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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,868 4,482 3,745
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.69% 16.10% 11.28%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.56% 17.74% 13.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,781 2,742 2,318
10th Percentile £248 £255 £262
25th Percentile £375 £380 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.51% -1.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £622
90th Percentile £713 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £490 £500
% change year-on-year - -2.00% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 409 281 243
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.13 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% +24.80% -70.01%
75th Percentile £44.09 £34.48 £32.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £65.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £21.10 £16.23
% change year-on-year -9.95% +30.01% -70.25%

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 38,771 25,264 28,522
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.11% 90.78% 85.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,101 16,147 18,629
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 £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,535 1,418 1,654
10th Percentile £14.56 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.87 £18.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +2.19%
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.05 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -3.67%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 2,080 £520 +4.00% 2,328
South East -3 773 £479 -2.24% 1,127
North of England -9 734 £450 -5.26% 894
Midlands -4 556 £450 +4.53% 654
West Midlands -9 402 £450 -1.50% 386
South West -1 351 £500 +5.26% 474
North West -12 346 £450 -8.16% 453
Yorkshire -7 331 £450 -5.26% 324
East of England +1 264 £450 -5.26% 415
East Midlands +1 151 £475 +26.67% 268
North East -17 62 £375 -16.67% 129
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
1 217 (4.46%) Confluence
2 205 (4.21%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.24%) Microsoft Exchange
4 54 (1.11%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.68%) Apache
7 32 (0.66%) SAS
8 28 (0.58%) CMS
8 28 (0.58%) Oracle Workflow
9 18 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.23%) CICS
12 9 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
13 8 (0.16%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.10%) Appian
15 5 (0.10%) Camunda
15 5 (0.10%) Mule
15 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 271 (5.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 241 (4.95%) Microsoft Office
3 89 (1.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (1.36%) MS Visio
5 62 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
6 27 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.27%) Revit
10 11 (0.23%) Trello
11 9 (0.18%) Sketch
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 5 (0.10%) CATIA
13 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
14 4 (0.082%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.082%) Photoshop
15 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.062%) Maya
15 3 (0.062%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 116 (2.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 25 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.45%) NetSuite
6 17 (0.35%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.31%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.27%) iTrent
8 13 (0.27%) SAP SD
9 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
9 11 (0.23%) SAP GRC
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 9 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
11 9 (0.18%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.16%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.16%) Teamcenter
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.14%) SAP ERP
13 7 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
13 7 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 957 (19.66%) Azure
2 693 (14.24%) AWS
3 414 (8.50%) Microsoft 365
4 392 (8.05%) Power Platform
5 274 (5.63%) GCP
6 237 (4.87%) Azure DevOps
7 204 (4.19%) Entra ID
8 160 (3.29%) GitHub
9 132 (2.71%) SaaS
10 113 (2.32%) Serverless
11 85 (1.75%) Power Automate
12 74 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
13 66 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
14 64 (1.31%) Dynamics 365
