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

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,864 4,419 3,873
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.60% 15.93% 11.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.48% 17.54% 13.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,775 2,704 2,311
10th Percentile £230 £255 £263
25th Percentile £375 £376 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
90th Percentile £716 £700 £714
UK median daily rate £500 £484 £500
% change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -3.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 412 281 232
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.80
25th Percentile £15.99 £15.12 £14.84
Median hourly rate £20.48 £19.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +7.76% +17.07% -70.37%
75th Percentile £43.75 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £19.83 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.19% +22.18% -70.37%

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 38,963 25,189 28,313
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.89% 90.78% 85.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,049 16,044 18,122
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 £632 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,587 1,471 1,456
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.87 £18.39
Median hourly rate £43.56 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +73.20% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.03
% change year-on-year +63.02% -40.16% +0.31%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 2,131 £525 +5.00% 4,807
South East -5 785 £475 - 1,474
North of England -12 708 £443 -6.74% 1,416
Midlands -6 540 £450 +0.90% 977
West Midlands -9 386 £450 -4.05% 601
North West -10 359 £444 -6.53% 779
South West -3 334 £485 +7.78% 864
Yorkshire -12 286 £450 -5.26% 456
East of England +1 260 £450 -10.00% 700
East Midlands -1 151 £463 +23.33% 377
North East -13 66 £375 -16.67% 205
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
1 223 (4.58%) SharePoint
2 209 (4.30%) Confluence
3 110 (2.26%) Microsoft Exchange
4 49 (1.01%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 31 (0.64%) Apache
7 27 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
8 26 (0.53%) CMS
9 24 (0.49%) SAS
10 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.19%) CICS
12 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 6 (0.12%) IIS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.10%) Appian
15 5 (0.10%) Camunda
15 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
Applications
1 279 (5.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 234 (4.81%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (2.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
5 53 (1.09%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.31%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 13 (0.27%) Revit
11 9 (0.19%) Sketch
11 9 (0.19%) Trello
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.12%) Windchill
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
14 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
15 4 (0.082%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.082%) Photoshop
16 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.062%) Maya
Business Applications
1 119 (2.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.58%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.53%) NetSuite
4 26 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.37%) SAP GRC
5 18 (0.37%) Workday HCM
6 14 (0.29%) iTrent
6 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
7 13 (0.27%) Aladdin
8 12 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
9 10 (0.21%) Finacle
9 10 (0.21%) Teamcenter
10 8 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
11 7 (0.14%) Loan IQ
11 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
11 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
11 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
11 7 (0.14%) Shopify
11 7 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 998 (20.52%) Azure
2 707 (14.54%) AWS
3 451 (9.27%) Microsoft 365
4 405 (8.33%) Power Platform
5 282 (5.80%) GCP
6 246 (5.06%) Azure DevOps
7 210 (4.32%) Entra ID
8 164 (3.37%) GitHub
9 129 (2.65%) SaaS
10 115 (2.36%) Serverless
11 93 (1.91%) Power Automate
12 71 (1.46%) Microsoft Copilot
13 70 (1.44%) GitHub Actions
13 70 (1.44%) OneDrive
14 69 (1.42%) Dynamics 365
15 67 (1.38%) PowerApps
16 61 (1.25%) Azure Data Factory
