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

6 months to
3 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 4,865 4,346 3,871
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.66% 15.88% 11.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.56% 17.49% 13.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,773 2,644 2,305
10th Percentile £236 £251 £263
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 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.52% -3.40% -2.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 415 281 224
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.77
25th Percentile £15.99 £15.13 £14.84
Median hourly rate £20.25 £19.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +6.58% +17.07% -70.25%
75th Percentile £43.20 £34.48 £28.88
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £18.90 £19.83 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.72% +22.18% -70.25%

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 38,735 24,846 28,143
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.90% 90.77% 85.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,900 15,805 17,939
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £634 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £751
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,596 1,469 1,428
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.38 £17.87 £18.50
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.01
90th Percentile £80.00 £69.65 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +2.41%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 2,141 £525 +5.00% 4,955
South East -5 783 £475 +2.70% 1,447
North of England -11 704 £443 -6.74% 1,441
Midlands -6 550 £450 +0.90% 1,039
West Midlands -8 393 £450 -4.05% 658
North West -9 356 £444 -6.53% 804
South West -3 329 £483 +7.22% 882
Yorkshire -12 285 £450 -5.26% 448
East of England +1 253 £438 -12.50% 714
East Midlands -1 154 £475 +26.67% 383
North East -14 65 £375 -16.67% 213
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%) SharePoint
2 213 (4.38%) Confluence
3 106 (2.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 49 (1.01%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.66%) Apache
7 27 (0.55%) CMS
7 27 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
8 23 (0.47%) SAS
9 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.23%) WebLogic
11 9 (0.18%) CICS
11 9 (0.18%) Jupyter
12 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
12 7 (0.14%) IIS
13 6 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 5 (0.10%) Appian
14 5 (0.10%) Camunda
14 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 281 (5.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 233 (4.79%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (2.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.32%) Microsoft Project
5 51 (1.05%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.33%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.31%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.27%) Revit
10 9 (0.18%) Sketch
10 9 (0.18%) Trello
11 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
12 6 (0.12%) Windchill
13 5 (0.10%) CATIA
13 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
14 4 (0.082%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.062%) DaVinci Resolve
15 3 (0.062%) NUKE
15 3 (0.062%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 119 (2.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.53%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
6 18 (0.37%) SAP GRC
6 18 (0.37%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.31%) iTrent
8 13 (0.27%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
8 13 (0.27%) SAP SD
9 11 (0.23%) Teamcenter
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 8 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
12 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
12 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
12 7 (0.14%) Shopify
13 6 (0.12%) Maximo
13 6 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 988 (20.31%) Azure
2 706 (14.51%) AWS
3 455 (9.35%) Microsoft 365
4 404 (8.30%) Power Platform
5 273 (5.61%) GCP
6 243 (4.99%) Azure DevOps
7 208 (4.28%) Entra ID
8 158 (3.25%) GitHub
9 132 (2.71%) SaaS
10 108 (2.22%) Serverless
11 95 (1.95%) Power Automate
12 74 (1.52%) Microsoft Copilot
13 72 (1.48%) OneDrive
14 70 (1.44%) Dynamics 365
15 68 (1.40%) PowerApps
16 66 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
17 62 (1.27%) Snowflake
