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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -7 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,757 4,475 3,909
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.61% 16.42% 11.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.43% 18.11% 12.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,765 2,760 2,404
10th Percentile £260 £250 £250
25th Percentile £382 £380 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £497 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.64% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £623
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £492 £492 £500
% change year-on-year - -1.60% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 367 276 299
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.82 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.30 £15.44 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.49 £21.25 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +1.15% +30.90% -69.09%
75th Percentile £51.26 £40.86 £33.04
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.13 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.48 £21.39 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.28% +31.79% -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 38,258 24,707 30,336
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.32% 90.66% 85.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,997 15,833 19,804
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £421 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £735 £745 £751
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,373 1,323 1,986
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.22 £13.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.88 £17.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -37.13% -6.43%
75th Percentile £69.50 £53.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.03 £74.22
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 21 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 21 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 21 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 2,012 £513 +2.50% 1,332
South East -5 750 £488 -2.50% 737
North of England -9 740 £447 -5.84% 639
Midlands -7 544 £450 +5.88% 392
West Midlands -8 397 £450 - 219
North West -10 367 £450 -8.54% 350
South West -2 336 £500 +3.90% 308
Yorkshire -7 324 £450 -5.26% 202
East of England -2 265 £450 -5.01% 260
East Midlands 0 145 £450 +20.00% 173
North East -19 55 £370 -17.78% 95
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
1 219 (4.60%) Confluence
2 175 (3.68%) SharePoint
3 89 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 53 (1.11%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.69%) Apache
7 31 (0.65%) CMS
8 27 (0.57%) SAS
9 26 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.38%) 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 5 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 249 (5.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 218 (4.58%) Microsoft Office
3 86 (1.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (1.45%) MS Visio
5 64 (1.35%) Microsoft Project
6 28 (0.59%) 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
1 118 (2.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
4 23 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.38%) Workday HCM
6 17 (0.36%) Aladdin
6 17 (0.36%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
8 12 (0.25%) iTrent
9 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
9 11 (0.23%) Teamcenter
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
10 10 (0.21%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
11 9 (0.19%) SAP GRC
12 8 (0.17%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
12 8 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
12 8 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
13 7 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 927 (19.49%) Azure
2 683 (14.36%) AWS
3 373 (7.84%) Power Platform
4 363 (7.63%) Microsoft 365
5 262 (5.51%) GCP
6 220 (4.62%) Azure DevOps
7 183 (3.85%) Entra ID
8 165 (3.47%) GitHub
9 125 (2.63%) SaaS
10 114 (2.40%) Serverless
11 77 (1.62%) GitHub Actions
