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

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,767 4,071 4,101
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.09% 15.84% 10.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.07% 17.51% 12.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,989 2,514 2,542
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £502
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -0.40% -7.04%
75th Percentile £594 £618 £637
90th Percentile £713 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £481 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.75% - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 162 360
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.99 £11.50
25th Percentile £15.74 £16.95 £14.16
Median hourly rate £20.00 £25.22 £19.44
Median % change year-on-year -20.68% +29.72% -52.01%
75th Percentile £41.92 £48.56 £46.18
90th Percentile £73.58 £77.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £26.50 £18.42
% change year-on-year -24.53% +43.90% -47.39%

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 31,633 23,246 33,278
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.88% 90.44% 87.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,235 14,775 22,032
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 1,951 810 2,137
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.49 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £29.61 £35.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.40% +6.06% -6.46%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £76.34 £71.88
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £32.81 £32.50
% change year-on-year -14.66% +0.95% -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 7 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 7 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 7 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 -4 2,095 £513 -2.38% 1,119
North of England -2 769 £450 -8.16% 665
South East -2 677 £492 -1.60% 944
Midlands -2 533 £450 +3.15% 494
West Midlands 0 388 £476 +4.94% 281
North West -4 382 £424 -10.79% 356
Yorkshire -4 336 £475 -5.00% 230
South West -3 318 £543 +3.33% 350
East of England -3 243 £450 - 396
East Midlands -3 146 £402 +7.20% 210
North East -2 60 £438 -9.00% 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
1 207 (4.34%) Confluence
2 155 (3.25%) SharePoint
3 108 (2.27%) Microsoft Exchange
4 67 (1.41%) Apache Spark
5 59 (1.24%) SAS
6 56 (1.17%) Apache
7 38 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
8 28 (0.59%) CMS
9 20 (0.42%) WebLogic
10 19 (0.40%) Skype for Business
11 14 (0.29%) 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 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
15 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
16 5 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 294 (6.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 216 (4.53%) Microsoft Office
3 116 (2.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 75 (1.57%) MS Visio
5 68 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
6 22 (0.46%) Chatbot
7 18 (0.38%) 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 (0.10%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.084%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.084%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.063%) InVision
13 3 (0.063%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.063%) Maya
13 3 (0.063%) Notion
13 3 (0.063%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.063%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 75 (1.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.46%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.31%) Workday HCM
6 14 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.27%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
7 13 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
7 13 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.25%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.25%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
11 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
12 8 (0.17%) SAP MDG
12 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,030 (21.61%) Azure
2 745 (15.63%) AWS
3 354 (7.43%) GCP
4 335 (7.03%) Power Platform
5 315 (6.61%) Microsoft 365
6 234 (4.91%) GitHub
7 223 (4.68%) Azure DevOps
8 162 (3.40%) Serverless
9 152 (3.19%) Entra ID
10 124 (2.60%) SaaS
