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 3 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +5
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,053 4,341 4,048
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.86% 15.49% 12.48%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.82% 17.03% 14.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,838 2,639 2,326
10th Percentile £257 £250 £265
25th Percentile £381 £375 £398
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £601
90th Percentile £716 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 503 276 201
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £19.48 £18.86 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.29% +16.20% -69.09%
75th Percentile £41.25 £34.61 £31.24
90th Percentile £72.75 £63.88 £63.75
UK median hourly rate £18.75 £20.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.25% +23.23% -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 39,417 25,490 28,010
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.73% 90.96% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,890 16,169 17,141
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -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 2,936 1,564 1,197
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.44 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.59 £17.87 £20.25
Median hourly rate £40.08 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.36% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.00 £67.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.43 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £38.72 £25.15 £42.27
% change year-on-year +53.96% -40.49% -0.55%

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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3 October 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 2,157 £525 +5.00% 5,696
South East -3 821 £475 +5.56% 2,121
North of England -10 733 £450 -5.26% 2,016
Midlands -5 621 £450 +1.47% 1,389
West Midlands -8 444 £450 -5.26% 831
North West -10 361 £450 -3.23% 1,002
South West -7 322 £500 +11.11% 1,032
Yorkshire -7 298 £475 -4.04% 690
East of England 0 290 £438 -12.94% 992
East Midlands +2 173 £446 +19.00% 558
North East -16 76 £375 -16.67% 346
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
1 234 (4.63%) SharePoint
2 227 (4.49%) Confluence
3 96 (1.90%) Microsoft Exchange
4 50 (0.99%) Apache Spark
5 42 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
6 41 (0.81%) Apache
7 26 (0.51%) CMS
8 22 (0.44%) SAS
9 20 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.30%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.20%) CICS
12 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 7 (0.14%) IIS
14 7 (0.14%) WordPress
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.099%) Appian
16 5 (0.099%) Mule
16 5 (0.099%) Tomcat
Applications
1 301 (5.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 245 (4.85%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (2.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
5 49 (0.97%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 17 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.32%) AutoCAD
8 16 (0.32%) Revit
9 10 (0.20%) Navisworks
9 10 (0.20%) Windchill
10 9 (0.18%) Sketch
11 8 (0.16%) Trello
12 6 (0.12%) CPLEX
13 4 (0.079%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.059%) Acrobat
14 3 (0.059%) DaVinci Resolve
14 3 (0.059%) NUKE
15 2 (0.040%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 114 (2.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
4 28 (0.55%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
6 24 (0.47%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.34%) SAP GRC
8 15 (0.30%) Teamcenter
9 14 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
10 13 (0.26%) iTrent
11 12 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
11 12 (0.24%) SAP SD
12 11 (0.22%) Aladdin
13 10 (0.20%) Finacle
13 10 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
13 10 (0.20%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
14 9 (0.18%) SAP PSCD
15 8 (0.16%) Primavera
15 8 (0.16%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,005 (19.89%) Azure
2 691 (13.68%) AWS
3 483 (9.56%) Microsoft 365
4 414 (8.19%) Power Platform
5 294 (5.82%) GCP
6 250 (4.95%) Azure DevOps
7 217 (4.29%) Entra ID
8 184 (3.64%) GitHub
9 127 (2.51%) SaaS
10 113 (2.24%) Serverless
11 109 (2.16%) Power Automate
12 88 (1.74%) Microsoft Copilot
