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

6 months to
7 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 4,870 4,443 3,741
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.67% 16.10% 11.21%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.53% 17.74% 13.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,794 2,730 2,308
10th Percentile £249 £255 £259
25th Percentile £380 £380 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £496 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.40% -0.80% -4.76%
75th Percentile £590 £600 £622
90th Percentile £713 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +0.10% -2.10% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 404 277 252
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £11.75
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% -69.76%
75th Percentile £43.83 £35.00 £31.91
90th Percentile £74.26 £65.10 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £21.24 £16.23
% change year-on-year -10.55% +30.87% -70.25%

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 38,882 25,041 28,684
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.21% 90.76% 85.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,206 16,026 18,694
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,519 1,388 1,683
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £20.01 £17.88 £18.15
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.27 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.68 £25.15 £40.33
% change year-on-year +69.69% -37.63% -5.12%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 2,085 £520 +4.00% 2,319
South East -3 780 £480 -2.04% 1,129
North of England -9 732 £450 -5.26% 907
Midlands -5 552 £450 +5.39% 655
West Midlands -9 401 £450 -0.33% 381
South West 0 350 £500 +5.26% 483
North West -12 346 £450 -8.35% 469
Yorkshire -7 331 £450 -5.26% 321
East of England +1 260 £450 -3.74% 420
East Midlands -1 148 £475 +27.86% 274
North East -18 60 £375 -16.67% 128
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
1 217 (4.46%) Confluence
2 202 (4.15%) SharePoint
3 107 (2.20%) Microsoft Exchange
4 54 (1.11%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.68%) Apache
7 32 (0.66%) SAS
8 28 (0.57%) CMS
9 27 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.23%) CICS
13 9 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.10%) Appian
16 5 (0.10%) Mule
16 5 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 5 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 272 (5.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 241 (4.95%) Microsoft Office
3 86 (1.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (1.36%) MS Visio
5 64 (1.31%) Microsoft Project
6 28 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.29%) AutoCAD
10 12 (0.25%) Revit
11 11 (0.23%) Trello
12 9 (0.18%) Sketch
13 7 (0.14%) CPLEX
14 5 (0.10%) CATIA
15 4 (0.082%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.082%) Navisworks
15 4 (0.082%) Photoshop
16 3 (0.062%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.062%) Maya
16 3 (0.062%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 116 (2.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 25 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.45%) NetSuite
6 16 (0.33%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.31%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.27%) iTrent
10 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
10 11 (0.23%) SAP GRC
11 10 (0.21%) Finacle
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
12 9 (0.18%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.18%) Teamcenter
13 8 (0.16%) Loan IQ
13 8 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
14 7 (0.14%) Oracle HRMS
14 7 (0.14%) SAP ERP
14 7 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 960 (19.71%) Azure
2 694 (14.25%) AWS
3 410 (8.42%) Microsoft 365
4 391 (8.03%) Power Platform
5 278 (5.71%) GCP
6 237 (4.87%) Azure DevOps
7 200 (4.11%) Entra ID
8 161 (3.31%) GitHub
9 129 (2.65%) SaaS
10 113 (2.32%) Serverless
11 85 (1.75%) Power Automate
12 74 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
13 66 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
14 64 (1.31%) Dynamics 365
15 62 (1.27%) Azure Data Factory
16 61 (1.25%) PowerApps
17 59 (1.21%) Amazon S3
18 58 (1.19%) Snowflake
