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

6 months to
26 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 4,835 4,403 3,834
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.58% 15.98% 11.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.48% 17.60% 13.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,757 2,685 2,299
10th Percentile £237 £255 £263
25th Percentile £375 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.52% -1.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £615
90th Percentile £715 £703 £725
UK median daily rate £495 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +1.54% -2.50% -3.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 411 284 238
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.55
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.22 £14.50
Median hourly rate £20.52 £19.13 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +7.29% +17.84% -70.49%
75th Percentile £43.20 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £64.63 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £19.96 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.79% +22.95% -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 38,747 25,016 28,488
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.82% 90.80% 85.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,944 15,923 18,325
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,579 1,477 1,517
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.23 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.80 £17.87 £18.13
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £69.79 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.06 £25.15 £40.50
% change year-on-year +63.26% -37.90% -4.71%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 2,113 £525 +5.00% 1,229
South East -4 783 £478 +0.63% 685
North of England -12 709 £444 -6.53% 689
Midlands -7 531 £450 +2.39% 592
West Midlands -9 377 £450 -2.70% 354
North West -12 356 £445 -6.32% 329
South West -2 334 £495 +10.00% 540
Yorkshire -10 291 £450 -5.26% 259
East of England +1 259 £450 -10.00% 338
East Midlands -1 151 £463 +23.33% 240
North East -16 65 £375 -16.67% 117
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
1 223 (4.61%) SharePoint
2 211 (4.36%) Confluence
3 112 (2.32%) Microsoft Exchange
4 50 (1.03%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
6 31 (0.64%) Apache
7 28 (0.58%) Oracle Workflow
8 27 (0.56%) CMS
9 23 (0.48%) SAS
10 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 10 (0.21%) CICS
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.12%) IIS
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.10%) Mule
16 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 279 (5.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 234 (4.84%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (2.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 61 (1.26%) Microsoft Project
5 58 (1.20%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.31%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 13 (0.27%) Revit
11 9 (0.19%) Sketch
11 9 (0.19%) Trello
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.12%) Windchill
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
14 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
15 4 (0.083%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.083%) Photoshop
16 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.062%) Maya
Business Applications
1 116 (2.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
5 23 (0.48%) NetSuite
6 19 (0.39%) Workday HCM
7 16 (0.33%) SAP GRC
8 14 (0.29%) iTrent
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.27%) Aladdin
10 12 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
12 9 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
12 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
13 8 (0.17%) Loan IQ
14 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
14 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
14 7 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
15 6 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 999 (20.66%) Azure
2 703 (14.54%) AWS
3 445 (9.20%) Microsoft 365
4 397 (8.21%) Power Platform
5 282 (5.83%) GCP
6 249 (5.15%) Azure DevOps
7 208 (4.30%) Entra ID
8 162 (3.35%) GitHub
9 130 (2.69%) SaaS
10 112 (2.32%) Serverless
11 92 (1.90%) Power Automate
12 70 (1.45%) Dynamics 365
12 70 (1.45%) GitHub Actions
13 69 (1.43%) OneDrive
14 68 (1.41%) Microsoft Copilot
15 65 (1.34%) PowerApps
