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

6 months to
4 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 4,877 4,311 3,855
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.69% 15.84% 11.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.59% 17.45% 13.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,778 2,618 2,291
10th Percentile £236 £250 £263
25th Percentile £375 £375 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
90th Percentile £716 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -2.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 416 277 217
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £12.62
25th Percentile £15.87 £15.25 £15.00
Median hourly rate £20.00 £19.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% +17.07% -70.01%
75th Percentile £42.92 £35.00 £29.25
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £18.79 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -7.23% +24.80% -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 38,742 24,707 27,973
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.90% 90.77% 85.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,892 15,711 17,811
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £636 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £751
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,598 1,453 1,393
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.25 £14.41
25th Percentile £18.34 £17.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £43.56 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +73.20% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £66.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +2.41%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 2,142 £525 +5.00% 5,003
South East -4 781 £475 +5.56% 1,470
North of England -12 713 £443 -6.74% 1,438
Midlands -6 551 £450 +1.12% 1,061
West Midlands -8 393 £450 -4.05% 669
North West -8 359 £444 -6.63% 805
South West -3 331 £483 +7.22% 886
Yorkshire -9 290 £450 -5.26% 450
East of England +1 253 £438 -12.50% 715
East Midlands -1 155 £475 +26.67% 394
North East -12 66 £375 -16.67% 209
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
1 218 (4.47%) SharePoint
2 212 (4.35%) Confluence
3 106 (2.17%) Microsoft Exchange
4 50 (1.03%) Apache Spark
5 41 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.68%) Apache
7 27 (0.55%) CMS
7 27 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
8 23 (0.47%) SAS
9 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
10 12 (0.25%) WebLogic
11 9 (0.18%) CICS
11 9 (0.18%) Jupyter
12 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
12 7 (0.14%) IIS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 5 (0.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 5 (0.10%) Appian
14 5 (0.10%) Camunda
14 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
Applications
1 280 (5.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 234 (4.80%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.31%) Microsoft Project
5 52 (1.07%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.33%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.31%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.27%) Revit
10 9 (0.18%) Sketch
10 9 (0.18%) Trello
11 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
12 6 (0.12%) Windchill
13 5 (0.10%) CATIA
13 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
14 4 (0.082%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.062%) DaVinci Resolve
15 3 (0.062%) NUKE
15 3 (0.062%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 118 (2.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.53%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
6 19 (0.39%) Workday HCM
7 18 (0.37%) SAP GRC
8 15 (0.31%) iTrent
9 13 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
9 13 (0.27%) SAP SD
10 11 (0.23%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.21%) Aladdin
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
12 8 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
12 8 (0.16%) Shopify
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
14 6 (0.12%) Maximo
14 6 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 989 (20.28%) Azure
2 705 (14.46%) AWS
3 459 (9.41%) Microsoft 365
4 404 (8.28%) Power Platform
5 274 (5.62%) GCP
6 245 (5.02%) Azure DevOps
7 209 (4.29%) Entra ID
8 159 (3.26%) GitHub
9 131 (2.69%) SaaS
10 108 (2.21%) Serverless
11 96 (1.97%) Power Automate