12 73 (1.53%) Power Automate
13 72 (1.51%) AWS Lambda
14 69 (1.45%) Amazon S3
15 60 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
15 60 (1.26%) PowerApps
16 59 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
16 59 (1.24%) OpenShift
17 57 (1.20%) Snowflake
18 51 (1.07%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 209 (4.39%) DNS
2 178 (3.74%) Firewall
3 130 (2.73%) VPN
4 125 (2.63%) TCP/IP
5 114 (2.40%) DHCP
6 99 (2.08%) WAN
7 88 (1.85%) LAN
8 85 (1.79%) Network Security
9 68 (1.43%) Wi-Fi
10 67 (1.41%) SAN
11 51 (1.07%) VLAN
12 49 (1.03%) BGP
13 48 (1.01%) Wireless
14 39 (0.82%) OSPF
15 34 (0.71%) SD-WAN
16 31 (0.65%) VoIP
17 29 (0.61%) Structured Cabling
18 24 (0.50%) MPLS
18 24 (0.50%) VXLAN
19 20 (0.42%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 294 (6.18%) Power BI
2 212 (4.46%) SQL Server
3 148 (3.11%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (2.88%) PostgreSQL
5 133 (2.80%) Relational Database
6 94 (1.98%) MongoDB
7 80 (1.68%) NoSQL
8 79 (1.66%) Data Lake
8 79 (1.66%) Metadata
9 78 (1.64%) Tableau
10 53 (1.11%) Oracle Database
11 50 (1.05%) Big Data
12 48 (1.01%) MySQL
12 48 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 35 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
14 26 (0.55%) Db2
15 25 (0.53%) Power Query
16 23 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
16 23 (0.48%) RDBMS
17 22 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 477 (10.03%) JIRA
2 275 (5.78%) Git
3 160 (3.36%) Jenkins
4 105 (2.21%) GitLab
5 66 (1.39%) Selenium
6 36 (0.76%) Postman
7 30 (0.63%) Cypress.io
8 28 (0.59%) REST Assured
9 27 (0.57%) Cucumber
10 24 (0.50%) JUnit
11 22 (0.46%) Bitbucket
12 21 (0.44%) Mockito
13 20 (0.42%) Maven
14 19 (0.40%) Gradle
15 17 (0.36%) WebDriver
16 15 (0.32%) JMeter
16 15 (0.32%) SonarQube
17 12 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
17 12 (0.25%) Zephyr
18 11 (0.23%) Gatling
General
1 2,452 (51.55%) Social Skills
2 1,973 (41.48%) Analytical Skills
3 1,100 (23.12%) Finance
4 443 (9.31%) Public Sector
5 367 (7.71%) Banking
6 197 (4.14%) Organisational Skills
7 196 (4.12%) Documentation Skills
8 180 (3.78%) Retail
9 139 (2.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 127 (2.67%) Influencing Skills
11 119 (2.50%) Manufacturing
12 110 (2.31%) Legal
13 104 (2.19%) Presentation Skills
14 98 (2.06%) Marketing
14 98 (2.06%) Telecoms
15 96 (2.02%) Front Office
16 72 (1.51%) Investment Banking
17 58 (1.22%) Law
18 53 (1.11%) Back Office
19 48 (1.01%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 666 (14.00%) Analyst
2 533 (11.20%) Developer
3 416 (8.75%) Senior
4 351 (7.38%) Lead
5 335 (7.04%) Architect
6 235 (4.94%) Business Analyst
7 206 (4.33%) Consultant
8 202 (4.25%) Data Engineer
9 163 (3.43%) IT Support
10 157 (3.30%) Support Engineer
11 154 (3.24%) Project Manager
12 104 (2.19%) Data Analyst
13 103 (2.17%) Administrator
14 101 (2.12%) IT Engineer
15 97 (2.04%) Java Developer
16 91 (1.91%) Software Engineer
17 90 (1.89%) Solutions Architect
18 81 (1.70%) Support Analyst
19 77 (1.62%) DevOps Engineer
19 77 (1.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (5.61%) REST
2 143 (3.01%) .NET
3 133 (2.80%) RESTful
4 129 (2.71%) Kafka
5 126 (2.65%) Spring
6 125 (2.63%) SOAP
7 121 (2.54%) React
8 110 (2.31%) JSON
9 106 (2.23%) CSS
10 96 (2.02%) HTML
11 95 (2.00%) XML
12 90 (1.89%) Middleware
12 90 (1.89%) Spring Boot
13 79 (1.66%) Node.js
14 75 (1.58%) AngularJS
15 61 (1.28%) OAuth
15 61 (1.28%) Web Services
16 54 (1.14%) LDAP
16 54 (1.14%) PySpark
17 47 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 247 (5.19%) Onboarding
2 233 (4.90%) Product Ownership
3 199 (4.18%) Cloud Native
4 177 (3.72%) Self-Motivation
5 175 (3.68%) Data Centre
6 138 (2.90%) Analytical Mindset
7 136 (2.86%) Management Information System
8 134 (2.82%) Distributed Systems
9 121 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
10 119 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
10 119 (2.50%) Enterprise Software
11 108 (2.27%) Data Structures
12 99 (2.08%) Virtual Team
13 62 (1.30%) Driving Licence
14 55 (1.16%) CMDB
15 53 (1.11%) AI Agents
15 53 (1.11%) Algorithms
16 52 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 49 (1.03%) PKI
