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

6 months to
10 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 4,659 3,944 4,079
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.87% 15.26% 10.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.84% 17.01% 12.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,961 2,318 2,543
10th Percentile £280 £261 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.44% -5.09%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £703 £700 £728
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -6.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 246 148 339
10th Percentile £13.90 £15.21 £12.13
25th Percentile £15.69 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.82 £25.43 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -25.99% +18.28% -31.81%
75th Percentile £35.90 £48.19 £55.00
90th Percentile £69.44 £78.48 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £26.50 £21.01
% change year-on-year -28.30% +26.16% -31.13%

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 29,411 23,191 33,300
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.56% 89.73% 87.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,824 14,242 22,230
10th Percentile £306 £310 £300
25th Percentile £411 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £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 1,845 729 1,976
10th Percentile £15.13 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.00 £21.05 £16.30
Median hourly rate £25.77 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.37% - -
75th Percentile £60.25 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £33.07
% change year-on-year -22.62% -1.71% +1.74%

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 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 10 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 10 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 2,088 £520 -1.23% 900
North of England -3 728 £450 -5.01% 585
South East -2 670 £481 -3.88% 879
Midlands -2 517 £450 +5.88% 463
North West -2 381 £425 -7.61% 339
West Midlands +1 365 £488 +11.43% 295
South West -2 301 £525 +10.53% 344
Yorkshire -4 292 £482 -3.60% 190
East of England -3 223 £475 +0.53% 303
East Midlands -2 153 £402 +9.76% 168
North East -3 63 £450 -11.76% 66
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
1 199 (4.27%) Confluence
2 159 (3.41%) SharePoint
3 107 (2.30%) Microsoft Exchange
4 58 (1.24%) Apache Spark
5 54 (1.16%) Apache
6 52 (1.12%) SAS
7 37 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.62%) Skype for Business
9 27 (0.58%) CMS
10 13 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.21%) JBoss
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
15 7 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 7 (0.15%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.15%) Camunda
15 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
16 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 298 (6.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 198 (4.25%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (2.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (1.50%) MS Visio
5 66 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
6 20 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.13%) Trello
12 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.086%) Adobe Captivate
13 4 (0.086%) Autodesk Inventor
14 3 (0.064%) InVision
14 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.064%) Notion
14 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
15 2 (0.043%) ProjectWise
15 2 (0.043%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 78 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
4 18 (0.39%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.36%) SAP EWM
6 16 (0.34%) Aladdin
7 15 (0.32%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
7 15 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 14 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
8 14 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
9 13 (0.28%) SAP WM
9 13 (0.28%) Workday HCM
10 12 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.24%) NEC Housing
11 11 (0.24%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.24%) SAP HR
12 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
13 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
14 8 (0.17%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,028 (22.06%) Azure
2 724 (15.54%) AWS
3 369 (7.92%) GCP
4 331 (7.10%) Power Platform
5 317 (6.80%) Microsoft 365
6 225 (4.83%) GitHub
7 216 (4.64%) Azure DevOps
