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

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -2 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,688 3,949 4,113
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.91% 16.00% 10.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.92% 17.66% 12.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,930 2,480 2,546
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £588 £618 £634
90th Percentile £713 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £482 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.60% - -6.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 251 163 365
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.99 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.00 £25.43 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -21.35% +37.46% -54.32%
75th Percentile £42.16 £48.38 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £76.50 £74.50
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £26.50 £18.00
% change year-on-year -24.53% +47.22% -48.57%

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 31,421 22,365 33,112
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.55% 90.61% 86.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,102 14,445 21,880
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 £615 £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 1,952 795 2,164
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.25 £13.02
25th Percentile £18.80 £21.01 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £34.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +6.15% -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.53
90th Percentile £74.26 £76.81 £71.83
UK median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -8.89% - -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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -5 2,043 £513 -2.38% 1,082
North of England -3 767 £450 -7.98% 676
South East -2 670 £492 -1.60% 898
Midlands -2 524 £450 +3.45% 486
West Midlands 0 383 £477 +5.03% 278
North West -2 381 £425 -10.53% 359
Yorkshire -4 337 £475 -5.00% 241
South West -1 309 £550 +4.76% 336
East of England -3 241 £450 - 339
East Midlands -4 142 £402 +7.20% 204
North East -1 58 £438 -2.78% 87
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
1 205 (4.37%) Confluence
2 152 (3.24%) SharePoint
3 105 (2.24%) Microsoft Exchange
4 65 (1.39%) Apache Spark
5 59 (1.26%) SAS
6 54 (1.15%) Apache
7 34 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.58%) CMS
9 20 (0.43%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.32%) Skype for Business
11 13 (0.28%) nginx
12 12 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 10 (0.21%) JBoss
14 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
15 7 (0.15%) Camunda
16 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
16 6 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
17 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 295 (6.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 214 (4.56%) Microsoft Office
3 114 (2.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (1.49%) MS Visio
5 67 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
6 22 (0.47%) Chatbot
7 20 (0.43%) 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 (0.085%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.085%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.064%) InVision
13 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.064%) Maya
13 3 (0.064%) Notion
13 3 (0.064%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 78 (1.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.47%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.32%) Workday HCM
6 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
6 13 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
7 12 (0.26%) NEC Housing
7 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
7 12 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
7 12 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 11 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
9 10 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
9 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
10 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
11 8 (0.17%) SAP MDG
11 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,004 (21.42%) Azure
2 730 (15.57%) AWS
3 342 (7.30%) GCP
4 332 (7.08%) Power Platform
5 303 (6.46%) Microsoft 365
6 234 (4.99%) GitHub
7 222 (4.74%) Azure DevOps
8 163 (3.48%) Serverless
9 147 (3.14%) Entra ID
