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

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -8 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,789 4,495 3,979
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.64% 16.51% 11.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.46% 18.21% 12.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,794 2,780 2,427
10th Percentile £261 £250 £250
25th Percentile £385 £379 £382
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £705 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £492 £492 £500
% change year-on-year - -1.60% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 367 274 321
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.96 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.49 £15.46 £14.16
Median hourly rate £22.00 £21.27 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.46% +31.02% -69.09%
75th Percentile £51.26 £43.66 £33.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.75 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £21.39 £16.23
% change year-on-year -1.82% +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 38,446 24,678 30,937
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.44% 90.65% 85.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,172 15,843 20,140
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £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 £746 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,378 1,309 2,090
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.28 £13.18
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.88 £16.83
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -8.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £53.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.50 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.88%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 2,030 £513 +2.50% 924
South East -5 754 £481 -2.58% 699
North of England -9 740 £450 -5.26% 581
Midlands -8 544 £450 +5.88% 346
West Midlands -8 395 £450 - 190
North West -11 369 £450 -8.54% 301
South West -2 341 £500 +2.56% 277
Yorkshire -7 325 £450 -5.26% 196
East of England -2 269 £450 -5.01% 232
East Midlands -1 147 £450 +20.00% 156
North East -16 52 £370 -17.78% 93
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 (4.55%) Confluence
2 172 (3.59%) SharePoint
3 89 (1.86%) Microsoft Exchange
4 57 (1.19%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
6 36 (0.75%) Apache
7 32 (0.67%) CMS
8 27 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
8 27 (0.56%) SAS
9 18 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.23%) nginx
12 10 (0.21%) ArcGIS
12 10 (0.21%) CICS
13 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.17%) Camunda
15 7 (0.15%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 253 (5.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (4.59%) Microsoft Office
3 85 (1.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (1.44%) MS Visio
5 63 (1.32%) Microsoft Project
6 28 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.27%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.23%) Revit
11 10 (0.21%) Sketch
12 9 (0.19%) Trello
13 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
14 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
15 5 (0.10%) Adobe XD
15 5 (0.10%) CATIA
15 5 (0.10%) Maya
16 3 (0.063%) Navisworks
16 3 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
17 2 (0.042%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 117 (2.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
4 23 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.38%) Aladdin
6 17 (0.35%) NetSuite
7 16 (0.33%) Workday HCM
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.25%) iTrent
10 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
10 11 (0.23%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 10 (0.21%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
12 9 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
12 9 (0.19%) SAP GRC
13 8 (0.17%) NEC Housing
13 8 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
13 8 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
14 7 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 939 (19.61%) Azure
2 694 (14.49%) AWS
3 374 (7.81%) Power Platform
4 358 (7.48%) Microsoft 365
5 267 (5.58%) GCP
6 229 (4.78%) Azure DevOps
7 179 (3.74%) Entra ID
8 164 (3.42%) GitHub
9 126 (2.63%) SaaS
