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 24 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -3 +5 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,677 4,014 4,086
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.49% 16.50% 10.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.47% 18.17% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,913 2,545 2,516
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% - -7.06%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £635
90th Percentile £713 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £481 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.75% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 174 360
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.84 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.69 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.71 £24.47 £18.25
Median % change year-on-year -15.37% +34.08% -57.98%
75th Percentile £45.68 £48.56 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £77.50 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £20.71 £25.43 £17.72
% change year-on-year -18.56% +43.51% -55.70%

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 32,321 22,086 32,747
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.33% 90.81% 86.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,717 14,513 21,645
10th Percentile £313 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,977 834 2,155
10th Percentile £15.31 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.67 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.00 £33.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.06% - -12.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.70
90th Percentile £75.40 £77.41 £71.89
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year - - -9.47%

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 24 March 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 24 March 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 24 March 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 -7 2,040 £510 -2.86% 981
North of England -5 769 £450 -7.41% 648
South East -4 681 £492 -1.60% 808
Midlands -2 511 £450 +0.45% 470
North West -4 383 £425 -10.53% 359
West Midlands -2 372 £475 +2.98% 270
Yorkshire -4 339 £475 -5.00% 215
South West -2 314 £525 - 306
East of England -3 227 £452 +0.44% 280
East Midlands -2 140 £408 +3.16% 198
North East -3 56 £450 - 87
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
1 204 (4.36%) Confluence
2 150 (3.21%) SharePoint
3 104 (2.22%) Microsoft Exchange
4 65 (1.39%) Apache Spark
5 56 (1.20%) SAS
6 51 (1.09%) Apache
7 31 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.58%) CMS
9 16 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.30%) nginx
11 12 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
11 12 (0.26%) Skype for Business
12 10 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.15%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.13%) JBoss
15 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
16 5 (0.11%) ArcGIS
16 5 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 296 (6.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 210 (4.49%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (2.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
4 73 (1.56%) MS Visio
5 22 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
6 21 (0.45%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.19%) Sketch
8 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
8 8 (0.17%) Trello
9 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 4 (0.086%) Adobe Captivate
10 4 (0.086%) Maya
10 4 (0.086%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.064%) InVision
11 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
11 3 (0.064%) Notion
11 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
12 2 (0.043%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 78 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 23 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.47%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.34%) Workday HCM
6 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
9 12 (0.26%) NEC Housing
9 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.17%) SAP MDG
13 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
14 7 (0.15%) Loan IQ
Cloud Services
1 1,008 (21.55%) Azure
2 729 (15.59%) AWS
3 342 (7.31%) GCP
4 332 (7.10%) Power Platform
5 302 (6.46%) Microsoft 365
6 231 (4.94%) GitHub
