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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 5 8
Rank change year-on-year -6 +3 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,057 4,311 4,084
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.94% 15.34% 12.61%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.90% 16.89% 14.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,833 2,621 2,348
10th Percentile £259 £250 £264
25th Percentile £388 £376 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £713 £700 £711
UK median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -0.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 509 280 195
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.52
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £19.33 £18.85 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +2.55% +16.14% -69.76%
75th Percentile £40.00 £34.12 £31.37
90th Percentile £72.75 £63.78 £63.25
UK median hourly rate £18.25 £19.25 £16.23
% change year-on-year -5.19% +18.61% -69.42%

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 39,199 25,531 28,009
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.82% 90.87% 86.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,678 16,181 17,100
10th Percentile £325 £294 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,975 1,587 1,157
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.36 £17.79 £20.19
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -4.49%
75th Percentile £67.47 £45.00 £66.61
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.25 £74.92
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -8.31%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -11 2,159 £525 +5.00% 5,891
South East -3 822 £475 +5.56% 1,768
North of England -9 740 £450 -5.26% 1,695
Midlands -5 610 £450 +2.27% 1,137
West Midlands -8 438 £450 -5.26% 699
North West -9 369 £450 -1.32% 853
South West -7 320 £506 +9.41% 842
East of England 0 297 £425 -15.84% 891
Yorkshire -8 292 £475 -4.04% 589
East Midlands +2 168 £425 +13.33% 438
North East -10 81 £375 -16.67% 269
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
1 237 (4.69%) SharePoint
2 230 (4.55%) Confluence
3 92 (1.82%) Microsoft Exchange
4 52 (1.03%) Apache Spark
5 44 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
6 41 (0.81%) Apache
7 27 (0.53%) CMS
8 21 (0.42%) SAS
9 18 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.34%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.32%) 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%) Tomcat
16 5 (0.099%) Mule
16 5 (0.099%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.099%) WebLogic Portal
Applications
1 302 (5.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 241 (4.77%) Microsoft Office
3 118 (2.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 62 (1.23%) Microsoft Project
5 49 (0.97%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.36%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 16 (0.32%) AutoCAD
8 16 (0.32%) Revit
9 15 (0.30%) Chatbot
10 10 (0.20%) Navisworks
10 10 (0.20%) Windchill
11 9 (0.18%) Sketch
12 8 (0.16%) Trello
13 6 (0.12%) CPLEX
14 4 (0.079%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.059%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.059%) DaVinci Resolve
15 3 (0.059%) NUKE
16 2 (0.040%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 108 (2.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.07%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
4 28 (0.55%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.49%) Workday HCM
6 24 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
7 17 (0.34%) SAP GRC
8 14 (0.28%) Teamcenter
9 13 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
10 12 (0.24%) Aladdin
11 11 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
11 11 (0.22%) SAP SD
12 10 (0.20%) iTrent
12 10 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
12 10 (0.20%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.18%) Finacle
13 9 (0.18%) SAP FI
13 9 (0.18%) SAP PSCD
14 8 (0.16%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,006 (19.89%) Azure
2 688 (13.60%) AWS
3 477 (9.43%) Microsoft 365
4 412 (8.15%) Power Platform
5 289 (5.71%) GCP
6 250 (4.94%) Azure DevOps
7 213 (4.21%) Entra ID
8 186 (3.68%) GitHub
9 117 (2.31%) SaaS
9 117 (2.31%) Serverless
10 111 (2.19%) Power Automate
11 90 (1.78%) Microsoft Copilot
12 86 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
13 85 (1.68%) PowerApps
