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 29 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,736 4,464 3,747
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.56% 16.23% 11.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.39% 17.89% 12.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,749 2,748 2,318
10th Percentile £250 £250 £250
25th Percentile £381 £375 £384
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.61% -1.60% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £624
90th Percentile £710 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £492 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +1.44% -3.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 379 279 261
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.77 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.35 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.10 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +1.18% +30.01% -69.09%
75th Percentile £49.63 £36.50 £33.00
90th Percentile £74.41 £65.70 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.33 £21.24 £16.23
% change year-on-year -8.99% +30.87% -69.58%

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 38,210 24,959 29,249
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.22% 90.75% 85.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,914 15,999 19,151
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -2.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,406 1,365 1,791
10th Percentile £15.05 £14.22 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.88 £17.75
Median hourly rate £46.62 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +85.35% -39.40% -2.35%
75th Percentile £69.49 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.10 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%

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 29 July 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 29 July 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 29 July 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 -13 2,023 £520 +4.00% 1,453
South East -4 758 £486 -1.32% 874
North of England -9 724 £450 -5.26% 735
Midlands -6 535 £450 +5.88% 501
West Midlands -7 391 £450 - 293
North West -11 347 £450 -7.12% 356
South West 0 335 £500 +5.26% 360
Yorkshire -7 323 £450 -5.26% 263
East of England -1 255 £450 -3.74% 292
East Midlands 0 142 £473 +27.19% 208
North East -17 59 £370 -17.78% 128
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
1 214 (4.52%) Confluence
2 184 (3.89%) SharePoint
3 95 (2.01%) Microsoft Exchange
4 54 (1.14%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.70%) Apache
7 30 (0.63%) SAS
8 28 (0.59%) CMS
9 26 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.40%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.21%) CICS
13 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.13%) nginx
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.11%) Camunda
15 5 (0.11%) Mule
15 5 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 249 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (4.71%) Microsoft Office
3 79 (1.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (1.39%) MS Visio
5 65 (1.37%) Microsoft Project
6 26 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.27%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.23%) Revit
11 10 (0.21%) Trello
12 9 (0.19%) Sketch
13 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
14 5 (0.11%) CATIA
14 5 (0.11%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.084%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.084%) Maya
16 3 (0.063%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.063%) Navisworks
16 3 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 116 (2.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.63%) Oracle EBS
4 23 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.46%) NetSuite
6 19 (0.40%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.32%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.30%) 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
11 10 (0.21%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.21%) Teamcenter
12 8 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
13 7 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
14 6 (0.13%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 922 (19.47%) Azure
2 686 (14.48%) AWS
3 380 (8.02%) Microsoft 365
4 377 (7.96%) Power Platform
5 268 (5.66%) GCP
6 225 (4.75%) Azure DevOps
7 182 (3.84%) Entra ID
8 161 (3.40%) GitHub
9 126 (2.66%) SaaS
