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

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,715 4,014 4,097
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.32% 15.72% 10.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.29% 17.42% 12.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,961 2,447 2,548
10th Percentile £300 £256 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -0.05% -7.36%
75th Percentile £600 £618 £631
90th Percentile £711 £713 £730
UK median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.45% - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 156 349
10th Percentile £13.97 £15.00 £11.75
25th Percentile £15.74 £16.90 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.31 £25.43 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -24.06% +30.41% -48.89%
75th Percentile £41.84 £49.25 £47.83
90th Percentile £73.58 £79.13 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £26.50 £19.38
% change year-on-year -24.53% +36.77% -38.55%

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 30,846 23,044 33,123
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.12% 90.26% 87.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,757 14,550 21,943
10th Percentile £313 £307 £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 £617 £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 1,917 778 2,099
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £13.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £28.55 £35.00 £34.21
Median % change year-on-year -18.43% +2.31% -2.92%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £59.94
90th Percentile £73.41 £75.73 £72.07
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year -15.38% -1.52% -5.71%

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 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 1 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 1 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 -3 2,067 £517 -1.57% 1,071
North of England -2 769 £450 -7.22% 781
South East -2 660 £488 -2.50% 1,173
Midlands -1 528 £450 +3.54% 574
North West -1 385 £424 -10.66% 403
West Midlands 0 383 £475 +5.56% 303
Yorkshire -4 332 £475 -5.00% 292
South West -2 319 £530 +6.00% 425
East of England -3 240 £475 +5.56% 485
East Midlands -2 146 £402 +1.77% 262
North East -4 60 £450 -6.40% 100
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
1 210 (4.45%) Confluence
2 149 (3.16%) SharePoint
3 106 (2.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 66 (1.40%) Apache Spark
5 63 (1.34%) SAS
6 54 (1.15%) Apache
7 38 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.57%) CMS
9 22 (0.47%) Skype for Business
10 20 (0.42%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.30%) nginx
12 10 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 10 (0.21%) JBoss
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
15 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
15 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 291 (6.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 219 (4.64%) Microsoft Office
3 116 (2.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 76 (1.61%) MS Visio
5 67 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
6 21 (0.45%) 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 6 (0.13%) 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%) Notion
13 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.042%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.042%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 76 (1.61%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (0.59%) 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 (0.30%) NetSuite
6 14 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
7 13 (0.28%) 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 1,020 (21.63%) Azure
2 737 (15.63%) AWS
3 353 (7.49%) GCP
4 331 (7.02%) Power Platform
5 312 (6.62%) Microsoft 365
6 229 (4.86%) GitHub
7 220 (4.67%) Azure DevOps
8 154 (3.27%) Serverless
9 149 (3.16%) Entra ID
10 126 (2.67%) SaaS
11 110 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
12 84 (1.78%) Amazon S3
12 84 (1.78%) OpenShift
13 82 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
14 73 (1.55%) Azure Data Factory
14 73 (1.55%) Snowflake
15 66 (1.40%) PaaS
16 59 (1.25%) Dynamics 365
