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

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -3 +5 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,711 4,033 4,083
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.41% 16.63% 10.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.39% 18.31% 12.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,923 2,564 2,524
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £502
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -0.40% -6.60%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £716 £707 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 255 185 358
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.84 £10.99
25th Percentile £15.93 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.71 £24.66 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.02% +37.00% -58.96%
75th Percentile £47.88 £48.75 £43.26
90th Percentile £74.87 £75.50 £69.59
UK median hourly rate £20.71 £25.09 £17.61
% change year-on-year -17.46% +42.52% -55.99%

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 32,731 22,028 32,675
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.21% 90.81% 86.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,968 14,519 21,584
10th Percentile £313 £313 £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 1,997 852 2,159
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.00 £20.30 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.00 £32.66 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.24% -1.05% -12.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.10 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +7.69% - -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 28 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 28 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 28 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 2,052 £509 -3.05% 986
North of England -5 779 £450 -5.26% 662
South East -5 678 £499 -0.25% 802
Midlands -3 519 £450 +0.56% 478
North West -4 388 £422 -11.18% 365
West Midlands -2 376 £475 +2.70% 278
Yorkshire -3 344 £471 -3.49% 222
South West -1 320 £525 +2.44% 308
East of England -2 228 £450 - 288
East Midlands -1 144 £411 +12.06% 199
North East -2 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 (4.35%) Confluence
2 147 (3.12%) SharePoint
3 103 (2.19%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.34%) Apache Spark
5 57 (1.21%) SAS
6 51 (1.08%) Apache
7 34 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
8 28 (0.59%) 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
1 293 (6.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 212 (4.50%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (2.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 74 (1.57%) Microsoft Project
5 73 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.53%) 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%) InVision
13 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.042%) Notion
14 2 (0.042%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 77 (1.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 21 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.42%) 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 (0.25%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.25%) 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%) SAP MDG
12 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
13 7 (0.15%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 1,004 (21.31%) Azure
2 735 (15.60%) AWS
3 342 (7.26%) Power Platform
4 333 (7.07%) GCP
5 304 (6.45%) Microsoft 365
6 229 (4.86%) Azure DevOps
7 220 (4.67%) GitHub
8 157 (3.33%) Serverless
9 148 (3.14%) Entra ID
10 121 (2.57%) SaaS
11 112 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
12 92 (1.95%) AWS Lambda
13 88 (1.87%) Amazon S3
14 83 (1.76%) OpenShift
15 72 (1.53%) Azure Data Factory
16 67 (1.42%) Snowflake
17 56 (1.19%) Google Workspace
17 56 (1.19%) PaaS
18 55 (1.17%) Power Automate
