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

6 months to
15 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 4,744 4,494 4,022
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.60% 16.56% 10.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.41% 18.26% 12.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,775 2,789 2,429
10th Percentile £260 £250 £251
25th Percentile £382 £380 £383
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.20% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £706 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -1.01% -1.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 360 268 342
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.10 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.55 £15.49 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.75 £21.27 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +2.26% +31.02% -69.09%
75th Percentile £48.44 £38.82 £33.05
90th Percentile £74.33 £66.45 £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 38,219 24,611 31,409
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.42% 90.71% 85.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,063 15,813 20,400
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £734 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,375 1,290 2,230
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.39 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -34.02% -6.09%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.56 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.60 £72.58
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 15 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 15 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 15 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 2,008 £513 +2.50% 1,266
South East -5 752 £480 -3.76% 1,065
North of England -9 738 £447 -5.89% 1,001
Midlands -7 538 £453 +6.47% 611
West Midlands -8 390 £464 +3.11% 308
North West -11 373 £450 -8.16% 503
South West -2 334 £500 - 432
Yorkshire -7 321 £450 -5.26% 359
East of England -2 261 £450 -4.26% 444
East Midlands -1 146 £450 +21.54% 301
North East -21 50 £370 -17.78% 150
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 (4.53%) Confluence
2 170 (3.58%) SharePoint
3 89 (1.88%) Microsoft Exchange
4 58 (1.22%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
6 38 (0.80%) Apache
7 32 (0.67%) CMS
8 29 (0.61%) SAS
9 27 (0.57%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.23%) nginx
13 10 (0.21%) ArcGIS
13 10 (0.21%) CICS
14 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 8 (0.17%) Camunda
16 7 (0.15%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
17 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
17 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 253 (5.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (4.64%) Microsoft Office
3 90 (1.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (1.48%) MS Visio
5 62 (1.31%) Microsoft Project
6 28 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.51%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.30%) 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 (0.11%) CATIA
14 5 (0.11%) Maya
15 3 (0.063%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.063%) Navisworks
15 3 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
16 2 (0.042%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 116 (2.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
4 21 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.38%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.34%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.32%) NetSuite
8 14 (0.30%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.25%) iTrent
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
10 10 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
10 10 (0.21%) SAP HCM
10 10 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 10 (0.21%) Teamcenter
11 9 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
11 9 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
11 9 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
11 9 (0.19%) SAP GRC
12 8 (0.17%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.17%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 937 (19.75%) Azure
2 693 (14.61%) AWS
3 376 (7.93%) Power Platform
4 357 (7.53%) Microsoft 365
5 267 (5.63%) GCP
6 227 (4.78%) Azure DevOps