19 57 (1.17%) Microsoft Copilot
19 57 (1.17%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 213 (4.37%) DNS
2 178 (3.66%) Firewall
3 144 (2.96%) VPN
4 127 (2.61%) DHCP
5 126 (2.59%) TCP/IP
6 111 (2.28%) WAN
7 96 (1.97%) LAN
8 84 (1.72%) Network Security
9 73 (1.50%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.36%) SAN
11 56 (1.15%) VLAN
12 53 (1.09%) Wireless
13 49 (1.01%) BGP
14 37 (0.76%) OSPF
15 36 (0.74%) SD-WAN
16 32 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
16 32 (0.66%) VoIP
17 26 (0.53%) MPLS
18 25 (0.51%) VXLAN
19 22 (0.45%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 306 (6.28%) Power BI
2 205 (4.21%) SQL Server
3 158 (3.24%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.77%) Relational Database
5 132 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
6 94 (1.93%) MongoDB
7 84 (1.72%) NoSQL
8 81 (1.66%) Data Lake
8 81 (1.66%) Metadata
9 79 (1.62%) Tableau
10 50 (1.03%) Big Data
11 49 (1.01%) Oracle Database
12 48 (0.99%) MySQL
13 43 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 38 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
15 28 (0.57%) Db2
15 28 (0.57%) Pentaho
16 27 (0.55%) Power Query
17 24 (0.49%) BigQuery
18 23 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 460 (9.45%) JIRA
2 288 (5.91%) Git
3 157 (3.22%) Jenkins
4 110 (2.26%) GitLab
5 64 (1.31%) Selenium
6 32 (0.66%) Cypress.io
7 31 (0.64%) Postman
8 27 (0.55%) Cucumber
8 27 (0.55%) REST Assured
9 24 (0.49%) Bitbucket
9 24 (0.49%) Maven
10 22 (0.45%) JUnit
11 20 (0.41%) Gradle
12 19 (0.39%) Mockito
13 18 (0.37%) WebDriver
14 17 (0.35%) JMeter
15 15 (0.31%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
17 13 (0.27%) Gatling
17 13 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 2,539 (52.14%) Social Skills
2 2,071 (42.53%) Analytical Skills
3 1,140 (23.41%) Finance
4 468 (9.61%) Public Sector
5 389 (7.99%) Banking
6 224 (4.60%) Organisational Skills
7 192 (3.94%) Retail
8 173 (3.55%) Documentation Skills
9 165 (3.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 145 (2.98%) Manufacturing
11 132 (2.71%) Influencing Skills
12 112 (2.30%) Presentation Skills
13 110 (2.26%) Marketing
14 108 (2.22%) Legal
15 105 (2.16%) Front Office
16 95 (1.95%) Telecoms
17 73 (1.50%) Investment Banking
18 61 (1.25%) Law
19 59 (1.21%) Financial Institution
20 53 (1.09%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 675 (13.86%) Analyst
2 542 (11.13%) Developer
3 440 (9.03%) Senior
4 372 (7.64%) Lead
5 325 (6.67%) Architect
6 234 (4.80%) Business Analyst
7 214 (4.39%) Consultant
8 210 (4.31%) Data Engineer
9 189 (3.88%) IT Support
10 174 (3.57%) Support Engineer
11 145 (2.98%) Project Manager
12 121 (2.48%) IT Engineer
13 120 (2.46%) Administrator
14 105 (2.16%) Data Analyst
15 98 (2.01%) Java Developer
16 90 (1.85%) Solutions Architect
17 88 (1.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 87 (1.79%) Software Engineer
19 80 (1.64%) IT Support Engineer
19 80 (1.64%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (5.71%) REST
2 142 (2.92%) .NET
3 135 (2.77%) RESTful
4 131 (2.69%) React
5 128 (2.63%) SOAP
6 122 (2.51%) Kafka
7 113 (2.32%) Spring
8 112 (2.30%) JSON
9 102 (2.09%) CSS
10 95 (1.95%) XML
11 91 (1.87%) HTML
12 90 (1.85%) Middleware
13 79 (1.62%) Node.js
14 77 (1.58%) Spring Boot
15 76 (1.56%) AngularJS
16 72 (1.48%) OAuth
17 65 (1.33%) Web Services
18 55 (1.13%) PySpark
19 47 (0.97%) Playwright
20 45 (0.92%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 281 (5.77%) Onboarding
2 232 (4.76%) Product Ownership
3 215 (4.41%) Cloud Native
4 183 (3.76%) Self-Motivation
5 174 (3.57%) Data Centre
6 143 (2.94%) Management Information System
7 141 (2.90%) Analytical Mindset
8 140 (2.87%) Distributed Systems
9 137 (2.81%) Enterprise Software
10 119 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
11 115 (2.36%) Data Structures
12 113 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
13 91 (1.87%) Virtual Team
14 62 (1.27%) Driving Licence
15 61 (1.25%) AI Agents
16 57 (1.17%) Algorithms
17 56 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 55 (1.13%) PKI
19 54 (1.11%) CMDB
20 47 (0.97%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 663 (13.61%) Windows
2 257 (5.28%) Linux
3 156 (3.20%) Windows Server
4 119 (2.44%) Windows 10
5 99 (2.03%) Unix
6 81 (1.66%) Mac OS
7 79 (1.62%) Apple iOS
8 72 (1.48%) Android
