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

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 11
Rank change year-on-year -1 +5 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,464 3,958 3,847
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.09% 14.85% 10.49%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.99% 16.63% 11.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,813 2,299 2,429
10th Percentile £278 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £523
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -4.31% -3.24%
75th Percentile £603 £613 £625
90th Percentile £716 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £489 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.20% - -7.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 235 155 269
10th Percentile £13.64 £15.04 £13.39
25th Percentile £15.65 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.50 £21.46 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.79% -21.96% -12.78%
75th Percentile £33.36 £37.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £63.90 £66.00 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £18.87 £24.00 £25.50
% change year-on-year -21.38% -5.88% -15.70%

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 27,911 23,801 32,210
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.11% 89.29% 87.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,824 14,585 21,671
10th Percentile £304 £310 £304
25th Percentile £409 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £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 1,743 772 1,617
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.88 £20.94 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -12.50% +14.29%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.20 £64.50
90th Percentile £69.43 £75.00 £75.84
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £38.85
% change year-on-year -22.62% -16.34% +19.54%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +1 2,045 £525 -1.87% 867
North of England -2 693 £450 -5.26% 855
South East -1 624 £478 -4.50% 1,437
Midlands -2 491 £450 +5.88% 630
North West -2 356 £425 -8.11% 382
West Midlands -1 347 £492 +13.10% 294
South West 0 285 £525 +16.67% 590
Yorkshire -5 285 £487 -2.60% 343
East of England -5 197 £475 +8.57% 642
East Midlands -5 145 £402 +12.29% 329
North East -2 59 £450 -18.18% 142
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
1 179 (4.01%) Confluence
2 153 (3.43%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.41%) SAS
5 53 (1.19%) Apache Spark
6 51 (1.14%) Apache
7 36 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.65%) Skype for Business
9 22 (0.49%) CMS
10 15 (0.34%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.25%) JBoss
12 10 (0.22%) Anypoint
12 10 (0.22%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
13 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
14 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.11%) Appian
15 5 (0.11%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 298 (6.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 203 (4.55%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (2.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (1.55%) MS Visio
5 66 (1.48%) Microsoft Project
6 16 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
8 7 (0.16%) Sketch
9 6 (0.13%) ProjectWise
10 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
10 5 (0.11%) Trello
11 4 (0.090%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.067%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.067%) Notion
13 2 (0.045%) InVision
13 2 (0.045%) Siemens NX
13 2 (0.045%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 80 (1.79%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
4 20 (0.45%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.38%) SAP EWM
6 15 (0.34%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.31%) Oracle Assets
7 14 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
7 14 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
8 13 (0.29%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.29%) SAP WM
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.25%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.25%) SAP HR
10 11 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
12 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
12 9 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 973 (21.80%) Azure
2 703 (15.75%) AWS
3 365 (8.18%) GCP
4 313 (7.01%) Power Platform
5 301 (6.74%) Microsoft 365
6 217 (4.86%) GitHub
7 196 (4.39%) Azure DevOps
