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

6 months to
9 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 4,966 4,351 3,881
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.72% 15.77% 11.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.63% 17.36% 13.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,830 2,644 2,271
10th Percentile £230 £250 £260
25th Percentile £375 £379 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
90th Percentile £716 £700 £714
UK median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 428 273 208
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £15.99 £15.25 £15.00
Median hourly rate £20.00 £18.92 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +5.71% +16.57% -69.76%
75th Percentile £42.44 £38.00 £30.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.20 £61.87
UK median hourly rate £18.75 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.43% +24.80% -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 39,321 25,058 28,015
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.90% 90.80% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,195 15,905 17,612
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 £636 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £752
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,661 1,475 1,343
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.27 £14.84
25th Percentile £18.00 £17.83 £20.24
Median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.96% -41.51% +0.58%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £66.61
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.03 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.17% -41.51% +1.96%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -12 2,170 £525 +5.00% 4,455
South East -4 794 £475 +5.56% 1,413
North of England -11 725 £445 -6.32% 1,328
Midlands -6 568 £450 +1.12% 994
West Midlands -8 406 £450 -4.05% 615
North West -8 367 £445 -6.32% 730
South West -4 336 £480 +6.67% 760
Yorkshire -9 292 £450 -6.25% 441
East of England +1 264 £425 -15.00% 643
East Midlands -1 159 £475 +26.67% 381
North East -15 68 £375 -16.67% 182
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
1 225 (4.53%) SharePoint
2 218 (4.39%) Confluence
3 107 (2.15%) Microsoft Exchange
4 51 (1.03%) Apache Spark
5 41 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.66%) Apache
7 28 (0.56%) CMS
8 27 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
9 23 (0.46%) SAS
10 13 (0.26%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.26%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.20%) CICS
12 9 (0.18%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.14%) IIS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.10%) Appian
15 5 (0.10%) Camunda
15 5 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
Applications
1 286 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 240 (4.83%) Microsoft Office
3 106 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 65 (1.31%) Microsoft Project
5 53 (1.07%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.32%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.30%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 13 (0.26%) Revit
11 9 (0.18%) Sketch
11 9 (0.18%) Trello
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.12%) Windchill
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
14 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
15 4 (0.081%) Adobe XD
16 3 (0.060%) DaVinci Resolve
16 3 (0.060%) NUKE
16 3 (0.060%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 121 (2.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
3 31 (0.62%) 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 13 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
9 13 (0.26%) SAP SD
10 11 (0.22%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.20%) Aladdin
11 10 (0.20%) Finacle
12 8 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
12 8 (0.16%) Shopify
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
14 6 (0.12%) Maximo
14 6 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,002 (20.18%) Azure
2 719 (14.48%) AWS
3 469 (9.44%) Microsoft 365
4 412 (8.30%) Power Platform
5 281 (5.66%) GCP
6 249 (5.01%) Azure DevOps
7 210 (4.23%) Entra ID
8 162 (3.26%) GitHub
9 132 (2.66%) SaaS
10 111 (2.24%) Serverless
11 97 (1.95%) Power Automate
12 79 (1.59%) Microsoft Copilot
13 73 (1.47%) Dynamics 365
