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

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,740 4,016 4,073
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.57% 15.53% 10.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.53% 17.25% 12.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,972 2,412 2,536
10th Percentile £298 £251 £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 £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £707 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - -6.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 260 150 341
10th Percentile £13.95 £15.00 £12.13
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.00 £26.75 £21.01
Median % change year-on-year -28.97% +27.32% -41.89%
75th Percentile £41.78 £50.75 £51.42
90th Percentile £72.22 £80.75 £83.41
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -26.27% +39.10% -36.83%

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 30,524 23,282 33,155
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.36% 90.06% 87.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,511 14,543 22,029
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £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 1,903 748 2,025
10th Percentile £15.22 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.28 £21.25 £16.30
Median hourly rate £26.61 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.99% - -
75th Percentile £63.05 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £75.08 £73.35
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.71% -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 21 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 21 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 21 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 2,095 £513 -2.38% 855
North of England -2 757 £450 -5.26% 613
South East -2 673 £483 -3.50% 885
Midlands -1 533 £450 +5.88% 440
North West -1 387 £418 -10.11% 358
West Midlands +1 383 £483 +9.09% 272
Yorkshire -4 316 £481 -3.75% 185
South West -3 305 £525 +5.00% 306
East of England -3 242 £475 +5.56% 292
East Midlands -2 151 £402 +12.92% 167
North East -5 62 £450 -11.33% 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
1 203 (4.28%) Confluence
2 149 (3.14%) SharePoint
3 104 (2.19%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.35%) Apache Spark
5 61 (1.29%) SAS
6 55 (1.16%) Apache
7 38 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
8 26 (0.55%) CMS
9 24 (0.51%) Skype for Business
10 20 (0.42%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.27%) nginx
12 10 (0.21%) JBoss
13 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
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%) Oracle Workflow
15 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 288 (6.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 214 (4.51%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (2.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (1.48%) MS Visio
5 68 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
6 20 (0.42%) Chatbot
7 18 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
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 (0.084%) Adobe Captivate
13 4 (0.084%) Autodesk Inventor
14 3 (0.063%) InVision
14 3 (0.063%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.063%) Notion
14 3 (0.063%) Zeplin
15 2 (0.042%) Oracle Smart View
15 2 (0.042%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 76 (1.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.38%) Aladdin
3 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
3 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
4 15 (0.32%) NetSuite
5 14 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.30%) Workday HCM
6 13 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 13 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
6 13 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
7 12 (0.25%) NEC Housing
7 12 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
8 11 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 11 (0.23%) SAP EWM
8 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
9 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
9 10 (0.21%) SAP WM
10 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
11 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,028 (21.69%) Azure
2 744 (15.70%) AWS
3 361 (7.62%) GCP
4 333 (7.03%) Power Platform
5 311 (6.56%) Microsoft 365
6 230 (4.85%) GitHub
7 218 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
