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

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,690 3,949 4,112
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.96% 15.95% 10.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.96% 17.61% 12.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,936 2,475 2,545
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% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £590 £616 £630
90th Percentile £713 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £481 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.75% - -6.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 252 166 365
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.99 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.00 £25.00 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +35.14% -54.32%
75th Percentile £41.88 £47.25 £43.75
90th Percentile £71.95 £75.00 £74.50
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £26.31 £18.00
% change year-on-year -23.98% +46.17% -48.57%

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 31,340 22,420 33,107
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.60% 90.56% 86.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,068 14,466 21,877
10th Percentile £313 £308 £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 1,932 799 2,164
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.26 £13.02
25th Percentile £18.84 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £34.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +6.15% -8.84%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.53
90th Percentile £74.26 £77.25 £71.83
UK median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -8.89% - -7.14%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -5 2,042 £513 -2.38% 850
North of England -3 765 £450 -8.07% 592
South East -2 669 £492 -1.60% 866
Midlands -1 529 £450 +3.45% 430
West Midlands 0 388 £475 +4.86% 251
North West -2 381 £425 -10.53% 313
Yorkshire -4 334 £475 -5.00% 208
South West -2 311 £543 +3.33% 311
East of England -3 241 £452 +0.44% 324
East Midlands -4 142 £402 +7.20% 179
North East -2 59 £438 -3.21% 82
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 (4.35%) Confluence
2 152 (3.24%) SharePoint
3 106 (2.26%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.36%) Apache Spark
5 59 (1.26%) SAS
6 55 (1.17%) Apache
7 35 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
8 28 (0.60%) CMS
9 20 (0.43%) WebLogic
10 17 (0.36%) Skype for Business
11 14 (0.30%) nginx
12 11 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 10 (0.21%) JBoss
14 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
15 7 (0.15%) Camunda
16 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
16 6 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
17 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 293 (6.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 214 (4.56%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (2.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.51%) MS Visio
5 66 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
6 22 (0.47%) Chatbot
7 19 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Trello
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.085%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.085%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.064%) InVision
13 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.064%) Maya
13 3 (0.064%) Notion
13 3 (0.064%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 78 (1.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.47%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.32%) Workday HCM
6 14 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
7 13 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
8 12 (0.26%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
8 12 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 11 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
11 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
12 8 (0.17%) SAP MDG
12 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,008 (21.49%) Azure
2 729 (15.54%) AWS
3 343 (7.31%) GCP
4 334 (7.12%) Power Platform
5 307 (6.55%) Microsoft 365
6 233 (4.97%) GitHub
7 224 (4.78%) Azure DevOps
8 162 (3.45%) Serverless
9 148 (3.16%) Entra ID
10 122 (2.60%) SaaS
11 114 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
12 90 (1.92%) Amazon S3
13 88 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
