (1.67%) Tableau
10 50 (1.03%) Big Data
10 50 (1.03%) Oracle Database
11 48 (0.99%) MySQL
12 41 (0.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 36 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
14 28 (0.58%) Pentaho
15 27 (0.56%) Db2
15 27 (0.56%) Power Query
16 23 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
16 23 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 451 (9.29%) JIRA
2 298 (6.14%) Git
3 156 (3.21%) Jenkins
4 112 (2.31%) GitLab
5 66 (1.36%) Selenium
6 34 (0.70%) Cypress.io
6 34 (0.70%) Postman
7 27 (0.56%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.54%) Maven
8 26 (0.54%) REST Assured
9 23 (0.47%) Bitbucket
10 22 (0.45%) JUnit
11 21 (0.43%) Gradle
12 20 (0.41%) JMeter
13 18 (0.37%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.31%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 15 (0.31%) Mockito
15 14 (0.29%) Gatling
15 14 (0.29%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,535 (52.24%) Social Skills
2 2,063 (42.51%) Analytical Skills
3 1,133 (23.35%) Finance
4 471 (9.71%) Public Sector
5 390 (8.04%) Banking
6 222 (4.57%) Organisational Skills
7 192 (3.96%) Retail
8 173 (3.56%) Documentation Skills
9 167 (3.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 154 (3.17%) Manufacturing
11 132 (2.72%) Influencing Skills
12 111 (2.29%) Marketing
12 111 (2.29%) Presentation Skills
13 108 (2.23%) Front Office
14 106 (2.18%) Legal
15 96 (1.98%) Telecoms
16 74 (1.52%) Investment Banking
17 60 (1.24%) Law
18 56 (1.15%) Financial Institution
19 55 (1.13%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 670 (13.81%) Analyst
2 533 (10.98%) Developer
3 438 (9.03%) Senior
4 373 (7.69%) Lead
5 323 (6.66%) Architect
6 229 (4.72%) Business Analyst
7 215 (4.43%) Consultant
8 210 (4.33%) Data Engineer
9 192 (3.96%) IT Support
10 175 (3.61%) Support Engineer
11 143 (2.95%) Project Manager
12 123 (2.53%) IT Engineer
13 118 (2.43%) Administrator
14 106 (2.18%) Data Analyst
15 96 (1.98%) Java Developer
16 91 (1.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 89 (1.83%) Solutions Architect
18 88 (1.81%) Software Engineer
19 82 (1.69%) IT Support Engineer
19 82 (1.69%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 282 (5.81%) REST
2 145 (2.99%) .NET
3 135 (2.78%) RESTful
4 134 (2.76%) React
5 129 (2.66%) SOAP
6 119 (2.45%) Kafka
7 115 (2.37%) Spring
8 112 (2.31%) JSON
9 102 (2.10%) CSS
10 100 (2.06%) XML
11 92 (1.90%) HTML
11 92 (1.90%) Middleware
12 79 (1.63%) Node.js
12 79 (1.63%) Spring Boot
13 75 (1.55%) AngularJS
14 72 (1.48%) Web Services
15 70 (1.44%) OAuth
16 55 (1.13%) PySpark
17 49 (1.01%) Playwright
18 43 (0.89%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 276 (5.69%) Onboarding
2 233 (4.80%) Product Ownership
3 215 (4.43%) Cloud Native
4 183 (3.77%) Self-Motivation
5 175 (3.61%) Data Centre
6 148 (3.05%) Management Information System
7 143 (2.95%) Enterprise Software
8 137 (2.82%) Distributed Systems
9 136 (2.80%) Analytical Mindset
10 118 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
11 116 (2.39%) Data Structures
12 112 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
13 89 (1.83%) Virtual Team
14 62 (1.28%) AI Agents
14 62 (1.28%) Driving Licence
15 59 (1.22%) Algorithms
16 58 (1.20%) CMDB
17 56 (1.15%) PKI
18 54 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 44 (0.91%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 671 (13.83%) Windows
2 257 (5.30%) Linux
3 164 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 122 (2.51%) Windows 10
5 98 (2.02%) Unix
6 79 (1.63%) Mac OS
7 78 (1.61%) Apple iOS
8 71 (1.46%) Android
9 40 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 14 (0.29%) VMS
13 12 (0.25%) zOS
14 8 (0.16%) Solaris
15 6 (0.12%) CentOS
15 6 (0.12%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
16 5 (0.10%) Debian
16 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,324 (27.28%) Agile
2 1,020 (21.02%) Continuous Improvement
3 951 (19.60%) Stakeholder Management
4 805 (16.59%) CI/CD
5 761 (15.68%) DevOps
6 648 (13.35%) AI
