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

6 months to
26 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,516 3,988 4,006
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.99% 15.08% 10.64%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.93% 16.86% 12.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,853 2,322 2,513
10th Percentile £295 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £498 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -0.50% -2.44% -5.09%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £715 £700 £713
UK median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -7.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 234 154 306
10th Percentile £13.85 £15.15 £13.23
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.91% -12.00% -19.74%
75th Percentile £35.00 £42.63 £61.00
90th Percentile £69.10 £67.52 £86.38
UK median hourly rate £18.90 £24.20 £23.50
% change year-on-year -21.92% +2.98% -21.67%

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 28,352 23,648 32,972
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.85% 89.40% 87.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,131 14,458 22,099
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% -0.94% -3.64%
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 1,777 764 1,811
10th Percentile £15.05 £15.62 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £17.13
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.06 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.15% -6.70% +7.35%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £36.02
% change year-on-year -22.62% -9.78% +12.89%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 2,070 £523 -2.11% 930
North of England -3 693 £450 -5.26% 857
South East -2 627 £475 -5.00% 1,382
Midlands -2 493 £460 +8.24% 653
North West -3 360 £425 -8.11% 399
West Midlands -1 347 £495 +13.47% 317
South West -3 291 £525 +10.53% 586
Yorkshire -5 280 £490 -2.10% 336
East of England -4 207 £475 +4.63% 586
East Midlands -2 147 £402 +9.76% 329
North East -3 60 £450 -15.29% 133
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
1 187 (4.14%) Confluence
2 150 (3.32%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.40%) SAS
5 57 (1.26%) Apache Spark
6 54 (1.20%) Apache
7 36 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.64%) Skype for Business
9 26 (0.58%) CMS
10 15 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.24%) JBoss
12 9 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.20%) nginx
13 8 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.18%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) OpenStack
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 286 (6.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 201 (4.45%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.51%) MS Visio
5 65 (1.44%) 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 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
11 5 (0.11%) Trello
12 4 (0.089%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.089%) 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 80 (1.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.51%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.42%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.38%) 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 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
9 12 (0.27%) 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 1,000 (22.14%) Azure
2 721 (15.97%) AWS
3 374 (8.28%) GCP
4 318 (7.04%) Power Platform
5 308 (6.82%) Microsoft 365
6 220 (4.87%) GitHub
7 205 (4.54%) Azure DevOps
8 151 (3.34%) Serverless
9 127 (2.81%) SaaS
10 126 (2.79%) Entra ID
11 109 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
12 75 (1.66%) Amazon S3
12 75 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
12 75 (1.66%) Snowflake
13 70 (1.55%) PaaS
14 68 (1.51%) Power Automate
15 66 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
16 64 (1.42%) Azure Data Factory
