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 10 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 6 8
Rank change year-on-year -5 +2 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,073 4,297 4,090
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.97% 15.32% 12.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.92% 16.85% 14.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,842 2,610 2,357
10th Percentile £260 £250 £265
25th Percentile £394 £379 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £713 £700 £710
UK median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 512 276 192
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.51
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £19.33 £18.85 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +2.55% +16.14% -69.76%
75th Percentile £39.50 £33.91 £31.89
90th Percentile £72.53 £63.58 £63.63
UK median hourly rate £18.25 £19.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.01% +20.92% -69.42%

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 39,257 25,497 27,959
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.86% 90.90% 86.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,690 16,157 17,059
10th Percentile £325 £293 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,996 1,590 1,150
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.54 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.33 £17.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -4.49%
75th Percentile £67.47 £45.00 £67.38
90th Percentile £78.88 £67.28 £74.88
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.16
% change year-on-year +49.11% -37.38% -8.38%

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 10 October 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 10 October 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 10 October 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 2,165 £525 +5.00% 5,653
South East -3 822 £475 +5.56% 1,700
North of England -8 744 £450 -5.26% 1,646
Midlands -5 615 £450 +0.67% 1,119
West Midlands -8 443 £450 -5.26% 674
North West -8 371 £450 -1.32% 824
South West -6 322 £505 +7.73% 811
East of England 0 297 £450 -10.89% 845
Yorkshire -6 293 £475 -3.80% 570
East Midlands +2 168 £425 +13.33% 444
North East -8 82 £375 -16.67% 268
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
1 241 (4.75%) SharePoint
2 230 (4.53%) Confluence
3 91 (1.79%) Microsoft Exchange
4 53 (1.04%) Apache Spark
5 45 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
6 42 (0.83%) Apache
7 27 (0.53%) CMS
8 21 (0.41%) SAS
9 18 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.32%) WebLogic
10 16 (0.32%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.20%) CICS
11 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.14%) IIS
13 7 (0.14%) WordPress
14 6 (0.12%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.099%) Appian
15 5 (0.099%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.099%) WebLogic Portal
Applications
1 312 (6.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 241 (4.75%) Microsoft Office
3 123 (2.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.26%) Microsoft Project
5 50 (0.99%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.35%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 15 (0.30%) AutoCAD
8 15 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.30%) Revit
9 10 (0.20%) Navisworks
9 10 (0.20%) Windchill
10 9 (0.18%) Sketch
11 8 (0.16%) Trello
12 6 (0.12%) CPLEX
13 4 (0.079%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.059%) Acrobat
14 3 (0.059%) DaVinci Resolve
14 3 (0.059%) NUKE
15 2 (0.039%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 108 (2.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.55%) NetSuite
3 28 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
4 25 (0.49%) Workday HCM
5 24 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
6 17 (0.34%) SAP GRC
7 14 (0.28%) Teamcenter
8 13 (0.26%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
9 11 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
9 11 (0.22%) SAP SD
10 10 (0.20%) iTrent
10 10 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
10 10 (0.20%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.18%) Finacle
11 9 (0.18%) SAP FI
11 9 (0.18%) SAP PSCD
12 8 (0.16%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,010 (19.91%) Azure
2 687 (13.54%) AWS
3 480 (9.46%) Microsoft 365
4 416 (8.20%) Power Platform
5 291 (5.74%) GCP
6 249 (4.91%) Azure DevOps
7 214 (4.22%) Entra ID
8 186 (3.67%) GitHub
9 117 (2.31%) Serverless
10 116 (2.29%) SaaS
