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

6 months to
20 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 4,674 3,993 4,105
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.58% 16.34% 10.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.56% 18.00% 12.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,909 2,518 2,533
10th Percentile £300 £269 £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 £613 £635
90th Percentile £707 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -6.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 253 171 360
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.84 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.67 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.36 £25.00 £18.25
Median % change year-on-year -18.58% +36.99% -57.98%
75th Percentile £44.94 £49.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.75 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £20.36 £26.50 £17.72
% change year-on-year -23.19% +49.55% -55.70%

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 32,109 22,180 32,789
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.44% 90.75% 86.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,603 14,473 21,697
10th Percentile £313 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.19% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £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 1,967 822 2,143
10th Percentile £15.45 £15.07 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £16.04
Median hourly rate £32.50 £33.26 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% +2.32% -12.87%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.47 £71.13
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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -7 2,028 £509 -3.05% 1,015
North of England -4 769 £450 -7.98% 652
South East -2 682 £492 -1.60% 856
Midlands -1 512 £450 +0.22% 452
North West -3 382 £425 -12.82% 354
West Midlands -1 373 £475 +1.71% 267
Yorkshire -4 338 £475 -5.00% 221
South West -2 314 £525 - 305
East of England -3 232 £450 - 290
East Midlands -2 140 £402 - 185
North East -4 58 £438 -2.78% 90
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
1 206 (4.41%) Confluence
2 153 (3.27%) SharePoint
3 105 (2.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.37%) Apache Spark
5 55 (1.18%) SAS
6 51 (1.09%) Apache
7 31 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
8 28 (0.60%) CMS
9 16 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.32%) Skype for Business
11 14 (0.30%) nginx
12 11 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
13 10 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.15%) Camunda
16 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
16 6 (0.13%) JBoss
16 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
17 5 (0.11%) ArcGIS
17 5 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 300 (6.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 212 (4.54%) Microsoft Office
3 114 (2.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 74 (1.58%) MS Visio
5 72 (1.54%) Microsoft Project
6 21 (0.45%) Chatbot
7 20 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.17%) Trello
10 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.086%) Adobe Captivate
11 4 (0.086%) Maya
11 4 (0.086%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.064%) InVision
12 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.064%) Notion
12 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
13 2 (0.043%) Autodesk Inventor
Business Applications
1 76 (1.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 23 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.47%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.39%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.34%) Workday HCM
6 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
7 13 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
7 13 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.26%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
8 12 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
9 11 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
12 8 (0.17%) SAP MDG
12 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
13 7 (0.15%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,008 (21.57%) Azure
2 727 (15.55%) AWS
3 341 (7.30%) GCP
4 336 (7.19%) Power Platform
5 306 (6.55%) Microsoft 365
6 232 (4.96%) GitHub
7 228 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
