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

6 months to
1 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 4,596 4,023 4,086
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.97% 15.19% 10.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.93% 16.97% 12.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,899 2,341 2,562
10th Percentile £297 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £517
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% -3.33% -4.21%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £709 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 237 156 330
10th Percentile £13.85 £15.05 £13.00
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.50 £23.15 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.09% -1.49% -28.79%
75th Percentile £35.00 £44.06 £57.46
90th Percentile £68.95 £68.46 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £18.87 £25.18 £22.50
% change year-on-year -25.06% +11.91% -27.11%

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 28,849 23,705 33,384
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.71% 89.48% 87.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,454 14,499 22,354
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £528
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.47% -4.09%
75th Percentile £619 £643 £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 1,790 754 1,912
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £13.50
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.75 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.63% -3.47% +2.86%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £62.12
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 1 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 1 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 1 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 2,084 £520 -1.93% 1,096
North of England -3 715 £450 -5.26% 630
South East -2 637 £475 -5.00% 880
Midlands -2 511 £455 +7.06% 502
North West -3 377 £430 -6.52% 355
West Midlands 0 363 £492 +13.10% 321
South West -3 296 £525 +10.53% 349
Yorkshire -5 285 £485 -3.10% 207
East of England -3 213 £475 +0.53% 271
East Midlands -3 149 £402 +7.20% 181
North East -4 61 £450 -15.29% 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
1 194 (4.22%) Confluence
2 156 (3.39%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.37%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.37%) SAS
5 57 (1.24%) Apache Spark
6 54 (1.17%) Apache
7 36 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.63%) Skype for Business
9 27 (0.59%) CMS
10 12 (0.26%) WebLogic
11 10 (0.22%) JBoss
11 10 (0.22%) nginx
12 9 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Anypoint
13 8 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 7 (0.15%) Camunda
14 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
15 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
15 6 (0.13%) OpenStack
Applications
1 296 (6.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 203 (4.42%) Microsoft Office
3 114 (2.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 67 (1.46%) MS Visio
5 64 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
6 20 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.33%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Trello
12 4 (0.087%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.087%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.065%) InVision
13 3 (0.065%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.065%) Notion
13 3 (0.065%) ProjectWise
13 3 (0.065%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.044%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 82 (1.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.72%) 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
6 16 (0.35%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
8 14 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
8 14 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 13 (0.28%) SAP WM
10 12 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
10 12 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
11 11 (0.24%) SAP HR
12 10 (0.22%) NEC Housing
12 10 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
13 9 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
13 9 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,017 (22.13%) Azure
2 717 (15.60%) AWS
3 368 (8.01%) GCP
4 326 (7.09%) Power Platform
5 315 (6.85%) Microsoft 365
6 227 (4.94%) GitHub
7 213 (4.63%) Azure DevOps
8 151 (3.29%) Serverless
9 135 (2.94%) Entra ID
10 128 (2.79%) SaaS