13 84 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
14 82 (1.62%) PowerApps
15 74 (1.46%) GitHub Actions
16 71 (1.41%) OneDrive
17 70 (1.39%) Snowflake
18 58 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
19 56 (1.11%) OpenShift
20 52 (1.03%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 202 (4.00%) DNS
2 177 (3.50%) Firewall
3 154 (3.05%) VPN
4 122 (2.41%) DHCP
5 114 (2.26%) TCP/IP
6 103 (2.04%) Network Security
7 100 (1.98%) WAN
8 86 (1.70%) LAN
9 71 (1.41%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.21%) Wireless
11 51 (1.01%) SAN
12 47 (0.93%) VLAN
13 45 (0.89%) BGP
14 42 (0.83%) VoIP
15 30 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
16 27 (0.53%) SD-WAN
17 25 (0.49%) MPLS
17 25 (0.49%) SSL
18 21 (0.42%) OSPF
19 20 (0.40%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (6.10%) Power BI
2 191 (3.78%) SQL Server
3 159 (3.15%) Relational Database
4 149 (2.95%) Data Warehouse
5 130 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
6 91 (1.80%) Metadata
7 84 (1.66%) MongoDB
8 80 (1.58%) NoSQL
9 73 (1.44%) Tableau
10 66 (1.31%) Data Lake
11 54 (1.07%) Oracle Database
12 53 (1.05%) MySQL
13 36 (0.71%) Big Data
14 33 (0.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 29 (0.57%) Oracle Reports
16 28 (0.55%) BigQuery
17 26 (0.51%) Db2
17 26 (0.51%) Delta Lake
18 23 (0.46%) Pentaho
18 23 (0.46%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 451 (8.93%) JIRA
2 332 (6.57%) Git
3 178 (3.52%) Jenkins
4 130 (2.57%) GitLab
5 71 (1.41%) Selenium
6 41 (0.81%) Cucumber
7 39 (0.77%) Maven
8 35 (0.69%) Cypress.io
8 35 (0.69%) JUnit
9 34 (0.67%) Postman
10 30 (0.59%) Bitbucket
11 29 (0.57%) Gradle
12 26 (0.51%) SonarQube
13 25 (0.49%) REST Assured
14 22 (0.44%) JMeter
15 19 (0.38%) Mockito
16 18 (0.36%) Gatling
17 17 (0.34%) WebDriver
18 15 (0.30%) Visual Studio
19 13 (0.26%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,697 (53.37%) Social Skills
2 2,206 (43.66%) Analytical Skills
3 1,183 (23.41%) Finance
4 516 (10.21%) Public Sector
5 416 (8.23%) Banking
6 281 (5.56%) Organisational Skills
7 252 (4.99%) Manufacturing
8 172 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
9 168 (3.32%) Influencing Skills
10 162 (3.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 162 (3.21%) Retail
11 119 (2.36%) Legal
12 113 (2.24%) Marketing
12 113 (2.24%) Presentation Skills
13 108 (2.14%) Front Office
14 104 (2.06%) Telecoms
15 84 (1.66%) Investment Banking
16 68 (1.35%) Aerospace
17 62 (1.23%) Military
18 60 (1.19%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 673 (13.32%) Analyst
2 581 (11.50%) Developer
3 488 (9.66%) Senior
4 384 (7.60%) Lead
5 279 (5.52%) Architect
6 234 (4.63%) Business Analyst
7 219 (4.33%) Consultant
8 216 (4.27%) IT Support
9 198 (3.92%) Support Engineer
10 172 (3.40%) Data Engineer
11 145 (2.87%) Project Manager
12 143 (2.83%) Administrator
13 132 (2.61%) IT Engineer
14 107 (2.12%) Data Analyst
15 100 (1.98%) IT Support Engineer
16 97 (1.92%) Java Developer
17 96 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
17 96 (1.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 91 (1.80%) Network Engineer
19 84 (1.66%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 340 (6.73%) REST
2 312 (6.17%) Terraform
3 174 (3.44%) .NET
4 152 (3.01%) RESTful
5 146 (2.89%) SOAP
6 143 (2.83%) React
7 120 (2.37%) Kafka
8 119 (2.36%) HTML
9 118 (2.34%) CSS
10 117 (2.32%) JSON
11 115 (2.28%) XML
12 110 (2.18%) Spring
13 100 (1.98%) Middleware
14 99 (1.96%) Web Services
15 90 (1.78%) Spring Boot
16 79 (1.56%) AngularJS
17 78 (1.54%) Node.js
18 73 (1.44%) OAuth
19 57 (1.13%) PySpark
20 52 (1.03%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 302 (5.98%) Onboarding
2 262 (5.19%) Cloud Native
3 238 (4.71%) Product Ownership
4 200 (3.96%) Management Information System
5 199 (3.94%) Self-Motivation
6 189 (3.74%) Enterprise Software
7 151 (2.99%) Data Centre
8 125 (2.47%) Data Structures
9 123 (2.43%) Distributed Systems
10 115 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
11 109 (2.16%) Analytical Mindset
11 109 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
12 82 (1.62%) Virtual Team
13 78 (1.54%) Driving Licence
14 74 (1.46%) AI Agents
15 66 (1.31%) CMDB
16 56 (1.11%) PKI
17 54 (1.07%) NHS
18 51 (1.01%) Algorithms
19 50 (0.99%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 691 (13.68%) Windows
2 277 (5.48%) Linux
3 200 (3.96%) Windows Server
4 124 (2.45%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.92%) Unix
