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

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 12
Rank change year-on-year -1 +6 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,409 3,937 3,784
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.22% 14.74% 10.39%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.11% 16.55% 11.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,761 2,289 2,406
10th Percentile £280 £267 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.82% -4.72%
75th Percentile £608 £613 £625
90th Percentile £718 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -7.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 236 152 244
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.12 £13.33
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.62 £14.31
Median hourly rate £18.73 £21.46 £30.25
Median % change year-on-year -12.72% -29.06% -1.21%
75th Percentile £35.00 £37.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.00 £66.00 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £18.92 £23.90 £27.50
% change year-on-year -20.84% -13.09% -8.33%

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 27,375 23,793 32,010
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.27% 89.07% 87.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,424 14,594 21,607
10th Percentile £304 £310 £305
25th Percentile £410 £413 £425
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 1,725 761 1,484
10th Percentile £15.13 £15.53 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.88 £20.30 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.03% -20.00% +21.43%
75th Percentile £57.50 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.86 £75.00 £77.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.25 £40.50
% change year-on-year -22.00% -20.38% +16.41%

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 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 12 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 12 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 2,022 £525 -0.99% 845
North of England -3 677 £450 -5.26% 812
South East -1 610 £475 -5.00% 1,387
Midlands -1 492 £450 +5.88% 543
North West -3 349 £438 -5.41% 356
West Midlands -1 344 £494 +12.80% 235
South West -1 277 £525 +16.67% 550
Yorkshire -5 277 £481 -3.75% 328
East of England -4 198 £450 - 601
East Midlands -3 149 £402 +12.92% 301
North East -1 58 £450 -18.18% 139
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
1 182 (4.13%) Confluence
2 156 (3.54%) SharePoint
3 106 (2.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (1.34%) SAS
5 54 (1.22%) Apache Spark
6 49 (1.11%) Apache
7 36 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.66%) Skype for Business
9 23 (0.52%) CMS
10 15 (0.34%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.25%) JBoss
12 10 (0.23%) Anypoint
13 9 (0.20%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.18%) HCL Notes
15 7 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 7 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
15 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
16 6 (0.14%) IIS
16 6 (0.14%) Mattermost
16 6 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 292 (6.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 201 (4.56%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (2.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 67 (1.52%) MS Visio
5 62 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
6 15 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.32%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
8 7 (0.16%) Sketch
9 6 (0.14%) ProjectWise
9 6 (0.14%) Trello
10 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
11 4 (0.091%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.068%) Notion
13 2 (0.045%) InVision
13 2 (0.045%) Siemens NX
13 2 (0.045%) Simulink
13 2 (0.045%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 86 (1.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.43%) Payment Gateway
4 18 (0.41%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.39%) SAP EWM
6 15 (0.34%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
8 13 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
8 13 (0.29%) SAP WM
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
10 11 (0.25%) Aladdin
10 11 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
10 11 (0.25%) SAP HR
10 11 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 10 (0.23%) Oracle Cash Management
11 10 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 9 (0.20%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 933 (21.16%) Azure
