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

6 months to
25 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 4,754 3,989 4,034
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.48% 15.59% 10.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.44% 17.31% 12.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,989 2,419 2,519
10th Percentile £300 £258 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £503
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -0.60% -6.85%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £630
90th Percentile £705 £701 £731
UK median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 149 341
10th Percentile £13.85 £15.00 £12.13
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.90 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.87 £27.00 £21.01
Median % change year-on-year -30.11% +28.51% -38.12%
75th Percentile £41.81 £50.75 £48.40
90th Percentile £72.45 £80.75 £83.41
UK median hourly rate £19.25 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -29.03% +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 30,789 23,051 32,723
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.31% 90.11% 87.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,727 14,450 21,724
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% - -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 1,908 755 2,031
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £27.50 £35.00 £34.25
Median % change year-on-year -21.43% +2.19% -2.14%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £72.15 £75.40 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £25.94 £33.00 £33.07
% change year-on-year -21.39% -0.20% -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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -4 2,088 £513 -2.38% 811
North of England -2 770 £450 -5.26% 605
South East -2 668 £483 -3.50% 819
Midlands -1 537 £450 +5.88% 419
North West -1 389 £420 -10.78% 341
West Midlands 0 387 £477 +7.62% 258
Yorkshire -4 328 £478 -4.38% 199
South West -1 317 £525 +5.00% 272
East of England -3 243 £475 +5.56% 273
East Midlands -3 151 £402 +9.54% 161
North East -4 61 £450 -6.40% 80
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
1 209 (4.40%) Confluence
2 150 (3.16%) SharePoint
3 102 (2.15%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.35%) Apache Spark
4 64 (1.35%) SAS
5 54 (1.14%) Apache
6 38 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.55%) CMS
8 24 (0.50%) Skype for Business
9 20 (0.42%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.29%) nginx
11 10 (0.21%) JBoss
12 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.13%) Camunda
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 288 (6.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 216 (4.54%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (2.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.49%) 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 6 (0.13%) 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 78 (1.64%) 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%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 14 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
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%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.19%) SAP EWM
12 8 (0.17%) SAP WM
12 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,024 (21.54%) Azure
2 739 (15.54%) AWS
3 353 (7.43%) GCP
4 334 (7.03%) Power Platform
5 311 (6.54%) Microsoft 365
6 230 (4.84%) GitHub
7 217 (4.56%) Azure DevOps
8 154 (3.24%) Serverless
9 148 (3.11%) Entra ID
10 127 (2.67%) SaaS
11 110 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
12 83 (1.75%) Amazon S3
12 83 (1.75%) OpenShift
13 80 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
14 73 (1.54%) Azure Data Factory
14 73 (1.54%) Snowflake
15 66 (1.39%) PaaS
16 60 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
17 57 (1.20%) Power Automate
18 55 (1.16%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 180 (3.79%) DNS
1 180 (3.79%) Firewall
2 127 (2.67%) TCP/IP
3 104 (2.19%) Network Security
4 101 (2.12%) DHCP
4 101 (2.12%) VPN
5 82 (1.72%) WAN
6 67 (1.41%) LAN
7 51 (1.07%) VLAN
8 48 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
9 41 (0.86%) BGP
10 30 (0.63%) OSPF
11 28 (0.59%) VoIP
12 26 (0.55%) SAN
13 24 (0.50%) Skype
14 22 (0.46%) Wireless
15 18 (0.38%) Internet
15 18 (0.38%) SD-WAN
16 17 (0.36%) HTTP
16 17 (0.36%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 267 (5.62%) Power BI
2 158 (3.32%) SQL Server
3 134 (2.82%) Relational Database
4 133 (2.80%) PostgreSQL
5 127 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
6 102 (2.15%) MongoDB
7 92 (1.94%) NoSQL
8 74 (1.56%) Metadata
9 65 (1.37%) Oracle Database
9 65 (1.37%) Tableau
10 63 (1.33%) MySQL
11 55 (1.16%) Data Lake
12 50 (1.05%) Big Data
12 50 (1.05%) Oracle Reports
13 47 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 37 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
15 35 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
16 34 (0.72%) DynamoDB
17 33 (0.69%) Pentaho
18 32 (0.67%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 464 (9.76%) JIRA
2 321 (6.75%) Git
3 249 (5.24%) Jenkins
4 155 (3.26%) GitLab
5 78 (1.64%) Selenium
6 54 (1.14%) JUnit
7 41 (0.86%) Postman
8 34 (0.72%) Bitbucket
8 34 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 24 (0.50%) Maven
9 24 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
10 22 (0.46%) REST Assured
11 21 (0.44%) Cypress.io
12 20 (0.42%) SonarQube
13 18 (0.38%) JMeter
13 18 (0.38%) SpecFlow
14 17 (0.36%) Mockito
15 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
16 13 (0.27%) IntelliJ
17 12 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,601 (54.71%) Social Skills
2 1,735 (36.50%) Analytical Skills
