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

6 months to
17 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 4,861 4,459 3,784
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.64% 16.04% 11.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.51% 17.66% 13.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,777 2,714 2,333
10th Percentile £236 £251 £263
25th Percentile £375 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.61% -1.60% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £623
90th Percentile £713 £718 £725
UK median daily rate £493 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +1.03% -2.50% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 407 282 237
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.48
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% -70.37%
75th Percentile £43.75 £34.48 £31.13
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £20.68 £16.23
% change year-on-year -8.11% +27.40% -70.49%

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 38,847 25,245 28,472
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.01% 90.81% 85.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,107 16,076 18,544
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% -2.40% -4.53%
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% -3.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,555 1,444 1,611
10th Percentile £14.28 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.87 £18.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +4.83%
75th Percentile £68.55 £50.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.97
% change year-on-year +67.00% -38.61% -1.28%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 2,104 £525 +5.00% 1,071
South East -4 778 £480 +1.05% 990
North of England -11 719 £446 -6.21% 796
Midlands -6 548 £450 +4.41% 593
West Midlands -10 395 £450 -2.17% 362
South West 0 349 £500 +6.67% 453
North West -11 343 £450 -5.76% 396
Yorkshire -8 318 £450 -5.26% 287
East of England +1 254 £450 -10.00% 328
East Midlands -1 150 £470 +26.51% 232
North East -16 63 £375 -16.67% 126
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
1 212 (4.36%) Confluence
2 211 (4.34%) SharePoint
3 112 (2.30%) Microsoft Exchange
4 57 (1.17%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.68%) Apache
6 33 (0.68%) SAS
7 28 (0.58%) CMS
7 28 (0.58%) Oracle Workflow
8 15 (0.31%) WebLogic
9 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.23%) CICS
11 8 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 8 (0.16%) Jupyter
12 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 5 (0.10%) Appian
14 5 (0.10%) Camunda
14 5 (0.10%) Mule
14 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
Applications
1 278 (5.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 231 (4.75%) Microsoft Office
3 97 (2.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (1.30%) MS Visio
5 62 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
6 27 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 20 (0.41%) 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
14 4 (0.082%) Windchill
15 3 (0.062%) DaVinci Resolve
15 3 (0.062%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 116 (2.39%) 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%) iTrent
7 14 (0.29%) SAP GRC
8 13 (0.27%) Aladdin
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%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 982 (20.20%) Azure
2 698 (14.36%) AWS
3 425 (8.74%) Microsoft 365
4 395 (8.13%) Power Platform
5 281 (5.78%) GCP
6 239 (4.92%) Azure DevOps
7 214 (4.40%) Entra ID
8 163 (3.35%) GitHub
9 135 (2.78%) SaaS
10 110 (2.26%) Serverless
11 86 (1.77%) Power Automate
12 74 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
13 65 (1.34%) Dynamics 365
13 65 (1.34%) OneDrive
14 63 (1.30%) Azure Data Factory
15 62 (1.28%) Microsoft Copilot
15 62 (1.28%) PowerApps
16 60 (1.23%) AWS Lambda
17 57 (1.17%) Snowflake
