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

6 months to
16 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 4,695 4,010 4,109
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.77% 16.21% 10.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.76% 17.89% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,917 2,535 2,538
10th Percentile £298 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £588 £618 £635
90th Percentile £712 £714 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 256 172 365
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.99 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.53 £25.43 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.26% +37.46% -57.82%
75th Percentile £43.22 £49.25 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.55 £73.25
UK median hourly rate £20.20 £26.50 £18.00
% change year-on-year -23.78% +47.22% -55.00%

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 31,799 22,421 32,927
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.47% 90.62% 86.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,337 14,594 21,795
10th Percentile £313 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.05% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £639 £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 1,979 812 2,149
10th Percentile £15.30 £15.22 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.15 £34.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.32% +4.62% -12.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.53
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -7.69% - -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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -5 2,043 £510 -2.86% 830
North of England -4 761 £450 -8.16% 587
South East -3 685 £490 -2.00% 808
Midlands -2 517 £450 +2.86% 403
North West -4 377 £424 -10.79% 331
West Midlands -2 376 £475 +4.70% 247
Yorkshire -4 337 £475 -5.00% 192
South West -3 311 £535 +1.90% 295
East of England -3 237 £450 - 260
East Midlands -3 142 £402 +1.77% 155
North East -3 56 £438 -2.78% 77
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 (4.43%) Confluence
2 152 (3.24%) SharePoint
3 105 (2.24%) Microsoft Exchange
4 65 (1.38%) Apache Spark
5 55 (1.17%) SAS
6 54 (1.15%) Apache
7 33 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
8 28 (0.60%) CMS
9 19 (0.40%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.32%) Skype for Business
11 13 (0.28%) nginx
12 11 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 11 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
13 9 (0.19%) JBoss
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.15%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
15 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
16 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 299 (6.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 210 (4.47%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (2.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.55%) MS Visio
5 71 (1.51%) 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%) InVision
13 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.064%) Notion
13 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.043%) Autodesk Inventor
Business Applications
1 77 (1.64%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.47%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.34%) Workday HCM
6 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
9 12 (0.26%) NEC Housing
9 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
12 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.17%) SAP MDG
13 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,013 (21.58%) Azure
2 738 (15.72%) AWS
3 345 (7.35%) GCP
4 338 (7.20%) Power Platform
5 301 (6.41%) Microsoft 365
6 235 (5.01%) GitHub
7 224 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
8 165 (3.51%) Serverless
9 150 (3.19%) Entra ID
10 123 (2.62%) SaaS
11 112 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
12 92 (1.96%) Amazon S3
13 90 (1.92%) AWS Lambda
14 87 (1.85%) OpenShift
15 73 (1.55%) Snowflake
16 71 (1.51%) Azure Data Factory
17 67 (1.43%) PaaS
18 56 (1.19%) Dynamics 365
19 53 (1.13%) Google Workspace
19 53 (1.13%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 178 (3.79%) Firewall
