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

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 11
Rank change year-on-year -1 +5 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,537 3,976 3,890
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.05% 14.92% 10.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.95% 16.70% 12.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,868 2,311 2,440
10th Percentile £284 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £715 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -7.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 235 156 289
10th Percentile £13.84 £15.05 £13.29
25th Percentile £15.71 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.50 £21.75 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.94% -13.00% -24.24%
75th Percentile £34.38 £38.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £63.90 £67.09 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £18.87 £24.18 £23.50
% change year-on-year -21.96% +2.89% -24.38%

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 28,450 23,808 32,355
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.12% 89.33% 87.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,222 14,593 21,730
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £409 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £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 1,765 770 1,701
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £17.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £38.16
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -8.27% +9.67%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.01 £63.29
90th Percentile £69.65 £75.00 £75.16
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -13.33% +17.19%

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 21 January 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 21 January 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 21 January 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 -1 2,079 £525 -2.10% 890
North of England -2 705 £450 -5.26% 826
South East -1 633 £475 -5.00% 1,328
Midlands -2 498 £450 +5.88% 605
North West -1 361 £428 -7.57% 386
West Midlands -1 350 £492 +13.10% 294
Yorkshire -4 291 £487 -2.60% 318
South West -1 290 £525 +12.90% 546
East of England -4 201 £475 +5.56% 546
East Midlands -5 149 £402 +12.29% 303
North East -2 60 £450 -18.18% 133
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
1 180 (3.97%) Confluence
2 153 (3.37%) SharePoint
3 110 (2.42%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.39%) SAS
5 58 (1.28%) Apache Spark
6 55 (1.21%) Apache
7 36 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.64%) Skype for Business
9 24 (0.53%) CMS
10 15 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.24%) JBoss
12 10 (0.22%) Anypoint
12 10 (0.22%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
13 7 (0.15%) OpenStack
14 6 (0.13%) Camunda
14 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 300 (6.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 204 (4.50%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (2.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (1.54%) MS Visio
5 64 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
6 16 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 8 (0.18%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.13%) ProjectWise
12 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
12 5 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
12 5 (0.11%) Trello
13 4 (0.088%) Autodesk Inventor
14 3 (0.066%) InVision
14 3 (0.066%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.066%) Notion
14 3 (0.066%) Zeplin
15 2 (0.044%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 83 (1.83%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.46%) Payment Gateway
4 20 (0.44%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.37%) SAP EWM
6 15 (0.33%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.31%) Aladdin
7 14 (0.31%) Oracle Assets
7 14 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
7 14 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
8 13 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.29%) SAP WM
8 13 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 12 (0.26%) SAP HR
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
12 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
12 9 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 998 (22.00%) Azure
2 721 (15.89%) AWS
3 373 (8.22%) GCP
4 317 (6.99%) Power Platform
5 305 (6.72%) Microsoft 365
6 218 (4.80%) GitHub