17 54 (1.15%) Power Automate
18 53 (1.12%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 179 (3.80%) Firewall
2 173 (3.67%) DNS
3 121 (2.57%) TCP/IP
4 102 (2.16%) Network Security
5 101 (2.14%) VPN
6 96 (2.04%) DHCP
7 84 (1.78%) WAN
8 67 (1.42%) LAN
9 50 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
10 46 (0.98%) VLAN
11 43 (0.91%) BGP
12 31 (0.66%) OSPF
13 29 (0.62%) SAN
14 28 (0.59%) VoIP
15 22 (0.47%) Skype
16 21 (0.45%) Wireless
17 18 (0.38%) Internet
18 17 (0.36%) SD-WAN
18 17 (0.36%) SSL
19 16 (0.34%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 266 (5.64%) Power BI
2 158 (3.35%) SQL Server
3 134 (2.84%) PostgreSQL
4 133 (2.82%) Relational Database
5 129 (2.74%) Data Warehouse
6 99 (2.10%) MongoDB
7 95 (2.01%) NoSQL
8 73 (1.55%) Metadata
9 65 (1.38%) Tableau
10 64 (1.36%) Oracle Database
11 63 (1.34%) MySQL
12 57 (1.21%) Data Lake
13 53 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
14 47 (1.00%) Big Data
15 46 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 37 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
17 34 (0.72%) DynamoDB
17 34 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
18 33 (0.70%) Hadoop
18 33 (0.70%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 457 (9.69%) JIRA
2 330 (7.00%) Git
3 245 (5.20%) Jenkins
4 157 (3.33%) GitLab
5 76 (1.61%) Selenium
6 53 (1.12%) JUnit
7 40 (0.85%) Postman
8 36 (0.76%) Bitbucket
9 35 (0.74%) Cucumber
10 24 (0.51%) Maven
10 24 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
11 22 (0.47%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 20 (0.42%) SonarQube
14 18 (0.38%) JMeter
15 17 (0.36%) SpecFlow
16 16 (0.34%) Mockito
17 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
18 14 (0.30%) IntelliJ
19 12 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,574 (54.59%) Social Skills
2 1,727 (36.63%) Analytical Skills
3 1,060 (22.48%) Finance
4 445 (9.44%) Public Sector
5 375 (7.95%) Banking
6 187 (3.97%) Organisational Skills
7 153 (3.24%) Documentation Skills
8 152 (3.22%) Legal
9 132 (2.80%) Retail
10 126 (2.67%) Presentation Skills
11 125 (2.65%) Influencing Skills
12 122 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 97 (2.06%) Front Office
14 90 (1.91%) Marketing
15 77 (1.63%) Telecoms
16 70 (1.48%) Investment Banking
17 63 (1.34%) Manufacturing
18 61 (1.29%) Military
19 44 (0.93%) Law
20 43 (0.91%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 688 (14.59%) Analyst
2 650 (13.79%) Developer
3 408 (8.65%) Senior
4 319 (6.77%) Architect
5 306 (6.49%) Lead
6 271 (5.75%) Business Analyst
7 237 (5.03%) Consultant
8 185 (3.92%) Data Engineer
9 178 (3.78%) Project Manager
10 129 (2.74%) Support Engineer
11 120 (2.55%) IT Support
12 97 (2.06%) Java Developer
13 95 (2.01%) Software Engineer
14 94 (1.99%) Senior Developer
15 91 (1.93%) Data Analyst
16 84 (1.78%) Python Developer
17 81 (1.72%) Support Analyst
18 80 (1.70%) Administrator
18 80 (1.70%) IT Analyst
18 80 (1.70%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 323 (6.85%) REST
2 172 (3.65%) SOAP
3 162 (3.44%) RESTful
4 155 (3.29%) .NET
5 151 (3.20%) Kafka
6 146 (3.10%) React
7 139 (2.95%) Spring
8 134 (2.84%) Node.js
9 117 (2.48%) HTML
10 112 (2.38%) CSS
11 108 (2.29%) AngularJS
12 101 (2.14%) JSON
13 97 (2.06%) Spring Boot
14 92 (1.95%) XML
15 86 (1.82%) Middleware
16 84 (1.78%) LDAP
17 67 (1.42%) Oracle Fusion
18 66 (1.40%) OAuth
19 65 (1.38%) Web Services
20 53 (1.12%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 227 (4.81%) Product Ownership
2 184 (3.90%) Cloud Native
3 180 (3.82%) Onboarding
4 156 (3.31%) Management Information System
5 123 (2.61%) Analytical Mindset
6 116 (2.46%) Data Centre
7 108 (2.29%) Data Structures
8 102 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
9 99 (2.10%) Self-Motivation
10 95 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
11 81 (1.72%) Algorithms
12 78 (1.65%) Security Posture
13 75 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
14 67 (1.42%) Virtual Team
15 66 (1.40%) Distributed Systems
16 64 (1.36%) Hybrid Cloud
16 64 (1.36%) Mobile App
17 59 (1.25%) CMDB
18 53 (1.12%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 48 (1.02%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 499 (10.58%) Windows
2 305 (6.47%) Linux
3 99 (2.10%) Windows 10
4 97 (2.06%) Unix
5 81 (1.72%) Windows Server
