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

6 months to
5 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 11
Rank change year-on-year -1 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,505 4,005 3,763
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.31% 14.66% 10.39%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.18% 16.50% 11.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,823 2,336 2,399
10th Percentile £280 £272 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £517
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -3.29% -4.26%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £485 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.00% - -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 243 159 229
10th Percentile £13.55 £15.08 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.36
Median hourly rate £18.82 £21.46 £32.32
Median % change year-on-year -12.30% -33.60% +2.51%
75th Percentile £35.00 £37.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.41 £66.44 £86.70
UK median hourly rate £19.25 £22.69 £30.25
% change year-on-year -15.15% -25.00% -

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 27,850 24,270 31,879
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.47% 88.85% 88.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,794 14,913 21,576
10th Percentile £304 £310 £306
25th Percentile £409 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £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 1,749 797 1,433
10th Percentile £15.21 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.96 £20.30 £19.05
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.86
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -20.20% +23.55%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £42.25
% change year-on-year -22.62% -23.07% +20.71%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 0 2,076 £523 -2.15% 1,465
North of England -3 686 £450 -5.26% 827
South East 0 621 £475 -5.00% 1,392
Midlands -1 499 £450 +5.88% 635
North West -2 354 £445 -5.12% 379
West Midlands -1 352 £492 +12.78% 332
South West -1 282 £513 +7.89% 489
Yorkshire -6 281 £481 -3.75% 351
East of England -4 203 £465 +3.22% 591
East Midlands -2 148 £402 +12.29% 274
North East -3 58 £450 -18.18% 109
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
2 160 (3.55%) SharePoint
3 106 (2.35%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (1.31%) SAS
5 58 (1.29%) Apache Spark
6 51 (1.13%) Apache
7 41 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.64%) Skype for Business
9 25 (0.55%) CMS
10 16 (0.36%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.24%) JBoss
12 10 (0.22%) Anypoint
13 9 (0.20%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.18%) HCL Notes
15 7 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 7 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
15 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
15 7 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.13%) IIS
16 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
Applications
1 297 (6.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 203 (4.51%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (2.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.51%) MS Visio
5 63 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.31%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
8 8 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.18%) Sketch
9 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
9 7 (0.16%) Trello
10 6 (0.13%) ProjectWise
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.089%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.089%) Notion
13 2 (0.044%) InVision
13 2 (0.044%) Siemens NX
13 2 (0.044%) Simulink
13 2 (0.044%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 86 (1.91%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.40%) Oracle Payables
3 18 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
4 17 (0.38%) SAP EWM
5 14 (0.31%) NetSuite
5 14 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
6 13 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
6 13 (0.29%) SAP WM
7 12 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
7 12 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
7 12 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
8 11 (0.24%) Aladdin
8 11 (0.24%) SAP HR
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 10 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 9 (0.20%) SAP ERP
10 9 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 944 (20.95%) Azure
2 706 (15.67%) AWS
