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

6 months to
26 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 4,304 4,043
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.82% 15.40% 12.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.78% 16.95% 14.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,845 2,626 2,314
10th Percentile £250 £250 £263
25th Percentile £381 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £608
90th Percentile £714 £701 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -0.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 477 268 208
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £15.40
Median hourly rate £19.48 £18.90 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.10% +16.42% -69.42%
75th Percentile £40.00 £34.61 £30.31
90th Percentile £72.85 £63.51 £62.88
UK median hourly rate £18.38 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -9.26% +24.80% -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 39,398 25,390 28,245
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.63% 90.87% 86.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,997 16,126 17,350
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 2,849 1,543 1,244
10th Percentile £13.90 £14.41 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.23% -41.51% -1.94%
75th Percentile £67.70 £47.50 £66.61
90th Percentile £79.00 £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 26 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 26 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 26 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 2,161 £525 +3.93% 5,391
South East -3 804 £475 +5.56% 1,883
North of England -9 729 £450 -5.26% 1,727
Midlands -5 615 £450 +2.33% 1,238
West Midlands -8 441 £450 -6.25% 751
North West -11 359 £450 -4.05% 912
South West -5 329 £500 +11.11% 913
Yorkshire -6 300 £454 -7.82% 586
East of England 0 285 £450 -10.00% 845
East Midlands +1 171 £450 +20.00% 485
North East -14 72 £375 -16.67% 244
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
1 233 (4.63%) SharePoint
2 220 (4.37%) Confluence
3 101 (2.01%) Microsoft Exchange
4 47 (0.93%) Apache Spark
5 42 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
6 36 (0.71%) Apache
7 26 (0.52%) CMS
8 25 (0.50%) SAS
9 24 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.32%) WebLogic
10 16 (0.32%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.20%) CICS
11 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 7 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 7 (0.14%) IIS
13 6 (0.12%) WordPress
14 5 (0.099%) ArcGIS
14 5 (0.099%) Mule
14 5 (0.099%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.099%) Tomcat
Applications
1 296 (5.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 247 (4.91%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (2.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 59 (1.17%) Microsoft Project
5 49 (0.97%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 17 (0.34%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.32%) Revit
9 9 (0.18%) Navisworks
9 9 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.18%) Trello
9 9 (0.18%) Windchill
10 6 (0.12%) CPLEX
11 4 (0.079%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.060%) Acrobat
12 3 (0.060%) CATIA
12 3 (0.060%) DaVinci Resolve
12 3 (0.060%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 117 (2.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.60%) 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 14 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
9 13 (0.26%) iTrent
9 13 (0.26%) SAP SD
10 11 (0.22%) Aladdin
10 11 (0.22%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.20%) Finacle
11 10 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
11 10 (0.20%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
12 8 (0.16%) Primavera
12 8 (0.16%) Shopify
13 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 997 (19.80%) Azure
