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

6 months to
8 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,637 4,010 4,095
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.89% 15.31% 10.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.86% 17.07% 12.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,941 2,358 2,565
10th Percentile £282 £261 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £514
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.72% -4.81%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £703 £700 £735
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 246 153 334
10th Percentile £13.85 £15.13 £12.87
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.82 £25.43 £22.06
Median % change year-on-year -25.99% +15.30% -28.25%
75th Percentile £35.71 £48.75 £57.33
90th Percentile £69.44 £75.75 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £26.50 £21.57
% change year-on-year -28.30% +22.86% -28.10%

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 29,230 23,495 33,456
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.56% 89.70% 87.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,709 14,439 22,381
10th Percentile £306 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £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 1,843 743 1,976
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.88 £21.00 £16.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% - -
75th Percentile £60.00 £64.50 £61.78
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% +7.69%

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 8 February 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 8 February 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 8 February 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 2,078 £520 -1.42% 1,051
North of England -3 725 £450 -5.26% 665
South East -2 660 £475 -5.00% 862
Midlands -2 517 £450 +5.88% 479
North West -2 378 £425 -7.61% 382
West Midlands 0 365 £488 +11.43% 309
South West -2 301 £525 +10.53% 348
Yorkshire -4 292 £482 -3.60% 220
East of England -3 223 £475 +1.17% 289
East Midlands -2 153 £402 +9.76% 170
North East -4 63 £450 -11.76% 73
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
1 197 (4.25%) Confluence
2 157 (3.39%) SharePoint
3 107 (2.31%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (1.27%) Apache Spark
5 55 (1.19%) Apache
6 53 (1.14%) SAS
7 37 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.63%) Skype for Business
9 27 (0.58%) CMS
10 13 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.22%) JBoss
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
15 7 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 7 (0.15%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.15%) Camunda
15 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 296 (6.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 199 (4.29%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (2.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (1.49%) MS Visio
5 65 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
6 21 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.13%) Trello
12 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.086%) Adobe Captivate
13 4 (0.086%) Autodesk Inventor
14 3 (0.065%) InVision
14 3 (0.065%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.065%) Notion
14 3 (0.065%) Zeplin
15 2 (0.043%) ProjectWise
15 2 (0.043%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 76 (1.64%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.41%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.37%) SAP EWM
6 16 (0.35%) Aladdin
7 15 (0.32%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
8 14 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
8 14 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
8 14 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 13 (0.28%) SAP WM
9 13 (0.28%) Workday HCM
10 12 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.24%) NEC Housing
11 11 (0.24%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.24%) SAP HR
12 10 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
13 8 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
13 8 (0.17%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,014 (21.87%) Azure
2 721 (15.55%) AWS
3 364 (7.85%) GCP
4 330 (7.12%) Power Platform
5 317 (6.84%) Microsoft 365
6 221 (4.77%) GitHub
7 215 (4.64%) Azure DevOps
8 148 (3.19%) Serverless
9 135 (2.91%) Entra ID
10 124 (2.67%) SaaS
