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 3 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,603 3,947 4,099
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.92% 15.14% 10.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.88% 16.91% 12.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,905 2,292 2,566
10th Percentile £298 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £376
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £498 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -0.50% -2.44% -5.09%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £708 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 238 153 335
10th Percentile £13.85 £15.13 £12.89
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.50 £24.18 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.49% +7.47% -27.29%
75th Percentile £35.30 £45.00 £57.33
90th Percentile £69.31 £68.64 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £18.87 £25.43 £21.82
% change year-on-year -25.80% +16.54% -27.27%

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 28,984 23,348 33,451
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.65% 89.57% 87.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,549 14,241 22,377
10th Percentile £306 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £640 £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 1,798 747 1,965
10th Percentile £15.06 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £16.74
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -1.41% +1.43%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £61.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% +8.53%

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 3 February 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 3 February 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 3 February 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 -3 2,080 £520 -2.21% 1,098
North of England -3 716 £450 -5.26% 629
South East -2 642 £475 -5.00% 889
Midlands -2 514 £455 +6.25% 485
North West -3 377 £430 -6.52% 363
West Midlands 0 364 £492 +12.46% 313
South West -3 297 £525 +10.53% 362
Yorkshire -5 285 £482 -3.60% 203
East of England -4 214 £475 +1.82% 271
East Midlands -3 151 £402 +4.42% 172
North East -4 62 £450 -15.29% 71
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
1 193 (4.19%) Confluence
2 157 (3.41%) SharePoint
3 108 (2.35%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.39%) SAS
5 57 (1.24%) Apache Spark
6 54 (1.17%) Apache
7 36 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.63%) Skype for Business
9 26 (0.56%) CMS
10 12 (0.26%) WebLogic
11 10 (0.22%) JBoss
11 10 (0.22%) nginx
12 9 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 7 (0.15%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.15%) Camunda
14 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
14 7 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
15 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
Applications
1 298 (6.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 202 (4.39%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (2.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.48%) MS Visio
5 62 (1.35%) Microsoft Project
6 19 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Trello
12 4 (0.087%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.087%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.065%) InVision
13 3 (0.065%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.065%) Notion
13 3 (0.065%) ProjectWise
13 3 (0.065%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.043%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 80 (1.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.41%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.37%) SAP EWM
6 16 (0.35%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.35%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
8 14 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
8 14 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
8 14 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 13 (0.28%) SAP WM
10 12 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
11 11 (0.24%) SAP HR
12 10 (0.22%) NEC Housing
12 10 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
13 9 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
13 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,017 (22.09%) Azure
2 714 (15.51%) AWS
3 366 (7.95%) GCP
4 327 (7.10%) Power Platform
5 316 (6.87%) Microsoft 365
6 226 (4.91%) GitHub
7 212 (4.61%) Azure DevOps
8 149 (3.24%) Serverless