8 145 (3.25%) Serverless
9 126 (2.82%) Entra ID
10 124 (2.78%) SaaS
11 109 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
12 72 (1.61%) Snowflake
13 69 (1.55%) AWS Lambda
13 69 (1.55%) PaaS
14 68 (1.52%) Amazon S3
14 68 (1.52%) Power Automate
15 66 (1.48%) Dynamics 365
16 63 (1.41%) OpenShift
17 62 (1.39%) Azure Data Factory
18 59 (1.32%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 148 (3.32%) Firewall
2 141 (3.16%) DNS
3 100 (2.24%) TCP/IP
4 97 (2.17%) Network Security
5 92 (2.06%) VPN
6 79 (1.77%) DHCP
7 66 (1.48%) WAN
8 49 (1.10%) LAN
9 39 (0.87%) VLAN
10 33 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
11 30 (0.67%) BGP
12 29 (0.65%) Skype
13 28 (0.63%) VoIP
14 22 (0.49%) Wireless
15 21 (0.47%) Wireshark
16 19 (0.43%) SSL
17 18 (0.40%) HTTP
18 17 (0.38%) SD-WAN
19 16 (0.36%) Internet
19 16 (0.36%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 245 (5.49%) Power BI
2 140 (3.14%) SQL Server
3 136 (3.05%) Relational Database
4 120 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
5 119 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
6 92 (2.06%) NoSQL
7 82 (1.84%) MongoDB
8 69 (1.55%) Oracle Database
9 67 (1.50%) Metadata
10 63 (1.41%) MySQL
10 63 (1.41%) Tableau
11 46 (1.03%) Big Data
11 46 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
12 42 (0.94%) DynamoDB
13 39 (0.87%) Data Lake
14 37 (0.83%) Pentaho
15 36 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
16 29 (0.65%) BigQuery
16 29 (0.65%) RDBMS
16 29 (0.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 418 (9.36%) JIRA
2 317 (7.10%) Git
3 231 (5.17%) Jenkins
4 147 (3.29%) GitLab
5 66 (1.48%) Selenium
6 56 (1.25%) JUnit
7 30 (0.67%) Cucumber
8 29 (0.65%) Maven
8 29 (0.65%) Postman
9 25 (0.56%) Bitbucket
10 20 (0.45%) SonarQube
11 18 (0.40%) Cypress.io
11 18 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
12 16 (0.36%) SpecFlow
13 15 (0.34%) CircleCI
13 15 (0.34%) JMeter
14 13 (0.29%) Gradle
14 13 (0.29%) REST Assured
15 12 (0.27%) Mockito
16 11 (0.25%) Artifactory
General
1 2,467 (55.26%) Social Skills
2 1,632 (36.56%) Analytical Skills
3 1,045 (23.41%) Finance
4 410 (9.18%) Public Sector
5 391 (8.76%) Banking
6 175 (3.92%) Organisational Skills
7 141 (3.16%) Legal
8 133 (2.98%) Influencing Skills
9 116 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
9 116 (2.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 113 (2.53%) Presentation Skills
11 104 (2.33%) Retail
12 94 (2.11%) Front Office
12 94 (2.11%) Marketing
12 94 (2.11%) Telecoms
13 76 (1.70%) Investment Banking
14 71 (1.59%) Manufacturing
15 53 (1.19%) Military
16 39 (0.87%) Financial Institution
17 38 (0.85%) Law
Job Titles
1 658 (14.74%) Developer
2 650 (14.56%) Analyst
3 389 (8.71%) Senior
4 282 (6.32%) Architect
5 272 (6.09%) Lead
6 258 (5.78%) Business Analyst
7 248 (5.56%) Consultant
8 176 (3.94%) Project Manager
9 145 (3.25%) Support Engineer
10 140 (3.14%) Data Engineer
11 120 (2.69%) IT Support
12 109 (2.44%) Senior Developer
13 100 (2.24%) Java Developer
14 89 (1.99%) Support Analyst
15 84 (1.88%) Software Engineer
16 80 (1.79%) Data Analyst
17 75 (1.68%) Administrator
17 75 (1.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 73 (1.64%) IT Analyst
19 72 (1.61%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 304 (6.81%) REST
2 176 (3.94%) RESTful
3 164 (3.67%) SOAP
4 153 (3.43%) .NET
5 136 (3.05%) Kafka
6 134 (3.00%) React
7 133 (2.98%) Node.js
8 129 (2.89%) Spring
9 116 (2.60%) HTML
10 102 (2.28%) AngularJS
11 96 (2.15%) CSS
11 96 (2.15%) Spring Boot
12 79 (1.77%) JSON
12 79 (1.77%) XML
13 72 (1.61%) Middleware
14 67 (1.50%) Oracle Fusion
15 64 (1.43%) LDAP
16 63 (1.41%) OAuth
17 57 (1.28%) Web Services
18 52 (1.16%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 227 (5.09%) Product Ownership
2 192 (4.30%) Cloud Native
3 181 (4.05%) Management Information System
4 168 (3.76%) Onboarding
5 127 (2.84%) Analytical Mindset
6 106 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
7 102 (2.28%) Data Structures
8 95 (2.13%) Self-Motivation
9 91 (2.04%) Security Posture
10 90 (2.02%) Data Centre
11 88 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
12 71 (1.59%) Algorithms
13 66 (1.48%) Distributed Systems
14 62 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
15 59 (1.32%) CMDB
15 59 (1.32%) Mobile App
16 57 (1.28%) Virtual Team
17 53 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
18 50 (1.12%) NHS
19 49 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 442 (9.90%) Windows
2 313 (7.01%) Linux
3 104 (2.33%) Windows 10
4 91 (2.04%) Unix
