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

6 months to
5 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 4,902 4,338 3,839
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.68% 15.83% 11.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.59% 17.45% 13.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,793 2,634 2,273
10th Percentile £236 £250 £262
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 £717 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -2.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 419 277 214
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £13.86
25th Percentile £15.75 £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 £43.20 £35.00 £29.81
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 38,940 24,864 27,870
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.85% 90.76% 85.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,004 15,800 17,728
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £509 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.05% -2.96% -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 2,613 1,459 1,377
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.24 £14.43
25th Percentile £18.31 £17.79 £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 £42.88
% change year-on-year +63.02% -41.35% +3.33%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 2,154 £525 +5.00% 3,578
South East -4 785 £475 +5.56% 1,285
North of England -11 718 £443 -6.68% 1,111
Midlands -6 554 £450 +1.69% 885
West Midlands -8 395 £450 -4.05% 548
North West -8 363 £445 -6.32% 573
South West -4 332 £483 +7.22% 716
Yorkshire -9 291 £450 -5.26% 376
East of England +1 253 £438 -12.50% 592
East Midlands -2 156 £475 +26.67% 338
North East -14 66 £375 -16.67% 182
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 (4.45%) SharePoint
2 213 (4.35%) Confluence
3 106 (2.16%) Microsoft Exchange
4 51 (1.04%) Apache Spark
5 41 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.67%) Apache
7 28 (0.57%) CMS
8 27 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
9 23 (0.47%) SAS
10 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 12 (0.24%) WebLogic
12 10 (0.20%) CICS
13 9 (0.18%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.14%) IIS
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 5 (0.10%) Appian
16 5 (0.10%) Camunda
16 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
Applications
1 281 (5.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 235 (4.79%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (2.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.31%) Microsoft Project
5 52 (1.06%) 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 (0.061%) DaVinci Resolve
15 3 (0.061%) NUKE
15 3 (0.061%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 119 (2.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.53%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
6 20 (0.41%) 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 (0.22%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.20%) Aladdin
11 10 (0.20%) 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
1 997 (20.34%) Azure
2 710 (14.48%) AWS
3 459 (9.36%) Microsoft 365
4 407 (8.30%) Power Platform
5 278 (5.67%) GCP
6 249 (5.08%) Azure DevOps
7 209 (4.26%) Entra ID
8 162 (3.30%) GitHub
9 131 (2.67%) SaaS
10 110 (2.24%) Serverless
11 96 (1.96%) Power Automate
12 76 (1.55%) Microsoft Copilot
13 72 (1.47%) Dynamics 365
13 72 (1.47%) OneDrive
14 69 (1.41%) PowerApps
15 66 (1.35%) GitHub Actions
16 63 (1.29%) Azure Data Factory
17 61 (1.24%) Snowflake
18 56 (1.14%) AWS Lambda
19 50 (1.02%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 208 (4.24%) DNS
2 176 (3.59%) Firewall