11 110 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
12 77 (1.68%) Amazon S3
13 75 (1.63%) AWS Lambda
14 74 (1.61%) Snowflake
15 71 (1.54%) PaaS
16 69 (1.50%) Power Automate
17 67 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
18 65 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
18 65 (1.41%) OpenShift
19 59 (1.28%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 163 (3.55%) Firewall
2 155 (3.37%) DNS
3 106 (2.31%) Network Security
3 106 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 99 (2.15%) VPN
5 86 (1.87%) DHCP
6 70 (1.52%) WAN
7 52 (1.13%) LAN
8 39 (0.85%) VLAN
9 34 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
10 31 (0.67%) BGP
11 29 (0.63%) Skype
12 28 (0.61%) VoIP
13 20 (0.44%) Internet
13 20 (0.44%) Wireless
13 20 (0.44%) Wireshark
14 19 (0.41%) SAN
14 19 (0.41%) SSL
15 18 (0.39%) HTTP
15 18 (0.39%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 253 (5.50%) Power BI
2 142 (3.09%) Relational Database
3 139 (3.02%) SQL Server
4 122 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
5 119 (2.59%) Data Warehouse
6 94 (2.05%) NoSQL
7 83 (1.81%) MongoDB
8 67 (1.46%) Metadata
8 67 (1.46%) Tableau
9 66 (1.44%) Oracle Database
10 64 (1.39%) MySQL
11 48 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
12 45 (0.98%) Big Data
13 42 (0.91%) Data Lake
14 39 (0.85%) DynamoDB
15 38 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
16 37 (0.81%) Pentaho
17 34 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
18 31 (0.67%) RDBMS
18 31 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 440 (9.57%) JIRA
2 321 (6.98%) Git
3 244 (5.31%) Jenkins
4 156 (3.39%) GitLab
5 73 (1.59%) Selenium
6 55 (1.20%) JUnit
7 37 (0.81%) Postman
8 32 (0.70%) Bitbucket
9 31 (0.67%) Cucumber
10 30 (0.65%) Maven
11 26 (0.57%) SonarQube
12 24 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
13 20 (0.44%) Cypress.io
14 19 (0.41%) REST Assured
15 17 (0.37%) JMeter
15 17 (0.37%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.33%) CircleCI
17 14 (0.30%) Mockito
18 13 (0.28%) Artifactory
18 13 (0.28%) Gradle
General
1 2,534 (55.13%) Social Skills
2 1,673 (36.40%) Analytical Skills
3 1,046 (22.76%) Finance
4 428 (9.31%) Public Sector
5 385 (8.38%) Banking
6 185 (4.03%) Organisational Skills
7 144 (3.13%) Legal
8 139 (3.02%) Documentation Skills
9 124 (2.70%) Influencing Skills
10 119 (2.59%) Presentation Skills
11 113 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 109 (2.37%) Retail
13 100 (2.18%) Telecoms
14 96 (2.09%) Front Office
15 95 (2.07%) Marketing
16 76 (1.65%) Investment Banking
17 72 (1.57%) Manufacturing
18 55 (1.20%) Military
19 43 (0.94%) Law
20 39 (0.85%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 670 (14.58%) Developer
2 665 (14.47%) Analyst
3 398 (8.66%) Senior
4 298 (6.48%) Architect
5 280 (6.09%) Lead
6 266 (5.79%) Business Analyst
7 250 (5.44%) Consultant
8 176 (3.83%) Project Manager
9 147 (3.20%) Data Engineer
10 144 (3.13%) Support Engineer
11 121 (2.63%) IT Support
12 107 (2.33%) Senior Developer
13 96 (2.09%) Java Developer
14 86 (1.87%) Support Analyst
15 85 (1.85%) Data Analyst
15 85 (1.85%) Software Engineer
16 82 (1.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 78 (1.70%) Solutions Architect
18 77 (1.68%) IT Analyst
19 75 (1.63%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 324 (7.05%) REST
2 177 (3.85%) RESTful
3 173 (3.76%) SOAP
4 164 (3.57%) .NET
5 143 (3.11%) React
6 139 (3.02%) Node.js
7 138 (3.00%) Kafka
8 135 (2.94%) Spring
9 123 (2.68%) HTML
10 107 (2.33%) AngularJS
11 105 (2.28%) CSS
12 102 (2.22%) Spring Boot
13 85 (1.85%) JSON
14 83 (1.81%) XML
15 79 (1.72%) LDAP
15 79 (1.72%) Middleware
16 68 (1.48%) Oracle Fusion
17 65 (1.41%) OAuth
18 59 (1.28%) Web Services
19 55 (1.20%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 241 (5.24%) Product Ownership
2 191 (4.16%) Cloud Native
3 179 (3.89%) Management Information System
4 172 (3.74%) Onboarding
5 128 (2.79%) Analytical Mindset
6 106 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
7 104 (2.26%) Data Structures
8 99 (2.15%) Data Centre
9 93 (2.02%) Self-Motivation
10 92 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
11 88 (1.91%) Security Posture
12 71 (1.54%) Algorithms
12 71 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
13 66 (1.44%) Virtual Team
14 63 (1.37%) Mobile App
15 62 (1.35%) CMDB
16 60 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
17 54 (1.17%) Hybrid Cloud
18 50 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 48 (1.04%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 465 (10.12%) Windows
