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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,829 4,456 3,756
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.65% 16.19% 11.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.50% 17.84% 12.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,792 2,745 2,324
10th Percentile £250 £250 £250
25th Percentile £380 £375 £383
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.41% -1.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £711 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +0.51% -2.50% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 390 277 261
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.77 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £21.24 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +0.52% +30.87% -69.33%
75th Percentile £50.44 £38.42 £32.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £66.15 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.33 £21.25 £16.23
% change year-on-year -9.01% +30.90% -69.67%

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 38,641 24,977 29,189
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.26% 90.76% 85.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,154 16,016 19,101
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,462 1,371 1,780
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.25 £13.87
25th Percentile £20.92 £17.98 £17.72
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -39.40% -2.35%
75th Percentile £68.75 £52.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -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 31 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 31 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 31 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 2,068 £520 +4.00% 1,546
South East -4 771 £481 -1.84% 905
North of England -9 743 £450 -5.26% 719
Midlands -6 542 £450 +5.88% 512
West Midlands -9 393 £450 - 301
North West -11 352 £450 -7.98% 359
South West 0 340 £500 +5.26% 392
Yorkshire -7 336 £450 -5.26% 252
East of England +1 258 £450 -1.91% 322
East Midlands 0 147 £470 +27.89% 211
North East -17 60 £370 -17.78% 119
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 (4.54%) Confluence
2 187 (3.87%) SharePoint
3 99 (2.05%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.16%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.70%) Apache
7 30 (0.62%) SAS
8 28 (0.58%) CMS
9 27 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.39%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.23%) CICS
13 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.10%) Camunda
15 5 (0.10%) Mule
15 5 (0.10%) nginx
15 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
Applications
1 251 (5.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 231 (4.78%) Microsoft Office
3 79 (1.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.41%) MS Visio
5 65 (1.35%) Microsoft Project
6 26 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.29%) AutoCAD
10 12 (0.25%) Revit
11 10 (0.21%) Trello
12 9 (0.19%) Sketch
13 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
14 5 (0.10%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.083%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.083%) Maya
15 4 (0.083%) Navisworks
16 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.062%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 116 (2.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 25 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.46%) NetSuite
6 19 (0.39%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.31%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.27%) iTrent
10 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
11 10 (0.21%) SAP GRC
11 10 (0.21%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.21%) Teamcenter
12 8 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
12 8 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
13 7 (0.14%) Loan IQ
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 938 (19.42%) Azure
2 694 (14.37%) AWS
3 391 (8.10%) Microsoft 365
4 378 (7.83%) Power Platform
5 274 (5.67%) GCP
6 229 (4.74%) Azure DevOps
7 186 (3.85%) Entra ID
8 163 (3.38%) GitHub
9 128 (2.65%) SaaS
10 116 (2.40%) Serverless
11 76 (1.57%) Power Automate
12 75 (1.55%) GitHub Actions
13 68 (1.41%) AWS Lambda
14 61 (1.26%) Amazon S3
14 61 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