3 160 (3.26%) VPN
4 125 (2.55%) DHCP
5 117 (2.39%) TCP/IP
6 106 (2.16%) WAN
7 90 (1.84%) LAN
7 90 (1.84%) Network Security
8 71 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
9 60 (1.22%) SAN
10 58 (1.18%) Wireless
11 50 (1.02%) VLAN
12 44 (0.90%) BGP
13 35 (0.71%) VoIP
14 34 (0.69%) SD-WAN
15 32 (0.65%) Structured Cabling
16 26 (0.53%) MPLS
17 25 (0.51%) OSPF
18 22 (0.45%) SSL
19 19 (0.39%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (6.32%) Power BI
2 197 (4.02%) SQL Server
3 161 (3.28%) Data Warehouse
4 158 (3.22%) Relational Database
5 138 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
6 91 (1.86%) Metadata
7 79 (1.61%) Tableau
8 77 (1.57%) NoSQL
9 75 (1.53%) MongoDB
10 71 (1.45%) Data Lake
11 50 (1.02%) MySQL
11 50 (1.02%) Oracle Database
12 46 (0.94%) Big Data
13 34 (0.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 32 (0.65%) Oracle Reports
15 27 (0.55%) Db2
16 25 (0.51%) Power Query
17 24 (0.49%) Delta Lake
18 22 (0.45%) BigQuery
18 22 (0.45%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 444 (9.06%) JIRA
2 306 (6.24%) Git
3 155 (3.16%) Jenkins
4 118 (2.41%) GitLab
5 68 (1.39%) Selenium
6 35 (0.71%) Cypress.io
6 35 (0.71%) Postman
7 30 (0.61%) 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 2,620 (53.45%) Social Skills
2 2,133 (43.51%) Analytical Skills
3 1,148 (23.42%) Finance
4 496 (10.12%) Public Sector
5 410 (8.36%) Banking
6 234 (4.77%) Organisational Skills
7 179 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
8 178 (3.63%) Retail
9 177 (3.61%) Manufacturing
10 159 (3.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 156 (3.18%) Influencing Skills
12 114 (2.33%) Front Office
13 110 (2.24%) Legal
14 108 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
15 103 (2.10%) Telecoms
16 102 (2.08%) Marketing
17 81 (1.65%) Investment Banking
18 63 (1.29%) Law
19 56 (1.14%) Back Office
20 54 (1.10%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 669 (13.65%) Analyst
2 563 (11.49%) Developer
3 444 (9.06%) Senior
4 377 (7.69%) Lead
5 309 (6.30%) Architect
6 223 (4.55%) Business Analyst
7 219 (4.47%) Consultant
8 205 (4.18%) IT Support
9 191 (3.90%) Support Engineer
10 187 (3.81%) Data Engineer
11 133 (2.71%) IT Engineer
12 131 (2.67%) Project Manager
13 118 (2.41%) Administrator
14 106 (2.16%) Data Analyst
15 98 (2.00%) Java Developer
16 96 (1.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 92 (1.88%) IT Support Engineer
18 90 (1.84%) DevOps Engineer
19 89 (1.82%) Solutions Architect
20 86 (1.75%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 315 (6.43%) REST
2 292 (5.96%) Terraform
3 165 (3.37%) .NET
4 152 (3.10%) RESTful
5 145 (2.96%) SOAP
6 139 (2.84%) React
7 118 (2.41%) Kafka
8 111 (2.26%) JSON
8 111 (2.26%) Spring
9 108 (2.20%) CSS
9 108 (2.20%) XML
10 107 (2.18%) HTML
11 98 (2.00%) Middleware
12 88 (1.80%) Spring Boot
12 88 (1.80%) Web Services
13 81 (1.65%) AngularJS
14 76 (1.55%) Node.js
14 76 (1.55%) OAuth
15 62 (1.26%) PySpark
16 49 (1.00%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 284 (5.79%) Onboarding
2 251 (5.12%) Product Ownership
3 248 (5.06%) Cloud Native
4 196 (4.00%) Self-Motivation
5 168 (3.43%) Management Information System
6 167 (3.41%) Enterprise Software
7 154 (3.14%) Data Centre
8 144 (2.94%) Distributed Systems
9 129 (2.63%) Data Structures
10 124 (2.53%) Analytical Mindset
11 119 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
12 110 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
13 84 (1.71%) Virtual Team
14 68 (1.39%) AI Agents
15 67 (1.37%) CMDB
15 67 (1.37%) Driving Licence
16 55 (1.12%) Algorithms
17 54 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 53 (1.08%) PKI
19 50 (1.02%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 672 (13.71%) Windows
