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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -8 +4 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,833 4,424 3,831
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.58% 16.05% 11.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.46% 17.67% 13.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,767 2,706 2,331
10th Percentile £238 £250 £263
25th Percentile £375 £379 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.52% -1.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £622
90th Percentile £713 £705 £725
UK median daily rate £495 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +1.02% -2.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 404 279 241
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £15.99 £15.19 £14.48
Median hourly rate £20.48 £20.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +2.38% +23.23% -70.49%
75th Percentile £42.38 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.20% +24.80% -70.49%

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 38,779 25,035 28,563
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.92% 90.85% 85.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,017 15,949 18,476
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,559 1,455 1,574
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.22 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.92 £17.80
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% +3.61%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.50
% change year-on-year +67.00% -37.90% -1.22%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 2,102 £525 +5.00% 1,102
South East -4 773 £480 +1.05% 1,042
North of England -10 716 £445 -6.32% 824
Midlands -7 537 £450 +2.39% 637
West Midlands -10 381 £450 -2.70% 379
North West -12 348 £450 -5.76% 402
South West -3 345 £500 +11.11% 507
Yorkshire -8 306 £450 -5.26% 307
East of England +1 252 £450 -10.00% 375
East Midlands -1 153 £475 +26.67% 257
North East -12 67 £375 -16.67% 131
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
1 220 (4.55%) Confluence
2 216 (4.47%) SharePoint
3 108 (2.23%) Microsoft Exchange
4 51 (1.06%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
6 30 (0.62%) Apache
7 29 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
8 27 (0.56%) CMS
9 26 (0.54%) SAS
10 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.23%) CICS
11 11 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.12%) IIS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.10%) Mule
15 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 281 (5.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 232 (4.80%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (2.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (1.30%) MS Visio
5 60 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
6 26 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.37%) 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 (0.19%) Sketch
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 5 (0.10%) CATIA
13 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
13 5 (0.10%) Windchill
14 4 (0.083%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.083%) Photoshop
15 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.062%) Maya
Business Applications
1 115 (2.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
5 23 (0.48%) NetSuite
6 19 (0.39%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.31%) SAP GRC
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.27%) Aladdin
9 13 (0.27%) iTrent
10 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
12 9 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
12 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
13 8 (0.17%) Loan IQ
14 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
14 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
14 7 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
15 6 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 992 (20.53%) Azure
2 697 (14.42%) AWS
3 436 (9.02%) Microsoft 365
4 394 (8.15%) Power Platform
5 280 (5.79%) GCP
6 248 (5.13%) Azure DevOps
7 206 (4.26%) Entra ID
8 159 (3.29%) GitHub
9 130 (2.69%) SaaS
10 113 (2.34%) Serverless
11 90 (1.86%) Power Automate
12 69 (1.43%) GitHub Actions
13 68 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
14 65 (1.34%) PowerApps
15 64 (1.32%) Microsoft Copilot
15 64 (1.32%) OneDrive
16 62 (1.28%) AWS Lambda
