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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -7 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,765 4,517 3,955
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.62% 16.47% 11.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.44% 18.17% 12.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,773 2,792 2,427
10th Percentile £260 £250 £250
25th Percentile £385 £380 £385
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 366 277 312
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.82 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.44 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.49 £21.25 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +1.13% +30.93% -69.09%
75th Percentile £51.27 £43.39 £33.24
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.75 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £20.51 £21.39 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.11% +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 38,301 24,864 30,650
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.33% 90.66% 85.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,041 15,953 19,995
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £421 £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 £745 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,379 1,324 2,046
10th Percentile £15.33 £14.23 £13.22
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.88 £16.90
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £39.50
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -36.33% -7.06%
75th Percentile £69.10 £53.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.39 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -10.31%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 2,018 £514 +2.80% 934
South East -5 750 £488 -0.51% 690
North of England -9 737 £450 -5.26% 570
Midlands -7 544 £450 +5.88% 351
West Midlands -8 393 £450 - 197
North West -11 368 £450 -8.54% 293
South West -2 338 £500 +2.56% 270
Yorkshire -7 323 £450 -5.26% 195
East of England -2 268 £450 -5.01% 232
East Midlands -1 149 £450 +20.00% 154
North East -19 52 £370 -17.78% 91
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 (4.58%) Confluence
2 174 (3.65%) SharePoint
3 90 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.18%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
6 35 (0.73%) Apache
7 32 (0.67%) CMS
8 27 (0.57%) SAS
9 26 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.23%) nginx
13 10 (0.21%) ArcGIS
13 10 (0.21%) CICS
14 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 7 (0.15%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.15%) Sitecore CMS
16 6 (0.13%) Camunda
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 253 (5.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 218 (4.58%) Microsoft Office
3 84 (1.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.43%) MS Visio
5 63 (1.32%) Microsoft Project
6 28 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.27%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.23%) Revit
11 9 (0.19%) Sketch
11 9 (0.19%) Trello
12 8 (0.17%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
14 5 (0.10%) Maya
15 4 (0.084%) Adobe XD
16 3 (0.063%) Navisworks
16 3 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
17 2 (0.042%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 117 (2.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
4 23 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
5 17 (0.36%) Aladdin
5 17 (0.36%) NetSuite
5 17 (0.36%) Workday HCM
6 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
7 12 (0.25%) iTrent
8 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 11 (0.23%) Teamcenter
9 10 (0.21%) Finacle
9 10 (0.21%) SAP HCM
9 10 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 9 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
10 9 (0.19%) SAP GRC
11 8 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
11 8 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
12 7 (0.15%) Oracle HRMS
12 7 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 932 (19.56%) Azure
2 687 (14.42%) AWS
3 375 (7.87%) Power Platform
4 359 (7.53%) Microsoft 365
5 266 (5.58%) GCP
6 226 (4.74%) Azure DevOps
7 178 (3.74%) Entra ID