7 228 (4.87%) Azure DevOps
8 158 (3.38%) Serverless
9 146 (3.12%) Entra ID
10 118 (2.52%) SaaS
11 112 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
12 91 (1.95%) Amazon S3
12 91 (1.95%) AWS Lambda
12 91 (1.95%) OpenShift
13 72 (1.54%) Azure Data Factory
14 69 (1.48%) Snowflake
15 56 (1.20%) Google Workspace
15 56 (1.20%) PaaS
16 54 (1.15%) Power Automate
17 52 (1.11%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 177 (3.78%) Firewall
2 173 (3.70%) DNS
3 115 (2.46%) TCP/IP
4 107 (2.29%) Network Security
5 97 (2.07%) VPN
6 94 (2.01%) WAN
7 89 (1.90%) DHCP
8 76 (1.62%) LAN
9 57 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
10 46 (0.98%) BGP
11 40 (0.86%) VLAN
12 37 (0.79%) SAN
13 34 (0.73%) OSPF
14 29 (0.62%) VoIP
15 25 (0.53%) SD-WAN
16 24 (0.51%) Wireless
17 21 (0.45%) Internet
18 20 (0.43%) MPLS
19 18 (0.38%) BIG-IP
20 17 (0.36%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (5.62%) Power BI
2 164 (3.51%) SQL Server
3 137 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
4 130 (2.78%) Relational Database
5 128 (2.74%) PostgreSQL
6 91 (1.95%) MongoDB
7 86 (1.84%) NoSQL
8 84 (1.80%) Metadata
9 73 (1.56%) Tableau
10 65 (1.39%) Data Lake
11 59 (1.26%) Oracle Database
12 55 (1.18%) Big Data
12 55 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
13 51 (1.09%) MySQL
14 47 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 39 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
16 31 (0.66%) DynamoDB
16 31 (0.66%) Hadoop
17 29 (0.62%) Pentaho
18 27 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 466 (9.96%) JIRA
2 321 (6.86%) Git
3 246 (5.26%) Jenkins
4 154 (3.29%) GitLab
5 77 (1.65%) Selenium
6 49 (1.05%) JUnit
7 36 (0.77%) Postman
8 33 (0.71%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
11 24 (0.51%) Cypress.io
12 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
13 22 (0.47%) Maven
14 17 (0.36%) Mockito
15 16 (0.34%) JMeter
16 15 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
16 15 (0.32%) SonarQube
16 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
18 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,530 (54.09%) Social Skills
2 1,758 (37.59%) Analytical Skills
3 1,070 (22.88%) Finance
4 469 (10.03%) Public Sector
5 376 (8.04%) Banking
6 188 (4.02%) Organisational Skills
7 163 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
8 155 (3.31%) Legal
9 142 (3.04%) Retail
10 125 (2.67%) Presentation Skills
11 116 (2.48%) Influencing Skills
12 113 (2.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (2.10%) Front Office
14 88 (1.88%) Marketing
15 73 (1.56%) Telecoms
16 70 (1.50%) Investment Banking
17 61 (1.30%) Manufacturing
18 57 (1.22%) Military
19 44 (0.94%) Law
20 38 (0.81%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 666 (14.24%) Analyst
2 596 (12.74%) Developer
3 401 (8.57%) Senior
4 339 (7.25%) Architect
5 317 (6.78%) Lead
6 271 (5.79%) Business Analyst
7 228 (4.87%) Consultant
8 194 (4.15%) Project Manager
9 191 (4.08%) Data Engineer
10 115 (2.46%) Support Engineer
11 105 (2.25%) IT Support
12 92 (1.97%) Java Developer
13 90 (1.92%) Software Engineer
14 87 (1.86%) Data Analyst
15 86 (1.84%) Solutions Architect
16 82 (1.75%) Administrator
16 82 (1.75%) Senior Developer
17 76 (1.62%) Python Developer
18 75 (1.60%) IT Analyst
19 68 (1.45%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 306 (6.54%) REST
2 156 (3.34%) SOAP
3 149 (3.19%) RESTful
4 147 (3.14%) Kafka
5 143 (3.06%) .NET
6 138 (2.95%) Spring
7 131 (2.80%) React
8 123 (2.63%) Node.js
9 104 (2.22%) AngularJS
10 99 (2.12%) CSS
11 97 (2.07%) HTML
11 97 (2.07%) Spring Boot
12 92 (1.97%) JSON
13 91 (1.95%) XML
14 89 (1.90%) LDAP
15 87 (1.86%) Middleware
16 69 (1.48%) OAuth
17 62 (1.33%) Web Services
18 60 (1.28%) Oracle Fusion
19 59 (1.26%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 234 (5.00%) Product Ownership
2 195 (4.17%) Onboarding
3 193 (4.13%) Cloud Native
4 149 (3.19%) Management Information System
5 133 (2.84%) Data Centre
6 124 (2.65%) Analytical Mindset
7 111 (2.37%) Self-Motivation
8 101 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
9 98 (2.10%) Data Structures
10 94 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
11 87 (1.86%) Distributed Systems
11 87 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
12 74 (1.58%) Virtual Team
13 71 (1.52%) Algorithms
14 68 (1.45%) Security Posture
15 65 (1.39%) Hybrid Cloud
16 63 (1.35%) Mobile App
17 56 (1.20%) CMDB
18 53 (1.13%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 51 (1.09%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 498 (10.65%) Windows
