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

6 months to
26 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 4,754 4,031 4,020
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.44% 15.65% 10.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.40% 17.35% 12.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,990 2,444 2,511
10th Percentile £298 £257 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -1.96% -5.56%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £635
90th Percentile £706 £700 £734
UK median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 256 150 341
10th Percentile £13.90 £15.00 £12.13
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.99 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.00 £26.75 £21.01
Median % change year-on-year -28.97% +27.32% -41.64%
75th Percentile £41.88 £50.75 £48.40
90th Percentile £73.13 £80.75 £83.41
UK median hourly rate £19.31 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -28.80% +39.10% -37.10%

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 30,862 23,227 32,534
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.27% 90.15% 87.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,776 14,571 21,606
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% - -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 1,913 757 2,031
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £28.00 £35.00 £34.21
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +2.31% -2.26%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £59.94
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.35 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £26.61 £32.66 £33.07
% change year-on-year -18.53% -1.24% -5.53%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -2 2,079 £513 -2.38% 601
North of England -2 769 £450 -5.26% 530
South East -2 672 £483 -3.50% 576
Midlands -1 540 £450 +5.88% 358
West Midlands 0 391 £482 +7.38% 215
North West -1 385 £420 -9.68% 304
Yorkshire -4 331 £475 -5.00% 168
South West -1 319 £530 +6.00% 244
East of England -3 242 £475 +5.56% 229
East Midlands -3 150 £402 +9.54% 143
North East -3 61 £450 -6.40% 70
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
1 210 (4.42%) Confluence
2 150 (3.16%) SharePoint
3 102 (2.15%) Microsoft Exchange
4 65 (1.37%) Apache Spark
5 64 (1.35%) SAS
6 54 (1.14%) Apache
7 38 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
8 26 (0.55%) CMS
9 22 (0.46%) Skype for Business
10 20 (0.42%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.29%) nginx
12 10 (0.21%) JBoss
13 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
14 7 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
15 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 294 (6.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 218 (4.59%) Microsoft Office
3 118 (2.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.54%) MS Visio
5 69 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
6 21 (0.44%) Chatbot
7 18 (0.38%) 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 (0.084%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.084%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.063%) InVision
13 3 (0.063%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.063%) Notion
13 3 (0.063%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.042%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.042%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 77 (1.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.32%) NetSuite
6 14 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
7 13 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.25%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
8 12 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
9 11 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
11 9 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
11 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.19%) SAP EWM
12 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,024 (21.54%) Azure
2 739 (15.54%) AWS
3 354 (7.45%) GCP
4 334 (7.03%) Power Platform
5 311 (6.54%) Microsoft 365
6 229 (4.82%) GitHub
7 217 (4.56%) Azure DevOps
8 156 (3.28%) Serverless
9 147 (3.09%) Entra ID
10 125 (2.63%) SaaS
11 110 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
12 83 (1.75%) Amazon S3
12 83 (1.75%) OpenShift
13 81 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
14 74 (1.56%) Azure Data Factory
