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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -8 +4 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,841 4,433 3,808
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.61% 16.06% 11.48%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.48% 17.69% 13.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,778 2,712 2,332
10th Percentile £238 £250 £263
25th Percentile £375 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.52% -1.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £622
90th Percentile £713 £713 £725
UK median daily rate £495 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +1.02% -2.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 403 280 238
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.55
25th Percentile £15.99 £15.12 £14.48
Median hourly rate £20.52 £19.96 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +2.83% +22.95% -70.49%
75th Percentile £43.20 £34.61 £30.84
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.20% +24.80% -70.49%

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 38,776 25,061 28,469
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.95% 90.80% 85.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,043 15,975 18,472
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £530
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -3.77% -3.64%
75th Percentile £630 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,543 1,444 1,583
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.22 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.88 £18.12
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +4.83%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.21 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.63 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +65.54% -38.57% -0.24%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 2,100 £525 +5.00% 1,946
South East -5 776 £480 +1.05% 1,147
North of England -10 719 £445 -6.26% 907
Midlands -6 540 £450 +3.45% 693
West Midlands -10 383 £450 -2.70% 435
North West -12 348 £450 -5.76% 439
South West -2 345 £500 +11.11% 529
Yorkshire -8 310 £450 -5.26% 337
East of England +1 253 £450 -10.00% 465
East Midlands 0 154 £470 +25.33% 259
North East -13 66 £375 -16.67% 146
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 (4.52%) Confluence
2 213 (4.40%) SharePoint
3 110 (2.27%) Microsoft Exchange
4 55 (1.14%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
6 30 (0.62%) Apache
7 29 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
8 27 (0.56%) CMS
8 27 (0.56%) SAS
9 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.23%) CICS
10 11 (0.23%) WebLogic
11 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
12 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.12%) IIS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.10%) Mule
15 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 281 (5.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 232 (4.79%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (2.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 62 (1.28%) MS Visio
5 61 (1.26%) Microsoft Project
6 26 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
7 20 (0.41%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.27%) Revit
10 11 (0.23%) Trello
11 9 (0.19%) Sketch
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 5 (0.10%) CATIA
13 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
13 5 (0.10%) Windchill
14 4 (0.083%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.083%) Photoshop
15 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.062%) Maya
Business Applications
1 114 (2.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
5 23 (0.48%) NetSuite
6 18 (0.37%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.29%) SAP GRC
7 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
8 13 (0.27%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.27%) iTrent
9 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 9 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
11 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
12 8 (0.17%) Loan IQ
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
13 7 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
14 6 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 992 (20.49%) Azure
2 700 (14.46%) AWS
3 431 (8.90%) Microsoft 365
4 393 (8.12%) Power Platform
5 281 (5.80%) GCP
6 249 (5.14%) Azure DevOps
7 210 (4.34%) Entra ID
