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

6 months to
19 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 4,861 4,426 3,801
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.63% 16.05% 11.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.52% 17.67% 13.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,779 2,693 2,330
10th Percentile £238 £255 £263
25th Percentile £375 £379 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -1.60% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £622
90th Percentile £713 £716 £725
UK median daily rate £495 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +1.54% -2.50% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 407 285 237
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.48
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% -70.25%
75th Percentile £43.75 £34.48 £31.13
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 38,841 25,050 28,543
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.95% 90.82% 85.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,105 15,945 18,525
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.68% -2.61% -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 2,548 1,450 1,590
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.20 £14.12
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.87 £18.14
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +5.81%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.45 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +65.23% -38.57% +0.61%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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% 3,233
South East -3 779 £480 +1.05% 1,306
North of England -11 723 £445 -6.32% 1,166
Midlands -6 549 £450 +3.45% 819
West Midlands -10 392 £450 -2.70% 513
North West -12 350 £450 -6.25% 622
South West 0 349 £500 +8.11% 646
Yorkshire -8 312 £450 -5.26% 382
East of England +1 250 £450 -10.00% 600
East Midlands 0 154 £470 +25.33% 307
North East -15 66 £375 -16.67% 184
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 (4.48%) Confluence
2 214 (4.40%) SharePoint
3 113 (2.32%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.15%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.68%) SAS
7 31 (0.64%) Apache
8 29 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
9 27 (0.56%) CMS
10 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.23%) CICS
11 11 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.12%) IIS
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.10%) Mule
16 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 282 (5.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 233 (4.79%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (2.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (1.30%) MS Visio
5 62 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
6 27 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 20 (0.41%) 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 (0.082%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.082%) Photoshop
15 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.062%) Maya
Business Applications
1 112 (2.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
5 23 (0.47%) NetSuite
6 18 (0.37%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.29%) SAP GRC
7 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
8 13 (0.27%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.27%) iTrent
9 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 9 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
11 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
12 8 (0.16%) Loan IQ
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
13 7 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
14 6 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 992 (20.41%) Azure
2 705 (14.50%) AWS
3 429 (8.83%) Microsoft 365
4 393 (8.08%) Power Platform
5 282 (5.80%) GCP
6 245 (5.04%) Azure DevOps
7 213 (4.38%) Entra ID
8 159 (3.27%) GitHub
9 132 (2.72%) SaaS
10 111 (2.28%) Serverless
11 87 (1.79%) Power Automate
12 71 (1.46%) GitHub Actions
13 66 (1.36%) Dynamics 365
14 64 (1.32%) OneDrive
15 62 (1.28%) AWS Lambda
15 62 (1.28%) Microsoft Copilot
15 62 (1.28%) PowerApps
16 61 (1.25%) Azure Data Factory
17 57 (1.17%) Snowflake
