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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,763 4,498 4,049
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.63% 16.64% 10.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.42% 18.34% 12.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,794 2,792 2,441
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £381 £380 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £712 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -1.21% -0.80% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 358 267 353
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.06 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.44 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.75 £21.25 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% +30.93% -68.79%
75th Percentile £46.65 £38.42 £33.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £66.60 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.60 £21.39 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.69% +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 38,339 24,527 31,778
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.54% 90.74% 85.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,173 15,771 20,632
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £733 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +2.48% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,381 1,262 2,268
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.21 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.98 £16.25
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -6.09%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.00 £62.00
90th Percentile £82.50 £70.16 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 2,006 £511 +2.18% 1,320
South East -5 751 £478 -2.45% 821
North of England -10 744 £448 -5.79% 706
Midlands -8 544 £464 +9.18% 429
West Midlands -9 395 £467 +3.74% 239
North West -11 369 £447 -7.74% 362
South West -3 342 £500 - 466
Yorkshire -7 333 £450 -5.26% 232
East of England -2 264 £473 -0.26% 263
East Midlands 0 147 £450 +22.62% 190
North East -21 48 £356 -20.83% 126
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
1 212 (4.45%) Confluence
2 158 (3.32%) SharePoint
3 88 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (1.24%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.82%) Apache
5 39 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
6 31 (0.65%) CMS
6 31 (0.65%) SAS
7 27 (0.57%) Oracle Workflow
8 18 (0.38%) WebLogic
9 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.23%) nginx
11 10 (0.21%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.21%) CICS
12 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Camunda
13 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 254 (5.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 218 (4.58%) Microsoft Office
3 89 (1.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.49%) MS Visio
5 59 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
6 29 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 13 (0.27%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.23%) Revit
10 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
11 7 (0.15%) Trello
12 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
12 6 (0.13%) Sketch
13 5 (0.10%) CATIA
13 5 (0.10%) Maya
14 3 (0.063%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.063%) Navisworks
14 3 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
15 2 (0.042%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 116 (2.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
4 21 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
5 19 (0.40%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.34%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.31%) NetSuite
8 13 (0.27%) SAP SD
9 11 (0.23%) iTrent
9 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
9 11 (0.23%) Teamcenter
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
10 10 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
10 10 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 9 (0.19%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.17%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.17%) NEC Housing
12 8 (0.17%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 952 (19.99%) Azure
2 696 (14.61%) AWS
3 377 (7.92%) Power Platform
4 351 (7.37%) Microsoft 365
5 268 (5.63%) GCP
6 231 (4.85%) Azure DevOps
7 172 (3.61%) Entra ID
8 157 (3.30%) GitHub
9 126 (2.65%) SaaS
10 122 (2.56%) Serverless