18 55 (1.13%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 212 (4.36%) DNS
2 177 (3.64%) Firewall
3 153 (3.15%) VPN
4 124 (2.55%) DHCP
5 116 (2.39%) TCP/IP
6 111 (2.28%) WAN
7 94 (1.93%) LAN
8 87 (1.79%) Network Security
9 73 (1.50%) Wi-Fi
10 64 (1.32%) SAN
11 57 (1.17%) Wireless
12 55 (1.13%) VLAN
13 48 (0.99%) BGP
14 38 (0.78%) SD-WAN
15 34 (0.70%) VoIP
16 33 (0.68%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.60%) MPLS
17 29 (0.60%) OSPF
18 23 (0.47%) VXLAN
19 22 (0.45%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 306 (6.30%) Power BI
2 197 (4.05%) SQL Server
3 155 (3.19%) Data Warehouse
4 147 (3.02%) Relational Database
5 135 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
6 89 (1.83%) NoSQL
7 86 (1.77%) Metadata
8 80 (1.65%) MongoDB
9 79 (1.63%) Tableau
10 75 (1.54%) 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 36 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 29 (0.60%) Pentaho
16 27 (0.56%) Db2
16 27 (0.56%) Power Query
17 22 (0.45%) Delta Lake
17 22 (0.45%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 447 (9.20%) JIRA
2 298 (6.13%) Git
3 155 (3.19%) Jenkins
4 118 (2.43%) GitLab
5 64 (1.32%) Selenium
6 33 (0.68%) Cypress.io
7 31 (0.64%) Postman
8 26 (0.53%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.53%) Maven
9 24 (0.49%) Bitbucket
9 24 (0.49%) JUnit
9 24 (0.49%) REST Assured
10 22 (0.45%) Gradle
11 20 (0.41%) JMeter
12 18 (0.37%) WebDriver
13 15 (0.31%) Mockito
14 14 (0.29%) Gatling
14 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.27%) SonarQube
16 12 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,557 (52.60%) Social Skills
2 2,082 (42.83%) Analytical Skills
3 1,141 (23.47%) Finance
4 476 (9.79%) Public Sector
5 392 (8.06%) Banking
6 224 (4.61%) Organisational Skills
7 188 (3.87%) Retail
8 183 (3.76%) Documentation Skills
9 158 (3.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 157 (3.23%) Manufacturing
11 138 (2.84%) Influencing Skills
12 112 (2.30%) Front Office
13 110 (2.26%) Marketing
14 108 (2.22%) Legal
15 100 (2.06%) Presentation Skills
15 100 (2.06%) Telecoms
16 74 (1.52%) Investment Banking
17 59 (1.21%) Law
18 57 (1.17%) Financial Institution
19 55 (1.13%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 666 (13.70%) Analyst
2 549 (11.29%) Developer
3 436 (8.97%) Senior
4 378 (7.78%) Lead
5 319 (6.56%) Architect
6 224 (4.61%) Business Analyst
7 213 (4.38%) Consultant
8 210 (4.32%) Data Engineer
9 198 (4.07%) IT Support
10 183 (3.76%) Support Engineer
11 142 (2.92%) Project Manager
12 130 (2.67%) IT Engineer
13 116 (2.39%) Administrator
14 104 (2.14%) Data Analyst
15 100 (2.06%) Java Developer
16 96 (1.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 89 (1.83%) Solutions Architect
18 88 (1.81%) IT Support Engineer
18 88 (1.81%) Support Analyst
19 83 (1.71%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 287 (5.90%) REST
2 150 (3.09%) .NET
3 145 (2.98%) RESTful
4 135 (2.78%) React
5 127 (2.61%) SOAP
6 120 (2.47%) Kafka
7 118 (2.43%) Spring
8 110 (2.26%) JSON
9 104 (2.14%) CSS
10 101 (2.08%) XML
11 95 (1.95%) HTML
12 94 (1.93%) Middleware
13 83 (1.71%) Spring Boot
14 78 (1.60%) Node.js
15 76 (1.56%) Web Services
16 75 (1.54%) AngularJS
17 73 (1.50%) OAuth
18 63 (1.30%) PySpark
19 46 (0.95%) Playwright
20 45 (0.93%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 278 (5.72%) Onboarding
2 234 (4.81%) Product Ownership
3 222 (4.57%) Cloud Native
4 189 (3.89%) Self-Motivation
5 170 (3.50%) Data Centre
6 151 (3.11%) Management Information System
7 150 (3.09%) Enterprise Software
8 144 (2.96%) Distributed Systems
9 141 (2.90%) Analytical Mindset
10 124 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
11 120 (2.47%) Data Structures
12 109 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
13 89 (1.83%) Virtual Team
14 65 (1.34%) Driving Licence
15 62 (1.28%) AI Agents
16 61 (1.25%) CMDB
17 60 (1.23%) Algorithms
18 54 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 52 (1.07%) PKI