9 135 (2.93%) Entra ID
10 129 (2.80%) SaaS
11 108 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
12 76 (1.65%) Amazon S3
13 74 (1.61%) AWS Lambda
13 74 (1.61%) Snowflake
14 72 (1.56%) PaaS
15 69 (1.50%) OpenShift
15 69 (1.50%) Power Automate
16 66 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
17 65 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
18 59 (1.28%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 164 (3.56%) Firewall
2 158 (3.43%) DNS
3 106 (2.30%) TCP/IP
4 105 (2.28%) Network Security
5 100 (2.17%) VPN
6 87 (1.89%) DHCP
7 70 (1.52%) WAN
8 52 (1.13%) LAN
9 40 (0.87%) VLAN
10 35 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
11 31 (0.67%) BGP
12 29 (0.63%) Skype
12 29 (0.63%) VoIP
13 20 (0.43%) SAN
13 20 (0.43%) Wireless
13 20 (0.43%) Wireshark
14 19 (0.41%) HTTP
14 19 (0.41%) Internet
14 19 (0.41%) SSL
15 18 (0.39%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 255 (5.54%) Power BI
2 142 (3.08%) Relational Database
3 139 (3.02%) SQL Server
4 121 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
5 119 (2.59%) Data Warehouse
6 94 (2.04%) NoSQL
7 83 (1.80%) MongoDB
8 67 (1.46%) Tableau
9 66 (1.43%) Oracle Database
10 65 (1.41%) Metadata
11 64 (1.39%) MySQL
12 48 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
13 45 (0.98%) Big Data
14 42 (0.91%) Data Lake
15 39 (0.85%) DynamoDB
16 38 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
17 37 (0.80%) Pentaho
18 34 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
19 31 (0.67%) RDBMS
19 31 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 440 (9.56%) JIRA
2 322 (7.00%) Git
3 246 (5.34%) Jenkins
4 157 (3.41%) GitLab
5 74 (1.61%) Selenium
6 56 (1.22%) JUnit
7 37 (0.80%) Postman
8 32 (0.70%) Bitbucket
9 31 (0.67%) Cucumber
10 30 (0.65%) Maven
11 25 (0.54%) SonarQube
12 24 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
13 20 (0.43%) REST Assured
14 19 (0.41%) Cypress.io
15 17 (0.37%) JMeter
15 17 (0.37%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.33%) CircleCI
17 14 (0.30%) Mockito
18 13 (0.28%) Gradle
19 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
General
1 2,534 (55.05%) Social Skills
2 1,673 (36.35%) Analytical Skills
3 1,049 (22.79%) Finance
4 429 (9.32%) Public Sector
5 384 (8.34%) Banking
6 185 (4.02%) Organisational Skills
7 143 (3.11%) Legal
8 139 (3.02%) Documentation Skills
9 123 (2.67%) Influencing Skills
10 119 (2.59%) Presentation Skills
11 111 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 110 (2.39%) Retail
13 98 (2.13%) Telecoms
14 96 (2.09%) Front Office
15 92 (2.00%) Marketing
16 76 (1.65%) Investment Banking
17 71 (1.54%) Manufacturing
18 57 (1.24%) Military
19 43 (0.93%) Law
20 39 (0.85%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 670 (14.56%) Developer
2 668 (14.51%) Analyst
3 397 (8.62%) Senior
4 295 (6.41%) Architect
5 281 (6.10%) Lead
6 267 (5.80%) Business Analyst
7 247 (5.37%) Consultant
8 177 (3.85%) Project Manager
9 147 (3.19%) Data Engineer
10 143 (3.11%) Support Engineer
11 119 (2.59%) IT Support
12 106 (2.30%) Senior Developer
13 96 (2.09%) Java Developer
14 87 (1.89%) Software Engineer
15 86 (1.87%) Support Analyst
16 85 (1.85%) Data Analyst
17 82 (1.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 78 (1.69%) Solutions Architect
19 77 (1.67%) IT Analyst
20 75 (1.63%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (7.06%) REST
2 179 (3.89%) RESTful
3 173 (3.76%) SOAP
4 165 (3.58%) .NET
5 142 (3.08%) React
6 139 (3.02%) Kafka
7 138 (3.00%) Node.js
8 134 (2.91%) Spring
9 124 (2.69%) HTML
10 109 (2.37%) AngularJS
11 107 (2.32%) CSS
12 101 (2.19%) Spring Boot
13 87 (1.89%) JSON
14 84 (1.82%) XML
15 79 (1.72%) LDAP
15 79 (1.72%) Middleware
16 68 (1.48%) Oracle Fusion
17 64 (1.39%) OAuth
18 59 (1.28%) Web Services
19 54 (1.17%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 236 (5.13%) Product Ownership
2 192 (4.17%) Cloud Native
3 177 (3.85%) Management Information System
4 171 (3.71%) Onboarding
5 127 (2.76%) Analytical Mindset
6 105 (2.28%) Data Structures
7 104 (2.26%) Enterprise Software
8 99 (2.15%) Data Centre
9 94 (2.04%) Self-Motivation
10 91 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
11 88 (1.91%) Security Posture
12 72 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
13 70 (1.52%) Algorithms
14 68 (1.48%) Virtual Team
15 64 (1.39%) Mobile App
16 61 (1.33%) CMDB
17 60 (1.30%) Distributed Systems
18 56 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
19 50 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 48 (1.04%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 468 (10.17%) Windows
