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

6 months to
25 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 5,035 4,308 4,034
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.82% 15.47% 12.29%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.78% 17.02% 14.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,843 2,636 2,318
10th Percentile £250 £250 £263
25th Percentile £380 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £489 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.25% -2.20% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £603 £610
90th Percentile £715 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 475 266 208
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £15.12
Median hourly rate £19.48 £18.86 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.29% +16.20% -69.76%
75th Percentile £40.00 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £73.00 £63.40 £62.88
UK median hourly rate £18.63 £20.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.88% +23.23% -69.76%

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 39,385 25,311 28,279
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.63% 90.87% 86.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,009 16,087 17,408
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,837 1,536 1,254
10th Percentile £13.99 £14.41 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £20.14
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -2.05%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.22 £66.61
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 2,160 £525 +5.00% 5,379
South East -3 798 £475 +5.56% 1,871
North of England -9 733 £447 -5.89% 1,704
Midlands -5 614 £450 +1.12% 1,277
West Midlands -7 441 £450 -5.26% 778
North West -9 361 £445 -5.12% 900
South West -6 334 £500 +11.11% 887
Yorkshire -7 301 £454 -7.77% 583
East of England 0 285 £450 -10.00% 820
East Midlands +2 170 £450 +20.00% 497
North East -14 73 £375 -16.67% 238
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
1 229 (4.55%) SharePoint
2 226 (4.49%) Confluence
3 101 (2.01%) Microsoft Exchange
4 47 (0.93%) Apache Spark
5 43 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
6 36 (0.71%) Apache
7 27 (0.54%) CMS
8 25 (0.50%) SAS
9 24 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.32%) WebLogic
10 16 (0.32%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.22%) CICS
12 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.14%) IIS
14 6 (0.12%) WordPress
15 5 (0.099%) Appian
15 5 (0.099%) ArcGIS
15 5 (0.099%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.099%) Tomcat
Applications
1 293 (5.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 249 (4.95%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (2.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 58 (1.15%) Microsoft Project
5 48 (0.95%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.32%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 16 (0.32%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.30%) Revit
10 9 (0.18%) Navisworks
10 9 (0.18%) Sketch
10 9 (0.18%) Trello
11 8 (0.16%) Windchill
12 6 (0.12%) CPLEX
13 4 (0.079%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.060%) Acrobat
14 3 (0.060%) CATIA
14 3 (0.060%) DaVinci Resolve
14 3 (0.060%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 115 (2.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (0.99%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.58%) Oracle EBS
4 27 (0.54%) NetSuite
5 26 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
6 23 (0.46%) Workday HCM
7 18 (0.36%) SAP GRC
8 15 (0.30%) iTrent
9 14 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
10 13 (0.26%) SAP SD
11 11 (0.22%) Aladdin
11 11 (0.22%) Teamcenter
12 10 (0.20%) Finacle
12 10 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
13 8 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
13 8 (0.16%) Primavera
13 8 (0.16%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.16%) Shopify
14 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 994 (19.74%) Azure
2 708 (14.06%) AWS
3 486 (9.65%) Microsoft 365
4 421 (8.36%) Power Platform
5 293 (5.82%) GCP
6 240 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
7 212 (4.21%) Entra ID
8 178 (3.54%) GitHub
9 133 (2.64%) SaaS
10 112 (2.22%) Serverless
11 107 (2.13%) Power Automate
12 87 (1.73%) Microsoft Copilot
13 80 (1.59%) Dynamics 365
14 77 (1.53%) PowerApps
15 71 (1.41%) OneDrive
