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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -3 +5 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,682 3,974 4,109
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.85% 16.13% 10.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.85% 17.80% 12.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,918 2,493 2,541
10th Percentile £298 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £588 £618 £635
90th Percentile £713 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £481 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.75% - -6.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 252 164 366
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.99 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.02 £25.43 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -21.27% +37.46% -54.32%
75th Percentile £42.44 £49.25 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £79.78 £74.38
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £26.50 £18.00
% change year-on-year -24.53% +47.22% -48.57%

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 31,521 22,327 33,048
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.53% 90.61% 86.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,160 14,432 21,853
10th Percentile £313 £308 £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 £615 £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 1,961 797 2,159
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £34.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +6.15% -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.63 £70.53
UK median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -8.89% - -7.14%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -6 2,043 £512 -2.45% 1,079
North of England -3 765 £450 -7.98% 775
South East -3 673 £492 -1.60% 1,042
Midlands -2 517 £450 +3.15% 574
North West -4 379 £425 -10.53% 409
West Midlands -2 376 £475 +3.69% 312
Yorkshire -4 339 £475 -5.00% 283
South West -2 309 £535 +1.90% 431
East of England -3 239 £450 - 426
East Midlands -3 142 £402 +7.20% 254
North East -2 56 £438 -2.78% 95
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
1 208 (4.44%) Confluence
2 149 (3.18%) SharePoint
3 105 (2.24%) Microsoft Exchange
4 66 (1.41%) Apache Spark
5 55 (1.17%) SAS
6 53 (1.13%) Apache
7 33 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.58%) CMS
9 20 (0.43%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.32%) Skype for Business
11 13 (0.28%) nginx
12 11 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 10 (0.21%) JBoss
14 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
15 7 (0.15%) Camunda
16 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
16 6 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
17 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 296 (6.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 212 (4.53%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (2.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (1.50%) MS Visio
5 68 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
6 22 (0.47%) Chatbot
7 20 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Trello
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.085%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.085%) Maya
12 4 (0.085%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.064%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.064%) InVision
13 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.064%) Notion
13 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 79 (1.69%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.47%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.32%) Workday HCM
6 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
6 13 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
7 12 (0.26%) NEC Housing
7 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
7 12 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
7 12 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 11 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
8 11 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
9 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
10 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
11 8 (0.17%) SAP MDG
11 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,006 (21.49%) Azure
2 734 (15.68%) AWS
3 344 (7.35%) GCP
4 333 (7.11%) Power Platform
5 302 (6.45%) Microsoft 365
6 237 (5.06%) GitHub
7 222 (4.74%) Azure DevOps
8 166 (3.55%) Serverless
9 147 (3.14%) Entra ID