2 171 (3.64%) DNS
3 117 (2.49%) TCP/IP
4 104 (2.22%) Network Security
5 95 (2.02%) DHCP
5 95 (2.02%) VPN
6 93 (1.98%) WAN
7 74 (1.58%) LAN
8 54 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
9 44 (0.94%) BGP
10 40 (0.85%) VLAN
11 34 (0.72%) SAN
12 32 (0.68%) OSPF
13 29 (0.62%) VoIP
14 25 (0.53%) SD-WAN
15 22 (0.47%) Internet
15 22 (0.47%) Wireless
16 19 (0.40%) MPLS
17 17 (0.36%) BIG-IP
17 17 (0.36%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 269 (5.73%) Power BI
2 163 (3.47%) SQL Server
3 141 (3.00%) PostgreSQL
4 139 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
5 131 (2.79%) Relational Database
6 98 (2.09%) MongoDB
7 91 (1.94%) NoSQL
8 77 (1.64%) Metadata
9 71 (1.51%) Tableau
10 64 (1.36%) Oracle Database
11 60 (1.28%) Data Lake
12 58 (1.24%) MySQL
13 54 (1.15%) Big Data
13 54 (1.15%) Oracle Reports
14 46 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 41 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
16 36 (0.77%) DynamoDB
17 31 (0.66%) Hadoop
18 29 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
18 29 (0.62%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 466 (9.93%) JIRA
2 328 (6.99%) Git
3 246 (5.24%) Jenkins
4 158 (3.37%) GitLab
5 80 (1.70%) Selenium
6 53 (1.13%) JUnit
7 42 (0.89%) Postman
8 36 (0.77%) Bitbucket
9 34 (0.72%) Cucumber
10 25 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
11 23 (0.49%) Cypress.io
11 23 (0.49%) Maven
11 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
12 19 (0.40%) JMeter
13 17 (0.36%) Mockito
13 17 (0.36%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
15 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
15 14 (0.30%) IntelliJ
15 14 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,539 (54.08%) Social Skills
2 1,760 (37.49%) Analytical Skills
3 1,064 (22.66%) Finance
4 459 (9.78%) Public Sector
5 369 (7.86%) Banking
6 184 (3.92%) Organisational Skills
7 162 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
8 155 (3.30%) Legal
9 141 (3.00%) Retail
10 125 (2.66%) Influencing Skills
11 123 (2.62%) Presentation Skills
12 113 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 92 (1.96%) Front Office
14 89 (1.90%) Marketing
15 78 (1.66%) Telecoms
16 66 (1.41%) Investment Banking
17 59 (1.26%) Manufacturing
17 59 (1.26%) Military
18 45 (0.96%) Law
19 42 (0.89%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 666 (14.19%) Analyst
2 621 (13.23%) Developer
3 398 (8.48%) Senior
4 328 (6.99%) Architect
5 312 (6.65%) Lead
6 270 (5.75%) Business Analyst
7 239 (5.09%) Consultant
8 192 (4.09%) Data Engineer
9 191 (4.07%) Project Manager
10 121 (2.58%) Support Engineer
11 108 (2.30%) IT Support
12 91 (1.94%) Java Developer
13 88 (1.87%) Data Analyst
14 87 (1.85%) Software Engineer
15 83 (1.77%) Senior Developer
16 82 (1.75%) Python Developer
17 80 (1.70%) Administrator
17 80 (1.70%) Solutions Architect
18 72 (1.53%) IT Analyst
18 72 (1.53%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 321 (6.84%) REST
2 165 (3.51%) SOAP
3 155 (3.30%) RESTful
4 154 (3.28%) Kafka
5 150 (3.19%) .NET
6 143 (3.05%) Spring
7 139 (2.96%) React
8 131 (2.79%) Node.js
9 111 (2.36%) CSS
10 110 (2.34%) HTML
11 108 (2.30%) AngularJS
12 102 (2.17%) JSON
13 98 (2.09%) Spring Boot
14 93 (1.98%) XML
15 88 (1.87%) LDAP
16 86 (1.83%) Middleware
17 71 (1.51%) OAuth
18 67 (1.43%) Web Services
19 66 (1.41%) Oracle Fusion
20 58 (1.24%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 227 (4.83%) Product Ownership
2 195 (4.15%) Cloud Native
3 184 (3.92%) Onboarding
4 152 (3.24%) Management Information System
5 129 (2.75%) Data Centre
6 126 (2.68%) Analytical Mindset
7 103 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
8 100 (2.13%) Data Structures
9 99 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
10 93 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
11 84 (1.79%) Legacy Systems
12 75 (1.60%) Algorithms
13 73 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
13 73 (1.55%) Security Posture
14 71 (1.51%) Virtual Team
15 67 (1.43%) Mobile App
16 63 (1.34%) Hybrid Cloud
17 59 (1.26%) CMDB
18 52 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 50 (1.06%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 498 (10.61%) Windows
2 288 (6.13%) Linux
3 94 (2.00%) Windows 10