3 364 (8.08%) GCP
4 314 (6.97%) Power Platform
5 301 (6.68%) Microsoft 365
6 221 (4.91%) GitHub
7 183 (4.06%) Azure DevOps
8 142 (3.15%) Serverless
9 126 (2.80%) Entra ID
10 117 (2.60%) SaaS
11 112 (2.49%) GitHub Actions
12 74 (1.64%) Amazon S3
13 71 (1.58%) Power Automate
14 70 (1.55%) AWS Lambda
15 68 (1.51%) Dynamics 365
15 68 (1.51%) PaaS
16 65 (1.44%) PowerApps
16 65 (1.44%) Snowflake
17 64 (1.42%) OpenShift
18 54 (1.20%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 166 (3.68%) Firewall
2 148 (3.29%) DNS
3 113 (2.51%) TCP/IP
4 103 (2.29%) VPN
5 102 (2.26%) Network Security
6 82 (1.82%) DHCP
7 62 (1.38%) WAN
8 51 (1.13%) LAN
9 42 (0.93%) VLAN
10 34 (0.75%) BGP
11 33 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
12 29 (0.64%) Skype
13 27 (0.60%) VoIP
14 25 (0.55%) Wireless
15 23 (0.51%) SSL
16 21 (0.47%) Wireshark
17 20 (0.44%) HTTP
17 20 (0.44%) OSPF
18 17 (0.38%) Internet
18 17 (0.38%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 239 (5.31%) Power BI
2 144 (3.20%) SQL Server
3 141 (3.13%) Relational Database
4 136 (3.02%) PostgreSQL
5 119 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
6 96 (2.13%) NoSQL
7 85 (1.89%) MongoDB
8 80 (1.78%) Oracle Database
9 69 (1.53%) Metadata
10 65 (1.44%) Tableau
11 62 (1.38%) MySQL
12 52 (1.15%) Big Data
13 47 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
14 45 (1.00%) DynamoDB
15 42 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
16 35 (0.78%) Data Lake
16 35 (0.78%) Hadoop
17 33 (0.73%) Pentaho
18 31 (0.69%) BigQuery
18 31 (0.69%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 425 (9.43%) JIRA
2 329 (7.30%) Git
3 231 (5.13%) Jenkins
4 146 (3.24%) GitLab
5 69 (1.53%) Selenium
6 61 (1.35%) JUnit
7 37 (0.82%) Postman
8 31 (0.69%) Cucumber
8 31 (0.69%) Maven
9 27 (0.60%) Bitbucket
10 26 (0.58%) SonarQube
11 18 (0.40%) JMeter
11 18 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
12 17 (0.38%) Cypress.io
13 15 (0.33%) Mockito
13 15 (0.33%) REST Assured
13 15 (0.33%) SpecFlow
14 13 (0.29%) CircleCI
14 13 (0.29%) Gradle
14 13 (0.29%) SoapUI
General
1 2,505 (55.60%) Social Skills
2 1,635 (36.29%) Analytical Skills
3 1,068 (23.71%) Finance
4 424 (9.41%) Public Sector
5 396 (8.79%) Banking
6 169 (3.75%) Organisational Skills
7 137 (3.04%) Legal
8 125 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
9 121 (2.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 117 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
11 108 (2.40%) Presentation Skills
12 102 (2.26%) Retail
13 101 (2.24%) Marketing
14 100 (2.22%) Telecoms
15 90 (2.00%) Front Office
16 81 (1.80%) Manufacturing
17 80 (1.78%) Investment Banking
18 52 (1.15%) Military
19 42 (0.93%) Financial Institution
20 38 (0.84%) Law
Job Titles
1 675 (14.98%) Developer
2 673 (14.94%) Analyst
3 400 (8.88%) Senior
4 289 (6.42%) Architect
5 275 (6.10%) Lead
6 261 (5.79%) Business Analyst
7 245 (5.44%) Consultant
8 181 (4.02%) Project Manager
9 152 (3.37%) Support Engineer
10 124 (2.75%) Data Engineer
11 119 (2.64%) IT Support
12 115 (2.55%) Senior Developer
13 105 (2.33%) Java Developer
14 95 (2.11%) Support Analyst
15 85 (1.89%) Software Engineer
16 82 (1.82%) Data Analyst
17 76 (1.69%) IT Analyst
18 75 (1.66%) Administrator
19 74 (1.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 73 (1.62%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 307 (6.81%) REST
2 177 (3.93%) RESTful
3 173 (3.84%) SOAP
4 159 (3.53%) .NET
5 140 (3.11%) Kafka
6 135 (3.00%) Node.js
7 134 (2.97%) React
8 130 (2.89%) Spring
9 123 (2.73%) HTML
10 104 (2.31%) AngularJS
11 102 (2.26%) CSS
12 94 (2.09%) Spring Boot
13 82 (1.82%) JSON
14 79 (1.75%) XML
15 76 (1.69%) Middleware
16 66 (1.47%) Oracle Fusion
17 65 (1.44%) OAuth
18 63 (1.40%) LDAP
18 63 (1.40%) Web Services
19 58 (1.29%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 223 (4.95%) Product Ownership
2 184 (4.08%) Management Information System
3 180 (4.00%) Cloud Native
4 163 (3.62%) Onboarding
5 127 (2.82%) Analytical Mindset
6 110 (2.44%) Enterprise Software
7 104 (2.31%) Data Structures
8 99 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
9 93 (2.06%) Data Centre
10 92 (2.04%) Security Posture
11 91 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
12 75 (1.66%) Algorithms
13 64 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
14 63 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
15 61 (1.35%) Mobile App
16 58 (1.29%) CMDB
16 58 (1.29%) Virtual Team
17 51 (1.13%) Hybrid Cloud
17 51 (1.13%) NHS
18 48 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 438 (9.72%) Windows
2 320 (7.10%) Linux
3 102 (2.26%) Windows 10