17 60 (1.23%) AWS Lambda
17 60 (1.23%) Snowflake
18 54 (1.11%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 207 (4.26%) DNS
2 178 (3.66%) Firewall
3 162 (3.33%) VPN
4 124 (2.55%) DHCP
5 120 (2.47%) TCP/IP
6 111 (2.28%) WAN
7 92 (1.89%) LAN
8 89 (1.83%) Network Security
9 72 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
10 62 (1.27%) SAN
11 58 (1.19%) Wireless
12 50 (1.03%) VLAN
13 46 (0.95%) BGP
14 37 (0.76%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.74%) VoIP
16 33 (0.68%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.60%) MPLS
18 27 (0.56%) OSPF
19 22 (0.45%) 5G
20 21 (0.43%) 4G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (6.39%) Power BI
2 199 (4.09%) SQL Server
3 162 (3.33%) Data Warehouse
4 152 (3.13%) Relational Database
5 133 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
6 88 (1.81%) Metadata
7 82 (1.69%) Tableau
8 81 (1.67%) NoSQL
9 76 (1.56%) MongoDB
10 72 (1.48%) Data Lake
11 50 (1.03%) Oracle Database
12 48 (0.99%) Big Data
13 47 (0.97%) MySQL
14 34 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 31 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
16 26 (0.53%) Db2
17 25 (0.51%) Power Query
18 23 (0.47%) Pentaho
19 22 (0.45%) Delta Lake
19 22 (0.45%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 439 (9.03%) JIRA
2 295 (6.06%) Git
3 150 (3.08%) Jenkins
4 118 (2.43%) GitLab
5 68 (1.40%) Selenium
6 36 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 35 (0.72%) Postman
8 26 (0.53%) Cucumber
9 25 (0.51%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.51%) Maven
10 24 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.47%) Gradle
11 23 (0.47%) JUnit
12 20 (0.41%) JMeter
13 16 (0.33%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.31%) Gatling
14 15 (0.31%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.29%) Mockito
16 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
17 12 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,593 (53.31%) Social Skills
2 2,100 (43.17%) Analytical Skills
3 1,147 (23.58%) Finance
4 480 (9.87%) Public Sector
5 405 (8.33%) Banking
6 230 (4.73%) Organisational Skills
7 181 (3.72%) Documentation Skills
8 179 (3.68%) Retail
9 171 (3.52%) Manufacturing
10 158 (3.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 149 (3.06%) Influencing Skills
12 113 (2.32%) Front Office
13 108 (2.22%) Legal
14 105 (2.16%) Telecoms
15 103 (2.12%) Marketing
15 103 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
16 80 (1.64%) Investment Banking
17 62 (1.27%) Law
18 55 (1.13%) Financial Institution
19 53 (1.09%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 663 (13.63%) Analyst
2 552 (11.35%) Developer
3 439 (9.03%) Senior
4 372 (7.65%) Lead
5 303 (6.23%) Architect
6 220 (4.52%) Business Analyst
7 215 (4.42%) Consultant
8 199 (4.09%) IT Support
9 194 (3.99%) Support Engineer
10 191 (3.93%) Data Engineer
11 136 (2.80%) Project Manager
12 132 (2.71%) IT Engineer
13 121 (2.49%) Administrator
14 103 (2.12%) Data Analyst
15 98 (2.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 94 (1.93%) Java Developer
17 91 (1.87%) IT Support Engineer
18 89 (1.83%) DevOps Engineer
19 88 (1.81%) Solutions Architect
20 86 (1.77%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 302 (6.21%) REST
2 296 (6.09%) Terraform
3 158 (3.25%) .NET
4 147 (3.02%) RESTful
5 138 (2.84%) React
6 136 (2.80%) SOAP
7 116 (2.38%) Kafka
8 112 (2.30%) JSON
9 110 (2.26%) Spring
10 106 (2.18%) CSS
10 106 (2.18%) XML
11 103 (2.12%) HTML
12 94 (1.93%) Middleware
13 83 (1.71%) Spring Boot
14 82 (1.69%) Web Services
15 77 (1.58%) AngularJS
15 77 (1.58%) Node.js
15 77 (1.58%) OAuth
16 63 (1.30%) PySpark
17 48 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 278 (5.72%) Onboarding
2 244 (5.02%) Cloud Native
3 243 (5.00%) Product Ownership
4 192 (3.95%) Self-Motivation
5 160 (3.29%) Data Centre
5 160 (3.29%) Management Information System
6 157 (3.23%) Enterprise Software
7 146 (3.00%) Distributed Systems
8 130 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
9 125 (2.57%) Data Structures
10 123 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
11 110 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
12 86 (1.77%) Virtual Team
13 71 (1.46%) AI Agents
14 70 (1.44%) Driving Licence
15 67 (1.38%) CMDB
16 54 (1.11%) PKI
17 53 (1.09%) Algorithms
17 53 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 50 (1.03%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 671 (13.80%) Windows
2 266 (5.47%) Linux
3 188 (3.87%) Windows Server
4 132 (2.71%) Windows 10
5 92 (1.89%) Unix