16 62 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
17 58 (1.20%) Snowflake
18 55 (1.14%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 209 (4.32%) DNS
2 178 (3.68%) Firewall
3 157 (3.25%) VPN
4 124 (2.57%) DHCP
5 117 (2.42%) TCP/IP
6 111 (2.30%) WAN
7 95 (1.97%) LAN
8 89 (1.84%) Network Security
9 71 (1.47%) Wi-Fi
10 62 (1.28%) SAN
11 58 (1.20%) Wireless
12 56 (1.16%) VLAN
13 48 (0.99%) BGP
14 36 (0.74%) SD-WAN
15 35 (0.72%) VoIP
16 33 (0.68%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.60%) MPLS
17 29 (0.60%) OSPF
18 22 (0.46%) 5G
18 22 (0.46%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (6.29%) Power BI
2 196 (4.06%) SQL Server
3 156 (3.23%) Data Warehouse
4 146 (3.02%) Relational Database
5 130 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
6 86 (1.78%) NoSQL
7 85 (1.76%) Metadata
8 80 (1.66%) Tableau
9 79 (1.63%) MongoDB
10 72 (1.49%) Data Lake
11 48 (0.99%) Big Data
11 48 (0.99%) Oracle Database
12 45 (0.93%) MySQL
13 35 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
14 33 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 27 (0.56%) Db2
15 27 (0.56%) Power Query
16 24 (0.50%) Pentaho
17 23 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
18 22 (0.46%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 454 (9.39%) JIRA
2 303 (6.27%) Git
3 149 (3.08%) Jenkins
4 120 (2.48%) GitLab
5 68 (1.41%) Selenium
6 36 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 34 (0.70%) Postman
8 29 (0.60%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.52%) Maven
9 25 (0.52%) REST Assured
10 24 (0.50%) Cucumber
11 22 (0.46%) Gradle
11 22 (0.46%) JUnit
12 20 (0.41%) JMeter
13 17 (0.35%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.31%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.29%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 14 (0.29%) Gatling
15 14 (0.29%) Mockito
15 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,557 (52.91%) Social Skills
2 2,086 (43.16%) Analytical Skills
3 1,141 (23.61%) Finance
4 475 (9.83%) Public Sector
5 402 (8.32%) Banking
6 222 (4.59%) Organisational Skills
7 187 (3.87%) Retail
8 176 (3.64%) Documentation Skills
9 164 (3.39%) Manufacturing
10 157 (3.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 141 (2.92%) Influencing Skills
12 113 (2.34%) Front Office
13 108 (2.23%) Legal
14 105 (2.17%) Marketing
15 101 (2.09%) Telecoms
16 99 (2.05%) Presentation Skills
17 75 (1.55%) Investment Banking
18 60 (1.24%) Law
19 56 (1.16%) Financial Institution
20 55 (1.14%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 662 (13.70%) Analyst
2 557 (11.52%) Developer
3 439 (9.08%) Senior
4 376 (7.78%) Lead
5 309 (6.39%) Architect
6 221 (4.57%) Business Analyst
7 216 (4.47%) Consultant
8 195 (4.03%) IT Support
9 190 (3.93%) Data Engineer
10 187 (3.87%) Support Engineer
11 139 (2.88%) Project Manager
12 129 (2.67%) IT Engineer
13 114 (2.36%) Administrator
14 106 (2.19%) Data Analyst
15 97 (2.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 93 (1.92%) Java Developer
17 88 (1.82%) Solutions Architect
18 87 (1.80%) IT Support Engineer
19 85 (1.76%) DevOps Engineer
20 84 (1.74%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 296 (6.12%) REST
2 286 (5.92%) Terraform
3 157 (3.25%) .NET
4 147 (3.04%) RESTful
5 136 (2.81%) React
6 133 (2.75%) SOAP
7 116 (2.40%) Kafka
8 113 (2.34%) JSON
9 109 (2.26%) Spring
10 105 (2.17%) CSS
10 105 (2.17%) XML
11 100 (2.07%) HTML
12 94 (1.94%) Middleware
13 82 (1.70%) Web Services
14 79 (1.63%) Spring Boot
15 77 (1.59%) Node.js
16 76 (1.57%) AngularJS
17 73 (1.51%) OAuth
18 62 (1.28%) PySpark
19 49 (1.01%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 276 (5.71%) Onboarding
2 240 (4.97%) Product Ownership
3 229 (4.74%) Cloud Native
4 193 (3.99%) Self-Motivation
5 166 (3.43%) Data Centre
6 156 (3.23%) Enterprise Software
7 150 (3.10%) Management Information System
8 146 (3.02%) Distributed Systems
9 136 (2.81%) Analytical Mindset
10 123 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
11 120 (2.48%) Data Structures
12 106 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
13 90 (1.86%) Virtual Team
14 66 (1.37%) CMDB
15 65 (1.34%) Driving Licence
16 63 (1.30%) AI Agents
17 57 (1.18%) Algorithms
18 53 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 53 (1.10%) PKI
19 48 (0.99%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 668 (13.82%) Windows
2 260 (5.38%) Linux
3 176 (3.64%) Windows Server
4 129 (2.67%) Windows 10