15 60 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
16 58 (1.20%) OpenShift
16 58 (1.20%) PowerApps
17 55 (1.14%) Snowflake
18 54 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 211 (4.37%) DNS
2 176 (3.64%) Firewall
3 140 (2.90%) VPN
4 124 (2.57%) DHCP
4 124 (2.57%) TCP/IP
5 106 (2.20%) WAN
6 94 (1.95%) LAN
7 82 (1.70%) Network Security
8 72 (1.49%) Wi-Fi
9 66 (1.37%) SAN
10 59 (1.22%) VLAN
11 53 (1.10%) Wireless
12 50 (1.04%) BGP
13 37 (0.77%) OSPF
14 34 (0.70%) SD-WAN
14 34 (0.70%) VoIP
15 32 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
16 26 (0.54%) MPLS
17 25 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 22 (0.46%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 298 (6.17%) Power BI
2 210 (4.35%) SQL Server
3 158 (3.27%) Data Warehouse
4 136 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
5 132 (2.73%) Relational Database
6 96 (1.99%) MongoDB
7 84 (1.74%) NoSQL
8 82 (1.70%) Data Lake
8 82 (1.70%) Metadata
9 78 (1.62%) Tableau
10 52 (1.08%) Big Data
11 50 (1.04%) MySQL
12 49 (1.01%) Oracle Database
13 44 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 37 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
15 28 (0.58%) Db2
16 26 (0.54%) Power Query
17 24 (0.50%) BigQuery
18 23 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
18 23 (0.48%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 467 (9.67%) JIRA
2 282 (5.84%) Git
3 161 (3.33%) Jenkins
4 104 (2.15%) GitLab
5 66 (1.37%) Selenium
6 33 (0.68%) Cypress.io
6 33 (0.68%) Postman
7 28 (0.58%) REST Assured
8 27 (0.56%) Cucumber
9 23 (0.48%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.48%) JUnit
9 23 (0.48%) Maven
10 19 (0.39%) Gradle
10 19 (0.39%) Mockito
11 17 (0.35%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 16 (0.33%) JMeter
13 13 (0.27%) Visual Studio
13 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
14 12 (0.25%) SonarQube
General
1 2,499 (51.75%) Social Skills
2 2,030 (42.04%) Analytical Skills
3 1,136 (23.52%) Finance
4 462 (9.57%) Public Sector
5 383 (7.93%) Banking
6 209 (4.33%) Organisational Skills
7 194 (4.02%) Retail
8 179 (3.71%) Documentation Skills
9 154 (3.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 132 (2.73%) Manufacturing
11 131 (2.71%) Influencing Skills
12 111 (2.30%) Legal
13 108 (2.24%) Presentation Skills
14 105 (2.17%) Marketing
15 104 (2.15%) Front Office
16 93 (1.93%) Telecoms
17 71 (1.47%) Investment Banking
18 58 (1.20%) Law
19 54 (1.12%) Financial Institution
20 53 (1.10%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 675 (13.98%) Analyst
2 541 (11.20%) Developer
3 437 (9.05%) Senior
4 374 (7.74%) Lead
5 330 (6.83%) Architect
6 236 (4.89%) Business Analyst
7 212 (4.39%) Consultant
8 206 (4.27%) Data Engineer
9 175 (3.62%) IT Support
10 163 (3.38%) Support Engineer
11 147 (3.04%) Project Manager
12 113 (2.34%) Administrator
13 110 (2.28%) IT Engineer
14 104 (2.15%) Data Analyst
15 103 (2.13%) Java Developer
16 91 (1.88%) Software Engineer
17 89 (1.84%) Solutions Architect
18 83 (1.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 81 (1.68%) Support Analyst
20 78 (1.62%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 280 (5.80%) REST
2 143 (2.96%) .NET
3 135 (2.80%) RESTful
4 130 (2.69%) Kafka
5 129 (2.67%) React
5 129 (2.67%) SOAP
6 120 (2.48%) Spring
7 114 (2.36%) JSON
8 103 (2.13%) CSS
9 95 (1.97%) XML
10 94 (1.95%) HTML
11 91 (1.88%) Middleware
12 86 (1.78%) Spring Boot
13 81 (1.68%) AngularJS
14 80 (1.66%) Node.js
15 70 (1.45%) OAuth
16 64 (1.33%) Web Services
17 56 (1.16%) PySpark
18 47 (0.97%) Playwright
19 45 (0.93%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 260 (5.38%) Onboarding
2 233 (4.83%) Product Ownership
3 214 (4.43%) Cloud Native
4 184 (3.81%) Self-Motivation
5 176 (3.64%) Data Centre
6 141 (2.92%) Distributed Systems
7 136 (2.82%) Analytical Mindset
7 136 (2.82%) Enterprise Software
7 136 (2.82%) Management Information System
8 119 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
9 115 (2.38%) Data Protection Act
10 114 (2.36%) Data Structures
11 96 (1.99%) Virtual Team
12 68 (1.41%) Driving Licence
13 59 (1.22%) AI Agents
14 58 (1.20%) Algorithms
15 55 (1.14%) CMDB
16 54 (1.12%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 53 (1.10%) PKI
18 45 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 642 (13.29%) Windows
2 248 (5.14%) Linux
3 144 (2.98%) Windows Server
4 116 (2.40%) Windows 10
5 96 (1.99%) Unix
6 77 (1.59%) Mac OS
7 75 (1.55%) Apple iOS
