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

6 months to
20 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 4,497 3,931 3,872
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.08% 14.85% 10.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.98% 16.63% 11.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,839 2,278 2,431
10th Percentile £279 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £384
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -3.85% -3.70%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £715 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -7.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 235 154 277
10th Percentile £13.84 £15.03 £13.29
25th Percentile £15.71 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.50 £21.48 £25.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.87% -15.76% -22.73%
75th Percentile £34.38 £37.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £63.90 £66.00 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £18.87 £24.09 £23.50
% change year-on-year -21.67% +2.51% -24.19%

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 28,150 23,642 32,326
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.12% 89.29% 87.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,007 14,469 21,732
10th Percentile £304 £310 £300
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 1,749 768 1,647
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £14.10
25th Percentile £17.89 £21.00 £17.68
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -12.50% +14.29%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £69.49 £75.00 £75.42
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £38.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -14.47% +16.92%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 0 2,060 £525 -2.33% 878
North of England -2 698 £450 -5.26% 817
South East -1 630 £475 -5.00% 1,330
Midlands -2 493 £450 +5.88% 613
North West -2 357 £428 -7.57% 376
West Midlands -1 349 £492 +13.10% 292
South West -1 288 £525 +14.75% 553
Yorkshire -5 288 £487 -2.60% 319
East of England -5 198 £475 +5.56% 555
East Midlands -5 145 £402 +11.67% 313
North East -2 60 £450 -18.18% 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
1 179 (3.98%) Confluence
2 153 (3.40%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.42%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.40%) SAS
5 54 (1.20%) Apache Spark
6 52 (1.16%) Apache
7 36 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.64%) Skype for Business
9 22 (0.49%) CMS
10 15 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.24%) 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%) Camunda
14 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 296 (6.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 204 (4.54%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (2.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (1.53%) MS Visio
5 65 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
6 16 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 8 (0.18%) Adobe XD
8 8 (0.18%) Sketch
9 7 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.13%) ProjectWise
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
11 5 (0.11%) Trello
12 4 (0.089%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.067%) InVision
13 3 (0.067%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.067%) Notion
13 3 (0.067%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.044%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 80 (1.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
4 20 (0.44%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.38%) SAP EWM
6 15 (0.33%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.31%) Aladdin
7 14 (0.31%) Oracle Assets
7 14 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
7 14 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
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
9 12 (0.27%) SAP HR
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
12 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
12 9 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 983 (21.86%) Azure
2 711 (15.81%) AWS
3 367 (8.16%) GCP
4 315 (7.00%) Power Platform
5 302 (6.72%) Microsoft 365
6 217 (4.83%) GitHub
7 199 (4.43%) Azure DevOps
8 148 (3.29%) Serverless
9 128 (2.85%) Entra ID
10 125 (2.78%) SaaS
11 109 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
12 73 (1.62%) Snowflake
