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

6 months to
25 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 10
Rank change year-on-year 0 +4 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,537 4,019 4,005
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.00% 15.07% 10.64%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.93% 16.86% 12.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,867 2,345 2,504
10th Percentile £287 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £514
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% -2.64% -4.89%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £715 £700 £721
UK median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -7.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 236 155 306
10th Percentile £13.85 £15.04 £13.23
25th Percentile £15.72 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.91% -12.00% -20.71%
75th Percentile £35.00 £42.25 £61.00
90th Percentile £69.00 £67.31 £86.38
UK median hourly rate £18.87 £24.19 £23.50
% change year-on-year -21.99% +2.94% -22.31%

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 28,483 23,837 32,974
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.89% 89.40% 87.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,219 14,596 22,102
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £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 1,784 766 1,805
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £17.14
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.06 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year -26.15% -8.41% +9.93%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £36.33
% change year-on-year -22.62% -10.55% +16.41%

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 January 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 January 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 January 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 -2 2,075 £524 -1.87% 920
North of England -3 702 £450 -5.26% 849
South East -2 629 £475 -5.00% 1,371
Midlands -2 497 £455 +7.06% 653
North West -3 362 £425 -8.11% 387
West Midlands -1 351 £492 +13.10% 320
South West -3 293 £525 +10.53% 583
Yorkshire -4 287 £485 -3.10% 339
East of England -4 208 £475 +5.09% 593
East Midlands -3 147 £402 +9.76% 326
North East -4 60 £450 -12.20% 134
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
1 190 (4.19%) Confluence
2 153 (3.37%) SharePoint
3 110 (2.42%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.39%) SAS
5 57 (1.26%) Apache Spark
6 55 (1.21%) Apache
7 35 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.64%) Skype for Business
9 26 (0.57%) CMS
10 15 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.24%) JBoss
12 10 (0.22%) Anypoint
13 9 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.20%) nginx
14 8 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
15 7 (0.15%) OpenStack
16 6 (0.13%) Camunda
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 292 (6.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 201 (4.43%) Microsoft Office
3 108 (2.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.50%) MS Visio
5 65 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
6 18 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.29%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 8 (0.18%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
11 5 (0.11%) Trello
12 4 (0.088%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.088%) ProjectWise
13 3 (0.066%) InVision
13 3 (0.066%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.066%) Notion
13 3 (0.066%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.044%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 82 (1.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.51%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.42%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.37%) SAP EWM
6 15 (0.33%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.31%) Aladdin
7 14 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
7 14 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
7 14 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 13 (0.29%) SAP WM
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.24%) SAP HR
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
12 9 (0.20%) NEC Housing
12 9 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
12 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,002 (22.09%) Azure
2 727 (16.02%) AWS
3 374 (8.24%) GCP
4 317 (6.99%) Power Platform
5 308 (6.79%) Microsoft 365
