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

6 months to
11 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 4,703 3,956 4,060
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.88% 15.26% 10.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.85% 17.01% 12.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,987 2,336 2,528
10th Percentile £281 £262 £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 248 149 339
10th Percentile £13.92 £15.22 £12.13
25th Percentile £15.72 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.82 £25.43 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -25.99% +18.28% -32.62%
75th Percentile £36.10 £48.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £69.61 £78.15 £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 29,666 23,261 33,042
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.57% 89.75% 87.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,990 14,365 22,049
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 1,857 734 1,965
10th Percentile £15.14 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.05 £21.01 £16.25
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 £72.84
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £33.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -2.99% +2.48%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 2,100 £520 -1.05% 846
North of England -3 740 £450 -5.26% 602
South East -2 675 £481 -3.75% 860
Midlands -2 524 £450 +5.88% 458
North West -2 385 £425 -7.61% 358
West Midlands +1 371 £488 +11.43% 305
South West -2 302 £525 +10.53% 331
Yorkshire -5 300 £485 -3.10% 186
East of England -3 226 £475 +1.82% 282
East Midlands -2 154 £402 +11.67% 153
North East -3 63 £450 -11.76% 68
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
1 201 (4.27%) Confluence
2 160 (3.40%) SharePoint
3 107 (2.28%) Microsoft Exchange
4 58 (1.23%) Apache Spark
5 54 (1.15%) Apache
6 52 (1.11%) SAS
7 37 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.62%) Skype for Business
9 27 (0.57%) CMS
10 13 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.26%) 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
1 301 (6.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 201 (4.27%) Microsoft Office
3 118 (2.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.55%) MS Visio
5 66 (1.40%) 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 (0.085%) Adobe Captivate
13 4 (0.085%) 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%) Oracle Smart View
15 2 (0.043%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 78 (1.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.51%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.40%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.36%) Aladdin
5 17 (0.36%) SAP EWM
6 15 (0.32%) NetSuite
6 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.32%) Oracle Receivables
6 15 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
6 15 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 14 (0.30%) Workday HCM
8 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.28%) SAP WM
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.23%) NEC Housing
10 11 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
11 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
12 8 (0.17%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,034 (21.99%) Azure
2 730 (15.52%) AWS
3 370 (7.87%) GCP
4 332 (7.06%) Power Platform
5 319 (6.78%) Microsoft 365
6 225 (4.78%) GitHub
7 219 (4.66%) Azure DevOps
8 149 (3.17%) Serverless
9 137 (2.91%) Entra ID
10 124 (2.64%) SaaS
11 110 (2.34%) GitHub Actions
12 79 (1.68%) Amazon S3
13 76 (1.62%) OpenShift
13 76 (1.62%) Snowflake
14 73 (1.55%) AWS Lambda
15 71 (1.51%) Azure Data Factory
16 64 (1.36%) Dynamics 365
16 64 (1.36%) PaaS
17 63 (1.34%) Power Automate
18 53 (1.13%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 169 (3.59%) Firewall
2 165 (3.51%) DNS
3 107 (2.28%) TCP/IP
4 105 (2.23%) VPN
5 103 (2.19%) Network Security
6 89 (1.89%) DHCP
7 71 (1.51%) WAN
8 54 (1.15%) LAN
9 44 (0.94%) VLAN
10 37 (0.79%) Wi-Fi
11 33 (0.70%) BGP
12 30 (0.64%) VoIP
13 29 (0.62%) Skype
14 21 (0.45%) SAN
14 21 (0.45%) Wireshark
15 20 (0.43%) OSPF