2 265 (5.41%) Linux
3 192 (3.92%) Windows Server
4 127 (2.59%) Windows 10
5 93 (1.90%) Unix
6 80 (1.63%) Apple iOS
7 78 (1.59%) Mac OS
8 71 (1.45%) 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 12 (0.24%) 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 1,359 (27.72%) Agile
2 1,099 (22.42%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,094 (22.32%) Stakeholder Management
4 814 (16.61%) CI/CD
5 768 (15.67%) DevOps
6 673 (13.73%) AI
7 563 (11.49%) Decision-Making
8 549 (11.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 516 (10.53%) Migration
10 509 (10.38%) Analytics
11 479 (9.77%) ITIL
12 470 (9.59%) Customer Service
13 393 (8.02%) Test Automation
14 392 (8.00%) Validation
15 377 (7.69%) Business Intelligence
16 358 (7.30%) Data Modelling
17 345 (7.04%) Scrum
18 341 (6.96%) Roadmaps
19 338 (6.90%) ITSM
20 317 (6.47%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 887 (18.09%) SQL
2 794 (16.20%) Python
3 363 (7.41%) Java
4 302 (6.16%) PowerShell
5 288 (5.88%) JavaScript
6 183 (3.73%) C#
7 147 (3.00%) Bash
8 115 (2.35%) TypeScript
9 85 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 50 (1.02%) C++
11 49 (1.00%) T-SQL
12 37 (0.75%) Go
13 36 (0.73%) Shell Script
14 31 (0.63%) Bicep
15 30 (0.61%) 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 1,073 (21.89%) Security Cleared
2 740 (15.10%) SC Cleared
3 603 (12.30%) Degree
4 205 (4.18%) DV Cleared
5 185 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
6 143 (2.92%) Microsoft Certification
7 116 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
8 89 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
9 77 (1.57%) Azure Certification
10 74 (1.51%) PMP
11 72 (1.47%) PMI Certification
12 68 (1.39%) CISSP
13 59 (1.20%) A+ Certification
14 50 (1.02%) CCNA
14 50 (1.02%) Master's Degree
15 42 (0.86%) AWS Certification
16 41 (0.84%) DBS Check
17 40 (0.82%) Network+ Certification
18 39 (0.80%) CISM
19 38 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 372 (7.59%) Data Quality
2 344 (7.02%) QA
3 123 (2.51%) GDPR
4 114 (2.33%) SLA
5 110 (2.24%) Accessibility
6 89 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 85 (1.73%) PMO
8 72 (1.47%) NIST
9 62 (1.26%) GRC
10 30 (0.61%) 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 (0.22%) IFRS
17 10 (0.20%) HL7
17 10 (0.20%) NCSC
System Software
1 399 (8.14%) Active Directory
2 300 (6.12%) Docker
3 149 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.24%) Hyper-V
4 61 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
5 53 (1.08%) VMware NSX
6 46 (0.94%) vSphere
7 34 (0.69%) 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 (0.061%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 3 (0.061%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.061%) Squid
15 3 (0.061%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 336 (6.85%) Kubernetes
2 163 (3.33%) Ansible
3 128 (2.61%) Microsoft Intune
4 91 (1.86%) Grafana
5 90 (1.84%) SCCM
6 70 (1.43%) Prometheus
7 55 (1.12%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.75%) SCOM
9 24 (0.49%) 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 (0.22%) Istio
12 11 (0.22%) Kibana
13 10 (0.20%) Nessus
13 10 (0.20%) Puppet
14 9 (0.18%) Podman
14 9 (0.18%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,119 (22.83%) Microsoft
2 348 (7.10%) Oracle
3 326 (6.65%) ServiceNow
4 301 (6.14%) SAP
5 199 (4.06%) VMware
6 134 (2.73%) Google
6 134 (2.73%) Salesforce
7 120 (2.45%) Databricks
8 107 (2.18%) Cisco
9 102 (2.08%) Splunk
10 73 (1.49%) Workday
11 67 (1.37%) Dynatrace
12 61 (1.24%) Apple
13 54 (1.10%) Adobe
14 48 (0.98%) IBM
15 45 (0.92%) CyberArk
16 42 (0.86%) Red Hat
17 41 (0.84%) MuleSoft
18 37 (0.75%) Dell
19 35 (0.71%) Citrix