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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +5
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,045 4,330 4,047
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.84% 15.47% 12.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.79% 17.01% 14.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,836 2,636 2,321
10th Percentile £256 £250 £264
25th Percentile £381 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £601 £605
90th Percentile £713 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 495 273 202
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £15.51
Median hourly rate £19.48 £18.87 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.23% +16.27% -69.42%
75th Percentile £40.00 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £71.85 £63.68 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £18.38 £20.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -8.10% +23.23% -69.09%

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 39,430 25,460 28,039
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.71% 90.97% 86.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,919 16,157 17,165
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.64% -2.57% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,918 1,560 1,201
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.42 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.87 £20.25
Median hourly rate £40.08 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.36% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.00 £67.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.28 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £38.72 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +53.96% -40.82% -

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 -11 2,151 £525 +5.00% 5,835
South East -4 815 £475 +5.56% 2,015
North of England -11 737 £450 -5.26% 1,849
Midlands -5 621 £450 +2.27% 1,274
West Midlands -8 444 £450 -5.26% 788
North West -10 361 £448 -4.58% 951
South West -7 324 £500 +8.11% 960
Yorkshire -7 302 £475 -4.04% 639
East of England 0 287 £438 -13.37% 896
East Midlands +2 173 £450 +20.00% 486
North East -14 76 £375 -16.67% 278
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
1 233 (4.62%) SharePoint
2 226 (4.48%) Confluence
3 97 (1.92%) Microsoft Exchange
4 51 (1.01%) Apache Spark
5 42 (0.83%) Apache
6 41 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.52%) CMS
8 22 (0.44%) SAS
9 20 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.34%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.32%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.20%) CICS
12 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 7 (0.14%) IIS
14 7 (0.14%) WordPress
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.12%) Tomcat
16 5 (0.099%) Appian
16 5 (0.099%) Mule
Applications
1 299 (5.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 247 (4.90%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (2.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 65 (1.29%) Microsoft Project
5 49 (0.97%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 17 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.32%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.30%) Revit
10 9 (0.18%) Navisworks
10 9 (0.18%) Sketch
10 9 (0.18%) Trello
10 9 (0.18%) Windchill
11 6 (0.12%) CPLEX
12 4 (0.079%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.059%) Acrobat
13 3 (0.059%) DaVinci Resolve
13 3 (0.059%) NUKE
14 2 (0.040%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 114 (2.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
4 27 (0.54%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
6 24 (0.48%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.34%) SAP GRC
8 15 (0.30%) Teamcenter
9 14 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
10 13 (0.26%) iTrent
11 12 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
11 12 (0.24%) SAP SD
12 11 (0.22%) Aladdin
13 10 (0.20%) Finacle
13 10 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
13 10 (0.20%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
14 9 (0.18%) SAP PSCD
15 8 (0.16%) Primavera
15 8 (0.16%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,008 (19.98%) Azure
2 690 (13.68%) AWS
3 487 (9.65%) Microsoft 365
4 416 (8.25%) Power Platform
5 295 (5.85%) GCP
6 251 (4.98%) Azure DevOps
7 216 (4.28%) Entra ID
8 181 (3.59%) GitHub
9 129 (2.56%) SaaS
10 112 (2.22%) Serverless