14 77 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
15 72 (1.42%) OneDrive
16 70 (1.38%) Snowflake
17 59 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
18 55 (1.09%) OpenShift
19 51 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 201 (3.97%) DNS
2 176 (3.48%) Firewall
3 150 (2.97%) VPN
4 115 (2.27%) DHCP
5 112 (2.21%) TCP/IP
6 104 (2.06%) Network Security
7 99 (1.96%) WAN
8 84 (1.66%) LAN
9 72 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
10 60 (1.19%) Wireless
11 47 (0.93%) VLAN
12 45 (0.89%) BGP
13 44 (0.87%) VoIP
14 43 (0.85%) SAN
15 29 (0.57%) Structured Cabling
16 27 (0.53%) SD-WAN
17 25 (0.49%) MPLS
18 22 (0.44%) Broadband
18 22 (0.44%) SSL
19 21 (0.42%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 301 (5.95%) Power BI
2 189 (3.74%) SQL Server
3 156 (3.08%) Relational Database
4 152 (3.01%) Data Warehouse
5 132 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
6 90 (1.78%) Metadata
7 86 (1.70%) MongoDB
8 81 (1.60%) NoSQL
9 71 (1.40%) Tableau
10 64 (1.27%) Data Lake
11 55 (1.09%) Oracle Database
12 54 (1.07%) MySQL
13 37 (0.73%) Big Data
14 34 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 28 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
16 26 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 25 (0.49%) BigQuery
17 25 (0.49%) Db2
18 23 (0.45%) DynamoDB
18 23 (0.45%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 455 (9.00%) JIRA
2 345 (6.82%) Git
3 187 (3.70%) Jenkins
4 131 (2.59%) GitLab
5 74 (1.46%) Selenium
6 45 (0.89%) Cucumber
7 41 (0.81%) Maven
8 39 (0.77%) JUnit
9 36 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 36 (0.71%) Postman
10 31 (0.61%) Bitbucket
10 31 (0.61%) Gradle
11 27 (0.53%) SonarQube
12 25 (0.49%) REST Assured
13 23 (0.45%) JMeter
14 21 (0.42%) Mockito
15 19 (0.38%) Gatling
16 17 (0.34%) WebDriver
17 15 (0.30%) Visual Studio
18 14 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,706 (53.51%) Social Skills
2 2,201 (43.52%) Analytical Skills
3 1,180 (23.33%) Finance
4 521 (10.30%) Public Sector
5 423 (8.36%) Banking
6 285 (5.64%) Organisational Skills
7 261 (5.16%) Manufacturing
8 175 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
9 167 (3.30%) Influencing Skills
10 164 (3.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 157 (3.10%) Retail
12 121 (2.39%) Legal
13 114 (2.25%) Marketing
14 110 (2.18%) Presentation Skills
14 110 (2.18%) Telecoms
15 105 (2.08%) Front Office
16 87 (1.72%) Investment Banking
17 77 (1.52%) Aerospace
18 62 (1.23%) Military
19 59 (1.17%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 673 (13.31%) Analyst
2 588 (11.63%) Developer
3 489 (9.67%) Senior
4 382 (7.55%) Lead
5 276 (5.46%) Architect
6 236 (4.67%) Business Analyst
7 232 (4.59%) Consultant
8 222 (4.39%) IT Support
9 198 (3.92%) Support Engineer
10 173 (3.42%) Data Engineer
11 152 (3.01%) Administrator
12 148 (2.93%) Project Manager
13 129 (2.55%) IT Engineer
14 102 (2.02%) Data Analyst
15 100 (1.98%) IT Support Engineer
16 98 (1.94%) Java Developer
17 96 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
18 90 (1.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 90 (1.78%) Network Engineer
19 82 (1.62%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 345 (6.82%) REST
2 308 (6.09%) Terraform
3 179 (3.54%) .NET
4 159 (3.14%) RESTful
5 148 (2.93%) React
6 144 (2.85%) SOAP
7 125 (2.47%) Kafka
8 118 (2.33%) HTML
9 116 (2.29%) JSON
10 114 (2.25%) CSS
11 113 (2.23%) XML
12 110 (2.18%) Spring
13 103 (2.04%) Web Services
14 102 (2.02%) Middleware
15 90 (1.78%) Spring Boot
16 85 (1.68%) Node.js
17 80 (1.58%) AngularJS
18 77 (1.52%) OAuth
19 59 (1.17%) PySpark
20 55 (1.09%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 305 (6.03%) Onboarding
2 267 (5.28%) Cloud Native
3 238 (4.71%) Product Ownership
4 208 (4.11%) Management Information System
5 201 (3.97%) Self-Motivation
6 192 (3.80%) Enterprise Software
7 148 (2.93%) Data Centre
8 127 (2.51%) Data Structures
9 123 (2.43%) Distributed Systems
10 110 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
11 108 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
12 105 (2.08%) Analytical Mindset
13 80 (1.58%) Virtual Team
14 78 (1.54%) Driving Licence
15 73 (1.44%) AI Agents
16 64 (1.27%) CMDB
17 56 (1.11%) PKI
18 54 (1.07%) Algorithms
18 54 (1.07%) NHS
19 49 (0.97%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 674 (13.33%) Windows
2 272 (5.38%) Linux
3 197 (3.90%) Windows Server
4 125 (2.47%) Windows 10
5 96 (1.90%) Unix
6 80 (1.58%) Apple iOS
7 76 (1.50%) Mac OS