13 73 (1.47%) OneDrive
14 70 (1.41%) PowerApps
15 66 (1.33%) GitHub Actions
16 63 (1.27%) Azure Data Factory
17 61 (1.23%) Snowflake
18 57 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
19 51 (1.03%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 208 (4.19%) DNS
2 176 (3.54%) Firewall
3 161 (3.24%) VPN
4 125 (2.52%) DHCP
5 117 (2.36%) TCP/IP
6 106 (2.13%) WAN
7 90 (1.81%) LAN
7 90 (1.81%) Network Security
8 72 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
9 60 (1.21%) SAN
10 58 (1.17%) Wireless
11 50 (1.01%) VLAN
12 44 (0.89%) BGP
13 35 (0.70%) VoIP
14 34 (0.68%) SD-WAN
15 32 (0.64%) Structured Cabling
16 26 (0.52%) MPLS
17 25 (0.50%) OSPF
18 22 (0.44%) SSL
19 19 (0.38%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 313 (6.30%) Power BI
2 198 (3.99%) SQL Server
3 161 (3.24%) Data Warehouse
4 159 (3.20%) Relational Database
5 139 (2.80%) PostgreSQL
6 92 (1.85%) Metadata
7 80 (1.61%) Tableau
8 76 (1.53%) NoSQL
9 75 (1.51%) MongoDB
10 71 (1.43%) Data Lake
11 51 (1.03%) Oracle Database
12 50 (1.01%) MySQL
13 46 (0.93%) Big Data
14 34 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 32 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
16 27 (0.54%) Db2
17 26 (0.52%) Power Query
18 24 (0.48%) Delta Lake
19 22 (0.44%) BigQuery
19 22 (0.44%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 451 (9.08%) JIRA
2 313 (6.30%) Git
3 158 (3.18%) Jenkins
4 118 (2.38%) GitLab
5 70 (1.41%) Selenium
6 37 (0.75%) Postman
7 35 (0.70%) Cypress.io
8 32 (0.64%) JUnit
9 31 (0.62%) Maven
10 28 (0.56%) Cucumber
11 25 (0.50%) Bitbucket
11 25 (0.50%) REST Assured
12 24 (0.48%) Gradle
13 21 (0.42%) JMeter
13 21 (0.42%) SonarQube
14 18 (0.36%) Mockito
15 16 (0.32%) Gatling
15 16 (0.32%) WebDriver
16 13 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
16 13 (0.26%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,660 (53.56%) Social Skills
2 2,160 (43.50%) Analytical Skills
3 1,163 (23.42%) Finance
4 497 (10.01%) Public Sector
5 412 (8.30%) Banking
6 241 (4.85%) Organisational Skills
7 186 (3.75%) Manufacturing
8 181 (3.64%) Documentation Skills
9 179 (3.60%) Retail
10 159 (3.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 159 (3.20%) Influencing Skills
11 115 (2.32%) Front Office
12 113 (2.28%) Legal
13 109 (2.19%) Presentation Skills
14 104 (2.09%) Telecoms
15 103 (2.07%) Marketing
16 82 (1.65%) Investment Banking
17 63 (1.27%) Law
18 57 (1.15%) Back Office
19 56 (1.13%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 679 (13.67%) Analyst
2 567 (11.42%) Developer
3 448 (9.02%) Senior
4 381 (7.67%) Lead
5 311 (6.26%) Architect
6 228 (4.59%) Business Analyst
7 219 (4.41%) Consultant
8 210 (4.23%) IT Support
9 196 (3.95%) Support Engineer
10 187 (3.77%) Data Engineer
11 136 (2.74%) IT Engineer
12 132 (2.66%) Project Manager
13 121 (2.44%) Administrator
14 106 (2.13%) Data Analyst
15 99 (1.99%) Java Developer
16 98 (1.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 95 (1.91%) IT Support Engineer
18 92 (1.85%) Solutions Architect
19 91 (1.83%) DevOps Engineer
20 86 (1.73%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 316 (6.36%) REST
2 295 (5.94%) Terraform
3 170 (3.42%) .NET
4 152 (3.06%) RESTful
5 145 (2.92%) SOAP
6 139 (2.80%) React
7 119 (2.40%) Kafka
8 112 (2.26%) Spring
9 111 (2.24%) JSON
10 108 (2.17%) CSS
10 108 (2.17%) XML
11 107 (2.15%) HTML
12 99 (1.99%) Middleware
13 89 (1.79%) Spring Boot
13 89 (1.79%) Web Services
14 82 (1.65%) AngularJS
15 76 (1.53%) OAuth
16 75 (1.51%) Node.js
17 62 (1.25%) PySpark
18 50 (1.01%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 291 (5.86%) Onboarding
2 255 (5.13%) Product Ownership
3 252 (5.07%) Cloud Native
4 198 (3.99%) Self-Motivation
5 173 (3.48%) Management Information System
6 171 (3.44%) Enterprise Software
7 155 (3.12%) Data Centre
8 143 (2.88%) Distributed Systems
9 129 (2.60%) Data Structures
10 124 (2.50%) Analytical Mindset
11 120 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
12 111 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
13 86 (1.73%) Virtual Team
14 69 (1.39%) AI Agents
14 69 (1.39%) Driving Licence
15 67 (1.35%) CMDB
16 55 (1.11%) Algorithms
16 55 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 53 (1.07%) PKI
18 50 (1.01%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 682 (13.73%) Windows
2 269 (5.42%) Linux
3 192 (3.87%) Windows Server
4 128 (2.58%) Windows 10
5 94 (1.89%) Unix
