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

6 months to
25 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 4,833 4,408 3,840
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.58% 16.00% 11.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.47% 17.62% 13.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,753 2,685 2,305
10th Percentile £238 £250 £263
25th Percentile £375 £376 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.01% -1.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £619
90th Percentile £713 £703 £724
UK median daily rate £495 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +1.02% -2.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 410 282 238
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.55
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.25 £14.50
Median hourly rate £20.52 £19.58 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year +4.78% +20.64% -70.49%
75th Percentile £42.58 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £64.88 £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 38,748 25,020 28,500
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.82% 90.83% 85.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,949 15,925 18,341
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.74% -2.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £627 £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 2,582 1,471 1,520
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.25 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.87 £18.13
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +65.23% -38.57% -3.67%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 2,113 £525 +5.00% 1,140
South East -5 784 £480 +1.05% 1,008
North of England -11 706 £443 -6.74% 832
Midlands -6 531 £450 +2.27% 657
West Midlands -9 377 £450 -2.70% 399
North West -12 351 £445 -6.32% 412
South West -2 334 £495 +10.00% 597
Yorkshire -11 293 £450 -5.26% 299
East of England +1 257 £450 -10.00% 381
East Midlands 0 151 £463 +23.33% 260
North East -16 65 £375 -16.67% 135
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
1 224 (4.63%) SharePoint
2 211 (4.37%) Confluence
3 113 (2.34%) Microsoft Exchange
4 51 (1.06%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
6 30 (0.62%) Apache
7 29 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
8 27 (0.56%) CMS
9 23 (0.48%) SAS
10 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 10 (0.21%) CICS
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.14%) 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
1 286 (5.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 237 (4.90%) Microsoft Office
3 105 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 61 (1.26%) MS Visio
5 60 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
6 27 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.31%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 13 (0.27%) Revit
11 10 (0.21%) Trello
12 9 (0.19%) Sketch
13 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
14 6 (0.12%) Windchill
15 5 (0.10%) CATIA
15 5 (0.10%) Navisworks
16 4 (0.083%) Adobe XD
16 4 (0.083%) Photoshop
17 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
17 3 (0.062%) Maya
Business Applications
1 116 (2.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
3 31 (0.64%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
5 23 (0.48%) NetSuite
6 19 (0.39%) Workday HCM
7 16 (0.33%) SAP GRC
8 14 (0.29%) iTrent
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.27%) Aladdin
10 12 (0.25%) 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
1 999 (20.67%) Azure
2 703 (14.55%) AWS
3 445 (9.21%) Microsoft 365
4 396 (8.19%) Power Platform
5 284 (5.88%) GCP
6 249 (5.15%) Azure DevOps
7 207 (4.28%) Entra ID
8 160 (3.31%) GitHub
9 129 (2.67%) SaaS
10 114 (2.36%) Serverless
11 92 (1.90%) Power Automate
12 70 (1.45%) GitHub Actions
13 69 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
13 69 (1.43%) OneDrive
14 68 (1.41%) Microsoft Copilot
15 65 (1.34%) PowerApps
16 61 (1.26%) Azure Data Factory
17 60 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
18 59 (1.22%) Snowflake
