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

6 months to
30 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -3 +5 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,681 4,061 4,077
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.34% 16.61% 10.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.34% 18.30% 12.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,897 2,582 2,524
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -2.44% -4.65%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £723 £712 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 188 362
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.84 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.68 £16.95 £14.04
Median hourly rate £20.71 £23.99 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.67% +33.28% -57.72%
75th Percentile £47.63 £48.19 £43.69
90th Percentile £74.74 £74.00 £71.01
UK median hourly rate £20.71 £25.00 £17.61
% change year-on-year -17.16% +42.01% -56.53%

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 32,652 22,196 32,688
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.09% 90.77% 86.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,899 14,634 21,608
10th Percentile £313 £311 £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 £614 £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 2,012 866 2,163
10th Percentile £15.34 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.04 £20.03 £15.97
Median hourly rate £36.71 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.95% - -13.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.67 £57.91
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £71.13
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £31.88 £32.50
% change year-on-year +11.36% -1.91% -9.72%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -7 2,043 £505 -3.81% 986
North of England -5 773 £450 -5.26% 662
South East -5 673 £496 -0.75% 802
Midlands -4 515 £450 +0.45% 478
North West -4 387 £420 -11.58% 365
West Midlands -1 375 £476 +2.86% 278
Yorkshire -3 339 £468 -4.00% 222
South West -1 318 £525 +2.44% 308
East of England -3 228 £450 - 288
East Midlands -2 141 £408 +10.21% 199
North East -4 56 £450 - 92
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
1 205 (4.38%) Confluence
2 147 (3.14%) SharePoint
3 103 (2.20%) Microsoft Exchange
4 62 (1.32%) Apache Spark
5 56 (1.20%) SAS
6 50 (1.07%) Apache
7 34 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.58%) CMS
9 16 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.30%) nginx
11 13 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
12 11 (0.23%) Skype for Business
13 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.17%) Camunda
14 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.13%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.13%) JBoss
15 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
16 5 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 292 (6.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 211 (4.51%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (2.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 74 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
5 72 (1.54%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.17%) Trello
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.085%) Maya
12 4 (0.085%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.064%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.064%) CATIA
13 3 (0.064%) InVision
13 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.043%) Notion
Business Applications
1 75 (1.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 21 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.43%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
6 14 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
6 14 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 14 (0.30%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
7 13 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
8 12 (0.26%) NEC Housing
9 11 (0.23%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
9 11 (0.23%) Oracle Receivables
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
12 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
13 7 (0.15%) SAP HR
13 7 (0.15%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 998 (21.32%) Azure
2 729 (15.57%) AWS
3 340 (7.26%) Power Platform
4 328 (7.01%) GCP
5 304 (6.49%) Microsoft 365
6 227 (4.85%) Azure DevOps
7 217 (4.64%) GitHub
8 155 (3.31%) Serverless
9 148 (3.16%) Entra ID
10 122 (2.61%) SaaS
11 110 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