5 87 (1.95%) Windows Server
6 53 (1.19%) Apple iOS
7 50 (1.12%) Android
7 50 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 39 (0.87%) Mac OS
9 24 (0.54%) VMS
10 18 (0.40%) CentOS
11 12 (0.27%) Ubuntu
12 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
13 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.090%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.090%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.090%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.067%) Debian
15 3 (0.067%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,366 (30.60%) Agile
2 810 (18.15%) CI/CD
3 716 (16.04%) DevOps
4 666 (14.92%) Stakeholder Management
5 643 (14.40%) Continuous Improvement
6 490 (10.98%) Analytics
7 431 (9.66%) Project Management
8 426 (9.54%) Decision-Making
9 418 (9.36%) Migration
10 396 (8.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 396 (8.87%) Test Automation
11 378 (8.47%) Scrum
12 360 (8.06%) AI
13 355 (7.95%) Data Modelling
14 332 (7.44%) Computer Science
15 329 (7.37%) Business Intelligence
16 318 (7.12%) Containerisation
17 317 (7.10%) ITIL
18 313 (7.01%) Mentoring
19 311 (6.97%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 911 (20.41%) Python
2 781 (17.50%) SQL
3 423 (9.48%) Java
4 295 (6.61%) PowerShell
5 265 (5.94%) JavaScript
6 187 (4.19%) C#
7 159 (3.56%) TypeScript
8 132 (2.96%) Bash
9 69 (1.55%) Go
10 63 (1.41%) PL/SQL
11 61 (1.37%) Shell Script
12 51 (1.14%) C++
13 39 (0.87%) VBA
14 38 (0.85%) Perl
14 38 (0.85%) Scala
15 32 (0.72%) R
16 31 (0.69%) Ruby
17 30 (0.67%) T-SQL
18 26 (0.58%) PHP
19 25 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 901 (20.18%) Security Cleared
2 659 (14.76%) SC Cleared
3 629 (14.09%) Degree
4 245 (5.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 139 (3.11%) DV Cleared
6 95 (2.13%) PMI Certification
7 91 (2.04%) CISSP
8 90 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
8 90 (2.02%) PMP
9 82 (1.84%) Master's Degree
10 80 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
11 79 (1.77%) Azure Certification
12 60 (1.34%) Cisco Certification
13 53 (1.19%) AWS Certification
14 47 (1.05%) CISM
15 36 (0.81%) A+ Certification
15 36 (0.81%) CCNP
16 34 (0.76%) MCP
17 28 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
18 26 (0.58%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 295 (6.61%) QA
2 257 (5.76%) Data Quality
3 158 (3.54%) GDPR
4 88 (1.97%) Accessibility
5 81 (1.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 80 (1.79%) NIST
7 72 (1.61%) PMO
8 42 (0.94%) SLA
9 41 (0.92%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.69%) GRC
11 28 (0.63%) PSD2
12 22 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.45%) ISO 20022
14 19 (0.43%) WCAG
15 16 (0.36%) EU AI Act
16 15 (0.34%) SEPA
17 14 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
17 14 (0.31%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 14 (0.31%) ISO 8583
18 13 (0.29%) HIPAA
System Software
1 430 (9.63%) Docker
2 326 (7.30%) Active Directory
3 95 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.94%) Hyper-V
5 24 (0.54%) vSphere
6 20 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
7 17 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
8 15 (0.34%) Firmware
8 15 (0.34%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.25%) HDFS
10 11 (0.25%) RACF
11 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.20%) ACF2
13 5 (0.11%) KVM
14 4 (0.090%) Lustre
14 4 (0.090%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 4 (0.090%) vCloud
14 4 (0.090%) VMware ESXi
15 3 (0.067%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 444 (9.95%) Kubernetes
2 241 (5.40%) Terraform
3 177 (3.97%) Ansible
4 91 (2.04%) Grafana
5 88 (1.97%) Microsoft Intune
6 82 (1.84%) SCCM
7 64 (1.43%) Prometheus
8 40 (0.90%) Puppet
9 31 (0.69%) Kibana
10 29 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (0.52%) Argo
12 21 (0.47%) Nessus
13 18 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 16 (0.36%) Red Hat Satellite
14 16 (0.36%) SCOM
14 16 (0.36%) vCenter Server
15 15 (0.34%) HP ALM
15 15 (0.34%) vRealize
16 12 (0.27%) Data Guard
17 11 (0.25%) Control-M
Vendors
1 892 (19.98%) Microsoft
2 321 (7.19%) Oracle
3 207 (4.64%) SAP
4 192 (4.30%) ServiceNow
5 173 (3.88%) VMware
6 155 (3.47%) Google
7 127 (2.84%) Databricks
8 126 (2.82%) Splunk
9 117 (2.62%) Salesforce
10 101 (2.26%) Cisco
11 79 (1.77%) CyberArk
12 65 (1.46%) BeyondTrust
13 60 (1.34%) Red Hat
14 50 (1.12%) IBM
15 46 (1.03%) Workday
16 45 (1.01%) Talend
17 44 (0.99%) Palo Alto
18 42 (0.94%) Citrix
18 42 (0.94%) MuleSoft
19 41 (0.92%) HP