10 123 (2.63%) SaaS
11 115 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
12 92 (1.96%) Amazon S3
13 91 (1.94%) AWS Lambda
14 87 (1.86%) OpenShift
15 74 (1.58%) Snowflake
16 72 (1.54%) Azure Data Factory
17 67 (1.43%) PaaS
18 56 (1.20%) Dynamics 365
19 53 (1.13%) Google Workspace
20 52 (1.11%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 173 (3.70%) Firewall
2 168 (3.59%) DNS
3 115 (2.46%) TCP/IP
4 102 (2.18%) Network Security
5 93 (1.99%) DHCP
6 92 (1.96%) VPN
7 89 (1.90%) WAN
8 72 (1.54%) LAN
9 54 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
10 43 (0.92%) BGP
11 40 (0.85%) VLAN
12 32 (0.68%) SAN
13 31 (0.66%) OSPF
14 29 (0.62%) VoIP
15 22 (0.47%) SD-WAN
15 22 (0.47%) Wireless
16 21 (0.45%) Internet
17 17 (0.36%) BIG-IP
17 17 (0.36%) Junos
17 17 (0.36%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 266 (5.68%) Power BI
2 162 (3.46%) SQL Server
3 138 (2.95%) PostgreSQL
4 136 (2.90%) Data Warehouse
5 131 (2.80%) Relational Database
6 99 (2.11%) MongoDB
7 91 (1.94%) NoSQL
8 75 (1.60%) Metadata
9 69 (1.47%) Tableau
10 63 (1.35%) Oracle Database
11 58 (1.24%) Data Lake
11 58 (1.24%) MySQL
12 54 (1.15%) Oracle Reports
13 51 (1.09%) Big Data
14 46 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 40 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
16 36 (0.77%) DynamoDB
17 32 (0.68%) Hadoop
18 29 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
18 29 (0.62%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 459 (9.80%) JIRA
2 328 (7.01%) Git
3 245 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 159 (3.40%) GitLab
5 79 (1.69%) Selenium
6 55 (1.17%) JUnit
7 41 (0.88%) Postman
8 36 (0.77%) Bitbucket
9 35 (0.75%) Cucumber
10 25 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
11 24 (0.51%) Maven
12 22 (0.47%) Cypress.io
12 22 (0.47%) REST Assured
13 18 (0.38%) JMeter
13 18 (0.38%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.36%) Mockito
15 15 (0.32%) IntelliJ
15 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
17 13 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,538 (54.21%) Social Skills
2 1,747 (37.31%) Analytical Skills
3 1,064 (22.73%) Finance
4 458 (9.78%) Public Sector
5 376 (8.03%) Banking
6 182 (3.89%) Organisational Skills
7 160 (3.42%) Documentation Skills
8 154 (3.29%) Legal
9 140 (2.99%) Retail
10 125 (2.67%) Influencing Skills
11 123 (2.63%) Presentation Skills
12 112 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 92 (1.96%) Front Office
14 88 (1.88%) Marketing
15 79 (1.69%) Telecoms
16 67 (1.43%) Investment Banking
17 60 (1.28%) Military
18 58 (1.24%) Manufacturing
19 45 (0.96%) Law
20 42 (0.90%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 663 (14.16%) Analyst
2 626 (13.37%) Developer
3 400 (8.54%) Senior
4 324 (6.92%) Architect
5 308 (6.58%) Lead
6 271 (5.79%) Business Analyst
7 236 (5.04%) Consultant
8 192 (4.10%) Project Manager
9 186 (3.97%) Data Engineer
10 123 (2.63%) Support Engineer
11 111 (2.37%) IT Support
12 92 (1.96%) Java Developer
13 88 (1.88%) Software Engineer
14 87 (1.86%) Data Analyst
15 85 (1.82%) Senior Developer
16 81 (1.73%) Solutions Architect
17 80 (1.71%) Administrator
17 80 (1.71%) Python Developer
18 72 (1.54%) IT Analyst
19 71 (1.52%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 322 (6.88%) REST
2 170 (3.63%) SOAP
3 156 (3.33%) RESTful
4 153 (3.27%) Kafka
5 150 (3.20%) .NET
6 143 (3.05%) Spring
7 137 (2.93%) React
8 132 (2.82%) Node.js
9 110 (2.35%) CSS
9 110 (2.35%) HTML
10 108 (2.31%) AngularJS
11 103 (2.20%) JSON
12 97 (2.07%) Spring Boot
13 93 (1.99%) XML
14 87 (1.86%) LDAP
15 86 (1.84%) Middleware
16 70 (1.50%) OAuth
17 69 (1.47%) Web Services
18 66 (1.41%) Oracle Fusion
19 56 (1.20%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 225 (4.81%) Product Ownership
2 192 (4.10%) Cloud Native
3 182 (3.89%) Onboarding
4 151 (3.23%) Management Information System
5 128 (2.73%) Data Centre
6 125 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
7 101 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
8 100 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
8 100 (2.14%) Data Structures
9 93 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
10 82 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
11 76 (1.62%) Algorithms
12 74 (1.58%) Security Posture
13 72 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
14 71 (1.52%) Virtual Team
15 66 (1.41%) Mobile App
16 63 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
17 60 (1.28%) CMDB
18 52 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 49 (1.05%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 499 (10.66%) Windows