15 61 (1.25%) Azure Data Factory
15 61 (1.25%) PowerApps
16 59 (1.21%) Amazon S3
16 59 (1.21%) Microsoft Copilot
16 59 (1.21%) OneDrive
17 57 (1.17%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 214 (4.40%) DNS
2 181 (3.72%) Firewall
3 145 (2.98%) VPN
4 128 (2.63%) DHCP
5 127 (2.61%) TCP/IP
6 113 (2.32%) WAN
7 98 (2.01%) LAN
8 84 (1.73%) Network Security
9 72 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.36%) SAN
11 56 (1.15%) VLAN
12 53 (1.09%) Wireless
13 51 (1.05%) BGP
14 37 (0.76%) OSPF
15 36 (0.74%) SD-WAN
16 32 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
16 32 (0.66%) VoIP
17 27 (0.55%) VXLAN
18 26 (0.53%) MPLS
19 22 (0.45%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (6.24%) Power BI
2 202 (4.15%) SQL Server
3 158 (3.25%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.77%) Relational Database
5 130 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
6 93 (1.91%) MongoDB
7 83 (1.71%) Metadata
7 83 (1.71%) NoSQL
8 80 (1.64%) Data Lake
8 80 (1.64%) Tableau
9 50 (1.03%) Big Data
10 49 (1.01%) Oracle Database
11 48 (0.99%) MySQL
12 43 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 37 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
14 28 (0.58%) Pentaho
15 27 (0.55%) Db2
15 27 (0.55%) Power Query
16 23 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
16 23 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 460 (9.45%) JIRA
2 295 (6.06%) Git
3 156 (3.20%) Jenkins
4 112 (2.30%) GitLab
5 66 (1.36%) Selenium
6 34 (0.70%) Cypress.io
7 33 (0.68%) Postman
8 27 (0.55%) Cucumber
9 26 (0.53%) REST Assured
10 24 (0.49%) Bitbucket
10 24 (0.49%) Maven
11 22 (0.45%) JUnit
12 20 (0.41%) Gradle
13 19 (0.39%) JMeter
13 19 (0.39%) Mockito
14 18 (0.37%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.31%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 14 (0.29%) Gatling
16 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
17 13 (0.27%) SonarQube
General
1 2,540 (52.18%) Social Skills
2 2,068 (42.48%) Analytical Skills
3 1,136 (23.34%) Finance
4 470 (9.65%) Public Sector
5 390 (8.01%) Banking
6 223 (4.58%) Organisational Skills
7 192 (3.94%) Retail
8 176 (3.62%) Documentation Skills
9 167 (3.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 153 (3.14%) Manufacturing
11 134 (2.75%) Influencing Skills
12 115 (2.36%) Presentation Skills
13 111 (2.28%) Marketing
14 107 (2.20%) Front Office
14 107 (2.20%) Legal
15 95 (1.95%) Telecoms
16 73 (1.50%) Investment Banking
17 60 (1.23%) Law
18 56 (1.15%) Back Office
18 56 (1.15%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 673 (13.82%) Analyst
2 539 (11.07%) Developer
3 440 (9.04%) Senior
4 373 (7.66%) Lead
5 323 (6.64%) Architect
6 230 (4.72%) Business Analyst
7 217 (4.46%) Consultant
8 211 (4.33%) Data Engineer
9 194 (3.99%) IT Support
10 176 (3.62%) Support Engineer
11 143 (2.94%) Project Manager
12 124 (2.55%) IT Engineer
13 120 (2.47%) Administrator
14 105 (2.16%) Data Analyst
15 98 (2.01%) Java Developer
16 89 (1.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 89 (1.83%) Solutions Architect
17 88 (1.81%) Software Engineer
18 83 (1.71%) IT Support Engineer
18 83 (1.71%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 283 (5.81%) REST
2 145 (2.98%) .NET
3 135 (2.77%) RESTful
4 132 (2.71%) React
5 130 (2.67%) SOAP
6 124 (2.55%) Kafka
7 114 (2.34%) JSON
8 113 (2.32%) Spring
9 102 (2.10%) CSS
10 97 (1.99%) XML
11 92 (1.89%) Middleware
12 91 (1.87%) HTML
13 79 (1.62%) Node.js
14 77 (1.58%) Spring Boot
15 75 (1.54%) AngularJS
16 72 (1.48%) OAuth
17 69 (1.42%) Web Services
18 54 (1.11%) PySpark
19 49 (1.01%) Playwright
20 45 (0.92%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 278 (5.71%) Onboarding
2 232 (4.77%) Product Ownership
3 214 (4.40%) Cloud Native
4 185 (3.80%) Self-Motivation
5 176 (3.62%) Data Centre
6 146 (3.00%) Management Information System
7 139 (2.86%) Analytical Mindset
7 139 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
7 139 (2.86%) Enterprise Software
8 116 (2.38%) Data Structures
8 116 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
9 112 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
10 92 (1.89%) Virtual Team
11 63 (1.29%) Driving Licence
12 61 (1.25%) AI Agents
13 58 (1.19%) Algorithms
14 57 (1.17%) CMDB
15 56 (1.15%) PKI
16 53 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 46 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 671 (13.78%) Windows
2 260 (5.34%) Linux
3 161 (3.31%) Windows Server
4 122 (2.51%) Windows 10
5 101 (2.07%) Unix
6 79 (1.62%) Apple iOS
6 79 (1.62%) Mac OS
7 73 (1.50%) Android