6 218 (4.80%) GitHub
7 204 (4.50%) Azure DevOps
8 152 (3.35%) Serverless
9 129 (2.84%) Entra ID
10 127 (2.80%) SaaS
11 107 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
12 75 (1.65%) Amazon S3
12 75 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
13 74 (1.63%) Snowflake
14 70 (1.54%) PaaS
15 68 (1.50%) Power Automate
16 66 (1.45%) Dynamics 365
17 63 (1.39%) Azure Data Factory
17 63 (1.39%) OpenShift
18 57 (1.26%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 155 (3.42%) Firewall
2 147 (3.24%) DNS
3 106 (2.34%) TCP/IP
4 105 (2.31%) Network Security
5 95 (2.09%) VPN
6 82 (1.81%) DHCP
7 68 (1.50%) WAN
8 51 (1.12%) LAN
9 38 (0.84%) VLAN
10 32 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
11 30 (0.66%) BGP
12 29 (0.64%) Skype
13 28 (0.62%) VoIP
14 21 (0.46%) Wireshark
15 20 (0.44%) Internet
15 20 (0.44%) Wireless
16 19 (0.42%) SSL
17 18 (0.40%) HTTP
18 17 (0.37%) OSPF
18 17 (0.37%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 247 (5.44%) Power BI
2 141 (3.11%) SQL Server
3 140 (3.09%) Relational Database
4 124 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
5 118 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
6 95 (2.09%) NoSQL
7 83 (1.83%) MongoDB
8 67 (1.48%) Metadata
9 65 (1.43%) MySQL
10 63 (1.39%) Oracle Database
10 63 (1.39%) Tableau
11 48 (1.06%) Oracle Reports
12 45 (0.99%) Big Data
13 41 (0.90%) Data Lake
14 40 (0.88%) DynamoDB
15 38 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
16 37 (0.82%) Pentaho
17 33 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
18 30 (0.66%) RDBMS
19 29 (0.64%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 426 (9.39%) JIRA
2 320 (7.05%) Git
3 235 (5.18%) Jenkins
4 152 (3.35%) GitLab
5 72 (1.59%) Selenium
6 58 (1.28%) JUnit
7 36 (0.79%) Postman
8 30 (0.66%) Bitbucket
8 30 (0.66%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.64%) Maven
10 25 (0.55%) SonarQube
11 20 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
12 19 (0.42%) Cypress.io
13 17 (0.37%) JMeter
13 17 (0.37%) REST Assured
14 16 (0.35%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.33%) CircleCI
16 14 (0.31%) Mockito
17 13 (0.29%) Artifactory
17 13 (0.29%) Gradle
General
1 2,519 (55.52%) Social Skills
2 1,654 (36.46%) Analytical Skills
3 1,048 (23.10%) Finance
4 424 (9.35%) Public Sector
5 383 (8.44%) Banking
6 179 (3.95%) Organisational Skills
7 142 (3.13%) Legal
8 132 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
9 123 (2.71%) Influencing Skills
10 119 (2.62%) Presentation Skills
11 117 (2.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 106 (2.34%) Retail
13 96 (2.12%) Telecoms
14 95 (2.09%) Front Office
14 95 (2.09%) Marketing
15 76 (1.68%) Investment Banking
16 73 (1.61%) Manufacturing
17 53 (1.17%) Military
18 39 (0.86%) Financial Institution
18 39 (0.86%) Law
Job Titles
1 668 (14.72%) Developer
2 662 (14.59%) Analyst
3 402 (8.86%) Senior
4 294 (6.48%) Architect
5 271 (5.97%) Lead
6 264 (5.82%) Business Analyst
7 250 (5.51%) Consultant
8 178 (3.92%) Project Manager
9 147 (3.24%) Support Engineer
10 144 (3.17%) Data Engineer
11 122 (2.69%) IT Support
12 110 (2.42%) Senior Developer
13 98 (2.16%) Java Developer
14 89 (1.96%) Support Analyst
15 86 (1.90%) Software Engineer
16 78 (1.72%) Data Analyst
16 78 (1.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 76 (1.68%) IT Analyst
18 75 (1.65%) Solutions Architect
19 74 (1.63%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 315 (6.94%) REST
2 183 (4.03%) RESTful
3 169 (3.72%) SOAP
4 158 (3.48%) .NET
5 144 (3.17%) React
6 136 (3.00%) Kafka
6 136 (3.00%) Node.js
7 134 (2.95%) Spring
8 122 (2.69%) HTML
9 107 (2.36%) AngularJS
10 101 (2.23%) CSS
10 101 (2.23%) Spring Boot
11 79 (1.74%) Middleware
12 78 (1.72%) JSON
13 76 (1.68%) XML
14 70 (1.54%) LDAP
15 68 (1.50%) Oracle Fusion
16 64 (1.41%) OAuth
17 57 (1.26%) Web Services
18 52 (1.15%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 234 (5.16%) Product Ownership
2 192 (4.23%) Cloud Native
3 182 (4.01%) Management Information System
4 165 (3.64%) Onboarding
5 127 (2.80%) Analytical Mindset
6 110 (2.42%) Enterprise Software
7 103 (2.27%) Data Structures
8 96 (2.12%) Data Centre
9 94 (2.07%) Self-Motivation
10 93 (2.05%) Security Posture
11 90 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
12 72 (1.59%) Algorithms
13 69 (1.52%) Legacy Systems
14 68 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
15 64 (1.41%) Virtual Team
16 63 (1.39%) Mobile App
17 61 (1.34%) CMDB
18 55 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
19 51 (1.12%) NHS