2 290 (6.20%) Linux
3 96 (2.05%) Windows 10
4 85 (1.82%) Unix
5 80 (1.71%) Windows Server
6 68 (1.45%) Android
7 61 (1.30%) Apple iOS
8 54 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 46 (0.98%) Mac OS
10 19 (0.41%) VMS
11 16 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.24%) CentOS
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 7 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.13%) zOS
16 5 (0.11%) Debian
17 4 (0.086%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.086%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,370 (29.29%) Agile
2 863 (18.45%) CI/CD
3 783 (16.74%) DevOps
4 732 (15.65%) Continuous Improvement
5 729 (15.59%) Stakeholder Management
6 554 (11.85%) Analytics
7 487 (10.41%) Migration
8 479 (10.24%) Decision-Making
9 464 (9.92%) AI
10 458 (9.79%) Project Management
11 410 (8.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 409 (8.74%) Data Modelling
13 408 (8.72%) Test Automation
14 365 (7.80%) Scrum
15 358 (7.65%) Validation
16 357 (7.63%) Business Intelligence
17 351 (7.50%) Change Management
18 350 (7.48%) ITIL
19 338 (7.23%) Customer Service
20 331 (7.08%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 922 (19.71%) Python
2 824 (17.62%) SQL
3 410 (8.77%) Java
4 320 (6.84%) PowerShell
5 246 (5.26%) JavaScript
6 185 (3.96%) C#
7 164 (3.51%) TypeScript
8 142 (3.04%) Bash
9 76 (1.62%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.26%) C++
11 47 (1.00%) Go
12 44 (0.94%) Shell Script
13 40 (0.86%) T-SQL
14 38 (0.81%) Bicep
15 35 (0.75%) Perl
16 34 (0.73%) Apex Code
17 33 (0.71%) Scala
18 32 (0.68%) C
18 32 (0.68%) Ruby
19 29 (0.62%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,082 (23.13%) Security Cleared
2 748 (15.99%) SC Cleared
3 605 (12.94%) Degree
4 224 (4.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 206 (4.40%) DV Cleared
6 118 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
7 102 (2.18%) PMP
8 95 (2.03%) Cisco Certification
9 93 (1.99%) CISSP
9 93 (1.99%) PMI Certification
10 88 (1.88%) Master's Degree
11 87 (1.86%) Microsoft Certification
12 67 (1.43%) Azure Certification
13 61 (1.30%) CISM
14 43 (0.92%) CCNA
15 42 (0.90%) CCNP
16 37 (0.79%) AWS Certification
17 35 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
18 31 (0.66%) A+ Certification
19 26 (0.56%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 311 (6.65%) QA
2 286 (6.12%) Data Quality
3 156 (3.34%) GDPR
4 91 (1.95%) Accessibility
5 88 (1.88%) PMO
6 86 (1.84%) NIST
7 84 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 58 (1.24%) SLA
9 39 (0.83%) GRC
10 33 (0.71%) PCI DSS
11 25 (0.53%) PSD2
12 24 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.45%) WCAG
15 18 (0.38%) ISO 20022
16 17 (0.36%) HIPAA
17 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
18 14 (0.30%) HL7
19 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 13 (0.28%) SEPA
System Software
1 405 (8.66%) Docker
2 347 (7.42%) Active Directory
3 99 (2.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.86%) vSphere
5 32 (0.68%) VMware NSX
6 27 (0.58%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.34%) Firmware
9 15 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.24%) RACF
11 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 9 (0.19%) Squid
12 9 (0.19%) vCloud
13 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.086%) HDFS
15 4 (0.086%) Snort
16 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 450 (9.62%) Kubernetes
2 273 (5.84%) Terraform
3 173 (3.70%) Ansible
4 117 (2.50%) Microsoft Intune
5 109 (2.33%) Grafana
6 85 (1.82%) Prometheus
7 74 (1.58%) SCCM
8 41 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
9 35 (0.75%) Argo
10 34 (0.73%) vCenter Server
11 32 (0.68%) FortiGate
12 30 (0.64%) Kibana
12 30 (0.64%) Puppet
13 24 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 22 (0.47%) Nessus
15 21 (0.45%) Control-M
16 17 (0.36%) IBM Guardium
17 14 (0.30%) vRealize
18 12 (0.26%) HP ALM
19 11 (0.24%) VxRail
Vendors
1 860 (18.39%) Microsoft
2 317 (6.78%) Oracle
3 212 (4.53%) SAP
4 198 (4.23%) ServiceNow
5 186 (3.98%) VMware
6 163 (3.49%) Google
7 146 (3.12%) Databricks
8 130 (2.78%) Splunk
9 112 (2.39%) Cisco
10 107 (2.29%) Salesforce
11 83 (1.77%) Red Hat
12 71 (1.52%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.35%) BeyondTrust
14 57 (1.22%) Citrix
15 53 (1.13%) Workday
16 50 (1.07%) IBM
17 47 (1.00%) Informatica
18 45 (0.96%) Dell
18 45 (0.96%) Talend
19 43 (0.92%) Adobe