7 175 (3.69%) Entra ID
8 158 (3.33%) GitHub
9 125 (2.63%) SaaS
10 120 (2.53%) Serverless
11 74 (1.56%) AWS Lambda
12 71 (1.50%) Amazon S3
12 71 (1.50%) Power Automate
13 70 (1.48%) GitHub Actions
14 61 (1.29%) Azure Data Factory
15 59 (1.24%) Dynamics 365
15 59 (1.24%) OpenShift
15 59 (1.24%) PowerApps
16 58 (1.22%) Snowflake
17 48 (1.01%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 204 (4.30%) DNS
2 174 (3.67%) Firewall
3 128 (2.70%) VPN
4 122 (2.57%) TCP/IP
5 109 (2.30%) DHCP
6 96 (2.02%) WAN
7 88 (1.85%) Network Security
8 85 (1.79%) LAN
9 67 (1.41%) SAN
10 66 (1.39%) Wi-Fi
11 48 (1.01%) VLAN
12 47 (0.99%) BGP
13 46 (0.97%) Wireless
14 38 (0.80%) OSPF
15 33 (0.70%) SD-WAN
16 29 (0.61%) VoIP
17 28 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
18 24 (0.51%) VXLAN
19 23 (0.48%) MPLS
20 20 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (6.26%) Power BI
2 213 (4.49%) SQL Server
3 148 (3.12%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (2.89%) PostgreSQL
5 133 (2.80%) Relational Database
6 92 (1.94%) MongoDB
7 81 (1.71%) NoSQL
8 80 (1.69%) Data Lake
9 76 (1.60%) Tableau
10 75 (1.58%) Metadata
11 53 (1.12%) Oracle Database
12 48 (1.01%) Big Data
12 48 (1.01%) MySQL
13 47 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 36 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
15 27 (0.57%) Power Query
16 26 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
17 25 (0.53%) Db2
17 25 (0.53%) RDBMS
18 23 (0.48%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 475 (10.01%) JIRA
2 277 (5.84%) Git
3 163 (3.44%) Jenkins
4 108 (2.28%) GitLab
5 65 (1.37%) Selenium
6 39 (0.82%) Postman
7 31 (0.65%) REST Assured
8 29 (0.61%) Cypress.io
9 25 (0.53%) JUnit
10 24 (0.51%) Cucumber
11 21 (0.44%) Bitbucket
11 21 (0.44%) Mockito
12 19 (0.40%) Gradle
12 19 (0.40%) Maven
13 18 (0.38%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.32%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
15 14 (0.30%) JMeter
16 12 (0.25%) Zephyr
17 10 (0.21%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,462 (51.90%) Social Skills
2 1,967 (41.46%) Analytical Skills
3 1,113 (23.46%) Finance
4 434 (9.15%) Public Sector
5 372 (7.84%) Banking
6 196 (4.13%) Organisational Skills
7 195 (4.11%) Documentation Skills
8 180 (3.79%) Retail
9 132 (2.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 119 (2.51%) Influencing Skills
11 118 (2.49%) Manufacturing
12 110 (2.32%) Legal
13 109 (2.30%) Presentation Skills
14 97 (2.04%) Front Office
15 95 (2.00%) Marketing
16 91 (1.92%) Telecoms
17 75 (1.58%) Investment Banking
18 58 (1.22%) Law
19 53 (1.12%) Back Office
20 48 (1.01%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 675 (14.23%) Analyst
2 529 (11.15%) Developer
3 408 (8.60%) Senior
4 349 (7.36%) Lead
5 334 (7.04%) Architect
6 244 (5.14%) Business Analyst
7 206 (4.34%) Data Engineer
8 205 (4.32%) Consultant
9 167 (3.52%) IT Support
10 157 (3.31%) Support Engineer
11 151 (3.18%) Project Manager
12 104 (2.19%) Data Analyst
13 103 (2.17%) Administrator
13 103 (2.17%) IT Engineer
14 100 (2.11%) Java Developer
15 91 (1.92%) Software Engineer
15 91 (1.92%) Solutions Architect
16 81 (1.71%) Support Analyst
17 79 (1.67%) Technical Support
18 78 (1.64%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (5.63%) REST
2 147 (3.10%) .NET
3 133 (2.80%) RESTful
4 132 (2.78%) Kafka
5 130 (2.74%) Spring
6 124 (2.61%) React
7 119 (2.51%) SOAP
8 107 (2.26%) JSON
9 99 (2.09%) CSS
10 95 (2.00%) Spring Boot
11 92 (1.94%) Middleware
12 91 (1.92%) XML
13 88 (1.85%) HTML
14 81 (1.71%) Node.js
15 77 (1.62%) AngularJS
16 58 (1.22%) OAuth
17 56 (1.18%) PySpark
18 55 (1.16%) Web Services
19 53 (1.12%) LDAP
20 46 (0.97%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 238 (5.02%) Onboarding
2 223 (4.70%) Product Ownership
3 204 (4.30%) Cloud Native
4 175 (3.69%) Data Centre
5 174 (3.67%) Self-Motivation
6 138 (2.91%) Analytical Mindset
7 134 (2.82%) Distributed Systems
8 128 (2.70%) Management Information System
9 119 (2.51%) Data Protection Act
10 118 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
11 113 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
12 108 (2.28%) Data Structures
13 99 (2.09%) Virtual Team
14 57 (1.20%) Driving Licence
15 54 (1.14%) AI Agents
16 53 (1.12%) Algorithms
17 52 (1.10%) CMDB
17 52 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 49 (1.03%) Derivative
18 49 (1.03%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 608 (12.82%) Windows
