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

6 months to
14 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 4,710 4,004 4,118
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.79% 16.20% 10.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.78% 17.89% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,929 2,516 2,550
10th Percentile £298 £263 £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 £618 £635
90th Percentile £713 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 255 168 363
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.95 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.04 £25.43 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -21.20% +37.46% -55.74%
75th Percentile £42.65 £49.25 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.75 £73.50
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £26.50 £18.00
% change year-on-year -24.53% +47.22% -52.82%

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 31,861 22,379 32,986
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.53% 90.57% 86.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,379 14,469 21,822
10th Percentile £313 £310 £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 £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 1,986 803 2,148
10th Percentile £15.31 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.03 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.32 £34.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.12% +6.15% -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.00
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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -6 2,051 £512 -2.51% 970
North of England -4 766 £450 -8.16% 632
South East -2 685 £490 -2.00% 832
Midlands -2 519 £450 +2.86% 434
West Midlands -2 379 £475 +4.70% 264
North West -4 379 £424 -10.66% 350
Yorkshire -4 340 £475 -5.00% 212
South West -3 313 £535 +1.90% 310
East of England -3 238 £450 - 255
East Midlands -4 141 £402 +4.42% 169
North East -3 56 £438 -2.78% 83
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
1 209 (4.44%) Confluence
2 152 (3.23%) SharePoint
3 106 (2.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 67 (1.42%) Apache Spark
5 55 (1.17%) SAS
6 54 (1.15%) Apache
7 33 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.57%) CMS
9 20 (0.42%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.32%) Skype for Business
11 13 (0.28%) nginx
12 11 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 10 (0.21%) JBoss
13 10 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
14 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
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
1 299 (6.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 212 (4.50%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (2.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 74 (1.57%) MS Visio
5 71 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
6 22 (0.47%) Chatbot
7 20 (0.42%) 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%) Maya
12 4 (0.085%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.064%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.064%) InVision
13 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.064%) Notion
13 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 77 (1.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.47%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.34%) Workday HCM
6 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
9 12 (0.25%) NEC Housing
9 12 (0.25%) NetSuite
9 12 (0.25%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
12 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.17%) SAP MDG
13 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,018 (21.61%) Azure
2 742 (15.75%) AWS
3 348 (7.39%) GCP
4 337 (7.15%) Power Platform
5 302 (6.41%) Microsoft 365
6 235 (4.99%) GitHub
7 225 (4.78%) Azure DevOps
8 165 (3.50%) Serverless
9 150 (3.18%) Entra ID
10 123 (2.61%) SaaS
11 112 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
12 92 (1.95%) Amazon S3
13 90 (1.91%) AWS Lambda
14 87 (1.85%) OpenShift
15 73 (1.55%) Snowflake
16 72 (1.53%) Azure Data Factory
17 68 (1.44%) PaaS
18 56 (1.19%) Dynamics 365
19 53 (1.13%) Azure AKS
