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 11 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,008 4,380 3,927
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.79% 15.74% 11.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.72% 17.33% 13.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,851 2,664 2,297
10th Percentile £235 £250 £259
25th Percentile £375 £375 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
90th Percentile £716 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 438 277 211
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.25 £15.00
Median hourly rate £19.48 £18.87 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +3.23% +16.27% -69.76%
75th Percentile £42.00 £35.96 £30.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.10 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £18.63 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -8.05% +24.80% -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 39,380 25,274 28,344
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.88% 90.84% 85.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,176 16,039 17,819
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £634 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,707 1,489 1,353
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.33 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.79 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.19% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £66.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +3.61%

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 11 September 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 11 September 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 11 September 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 -11 2,179 £525 +5.00% 3,249
South East -4 801 £475 +5.56% 1,322
North of England -11 723 £444 -6.47% 1,082
Midlands -5 588 £450 +3.15% 891
West Midlands -8 419 £450 -2.70% 533
North West -9 364 £445 -6.32% 537
South West -5 341 £495 +10.00% 635
Yorkshire -9 292 £450 -6.25% 390
East of England +1 268 £425 -15.00% 539
East Midlands +1 166 £475 +26.67% 358
North East -16 69 £375 -16.67% 175
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
1 228 (4.55%) SharePoint
2 227 (4.53%) Confluence
3 108 (2.16%) Microsoft Exchange
4 50 (1.00%) Apache Spark
5 41 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
6 35 (0.70%) Apache
7 28 (0.56%) CMS
8 27 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
9 23 (0.46%) SAS
10 13 (0.26%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.26%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.20%) CICS
12 9 (0.18%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.14%) IIS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.100%) Appian
15 5 (0.100%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.100%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.100%) WordPress
Applications
1 291 (5.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 244 (4.87%) Microsoft Office
3 108 (2.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 65 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
5 52 (1.04%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.32%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.30%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 14 (0.28%) Revit
11 9 (0.18%) Sketch
11 9 (0.18%) Trello
12 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.12%) Navisworks
13 6 (0.12%) Windchill
14 5 (0.100%) CATIA
15 4 (0.080%) Adobe XD
16 3 (0.060%) DaVinci Resolve
16 3 (0.060%) NUKE
16 3 (0.060%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 118 (2.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
3 31 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.52%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
6 22 (0.44%) Workday HCM
7 18 (0.36%) SAP GRC
8 15 (0.30%) iTrent
9 13 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
9 13 (0.26%) SAP SD
10 11 (0.22%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.20%) Aladdin
11 10 (0.20%) Finacle
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
12 9 (0.18%) Shopify
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
13 7 (0.14%) Primavera
13 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.14%) SAP ERP
13 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,009 (20.15%) Azure
2 718 (14.34%) AWS
3 476 (9.50%) Microsoft 365
4 420 (8.39%) Power Platform
5 284 (5.67%) GCP
6 250 (4.99%) Azure DevOps
7 211 (4.21%) Entra ID
8 168 (3.35%) GitHub
9 131 (2.62%) SaaS