6 68 (1.44%) Android
7 64 (1.36%) Apple iOS
8 59 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 46 (0.98%) Mac OS
10 22 (0.47%) VMS
11 17 (0.36%) CentOS
12 15 (0.32%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.11%) zOS
17 4 (0.085%) Debian
17 4 (0.085%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,383 (29.33%) Agile
2 876 (18.58%) CI/CD
3 768 (16.29%) DevOps
4 709 (15.04%) Continuous Improvement
5 707 (14.99%) Stakeholder Management
6 539 (11.43%) Analytics
7 485 (10.29%) Migration
8 478 (10.14%) Decision-Making
9 429 (9.10%) AI
10 426 (9.03%) Project Management
11 416 (8.82%) Test Automation
12 402 (8.53%) Data Modelling
13 399 (8.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 374 (7.93%) Scrum
15 361 (7.66%) Validation
16 357 (7.57%) Business Intelligence
17 340 (7.21%) ITIL
18 339 (7.19%) Computer Science
19 338 (7.17%) Customer Service
20 335 (7.10%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 939 (19.92%) Python
2 835 (17.71%) SQL
3 424 (8.99%) Java
4 312 (6.62%) PowerShell
5 270 (5.73%) JavaScript
6 195 (4.14%) C#
7 173 (3.67%) TypeScript
8 136 (2.88%) Bash
9 72 (1.53%) PL/SQL
10 60 (1.27%) C++
11 51 (1.08%) Go
11 51 (1.08%) Shell Script
12 39 (0.83%) Perl
13 37 (0.78%) T-SQL
14 36 (0.76%) Scala
15 34 (0.72%) VBA
16 31 (0.66%) Bicep
17 30 (0.64%) C
17 30 (0.64%) Ruby
18 29 (0.62%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,052 (22.31%) Security Cleared
2 739 (15.67%) SC Cleared
3 631 (13.38%) Degree
4 236 (5.01%) Computer Science Degree
5 195 (4.14%) DV Cleared
6 110 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 95 (2.01%) Microsoft Certification
8 93 (1.97%) PMP
9 89 (1.89%) CISSP
9 89 (1.89%) Master's Degree
9 89 (1.89%) PMI Certification
10 81 (1.72%) Cisco Certification
11 68 (1.44%) Azure Certification
12 57 (1.21%) CISM
13 46 (0.98%) AWS Certification
14 41 (0.87%) CCNP
15 37 (0.78%) A+ Certification
15 37 (0.78%) CCNA
16 30 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
17 25 (0.53%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 307 (6.51%) QA
2 283 (6.00%) Data Quality
3 149 (3.16%) GDPR
4 90 (1.91%) Accessibility
5 84 (1.78%) NIST
6 80 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 80 (1.70%) PMO
7 54 (1.15%) SLA
8 35 (0.74%) PCI DSS
9 32 (0.68%) GRC
10 23 (0.49%) PSD2
11 22 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
11 22 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.42%) WCAG
13 16 (0.34%) EU AI Act
13 16 (0.34%) ISO 20022
14 15 (0.32%) HIPAA
14 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
15 14 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 12 (0.25%) IFRS
System Software
1 429 (9.10%) Docker
2 356 (7.55%) Active Directory
3 99 (2.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.72%) vSphere
5 32 (0.68%) Hyper-V
6 27 (0.57%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.36%) Firmware
8 17 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.23%) RACF
10 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 8 (0.17%) Squid
13 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) vCloud
15 5 (0.11%) HDFS
15 5 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.085%) Snort
17 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
17 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 466 (9.88%) Kubernetes
2 262 (5.56%) Terraform
3 171 (3.63%) Ansible
4 113 (2.40%) Grafana
5 109 (2.31%) Microsoft Intune
6 89 (1.89%) Prometheus
7 85 (1.80%) SCCM
8 40 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
9 36 (0.76%) Puppet
10 33 (0.70%) Kibana
11 31 (0.66%) Nessus
12 30 (0.64%) Argo
13 29 (0.62%) FortiGate
14 25 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 25 (0.53%) vCenter Server
15 23 (0.49%) Control-M
16 22 (0.47%) IBM Guardium
17 16 (0.34%) Red Hat Satellite
18 12 (0.25%) vRealize
19 11 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 901 (19.11%) Microsoft
2 328 (6.96%) Oracle
3 209 (4.43%) SAP
4 207 (4.39%) ServiceNow
5 187 (3.97%) VMware
6 158 (3.35%) Google
7 144 (3.05%) Splunk
8 142 (3.01%) Databricks
9 111 (2.35%) Cisco
10 104 (2.21%) Salesforce
11 83 (1.76%) Red Hat
12 72 (1.53%) CyberArk
13 61 (1.29%) BeyondTrust
14 54 (1.15%) Citrix
15 53 (1.12%) Workday
16 50 (1.06%) IBM
17 48 (1.02%) Talend
18 44 (0.93%) Informatica
19 43 (0.91%) F5
19 43 (0.91%) Palo Alto