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

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 12
Rank change year-on-year -1 +6 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,500 3,997 3,741
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.17% 14.82% 10.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.04% 16.63% 11.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,824 2,328 2,375
10th Percentile £277 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £518
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% -3.38% -4.17%
75th Percentile £608 £613 £625
90th Percentile £717 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -7.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 241 155 244
10th Percentile £13.75 £15.00 £13.29
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.73 £21.46 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.72% -28.47% -3.05%
75th Percentile £35.00 £37.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.25 £67.31 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £18.90 £23.80 £27.50
% change year-on-year -20.61% -13.45% -8.33%

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 28,047 24,036 31,494
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.31% 89.14% 87.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,899 14,761 21,230
10th Percentile £304 £310 £305
25th Percentile £409 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
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 1,744 772 1,471
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.54 £14.18
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.50 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.75 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -27.63% -18.24% +21.43%
75th Percentile £57.50 £63.84 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.59 £75.00 £77.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +15.71%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 2,053 £525 -0.94% 779
North of England -1 700 £450 -5.26% 742
South East -2 625 £476 -4.75% 1,210
Midlands -1 497 £450 +5.88% 519
North West -1 355 £436 -5.68% 345
West Midlands -1 348 £495 +13.47% 266
Yorkshire -4 292 £490 -2.10% 282
South West 0 288 £525 +16.67% 453
East of England -4 204 £452 +0.44% 474
East Midlands -3 150 £402 +12.92% 248
North East -1 60 £450 -18.18% 127
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
1 182 (4.04%) Confluence
2 154 (3.42%) SharePoint
3 108 (2.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 61 (1.36%) SAS
5 54 (1.20%) Apache Spark
6 50 (1.11%) Apache
7 35 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.64%) Skype for Business
9 22 (0.49%) CMS
10 15 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.24%) JBoss
12 10 (0.22%) Anypoint
12 10 (0.22%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.18%) HCL Notes
14 7 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 7 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
14 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
15 6 (0.13%) IIS
15 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 295 (6.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 204 (4.53%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (2.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 67 (1.49%) MS Visio
5 62 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
6 16 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
8 7 (0.16%) Sketch
9 6 (0.13%) ProjectWise
9 6 (0.13%) Trello
10 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
11 4 (0.089%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.067%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.067%) Notion
13 2 (0.044%) InVision
13 2 (0.044%) Siemens NX
13 2 (0.044%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 89 (1.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.44%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.42%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.38%) SAP EWM
6 15 (0.33%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
8 13 (0.29%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
8 13 (0.29%) SAP WM
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.24%) SAP HR
10 11 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
12 9 (0.20%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 972 (21.60%) Azure
2 709 (15.76%) AWS
3 368 (8.18%) GCP
4 310 (6.89%) Power Platform
5 301 (6.69%) Microsoft 365
6 216 (4.80%) GitHub