15 20 (0.43%) Wireless
16 18 (0.38%) HTTP
16 18 (0.38%) Internet
16 18 (0.38%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 264 (5.61%) Power BI
2 143 (3.04%) SQL Server
3 138 (2.93%) Relational Database
4 126 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
5 121 (2.57%) Data Warehouse
6 94 (2.00%) MongoDB
7 89 (1.89%) NoSQL
8 71 (1.51%) Metadata
9 67 (1.42%) Tableau
10 66 (1.40%) Oracle Database
11 60 (1.28%) MySQL
12 48 (1.02%) Data Lake
12 48 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
13 45 (0.96%) Big Data
14 36 (0.77%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 35 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
16 33 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
16 33 (0.70%) DynamoDB
17 27 (0.57%) Hadoop
18 26 (0.55%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 450 (9.57%) JIRA
2 302 (6.42%) Git
3 235 (5.00%) Jenkins
4 158 (3.36%) GitLab
5 76 (1.62%) Selenium
6 55 (1.17%) JUnit
7 40 (0.85%) Postman
8 32 (0.68%) Bitbucket
8 32 (0.68%) Cucumber
9 24 (0.51%) Maven
9 24 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
10 21 (0.45%) Cypress.io
10 21 (0.45%) REST Assured
10 21 (0.45%) SonarQube
11 18 (0.38%) Mockito
12 17 (0.36%) JMeter
13 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
13 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
14 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
14 12 (0.26%) IntelliJ
General
1 2,584 (54.94%) Social Skills
2 1,716 (36.49%) Analytical Skills
3 1,073 (22.82%) Finance
4 435 (9.25%) Public Sector
5 382 (8.12%) Banking
6 185 (3.93%) Organisational Skills
7 148 (3.15%) Legal
8 147 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
9 125 (2.66%) Influencing Skills
10 124 (2.64%) Retail
11 121 (2.57%) Presentation Skills
12 107 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (2.08%) Front Office
14 96 (2.04%) Telecoms
15 91 (1.93%) Marketing
16 75 (1.59%) Investment Banking
17 71 (1.51%) Manufacturing
18 58 (1.23%) Military
19 43 (0.91%) Financial Institution
20 42 (0.89%) Law
Job Titles
1 688 (14.63%) Analyst
2 673 (14.31%) Developer
3 406 (8.63%) Senior
4 302 (6.42%) Architect
5 293 (6.23%) Lead
6 277 (5.89%) Business Analyst
7 247 (5.25%) Consultant
8 178 (3.78%) Project Manager
9 154 (3.27%) Data Engineer
10 144 (3.06%) Support Engineer
11 121 (2.57%) IT Support
12 103 (2.19%) Senior Developer
13 98 (2.08%) Java Developer
14 89 (1.89%) Data Analyst
15 88 (1.87%) Support Analyst
16 87 (1.85%) Software Engineer
17 82 (1.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 79 (1.68%) Solutions Architect
19 78 (1.66%) Python Developer
20 77 (1.64%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 333 (7.08%) REST
2 177 (3.76%) SOAP
3 171 (3.64%) RESTful
4 160 (3.40%) .NET
5 150 (3.19%) Kafka
6 143 (3.04%) React
7 140 (2.98%) Node.js
8 135 (2.87%) Spring
9 126 (2.68%) HTML
10 110 (2.34%) CSS
11 108 (2.30%) AngularJS
12 100 (2.13%) Spring Boot
13 95 (2.02%) JSON
14 87 (1.85%) XML
15 81 (1.72%) LDAP
16 80 (1.70%) Middleware
17 66 (1.40%) OAuth
18 65 (1.38%) Oracle Fusion
19 60 (1.28%) Web Services
20 53 (1.13%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 232 (4.93%) Product Ownership
2 196 (4.17%) Cloud Native
3 175 (3.72%) Onboarding
4 172 (3.66%) Management Information System
5 129 (2.74%) Analytical Mindset
6 109 (2.32%) Data Structures
7 103 (2.19%) Data Centre
8 101 (2.15%) Enterprise Software
8 101 (2.15%) Self-Motivation
9 94 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
10 86 (1.83%) Security Posture
11 76 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
12 75 (1.59%) Algorithms
13 67 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
13 67 (1.42%) Virtual Team
14 65 (1.38%) Mobile App
15 64 (1.36%) CMDB
16 61 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
17 53 (1.13%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 49 (1.04%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 481 (10.23%) Windows
2 325 (6.91%) Linux
3 106 (2.25%) Windows 10
4 100 (2.13%) Unix
5 88 (1.87%) Windows Server
6 57 (1.21%) Android
6 57 (1.21%) Apple iOS
6 57 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 45 (0.96%) Mac OS
8 23 (0.49%) VMS
9 18 (0.38%) CentOS
10 14 (0.30%) Ubuntu
