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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,860 4,459 3,746
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.70% 16.15% 11.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.56% 17.80% 13.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,806 2,740 2,316
10th Percentile £236 £255 £260
25th Percentile £378 £380 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.51% -1.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +0.51% -2.50% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 396 279 251
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £16.01 £15.19 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £20.50 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% +26.31% -69.76%
75th Percentile £47.63 £36.50 £32.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £65.05 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £21.24 £16.23
% change year-on-year -10.55% +30.87% -70.01%

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 38,695 25,047 28,792
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.19% 90.72% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,133 16,039 18,801
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
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 £758
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,478 1,391 1,685
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.87 £18.16
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -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 5 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 5 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 5 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 2,078 £520 +4.00% 2,273
South East -4 776 £475 -3.06% 1,129
North of England -9 739 £450 -5.26% 864
Midlands -6 551 £450 +5.88% 659
West Midlands -9 400 £450 - 384
North West -12 349 £450 -7.98% 449
South West +1 344 £500 +5.26% 481
Yorkshire -7 334 £450 -5.26% 301
East of England +1 261 £450 -4.51% 421
East Midlands 0 148 £473 +27.19% 275
North East -14 61 £375 -16.67% 124
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
1 220 (4.53%) Confluence
2 196 (4.03%) SharePoint
3 105 (2.16%) Microsoft Exchange
4 55 (1.13%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.70%) Apache
7 32 (0.66%) SAS
8 28 (0.58%) CMS
9 26 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.39%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.29%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.23%) CICS
13 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.10%) Mule
16 5 (0.10%) nginx
16 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 262 (5.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 235 (4.84%) Microsoft Office
3 84 (1.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.40%) MS Visio
5 65 (1.34%) Microsoft Project
6 27 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.29%) AutoCAD
10 12 (0.25%) Revit
11 11 (0.23%) Trello
12 9 (0.19%) Sketch
13 8 (0.16%) CPLEX
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
15 4 (0.082%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.082%) Navisworks
15 4 (0.082%) Photoshop
16 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.062%) Maya
16 3 (0.062%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 116 (2.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 25 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.45%) NetSuite
6 18 (0.37%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.31%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.27%) iTrent
10 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
11 10 (0.21%) SAP GRC
12 9 (0.19%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
13 8 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
14 7 (0.14%) Loan IQ
14 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
14 7 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 962 (19.79%) Azure
2 699 (14.38%) AWS
3 402 (8.27%) Microsoft 365
4 390 (8.02%) Power Platform
5 278 (5.72%) GCP
6 239 (4.92%) Azure DevOps
7 194 (3.99%) Entra ID
8 160 (3.29%) GitHub
9 130 (2.67%) SaaS
10 118 (2.43%) Serverless
11 82 (1.69%) Power Automate
12 74 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
13 68 (1.40%) AWS Lambda
14 63 (1.30%) Azure Data Factory
14 63 (1.30%) Dynamics 365
15 61 (1.26%) Amazon S3
16 60 (1.23%) PowerApps