10 112 (2.36%) Serverless
11 76 (1.60%) GitHub Actions
12 73 (1.54%) Power Automate
13 68 (1.44%) AWS Lambda
14 61 (1.29%) Amazon S3
15 60 (1.27%) Dynamics 365
16 58 (1.22%) OpenShift
17 57 (1.20%) PowerApps
18 54 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
19 53 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
19 53 (1.12%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 206 (4.35%) DNS
2 172 (3.63%) Firewall
3 135 (2.85%) VPN
4 122 (2.58%) TCP/IP
5 121 (2.55%) DHCP
6 104 (2.20%) WAN
7 92 (1.94%) LAN
8 81 (1.71%) Network Security
9 71 (1.50%) Wi-Fi
10 64 (1.35%) SAN
11 58 (1.22%) VLAN
12 52 (1.10%) Wireless
13 49 (1.03%) BGP
14 37 (0.78%) OSPF
15 34 (0.72%) SD-WAN
16 33 (0.70%) VoIP
17 31 (0.65%) Structured Cabling
18 25 (0.53%) MPLS
18 25 (0.53%) VXLAN
19 20 (0.42%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (6.27%) Power BI
2 208 (4.39%) SQL Server
3 154 (3.25%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (2.89%) PostgreSQL
5 134 (2.83%) Relational Database
6 95 (2.01%) MongoDB
7 82 (1.73%) Data Lake
8 80 (1.69%) NoSQL
9 78 (1.65%) Metadata
10 77 (1.63%) Tableau
11 50 (1.06%) Big Data
11 50 (1.06%) MySQL
12 48 (1.01%) Oracle Database
13 43 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 37 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
15 27 (0.57%) Db2
16 26 (0.55%) Power Query
17 23 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
17 23 (0.49%) BigQuery
17 23 (0.49%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 461 (9.73%) JIRA
2 279 (5.89%) Git
3 158 (3.34%) Jenkins
4 102 (2.15%) GitLab
5 66 (1.39%) Selenium
6 33 (0.70%) Postman
7 32 (0.68%) Cypress.io
8 28 (0.59%) REST Assured
9 26 (0.55%) Cucumber
10 23 (0.49%) Bitbucket
10 23 (0.49%) Maven
11 22 (0.46%) JUnit
12 19 (0.40%) Gradle
12 19 (0.40%) Mockito
13 17 (0.36%) WebDriver
14 16 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 14 (0.30%) JMeter
16 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
17 12 (0.25%) SonarQube
17 12 (0.25%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,441 (51.54%) Social Skills
2 1,987 (41.96%) Analytical Skills
3 1,112 (23.48%) Finance
4 453 (9.57%) Public Sector
5 373 (7.88%) Banking
6 202 (4.27%) Organisational Skills
7 184 (3.89%) Retail
8 178 (3.76%) Documentation Skills
9 153 (3.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 130 (2.74%) Influencing Skills
11 124 (2.62%) Manufacturing
12 109 (2.30%) Legal
13 107 (2.26%) Presentation Skills
14 102 (2.15%) Front Office
14 102 (2.15%) Marketing
15 92 (1.94%) Telecoms
16 70 (1.48%) Investment Banking
17 59 (1.25%) Law
18 52 (1.10%) Back Office
19 50 (1.06%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 660 (13.94%) Analyst
2 534 (11.28%) Developer
3 422 (8.91%) Senior
4 370 (7.81%) Lead
5 328 (6.93%) Architect
6 232 (4.90%) Business Analyst
7 209 (4.41%) Consultant
8 204 (4.31%) Data Engineer
9 173 (3.65%) IT Support
10 163 (3.44%) Support Engineer
11 145 (3.06%) Project Manager
12 110 (2.32%) IT Engineer
13 109 (2.30%) Administrator
14 104 (2.20%) Data Analyst
15 101 (2.13%) Java Developer
16 90 (1.90%) Software Engineer
17 88 (1.86%) Solutions Architect
18 80 (1.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 79 (1.67%) Support Analyst
20 77 (1.63%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 275 (5.81%) REST
2 142 (3.00%) .NET
3 131 (2.77%) RESTful
4 130 (2.74%) Kafka
5 129 (2.72%) SOAP
6 128 (2.70%) React
7 120 (2.53%) Spring
8 114 (2.41%) JSON
9 105 (2.22%) CSS
10 95 (2.01%) HTML
11 94 (1.98%) XML
12 89 (1.88%) Middleware
13 86 (1.82%) Spring Boot
14 79 (1.67%) AngularJS
15 78 (1.65%) Node.js
16 69 (1.46%) OAuth
17 63 (1.33%) Web Services
18 56 (1.18%) PySpark
19 46 (0.97%) Playwright
20 45 (0.95%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 258 (5.45%) Onboarding
2 232 (4.90%) Product Ownership
3 207 (4.37%) Cloud Native
4 181 (3.82%) Self-Motivation
5 174 (3.67%) Data Centre
6 140 (2.96%) Distributed Systems
7 134 (2.83%) Analytical Mindset
7 134 (2.83%) Management Information System
8 132 (2.79%) Enterprise Software
9 118 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
10 112 (2.36%) Data Protection Act
11 111 (2.34%) Data Structures
12 96 (2.03%) Virtual Team
13 66 (1.39%) Driving Licence
14 56 (1.18%) AI Agents
14 56 (1.18%) Algorithms
15 54 (1.14%) CMDB
15 54 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 52 (1.10%) PKI
17 45 (0.95%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 632 (13.34%) Windows
2 249 (5.26%) Linux
3 140 (2.96%) Windows Server
4 110 (2.32%) Windows 10
5 96 (2.03%) Unix