8 165 (3.46%) GitHub
9 125 (2.62%) SaaS
10 115 (2.41%) Serverless
11 76 (1.59%) GitHub Actions
12 73 (1.53%) Power Automate
13 71 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
14 68 (1.43%) Amazon S3
15 60 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
15 60 (1.26%) PowerApps
16 59 (1.24%) OpenShift
17 58 (1.22%) Azure Data Factory
18 57 (1.20%) Snowflake
19 52 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 208 (4.37%) DNS
2 176 (3.69%) Firewall
3 131 (2.75%) VPN
4 125 (2.62%) TCP/IP
5 113 (2.37%) DHCP
6 100 (2.10%) WAN
7 89 (1.87%) LAN
8 84 (1.76%) Network Security
9 68 (1.43%) Wi-Fi
10 67 (1.41%) SAN
11 52 (1.09%) VLAN
12 50 (1.05%) BGP
13 48 (1.01%) Wireless
14 40 (0.84%) OSPF
15 34 (0.71%) SD-WAN
16 31 (0.65%) VoIP
17 29 (0.61%) Structured Cabling
18 24 (0.50%) MPLS
18 24 (0.50%) VXLAN
19 20 (0.42%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 296 (6.21%) Power BI
2 214 (4.49%) SQL Server
3 150 (3.15%) Data Warehouse
4 138 (2.90%) PostgreSQL
5 133 (2.79%) Relational Database
6 93 (1.95%) MongoDB
7 82 (1.72%) NoSQL
8 80 (1.68%) Metadata
9 79 (1.66%) Tableau
10 78 (1.64%) Data Lake
11 53 (1.11%) Oracle Database
12 50 (1.05%) Big Data
13 49 (1.03%) MySQL
14 48 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 36 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
16 26 (0.55%) Db2
17 25 (0.52%) Power Query
18 23 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
18 23 (0.48%) RDBMS
19 22 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 477 (10.01%) JIRA
2 276 (5.79%) Git
3 159 (3.34%) Jenkins
4 105 (2.20%) GitLab
5 68 (1.43%) Selenium
6 39 (0.82%) Postman
7 32 (0.67%) Cypress.io
8 30 (0.63%) REST Assured
9 26 (0.55%) 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%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,460 (51.63%) Social Skills
2 1,984 (41.64%) Analytical Skills
3 1,108 (23.25%) Finance
4 441 (9.25%) Public Sector
5 371 (7.79%) Banking
6 196 (4.11%) Organisational Skills
7 195 (4.09%) Documentation Skills
8 182 (3.82%) Retail
9 137 (2.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 127 (2.67%) Influencing Skills
11 119 (2.50%) Manufacturing
12 109 (2.29%) Legal
13 106 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
14 97 (2.04%) Front Office
14 97 (2.04%) Marketing
15 96 (2.01%) Telecoms
16 72 (1.51%) Investment Banking
17 58 (1.22%) Law
18 53 (1.11%) Back Office
19 49 (1.03%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 673 (14.12%) Analyst
2 531 (11.14%) Developer
3 415 (8.71%) Senior
4 355 (7.45%) Lead
5 339 (7.11%) Architect
6 240 (5.04%) Business Analyst
7 202 (4.24%) Consultant
8 201 (4.22%) Data Engineer
9 161 (3.38%) IT Support
10 156 (3.27%) Support Engineer
11 154 (3.23%) Project Manager
12 104 (2.18%) Data Analyst
13 103 (2.16%) Administrator
14 100 (2.10%) IT Engineer
15 97 (2.04%) Java Developer
16 92 (1.93%) Software Engineer
17 91 (1.91%) Solutions Architect
18 81 (1.70%) Support Analyst
19 78 (1.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 77 (1.62%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (5.65%) REST
2 146 (3.06%) .NET
3 132 (2.77%) RESTful
4 128 (2.69%) Kafka
5 126 (2.64%) Spring
6 125 (2.62%) React
7 123 (2.58%) SOAP
8 110 (2.31%) JSON
9 106 (2.22%) CSS
10 96 (2.01%) HTML
11 94 (1.97%) Middleware
11 94 (1.97%) XML
12 90 (1.89%) Spring Boot
13 79 (1.66%) Node.js
14 77 (1.62%) AngularJS
15 61 (1.28%) Web Services
16 60 (1.26%) OAuth
17 54 (1.13%) LDAP
17 54 (1.13%) PySpark
18 47 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 240 (5.04%) Onboarding
2 232 (4.87%) Product Ownership
3 198 (4.16%) Cloud Native
4 179 (3.76%) Self-Motivation
5 176 (3.69%) Data Centre
6 138 (2.90%) Analytical Mindset
7 136 (2.85%) Distributed Systems
7 136 (2.85%) Management Information System
8 122 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
9 121 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
10 120 (2.52%) Data Protection Act
11 109 (2.29%) Data Structures
12 101 (2.12%) Virtual Team
13 62 (1.30%) Driving Licence
14 54 (1.13%) CMDB
15 53 (1.11%) AI Agents
15 53 (1.11%) Algorithms
16 52 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 49 (1.03%) PKI
17 49 (1.03%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 610 (12.80%) Windows
2 255 (5.35%) Linux
3 120 (2.52%) Windows Server