17 57 (1.17%) Snowflake
18 56 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
19 54 (1.11%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 213 (4.38%) DNS
2 178 (3.66%) Firewall
3 143 (2.94%) VPN
4 126 (2.59%) DHCP
4 126 (2.59%) TCP/IP
5 109 (2.24%) WAN
6 97 (2.00%) LAN
7 82 (1.69%) Network Security
8 72 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
9 66 (1.36%) SAN
10 58 (1.19%) VLAN
11 53 (1.09%) Wireless
12 50 (1.03%) BGP
13 37 (0.76%) OSPF
14 34 (0.70%) SD-WAN
15 33 (0.68%) VoIP
16 32 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
17 26 (0.53%) MPLS
18 25 (0.51%) VXLAN
19 21 (0.43%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 305 (6.28%) Power BI
2 208 (4.28%) SQL Server
3 160 (3.29%) Data Warehouse
4 136 (2.80%) Relational Database
5 135 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
6 97 (2.00%) MongoDB
7 85 (1.75%) NoSQL
8 84 (1.73%) Data Lake
9 82 (1.69%) Metadata
10 78 (1.60%) Tableau
11 50 (1.03%) Big Data
11 50 (1.03%) Oracle Database
12 48 (0.99%) MySQL
13 46 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 38 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
15 28 (0.58%) Db2
16 27 (0.56%) Pentaho
16 27 (0.56%) Power Query
17 24 (0.49%) BigQuery
18 23 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 467 (9.61%) JIRA
2 292 (6.01%) Git
3 157 (3.23%) Jenkins
4 109 (2.24%) GitLab
5 65 (1.34%) Selenium
6 32 (0.66%) Cypress.io
6 32 (0.66%) Postman
7 27 (0.56%) Cucumber
7 27 (0.56%) REST Assured
8 24 (0.49%) Bitbucket
8 24 (0.49%) Maven
9 22 (0.45%) JUnit
10 20 (0.41%) Gradle
11 19 (0.39%) Mockito
12 18 (0.37%) WebDriver
13 17 (0.35%) JMeter
14 16 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 13 (0.27%) Gatling
15 13 (0.27%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 2,533 (52.12%) Social Skills
2 2,053 (42.24%) Analytical Skills
3 1,135 (23.35%) Finance
4 471 (9.69%) Public Sector
5 385 (7.92%) Banking
6 213 (4.38%) Organisational Skills
7 200 (4.12%) Retail
8 178 (3.66%) Documentation Skills
9 164 (3.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 135 (2.78%) Manufacturing
11 132 (2.72%) Influencing Skills
12 110 (2.26%) Legal
12 110 (2.26%) Presentation Skills
13 109 (2.24%) Marketing
14 104 (2.14%) Front Office
15 92 (1.89%) Telecoms
16 72 (1.48%) Investment Banking
17 58 (1.19%) Law
18 57 (1.17%) Financial Institution
19 52 (1.07%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 672 (13.83%) Analyst
2 546 (11.23%) Developer
3 442 (9.09%) Senior
4 376 (7.74%) Lead
5 327 (6.73%) Architect
6 232 (4.77%) Business Analyst
7 216 (4.44%) Consultant
7 216 (4.44%) Data Engineer
8 185 (3.81%) IT Support
9 169 (3.48%) Support Engineer
10 143 (2.94%) Project Manager
11 117 (2.41%) IT Engineer
12 115 (2.37%) Administrator
13 104 (2.14%) Data Analyst
14 100 (2.06%) Java Developer
15 91 (1.87%) Solutions Architect
16 90 (1.85%) Software Engineer
17 85 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 81 (1.67%) DevOps Engineer
19 80 (1.65%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 280 (5.76%) REST
2 143 (2.94%) .NET
3 136 (2.80%) RESTful
4 130 (2.67%) React
5 129 (2.65%) SOAP
6 127 (2.61%) Kafka
7 117 (2.41%) Spring
8 116 (2.39%) JSON
9 103 (2.12%) CSS
10 98 (2.02%) XML
11 91 (1.87%) HTML
11 91 (1.87%) Middleware
12 81 (1.67%) Spring Boot
13 79 (1.63%) Node.js
14 76 (1.56%) AngularJS
15 71 (1.46%) OAuth
16 66 (1.36%) Web Services
17 56 (1.15%) PySpark
18 47 (0.97%) Playwright
19 45 (0.93%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 271 (5.58%) Onboarding
2 232 (4.77%) Product Ownership
3 216 (4.44%) Cloud Native
4 182 (3.74%) Self-Motivation
5 177 (3.64%) Data Centre
6 141 (2.90%) Analytical Mindset
6 141 (2.90%) Distributed Systems
7 139 (2.86%) Management Information System
8 137 (2.82%) Enterprise Software
9 118 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
10 115 (2.37%) Data Structures
11 114 (2.35%) Data Protection Act
12 94 (1.93%) Virtual Team
13 70 (1.44%) Driving Licence
14 61 (1.26%) AI Agents
15 58 (1.19%) Algorithms
16 56 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 54 (1.11%) CMDB
17 54 (1.11%) PKI
18 45 (0.93%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 651 (13.40%) Windows
2 257 (5.29%) Linux
3 150 (3.09%) Windows Server
4 118 (2.43%) Windows 10
5 96 (1.98%) Unix
6 78 (1.60%) Apple iOS
6 78 (1.60%) Mac OS
7 73 (1.50%) Android
