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

6 months to
11 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 4,795 4,515 4,034
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.65% 16.66% 10.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.44% 18.36% 12.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,814 2,800 2,435
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £381 £375 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £711 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -1.01% -1.00% -4.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 359 270 345
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.17 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.46 £14.16
Median hourly rate £22.00 £21.27 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.46% +31.02% -69.09%
75th Percentile £47.50 £39.62 £33.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.63 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.60 £21.39 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.69% +31.79% -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 38,535 24,596 31,653
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.57% 90.73% 85.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,284 15,811 20,551
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.14% -2.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £733 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +3.40% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,389 1,270 2,240
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.20 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.98 £16.25
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -6.09%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.94 £62.50
90th Percentile £82.60 £72.50 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -4.70%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -12 2,021 £512 +2.36% 1,059
South East -5 758 £478 -2.45% 810
North of England -10 749 £447 -5.84% 664
Midlands -7 548 £465 +9.29% 407
West Midlands -8 397 £468 +4.80% 224
North West -11 370 £447 -7.74% 350
South West -3 343 £500 - 312
Yorkshire -7 334 £450 -5.26% 219
East of England -2 264 £473 +0.53% 254
East Midlands -1 149 £450 +22.62% 183
North East -17 51 £366 -18.61% 110
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
1 215 (4.48%) Confluence
2 158 (3.30%) SharePoint
3 89 (1.86%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (1.23%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.81%) Apache
5 39 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.67%) CMS
7 31 (0.65%) SAS
8 27 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
9 18 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.23%) nginx
12 10 (0.21%) ArcGIS
12 10 (0.21%) CICS
13 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.17%) Camunda
14 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 254 (5.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 218 (4.55%) Microsoft Office
3 89 (1.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.48%) MS Visio
5 59 (1.23%) Microsoft Project
6 29 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.29%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.27%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.23%) Revit
11 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
11 8 (0.17%) Trello
12 7 (0.15%) Sketch
13 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
14 5 (0.10%) Maya
15 3 (0.063%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.063%) Navisworks
15 3 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
16 2 (0.042%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 117 (2.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
4 21 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
5 19 (0.40%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.33%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.31%) NetSuite
8 13 (0.27%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.25%) iTrent
10 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
10 11 (0.23%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
11 10 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
11 10 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
12 9 (0.19%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.17%) Loan IQ
13 8 (0.17%) NEC Housing
13 8 (0.17%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 960 (20.02%) Azure
2 702 (14.64%) AWS
3 378 (7.88%) Power Platform
4 354 (7.38%) Microsoft 365
5 273 (5.69%) GCP
6 231 (4.82%) Azure DevOps