13 72 (1.60%) AWS Lambda
14 71 (1.58%) Amazon S3
15 69 (1.53%) PaaS
16 68 (1.51%) Power Automate
17 66 (1.47%) Dynamics 365
18 63 (1.40%) OpenShift
19 62 (1.38%) Azure Data Factory
20 59 (1.31%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 150 (3.34%) Firewall
2 141 (3.14%) DNS
3 102 (2.27%) Network Security
4 100 (2.22%) TCP/IP
5 92 (2.05%) VPN
6 79 (1.76%) DHCP
7 66 (1.47%) WAN
8 49 (1.09%) LAN
9 39 (0.87%) VLAN
10 33 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
11 30 (0.67%) BGP
12 29 (0.64%) Skype
13 28 (0.62%) VoIP
14 22 (0.49%) Wireless
15 21 (0.47%) Wireshark
16 19 (0.42%) SSL
17 18 (0.40%) HTTP
18 17 (0.38%) Internet
18 17 (0.38%) SD-WAN
19 16 (0.36%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 247 (5.49%) Power BI
2 140 (3.11%) SQL Server
3 139 (3.09%) Relational Database
4 121 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
5 119 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
6 92 (2.05%) NoSQL
7 83 (1.85%) MongoDB
8 69 (1.53%) Oracle Database
9 68 (1.51%) Metadata
10 63 (1.40%) MySQL
10 63 (1.40%) Tableau
11 46 (1.02%) Big Data
11 46 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
12 42 (0.93%) DynamoDB
13 39 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
13 39 (0.87%) Data Lake
14 37 (0.82%) Pentaho
15 31 (0.69%) RDBMS
16 29 (0.64%) BigQuery
16 29 (0.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 419 (9.32%) JIRA
2 320 (7.12%) Git
3 235 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 148 (3.29%) GitLab
5 67 (1.49%) Selenium
6 56 (1.25%) JUnit
7 30 (0.67%) Cucumber
7 30 (0.67%) Postman
8 29 (0.64%) Maven
9 25 (0.56%) Bitbucket
10 20 (0.44%) SonarQube
11 18 (0.40%) Cypress.io
11 18 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
12 16 (0.36%) SpecFlow
13 15 (0.33%) CircleCI
13 15 (0.33%) JMeter
14 14 (0.31%) REST Assured
15 13 (0.29%) Gradle
16 12 (0.27%) Mockito
17 11 (0.24%) Artifactory
General
1 2,486 (55.28%) Social Skills
2 1,644 (36.56%) Analytical Skills
3 1,048 (23.30%) Finance
4 414 (9.21%) Public Sector
5 392 (8.72%) Banking
6 175 (3.89%) Organisational Skills
7 143 (3.18%) Legal
8 133 (2.96%) Influencing Skills
9 117 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
9 117 (2.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 113 (2.51%) Presentation Skills
11 104 (2.31%) Retail
12 95 (2.11%) Marketing
13 94 (2.09%) Front Office
14 93 (2.07%) Telecoms
15 77 (1.71%) Investment Banking
16 73 (1.62%) Manufacturing
17 53 (1.18%) Military
18 39 (0.87%) Financial Institution
19 38 (0.85%) Law
Job Titles
1 662 (14.72%) Developer
2 653 (14.52%) Analyst
3 392 (8.72%) Senior
4 285 (6.34%) Architect
5 274 (6.09%) Lead
6 261 (5.80%) Business Analyst
7 249 (5.54%) Consultant
8 176 (3.91%) Project Manager
9 147 (3.27%) Support Engineer
10 141 (3.14%) Data Engineer
11 121 (2.69%) IT Support
12 109 (2.42%) Senior Developer
13 101 (2.25%) Java Developer
14 89 (1.98%) Support Analyst
15 84 (1.87%) Software Engineer
16 81 (1.80%) Data Analyst
17 76 (1.69%) Administrator
18 75 (1.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 73 (1.62%) IT Analyst
19 73 (1.62%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 307 (6.83%) REST
2 179 (3.98%) RESTful
3 164 (3.65%) SOAP
4 154 (3.42%) .NET
5 138 (3.07%) Kafka
6 136 (3.02%) React
7 133 (2.96%) Node.js
8 131 (2.91%) Spring
9 116 (2.58%) HTML
10 104 (2.31%) AngularJS
11 98 (2.18%) Spring Boot
12 96 (2.13%) CSS
13 80 (1.78%) XML
14 79 (1.76%) JSON
15 72 (1.60%) Middleware
16 67 (1.49%) Oracle Fusion
17 64 (1.42%) LDAP
18 63 (1.40%) OAuth
19 57 (1.27%) Web Services
20 52 (1.16%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 229 (5.09%) Product Ownership
2 197 (4.38%) Cloud Native
3 181 (4.02%) Management Information System
4 168 (3.74%) Onboarding
5 128 (2.85%) Analytical Mindset
6 106 (2.36%) Enterprise Software
7 103 (2.29%) Data Structures
8 95 (2.11%) Self-Motivation
9 93 (2.07%) Data Centre
10 91 (2.02%) Security Posture
11 88 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
12 71 (1.58%) Algorithms
13 66 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
14 65 (1.45%) Legacy Systems
15 60 (1.33%) CMDB
16 59 (1.31%) Mobile App
17 57 (1.27%) Virtual Team
18 54 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
19 51 (1.13%) NHS
20 49 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 446 (9.92%) Windows
2 316 (7.03%) Linux
3 104 (2.31%) Windows 10
4 92 (2.05%) Unix
5 89 (1.98%) Windows Server
