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

6 months to
24 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 4,326 4,000
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.81% 15.55% 12.28%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.77% 17.11% 14.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,842 2,646 2,304
10th Percentile £249 £248 £263
25th Percentile £380 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £601 £608
90th Percentile £716 £701 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 475 271 208
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £15.12
Median hourly rate £19.48 £18.92 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +2.96% +16.57% -69.76%
75th Percentile £40.00 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £63.40 £62.88
UK median hourly rate £18.75 £20.13 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.84% +24.01% -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 39,443 25,283 28,060
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.68% 90.86% 86.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,053 16,051 17,283
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -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 2,841 1,529 1,252
10th Percentile £13.99 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £20.09
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -2.39%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.12 £66.61
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 2,156 £525 +5.00% 5,133
South East -4 799 £475 +5.56% 1,769
North of England -9 731 £447 -5.89% 1,619
Midlands -5 618 £450 +2.39% 1,250
West Midlands -8 441 £450 -5.26% 755
North West -10 360 £445 -5.12% 851
South West -5 335 £500 +11.11% 872
Yorkshire -7 301 £450 -7.64% 547
East of England 0 285 £425 -15.00% 761
East Midlands +1 174 £475 +26.67% 493
North East -13 72 £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
1 227 (4.51%) SharePoint
2 225 (4.47%) Confluence
3 102 (2.03%) Microsoft Exchange
4 47 (0.93%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.68%) 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%) ArcGIS
15 5 (0.099%) Mule
15 5 (0.099%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.099%) Tomcat
Applications
1 292 (5.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 246 (4.89%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (2.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 61 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
5 48 (0.95%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.50%) 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 31 (0.62%) 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
1 995 (19.76%) Azure
2 707 (14.04%) AWS
3 487 (9.67%) Microsoft 365
4 420 (8.34%) Power Platform
5 288 (5.72%) GCP
6 240 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
7 211 (4.19%) Entra ID
8 176 (3.50%) GitHub
9 134 (2.66%) SaaS
10 111 (2.20%) 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 68 (1.35%) GitHub Actions
17 64 (1.27%) Snowflake
18 59 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
19 51 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
19 51 (1.01%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 205 (4.07%) DNS
2 176 (3.50%) Firewall
3 158 (3.14%) VPN
4 124 (2.46%) DHCP
5 116 (2.30%) TCP/IP
6 100 (1.99%) WAN
7 95 (1.89%) Network Security
8 85 (1.69%) LAN
9 71 (1.41%) Wi-Fi
10 60 (1.19%) Wireless
11 57 (1.13%) SAN
12 50 (0.99%) 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
1 318 (6.32%) Power BI
2 191 (3.79%) SQL Server
3 158 (3.14%) Relational Database
4 153 (3.04%) Data Warehouse
5 137 (2.72%) PostgreSQL
6 89 (1.77%) Metadata
7 79 (1.57%) MongoDB
7 79 (1.57%) NoSQL
8 74 (1.47%) 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 27 (0.54%) BigQuery
15 27 (0.54%) Db2
15 27 (0.54%) Power Query
16 25 (0.50%) Delta Lake
16 25 (0.50%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 451 (8.96%) JIRA
2 334 (6.63%) Git
3 172 (3.42%) Jenkins
4 124 (2.46%) 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 21 (0.42%) JMeter
15 21 (0.42%) Mockito
16 17 (0.34%) Gatling
16 17 (0.34%) WebDriver
17 15 (0.30%) Visual Studio
18 14 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,691 (53.45%) Social Skills
2 2,186 (43.42%) Analytical Skills
3 1,159 (23.02%) Finance
4 498 (9.89%) Public Sector
5 417 (8.28%) Banking
6 263 (5.22%) Organisational Skills
7 221 (4.39%) Manufacturing
8 178 (3.54%) Documentation Skills
9 173 (3.44%) Retail
10 168 (3.34%) Influencing Skills
11 163 (3.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 117 (2.32%) Legal
13 113 (2.24%) Front Office
14 108 (2.14%) Marketing
14 108 (2.14%) Presentation Skills
14 108 (2.14%) Telecoms
15 77 (1.53%) Investment Banking
16 65 (1.29%) Law
17 59 (1.17%) Aerospace
18 56 (1.11%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 683 (13.57%) Analyst
2 582 (11.56%) Developer
3 467 (9.28%) Senior
4 378 (7.51%) Lead
5 291 (5.78%) Architect
6 229 (4.55%) Business Analyst
7 220 (4.37%) IT Support
8 206 (4.09%) Consultant
9 198 (3.93%) Support Engineer