2 692 (15.70%) AWS
3 356 (8.07%) GCP
4 304 (6.89%) Power Platform
5 294 (6.67%) Microsoft 365
6 211 (4.79%) GitHub
7 182 (4.13%) Azure DevOps
8 141 (3.20%) Serverless
9 124 (2.81%) Entra ID
10 119 (2.70%) SaaS
11 106 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
12 71 (1.61%) Power Automate
13 68 (1.54%) AWS Lambda
13 68 (1.54%) PaaS
14 67 (1.52%) Amazon S3
15 66 (1.50%) Dynamics 365
16 64 (1.45%) PowerApps
17 63 (1.43%) Snowflake
18 62 (1.41%) OpenShift
19 55 (1.25%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 157 (3.56%) Firewall
2 139 (3.15%) DNS
3 106 (2.40%) TCP/IP
4 97 (2.20%) Network Security
5 95 (2.15%) VPN
6 79 (1.79%) DHCP
7 63 (1.43%) WAN
8 48 (1.09%) LAN
9 41 (0.93%) VLAN
10 32 (0.73%) BGP
10 32 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
11 29 (0.66%) Skype
12 27 (0.61%) VoIP
13 23 (0.52%) Wireless
14 22 (0.50%) SSL
15 21 (0.48%) Wireshark
16 18 (0.41%) HTTP
16 18 (0.41%) OSPF
17 16 (0.36%) Internet
17 16 (0.36%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 235 (5.33%) Power BI
2 138 (3.13%) Relational Database
3 137 (3.11%) SQL Server
4 121 (2.74%) PostgreSQL
5 116 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
6 92 (2.09%) NoSQL
7 83 (1.88%) MongoDB
8 75 (1.70%) Oracle Database
9 67 (1.52%) Metadata
10 62 (1.41%) MySQL
10 62 (1.41%) Tableau
11 49 (1.11%) Big Data
12 45 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
13 43 (0.98%) DynamoDB
14 37 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
15 36 (0.82%) Data Lake
16 33 (0.75%) Hadoop
16 33 (0.75%) Pentaho
17 30 (0.68%) RDBMS
18 29 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 416 (9.44%) JIRA
2 319 (7.24%) Git
3 224 (5.08%) Jenkins
4 140 (3.18%) GitLab
5 67 (1.52%) Selenium
6 57 (1.29%) JUnit
7 33 (0.75%) Postman
8 31 (0.70%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.66%) Maven
10 27 (0.61%) Bitbucket
11 22 (0.50%) SonarQube
12 17 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
13 16 (0.36%) Cypress.io
13 16 (0.36%) JMeter
14 15 (0.34%) SpecFlow
15 14 (0.32%) CircleCI
16 13 (0.29%) Gradle
16 13 (0.29%) Mockito
16 13 (0.29%) REST Assured
17 12 (0.27%) Artifactory
General
1 2,447 (55.50%) Social Skills
2 1,604 (36.38%) Analytical Skills
3 1,040 (23.59%) Finance
4 413 (9.37%) Public Sector
5 392 (8.89%) Banking
6 170 (3.86%) Organisational Skills
7 136 (3.08%) Legal
8 125 (2.84%) Influencing Skills
9 116 (2.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 114 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
11 110 (2.49%) Presentation Skills
12 102 (2.31%) Retail
13 99 (2.25%) Marketing
14 97 (2.20%) Telecoms
15 89 (2.02%) Front Office
16 79 (1.79%) Investment Banking
17 77 (1.75%) Manufacturing
18 51 (1.16%) Military
19 42 (0.95%) Financial Institution
20 38 (0.86%) Law
Job Titles
1 660 (14.97%) Developer
2 656 (14.88%) Analyst
3 384 (8.71%) Senior
4 285 (6.46%) Architect
5 268 (6.08%) Lead
6 259 (5.87%) Business Analyst
7 241 (5.47%) Consultant
8 175 (3.97%) Project Manager
9 148 (3.36%) Support Engineer
10 122 (2.77%) Data Engineer
11 118 (2.68%) IT Support
12 110 (2.49%) Senior Developer
13 100 (2.27%) Java Developer
14 91 (2.06%) Support Analyst
15 82 (1.86%) Software Engineer
16 80 (1.81%) Data Analyst
17 74 (1.68%) Administrator
17 74 (1.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 73 (1.66%) IT Analyst
19 72 (1.63%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 302 (6.85%) REST
2 175 (3.97%) RESTful
3 169 (3.83%) SOAP
4 157 (3.56%) .NET
5 134 (3.04%) Kafka
5 134 (3.04%) React
6 132 (2.99%) Node.js
7 127 (2.88%) Spring
8 118 (2.68%) HTML
9 101 (2.29%) AngularJS
10 97 (2.20%) CSS
11 92 (2.09%) Spring Boot
12 78 (1.77%) JSON
12 78 (1.77%) XML
13 76 (1.72%) Middleware
14 65 (1.47%) Oracle Fusion
15 64 (1.45%) LDAP
16 63 (1.43%) OAuth
17 59 (1.34%) Web Services
18 55 (1.25%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 223 (5.06%) Product Ownership
2 182 (4.13%) Management Information System
3 178 (4.04%) Cloud Native
4 155 (3.52%) Onboarding
5 126 (2.86%) Analytical Mindset
6 110 (2.49%) Enterprise Software
7 103 (2.34%) Data Structures
8 96 (2.18%) Self-Motivation
9 94 (2.13%) Data Centre
10 90 (2.04%) Security Posture
11 84 (1.91%) Data Protection Act
12 75 (1.70%) Algorithms
13 63 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
14 62 (1.41%) Distributed Systems
15 60 (1.36%) Mobile App
16 58 (1.32%) CMDB
17 55 (1.25%) Virtual Team
18 51 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
19 50 (1.13%) NHS
20 47 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 431 (9.78%) Windows