16 69 (1.37%) GitHub Actions
17 65 (1.29%) Snowflake
18 59 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
19 52 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
19 52 (1.03%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 203 (4.03%) DNS
2 176 (3.50%) Firewall
3 158 (3.14%) VPN
4 122 (2.42%) DHCP
5 115 (2.28%) TCP/IP
6 100 (1.99%) WAN
7 96 (1.91%) Network Security
8 85 (1.69%) LAN
9 70 (1.39%) Wi-Fi
10 60 (1.19%) Wireless
11 56 (1.11%) SAN
12 48 (0.95%) VLAN
13 45 (0.89%) BGP
14 39 (0.77%) VoIP
15 31 (0.62%) Structured Cabling
16 29 (0.58%) SD-WAN
17 26 (0.52%) MPLS
18 24 (0.48%) SSL
19 21 (0.42%) OSPF
19 21 (0.42%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 319 (6.34%) Power BI
2 188 (3.73%) SQL Server
3 157 (3.12%) Relational Database
4 154 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
5 134 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
6 88 (1.75%) Metadata
7 79 (1.57%) MongoDB
7 79 (1.57%) NoSQL
8 75 (1.49%) Tableau
9 68 (1.35%) Data Lake
10 54 (1.07%) MySQL
11 52 (1.03%) Oracle Database
12 35 (0.70%) Big Data
13 31 (0.62%) Oracle Reports
14 30 (0.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 29 (0.58%) BigQuery
16 27 (0.54%) Db2
16 27 (0.54%) Power Query
17 26 (0.52%) Pentaho
18 25 (0.50%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 451 (8.96%) JIRA
2 337 (6.69%) Git
3 173 (3.44%) Jenkins
4 125 (2.48%) GitLab
5 71 (1.41%) Selenium
6 39 (0.77%) Cucumber
7 37 (0.73%) JUnit
8 36 (0.71%) Maven
9 35 (0.70%) Postman
10 34 (0.68%) Cypress.io
11 28 (0.56%) Bitbucket
12 27 (0.54%) Gradle
13 26 (0.52%) SonarQube
14 24 (0.48%) REST Assured
15 22 (0.44%) JMeter
16 21 (0.42%) Mockito
17 18 (0.36%) Gatling
18 17 (0.34%) WebDriver
19 15 (0.30%) Visual Studio
20 13 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,693 (53.49%) Social Skills
2 2,187 (43.44%) Analytical Skills
3 1,164 (23.12%) Finance
4 499 (9.91%) Public Sector
5 419 (8.32%) Banking
6 262 (5.20%) Organisational Skills
7 222 (4.41%) Manufacturing
8 175 (3.48%) Documentation Skills
9 172 (3.42%) Retail
10 169 (3.36%) Influencing Skills
11 163 (3.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 118 (2.34%) Legal
13 113 (2.24%) Front Office
14 109 (2.16%) Presentation Skills
14 109 (2.16%) Telecoms
15 108 (2.14%) Marketing
16 77 (1.53%) Investment Banking
17 65 (1.29%) Law
18 58 (1.15%) Aerospace
19 56 (1.11%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 681 (13.53%) Analyst
2 580 (11.52%) Developer
3 470 (9.33%) Senior
4 381 (7.57%) Lead
5 288 (5.72%) Architect
6 229 (4.55%) Business Analyst
7 220 (4.37%) IT Support
8 207 (4.11%) Consultant
9 199 (3.95%) Support Engineer
10 181 (3.59%) Data Engineer
11 138 (2.74%) Administrator
12 136 (2.70%) IT Engineer
13 134 (2.66%) Project Manager
14 107 (2.13%) Data Analyst
15 101 (2.01%) Java Developer
16 100 (1.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 100 (1.99%) IT Support Engineer
17 96 (1.91%) DevOps Engineer
18 88 (1.75%) Network Engineer
19 86 (1.71%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 333 (6.61%) REST
2 306 (6.08%) Terraform
3 171 (3.40%) .NET
4 150 (2.98%) RESTful
5 149 (2.96%) SOAP
6 146 (2.90%) React
7 122 (2.42%) Kafka
8 118 (2.34%) JSON
9 116 (2.30%) CSS
9 116 (2.30%) HTML
10 113 (2.24%) XML
11 111 (2.20%) Spring
12 97 (1.93%) Middleware
12 97 (1.93%) Web Services
13 91 (1.81%) Spring Boot
14 85 (1.69%) AngularJS
15 81 (1.61%) Node.js
16 75 (1.49%) OAuth
17 57 (1.13%) PySpark
18 50 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 300 (5.96%) Onboarding
2 258 (5.12%) Cloud Native
3 244 (4.85%) Product Ownership
4 198 (3.93%) Self-Motivation
5 189 (3.75%) Management Information System
6 178 (3.54%) Enterprise Software
7 153 (3.04%) Data Centre
8 131 (2.60%) Distributed Systems
9 125 (2.48%) Data Structures
10 119 (2.36%) Analytical Mindset
11 114 (2.26%) Legacy Systems
12 109 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
13 84 (1.67%) Virtual Team
14 80 (1.59%) Driving Licence
15 73 (1.45%) AI Agents
16 67 (1.33%) CMDB
17 58 (1.15%) PKI
18 51 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 50 (0.99%) Mobile App
19 50 (0.99%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 703 (13.96%) Windows
2 281 (5.58%) Linux
3 205 (4.07%) Windows Server
4 127 (2.52%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.93%) Unix
6 84 (1.67%) Mac OS
7 83 (1.65%) Apple iOS
8 72 (1.43%) Android
9 51 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 19 (0.38%) VMS