11 111 (2.20%) Power Automate
12 89 (1.76%) Microsoft Copilot
13 84 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
14 82 (1.63%) PowerApps
15 72 (1.43%) GitHub Actions
16 71 (1.41%) OneDrive
17 67 (1.33%) Snowflake
18 60 (1.19%) Azure Data Factory
19 56 (1.11%) OpenShift
20 52 (1.03%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 201 (3.98%) DNS
2 179 (3.55%) Firewall
3 155 (3.07%) VPN
4 122 (2.42%) DHCP
5 114 (2.26%) TCP/IP
6 102 (2.02%) Network Security
7 100 (1.98%) WAN
8 86 (1.70%) LAN
9 71 (1.41%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.21%) Wireless
11 51 (1.01%) SAN
12 47 (0.93%) VLAN
13 45 (0.89%) BGP
14 43 (0.85%) VoIP
15 30 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
16 27 (0.54%) SD-WAN
17 25 (0.50%) MPLS
18 24 (0.48%) SSL
19 21 (0.42%) OSPF
19 21 (0.42%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (6.14%) Power BI
2 191 (3.79%) SQL Server
3 160 (3.17%) Relational Database
4 149 (2.95%) Data Warehouse
5 131 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
6 89 (1.76%) Metadata
7 82 (1.63%) MongoDB
8 81 (1.61%) NoSQL
9 71 (1.41%) Tableau
10 65 (1.29%) Data Lake
11 54 (1.07%) MySQL
11 54 (1.07%) Oracle Database
12 36 (0.71%) Big Data
13 33 (0.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 29 (0.57%) Oracle Reports
15 27 (0.54%) BigQuery
16 26 (0.52%) Db2
17 25 (0.50%) Delta Lake
18 23 (0.46%) Pentaho
18 23 (0.46%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 450 (8.92%) JIRA
2 333 (6.60%) Git
3 178 (3.53%) Jenkins
4 130 (2.58%) GitLab
5 71 (1.41%) Selenium
6 41 (0.81%) Cucumber
7 39 (0.77%) Maven
8 36 (0.71%) JUnit
9 35 (0.69%) Cypress.io
10 34 (0.67%) Postman
11 30 (0.59%) Bitbucket
12 29 (0.57%) Gradle
13 26 (0.52%) SonarQube
14 25 (0.50%) REST Assured
15 22 (0.44%) JMeter
16 20 (0.40%) Mockito
17 18 (0.36%) Gatling
18 17 (0.34%) WebDriver
19 15 (0.30%) Visual Studio
20 13 (0.26%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,692 (53.36%) Social Skills
2 2,195 (43.51%) Analytical Skills
3 1,174 (23.27%) Finance
4 509 (10.09%) Public Sector
5 416 (8.25%) Banking
6 278 (5.51%) Organisational Skills
7 249 (4.94%) Manufacturing
8 174 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
9 166 (3.29%) Influencing Skills
10 164 (3.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 163 (3.23%) Retail
12 115 (2.28%) Legal
13 113 (2.24%) Marketing
14 112 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
15 107 (2.12%) Front Office
16 104 (2.06%) Telecoms
17 83 (1.65%) Investment Banking
18 67 (1.33%) Aerospace
19 61 (1.21%) Law
19 61 (1.21%) Military
Job Titles
1 669 (13.26%) Analyst
2 583 (11.56%) Developer
3 487 (9.65%) Senior
4 381 (7.55%) Lead
5 280 (5.55%) Architect
6 233 (4.62%) Business Analyst
7 219 (4.34%) Consultant
8 217 (4.30%) IT Support
9 198 (3.92%) Support Engineer
10 174 (3.45%) Data Engineer
11 147 (2.91%) Project Manager
12 142 (2.81%) Administrator
13 133 (2.64%) IT Engineer
14 107 (2.12%) Data Analyst
15 101 (2.00%) Java Developer
16 100 (1.98%) IT Support Engineer
17 96 (1.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 95 (1.88%) DevOps Engineer
19 92 (1.82%) Network Engineer
20 84 (1.67%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 341 (6.76%) REST
2 311 (6.16%) Terraform
3 175 (3.47%) .NET
4 154 (3.05%) RESTful
5 146 (2.89%) SOAP
6 143 (2.83%) React
7 120 (2.38%) HTML
7 120 (2.38%) Kafka
8 119 (2.36%) CSS
9 117 (2.32%) JSON
10 115 (2.28%) XML
11 112 (2.22%) Spring
12 99 (1.96%) Middleware
13 98 (1.94%) Web Services
14 92 (1.82%) Spring Boot
15 80 (1.59%) AngularJS
16 78 (1.55%) Node.js
17 73 (1.45%) OAuth
18 57 (1.13%) PySpark
19 52 (1.03%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 298 (5.91%) Onboarding
2 261 (5.17%) Cloud Native
3 238 (4.72%) Product Ownership
4 198 (3.92%) Management Information System
4 198 (3.92%) Self-Motivation
5 188 (3.73%) Enterprise Software
6 150 (2.97%) Data Centre
7 125 (2.48%) Data Structures
8 123 (2.44%) Distributed Systems
9 116 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
10 109 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
11 108 (2.14%) Analytical Mindset
12 82 (1.63%) Virtual Team
13 78 (1.55%) Driving Licence
14 74 (1.47%) AI Agents
15 66 (1.31%) CMDB
16 56 (1.11%) PKI
17 53 (1.05%) NHS
18 51 (1.01%) Algorithms
19 50 (0.99%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 697 (13.82%) Windows
2 278 (5.51%) Linux
3 201 (3.98%) Windows Server
4 125 (2.48%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.92%) Unix
6 86 (1.70%) Apple iOS
