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

6 months to
6 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 4,867 4,459 3,738
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.69% 16.14% 11.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.55% 17.78% 13.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,804 2,740 2,308
10th Percentile £230 £255 £259
25th Percentile £375 £375 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £494 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.34% -1.25% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £623
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 403 278 251
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £16.01 £15.16 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £20.68 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +1.56% +27.40% -69.76%
75th Percentile £47.50 £37.25 £32.11
90th Percentile £74.26 £65.08 £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 38,782 25,081 28,761
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.18% 90.77% 85.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,156 16,055 18,761
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 £760
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,506 1,391 1,691
10th Percentile £14.94 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £20.31 £17.87 £18.21
Median hourly rate £44.23 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +75.86% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.50 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.33
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.63% -5.12%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 2,082 £520 +4.00% 2,270
South East -3 779 £477 -2.76% 1,114
North of England -9 736 £449 -5.53% 884
Midlands -6 550 £450 +5.88% 645
West Midlands -10 399 £450 - 382
South West 0 349 £500 +5.26% 477
North West -11 348 £450 -7.98% 455
Yorkshire -7 332 £450 -5.26% 307
East of England +1 260 £450 -5.26% 421
East Midlands 0 148 £470 +26.51% 263
North East -17 61 £375 -16.67% 133
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
1 219 (4.50%) Confluence
2 202 (4.15%) SharePoint
3 107 (2.20%) Microsoft Exchange
4 54 (1.11%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.68%) Apache
7 32 (0.66%) SAS
8 28 (0.58%) CMS
9 26 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.29%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.23%) CICS
13 9 (0.18%) 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
1 272 (5.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 239 (4.91%) Microsoft Office
3 86 (1.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (1.36%) Microsoft Project
4 66 (1.36%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
6 23 (0.47%) Chatbot
7 16 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 14 (0.29%) AutoCAD
9 12 (0.25%) Revit
10 11 (0.23%) Trello
11 9 (0.18%) Sketch
12 8 (0.16%) CPLEX
13 5 (0.10%) CATIA
14 4 (0.082%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.082%) Navisworks
14 4 (0.082%) Photoshop
15 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.062%) Maya
15 3 (0.062%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 115 (2.36%) 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 16 (0.33%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.31%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.27%) iTrent
10 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
10 11 (0.23%) SAP GRC
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
12 9 (0.18%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.18%) 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 ERP
14 7 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 959 (19.70%) Azure
2 696 (14.30%) AWS
3 407 (8.36%) Microsoft 365
4 390 (8.01%) Power Platform
5 277 (5.69%) GCP
6 239 (4.91%) Azure DevOps
7 197 (4.05%) Entra ID
8 160 (3.29%) GitHub
9 130 (2.67%) SaaS
10 116 (2.38%) Serverless
11 82 (1.68%) Power Automate
12 74 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