12 91 (1.94%) AWS Lambda
13 88 (1.88%) Amazon S3
14 82 (1.75%) OpenShift
15 72 (1.54%) Azure Data Factory
16 66 (1.41%) Snowflake
17 56 (1.20%) Google Workspace
17 56 (1.20%) PaaS
18 55 (1.17%) Power Automate
19 52 (1.11%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 177 (3.78%) Firewall
2 173 (3.70%) DNS
3 114 (2.44%) TCP/IP
4 104 (2.22%) Network Security
5 95 (2.03%) VPN
6 90 (1.92%) WAN
7 87 (1.86%) DHCP
8 74 (1.58%) LAN
9 59 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
10 46 (0.98%) BGP
11 41 (0.88%) VLAN
12 39 (0.83%) SAN
13 34 (0.73%) OSPF
14 29 (0.62%) VoIP
15 25 (0.53%) SD-WAN
15 25 (0.53%) Wireless
16 19 (0.41%) Internet
16 19 (0.41%) MPLS
17 18 (0.38%) BIG-IP
18 17 (0.36%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 270 (5.77%) Power BI
2 170 (3.63%) SQL Server
3 141 (3.01%) Data Warehouse
4 128 (2.73%) Relational Database
5 121 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
6 90 (1.92%) MongoDB
7 89 (1.90%) Metadata
8 84 (1.79%) NoSQL
9 74 (1.58%) Tableau
10 68 (1.45%) Data Lake
11 59 (1.26%) Oracle Database
12 55 (1.17%) Big Data
13 51 (1.09%) Oracle Reports
14 50 (1.07%) MySQL
15 47 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 36 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
17 31 (0.66%) DynamoDB
17 31 (0.66%) Pentaho
18 27 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
18 27 (0.58%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 470 (10.04%) JIRA
2 318 (6.79%) Git
3 239 (5.11%) Jenkins
4 151 (3.23%) GitLab
5 77 (1.64%) Selenium
6 49 (1.05%) JUnit
7 36 (0.77%) Postman
8 33 (0.70%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 23 (0.49%) Cypress.io
10 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 22 (0.47%) Maven
11 22 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
12 18 (0.38%) Mockito
13 16 (0.34%) JMeter
14 15 (0.32%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
15 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
16 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
16 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,523 (53.90%) Social Skills
2 1,779 (38.00%) Analytical Skills
3 1,064 (22.73%) Finance
4 459 (9.81%) Public Sector
5 378 (8.08%) Banking
6 193 (4.12%) Organisational Skills
7 169 (3.61%) Documentation Skills
8 159 (3.40%) Legal
9 152 (3.25%) Retail
10 125 (2.67%) Presentation Skills
11 118 (2.52%) Influencing Skills
12 109 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 93 (1.99%) Front Office
14 84 (1.79%) Marketing
15 73 (1.56%) Telecoms
16 68 (1.45%) Investment Banking
17 55 (1.17%) Manufacturing
18 54 (1.15%) Military
19 47 (1.00%) Law
20 42 (0.90%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 678 (14.48%) Analyst
2 590 (12.60%) Developer
3 398 (8.50%) Senior
4 338 (7.22%) Architect
5 315 (6.73%) Lead
6 265 (5.66%) Business Analyst
7 224 (4.79%) Consultant
8 200 (4.27%) Data Engineer
9 192 (4.10%) Project Manager
10 115 (2.46%) Support Engineer
11 108 (2.31%) IT Support
12 94 (2.01%) Java Developer
13 93 (1.99%) Data Analyst
13 93 (1.99%) Solutions Architect
14 90 (1.92%) Software Engineer
15 84 (1.79%) Administrator
16 80 (1.71%) Python Developer
17 78 (1.67%) Senior Developer
18 76 (1.62%) IT Analyst
19 67 (1.43%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 307 (6.56%) REST
2 153 (3.27%) RESTful
3 152 (3.25%) SOAP
4 149 (3.18%) Kafka
5 141 (3.01%) .NET
6 133 (2.84%) Spring
7 122 (2.61%) React
8 111 (2.37%) Node.js
9 100 (2.14%) Spring Boot
10 99 (2.11%) AngularJS
11 92 (1.97%) JSON
11 92 (1.97%) XML
12 89 (1.90%) CSS
12 89 (1.90%) LDAP
13 88 (1.88%) HTML
14 85 (1.82%) Middleware
15 68 (1.45%) OAuth
16 59 (1.26%) Oracle Fusion
16 59 (1.26%) Web Services
17 57 (1.22%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 232 (4.96%) Product Ownership
2 195 (4.17%) Onboarding
3 186 (3.97%) Cloud Native
4 144 (3.08%) Management Information System
5 132 (2.82%) Data Centre
6 127 (2.71%) Analytical Mindset
7 118 (2.52%) Self-Motivation
8 102 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
9 101 (2.16%) Data Structures
10 93 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
11 90 (1.92%) Distributed Systems
12 85 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
13 76 (1.62%) Virtual Team
14 68 (1.45%) Security Posture
15 66 (1.41%) Algorithms
16 63 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
17 62 (1.32%) Mobile App
18 53 (1.13%) CMDB
19 52 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 46 (0.98%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 505 (10.79%) Windows
2 284 (6.07%) Linux