19 52 (1.10%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 178 (3.78%) Firewall
2 173 (3.67%) DNS
3 114 (2.42%) TCP/IP
4 105 (2.23%) Network Security
5 96 (2.04%) VPN
6 93 (1.97%) WAN
7 87 (1.85%) DHCP
8 74 (1.57%) LAN
9 59 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
10 46 (0.98%) BGP
11 41 (0.87%) VLAN
12 39 (0.83%) SAN
13 34 (0.72%) OSPF
14 29 (0.62%) VoIP
15 26 (0.55%) SD-WAN
16 25 (0.53%) Wireless
17 20 (0.42%) Internet
17 20 (0.42%) MPLS
18 18 (0.38%) BIG-IP
19 17 (0.36%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 272 (5.77%) Power BI
2 170 (3.61%) SQL Server
3 141 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
4 130 (2.76%) Relational Database
5 121 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
6 92 (1.95%) MongoDB
7 89 (1.89%) Metadata
8 85 (1.80%) NoSQL
9 75 (1.59%) Tableau
10 68 (1.44%) Data Lake
11 59 (1.25%) Oracle Database
12 56 (1.19%) Big Data
13 51 (1.08%) MySQL
13 51 (1.08%) Oracle Reports
14 47 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 36 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
16 32 (0.68%) DynamoDB
17 31 (0.66%) Pentaho
18 28 (0.59%) Hadoop
19 27 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 474 (10.06%) JIRA
2 323 (6.86%) Git
3 243 (5.16%) Jenkins
4 154 (3.27%) GitLab
5 77 (1.63%) Selenium
6 49 (1.04%) JUnit
7 36 (0.76%) 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%) Rational DOORS
14 15 (0.32%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
15 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
16 12 (0.25%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,544 (54.00%) Social Skills
2 1,790 (38.00%) Analytical Skills
3 1,075 (22.82%) Finance
4 464 (9.85%) Public Sector
5 382 (8.11%) Banking
6 192 (4.08%) Organisational Skills
7 170 (3.61%) Documentation Skills
8 158 (3.35%) Legal
9 153 (3.25%) Retail
10 124 (2.63%) Presentation Skills
11 118 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
12 110 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 93 (1.97%) Front Office
14 84 (1.78%) Marketing
15 74 (1.57%) Telecoms
16 68 (1.44%) Investment Banking
17 56 (1.19%) Military
18 55 (1.17%) Manufacturing
19 47 (1.00%) Law
20 41 (0.87%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 680 (14.43%) Analyst
2 593 (12.59%) Developer
3 401 (8.51%) Senior
4 341 (7.24%) Architect
5 319 (6.77%) Lead
6 269 (5.71%) Business Analyst
7 228 (4.84%) Consultant
8 199 (4.22%) Data Engineer
9 193 (4.10%) Project Manager
10 115 (2.44%) Support Engineer
11 109 (2.31%) IT Support
12 94 (2.00%) Java Developer
13 93 (1.97%) Data Analyst
13 93 (1.97%) Solutions Architect
14 91 (1.93%) Software Engineer
15 84 (1.78%) Administrator
16 79 (1.68%) Python Developer
16 79 (1.68%) Senior Developer
17 76 (1.61%) IT Analyst
18 67 (1.42%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 309 (6.56%) REST
2 154 (3.27%) RESTful
2 154 (3.27%) SOAP
3 151 (3.21%) Kafka
4 144 (3.06%) .NET
5 133 (2.82%) Spring
6 123 (2.61%) React
7 111 (2.36%) Node.js
8 100 (2.12%) AngularJS
8 100 (2.12%) Spring Boot
9 94 (2.00%) JSON
10 92 (1.95%) XML
11 91 (1.93%) CSS
12 90 (1.91%) HTML
13 89 (1.89%) LDAP
14 87 (1.85%) Middleware
15 68 (1.44%) OAuth
16 63 (1.34%) Web Services
17 59 (1.25%) Oracle Fusion
18 58 (1.23%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 236 (5.01%) Product Ownership
2 195 (4.14%) Onboarding
3 187 (3.97%) Cloud Native
4 145 (3.08%) Management Information System
5 133 (2.82%) Data Centre
6 128 (2.72%) Analytical Mindset
7 117 (2.48%) Self-Motivation
8 102 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
9 101 (2.14%) Data Structures
10 93 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
11 90 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
12 88 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
13 76 (1.61%) Virtual Team
14 69 (1.46%) Security Posture
15 67 (1.42%) Algorithms
16 66 (1.40%) Hybrid Cloud
17 64 (1.36%) Mobile App
18 54 (1.15%) CMDB
19 52 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 46 (0.98%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 509 (10.80%) Windows