18 48 (1.01%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 612 (12.87%) Windows
2 256 (5.38%) Linux
3 123 (2.59%) Windows Server
4 106 (2.23%) Windows 10
5 97 (2.04%) Unix
6 77 (1.62%) Mac OS
7 76 (1.60%) Apple iOS
8 72 (1.51%) Android
9 41 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.25%) VMS
13 11 (0.23%) zOS
14 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.15%) Solaris
16 6 (0.13%) CentOS
17 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.084%) AIX
18 4 (0.084%) HPUX
18 4 (0.084%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,289 (27.10%) Agile
2 926 (19.47%) Continuous Improvement
3 878 (18.46%) Stakeholder Management
4 770 (16.19%) CI/CD
5 731 (15.37%) DevOps
6 613 (12.89%) AI
7 532 (11.18%) Decision-Making
8 502 (10.55%) Migration
9 500 (10.51%) Analytics
10 478 (10.05%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 473 (9.94%) ITIL
12 430 (9.04%) Customer Service
13 381 (8.01%) Business Intelligence
14 374 (7.86%) Validation
15 367 (7.71%) Test Automation
16 365 (7.67%) Data Modelling
17 351 (7.38%) Project Management
18 337 (7.08%) Roadmaps
19 331 (6.96%) Change Management
20 327 (6.87%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 849 (17.85%) SQL
2 780 (16.40%) Python
3 362 (7.61%) Java
4 263 (5.53%) PowerShell
5 252 (5.30%) JavaScript
6 156 (3.28%) C#
7 127 (2.67%) Bash
8 107 (2.25%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.18%) C++
11 49 (1.03%) T-SQL
12 44 (0.92%) Shell Script
13 40 (0.84%) C
14 38 (0.80%) Go
15 33 (0.69%) Bicep
16 31 (0.65%) Apex Code
16 31 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 27 (0.57%) Kotlin
18 26 (0.55%) R
19 21 (0.44%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,056 (22.20%) Security Cleared
2 696 (14.63%) SC Cleared
3 588 (12.36%) Degree
4 216 (4.54%) DV Cleared
5 169 (3.55%) Computer Science Degree
6 131 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
7 116 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
8 110 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
9 82 (1.72%) CISSP
10 77 (1.62%) PMP
11 70 (1.47%) PMI Certification
12 67 (1.41%) Azure Certification
13 65 (1.37%) CCNA
14 64 (1.35%) A+ Certification
15 53 (1.11%) CISM
15 53 (1.11%) Master's Degree
16 44 (0.92%) Network+ Certification
17 40 (0.84%) MCSE
18 39 (0.82%) AWS Certification
19 37 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 326 (6.85%) Data Quality
2 281 (5.91%) QA
3 144 (3.03%) GDPR
4 104 (2.19%) Accessibility
5 102 (2.14%) SLA
6 86 (1.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 74 (1.56%) PMO
8 71 (1.49%) NIST
9 45 (0.95%) GRC
10 26 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
11 25 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 22 (0.46%) WCAG
13 17 (0.36%) PCI DSS
14 14 (0.29%) NCSC
15 13 (0.27%) GxP
15 13 (0.27%) HIPAA
16 11 (0.23%) COBIT
16 11 (0.23%) Def Stans
16 11 (0.23%) ISO 20022
17 10 (0.21%) PSD2
System Software
1 363 (7.63%) Active Directory
2 302 (6.35%) Docker
3 120 (2.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 47 (0.99%) vSphere
5 46 (0.97%) VMware ESXi
5 46 (0.97%) VMware NSX
6 34 (0.71%) 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
1 362 (7.61%) Kubernetes
2 285 (5.99%) Terraform
3 160 (3.36%) Ansible
4 122 (2.56%) Microsoft Intune
5 105 (2.21%) Grafana
6 89 (1.87%) Prometheus
7 70 (1.47%) SCCM
8 55 (1.16%) vCenter Server
9 36 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
10 34 (0.71%) FortiGate
11 31 (0.65%) Control-M
12 22 (0.46%) SCOM
13 20 (0.42%) Argo
13 20 (0.42%) Nessus
14 18 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
14 18 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
15 16 (0.34%) WSUS
16 12 (0.25%) Kibana
17 9 (0.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 9 (0.19%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 932 (19.59%) Microsoft
2 339 (7.13%) Oracle
3 308 (6.47%) ServiceNow
4 290 (6.10%) SAP
5 188 (3.95%) VMware
6 147 (3.09%) Google
7 122 (2.56%) Splunk
8 121 (2.54%) Salesforce
9 108 (2.27%) Cisco
10 101 (2.12%) Databricks
11 76 (1.60%) Workday
12 67 (1.41%) Dynatrace
13 59 (1.24%) Red Hat
14 53 (1.11%) Adobe
15 51 (1.07%) Apple
16 49 (1.03%) Dell
17 48 (1.01%) CyberArk
18 47 (0.99%) Citrix
19 43 (0.90%) MuleSoft
20 39 (0.82%) Juniper