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 8 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,906 4,449 3,734
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.72% 16.12% 11.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.57% 17.75% 13.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,811 2,726 2,304
10th Percentile £248 £255 £260
25th Percentile £375 £380 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.40% -1.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £622
90th Percentile £713 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +0.51% -2.50% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 408 278 251
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.16 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% +24.80% -69.76%
75th Percentile £43.83 £34.87 £32.11
90th Percentile £74.26 £65.08 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £21.24 £16.23
% change year-on-year -10.55% +30.87% -70.01%

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 39,026 25,062 28,650
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.26% 90.78% 85.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,293 16,024 18,683
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £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 2,529 1,392 1,676
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £14.09
25th Percentile £19.85 £17.87 £18.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.27 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.50
% change year-on-year +68.99% -37.90% -4.71%

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 8 August 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 8 August 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 8 August 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 2,104 £520 +4.00% 2,312
South East -3 782 £480 -2.04% 1,125
North of England -9 738 £450 -5.26% 895
Midlands -5 556 £450 +4.65% 640
West Midlands -9 404 £450 -0.81% 376
South West +1 353 £500 +5.26% 475
North West -11 351 £450 -8.35% 457
Yorkshire -7 331 £450 -5.26% 320
East of England +1 262 £450 -4.51% 415
East Midlands -1 149 £475 +26.67% 264
North East -18 61 £375 -16.67% 129
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 (4.46%) Confluence
2 205 (4.18%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.22%) Microsoft Exchange
4 54 (1.10%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.67%) Apache
7 32 (0.65%) SAS
8 28 (0.57%) CMS
9 27 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.26%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.22%) CICS
13 9 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.10%) Appian
16 5 (0.10%) Mule
16 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 272 (5.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 241 (4.91%) Microsoft Office
3 88 (1.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 67 (1.37%) MS Visio
5 64 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
6 27 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.26%) Revit
10 11 (0.22%) Trello
11 9 (0.18%) Sketch
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 5 (0.10%) CATIA
13 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
14 4 (0.082%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.082%) Photoshop
15 3 (0.061%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.061%) Maya
15 3 (0.061%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 117 (2.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
4 25 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.45%) NetSuite
6 17 (0.35%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.31%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.26%) iTrent
10 11 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
10 11 (0.22%) SAP GRC
11 10 (0.20%) Finacle
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
12 9 (0.18%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.18%) Teamcenter
13 8 (0.16%) Loan IQ
13 8 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
14 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
14 7 (0.14%) SAP ERP
14 7 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 968 (19.73%) Azure
2 699 (14.25%) AWS
3 416 (8.48%) Microsoft 365
4 394 (8.03%) Power Platform
5 279 (5.69%) GCP
6 237 (4.83%) Azure DevOps
7 203 (4.14%) Entra ID
8 164 (3.34%) GitHub
9 132 (2.69%) SaaS
10 113 (2.30%) Serverless
11 87 (1.77%) Power Automate
12 75 (1.53%) GitHub Actions
13 66 (1.35%) AWS Lambda
14 65 (1.32%) Dynamics 365