12 17 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.28%) Solaris
14 13 (0.26%) zOS
15 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
16 8 (0.16%) AIX
16 8 (0.16%) CentOS
17 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.079%) Rocky
18 4 (0.079%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,373 (27.27%) Agile
2 1,216 (24.15%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,147 (22.78%) Continuous Improvement
4 840 (16.68%) CI/CD
5 763 (15.15%) DevOps
6 701 (13.92%) AI
7 578 (11.48%) Decision-Making
8 560 (11.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 528 (10.49%) Migration
10 502 (9.97%) Analytics
11 496 (9.85%) Customer Service
12 475 (9.43%) ITIL
13 412 (8.18%) Test Automation
14 400 (7.94%) Validation
15 380 (7.55%) Business Intelligence
16 356 (7.07%) Data Modelling
17 349 (6.93%) Scrum
18 343 (6.81%) ITSM
19 336 (6.67%) Roadmaps
20 335 (6.65%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 893 (17.74%) SQL
2 785 (15.59%) Python
3 371 (7.37%) Java
4 310 (6.16%) JavaScript
5 302 (6.00%) PowerShell
6 195 (3.87%) C#
7 147 (2.92%) Bash
8 133 (2.64%) TypeScript
9 82 (1.63%) PL/SQL
10 47 (0.93%) T-SQL
11 44 (0.87%) C++
11 44 (0.87%) Shell Script
12 42 (0.83%) Go
13 30 (0.60%) Scala
14 29 (0.58%) Bicep
15 28 (0.56%) Groovy
16 26 (0.52%) Kotlin
16 26 (0.52%) R
17 25 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 21 (0.42%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,108 (22.01%) Security Cleared
2 778 (15.45%) SC Cleared
3 609 (12.10%) Degree
4 215 (4.27%) DV Cleared
5 182 (3.61%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
7 133 (2.64%) BPSS Clearance
8 88 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
9 77 (1.53%) CISSP
10 76 (1.51%) Azure Certification
11 72 (1.43%) PMI Certification
12 69 (1.37%) PMP
13 54 (1.07%) A+ Certification
14 49 (0.97%) DBS Check
15 48 (0.95%) Master's Degree
16 47 (0.93%) AWS Certification
16 47 (0.93%) CCNA
17 44 (0.87%) CISM
18 40 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
19 36 (0.71%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (7.57%) Data Quality
2 347 (6.89%) QA
3 120 (2.38%) GDPR
4 115 (2.28%) SLA
5 111 (2.20%) Accessibility
6 92 (1.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (1.59%) PMO
8 69 (1.37%) NIST
9 58 (1.15%) GRC
10 31 (0.62%) WCAG
11 23 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
12 20 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 17 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
14 16 (0.32%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.26%) GxP
15 13 (0.26%) IFRS
15 13 (0.26%) NCSC
16 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 11 (0.22%) COBIT
17 9 (0.18%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 407 (8.08%) Active Directory
2 312 (6.20%) Docker
3 160 (3.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 65 (1.29%) VMware ESXi
5 63 (1.25%) Hyper-V
6 53 (1.05%) vSphere
7 52 (1.03%) VMware NSX
8 32 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
9 30 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 27 (0.54%) IAG
11 25 (0.50%) vCloud
12 16 (0.32%) Firmware
13 10 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.099%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 5 (0.099%) XenApp
15 5 (0.099%) XenDesktop
16 4 (0.079%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.079%) RACF
Systems Management
1 344 (6.83%) Kubernetes
2 163 (3.24%) Ansible
3 133 (2.64%) Microsoft Intune
4 91 (1.81%) Grafana
5 85 (1.69%) SCCM
6 74 (1.47%) Prometheus
7 49 (0.97%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.73%) SCOM
9 25 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
10 24 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
11 20 (0.40%) Control-M
12 19 (0.38%) WSUS
13 13 (0.26%) FortiGate
13 13 (0.26%) Nessus
14 12 (0.24%) VxRail
15 11 (0.22%) Istio
15 11 (0.22%) Kibana
16 9 (0.18%) Argo
16 9 (0.18%) NetBackup
16 9 (0.18%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,200 (23.83%) Microsoft
2 342 (6.79%) Oracle
3 324 (6.43%) ServiceNow
4 306 (6.08%) SAP
5 206 (4.09%) VMware
6 152 (3.02%) Google
7 126 (2.50%) Salesforce
8 120 (2.38%) Cisco
9 117 (2.32%) Databricks
10 100 (1.99%) Splunk
11 71 (1.41%) Workday
12 66 (1.31%) Dynatrace
13 60 (1.19%) Apple
14 55 (1.09%) IBM
15 53 (1.05%) Adobe
16 48 (0.95%) Red Hat
17 42 (0.83%) CyberArk
18 37 (0.73%) Dell
18 37 (0.73%) MuleSoft
19 33 (0.66%) Palo Alto