13 68 (1.40%) AWS Lambda
14 63 (1.29%) Dynamics 365
15 61 (1.25%) Amazon S3
15 61 (1.25%) Azure Data Factory
15 61 (1.25%) PowerApps
16 57 (1.17%) OneDrive
16 57 (1.17%) Snowflake
17 56 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 216 (4.44%) DNS
2 178 (3.66%) Firewall
3 145 (2.98%) VPN
4 128 (2.63%) DHCP
4 128 (2.63%) TCP/IP
5 109 (2.24%) WAN
6 97 (1.99%) LAN
7 83 (1.71%) Network Security
8 73 (1.50%) 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 22 (0.45%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 305 (6.27%) Power BI
2 206 (4.23%) SQL Server
3 158 (3.25%) Data Warehouse
4 136 (2.79%) Relational Database
5 133 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
6 96 (1.97%) MongoDB
7 85 (1.75%) NoSQL
8 81 (1.66%) Data Lake
8 81 (1.66%) Metadata
9 79 (1.62%) Tableau
10 50 (1.03%) Big Data
10 50 (1.03%) Oracle Database
11 48 (0.99%) MySQL
12 44 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 38 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
14 28 (0.58%) Db2
14 28 (0.58%) Pentaho
15 27 (0.55%) Power Query
16 24 (0.49%) BigQuery
17 23 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 463 (9.51%) JIRA
2 289 (5.94%) Git
3 156 (3.21%) Jenkins
4 110 (2.26%) GitLab
5 64 (1.31%) Selenium
6 32 (0.66%) Cypress.io
7 31 (0.64%) Postman
8 27 (0.55%) Cucumber
8 27 (0.55%) REST Assured
9 24 (0.49%) Bitbucket
9 24 (0.49%) Maven
10 22 (0.45%) JUnit
11 20 (0.41%) Gradle
12 19 (0.39%) Mockito
13 18 (0.37%) WebDriver
14 17 (0.35%) JMeter
15 15 (0.31%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
17 13 (0.27%) Gatling
17 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 2,534 (52.06%) Social Skills
2 2,059 (42.31%) Analytical Skills
3 1,131 (23.24%) Finance
4 470 (9.66%) Public Sector
5 386 (7.93%) Banking
6 220 (4.52%) Organisational Skills
7 201 (4.13%) Retail
8 177 (3.64%) Documentation Skills
9 165 (3.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 141 (2.90%) Manufacturing
11 132 (2.71%) Influencing Skills
12 111 (2.28%) Marketing
13 110 (2.26%) Legal
13 110 (2.26%) Presentation Skills
14 103 (2.12%) Front Office
15 94 (1.93%) Telecoms
16 72 (1.48%) Investment Banking
17 59 (1.21%) Law
18 57 (1.17%) Financial Institution
19 52 (1.07%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 673 (13.83%) Analyst
2 546 (11.22%) Developer
3 439 (9.02%) Senior
4 372 (7.64%) Lead
5 327 (6.72%) Architect
6 233 (4.79%) Business Analyst
7 213 (4.38%) Data Engineer
8 212 (4.36%) Consultant
9 189 (3.88%) IT Support
10 173 (3.55%) Support Engineer
11 143 (2.94%) Project Manager
12 121 (2.49%) IT Engineer
13 118 (2.42%) Administrator
14 103 (2.12%) Data Analyst
15 99 (2.03%) Java Developer
16 91 (1.87%) Solutions Architect
17 89 (1.83%) Software Engineer
18 86 (1.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 80 (1.64%) DevOps Engineer
19 80 (1.64%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 279 (5.73%) REST
2 142 (2.92%) .NET
3 135 (2.77%) RESTful
4 130 (2.67%) React
5 129 (2.65%) SOAP
6 124 (2.55%) Kafka
7 113 (2.32%) JSON
7 113 (2.32%) Spring
8 102 (2.10%) CSS
9 95 (1.95%) XML
10 91 (1.87%) HTML
11 90 (1.85%) Middleware
12 79 (1.62%) Node.js
13 77 (1.58%) Spring Boot
14 76 (1.56%) AngularJS
15 71 (1.46%) OAuth
16 65 (1.34%) Web Services
17 55 (1.13%) PySpark
18 47 (0.97%) Playwright
19 45 (0.92%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 277 (5.69%) Onboarding
2 232 (4.77%) Product Ownership
3 213 (4.38%) Cloud Native
4 184 (3.78%) Self-Motivation
5 176 (3.62%) Data Centre
6 141 (2.90%) Analytical Mindset
7 140 (2.88%) Distributed Systems
7 140 (2.88%) Management Information System
8 137 (2.81%) Enterprise Software
9 118 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
10 116 (2.38%) Data Structures
11 114 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
12 92 (1.89%) Virtual Team
13 72 (1.48%) Driving Licence
14 61 (1.25%) 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 (0.92%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 660 (13.56%) Windows
2 257 (5.28%) Linux