11 114 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
12 90 (1.89%) Amazon S3
13 88 (1.85%) AWS Lambda
14 87 (1.83%) OpenShift
15 75 (1.57%) Snowflake
16 74 (1.55%) Azure Data Factory
17 67 (1.41%) PaaS
18 57 (1.20%) Azure AKS
19 55 (1.15%) Dynamics 365
20 53 (1.11%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 179 (3.75%) Firewall
2 175 (3.67%) DNS
3 123 (2.58%) TCP/IP
4 103 (2.16%) Network Security
5 101 (2.12%) VPN
6 95 (1.99%) DHCP
7 86 (1.80%) WAN
8 68 (1.43%) LAN
9 53 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
10 45 (0.94%) BGP
11 44 (0.92%) VLAN
12 33 (0.69%) OSPF
13 31 (0.65%) SAN
14 29 (0.61%) VoIP
15 20 (0.42%) SD-WAN
15 20 (0.42%) Wireless
16 19 (0.40%) Internet
16 19 (0.40%) Skype
17 18 (0.38%) HTTP
18 17 (0.36%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 268 (5.62%) Power BI
2 163 (3.42%) SQL Server
3 139 (2.92%) PostgreSQL
4 135 (2.83%) Relational Database
5 134 (2.81%) Data Warehouse
6 103 (2.16%) MongoDB
7 99 (2.08%) NoSQL
8 73 (1.53%) Metadata
9 69 (1.45%) Tableau
10 66 (1.38%) Oracle Database
11 63 (1.32%) MySQL
12 58 (1.22%) Data Lake
13 53 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
14 48 (1.01%) Big Data
15 46 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 39 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
17 36 (0.76%) DynamoDB
18 34 (0.71%) Pentaho
19 33 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
19 33 (0.69%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 464 (9.73%) JIRA
2 333 (6.99%) Git
3 251 (5.27%) Jenkins
4 159 (3.34%) GitLab
5 78 (1.64%) Selenium
6 54 (1.13%) JUnit
7 39 (0.82%) Postman
8 36 (0.76%) Bitbucket
8 36 (0.76%) Cucumber
9 25 (0.52%) Maven
10 24 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
11 22 (0.46%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.44%) Cypress.io
13 18 (0.38%) Mockito
13 18 (0.38%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.36%) JMeter
15 15 (0.31%) IntelliJ
15 15 (0.31%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.29%) CircleCI
17 13 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,594 (54.42%) Social Skills
2 1,750 (36.71%) Analytical Skills
3 1,076 (22.57%) Finance
4 456 (9.57%) Public Sector
5 379 (7.95%) Banking
6 186 (3.90%) Organisational Skills
7 156 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
8 153 (3.21%) Legal
9 135 (2.83%) Retail
10 127 (2.66%) Influencing Skills
10 127 (2.66%) Presentation Skills
11 118 (2.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 96 (2.01%) Front Office
13 92 (1.93%) Marketing
14 77 (1.62%) Telecoms
15 70 (1.47%) Investment Banking
16 62 (1.30%) Military
17 60 (1.26%) Manufacturing
18 44 (0.92%) Law
19 43 (0.90%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 687 (14.41%) Analyst
2 650 (13.64%) Developer
3 411 (8.62%) Senior
4 318 (6.67%) Architect
5 311 (6.52%) Lead
6 276 (5.79%) Business Analyst
7 234 (4.91%) Consultant
8 189 (3.96%) Data Engineer
8 189 (3.96%) Project Manager
9 131 (2.75%) Support Engineer
10 118 (2.48%) IT Support
11 98 (2.06%) Java Developer
12 92 (1.93%) Senior Developer
12 92 (1.93%) Software Engineer
13 89 (1.87%) Data Analyst
14 84 (1.76%) Python Developer
15 82 (1.72%) Administrator
16 80 (1.68%) Solutions Architect
16 80 (1.68%) Support Analyst
17 79 (1.66%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 324 (6.80%) REST
2 174 (3.65%) SOAP
3 163 (3.42%) RESTful
4 155 (3.25%) Kafka
5 151 (3.17%) .NET
6 145 (3.04%) React
6 145 (3.04%) Spring
7 136 (2.85%) Node.js
8 116 (2.43%) HTML
9 114 (2.39%) CSS
10 109 (2.29%) AngularJS
11 103 (2.16%) JSON
12 99 (2.08%) Spring Boot
13 92 (1.93%) XML
14 86 (1.80%) LDAP
15 84 (1.76%) Middleware
16 70 (1.47%) OAuth
17 68 (1.43%) Web Services
18 66 (1.38%) Oracle Fusion
19 54 (1.13%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 228 (4.78%) Product Ownership
2 190 (3.99%) Cloud Native
3 186 (3.90%) Onboarding
4 155 (3.25%) Management Information System
5 128 (2.69%) Analytical Mindset
6 124 (2.60%) Data Centre
7 105 (2.20%) Data Structures
8 103 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
9 101 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
10 94 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
11 80 (1.68%) Algorithms
12 79 (1.66%) Security Posture
13 77 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
14 72 (1.51%) Distributed Systems
15 71 (1.49%) Virtual Team
16 64 (1.34%) Hybrid Cloud
16 64 (1.34%) Mobile App
17 60 (1.26%) CMDB