16 61 (1.26%) Azure Data Factory
17 59 (1.22%) Snowflake
18 58 (1.20%) AWS Lambda
19 54 (1.12%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 208 (4.30%) DNS
2 175 (3.62%) Firewall
3 159 (3.29%) VPN
4 123 (2.54%) DHCP
5 116 (2.40%) TCP/IP
6 111 (2.30%) WAN
7 92 (1.90%) LAN
8 87 (1.80%) Network Security
9 70 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
10 60 (1.24%) SAN
11 56 (1.16%) Wireless
12 51 (1.05%) VLAN
13 47 (0.97%) BGP
14 37 (0.77%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.74%) VoIP
16 32 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.60%) MPLS
18 28 (0.58%) OSPF
19 22 (0.46%) 5G
20 21 (0.43%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 305 (6.31%) Power BI
2 198 (4.10%) SQL Server
3 157 (3.25%) Data Warehouse
4 151 (3.12%) Relational Database
5 130 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
6 89 (1.84%) Metadata
7 85 (1.76%) NoSQL
8 81 (1.68%) Tableau
9 77 (1.59%) MongoDB
10 74 (1.53%) Data Lake
11 48 (0.99%) Big Data
11 48 (0.99%) Oracle Database
12 47 (0.97%) MySQL
13 33 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 32 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
15 28 (0.58%) Db2
16 25 (0.52%) Power Query
17 23 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
17 23 (0.48%) BigQuery
18 22 (0.46%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 443 (9.16%) JIRA
2 295 (6.10%) Git
3 147 (3.04%) Jenkins
4 118 (2.44%) GitLab
5 68 (1.41%) Selenium
6 36 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 34 (0.70%) Postman
8 26 (0.54%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.52%) Maven
9 25 (0.52%) REST Assured
10 24 (0.50%) Cucumber
11 22 (0.46%) Gradle
11 22 (0.46%) JUnit
12 20 (0.41%) JMeter
13 17 (0.35%) WebDriver
14 14 (0.29%) Gatling
14 14 (0.29%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.27%) Mockito
15 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 2,569 (53.13%) Social Skills
2 2,085 (43.12%) Analytical Skills
3 1,138 (23.54%) Finance
4 470 (9.72%) Public Sector
5 404 (8.36%) Banking
6 229 (4.74%) Organisational Skills
7 183 (3.78%) Retail
8 179 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
9 166 (3.43%) Manufacturing
10 157 (3.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 145 (3.00%) Influencing Skills
12 114 (2.36%) Front Office
13 108 (2.23%) Legal
14 105 (2.17%) Telecoms
15 104 (2.15%) Marketing
16 101 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
17 79 (1.63%) Investment Banking
18 61 (1.26%) Law
19 55 (1.14%) Financial Institution
20 53 (1.10%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 658 (13.61%) Analyst
2 551 (11.40%) Developer
3 437 (9.04%) Senior
4 377 (7.80%) Lead
5 304 (6.29%) Architect
6 218 (4.51%) Business Analyst
7 213 (4.41%) Consultant
8 196 (4.05%) IT Support
9 192 (3.97%) Support Engineer
10 187 (3.87%) Data Engineer
11 134 (2.77%) Project Manager
12 131 (2.71%) IT Engineer
13 118 (2.44%) Administrator
14 103 (2.13%) Data Analyst
15 95 (1.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 94 (1.94%) Java Developer
17 89 (1.84%) IT Support Engineer
18 88 (1.82%) Solutions Architect
19 87 (1.80%) DevOps Engineer
19 87 (1.80%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 298 (6.16%) REST
2 288 (5.96%) Terraform
3 159 (3.29%) .NET
4 147 (3.04%) RESTful
5 137 (2.83%) React
6 132 (2.73%) SOAP
7 116 (2.40%) Kafka
8 112 (2.32%) JSON
8 112 (2.32%) Spring
9 107 (2.21%) CSS
10 105 (2.17%) XML
11 103 (2.13%) HTML
12 94 (1.94%) Middleware
13 82 (1.70%) Spring Boot
14 81 (1.68%) Web Services
15 78 (1.61%) Node.js
16 77 (1.59%) AngularJS
16 77 (1.59%) OAuth
17 62 (1.28%) PySpark
18 48 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 284 (5.87%) Onboarding
2 241 (4.98%) Product Ownership
3 239 (4.94%) Cloud Native
4 190 (3.93%) Self-Motivation
5 161 (3.33%) Data Centre
6 156 (3.23%) Enterprise Software
7 154 (3.19%) Management Information System
8 146 (3.02%) Distributed Systems
9 131 (2.71%) Analytical Mindset
10 125 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
11 121 (2.50%) Data Structures
12 110 (2.28%) Data Protection Act
13 86 (1.78%) Virtual Team
14 67 (1.39%) Driving Licence
15 66 (1.37%) AI Agents
15 66 (1.37%) CMDB
16 53 (1.10%) Algorithms
16 53 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 53 (1.10%) PKI
17 50 (1.03%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 671 (13.88%) Windows
2 259 (5.36%) Linux
3 182 (3.76%) Windows Server
4 133 (2.75%) Windows 10
5 94 (1.94%) Unix
6 79 (1.63%) Apple iOS