17 63 (1.40%) OpenShift
18 57 (1.26%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 152 (3.37%) Firewall
2 147 (3.26%) DNS
3 106 (2.35%) TCP/IP
4 102 (2.26%) Network Security
5 95 (2.10%) VPN
6 82 (1.82%) DHCP
7 68 (1.51%) WAN
8 51 (1.13%) 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 (0.47%) Wireshark
15 20 (0.44%) Internet
15 20 (0.44%) Wireless
16 19 (0.42%) SSL
17 18 (0.40%) HTTP
18 17 (0.38%) OSPF
18 17 (0.38%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 248 (5.49%) Power BI
2 141 (3.12%) Relational Database
3 140 (3.10%) SQL Server
4 125 (2.77%) Data Warehouse
5 118 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
6 94 (2.08%) NoSQL
7 83 (1.84%) MongoDB
8 67 (1.48%) Metadata
9 65 (1.44%) MySQL
10 64 (1.42%) Tableau
11 62 (1.37%) Oracle Database
12 48 (1.06%) Oracle Reports
13 45 (1.00%) Big Data
14 41 (0.91%) Data Lake
15 40 (0.89%) DynamoDB
16 38 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
17 37 (0.82%) Pentaho
18 33 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
19 30 (0.66%) RDBMS
20 29 (0.64%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 421 (9.32%) JIRA
2 317 (7.02%) Git
3 236 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 152 (3.37%) GitLab
5 72 (1.59%) Selenium
6 58 (1.28%) JUnit
7 36 (0.80%) 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 (0.38%) JMeter
13 17 (0.38%) REST Assured
14 16 (0.35%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.33%) CircleCI
16 13 (0.29%) Artifactory
16 13 (0.29%) Gradle
16 13 (0.29%) Mockito
General
1 2,507 (55.51%) Social Skills
2 1,641 (36.34%) Analytical Skills
3 1,040 (23.03%) Finance
4 422 (9.34%) Public Sector
5 383 (8.48%) Banking
6 179 (3.96%) Organisational Skills
7 141 (3.12%) Legal
8 130 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
9 123 (2.72%) Influencing Skills
10 118 (2.61%) Presentation Skills
11 116 (2.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 105 (2.33%) Retail
13 95 (2.10%) Front Office
13 95 (2.10%) Marketing
13 95 (2.10%) Telecoms
14 76 (1.68%) Investment Banking
15 73 (1.62%) Manufacturing
16 53 (1.17%) Military
17 39 (0.86%) Financial Institution
17 39 (0.86%) Law
Job Titles
1 667 (14.77%) Developer
2 655 (14.50%) Analyst
3 399 (8.84%) Senior
4 291 (6.44%) Architect
5 273 (6.05%) Lead
6 259 (5.74%) Business Analyst
7 249 (5.51%) Consultant
8 176 (3.90%) Project Manager
9 146 (3.23%) Support Engineer
10 144 (3.19%) Data Engineer
11 121 (2.68%) IT Support
12 109 (2.41%) Senior Developer
13 97 (2.15%) Java Developer
14 89 (1.97%) Support Analyst
15 86 (1.90%) Software Engineer
16 78 (1.73%) Data Analyst
16 78 (1.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 76 (1.68%) IT Analyst
18 75 (1.66%) Solutions Architect
19 74 (1.64%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 314 (6.95%) REST
2 182 (4.03%) RESTful
3 169 (3.74%) SOAP
4 159 (3.52%) .NET
5 145 (3.21%) React
6 137 (3.03%) Kafka
6 137 (3.03%) Node.js
7 134 (2.97%) Spring
8 123 (2.72%) HTML
9 107 (2.37%) AngularJS
10 102 (2.26%) CSS
11 101 (2.24%) Spring Boot
12 79 (1.75%) Middleware
13 78 (1.73%) JSON
14 76 (1.68%) XML
15 70 (1.55%) LDAP
16 68 (1.51%) Oracle Fusion
17 64 (1.42%) OAuth
18 57 (1.26%) Web Services
19 52 (1.15%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 232 (5.14%) Product Ownership
2 190 (4.21%) Cloud Native
3 182 (4.03%) Management Information System
4 164 (3.63%) Onboarding
5 125 (2.77%) Analytical Mindset
6 106 (2.35%) Enterprise Software
7 103 (2.28%) Data Structures
8 96 (2.13%) Data Centre
9 94 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
10 90 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
10 90 (1.99%) Security Posture
11 72 (1.59%) Algorithms
12 69 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
13 68 (1.51%) Distributed Systems
14 64 (1.42%) Virtual Team
15 63 (1.40%) Mobile App
16 61 (1.35%) CMDB
17 52 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
18 51 (1.13%) NHS
19 49 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 454 (10.05%) Windows
2 308 (6.82%) Linux