2 316 (6.88%) Linux
3 104 (2.26%) Windows 10
4 94 (2.05%) Unix
5 87 (1.89%) Windows Server
6 53 (1.15%) Apple iOS
7 52 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 49 (1.07%) Android
9 42 (0.91%) Mac OS
10 23 (0.50%) VMS
11 18 (0.39%) CentOS
12 14 (0.30%) Ubuntu
13 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
15 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.087%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.065%) Debian
17 3 (0.065%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,392 (30.29%) Agile
2 854 (18.58%) CI/CD
3 750 (16.32%) DevOps
4 691 (15.03%) Stakeholder Management
5 657 (14.30%) Continuous Improvement
6 516 (11.23%) Analytics
7 449 (9.77%) Migration
8 445 (9.68%) Decision-Making
9 428 (9.31%) Project Management
10 411 (8.94%) Test Automation
11 402 (8.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 396 (8.62%) AI
13 384 (8.36%) Scrum
14 370 (8.05%) Data Modelling
15 342 (7.44%) Computer Science
16 338 (7.35%) Business Intelligence
17 337 (7.33%) ITIL
18 334 (7.27%) Containerisation
19 332 (7.22%) Validation
20 323 (7.03%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 923 (20.08%) Python
2 812 (17.67%) SQL
3 427 (9.29%) Java
4 314 (6.83%) PowerShell
5 272 (5.92%) JavaScript
6 202 (4.40%) C#
7 174 (3.79%) TypeScript
8 131 (2.85%) Bash
9 64 (1.39%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.28%) Go
11 57 (1.24%) C++
11 57 (1.24%) Shell Script
12 40 (0.87%) Perl
12 40 (0.87%) Scala
12 40 (0.87%) VBA
13 30 (0.65%) R
13 30 (0.65%) Ruby
14 29 (0.63%) Apex Code
14 29 (0.63%) T-SQL
15 26 (0.57%) C
Qualifications
1 979 (21.30%) Security Cleared
2 704 (15.32%) SC Cleared
3 636 (13.84%) Degree
4 250 (5.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 167 (3.63%) DV Cleared
6 94 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 92 (2.00%) PMI Certification
8 91 (1.98%) CISSP
8 91 (1.98%) Microsoft Certification
8 91 (1.98%) PMP
9 87 (1.89%) Master's Degree
10 81 (1.76%) Azure Certification
11 60 (1.31%) Cisco Certification
12 52 (1.13%) AWS Certification
13 51 (1.11%) CISM
14 39 (0.85%) A+ Certification
15 37 (0.81%) CCNP
16 30 (0.65%) CCNA
16 30 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
17 27 (0.59%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 307 (6.68%) QA
2 269 (5.85%) Data Quality
3 160 (3.48%) GDPR
4 90 (1.96%) Accessibility
5 80 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 79 (1.72%) NIST
7 71 (1.54%) PMO
8 43 (0.94%) SLA
9 41 (0.89%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.67%) GRC
11 30 (0.65%) PSD2
12 22 (0.48%) ISO 20022
12 22 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.44%) WCAG
14 17 (0.37%) SEPA
15 16 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
15 16 (0.35%) EU AI Act
15 16 (0.35%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 14 (0.30%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 441 (9.60%) Docker
2 349 (7.59%) Active Directory
3 105 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.89%) Hyper-V
5 30 (0.65%) vSphere
6 23 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
7 20 (0.44%) VMware NSX
8 19 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
9 16 (0.35%) Firmware
10 11 (0.24%) RACF
11 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.20%) ACF2
13 8 (0.17%) HDFS
14 6 (0.13%) Squid
15 5 (0.11%) KVM
15 5 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
16 4 (0.087%) vCloud
17 3 (0.065%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.065%) Oracle RAC
17 3 (0.065%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 454 (9.88%) Kubernetes
2 257 (5.59%) Terraform
3 171 (3.72%) Ansible
4 99 (2.15%) Grafana
5 97 (2.11%) Microsoft Intune
6 86 (1.87%) SCCM
7 80 (1.74%) Prometheus
8 39 (0.85%) Puppet
9 36 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
10 34 (0.74%) Kibana
11 24 (0.52%) Argo
11 24 (0.52%) Nessus
12 23 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 17 (0.37%) Control-M
13 17 (0.37%) vCenter Server
14 16 (0.35%) IBM Guardium
14 16 (0.35%) Red Hat Satellite
14 16 (0.35%) SCOM
15 15 (0.33%) vRealize
16 14 (0.30%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 913 (19.87%) Microsoft
2 328 (7.14%) Oracle
3 219 (4.77%) SAP
4 198 (4.31%) ServiceNow
5 183 (3.98%) VMware
6 159 (3.46%) Google
7 133 (2.89%) Databricks
8 131 (2.85%) Splunk
9 121 (2.63%) Salesforce
10 101 (2.20%) Cisco
11 79 (1.72%) CyberArk
12 68 (1.48%) Red Hat
13 67 (1.46%) BeyondTrust
14 50 (1.09%) IBM
15 45 (0.98%) Palo Alto
15 45 (0.98%) Talend
15 45 (0.98%) Workday
16 39 (0.85%) Citrix
16 39 (0.85%) MuleSoft
17 38 (0.83%) Adobe