8 155 (3.27%) Serverless
9 144 (3.04%) Entra ID
10 127 (2.68%) SaaS
11 111 (2.34%) GitHub Actions
12 84 (1.77%) Amazon S3
13 83 (1.75%) OpenShift
14 78 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
15 73 (1.54%) Azure Data Factory
15 73 (1.54%) Snowflake
16 64 (1.35%) PaaS
17 61 (1.29%) Dynamics 365
18 56 (1.18%) Power Automate
19 54 (1.14%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 178 (3.76%) DNS
2 176 (3.71%) Firewall
3 124 (2.62%) TCP/IP
4 102 (2.15%) Network Security
5 101 (2.13%) DHCP
5 101 (2.13%) VPN
6 79 (1.67%) WAN
7 64 (1.35%) LAN
8 48 (1.01%) VLAN
9 43 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
10 41 (0.86%) BGP
11 29 (0.61%) OSPF
12 28 (0.59%) VoIP
13 25 (0.53%) SAN
14 24 (0.51%) Skype
15 20 (0.42%) Wireless
16 19 (0.40%) HTTP
16 19 (0.40%) SD-WAN
17 18 (0.38%) Internet
18 17 (0.36%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 266 (5.61%) Power BI
2 158 (3.33%) SQL Server
3 137 (2.89%) Relational Database
4 132 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
5 126 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
6 101 (2.13%) MongoDB
7 91 (1.92%) NoSQL
8 76 (1.60%) Metadata
9 66 (1.39%) Oracle Database
10 64 (1.35%) MySQL
11 63 (1.33%) Tableau
12 56 (1.18%) Data Lake
13 50 (1.05%) Big Data
14 49 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
15 47 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 37 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
17 34 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
18 33 (0.70%) DynamoDB
19 31 (0.65%) Hadoop
19 31 (0.65%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 452 (9.54%) JIRA
2 317 (6.69%) Git
3 245 (5.17%) Jenkins
4 155 (3.27%) GitLab
5 79 (1.67%) Selenium
6 54 (1.14%) JUnit
7 41 (0.86%) Postman
8 35 (0.74%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 24 (0.51%) Maven
11 23 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
12 22 (0.46%) REST Assured
13 21 (0.44%) Cypress.io
14 19 (0.40%) JMeter
14 19 (0.40%) SonarQube
15 18 (0.38%) Mockito
16 17 (0.36%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
18 13 (0.27%) IntelliJ
19 12 (0.25%) Artifactory
General
1 2,586 (54.56%) Social Skills
2 1,726 (36.41%) Analytical Skills
3 1,066 (22.49%) Finance
4 441 (9.30%) Public Sector
5 376 (7.93%) Banking
6 188 (3.97%) Organisational Skills
7 156 (3.29%) Documentation Skills
8 153 (3.23%) Legal
9 131 (2.76%) Presentation Skills
10 129 (2.72%) Retail
11 124 (2.62%) Influencing Skills
12 121 (2.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 97 (2.05%) Front Office
14 90 (1.90%) Marketing
15 86 (1.81%) Telecoms
16 72 (1.52%) Investment Banking
17 65 (1.37%) Manufacturing
18 63 (1.33%) Military
19 47 (0.99%) Law
20 44 (0.93%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 700 (14.77%) Analyst
2 651 (13.73%) Developer
3 411 (8.67%) Senior
4 314 (6.62%) Architect
5 297 (6.27%) Lead
6 280 (5.91%) Business Analyst
7 238 (5.02%) Consultant
8 183 (3.86%) Data Engineer
9 178 (3.76%) Project Manager
10 141 (2.97%) Support Engineer
11 125 (2.64%) IT Support
12 102 (2.15%) Java Developer
13 99 (2.09%) Senior Developer
14 95 (2.00%) Software Engineer
15 89 (1.88%) Data Analyst
16 86 (1.81%) Support Analyst
17 83 (1.75%) IT Analyst
17 83 (1.75%) Python Developer
18 81 (1.71%) Solutions Architect
19 80 (1.69%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 327 (6.90%) REST
2 174 (3.67%) SOAP
3 166 (3.50%) RESTful
4 159 (3.35%) Kafka
5 155 (3.27%) .NET
6 147 (3.10%) React
7 140 (2.95%) Spring
8 137 (2.89%) Node.js
9 122 (2.57%) HTML
10 114 (2.41%) CSS
11 107 (2.26%) AngularJS
12 100 (2.11%) Spring Boot
13 99 (2.09%) JSON
14 90 (1.90%) XML
15 85 (1.79%) Middleware
16 82 (1.73%) LDAP
17 65 (1.37%) OAuth
18 64 (1.35%) Oracle Fusion
19 61 (1.29%) Web Services
20 56 (1.18%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 228 (4.81%) Product Ownership
2 197 (4.16%) Cloud Native
3 178 (3.76%) Onboarding
4 164 (3.46%) Management Information System
5 127 (2.68%) Analytical Mindset
6 113 (2.38%) Data Centre
7 111 (2.34%) Data Structures
8 102 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
9 96 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
10 94 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
11 79 (1.67%) Algorithms
12 76 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
12 76 (1.60%) Security Posture
13 68 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
14 65 (1.37%) Virtual Team
15 64 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
16 63 (1.33%) Mobile App