3 107 (2.37%) Windows 10
4 92 (2.04%) Unix
5 88 (1.95%) Windows Server
6 53 (1.17%) Apple iOS
7 51 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 49 (1.09%) 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 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
15 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.089%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.089%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.066%) Debian
17 3 (0.066%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,381 (30.58%) Agile
2 838 (18.56%) CI/CD
3 735 (16.28%) DevOps
4 672 (14.88%) Stakeholder Management
5 655 (14.50%) Continuous Improvement
6 502 (11.12%) Analytics
7 430 (9.52%) Decision-Making
8 428 (9.48%) Migration
9 425 (9.41%) Project Management
10 403 (8.92%) Test Automation
11 396 (8.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 382 (8.46%) Scrum
13 377 (8.35%) AI
14 361 (7.99%) Data Modelling
15 338 (7.48%) Computer Science
16 333 (7.37%) Business Intelligence
17 327 (7.24%) ITIL
18 322 (7.13%) Containerisation
19 320 (7.09%) Microservices
20 316 (7.00%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 922 (20.42%) Python
2 792 (17.54%) SQL
3 430 (9.52%) Java
4 300 (6.64%) PowerShell
5 271 (6.00%) JavaScript
6 196 (4.34%) C#
7 169 (3.74%) TypeScript
8 130 (2.88%) Bash
9 70 (1.55%) Go
10 63 (1.40%) PL/SQL
11 56 (1.24%) Shell Script
12 55 (1.22%) C++
13 41 (0.91%) Scala
14 40 (0.89%) Perl
14 40 (0.89%) VBA
15 32 (0.71%) Ruby
16 30 (0.66%) R
16 30 (0.66%) T-SQL
17 29 (0.64%) Apex Code
18 26 (0.58%) PHP
Qualifications
1 947 (20.97%) Security Cleared
2 686 (15.19%) SC Cleared
3 630 (13.95%) Degree
4 248 (5.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 156 (3.45%) DV Cleared
6 93 (2.06%) Microsoft Certification
7 92 (2.04%) CISSP
7 92 (2.04%) PMI Certification
8 89 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
9 88 (1.95%) PMP
10 86 (1.90%) Master's Degree
11 78 (1.73%) Azure Certification
12 60 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
13 52 (1.15%) AWS Certification
14 49 (1.09%) CISM
15 39 (0.86%) A+ Certification
16 37 (0.82%) CCNP
17 33 (0.73%) MCP
18 30 (0.66%) CCNA
18 30 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 297 (6.58%) QA
2 255 (5.65%) Data Quality
3 158 (3.50%) GDPR
4 90 (1.99%) Accessibility
5 78 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 78 (1.73%) NIST
6 71 (1.57%) PMO
7 42 (0.93%) SLA
8 41 (0.91%) PCI DSS
9 32 (0.71%) GRC
10 27 (0.60%) PSD2
11 22 (0.49%) 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%) SEPA
15 14 (0.31%) ISO 8583
16 13 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 433 (9.59%) Docker
2 331 (7.33%) Active Directory
3 100 (2.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.91%) Hyper-V
5 26 (0.58%) vSphere
6 21 (0.47%) 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 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.13%) Squid
13 5 (0.11%) KVM
14 4 (0.089%) vCloud
14 4 (0.089%) VMware ESXi
15 3 (0.066%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.066%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 450 (9.96%) Kubernetes
2 247 (5.47%) Terraform
3 170 (3.76%) Ansible
4 95 (2.10%) Grafana
5 93 (2.06%) Microsoft Intune
6 84 (1.86%) SCCM
7 75 (1.66%) Prometheus
8 40 (0.89%) Puppet
9 35 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
10 34 (0.75%) Kibana
11 23 (0.51%) Argo
12 21 (0.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 21 (0.47%) 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 (0.27%) Control-M
17 11 (0.24%) IBM Guardium
Vendors
1 896 (19.84%) Microsoft
2 321 (7.11%) Oracle
3 212 (4.69%) SAP
4 194 (4.30%) ServiceNow
5 176 (3.90%) VMware
6 159 (3.52%) Google
7 129 (2.86%) Databricks
8 127 (2.81%) Splunk
9 120 (2.66%) Salesforce
10 100 (2.21%) Cisco
11 78 (1.73%) CyberArk
12 67 (1.48%) Red Hat
13 65 (1.44%) BeyondTrust
14 51 (1.13%) IBM
15 45 (1.00%) Palo Alto
15 45 (1.00%) Talend
16 42 (0.93%) Workday
17 41 (0.91%) Citrix
18 39 (0.86%) MuleSoft
19 38 (0.84%) Adobe