7 207 (4.56%) Azure DevOps
8 150 (3.31%) Serverless
9 129 (2.84%) Entra ID
10 126 (2.78%) SaaS
11 109 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
12 73 (1.61%) Snowflake
13 72 (1.59%) AWS Lambda
14 71 (1.56%) Amazon S3
15 69 (1.52%) PaaS
16 68 (1.50%) Power Automate
17 66 (1.45%) Dynamics 365
18 63 (1.39%) OpenShift
19 62 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
20 58 (1.28%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 150 (3.31%) Firewall
2 141 (3.11%) DNS
3 102 (2.25%) Network Security
4 100 (2.20%) TCP/IP
5 93 (2.05%) VPN
6 79 (1.74%) DHCP
7 67 (1.48%) WAN
8 50 (1.10%) LAN
9 40 (0.88%) VLAN
10 33 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
11 31 (0.68%) BGP
12 29 (0.64%) Skype
13 28 (0.62%) VoIP
14 22 (0.48%) Wireless
15 21 (0.46%) Wireshark
16 19 (0.42%) SSL
17 18 (0.40%) HTTP
18 17 (0.37%) Internet
18 17 (0.37%) OSPF
18 17 (0.37%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 248 (5.47%) Power BI
2 144 (3.17%) SQL Server
3 139 (3.06%) Relational Database
4 123 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
5 120 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
6 94 (2.07%) NoSQL
7 83 (1.83%) MongoDB
8 69 (1.52%) Metadata
8 69 (1.52%) Oracle Database
9 64 (1.41%) MySQL
9 64 (1.41%) Tableau
10 47 (1.04%) Big Data
10 47 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
11 42 (0.93%) DynamoDB
12 39 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
12 39 (0.86%) Data Lake
13 37 (0.82%) Pentaho
14 31 (0.68%) RDBMS
15 29 (0.64%) Hadoop
15 29 (0.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 422 (9.30%) JIRA
2 324 (7.14%) Git
3 237 (5.22%) Jenkins
4 149 (3.28%) GitLab
5 70 (1.54%) Selenium
6 56 (1.23%) JUnit
7 33 (0.73%) Postman
8 30 (0.66%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.64%) Maven
10 25 (0.55%) Bitbucket
11 20 (0.44%) Cypress.io
11 20 (0.44%) SonarQube
12 19 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
13 17 (0.37%) REST Assured
14 16 (0.35%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.33%) CircleCI
15 15 (0.33%) JMeter
16 13 (0.29%) Gradle
17 12 (0.26%) Mockito
18 11 (0.24%) Artifactory
General
1 2,508 (55.28%) Social Skills
2 1,667 (36.74%) Analytical Skills
3 1,060 (23.36%) Finance
4 419 (9.24%) Public Sector
5 397 (8.75%) Banking
6 175 (3.86%) Organisational Skills
7 144 (3.17%) Legal
8 133 (2.93%) Influencing Skills
9 119 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
10 118 (2.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 116 (2.56%) Presentation Skills
12 106 (2.34%) Retail
13 96 (2.12%) Front Office
14 95 (2.09%) Marketing
15 93 (2.05%) Telecoms
16 77 (1.70%) Investment Banking
17 73 (1.61%) Manufacturing
18 53 (1.17%) Military
19 39 (0.86%) Financial Institution
19 39 (0.86%) Law
Job Titles
1 666 (14.68%) Developer
2 663 (14.61%) Analyst
3 394 (8.68%) Senior
4 289 (6.37%) Architect
5 278 (6.13%) Lead
6 266 (5.86%) Business Analyst
7 250 (5.51%) Consultant
8 177 (3.90%) Project Manager
9 147 (3.24%) Support Engineer
10 141 (3.11%) Data Engineer
11 122 (2.69%) IT Support
12 109 (2.40%) Senior Developer
13 101 (2.23%) Java Developer
14 90 (1.98%) Support Analyst
15 85 (1.87%) Software Engineer
16 81 (1.79%) Data Analyst
17 76 (1.68%) Administrator
17 76 (1.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 74 (1.63%) IT Analyst
18 74 (1.63%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 313 (6.90%) REST
2 179 (3.95%) RESTful
3 164 (3.61%) SOAP
4 157 (3.46%) .NET
5 140 (3.09%) React
6 138 (3.04%) Kafka
7 136 (3.00%) Node.js
8 131 (2.89%) Spring
9 118 (2.60%) HTML
10 107 (2.36%) AngularJS
11 98 (2.16%) CSS
11 98 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 80 (1.76%) XML
13 79 (1.74%) JSON
14 76 (1.68%) Middleware
15 67 (1.48%) Oracle Fusion
16 64 (1.41%) LDAP
17 63 (1.39%) OAuth
18 57 (1.26%) Web Services
19 52 (1.15%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 231 (5.09%) Product Ownership
2 197 (4.34%) Cloud Native
3 182 (4.01%) Management Information System
4 169 (3.72%) Onboarding
5 129 (2.84%) Analytical Mindset
6 109 (2.40%) Enterprise Software
7 104 (2.29%) Data Structures
8 96 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
9 94 (2.07%) Data Centre
10 92 (2.03%) Security Posture
11 89 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
12 71 (1.56%) Algorithms
13 68 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
14 67 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
15 61 (1.34%) Mobile App
16 60 (1.32%) CMDB
16 60 (1.32%) Virtual Team
17 54 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
18 51 (1.12%) NHS