7 81 (1.61%) Mac OS
8 73 (1.45%) Android
9 50 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.34%) VMS
11 17 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.30%) Solaris
13 12 (0.24%) zOS
14 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.16%) AIX
15 8 (0.16%) CentOS
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.079%) Rocky
17 4 (0.079%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,384 (27.43%) Agile
2 1,253 (24.84%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,159 (22.97%) Continuous Improvement
4 855 (16.95%) CI/CD
5 775 (15.36%) DevOps
6 706 (13.99%) AI
7 582 (11.54%) Decision-Making
8 565 (11.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 531 (10.53%) Migration
10 492 (9.75%) Customer Service
11 486 (9.63%) Analytics
12 457 (9.06%) ITIL
13 424 (8.40%) Test Automation
14 405 (8.03%) Validation
15 364 (7.22%) Business Intelligence
16 356 (7.06%) Scrum
17 350 (6.94%) Data Modelling
18 339 (6.72%) Technical Leadership
19 338 (6.70%) ITSM
20 337 (6.68%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 894 (17.72%) SQL
2 765 (15.16%) Python
3 371 (7.35%) Java
4 312 (6.18%) JavaScript
5 305 (6.05%) PowerShell
6 204 (4.04%) C#
7 147 (2.91%) Bash
8 132 (2.62%) TypeScript
9 79 (1.57%) PL/SQL
10 47 (0.93%) T-SQL
11 45 (0.89%) Shell Script
12 42 (0.83%) C++
12 42 (0.83%) Go
13 31 (0.61%) Bicep
14 29 (0.57%) Scala
15 25 (0.50%) Groovy
16 24 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 23 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 20 (0.40%) ABAP
18 20 (0.40%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,116 (22.12%) Security Cleared
2 784 (15.54%) SC Cleared
3 619 (12.27%) Degree
4 220 (4.36%) DV Cleared
5 180 (3.57%) Computer Science Degree
6 138 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
7 136 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
8 83 (1.65%) Cisco Certification
9 81 (1.61%) PMI Certification
10 77 (1.53%) Azure Certification
10 77 (1.53%) PMP
11 73 (1.45%) CISSP
12 53 (1.05%) DBS Check
13 50 (0.99%) Master's Degree
14 48 (0.95%) A+ Certification
15 47 (0.93%) AWS Certification
16 43 (0.85%) CISM
17 42 (0.83%) CCNA
18 40 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
19 34 (0.67%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 375 (7.43%) Data Quality
2 351 (6.96%) QA
3 119 (2.36%) GDPR
4 118 (2.34%) Accessibility
5 110 (2.18%) SLA
6 87 (1.72%) PMO
7 86 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 62 (1.23%) NIST
9 54 (1.07%) GRC
10 32 (0.63%) WCAG
11 22 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
12 19 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 17 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.30%) PCI DSS
15 14 (0.28%) NCSC
16 13 (0.26%) GxP
17 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
17 11 (0.22%) IFRS
17 11 (0.22%) ISO 9001
18 10 (0.20%) COBIT
System Software
1 404 (8.01%) Active Directory
2 309 (6.12%) Docker
3 157 (3.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 64 (1.27%) VMware ESXi
5 62 (1.23%) Hyper-V
6 54 (1.07%) vSphere
7 52 (1.03%) VMware NSX
8 35 (0.69%) Virtual Desktop
9 27 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
10 24 (0.48%) IAG
10 24 (0.48%) vCloud
11 17 (0.34%) Firmware
12 10 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.12%) NFS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.099%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 5 (0.099%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.099%) XenApp
14 5 (0.099%) XenDesktop
15 4 (0.079%) FreeRADIUS
Systems Management
1 348 (6.90%) Kubernetes
2 165 (3.27%) Ansible
3 132 (2.62%) Microsoft Intune
4 90 (1.78%) Grafana
5 85 (1.68%) SCCM
6 73 (1.45%) Prometheus
7 47 (0.93%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.73%) SCOM
9 25 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
10 23 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
11 20 (0.40%) Control-M
12 18 (0.36%) WSUS
13 14 (0.28%) 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%) McAfee ePO
19 8 (0.16%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,229 (24.36%) Microsoft
2 342 (6.78%) Oracle
3 315 (6.24%) SAP
4 311 (6.16%) ServiceNow
5 202 (4.00%) VMware
6 151 (2.99%) Google
7 122 (2.42%) Salesforce
8 121 (2.40%) Cisco
8 121 (2.40%) Databricks
9 102 (2.02%) Splunk
10 72 (1.43%) Workday
11 63 (1.25%) Dynatrace
12 62 (1.23%) Apple
13 54 (1.07%) Adobe
13 54 (1.07%) IBM
14 49 (0.97%) Red Hat
15 44 (0.87%) CyberArk
16 37 (0.73%) Palo Alto
17 36 (0.71%) MuleSoft
18 33 (0.65%) Dell