18 56 (1.15%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 212 (4.36%) DNS
2 178 (3.66%) Firewall
3 155 (3.19%) VPN
4 126 (2.59%) DHCP
5 115 (2.37%) TCP/IP
6 111 (2.28%) WAN
7 95 (1.95%) LAN
8 90 (1.85%) Network Security
9 72 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
10 62 (1.28%) SAN
11 58 (1.19%) Wireless
12 56 (1.15%) VLAN
13 49 (1.01%) BGP
14 36 (0.74%) SD-WAN
15 35 (0.72%) VoIP
16 33 (0.68%) Structured Cabling
17 30 (0.62%) OSPF
18 29 (0.60%) MPLS
19 23 (0.47%) VXLAN
20 22 (0.45%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 305 (6.27%) Power BI
2 200 (4.11%) SQL Server
3 154 (3.17%) Data Warehouse
4 145 (2.98%) Relational Database
5 133 (2.74%) PostgreSQL
6 92 (1.89%) NoSQL
7 85 (1.75%) Metadata
8 80 (1.65%) MongoDB
9 79 (1.63%) Tableau
10 72 (1.48%) Data Lake
11 49 (1.01%) Big Data
11 49 (1.01%) MySQL
11 49 (1.01%) Oracle Database
12 35 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
13 32 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 29 (0.60%) Pentaho
15 27 (0.56%) Db2
15 27 (0.56%) Power Query
16 23 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
16 23 (0.47%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 455 (9.36%) JIRA
2 308 (6.34%) Git
3 156 (3.21%) Jenkins
4 120 (2.47%) GitLab
5 66 (1.36%) Selenium
6 36 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 33 (0.68%) Postman
8 28 (0.58%) Bitbucket
9 26 (0.53%) Maven
10 25 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 24 (0.49%) Cucumber
12 22 (0.45%) Gradle
12 22 (0.45%) JUnit
13 18 (0.37%) JMeter
14 17 (0.35%) WebDriver
15 14 (0.29%) Gatling
15 14 (0.29%) Mockito
15 14 (0.29%) SonarQube
16 13 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 13 (0.27%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,565 (52.77%) Social Skills
2 2,091 (43.02%) Analytical Skills
3 1,151 (23.68%) Finance
4 479 (9.85%) Public Sector
5 399 (8.21%) Banking
6 222 (4.57%) Organisational Skills
7 189 (3.89%) Retail
8 181 (3.72%) Documentation Skills
9 160 (3.29%) Manufacturing
10 157 (3.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 139 (2.86%) Influencing Skills
12 111 (2.28%) Front Office
13 109 (2.24%) Legal
14 107 (2.20%) Marketing
15 100 (2.06%) Telecoms
16 98 (2.02%) Presentation Skills
17 76 (1.56%) Investment Banking
18 59 (1.21%) Law
19 57 (1.17%) Financial Institution
20 55 (1.13%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 671 (13.80%) Analyst
2 552 (11.36%) Developer
3 438 (9.01%) Senior
4 380 (7.82%) Lead
5 315 (6.48%) Architect
6 223 (4.59%) Business Analyst
7 215 (4.42%) Consultant
8 203 (4.18%) Data Engineer
9 195 (4.01%) IT Support
10 184 (3.79%) Support Engineer
11 139 (2.86%) Project Manager
12 128 (2.63%) IT Engineer
13 116 (2.39%) Administrator
14 104 (2.14%) Data Analyst
15 98 (2.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 94 (1.93%) Java Developer
17 88 (1.81%) Solutions Architect
18 87 (1.79%) Support Analyst
19 86 (1.77%) IT Support Engineer
20 83 (1.71%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (5.99%) REST
2 155 (3.19%) .NET
3 148 (3.04%) RESTful
4 137 (2.82%) React
5 129 (2.65%) SOAP
6 119 (2.45%) Kafka
7 112 (2.30%) JSON
7 112 (2.30%) Spring
8 105 (2.16%) CSS
9 104 (2.14%) XML
10 98 (2.02%) HTML
11 94 (1.93%) Middleware
12 80 (1.65%) Spring Boot
12 80 (1.65%) Web Services
13 79 (1.63%) Node.js
14 77 (1.58%) AngularJS
15 74 (1.52%) OAuth
16 62 (1.28%) PySpark
17 48 (0.99%) Playwright
18 45 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 276 (5.68%) Onboarding
2 238 (4.90%) Product Ownership
3 228 (4.69%) Cloud Native
4 190 (3.91%) Self-Motivation
5 168 (3.46%) Data Centre
6 155 (3.19%) Enterprise Software
7 153 (3.15%) Management Information System
8 149 (3.07%) Distributed Systems
9 139 (2.86%) Analytical Mindset
10 121 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
11 119 (2.45%) Data Structures
12 106 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
13 92 (1.89%) Virtual Team
14 65 (1.34%) Driving Licence
15 63 (1.30%) CMDB
16 62 (1.28%) AI Agents
17 58 (1.19%) Algorithms
18 54 (1.11%) PKI
19 53 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 47 (0.97%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 675 (13.89%) Windows
2 262 (5.39%) Linux
3 177 (3.64%) Windows Server
4 130 (2.67%) Windows 10
5 95 (1.95%) Unix
6 83 (1.71%) Apple iOS
7 80 (1.65%) Mac OS
8 75 (1.54%) Android