8 40 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
10 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
11 14 (0.29%) VMS
12 12 (0.25%) zOS
13 9 (0.18%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.16%) Solaris
15 6 (0.12%) CentOS
15 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
16 5 (0.10%) Debian
16 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,331 (27.34%) Agile
2 1,016 (20.87%) Continuous Improvement
3 945 (19.41%) Stakeholder Management
4 805 (16.54%) CI/CD
5 765 (15.71%) DevOps
6 644 (13.23%) AI
7 542 (11.13%) Decision-Making
8 517 (10.62%) Analytics
9 514 (10.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 505 (10.37%) Migration
11 475 (9.76%) ITIL
12 460 (9.45%) Customer Service
13 393 (8.07%) Business Intelligence
14 385 (7.91%) Test Automation
15 381 (7.83%) Validation
16 373 (7.66%) Data Modelling
17 336 (6.90%) Roadmaps
17 336 (6.90%) Scrum
18 322 (6.61%) Project Management
19 315 (6.47%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 879 (18.06%) SQL
2 798 (16.39%) Python
3 368 (7.56%) Java
4 278 (5.71%) PowerShell
5 270 (5.55%) JavaScript
6 164 (3.37%) C#
7 139 (2.86%) Bash
8 108 (2.22%) TypeScript
9 87 (1.79%) PL/SQL
10 52 (1.07%) C++
11 49 (1.01%) T-SQL
12 40 (0.82%) Shell Script
13 35 (0.72%) Go
14 33 (0.68%) Bicep
15 31 (0.64%) C
16 30 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 29 (0.60%) Apex Code
18 28 (0.58%) Kotlin
18 28 (0.58%) Scala
19 26 (0.53%) R
Qualifications
1 1,067 (21.92%) Security Cleared
2 719 (14.77%) SC Cleared
3 601 (12.35%) Degree
4 208 (4.27%) DV Cleared
5 182 (3.74%) Computer Science Degree
6 145 (2.98%) Microsoft Certification
7 113 (2.32%) Cisco Certification
8 109 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
9 75 (1.54%) CISSP
10 72 (1.48%) Azure Certification
11 68 (1.40%) PMP
12 63 (1.29%) A+ Certification
12 63 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 62 (1.27%) CCNA
14 48 (0.99%) CISM
15 47 (0.97%) Master's Degree
16 43 (0.88%) Network+ Certification
17 41 (0.84%) MCSE
18 37 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
19 36 (0.74%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 347 (7.13%) Data Quality
2 302 (6.20%) QA
3 133 (2.73%) GDPR
4 108 (2.22%) Accessibility
5 107 (2.20%) SLA
6 86 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 83 (1.71%) PMO
8 71 (1.46%) NIST
9 50 (1.03%) GRC
10 28 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 28 (0.58%) WCAG
11 25 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
12 16 (0.33%) NCSC
13 15 (0.31%) GxP
14 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.27%) COBIT
15 13 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
16 12 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
17 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
17 10 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 392 (8.05%) Active Directory
2 309 (6.35%) Docker
3 137 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 53 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
5 51 (1.05%) Hyper-V
6 48 (0.99%) VMware NSX
7 46 (0.94%) vSphere
8 30 (0.62%) Virtual Desktop
9 29 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 23 (0.47%) vCloud
11 21 (0.43%) Firmware
12 19 (0.39%) IAG
13 11 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
15 5 (0.10%) Squid
16 4 (0.082%) Microsoft App-V
17 3 (0.062%) Snort
18 2 (0.041%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 2 (0.041%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 350 (7.19%) Kubernetes
2 285 (5.85%) Terraform
3 161 (3.31%) Ansible
4 131 (2.69%) Microsoft Intune
5 87 (1.79%) Grafana
6 81 (1.66%) SCCM
7 78 (1.60%) Prometheus
8 55 (1.13%) vCenter Server
9 29 (0.60%) SCOM
10 28 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.55%) Control-M
11 27 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 21 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
13 19 (0.39%) WSUS
14 16 (0.33%) Argo
15 14 (0.29%) Nessus
16 13 (0.27%) IBM Guardium
17 12 (0.25%) Puppet
18 11 (0.23%) Kibana
18 11 (0.23%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,040 (21.36%) Microsoft
2 338 (6.94%) Oracle
3 321 (6.59%) ServiceNow
4 294 (6.04%) SAP
5 200 (4.11%) VMware
6 148 (3.04%) Google
7 129 (2.65%) Salesforce
8 119 (2.44%) Cisco
9 112 (2.30%) Splunk
10 104 (2.14%) Databricks
11 75 (1.54%) Workday
12 67 (1.38%) Dynatrace
13 57 (1.17%) Apple
14 55 (1.13%) Adobe
15 47 (0.97%) Citrix
15 47 (0.97%) Dell
16 46 (0.94%) Red Hat
17 45 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 42 (0.86%) IBM
18 42 (0.86%) MuleSoft