14 87 (1.86%) OpenShift
15 73 (1.56%) Snowflake
16 72 (1.54%) Azure Data Factory
17 64 (1.36%) PaaS
18 55 (1.17%) Dynamics 365
19 53 (1.13%) Azure AKS
19 53 (1.13%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 175 (3.73%) Firewall
2 170 (3.62%) DNS
3 119 (2.54%) TCP/IP
4 100 (2.13%) Network Security
5 97 (2.07%) VPN
6 95 (2.03%) DHCP
7 88 (1.88%) WAN
8 70 (1.49%) LAN
9 54 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
10 43 (0.92%) BGP
11 41 (0.87%) VLAN
12 32 (0.68%) SAN
13 31 (0.66%) OSPF
14 29 (0.62%) VoIP
15 21 (0.45%) SD-WAN
16 20 (0.43%) Internet
16 20 (0.43%) Wireless
17 17 (0.36%) HTTP
17 17 (0.36%) MPLS
17 17 (0.36%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 268 (5.71%) Power BI
2 164 (3.50%) SQL Server
3 136 (2.90%) PostgreSQL
4 133 (2.84%) Relational Database
5 131 (2.79%) Data Warehouse
6 100 (2.13%) MongoDB
7 93 (1.98%) NoSQL
8 73 (1.56%) Metadata
9 68 (1.45%) Tableau
10 65 (1.39%) Oracle Database
11 59 (1.26%) MySQL
12 58 (1.24%) Data Lake
13 53 (1.13%) Oracle Reports
14 49 (1.04%) Big Data
15 45 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 39 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
17 35 (0.75%) DynamoDB
18 34 (0.72%) Pentaho
19 30 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
19 30 (0.64%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 462 (9.85%) JIRA
2 331 (7.06%) Git
3 248 (5.29%) Jenkins
4 157 (3.35%) GitLab
5 79 (1.68%) Selenium
6 54 (1.15%) JUnit
7 40 (0.85%) Postman
8 36 (0.77%) Bitbucket
9 35 (0.75%) Cucumber
10 25 (0.53%) Maven
10 25 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
11 22 (0.47%) Cypress.io
11 22 (0.47%) REST Assured
12 18 (0.38%) JMeter
12 18 (0.38%) Mockito
12 18 (0.38%) SonarQube
13 15 (0.32%) IntelliJ
13 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
14 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
15 13 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,544 (54.24%) Social Skills
2 1,737 (37.04%) Analytical Skills
3 1,060 (22.60%) Finance
4 453 (9.66%) Public Sector
5 377 (8.04%) Banking
6 184 (3.92%) Organisational Skills
7 157 (3.35%) Documentation Skills
8 156 (3.33%) Legal
9 135 (2.88%) Retail
10 126 (2.69%) Influencing Skills
11 121 (2.58%) Presentation Skills
12 112 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 92 (1.96%) Front Office
14 87 (1.86%) Marketing
15 78 (1.66%) Telecoms
16 67 (1.43%) Investment Banking
17 61 (1.30%) Military
18 57 (1.22%) Manufacturing
19 45 (0.96%) Law
20 40 (0.85%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 676 (14.41%) Analyst
2 632 (13.48%) Developer
3 404 (8.61%) Senior
4 322 (6.87%) Architect
5 307 (6.55%) Lead
6 272 (5.80%) Business Analyst
7 232 (4.95%) Consultant
8 190 (4.05%) Project Manager
9 184 (3.92%) Data Engineer
10 125 (2.67%) Support Engineer
11 113 (2.41%) IT Support
12 93 (1.98%) Java Developer
13 90 (1.92%) Software Engineer
14 88 (1.88%) Data Analyst
14 88 (1.88%) Senior Developer
15 83 (1.77%) Solutions Architect
16 82 (1.75%) Administrator
16 82 (1.75%) Python Developer
17 76 (1.62%) Support Analyst
18 74 (1.58%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 323 (6.89%) REST
2 169 (3.60%) SOAP
3 158 (3.37%) RESTful
4 152 (3.24%) Kafka
5 150 (3.20%) .NET
6 140 (2.99%) React
6 140 (2.99%) Spring
7 135 (2.88%) Node.js
8 110 (2.35%) HTML
9 109 (2.32%) CSS
10 107 (2.28%) AngularJS
11 103 (2.20%) JSON
12 94 (2.00%) Spring Boot
13 92 (1.96%) XML
14 87 (1.86%) LDAP
15 84 (1.79%) Middleware
16 69 (1.47%) OAuth
17 68 (1.45%) Web Services
18 66 (1.41%) Oracle Fusion
19 54 (1.15%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 225 (4.80%) Product Ownership
2 188 (4.01%) Cloud Native
3 184 (3.92%) Onboarding
4 152 (3.24%) Management Information System
5 126 (2.69%) Data Centre
6 125 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
7 103 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
8 102 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
9 97 (2.07%) Data Structures
10 93 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
11 79 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
12 75 (1.60%) Algorithms
13 73 (1.56%) Security Posture
14 71 (1.51%) Virtual Team
15 70 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
16 64 (1.36%) Mobile App
17 62 (1.32%) Hybrid Cloud
18 59 (1.26%) CMDB
19 51 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 49 (1.04%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 501 (10.68%) Windows
2 290 (6.18%) Linux