19 49 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 450 (9.92%) Windows
2 316 (6.96%) Linux
3 106 (2.34%) Windows 10
4 93 (2.05%) Unix
5 89 (1.96%) Windows Server
6 54 (1.19%) Apple iOS
7 51 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 50 (1.10%) Android
9 40 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 24 (0.53%) VMS
11 19 (0.42%) CentOS
12 13 (0.29%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
15 5 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.088%) Windows Server 2016
17 3 (0.066%) Debian
17 3 (0.066%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,387 (30.57%) Agile
2 833 (18.36%) CI/CD
3 739 (16.29%) DevOps
4 676 (14.90%) Stakeholder Management
5 656 (14.46%) Continuous Improvement
6 495 (10.91%) Analytics
7 434 (9.57%) Project Management
8 433 (9.54%) Decision-Making
9 429 (9.46%) Migration
10 402 (8.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 402 (8.86%) Test Automation
11 385 (8.49%) Scrum
12 369 (8.13%) AI
13 363 (8.00%) Data Modelling
14 337 (7.43%) Computer Science
15 332 (7.32%) Business Intelligence
16 322 (7.10%) Containerisation
16 322 (7.10%) ITIL
17 321 (7.08%) Mentoring
18 320 (7.05%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 931 (20.52%) Python
2 797 (17.57%) SQL
3 430 (9.48%) Java
4 302 (6.66%) PowerShell
5 268 (5.91%) JavaScript
6 194 (4.28%) C#
7 163 (3.59%) TypeScript
8 133 (2.93%) Bash
9 71 (1.56%) Go
10 63 (1.39%) PL/SQL
11 62 (1.37%) Shell Script
12 51 (1.12%) C++
13 42 (0.93%) Scala
14 40 (0.88%) VBA
15 39 (0.86%) Perl
16 33 (0.73%) R
17 32 (0.71%) Ruby
18 30 (0.66%) T-SQL
19 26 (0.57%) Apex Code
19 26 (0.57%) PHP
Qualifications
1 920 (20.28%) Security Cleared
2 670 (14.77%) SC Cleared
3 635 (14.00%) Degree
4 249 (5.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 143 (3.15%) DV Cleared
6 96 (2.12%) PMI Certification
7 94 (2.07%) CISSP
8 91 (2.01%) Microsoft Certification
8 91 (2.01%) PMP
9 87 (1.92%) BPSS Clearance
10 84 (1.85%) Master's Degree
11 80 (1.76%) Azure Certification
12 61 (1.34%) Cisco Certification
13 55 (1.21%) AWS Certification
14 47 (1.04%) CISM
15 38 (0.84%) A+ Certification
16 36 (0.79%) CCNP
17 34 (0.75%) MCP
18 28 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
19 27 (0.60%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 302 (6.66%) QA
2 259 (5.71%) Data Quality
3 160 (3.53%) GDPR
4 89 (1.96%) Accessibility
5 81 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 80 (1.76%) NIST
7 72 (1.59%) PMO
8 42 (0.93%) SLA
9 41 (0.90%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.68%) GRC
11 28 (0.62%) PSD2
12 22 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.44%) ISO 20022
13 20 (0.44%) WCAG
14 16 (0.35%) EU AI Act
15 15 (0.33%) SEPA
16 14 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
16 14 (0.31%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 14 (0.31%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.31%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 436 (9.61%) Docker
2 331 (7.30%) Active Directory
3 98 (2.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.93%) Hyper-V
5 24 (0.53%) vSphere
6 20 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
7 18 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
8 17 (0.37%) VMware NSX
9 15 (0.33%) Firmware
10 12 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
11 11 (0.24%) HDFS
11 11 (0.24%) RACF
12 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
13 9 (0.20%) ACF2
14 5 (0.11%) KVM
15 4 (0.088%) Lustre
15 4 (0.088%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 4 (0.088%) vCloud
15 4 (0.088%) VMware ESXi
16 3 (0.066%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 449 (9.90%) Kubernetes
2 246 (5.42%) Terraform
3 179 (3.95%) Ansible
4 91 (2.01%) Grafana
4 91 (2.01%) Microsoft Intune
5 83 (1.83%) SCCM
6 67 (1.48%) Prometheus
7 41 (0.90%) Puppet
8 34 (0.75%) Kibana
9 29 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
10 23 (0.51%) Argo
11 21 (0.46%) Nessus
12 20 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 16 (0.35%) Red Hat Satellite
13 16 (0.35%) SCOM
13 16 (0.35%) vCenter Server
14 15 (0.33%) HP ALM
14 15 (0.33%) vRealize
15 12 (0.26%) Data Guard
16 11 (0.24%) Control-M
Vendors
1 901 (19.86%) Microsoft
2 327 (7.21%) Oracle
3 213 (4.69%) SAP
4 193 (4.25%) ServiceNow
5 176 (3.88%) VMware
6 158 (3.48%) Google
7 129 (2.84%) Splunk
8 128 (2.82%) Databricks
9 119 (2.62%) Salesforce
10 102 (2.25%) Cisco
11 79 (1.74%) CyberArk
12 65 (1.43%) BeyondTrust
13 61 (1.34%) Red Hat
14 50 (1.10%) IBM
15 47 (1.04%) Workday
16 45 (0.99%) Palo Alto
16 45 (0.99%) Talend
17 42 (0.93%) Citrix
17 42 (0.93%) MuleSoft
18 41 (0.90%) HP