10 111 (2.22%) Serverless
11 102 (2.04%) Power Automate
12 84 (1.68%) Microsoft Copilot
13 75 (1.50%) PowerApps
14 73 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
15 72 (1.44%) OneDrive
16 69 (1.38%) GitHub Actions
17 62 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
18 61 (1.22%) Snowflake
19 54 (1.08%) AWS Lambda
20 50 (1.00%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 209 (4.17%) DNS
2 178 (3.55%) Firewall
3 161 (3.21%) VPN
4 126 (2.52%) DHCP
5 119 (2.38%) TCP/IP
6 105 (2.10%) WAN
7 90 (1.80%) Network Security
8 89 (1.78%) LAN
9 73 (1.46%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.22%) Wireless
11 58 (1.16%) SAN
12 51 (1.02%) VLAN
13 44 (0.88%) BGP
14 35 (0.70%) VoIP
15 33 (0.66%) SD-WAN
15 33 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
16 27 (0.54%) MPLS
17 24 (0.48%) OSPF
18 23 (0.46%) SSL
19 18 (0.36%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 320 (6.39%) Power BI
2 198 (3.95%) SQL Server
3 162 (3.23%) Relational Database
4 160 (3.19%) Data Warehouse
5 141 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
6 92 (1.84%) Metadata
7 82 (1.64%) Tableau
8 77 (1.54%) MongoDB
8 77 (1.54%) NoSQL
9 72 (1.44%) Data Lake
10 53 (1.06%) MySQL
11 51 (1.02%) Oracle Database
12 44 (0.88%) Big Data
13 34 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 32 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
15 28 (0.56%) Db2
16 27 (0.54%) Power Query
17 24 (0.48%) Delta Lake
18 23 (0.46%) BigQuery
19 22 (0.44%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 458 (9.15%) JIRA
2 324 (6.47%) Git
3 164 (3.27%) Jenkins
4 122 (2.44%) GitLab
5 69 (1.38%) Selenium
6 34 (0.68%) Cypress.io
6 34 (0.68%) JUnit
6 34 (0.68%) Maven
6 34 (0.68%) Postman
7 29 (0.58%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.52%) Gradle
9 25 (0.50%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.50%) REST Assured
10 24 (0.48%) SonarQube
11 21 (0.42%) Mockito
12 20 (0.40%) JMeter
13 16 (0.32%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.30%) Gatling
15 13 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
15 13 (0.26%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,692 (53.75%) Social Skills
2 2,168 (43.29%) Analytical Skills
3 1,161 (23.18%) Finance
4 497 (9.92%) Public Sector
5 411 (8.21%) Banking
6 245 (4.89%) Organisational Skills
7 194 (3.87%) Manufacturing
8 184 (3.67%) Retail
9 178 (3.55%) Documentation Skills
10 161 (3.21%) Influencing Skills
11 160 (3.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 115 (2.30%) Front Office
13 113 (2.26%) Legal
14 110 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
15 104 (2.08%) Marketing
15 104 (2.08%) Telecoms
16 83 (1.66%) Investment Banking
17 62 (1.24%) Law
18 59 (1.18%) Back Office
19 57 (1.14%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 689 (13.76%) Analyst
2 574 (11.46%) Developer
3 456 (9.11%) Senior
4 383 (7.65%) Lead
5 308 (6.15%) Architect
6 231 (4.61%) Business Analyst
7 217 (4.33%) Consultant
8 212 (4.23%) IT Support
9 199 (3.97%) Support Engineer
10 188 (3.75%) Data Engineer
11 135 (2.70%) IT Engineer
12 130 (2.60%) Project Manager
13 126 (2.52%) Administrator
14 109 (2.18%) Data Analyst
15 102 (2.04%) Java Developer
16 99 (1.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 96 (1.92%) DevOps Engineer
18 95 (1.90%) IT Support Engineer
19 92 (1.84%) Solutions Architect
20 87 (1.74%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 320 (6.39%) REST
2 300 (5.99%) Terraform
3 174 (3.47%) .NET
4 154 (3.08%) RESTful
5 148 (2.96%) SOAP
6 142 (2.84%) React
7 121 (2.42%) Kafka
8 114 (2.28%) Spring
9 111 (2.22%) JSON
10 110 (2.20%) CSS
10 110 (2.20%) HTML
11 108 (2.16%) XML
12 97 (1.94%) Middleware
13 93 (1.86%) Web Services
14 91 (1.82%) Spring Boot
15 84 (1.68%) AngularJS
16 78 (1.56%) Node.js
17 74 (1.48%) OAuth
18 60 (1.20%) PySpark
19 50 (1.00%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 295 (5.89%) Onboarding
2 256 (5.11%) Product Ownership
3 252 (5.03%) Cloud Native
4 202 (4.03%) Self-Motivation
5 175 (3.49%) Management Information System
6 173 (3.45%) Enterprise Software
7 151 (3.02%) Data Centre
8 142 (2.84%) Distributed Systems
9 130 (2.60%) Data Structures
10 122 (2.44%) Analytical Mindset
10 122 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
11 110 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
12 88 (1.76%) Virtual Team
13 72 (1.44%) Driving Licence
14 71 (1.42%) AI Agents
15 66 (1.32%) CMDB
16 55 (1.10%) Algorithms
17 54 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 54 (1.08%) PKI