12 75 (1.54%) Microsoft Copilot
13 72 (1.48%) OneDrive
14 70 (1.44%) Dynamics 365
15 69 (1.41%) PowerApps
16 66 (1.35%) GitHub Actions
17 63 (1.29%) Azure Data Factory
18 61 (1.25%) Snowflake
19 56 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
20 50 (1.03%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 206 (4.22%) DNS
2 174 (3.57%) Firewall
3 160 (3.28%) VPN
4 125 (2.56%) DHCP
5 117 (2.40%) TCP/IP
6 106 (2.17%) WAN
7 90 (1.85%) LAN
8 88 (1.80%) Network Security
9 71 (1.46%) Wi-Fi
10 60 (1.23%) SAN
11 58 (1.19%) Wireless
12 50 (1.03%) VLAN
13 44 (0.90%) BGP
14 35 (0.72%) VoIP
15 34 (0.70%) SD-WAN
16 32 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
17 26 (0.53%) MPLS
18 25 (0.51%) OSPF
19 22 (0.45%) SSL
20 19 (0.39%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (6.36%) Power BI
2 195 (4.00%) SQL Server
3 161 (3.30%) Data Warehouse
4 157 (3.22%) Relational Database
5 136 (2.79%) PostgreSQL
6 91 (1.87%) Metadata
7 79 (1.62%) Tableau
8 77 (1.58%) NoSQL
9 72 (1.48%) MongoDB
10 71 (1.46%) Data Lake
11 50 (1.03%) Oracle Database
12 48 (0.98%) MySQL
13 45 (0.92%) Big Data
14 34 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 32 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
16 27 (0.55%) Db2
17 25 (0.51%) Power Query
18 24 (0.49%) Delta Lake
19 22 (0.45%) BigQuery
19 22 (0.45%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 440 (9.02%) JIRA
2 303 (6.21%) Git
3 152 (3.12%) Jenkins
4 116 (2.38%) GitLab
5 67 (1.37%) Selenium
6 35 (0.72%) Cypress.io
6 35 (0.72%) Postman
7 30 (0.62%) Maven
8 29 (0.59%) JUnit
9 26 (0.53%) Cucumber
10 25 (0.51%) Bitbucket
11 24 (0.49%) Gradle
11 24 (0.49%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.43%) JMeter
12 21 (0.43%) SonarQube
13 18 (0.37%) Mockito
14 16 (0.33%) Gatling
14 16 (0.33%) WebDriver
15 13 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
15 13 (0.27%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,606 (53.43%) Social Skills
2 2,124 (43.55%) Analytical Skills
3 1,144 (23.46%) Finance
4 492 (10.09%) Public Sector
5 405 (8.30%) Banking
6 234 (4.80%) Organisational Skills
7 179 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
8 178 (3.65%) Retail
9 176 (3.61%) Manufacturing
10 159 (3.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 156 (3.20%) Influencing Skills
12 114 (2.34%) Front Office
13 110 (2.26%) Legal
14 108 (2.21%) Presentation Skills
15 103 (2.11%) Telecoms
16 102 (2.09%) Marketing
17 81 (1.66%) Investment Banking
18 63 (1.29%) Law
19 55 (1.13%) Back Office
20 54 (1.11%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 667 (13.68%) Analyst
2 560 (11.48%) Developer
3 443 (9.08%) Senior
4 376 (7.71%) Lead
5 306 (6.27%) Architect
6 223 (4.57%) Business Analyst
7 215 (4.41%) Consultant
8 205 (4.20%) IT Support
9 191 (3.92%) Support Engineer
10 187 (3.83%) Data Engineer
11 133 (2.73%) IT Engineer
12 131 (2.69%) Project Manager
13 118 (2.42%) Administrator
14 106 (2.17%) Data Analyst
15 98 (2.01%) Java Developer
16 96 (1.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 92 (1.89%) IT Support Engineer
18 89 (1.82%) DevOps Engineer
19 87 (1.78%) Solutions Architect
20 85 (1.74%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 312 (6.40%) REST
2 288 (5.91%) Terraform
3 164 (3.36%) .NET
4 151 (3.10%) RESTful
5 145 (2.97%) SOAP
6 137 (2.81%) React
7 116 (2.38%) Kafka
8 111 (2.28%) JSON
8 111 (2.28%) Spring
9 108 (2.21%) XML
10 106 (2.17%) CSS
11 105 (2.15%) HTML
12 98 (2.01%) Middleware
13 88 (1.80%) Spring Boot
13 88 (1.80%) Web Services
14 81 (1.66%) AngularJS
15 76 (1.56%) Node.js
15 76 (1.56%) OAuth
16 62 (1.27%) PySpark
17 49 (1.00%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 283 (5.80%) Onboarding
2 247 (5.06%) Product Ownership
3 246 (5.04%) Cloud Native
4 196 (4.02%) Self-Motivation
5 168 (3.44%) Management Information System
6 165 (3.38%) Enterprise Software
7 152 (3.12%) Data Centre
8 143 (2.93%) Distributed Systems
9 129 (2.65%) Data Structures
10 124 (2.54%) Analytical Mindset
11 119 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
12 110 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
13 84 (1.72%) Virtual Team
14 68 (1.39%) AI Agents
15 67 (1.37%) CMDB
15 67 (1.37%) Driving Licence
16 55 (1.13%) Algorithms
17 54 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 53 (1.09%) PKI
19 50 (1.03%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 672 (13.78%) Windows
2 265 (5.43%) Linux
3 192 (3.94%) Windows Server