2 703 (13.96%) AWS
3 484 (9.61%) Microsoft 365
4 421 (8.36%) Power Platform
5 293 (5.82%) GCP
6 241 (4.79%) Azure DevOps
7 212 (4.21%) Entra ID
8 176 (3.50%) GitHub
9 130 (2.58%) SaaS
10 111 (2.20%) Serverless
11 108 (2.14%) Power Automate
12 88 (1.75%) Microsoft Copilot
13 83 (1.65%) Dynamics 365
14 80 (1.59%) PowerApps
15 71 (1.41%) OneDrive
16 69 (1.37%) GitHub Actions
17 66 (1.31%) Snowflake
18 59 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
19 51 (1.01%) OpenShift
20 50 (0.99%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 202 (4.01%) DNS
2 175 (3.48%) Firewall
3 158 (3.14%) VPN
4 122 (2.42%) DHCP
5 114 (2.26%) TCP/IP
6 99 (1.97%) WAN
7 96 (1.91%) Network Security
8 85 (1.69%) LAN
9 70 (1.39%) Wi-Fi
10 59 (1.17%) Wireless
11 55 (1.09%) SAN
12 48 (0.95%) VLAN
13 45 (0.89%) BGP
14 40 (0.79%) VoIP
15 31 (0.62%) Structured Cabling
16 28 (0.56%) 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
1 315 (6.26%) Power BI
2 189 (3.75%) SQL Server
3 156 (3.10%) Relational Database
4 151 (3.00%) Data Warehouse
5 133 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
6 88 (1.75%) Metadata
7 83 (1.65%) MongoDB
8 79 (1.57%) NoSQL
9 73 (1.45%) Tableau
10 70 (1.39%) Data Lake
11 53 (1.05%) MySQL
12 52 (1.03%) Oracle Database
13 35 (0.70%) Big Data
14 33 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 32 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
16 29 (0.58%) BigQuery
17 26 (0.52%) Db2
17 26 (0.52%) Pentaho
18 25 (0.50%) Delta Lake
18 25 (0.50%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 440 (8.74%) JIRA
2 331 (6.57%) Git
3 174 (3.46%) Jenkins
4 125 (2.48%) GitLab
5 71 (1.41%) Selenium
6 40 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 36 (0.71%) JUnit
7 36 (0.71%) Maven
8 35 (0.70%) Cypress.io
8 35 (0.70%) Postman
9 28 (0.56%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.54%) Gradle
11 26 (0.52%) SonarQube
12 24 (0.48%) REST Assured
13 22 (0.44%) JMeter
14 21 (0.42%) Mockito
15 18 (0.36%) Gatling
16 17 (0.34%) WebDriver
17 15 (0.30%) Visual Studio
18 13 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,691 (53.45%) Social Skills
2 2,188 (43.46%) Analytical Skills
3 1,164 (23.12%) Finance
4 505 (10.03%) Public Sector
5 412 (8.18%) Banking
6 264 (5.24%) Organisational Skills
7 226 (4.49%) Manufacturing
8 176 (3.50%) Documentation Skills
9 169 (3.36%) Retail
10 168 (3.34%) Influencing Skills
11 161 (3.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 119 (2.36%) Legal
13 113 (2.24%) Front Office
14 110 (2.18%) Marketing
14 110 (2.18%) Presentation Skills
15 108 (2.14%) Telecoms
16 77 (1.53%) Investment Banking
17 65 (1.29%) Law
18 59 (1.17%) Aerospace
18 59 (1.17%) Military
Job Titles
1 679 (13.49%) Analyst
2 576 (11.44%) Developer
3 470 (9.33%) Senior
4 380 (7.55%) Lead
5 288 (5.72%) Architect
6 231 (4.59%) Business Analyst
7 218 (4.33%) IT Support
8 207 (4.11%) Consultant
9 199 (3.95%) Support Engineer
10 181 (3.59%) Data Engineer
11 136 (2.70%) Administrator
11 136 (2.70%) IT Engineer
12 134 (2.66%) Project Manager
13 109 (2.16%) Data Analyst
14 100 (1.99%) IT Support Engineer
15 99 (1.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 99 (1.97%) Java Developer
16 96 (1.91%) DevOps Engineer
17 88 (1.75%) Network Engineer
18 83 (1.65%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 333 (6.61%) REST
2 304 (6.04%) Terraform
3 171 (3.40%) .NET
4 150 (2.98%) RESTful
4 150 (2.98%) SOAP
5 143 (2.84%) React
6 119 (2.36%) Kafka
7 116 (2.30%) CSS
7 116 (2.30%) HTML
7 116 (2.30%) JSON
8 114 (2.26%) XML
9 109 (2.16%) Spring
10 97 (1.93%) Middleware
11 96 (1.91%) Web Services
12 89 (1.77%) Spring Boot
13 82 (1.63%) AngularJS
14 81 (1.61%) Node.js
15 76 (1.51%) OAuth
16 57 (1.13%) PySpark
17 51 (1.01%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 300 (5.96%) Onboarding
2 258 (5.12%) Cloud Native
3 241 (4.79%) Product Ownership
4 202 (4.01%) Self-Motivation
5 190 (3.77%) Management Information System
6 179 (3.56%) Enterprise Software