18 61 (1.25%) Azure Data Factory
19 56 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
20 50 (1.03%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 206 (4.23%) DNS
2 175 (3.60%) Firewall
3 160 (3.29%) VPN
4 125 (2.57%) DHCP
5 117 (2.40%) TCP/IP
6 108 (2.22%) WAN
7 90 (1.85%) LAN
8 88 (1.81%) Network Security
9 71 (1.46%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.25%) SAN
11 58 (1.19%) Wireless
12 50 (1.03%) VLAN
13 44 (0.90%) BGP
14 36 (0.74%) SD-WAN
15 35 (0.72%) VoIP
16 32 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
17 28 (0.58%) MPLS
18 25 (0.51%) OSPF
19 22 (0.45%) SSL
20 19 (0.39%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (6.37%) Power BI
2 195 (4.01%) SQL Server
3 160 (3.29%) Data Warehouse
4 158 (3.25%) Relational Database
5 137 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
6 91 (1.87%) Metadata
7 80 (1.64%) Tableau
8 76 (1.56%) NoSQL
9 72 (1.48%) MongoDB
10 70 (1.44%) Data Lake
11 49 (1.01%) MySQL
11 49 (1.01%) Oracle Database
12 46 (0.95%) Big Data
13 34 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 32 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
15 27 (0.55%) Db2
16 25 (0.51%) Power Query
17 23 (0.47%) Delta Lake
18 22 (0.45%) Pentaho
18 22 (0.45%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 439 (9.02%) JIRA
2 297 (6.10%) Git
3 151 (3.10%) Jenkins
4 115 (2.36%) GitLab
5 66 (1.36%) Selenium
6 35 (0.72%) Cypress.io
6 35 (0.72%) Postman
7 31 (0.64%) Maven
8 28 (0.58%) JUnit
9 25 (0.51%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.51%) Cucumber
10 24 (0.49%) Gradle
10 24 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 21 (0.43%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.41%) JMeter
13 18 (0.37%) Mockito
14 16 (0.33%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.31%) Gatling
16 13 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
16 13 (0.27%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,602 (53.48%) Social Skills
2 2,119 (43.56%) Analytical Skills
3 1,143 (23.49%) Finance
4 485 (9.97%) Public Sector
5 405 (8.32%) Banking
6 234 (4.81%) Organisational Skills
7 180 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
8 176 (3.62%) Retail
9 174 (3.58%) Manufacturing
10 159 (3.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 155 (3.19%) Influencing Skills
12 115 (2.36%) Front Office
13 108 (2.22%) Legal
14 106 (2.18%) Presentation Skills
15 105 (2.16%) Telecoms
16 101 (2.08%) Marketing
17 83 (1.71%) Investment Banking
18 63 (1.29%) Law
19 55 (1.13%) Back Office
20 54 (1.11%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 665 (13.67%) Analyst
2 560 (11.51%) Developer
3 443 (9.11%) Senior
4 371 (7.63%) Lead
5 303 (6.23%) Architect
6 223 (4.58%) Business Analyst
7 213 (4.38%) Consultant
8 204 (4.19%) IT Support
9 191 (3.93%) Support Engineer
10 186 (3.82%) Data Engineer
11 134 (2.75%) IT Engineer
12 131 (2.69%) Project Manager
13 118 (2.43%) Administrator
14 107 (2.20%) Data Analyst
15 98 (2.01%) Java Developer
16 97 (1.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 93 (1.91%) IT Support Engineer
18 90 (1.85%) DevOps Engineer
19 87 (1.79%) Solutions Architect
20 84 (1.73%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 310 (6.37%) REST
2 289 (5.94%) Terraform
3 164 (3.37%) .NET
4 150 (3.08%) RESTful
5 142 (2.92%) SOAP
6 137 (2.82%) React
7 116 (2.38%) Kafka
8 113 (2.32%) Spring
9 111 (2.28%) JSON
10 108 (2.22%) XML
11 107 (2.20%) CSS
12 105 (2.16%) HTML
13 96 (1.97%) Middleware
14 88 (1.81%) Spring Boot
15 87 (1.79%) Web Services
16 82 (1.69%) AngularJS
17 77 (1.58%) Node.js
18 76 (1.56%) OAuth
19 60 (1.23%) PySpark
20 49 (1.01%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 282 (5.80%) Onboarding
2 247 (5.08%) Cloud Native
2 247 (5.08%) Product Ownership
3 194 (3.99%) Self-Motivation
4 165 (3.39%) Enterprise Software
5 164 (3.37%) Management Information System
6 153 (3.14%) Data Centre
7 142 (2.92%) Distributed Systems
8 129 (2.65%) Data Structures
9 126 (2.59%) Analytical Mindset
10 119 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
11 110 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
12 85 (1.75%) Virtual Team
13 68 (1.40%) AI Agents
14 67 (1.38%) Driving Licence
15 66 (1.36%) CMDB
16 55 (1.13%) Algorithms
17 54 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 53 (1.09%) PKI
19 50 (1.03%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 672 (13.81%) Windows
2 267 (5.49%) Linux
3 192 (3.95%) Windows Server
4 127 (2.61%) Windows 10
5 92 (1.89%) Unix
6 80 (1.64%) Apple iOS