8 161 (3.33%) GitHub
9 131 (2.71%) SaaS
10 114 (2.35%) Serverless
11 88 (1.82%) Power Automate
12 72 (1.49%) GitHub Actions
13 67 (1.38%) Dynamics 365
14 64 (1.32%) OneDrive
15 63 (1.30%) Microsoft Copilot
15 63 (1.30%) PowerApps
16 62 (1.28%) AWS Lambda
16 62 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
17 58 (1.20%) Snowflake
18 56 (1.16%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 210 (4.34%) DNS
2 178 (3.68%) Firewall
3 156 (3.22%) VPN
4 125 (2.58%) DHCP
5 117 (2.42%) TCP/IP
6 111 (2.29%) WAN
7 95 (1.96%) LAN
8 91 (1.88%) Network Security
9 72 (1.49%) Wi-Fi
10 62 (1.28%) SAN
11 59 (1.22%) Wireless
12 56 (1.16%) VLAN
13 48 (0.99%) BGP
14 36 (0.74%) SD-WAN
15 35 (0.72%) VoIP
16 33 (0.68%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.60%) MPLS
17 29 (0.60%) OSPF
18 22 (0.45%) SSL
18 22 (0.45%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (6.28%) Power BI
2 200 (4.13%) SQL Server
3 156 (3.22%) Data Warehouse
4 146 (3.02%) Relational Database
5 134 (2.77%) PostgreSQL
6 91 (1.88%) NoSQL
7 85 (1.76%) Metadata
8 80 (1.65%) MongoDB
9 79 (1.63%) Tableau
10 72 (1.49%) Data Lake
11 49 (1.01%) MySQL
12 48 (0.99%) Big Data
12 48 (0.99%) Oracle Database
13 35 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
14 33 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 27 (0.56%) Db2
15 27 (0.56%) Power Query
16 25 (0.52%) Pentaho
17 23 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
18 22 (0.45%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 451 (9.32%) JIRA
2 304 (6.28%) Git
3 152 (3.14%) Jenkins
4 121 (2.50%) GitLab
5 66 (1.36%) Selenium
6 36 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 33 (0.68%) Postman
8 29 (0.60%) Bitbucket
9 26 (0.54%) Maven
10 25 (0.52%) REST Assured
11 24 (0.50%) Cucumber
12 22 (0.45%) Gradle
12 22 (0.45%) JUnit
13 18 (0.37%) JMeter
14 17 (0.35%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.31%) SonarQube
16 14 (0.29%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 14 (0.29%) Gatling
16 14 (0.29%) Mockito
16 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,558 (52.84%) Social Skills
2 2,085 (43.07%) Analytical Skills
3 1,148 (23.71%) Finance
4 473 (9.77%) Public Sector
5 401 (8.28%) Banking
6 222 (4.59%) Organisational Skills
7 190 (3.92%) Retail
8 179 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
9 162 (3.35%) Manufacturing
10 158 (3.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 138 (2.85%) Influencing Skills
12 112 (2.31%) Front Office
13 106 (2.19%) Legal
13 106 (2.19%) Marketing
14 101 (2.09%) Telecoms
15 100 (2.07%) Presentation Skills
16 76 (1.57%) Investment Banking
17 59 (1.22%) Law
18 57 (1.18%) Financial Institution
19 55 (1.14%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 664 (13.72%) Analyst
2 554 (11.44%) Developer
3 438 (9.05%) Senior
4 380 (7.85%) Lead
5 312 (6.44%) Architect
6 221 (4.57%) Business Analyst
7 215 (4.44%) Consultant
8 195 (4.03%) Data Engineer
8 195 (4.03%) IT Support
9 187 (3.86%) Support Engineer
10 140 (2.89%) Project Manager
11 128 (2.64%) IT Engineer
12 115 (2.38%) Administrator
13 104 (2.15%) Data Analyst
14 97 (2.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 93 (1.92%) Java Developer
16 88 (1.82%) Solutions Architect
17 86 (1.78%) IT Support Engineer
18 85 (1.76%) DevOps Engineer
18 85 (1.76%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 294 (6.07%) REST
2 288 (5.95%) Terraform
3 157 (3.24%) .NET
4 148 (3.06%) RESTful
5 136 (2.81%) React
6 131 (2.71%) SOAP
7 118 (2.44%) Kafka
8 113 (2.33%) JSON
9 110 (2.27%) Spring
10 105 (2.17%) XML
11 104 (2.15%) CSS
12 98 (2.02%) HTML
13 93 (1.92%) Middleware
14 81 (1.67%) Web Services
15 79 (1.63%) Spring Boot
16 78 (1.61%) Node.js
17 77 (1.59%) AngularJS
18 73 (1.51%) OAuth
19 62 (1.28%) PySpark
20 48 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 275 (5.68%) Onboarding
2 237 (4.90%) Product Ownership
3 229 (4.73%) Cloud Native
4 193 (3.99%) Self-Motivation
5 166 (3.43%) Data Centre
6 155 (3.20%) Enterprise Software
7 152 (3.14%) Management Information System
8 148 (3.06%) Distributed Systems
9 138 (2.85%) Analytical Mindset
10 121 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
11 120 (2.48%) Data Structures
12 106 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
13 91 (1.88%) Virtual Team
14 66 (1.36%) CMDB
14 66 (1.36%) Driving Licence
15 64 (1.32%) AI Agents
16 57 (1.18%) Algorithms
17 53 (1.09%) PKI
18 52 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 47 (0.97%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 671 (13.86%) Windows