20 46 (0.95%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 677 (13.93%) Windows
2 258 (5.31%) Linux
3 174 (3.58%) Windows Server
4 127 (2.61%) Windows 10
5 94 (1.93%) Unix
6 84 (1.73%) Apple iOS
7 80 (1.65%) Mac OS
8 78 (1.60%) Android
9 37 (0.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.39%) 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%) Windows Server 2016
16 6 (0.12%) CentOS
16 6 (0.12%) Mac OS X
16 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Debian
17 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,343 (27.63%) Agile
2 1,038 (21.35%) Continuous Improvement
3 987 (20.30%) Stakeholder Management
4 808 (16.62%) CI/CD
5 770 (15.84%) DevOps
6 643 (13.23%) AI
7 527 (10.84%) Decision-Making
8 521 (10.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 517 (10.64%) Analytics
10 514 (10.57%) Migration
11 477 (9.81%) ITIL
12 449 (9.24%) Customer Service
13 396 (8.15%) Validation
14 393 (8.08%) Business Intelligence
15 390 (8.02%) Test Automation
16 368 (7.57%) Data Modelling
17 341 (7.02%) Scrum
18 333 (6.85%) Roadmaps
19 323 (6.64%) ITSM
20 321 (6.60%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 880 (18.10%) SQL
2 805 (16.56%) Python
3 366 (7.53%) Java
4 289 (5.95%) PowerShell
5 276 (5.68%) JavaScript
6 164 (3.37%) C#
7 139 (2.86%) Bash
8 107 (2.20%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.71%) 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%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
17 26 (0.53%) Apex Code
17 26 (0.53%) R
Qualifications
1 1,050 (21.60%) Security Cleared
2 711 (14.63%) SC Cleared
3 593 (12.20%) Degree
4 199 (4.09%) DV Cleared
5 187 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
6 149 (3.07%) Microsoft Certification
7 108 (2.22%) Cisco Certification
8 106 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
9 75 (1.54%) Azure Certification
10 73 (1.50%) CISSP
10 73 (1.50%) PMP
11 68 (1.40%) PMI Certification
12 64 (1.32%) A+ Certification
13 60 (1.23%) CCNA
14 52 (1.07%) Master's Degree
15 47 (0.97%) CISM
16 44 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
17 40 (0.82%) MCSE
18 37 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
19 36 (0.74%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (7.39%) Data Quality
2 313 (6.44%) QA
3 131 (2.69%) GDPR
4 113 (2.32%) Accessibility
5 107 (2.20%) SLA
6 86 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 79 (1.63%) PMO
8 70 (1.44%) NIST
9 54 (1.11%) GRC
10 29 (0.60%) WCAG
11 27 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 22 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.29%) GxP
14 13 (0.27%) COBIT
14 13 (0.27%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 12 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
15 12 (0.25%) NCSC
16 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
16 10 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 404 (8.31%) Active Directory
2 311 (6.40%) Docker
3 143 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 57 (1.17%) VMware ESXi
5 54 (1.11%) Hyper-V
6 49 (1.01%) VMware NSX
7 45 (0.93%) vSphere
8 32 (0.66%) 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%) FreeRADIUS
Systems Management
1 339 (6.97%) Kubernetes
2 287 (5.90%) Terraform
3 164 (3.37%) Ansible
4 139 (2.86%) Microsoft Intune
5 88 (1.81%) SCCM
6 81 (1.67%) Grafana
7 69 (1.42%) Prometheus
8 55 (1.13%) vCenter Server
9 31 (0.64%) SCOM
10 27 (0.56%) 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%) Istio
19 9 (0.19%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,068 (21.97%) Microsoft
2 342 (7.04%) Oracle
3 323 (6.64%) ServiceNow
4 300 (6.17%) SAP
5 205 (4.22%) VMware
6 146 (3.00%) Google
7 129 (2.65%) Salesforce
8 114 (2.35%) Cisco
9 109 (2.24%) Databricks
10 100 (2.06%) Splunk
11 74 (1.52%) Workday
12 69 (1.42%) Dynatrace
13 60 (1.23%) Apple
14 56 (1.15%) Adobe
15 46 (0.95%) Citrix
16 45 (0.93%) CyberArk
16 45 (0.93%) Dell
17 44 (0.91%) IBM
18 43 (0.88%) MuleSoft
19 42 (0.86%) Red Hat