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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,750 4,017 4,048
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.40% 15.63% 10.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.37% 17.33% 12.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,992 2,436 2,530
10th Percentile £298 £257 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -1.96% -5.56%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £635
90th Percentile £707 £708 £734
UK median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 253 155 341
10th Percentile £13.96 £15.00 £12.13
25th Percentile £15.62 £16.08 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.25 £25.43 £21.01
Median % change year-on-year -24.30% +21.04% -42.13%
75th Percentile £41.87 £49.75 £48.40
90th Percentile £73.81 £79.45 £83.41
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £26.75 £19.50
% change year-on-year -25.23% +37.18% -37.10%

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 30,906 23,179 32,763
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.22% 90.17% 87.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,822 14,560 21,758
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 £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 1,906 762 2,042
10th Percentile £15.22 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £28.50 £35.00 £34.23
Median % change year-on-year -18.57% +2.25% -2.20%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £59.94
90th Percentile £72.52 £75.23 £72.00
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £33.07
% change year-on-year -15.38% -1.71% -5.53%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -3 2,077 £514 -2.14% 568
North of England -2 767 £450 -5.26% 496
South East -2 673 £485 -3.00% 558
Midlands -1 537 £450 +5.88% 343
West Midlands 0 390 £477 +5.89% 208
North West -1 383 £424 -10.32% 284
Yorkshire -4 331 £475 -5.00% 158
South West -2 319 £535 +5.68% 239
East of England -3 243 £475 +5.56% 221
East Midlands -2 148 £402 +9.54% 135
North East -3 61 £450 -6.40% 67
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
1 211 (4.44%) Confluence
2 150 (3.16%) SharePoint
3 102 (2.15%) Microsoft Exchange
4 65 (1.37%) Apache Spark
5 63 (1.33%) SAS
6 53 (1.12%) Apache
7 37 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
8 26 (0.55%) CMS
9 22 (0.46%) Skype for Business
10 20 (0.42%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.29%) nginx
12 10 (0.21%) JBoss
13 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
15 7 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
16 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
16 6 (0.13%) Camunda
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 294 (6.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 218 (4.59%) Microsoft Office
3 118 (2.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 77 (1.62%) MS Visio
5 69 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
6 21 (0.44%) Chatbot
7 17 (0.36%) 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 (0.084%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.084%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.063%) InVision
13 3 (0.063%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.063%) Notion
13 3 (0.063%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.042%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.042%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 78 (1.64%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.32%) Workday HCM
6 14 (0.29%) NetSuite
6 14 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
7 13 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.25%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.25%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
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 EWM
12 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,027 (21.62%) Azure
2 743 (15.64%) AWS
3 353 (7.43%) GCP
4 335 (7.05%) Power Platform
5 310 (6.53%) Microsoft 365
6 229 (4.82%) GitHub
7 217 (4.57%) Azure DevOps
8 156 (3.28%) Serverless
9 148 (3.12%) Entra ID
10 125 (2.63%) SaaS
11 110 (2.32%) GitHub Actions
12 84 (1.77%) Amazon S3
13 83 (1.75%) OpenShift
14 82 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
15 74 (1.56%) Azure Data Factory
16 73 (1.54%) Snowflake
17 67 (1.41%) PaaS
18 61 (1.28%) Dynamics 365
19 56 (1.18%) Power Automate