11 109 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
12 78 (1.68%) Amazon S3
13 75 (1.62%) Snowflake
14 72 (1.55%) AWS Lambda
14 72 (1.55%) OpenShift
15 69 (1.49%) Azure Data Factory
16 65 (1.40%) Power Automate
17 63 (1.36%) Dynamics 365
17 63 (1.36%) PaaS
18 55 (1.19%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 169 (3.64%) Firewall
2 164 (3.54%) DNS
3 107 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 103 (2.22%) Network Security
4 103 (2.22%) VPN
5 89 (1.92%) DHCP
6 70 (1.51%) WAN
7 53 (1.14%) LAN
8 43 (0.93%) VLAN
9 37 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
10 32 (0.69%) BGP
11 30 (0.65%) VoIP
12 29 (0.63%) Skype
13 21 (0.45%) SAN
13 21 (0.45%) Wireshark
14 20 (0.43%) Wireless
15 19 (0.41%) HTTP
15 19 (0.41%) SSL
16 18 (0.39%) Internet
16 18 (0.39%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 260 (5.61%) Power BI
2 139 (3.00%) Relational Database
3 138 (2.98%) SQL Server
4 120 (2.59%) Data Warehouse
4 120 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
5 88 (1.90%) NoSQL
6 87 (1.88%) MongoDB
7 70 (1.51%) Metadata
8 67 (1.44%) Tableau
9 66 (1.42%) Oracle Database
10 61 (1.32%) MySQL
11 47 (1.01%) Data Lake
12 46 (0.99%) Big Data
12 46 (0.99%) Oracle Reports
13 34 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
13 34 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 33 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
14 33 (0.71%) DynamoDB
15 28 (0.60%) Hadoop
16 26 (0.56%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 436 (9.40%) JIRA
2 302 (6.51%) Git
3 233 (5.02%) Jenkins
4 156 (3.36%) GitLab
5 76 (1.64%) Selenium
6 56 (1.21%) JUnit
7 40 (0.86%) Postman
8 32 (0.69%) Cucumber
9 31 (0.67%) Bitbucket
10 24 (0.52%) Maven
10 24 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
11 20 (0.43%) Cypress.io
11 20 (0.43%) REST Assured
11 20 (0.43%) SonarQube
12 17 (0.37%) JMeter
13 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
13 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
14 14 (0.30%) Mockito
15 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
15 12 (0.26%) IntelliJ
General
1 2,552 (55.04%) Social Skills
2 1,688 (36.40%) Analytical Skills
3 1,064 (22.95%) Finance
4 431 (9.29%) Public Sector
5 382 (8.24%) Banking
6 182 (3.92%) Organisational Skills
7 146 (3.15%) Legal
8 145 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
9 123 (2.65%) Influencing Skills
9 123 (2.65%) Retail
10 117 (2.52%) Presentation Skills
11 110 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 98 (2.11%) Front Office
12 98 (2.11%) Telecoms
13 92 (1.98%) Marketing
14 75 (1.62%) Investment Banking
15 70 (1.51%) Manufacturing
16 57 (1.23%) Military
17 41 (0.88%) Financial Institution
17 41 (0.88%) Law
Job Titles
1 678 (14.62%) Analyst
2 663 (14.30%) Developer
3 402 (8.67%) Senior
4 293 (6.32%) Architect
5 290 (6.25%) Lead
6 270 (5.82%) Business Analyst
7 246 (5.31%) Consultant
8 176 (3.80%) Project Manager
9 150 (3.23%) Data Engineer
10 141 (3.04%) Support Engineer
11 120 (2.59%) IT Support
12 103 (2.22%) Senior Developer
13 97 (2.09%) Java Developer
14 89 (1.92%) Data Analyst
15 88 (1.90%) Software Engineer
16 87 (1.88%) Support Analyst
17 82 (1.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 78 (1.68%) IT Analyst
19 76 (1.64%) Solutions Architect
20 74 (1.60%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (7.07%) REST
2 175 (3.77%) SOAP
3 170 (3.67%) RESTful
4 159 (3.43%) .NET
5 144 (3.11%) Kafka
6 142 (3.06%) React
7 139 (3.00%) Node.js
8 138 (2.98%) Spring
9 124 (2.67%) HTML
10 108 (2.33%) CSS
11 107 (2.31%) AngularJS
12 102 (2.20%) Spring Boot
13 92 (1.98%) JSON
14 87 (1.88%) XML
15 80 (1.73%) LDAP
16 79 (1.70%) Middleware
17 64 (1.38%) Oracle Fusion
18 63 (1.36%) OAuth
19 59 (1.27%) Web Services
20 52 (1.12%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 231 (4.98%) Product Ownership
2 193 (4.16%) Cloud Native
3 173 (3.73%) Management Information System
4 171 (3.69%) Onboarding
5 123 (2.65%) Analytical Mindset
6 109 (2.35%) Data Structures
7 102 (2.20%) Data Centre
8 101 (2.18%) Enterprise Software
9 99 (2.14%) Self-Motivation
10 91 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
11 87 (1.88%) Security Posture
12 75 (1.62%) Algorithms
13 73 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
14 68 (1.47%) Virtual Team
15 64 (1.38%) CMDB
15 64 (1.38%) Distributed Systems
15 64 (1.38%) Mobile App
16 59 (1.27%) Hybrid Cloud
17 50 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 49 (1.06%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 475 (10.24%) Windows