7 193 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
8 144 (3.20%) Serverless
9 126 (2.80%) Entra ID
10 122 (2.71%) SaaS
11 109 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
12 70 (1.56%) AWS Lambda
13 69 (1.53%) Power Automate
13 69 (1.53%) Snowflake
14 68 (1.51%) Amazon S3
14 68 (1.51%) PaaS
15 66 (1.47%) Dynamics 365
16 63 (1.40%) PowerApps
17 62 (1.38%) OpenShift
18 58 (1.29%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 153 (3.40%) Firewall
2 142 (3.16%) DNS
3 104 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 98 (2.18%) Network Security
5 96 (2.13%) VPN
6 81 (1.80%) DHCP
7 65 (1.44%) WAN
8 49 (1.09%) LAN
9 41 (0.91%) VLAN
10 32 (0.71%) BGP
10 32 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
11 29 (0.64%) Skype
12 28 (0.62%) VoIP
13 24 (0.53%) Wireless
14 21 (0.47%) SSL
14 21 (0.47%) Wireshark
15 18 (0.40%) HTTP
15 18 (0.40%) OSPF
16 17 (0.38%) SD-WAN
17 16 (0.36%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 240 (5.33%) Power BI
2 142 (3.16%) SQL Server
3 141 (3.13%) Relational Database
4 119 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
5 118 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
6 93 (2.07%) NoSQL
7 85 (1.89%) MongoDB
8 74 (1.64%) Oracle Database
9 69 (1.53%) Metadata
10 65 (1.44%) Tableau
11 63 (1.40%) MySQL
12 48 (1.07%) Big Data
13 46 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
14 43 (0.96%) DynamoDB
15 37 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
15 37 (0.82%) Data Lake
16 34 (0.76%) Pentaho
17 32 (0.71%) Hadoop
18 30 (0.67%) RDBMS
19 29 (0.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 421 (9.36%) JIRA
2 321 (7.13%) Git
3 228 (5.07%) Jenkins
4 146 (3.24%) GitLab
5 68 (1.51%) Selenium
6 56 (1.24%) JUnit
7 32 (0.71%) Postman
8 31 (0.69%) Cucumber
9 28 (0.62%) Maven
10 26 (0.58%) Bitbucket
11 20 (0.44%) SonarQube
12 17 (0.38%) Cypress.io
12 17 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
13 16 (0.36%) JMeter
13 16 (0.36%) SpecFlow
14 15 (0.33%) CircleCI
15 13 (0.29%) Gradle
15 13 (0.29%) REST Assured
16 12 (0.27%) Mockito
17 11 (0.24%) Artifactory
General
1 2,487 (55.27%) Social Skills
2 1,638 (36.40%) Analytical Skills
3 1,058 (23.51%) Finance
4 415 (9.22%) Public Sector
5 397 (8.82%) Banking
6 176 (3.91%) Organisational Skills
7 143 (3.18%) Legal
8 132 (2.93%) Influencing Skills
9 120 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 117 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
11 109 (2.42%) Presentation Skills
12 102 (2.27%) Retail
13 100 (2.22%) Marketing
14 98 (2.18%) Telecoms
15 94 (2.09%) Front Office
16 80 (1.78%) Investment Banking
17 76 (1.69%) Manufacturing
18 53 (1.18%) Military
19 41 (0.91%) Financial Institution
20 39 (0.87%) Law
Job Titles
1 663 (14.73%) Analyst
1 663 (14.73%) Developer
2 394 (8.76%) Senior
3 289 (6.42%) Architect
4 268 (5.96%) Lead
5 264 (5.87%) Business Analyst
6 248 (5.51%) Consultant
7 181 (4.02%) Project Manager
8 148 (3.29%) Support Engineer
9 131 (2.91%) Data Engineer
10 120 (2.67%) IT Support
11 111 (2.47%) Senior Developer
12 100 (2.22%) Java Developer
13 93 (2.07%) Support Analyst
14 85 (1.89%) Software Engineer
15 79 (1.76%) Data Analyst
16 77 (1.71%) Administrator
17 76 (1.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 75 (1.67%) IT Analyst
19 72 (1.60%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 305 (6.78%) REST
2 177 (3.93%) RESTful
3 167 (3.71%) SOAP
4 158 (3.51%) .NET
5 137 (3.04%) Kafka
6 135 (3.00%) React
7 132 (2.93%) Node.js
8 127 (2.82%) Spring
9 119 (2.64%) HTML
10 101 (2.24%) AngularJS
11 98 (2.18%) CSS
12 92 (2.04%) Spring Boot
13 79 (1.76%) JSON
13 79 (1.76%) XML
14 76 (1.69%) Middleware
15 66 (1.47%) LDAP
15 66 (1.47%) Oracle Fusion
16 64 (1.42%) OAuth
17 58 (1.29%) Web Services
18 55 (1.22%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 229 (5.09%) Product Ownership
2 189 (4.20%) Cloud Native
3 185 (4.11%) Management Information System
4 167 (3.71%) Onboarding
5 130 (2.89%) Analytical Mindset
6 111 (2.47%) Enterprise Software
7 104 (2.31%) Data Structures
8 97 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
9 95 (2.11%) Data Centre
10 90 (2.00%) Security Posture
11 87 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
12 77 (1.71%) Algorithms
13 65 (1.44%) Distributed Systems
13 65 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
14 60 (1.33%) CMDB
14 60 (1.33%) Mobile App
15 58 (1.29%) Virtual Team
16 53 (1.18%) Hybrid Cloud
17 52 (1.16%) NHS
18 49 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 449 (9.98%) Windows