9 38 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.33%) VMS
11 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.25%) zOS
13 8 (0.16%) Solaris
14 7 (0.14%) CentOS
14 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
14 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
15 5 (0.10%) Mac OS X
15 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.082%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,348 (27.73%) Agile
2 1,049 (21.58%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,008 (20.74%) Stakeholder Management
4 821 (16.89%) CI/CD
5 777 (15.98%) DevOps
6 651 (13.39%) AI
7 530 (10.90%) Decision-Making
8 522 (10.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 515 (10.59%) Analytics
10 510 (10.49%) Migration
11 483 (9.94%) ITIL
12 449 (9.24%) Customer Service
13 397 (8.17%) Test Automation
14 391 (8.04%) Business Intelligence
15 390 (8.02%) Validation
16 365 (7.51%) Data Modelling
17 350 (7.20%) Scrum
18 331 (6.81%) Roadmaps
19 325 (6.69%) ITSM
20 324 (6.67%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 882 (18.14%) SQL
2 804 (16.54%) Python
3 364 (7.49%) Java
4 292 (6.01%) PowerShell
5 278 (5.72%) JavaScript
6 169 (3.48%) C#
7 143 (2.94%) Bash
8 109 (2.24%) TypeScript
9 80 (1.65%) PL/SQL
10 55 (1.13%) C++
11 46 (0.95%) T-SQL
12 36 (0.74%) Shell Script
13 35 (0.72%) Bicep
13 35 (0.72%) Go
14 30 (0.62%) C
15 28 (0.58%) Kotlin
15 28 (0.58%) Scala
16 27 (0.56%) Apex Code
17 26 (0.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 26 (0.53%) R
Qualifications
1 1,047 (21.54%) Security Cleared
2 709 (14.59%) SC Cleared
3 600 (12.34%) Degree
4 199 (4.09%) DV Cleared
5 191 (3.93%) Computer Science Degree
6 146 (3.00%) Microsoft Certification
7 109 (2.24%) Cisco Certification
8 108 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
9 74 (1.52%) Azure Certification
9 74 (1.52%) CISSP
10 73 (1.50%) PMP
11 69 (1.42%) PMI Certification
12 62 (1.28%) A+ Certification
13 58 (1.19%) CCNA
14 54 (1.11%) Master's Degree
15 46 (0.95%) CISM
16 43 (0.88%) Network+ Certification
17 40 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
18 38 (0.78%) MCSE
19 37 (0.76%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 360 (7.41%) Data Quality
2 316 (6.50%) QA
3 130 (2.67%) GDPR
4 113 (2.32%) Accessibility
5 108 (2.22%) SLA
6 87 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 79 (1.63%) PMO
8 71 (1.46%) NIST
9 55 (1.13%) GRC
10 29 (0.60%) WCAG
11 27 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 22 (0.45%) 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
15 12 (0.25%) NCSC
16 11 (0.23%) IFRS
17 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 406 (8.35%) Active Directory
2 314 (6.46%) Docker
3 148 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 58 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 56 (1.15%) Hyper-V
6 49 (1.01%) VMware NSX
7 47 (0.97%) vSphere
8 33 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
9 29 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 25 (0.51%) vCloud
11 23 (0.47%) IAG
12 21 (0.43%) Firmware
13 9 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.12%) NFS
16 5 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
17 4 (0.082%) Squid
18 3 (0.062%) BitLocker
18 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
19 2 (0.041%) UAG
Systems Management
1 344 (7.08%) Kubernetes
2 287 (5.90%) Terraform
3 164 (3.37%) Ansible
4 136 (2.80%) Microsoft Intune
5 89 (1.83%) SCCM
6 82 (1.69%) Grafana
7 67 (1.38%) Prometheus
8 55 (1.13%) vCenter Server
9 31 (0.64%) SCOM
10 26 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (0.47%) Control-M
12 22 (0.45%) WSUS
13 20 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
14 19 (0.39%) FortiGate
15 14 (0.29%) Argo
16 12 (0.25%) Puppet
17 11 (0.23%) Progress Chef
18 10 (0.21%) Kibana
19 9 (0.19%) Nessus
19 9 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,080 (22.22%) Microsoft
2 342 (7.04%) Oracle
3 325 (6.69%) ServiceNow
4 292 (6.01%) SAP
5 206 (4.24%) VMware
6 147 (3.02%) Google
7 129 (2.65%) Salesforce
8 113 (2.32%) Cisco
9 108 (2.22%) Databricks
10 102 (2.10%) Splunk
11 75 (1.54%) Workday
12 72 (1.48%) Dynatrace
13 61 (1.25%) Apple
14 56 (1.15%) Adobe
15 45 (0.93%) CyberArk
16 43 (0.88%) Citrix
16 43 (0.88%) Red Hat
17 42 (0.86%) IBM
18 41 (0.84%) Dell
19 39 (0.80%) MuleSoft