10 122 (2.60%) SaaS
11 114 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
12 90 (1.92%) Amazon S3
13 89 (1.90%) AWS Lambda
14 87 (1.86%) OpenShift
15 73 (1.56%) Snowflake
16 71 (1.51%) Azure Data Factory
17 65 (1.39%) PaaS
18 55 (1.17%) Dynamics 365
19 53 (1.13%) Azure AKS
19 53 (1.13%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 172 (3.67%) Firewall
2 168 (3.58%) DNS
3 115 (2.45%) TCP/IP
4 99 (2.11%) Network Security
5 92 (1.96%) DHCP
5 92 (1.96%) VPN
6 87 (1.86%) WAN
7 69 (1.47%) LAN
8 54 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
9 42 (0.90%) BGP
10 40 (0.85%) VLAN
11 32 (0.68%) SAN
12 30 (0.64%) OSPF
13 29 (0.62%) VoIP
14 21 (0.45%) SD-WAN
15 20 (0.43%) Internet
16 19 (0.41%) Wireless
17 17 (0.36%) HTTP
17 17 (0.36%) MPLS
18 16 (0.34%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 266 (5.67%) Power BI
2 162 (3.46%) SQL Server
3 138 (2.94%) PostgreSQL
4 132 (2.82%) Data Warehouse
5 130 (2.77%) Relational Database
6 99 (2.11%) MongoDB
7 94 (2.01%) NoSQL
8 73 (1.56%) Metadata
9 67 (1.43%) Tableau
10 66 (1.41%) Oracle Database
11 58 (1.24%) MySQL
12 57 (1.22%) Data Lake
13 53 (1.13%) Oracle Reports
14 50 (1.07%) Big Data
15 45 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 39 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
17 36 (0.77%) DynamoDB
18 34 (0.73%) Pentaho
19 31 (0.66%) Hadoop
20 30 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 461 (9.83%) JIRA
2 332 (7.08%) Git
3 250 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 158 (3.37%) GitLab
5 79 (1.69%) Selenium
6 55 (1.17%) JUnit
7 41 (0.87%) Postman
8 36 (0.77%) Bitbucket
9 35 (0.75%) Cucumber
10 25 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
11 24 (0.51%) Maven
12 22 (0.47%) Cypress.io
12 22 (0.47%) REST Assured
13 19 (0.41%) JMeter
14 18 (0.38%) Mockito
14 18 (0.38%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.32%) IntelliJ
15 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
17 13 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,542 (54.22%) Social Skills
2 1,743 (37.18%) Analytical Skills
3 1,065 (22.72%) Finance
4 457 (9.75%) Public Sector
5 379 (8.08%) Banking
6 182 (3.88%) Organisational Skills
7 158 (3.37%) Documentation Skills
8 156 (3.33%) Legal
9 135 (2.88%) Retail
10 125 (2.67%) Influencing Skills
11 123 (2.62%) Presentation Skills
12 112 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 92 (1.96%) Front Office
14 87 (1.86%) Marketing
15 79 (1.69%) Telecoms
16 67 (1.43%) Investment Banking
17 60 (1.28%) Military
18 58 (1.24%) Manufacturing
19 45 (0.96%) Law
20 41 (0.87%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 667 (14.23%) Analyst
2 632 (13.48%) Developer
3 403 (8.60%) Senior
4 321 (6.85%) Architect
5 308 (6.57%) Lead
6 272 (5.80%) Business Analyst
7 233 (4.97%) Consultant
8 191 (4.07%) Project Manager
9 184 (3.92%) Data Engineer
10 124 (2.65%) Support Engineer
11 110 (2.35%) IT Support
12 94 (2.01%) Java Developer
13 90 (1.92%) Software Engineer
14 88 (1.88%) Senior Developer
15 87 (1.86%) Data Analyst
16 82 (1.75%) Python Developer
17 81 (1.73%) Solutions Architect
18 80 (1.71%) Administrator
19 72 (1.54%) IT Analyst
20 71 (1.51%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 324 (6.91%) REST
2 170 (3.63%) SOAP
3 159 (3.39%) RESTful
4 154 (3.28%) Kafka
5 150 (3.20%) .NET
6 143 (3.05%) Spring
7 140 (2.99%) React
8 136 (2.90%) Node.js
9 110 (2.35%) CSS
9 110 (2.35%) HTML
10 108 (2.30%) AngularJS
11 104 (2.22%) JSON
12 97 (2.07%) Spring Boot
13 93 (1.98%) XML
14 87 (1.86%) LDAP
15 84 (1.79%) Middleware
16 72 (1.54%) OAuth
17 68 (1.45%) Web Services
18 65 (1.39%) Oracle Fusion
19 55 (1.17%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 224 (4.78%) Product Ownership
2 190 (4.05%) Cloud Native
3 181 (3.86%) Onboarding
4 152 (3.24%) Management Information System
5 125 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
5 125 (2.67%) Data Centre
6 102 (2.18%) Self-Motivation
7 100 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
8 97 (2.07%) Data Structures
9 93 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
10 79 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
11 75 (1.60%) Algorithms
12 73 (1.56%) Security Posture
13 71 (1.51%) Distributed Systems
13 71 (1.51%) Virtual Team
14 66 (1.41%) Mobile App
15 63 (1.34%) Hybrid Cloud
16 60 (1.28%) CMDB
17 52 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 49 (1.05%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 499 (10.64%) Windows
2 287 (6.12%) Linux
3 95 (2.03%) Windows 10
4 93 (1.98%) Unix
5 85 (1.81%) Windows Server