8 158 (3.38%) Serverless
9 146 (3.12%) Entra ID
10 118 (2.52%) SaaS
11 112 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
12 91 (1.95%) Amazon S3
12 91 (1.95%) OpenShift
13 89 (1.90%) AWS Lambda
14 70 (1.50%) Azure Data Factory
14 70 (1.50%) Snowflake
15 56 (1.20%) PaaS
16 54 (1.16%) Dynamics 365
16 54 (1.16%) Google Workspace
16 54 (1.16%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 178 (3.81%) Firewall
2 174 (3.72%) DNS
3 115 (2.46%) TCP/IP
4 107 (2.29%) Network Security
5 97 (2.08%) WAN
6 96 (2.05%) VPN
7 93 (1.99%) DHCP
8 78 (1.67%) LAN
9 57 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
10 46 (0.98%) BGP
11 40 (0.86%) VLAN
12 35 (0.75%) SAN
13 34 (0.73%) OSPF
14 29 (0.62%) VoIP
15 26 (0.56%) SD-WAN
16 24 (0.51%) Wireless
17 21 (0.45%) Internet
18 20 (0.43%) MPLS
19 18 (0.39%) BIG-IP
20 17 (0.36%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 268 (5.73%) Power BI
2 163 (3.49%) SQL Server
3 135 (2.89%) Data Warehouse
4 133 (2.85%) Relational Database
5 132 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
6 92 (1.97%) MongoDB
7 89 (1.90%) NoSQL
8 81 (1.73%) Metadata
9 72 (1.54%) Tableau
10 62 (1.33%) Data Lake
11 60 (1.28%) Oracle Database
12 55 (1.18%) Big Data
13 54 (1.16%) Oracle Reports
14 51 (1.09%) MySQL
15 46 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 39 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
17 32 (0.68%) DynamoDB
18 30 (0.64%) Hadoop
19 29 (0.62%) Pentaho
20 27 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 466 (9.97%) JIRA
2 324 (6.93%) Git
3 245 (5.24%) Jenkins
4 154 (3.29%) GitLab
5 77 (1.65%) Selenium
6 50 (1.07%) JUnit
7 38 (0.81%) Postman
8 34 (0.73%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
11 24 (0.51%) Cypress.io
12 23 (0.49%) Maven
12 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
13 18 (0.39%) Mockito
14 17 (0.36%) JMeter
14 17 (0.36%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
16 14 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
17 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
General
1 2,532 (54.17%) Social Skills
2 1,760 (37.66%) Analytical Skills
3 1,063 (22.74%) Finance
4 472 (10.10%) Public Sector
5 368 (7.87%) Banking
6 188 (4.02%) Organisational Skills
7 160 (3.42%) Documentation Skills
8 157 (3.36%) Legal
9 141 (3.02%) Retail
10 124 (2.65%) Presentation Skills
11 118 (2.52%) Influencing Skills
12 112 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 92 (1.97%) Front Office
14 86 (1.84%) Marketing
15 75 (1.60%) Telecoms
16 66 (1.41%) Investment Banking
17 60 (1.28%) Manufacturing
18 58 (1.24%) Military
19 44 (0.94%) Law
20 39 (0.83%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 662 (14.16%) Analyst
2 600 (12.84%) Developer
3 399 (8.54%) Senior
4 331 (7.08%) Architect
5 316 (6.76%) Lead
6 273 (5.84%) Business Analyst
7 231 (4.94%) Consultant
8 197 (4.21%) Project Manager
9 190 (4.07%) Data Engineer
10 119 (2.55%) Support Engineer
11 107 (2.29%) IT Support
12 91 (1.95%) Java Developer
13 89 (1.90%) Software Engineer
14 88 (1.88%) Data Analyst
15 82 (1.75%) Solutions Architect
16 81 (1.73%) Administrator
16 81 (1.73%) Senior Developer
17 80 (1.71%) Python Developer
18 71 (1.52%) IT Analyst
19 68 (1.45%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 311 (6.65%) REST
2 159 (3.40%) SOAP
3 152 (3.25%) Kafka
4 151 (3.23%) RESTful
5 145 (3.10%) .NET
6 140 (3.00%) Spring
7 132 (2.82%) React
8 122 (2.61%) Node.js
9 104 (2.23%) AngularJS
10 102 (2.18%) CSS
11 99 (2.12%) HTML
11 99 (2.12%) Spring Boot
12 93 (1.99%) JSON
13 92 (1.97%) XML
14 88 (1.88%) LDAP
15 87 (1.86%) Middleware
16 69 (1.48%) OAuth
17 62 (1.33%) Web Services
18 59 (1.26%) Oracle Fusion
19 58 (1.24%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 227 (4.86%) Product Ownership
2 192 (4.11%) Cloud Native
3 186 (3.98%) Onboarding
4 151 (3.23%) Management Information System
5 132 (2.82%) Data Centre
6 125 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
7 109 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
8 99 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
9 98 (2.10%) Data Structures
10 94 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
11 86 (1.84%) Legacy Systems
12 81 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
13 73 (1.56%) Security Posture
13 73 (1.56%) Virtual Team
14 70 (1.50%) Algorithms
15 67 (1.43%) Hybrid Cloud
16 64 (1.37%) Mobile App
17 59 (1.26%) CMDB
18 50 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 48 (1.03%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 497 (10.63%) Windows