2 284 (6.07%) Linux
3 96 (2.05%) Windows 10
4 89 (1.90%) Unix
5 84 (1.79%) Windows Server
6 69 (1.47%) Android
7 63 (1.35%) Apple iOS
8 55 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 47 (1.00%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.43%) VMS
11 15 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 13 (0.28%) CentOS
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 7 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.11%) zOS
17 4 (0.085%) Debian
17 4 (0.085%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,369 (29.24%) Agile
2 875 (18.69%) CI/CD
3 768 (16.40%) DevOps
4 719 (15.36%) Stakeholder Management
5 712 (15.21%) Continuous Improvement
6 549 (11.73%) Analytics
7 483 (10.32%) Migration
8 477 (10.19%) Decision-Making
9 446 (9.53%) AI
10 440 (9.40%) Project Management
11 413 (8.82%) Data Modelling
12 410 (8.76%) Test Automation
13 409 (8.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 368 (7.86%) Scrum
15 359 (7.67%) Validation
16 353 (7.54%) Business Intelligence
17 336 (7.18%) Containerisation
17 336 (7.18%) ITIL
18 335 (7.16%) Customer Service
19 333 (7.11%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 927 (19.80%) Python
2 836 (17.86%) SQL
3 414 (8.84%) Java
4 312 (6.66%) PowerShell
5 260 (5.55%) JavaScript
6 185 (3.95%) C#
7 173 (3.70%) TypeScript
8 137 (2.93%) Bash
9 73 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.20%) C++
11 50 (1.07%) Shell Script
12 47 (1.00%) Go
13 37 (0.79%) Perl
14 36 (0.77%) Scala
14 36 (0.77%) T-SQL
15 35 (0.75%) Bicep
16 33 (0.70%) VBA
17 32 (0.68%) Ruby
18 31 (0.66%) Apex Code
19 30 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,055 (22.53%) Security Cleared
2 731 (15.61%) SC Cleared
3 608 (12.99%) Degree
4 229 (4.89%) Computer Science Degree
5 202 (4.31%) DV Cleared
6 110 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
7 94 (2.01%) PMP
8 92 (1.96%) CISSP
9 91 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
9 91 (1.94%) Microsoft Certification
10 89 (1.90%) Master's Degree
10 89 (1.90%) PMI Certification
11 70 (1.50%) Azure Certification
12 60 (1.28%) CISM
13 45 (0.96%) AWS Certification
14 41 (0.88%) CCNA
14 41 (0.88%) CCNP
15 34 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
16 32 (0.68%) A+ Certification
17 26 (0.56%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 304 (6.49%) QA
2 280 (5.98%) Data Quality
3 153 (3.27%) GDPR
4 88 (1.88%) Accessibility
4 88 (1.88%) NIST
5 83 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 80 (1.71%) PMO
7 57 (1.22%) SLA
8 35 (0.75%) GRC
9 34 (0.73%) PCI DSS
10 24 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
11 23 (0.49%) PSD2
12 21 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 19 (0.41%) WCAG
14 17 (0.36%) EU AI Act
15 16 (0.34%) HIPAA
15 16 (0.34%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
17 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 12 (0.26%) NCSC
System Software
1 426 (9.10%) Docker
2 345 (7.37%) Active Directory
3 96 (2.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.79%) vSphere
5 29 (0.62%) VMware NSX
6 28 (0.60%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.34%) Firmware
8 16 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.23%) RACF
10 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 8 (0.17%) Squid
13 7 (0.15%) vCloud
13 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.085%) HDFS
15 4 (0.085%) Snort
16 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 461 (9.85%) Kubernetes
2 266 (5.68%) Terraform
3 168 (3.59%) Ansible
4 112 (2.39%) Microsoft Intune
5 111 (2.37%) Grafana
6 90 (1.92%) Prometheus
7 75 (1.60%) SCCM
8 40 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
9 33 (0.70%) Puppet
10 31 (0.66%) Argo
10 31 (0.66%) FortiGate
10 31 (0.66%) Kibana
11 29 (0.62%) Nessus
11 29 (0.62%) vCenter Server
12 26 (0.56%) Control-M
13 25 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 24 (0.51%) IBM Guardium
15 14 (0.30%) vRealize
16 13 (0.28%) Red Hat Satellite
17 11 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 875 (18.69%) Microsoft
2 318 (6.79%) Oracle
3 214 (4.57%) SAP
4 199 (4.25%) ServiceNow
5 184 (3.93%) VMware
6 164 (3.50%) Google
7 140 (2.99%) Databricks
8 138 (2.95%) Splunk
9 113 (2.41%) Cisco
10 104 (2.22%) Salesforce
11 80 (1.71%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.56%) CyberArk
13 62 (1.32%) BeyondTrust
14 55 (1.17%) Workday
15 54 (1.15%) Citrix
16 49 (1.05%) IBM
17 46 (0.98%) F5
17 46 (0.98%) Informatica
18 45 (0.96%) Talend
19 43 (0.92%) Dell