6 68 (1.45%) Android
7 63 (1.34%) Apple iOS
8 55 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 47 (1.00%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.43%) VMS
11 15 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 13 (0.28%) CentOS
13 9 (0.19%) Mac OS X
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.11%) zOS
16 4 (0.085%) Debian
16 4 (0.085%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,373 (29.29%) Agile
2 881 (18.79%) CI/CD
3 772 (16.47%) DevOps
4 722 (15.40%) Stakeholder Management
5 718 (15.32%) Continuous Improvement
6 551 (11.75%) Analytics
7 483 (10.30%) Migration
8 480 (10.24%) Decision-Making
9 444 (9.47%) AI
10 439 (9.36%) Project Management
11 415 (8.85%) Test Automation
12 411 (8.77%) Data Modelling
13 408 (8.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 374 (7.98%) Scrum
15 360 (7.68%) Validation
16 355 (7.57%) Business Intelligence
17 339 (7.23%) Customer Service
18 336 (7.17%) ITIL
19 335 (7.15%) Computer Science
19 335 (7.15%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 930 (19.84%) Python
2 837 (17.85%) SQL
3 419 (8.94%) Java
4 312 (6.66%) PowerShell
5 260 (5.55%) JavaScript
6 187 (3.99%) C#
7 176 (3.75%) TypeScript
8 137 (2.92%) Bash
9 72 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.19%) C++
11 50 (1.07%) Shell Script
12 48 (1.02%) Go
13 37 (0.79%) Perl
14 36 (0.77%) Scala
14 36 (0.77%) T-SQL
15 35 (0.75%) Bicep
16 33 (0.70%) VBA
17 31 (0.66%) Ruby
18 30 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 29 (0.62%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,055 (22.50%) Security Cleared
2 734 (15.66%) SC Cleared
3 611 (13.03%) Degree
4 230 (4.91%) Computer Science Degree
5 202 (4.31%) DV Cleared
6 111 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
7 95 (2.03%) PMP
8 92 (1.96%) Microsoft Certification
9 91 (1.94%) CISSP
10 90 (1.92%) PMI Certification
11 89 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
11 89 (1.90%) Master's Degree
12 71 (1.51%) Azure Certification
13 59 (1.26%) CISM
14 44 (0.94%) AWS Certification
15 41 (0.87%) CCNA
15 41 (0.87%) CCNP
16 34 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
17 32 (0.68%) A+ Certification
18 26 (0.55%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 303 (6.46%) QA
2 283 (6.04%) Data Quality
3 153 (3.26%) GDPR
4 88 (1.88%) Accessibility
4 88 (1.88%) NIST
5 82 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 79 (1.69%) PMO
7 57 (1.22%) SLA
8 34 (0.73%) GRC
8 34 (0.73%) PCI DSS
9 23 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
9 23 (0.49%) PSD2
10 21 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 19 (0.41%) WCAG
12 17 (0.36%) EU AI Act
13 16 (0.34%) HIPAA
13 16 (0.34%) ISO 20022
14 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
15 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 12 (0.26%) NCSC
System Software
1 431 (9.19%) Docker
2 346 (7.38%) Active Directory
3 97 (2.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.79%) vSphere
5 28 (0.60%) Hyper-V
5 28 (0.60%) VMware NSX
6 24 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
7 16 (0.34%) Firmware
7 16 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (0.23%) RACF
9 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
10 9 (0.19%) ACF2
11 8 (0.17%) Squid
12 7 (0.15%) vCloud
12 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
13 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.085%) HDFS
14 4 (0.085%) Snort
15 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
15 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 468 (9.98%) Kubernetes
2 266 (5.67%) Terraform
3 169 (3.60%) Ansible
4 111 (2.37%) Grafana
5 110 (2.35%) Microsoft Intune
6 89 (1.90%) Prometheus
7 76 (1.62%) SCCM
8 40 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
9 34 (0.73%) Puppet
10 32 (0.68%) Kibana
11 31 (0.66%) Argo
12 30 (0.64%) FortiGate
13 29 (0.62%) vCenter Server
14 28 (0.60%) Nessus
15 25 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 25 (0.53%) Control-M
16 23 (0.49%) IBM Guardium
17 14 (0.30%) vRealize
18 13 (0.28%) Red Hat Satellite
19 11 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 877 (18.71%) Microsoft
2 320 (6.83%) Oracle
3 210 (4.48%) SAP
4 205 (4.37%) ServiceNow
5 184 (3.92%) VMware
6 164 (3.50%) Google
7 139 (2.97%) Databricks
8 137 (2.92%) Splunk
9 112 (2.39%) Cisco
10 101 (2.15%) Salesforce
11 80 (1.71%) Red Hat
12 74 (1.58%) CyberArk
13 62 (1.32%) BeyondTrust
14 55 (1.17%) Citrix
14 55 (1.17%) Workday
15 50 (1.07%) IBM
16 49 (1.05%) Talend
17 45 (0.96%) F5
17 45 (0.96%) Informatica
18 43 (0.92%) Adobe