10 118 (2.46%) Serverless
11 76 (1.59%) GitHub Actions
12 74 (1.55%) AWS Lambda
13 73 (1.52%) Power Automate
14 71 (1.48%) Amazon S3
15 60 (1.25%) PowerApps
16 59 (1.23%) Dynamics 365
17 58 (1.21%) Azure Data Factory
17 58 (1.21%) OpenShift
18 57 (1.19%) Snowflake
19 51 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 206 (4.30%) DNS
2 177 (3.70%) Firewall
3 130 (2.71%) VPN
4 124 (2.59%) TCP/IP
5 112 (2.34%) DHCP
6 100 (2.09%) WAN
7 89 (1.86%) Network Security
8 88 (1.84%) LAN
9 68 (1.42%) SAN
9 68 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
10 51 (1.06%) VLAN
11 49 (1.02%) BGP
12 47 (0.98%) Wireless
13 39 (0.81%) OSPF
14 34 (0.71%) SD-WAN
15 30 (0.63%) VoIP
16 29 (0.61%) Structured Cabling
17 24 (0.50%) MPLS
17 24 (0.50%) VXLAN
18 20 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 295 (6.16%) Power BI
2 213 (4.45%) SQL Server
3 150 (3.13%) Data Warehouse
4 138 (2.88%) PostgreSQL
5 136 (2.84%) Relational Database
6 94 (1.96%) MongoDB
7 82 (1.71%) NoSQL
8 81 (1.69%) Metadata
9 78 (1.63%) Data Lake
9 78 (1.63%) Tableau
10 53 (1.11%) Oracle Database
11 50 (1.04%) Big Data
12 49 (1.02%) MySQL
13 48 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 36 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
15 26 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
15 26 (0.54%) Db2
16 25 (0.52%) Power Query
16 25 (0.52%) RDBMS
17 22 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 478 (9.98%) JIRA
2 279 (5.83%) Git
3 163 (3.40%) Jenkins
4 106 (2.21%) GitLab
5 69 (1.44%) Selenium
6 40 (0.84%) Postman
7 32 (0.67%) Cypress.io
8 31 (0.65%) REST Assured
9 26 (0.54%) Cucumber
10 24 (0.50%) JUnit
11 22 (0.46%) Bitbucket
12 21 (0.44%) Mockito
13 19 (0.40%) Gradle
13 19 (0.40%) WebDriver
14 18 (0.38%) Maven
15 15 (0.31%) SonarQube
16 14 (0.29%) JMeter
17 13 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
18 12 (0.25%) Zephyr
19 10 (0.21%) Gatling
General
1 2,475 (51.68%) Social Skills
2 1,993 (41.62%) Analytical Skills
3 1,111 (23.20%) Finance
4 443 (9.25%) Public Sector
5 372 (7.77%) Banking
6 196 (4.09%) Documentation Skills
6 196 (4.09%) Organisational Skills
7 182 (3.80%) Retail
8 138 (2.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 126 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
10 121 (2.53%) Manufacturing
11 111 (2.32%) Legal
12 106 (2.21%) Presentation Skills
13 98 (2.05%) Marketing
14 97 (2.03%) Front Office
15 96 (2.00%) Telecoms
16 73 (1.52%) Investment Banking
17 57 (1.19%) Law
18 53 (1.11%) Back Office
19 50 (1.04%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 677 (14.14%) Analyst
2 534 (11.15%) Developer
3 417 (8.71%) Senior
4 355 (7.41%) Lead
5 341 (7.12%) Architect
6 243 (5.07%) Business Analyst
7 203 (4.24%) Consultant
8 202 (4.22%) Data Engineer
9 163 (3.40%) IT Support
10 159 (3.32%) Support Engineer
11 154 (3.22%) Project Manager
12 105 (2.19%) Data Analyst
13 103 (2.15%) Administrator
13 103 (2.15%) IT Engineer
14 98 (2.05%) Java Developer
15 92 (1.92%) Software Engineer
15 92 (1.92%) Solutions Architect
16 81 (1.69%) Support Analyst
17 78 (1.63%) DevOps Engineer
18 77 (1.61%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (5.66%) REST
2 147 (3.07%) .NET
3 135 (2.82%) RESTful
4 130 (2.71%) Kafka
5 128 (2.67%) Spring
6 127 (2.65%) React
7 123 (2.57%) SOAP
8 110 (2.30%) JSON
9 106 (2.21%) CSS
10 96 (2.00%) HTML
11 95 (1.98%) XML
12 94 (1.96%) Middleware
13 92 (1.92%) Spring Boot
14 79 (1.65%) AngularJS
14 79 (1.65%) Node.js
15 61 (1.27%) Web Services
16 60 (1.25%) OAuth
17 54 (1.13%) LDAP
17 54 (1.13%) PySpark
18 47 (0.98%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 240 (5.01%) Onboarding
2 233 (4.87%) Product Ownership
3 203 (4.24%) Cloud Native
4 178 (3.72%) Data Centre
4 178 (3.72%) Self-Motivation
5 139 (2.90%) Analytical Mindset
6 136 (2.84%) Distributed Systems
6 136 (2.84%) Management Information System
7 124 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
8 121 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
9 120 (2.51%) Data Protection Act
10 110 (2.30%) Data Structures
11 101 (2.11%) Virtual Team
12 61 (1.27%) Driving Licence
13 55 (1.15%) CMDB
14 54 (1.13%) AI Agents
15 53 (1.11%) Algorithms
16 52 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 49 (1.02%) Security Posture
18 48 (1.00%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 612 (12.78%) Windows
2 258 (5.39%) Linux
3 120 (2.51%) Windows Server
4 108 (2.26%) Windows 10
5 99 (2.07%) Unix
