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

6 months to
10 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 4,975 4,380 3,897
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.74% 15.76% 11.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.66% 17.35% 13.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,827 2,665 2,283
10th Percentile £230 £250 £260
25th Percentile £375 £375 £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% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 434 274 208
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.25 £15.00
Median hourly rate £19.57 £18.90 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% +16.42% -69.76%
75th Percentile £42.00 £37.49 £30.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.18 £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 39,304 25,245 28,138
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.88% 90.83% 85.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,151 16,024 17,695
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.95% -2.87% -4.55%
75th Percentile £636 £625 £650
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 2,693 1,483 1,349
10th Percentile £14.01 £14.31 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.87 £20.22
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £66.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +2.87%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 2,168 £525 +5.00% 2,213
South East -4 795 £475 +5.56% 1,167
North of England -12 722 £445 -6.32% 921
Midlands -5 578 £450 +2.33% 786
West Midlands -8 412 £450 -4.05% 464
North West -9 364 £445 -6.32% 461
South West -3 338 £485 +7.78% 566
Yorkshire -9 292 £450 -6.25% 327
East of England +1 265 £425 -15.00% 444
East Midlands +1 163 £475 +26.67% 324
North East -15 68 £375 -16.67% 150
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 (4.52%) SharePoint
2 222 (4.46%) Confluence
3 107 (2.15%) Microsoft Exchange
4 51 (1.03%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.80%) 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%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 5 (0.10%) Mule
15 5 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
Applications
1 287 (5.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 239 (4.80%) Microsoft Office
3 105 (2.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (1.33%) Microsoft Project
5 52 (1.05%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.32%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.30%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 14 (0.28%) Revit
11 9 (0.18%) Sketch
11 9 (0.18%) Trello
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.12%) Navisworks
13 6 (0.12%) Windchill
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
15 4 (0.080%) Adobe XD
16 3 (0.060%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.060%) DaVinci Resolve
16 3 (0.060%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 117 (2.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
3 31 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.52%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
6 22 (0.44%) 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 9 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
13 8 (0.16%) Shopify
14 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
14 7 (0.14%) Primavera
14 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
15 6 (0.12%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 998 (20.06%) Azure
2 717 (14.41%) AWS
3 470 (9.45%) Microsoft 365
4 412 (8.28%) Power Platform
5 278 (5.59%) GCP
6 246 (4.94%) Azure DevOps
7 208 (4.18%) Entra ID
8 163 (3.28%) GitHub
9 130 (2.61%) SaaS
10 109 (2.19%) Serverless
11 97 (1.95%) Power Automate
12 80 (1.61%) Microsoft Copilot
13 72 (1.45%) Dynamics 365
13 72 (1.45%) OneDrive
14 71 (1.43%) PowerApps
15 66 (1.33%) GitHub Actions
16 62 (1.25%) Azure Data Factory
17 60 (1.21%) Snowflake
18 55 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
19 50 (1.01%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 208 (4.18%) DNS