19 54 (1.12%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 208 (4.30%) DNS
2 174 (3.60%) Firewall
3 158 (3.27%) VPN
4 123 (2.55%) DHCP
5 115 (2.38%) TCP/IP
6 110 (2.28%) WAN
7 92 (1.90%) LAN
8 87 (1.80%) Network Security
9 69 (1.43%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.26%) SAN
11 54 (1.12%) Wireless
12 51 (1.06%) VLAN
13 48 (0.99%) BGP
14 36 (0.74%) SD-WAN
14 36 (0.74%) VoIP
15 33 (0.68%) Structured Cabling
16 30 (0.62%) MPLS
17 28 (0.58%) OSPF
18 22 (0.46%) 5G
19 21 (0.43%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 305 (6.31%) Power BI
2 195 (4.03%) SQL Server
3 157 (3.25%) Data Warehouse
4 148 (3.06%) Relational Database
5 127 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
6 88 (1.82%) Metadata
7 87 (1.80%) NoSQL
8 81 (1.68%) Tableau
9 77 (1.59%) MongoDB
10 74 (1.53%) Data Lake
11 48 (0.99%) Big Data
11 48 (0.99%) Oracle Database
12 44 (0.91%) MySQL
13 34 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
14 33 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 27 (0.56%) Db2
16 24 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
16 24 (0.50%) Power Query
17 23 (0.48%) BigQuery
18 22 (0.46%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 443 (9.17%) JIRA
2 299 (6.19%) Git
3 145 (3.00%) Jenkins
4 119 (2.46%) GitLab
5 68 (1.41%) Selenium
6 36 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 34 (0.70%) Postman
8 27 (0.56%) 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 14 (0.29%) Gatling
14 14 (0.29%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.27%) Mockito
15 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 2,559 (52.95%) Social Skills
2 2,090 (43.24%) Analytical Skills
3 1,141 (23.61%) Finance
4 470 (9.72%) Public Sector
5 405 (8.38%) Banking
6 228 (4.72%) Organisational Skills
7 187 (3.87%) Retail
8 179 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
9 164 (3.39%) Manufacturing
10 158 (3.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 143 (2.96%) Influencing Skills
12 114 (2.36%) Front Office
13 110 (2.28%) Legal
14 105 (2.17%) Marketing
15 104 (2.15%) Telecoms
16 100 (2.07%) Presentation Skills
17 77 (1.59%) Investment Banking
18 62 (1.28%) Law
19 56 (1.16%) Financial Institution
20 54 (1.12%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 665 (13.76%) Analyst
2 555 (11.48%) Developer
3 438 (9.06%) Senior
4 376 (7.78%) Lead
5 305 (6.31%) Architect
6 223 (4.61%) Business Analyst
7 216 (4.47%) Consultant
8 197 (4.08%) IT Support
9 193 (3.99%) Support Engineer
10 188 (3.89%) Data Engineer
11 134 (2.77%) Project Manager
12 132 (2.73%) IT Engineer
13 115 (2.38%) Administrator
14 105 (2.17%) Data Analyst
15 95 (1.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 93 (1.92%) Java Developer
17 90 (1.86%) IT Support Engineer
18 87 (1.80%) DevOps Engineer
18 87 (1.80%) Solutions Architect
18 87 (1.80%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 298 (6.17%) REST
2 286 (5.92%) Terraform
3 160 (3.31%) .NET
4 148 (3.06%) RESTful
5 137 (2.83%) React
6 132 (2.73%) SOAP
7 115 (2.38%) Kafka
8 113 (2.34%) JSON
9 111 (2.30%) Spring
10 106 (2.19%) CSS
11 105 (2.17%) XML
12 102 (2.11%) HTML
13 92 (1.90%) Middleware
14 82 (1.70%) Web Services
15 81 (1.68%) Spring Boot
16 78 (1.61%) AngularJS
16 78 (1.61%) Node.js
17 75 (1.55%) OAuth
18 62 (1.28%) PySpark
19 48 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 279 (5.77%) Onboarding
2 241 (4.99%) Product Ownership
3 235 (4.86%) Cloud Native
4 191 (3.95%) Self-Motivation
5 165 (3.41%) Data Centre
6 157 (3.25%) Enterprise Software
7 155 (3.21%) Management Information System
8 147 (3.04%) Distributed Systems
9 134 (2.77%) Analytical Mindset
10 124 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
11 121 (2.50%) Data Structures
12 108 (2.23%) Data Protection Act
13 86 (1.78%) Virtual Team
14 67 (1.39%) Driving Licence
15 65 (1.34%) AI Agents
15 65 (1.34%) CMDB
16 56 (1.16%) Algorithms
17 53 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 53 (1.10%) PKI
18 49 (1.01%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 672 (13.90%) Windows
2 259 (5.36%) Linux
3 180 (3.72%) Windows Server
4 133 (2.75%) Windows 10
5 92 (1.90%) Unix
6 80 (1.66%) Apple iOS
7 79 (1.63%) Mac OS