11 10 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
12 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
12 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.085%) Windows 8
14 4 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
15 3 (0.064%) Debian
15 3 (0.064%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,384 (29.43%) Agile
2 852 (18.12%) CI/CD
3 752 (15.99%) DevOps
4 698 (14.84%) Stakeholder Management
5 665 (14.14%) Continuous Improvement
6 524 (11.14%) Analytics
7 472 (10.04%) Migration
8 464 (9.87%) Decision-Making
9 435 (9.25%) Project Management
10 409 (8.70%) AI
11 408 (8.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 405 (8.61%) Test Automation
13 380 (8.08%) Data Modelling
14 374 (7.95%) Scrum
15 350 (7.44%) Validation
16 348 (7.40%) Computer Science
16 348 (7.40%) ITIL
17 346 (7.36%) Containerisation
18 340 (7.23%) Business Intelligence
19 324 (6.89%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 941 (20.01%) Python
2 803 (17.07%) SQL
3 434 (9.23%) Java
4 321 (6.83%) PowerShell
5 276 (5.87%) JavaScript
6 201 (4.27%) C#
7 177 (3.76%) TypeScript
8 137 (2.91%) Bash
9 63 (1.34%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.25%) C++
10 59 (1.25%) Go
11 50 (1.06%) Shell Script
12 41 (0.87%) Perl
13 39 (0.83%) VBA
14 38 (0.81%) Scala
15 31 (0.66%) Apex Code
15 31 (0.66%) Ruby
16 29 (0.62%) T-SQL
17 27 (0.57%) C
17 27 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,009 (21.45%) Security Cleared
2 723 (15.37%) SC Cleared
3 645 (13.71%) Degree
4 251 (5.34%) Computer Science Degree
5 186 (3.95%) DV Cleared
6 106 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
7 94 (2.00%) PMI Certification
8 93 (1.98%) PMP
9 92 (1.96%) Microsoft Certification
10 91 (1.93%) Master's Degree
11 90 (1.91%) CISSP
12 77 (1.64%) Azure Certification
13 62 (1.32%) Cisco Certification
14 50 (1.06%) AWS Certification
14 50 (1.06%) CISM
15 39 (0.83%) A+ Certification
16 38 (0.81%) CCNP
17 33 (0.70%) CCNA
18 31 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
19 28 (0.60%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 315 (6.70%) QA
2 265 (5.63%) Data Quality
3 159 (3.38%) GDPR
4 95 (2.02%) Accessibility
5 81 (1.72%) NIST
6 79 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 76 (1.62%) PMO
8 49 (1.04%) SLA
9 39 (0.83%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.66%) GRC
11 30 (0.64%) PSD2
12 23 (0.49%) ISO 20022
13 22 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.43%) WCAG
15 18 (0.38%) SEPA
16 16 (0.34%) EU AI Act
17 15 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
17 15 (0.32%) HIPAA
18 14 (0.30%) ISO 8583
19 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 431 (9.16%) Docker
2 356 (7.57%) Active Directory
3 110 (2.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.87%) Hyper-V
5 34 (0.72%) vSphere
6 24 (0.51%) VMware NSX
7 23 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 21 (0.45%) 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 7 (0.15%) HDFS
15 5 (0.11%) KVM
15 5 (0.11%) vCloud
15 5 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
16 3 (0.064%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.064%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 458 (9.74%) Kubernetes
2 260 (5.53%) Terraform
3 173 (3.68%) Ansible
4 114 (2.42%) Grafana
5 102 (2.17%) Microsoft Intune
6 91 (1.93%) Prometheus
7 89 (1.89%) SCCM
8 39 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
9 38 (0.81%) Puppet
10 36 (0.77%) Kibana
11 29 (0.62%) Nessus
12 28 (0.60%) Argo
13 24 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 21 (0.45%) Control-M
14 21 (0.45%) vCenter Server
15 20 (0.43%) IBM Guardium
16 19 (0.40%) Red Hat Satellite
17 17 (0.36%) FortiGate
18 16 (0.34%) SCOM
19 15 (0.32%) vRealize
Vendors
1 918 (19.52%) Microsoft
2 315 (6.70%) Oracle
3 223 (4.74%) SAP
4 206 (4.38%) ServiceNow
5 194 (4.13%) VMware
6 161 (3.42%) Google
7 140 (2.98%) Databricks
8 138 (2.93%) Splunk
9 114 (2.42%) Salesforce
10 101 (2.15%) Cisco
11 80 (1.70%) Red Hat
12 79 (1.68%) CyberArk
13 67 (1.42%) BeyondTrust
14 50 (1.06%) IBM
15 47 (1.00%) Workday
16 45 (0.96%) Palo Alto
17 42 (0.89%) Citrix
18 39 (0.83%) Adobe
18 39 (0.83%) Informatica
19 38 (0.81%) HP