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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -8 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,758 4,479 3,906
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.61% 16.41% 11.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.43% 18.10% 12.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,767 2,764 2,402
10th Percentile £257 £250 £250
25th Percentile £381 £375 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £497 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.64% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £622
90th Percentile £702 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £492 £492 £500
% change year-on-year - -1.60% -2.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 367 275 298
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.81 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.44 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.24 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +0.52% +30.87% -69.09%
75th Percentile £51.25 £41.70 £33.00
90th Percentile £74.56 £68.25 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £21.34 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.26% +31.45% -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 38,278 24,745 30,322
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.32% 90.65% 85.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,038 15,865 19,799
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £635 £645
90th Percentile £737 £738 £751
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,361 1,324 1,984
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.23 £13.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.95 £17.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -37.13% -6.98%
75th Percentile £69.50 £53.56 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £74.31
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -10.31%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 2,018 £514 +2.80% 1,432
South East -5 753 £486 -2.80% 807
North of England -9 745 £450 -5.26% 666
Midlands -8 542 £450 +5.88% 425
West Midlands -9 396 £450 - 246
North West -10 369 £450 -8.16% 352
South West -2 334 £500 +5.26% 331
Yorkshire -7 325 £450 -5.26% 221
East of England -2 256 £450 -5.01% 285
East Midlands -1 144 £460 +22.67% 179
North East -14 57 £370 -17.78% 100
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
1 216 (4.54%) Confluence
2 177 (3.72%) SharePoint
3 90 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 52 (1.09%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.67%) Apache
7 30 (0.63%) CMS
8 27 (0.57%) SAS
9 26 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.40%) 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 7 (0.15%) Jupyter
16 6 (0.13%) Camunda
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
17 4 (0.084%) IIS
Applications
1 247 (5.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (4.62%) Microsoft Office
3 85 (1.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (1.47%) MS Visio
5 63 (1.32%) Microsoft Project
6 27 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.27%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.23%) Revit
11 9 (0.19%) Trello
12 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
12 8 (0.17%) Sketch
13 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.11%) CATIA
14 5 (0.11%) Maya
15 4 (0.084%) Adobe XD
16 3 (0.063%) Navisworks
16 3 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
17 2 (0.042%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 119 (2.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
4 24 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
5 19 (0.40%) NetSuite
6 18 (0.38%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.36%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.25%) iTrent
10 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 10 (0.21%) SAP GRC
11 10 (0.21%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.21%) Teamcenter
12 9 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
12 9 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
13 7 (0.15%) Loan IQ
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
13 7 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 925 (19.44%) Azure
2 683 (14.35%) AWS
3 372 (7.82%) Power Platform
4 370 (7.78%) Microsoft 365
5 261 (5.49%) GCP
6 221 (4.64%) Azure DevOps
7 185 (3.89%) Entra ID
8 167 (3.51%) GitHub
9 125 (2.63%) SaaS
10 115 (2.42%) Serverless