15 63 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
15 63 (1.28%) PowerApps
16 59 (1.20%) Amazon S3
16 59 (1.20%) OneDrive
17 58 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
17 58 (1.18%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 215 (4.38%) DNS
2 181 (3.69%) Firewall
3 145 (2.96%) VPN
4 128 (2.61%) DHCP
5 127 (2.59%) TCP/IP
6 113 (2.30%) WAN
7 98 (2.00%) LAN
8 84 (1.71%) Network Security
9 73 (1.49%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.35%) SAN
11 56 (1.14%) VLAN
12 53 (1.08%) Wireless
13 51 (1.04%) BGP
14 37 (0.75%) OSPF
15 36 (0.73%) SD-WAN
16 33 (0.67%) Structured Cabling
17 32 (0.65%) VoIP
18 27 (0.55%) VXLAN
19 26 (0.53%) MPLS
20 22 (0.45%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 307 (6.26%) Power BI
2 205 (4.18%) SQL Server
3 159 (3.24%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.75%) Relational Database
5 132 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
6 94 (1.92%) MongoDB
7 84 (1.71%) NoSQL
8 82 (1.67%) Metadata
9 81 (1.65%) Data Lake
9 81 (1.65%) Tableau
10 50 (1.02%) Big Data
11 49 (1.00%) Oracle Database
12 48 (0.98%) MySQL
13 43 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 38 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
15 28 (0.57%) Db2
15 28 (0.57%) Pentaho
16 27 (0.55%) Power Query
17 24 (0.49%) BigQuery
18 23 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 466 (9.50%) JIRA
2 293 (5.97%) Git
3 158 (3.22%) Jenkins
4 112 (2.28%) GitLab
5 67 (1.37%) Selenium
6 35 (0.71%) Cypress.io
7 33 (0.67%) Postman
8 27 (0.55%) Cucumber
8 27 (0.55%) REST Assured
9 24 (0.49%) Bitbucket
9 24 (0.49%) Maven
10 22 (0.45%) JUnit
11 20 (0.41%) Gradle
12 19 (0.39%) JMeter
12 19 (0.39%) Mockito
13 18 (0.37%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.31%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 14 (0.29%) Gatling
15 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
16 13 (0.26%) SonarQube
General
1 2,558 (52.14%) Social Skills
2 2,081 (42.42%) Analytical Skills
3 1,144 (23.32%) Finance
4 472 (9.62%) Public Sector
5 393 (8.01%) Banking
6 224 (4.57%) Organisational Skills
7 192 (3.91%) Retail
8 176 (3.59%) Documentation Skills
9 165 (3.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 154 (3.14%) Manufacturing
11 133 (2.71%) Influencing Skills
12 113 (2.30%) Presentation Skills
13 111 (2.26%) Marketing
14 107 (2.18%) Legal
15 106 (2.16%) Front Office
16 95 (1.94%) Telecoms
17 74 (1.51%) Investment Banking
18 61 (1.24%) Law
19 58 (1.18%) Financial Institution
20 55 (1.12%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 678 (13.82%) Analyst
2 542 (11.05%) Developer
3 443 (9.03%) Senior
4 375 (7.64%) Lead
5 329 (6.71%) Architect
6 233 (4.75%) Business Analyst
7 219 (4.46%) Consultant
8 212 (4.32%) Data Engineer
9 193 (3.93%) IT Support
10 177 (3.61%) Support Engineer
11 146 (2.98%) Project Manager
12 123 (2.51%) IT Engineer
13 121 (2.47%) Administrator
14 105 (2.14%) Data Analyst
15 98 (2.00%) Java Developer
16 91 (1.85%) Solutions Architect
17 89 (1.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 88 (1.79%) Software Engineer
19 83 (1.69%) Support Analyst
20 82 (1.67%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 283 (5.77%) REST
2 143 (2.91%) .NET
3 136 (2.77%) RESTful
4 133 (2.71%) React
5 129 (2.63%) SOAP
6 124 (2.53%) Kafka
7 114 (2.32%) JSON
8 113 (2.30%) Spring
9 103 (2.10%) CSS
10 97 (1.98%) XML
11 93 (1.90%) Middleware
12 92 (1.88%) HTML
13 79 (1.61%) Node.js
14 77 (1.57%) Spring Boot
15 76 (1.55%) AngularJS
16 72 (1.47%) OAuth
17 67 (1.37%) Web Services
18 56 (1.14%) PySpark
19 50 (1.02%) Playwright
20 45 (0.92%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 281 (5.73%) Onboarding
2 233 (4.75%) Product Ownership
3 217 (4.42%) Cloud Native
4 183 (3.73%) Self-Motivation
5 177 (3.61%) Data Centre
6 143 (2.91%) Management Information System
7 141 (2.87%) Analytical Mindset
8 140 (2.85%) Distributed Systems
9 139 (2.83%) Enterprise Software
10 118 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
11 115 (2.34%) Data Structures
12 114 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
13 91 (1.85%) Virtual Team
14 63 (1.28%) Driving Licence
15 61 (1.24%) AI Agents
16 57 (1.16%) Algorithms
16 57 (1.16%) CMDB
17 56 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 56 (1.14%) PKI
18 47 (0.96%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 674 (13.74%) Windows
2 264 (5.38%) Linux
3 161 (3.28%) Windows Server
4 122 (2.49%) Windows 10
5 101 (2.06%) Unix
6 81 (1.65%) Mac OS