20 54 (1.14%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 180 (3.79%) Firewall
2 177 (3.73%) DNS
3 127 (2.67%) TCP/IP
4 102 (2.15%) DHCP
4 102 (2.15%) Network Security
5 101 (2.13%) VPN
6 84 (1.77%) WAN
7 67 (1.41%) LAN
8 52 (1.09%) VLAN
9 49 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
10 43 (0.91%) BGP
11 31 (0.65%) OSPF
12 30 (0.63%) SAN
13 28 (0.59%) VoIP
14 22 (0.46%) Skype
15 21 (0.44%) Wireless
16 18 (0.38%) Internet
17 17 (0.36%) SD-WAN
17 17 (0.36%) SSL
18 16 (0.34%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 270 (5.68%) Power BI
2 160 (3.37%) SQL Server
3 136 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
4 134 (2.82%) Relational Database
5 129 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
6 102 (2.15%) MongoDB
7 95 (2.00%) NoSQL
8 75 (1.58%) Metadata
9 65 (1.37%) Oracle Database
9 65 (1.37%) Tableau
10 63 (1.33%) MySQL
11 57 (1.20%) Data Lake
12 53 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
13 48 (1.01%) Big Data
14 47 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 37 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
16 35 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
17 34 (0.72%) DynamoDB
18 33 (0.69%) Pentaho
19 32 (0.67%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 461 (9.71%) JIRA
2 327 (6.88%) Git
3 245 (5.16%) Jenkins
4 156 (3.28%) GitLab
5 76 (1.60%) Selenium
6 54 (1.14%) JUnit
7 40 (0.84%) Postman
8 35 (0.74%) Bitbucket
8 35 (0.74%) Cucumber
9 24 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
10 23 (0.48%) Maven
11 21 (0.44%) Cypress.io
11 21 (0.44%) REST Assured
12 20 (0.42%) SonarQube
13 18 (0.38%) JMeter
14 17 (0.36%) Mockito
14 17 (0.36%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
16 14 (0.29%) IntelliJ
17 12 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,591 (54.55%) Social Skills
2 1,739 (36.61%) Analytical Skills
3 1,062 (22.36%) Finance
4 450 (9.47%) Public Sector
5 377 (7.94%) Banking
6 185 (3.89%) Organisational Skills
7 155 (3.26%) Documentation Skills
8 150 (3.16%) Legal
9 131 (2.76%) Retail
10 127 (2.67%) Presentation Skills
11 125 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
12 123 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 96 (2.02%) Front Office
14 90 (1.89%) Marketing
15 81 (1.71%) Telecoms
16 70 (1.47%) Investment Banking
17 66 (1.39%) Manufacturing
18 61 (1.28%) Military
19 44 (0.93%) Law
20 43 (0.91%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 691 (14.55%) Analyst
2 652 (13.73%) Developer
3 411 (8.65%) Senior
4 322 (6.78%) Architect
5 304 (6.40%) Lead
6 274 (5.77%) Business Analyst
7 241 (5.07%) Consultant
8 187 (3.94%) Data Engineer
9 183 (3.85%) Project Manager
10 139 (2.93%) Support Engineer
11 122 (2.57%) IT Support
12 97 (2.04%) Java Developer
13 96 (2.02%) Software Engineer
14 94 (1.98%) Senior Developer
15 91 (1.92%) Data Analyst
16 84 (1.77%) Python Developer
17 82 (1.73%) Administrator
17 82 (1.73%) Solutions Architect
18 81 (1.71%) Support Analyst
19 80 (1.68%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 326 (6.86%) REST
2 174 (3.66%) SOAP
3 163 (3.43%) RESTful
4 155 (3.26%) .NET
5 154 (3.24%) Kafka
6 147 (3.09%) React
7 138 (2.91%) Spring
8 134 (2.82%) Node.js
9 118 (2.48%) HTML
10 112 (2.36%) CSS
11 107 (2.25%) AngularJS
12 101 (2.13%) JSON
13 97 (2.04%) Spring Boot
14 91 (1.92%) XML
15 87 (1.83%) Middleware
16 84 (1.77%) LDAP
17 67 (1.41%) Oracle Fusion
18 65 (1.37%) OAuth
19 64 (1.35%) Web Services
20 53 (1.12%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 226 (4.76%) Product Ownership
2 185 (3.89%) Cloud Native
3 177 (3.73%) Onboarding
4 158 (3.33%) Management Information System
5 133 (2.80%) Analytical Mindset
6 118 (2.48%) Data Centre
7 110 (2.32%) Data Structures
8 101 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
9 97 (2.04%) Self-Motivation
10 96 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
11 82 (1.73%) Algorithms
12 77 (1.62%) Security Posture
13 76 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
14 68 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
14 68 (1.43%) Virtual Team
15 65 (1.37%) Hybrid Cloud
16 64 (1.35%) Mobile App
17 58 (1.22%) CMDB
18 54 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 49 (1.03%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 502 (10.57%) Windows
2 317 (6.67%) Linux
3 98 (2.06%) Unix
3 98 (2.06%) Windows 10
4 81 (1.71%) Windows Server
5 68 (1.43%) Android
6 65 (1.37%) Apple iOS