4 127 (2.60%) Windows 10
5 93 (1.91%) Unix
6 80 (1.64%) Apple iOS
7 78 (1.60%) Mac OS
8 71 (1.46%) Android
9 42 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.41%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.33%) VMS
13 11 (0.23%) zOS
14 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.16%) CentOS
15 8 (0.16%) Solaris
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
18 4 (0.082%) AIX
18 4 (0.082%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,349 (27.66%) Agile
2 1,094 (22.43%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,085 (22.25%) Stakeholder Management
4 806 (16.53%) CI/CD
5 760 (15.58%) DevOps
6 671 (13.76%) AI
7 561 (11.50%) Decision-Making
8 547 (11.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 514 (10.54%) Migration
10 507 (10.40%) Analytics
11 477 (9.78%) ITIL
12 464 (9.51%) Customer Service
13 392 (8.04%) Test Automation
14 391 (8.02%) Validation
15 377 (7.73%) Business Intelligence
16 357 (7.32%) Data Modelling
17 340 (6.97%) Roadmaps
17 340 (6.97%) Scrum
18 337 (6.91%) ITSM
19 315 (6.46%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 883 (18.11%) SQL
2 790 (16.20%) Python
3 362 (7.42%) Java
4 301 (6.17%) PowerShell
5 285 (5.84%) JavaScript
6 182 (3.73%) C#
7 147 (3.01%) Bash
8 113 (2.32%) TypeScript
9 85 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 50 (1.03%) C++
11 49 (1.00%) T-SQL
12 37 (0.76%) Go
13 36 (0.74%) Shell Script
14 31 (0.64%) Bicep
15 30 (0.62%) Scala
16 29 (0.59%) Kotlin
17 27 (0.55%) R
18 26 (0.53%) Apex Code
19 25 (0.51%) C
20 24 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,068 (21.90%) Security Cleared
2 738 (15.13%) SC Cleared
3 596 (12.22%) Degree
4 204 (4.18%) DV Cleared
5 183 (3.75%) Computer Science Degree
6 143 (2.93%) Microsoft Certification
7 113 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
8 89 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
9 77 (1.58%) Azure Certification
10 73 (1.50%) PMP
11 71 (1.46%) PMI Certification
12 68 (1.39%) CISSP
13 59 (1.21%) A+ Certification
14 50 (1.03%) CCNA
15 49 (1.00%) Master's Degree
16 41 (0.84%) AWS Certification
17 40 (0.82%) DBS Check
17 40 (0.82%) Network+ Certification
18 39 (0.80%) CISM
19 38 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 370 (7.59%) Data Quality
2 340 (6.97%) QA
3 123 (2.52%) GDPR
4 113 (2.32%) SLA
5 110 (2.26%) Accessibility
6 89 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 85 (1.74%) PMO
8 72 (1.48%) NIST
9 62 (1.27%) GRC
10 30 (0.62%) WCAG
11 24 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.31%) GxP
14 14 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
14 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.27%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 13 (0.27%) COBIT
16 11 (0.23%) IFRS
17 10 (0.21%) HL7
17 10 (0.21%) NCSC
System Software
1 399 (8.18%) Active Directory
2 298 (6.11%) Docker
3 149 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.25%) Hyper-V
4 61 (1.25%) VMware ESXi
5 53 (1.09%) VMware NSX
6 46 (0.94%) vSphere
7 34 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
8 28 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (0.55%) vCloud
10 26 (0.53%) IAG
11 15 (0.31%) Firmware
12 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.12%) NFS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.062%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.062%) Squid
15 3 (0.062%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 334 (6.85%) Kubernetes
2 161 (3.30%) Ansible
3 128 (2.62%) Microsoft Intune
4 91 (1.87%) Grafana
5 90 (1.85%) SCCM
6 70 (1.44%) Prometheus
7 55 (1.13%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.76%) SCOM
9 23 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.45%) Control-M
10 22 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
10 22 (0.45%) WSUS
11 14 (0.29%) Argo
11 14 (0.29%) FortiGate
12 11 (0.23%) Istio
12 11 (0.23%) Kibana
13 10 (0.21%) Nessus
13 10 (0.21%) Puppet
14 9 (0.18%) Podman
14 9 (0.18%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,113 (22.82%) Microsoft
2 348 (7.14%) Oracle
3 325 (6.66%) ServiceNow
4 300 (6.15%) SAP
5 199 (4.08%) VMware
6 134 (2.75%) Google
6 134 (2.75%) Salesforce
7 120 (2.46%) Databricks
8 107 (2.19%) Cisco
9 101 (2.07%) Splunk
10 72 (1.48%) Workday
11 67 (1.37%) Dynatrace
12 61 (1.25%) Apple
13 54 (1.11%) Adobe
14 47 (0.96%) IBM
15 45 (0.92%) CyberArk
16 42 (0.86%) Red Hat
17 41 (0.84%) MuleSoft
18 37 (0.76%) Dell
19 35 (0.72%) Citrix