7 151 (3.00%) Data Centre
8 132 (2.62%) Distributed Systems
9 126 (2.50%) Data Structures
10 116 (2.30%) Analytical Mindset
11 114 (2.26%) Legacy Systems
12 107 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
13 85 (1.69%) Virtual Team
14 80 (1.59%) Driving Licence
15 72 (1.43%) AI Agents
16 66 (1.31%) CMDB
17 58 (1.15%) PKI
18 52 (1.03%) Mobile App
19 51 (1.01%) NHS
20 50 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 701 (13.92%) Windows
2 281 (5.58%) Linux
3 204 (4.05%) Windows Server
4 125 (2.48%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.95%) Unix
6 84 (1.67%) Mac OS
7 82 (1.63%) Apple iOS
8 73 (1.45%) 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 15 (0.30%) Solaris
14 12 (0.24%) 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 1,370 (27.21%) Agile
2 1,226 (24.35%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,146 (22.76%) Continuous Improvement
4 840 (16.68%) CI/CD
5 762 (15.13%) DevOps
6 698 (13.86%) AI
7 576 (11.44%) Decision-Making
8 561 (11.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 530 (10.53%) Migration
10 498 (9.89%) Analytics
11 497 (9.87%) Customer Service
12 470 (9.33%) ITIL
13 413 (8.20%) Test Automation
14 403 (8.00%) Validation
15 374 (7.43%) Business Intelligence
16 356 (7.07%) Data Modelling
17 345 (6.85%) Scrum
18 339 (6.73%) ITSM
19 334 (6.63%) Technical Leadership
20 333 (6.61%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 891 (17.70%) SQL
2 774 (15.37%) Python
3 371 (7.37%) Java
4 311 (6.18%) JavaScript
5 300 (5.96%) PowerShell
6 198 (3.93%) C#
7 146 (2.90%) Bash
8 133 (2.64%) TypeScript
9 82 (1.63%) PL/SQL
10 47 (0.93%) T-SQL
11 43 (0.85%) Go
11 43 (0.85%) Shell Script
12 42 (0.83%) C++
13 30 (0.60%) Scala
14 29 (0.58%) Bicep
15 26 (0.52%) Groovy
15 26 (0.52%) Kotlin
16 25 (0.50%) R
17 23 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 21 (0.42%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,113 (22.11%) Security Cleared
2 781 (15.51%) SC Cleared
3 607 (12.06%) Degree
4 217 (4.31%) DV Cleared
5 179 (3.56%) Computer Science Degree
6 141 (2.80%) Microsoft Certification
7 139 (2.76%) BPSS Clearance
8 86 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
9 76 (1.51%) CISSP
10 74 (1.47%) Azure Certification
11 72 (1.43%) PMI Certification
12 68 (1.35%) PMP
13 52 (1.03%) A+ Certification
14 49 (0.97%) DBS Check
15 48 (0.95%) Master's Degree
16 47 (0.93%) AWS Certification
17 45 (0.89%) CCNA
18 43 (0.85%) CISM
19 39 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
20 35 (0.70%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (7.51%) Data Quality
2 350 (6.95%) QA
3 119 (2.36%) GDPR
4 117 (2.32%) SLA
5 115 (2.28%) Accessibility
6 90 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 82 (1.63%) PMO
8 67 (1.33%) NIST
9 55 (1.09%) GRC
10 31 (0.62%) WCAG
11 22 (0.44%) 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%) HIPAA
System Software
1 405 (8.04%) Active Directory
2 311 (6.18%) Docker
3 159 (3.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 65 (1.29%) VMware ESXi
5 62 (1.23%) Hyper-V
6 53 (1.05%) vSphere
7 52 (1.03%) VMware NSX
8 32 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
9 29 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
10 25 (0.50%) 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
1 342 (6.79%) Kubernetes
2 160 (3.18%) Ansible
3 133 (2.64%) Microsoft Intune
4 91 (1.81%) Grafana
5 84 (1.67%) SCCM
6 73 (1.45%) 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
17 8 (0.16%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,214 (24.11%) Microsoft
2 341 (6.77%) Oracle
3 316 (6.28%) ServiceNow
4 310 (6.16%) SAP
5 205 (4.07%) VMware
6 153 (3.04%) Google
7 126 (2.50%) Salesforce
8 119 (2.36%) Cisco
8 119 (2.36%) Databricks
9 103 (2.05%) Splunk
10 71 (1.41%) Workday
11 66 (1.31%) Dynatrace
12 59 (1.17%) Apple
13 55 (1.09%) IBM
14 54 (1.07%) Adobe
15 48 (0.95%) Red Hat
16 43 (0.85%) CyberArk
17 36 (0.71%) Dell
17 36 (0.71%) MuleSoft
18 33 (0.66%) Palo Alto