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

6 months to
3 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,729 3,930 4,055
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.29% 15.71% 10.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.27% 17.38% 12.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,960 2,405 2,522
10th Percentile £300 £258 £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 £598 £618 £635
90th Percentile £709 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 255 153 350
10th Percentile £13.97 £15.00 £11.75
25th Percentile £15.74 £16.95 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.25 £25.43 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -24.30% +30.41% -51.55%
75th Percentile £41.81 £50.75 £48.26
90th Percentile £73.35 £80.10 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £26.75 £19.38
% change year-on-year -25.23% +38.06% -42.59%

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 30,978 22,606 33,028
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.03% 90.35% 87.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,831 14,326 21,880
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £617 £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 1,924 770 2,093
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £13.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.00 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.14% +2.94% -5.56%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £59.50
90th Percentile £73.43 £75.28 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £27.72 £32.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year -14.71% -1.52% -5.71%

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 3 March 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 3 March 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 3 March 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 2,072 £519 -1.23% 976
North of England -2 772 £450 -7.31% 728
South East -2 667 £490 -2.00% 1,017
Midlands -1 531 £450 +3.54% 497
North West -1 388 £424 -10.66% 372
West Midlands 0 385 £475 +5.56% 269
Yorkshire -4 332 £475 -5.00% 272
South West -2 316 £535 +4.39% 398
East of England -3 240 £465 +3.22% 448
East Midlands -2 147 £402 +4.42% 223
North East -2 60 £450 -0.88% 99
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
1 208 (4.40%) Confluence
2 151 (3.19%) SharePoint
3 108 (2.28%) Microsoft Exchange
4 66 (1.40%) Apache Spark
5 61 (1.29%) SAS
6 55 (1.16%) Apache
7 38 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.57%) CMS
9 22 (0.47%) Skype for Business
10 20 (0.42%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.30%) nginx
12 10 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 10 (0.21%) JBoss
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
15 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
15 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 294 (6.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 218 (4.61%) Microsoft Office
3 117 (2.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 74 (1.56%) MS Visio
5 68 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
6 21 (0.44%) Chatbot
7 17 (0.36%) 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 (0.085%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.085%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.063%) InVision
13 3 (0.063%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.063%) Maya
13 3 (0.063%) Notion
13 3 (0.063%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.063%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 78 (1.65%) 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%) Workday HCM
6 14 (0.30%) NetSuite
6 14 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
7 13 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
7 13 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.25%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.25%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
11 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
12 8 (0.17%) SAP MDG
12 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,023 (21.63%) Azure
2 740 (15.65%) AWS
3 351 (7.42%) GCP
4 332 (7.02%) Power Platform
5 314 (6.64%) Microsoft 365
6 231 (4.88%) GitHub
7 222 (4.69%) Azure DevOps
8 156 (3.30%) Serverless
9 149 (3.15%) Entra ID
10 126 (2.66%) SaaS
11 112 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
12 86 (1.82%) Amazon S3