18 49 (0.98%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 684 (13.66%) Windows
2 274 (5.47%) Linux
3 196 (3.91%) Windows Server
4 129 (2.58%) Windows 10
5 94 (1.88%) Unix
6 82 (1.64%) Apple iOS
7 78 (1.56%) Mac OS
8 73 (1.46%) Android
9 46 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.42%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.34%) VMS
11 17 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.24%) zOS
13 9 (0.18%) Solaris
13 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 8 (0.16%) CentOS
15 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
16 5 (0.100%) Rocky
17 4 (0.080%) AIX
17 4 (0.080%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,393 (27.82%) Agile
2 1,153 (23.02%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,127 (22.50%) Continuous Improvement
4 830 (16.57%) CI/CD
5 782 (15.62%) DevOps
6 693 (13.84%) AI
7 578 (11.54%) Decision-Making
8 559 (11.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 525 (10.48%) Migration
10 509 (10.16%) Analytics
11 487 (9.72%) Customer Service
12 484 (9.66%) ITIL
13 401 (8.01%) Test Automation
14 396 (7.91%) Validation
15 386 (7.71%) Business Intelligence
16 357 (7.13%) Data Modelling
16 357 (7.13%) Scrum
17 345 (6.89%) Roadmaps
18 344 (6.87%) ITSM
19 323 (6.45%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 898 (17.93%) SQL
2 802 (16.01%) Python
3 366 (7.31%) Java
4 306 (6.11%) PowerShell
5 296 (5.91%) JavaScript
6 193 (3.85%) C#
7 149 (2.98%) Bash
8 123 (2.46%) TypeScript
9 88 (1.76%) PL/SQL
10 50 (1.00%) T-SQL
11 49 (0.98%) C++
12 39 (0.78%) Go
13 38 (0.76%) Shell Script
14 33 (0.66%) Bicep
15 32 (0.64%) Scala
16 27 (0.54%) R
17 26 (0.52%) Apex Code
17 26 (0.52%) Kotlin
18 25 (0.50%) C
19 24 (0.48%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,104 (22.04%) Security Cleared
2 764 (15.26%) SC Cleared
3 608 (12.14%) Degree
4 214 (4.27%) DV Cleared
5 183 (3.65%) Computer Science Degree
6 145 (2.90%) Microsoft Certification
7 125 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
8 88 (1.76%) Cisco Certification
9 77 (1.54%) Azure Certification
9 77 (1.54%) PMP
10 76 (1.52%) PMI Certification
11 70 (1.40%) CISSP
12 57 (1.14%) A+ Certification
13 50 (1.00%) Master's Degree
14 48 (0.96%) CCNA
15 45 (0.90%) DBS Check
16 42 (0.84%) AWS Certification
17 39 (0.78%) CISM
17 39 (0.78%) Network+ Certification
18 38 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 382 (7.63%) Data Quality
2 348 (6.95%) QA
3 122 (2.44%) GDPR
4 115 (2.30%) SLA
5 112 (2.24%) Accessibility
6 88 (1.76%) PMO
7 86 (1.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 68 (1.36%) NIST
9 62 (1.24%) GRC
10 31 (0.62%) WCAG
11 23 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
13 14 (0.28%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.26%) COBIT
14 13 (0.26%) GxP
15 11 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 11 (0.22%) IFRS
16 10 (0.20%) HL7
16 10 (0.20%) NCSC
System Software
1 403 (8.05%) Active Directory
2 312 (6.23%) Docker
3 151 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 63 (1.26%) Hyper-V
5 62 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
6 52 (1.04%) VMware NSX
7 47 (0.94%) vSphere
8 34 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
9 30 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 27 (0.54%) IAG
10 27 (0.54%) vCloud
11 16 (0.32%) Firmware
12 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.12%) NFS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.080%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 4 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.080%) XenApp
14 4 (0.080%) XenDesktop
15 3 (0.060%) Squid
Systems Management
1 344 (6.87%) Kubernetes
2 165 (3.29%) Ansible
3 130 (2.60%) Microsoft Intune
4 92 (1.84%) SCCM
5 91 (1.82%) Grafana
6 71 (1.42%) Prometheus
7 55 (1.10%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.74%) SCOM
9 24 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
10 22 (0.44%) WSUS
11 21 (0.42%) Control-M
12 13 (0.26%) Argo
12 13 (0.26%) FortiGate
13 11 (0.22%) Istio
13 11 (0.22%) Kibana
13 11 (0.22%) Puppet
14 10 (0.20%) Nessus
15 9 (0.18%) Podman
15 9 (0.18%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,166 (23.28%) Microsoft
2 352 (7.03%) Oracle
3 326 (6.51%) ServiceNow
4 308 (6.15%) SAP
5 201 (4.01%) VMware
6 138 (2.76%) Google
7 134 (2.68%) Salesforce
8 119 (2.38%) Databricks
9 109 (2.18%) Cisco
10 101 (2.02%) Splunk
11 73 (1.46%) Workday
12 66 (1.32%) Dynatrace
13 58 (1.16%) Apple
14 52 (1.04%) Adobe
15 47 (0.94%) IBM
16 44 (0.88%) CyberArk
16 44 (0.88%) Red Hat
17 42 (0.84%) MuleSoft
18 35 (0.70%) Citrix
18 35 (0.70%) Dell