7 61 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 46 (0.97%) Mac OS
9 22 (0.46%) VMS
10 17 (0.36%) CentOS
11 15 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
12 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
12 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.11%) zOS
15 4 (0.084%) Debian
15 4 (0.084%) Windows 8
15 4 (0.084%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,395 (29.37%) Agile
2 875 (18.42%) CI/CD
3 770 (16.21%) DevOps
4 713 (15.01%) Stakeholder Management
5 703 (14.80%) Continuous Improvement
6 543 (11.43%) Analytics
7 487 (10.25%) Migration
8 486 (10.23%) Decision-Making
9 432 (9.09%) AI
10 428 (9.01%) Project Management
11 417 (8.78%) Test Automation
12 406 (8.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 403 (8.48%) Data Modelling
14 373 (7.85%) Scrum
15 363 (7.64%) Validation
16 362 (7.62%) Business Intelligence
17 344 (7.24%) Computer Science
17 344 (7.24%) ITIL
18 339 (7.14%) Customer Service
19 336 (7.07%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 944 (19.87%) Python
2 839 (17.66%) SQL
3 427 (8.99%) Java
4 313 (6.59%) PowerShell
5 272 (5.73%) JavaScript
6 196 (4.13%) C#
7 174 (3.66%) TypeScript
8 138 (2.91%) Bash
9 72 (1.52%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.28%) C++
11 52 (1.09%) Go
12 51 (1.07%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.82%) Perl
14 37 (0.78%) Scala
14 37 (0.78%) T-SQL
15 35 (0.74%) VBA
16 31 (0.65%) Ruby
17 30 (0.63%) Bicep
17 30 (0.63%) C
17 30 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,063 (22.38%) Security Cleared
2 748 (15.75%) SC Cleared
3 638 (13.43%) Degree
4 241 (5.07%) Computer Science Degree
5 196 (4.13%) DV Cleared
6 109 (2.29%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (2.17%) Microsoft Certification
8 93 (1.96%) PMP
9 90 (1.89%) Master's Degree
10 89 (1.87%) PMI Certification
11 87 (1.83%) CISSP
12 80 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
13 75 (1.58%) Azure Certification
14 55 (1.16%) CISM
15 46 (0.97%) AWS Certification
16 41 (0.86%) CCNP
17 38 (0.80%) A+ Certification
17 38 (0.80%) CCNA
18 32 (0.67%) Network+ Certification
19 30 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 306 (6.44%) QA
2 285 (6.00%) Data Quality
3 151 (3.18%) GDPR
4 92 (1.94%) Accessibility
5 82 (1.73%) NIST
6 79 (1.66%) PMO
7 78 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 52 (1.09%) SLA
9 35 (0.74%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.65%) GRC
11 24 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.48%) PSD2
13 22 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
14 20 (0.42%) WCAG
15 16 (0.34%) EU AI Act
15 16 (0.34%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.32%) HIPAA
16 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
17 14 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 12 (0.25%) IFRS
System Software
1 432 (9.09%) Docker
2 354 (7.45%) Active Directory
3 106 (2.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.80%) Hyper-V
5 34 (0.72%) vSphere
6 27 (0.57%) VMware NSX
7 26 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (0.38%) Firmware
10 11 (0.23%) RACF
11 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.19%) ACF2
13 8 (0.17%) Squid
14 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
15 6 (0.13%) vCloud
16 5 (0.11%) HDFS
17 4 (0.084%) Oracle RAC
17 4 (0.084%) Snort
18 3 (0.063%) ISA Server
18 3 (0.063%) NFS
Systems Management
1 470 (9.89%) Kubernetes
2 263 (5.54%) Terraform
3 176 (3.71%) Ansible
4 115 (2.42%) Grafana
5 111 (2.34%) Microsoft Intune
6 91 (1.92%) Prometheus
7 85 (1.79%) SCCM
8 40 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.78%) Puppet
10 34 (0.72%) Kibana
11 31 (0.65%) Nessus
12 30 (0.63%) Argo
13 29 (0.61%) FortiGate
14 25 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 25 (0.53%) vCenter Server
15 23 (0.48%) Control-M
16 22 (0.46%) IBM Guardium
17 18 (0.38%) Red Hat Satellite
18 12 (0.25%) vRealize
19 11 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 912 (19.20%) Microsoft
2 331 (6.97%) Oracle
3 216 (4.55%) SAP
4 208 (4.38%) ServiceNow
5 196 (4.13%) VMware
6 158 (3.33%) Google
7 146 (3.07%) Splunk
8 143 (3.01%) Databricks
9 112 (2.36%) Cisco
10 106 (2.23%) Salesforce
11 85 (1.79%) Red Hat
12 72 (1.52%) CyberArk
13 61 (1.28%) BeyondTrust
14 55 (1.16%) Workday
15 54 (1.14%) Citrix
16 48 (1.01%) IBM
16 48 (1.01%) Talend
17 44 (0.93%) Informatica
17 44 (0.93%) Palo Alto
18 43 (0.91%) F5