3 1,073 (22.57%) Finance
4 447 (9.40%) Public Sector
5 380 (7.99%) Banking
6 187 (3.93%) Organisational Skills
7 156 (3.28%) Documentation Skills
8 151 (3.18%) Legal
9 129 (2.71%) Presentation Skills
10 127 (2.67%) Retail
11 126 (2.65%) Influencing Skills
12 121 (2.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (2.06%) Front Office
14 88 (1.85%) Marketing
15 84 (1.77%) Telecoms
16 73 (1.54%) Investment Banking
17 65 (1.37%) Manufacturing
18 63 (1.33%) Military
19 45 (0.95%) Law
20 43 (0.90%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 697 (14.66%) Analyst
2 651 (13.69%) Developer
3 415 (8.73%) Senior
4 318 (6.69%) Architect
5 302 (6.35%) Lead
6 276 (5.81%) Business Analyst
7 240 (5.05%) Consultant
8 185 (3.89%) Data Engineer
9 183 (3.85%) Project Manager
10 140 (2.94%) Support Engineer
11 125 (2.63%) IT Support
12 100 (2.10%) Java Developer
13 97 (2.04%) Senior Developer
14 96 (2.02%) Software Engineer
15 90 (1.89%) Data Analyst
16 84 (1.77%) Python Developer
16 84 (1.77%) Support Analyst
17 82 (1.72%) Administrator
17 82 (1.72%) Solutions Architect
18 81 (1.70%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 324 (6.82%) REST
2 172 (3.62%) SOAP
3 167 (3.51%) RESTful
4 158 (3.32%) Kafka
5 155 (3.26%) .NET
6 148 (3.11%) React
7 140 (2.94%) Spring
8 134 (2.82%) Node.js
9 121 (2.55%) HTML
10 114 (2.40%) CSS
11 107 (2.25%) AngularJS
12 100 (2.10%) Spring Boot
13 99 (2.08%) JSON
14 90 (1.89%) XML
15 86 (1.81%) Middleware
16 83 (1.75%) LDAP
17 65 (1.37%) OAuth
18 64 (1.35%) Oracle Fusion
19 62 (1.30%) Web Services
20 57 (1.20%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 228 (4.80%) Product Ownership
2 193 (4.06%) Cloud Native
3 175 (3.68%) Onboarding
4 160 (3.37%) Management Information System
5 128 (2.69%) Analytical Mindset
6 112 (2.36%) Data Centre
7 110 (2.31%) Data Structures
8 102 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
9 97 (2.04%) Self-Motivation
10 95 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
11 79 (1.66%) Algorithms
12 78 (1.64%) Security Posture
13 74 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
14 69 (1.45%) Virtual Team
15 68 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
16 64 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
16 64 (1.35%) Mobile App
17 58 (1.22%) CMDB
18 54 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 50 (1.05%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 496 (10.43%) Windows
2 318 (6.69%) Linux
3 98 (2.06%) Unix
3 98 (2.06%) Windows 10
4 82 (1.72%) Windows Server
5 66 (1.39%) Android
6 63 (1.33%) Apple iOS
7 61 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 46 (0.97%) Mac OS
9 22 (0.46%) VMS
10 17 (0.36%) CentOS
11 15 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
12 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
12 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.084%) Debian
14 4 (0.084%) Windows 8
14 4 (0.084%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.084%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,399 (29.43%) Agile
2 873 (18.36%) CI/CD
3 767 (16.13%) DevOps
4 710 (14.93%) Stakeholder Management
5 703 (14.79%) Continuous Improvement
6 541 (11.38%) Analytics
7 488 (10.27%) Decision-Making
8 481 (10.12%) Migration
9 433 (9.11%) Project Management
10 425 (8.94%) AI
11 416 (8.75%) Test Automation
12 406 (8.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 398 (8.37%) Data Modelling
14 371 (7.80%) Scrum
15 356 (7.49%) Business Intelligence
16 352 (7.40%) Validation
17 349 (7.34%) Computer Science
18 346 (7.28%) ITIL
19 339 (7.13%) Containerisation
20 337 (7.09%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 942 (19.81%) Python
2 832 (17.50%) SQL
3 431 (9.07%) Java
4 314 (6.60%) PowerShell
5 275 (5.78%) JavaScript
6 200 (4.21%) C#
7 177 (3.72%) TypeScript
8 138 (2.90%) Bash
9 70 (1.47%) PL/SQL
10 58 (1.22%) C++
11 52 (1.09%) Go
12 50 (1.05%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.82%) Perl
14 38 (0.80%) Scala
15 35 (0.74%) T-SQL
15 35 (0.74%) VBA
16 31 (0.65%) Ruby
17 30 (0.63%) Apex Code
17 30 (0.63%) Bicep
17 30 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,060 (22.30%) Security Cleared
2 746 (15.69%) SC Cleared
3 648 (13.63%) Degree
4 245 (5.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 197 (4.14%) DV Cleared
6 111 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 101 (2.12%) Microsoft Certification
8 95 (2.00%) PMP
9 91 (1.91%) PMI Certification
10 90 (1.89%) Master's Degree
11 89 (1.87%) CISSP
12 77 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
13 75 (1.58%) Azure Certification
14 56 (1.18%) CISM
15 46 (0.97%) AWS Certification
16 42 (0.88%) CCNP
17 38 (0.80%) A+ Certification
18 37 (0.78%) CCNA
19 30 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
19 30 (0.63%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 304 (6.39%) QA
2 284 (5.97%) Data Quality
3 152 (3.20%) 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 38 (0.80%) 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 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 (9.09%) Docker
2 355 (7.47%) Active Directory
3 106 (2.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.82%) 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
1 473 (9.95%) Kubernetes
2 263 (5.53%) Terraform
3 173 (3.64%) Ansible
4 113 (2.38%) Grafana
5 107 (2.25%) Microsoft Intune
6 89 (1.87%) 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%) SCOM
18 12 (0.25%) vRealize
Vendors
1 910 (19.14%) Microsoft
2 322 (6.77%) 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
10 109 (2.29%) Salesforce
11 86 (1.81%) Red Hat
12 72 (1.51%) CyberArk
13 61 (1.28%) BeyondTrust
14 53 (1.11%) Workday
15 52 (1.09%) Citrix
16 49 (1.03%) IBM
17 48 (1.01%) Talend
18 44 (0.93%) Informatica
18 44 (0.93%) Palo Alto
19 41 (0.86%) Adobe