2 314 (6.82%) Linux
3 105 (2.28%) Windows 10
4 94 (2.04%) Unix
5 87 (1.89%) Windows Server
6 53 (1.15%) Apple iOS
7 52 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 49 (1.06%) Android
9 42 (0.91%) Mac OS
10 23 (0.50%) VMS
11 18 (0.39%) CentOS
12 14 (0.30%) Ubuntu
13 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
15 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.087%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.065%) Debian
17 3 (0.065%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,385 (30.09%) Agile
2 851 (18.49%) CI/CD
3 746 (16.21%) DevOps
4 692 (15.03%) Stakeholder Management
5 660 (14.34%) Continuous Improvement
6 513 (11.14%) Analytics
7 454 (9.86%) Migration
8 444 (9.65%) Decision-Making
9 428 (9.30%) Project Management
10 409 (8.89%) Test Automation
11 401 (8.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 396 (8.60%) AI
13 382 (8.30%) Scrum
14 370 (8.04%) Data Modelling
15 341 (7.41%) Computer Science
16 339 (7.36%) Business Intelligence
16 339 (7.36%) ITIL
17 337 (7.32%) Containerisation
18 335 (7.28%) Validation
19 320 (6.95%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 923 (20.05%) Python
2 811 (17.62%) SQL
3 424 (9.21%) Java
4 315 (6.84%) PowerShell
5 272 (5.91%) JavaScript
6 203 (4.41%) C#
7 173 (3.76%) TypeScript
8 132 (2.87%) Bash
9 64 (1.39%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.28%) Go
11 58 (1.26%) C++
12 56 (1.22%) Shell Script
13 40 (0.87%) Perl
13 40 (0.87%) Scala
13 40 (0.87%) VBA
14 30 (0.65%) R
14 30 (0.65%) Ruby
15 29 (0.63%) Apex Code
15 29 (0.63%) T-SQL
16 27 (0.59%) C
Qualifications
1 980 (21.29%) Security Cleared
2 702 (15.25%) SC Cleared
3 633 (13.75%) Degree
4 249 (5.41%) Computer Science Degree
5 168 (3.65%) DV Cleared
6 94 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
7 91 (1.98%) Microsoft Certification
7 91 (1.98%) PMI Certification
8 90 (1.96%) CISSP
8 90 (1.96%) PMP
9 87 (1.89%) Master's Degree
10 80 (1.74%) Azure Certification
11 59 (1.28%) Cisco Certification
12 51 (1.11%) AWS Certification
12 51 (1.11%) CISM
13 39 (0.85%) A+ Certification
14 37 (0.80%) CCNP
15 30 (0.65%) CCNA
15 30 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
16 27 (0.59%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 308 (6.69%) QA
2 269 (5.84%) Data Quality
3 160 (3.48%) GDPR
4 90 (1.96%) Accessibility
5 80 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 79 (1.72%) NIST
7 71 (1.54%) PMO
8 46 (1.00%) SLA
9 41 (0.89%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.67%) GRC
11 30 (0.65%) PSD2
12 22 (0.48%) ISO 20022
12 22 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 21 (0.46%) WCAG
14 17 (0.37%) SEPA
15 16 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
15 16 (0.35%) EU AI Act
15 16 (0.35%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 14 (0.30%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 441 (9.58%) Docker
2 350 (7.60%) Active Directory
3 106 (2.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.89%) Hyper-V
5 31 (0.67%) vSphere
6 23 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
7 21 (0.46%) VMware NSX
8 19 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
9 16 (0.35%) Firmware
10 11 (0.24%) RACF
11 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.20%) ACF2
13 8 (0.17%) HDFS
14 6 (0.13%) Squid
15 5 (0.11%) KVM
15 5 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
16 4 (0.087%) vCloud
17 3 (0.065%) ISA Server
17 3 (0.065%) NFS
17 3 (0.065%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 457 (9.93%) Kubernetes
2 257 (5.58%) Terraform
3 171 (3.71%) Ansible
4 100 (2.17%) Grafana
5 98 (2.13%) Microsoft Intune
6 88 (1.91%) SCCM
7 81 (1.76%) Prometheus
8 39 (0.85%) Puppet
9 37 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
10 34 (0.74%) Kibana
11 25 (0.54%) Argo
12 24 (0.52%) Nessus
13 23 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 18 (0.39%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.37%) Control-M
16 16 (0.35%) IBM Guardium
16 16 (0.35%) Red Hat Satellite
16 16 (0.35%) SCOM
17 15 (0.33%) FortiGate
17 15 (0.33%) vRealize
Vendors
1 914 (19.86%) Microsoft
2 330 (7.17%) Oracle
3 216 (4.69%) SAP
4 198 (4.30%) ServiceNow
5 184 (4.00%) VMware
6 158 (3.43%) Google
7 133 (2.89%) Databricks
7 133 (2.89%) Splunk
8 121 (2.63%) Salesforce
9 100 (2.17%) Cisco
10 79 (1.72%) CyberArk
11 70 (1.52%) Red Hat
12 67 (1.46%) BeyondTrust
13 50 (1.09%) IBM
14 45 (0.98%) Talend
14 45 (0.98%) Workday
15 44 (0.96%) Palo Alto
16 39 (0.85%) Citrix
17 38 (0.83%) Adobe
17 38 (0.83%) MuleSoft