7 175 (3.65%) Entra ID
8 161 (3.36%) GitHub
9 127 (2.65%) SaaS
10 122 (2.54%) Serverless
11 75 (1.56%) AWS Lambda
12 73 (1.52%) Amazon S3
13 70 (1.46%) GitHub Actions
14 69 (1.44%) Power Automate
15 63 (1.31%) Azure Data Factory
16 61 (1.27%) Snowflake
17 60 (1.25%) Dynamics 365
17 60 (1.25%) PowerApps
18 59 (1.23%) OpenShift
19 47 (0.98%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 205 (4.28%) DNS
2 171 (3.57%) Firewall
3 124 (2.59%) VPN
4 119 (2.48%) TCP/IP
5 109 (2.27%) DHCP
6 99 (2.06%) WAN
7 88 (1.84%) Network Security
8 85 (1.77%) LAN
9 68 (1.42%) SAN
10 65 (1.36%) Wi-Fi
11 48 (1.00%) VLAN
12 45 (0.94%) BGP
12 45 (0.94%) Wireless
13 37 (0.77%) OSPF
14 35 (0.73%) SD-WAN
15 29 (0.60%) VoIP
16 28 (0.58%) Structured Cabling
17 24 (0.50%) VXLAN
18 22 (0.46%) MPLS
19 20 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (6.19%) Power BI
2 214 (4.46%) SQL Server
3 146 (3.04%) Data Warehouse
4 136 (2.84%) Relational Database
5 135 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
6 94 (1.96%) MongoDB
7 82 (1.71%) NoSQL
8 79 (1.65%) Data Lake
8 79 (1.65%) Tableau
9 78 (1.63%) Metadata
10 52 (1.08%) Oracle Database
11 49 (1.02%) MySQL
12 48 (1.00%) Big Data
13 47 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 37 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
15 27 (0.56%) Power Query
16 26 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
16 26 (0.54%) Delta Lake
17 25 (0.52%) RDBMS
18 24 (0.50%) Db2
Development Applications
1 480 (10.01%) JIRA
2 279 (5.82%) Git
3 167 (3.48%) Jenkins
4 113 (2.36%) GitLab
5 63 (1.31%) Selenium
6 39 (0.81%) Postman
7 32 (0.67%) REST Assured
8 28 (0.58%) Cypress.io
9 25 (0.52%) JUnit
10 24 (0.50%) Cucumber
11 22 (0.46%) Bitbucket
12 21 (0.44%) Mockito
13 18 (0.38%) Gradle
13 18 (0.38%) Maven
13 18 (0.38%) WebDriver
14 16 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
15 15 (0.31%) SonarQube
16 14 (0.29%) JMeter
17 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
18 10 (0.21%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,480 (51.72%) Social Skills
2 1,973 (41.15%) Analytical Skills
3 1,124 (23.44%) Finance
4 426 (8.88%) Public Sector
5 375 (7.82%) Banking
6 199 (4.15%) Documentation Skills
7 197 (4.11%) Organisational Skills
8 179 (3.73%) Retail
9 135 (2.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 124 (2.59%) Influencing Skills
11 115 (2.40%) Legal
12 114 (2.38%) Manufacturing
13 108 (2.25%) Presentation Skills
14 101 (2.11%) Front Office
15 95 (1.98%) Marketing
16 91 (1.90%) Telecoms
17 75 (1.56%) Investment Banking
18 58 (1.21%) Law
19 54 (1.13%) Back Office
20 48 (1.00%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 676 (14.10%) Analyst
2 534 (11.14%) Developer
3 416 (8.68%) Senior
4 344 (7.17%) Lead
5 340 (7.09%) Architect
6 247 (5.15%) Business Analyst
7 215 (4.48%) Data Engineer
8 210 (4.38%) Consultant
9 163 (3.40%) IT Support
10 155 (3.23%) Project Manager
11 152 (3.17%) Support Engineer
12 103 (2.15%) Data Analyst
13 102 (2.13%) Administrator
14 100 (2.09%) Java Developer
15 99 (2.06%) IT Engineer
16 93 (1.94%) Software Engineer
17 92 (1.92%) Solutions Architect
18 84 (1.75%) Technical Support
19 82 (1.71%) Support Analyst
20 77 (1.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (5.65%) REST
2 147 (3.07%) .NET
3 136 (2.84%) Kafka
4 134 (2.79%) RESTful
5 130 (2.71%) Spring
6 124 (2.59%) React
7 119 (2.48%) SOAP
8 107 (2.23%) JSON
9 99 (2.06%) CSS
10 95 (1.98%) Middleware
10 95 (1.98%) Spring Boot
11 92 (1.92%) XML
12 88 (1.84%) HTML
13 80 (1.67%) Node.js
14 76 (1.58%) AngularJS
15 59 (1.23%) PySpark
16 58 (1.21%) OAuth
17 55 (1.15%) LDAP
18 54 (1.13%) Web Services
19 46 (0.96%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 240 (5.01%) Onboarding
2 225 (4.69%) Product Ownership
3 212 (4.42%) Cloud Native
4 176 (3.67%) Data Centre
5 175 (3.65%) Self-Motivation
6 142 (2.96%) Analytical Mindset
7 135 (2.82%) Distributed Systems
8 132 (2.75%) Management Information System
9 121 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
10 116 (2.42%) Data Protection Act
11 111 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
12 108 (2.25%) Data Structures
13 99 (2.06%) Virtual Team
14 57 (1.19%) Driving Licence
15 55 (1.15%) AI Agents
15 55 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 54 (1.13%) Algorithms
17 53 (1.11%) CMDB
18 49 (1.02%) Derivative
18 49 (1.02%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 613 (12.78%) Windows
2 267 (5.57%) Linux
3 119 (2.48%) Windows Server
4 110 (2.29%) Windows 10
5 100 (2.09%) Unix