17 57 (1.20%) CMDB
18 55 (1.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 49 (1.03%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 492 (10.38%) Windows
2 321 (6.77%) Linux
3 100 (2.11%) Unix
4 98 (2.07%) Windows 10
5 85 (1.79%) Windows Server
6 62 (1.31%) Android
7 61 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 59 (1.24%) Apple iOS
9 45 (0.95%) Mac OS
10 22 (0.46%) VMS
11 17 (0.36%) CentOS
12 15 (0.32%) Ubuntu
13 10 (0.21%) Mac OS X
14 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.084%) Debian
16 4 (0.084%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.084%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.063%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,388 (29.28%) Agile
2 869 (18.33%) CI/CD
3 762 (16.08%) DevOps
4 702 (14.81%) Stakeholder Management
5 701 (14.79%) Continuous Improvement
6 535 (11.29%) Analytics
7 486 (10.25%) Decision-Making
8 482 (10.17%) Migration
9 432 (9.11%) AI
10 431 (9.09%) Project Management
11 413 (8.71%) Test Automation
12 403 (8.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 395 (8.33%) Data Modelling
14 369 (7.78%) Scrum
15 355 (7.49%) Validation
16 351 (7.41%) Business Intelligence
17 343 (7.24%) ITIL
18 342 (7.22%) Computer Science
19 340 (7.17%) Containerisation
20 337 (7.11%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 939 (19.81%) Python
2 827 (17.45%) SQL
3 436 (9.20%) Java
4 311 (6.56%) PowerShell
5 273 (5.76%) JavaScript
6 200 (4.22%) C#
7 175 (3.69%) TypeScript
8 137 (2.89%) Bash
9 71 (1.50%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.24%) C++
11 54 (1.14%) Go
12 51 (1.08%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.82%) Perl
14 38 (0.80%) Scala
15 36 (0.76%) VBA
16 35 (0.74%) T-SQL
17 31 (0.65%) Apex Code
17 31 (0.65%) Ruby
18 30 (0.63%) Bicep
19 29 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,041 (21.96%) Security Cleared
2 733 (15.46%) SC Cleared
3 644 (13.59%) Degree
4 239 (5.04%) Computer Science Degree
5 193 (4.07%) DV Cleared
6 110 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
7 99 (2.09%) Microsoft Certification
8 91 (1.92%) PMP
9 89 (1.88%) Master's Degree
10 87 (1.84%) CISSP
10 87 (1.84%) PMI Certification
11 77 (1.62%) Azure Certification
12 70 (1.48%) Cisco Certification
13 55 (1.16%) CISM
14 47 (0.99%) AWS Certification
15 39 (0.82%) A+ Certification
16 38 (0.80%) CCNP
17 35 (0.74%) CCNA
18 30 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
18 30 (0.63%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 309 (6.52%) QA
2 280 (5.91%) Data Quality
3 152 (3.21%) GDPR
4 92 (1.94%) Accessibility
5 83 (1.75%) NIST
6 80 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 78 (1.65%) PMO
8 49 (1.03%) SLA
9 38 (0.80%) PCI DSS
10 30 (0.63%) GRC
11 24 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.49%) PSD2
13 21 (0.44%) WCAG
14 20 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
15 18 (0.38%) 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
1 432 (9.11%) Docker
2 353 (7.45%) Active Directory
3 106 (2.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.84%) Hyper-V
5 36 (0.76%) vSphere
6 26 (0.55%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
8 21 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
9 15 (0.32%) Firmware
10 11 (0.23%) RACF
11 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.19%) ACF2
13 8 (0.17%) Squid
14 6 (0.13%) HDFS
14 6 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
15 5 (0.11%) 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
1 470 (9.92%) Kubernetes
2 264 (5.57%) Terraform
3 171 (3.61%) Ansible
4 113 (2.38%) Grafana
5 99 (2.09%) Microsoft Intune
6 89 (1.88%) Prometheus
7 85 (1.79%) SCCM
8 39 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
9 35 (0.74%) Kibana
9 35 (0.74%) Puppet
10 30 (0.63%) Argo
10 30 (0.63%) Nessus
11 26 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 25 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 23 (0.49%) vCenter Server
14 22 (0.46%) Control-M
15 21 (0.44%) IBM Guardium
16 18 (0.38%) Red Hat Satellite
17 13 (0.27%) SCOM
17 13 (0.27%) vRealize
Vendors
1 901 (19.01%) Microsoft
2 321 (6.77%) Oracle
3 218 (4.60%) SAP
4 200 (4.22%) ServiceNow
5 192 (4.05%) VMware
6 163 (3.44%) Google
7 143 (3.02%) Databricks
8 142 (3.00%) Splunk
9 111 (2.34%) Cisco
10 110 (2.32%) Salesforce
11 85 (1.79%) Red Hat
12 72 (1.52%) CyberArk
13 61 (1.29%) BeyondTrust
14 50 (1.05%) Citrix
14 50 (1.05%) Workday
15 49 (1.03%) IBM
16 46 (0.97%) Talend
17 44 (0.93%) Informatica
18 41 (0.86%) Dell
18 41 (0.86%) Palo Alto