8 70 (1.38%) Android
9 48 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.36%) VMS
11 18 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 13 (0.26%) Solaris
13 11 (0.22%) zOS
14 8 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
15 7 (0.14%) CentOS
16 6 (0.12%) AIX
17 5 (0.099%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
18 4 (0.079%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,397 (27.63%) Agile
2 1,292 (25.55%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,173 (23.20%) Continuous Improvement
4 870 (17.20%) CI/CD
5 778 (15.38%) DevOps
6 703 (13.90%) AI
7 575 (11.37%) Decision-Making
8 574 (11.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 520 (10.28%) Migration
10 476 (9.41%) Customer Service
11 473 (9.35%) Analytics
12 451 (8.92%) ITIL
13 438 (8.66%) Test Automation
14 410 (8.11%) Validation
15 358 (7.08%) Scrum
16 348 (6.88%) Business Intelligence
16 348 (6.88%) Data Modelling
17 346 (6.84%) Roadmaps
17 346 (6.84%) Technical Leadership
18 337 (6.66%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 880 (17.40%) SQL
2 757 (14.97%) Python
3 361 (7.14%) Java
4 313 (6.19%) JavaScript
5 306 (6.05%) PowerShell
6 204 (4.03%) C#
7 150 (2.97%) Bash
8 139 (2.75%) TypeScript
9 80 (1.58%) PL/SQL
10 48 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 47 (0.93%) T-SQL
12 38 (0.75%) C++
12 38 (0.75%) Go
13 29 (0.57%) Bicep
13 29 (0.57%) Scala
14 27 (0.53%) Kotlin
15 26 (0.51%) Groovy
16 23 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 19 (0.38%) Apex Code
17 19 (0.38%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,124 (22.23%) Security Cleared
2 797 (15.76%) SC Cleared
3 623 (12.32%) Degree
4 223 (4.41%) DV Cleared
5 187 (3.70%) Computer Science Degree
6 147 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
7 126 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
8 80 (1.58%) PMI Certification
9 79 (1.56%) Cisco Certification
10 75 (1.48%) Azure Certification
10 75 (1.48%) PMP
11 73 (1.44%) CISSP
12 54 (1.07%) DBS Check
13 51 (1.01%) Master's Degree
14 49 (0.97%) AWS Certification
15 43 (0.85%) A+ Certification
15 43 (0.85%) CISM
16 39 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
17 37 (0.73%) CCNA
18 34 (0.67%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (7.47%) Data Quality
2 353 (6.98%) QA
3 123 (2.43%) Accessibility
4 122 (2.41%) GDPR
5 109 (2.16%) SLA
6 91 (1.80%) PMO
7 83 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 60 (1.19%) NIST
9 53 (1.05%) GRC
10 32 (0.63%) WCAG
11 20 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
12 18 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 17 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
14 16 (0.32%) NCSC
15 15 (0.30%) PCI DSS
16 13 (0.26%) GxP
17 12 (0.24%) ISO 9001
18 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
18 11 (0.22%) IFRS
19 10 (0.20%) COBIT
System Software
1 396 (7.83%) Active Directory
2 312 (6.17%) Docker
3 152 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.21%) VMware ESXi
5 58 (1.15%) Hyper-V
6 53 (1.05%) vSphere
7 51 (1.01%) VMware NSX
8 36 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
9 25 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
10 24 (0.47%) vCloud
11 23 (0.45%) IAG
12 16 (0.32%) Firmware
13 10 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 6 (0.12%) XenApp
14 6 (0.12%) XenDesktop
15 5 (0.099%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.099%) NFS
15 5 (0.099%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.079%) RACF
Systems Management
1 350 (6.92%) Kubernetes
2 160 (3.16%) Ansible
3 129 (2.55%) Microsoft Intune
4 92 (1.82%) Grafana
5 84 (1.66%) SCCM
6 73 (1.44%) Prometheus
7 44 (0.87%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.73%) SCOM
9 24 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
10 23 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
11 20 (0.40%) Control-M
12 16 (0.32%) WSUS
13 15 (0.30%) 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%) NetBackup
19 8 (0.16%) Puppet
19 8 (0.16%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,238 (24.48%) Microsoft
2 337 (6.66%) Oracle
3 310 (6.13%) SAP
4 301 (5.95%) ServiceNow
5 195 (3.86%) VMware
6 149 (2.95%) Google
7 124 (2.45%) Databricks
8 121 (2.39%) Salesforce
9 118 (2.33%) Cisco
10 104 (2.06%) Splunk
11 67 (1.32%) Workday
12 64 (1.27%) Dynatrace
13 58 (1.15%) Apple
14 55 (1.09%) IBM
15 53 (1.05%) Adobe
16 47 (0.93%) Red Hat
17 44 (0.87%) CyberArk
18 39 (0.77%) Palo Alto
19 35 (0.69%) MuleSoft
20 30 (0.59%) F5