6 75 (1.58%) Apple iOS
6 75 (1.58%) Mac OS
7 71 (1.50%) Android
8 42 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 19 (0.40%) Ubuntu
10 15 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
11 14 (0.30%) VMS
12 11 (0.23%) zOS
13 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.17%) Solaris
15 6 (0.13%) CentOS
15 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.084%) AIX
16 4 (0.084%) HPUX
16 4 (0.084%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,281 (27.05%) Agile
2 954 (20.14%) Continuous Improvement
3 894 (18.88%) Stakeholder Management
4 772 (16.30%) CI/CD
5 738 (15.58%) DevOps
6 619 (13.07%) AI
7 533 (11.25%) Decision-Making
8 498 (10.52%) Analytics
8 498 (10.52%) Migration
9 484 (10.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 473 (9.99%) ITIL
11 434 (9.16%) Customer Service
12 385 (8.13%) Business Intelligence
13 366 (7.73%) Validation
14 365 (7.71%) Test Automation
15 364 (7.69%) Data Modelling
16 337 (7.12%) Project Management
17 334 (7.05%) Roadmaps
18 327 (6.90%) Scrum
19 317 (6.69%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 851 (17.97%) SQL
2 789 (16.66%) Python
3 365 (7.71%) Java
4 264 (5.57%) JavaScript
5 261 (5.51%) PowerShell
6 159 (3.36%) C#
7 134 (2.83%) Bash
8 107 (2.26%) TypeScript
9 84 (1.77%) PL/SQL
10 51 (1.08%) T-SQL
11 50 (1.06%) C++
12 41 (0.87%) Shell Script
13 36 (0.76%) Go
14 35 (0.74%) Bicep
15 32 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 31 (0.65%) C
17 28 (0.59%) Apex Code
17 28 (0.59%) Kotlin
18 25 (0.53%) Groovy
18 25 (0.53%) R
Qualifications
1 1,051 (22.19%) Security Cleared
2 704 (14.86%) SC Cleared
3 584 (12.33%) Degree
4 213 (4.50%) DV Cleared
5 170 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 134 (2.83%) Microsoft Certification
7 113 (2.39%) Cisco Certification
8 107 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
9 75 (1.58%) CISSP
9 75 (1.58%) PMP
10 70 (1.48%) PMI Certification
11 67 (1.41%) Azure Certification
12 62 (1.31%) CCNA
13 61 (1.29%) A+ Certification
14 50 (1.06%) Master's Degree
15 47 (0.99%) CISM
16 41 (0.87%) Network+ Certification
17 39 (0.82%) MCSE
18 37 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
19 36 (0.76%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 331 (6.99%) Data Quality
2 287 (6.06%) QA
3 134 (2.83%) GDPR
4 106 (2.24%) Accessibility
5 105 (2.22%) SLA
6 83 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 79 (1.67%) PMO
8 68 (1.44%) NIST
9 46 (0.97%) GRC
10 27 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 25 (0.53%) WCAG
12 24 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.30%) GxP
14 13 (0.27%) NCSC
14 13 (0.27%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.25%) COBIT
16 11 (0.23%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 11 (0.23%) HIPAA
17 10 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
18 9 (0.19%) IFRS
System Software
1 368 (7.77%) Active Directory
2 304 (6.42%) Docker
3 125 (2.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (1.01%) VMware NSX
5 47 (0.99%) VMware ESXi
6 46 (0.97%) vSphere
7 43 (0.91%) Hyper-V
8 31 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
9 28 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
10 22 (0.46%) vCloud
11 19 (0.40%) Firmware
12 18 (0.38%) IAG
13 10 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.13%) NFS
14 6 (0.13%) Squid
15 4 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
16 3 (0.063%) Snort
16 3 (0.063%) Virtual Servers
17 2 (0.042%) BitLocker
17 2 (0.042%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 352 (7.43%) Kubernetes
2 288 (6.08%) Terraform
3 162 (3.42%) Ansible
4 124 (2.62%) Microsoft Intune
5 94 (1.98%) Grafana
6 79 (1.67%) Prometheus
7 75 (1.58%) SCCM
8 56 (1.18%) vCenter Server
9 29 (0.61%) FortiGate
10 28 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.55%) Control-M
12 23 (0.49%) SCOM
13 20 (0.42%) Argo
14 18 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
15 17 (0.36%) WSUS
16 14 (0.30%) Nessus
17 13 (0.27%) Kibana
18 12 (0.25%) IBM Guardium
19 11 (0.23%) Puppet
20 10 (0.21%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 955 (20.16%) Microsoft
2 339 (7.16%) Oracle
3 311 (6.57%) ServiceNow
4 288 (6.08%) SAP
5 193 (4.08%) VMware
6 148 (3.13%) Google
7 121 (2.55%) Salesforce
8 117 (2.47%) Splunk
9 113 (2.39%) Cisco
10 101 (2.13%) Databricks
11 78 (1.65%) Workday
12 66 (1.39%) Dynatrace
13 53 (1.12%) Adobe
13 53 (1.12%) Red Hat
14 51 (1.08%) Apple
15 47 (0.99%) Citrix
16 45 (0.95%) CyberArk
17 44 (0.93%) Dell
17 44 (0.93%) MuleSoft
18 40 (0.84%) Juniper