10 178 (3.54%) Data Engineer
11 139 (2.76%) Administrator
12 137 (2.72%) IT Engineer
13 133 (2.64%) Project Manager
14 109 (2.16%) Data Analyst
15 101 (2.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 100 (1.99%) IT Support Engineer
16 100 (1.99%) Java Developer
17 94 (1.87%) DevOps Engineer
18 89 (1.77%) Network Engineer
19 86 (1.71%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (6.59%) REST
2 302 (6.00%) Terraform
3 172 (3.42%) .NET
4 152 (3.02%) RESTful
5 149 (2.96%) SOAP
6 145 (2.88%) React
7 122 (2.42%) Kafka
8 117 (2.32%) JSON
9 115 (2.28%) CSS
9 115 (2.28%) HTML
10 112 (2.22%) Spring
10 112 (2.22%) XML
11 97 (1.93%) Web Services
12 96 (1.91%) Middleware
13 91 (1.81%) Spring Boot
14 85 (1.69%) AngularJS
15 81 (1.61%) Node.js
16 75 (1.49%) OAuth
17 54 (1.07%) PySpark
18 50 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 299 (5.94%) Onboarding
2 255 (5.06%) Cloud Native
3 242 (4.81%) Product Ownership
4 201 (3.99%) Self-Motivation
5 187 (3.71%) Management Information System
6 178 (3.54%) Enterprise Software
7 152 (3.02%) Data Centre
8 131 (2.60%) Distributed Systems
9 126 (2.50%) Data Structures
10 119 (2.36%) Analytical Mindset
11 114 (2.26%) Legacy Systems
12 108 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
13 84 (1.67%) Virtual Team
14 79 (1.57%) 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)
18 51 (1.01%) NHS
19 50 (0.99%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 705 (14.00%) Windows
2 281 (5.58%) Linux
3 205 (4.07%) Windows Server
4 130 (2.58%) Windows 10
5 96 (1.91%) 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%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
18 4 (0.079%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,373 (27.27%) Agile
2 1,208 (23.99%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,147 (22.78%) Continuous Improvement
4 835 (16.58%) CI/CD
5 760 (15.09%) DevOps
6 697 (13.84%) AI
7 579 (11.50%) Decision-Making
8 563 (11.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 527 (10.47%) Migration
10 500 (9.93%) Analytics
11 498 (9.89%) Customer Service
12 476 (9.45%) ITIL
13 411 (8.16%) Test Automation
14 401 (7.96%) Validation
15 379 (7.53%) Business Intelligence
16 356 (7.07%) Data Modelling
17 348 (6.91%) Scrum
18 344 (6.83%) ITSM
19 337 (6.69%) Roadmaps
20 335 (6.65%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 889 (17.66%) SQL
2 785 (15.59%) Python
3 371 (7.37%) Java
4 309 (6.14%) JavaScript
5 300 (5.96%) PowerShell
6 196 (3.89%) C#
7 146 (2.90%) Bash
8 133 (2.64%) TypeScript
9 84 (1.67%) PL/SQL
10 47 (0.93%) T-SQL
11 45 (0.89%) C++
12 44 (0.87%) Shell Script
13 42 (0.83%) Go
14 30 (0.60%) Scala
15 29 (0.58%) Bicep
16 28 (0.56%) Groovy
17 26 (0.52%) Kotlin
17 26 (0.52%) R
18 25 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 22 (0.44%) C
Qualifications
1 1,108 (22.01%) Security Cleared
2 779 (15.47%) SC Cleared
3 605 (12.02%) Degree
4 214 (4.25%) DV Cleared
5 181 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
7 134 (2.66%) BPSS Clearance
8 88 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
9 76 (1.51%) Azure Certification
9 76 (1.51%) CISSP
10 73 (1.45%) PMI Certification
11 69 (1.37%) PMP
12 55 (1.09%) A+ Certification
13 49 (0.97%) DBS Check
14 48 (0.95%) Master's Degree
15 47 (0.93%) AWS Certification
15 47 (0.93%) CCNA
16 44 (0.87%) CISM
17 40 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
18 37 (0.73%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 380 (7.55%) Data Quality
2 344 (6.83%) QA
3 120 (2.38%) GDPR
4 116 (2.30%) SLA
5 113 (2.24%) Accessibility
6 92 (1.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 81 (1.61%) 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
1 406 (8.06%) Active Directory
2 312 (6.20%) Docker
3 161 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 65 (1.29%) VMware ESXi
5 63 (1.25%) Hyper-V
6 53 (1.05%) VMware NSX
6 53 (1.05%) vSphere
7 33 (0.66%) Virtual Desktop
8 30 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (0.54%) IAG
10 25 (0.50%) vCloud
11 16 (0.32%) Firmware
12 10 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.12%) NFS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.099%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 5 (0.099%) XenApp
14 5 (0.099%) XenDesktop
15 4 (0.079%) FreeRADIUS
15 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 88 (1.75%) SCCM
6 74 (1.47%) Prometheus
7 49 (0.97%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.73%) SCOM
9 25 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
10 23 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
11 20 (0.40%) WSUS
12 19 (0.38%) Control-M
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 1,199 (23.81%) Microsoft
2 344 (6.83%) Oracle
3 323 (6.42%) ServiceNow
4 308 (6.12%) SAP
5 208 (4.13%) VMware
6 150 (2.98%) Google
7 127 (2.52%) Salesforce
8 120 (2.38%) Cisco
9 117 (2.32%) Databricks
10 100 (1.99%) Splunk
11 71 (1.41%) Workday
12 67 (1.33%) Dynatrace
13 60 (1.19%) Apple
14 55 (1.09%) IBM
15 54 (1.07%) Adobe
16 47 (0.93%) Red Hat
17 42 (0.83%) CyberArk
18 37 (0.73%) Dell
18 37 (0.73%) MuleSoft
19 33 (0.66%) Palo Alto