6 79 (1.63%) Mac OS
7 71 (1.47%) Android
8 39 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
10 18 (0.37%) VMS
11 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.25%) zOS
13 8 (0.17%) Solaris
13 8 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 7 (0.14%) CentOS
14 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.083%) AIX
16 4 (0.083%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,333 (27.57%) Agile
2 1,058 (21.88%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,032 (21.34%) Stakeholder Management
4 811 (16.77%) CI/CD
5 768 (15.88%) DevOps
6 662 (13.69%) AI
7 538 (11.13%) Decision-Making
8 529 (10.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 511 (10.57%) Migration
10 505 (10.44%) Analytics
11 482 (9.97%) ITIL
12 458 (9.47%) Customer Service
13 389 (8.05%) Validation
14 387 (8.00%) Test Automation
15 376 (7.78%) Business Intelligence
16 358 (7.40%) Data Modelling
17 342 (7.07%) Scrum
18 336 (6.95%) Roadmaps
19 329 (6.80%) ITSM
20 319 (6.60%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 873 (18.06%) SQL
2 794 (16.42%) Python
3 362 (7.49%) Java
4 293 (6.06%) PowerShell
5 280 (5.79%) JavaScript
6 172 (3.56%) C#
7 144 (2.98%) Bash
8 110 (2.28%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.72%) PL/SQL
10 51 (1.05%) C++
11 46 (0.95%) T-SQL
12 36 (0.74%) Shell Script
13 35 (0.72%) Bicep
13 35 (0.72%) Go
14 29 (0.60%) Scala
15 28 (0.58%) C
16 27 (0.56%) Apex Code
16 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
16 27 (0.56%) R
17 24 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,039 (21.49%) Security Cleared
2 704 (14.56%) SC Cleared
3 591 (12.22%) Degree
4 202 (4.18%) DV Cleared
5 185 (3.83%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.98%) Microsoft Certification
7 108 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
8 95 (1.96%) Cisco Certification
9 73 (1.51%) Azure Certification
10 71 (1.47%) PMP
11 67 (1.39%) CISSP
11 67 (1.39%) PMI Certification
12 61 (1.26%) A+ Certification
13 53 (1.10%) CCNA
14 51 (1.05%) Master's Degree
15 42 (0.87%) Network+ Certification
16 41 (0.85%) CISM
17 39 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
18 37 (0.77%) AWS Certification
18 37 (0.77%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (7.43%) Data Quality
2 330 (6.83%) QA
3 128 (2.65%) GDPR
4 112 (2.32%) Accessibility
4 112 (2.32%) SLA
5 88 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 86 (1.78%) PMO
7 72 (1.49%) NIST
8 60 (1.24%) GRC
9 30 (0.62%) WCAG
10 25 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 22 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
12 14 (0.29%) GxP
13 13 (0.27%) COBIT
13 13 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
13 13 (0.27%) PCI DSS
14 12 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 11 (0.23%) IFRS
15 11 (0.23%) NCSC
16 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 403 (8.34%) Active Directory
2 299 (6.18%) Docker
3 148 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 58 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
5 57 (1.18%) Hyper-V
6 50 (1.03%) VMware NSX
7 46 (0.95%) vSphere
8 35 (0.72%) Virtual Desktop
9 28 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
10 26 (0.54%) vCloud
11 24 (0.50%) IAG
12 18 (0.37%) Firmware
13 8 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.12%) NFS
16 5 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
17 3 (0.062%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 3 (0.062%) Squid
18 2 (0.041%) UAG
Systems Management
1 334 (6.91%) Kubernetes
2 161 (3.33%) Ansible
3 129 (2.67%) Microsoft Intune
4 88 (1.82%) SCCM
5 84 (1.74%) Grafana
6 64 (1.32%) Prometheus
7 56 (1.16%) vCenter Server
8 33 (0.68%) SCOM
9 25 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.46%) Control-M
10 22 (0.46%) WSUS
11 20 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
12 16 (0.33%) FortiGate
13 14 (0.29%) Argo
14 11 (0.23%) Kibana
15 10 (0.21%) Istio
15 10 (0.21%) Puppet
16 9 (0.19%) Progress Chef
16 9 (0.19%) VxRail
17 8 (0.17%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,092 (22.59%) Microsoft
2 341 (7.05%) Oracle
3 323 (6.68%) ServiceNow
4 294 (6.08%) SAP
5 198 (4.10%) VMware
6 140 (2.90%) Google
7 134 (2.77%) Salesforce
8 112 (2.32%) Databricks
9 110 (2.28%) Cisco
10 95 (1.96%) Splunk
11 72 (1.49%) Workday
12 70 (1.45%) Dynatrace
13 61 (1.26%) Apple
14 54 (1.12%) Adobe
15 48 (0.99%) IBM
16 46 (0.95%) CyberArk
17 41 (0.85%) Red Hat
18 40 (0.83%) Dell
19 39 (0.81%) MuleSoft
20 37 (0.77%) Citrix