11 78 (1.64%) GitHub Actions
12 75 (1.58%) Power Automate
13 73 (1.53%) AWS Lambda
14 69 (1.45%) Amazon S3
15 61 (1.28%) PowerApps
16 60 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
17 59 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
17 59 (1.24%) OpenShift
18 55 (1.16%) Snowflake
19 52 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 213 (4.48%) DNS
2 180 (3.78%) Firewall
3 135 (2.84%) VPN
4 127 (2.67%) TCP/IP
5 119 (2.50%) DHCP
6 99 (2.08%) WAN
7 88 (1.85%) LAN
8 85 (1.79%) Network Security
9 70 (1.47%) Wi-Fi
10 68 (1.43%) SAN
11 54 (1.13%) VLAN
12 49 (1.03%) BGP
12 49 (1.03%) Wireless
13 39 (0.82%) OSPF
14 35 (0.74%) SD-WAN
15 32 (0.67%) VoIP
16 30 (0.63%) Structured Cabling
17 25 (0.53%) MPLS
17 25 (0.53%) VXLAN
18 20 (0.42%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 292 (6.14%) Power BI
2 211 (4.43%) SQL Server
3 147 (3.09%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (2.88%) PostgreSQL
5 133 (2.80%) Relational Database
6 94 (1.98%) MongoDB
7 79 (1.66%) NoSQL
8 77 (1.62%) Data Lake
8 77 (1.62%) Metadata
9 76 (1.60%) Tableau
10 54 (1.13%) Oracle Database
11 50 (1.05%) Big Data
12 49 (1.03%) MySQL
13 48 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 34 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
15 26 (0.55%) Db2
16 25 (0.53%) Power Query
17 23 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
17 23 (0.48%) RDBMS
18 22 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 475 (9.98%) JIRA
2 276 (5.80%) Git
3 161 (3.38%) Jenkins
4 104 (2.19%) GitLab
5 66 (1.39%) Selenium
6 34 (0.71%) Postman
7 30 (0.63%) Cypress.io
8 28 (0.59%) REST Assured
9 27 (0.57%) Cucumber
10 22 (0.46%) Bitbucket
10 22 (0.46%) JUnit
11 21 (0.44%) Maven
12 19 (0.40%) Gradle
12 19 (0.40%) Mockito
13 17 (0.36%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.32%) JMeter
14 15 (0.32%) SonarQube
15 13 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
15 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
16 12 (0.25%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,446 (51.41%) Social Skills
2 1,975 (41.51%) Analytical Skills
3 1,110 (23.33%) Finance
4 443 (9.31%) Public Sector
5 371 (7.80%) Banking
6 197 (4.14%) Organisational Skills
7 190 (3.99%) Documentation Skills
8 181 (3.80%) Retail
9 140 (2.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 127 (2.67%) Influencing Skills
11 121 (2.54%) Manufacturing
12 111 (2.33%) Legal
13 103 (2.16%) Presentation Skills
14 98 (2.06%) Marketing
15 97 (2.04%) Telecoms
16 96 (2.02%) Front Office
17 71 (1.49%) Investment Banking
18 57 (1.20%) Law
19 53 (1.11%) Back Office
20 49 (1.03%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 667 (14.02%) Analyst
2 532 (11.18%) Developer
3 421 (8.85%) Senior
4 357 (7.50%) Lead
5 333 (7.00%) Architect
6 236 (4.96%) Business Analyst
7 206 (4.33%) Consultant
8 200 (4.20%) Data Engineer
9 167 (3.51%) IT Support
10 158 (3.32%) Support Engineer
11 153 (3.22%) Project Manager
12 106 (2.23%) Data Analyst
13 102 (2.14%) Administrator
13 102 (2.14%) IT Engineer
14 100 (2.10%) Java Developer
15 91 (1.91%) Software Engineer
16 90 (1.89%) Solutions Architect
17 81 (1.70%) Support Analyst
18 78 (1.64%) DevOps Engineer
18 78 (1.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (5.61%) REST
2 140 (2.94%) .NET
3 133 (2.80%) RESTful
4 131 (2.75%) Kafka
5 128 (2.69%) Spring
6 123 (2.59%) SOAP
7 122 (2.56%) React
8 110 (2.31%) JSON
9 103 (2.16%) CSS
10 94 (1.98%) XML
11 92 (1.93%) HTML
11 92 (1.93%) Spring Boot
12 90 (1.89%) Middleware
13 78 (1.64%) Node.js
14 76 (1.60%) AngularJS
15 61 (1.28%) Web Services
16 60 (1.26%) OAuth
17 54 (1.13%) LDAP
17 54 (1.13%) PySpark
18 47 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 250 (5.25%) Onboarding
2 235 (4.94%) Product Ownership
3 201 (4.22%) Cloud Native
4 177 (3.72%) Self-Motivation
5 175 (3.68%) Data Centre
6 139 (2.92%) Analytical Mindset
7 138 (2.90%) Distributed Systems
8 133 (2.80%) Management Information System
9 123 (2.59%) Enterprise Software
10 120 (2.52%) Data Protection Act
10 120 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
11 109 (2.29%) Data Structures
12 101 (2.12%) Virtual Team
13 63 (1.32%) Driving Licence
14 55 (1.16%) CMDB
15 54 (1.13%) Algorithms
16 53 (1.11%) AI Agents
17 52 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 49 (1.03%) PKI
19 48 (1.01%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 620 (13.03%) Windows
2 258 (5.42%) Linux
3 126 (2.65%) Windows Server
4 107 (2.25%) Windows 10
5 98 (2.06%) Unix
6 77 (1.62%) Apple iOS