2 176 (3.54%) Firewall
3 159 (3.20%) VPN
4 124 (2.49%) DHCP
5 117 (2.35%) TCP/IP
6 104 (2.09%) WAN
7 89 (1.79%) Network Security
8 88 (1.77%) LAN
9 72 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
10 58 (1.17%) SAN
10 58 (1.17%) Wireless
11 50 (1.01%) VLAN
12 44 (0.88%) BGP
13 35 (0.70%) VoIP
14 33 (0.66%) SD-WAN
14 33 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
15 27 (0.54%) MPLS
16 24 (0.48%) OSPF
17 22 (0.44%) SSL
18 18 (0.36%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 314 (6.31%) Power BI
2 198 (3.98%) SQL Server
3 161 (3.24%) Relational Database
4 159 (3.20%) Data Warehouse
5 141 (2.83%) PostgreSQL
6 91 (1.83%) Metadata
7 81 (1.63%) Tableau
8 76 (1.53%) MongoDB
8 76 (1.53%) NoSQL
9 70 (1.41%) Data Lake
10 52 (1.05%) Oracle Database
11 51 (1.03%) MySQL
12 44 (0.88%) Big Data
13 34 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 32 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
15 28 (0.56%) Db2
16 27 (0.54%) Power Query
17 23 (0.46%) Delta Lake
18 22 (0.44%) BigQuery
18 22 (0.44%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 451 (9.07%) JIRA
2 315 (6.33%) Git
3 158 (3.18%) Jenkins
4 117 (2.35%) GitLab
5 69 (1.39%) Selenium
6 35 (0.70%) Postman
7 34 (0.68%) Cypress.io
7 34 (0.68%) JUnit
8 33 (0.66%) Maven
9 28 (0.56%) Cucumber
10 25 (0.50%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.50%) Gradle
10 25 (0.50%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.46%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.42%) JMeter
13 20 (0.40%) Mockito
14 16 (0.32%) Gatling
14 16 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 13 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
15 13 (0.26%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,671 (53.69%) Social Skills
2 2,157 (43.36%) Analytical Skills
3 1,161 (23.34%) Finance
4 497 (9.99%) Public Sector
5 411 (8.26%) Banking
6 244 (4.90%) Organisational Skills
7 188 (3.78%) Manufacturing
8 182 (3.66%) Retail
9 178 (3.58%) Documentation Skills
10 159 (3.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 158 (3.18%) Influencing Skills
12 114 (2.29%) Front Office
13 113 (2.27%) Legal
14 110 (2.21%) Presentation Skills
15 104 (2.09%) Marketing
15 104 (2.09%) Telecoms
16 82 (1.65%) Investment Banking
17 62 (1.25%) Law
18 59 (1.19%) Back Office
19 56 (1.13%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 682 (13.71%) Analyst
2 575 (11.56%) Developer
3 451 (9.07%) Senior
4 381 (7.66%) Lead
5 305 (6.13%) Architect
6 228 (4.58%) Business Analyst
7 216 (4.34%) Consultant
8 211 (4.24%) IT Support
9 198 (3.98%) Support Engineer
10 186 (3.74%) Data Engineer
11 135 (2.71%) IT Engineer
12 130 (2.61%) Project Manager
13 123 (2.47%) Administrator
14 108 (2.17%) Data Analyst
15 102 (2.05%) Java Developer
16 98 (1.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 95 (1.91%) IT Support Engineer
18 90 (1.81%) DevOps Engineer
19 89 (1.79%) Solutions Architect
20 86 (1.73%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 317 (6.37%) REST
2 295 (5.93%) Terraform
3 173 (3.48%) .NET
4 154 (3.10%) RESTful
5 147 (2.95%) SOAP
6 140 (2.81%) React
7 121 (2.43%) Kafka
8 115 (2.31%) Spring
9 111 (2.23%) JSON
10 108 (2.17%) CSS
10 108 (2.17%) XML
11 107 (2.15%) HTML
12 97 (1.95%) Middleware
13 92 (1.85%) Spring Boot
13 92 (1.85%) Web Services
14 83 (1.67%) AngularJS
15 76 (1.53%) OAuth
16 75 (1.51%) Node.js
17 60 (1.21%) PySpark
18 50 (1.01%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 292 (5.87%) Onboarding
2 254 (5.11%) Product Ownership
3 252 (5.07%) Cloud Native
4 204 (4.10%) Self-Motivation
5 174 (3.50%) Management Information System
6 171 (3.44%) Enterprise Software
7 151 (3.04%) Data Centre
8 143 (2.87%) Distributed Systems
9 129 (2.59%) Data Structures
10 123 (2.47%) Analytical Mindset
11 120 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
12 110 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
13 86 (1.73%) Virtual Team
14 72 (1.45%) Driving Licence
15 69 (1.39%) AI Agents
16 67 (1.35%) CMDB
17 55 (1.11%) Algorithms