4 89 (1.90%) Unix
5 82 (1.75%) Windows Server
6 68 (1.45%) Android
7 62 (1.32%) Apple iOS
8 56 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 47 (1.00%) Mac OS
10 19 (0.40%) 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 1,371 (29.20%) Agile
2 876 (18.66%) CI/CD
3 771 (16.42%) DevOps
4 722 (15.38%) Stakeholder Management
5 711 (15.14%) Continuous Improvement
6 552 (11.76%) Analytics
7 491 (10.46%) Migration
8 476 (10.14%) Decision-Making
9 447 (9.52%) AI
10 443 (9.44%) Project Management
11 417 (8.88%) Data Modelling
11 417 (8.88%) Test Automation
12 412 (8.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 366 (7.80%) Scrum
14 364 (7.75%) Validation
15 361 (7.69%) Business Intelligence
16 342 (7.28%) ITIL
17 339 (7.22%) Change Management
18 336 (7.16%) Computer Science
18 336 (7.16%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 934 (19.89%) Python
2 838 (17.85%) SQL
3 415 (8.84%) Java
4 316 (6.73%) PowerShell
5 259 (5.52%) JavaScript
6 184 (3.92%) C#
7 171 (3.64%) TypeScript
8 137 (2.92%) Bash
9 73 (1.55%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.19%) C++
11 48 (1.02%) Shell Script
12 47 (1.00%) Go
13 36 (0.77%) Bicep
13 36 (0.77%) Perl
13 36 (0.77%) Scala
13 36 (0.77%) T-SQL
14 33 (0.70%) VBA
15 32 (0.68%) Ruby
16 31 (0.66%) Apex Code
17 30 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,063 (22.64%) Security Cleared
2 734 (15.63%) SC Cleared
3 607 (12.93%) Degree
4 227 (4.83%) Computer Science Degree
5 204 (4.35%) DV Cleared
6 111 (2.36%) BPSS Clearance
7 99 (2.11%) PMP
8 93 (1.98%) CISSP
9 92 (1.96%) PMI Certification
10 91 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
11 90 (1.92%) Master's Degree
11 90 (1.92%) Microsoft Certification
12 69 (1.47%) Azure Certification
13 60 (1.28%) CISM
14 42 (0.89%) AWS Certification
15 41 (0.87%) CCNA
15 41 (0.87%) CCNP
16 35 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
17 31 (0.66%) A+ Certification
18 26 (0.55%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 305 (6.50%) QA
2 285 (6.07%) Data Quality
3 157 (3.34%) GDPR
4 90 (1.92%) NIST
5 89 (1.90%) Accessibility
6 83 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (1.70%) PMO
8 57 (1.21%) SLA
9 35 (0.75%) GRC
10 34 (0.72%) PCI DSS
11 25 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
12 23 (0.49%) PSD2
13 21 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 19 (0.40%) WCAG
15 17 (0.36%) EU AI Act
16 16 (0.34%) HIPAA
16 16 (0.34%) ISO 20022
17 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
18 14 (0.30%) HL7
19 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 422 (8.99%) Docker
2 346 (7.37%) Active Directory
3 96 (2.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.77%) vSphere
5 29 (0.62%) Hyper-V
5 29 (0.62%) VMware NSX
6 22 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
7 16 (0.34%) Firmware
7 16 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (0.23%) RACF
9 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
10 9 (0.19%) ACF2
11 8 (0.17%) Squid
11 8 (0.17%) vCloud
12 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
13 4 (0.085%) HDFS
13 4 (0.085%) Snort
14 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 457 (9.73%) Kubernetes
2 269 (5.73%) Terraform
3 169 (3.60%) Ansible
4 114 (2.43%) Microsoft Intune
5 112 (2.39%) Grafana
6 91 (1.94%) Prometheus
7 74 (1.58%) SCCM
8 40 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
9 32 (0.68%) Puppet
10 31 (0.66%) Argo
10 31 (0.66%) FortiGate
10 31 (0.66%) Kibana
11 30 (0.64%) vCenter Server
12 29 (0.62%) Nessus
13 26 (0.55%) Control-M
14 25 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 24 (0.51%) IBM Guardium
16 14 (0.30%) vRealize
17 13 (0.28%) Red Hat Satellite
18 11 (0.23%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 877 (18.68%) Microsoft
2 320 (6.82%) Oracle
3 216 (4.60%) SAP
4 197 (4.20%) ServiceNow
5 185 (3.94%) VMware
6 163 (3.47%) Google
7 142 (3.02%) Databricks
8 135 (2.88%) Splunk
9 112 (2.39%) Cisco
10 103 (2.19%) Salesforce
11 81 (1.73%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.55%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.34%) BeyondTrust
14 55 (1.17%) Workday
15 54 (1.15%) Citrix
16 49 (1.04%) IBM
17 47 (1.00%) Informatica
18 45 (0.96%) F5
18 45 (0.96%) Talend
19 43 (0.92%) Dell