11 112 (2.21%) Power Automate
12 93 (1.83%) Microsoft Copilot
13 86 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
13 86 (1.70%) PowerApps
14 77 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
15 72 (1.42%) OneDrive
16 70 (1.38%) Snowflake
17 59 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
18 55 (1.08%) OpenShift
19 51 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 201 (3.96%) DNS
2 176 (3.47%) Firewall
3 150 (2.96%) VPN
4 115 (2.27%) DHCP
5 112 (2.21%) TCP/IP
6 103 (2.03%) Network Security
7 99 (1.95%) WAN
8 85 (1.68%) LAN
9 72 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.20%) Wireless
11 47 (0.93%) VLAN
12 45 (0.89%) BGP
12 45 (0.89%) VoIP
13 43 (0.85%) SAN
14 29 (0.57%) Structured Cabling
15 27 (0.53%) SD-WAN
16 25 (0.49%) MPLS
17 22 (0.43%) Broadband
17 22 (0.43%) SSL
18 21 (0.41%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 303 (5.97%) Power BI
2 189 (3.73%) SQL Server
3 157 (3.09%) Relational Database
4 152 (3.00%) Data Warehouse
5 132 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
6 90 (1.77%) Metadata
7 87 (1.71%) MongoDB
8 81 (1.60%) NoSQL
9 72 (1.42%) Tableau
10 66 (1.30%) Data Lake
11 55 (1.08%) MySQL
11 55 (1.08%) Oracle Database
12 37 (0.73%) Big Data
13 35 (0.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 28 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
15 27 (0.53%) Delta Lake
16 25 (0.49%) BigQuery
16 25 (0.49%) Db2
17 23 (0.45%) DynamoDB
17 23 (0.45%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 453 (8.93%) JIRA
2 344 (6.78%) Git
3 188 (3.71%) Jenkins
4 131 (2.58%) GitLab
5 74 (1.46%) Selenium
6 45 (0.89%) Cucumber
7 41 (0.81%) Maven
8 39 (0.77%) JUnit
9 36 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 36 (0.71%) Postman
10 32 (0.63%) Gradle
11 30 (0.59%) Bitbucket
12 28 (0.55%) SonarQube
13 25 (0.49%) REST Assured
14 24 (0.47%) JMeter
15 22 (0.43%) Mockito
16 20 (0.39%) Gatling
17 17 (0.34%) WebDriver
18 15 (0.30%) Visual Studio
19 14 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,706 (53.34%) Social Skills
2 2,216 (43.68%) Analytical Skills
3 1,186 (23.38%) Finance
4 521 (10.27%) Public Sector
5 427 (8.42%) Banking
6 289 (5.70%) Organisational Skills
7 264 (5.20%) Manufacturing
8 175 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
9 167 (3.29%) Influencing Skills
10 165 (3.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 157 (3.09%) Retail
12 121 (2.39%) Legal
13 113 (2.23%) Marketing
14 110 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
14 110 (2.17%) Telecoms
15 104 (2.05%) Front Office
16 89 (1.75%) Investment Banking
17 77 (1.52%) Aerospace
18 62 (1.22%) Military
19 58 (1.14%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 672 (13.25%) Analyst
2 588 (11.59%) Developer
3 491 (9.68%) Senior
4 383 (7.55%) Lead
5 275 (5.42%) Architect
6 236 (4.65%) Business Analyst
7 233 (4.59%) Consultant
8 222 (4.38%) IT Support
9 198 (3.90%) Support Engineer
10 175 (3.45%) Data Engineer
11 153 (3.02%) Administrator
12 149 (2.94%) Project Manager
13 129 (2.54%) IT Engineer
14 103 (2.03%) Data Analyst
15 100 (1.97%) IT Support Engineer
16 97 (1.91%) DevOps Engineer
16 97 (1.91%) Java Developer
17 92 (1.81%) Network Engineer
18 90 (1.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 84 (1.66%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 344 (6.78%) REST
2 308 (6.07%) Terraform
3 179 (3.53%) .NET
4 161 (3.17%) RESTful
5 146 (2.88%) React
6 145 (2.86%) SOAP
7 126 (2.48%) Kafka
8 117 (2.31%) HTML
9 115 (2.27%) JSON
10 113 (2.23%) CSS
11 112 (2.21%) XML
12 110 (2.17%) Spring
13 102 (2.01%) Middleware
13 102 (2.01%) Web Services
14 91 (1.79%) Spring Boot
15 85 (1.68%) Node.js
16 80 (1.58%) AngularJS
17 77 (1.52%) OAuth
18 60 (1.18%) PySpark
19 55 (1.08%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 306 (6.03%) Onboarding
2 269 (5.30%) Cloud Native
3 239 (4.71%) Product Ownership
4 208 (4.10%) Management Information System
5 200 (3.94%) Self-Motivation
6 193 (3.80%) Enterprise Software
7 148 (2.92%) Data Centre
8 127 (2.50%) Data Structures
9 126 (2.48%) Distributed Systems
10 110 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
10 110 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
11 105 (2.07%) Analytical Mindset
12 85 (1.68%) Virtual Team
13 77 (1.52%) Driving Licence
14 74 (1.46%) AI Agents
15 64 (1.26%) CMDB
16 56 (1.10%) PKI
17 54 (1.06%) Algorithms
17 54 (1.06%) NHS
18 52 (1.03%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 673 (13.27%) Windows
2 271 (5.34%) Linux
3 197 (3.88%) Windows Server
4 125 (2.46%) Windows 10
5 96 (1.89%) Unix
6 79 (1.56%) Apple iOS
