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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,848 4,434 3,770
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.63% 16.04% 11.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.50% 17.67% 13.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,767 2,698 2,323
10th Percentile £245 £250 £263
25th Percentile £375 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.51% -1.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £622
90th Percentile £713 £719 £725
UK median daily rate £493 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +1.03% -2.50% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 405 281 241
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £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 £32.50
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £21.10 £16.23
% change year-on-year -9.95% +30.01% -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 38,785 25,097 28,627
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.06% 90.81% 85.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,091 16,007 18,621
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,533 1,429 1,649
10th Percentile £14.48 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £17.87 £18.50
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +2.87%
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £41.50
% change year-on-year +68.19% -39.40% -2.35%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 2,093 £525 +5.00% 4,584
South East -4 772 £481 +1.16% 1,395
North of England -11 720 £447 -5.89% 1,299
Midlands -6 549 £450 +4.53% 825
West Midlands -10 398 £450 -2.17% 518
South West -1 353 £500 +6.67% 701
North West -12 343 £450 -6.25% 711
Yorkshire -8 319 £450 -5.16% 422
East of England +1 254 £450 -10.00% 590
East Midlands -1 148 £470 +26.51% 308
North East -16 63 £375 -16.67% 186
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
1 215 (4.43%) Confluence
2 209 (4.31%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 57 (1.18%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.70%) Apache
7 33 (0.68%) SAS
8 28 (0.58%) Oracle Workflow
9 27 (0.56%) CMS
10 16 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.23%) CICS
13 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.10%) Appian
16 5 (0.10%) Camunda
16 5 (0.10%) Mule
16 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 277 (5.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 237 (4.89%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (1.96%) 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
14 4 (0.083%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.083%) Photoshop
15 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
15 3 (0.062%) Maya
16 2 (0.041%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 115 (2.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
5 23 (0.47%) NetSuite
6 16 (0.33%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.29%) SAP GRC
8 13 (0.27%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.27%) iTrent
8 13 (0.27%) SAP SD
9 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
10 10 (0.21%) Finacle
11 9 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
11 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
12 8 (0.17%) 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%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 978 (20.17%) Azure
2 700 (14.44%) AWS
3 419 (8.64%) Microsoft 365
4 393 (8.11%) Power Platform
5 279 (5.75%) GCP
6 238 (4.91%) Azure DevOps
7 212 (4.37%) Entra ID
8 162 (3.34%) GitHub
9 135 (2.78%) SaaS
10 113 (2.33%) Serverless
11 85 (1.75%) Power Automate
12 73 (1.51%) GitHub Actions
13 64 (1.32%) Dynamics 365
14 63 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
14 63 (1.30%) Azure Data Factory
14 63 (1.30%) OneDrive
15 60 (1.24%) PowerApps
16 59 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
17 57 (1.18%) Snowflake
18 56 (1.16%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 218 (4.50%) DNS
2 182 (3.75%) Firewall
3 152 (3.14%) VPN
4 130 (2.68%) DHCP
5 123 (2.54%) TCP/IP
6 116 (2.39%) WAN
7 100 (2.06%) LAN