19 53 (1.13%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 177 (3.76%) Firewall
2 171 (3.63%) DNS
3 117 (2.48%) TCP/IP
4 103 (2.19%) Network Security
5 95 (2.02%) DHCP
5 95 (2.02%) VPN
6 92 (1.95%) WAN
7 74 (1.57%) LAN
8 54 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
9 44 (0.93%) BGP
10 40 (0.85%) VLAN
11 34 (0.72%) SAN
12 32 (0.68%) OSPF
13 29 (0.62%) VoIP
14 24 (0.51%) SD-WAN
15 22 (0.47%) Wireless
16 21 (0.45%) Internet
17 18 (0.38%) MPLS
18 17 (0.36%) BIG-IP
18 17 (0.36%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 269 (5.71%) Power BI
2 163 (3.46%) SQL Server
3 141 (2.99%) PostgreSQL
4 140 (2.97%) Data Warehouse
5 131 (2.78%) Relational Database
6 99 (2.10%) MongoDB
7 91 (1.93%) NoSQL
8 77 (1.63%) Metadata
9 71 (1.51%) Tableau
10 64 (1.36%) Oracle Database
11 61 (1.30%) Data Lake
12 57 (1.21%) MySQL
13 54 (1.15%) Big Data
13 54 (1.15%) Oracle Reports
14 46 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 41 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
16 36 (0.76%) DynamoDB
17 32 (0.68%) Hadoop
18 29 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
18 29 (0.62%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 465 (9.87%) JIRA
2 329 (6.99%) Git
3 247 (5.24%) Jenkins
4 159 (3.38%) GitLab
5 81 (1.72%) Selenium
6 54 (1.15%) JUnit
7 42 (0.89%) Postman
8 36 (0.76%) Bitbucket
9 34 (0.72%) Cucumber
10 25 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
11 23 (0.49%) Cypress.io
11 23 (0.49%) Maven
11 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
12 19 (0.40%) JMeter
13 17 (0.36%) Mockito
13 17 (0.36%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.32%) IntelliJ
14 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
15 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
15 14 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,548 (54.10%) Social Skills
2 1,767 (37.52%) Analytical Skills
3 1,070 (22.72%) Finance
4 459 (9.75%) Public Sector
5 374 (7.94%) Banking
6 183 (3.89%) Organisational Skills
7 161 (3.42%) Documentation Skills
8 156 (3.31%) Legal
9 142 (3.01%) Retail
10 126 (2.68%) Influencing Skills
11 124 (2.63%) Presentation Skills
12 114 (2.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 93 (1.97%) Front Office
14 88 (1.87%) Marketing
15 79 (1.68%) Telecoms
16 67 (1.42%) Investment Banking
17 60 (1.27%) Manufacturing
18 59 (1.25%) Military
19 45 (0.96%) Law
20 42 (0.89%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 668 (14.18%) Analyst
2 622 (13.21%) Developer
3 399 (8.47%) Senior
4 330 (7.01%) Architect
5 310 (6.58%) Lead
6 271 (5.75%) Business Analyst
7 240 (5.10%) Consultant
8 192 (4.08%) Project Manager
9 191 (4.06%) Data Engineer
10 121 (2.57%) Support Engineer
11 110 (2.34%) IT Support
12 91 (1.93%) Java Developer
13 88 (1.87%) Data Analyst
13 88 (1.87%) Software Engineer
14 83 (1.76%) Senior Developer
14 83 (1.76%) Solutions Architect
15 82 (1.74%) Python Developer
16 80 (1.70%) Administrator
17 73 (1.55%) IT Analyst
18 71 (1.51%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 322 (6.84%) REST
2 168 (3.57%) SOAP
3 155 (3.29%) RESTful
4 154 (3.27%) Kafka
5 151 (3.21%) .NET
6 144 (3.06%) Spring
7 139 (2.95%) React
8 131 (2.78%) Node.js
9 109 (2.31%) CSS
9 109 (2.31%) HTML
10 108 (2.29%) AngularJS
11 103 (2.19%) JSON
12 98 (2.08%) Spring Boot
13 93 (1.97%) XML
14 88 (1.87%) LDAP
15 86 (1.83%) Middleware
16 71 (1.51%) OAuth
17 68 (1.44%) Web Services
18 66 (1.40%) Oracle Fusion
19 58 (1.23%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 227 (4.82%) Product Ownership
2 196 (4.16%) Cloud Native
3 183 (3.89%) Onboarding
4 152 (3.23%) Management Information System
5 130 (2.76%) Data Centre
6 127 (2.70%) Analytical Mindset
7 103 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
8 100 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
8 100 (2.12%) Data Structures
9 93 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
10 84 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
11 76 (1.61%) Algorithms
12 73 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
12 73 (1.55%) Security Posture
13 71 (1.51%) Virtual Team
14 67 (1.42%) Mobile App
15 63 (1.34%) Hybrid Cloud
16 60 (1.27%) CMDB
17 52 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 50 (1.06%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 501 (10.64%) Windows