8 148 (3.18%) Serverless
9 135 (2.90%) Entra ID
10 124 (2.66%) SaaS
11 110 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
12 78 (1.67%) Amazon S3
13 76 (1.63%) Snowflake
14 74 (1.59%) OpenShift
15 72 (1.55%) AWS Lambda
16 71 (1.52%) Azure Data Factory
17 64 (1.37%) Dynamics 365
17 64 (1.37%) PaaS
18 63 (1.35%) Power Automate
19 52 (1.12%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 169 (3.63%) Firewall
2 165 (3.54%) DNS
3 107 (2.30%) TCP/IP
4 103 (2.21%) Network Security
4 103 (2.21%) VPN
5 89 (1.91%) DHCP
6 70 (1.50%) WAN
7 53 (1.14%) LAN
8 43 (0.92%) VLAN
9 37 (0.79%) Wi-Fi
10 32 (0.69%) BGP
11 30 (0.64%) VoIP
12 29 (0.62%) Skype
13 21 (0.45%) SAN
13 21 (0.45%) Wireshark
14 20 (0.43%) Wireless
15 18 (0.39%) HTTP
15 18 (0.39%) Internet
15 18 (0.39%) OSPF
15 18 (0.39%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 264 (5.67%) Power BI
2 141 (3.03%) SQL Server
3 138 (2.96%) Relational Database
4 122 (2.62%) PostgreSQL
5 121 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
6 89 (1.91%) NoSQL
7 87 (1.87%) MongoDB
8 70 (1.50%) Metadata
9 68 (1.46%) Tableau
10 66 (1.42%) Oracle Database
11 60 (1.29%) MySQL
12 48 (1.03%) Data Lake
13 47 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
14 45 (0.97%) Big Data
15 34 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
15 34 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 33 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
16 33 (0.71%) DynamoDB
17 27 (0.58%) Hadoop
18 26 (0.56%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 441 (9.47%) JIRA
2 301 (6.46%) Git
3 233 (5.00%) Jenkins
4 156 (3.35%) GitLab
5 76 (1.63%) Selenium
6 55 (1.18%) JUnit
7 40 (0.86%) Postman
8 32 (0.69%) Cucumber
9 31 (0.67%) Bitbucket
10 24 (0.52%) Maven
10 24 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
11 21 (0.45%) Cypress.io
11 21 (0.45%) REST Assured
12 20 (0.43%) SonarQube
13 17 (0.36%) JMeter
14 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
14 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
15 14 (0.30%) Mockito
16 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
16 12 (0.26%) IntelliJ
General
1 2,561 (54.97%) Social Skills
2 1,699 (36.47%) Analytical Skills
3 1,065 (22.86%) Finance
4 430 (9.23%) Public Sector
5 381 (8.18%) Banking
6 184 (3.95%) Organisational Skills
7 146 (3.13%) Legal
8 143 (3.07%) Documentation Skills
9 124 (2.66%) Retail
10 123 (2.64%) Influencing Skills
11 117 (2.51%) Presentation Skills
12 107 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (2.10%) Front Office
14 96 (2.06%) Telecoms
15 91 (1.95%) Marketing
16 75 (1.61%) Investment Banking
17 71 (1.52%) Manufacturing
18 57 (1.22%) Military
19 43 (0.92%) Financial Institution
20 42 (0.90%) Law
Job Titles
1 682 (14.64%) Analyst
2 660 (14.17%) Developer
3 401 (8.61%) Senior
4 299 (6.42%) Architect
5 292 (6.27%) Lead
6 273 (5.86%) Business Analyst
7 245 (5.26%) Consultant
8 178 (3.82%) Project Manager
9 152 (3.26%) Data Engineer
10 143 (3.07%) Support Engineer
11 119 (2.55%) IT Support
12 101 (2.17%) Senior Developer
13 94 (2.02%) Java Developer
14 90 (1.93%) Data Analyst
15 87 (1.87%) Software Engineer
15 87 (1.87%) Support Analyst
16 82 (1.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 78 (1.67%) Solutions Architect
18 76 (1.63%) IT Analyst
19 75 (1.61%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 329 (7.06%) REST
2 175 (3.76%) SOAP
3 169 (3.63%) RESTful
4 159 (3.41%) .NET
5 143 (3.07%) Kafka
5 143 (3.07%) React
6 139 (2.98%) Node.js
7 135 (2.90%) Spring
8 125 (2.68%) HTML
9 109 (2.34%) CSS
10 108 (2.32%) AngularJS
11 100 (2.15%) Spring Boot
12 92 (1.97%) JSON
13 87 (1.87%) XML
14 80 (1.72%) LDAP
14 80 (1.72%) Middleware
15 64 (1.37%) Oracle Fusion
16 63 (1.35%) OAuth
17 59 (1.27%) Web Services
18 53 (1.14%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 232 (4.98%) Product Ownership
2 194 (4.16%) Cloud Native
3 172 (3.69%) Management Information System
3 172 (3.69%) Onboarding
4 126 (2.70%) Analytical Mindset
5 109 (2.34%) Data Structures
6 102 (2.19%) Data Centre
7 101 (2.17%) Enterprise Software
8 99 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
9 93 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
10 86 (1.85%) Security Posture
11 76 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
12 75 (1.61%) Algorithms
13 65 (1.40%) Distributed Systems
13 65 (1.40%) Mobile App
14 64 (1.37%) CMDB
14 64 (1.37%) Virtual Team
15 59 (1.27%) Hybrid Cloud
16 53 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 49 (1.05%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 478 (10.26%) Windows