8 72 (1.49%) Android
9 41 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 18 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 14 (0.29%) VMS
13 12 (0.25%) zOS
14 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.17%) Solaris
16 6 (0.12%) CentOS
16 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
18 4 (0.083%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,310 (27.13%) Agile
2 978 (20.25%) Continuous Improvement
3 917 (18.99%) Stakeholder Management
4 787 (16.30%) CI/CD
5 749 (15.51%) DevOps
6 636 (13.17%) AI
7 541 (11.20%) Decision-Making
8 505 (10.46%) Analytics
9 504 (10.44%) Migration
10 493 (10.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 476 (9.86%) ITIL
12 446 (9.24%) Customer Service
13 386 (7.99%) Business Intelligence
14 374 (7.74%) Validation
15 372 (7.70%) Data Modelling
16 369 (7.64%) Test Automation
17 340 (7.04%) Project Management
17 340 (7.04%) Roadmaps
18 334 (6.92%) Scrum
19 319 (6.61%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 860 (17.81%) SQL
2 796 (16.48%) Python
3 371 (7.68%) Java
4 269 (5.57%) JavaScript
5 265 (5.49%) PowerShell
6 161 (3.33%) C#
7 134 (2.77%) Bash
8 110 (2.28%) TypeScript
9 84 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 52 (1.08%) C++
10 52 (1.08%) T-SQL
11 40 (0.83%) Shell Script
12 35 (0.72%) Go
13 34 (0.70%) Bicep
14 32 (0.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 31 (0.64%) C
16 29 (0.60%) Kotlin
17 28 (0.58%) Apex Code
18 25 (0.52%) Groovy
18 25 (0.52%) R
Qualifications
1 1,064 (22.03%) Security Cleared
2 711 (14.72%) SC Cleared
3 593 (12.28%) Degree
4 216 (4.47%) DV Cleared
5 174 (3.60%) Computer Science Degree
6 138 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
7 114 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
8 110 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
9 75 (1.55%) CISSP
10 74 (1.53%) PMP
11 69 (1.43%) PMI Certification
12 67 (1.39%) Azure Certification
13 63 (1.30%) CCNA
14 62 (1.28%) A+ Certification
15 51 (1.06%) Master's Degree
16 47 (0.97%) CISM
17 42 (0.87%) Network+ Certification
18 39 (0.81%) MCSE
19 37 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
20 36 (0.75%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 334 (6.92%) Data Quality
2 295 (6.11%) QA
3 134 (2.77%) GDPR
4 109 (2.26%) SLA
5 106 (2.20%) Accessibility
6 83 (1.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (1.66%) PMO
8 68 (1.41%) NIST
9 46 (0.95%) GRC
10 27 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 25 (0.52%) WCAG
12 24 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.29%) GxP
14 13 (0.27%) NCSC
14 13 (0.27%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.25%) COBIT
16 11 (0.23%) 21 CFR Part 11
17 10 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
17 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
18 9 (0.19%) IFRS
System Software
1 373 (7.72%) Active Directory
2 307 (6.36%) Docker
3 129 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 50 (1.04%) VMware ESXi
5 49 (1.01%) VMware NSX
6 47 (0.97%) vSphere
7 44 (0.91%) Hyper-V
8 30 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
10 22 (0.46%) vCloud
11 20 (0.41%) Firmware
12 18 (0.37%) IAG
13 11 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.12%) Squid
15 4 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
16 3 (0.062%) Snort
16 3 (0.062%) Virtual Servers
17 2 (0.041%) BitLocker
17 2 (0.041%) UAG
Systems Management
1 358 (7.41%) Kubernetes
2 288 (5.96%) Terraform
3 163 (3.38%) Ansible
4 126 (2.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 94 (1.95%) Grafana
6 79 (1.64%) Prometheus
7 76 (1.57%) SCCM
8 58 (1.20%) vCenter Server
9 29 (0.60%) FortiGate
10 28 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.54%) Control-M
12 24 (0.50%) SCOM
13 20 (0.41%) Argo
14 18 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
15 17 (0.35%) WSUS
16 14 (0.29%) Nessus
17 13 (0.27%) Kibana
18 12 (0.25%) IBM Guardium
19 11 (0.23%) Puppet
20 10 (0.21%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 975 (20.19%) Microsoft
2 341 (7.06%) Oracle
3 314 (6.50%) ServiceNow
4 290 (6.01%) SAP
5 197 (4.08%) VMware
6 149 (3.09%) Google
7 121 (2.51%) Salesforce
8 117 (2.42%) Splunk
9 116 (2.40%) Cisco
10 106 (2.20%) Databricks
11 80 (1.66%) Workday
12 68 (1.41%) Dynatrace
13 54 (1.12%) Adobe
14 53 (1.10%) Red Hat
15 52 (1.08%) Apple
16 47 (0.97%) Citrix
17 46 (0.95%) Dell
18 45 (0.93%) CyberArk
19 44 (0.91%) MuleSoft
20 41 (0.85%) Juniper