3 153 (3.14%) Windows Server
4 119 (2.45%) Windows 10
5 98 (2.01%) Unix
6 79 (1.62%) Apple iOS
7 78 (1.60%) Mac OS
8 74 (1.52%) Android
9 42 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 14 (0.29%) VMS
13 12 (0.25%) zOS
14 9 (0.18%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.16%) Solaris
16 6 (0.12%) CentOS
16 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Debian
17 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,328 (27.29%) Agile
2 1,003 (20.61%) Continuous Improvement
3 932 (19.15%) Stakeholder Management
4 798 (16.40%) CI/CD
5 764 (15.70%) DevOps
6 648 (13.31%) AI
7 544 (11.18%) Decision-Making
8 517 (10.62%) Analytics
9 507 (10.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 504 (10.36%) Migration
11 477 (9.80%) ITIL
12 465 (9.55%) Customer Service
13 397 (8.16%) Business Intelligence
14 378 (7.77%) Validation
15 377 (7.75%) Test Automation
16 375 (7.70%) Data Modelling
17 340 (6.99%) Roadmaps
18 331 (6.80%) Scrum
19 328 (6.74%) Project Management
20 320 (6.57%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 872 (17.92%) SQL
2 798 (16.40%) Python
3 365 (7.50%) Java
4 275 (5.65%) PowerShell
5 268 (5.51%) JavaScript
6 161 (3.31%) C#
7 138 (2.84%) Bash
8 108 (2.22%) TypeScript
9 85 (1.75%) PL/SQL
10 53 (1.09%) C++
11 49 (1.01%) T-SQL
12 40 (0.82%) Shell Script
13 35 (0.72%) Go
14 34 (0.70%) Bicep
15 32 (0.66%) C
16 30 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 29 (0.60%) Apex Code
17 29 (0.60%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.55%) Scala
19 26 (0.53%) R
Qualifications
1 1,073 (22.05%) Security Cleared
2 720 (14.79%) SC Cleared
3 598 (12.29%) Degree
4 215 (4.42%) DV Cleared
5 177 (3.64%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.96%) Microsoft Certification
7 115 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
8 111 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
9 76 (1.56%) CISSP
10 71 (1.46%) Azure Certification
11 69 (1.42%) PMP
12 64 (1.31%) CCNA
12 64 (1.31%) PMI Certification
13 62 (1.27%) A+ Certification
14 48 (0.99%) CISM
15 46 (0.95%) 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 (7.05%) Data Quality
2 296 (6.08%) QA
3 135 (2.77%) GDPR
4 110 (2.26%) Accessibility
5 108 (2.22%) SLA
6 86 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 86 (1.77%) PMO
7 73 (1.50%) NIST
8 50 (1.03%) GRC
9 28 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 28 (0.58%) WCAG
10 24 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
11 15 (0.31%) GxP
12 14 (0.29%) NCSC
12 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
13 13 (0.27%) COBIT
13 13 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
14 12 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 11 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 387 (7.95%) Active Directory
2 309 (6.35%) Docker
3 131 (2.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 53 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
5 48 (0.99%) VMware NSX
6 47 (0.97%) Hyper-V
6 47 (0.97%) vSphere
7 31 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
8 28 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
9 24 (0.49%) 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
1 353 (7.25%) Kubernetes
2 290 (5.96%) Terraform
3 163 (3.35%) Ansible
4 128 (2.63%) Microsoft Intune
5 89 (1.83%) Grafana
6 79 (1.62%) Prometheus
7 77 (1.58%) SCCM
8 57 (1.17%) vCenter Server
9 28 (0.58%) FortiGate
10 27 (0.55%) Control-M
10 27 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.53%) 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 1,017 (20.90%) Microsoft
2 338 (6.94%) Oracle
3 315 (6.47%) ServiceNow
4 294 (6.04%) SAP
5 199 (4.09%) VMware
6 150 (3.08%) Google
7 127 (2.61%) Salesforce
8 117 (2.40%) Cisco
9 112 (2.30%) Splunk
10 108 (2.22%) Databricks
11 75 (1.54%) Workday
12 68 (1.40%) Dynatrace
13 54 (1.11%) Adobe
14 53 (1.09%) Apple
15 49 (1.01%) Red Hat
16 47 (0.97%) Citrix
16 47 (0.97%) Dell
17 45 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 44 (0.90%) MuleSoft
19 41 (0.84%) Juniper