4 108 (2.27%) Windows 10
5 98 (2.06%) Unix
6 78 (1.64%) Mac OS
7 76 (1.59%) Apple iOS
8 71 (1.49%) Android
9 41 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 18 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.25%) VMS
13 11 (0.23%) zOS
14 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.15%) Solaris
16 6 (0.13%) CentOS
17 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.084%) AIX
18 4 (0.084%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,291 (27.09%) Agile
2 922 (19.35%) Continuous Improvement
3 874 (18.34%) Stakeholder Management
4 775 (16.26%) CI/CD
5 739 (15.51%) DevOps
6 614 (12.89%) AI
7 537 (11.27%) Decision-Making
8 507 (10.64%) Migration
9 498 (10.45%) Analytics
10 483 (10.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 472 (9.91%) ITIL
12 428 (8.98%) Customer Service
13 383 (8.04%) Business Intelligence
14 380 (7.97%) Validation
15 371 (7.79%) Data Modelling
16 367 (7.70%) Test Automation
17 355 (7.45%) Project Management
18 339 (7.11%) Roadmaps
19 335 (7.03%) Change Management
20 329 (6.90%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 856 (17.96%) SQL
2 788 (16.54%) Python
3 364 (7.64%) Java
4 261 (5.48%) PowerShell
5 250 (5.25%) JavaScript
6 161 (3.38%) C#
7 127 (2.67%) Bash
8 109 (2.29%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.18%) C++
11 49 (1.03%) 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 (0.57%) Kotlin
16 27 (0.57%) R
17 21 (0.44%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,058 (22.20%) Security Cleared
2 695 (14.59%) SC Cleared
3 589 (12.36%) Degree
4 218 (4.58%) DV Cleared
5 171 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 131 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
7 115 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
8 112 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
9 82 (1.72%) CISSP
10 77 (1.62%) PMP
11 70 (1.47%) PMI Certification
12 65 (1.36%) Azure Certification
13 64 (1.34%) A+ Certification
13 64 (1.34%) CCNA
14 55 (1.15%) Master's Degree
15 53 (1.11%) CISM
16 44 (0.92%) Network+ Certification
17 40 (0.84%) MCSE
18 39 (0.82%) AWS Certification
19 37 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 327 (6.86%) Data Quality
2 284 (5.96%) QA
3 146 (3.06%) GDPR
4 102 (2.14%) SLA
5 101 (2.12%) Accessibility
6 86 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 74 (1.55%) PMO
8 71 (1.49%) NIST
9 44 (0.92%) GRC
10 26 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
11 25 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.42%) WCAG
13 17 (0.36%) PCI DSS
14 14 (0.29%) HIPAA
14 14 (0.29%) NCSC
15 13 (0.27%) GxP
16 11 (0.23%) COBIT
16 11 (0.23%) Def Stans
16 11 (0.23%) ISO 20022
17 10 (0.21%) PSD2
System Software
1 357 (7.49%) Active Directory
2 299 (6.27%) Docker
3 120 (2.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 46 (0.97%) VMware NSX
4 46 (0.97%) vSphere
5 45 (0.94%) VMware ESXi
6 34 (0.71%) Hyper-V
7 30 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
8 27 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
9 21 (0.44%) vCloud
10 20 (0.42%) Firmware
11 17 (0.36%) IAG
12 11 (0.23%) Squid
13 8 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.15%) NFS
15 4 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.084%) Snort
16 3 (0.063%) BitLocker
17 2 (0.042%) UAG
17 2 (0.042%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 361 (7.58%) Kubernetes
2 281 (5.90%) Terraform
3 161 (3.38%) Ansible
4 121 (2.54%) Microsoft Intune
5 105 (2.20%) Grafana
6 89 (1.87%) Prometheus
7 70 (1.47%) SCCM
8 55 (1.15%) vCenter Server
9 36 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
10 34 (0.71%) FortiGate
11 31 (0.65%) 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 (0.34%) WSUS
17 12 (0.25%) Kibana
18 9 (0.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 9 (0.19%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 927 (19.45%) Microsoft
2 341 (7.16%) Oracle
3 306 (6.42%) ServiceNow
4 289 (6.07%) SAP
5 187 (3.92%) VMware
6 147 (3.08%) Google
7 124 (2.60%) Splunk
8 121 (2.54%) Salesforce
9 108 (2.27%) Cisco
10 99 (2.08%) Databricks
11 76 (1.59%) Workday
12 65 (1.36%) Dynatrace
13 58 (1.22%) Red Hat
14 54 (1.13%) Adobe
15 51 (1.07%) Apple
16 49 (1.03%) Dell
17 47 (0.99%) Citrix
18 46 (0.97%) CyberArk
19 42 (0.88%) MuleSoft
20 40 (0.84%) Juniper