7 78 (1.60%) Mac OS
8 71 (1.46%) Android
9 43 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.41%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.37%) VMS
12 17 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 11 (0.23%) zOS
14 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.16%) CentOS
15 8 (0.16%) Solaris
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
18 4 (0.082%) AIX
18 4 (0.082%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,346 (27.67%) Agile
2 1,092 (22.45%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,072 (22.03%) Stakeholder Management
4 805 (16.55%) CI/CD
5 763 (15.68%) DevOps
6 669 (13.75%) AI
7 558 (11.47%) Decision-Making
8 548 (11.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 512 (10.52%) Migration
10 504 (10.36%) Analytics
11 482 (9.91%) ITIL
12 463 (9.52%) Customer Service
13 390 (8.02%) Test Automation
14 387 (7.95%) Validation
15 377 (7.75%) Business Intelligence
16 355 (7.30%) Data Modelling
17 344 (7.07%) Roadmaps
18 342 (7.03%) Scrum
19 337 (6.93%) ITSM
20 315 (6.47%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 879 (18.07%) SQL
2 795 (16.34%) Python
3 363 (7.46%) Java
4 301 (6.19%) PowerShell
5 285 (5.86%) JavaScript
6 182 (3.74%) C#
7 146 (3.00%) Bash
8 115 (2.36%) TypeScript
9 84 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 50 (1.03%) C++
11 49 (1.01%) T-SQL
12 37 (0.76%) Go
13 36 (0.74%) Shell Script
14 31 (0.64%) Bicep
15 29 (0.60%) Kotlin
15 29 (0.60%) Scala
16 27 (0.55%) R
17 25 (0.51%) C
17 25 (0.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 24 (0.49%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,065 (21.89%) Security Cleared
2 734 (15.09%) SC Cleared
3 597 (12.27%) Degree
4 206 (4.23%) DV Cleared
5 186 (3.82%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.96%) Microsoft Certification
7 111 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
8 89 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
9 77 (1.58%) Azure Certification
10 73 (1.50%) PMP
11 71 (1.46%) PMI Certification
12 68 (1.40%) CISSP
13 60 (1.23%) A+ Certification
14 51 (1.05%) CCNA
15 49 (1.01%) Master's Degree
16 41 (0.84%) AWS Certification
16 41 (0.84%) Network+ Certification
17 40 (0.82%) CISM
17 40 (0.82%) DBS Check
18 39 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 368 (7.56%) Data Quality
2 340 (6.99%) QA
3 124 (2.55%) GDPR
4 113 (2.32%) SLA
5 109 (2.24%) Accessibility
6 90 (1.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 85 (1.75%) PMO
8 73 (1.50%) NIST
9 62 (1.27%) GRC
10 30 (0.62%) WCAG
11 24 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.31%) GxP
14 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.27%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 13 (0.27%) COBIT
15 13 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
16 11 (0.23%) IFRS
17 10 (0.21%) HL7
17 10 (0.21%) NCSC
System Software
1 400 (8.22%) Active Directory
2 300 (6.17%) Docker
3 150 (3.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.25%) Hyper-V
4 61 (1.25%) VMware ESXi
5 53 (1.09%) VMware NSX
6 46 (0.95%) vSphere
7 34 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
8 28 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (0.55%) vCloud
10 25 (0.51%) IAG
11 16 (0.33%) Firmware
12 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.12%) NFS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.062%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.062%) Squid
15 3 (0.062%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 334 (6.87%) Kubernetes
2 163 (3.35%) Ansible
3 126 (2.59%) Microsoft Intune
4 91 (1.87%) Grafana
5 88 (1.81%) SCCM
6 70 (1.44%) Prometheus
7 55 (1.13%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.76%) SCOM
9 23 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.45%) Control-M
10 22 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
10 22 (0.45%) WSUS
11 14 (0.29%) Argo
11 14 (0.29%) FortiGate
12 11 (0.23%) Istio
12 11 (0.23%) Kibana
13 10 (0.21%) Nessus
13 10 (0.21%) Puppet
14 9 (0.18%) Podman
14 9 (0.18%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,109 (22.80%) Microsoft
2 345 (7.09%) Oracle
3 324 (6.66%) ServiceNow
4 298 (6.13%) SAP
5 201 (4.13%) VMware
6 133 (2.73%) Google
7 132 (2.71%) Salesforce
8 118 (2.43%) Databricks
9 108 (2.22%) Cisco
10 101 (2.08%) Splunk
11 71 (1.46%) Workday
12 68 (1.40%) Dynatrace
13 61 (1.25%) Apple
14 54 (1.11%) Adobe
15 47 (0.97%) IBM
16 46 (0.95%) CyberArk
17 43 (0.88%) Red Hat
18 39 (0.80%) MuleSoft
19 38 (0.78%) Dell
20 35 (0.72%) Citrix