8 86 (1.77%) Network Security
9 75 (1.55%) Wi-Fi
10 65 (1.34%) SAN
11 57 (1.18%) VLAN
11 57 (1.18%) Wireless
12 52 (1.07%) BGP
13 38 (0.78%) SD-WAN
14 35 (0.72%) OSPF
15 34 (0.70%) VoIP
16 33 (0.68%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.60%) MPLS
18 27 (0.56%) VXLAN
19 23 (0.47%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 306 (6.31%) Power BI
2 196 (4.04%) SQL Server
3 156 (3.22%) Data Warehouse
4 143 (2.95%) Relational Database
5 131 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
6 88 (1.82%) Metadata
6 88 (1.82%) NoSQL
7 82 (1.69%) MongoDB
8 80 (1.65%) Tableau
9 76 (1.57%) Data Lake
10 50 (1.03%) Big Data
11 49 (1.01%) Oracle Database
12 47 (0.97%) MySQL
13 37 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
14 35 (0.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 29 (0.60%) Pentaho
16 27 (0.56%) Db2
16 27 (0.56%) Power Query
17 23 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
18 22 (0.45%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 448 (9.24%) JIRA
2 300 (6.19%) Git
3 156 (3.22%) Jenkins
4 115 (2.37%) GitLab
5 65 (1.34%) Selenium
6 33 (0.68%) Cypress.io
7 32 (0.66%) Postman
8 27 (0.56%) Cucumber
9 26 (0.54%) Maven
10 24 (0.50%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.47%) Bitbucket
11 23 (0.47%) JUnit
12 22 (0.45%) Gradle
13 20 (0.41%) JMeter
14 18 (0.37%) WebDriver
15 14 (0.29%) Gatling
15 14 (0.29%) Mockito
15 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
16 13 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 13 (0.27%) SonarQube
General
1 2,543 (52.45%) Social Skills
2 2,078 (42.86%) Analytical Skills
3 1,136 (23.43%) Finance
4 471 (9.72%) Public Sector
5 393 (8.11%) Banking
6 222 (4.58%) Organisational Skills
7 187 (3.86%) Retail
8 179 (3.69%) Documentation Skills
9 162 (3.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 157 (3.24%) Manufacturing
11 136 (2.81%) Influencing Skills
12 111 (2.29%) Front Office
13 110 (2.27%) Marketing
14 108 (2.23%) Legal
15 106 (2.19%) Presentation Skills
16 102 (2.10%) Telecoms
17 75 (1.55%) Investment Banking
18 59 (1.22%) Law
19 57 (1.18%) Financial Institution
20 56 (1.16%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 658 (13.57%) Analyst
2 542 (11.18%) Developer
3 438 (9.03%) Senior
4 377 (7.78%) Lead
5 321 (6.62%) Architect
6 224 (4.62%) Business Analyst
7 211 (4.35%) Consultant
7 211 (4.35%) Data Engineer
8 194 (4.00%) IT Support
9 177 (3.65%) Support Engineer
10 143 (2.95%) Project Manager
11 127 (2.62%) IT Engineer
12 116 (2.39%) Administrator
13 103 (2.12%) Data Analyst
14 98 (2.02%) Java Developer
15 94 (1.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 89 (1.84%) Solutions Architect
17 85 (1.75%) IT Support Engineer
17 85 (1.75%) Software Engineer
18 83 (1.71%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 286 (5.90%) REST
2 149 (3.07%) .NET
3 142 (2.93%) RESTful
4 135 (2.78%) React
5 126 (2.60%) SOAP
6 120 (2.48%) Kafka
7 118 (2.43%) Spring
8 110 (2.27%) JSON
9 103 (2.12%) CSS
10 99 (2.04%) XML
11 95 (1.96%) Middleware
12 94 (1.94%) HTML
13 83 (1.71%) Spring Boot
14 78 (1.61%) Node.js
15 76 (1.57%) AngularJS
16 73 (1.51%) Web Services
17 70 (1.44%) OAuth
18 61 (1.26%) PySpark
19 47 (0.97%) Playwright
20 44 (0.91%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 276 (5.69%) Onboarding
2 232 (4.79%) Product Ownership
3 222 (4.58%) Cloud Native
4 187 (3.86%) Self-Motivation
5 175 (3.61%) Data Centre
6 149 (3.07%) Management Information System
7 148 (3.05%) Enterprise Software
8 142 (2.93%) Distributed Systems
9 139 (2.87%) Analytical Mindset
10 123 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
11 118 (2.43%) Data Structures
12 110 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
13 89 (1.84%) Virtual Team
14 63 (1.30%) Driving Licence
15 62 (1.28%) AI Agents
16 61 (1.26%) CMDB
17 59 (1.22%) Algorithms
18 57 (1.18%) PKI
19 54 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 45 (0.93%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 677 (13.96%) Windows
2 255 (5.26%) Linux
3 170 (3.51%) Windows Server
4 124 (2.56%) Windows 10
5 93 (1.92%) Unix
6 80 (1.65%) Apple iOS
7 79 (1.63%) Mac OS