6 80 (1.67%) Mac OS
7 76 (1.58%) Apple iOS
8 71 (1.48%) Android
9 45 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.44%) Ubuntu
11 12 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 11 (0.23%) VMS
12 11 (0.23%) zOS
13 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.17%) CentOS
15 7 (0.15%) Solaris
16 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.10%) Debian
17 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.083%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,269 (26.47%) Agile
2 902 (18.81%) Continuous Improvement
3 849 (17.71%) Stakeholder Management
4 785 (16.37%) CI/CD
5 753 (15.70%) DevOps
6 597 (12.45%) AI
7 543 (11.32%) Decision-Making
8 525 (10.95%) Migration
9 513 (10.70%) Analytics
10 479 (9.99%) ITIL
11 461 (9.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 429 (8.95%) Customer Service
13 390 (8.13%) Validation
14 384 (8.01%) Business Intelligence
15 381 (7.95%) Data Modelling
16 365 (7.61%) Test Automation
17 362 (7.55%) Project Management
18 337 (7.03%) Change Management
19 334 (6.97%) Roadmaps
20 332 (6.92%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 877 (18.29%) SQL
2 819 (17.08%) Python
3 375 (7.82%) Java
4 267 (5.57%) PowerShell
5 244 (5.09%) JavaScript
6 169 (3.52%) C#
7 126 (2.63%) Bash
8 111 (2.31%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.23%) C++
11 49 (1.02%) T-SQL
12 46 (0.96%) Shell Script
13 43 (0.90%) Go
14 42 (0.88%) C
15 35 (0.73%) Bicep
16 34 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 31 (0.65%) Apex Code
18 28 (0.58%) R
19 25 (0.52%) Kotlin
20 22 (0.46%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,055 (22.00%) Security Cleared
2 697 (14.54%) SC Cleared
3 599 (12.49%) Degree
4 210 (4.38%) DV Cleared
5 184 (3.84%) Computer Science Degree
6 136 (2.84%) Microsoft Certification
7 119 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
8 116 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
9 90 (1.88%) CISSP
10 76 (1.58%) PMP
11 68 (1.42%) A+ Certification
11 68 (1.42%) Azure Certification
11 68 (1.42%) PMI Certification
12 67 (1.40%) CCNA
13 57 (1.19%) CISM
14 56 (1.17%) Master's Degree
15 49 (1.02%) Network+ Certification
16 42 (0.88%) MCSE
17 40 (0.83%) AWS Certification
18 37 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 340 (7.09%) Data Quality
2 287 (5.99%) QA
3 141 (2.94%) GDPR
4 104 (2.17%) SLA
5 94 (1.96%) Accessibility
6 89 (1.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 75 (1.56%) PMO
8 74 (1.54%) NIST
9 45 (0.94%) GRC
10 26 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
11 25 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.40%) PCI DSS
13 16 (0.33%) WCAG
14 13 (0.27%) HIPAA
14 13 (0.27%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.27%) NCSC
15 12 (0.25%) GxP
15 12 (0.25%) PSD2
16 11 (0.23%) COBIT
16 11 (0.23%) IFRS
System Software
1 360 (7.51%) Active Directory
2 312 (6.51%) Docker
3 118 (2.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 44 (0.92%) vSphere
6 42 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
7 35 (0.73%) Hyper-V
8 28 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
9 23 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (0.42%) vCloud
11 19 (0.40%) Firmware
12 15 (0.31%) IAG
13 11 (0.23%) Squid
14 7 (0.15%) NFS
14 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.083%) ACF2
15 4 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.083%) RACF
15 4 (0.083%) Snort
15 4 (0.083%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 373 (7.78%) Kubernetes
2 284 (5.92%) Terraform
3 163 (3.40%) Ansible
4 129 (2.69%) Microsoft Intune
5 104 (2.17%) Grafana
6 91 (1.90%) Prometheus
7 73 (1.52%) SCCM
8 52 (1.08%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
10 35 (0.73%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.63%) Control-M
12 22 (0.46%) Nessus
13 21 (0.44%) SCOM
14 20 (0.42%) Argo
15 19 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
16 18 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
17 17 (0.35%) WSUS
18 16 (0.33%) Kibana
19 12 (0.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
20 10 (0.21%) Puppet
Vendors
1 929 (19.37%) Microsoft
2 347 (7.24%) Oracle
3 299 (6.24%) ServiceNow
4 290 (6.05%) SAP
5 187 (3.90%) VMware
6 146 (3.04%) Google
7 125 (2.61%) Splunk
8 120 (2.50%) Salesforce
9 111 (2.31%) Databricks
10 107 (2.23%) Cisco
11 75 (1.56%) Workday
12 63 (1.31%) Dynatrace
13 60 (1.25%) Red Hat
14 54 (1.13%) Dell
15 50 (1.04%) Apple
16 49 (1.02%) Adobe
17 48 (1.00%) Citrix
18 45 (0.94%) CyberArk
19 43 (0.90%) MuleSoft
20 38 (0.79%) F5