17 55 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 53 (1.07%) PKI
19 51 (1.03%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 680 (13.67%) Windows
2 268 (5.39%) Linux
3 193 (3.88%) Windows Server
4 127 (2.55%) Windows 10
5 93 (1.87%) Unix
6 82 (1.65%) Apple iOS
7 76 (1.53%) Mac OS
8 72 (1.45%) Android
9 43 (0.86%) 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%) Solaris
14 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.16%) CentOS
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
18 4 (0.080%) Debian
18 4 (0.080%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,379 (27.72%) Agile
2 1,131 (22.73%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,120 (22.51%) Continuous Improvement
4 819 (16.46%) CI/CD
5 770 (15.48%) DevOps
6 683 (13.73%) AI
7 573 (11.52%) Decision-Making
8 556 (11.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 518 (10.41%) Migration
10 510 (10.25%) Analytics
11 485 (9.75%) Customer Service
12 483 (9.71%) ITIL
13 401 (8.06%) Test Automation
14 394 (7.92%) Validation
15 380 (7.64%) Business Intelligence
16 357 (7.18%) Data Modelling
17 354 (7.12%) Scrum
18 343 (6.89%) ITSM
18 343 (6.89%) Roadmaps
19 322 (6.47%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 890 (17.89%) SQL
2 795 (15.98%) Python
3 368 (7.40%) Java
4 303 (6.09%) PowerShell
5 291 (5.85%) JavaScript
6 191 (3.84%) C#
7 146 (2.93%) Bash
8 121 (2.43%) TypeScript
9 88 (1.77%) PL/SQL
10 50 (1.01%) T-SQL
11 49 (0.98%) C++
12 38 (0.76%) Go
12 38 (0.76%) Shell Script
13 31 (0.62%) Bicep
13 31 (0.62%) Scala
14 29 (0.58%) Kotlin
15 27 (0.54%) R
16 26 (0.52%) Apex Code
17 25 (0.50%) C
18 24 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,089 (21.89%) Security Cleared
2 753 (15.14%) SC Cleared
3 601 (12.08%) Degree
4 207 (4.16%) DV Cleared
5 181 (3.64%) Computer Science Degree
6 143 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
7 124 (2.49%) BPSS Clearance
8 88 (1.77%) Cisco Certification
9 76 (1.53%) PMP
10 75 (1.51%) Azure Certification
10 75 (1.51%) PMI Certification
11 70 (1.41%) CISSP
12 57 (1.15%) A+ Certification
13 49 (0.98%) Master's Degree
14 48 (0.96%) CCNA
15 43 (0.86%) DBS Check
16 41 (0.82%) AWS Certification
17 40 (0.80%) CISM
18 39 (0.78%) Network+ Certification
19 38 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 377 (7.58%) Data Quality
2 347 (6.97%) QA
3 124 (2.49%) GDPR
4 115 (2.31%) SLA
5 113 (2.27%) Accessibility
6 88 (1.77%) PMO
7 87 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 70 (1.41%) NIST
9 63 (1.27%) GRC
10 31 (0.62%) WCAG
11 23 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
13 14 (0.28%) GxP
13 14 (0.28%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.26%) COBIT
15 12 (0.24%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 11 (0.22%) IFRS
17 10 (0.20%) HIPAA
17 10 (0.20%) NCSC
System Software
1 398 (8.00%) Active Directory
2 303 (6.09%) Docker
3 149 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.23%) Hyper-V
4 61 (1.23%) VMware ESXi
5 53 (1.07%) VMware NSX
6 47 (0.94%) vSphere
7 34 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
8 29 (0.58%) 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 4 (0.080%) 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
1 339 (6.81%) Kubernetes
2 165 (3.32%) Ansible
3 128 (2.57%) 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 (0.74%) SCOM
9 24 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
10 22 (0.44%) WSUS
11 21 (0.42%) Control-M
12 14 (0.28%) Argo
13 13 (0.26%) FortiGate
14 11 (0.22%) Istio
14 11 (0.22%) Kibana
15 10 (0.20%) Nessus
15 10 (0.20%) Puppet
16 9 (0.18%) Podman
16 9 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,150 (23.12%) Microsoft
2 353 (7.10%) Oracle
3 325 (6.53%) ServiceNow
4 305 (6.13%) SAP
5 199 (4.00%) VMware
6 134 (2.69%) Salesforce
7 132 (2.65%) Google
8 119 (2.39%) Databricks
9 107 (2.15%) Cisco
10 103 (2.07%) Splunk
11 74 (1.49%) Workday
12 67 (1.35%) Dynatrace
13 59 (1.19%) Apple
14 54 (1.09%) Adobe
15 48 (0.96%) IBM
16 44 (0.88%) CyberArk
17 43 (0.86%) Red Hat
18 41 (0.82%) MuleSoft
19 35 (0.70%) Dell
20 33 (0.66%) Citrix