8 76 (1.57%) Android
9 38 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.31%) VMS
13 12 (0.25%) zOS
14 8 (0.17%) Solaris
15 6 (0.12%) CentOS
15 6 (0.12%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
16 5 (0.10%) Debian
16 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,333 (27.50%) Agile
2 1,030 (21.25%) Continuous Improvement
3 973 (20.07%) Stakeholder Management
4 808 (16.67%) CI/CD
5 770 (15.88%) DevOps
6 647 (13.35%) AI
7 530 (10.93%) Decision-Making
8 519 (10.71%) Analytics
9 517 (10.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 508 (10.48%) Migration
11 479 (9.88%) ITIL
12 448 (9.24%) Customer Service
13 395 (8.15%) Business Intelligence
14 394 (8.13%) Validation
15 389 (8.02%) Test Automation
16 369 (7.61%) Data Modelling
17 342 (7.05%) Scrum
18 334 (6.89%) Roadmaps
19 321 (6.62%) ITSM
20 319 (6.58%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 884 (18.23%) SQL
2 803 (16.56%) Python
3 366 (7.55%) Java
4 287 (5.92%) PowerShell
5 274 (5.65%) JavaScript
6 162 (3.34%) C#
7 139 (2.87%) Bash
8 109 (2.25%) TypeScript
9 86 (1.77%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.16%) C++
11 45 (0.93%) T-SQL
12 37 (0.76%) Shell Script
13 36 (0.74%) Go
14 33 (0.68%) Bicep
15 31 (0.64%) C
16 28 (0.58%) Scala
17 27 (0.56%) Apex Code
17 27 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
18 26 (0.54%) R
Qualifications
1 1,056 (21.78%) Security Cleared
2 711 (14.67%) SC Cleared
3 595 (12.27%) Degree
4 204 (4.21%) DV Cleared
5 185 (3.82%) Computer Science Degree
6 147 (3.03%) Microsoft Certification
7 113 (2.33%) Cisco Certification
8 104 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
9 76 (1.57%) Azure Certification
10 74 (1.53%) CISSP
11 72 (1.49%) PMP
12 67 (1.38%) PMI Certification
13 63 (1.30%) A+ Certification
14 60 (1.24%) CCNA
15 50 (1.03%) Master's Degree
16 48 (0.99%) CISM
17 43 (0.89%) Network+ Certification
18 40 (0.83%) MCSE
19 37 (0.76%) AWS Certification
19 37 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 358 (7.38%) Data Quality
2 310 (6.39%) QA
3 132 (2.72%) GDPR
4 111 (2.29%) Accessibility
5 108 (2.23%) SLA
6 86 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 81 (1.67%) PMO
8 70 (1.44%) NIST
9 54 (1.11%) GRC
10 29 (0.60%) WCAG
11 28 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.29%) GxP
14 13 (0.27%) COBIT
14 13 (0.27%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 12 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
15 12 (0.25%) NCSC
16 10 (0.21%) HIPAA
16 10 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 399 (8.23%) Active Directory
2 308 (6.35%) Docker
3 142 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 57 (1.18%) VMware ESXi
5 53 (1.09%) Hyper-V
6 49 (1.01%) VMware NSX
7 45 (0.93%) vSphere
8 32 (0.66%) Virtual Desktop
9 29 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 25 (0.52%) vCloud
11 21 (0.43%) Firmware
11 21 (0.43%) IAG
12 9 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
15 5 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.083%) Squid
17 3 (0.062%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 2 (0.041%) KVM
Systems Management
1 344 (7.10%) Kubernetes
2 287 (5.92%) Terraform
3 163 (3.36%) Ansible
4 137 (2.83%) Microsoft Intune
5 85 (1.75%) SCCM
6 81 (1.67%) Grafana
7 68 (1.40%) Prometheus
8 56 (1.16%) vCenter Server
9 31 (0.64%) SCOM
10 27 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
11 25 (0.52%) FortiGate
12 23 (0.47%) Control-M
13 21 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
13 21 (0.43%) WSUS
14 15 (0.31%) Argo
15 12 (0.25%) Puppet
16 11 (0.23%) Progress Chef
17 10 (0.21%) Istio
17 10 (0.21%) Kibana
18 9 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,056 (21.78%) Microsoft
2 341 (7.03%) Oracle
3 322 (6.64%) ServiceNow
4 296 (6.11%) SAP
5 205 (4.23%) VMware
6 146 (3.01%) Google
7 129 (2.66%) Salesforce
8 119 (2.45%) Cisco
9 108 (2.23%) Databricks
9 108 (2.23%) Splunk
10 73 (1.51%) Workday
11 69 (1.42%) Dynatrace
12 58 (1.20%) Apple
13 56 (1.16%) Adobe
14 46 (0.95%) Citrix
15 45 (0.93%) CyberArk
16 44 (0.91%) Dell
16 44 (0.91%) IBM
17 43 (0.89%) MuleSoft
17 43 (0.89%) Red Hat