7 78 (1.54%) Mac OS
8 69 (1.36%) Android
9 48 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.35%) VMS
11 18 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 13 (0.26%) Solaris
13 12 (0.24%) zOS
14 8 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
15 7 (0.14%) CentOS
16 6 (0.12%) AIX
17 5 (0.099%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
18 4 (0.079%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,403 (27.66%) Agile
2 1,299 (25.61%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,185 (23.36%) Continuous Improvement
4 874 (17.23%) CI/CD
5 781 (15.40%) DevOps
6 705 (13.90%) AI
7 578 (11.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 576 (11.35%) Decision-Making
9 522 (10.29%) Migration
10 477 (9.40%) Customer Service
11 475 (9.36%) Analytics
12 449 (8.85%) ITIL
13 439 (8.65%) Test Automation
14 412 (8.12%) Validation
15 359 (7.08%) Scrum
16 350 (6.90%) Business Intelligence
16 350 (6.90%) Data Modelling
17 346 (6.82%) Roadmaps
17 346 (6.82%) Technical Leadership
18 340 (6.70%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 883 (17.41%) SQL
2 757 (14.92%) Python
3 363 (7.16%) Java
4 313 (6.17%) JavaScript
5 304 (5.99%) PowerShell
6 205 (4.04%) C#
7 149 (2.94%) Bash
8 138 (2.72%) TypeScript
9 78 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 47 (0.93%) Shell Script
10 47 (0.93%) T-SQL
11 39 (0.77%) Go
12 38 (0.75%) C++
13 30 (0.59%) Scala
14 29 (0.57%) Bicep
15 28 (0.55%) Kotlin
16 26 (0.51%) Groovy
17 23 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 19 (0.37%) Apex Code
18 19 (0.37%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,130 (22.27%) Security Cleared
2 799 (15.75%) SC Cleared
3 621 (12.24%) Degree
4 228 (4.49%) DV Cleared
5 188 (3.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 147 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
7 126 (2.48%) Microsoft Certification
8 80 (1.58%) PMI Certification
9 79 (1.56%) Cisco Certification
10 75 (1.48%) Azure Certification
10 75 (1.48%) PMP
11 72 (1.42%) CISSP
12 54 (1.06%) DBS Check
13 51 (1.01%) Master's Degree
14 49 (0.97%) AWS Certification
15 43 (0.85%) A+ Certification
15 43 (0.85%) CISM
16 39 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
17 37 (0.73%) CCNA
18 35 (0.69%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (7.51%) Data Quality
2 353 (6.96%) QA
3 123 (2.42%) GDPR
4 121 (2.39%) Accessibility
5 110 (2.17%) SLA
6 93 (1.83%) PMO
7 79 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 58 (1.14%) NIST
9 53 (1.04%) GRC
10 32 (0.63%) WCAG
11 20 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
11 20 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
12 16 (0.32%) NCSC
12 16 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 15 (0.30%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.26%) GxP
15 12 (0.24%) ISO 9001
16 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 11 (0.22%) IFRS
17 9 (0.18%) COBIT
System Software
1 393 (7.75%) Active Directory
2 315 (6.21%) Docker
3 152 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
5 58 (1.14%) Hyper-V
6 53 (1.04%) vSphere
7 51 (1.01%) VMware NSX
8 36 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
9 25 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
10 24 (0.47%) vCloud
11 23 (0.45%) IAG
12 16 (0.32%) Firmware
13 10 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 6 (0.12%) XenApp
14 6 (0.12%) XenDesktop
15 5 (0.099%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.099%) NFS
15 5 (0.099%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.079%) RACF
Systems Management
1 353 (6.96%) Kubernetes
2 160 (3.15%) Ansible
3 130 (2.56%) Microsoft Intune
4 92 (1.81%) Grafana
5 84 (1.66%) SCCM
6 73 (1.44%) Prometheus
7 44 (0.87%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.73%) SCOM
9 25 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
10 23 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
11 20 (0.39%) Control-M
12 16 (0.32%) WSUS
13 15 (0.30%) FortiGate
14 13 (0.26%) Nessus
15 12 (0.24%) VxRail
16 11 (0.22%) Istio
17 10 (0.20%) Kibana
18 9 (0.18%) NetBackup
19 8 (0.16%) Puppet
19 8 (0.16%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,251 (24.66%) Microsoft
2 337 (6.64%) Oracle
3 309 (6.09%) SAP
4 301 (5.93%) ServiceNow
5 195 (3.84%) VMware
6 150 (2.96%) Google
7 127 (2.50%) Databricks
8 120 (2.37%) Cisco
9 119 (2.35%) Salesforce
10 105 (2.07%) Splunk
11 67 (1.32%) Workday
12 65 (1.28%) Dynatrace
13 59 (1.16%) Apple
14 57 (1.12%) IBM
15 52 (1.03%) Adobe
16 47 (0.93%) Red Hat
17 42 (0.83%) CyberArk
18 39 (0.77%) Palo Alto
19 34 (0.67%) MuleSoft
20 30 (0.59%) F5