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

6 months to
14 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 4,720 4,002 4,092
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.79% 15.36% 10.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.76% 17.10% 12.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,993 2,378 2,544
10th Percentile £286 £263 £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 £705 £700 £730
UK median daily rate £486 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.75% - -6.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 252 150 342
10th Percentile £13.96 £15.24 £12.19
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.85 £25.22 £21.57
Median % change year-on-year -25.26% +16.90% -36.47%
75th Percentile £36.63 £48.56 £54.69
90th Percentile £70.00 £77.83 £83.72
UK median hourly rate £19.25 £26.50 £21.01
% change year-on-year -27.36% +26.16% -31.40%

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 29,953 23,398 33,216
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.52% 89.80% 87.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,141 14,488 22,145
10th Percentile £310 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £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 1,876 738 1,974
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £13.31
25th Percentile £18.21 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.77 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.37% - -
75th Percentile £60.30 £64.50 £60.36
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.42
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £33.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -2.99% +2.15%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 2,101 £519 -1.23% 749
North of England -2 753 £450 -5.26% 594
South East -2 676 £481 -3.75% 860
Midlands -1 522 £450 +5.88% 456
North West -1 393 £425 -8.11% 348
West Midlands +1 370 £488 +11.54% 284
Yorkshire -5 306 £485 -3.10% 189
South West -2 301 £525 +5.00% 314
East of England -3 232 £475 +4.63% 281
East Midlands -2 153 £402 +7.92% 172
North East -4 62 £450 -11.33% 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
1 207 (4.39%) Confluence
2 161 (3.41%) SharePoint
3 106 (2.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 58 (1.23%) Apache Spark
5 52 (1.10%) Apache
5 52 (1.10%) SAS
6 36 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
7 29 (0.61%) Skype for Business
8 27 (0.57%) CMS
9 15 (0.32%) WebLogic
10 12 (0.25%) nginx
11 10 (0.21%) JBoss
12 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 7 (0.15%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 298 (6.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 208 (4.41%) Microsoft Office
3 118 (2.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.53%) MS Visio
5 67 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
6 19 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.38%) 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 (0.042%) Oracle Smart View
15 2 (0.042%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 79 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.40%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 17 (0.36%) SAP EWM
6 15 (0.32%) NetSuite
6 15 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
6 15 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 14 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
7 14 (0.30%) Workday HCM
8 13 (0.28%) SAP WM
9 12 (0.25%) NEC Housing
9 12 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.25%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
12 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.19%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,038 (21.99%) Azure
2 731 (15.49%) AWS
3 363 (7.69%) GCP
4 334 (7.08%) Power Platform
5 315 (6.67%) Microsoft 365
6 228 (4.83%) GitHub
7 217 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
8 151 (3.20%) Serverless
9 136 (2.88%) Entra ID
10 124 (2.63%) SaaS
11 112 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
12 81 (1.72%) Amazon S3
13 79 (1.67%) OpenShift
14 77 (1.63%) Snowflake
15 75 (1.59%) AWS Lambda
16 73 (1.55%) Azure Data Factory
17 64 (1.36%) PaaS
18 63 (1.33%) Dynamics 365
19 57 (1.21%) Power Automate
20 52 (1.10%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 169 (3.58%) DNS