8 72 (1.49%) 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 11 (0.23%) zOS
14 8 (0.17%) Solaris
14 8 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
15 7 (0.14%) CentOS
15 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
16 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.083%) AIX
17 4 (0.083%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,330 (27.52%) Agile
2 1,053 (21.79%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,024 (21.19%) Stakeholder Management
4 812 (16.80%) CI/CD
5 767 (15.87%) DevOps
6 659 (13.64%) AI
7 531 (10.99%) Decision-Making
8 525 (10.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 513 (10.61%) Migration
10 505 (10.45%) Analytics
11 481 (9.95%) ITIL
12 460 (9.52%) Customer Service
13 394 (8.15%) Validation
14 388 (8.03%) Test Automation
15 378 (7.82%) Business Intelligence
16 356 (7.37%) Data Modelling
17 342 (7.08%) Scrum
18 333 (6.89%) Roadmaps
19 327 (6.77%) ITSM
20 319 (6.60%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 877 (18.15%) SQL
2 798 (16.51%) Python
3 362 (7.49%) Java
4 291 (6.02%) PowerShell
5 280 (5.79%) JavaScript
6 173 (3.58%) C#
7 144 (2.98%) Bash
8 109 (2.26%) TypeScript
9 82 (1.70%) PL/SQL
10 53 (1.10%) C++
11 47 (0.97%) T-SQL
12 35 (0.72%) Bicep
12 35 (0.72%) Go
13 34 (0.70%) Shell Script
14 29 (0.60%) Scala
15 28 (0.58%) C
16 27 (0.56%) Apex Code
16 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
16 27 (0.56%) R
17 24 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,032 (21.35%) Security Cleared
2 698 (14.44%) SC Cleared
3 593 (12.27%) Degree
4 202 (4.18%) DV Cleared
5 185 (3.83%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.98%) Microsoft Certification
7 107 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
8 98 (2.03%) Cisco Certification
9 73 (1.51%) Azure Certification
10 71 (1.47%) PMP
11 67 (1.39%) CISSP
11 67 (1.39%) PMI Certification
12 63 (1.30%) A+ Certification
13 55 (1.14%) CCNA
14 51 (1.06%) Master's Degree
15 44 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
16 41 (0.85%) CISM
17 38 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
17 38 (0.79%) MCSE
18 37 (0.77%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 356 (7.37%) Data Quality
2 327 (6.77%) QA
3 127 (2.63%) GDPR
4 112 (2.32%) SLA
5 111 (2.30%) Accessibility
6 88 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 83 (1.72%) PMO
8 71 (1.47%) NIST
9 59 (1.22%) GRC
10 30 (0.62%) WCAG
11 25 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 22 (0.46%) 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%) IFRS
15 12 (0.25%) NCSC
16 10 (0.21%) HL7
System Software
1 402 (8.32%) Active Directory
2 303 (6.27%) Docker
3 147 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 58 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
5 56 (1.16%) Hyper-V
6 50 (1.03%) VMware NSX
7 46 (0.95%) vSphere
8 34 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
9 27 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
10 26 (0.54%) vCloud
11 23 (0.48%) IAG
12 18 (0.37%) 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
17 3 (0.062%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 3 (0.062%) Squid
18 2 (0.041%) UAG
Systems Management
1 332 (6.87%) Kubernetes
2 161 (3.33%) Ansible
3 129 (2.67%) Microsoft Intune
4 89 (1.84%) SCCM
5 83 (1.72%) Grafana
6 65 (1.34%) Prometheus
7 56 (1.16%) vCenter Server
8 33 (0.68%) SCOM
9 24 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.46%) Control-M
10 22 (0.46%) WSUS
11 20 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
12 16 (0.33%) FortiGate
13 14 (0.29%) Argo
14 11 (0.23%) Kibana
15 10 (0.21%) Istio
15 10 (0.21%) Puppet
16 9 (0.19%) Progress Chef
16 9 (0.19%) VxRail
17 8 (0.17%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,089 (22.53%) Microsoft
2 339 (7.01%) Oracle
3 321 (6.64%) ServiceNow
4 294 (6.08%) SAP
5 198 (4.10%) VMware
6 140 (2.90%) Google
7 133 (2.75%) Salesforce
8 112 (2.32%) Databricks
9 110 (2.28%) Cisco
10 93 (1.92%) Splunk
11 73 (1.51%) Workday
12 69 (1.43%) Dynatrace
13 61 (1.26%) Apple
14 54 (1.12%) Adobe
15 45 (0.93%) CyberArk
16 44 (0.91%) IBM
17 41 (0.85%) Dell
17 41 (0.85%) Red Hat
18 39 (0.81%) MuleSoft
19 36 (0.74%) Citrix