18 53 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 49 (1.03%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 511 (10.72%) Windows
2 301 (6.31%) Linux
3 102 (2.14%) Windows 10
4 98 (2.06%) Unix
5 86 (1.80%) Windows Server
6 68 (1.43%) Android
7 64 (1.34%) Apple iOS
8 58 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 46 (0.96%) Mac OS
10 22 (0.46%) VMS
11 15 (0.31%) CentOS
11 15 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
12 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
13 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
14 5 (0.10%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.10%) zOS
15 4 (0.084%) Debian
15 4 (0.084%) Windows 8
15 4 (0.084%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,399 (29.35%) Agile
2 889 (18.65%) CI/CD
3 779 (16.34%) DevOps
4 730 (15.31%) Stakeholder Management
5 719 (15.08%) Continuous Improvement
6 550 (11.54%) Analytics
7 488 (10.24%) Migration
8 485 (10.17%) Decision-Making
9 446 (9.36%) AI
10 440 (9.23%) Project Management
11 420 (8.81%) Test Automation
12 412 (8.64%) Data Modelling
13 410 (8.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 381 (7.99%) Scrum
15 365 (7.66%) Validation
16 359 (7.53%) Business Intelligence
17 349 (7.32%) ITIL
18 342 (7.17%) Containerisation
18 342 (7.17%) Customer Service
19 341 (7.15%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 948 (19.89%) Python
2 847 (17.77%) SQL
3 427 (8.96%) Java
4 319 (6.69%) PowerShell
5 267 (5.60%) JavaScript
6 191 (4.01%) C#
7 178 (3.73%) TypeScript
8 142 (2.98%) Bash
9 72 (1.51%) PL/SQL
10 55 (1.15%) C++
11 51 (1.07%) Shell Script
12 49 (1.03%) Go
13 39 (0.82%) Perl
14 38 (0.80%) Scala
15 37 (0.78%) T-SQL
16 35 (0.73%) Bicep
17 33 (0.69%) VBA
18 31 (0.65%) Apex Code
18 31 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 30 (0.63%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,067 (22.38%) Security Cleared
2 745 (15.63%) SC Cleared
3 632 (13.26%) Degree
4 234 (4.91%) Computer Science Degree
5 203 (4.26%) DV Cleared
6 111 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 97 (2.03%) Microsoft Certification
8 96 (2.01%) PMP
9 91 (1.91%) Master's Degree
10 90 (1.89%) CISSP
10 90 (1.89%) PMI Certification
11 86 (1.80%) Cisco Certification
12 69 (1.45%) Azure Certification
13 58 (1.22%) CISM
14 44 (0.92%) AWS Certification
15 41 (0.86%) CCNP
16 40 (0.84%) CCNA
17 34 (0.71%) A+ Certification
17 34 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
18 26 (0.55%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 310 (6.50%) QA
2 285 (5.98%) Data Quality
3 153 (3.21%) GDPR
4 88 (1.85%) Accessibility
5 85 (1.78%) NIST
6 81 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 81 (1.70%) PMO
7 56 (1.17%) SLA
8 35 (0.73%) PCI DSS
9 33 (0.69%) GRC
10 23 (0.48%) PSD2
11 22 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.42%) WCAG
14 16 (0.34%) EU AI Act
14 16 (0.34%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.31%) HIPAA
15 15 (0.31%) ISO 8583
16 14 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 12 (0.25%) IFRS
System Software
1 439 (9.21%) Docker
2 361 (7.57%) Active Directory
3 98 (2.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.76%) vSphere
5 30 (0.63%) Hyper-V
6 27 (0.57%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.36%) Firmware
8 17 (0.36%) 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 5 (0.10%) HDFS
16 4 (0.084%) Snort
17 3 (0.063%) ISA Server
17 3 (0.063%) NFS
Systems Management
1 474 (9.94%) Kubernetes
2 270 (5.66%) Terraform
3 174 (3.65%) Ansible
4 112 (2.35%) Microsoft Intune
5 110 (2.31%) Grafana
6 87 (1.83%) Prometheus
7 85 (1.78%) SCCM
8 43 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
9 35 (0.73%) Puppet
10 33 (0.69%) Kibana
11 32 (0.67%) Nessus
12 30 (0.63%) Argo
12 30 (0.63%) FortiGate
13 28 (0.59%) vCenter Server
14 25 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 24 (0.50%) Control-M
16 23 (0.48%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.31%) Red Hat Satellite
18 14 (0.29%) vRealize
19 11 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 908 (19.05%) Microsoft
2 324 (6.80%) Oracle
3 211 (4.43%) ServiceNow
4 209 (4.38%) SAP
5 187 (3.92%) VMware
6 164 (3.44%) Google
7 142 (2.98%) Databricks
7 142 (2.98%) Splunk
8 112 (2.35%) Cisco
9 105 (2.20%) Salesforce
10 82 (1.72%) Red Hat
11 73 (1.53%) CyberArk
12 62 (1.30%) BeyondTrust
13 55 (1.15%) Citrix
14 54 (1.13%) Workday
15 50 (1.05%) IBM
16 49 (1.03%) Talend
17 44 (0.92%) F5
17 44 (0.92%) Informatica
18 42 (0.88%) Dell