13 85 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
14 84 (1.78%) OpenShift
15 74 (1.56%) Azure Data Factory
16 73 (1.54%) Snowflake
17 66 (1.40%) PaaS
18 59 (1.25%) Dynamics 365
19 54 (1.14%) Power Automate
20 53 (1.12%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 181 (3.83%) Firewall
2 174 (3.68%) DNS
3 120 (2.54%) TCP/IP
4 103 (2.18%) Network Security
5 101 (2.14%) VPN
6 97 (2.05%) DHCP
7 84 (1.78%) WAN
8 67 (1.42%) LAN
9 50 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
10 46 (0.97%) VLAN
11 44 (0.93%) BGP
12 32 (0.68%) OSPF
13 30 (0.63%) SAN
14 28 (0.59%) VoIP
15 22 (0.47%) Skype
16 21 (0.44%) Wireless
17 18 (0.38%) Internet
18 17 (0.36%) SD-WAN
18 17 (0.36%) SSL
19 16 (0.34%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 267 (5.65%) Power BI
2 161 (3.40%) SQL Server
3 135 (2.85%) PostgreSQL
4 134 (2.83%) Relational Database
5 130 (2.75%) Data Warehouse
6 99 (2.09%) MongoDB
7 96 (2.03%) NoSQL
8 73 (1.54%) Metadata
9 66 (1.40%) Tableau
10 64 (1.35%) MySQL
10 64 (1.35%) Oracle Database
11 57 (1.21%) Data Lake
12 53 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
13 46 (0.97%) Big Data
13 46 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 37 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
15 35 (0.74%) DynamoDB
16 33 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
16 33 (0.70%) Hadoop
16 33 (0.70%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 464 (9.81%) JIRA
2 327 (6.91%) Git
3 247 (5.22%) Jenkins
4 158 (3.34%) GitLab
5 77 (1.63%) Selenium
6 54 (1.14%) JUnit
7 40 (0.85%) Postman
8 36 (0.76%) Bitbucket
8 36 (0.76%) Cucumber
9 24 (0.51%) Maven
9 24 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
10 22 (0.47%) REST Assured
11 21 (0.44%) Cypress.io
12 20 (0.42%) SonarQube
13 18 (0.38%) JMeter
14 17 (0.36%) Mockito
14 17 (0.36%) SpecFlow
15 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
15 14 (0.30%) IntelliJ
16 12 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,579 (54.54%) Social Skills
2 1,728 (36.54%) Analytical Skills
3 1,060 (22.41%) Finance
4 449 (9.49%) Public Sector
5 375 (7.93%) Banking
6 185 (3.91%) Organisational Skills
7 153 (3.24%) Documentation Skills
7 153 (3.24%) Legal
8 133 (2.81%) Retail
9 127 (2.69%) Presentation Skills
10 125 (2.64%) Influencing Skills
11 122 (2.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 96 (2.03%) Front Office
13 90 (1.90%) Marketing
14 75 (1.59%) Telecoms
15 70 (1.48%) Investment Banking
16 61 (1.29%) Military
17 60 (1.27%) Manufacturing
18 44 (0.93%) Law
19 42 (0.89%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 690 (14.59%) Analyst
2 647 (13.68%) Developer
3 408 (8.63%) Senior
4 320 (6.77%) Architect
5 306 (6.47%) Lead
6 272 (5.75%) Business Analyst
7 238 (5.03%) Consultant
8 185 (3.91%) Data Engineer
9 181 (3.83%) Project Manager
10 133 (2.81%) Support Engineer
11 122 (2.58%) IT Support
12 96 (2.03%) Java Developer
13 93 (1.97%) Senior Developer
13 93 (1.97%) Software Engineer
14 91 (1.92%) Data Analyst
15 83 (1.76%) Python Developer
16 82 (1.73%) Support Analyst
17 80 (1.69%) IT Analyst
17 80 (1.69%) Solutions Architect
18 79 (1.67%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 324 (6.85%) REST
2 174 (3.68%) SOAP
3 164 (3.47%) RESTful
4 155 (3.28%) .NET
5 152 (3.21%) Kafka
6 147 (3.11%) React
7 141 (2.98%) Spring
8 133 (2.81%) Node.js
9 116 (2.45%) HTML
10 111 (2.35%) CSS
11 109 (2.30%) AngularJS
12 101 (2.14%) JSON
13 99 (2.09%) Spring Boot
14 92 (1.95%) XML
15 86 (1.82%) Middleware
16 84 (1.78%) LDAP
17 67 (1.42%) OAuth
17 67 (1.42%) Oracle Fusion
18 65 (1.37%) Web Services
19 53 (1.12%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 228 (4.82%) Product Ownership
2 187 (3.95%) Cloud Native
3 184 (3.89%) Onboarding
4 158 (3.34%) Management Information System
5 124 (2.62%) Analytical Mindset
6 118 (2.50%) Data Centre
7 108 (2.28%) Data Structures
8 102 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
9 100 (2.11%) Self-Motivation
10 95 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
11 81 (1.71%) Algorithms
12 78 (1.65%) Security Posture
13 77 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
14 69 (1.46%) Distributed Systems
15 67 (1.42%) Virtual Team
16 64 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
16 64 (1.35%) Mobile App
17 59 (1.25%) CMDB
18 53 (1.12%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 48 (1.02%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 504 (10.66%) Windows
2 304 (6.43%) Linux