15 72 (1.51%) Snowflake
16 66 (1.39%) PaaS
17 61 (1.28%) Dynamics 365
18 57 (1.20%) Power Automate
19 54 (1.14%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 179 (3.77%) Firewall
2 178 (3.74%) DNS
3 127 (2.67%) TCP/IP
4 103 (2.17%) Network Security
5 100 (2.10%) DHCP
5 100 (2.10%) VPN
6 83 (1.75%) WAN
7 66 (1.39%) LAN
8 51 (1.07%) VLAN
9 48 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
10 42 (0.88%) BGP
11 30 (0.63%) OSPF
12 29 (0.61%) SAN
13 28 (0.59%) VoIP
14 22 (0.46%) Skype
15 21 (0.44%) Wireless
16 18 (0.38%) Internet
17 17 (0.36%) SD-WAN
17 17 (0.36%) SSL
18 16 (0.34%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 268 (5.64%) Power BI
2 158 (3.32%) SQL Server
3 134 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
3 134 (2.82%) Relational Database
4 128 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
5 101 (2.12%) MongoDB
6 94 (1.98%) NoSQL
7 74 (1.56%) Metadata
8 65 (1.37%) Oracle Database
8 65 (1.37%) Tableau
9 63 (1.33%) MySQL
10 55 (1.16%) Data Lake
11 52 (1.09%) Oracle Reports
12 50 (1.05%) Big Data
13 47 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 37 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
15 35 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
16 33 (0.69%) DynamoDB
16 33 (0.69%) Hadoop
16 33 (0.69%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 461 (9.70%) JIRA
2 325 (6.84%) Git
3 247 (5.20%) Jenkins
4 155 (3.26%) GitLab
5 75 (1.58%) Selenium
6 53 (1.11%) JUnit
7 40 (0.84%) Postman
8 35 (0.74%) Bitbucket
9 34 (0.72%) Cucumber
10 24 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
11 23 (0.48%) Maven
12 21 (0.44%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.44%) REST Assured
13 20 (0.42%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.36%) JMeter
14 17 (0.36%) Mockito
14 17 (0.36%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
16 14 (0.29%) IntelliJ
17 12 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,600 (54.69%) Social Skills
2 1,738 (36.56%) Analytical Skills
3 1,072 (22.55%) Finance
4 448 (9.42%) Public Sector
5 378 (7.95%) Banking
6 184 (3.87%) Organisational Skills
7 155 (3.26%) Documentation Skills
8 153 (3.22%) Legal
9 129 (2.71%) Presentation Skills
10 128 (2.69%) Retail
11 125 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
12 122 (2.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 97 (2.04%) Front Office
14 90 (1.89%) Marketing
15 82 (1.72%) Telecoms
16 71 (1.49%) Investment Banking
17 65 (1.37%) Manufacturing
18 62 (1.30%) Military
19 45 (0.95%) Law
20 44 (0.93%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 695 (14.62%) Analyst
2 655 (13.78%) Developer
3 413 (8.69%) Senior
4 322 (6.77%) Architect
5 302 (6.35%) Lead
6 278 (5.85%) Business Analyst
7 242 (5.09%) Consultant
8 186 (3.91%) Data Engineer
9 183 (3.85%) Project Manager
10 140 (2.94%) Support Engineer
11 125 (2.63%) IT Support
12 99 (2.08%) Java Developer
13 96 (2.02%) Software Engineer
14 95 (2.00%) Senior Developer
15 92 (1.94%) Data Analyst
16 85 (1.79%) Python Developer
17 82 (1.72%) Administrator
17 82 (1.72%) Solutions Architect
17 82 (1.72%) Support Analyst
18 81 (1.70%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 326 (6.86%) REST
2 173 (3.64%) SOAP
3 164 (3.45%) RESTful
4 156 (3.28%) Kafka
5 155 (3.26%) .NET
6 147 (3.09%) React
7 139 (2.92%) Spring
8 133 (2.80%) Node.js
9 121 (2.55%) HTML
10 115 (2.42%) CSS
11 108 (2.27%) AngularJS
12 100 (2.10%) JSON
13 99 (2.08%) Spring Boot
14 91 (1.91%) XML
15 86 (1.81%) Middleware
16 84 (1.77%) LDAP
17 66 (1.39%) Oracle Fusion
18 65 (1.37%) OAuth
19 63 (1.33%) Web Services
20 53 (1.11%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 226 (4.75%) Product Ownership
2 190 (4.00%) Cloud Native
3 174 (3.66%) Onboarding
4 161 (3.39%) Management Information System
5 131 (2.76%) Analytical Mindset
6 116 (2.44%) Data Centre
7 109 (2.29%) Data Structures
8 101 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
9 97 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
9 97 (2.04%) Self-Motivation
10 82 (1.72%) Algorithms
11 78 (1.64%) Security Posture
12 75 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
13 68 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
13 68 (1.43%) Virtual Team
14 65 (1.37%) Hybrid Cloud
15 64 (1.35%) Mobile App
16 58 (1.22%) CMDB
17 54 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 50 (1.05%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 499 (10.50%) Windows