11 75 (1.57%) AWS Lambda
12 73 (1.53%) Amazon S3
13 69 (1.45%) GitHub Actions
13 69 (1.45%) Power Automate
14 63 (1.32%) Azure Data Factory
15 61 (1.28%) Snowflake
16 60 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
16 60 (1.26%) PowerApps
17 58 (1.22%) OpenShift
18 47 (0.99%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 205 (4.30%) DNS
2 170 (3.57%) Firewall
3 124 (2.60%) VPN
4 119 (2.50%) TCP/IP
5 109 (2.29%) DHCP
6 98 (2.06%) WAN
7 88 (1.85%) Network Security
8 85 (1.78%) LAN
9 67 (1.41%) SAN
10 64 (1.34%) Wi-Fi
11 48 (1.01%) VLAN
12 45 (0.94%) BGP
12 45 (0.94%) Wireless
13 37 (0.78%) OSPF
14 34 (0.71%) SD-WAN
15 29 (0.61%) VoIP
16 28 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
17 24 (0.50%) VXLAN
18 22 (0.46%) MPLS
19 19 (0.40%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 296 (6.21%) Power BI
2 213 (4.47%) SQL Server
3 146 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
4 134 (2.81%) Relational Database
5 132 (2.77%) PostgreSQL
6 92 (1.93%) MongoDB
7 82 (1.72%) NoSQL
8 79 (1.66%) Data Lake
8 79 (1.66%) Tableau
9 77 (1.62%) Metadata
10 52 (1.09%) Oracle Database
11 48 (1.01%) Big Data
12 47 (0.99%) MySQL
12 47 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 37 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
14 27 (0.57%) Power Query
15 26 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
15 26 (0.55%) Delta Lake
16 25 (0.52%) RDBMS
17 24 (0.50%) Db2
Development Applications
1 477 (10.01%) JIRA
2 276 (5.79%) Git
3 167 (3.51%) Jenkins
4 112 (2.35%) GitLab
5 63 (1.32%) Selenium
6 39 (0.82%) Postman
7 32 (0.67%) REST Assured
8 28 (0.59%) Cypress.io
9 25 (0.52%) JUnit
10 24 (0.50%) Cucumber
11 21 (0.44%) Bitbucket
11 21 (0.44%) Mockito
12 18 (0.38%) WebDriver
13 16 (0.34%) Gradle
13 16 (0.34%) Maven
13 16 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
14 15 (0.31%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.29%) JMeter
16 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
17 10 (0.21%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,463 (51.71%) Social Skills
2 1,957 (41.09%) Analytical Skills
3 1,116 (23.43%) Finance
4 422 (8.86%) Public Sector
5 370 (7.77%) Banking
6 197 (4.14%) Documentation Skills
7 195 (4.09%) Organisational Skills
8 178 (3.74%) Retail
9 132 (2.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 122 (2.56%) Influencing Skills
11 114 (2.39%) Legal
12 112 (2.35%) Manufacturing
13 106 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
14 101 (2.12%) Front Office
15 94 (1.97%) Marketing
16 90 (1.89%) Telecoms
17 75 (1.57%) Investment Banking
18 58 (1.22%) Law
19 54 (1.13%) Back Office
20 48 (1.01%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 669 (14.05%) Analyst
2 528 (11.09%) Developer
3 412 (8.65%) Senior
4 342 (7.18%) Lead
5 339 (7.12%) Architect
6 244 (5.12%) Business Analyst
7 215 (4.51%) Data Engineer
8 207 (4.35%) Consultant
9 162 (3.40%) IT Support
10 154 (3.23%) Project Manager
11 152 (3.19%) Support Engineer
12 102 (2.14%) Data Analyst
13 101 (2.12%) Administrator
14 99 (2.08%) IT Engineer
15 98 (2.06%) Java Developer
16 92 (1.93%) Software Engineer
16 92 (1.93%) Solutions Architect
17 84 (1.76%) Technical Support
18 81 (1.70%) Support Analyst
19 77 (1.62%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (5.63%) REST
2 147 (3.09%) .NET
3 135 (2.83%) Kafka
4 132 (2.77%) RESTful
5 127 (2.67%) Spring
6 124 (2.60%) React
7 119 (2.50%) SOAP
8 107 (2.25%) JSON
9 97 (2.04%) CSS
10 95 (1.99%) Middleware
11 93 (1.95%) Spring Boot
12 92 (1.93%) XML
13 86 (1.81%) HTML
14 79 (1.66%) Node.js
15 76 (1.60%) AngularJS
16 59 (1.24%) PySpark
17 58 (1.22%) OAuth
18 55 (1.15%) LDAP
19 54 (1.13%) Web Services
20 46 (0.97%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 237 (4.98%) Onboarding
2 224 (4.70%) Product Ownership
3 212 (4.45%) Cloud Native
4 176 (3.70%) Data Centre
5 175 (3.67%) Self-Motivation
6 142 (2.98%) Analytical Mindset
7 134 (2.81%) Distributed Systems
8 129 (2.71%) Management Information System
9 121 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
10 115 (2.41%) Data Protection Act
11 111 (2.33%) Enterprise Software
12 107 (2.25%) Data Structures
13 98 (2.06%) Virtual Team
14 57 (1.20%) Driving Licence
15 55 (1.15%) AI Agents
15 55 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 54 (1.13%) Algorithms
17 53 (1.11%) CMDB
18 49 (1.03%) Derivative
18 49 (1.03%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 608 (12.77%) Windows
2 264 (5.54%) Linux
3 118 (2.48%) Windows Server
4 110 (2.31%) Windows 10
5 100 (2.10%) Unix