3 98 (2.09%) Windows 10
4 94 (2.00%) Unix
5 85 (1.81%) Windows Server
6 68 (1.45%) Android
7 63 (1.34%) Apple iOS
8 57 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 47 (1.00%) Mac OS
10 21 (0.45%) VMS
11 15 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 14 (0.30%) CentOS
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
15 5 (0.11%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.11%) zOS
16 4 (0.085%) Debian
16 4 (0.085%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,375 (29.32%) Agile
2 876 (18.68%) CI/CD
3 771 (16.44%) DevOps
4 726 (15.48%) Stakeholder Management
5 719 (15.33%) Continuous Improvement
6 547 (11.66%) Analytics
7 485 (10.34%) Migration
8 483 (10.30%) Decision-Making
9 443 (9.45%) AI
10 438 (9.34%) Project Management
11 414 (8.83%) Test Automation
12 408 (8.70%) Data Modelling
12 408 (8.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 376 (8.02%) Scrum
14 358 (7.63%) Validation
15 357 (7.61%) Business Intelligence
16 341 (7.27%) ITIL
17 339 (7.23%) Customer Service
18 336 (7.16%) Computer Science
19 334 (7.12%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 927 (19.77%) Python
2 840 (17.91%) SQL
3 414 (8.83%) Java
4 312 (6.65%) PowerShell
5 259 (5.52%) JavaScript
6 188 (4.01%) C#
7 176 (3.75%) TypeScript
8 136 (2.90%) Bash
9 72 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.19%) C++
11 50 (1.07%) Shell Script
12 48 (1.02%) Go
13 37 (0.79%) Perl
14 36 (0.77%) Scala
14 36 (0.77%) T-SQL
15 35 (0.75%) Bicep
16 33 (0.70%) VBA
17 30 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 30 (0.64%) Ruby
18 29 (0.62%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,058 (22.56%) Security Cleared
2 738 (15.74%) SC Cleared
3 615 (13.11%) Degree
4 230 (4.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 203 (4.33%) DV Cleared
6 111 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
7 95 (2.03%) Microsoft Certification
7 95 (2.03%) PMP
8 90 (1.92%) CISSP
8 90 (1.92%) PMI Certification
9 89 (1.90%) Master's Degree
10 88 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
11 71 (1.51%) Azure Certification
12 58 (1.24%) CISM
13 46 (0.98%) AWS Certification
14 41 (0.87%) CCNA
14 41 (0.87%) CCNP
15 34 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
16 32 (0.68%) A+ Certification
17 26 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 303 (6.46%) QA
2 283 (6.03%) Data Quality
3 151 (3.22%) GDPR
4 87 (1.86%) Accessibility
5 86 (1.83%) NIST
6 81 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 78 (1.66%) PMO
8 57 (1.22%) SLA
9 35 (0.75%) PCI DSS
10 33 (0.70%) GRC
11 23 (0.49%) PSD2
12 22 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 19 (0.41%) WCAG
15 16 (0.34%) EU AI Act
15 16 (0.34%) HIPAA
15 16 (0.34%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
17 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 12 (0.26%) NCSC
System Software
1 433 (9.23%) Docker
2 352 (7.51%) Active Directory
3 98 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.77%) vSphere
5 29 (0.62%) Hyper-V
6 27 (0.58%) VMware NSX
7 24 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.34%) Firmware
8 16 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.23%) RACF
10 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 8 (0.17%) Squid
13 7 (0.15%) vCloud
13 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.085%) HDFS
15 4 (0.085%) Snort
16 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 466 (9.94%) Kubernetes
2 265 (5.65%) Terraform
3 170 (3.62%) Ansible
4 111 (2.37%) Grafana
4 111 (2.37%) Microsoft Intune
5 89 (1.90%) Prometheus
6 83 (1.77%) SCCM
7 40 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
8 34 (0.72%) Puppet
9 32 (0.68%) Kibana
10 31 (0.66%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.64%) Argo
12 28 (0.60%) Nessus
12 28 (0.60%) vCenter Server
13 25 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 25 (0.53%) Control-M
14 23 (0.49%) IBM Guardium
15 14 (0.30%) Red Hat Satellite
15 14 (0.30%) vRealize
16 11 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 884 (18.85%) Microsoft
2 320 (6.82%) Oracle
3 208 (4.43%) SAP
4 204 (4.35%) ServiceNow
5 185 (3.94%) VMware
6 163 (3.48%) Google
7 139 (2.96%) Databricks
8 136 (2.90%) Splunk
9 113 (2.41%) Cisco
10 103 (2.20%) Salesforce
11 80 (1.71%) Red Hat
12 74 (1.58%) CyberArk
13 62 (1.32%) BeyondTrust
14 55 (1.17%) Citrix
15 54 (1.15%) Workday
16 49 (1.04%) IBM
16 49 (1.04%) Talend
17 45 (0.96%) F5
17 45 (0.96%) Informatica
18 43 (0.92%) Dell