7 540 (11.13%) Decision-Making
8 516 (10.63%) Analytics
9 515 (10.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 506 (10.43%) Migration
11 476 (9.81%) ITIL
12 457 (9.42%) Customer Service
13 393 (8.10%) Business Intelligence
14 385 (7.93%) Test Automation
15 380 (7.83%) Validation
16 370 (7.62%) Data Modelling
17 337 (6.94%) Scrum
18 334 (6.88%) Roadmaps
19 322 (6.64%) Project Management
20 314 (6.47%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 885 (18.24%) SQL
2 797 (16.42%) Python
3 364 (7.50%) Java
4 278 (5.73%) PowerShell
5 275 (5.67%) JavaScript
6 163 (3.36%) C#
7 140 (2.88%) Bash
8 107 (2.20%) TypeScript
9 87 (1.79%) PL/SQL
10 54 (1.11%) C++
11 49 (1.01%) T-SQL
12 40 (0.82%) Shell Script
13 35 (0.72%) Go
14 34 (0.70%) Bicep
15 31 (0.64%) C
16 30 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 28 (0.58%) Scala
18 27 (0.56%) Apex Code
18 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
19 26 (0.54%) R
Qualifications
1 1,062 (21.88%) Security Cleared
2 713 (14.69%) SC Cleared
3 599 (12.34%) Degree
4 208 (4.29%) DV Cleared
5 183 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.97%) Microsoft Certification
7 112 (2.31%) Cisco Certification
8 107 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
9 75 (1.55%) CISSP
10 72 (1.48%) Azure Certification
11 68 (1.40%) PMP
12 63 (1.30%) PMI Certification
13 62 (1.28%) A+ Certification
14 61 (1.26%) CCNA
15 48 (0.99%) CISM
16 47 (0.97%) Master's Degree
17 42 (0.87%) Network+ Certification
18 40 (0.82%) MCSE
19 37 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
20 36 (0.74%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 350 (7.21%) Data Quality
2 305 (6.28%) QA
3 134 (2.76%) GDPR
4 108 (2.23%) Accessibility
5 106 (2.18%) SLA
6 86 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 81 (1.67%) PMO
8 71 (1.46%) NIST
9 50 (1.03%) GRC
10 29 (0.60%) WCAG
11 28 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 25 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
13 16 (0.33%) NCSC
14 15 (0.31%) GxP
15 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
16 13 (0.27%) COBIT
16 13 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
17 12 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
18 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
18 10 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 391 (8.06%) Active Directory
2 306 (6.31%) Docker
3 138 (2.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 53 (1.09%) Hyper-V
4 53 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
5 48 (0.99%) VMware NSX
6 46 (0.95%) vSphere
7 31 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
8 29 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
9 23 (0.47%) vCloud
10 21 (0.43%) Firmware
11 19 (0.39%) IAG
12 11 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.12%) NFS
13 6 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.082%) Squid
16 3 (0.062%) Snort
17 2 (0.041%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 2 (0.041%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 345 (7.11%) Kubernetes
2 286 (5.89%) Terraform
3 161 (3.32%) Ansible
4 131 (2.70%) Microsoft Intune
5 81 (1.67%) Grafana
5 81 (1.67%) SCCM
6 71 (1.46%) Prometheus
7 55 (1.13%) vCenter Server
8 29 (0.60%) SCOM
9 27 (0.56%) FortiGate
9 27 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 24 (0.49%) Control-M
11 21 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
12 20 (0.41%) WSUS
13 17 (0.35%) Argo
14 12 (0.25%) Puppet
15 11 (0.23%) Progress Chef
16 10 (0.21%) Kibana
16 10 (0.21%) Nessus
17 9 (0.19%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 1,037 (21.37%) Microsoft
2 340 (7.01%) Oracle
3 319 (6.57%) ServiceNow
4 296 (6.10%) SAP
5 200 (4.12%) VMware
6 148 (3.05%) Google
7 128 (2.64%) Salesforce
8 119 (2.45%) Cisco
9 110 (2.27%) Splunk
10 104 (2.14%) Databricks
11 73 (1.50%) Workday
12 66 (1.36%) Dynatrace
13 57 (1.17%) Apple
14 55 (1.13%) Adobe
15 46 (0.95%) Citrix
16 45 (0.93%) CyberArk
16 45 (0.93%) Dell
16 45 (0.93%) Red Hat
17 43 (0.89%) IBM
17 43 (0.89%) MuleSoft