8 43 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
10 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
11 14 (0.29%) VMS
12 12 (0.25%) zOS
13 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.16%) Solaris
15 6 (0.12%) CentOS
15 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
16 5 (0.10%) Debian
16 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,328 (27.33%) Agile
2 999 (20.56%) Continuous Improvement
3 930 (19.14%) Stakeholder Management
4 801 (16.48%) CI/CD
5 768 (15.80%) DevOps
6 649 (13.35%) AI
7 549 (11.30%) Decision-Making
8 518 (10.66%) Analytics
9 505 (10.39%) Migration
9 505 (10.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 475 (9.77%) ITIL
11 460 (9.47%) Customer Service
12 398 (8.19%) Business Intelligence
13 378 (7.78%) Validation
14 377 (7.76%) Data Modelling
15 372 (7.65%) Test Automation
16 344 (7.08%) Roadmaps
17 333 (6.85%) Scrum
18 332 (6.83%) Project Management
19 320 (6.58%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 875 (18.00%) SQL
2 801 (16.48%) Python
3 370 (7.61%) Java
4 274 (5.64%) PowerShell
5 268 (5.51%) JavaScript
6 163 (3.35%) C#
7 136 (2.80%) Bash
8 108 (2.22%) TypeScript
9 85 (1.75%) PL/SQL
10 51 (1.05%) C++
10 51 (1.05%) T-SQL
11 41 (0.84%) Shell Script
12 36 (0.74%) Bicep
13 35 (0.72%) Go
14 33 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 30 (0.62%) C
16 29 (0.60%) Apex Code
16 29 (0.60%) Kotlin
17 27 (0.56%) Scala
18 26 (0.53%) R
Qualifications
1 1,075 (22.12%) Security Cleared
2 725 (14.92%) SC Cleared
3 597 (12.28%) Degree
4 213 (4.38%) DV Cleared
5 178 (3.66%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.96%) Microsoft Certification
7 115 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
8 111 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
9 76 (1.56%) CISSP
10 70 (1.44%) Azure Certification
10 70 (1.44%) PMP
11 65 (1.34%) PMI Certification
12 64 (1.32%) CCNA
13 62 (1.28%) A+ Certification
14 48 (0.99%) CISM
15 47 (0.97%) Master's Degree
16 42 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
17 41 (0.84%) MCSE
18 38 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
19 36 (0.74%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 343 (7.06%) Data Quality
2 297 (6.11%) QA
3 135 (2.78%) GDPR
4 111 (2.28%) Accessibility
5 107 (2.20%) SLA
6 86 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 83 (1.71%) PMO
8 72 (1.48%) NIST
9 49 (1.01%) GRC
10 28 (0.58%) WCAG
11 27 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.31%) GxP
14 14 (0.29%) NCSC
14 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
16 12 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 12 (0.25%) COBIT
17 11 (0.23%) ISO 20022
18 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 382 (7.86%) Active Directory
2 311 (6.40%) Docker
3 130 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 52 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
5 48 (0.99%) VMware NSX
6 46 (0.95%) Hyper-V
6 46 (0.95%) vSphere
7 31 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
8 28 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
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%) Squid
14 4 (0.082%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.082%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.062%) Snort
16 2 (0.041%) UAG
16 2 (0.041%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 358 (7.37%) Kubernetes
2 291 (5.99%) Terraform
3 163 (3.35%) Ansible
4 127 (2.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 90 (1.85%) Grafana
6 80 (1.65%) Prometheus
7 77 (1.58%) SCCM
8 56 (1.15%) vCenter Server
9 28 (0.58%) FortiGate
10 27 (0.56%) Control-M
10 27 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
11 25 (0.51%) SCOM
12 18 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
12 18 (0.37%) WSUS
13 17 (0.35%) Argo
14 15 (0.31%) Nessus
15 13 (0.27%) IBM Guardium
16 12 (0.25%) Puppet
17 11 (0.23%) Kibana
17 11 (0.23%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,008 (20.74%) Microsoft
2 339 (6.98%) Oracle
3 317 (6.52%) ServiceNow
4 290 (5.97%) SAP
5 197 (4.05%) VMware
6 151 (3.11%) Google
7 127 (2.61%) Salesforce
8 117 (2.41%) Cisco
9 113 (2.33%) Splunk
10 111 (2.28%) Databricks
11 77 (1.58%) Workday
12 68 (1.40%) Dynatrace
13 54 (1.11%) Adobe
14 53 (1.09%) Apple
15 50 (1.03%) Red Hat
16 47 (0.97%) Citrix
16 47 (0.97%) Dell
17 45 (0.93%) CyberArk
18 44 (0.91%) MuleSoft
19 41 (0.84%) Juniper