2 288 (6.16%) Linux
3 95 (2.03%) Windows 10
4 86 (1.84%) Unix
5 79 (1.69%) Windows Server
6 68 (1.45%) Android
7 61 (1.31%) Apple iOS
8 55 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.96%) Mac OS
10 19 (0.41%) VMS
11 16 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.24%) 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
15 6 (0.13%) zOS
16 5 (0.11%) Debian
17 4 (0.086%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.086%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,364 (29.18%) Agile
2 862 (18.44%) CI/CD
3 778 (16.65%) DevOps
4 729 (15.60%) Stakeholder Management
5 721 (15.43%) Continuous Improvement
6 551 (11.79%) Analytics
7 484 (10.36%) Migration
8 476 (10.18%) Decision-Making
9 459 (9.82%) Project Management
10 458 (9.80%) AI
11 410 (8.77%) Data Modelling
12 407 (8.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 406 (8.69%) Test Automation
14 369 (7.89%) Scrum
15 359 (7.68%) Business Intelligence
16 355 (7.60%) Validation
17 347 (7.42%) Change Management
18 345 (7.38%) ITIL
19 337 (7.21%) Customer Service
20 332 (7.10%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 924 (19.77%) Python
2 823 (17.61%) SQL
3 409 (8.75%) Java
4 319 (6.82%) PowerShell
5 251 (5.37%) JavaScript
6 184 (3.94%) C#
7 167 (3.57%) TypeScript
8 138 (2.95%) Bash
9 75 (1.60%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.20%) C++
11 48 (1.03%) Go
12 46 (0.98%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.83%) T-SQL
14 36 (0.77%) Perl
15 35 (0.75%) Bicep
16 33 (0.71%) Apex Code
16 33 (0.71%) Scala
17 32 (0.68%) Ruby
18 30 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 29 (0.62%) C
Qualifications
1 1,082 (23.15%) Security Cleared
2 745 (15.94%) SC Cleared
3 604 (12.92%) Degree
4 223 (4.77%) Computer Science Degree
5 205 (4.39%) DV Cleared
6 115 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (2.20%) PMP
8 94 (2.01%) PMI Certification
9 92 (1.97%) Cisco Certification
9 92 (1.97%) CISSP
10 88 (1.88%) Master's Degree
11 87 (1.86%) Microsoft Certification
12 64 (1.37%) Azure Certification
13 59 (1.26%) CISM
14 42 (0.90%) CCNP
15 41 (0.88%) CCNA
16 37 (0.79%) AWS Certification
17 35 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
18 30 (0.64%) A+ Certification
19 25 (0.53%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 310 (6.63%) QA
2 286 (6.12%) Data Quality
3 152 (3.25%) GDPR
4 93 (1.99%) Accessibility
5 85 (1.82%) PMO
6 82 (1.75%) NIST
7 79 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 58 (1.24%) SLA
9 36 (0.77%) GRC
10 33 (0.71%) PCI DSS
11 25 (0.53%) PSD2
12 24 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 21 (0.45%) WCAG
14 18 (0.39%) ISO 20022
15 16 (0.34%) HIPAA
16 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
17 14 (0.30%) HL7
18 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 13 (0.28%) SEPA
System Software
1 410 (8.77%) Docker
2 348 (7.45%) Active Directory
3 99 (2.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.88%) vSphere
5 33 (0.71%) VMware NSX
6 28 (0.60%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.34%) Firmware
8 16 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.24%) RACF
10 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
11 9 (0.19%) Squid
12 8 (0.17%) vCloud
13 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.086%) HDFS
15 4 (0.086%) Snort
16 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 453 (9.69%) Kubernetes
2 273 (5.84%) Terraform
3 172 (3.68%) Ansible
4 116 (2.48%) Microsoft Intune
5 107 (2.29%) Grafana
6 84 (1.80%) Prometheus
7 74 (1.58%) SCCM
8 41 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
9 35 (0.75%) Argo
10 34 (0.73%) vCenter Server
11 32 (0.68%) FortiGate
12 30 (0.64%) Kibana
13 27 (0.58%) Puppet
14 24 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 22 (0.47%) Nessus
16 20 (0.43%) Control-M
17 17 (0.36%) IBM Guardium
18 14 (0.30%) vRealize
19 12 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
20 11 (0.24%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 873 (18.68%) Microsoft
2 315 (6.74%) Oracle
3 208 (4.45%) SAP
4 199 (4.26%) ServiceNow
5 187 (4.00%) VMware
6 161 (3.44%) Google
7 140 (3.00%) Databricks
8 133 (2.85%) Splunk
9 114 (2.44%) Cisco
10 105 (2.25%) Salesforce
11 84 (1.80%) Red Hat
12 70 (1.50%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.35%) BeyondTrust
14 55 (1.18%) Citrix
15 53 (1.13%) Workday
16 49 (1.05%) IBM
17 47 (1.01%) Informatica
18 45 (0.96%) Talend
19 43 (0.92%) Adobe
19 43 (0.92%) F5