3 100 (2.14%) Windows 10
4 87 (1.86%) Unix
5 84 (1.79%) Windows Server
6 69 (1.47%) Android
7 61 (1.30%) Apple iOS
8 54 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 48 (1.03%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.43%) VMS
11 16 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.23%) CentOS
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 7 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.15%) zOS
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.11%) Debian
17 4 (0.085%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,366 (29.18%) Agile
2 849 (18.14%) CI/CD
3 776 (16.58%) DevOps
4 749 (16.00%) Continuous Improvement
5 723 (15.45%) Stakeholder Management
6 561 (11.98%) Analytics
7 490 (10.47%) Decision-Making
8 486 (10.38%) Migration
9 478 (10.21%) AI
10 463 (9.89%) Project Management
11 416 (8.89%) Data Modelling
12 412 (8.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 411 (8.78%) Test Automation
14 372 (7.95%) Scrum
15 365 (7.80%) Business Intelligence
16 363 (7.75%) Validation
17 357 (7.63%) ITIL
18 350 (7.48%) Change Management
19 343 (7.33%) Customer Service
20 319 (6.81%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 931 (19.89%) Python
2 834 (17.82%) SQL
3 401 (8.57%) Java
4 319 (6.81%) PowerShell
5 240 (5.13%) JavaScript
6 185 (3.95%) C#
7 156 (3.33%) TypeScript
8 141 (3.01%) Bash
9 77 (1.64%) PL/SQL
10 60 (1.28%) C++
11 46 (0.98%) Go
12 45 (0.96%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.83%) T-SQL
14 38 (0.81%) Bicep
15 35 (0.75%) C
15 35 (0.75%) Perl
16 31 (0.66%) Apex Code
16 31 (0.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 31 (0.66%) Scala
17 28 (0.60%) R
Qualifications
1 1,072 (22.90%) Security Cleared
2 737 (15.74%) SC Cleared
3 588 (12.56%) Degree
4 215 (4.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 206 (4.40%) DV Cleared
6 121 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (2.20%) PMP
8 96 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
9 95 (2.03%) PMI Certification
10 94 (2.01%) CISSP
11 89 (1.90%) Microsoft Certification
12 79 (1.69%) Master's Degree
13 65 (1.39%) Azure Certification
14 63 (1.35%) CISM
15 45 (0.96%) CCNA
16 43 (0.92%) CCNP
17 36 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
18 35 (0.75%) A+ Certification
19 33 (0.70%) AWS Certification
20 29 (0.62%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 312 (6.67%) QA
2 304 (6.49%) Data Quality
3 155 (3.31%) GDPR
4 92 (1.97%) PMO
5 91 (1.94%) Accessibility
6 89 (1.90%) NIST
7 85 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 62 (1.32%) SLA
9 43 (0.92%) GRC
10 31 (0.66%) PCI DSS
11 26 (0.56%) PSD2
12 24 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.43%) WCAG
15 18 (0.38%) ISO 20022
16 16 (0.34%) ISO 8583
17 15 (0.32%) HL7
18 13 (0.28%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.28%) SEPA
19 12 (0.26%) NCSC
System Software
1 391 (8.35%) Docker
2 356 (7.61%) Active Directory
3 102 (2.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.85%) vSphere
5 32 (0.68%) VMware NSX
6 27 (0.58%) Hyper-V
7 24 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.34%) Firmware
9 14 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.23%) RACF
11 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 9 (0.19%) Squid
12 9 (0.19%) vCloud
13 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.085%) IAG
15 4 (0.085%) Snort
16 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 439 (9.38%) Kubernetes
2 270 (5.77%) Terraform
3 167 (3.57%) Ansible
4 120 (2.56%) Microsoft Intune
5 107 (2.29%) Grafana
6 83 (1.77%) Prometheus
7 73 (1.56%) SCCM
8 38 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
9 33 (0.70%) vCenter Server
10 32 (0.68%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.64%) Kibana
11 30 (0.64%) Puppet
12 26 (0.56%) Argo
13 24 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 20 (0.43%) Nessus
15 19 (0.41%) Control-M
16 15 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
17 14 (0.30%) vRealize
18 12 (0.26%) HP ALM
19 11 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 857 (18.31%) Microsoft
2 318 (6.79%) Oracle
3 213 (4.55%) SAP
4 205 (4.38%) ServiceNow
5 188 (4.02%) VMware
6 152 (3.25%) Google
7 147 (3.14%) Databricks
8 131 (2.80%) Splunk
9 112 (2.39%) Cisco
10 105 (2.24%) Salesforce
11 74 (1.58%) Red Hat
12 68 (1.45%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.35%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.24%) Citrix
15 50 (1.07%) Workday
16 48 (1.03%) Talend
17 47 (1.00%) IBM
17 47 (1.00%) Informatica
18 46 (0.98%) Dell
19 42 (0.90%) Juniper