2 286 (6.07%) Linux
3 101 (2.14%) Windows 10
4 86 (1.83%) Unix
5 84 (1.78%) Windows Server
6 69 (1.46%) Android
7 62 (1.32%) Apple iOS
8 54 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 47 (1.00%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.42%) 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 1,381 (29.31%) Agile
2 857 (18.19%) CI/CD
3 782 (16.60%) DevOps
4 754 (16.01%) Continuous Improvement
5 733 (15.56%) Stakeholder Management
6 563 (11.95%) Analytics
7 493 (10.46%) Decision-Making
8 492 (10.44%) Migration
9 478 (10.15%) AI
10 466 (9.89%) Project Management
11 419 (8.89%) Data Modelling
12 413 (8.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 412 (8.75%) Test Automation
14 372 (7.90%) Scrum
15 369 (7.83%) Validation
16 368 (7.81%) Business Intelligence
17 356 (7.56%) ITIL
18 351 (7.45%) Change Management
19 341 (7.24%) Customer Service
20 319 (6.77%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 936 (19.87%) Python
2 840 (17.83%) SQL
3 402 (8.53%) Java
4 319 (6.77%) PowerShell
5 242 (5.14%) JavaScript
6 188 (3.99%) C#
7 156 (3.31%) TypeScript
8 144 (3.06%) Bash
9 78 (1.66%) PL/SQL
10 60 (1.27%) C++
11 47 (1.00%) Go
12 44 (0.93%) Shell Script
13 40 (0.85%) T-SQL
14 38 (0.81%) Bicep
15 35 (0.74%) C
15 35 (0.74%) Perl
16 33 (0.70%) Apex Code
17 31 (0.66%) Scala
18 30 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 28 (0.59%) R
Qualifications
1 1,082 (22.97%) Security Cleared
2 743 (15.77%) SC Cleared
3 592 (12.57%) Degree
4 214 (4.54%) Computer Science Degree
5 205 (4.35%) DV Cleared
6 122 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (2.19%) PMP
8 96 (2.04%) Cisco Certification
9 95 (2.02%) PMI Certification
10 94 (2.00%) CISSP
11 89 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
12 81 (1.72%) Master's Degree
13 66 (1.40%) Azure Certification
14 63 (1.34%) CISM
15 45 (0.96%) CCNA
16 43 (0.91%) CCNP
17 36 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
18 35 (0.74%) A+ Certification
19 34 (0.72%) AWS Certification
20 29 (0.62%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 314 (6.67%) QA
2 303 (6.43%) Data Quality
3 155 (3.29%) GDPR
4 93 (1.97%) Accessibility
5 92 (1.95%) PMO
6 89 (1.89%) NIST
7 85 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 63 (1.34%) SLA
9 42 (0.89%) GRC
10 32 (0.68%) PCI DSS
11 26 (0.55%) PSD2
12 24 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 21 (0.45%) WCAG
14 18 (0.38%) ISO 20022
15 16 (0.34%) ISO 8583
16 15 (0.32%) HL7
17 13 (0.28%) HIPAA
17 13 (0.28%) SEPA
18 12 (0.25%) NCSC
System Software
1 397 (8.43%) Docker
2 355 (7.54%) Active Directory
3 102 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.87%) vSphere
5 33 (0.70%) VMware NSX
6 27 (0.57%) Hyper-V
7 24 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.34%) Firmware
9 15 (0.32%) 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
1 445 (9.45%) Kubernetes
2 275 (5.84%) Terraform
3 172 (3.65%) Ansible
4 119 (2.53%) Microsoft Intune
5 109 (2.31%) Grafana
6 85 (1.80%) Prometheus
7 74 (1.57%) SCCM
8 39 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
9 34 (0.72%) vCenter Server
10 32 (0.68%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.64%) Kibana
11 30 (0.64%) Puppet
12 26 (0.55%) Argo
13 24 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 20 (0.42%) Nessus
15 19 (0.40%) Control-M
16 15 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
17 14 (0.30%) vRealize
18 12 (0.25%) HP ALM
19 11 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 859 (18.23%) Microsoft
2 320 (6.79%) Oracle
3 214 (4.54%) SAP
4 205 (4.35%) ServiceNow
5 190 (4.03%) VMware
6 156 (3.31%) Google
7 148 (3.14%) Databricks
8 131 (2.78%) Splunk
9 112 (2.38%) Cisco
10 108 (2.29%) Salesforce
11 74 (1.57%) Red Hat
12 68 (1.44%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.34%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.23%) Citrix
15 51 (1.08%) Workday
16 50 (1.06%) IBM
17 48 (1.02%) Talend
18 47 (1.00%) Informatica
19 46 (0.98%) Dell
20 42 (0.89%) Juniper