2 319 (6.85%) Linux
3 106 (2.28%) Windows 10
4 96 (2.06%) Unix
5 88 (1.89%) Windows Server
6 57 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 56 (1.20%) Apple iOS
8 55 (1.18%) Android
9 45 (0.97%) Mac OS
10 23 (0.49%) VMS
11 18 (0.39%) CentOS
12 14 (0.30%) Ubuntu
13 10 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
15 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.086%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.086%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.064%) Debian
17 3 (0.064%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,368 (29.36%) Agile
2 841 (18.05%) CI/CD
3 743 (15.95%) DevOps
4 693 (14.87%) Stakeholder Management
5 661 (14.19%) Continuous Improvement
6 520 (11.16%) Analytics
7 466 (10.00%) Migration
8 458 (9.83%) Decision-Making
9 433 (9.29%) Project Management
10 407 (8.74%) AI
10 407 (8.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 401 (8.61%) Test Automation
12 374 (8.03%) Data Modelling
13 371 (7.96%) Scrum
14 348 (7.47%) Computer Science
15 346 (7.43%) ITIL
15 346 (7.43%) Validation
16 339 (7.28%) Business Intelligence
16 339 (7.28%) Containerisation
17 323 (6.93%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 932 (20.00%) Python
2 799 (17.15%) SQL
3 426 (9.14%) Java
4 320 (6.87%) PowerShell
5 275 (5.90%) JavaScript
6 200 (4.29%) C#
7 176 (3.78%) TypeScript
8 137 (2.94%) Bash
9 63 (1.35%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.27%) C++
10 59 (1.27%) Go
11 50 (1.07%) Shell Script
12 42 (0.90%) Perl
13 39 (0.84%) VBA
14 38 (0.82%) Scala
15 31 (0.67%) Ruby
16 29 (0.62%) Apex Code
16 29 (0.62%) T-SQL
17 27 (0.58%) C
17 27 (0.58%) R
Qualifications
1 998 (21.42%) Security Cleared
2 714 (15.33%) SC Cleared
3 641 (13.76%) Degree
4 251 (5.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 183 (3.93%) DV Cleared
6 103 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
7 94 (2.02%) PMI Certification
8 93 (2.00%) PMP
9 91 (1.95%) Master's Degree
9 91 (1.95%) Microsoft Certification
10 90 (1.93%) CISSP
11 77 (1.65%) Azure Certification
12 61 (1.31%) Cisco Certification
13 50 (1.07%) AWS Certification
13 50 (1.07%) CISM
14 38 (0.82%) A+ Certification
14 38 (0.82%) CCNP
15 32 (0.69%) CCNA
16 31 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
17 27 (0.58%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 314 (6.74%) QA
2 265 (5.69%) Data Quality
3 159 (3.41%) GDPR
4 95 (2.04%) Accessibility
5 81 (1.74%) NIST
6 79 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 74 (1.59%) PMO
8 48 (1.03%) SLA
9 39 (0.84%) PCI DSS
10 30 (0.64%) GRC
10 30 (0.64%) PSD2
11 23 (0.49%) ISO 20022
12 22 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.43%) WCAG
14 18 (0.39%) SEPA
15 16 (0.34%) EU AI Act
16 15 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
16 15 (0.32%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.30%) ISO 8583
18 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 425 (9.12%) Docker
2 354 (7.60%) Active Directory
3 111 (2.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.88%) Hyper-V
5 34 (0.73%) vSphere
6 24 (0.52%) VMware NSX
7 23 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 21 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
9 15 (0.32%) Firmware
10 11 (0.24%) RACF
11 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.19%) ACF2
13 7 (0.15%) HDFS
13 7 (0.15%) Squid
14 5 (0.11%) KVM
14 5 (0.11%) vCloud
14 5 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
15 3 (0.064%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.064%) Lustre
15 3 (0.064%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 450 (9.66%) Kubernetes
2 256 (5.49%) Terraform
3 172 (3.69%) Ansible
4 107 (2.30%) Grafana
5 101 (2.17%) Microsoft Intune
6 89 (1.91%) SCCM
7 83 (1.78%) Prometheus
8 38 (0.82%) Puppet
8 38 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
9 35 (0.75%) Kibana
10 28 (0.60%) Argo
11 25 (0.54%) Nessus
12 23 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 22 (0.47%) vCenter Server
14 19 (0.41%) Red Hat Satellite
15 17 (0.36%) Control-M
16 16 (0.34%) FortiGate
16 16 (0.34%) IBM Guardium
16 16 (0.34%) SCOM
17 15 (0.32%) vRealize
Vendors
1 908 (19.49%) Microsoft
2 314 (6.74%) Oracle
3 222 (4.76%) SAP
4 204 (4.38%) ServiceNow
5 194 (4.16%) VMware
6 161 (3.46%) Google
7 139 (2.98%) Databricks
8 136 (2.92%) Splunk
9 112 (2.40%) Salesforce
10 100 (2.15%) Cisco
11 79 (1.70%) CyberArk
11 79 (1.70%) Red Hat
12 67 (1.44%) BeyondTrust
13 50 (1.07%) IBM
14 45 (0.97%) Workday
15 44 (0.94%) Palo Alto
16 41 (0.88%) Citrix
17 39 (0.84%) Adobe
17 39 (0.84%) Informatica
18 37 (0.79%) HP