4 94 (2.09%) Unix
5 92 (2.04%) Windows Server
6 54 (1.20%) Apple iOS
7 49 (1.09%) Android
8 47 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 41 (0.91%) Mac OS
10 28 (0.62%) VMS
11 19 (0.42%) CentOS
12 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
13 11 (0.24%) Ubuntu
14 7 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 7 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
15 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
16 4 (0.089%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.067%) Windows 7
17 3 (0.067%) zOS
18 2 (0.044%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,391 (30.88%) Agile
2 793 (17.60%) CI/CD
3 715 (15.87%) DevOps
4 660 (14.65%) Stakeholder Management
5 632 (14.03%) Continuous Improvement
6 478 (10.61%) Analytics
7 434 (9.63%) Migration
8 433 (9.61%) Project Management
9 422 (9.37%) Decision-Making
10 406 (9.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 391 (8.68%) Test Automation
12 377 (8.37%) Scrum
13 355 (7.88%) Data Modelling
14 339 (7.52%) AI
15 333 (7.39%) Computer Science
16 329 (7.30%) Business Intelligence
16 329 (7.30%) Mentoring
17 318 (7.06%) Containerisation
18 310 (6.88%) ITIL
18 310 (6.88%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 905 (20.09%) Python
2 765 (16.98%) SQL
3 434 (9.63%) Java
4 293 (6.50%) PowerShell
5 272 (6.04%) JavaScript
6 189 (4.20%) C#
7 156 (3.46%) TypeScript
8 135 (3.00%) Bash
9 71 (1.58%) Go
10 70 (1.55%) PL/SQL
11 68 (1.51%) Shell Script
12 50 (1.11%) C++
13 40 (0.89%) VBA
14 39 (0.87%) Perl
15 38 (0.84%) Scala
16 32 (0.71%) Apex Code
16 32 (0.71%) R
17 31 (0.69%) T-SQL
18 30 (0.67%) PHP
19 29 (0.64%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 889 (19.73%) Security Cleared
2 655 (14.54%) SC Cleared
3 641 (14.23%) Degree
4 245 (5.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 130 (2.89%) DV Cleared
6 99 (2.20%) PMI Certification
7 94 (2.09%) Microsoft Certification
8 92 (2.04%) CISSP
8 92 (2.04%) PMP
9 87 (1.93%) Master's Degree
10 78 (1.73%) Azure Certification
11 72 (1.60%) BPSS Clearance
12 66 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
13 57 (1.27%) AWS Certification
14 47 (1.04%) CISM
15 38 (0.84%) A+ Certification
16 37 (0.82%) CCNP
17 35 (0.78%) MCP
18 26 (0.58%) CCNA
18 26 (0.58%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 302 (6.70%) QA
2 257 (5.70%) Data Quality
3 167 (3.71%) GDPR
4 93 (2.06%) Accessibility
5 81 (1.80%) NIST
6 78 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 70 (1.55%) PMO
8 48 (1.07%) SLA
9 38 (0.84%) PCI DSS
10 26 (0.58%) GRC
10 26 (0.58%) PSD2
11 23 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.44%) WCAG
13 18 (0.40%) ISO 20022
14 17 (0.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 16 (0.36%) EU AI Act
16 15 (0.33%) HIPAA
17 13 (0.29%) SEPA
18 12 (0.27%) ISO 8583
19 11 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 427 (9.48%) Docker
2 319 (7.08%) Active Directory
3 96 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.91%) Hyper-V
5 27 (0.60%) vSphere
6 20 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
7 18 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.40%) VMware NSX
8 16 (0.36%) Firmware
9 14 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.24%) HDFS
11 8 (0.18%) RACF
12 7 (0.16%) Time Sharing Option
13 6 (0.13%) ACF2
13 6 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
14 5 (0.11%) KVM
15 4 (0.089%) Lustre
15 4 (0.089%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.067%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.067%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 444 (9.86%) Kubernetes
2 248 (5.50%) Terraform
3 179 (3.97%) Ansible
4 95 (2.11%) Grafana
5 80 (1.78%) Microsoft Intune
6 79 (1.75%) SCCM
7 67 (1.49%) Prometheus
8 37 (0.82%) Puppet
9 29 (0.64%) Kibana
10 27 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.58%) Argo
12 19 (0.42%) Nessus
12 19 (0.42%) SCOM
12 19 (0.42%) vCenter Server
13 18 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 16 (0.36%) Red Hat Satellite
15 15 (0.33%) vRealize
16 14 (0.31%) Data Guard
16 14 (0.31%) HP ALM
17 13 (0.29%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 921 (20.44%) Microsoft
2 329 (7.30%) Oracle
3 223 (4.95%) SAP
4 199 (4.42%) ServiceNow
5 174 (3.86%) VMware
6 155 (3.44%) Google
7 127 (2.82%) Splunk
8 126 (2.80%) Salesforce
9 113 (2.51%) Databricks
10 105 (2.33%) Cisco
11 80 (1.78%) CyberArk
12 65 (1.44%) Red Hat
13 63 (1.40%) BeyondTrust
14 54 (1.20%) IBM
15 52 (1.15%) Palo Alto
16 47 (1.04%) Workday
17 45 (1.00%) Citrix
18 42 (0.93%) MuleSoft
19 41 (0.91%) Talend
20 37 (0.82%) HP