6 79 (1.66%) Mac OS
7 76 (1.60%) Apple iOS
8 71 (1.49%) Android
9 44 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.42%) Ubuntu
11 12 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 11 (0.23%) VMS
12 11 (0.23%) zOS
13 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.17%) CentOS
15 7 (0.15%) Solaris
16 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.10%) Debian
17 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.084%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,258 (26.41%) Agile
2 892 (18.73%) Continuous Improvement
3 841 (17.66%) Stakeholder Management
4 776 (16.29%) CI/CD
5 752 (15.79%) DevOps
6 591 (12.41%) AI
7 537 (11.27%) Decision-Making
8 522 (10.96%) Migration
9 512 (10.75%) Analytics
10 474 (9.95%) ITIL
11 455 (9.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 427 (8.96%) Customer Service
13 386 (8.10%) Validation
14 383 (8.04%) Business Intelligence
15 379 (7.96%) Data Modelling
16 364 (7.64%) Test Automation
17 362 (7.60%) Project Management
18 334 (7.01%) Change Management
19 331 (6.95%) Roadmaps
20 330 (6.93%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 873 (18.33%) SQL
2 817 (17.15%) Python
3 373 (7.83%) Java
4 266 (5.58%) PowerShell
5 242 (5.08%) JavaScript
6 169 (3.55%) C#
7 124 (2.60%) Bash
8 111 (2.33%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.24%) C++
11 49 (1.03%) T-SQL
12 46 (0.97%) Shell Script
13 43 (0.90%) Go
14 42 (0.88%) C
15 35 (0.73%) Bicep
16 34 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 30 (0.63%) Apex Code
18 28 (0.59%) R
19 24 (0.50%) Kotlin
20 21 (0.44%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,046 (21.96%) Security Cleared
2 689 (14.47%) SC Cleared
3 594 (12.47%) Degree
4 210 (4.41%) DV Cleared
5 181 (3.80%) Computer Science Degree
6 135 (2.83%) Microsoft Certification
7 117 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
8 116 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
9 90 (1.89%) CISSP
10 76 (1.60%) PMP
11 68 (1.43%) PMI Certification
12 67 (1.41%) A+ Certification
12 67 (1.41%) CCNA
13 66 (1.39%) Azure Certification
14 57 (1.20%) CISM
15 55 (1.15%) Master's Degree
16 49 (1.03%) Network+ Certification
17 42 (0.88%) MCSE
18 39 (0.82%) AWS Certification
19 37 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 339 (7.12%) Data Quality
2 286 (6.00%) QA
3 140 (2.94%) GDPR
4 104 (2.18%) SLA
5 92 (1.93%) Accessibility
6 89 (1.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 74 (1.55%) PMO
8 73 (1.53%) NIST
9 45 (0.94%) GRC
10 26 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
11 24 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.40%) PCI DSS
13 15 (0.31%) WCAG
14 13 (0.27%) HIPAA
14 13 (0.27%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.27%) NCSC
15 12 (0.25%) GxP
15 12 (0.25%) PSD2
16 11 (0.23%) COBIT
16 11 (0.23%) IFRS
System Software
1 356 (7.47%) Active Directory
2 308 (6.47%) Docker
3 117 (2.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 44 (0.92%) vSphere
6 41 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
7 35 (0.73%) Hyper-V
8 28 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
9 23 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (0.42%) vCloud
11 19 (0.40%) Firmware
12 15 (0.31%) IAG
13 11 (0.23%) Squid
14 7 (0.15%) NFS
14 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.084%) ACF2
15 4 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.084%) RACF
15 4 (0.084%) Snort
15 4 (0.084%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 368 (7.73%) Kubernetes
2 283 (5.94%) Terraform
3 163 (3.42%) Ansible
4 128 (2.69%) Microsoft Intune
5 104 (2.18%) Grafana
6 90 (1.89%) Prometheus
7 73 (1.53%) SCCM
8 52 (1.09%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
10 35 (0.73%) FortiGate
11 29 (0.61%) Control-M
12 22 (0.46%) Nessus
13 21 (0.44%) SCOM
14 20 (0.42%) Argo
15 18 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
15 18 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
16 17 (0.36%) WSUS
17 15 (0.31%) Kibana
18 12 (0.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
19 10 (0.21%) Puppet
Vendors
1 923 (19.38%) Microsoft
2 343 (7.20%) Oracle
3 299 (6.28%) ServiceNow
4 288 (6.05%) SAP
5 185 (3.88%) VMware
6 143 (3.00%) Google
7 124 (2.60%) Splunk
8 119 (2.50%) Salesforce
9 111 (2.33%) Databricks
10 106 (2.23%) Cisco
11 74 (1.55%) Workday
12 63 (1.32%) Dynatrace
13 59 (1.24%) Red Hat
14 54 (1.13%) Dell
15 49 (1.03%) Apple
16 48 (1.01%) Adobe
16 48 (1.01%) Citrix
17 44 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 43 (0.90%) MuleSoft
19 38 (0.80%) F5