6 79 (1.62%) Mac OS
7 78 (1.60%) Apple iOS
8 70 (1.44%) Android
9 42 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.41%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.37%) VMS
12 17 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 11 (0.23%) zOS
14 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.16%) CentOS
15 8 (0.16%) Solaris
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
18 4 (0.082%) Debian
18 4 (0.082%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,337 (27.49%) Agile
2 1,073 (22.06%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,055 (21.69%) Stakeholder Management
4 808 (16.61%) CI/CD
5 767 (15.77%) DevOps
6 670 (13.77%) AI
7 554 (11.39%) Decision-Making
8 548 (11.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 513 (10.55%) Migration
10 508 (10.44%) Analytics
11 481 (9.89%) ITIL
12 463 (9.52%) Customer Service
13 388 (7.98%) Test Automation
14 387 (7.96%) Validation
15 380 (7.81%) Business Intelligence
16 355 (7.30%) Data Modelling
17 342 (7.03%) Roadmaps
18 337 (6.93%) Scrum
19 329 (6.76%) ITSM
20 324 (6.66%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 876 (18.01%) SQL
2 804 (16.53%) Python
3 362 (7.44%) Java
4 303 (6.23%) PowerShell
5 284 (5.84%) JavaScript
6 174 (3.58%) C#
7 151 (3.10%) Bash
8 110 (2.26%) TypeScript
9 81 (1.67%) PL/SQL
10 49 (1.01%) C++
11 47 (0.97%) T-SQL
12 36 (0.74%) Go
12 36 (0.74%) Shell Script
13 35 (0.72%) Bicep
14 29 (0.60%) Scala
15 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
15 27 (0.56%) R
16 26 (0.53%) Apex Code
16 26 (0.53%) C
17 25 (0.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,056 (21.71%) Security Cleared
2 720 (14.80%) SC Cleared
3 600 (12.34%) Degree
4 206 (4.24%) DV Cleared
5 188 (3.87%) Computer Science Degree
6 148 (3.04%) Microsoft Certification
7 110 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
8 93 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
9 78 (1.60%) Azure Certification
10 74 (1.52%) PMP
11 71 (1.46%) PMI Certification
12 68 (1.40%) CISSP
13 61 (1.25%) A+ Certification
14 53 (1.09%) CCNA
15 51 (1.05%) Master's Degree
16 42 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
17 40 (0.82%) AWS Certification
17 40 (0.82%) CISM
17 40 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
18 39 (0.80%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 363 (7.46%) Data Quality
2 334 (6.87%) QA
3 126 (2.59%) GDPR
4 111 (2.28%) Accessibility
5 110 (2.26%) SLA
6 87 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 84 (1.73%) PMO
8 72 (1.48%) NIST
9 62 (1.27%) GRC
10 30 (0.62%) WCAG
11 25 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.29%) GxP
13 14 (0.29%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.27%) COBIT
14 13 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
15 12 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
16 10 (0.21%) IFRS
16 10 (0.21%) NCSC
System Software
1 406 (8.35%) Active Directory
2 302 (6.21%) Docker
3 152 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 60 (1.23%) Hyper-V
5 58 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
6 51 (1.05%) VMware NSX
7 47 (0.97%) vSphere
8 34 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
9 29 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 26 (0.53%) vCloud
11 25 (0.51%) IAG
12 16 (0.33%) Firmware
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
15 5 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
16 3 (0.062%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.062%) Squid
17 2 (0.041%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 339 (6.97%) Kubernetes
2 167 (3.43%) Ansible
3 129 (2.65%) Microsoft Intune
4 89 (1.83%) SCCM
5 84 (1.73%) Grafana
6 64 (1.32%) Prometheus
7 56 (1.15%) vCenter Server
8 35 (0.72%) SCOM
9 25 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.45%) Control-M
10 22 (0.45%) WSUS
11 20 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
12 15 (0.31%) Argo
12 15 (0.31%) FortiGate
13 11 (0.23%) Istio
13 11 (0.23%) Kibana
14 10 (0.21%) Nessus
14 10 (0.21%) Puppet
15 9 (0.19%) Progress Chef
15 9 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,107 (22.76%) Microsoft
2 340 (6.99%) Oracle
3 325 (6.68%) ServiceNow
4 298 (6.13%) SAP
5 201 (4.13%) VMware
6 140 (2.88%) Google
7 134 (2.75%) Salesforce
8 112 (2.30%) Databricks
9 110 (2.26%) Cisco
10 98 (2.01%) Splunk
11 71 (1.46%) Workday
12 67 (1.38%) Dynatrace
13 61 (1.25%) Apple
14 54 (1.11%) Adobe
15 46 (0.95%) CyberArk
15 46 (0.95%) IBM
16 43 (0.88%) Red Hat
17 40 (0.82%) Dell
18 39 (0.80%) MuleSoft
19 35 (0.72%) Citrix