2 317 (6.84%) Linux
3 106 (2.29%) Windows 10
4 96 (2.07%) Unix
5 88 (1.90%) Windows Server
6 55 (1.19%) Apple iOS
7 54 (1.16%) Android
7 54 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 43 (0.93%) Mac OS
9 23 (0.50%) VMS
10 18 (0.39%) CentOS
11 14 (0.30%) Ubuntu
12 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.086%) Windows 8
15 4 (0.086%) Windows Server 2003
16 3 (0.065%) Debian
16 3 (0.065%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,368 (29.50%) Agile
2 840 (18.12%) CI/CD
3 740 (15.96%) DevOps
4 691 (14.90%) Stakeholder Management
5 661 (14.25%) Continuous Improvement
6 511 (11.02%) Analytics
7 462 (9.96%) Migration
8 453 (9.77%) Decision-Making
9 429 (9.25%) Project Management
10 403 (8.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 402 (8.67%) Test Automation
12 399 (8.60%) AI
13 373 (8.04%) Scrum
14 368 (7.94%) Data Modelling
15 345 (7.44%) Computer Science
16 342 (7.38%) ITIL
16 342 (7.38%) Validation
17 335 (7.22%) Business Intelligence
17 335 (7.22%) Containerisation
18 319 (6.88%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 926 (19.97%) Python
2 794 (17.12%) SQL
3 426 (9.19%) Java
4 320 (6.90%) PowerShell
5 271 (5.84%) JavaScript
6 199 (4.29%) C#
7 175 (3.77%) TypeScript
8 136 (2.93%) Bash
9 63 (1.36%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.27%) C++
10 59 (1.27%) Go
11 51 (1.10%) Shell Script
12 42 (0.91%) Perl
13 39 (0.84%) VBA
14 38 (0.82%) Scala
15 31 (0.67%) Ruby
16 29 (0.63%) Apex Code
16 29 (0.63%) T-SQL
17 27 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 27 (0.58%) R
Qualifications
1 992 (21.39%) Security Cleared
2 711 (15.33%) SC Cleared
3 636 (13.72%) Degree
4 249 (5.37%) Computer Science Degree
5 177 (3.82%) DV Cleared
6 99 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
7 93 (2.01%) PMI Certification
8 92 (1.98%) PMP
9 91 (1.96%) Master's Degree
9 91 (1.96%) Microsoft Certification
10 89 (1.92%) CISSP
11 78 (1.68%) Azure Certification
12 60 (1.29%) Cisco Certification
13 51 (1.10%) AWS Certification
14 50 (1.08%) CISM
15 38 (0.82%) A+ Certification
15 38 (0.82%) CCNP
16 31 (0.67%) CCNA
16 31 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
17 27 (0.58%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 313 (6.75%) QA
2 264 (5.69%) Data Quality
3 160 (3.45%) GDPR
4 93 (2.01%) Accessibility
5 78 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 78 (1.68%) NIST
6 73 (1.57%) PMO
7 48 (1.04%) SLA
8 39 (0.84%) PCI DSS
9 30 (0.65%) GRC
10 29 (0.63%) PSD2
11 22 (0.47%) ISO 20022
11 22 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.43%) WCAG
13 17 (0.37%) SEPA
14 16 (0.35%) EU AI Act
15 15 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
15 15 (0.32%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.30%) ISO 8583
17 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 425 (9.17%) Docker
2 352 (7.59%) Active Directory
3 110 (2.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.88%) Hyper-V
5 33 (0.71%) vSphere
6 23 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
6 23 (0.50%) VMware NSX
7 21 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
8 16 (0.35%) Firmware
9 11 (0.24%) RACF
10 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 7 (0.15%) HDFS
12 7 (0.15%) Squid
13 5 (0.11%) KVM
13 5 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
14 4 (0.086%) vCloud
15 3 (0.065%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.065%) ISA Server
15 3 (0.065%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 451 (9.73%) Kubernetes
2 255 (5.50%) Terraform
3 169 (3.64%) Ansible
4 105 (2.26%) Grafana
5 100 (2.16%) Microsoft Intune
6 90 (1.94%) SCCM
7 83 (1.79%) Prometheus
8 39 (0.84%) Puppet
9 38 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
10 35 (0.75%) Kibana
11 27 (0.58%) Argo
12 24 (0.52%) Nessus
13 23 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 20 (0.43%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.37%) Control-M
16 16 (0.35%) FortiGate
16 16 (0.35%) IBM Guardium
16 16 (0.35%) Red Hat Satellite
16 16 (0.35%) SCOM
17 15 (0.32%) vRealize
Vendors
1 906 (19.54%) Microsoft
2 316 (6.81%) Oracle
3 219 (4.72%) SAP
4 204 (4.40%) ServiceNow
5 190 (4.10%) VMware
6 159 (3.43%) Google
7 135 (2.91%) Databricks
7 135 (2.91%) Splunk
8 113 (2.44%) Salesforce
9 100 (2.16%) Cisco
10 79 (1.70%) CyberArk
11 75 (1.62%) Red Hat
12 67 (1.44%) BeyondTrust
13 50 (1.08%) IBM
14 45 (0.97%) Workday
15 44 (0.95%) Palo Alto
16 41 (0.88%) Citrix
17 39 (0.84%) Informatica
18 38 (0.82%) Adobe
19 37 (0.80%) HP