2 287 (6.09%) Linux
3 96 (2.04%) Windows 10
4 89 (1.89%) Unix
5 82 (1.74%) Windows Server
6 69 (1.46%) Android
7 63 (1.34%) Apple iOS
8 56 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 47 (1.00%) Mac OS
10 19 (0.40%) VMS
11 15 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 13 (0.28%) 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
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 1,377 (29.24%) Agile
2 879 (18.66%) CI/CD
3 775 (16.45%) DevOps
4 725 (15.39%) Stakeholder Management
5 715 (15.18%) Continuous Improvement
6 554 (11.76%) Analytics
7 491 (10.42%) Migration
8 479 (10.17%) Decision-Making
9 449 (9.53%) AI
10 442 (9.38%) Project Management
11 418 (8.87%) Data Modelling
12 417 (8.85%) Test Automation
13 413 (8.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 367 (7.79%) Scrum
15 365 (7.75%) Validation
16 360 (7.64%) Business Intelligence
17 342 (7.26%) ITIL
18 339 (7.20%) Computer Science
19 338 (7.18%) Customer Service
20 337 (7.15%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 938 (19.92%) Python
2 840 (17.83%) SQL
3 417 (8.85%) Java
4 317 (6.73%) PowerShell
5 258 (5.48%) JavaScript
6 185 (3.93%) C#
7 171 (3.63%) TypeScript
8 137 (2.91%) Bash
9 73 (1.55%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.19%) C++
11 50 (1.06%) Shell Script
12 47 (1.00%) Go
13 38 (0.81%) Scala
14 37 (0.79%) Perl
15 36 (0.76%) Bicep
15 36 (0.76%) T-SQL
16 33 (0.70%) VBA
17 32 (0.68%) Ruby
18 31 (0.66%) Apex Code
19 30 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,064 (22.59%) Security Cleared
2 734 (15.58%) SC Cleared
3 612 (12.99%) Degree
4 230 (4.88%) Computer Science Degree
5 204 (4.33%) DV Cleared
6 111 (2.36%) BPSS Clearance
7 99 (2.10%) PMP
8 93 (1.97%) CISSP
9 92 (1.95%) PMI Certification
10 91 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
10 91 (1.93%) Master's Degree
10 91 (1.93%) Microsoft Certification
11 71 (1.51%) Azure Certification
12 60 (1.27%) CISM
13 44 (0.93%) AWS Certification
14 41 (0.87%) CCNA
14 41 (0.87%) CCNP
15 34 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
16 32 (0.68%) A+ Certification
17 26 (0.55%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 306 (6.50%) QA
2 286 (6.07%) Data Quality
3 156 (3.31%) GDPR
4 90 (1.91%) NIST
5 89 (1.89%) Accessibility
6 83 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (1.70%) PMO
8 57 (1.21%) SLA
9 35 (0.74%) GRC
10 34 (0.72%) PCI DSS
11 25 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
12 23 (0.49%) PSD2
13 22 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 19 (0.40%) WCAG
15 17 (0.36%) EU AI Act
16 16 (0.34%) HIPAA
16 16 (0.34%) ISO 20022
17 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
18 14 (0.30%) HL7
19 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 425 (9.02%) Docker
2 348 (7.39%) Active Directory
3 96 (2.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.76%) vSphere
5 29 (0.62%) Hyper-V
5 29 (0.62%) VMware NSX
6 22 (0.47%) 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
11 8 (0.17%) vCloud
12 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
13 4 (0.085%) HDFS
13 4 (0.085%) Snort
14 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 459 (9.75%) Kubernetes
2 270 (5.73%) Terraform
3 169 (3.59%) Ansible
4 114 (2.42%) Microsoft Intune
5 112 (2.38%) Grafana
6 91 (1.93%) Prometheus
7 74 (1.57%) SCCM
8 40 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
9 33 (0.70%) Puppet
10 31 (0.66%) Argo
10 31 (0.66%) FortiGate
10 31 (0.66%) Kibana
11 30 (0.64%) vCenter Server
12 29 (0.62%) Nessus
13 26 (0.55%) Control-M
14 25 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 24 (0.51%) IBM Guardium
16 14 (0.30%) vRealize
17 13 (0.28%) Red Hat Satellite
18 11 (0.23%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 880 (18.68%) Microsoft
2 320 (6.79%) Oracle
3 218 (4.63%) SAP
4 201 (4.27%) ServiceNow
5 185 (3.93%) VMware
6 163 (3.46%) Google
7 144 (3.06%) Databricks
8 138 (2.93%) Splunk
9 112 (2.38%) Cisco
10 103 (2.19%) Salesforce
11 81 (1.72%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.55%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.34%) BeyondTrust
14 56 (1.19%) Workday
15 54 (1.15%) Citrix
16 49 (1.04%) IBM
17 47 (1.00%) Informatica
18 45 (0.96%) F5
18 45 (0.96%) Talend
19 43 (0.91%) Dell