3 100 (2.11%) Windows 10
4 96 (2.03%) Unix
5 82 (1.73%) Windows Server
6 68 (1.44%) Android
7 64 (1.35%) Apple iOS
8 59 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 46 (0.97%) Mac OS
10 21 (0.44%) VMS
11 16 (0.34%) CentOS
12 15 (0.32%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 7 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.11%) zOS
17 4 (0.085%) Debian
17 4 (0.085%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,389 (29.37%) Agile
2 880 (18.61%) CI/CD
3 772 (16.32%) DevOps
4 714 (15.10%) Continuous Improvement
5 712 (15.06%) Stakeholder Management
6 541 (11.44%) Analytics
7 489 (10.34%) Migration
8 479 (10.13%) Decision-Making
9 434 (9.18%) AI
10 430 (9.09%) Project Management
11 418 (8.84%) Test Automation
12 404 (8.54%) Data Modelling
12 404 (8.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 377 (7.97%) Scrum
14 365 (7.72%) Validation
15 357 (7.55%) Business Intelligence
16 342 (7.23%) ITIL
17 340 (7.19%) Customer Service
18 337 (7.13%) Computer Science
18 337 (7.13%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 938 (19.84%) Python
2 838 (17.72%) SQL
3 421 (8.90%) Java
4 315 (6.66%) PowerShell
5 270 (5.71%) JavaScript
6 194 (4.10%) C#
7 175 (3.70%) TypeScript
8 138 (2.92%) Bash
9 72 (1.52%) PL/SQL
10 58 (1.23%) C++
11 51 (1.08%) Go
11 51 (1.08%) Shell Script
12 39 (0.82%) Perl
13 37 (0.78%) T-SQL
14 36 (0.76%) Scala
15 34 (0.72%) VBA
16 32 (0.68%) Bicep
17 30 (0.63%) Apex Code
17 30 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 30 (0.63%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,054 (22.29%) Security Cleared
2 741 (15.67%) SC Cleared
3 628 (13.28%) Degree
4 234 (4.95%) Computer Science Degree
5 197 (4.17%) DV Cleared
6 109 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
7 95 (2.01%) Microsoft Certification
8 94 (1.99%) PMP
9 90 (1.90%) Master's Degree
9 90 (1.90%) PMI Certification
10 89 (1.88%) CISSP
11 83 (1.76%) Cisco Certification
12 68 (1.44%) Azure Certification
13 57 (1.21%) CISM
14 46 (0.97%) AWS Certification
15 41 (0.87%) CCNP
16 38 (0.80%) CCNA
17 35 (0.74%) A+ Certification
18 31 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
19 26 (0.55%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 308 (6.51%) QA
2 283 (5.98%) Data Quality
3 149 (3.15%) GDPR
4 89 (1.88%) Accessibility
5 84 (1.78%) NIST
6 81 (1.71%) PMO
7 80 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 55 (1.16%) SLA
9 35 (0.74%) PCI DSS
10 32 (0.68%) GRC
11 23 (0.49%) PSD2
12 22 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
13 20 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.42%) WCAG
14 16 (0.34%) EU AI Act
14 16 (0.34%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.32%) HIPAA
15 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
16 14 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 12 (0.25%) IFRS
System Software
1 432 (9.14%) Docker
2 357 (7.55%) Active Directory
3 101 (2.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.74%) vSphere
5 32 (0.68%) Hyper-V
6 27 (0.57%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.36%) Firmware
8 17 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.23%) RACF
10 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 8 (0.17%) Squid
13 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) vCloud
15 5 (0.11%) HDFS
15 5 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.085%) Snort
17 3 (0.063%) ISA Server
17 3 (0.063%) NFS
Systems Management
1 467 (9.88%) Kubernetes
2 264 (5.58%) Terraform
3 171 (3.62%) Ansible
4 112 (2.37%) Grafana
5 110 (2.33%) Microsoft Intune
6 89 (1.88%) Prometheus
7 86 (1.82%) SCCM
8 40 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
9 36 (0.76%) Puppet
10 33 (0.70%) Kibana
11 31 (0.66%) Argo
11 31 (0.66%) Nessus
12 30 (0.63%) FortiGate
13 26 (0.55%) vCenter Server
14 25 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 23 (0.49%) Control-M
16 22 (0.47%) IBM Guardium
17 16 (0.34%) Red Hat Satellite
18 13 (0.27%) vRealize
19 11 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 907 (19.18%) Microsoft
2 326 (6.89%) Oracle
3 211 (4.46%) SAP
4 210 (4.44%) ServiceNow
5 189 (4.00%) VMware
6 157 (3.32%) Google
7 146 (3.09%) Splunk
8 141 (2.98%) Databricks
9 113 (2.39%) Cisco
10 104 (2.20%) Salesforce
11 82 (1.73%) Red Hat
12 72 (1.52%) CyberArk
13 61 (1.29%) BeyondTrust
14 55 (1.16%) Citrix
15 54 (1.14%) Workday
16 50 (1.06%) IBM
17 48 (1.02%) Talend
18 44 (0.93%) F5
18 44 (0.93%) Informatica
19 43 (0.91%) Palo Alto