6 78 (1.63%) Mac OS
7 76 (1.59%) Apple iOS
8 71 (1.48%) Android
9 42 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 12 (0.25%) VMS
11 12 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 11 (0.23%) zOS
13 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.15%) CentOS
14 7 (0.15%) Solaris
15 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.084%) AIX
16 4 (0.084%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,295 (27.04%) Agile
2 927 (19.36%) Continuous Improvement
3 875 (18.27%) Stakeholder Management
4 784 (16.37%) CI/CD
5 747 (15.60%) DevOps
6 616 (12.86%) AI
7 538 (11.23%) Decision-Making
8 509 (10.63%) Migration
9 499 (10.42%) Analytics
10 481 (10.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 475 (9.92%) ITIL
12 429 (8.96%) Customer Service
13 382 (7.98%) Business Intelligence
14 379 (7.91%) Validation
15 371 (7.75%) Data Modelling
16 368 (7.68%) Test Automation
17 356 (7.43%) Project Management
18 339 (7.08%) Roadmaps
19 336 (7.02%) Change Management
20 331 (6.91%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 861 (17.98%) SQL
2 795 (16.60%) Python
3 367 (7.66%) Java
4 265 (5.53%) PowerShell
5 250 (5.22%) JavaScript
6 162 (3.38%) C#
7 127 (2.65%) Bash
8 109 (2.28%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.17%) C++
11 49 (1.02%) T-SQL
12 45 (0.94%) Shell Script
13 40 (0.84%) C
13 40 (0.84%) Go
14 32 (0.67%) Apex Code
14 32 (0.67%) Bicep
15 31 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
16 27 (0.56%) R
17 21 (0.44%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,062 (22.18%) Security Cleared
2 698 (14.58%) SC Cleared
3 590 (12.32%) Degree
4 218 (4.55%) DV Cleared
5 171 (3.57%) Computer Science Degree
6 132 (2.76%) Microsoft Certification
7 115 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
7 115 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
8 85 (1.77%) CISSP
9 77 (1.61%) PMP
10 71 (1.48%) PMI Certification
11 66 (1.38%) A+ Certification
11 66 (1.38%) Azure Certification
12 65 (1.36%) CCNA
13 55 (1.15%) Master's Degree
14 53 (1.11%) CISM
15 46 (0.96%) Network+ Certification
16 41 (0.86%) AWS Certification
16 41 (0.86%) MCSE
17 37 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 328 (6.85%) Data Quality
2 284 (5.93%) QA
3 146 (3.05%) GDPR
4 102 (2.13%) Accessibility
4 102 (2.13%) SLA
5 86 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 74 (1.55%) PMO
7 71 (1.48%) NIST
8 44 (0.92%) GRC
9 26 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
10 25 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 21 (0.44%) WCAG
12 17 (0.35%) PCI DSS
13 14 (0.29%) HIPAA
13 14 (0.29%) NCSC
14 13 (0.27%) GxP
15 11 (0.23%) COBIT
15 11 (0.23%) Def Stans
15 11 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.21%) HL7
System Software
1 357 (7.45%) Active Directory
2 305 (6.37%) Docker
3 120 (2.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (1.00%) VMware NSX
5 46 (0.96%) vSphere
6 44 (0.92%) VMware ESXi
7 34 (0.71%) Hyper-V
8 30 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
10 21 (0.44%) vCloud
11 20 (0.42%) Firmware
12 17 (0.35%) IAG
13 11 (0.23%) Squid
14 8 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.15%) NFS
16 4 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.084%) Snort
17 3 (0.063%) BitLocker
18 2 (0.042%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 2 (0.042%) KVM
Systems Management
1 364 (7.60%) Kubernetes
2 284 (5.93%) Terraform
3 162 (3.38%) Ansible
4 123 (2.57%) Microsoft Intune
5 105 (2.19%) Grafana
6 92 (1.92%) Prometheus
7 71 (1.48%) SCCM
8 54 (1.13%) vCenter Server
9 36 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
10 34 (0.71%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.63%) Control-M
12 22 (0.46%) SCOM
13 20 (0.42%) Argo
13 20 (0.42%) Nessus
14 19 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
15 18 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
16 16 (0.33%) WSUS
17 15 (0.31%) Kibana
18 11 (0.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
19 9 (0.19%) Puppet
Vendors
1 929 (19.40%) Microsoft
2 342 (7.14%) Oracle
3 307 (6.41%) ServiceNow
4 291 (6.08%) SAP
5 187 (3.90%) VMware
6 147 (3.07%) Google
7 123 (2.57%) Splunk
8 122 (2.55%) Salesforce
9 107 (2.23%) Cisco
10 100 (2.09%) Databricks
11 75 (1.57%) Workday
12 65 (1.36%) Dynatrace
13 59 (1.23%) Red Hat
14 56 (1.17%) Adobe
15 51 (1.06%) Apple
16 50 (1.04%) Dell
17 47 (0.98%) Citrix
18 46 (0.96%) CyberArk
19 42 (0.88%) MuleSoft
20 39 (0.81%) Juniper