5 93 (1.92%) Unix
6 82 (1.70%) Apple iOS
7 80 (1.66%) Mac OS
8 73 (1.51%) Android
9 38 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.37%) VMS
12 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
13 12 (0.25%) zOS
14 8 (0.17%) Solaris
15 7 (0.14%) CentOS
15 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
16 5 (0.10%) Mac OS X
16 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.083%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,341 (27.75%) Agile
2 1,041 (21.54%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,013 (20.96%) Stakeholder Management
4 810 (16.76%) CI/CD
5 766 (15.85%) DevOps
6 653 (13.51%) AI
7 531 (10.99%) Decision-Making
8 522 (10.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 507 (10.49%) Analytics
9 507 (10.49%) Migration
10 480 (9.93%) ITIL
11 452 (9.35%) Customer Service
12 390 (8.07%) Validation
13 389 (8.05%) Test Automation
14 381 (7.88%) Business Intelligence
15 359 (7.43%) Data Modelling
16 343 (7.10%) Scrum
17 333 (6.89%) Roadmaps
18 326 (6.75%) ITSM
19 319 (6.60%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 879 (18.19%) SQL
2 802 (16.59%) Python
3 361 (7.47%) Java
4 290 (6.00%) PowerShell
5 281 (5.81%) JavaScript
6 172 (3.56%) C#
7 144 (2.98%) Bash
8 110 (2.28%) TypeScript
9 81 (1.68%) PL/SQL
10 54 (1.12%) C++
11 47 (0.97%) T-SQL
12 35 (0.72%) Bicep
12 35 (0.72%) Go
13 34 (0.70%) Shell Script
14 28 (0.58%) C
14 28 (0.58%) Scala
15 27 (0.56%) Apex Code
15 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
15 27 (0.56%) R
16 25 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,039 (21.50%) Security Cleared
2 704 (14.57%) SC Cleared
3 599 (12.39%) Degree
4 200 (4.14%) DV Cleared
5 191 (3.95%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.98%) Microsoft Certification
7 106 (2.19%) Cisco Certification
8 105 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
9 74 (1.53%) PMP
10 73 (1.51%) Azure Certification
11 70 (1.45%) PMI Certification
12 69 (1.43%) CISSP
13 62 (1.28%) A+ Certification
14 58 (1.20%) CCNA
15 52 (1.08%) Master's Degree
16 43 (0.89%) Network+ Certification
17 42 (0.87%) CISM
18 38 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
18 38 (0.79%) MCSE
19 37 (0.77%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 353 (7.30%) Data Quality
2 321 (6.64%) QA
3 127 (2.63%) GDPR
4 112 (2.32%) Accessibility
5 110 (2.28%) SLA
6 87 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 82 (1.70%) PMO
8 70 (1.45%) NIST
9 57 (1.18%) GRC
10 29 (0.60%) WCAG
11 26 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.29%) GxP
14 13 (0.27%) COBIT
14 13 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
14 13 (0.27%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 12 (0.25%) NCSC
16 11 (0.23%) IFRS
17 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 401 (8.30%) Active Directory
2 306 (6.33%) Docker
3 146 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 56 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
5 55 (1.14%) Hyper-V
6 49 (1.01%) VMware NSX
7 46 (0.95%) vSphere
8 33 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
9 27 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
10 25 (0.52%) vCloud
11 23 (0.48%) IAG
12 20 (0.41%) Firmware
13 8 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.12%) NFS
16 4 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.083%) Squid
17 3 (0.062%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 2 (0.041%) UAG
Systems Management
1 334 (6.91%) Kubernetes
2 164 (3.39%) Ansible
3 134 (2.77%) Microsoft Intune
4 87 (1.80%) SCCM
5 84 (1.74%) Grafana
6 67 (1.39%) Prometheus
7 55 (1.14%) vCenter Server
8 31 (0.64%) SCOM
9 26 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
10 23 (0.48%) Control-M
11 22 (0.46%) WSUS
12 20 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
13 18 (0.37%) FortiGate
14 14 (0.29%) Argo
15 12 (0.25%) Puppet
16 11 (0.23%) Progress Chef
17 10 (0.21%) Kibana
18 9 (0.19%) Istio
18 9 (0.19%) Nessus
18 9 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,077 (22.28%) Microsoft
2 338 (6.99%) Oracle
3 325 (6.72%) ServiceNow
4 293 (6.06%) SAP
5 201 (4.16%) VMware
6 144 (2.98%) Google
7 131 (2.71%) Salesforce
8 112 (2.32%) Cisco
9 110 (2.28%) Databricks
10 96 (1.99%) Splunk
11 75 (1.55%) Workday
12 71 (1.47%) Dynatrace
13 60 (1.24%) Apple
14 56 (1.16%) Adobe
15 45 (0.93%) CyberArk
16 43 (0.89%) IBM
17 42 (0.87%) Red Hat
18 41 (0.85%) Dell
19 40 (0.83%) Citrix
20 39 (0.81%) MuleSoft