2 311 (7.05%) Linux
3 101 (2.29%) Windows 10
4 91 (2.06%) Unix
5 86 (1.95%) Windows Server
6 53 (1.20%) Apple iOS
7 49 (1.11%) Android
8 47 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 41 (0.93%) Mac OS
10 24 (0.54%) VMS
11 17 (0.39%) CentOS
12 11 (0.25%) Windows Server 2012
13 10 (0.23%) Ubuntu
14 6 (0.14%) Mac OS X
15 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
15 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
16 4 (0.091%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.068%) zOS
18 2 (0.045%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,365 (30.96%) Agile
2 784 (17.78%) CI/CD
3 699 (15.85%) DevOps
4 652 (14.79%) Stakeholder Management
5 620 (14.06%) Continuous Improvement
6 470 (10.66%) Analytics
7 428 (9.71%) Project Management
8 415 (9.41%) Decision-Making
9 413 (9.37%) Migration
10 398 (9.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 387 (8.78%) Test Automation
12 370 (8.39%) Scrum
13 348 (7.89%) Data Modelling
14 338 (7.67%) AI
15 324 (7.35%) Computer Science
16 321 (7.28%) Business Intelligence
17 311 (7.05%) Mentoring
18 310 (7.03%) Containerisation
19 307 (6.96%) ITIL
20 305 (6.92%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 886 (20.10%) Python
2 753 (17.08%) SQL
3 420 (9.53%) Java
4 286 (6.49%) PowerShell
5 269 (6.10%) JavaScript
6 186 (4.22%) C#
7 155 (3.52%) TypeScript
8 131 (2.97%) Bash
9 68 (1.54%) Go
10 67 (1.52%) PL/SQL
11 62 (1.41%) Shell Script
12 50 (1.13%) C++
13 39 (0.88%) Perl
14 38 (0.86%) VBA
15 37 (0.84%) Scala
16 31 (0.70%) Apex Code
16 31 (0.70%) R
17 30 (0.68%) PHP
17 30 (0.68%) Ruby
17 30 (0.68%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 879 (19.94%) Security Cleared
2 644 (14.61%) SC Cleared
3 625 (14.18%) Degree
4 237 (5.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 132 (2.99%) DV Cleared
6 95 (2.15%) PMI Certification
7 92 (2.09%) Microsoft Certification
8 88 (2.00%) PMP
9 87 (1.97%) Master's Degree
10 86 (1.95%) CISSP
11 76 (1.72%) Azure Certification
12 70 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
13 62 (1.41%) Cisco Certification
14 53 (1.20%) AWS Certification
15 43 (0.98%) CISM
16 38 (0.86%) A+ Certification
17 35 (0.79%) CCNP
18 33 (0.75%) MCP
19 27 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
20 26 (0.59%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 292 (6.62%) QA
2 249 (5.65%) Data Quality
3 166 (3.77%) GDPR
4 90 (2.04%) Accessibility
5 77 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 77 (1.75%) NIST
6 67 (1.52%) PMO
7 41 (0.93%) SLA
8 39 (0.88%) PCI DSS
9 28 (0.64%) GRC
10 26 (0.59%) PSD2
11 22 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.45%) WCAG
13 18 (0.41%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 18 (0.41%) ISO 20022
14 16 (0.36%) EU AI Act
15 14 (0.32%) HIPAA
16 13 (0.29%) SEPA
17 12 (0.27%) ISO 8583
18 11 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 420 (9.53%) Docker
2 314 (7.12%) Active Directory
3 94 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.93%) Hyper-V
5 24 (0.54%) vSphere
6 20 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
7 16 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
8 15 (0.34%) Firmware
8 15 (0.34%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.25%) HDFS
11 8 (0.18%) RACF
12 7 (0.16%) Time Sharing Option
13 6 (0.14%) ACF2
14 5 (0.11%) KVM
14 5 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
15 4 (0.091%) Lustre
15 4 (0.091%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 4 (0.091%) vCloud
16 3 (0.068%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 436 (9.89%) Kubernetes
2 238 (5.40%) Terraform
3 176 (3.99%) Ansible
4 94 (2.13%) Grafana
5 79 (1.79%) Microsoft Intune
6 78 (1.77%) SCCM
7 64 (1.45%) Prometheus
8 38 (0.86%) Puppet
9 30 (0.68%) Kibana
10 26 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
11 24 (0.54%) Argo
12 19 (0.43%) Nessus
13 18 (0.41%) SCOM
14 17 (0.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 17 (0.39%) vCenter Server
15 16 (0.36%) Red Hat Satellite
16 14 (0.32%) Data Guard
16 14 (0.32%) HP ALM
16 14 (0.32%) vRealize
17 12 (0.27%) Control-M
Vendors
1 891 (20.21%) Microsoft
2 317 (7.19%) Oracle
3 217 (4.92%) SAP
4 194 (4.40%) ServiceNow
5 171 (3.88%) VMware
6 151 (3.42%) Google
7 124 (2.81%) Splunk
8 122 (2.77%) Salesforce
9 113 (2.56%) Databricks
10 103 (2.34%) Cisco
11 79 (1.79%) CyberArk
12 62 (1.41%) BeyondTrust
13 61 (1.38%) Red Hat
14 51 (1.16%) IBM
15 48 (1.09%) Palo Alto
16 47 (1.07%) Workday
17 42 (0.95%) Citrix
18 41 (0.93%) MuleSoft
18 41 (0.93%) Talend
19 37 (0.84%) HP