20 49 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 454 (10.01%) Windows
2 311 (6.85%) Linux
3 107 (2.36%) Windows 10
4 92 (2.03%) Unix
5 88 (1.94%) Windows Server
6 53 (1.17%) Apple iOS
7 51 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 49 (1.08%) Android
9 39 (0.86%) Mac OS
10 23 (0.51%) VMS
11 18 (0.40%) CentOS
12 13 (0.29%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
14 7 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
15 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.088%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.066%) Debian
17 3 (0.066%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,391 (30.66%) Agile
2 842 (18.56%) CI/CD
3 738 (16.27%) DevOps
4 678 (14.94%) Stakeholder Management
5 659 (14.53%) Continuous Improvement
6 501 (11.04%) Analytics
7 432 (9.52%) Project Management
8 430 (9.48%) Decision-Making
9 428 (9.43%) Migration
10 408 (8.99%) Test Automation
11 398 (8.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 387 (8.53%) Scrum
13 378 (8.33%) AI
14 360 (7.93%) Data Modelling
15 338 (7.45%) Computer Science
16 332 (7.32%) Business Intelligence
17 327 (7.21%) ITIL
18 322 (7.10%) Containerisation
19 321 (7.08%) Microservices
20 320 (7.05%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 924 (20.37%) Python
2 791 (17.43%) SQL
3 431 (9.50%) Java
4 300 (6.61%) PowerShell
5 270 (5.95%) JavaScript
6 195 (4.30%) C#
7 167 (3.68%) TypeScript
8 131 (2.89%) Bash
9 72 (1.59%) Go
10 63 (1.39%) PL/SQL
11 57 (1.26%) Shell Script
12 55 (1.21%) C++
13 41 (0.90%) Scala
14 40 (0.88%) Perl
14 40 (0.88%) VBA
15 32 (0.71%) Ruby
16 31 (0.68%) R
17 30 (0.66%) T-SQL
18 29 (0.64%) Apex Code
19 26 (0.57%) PHP
Qualifications
1 947 (20.87%) Security Cleared
2 685 (15.10%) SC Cleared
3 629 (13.86%) Degree
4 248 (5.47%) Computer Science Degree
5 154 (3.39%) DV Cleared
6 96 (2.12%) CISSP
7 93 (2.05%) Microsoft Certification
8 92 (2.03%) PMI Certification
9 90 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
10 88 (1.94%) PMP
11 86 (1.90%) Master's Degree
12 81 (1.79%) Azure Certification
13 63 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
14 56 (1.23%) AWS Certification
15 49 (1.08%) CISM
16 39 (0.86%) A+ Certification
17 37 (0.82%) CCNP
18 33 (0.73%) MCP
19 30 (0.66%) CCNA
19 30 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 297 (6.55%) QA
2 255 (5.62%) Data Quality
3 161 (3.55%) GDPR
4 90 (1.98%) Accessibility
5 81 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 81 (1.79%) NIST
6 71 (1.56%) PMO
7 44 (0.97%) PCI DSS
8 42 (0.93%) SLA
9 32 (0.71%) GRC
10 30 (0.66%) PSD2
11 22 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.44%) ISO 20022
12 20 (0.44%) WCAG
13 16 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
13 16 (0.35%) EU AI Act
13 16 (0.35%) HIPAA
14 15 (0.33%) ISO 8583
14 15 (0.33%) SEPA
15 13 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 436 (9.61%) Docker
2 332 (7.32%) Active Directory
3 100 (2.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.90%) Hyper-V
5 26 (0.57%) vSphere
6 21 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
7 18 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.40%) VMware NSX
8 15 (0.33%) Firmware
9 11 (0.24%) RACF
10 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.20%) ACF2
11 9 (0.20%) HDFS
12 7 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.13%) Squid
14 5 (0.11%) KVM
15 4 (0.088%) Lustre
15 4 (0.088%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 4 (0.088%) vCloud
15 4 (0.088%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 457 (10.07%) Kubernetes
2 250 (5.51%) Terraform
3 172 (3.79%) Ansible
4 97 (2.14%) Grafana
5 93 (2.05%) Microsoft Intune
6 84 (1.85%) SCCM
7 75 (1.65%) Prometheus
8 40 (0.88%) Puppet
9 35 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
10 34 (0.75%) Kibana
11 23 (0.51%) Argo
12 21 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 21 (0.46%) Nessus
13 16 (0.35%) Red Hat Satellite
13 16 (0.35%) SCOM
13 16 (0.35%) vCenter Server
14 15 (0.33%) vRealize
15 13 (0.29%) FortiGate
16 12 (0.26%) Control-M
16 12 (0.26%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 900 (19.84%) Microsoft
2 323 (7.12%) Oracle
3 215 (4.74%) SAP
4 194 (4.28%) ServiceNow
5 176 (3.88%) VMware
6 158 (3.48%) Google
7 129 (2.84%) Databricks
8 127 (2.80%) Splunk
9 122 (2.69%) Salesforce
10 100 (2.20%) Cisco
11 78 (1.72%) CyberArk
12 67 (1.48%) Red Hat
13 65 (1.43%) BeyondTrust
14 51 (1.12%) IBM
15 45 (0.99%) Palo Alto
15 45 (0.99%) Talend
16 44 (0.97%) Workday
17 41 (0.90%) Citrix
17 41 (0.90%) MuleSoft
18 38 (0.84%) HP