2 168 (3.56%) Firewall
3 113 (2.39%) TCP/IP
4 106 (2.25%) VPN
5 102 (2.16%) Network Security
6 92 (1.95%) DHCP
7 74 (1.57%) WAN
8 57 (1.21%) LAN
9 46 (0.97%) VLAN
10 38 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
11 35 (0.74%) BGP
12 29 (0.61%) Skype
12 29 (0.61%) VoIP
13 22 (0.47%) OSPF
13 22 (0.47%) SAN
14 20 (0.42%) Wireless
15 19 (0.40%) HTTP
16 18 (0.38%) Internet
16 18 (0.38%) SD-WAN
16 18 (0.38%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 270 (5.72%) Power BI
2 153 (3.24%) SQL Server
3 137 (2.90%) Relational Database
4 128 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
5 126 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
6 99 (2.10%) MongoDB
7 88 (1.86%) NoSQL
8 72 (1.53%) Metadata
9 69 (1.46%) Tableau
10 67 (1.42%) Oracle Database
11 61 (1.29%) MySQL
12 53 (1.12%) Data Lake
13 48 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
14 46 (0.97%) Big Data
15 42 (0.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 35 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
16 35 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
17 33 (0.70%) DynamoDB
18 30 (0.64%) SQL Server Reporting Services
19 27 (0.57%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 455 (9.64%) JIRA
2 306 (6.48%) Git
3 239 (5.06%) Jenkins
4 158 (3.35%) GitLab
5 77 (1.63%) Selenium
6 55 (1.17%) JUnit
7 42 (0.89%) Postman
8 33 (0.70%) Bitbucket
9 32 (0.68%) Cucumber
10 25 (0.53%) Maven
11 24 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
12 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
13 22 (0.47%) Cypress.io
13 22 (0.47%) SonarQube
14 19 (0.40%) Mockito
15 17 (0.36%) JMeter
16 16 (0.34%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
18 12 (0.25%) Artifactory
18 12 (0.25%) IntelliJ
General
1 2,580 (54.66%) Social Skills
2 1,715 (36.33%) Analytical Skills
3 1,078 (22.84%) Finance
4 436 (9.24%) Public Sector
5 381 (8.07%) Banking
6 189 (4.00%) Organisational Skills
7 150 (3.18%) Documentation Skills
8 149 (3.16%) Legal
9 127 (2.69%) Presentation Skills
9 127 (2.69%) Retail
10 123 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
11 113 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 97 (2.06%) Front Office
13 94 (1.99%) Telecoms
14 91 (1.93%) Marketing
15 75 (1.59%) Investment Banking
16 71 (1.50%) Manufacturing
17 60 (1.27%) Military
18 45 (0.95%) Law
19 43 (0.91%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 700 (14.83%) Analyst
2 660 (13.98%) Developer
3 412 (8.73%) Senior
4 304 (6.44%) Architect
5 292 (6.19%) Lead
6 283 (6.00%) Business Analyst
7 251 (5.32%) Consultant
8 180 (3.81%) Project Manager
9 162 (3.43%) Data Engineer
10 148 (3.14%) Support Engineer
11 123 (2.61%) IT Support
12 104 (2.20%) Senior Developer
13 99 (2.10%) Java Developer
14 93 (1.97%) Data Analyst
15 90 (1.91%) Software Engineer
16 89 (1.89%) Support Analyst
17 82 (1.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 81 (1.72%) IT Analyst
19 80 (1.69%) Python Developer
20 79 (1.67%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 333 (7.06%) REST
2 176 (3.73%) SOAP
3 170 (3.60%) RESTful
4 159 (3.37%) .NET
5 151 (3.20%) Kafka
6 144 (3.05%) React
7 139 (2.94%) Node.js
8 138 (2.92%) Spring
9 124 (2.63%) HTML
10 112 (2.37%) CSS
11 110 (2.33%) AngularJS
12 102 (2.16%) Spring Boot
13 100 (2.12%) JSON
14 91 (1.93%) XML
15 82 (1.74%) LDAP
16 80 (1.69%) Middleware
17 66 (1.40%) OAuth
18 65 (1.38%) Oracle Fusion
19 62 (1.31%) Web Services
20 55 (1.17%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 228 (4.83%) Product Ownership
2 200 (4.24%) Cloud Native
3 182 (3.86%) Onboarding
4 169 (3.58%) Management Information System
5 123 (2.61%) Analytical Mindset
6 108 (2.29%) Data Structures
7 107 (2.27%) Data Centre
8 102 (2.16%) Enterprise Software
9 99 (2.10%) Self-Motivation
10 97 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
11 78 (1.65%) Security Posture
12 77 (1.63%) Algorithms
12 77 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
13 65 (1.38%) Mobile App
13 65 (1.38%) Virtual Team
14 63 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
14 63 (1.33%) Hybrid Cloud
15 59 (1.25%) CMDB
16 54 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 49 (1.04%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 483 (10.23%) Windows
2 326 (6.91%) Linux
3 105 (2.22%) Windows 10
4 102 (2.16%) Unix