6 81 (1.63%) Apple iOS
7 78 (1.57%) Mac OS
8 71 (1.43%) Android
9 43 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.32%) VMS
13 12 (0.24%) zOS
14 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.16%) CentOS
15 8 (0.16%) Solaris
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
18 4 (0.081%) AIX
18 4 (0.081%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,377 (27.73%) Agile
2 1,121 (22.57%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,116 (22.47%) Continuous Improvement
4 820 (16.51%) CI/CD
5 770 (15.51%) DevOps
6 681 (13.71%) AI
7 572 (11.52%) Decision-Making
8 557 (11.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 520 (10.47%) Migration
10 512 (10.31%) Analytics
11 483 (9.73%) ITIL
12 479 (9.65%) Customer Service
13 398 (8.01%) Test Automation
14 395 (7.95%) Validation
15 380 (7.65%) Business Intelligence
16 362 (7.29%) Data Modelling
17 352 (7.09%) Scrum
18 345 (6.95%) Roadmaps
19 343 (6.91%) ITSM
20 323 (6.50%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 895 (18.02%) SQL
2 801 (16.13%) Python
3 366 (7.37%) Java
4 303 (6.10%) PowerShell
5 290 (5.84%) JavaScript
6 188 (3.79%) C#
7 147 (2.96%) Bash
8 117 (2.36%) TypeScript
9 88 (1.77%) PL/SQL
10 51 (1.03%) T-SQL
11 50 (1.01%) C++
12 38 (0.77%) Go
13 37 (0.75%) Shell Script
14 31 (0.62%) Bicep
15 30 (0.60%) Scala
16 29 (0.58%) Kotlin
17 27 (0.54%) R
18 26 (0.52%) Apex Code
19 25 (0.50%) C
20 24 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,086 (21.87%) Security Cleared
2 750 (15.10%) SC Cleared
3 606 (12.20%) Degree
4 206 (4.15%) DV Cleared
5 185 (3.73%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.90%) Microsoft Certification
7 123 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
8 89 (1.79%) Cisco Certification
9 77 (1.55%) Azure Certification
10 76 (1.53%) PMP
11 75 (1.51%) PMI Certification
12 68 (1.37%) CISSP
13 59 (1.19%) A+ Certification
14 50 (1.01%) CCNA
14 50 (1.01%) Master's Degree
15 43 (0.87%) AWS Certification
16 42 (0.85%) DBS Check
17 40 (0.81%) Network+ Certification
18 39 (0.79%) CISM
19 38 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (7.57%) Data Quality
2 348 (7.01%) QA
3 126 (2.54%) GDPR
4 115 (2.32%) SLA
5 112 (2.26%) Accessibility
6 89 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 87 (1.75%) PMO
8 72 (1.45%) NIST
9 62 (1.25%) GRC
10 30 (0.60%) WCAG
11 24 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.30%) GxP
14 14 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
14 14 (0.28%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.26%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 13 (0.26%) COBIT
16 11 (0.22%) HIPAA
16 11 (0.22%) IFRS
17 10 (0.20%) NCSC
System Software
1 401 (8.07%) Active Directory
2 302 (6.08%) Docker
3 150 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.23%) Hyper-V
4 61 (1.23%) VMware ESXi
5 53 (1.07%) VMware NSX
6 47 (0.95%) vSphere
7 34 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
8 28 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (0.54%) IAG
9 27 (0.54%) vCloud
10 16 (0.32%) Firmware
11 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
12 6 (0.12%) NFS
12 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
14 3 (0.060%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 3 (0.060%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.060%) Squid
14 3 (0.060%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 338 (6.81%) Kubernetes
2 165 (3.32%) Ansible
3 128 (2.58%) Microsoft Intune
4 91 (1.83%) Grafana
5 90 (1.81%) SCCM
6 70 (1.41%) Prometheus
7 55 (1.11%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.75%) SCOM
9 25 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.44%) Control-M
10 22 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
10 22 (0.44%) WSUS
11 14 (0.28%) Argo
11 14 (0.28%) FortiGate
12 11 (0.22%) Istio
12 11 (0.22%) Kibana
13 10 (0.20%) Nessus
13 10 (0.20%) Puppet
14 9 (0.18%) Podman
14 9 (0.18%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,142 (23.00%) Microsoft
2 353 (7.11%) Oracle
3 326 (6.56%) ServiceNow
4 307 (6.18%) SAP
5 200 (4.03%) VMware
6 135 (2.72%) Google
7 134 (2.70%) Salesforce
8 120 (2.42%) Databricks
9 108 (2.17%) Cisco
10 104 (2.09%) Splunk
11 74 (1.49%) Workday
12 67 (1.35%) Dynatrace
13 61 (1.23%) Apple
14 54 (1.09%) Adobe
15 48 (0.97%) IBM
16 45 (0.91%) CyberArk
17 43 (0.87%) Red Hat
18 41 (0.83%) MuleSoft
19 37 (0.75%) Dell
20 35 (0.70%) Citrix