2 318 (6.69%) Linux
3 99 (2.08%) Windows 10
4 98 (2.06%) Unix
5 82 (1.72%) Windows Server
6 67 (1.41%) Android
7 64 (1.35%) Apple iOS
8 61 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 46 (0.97%) Mac OS
10 22 (0.46%) VMS
11 17 (0.36%) CentOS
12 15 (0.32%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.084%) Debian
15 4 (0.084%) Windows 8
15 4 (0.084%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.084%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,391 (29.26%) Agile
2 876 (18.43%) CI/CD
3 770 (16.20%) DevOps
4 709 (14.91%) Stakeholder Management
5 706 (14.85%) Continuous Improvement
6 542 (11.40%) Analytics
7 490 (10.31%) Decision-Making
8 483 (10.16%) Migration
9 428 (9.00%) AI
9 428 (9.00%) Project Management
10 414 (8.71%) Test Automation
11 406 (8.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 399 (8.39%) Data Modelling
13 370 (7.78%) Scrum
14 359 (7.55%) Business Intelligence
15 355 (7.47%) Validation
16 345 (7.26%) Computer Science
17 343 (7.21%) ITIL
18 338 (7.11%) Customer Service
19 337 (7.09%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 947 (19.92%) Python
2 836 (17.59%) SQL
3 431 (9.07%) Java
4 312 (6.56%) PowerShell
5 274 (5.76%) JavaScript
6 198 (4.16%) C#
7 174 (3.66%) TypeScript
8 139 (2.92%) Bash
9 70 (1.47%) PL/SQL
10 60 (1.26%) C++
11 52 (1.09%) Go
12 50 (1.05%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.82%) Perl
14 38 (0.80%) Scala
15 36 (0.76%) T-SQL
16 35 (0.74%) VBA
17 31 (0.65%) Ruby
18 30 (0.63%) Apex Code
18 30 (0.63%) Bicep
18 30 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,059 (22.28%) Security Cleared
2 745 (15.67%) SC Cleared
3 644 (13.55%) Degree
4 241 (5.07%) Computer Science Degree
5 197 (4.14%) DV Cleared
6 110 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
7 104 (2.19%) Microsoft Certification
8 92 (1.94%) PMP
9 90 (1.89%) Master's Degree
10 89 (1.87%) CISSP
10 89 (1.87%) PMI Certification
11 79 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
12 75 (1.58%) Azure Certification
13 56 (1.18%) CISM
14 46 (0.97%) AWS Certification
15 41 (0.86%) CCNP
16 40 (0.84%) A+ Certification
17 38 (0.80%) CCNA
18 32 (0.67%) Network+ Certification
19 30 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 304 (6.39%) QA
2 284 (5.97%) Data Quality
3 150 (3.16%) GDPR
4 92 (1.94%) Accessibility
5 83 (1.75%) NIST
6 80 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 79 (1.66%) PMO
8 49 (1.03%) SLA
9 36 (0.76%) PCI DSS
10 30 (0.63%) GRC
11 25 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.48%) PSD2
13 21 (0.44%) WCAG
14 20 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
15 17 (0.36%) ISO 20022
16 16 (0.34%) EU AI Act
17 15 (0.32%) HIPAA
17 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
18 13 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 12 (0.25%) SEPA
System Software
1 433 (9.11%) Docker
2 354 (7.45%) Active Directory
3 106 (2.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.80%) Hyper-V
5 34 (0.72%) vSphere
6 27 (0.57%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
9 16 (0.34%) Firmware
10 11 (0.23%) RACF
11 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.19%) ACF2
13 8 (0.17%) Squid
14 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
15 6 (0.13%) HDFS
15 6 (0.13%) vCloud
16 4 (0.084%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.084%) Snort
17 3 (0.063%) ISA Server
17 3 (0.063%) NFS
Systems Management
1 471 (9.91%) Kubernetes
2 263 (5.53%) Terraform
3 176 (3.70%) Ansible
4 114 (2.40%) Grafana
5 108 (2.27%) Microsoft Intune
6 90 (1.89%) Prometheus
7 86 (1.81%) SCCM
8 41 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.78%) Puppet
10 35 (0.74%) Kibana
11 31 (0.65%) Nessus
12 30 (0.63%) Argo
13 28 (0.59%) FortiGate
14 25 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 25 (0.53%) vCenter Server
15 23 (0.48%) Control-M
16 22 (0.46%) IBM Guardium
17 18 (0.38%) Red Hat Satellite
18 12 (0.25%) vRealize
19 11 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 915 (19.25%) Microsoft
2 325 (6.84%) Oracle
3 215 (4.52%) SAP
4 206 (4.33%) ServiceNow
5 197 (4.14%) VMware
6 161 (3.39%) Google
7 145 (3.05%) Splunk
8 144 (3.03%) Databricks
9 111 (2.33%) Cisco
10 107 (2.25%) Salesforce
11 85 (1.79%) Red Hat
12 72 (1.51%) CyberArk
13 61 (1.28%) BeyondTrust
14 54 (1.14%) Workday
15 53 (1.11%) Citrix
16 48 (1.01%) IBM
16 48 (1.01%) Talend
17 44 (0.93%) Informatica
17 44 (0.93%) Palo Alto
18 42 (0.88%) F5