5 89 (1.89%) Windows Server
6 59 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 57 (1.21%) Apple iOS
8 56 (1.19%) Android
9 46 (0.97%) Mac OS
10 23 (0.49%) VMS
11 18 (0.38%) CentOS
12 14 (0.30%) Ubuntu
13 10 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
14 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.085%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.064%) Debian
17 3 (0.064%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,377 (29.17%) Agile
2 853 (18.07%) CI/CD
3 749 (15.87%) DevOps
4 701 (14.85%) Stakeholder Management
5 673 (14.26%) Continuous Improvement
6 522 (11.06%) Analytics
7 479 (10.15%) Migration
8 474 (10.04%) Decision-Making
9 440 (9.32%) Project Management
10 420 (8.90%) AI
11 404 (8.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 402 (8.52%) Test Automation
13 386 (8.18%) Data Modelling
14 365 (7.73%) Scrum
15 352 (7.46%) ITIL
16 348 (7.37%) Containerisation
16 348 (7.37%) Validation
17 347 (7.35%) Business Intelligence
18 344 (7.29%) Computer Science
19 332 (7.03%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 936 (19.83%) Python
2 818 (17.33%) SQL
3 433 (9.17%) Java
4 315 (6.67%) PowerShell
5 273 (5.78%) JavaScript
6 205 (4.34%) C#
7 178 (3.77%) TypeScript
8 138 (2.92%) Bash
9 65 (1.38%) PL/SQL
10 58 (1.23%) C++
11 57 (1.21%) Go
12 54 (1.14%) Shell Script
13 42 (0.89%) Perl
14 39 (0.83%) VBA
15 38 (0.81%) Scala
16 34 (0.72%) T-SQL
17 31 (0.66%) Apex Code
18 30 (0.64%) Ruby
19 29 (0.61%) Bicep
19 29 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,022 (21.65%) Security Cleared
2 728 (15.42%) SC Cleared
3 649 (13.75%) Degree
4 247 (5.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 193 (4.09%) DV Cleared
6 110 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 93 (1.97%) Microsoft Certification
8 92 (1.95%) PMP
9 91 (1.93%) Master's Degree
10 89 (1.89%) PMI Certification
11 86 (1.82%) CISSP
12 77 (1.63%) Azure Certification
13 62 (1.31%) Cisco Certification
14 49 (1.04%) CISM
15 48 (1.02%) AWS Certification
16 39 (0.83%) A+ Certification
17 38 (0.81%) CCNP
18 34 (0.72%) CCNA
19 32 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
20 28 (0.59%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 317 (6.72%) QA
2 269 (5.70%) Data Quality
3 156 (3.31%) GDPR
4 93 (1.97%) Accessibility
5 82 (1.74%) NIST
6 80 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 78 (1.65%) PMO
8 50 (1.06%) SLA
9 37 (0.78%) PCI DSS
10 30 (0.64%) GRC
11 26 (0.55%) PSD2
12 22 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 21 (0.44%) ISO 20022
14 20 (0.42%) WCAG
15 17 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
16 16 (0.34%) EU AI Act
16 16 (0.34%) SEPA
17 15 (0.32%) HIPAA
18 14 (0.30%) ISO 8583
19 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 429 (9.09%) Docker
2 357 (7.56%) Active Directory
3 110 (2.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.89%) Hyper-V
5 36 (0.76%) vSphere
6 27 (0.57%) VMware NSX
7 23 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 21 (0.44%) 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%) vCloud
15 5 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
16 4 (0.085%) KVM
17 3 (0.064%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.064%) Oracle RAC
17 3 (0.064%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 462 (9.79%) Kubernetes
2 261 (5.53%) Terraform
3 175 (3.71%) Ansible
4 115 (2.44%) Grafana
5 102 (2.16%) Microsoft Intune
6 92 (1.95%) Prometheus
7 90 (1.91%) SCCM
8 40 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.78%) Puppet
10 36 (0.76%) Kibana
11 30 (0.64%) Argo
11 30 (0.64%) Nessus
12 25 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 23 (0.49%) vCenter Server
14 22 (0.47%) Control-M
15 21 (0.44%) IBM Guardium
16 19 (0.40%) FortiGate
16 19 (0.40%) Red Hat Satellite
17 16 (0.34%) SCOM
18 15 (0.32%) vRealize
Vendors
1 914 (19.36%) Microsoft
2 319 (6.76%) Oracle
3 225 (4.77%) SAP
4 201 (4.26%) ServiceNow
5 193 (4.09%) VMware
6 163 (3.45%) Google
7 143 (3.03%) Databricks
8 136 (2.88%) Splunk
9 113 (2.39%) Salesforce
10 103 (2.18%) Cisco
11 83 (1.76%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.55%) CyberArk
13 62 (1.31%) BeyondTrust
14 49 (1.04%) IBM
15 48 (1.02%) Workday
16 44 (0.93%) Palo Alto
17 42 (0.89%) Citrix
18 40 (0.85%) Informatica
19 39 (0.83%) Adobe
20 38 (0.81%) HP