6 53 (1.18%) Apple iOS
7 51 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 50 (1.11%) Android
9 39 (0.87%) Mac OS
10 24 (0.53%) VMS
11 19 (0.42%) CentOS
12 13 (0.29%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.089%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.089%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.089%) Windows Server 2016
16 3 (0.067%) Windows 8
16 3 (0.067%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,373 (30.53%) Agile
2 819 (18.21%) CI/CD
3 724 (16.10%) DevOps
4 669 (14.88%) Stakeholder Management
5 651 (14.48%) Continuous Improvement
6 492 (10.94%) Analytics
7 431 (9.58%) Project Management
8 426 (9.47%) Decision-Making
9 420 (9.34%) Migration
10 397 (8.83%) Test Automation
11 395 (8.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 380 (8.45%) Scrum
13 363 (8.07%) AI
14 357 (7.94%) Data Modelling
15 332 (7.38%) Computer Science
16 331 (7.36%) Business Intelligence
17 322 (7.16%) Containerisation
18 320 (7.12%) ITIL
19 317 (7.05%) Mentoring
20 314 (6.98%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 919 (20.44%) Python
2 787 (17.50%) SQL
3 426 (9.47%) Java
4 300 (6.67%) PowerShell
5 265 (5.89%) JavaScript
6 188 (4.18%) C#
7 159 (3.54%) TypeScript
8 132 (2.94%) Bash
9 69 (1.53%) Go
10 63 (1.40%) PL/SQL
11 61 (1.36%) Shell Script
12 51 (1.13%) C++
13 39 (0.87%) Perl
13 39 (0.87%) Scala
13 39 (0.87%) VBA
14 32 (0.71%) R
14 32 (0.71%) Ruby
15 30 (0.67%) T-SQL
16 26 (0.58%) PHP
17 25 (0.56%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 910 (20.24%) Security Cleared
2 664 (14.77%) SC Cleared
3 630 (14.01%) Degree
4 245 (5.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 141 (3.14%) DV Cleared
6 95 (2.11%) PMI Certification
7 94 (2.09%) CISSP
8 91 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
9 90 (2.00%) PMP
10 83 (1.85%) BPSS Clearance
11 82 (1.82%) Master's Degree
12 80 (1.78%) Azure Certification
13 61 (1.36%) Cisco Certification
14 55 (1.22%) AWS Certification
15 47 (1.05%) CISM
16 38 (0.85%) A+ Certification
17 36 (0.80%) CCNP
18 34 (0.76%) MCP
19 28 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
20 27 (0.60%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 296 (6.58%) QA
2 259 (5.76%) Data Quality
3 158 (3.51%) GDPR
4 89 (1.98%) Accessibility
5 81 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 80 (1.78%) NIST
7 72 (1.60%) PMO
8 42 (0.93%) SLA
9 41 (0.91%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.69%) GRC
11 28 (0.62%) PSD2
12 22 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.44%) ISO 20022
13 20 (0.44%) WCAG
14 16 (0.36%) EU AI Act
15 15 (0.33%) SEPA
16 14 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
16 14 (0.31%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 14 (0.31%) ISO 8583
17 13 (0.29%) HIPAA
System Software
1 436 (9.70%) Docker
2 329 (7.32%) Active Directory
3 97 (2.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.93%) Hyper-V
5 24 (0.53%) vSphere
6 20 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
7 17 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
7 17 (0.38%) VMware NSX
8 15 (0.33%) Firmware
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.24%) HDFS
10 11 (0.24%) RACF
11 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.20%) ACF2
13 5 (0.11%) KVM
14 4 (0.089%) Lustre
14 4 (0.089%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 4 (0.089%) vCloud
14 4 (0.089%) VMware ESXi
15 3 (0.067%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 447 (9.94%) Kubernetes
2 245 (5.45%) Terraform
3 178 (3.96%) Ansible
4 91 (2.02%) Grafana
5 90 (2.00%) Microsoft Intune
6 82 (1.82%) SCCM
7 67 (1.49%) Prometheus
8 41 (0.91%) Puppet
9 34 (0.76%) Kibana
10 29 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (0.51%) Argo
12 21 (0.47%) Nessus
13 20 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 16 (0.36%) Red Hat Satellite
14 16 (0.36%) SCOM
14 16 (0.36%) vCenter Server
15 15 (0.33%) HP ALM
15 15 (0.33%) vRealize
16 12 (0.27%) Data Guard
17 11 (0.24%) Control-M
Vendors
1 897 (19.95%) Microsoft
2 324 (7.20%) Oracle
3 210 (4.67%) SAP
4 193 (4.29%) ServiceNow
5 175 (3.89%) VMware
6 155 (3.45%) Google
7 128 (2.85%) Databricks
8 126 (2.80%) Splunk
9 117 (2.60%) Salesforce
10 101 (2.25%) Cisco
11 79 (1.76%) CyberArk
12 65 (1.45%) BeyondTrust
13 61 (1.36%) Red Hat
14 50 (1.11%) IBM
15 46 (1.02%) Workday
16 45 (1.00%) Talend
17 44 (0.98%) Palo Alto
18 42 (0.93%) Citrix
18 42 (0.93%) MuleSoft
19 41 (0.91%) HP