6 85 (1.68%) Apple iOS
7 80 (1.58%) Mac OS
8 72 (1.42%) Android
9 50 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.34%) VMS
11 17 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.30%) Solaris
13 12 (0.24%) zOS
14 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.16%) AIX
15 8 (0.16%) CentOS
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.079%) HPUX
17 4 (0.079%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,388 (27.47%) Agile
2 1,261 (24.96%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,171 (23.17%) Continuous Improvement
4 853 (16.88%) CI/CD
5 775 (15.34%) DevOps
6 707 (13.99%) AI
7 584 (11.56%) Decision-Making
8 569 (11.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 526 (10.41%) Migration
10 488 (9.66%) Customer Service
11 486 (9.62%) Analytics
12 455 (9.00%) ITIL
13 423 (8.37%) Test Automation
14 408 (8.07%) Validation
15 359 (7.10%) Business Intelligence
16 355 (7.03%) Scrum
17 351 (6.95%) Data Modelling
18 340 (6.73%) Technical Leadership
19 338 (6.69%) ITSM
20 336 (6.65%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 889 (17.59%) SQL
2 764 (15.12%) Python
3 366 (7.24%) Java
4 310 (6.13%) JavaScript
5 303 (6.00%) PowerShell
6 204 (4.04%) C#
7 148 (2.93%) Bash
8 131 (2.59%) TypeScript
9 79 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 45 (0.89%) Shell Script
10 45 (0.89%) T-SQL
11 42 (0.83%) C++
11 42 (0.83%) Go
12 30 (0.59%) Bicep
13 29 (0.57%) Scala
14 26 (0.51%) Groovy
15 24 (0.47%) Kotlin
16 23 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 20 (0.40%) C
17 20 (0.40%) R
Qualifications
1 1,120 (22.17%) Security Cleared
2 786 (15.56%) SC Cleared
3 619 (12.25%) Degree
4 223 (4.41%) DV Cleared
5 179 (3.54%) Computer Science Degree
6 140 (2.77%) BPSS Clearance
7 135 (2.67%) Microsoft Certification
8 83 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
9 80 (1.58%) PMI Certification
10 77 (1.52%) Azure Certification
11 75 (1.48%) PMP
12 73 (1.44%) CISSP
13 53 (1.05%) DBS Check
14 50 (0.99%) Master's Degree
15 48 (0.95%) A+ Certification
15 48 (0.95%) AWS Certification
16 43 (0.85%) CISM
17 42 (0.83%) CCNA
18 39 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
19 34 (0.67%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 373 (7.38%) Data Quality
2 349 (6.91%) QA
3 120 (2.37%) GDPR
4 118 (2.34%) Accessibility
5 111 (2.20%) SLA
6 88 (1.74%) PMO
7 86 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 62 (1.23%) NIST
9 54 (1.07%) GRC
10 32 (0.63%) WCAG
11 22 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
12 19 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 17 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.30%) NCSC
14 15 (0.30%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.26%) GxP
16 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 11 (0.22%) IFRS
16 11 (0.22%) ISO 9001
17 10 (0.20%) COBIT
System Software
1 403 (7.98%) Active Directory
2 309 (6.12%) Docker
3 157 (3.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 64 (1.27%) VMware ESXi
5 62 (1.23%) Hyper-V
6 54 (1.07%) vSphere
7 52 (1.03%) VMware NSX
8 35 (0.69%) Virtual Desktop
9 27 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
10 24 (0.47%) IAG
10 24 (0.47%) vCloud
11 17 (0.34%) 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%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.099%) XenApp
14 5 (0.099%) XenDesktop
15 4 (0.079%) RACF
Systems Management
1 349 (6.91%) Kubernetes
2 165 (3.27%) Ansible
3 131 (2.59%) Microsoft Intune
4 90 (1.78%) Grafana
5 84 (1.66%) SCCM
6 73 (1.44%) Prometheus
7 47 (0.93%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.73%) SCOM
9 25 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
10 23 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
11 20 (0.40%) Control-M
12 18 (0.36%) WSUS
13 14 (0.28%) FortiGate
14 13 (0.26%) Nessus
15 12 (0.24%) VxRail
16 11 (0.22%) Istio
17 10 (0.20%) Kibana
18 9 (0.18%) Functional Safety
18 9 (0.18%) NetBackup
19 8 (0.16%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,229 (24.32%) Microsoft
2 344 (6.81%) Oracle
3 316 (6.25%) SAP
4 309 (6.12%) ServiceNow
5 202 (4.00%) VMware
6 150 (2.97%) Google
7 123 (2.43%) Databricks
8 122 (2.41%) Salesforce
9 120 (2.37%) Cisco
10 103 (2.04%) Splunk
11 72 (1.42%) Workday
12 63 (1.25%) Dynatrace
13 62 (1.23%) Apple
14 54 (1.07%) Adobe
14 54 (1.07%) IBM
15 49 (0.97%) Red Hat
16 44 (0.87%) CyberArk
17 37 (0.73%) Palo Alto
18 36 (0.71%) MuleSoft
19 33 (0.65%) Dell