2 262 (5.41%) Linux
3 177 (3.66%) Windows Server
4 130 (2.69%) Windows 10
5 94 (1.94%) Unix
6 82 (1.69%) Apple iOS
7 80 (1.65%) Mac OS
8 73 (1.51%) Android
9 39 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.37%) VMS
12 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
13 12 (0.25%) zOS
14 8 (0.17%) Solaris
15 7 (0.14%) CentOS
15 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
16 5 (0.10%) Mac OS X
16 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.083%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,340 (27.68%) Agile
2 1,043 (21.55%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,012 (20.90%) Stakeholder Management
4 817 (16.88%) CI/CD
5 772 (15.95%) DevOps
6 653 (13.49%) AI
7 530 (10.95%) Decision-Making
8 520 (10.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 512 (10.58%) Analytics
10 507 (10.47%) Migration
11 484 (10.00%) ITIL
12 452 (9.34%) Customer Service
13 393 (8.12%) Test Automation
14 389 (8.04%) Validation
15 385 (7.95%) Business Intelligence
16 360 (7.44%) Data Modelling
17 346 (7.15%) Scrum
18 331 (6.84%) Roadmaps
19 327 (6.75%) ITSM
20 320 (6.61%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 880 (18.18%) SQL
2 805 (16.63%) Python
3 361 (7.46%) Java
4 293 (6.05%) PowerShell
5 279 (5.76%) JavaScript
6 172 (3.55%) C#
7 146 (3.02%) Bash
8 108 (2.23%) TypeScript
9 82 (1.69%) PL/SQL
10 55 (1.14%) C++
11 48 (0.99%) T-SQL
12 37 (0.76%) Bicep
13 35 (0.72%) Go
13 35 (0.72%) Shell Script
14 30 (0.62%) C
15 28 (0.58%) Scala
16 27 (0.56%) Apex Code
16 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
17 26 (0.54%) R
18 25 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,038 (21.44%) Security Cleared
2 702 (14.50%) SC Cleared
3 598 (12.35%) Degree
4 198 (4.09%) DV Cleared
5 191 (3.95%) Computer Science Degree
6 145 (3.00%) Microsoft Certification
7 108 (2.23%) Cisco Certification
8 106 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
9 75 (1.55%) Azure Certification
10 73 (1.51%) PMP
11 72 (1.49%) CISSP
12 69 (1.43%) PMI Certification
13 62 (1.28%) A+ Certification
14 58 (1.20%) CCNA
15 54 (1.12%) Master's Degree
16 45 (0.93%) CISM
17 43 (0.89%) Network+ Certification
18 40 (0.83%) ITIL Certification
19 38 (0.78%) MCSE
20 37 (0.76%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 353 (7.29%) Data Quality
2 317 (6.55%) QA
3 128 (2.64%) GDPR
4 112 (2.31%) Accessibility
5 110 (2.27%) SLA
6 87 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (1.65%) PMO
8 71 (1.47%) NIST
9 55 (1.14%) GRC
10 29 (0.60%) WCAG
11 27 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.29%) GxP
13 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.27%) COBIT
14 13 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
15 12 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 12 (0.25%) NCSC
16 11 (0.23%) IFRS
17 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 404 (8.35%) Active Directory
2 309 (6.38%) Docker
3 147 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 57 (1.18%) VMware ESXi
5 56 (1.16%) Hyper-V
6 49 (1.01%) VMware NSX
7 46 (0.95%) vSphere
8 33 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
9 29 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 25 (0.52%) vCloud
11 23 (0.48%) IAG
12 21 (0.43%) Firmware
13 8 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.12%) NFS
16 4 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.083%) Squid
17 3 (0.062%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 2 (0.041%) UAG
Systems Management
1 340 (7.02%) Kubernetes
2 164 (3.39%) Ansible
3 134 (2.77%) Microsoft Intune
4 88 (1.82%) SCCM
5 84 (1.74%) Grafana
6 67 (1.38%) Prometheus
7 55 (1.14%) vCenter Server
8 31 (0.64%) SCOM
9 26 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
10 23 (0.48%) Control-M
11 22 (0.45%) WSUS
12 20 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
13 18 (0.37%) FortiGate
14 14 (0.29%) Argo
15 12 (0.25%) Puppet
16 11 (0.23%) Progress Chef
17 10 (0.21%) Kibana
18 9 (0.19%) Istio
18 9 (0.19%) Nessus
18 9 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,080 (22.31%) Microsoft
2 339 (7.00%) Oracle
3 329 (6.80%) ServiceNow
4 293 (6.05%) SAP
5 203 (4.19%) VMware
6 145 (3.00%) Google
7 130 (2.69%) Salesforce
8 112 (2.31%) Cisco
9 110 (2.27%) Databricks
10 101 (2.09%) Splunk
11 74 (1.53%) Workday
12 71 (1.47%) Dynatrace
13 61 (1.26%) Apple
14 56 (1.16%) Adobe
15 45 (0.93%) CyberArk
16 43 (0.89%) IBM
16 43 (0.89%) Red Hat
17 41 (0.85%) Citrix
17 41 (0.85%) Dell
18 39 (0.81%) MuleSoft