9 43 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 14 (0.29%) VMS
13 12 (0.25%) zOS
14 9 (0.18%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.16%) Solaris
16 6 (0.12%) CentOS
16 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Debian
17 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,328 (27.27%) Agile
2 1,012 (20.78%) Continuous Improvement
3 943 (19.36%) Stakeholder Management
4 800 (16.43%) CI/CD
5 765 (15.71%) DevOps
6 651 (13.37%) AI
7 546 (11.21%) Decision-Making
8 523 (10.74%) Analytics
9 514 (10.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 502 (10.31%) Migration
11 479 (9.84%) ITIL
12 458 (9.40%) Customer Service
13 397 (8.15%) Business Intelligence
14 379 (7.78%) Test Automation
15 378 (7.76%) Validation
16 375 (7.70%) Data Modelling
17 337 (6.92%) Roadmaps
18 331 (6.80%) Scrum
19 328 (6.74%) Project Management
20 319 (6.55%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 875 (17.97%) SQL
2 800 (16.43%) Python
3 365 (7.49%) Java
4 277 (5.69%) PowerShell
5 269 (5.52%) JavaScript
6 161 (3.31%) C#
7 139 (2.85%) Bash
8 107 (2.20%) TypeScript
9 85 (1.75%) PL/SQL
10 53 (1.09%) C++
11 49 (1.01%) T-SQL
12 40 (0.82%) Shell Script
13 35 (0.72%) Go
14 33 (0.68%) Bicep
15 32 (0.66%) C
16 30 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 28 (0.57%) Apex Code
17 28 (0.57%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.55%) Scala
19 26 (0.53%) R
Qualifications
1 1,073 (22.03%) Security Cleared
2 720 (14.78%) SC Cleared
3 601 (12.34%) Degree
4 216 (4.44%) DV Cleared
5 180 (3.70%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.96%) Microsoft Certification
7 114 (2.34%) Cisco Certification
8 110 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
9 77 (1.58%) CISSP
10 72 (1.48%) Azure Certification
11 69 (1.42%) PMP
12 64 (1.31%) PMI Certification
13 63 (1.29%) CCNA
14 62 (1.27%) A+ Certification
15 48 (0.99%) CISM
16 47 (0.97%) Master's Degree
17 42 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
18 41 (0.84%) MCSE
19 37 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
20 36 (0.74%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 345 (7.08%) Data Quality
2 298 (6.12%) QA
3 134 (2.75%) GDPR
4 110 (2.26%) Accessibility
5 106 (2.18%) SLA
6 87 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 85 (1.75%) PMO
8 73 (1.50%) NIST
9 50 (1.03%) GRC
10 28 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 28 (0.57%) WCAG
11 24 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
12 15 (0.31%) GxP
13 14 (0.29%) NCSC
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
System Software
1 386 (7.93%) Active Directory
2 310 (6.37%) Docker
3 135 (2.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 53 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
5 48 (0.99%) Hyper-V
5 48 (0.99%) VMware NSX
6 47 (0.97%) vSphere
7 29 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
8 28 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
9 24 (0.49%) vCloud
10 21 (0.43%) Firmware
11 19 (0.39%) IAG
12 11 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.12%) NFS
14 5 (0.10%) Squid
15 4 (0.082%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.082%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.062%) Snort
17 2 (0.041%) UAG
17 2 (0.041%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 352 (7.23%) Kubernetes
2 288 (5.91%) Terraform
3 163 (3.35%) Ansible
4 130 (2.67%) Microsoft Intune
5 88 (1.81%) Grafana
6 78 (1.60%) Prometheus
7 77 (1.58%) SCCM
8 57 (1.17%) vCenter Server
9 29 (0.60%) SCOM
10 28 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.55%) Control-M
11 27 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 21 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
13 19 (0.39%) WSUS
14 17 (0.35%) Argo
15 15 (0.31%) Nessus
16 13 (0.27%) IBM Guardium
17 12 (0.25%) Puppet
18 11 (0.23%) Kibana
18 11 (0.23%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,029 (21.13%) Microsoft
2 337 (6.92%) Oracle
3 317 (6.51%) ServiceNow
4 295 (6.06%) SAP
5 202 (4.15%) VMware
6 150 (3.08%) Google
7 126 (2.59%) Salesforce
8 117 (2.40%) Cisco
9 112 (2.30%) Splunk
10 106 (2.18%) Databricks
11 75 (1.54%) Workday
12 66 (1.36%) Dynatrace
13 57 (1.17%) Apple
14 55 (1.13%) Adobe
15 48 (0.99%) Red Hat
16 47 (0.97%) Dell
17 46 (0.94%) Citrix
18 45 (0.92%) CyberArk
19 42 (0.86%) MuleSoft
20 41 (0.84%) Juniper