2 316 (7.02%) Linux
3 104 (2.31%) Windows 10
4 91 (2.02%) Unix
4 91 (2.02%) Windows Server
5 55 (1.22%) Apple iOS
6 51 (1.13%) Android
7 50 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 44 (0.98%) Mac OS
9 24 (0.53%) VMS
10 18 (0.40%) CentOS
11 12 (0.27%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.089%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.089%) Windows Server 2003
16 3 (0.067%) Debian
16 3 (0.067%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,384 (30.76%) Agile
2 813 (18.07%) CI/CD
3 720 (16.00%) DevOps
4 662 (14.71%) Stakeholder Management
5 638 (14.18%) Continuous Improvement
6 489 (10.87%) Analytics
7 435 (9.67%) Project Management
8 430 (9.56%) Decision-Making
9 425 (9.44%) Migration
10 401 (8.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 394 (8.76%) Test Automation
12 378 (8.40%) Scrum
13 355 (7.89%) Data Modelling
14 354 (7.87%) AI
15 332 (7.38%) Computer Science
16 327 (7.27%) Business Intelligence
17 321 (7.13%) ITIL
18 318 (7.07%) Containerisation
19 314 (6.98%) Mentoring
20 311 (6.91%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 912 (20.27%) Python
2 775 (17.22%) SQL
3 426 (9.47%) Java
4 295 (6.56%) PowerShell
5 271 (6.02%) JavaScript
6 191 (4.24%) C#
7 156 (3.47%) TypeScript
8 133 (2.96%) Bash
9 73 (1.62%) Go
10 66 (1.47%) PL/SQL
11 62 (1.38%) Shell Script
12 53 (1.18%) C++
13 40 (0.89%) Perl
14 39 (0.87%) VBA
15 38 (0.84%) Scala
16 32 (0.71%) R
17 31 (0.69%) Ruby
18 30 (0.67%) T-SQL
19 29 (0.64%) Apex Code
20 27 (0.60%) PHP
Qualifications
1 909 (20.20%) Security Cleared
2 669 (14.87%) SC Cleared
3 635 (14.11%) Degree
4 242 (5.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 139 (3.09%) DV Cleared
6 95 (2.11%) Microsoft Certification
7 94 (2.09%) PMI Certification
8 89 (1.98%) PMP
9 87 (1.93%) CISSP
10 85 (1.89%) Master's Degree
11 78 (1.73%) Azure Certification
12 75 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
13 61 (1.36%) Cisco Certification
14 53 (1.18%) AWS Certification
15 44 (0.98%) CISM
16 40 (0.89%) A+ Certification
17 35 (0.78%) CCNP
17 35 (0.78%) MCP
18 28 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
19 26 (0.58%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 299 (6.64%) QA
2 252 (5.60%) Data Quality
3 167 (3.71%) GDPR
4 90 (2.00%) Accessibility
5 80 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 79 (1.76%) NIST
7 69 (1.53%) PMO
8 44 (0.98%) SLA
9 40 (0.89%) PCI DSS
10 29 (0.64%) GRC
11 26 (0.58%) PSD2
12 22 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.44%) WCAG
14 18 (0.40%) ISO 20022
15 16 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 16 (0.36%) EU AI Act
16 14 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
16 14 (0.31%) HIPAA
17 13 (0.29%) ISO 8583
17 13 (0.29%) SEPA
System Software
1 429 (9.53%) Docker
2 327 (7.27%) Active Directory
3 95 (2.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 43 (0.96%) Hyper-V
5 24 (0.53%) vSphere
6 20 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
7 17 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
8 15 (0.33%) Firmware
8 15 (0.33%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.24%) HDFS
11 10 (0.22%) RACF
12 9 (0.20%) Time Sharing Option
13 8 (0.18%) ACF2
14 5 (0.11%) KVM
14 5 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
15 4 (0.089%) Lustre
15 4 (0.089%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 4 (0.089%) vCloud
16 3 (0.067%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 447 (9.93%) Kubernetes
2 245 (5.44%) Terraform
3 178 (3.96%) Ansible
4 95 (2.11%) Grafana
5 85 (1.89%) Microsoft Intune
6 80 (1.78%) SCCM
7 65 (1.44%) Prometheus
8 39 (0.87%) Puppet
9 30 (0.67%) Kibana
10 29 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (0.51%) Argo
12 19 (0.42%) Nessus
13 18 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 17 (0.38%) SCOM
14 17 (0.38%) vCenter Server
15 16 (0.36%) Red Hat Satellite
16 15 (0.33%) HP ALM
16 15 (0.33%) vRealize
17 14 (0.31%) Data Guard
18 12 (0.27%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 902 (20.04%) Microsoft
2 323 (7.18%) Oracle
3 221 (4.91%) SAP
4 198 (4.40%) ServiceNow
5 175 (3.89%) VMware
6 156 (3.47%) Google
7 124 (2.76%) Databricks
7 124 (2.76%) Splunk
8 122 (2.71%) Salesforce
9 104 (2.31%) Cisco
10 80 (1.78%) CyberArk
11 65 (1.44%) BeyondTrust
12 60 (1.33%) Red Hat
13 52 (1.16%) IBM
14 48 (1.07%) Palo Alto
15 47 (1.04%) Workday
16 43 (0.96%) Citrix
17 42 (0.93%) MuleSoft
17 42 (0.93%) Talend
18 40 (0.89%) HP