6 77 (1.62%) Mac OS
7 73 (1.53%) Android
8 40 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 19 (0.40%) Ubuntu
10 13 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
11 12 (0.25%) VMS
12 11 (0.23%) zOS
13 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.15%) Solaris
15 6 (0.13%) CentOS
16 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.084%) AIX
17 4 (0.084%) HPUX
17 4 (0.084%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,288 (27.07%) Agile
2 928 (19.50%) Continuous Improvement
3 883 (18.56%) Stakeholder Management
4 767 (16.12%) CI/CD
5 732 (15.38%) DevOps
6 617 (12.97%) AI
7 533 (11.20%) Decision-Making
8 502 (10.55%) Migration
9 497 (10.45%) Analytics
10 479 (10.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 472 (9.92%) ITIL
12 437 (9.18%) Customer Service
13 377 (7.92%) Business Intelligence
14 368 (7.73%) Validation
15 360 (7.57%) Data Modelling
15 360 (7.57%) Test Automation
16 349 (7.34%) Project Management
17 338 (7.10%) Roadmaps
18 329 (6.91%) Change Management
19 325 (6.83%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 852 (17.91%) SQL
2 779 (16.37%) Python
3 361 (7.59%) Java
4 265 (5.57%) PowerShell
5 253 (5.32%) JavaScript
6 155 (3.26%) C#
7 129 (2.71%) Bash
8 105 (2.21%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 51 (1.07%) C++
11 50 (1.05%) T-SQL
12 44 (0.92%) Shell Script
13 38 (0.80%) Go
14 34 (0.71%) C
15 33 (0.69%) Bicep
16 31 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 28 (0.59%) Apex Code
18 27 (0.57%) Kotlin
19 26 (0.55%) R
20 22 (0.46%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,054 (22.15%) Security Cleared
2 700 (14.71%) SC Cleared
3 589 (12.38%) Degree
4 213 (4.48%) DV Cleared
5 167 (3.51%) Computer Science Degree
6 133 (2.80%) Microsoft Certification
7 117 (2.46%) Cisco Certification
8 107 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
9 81 (1.70%) CISSP
10 78 (1.64%) PMP
11 71 (1.49%) PMI Certification
12 67 (1.41%) Azure Certification
13 65 (1.37%) CCNA
14 64 (1.35%) A+ Certification
15 53 (1.11%) CISM
16 52 (1.09%) Master's Degree
17 44 (0.92%) Network+ Certification
18 41 (0.86%) MCSE
19 37 (0.78%) AWS Certification
20 36 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 327 (6.87%) Data Quality
2 283 (5.95%) QA
3 143 (3.01%) GDPR
4 105 (2.21%) Accessibility
5 104 (2.19%) SLA
6 87 (1.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 74 (1.56%) PMO
8 71 (1.49%) NIST
9 46 (0.97%) GRC
10 26 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 25 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
12 23 (0.48%) WCAG
13 14 (0.29%) NCSC
13 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.27%) GxP
15 11 (0.23%) COBIT
15 11 (0.23%) HIPAA
15 11 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.21%) HL7
16 10 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 368 (7.73%) Active Directory
2 305 (6.41%) Docker
3 121 (2.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 47 (0.99%) vSphere
5 46 (0.97%) VMware ESXi
5 46 (0.97%) VMware NSX
6 36 (0.76%) Hyper-V
7 30 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
8 27 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
9 21 (0.44%) vCloud
10 20 (0.42%) Firmware
11 18 (0.38%) IAG
12 11 (0.23%) Squid
13 8 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.15%) NFS
15 4 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.084%) Snort
16 2 (0.042%) SRDF
16 2 (0.042%) UAG
16 2 (0.042%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 365 (7.67%) Kubernetes
2 288 (6.05%) Terraform
3 162 (3.40%) Ansible
4 123 (2.59%) Microsoft Intune
5 105 (2.21%) Grafana
6 89 (1.87%) Prometheus
7 72 (1.51%) SCCM
8 55 (1.16%) vCenter Server
9 36 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
10 34 (0.71%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.63%) Control-M
12 22 (0.46%) SCOM
13 20 (0.42%) Argo
14 19 (0.40%) Nessus
15 18 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
16 17 (0.36%) IBM Guardium
17 16 (0.34%) WSUS
18 12 (0.25%) Kibana
19 9 (0.19%) Puppet
19 9 (0.19%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 944 (19.84%) Microsoft
2 339 (7.12%) Oracle
3 309 (6.49%) ServiceNow
4 292 (6.14%) SAP
5 189 (3.97%) VMware
6 146 (3.07%) Google
7 122 (2.56%) Splunk
8 117 (2.46%) Salesforce
9 110 (2.31%) Cisco
10 101 (2.12%) Databricks
11 76 (1.60%) Workday
12 68 (1.43%) Dynatrace
13 58 (1.22%) Red Hat
14 53 (1.11%) Adobe
15 51 (1.07%) Apple
16 49 (1.03%) Dell
17 47 (0.99%) Citrix
17 47 (0.99%) CyberArk
18 43 (0.90%) MuleSoft
19 39 (0.82%) Juniper