2 261 (5.50%) Linux
3 115 (2.42%) Windows Server
4 109 (2.30%) Windows 10
5 100 (2.11%) Unix
6 77 (1.62%) Mac OS
7 75 (1.58%) Apple iOS
8 70 (1.48%) Android
9 42 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
12 11 (0.23%) VMS
12 11 (0.23%) zOS
13 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.15%) CentOS
14 7 (0.15%) Solaris
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.084%) AIX
17 4 (0.084%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,264 (26.64%) Agile
2 908 (19.14%) Continuous Improvement
3 857 (18.06%) Stakeholder Management
4 773 (16.29%) CI/CD
5 742 (15.64%) DevOps
6 602 (12.69%) AI
7 535 (11.28%) Decision-Making
8 514 (10.83%) Migration
9 502 (10.58%) Analytics
10 473 (9.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 471 (9.93%) ITIL
12 429 (9.04%) Customer Service
13 382 (8.05%) Business Intelligence
14 378 (7.97%) Validation
15 373 (7.86%) Data Modelling
16 364 (7.67%) Test Automation
17 355 (7.48%) Project Management
18 334 (7.04%) Change Management
19 331 (6.98%) Roadmaps
20 329 (6.94%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 861 (18.15%) SQL
2 800 (16.86%) Python
3 370 (7.80%) Java
4 263 (5.54%) PowerShell
5 243 (5.12%) JavaScript
6 165 (3.48%) C#
7 127 (2.68%) Bash
8 111 (2.34%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.75%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.18%) C++
11 49 (1.03%) T-SQL
12 46 (0.97%) Shell Script
13 41 (0.86%) C
14 38 (0.80%) Go
15 32 (0.67%) Bicep
15 32 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 31 (0.65%) Apex Code
17 27 (0.57%) R
18 26 (0.55%) Kotlin
19 21 (0.44%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,045 (22.03%) Security Cleared
2 686 (14.46%) SC Cleared
3 589 (12.42%) Degree
4 213 (4.49%) DV Cleared
5 176 (3.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 131 (2.76%) Microsoft Certification
7 117 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
8 115 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
9 88 (1.85%) CISSP
10 76 (1.60%) PMP
11 70 (1.48%) PMI Certification
12 67 (1.41%) Azure Certification
13 66 (1.39%) A+ Certification
13 66 (1.39%) CCNA
14 56 (1.18%) Master's Degree
15 55 (1.16%) CISM
16 46 (0.97%) Network+ Certification
17 41 (0.86%) AWS Certification
17 41 (0.86%) MCSE
18 37 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 335 (7.06%) Data Quality
2 279 (5.88%) QA
3 142 (2.99%) GDPR
4 102 (2.15%) SLA
5 96 (2.02%) Accessibility
6 85 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 77 (1.62%) PMO
8 72 (1.52%) NIST
9 45 (0.95%) GRC
10 25 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 23 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
12 18 (0.38%) PCI DSS
13 17 (0.36%) 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%) Def Stans
System Software
1 353 (7.44%) Active Directory
2 307 (6.47%) Docker
3 119 (2.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 46 (0.97%) VMware NSX
5 45 (0.95%) vSphere
6 42 (0.89%) VMware ESXi
7 34 (0.72%) Hyper-V
8 28 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
9 25 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (0.42%) vCloud
11 19 (0.40%) Firmware
12 16 (0.34%) IAG
13 11 (0.23%) Squid
14 8 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.13%) NFS
16 4 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.084%) Snort
17 3 (0.063%) BitLocker
18 2 (0.042%) Time Sharing Option
18 2 (0.042%) UAG
Systems Management
1 368 (7.76%) Kubernetes
2 286 (6.03%) Terraform
3 162 (3.41%) Ansible
4 124 (2.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 104 (2.19%) Grafana
6 91 (1.92%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.52%) SCCM
8 52 (1.10%) vCenter Server
9 35 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
10 34 (0.72%) 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 (0.36%) WSUS
18 16 (0.34%) Kibana
19 11 (0.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
20 10 (0.21%) Puppet
Vendors
1 927 (19.54%) Microsoft
2 343 (7.23%) Oracle
3 300 (6.32%) ServiceNow
4 291 (6.13%) SAP
5 185 (3.90%) VMware
6 146 (3.08%) Google
7 123 (2.59%) Splunk
8 118 (2.49%) Salesforce
9 107 (2.26%) Cisco
10 102 (2.15%) Databricks
11 74 (1.56%) Workday
12 63 (1.33%) Dynatrace
13 59 (1.24%) Red Hat
14 50 (1.05%) Adobe
14 50 (1.05%) Apple
14 50 (1.05%) Dell
15 47 (0.99%) Citrix
16 43 (0.91%) CyberArk
17 42 (0.89%) MuleSoft
18 39 (0.82%) Juniper