7 79 (1.61%) Apple iOS
8 73 (1.49%) Android
9 43 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 14 (0.29%) VMS
13 12 (0.24%) zOS
14 9 (0.18%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.16%) Solaris
16 6 (0.12%) CentOS
16 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
16 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
17 5 (0.10%) Debian
17 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,341 (27.33%) Agile
2 1,018 (20.75%) Continuous Improvement
3 948 (19.32%) Stakeholder Management
4 809 (16.49%) CI/CD
5 769 (15.67%) DevOps
6 653 (13.31%) AI
7 546 (11.13%) Decision-Making
8 527 (10.74%) Analytics
9 519 (10.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 509 (10.38%) Migration
11 482 (9.82%) ITIL
12 461 (9.40%) Customer Service
13 397 (8.09%) Business Intelligence
14 387 (7.89%) Test Automation
15 385 (7.85%) Validation
16 378 (7.70%) Data Modelling
17 341 (6.95%) Roadmaps
18 337 (6.87%) Scrum
19 329 (6.71%) Project Management
20 320 (6.52%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 881 (17.96%) SQL
2 809 (16.49%) Python
3 369 (7.52%) Java
4 279 (5.69%) PowerShell
5 273 (5.56%) JavaScript
6 163 (3.32%) C#
7 140 (2.85%) Bash
8 109 (2.22%) TypeScript
9 87 (1.77%) PL/SQL
10 53 (1.08%) C++
11 49 (1.00%) T-SQL
12 40 (0.82%) Shell Script
13 35 (0.71%) Go
14 33 (0.67%) Bicep
15 32 (0.65%) C
16 30 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 28 (0.57%) Apex Code
17 28 (0.57%) Kotlin
17 28 (0.57%) Scala
18 26 (0.53%) R
Qualifications
1 1,079 (21.99%) Security Cleared
2 726 (14.80%) SC Cleared
3 604 (12.31%) Degree
4 214 (4.36%) DV Cleared
5 182 (3.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 145 (2.96%) Microsoft Certification
7 114 (2.32%) Cisco Certification
8 112 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
9 77 (1.57%) CISSP
10 72 (1.47%) Azure Certification
11 69 (1.41%) PMP
12 64 (1.30%) PMI Certification
13 63 (1.28%) A+ Certification
13 63 (1.28%) CCNA
14 48 (0.98%) CISM
15 47 (0.96%) Master's Degree
16 43 (0.88%) Network+ Certification
17 41 (0.84%) MCSE
18 37 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
19 36 (0.73%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 347 (7.07%) Data Quality
2 305 (6.22%) QA
3 133 (2.71%) GDPR
4 110 (2.24%) Accessibility
5 107 (2.18%) SLA
6 87 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 85 (1.73%) PMO
8 74 (1.51%) NIST
9 50 (1.02%) GRC
10 28 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 28 (0.57%) WCAG
11 25 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
12 16 (0.33%) NCSC
13 15 (0.31%) GxP
14 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.26%) COBIT
15 13 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials
16 12 (0.24%) 21 CFR Part 11
17 10 (0.20%) HIPAA
17 10 (0.20%) IFRS
System Software
1 393 (8.01%) Active Directory
2 312 (6.36%) Docker
3 138 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 53 (1.08%) VMware ESXi
5 51 (1.04%) Hyper-V
6 49 (1.00%) VMware NSX
7 47 (0.96%) vSphere
8 30 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
9 29 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
10 24 (0.49%) vCloud
11 21 (0.43%) Firmware
12 19 (0.39%) IAG
13 11 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
15 5 (0.10%) Squid
16 4 (0.082%) Microsoft App-V
17 3 (0.061%) Snort
18 2 (0.041%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 2 (0.041%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 353 (7.20%) Kubernetes
2 288 (5.87%) Terraform
3 165 (3.36%) Ansible
4 133 (2.71%) Microsoft Intune
5 89 (1.81%) Grafana
6 81 (1.65%) SCCM
7 78 (1.59%) Prometheus
8 57 (1.16%) vCenter Server
9 29 (0.59%) SCOM
10 28 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.55%) Control-M
11 27 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 21 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
13 19 (0.39%) WSUS
14 17 (0.35%) Argo
15 15 (0.31%) Nessus
16 13 (0.26%) IBM Guardium
17 12 (0.24%) Puppet
18 11 (0.22%) Kibana
18 11 (0.22%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,042 (21.24%) Microsoft
2 338 (6.89%) Oracle
3 322 (6.56%) ServiceNow
4 296 (6.03%) SAP
5 205 (4.18%) VMware
6 151 (3.08%) Google
7 126 (2.57%) Salesforce
8 119 (2.43%) Cisco
9 113 (2.30%) Splunk
10 108 (2.20%) Databricks
11 76 (1.55%) Workday
12 67 (1.37%) Dynatrace
13 57 (1.16%) Apple
14 56 (1.14%) Adobe
15 50 (1.02%) Red Hat
16 47 (0.96%) Citrix
16 47 (0.96%) Dell
17 45 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 42 (0.86%) IBM
18 42 (0.86%) MuleSoft