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

6 months to
21 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 4,713 4,016 4,099
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.59% 16.40% 10.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.56% 18.07% 12.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,937 2,531 2,525
10th Percentile £300 £265 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £635
90th Percentile £712 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 253 171 361
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.84 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.67 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.71 £25.00 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.16% +38.89% -58.14%
75th Percentile £44.94 £49.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £77.50 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £20.53 £26.50 £17.72
% change year-on-year -22.52% +49.59% -55.15%

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 32,374 22,226 32,746
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.47% 90.74% 86.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,766 14,506 21,651
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 £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 1,980 825 2,147
10th Percentile £15.49 £15.07 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £32.50 £34.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.41% +4.62% -10.48%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.83
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.81 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £30.32 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -6.71% - -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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -7 2,049 £510 -2.86% 1,057
North of England -4 778 £450 -7.41% 667
South East -3 684 £492 -1.60% 859
Midlands -1 515 £450 - 469
North West -3 388 £424 -11.81% 363
West Midlands -1 375 £475 +2.15% 277
Yorkshire -4 341 £475 -5.00% 230
South West -2 316 £525 - 311
East of England -3 232 £450 - 296
East Midlands -2 141 £405 +5.54% 191
North East -4 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
1 207 (4.39%) Confluence
2 154 (3.27%) SharePoint
3 105 (2.23%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.36%) Apache Spark
5 56 (1.19%) SAS
6 51 (1.08%) Apache
7 31 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
8 28 (0.59%) CMS
9 16 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.32%) Skype for Business
11 14 (0.30%) nginx
12 11 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
13 10 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.15%) Camunda
16 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
16 6 (0.13%) JBoss
16 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
17 5 (0.11%) ArcGIS
17 5 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 303 (6.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 212 (4.50%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (2.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 74 (1.57%) MS Visio
5 73 (1.55%) Microsoft Project
6 22 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.17%) Trello
10 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.085%) Adobe Captivate
11 4 (0.085%) Maya
11 4 (0.085%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.064%) InVision
12 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.064%) Notion
12 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
13 2 (0.042%) Autodesk Inventor
Business Applications
1 78 (1.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 23 (0.49%) 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 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
7 13 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
7 13 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.25%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.25%) NetSuite
8 12 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
9 11 (0.23%) Oracle Receivables
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
12 8 (0.17%) SAP HR
12 8 (0.17%) SAP MDG
12 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,019 (21.62%) Azure
2 737 (15.64%) AWS
3 342 (7.26%) GCP
4 336 (7.13%) Power Platform
5 309 (6.56%) Microsoft 365
6 235 (4.99%) GitHub
7 232 (4.92%) Azure DevOps
8 160 (3.39%) Serverless
9 148 (3.14%) Entra ID
10 118 (2.50%) SaaS
11 115 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
12 92 (1.95%) Amazon S3
13 91 (1.93%) OpenShift
14 90 (1.91%) AWS Lambda
15 73 (1.55%) Azure Data Factory
16 70 (1.49%) Snowflake
17 56 (1.19%) Google Workspace
17 56 (1.19%) PaaS
18 55 (1.17%) Power Automate
19 54 (1.15%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 180 (3.82%) Firewall
2 176 (3.73%) DNS
3 118 (2.50%) TCP/IP
4 107 (2.27%) Network Security
5 99 (2.10%) VPN
6 97 (2.06%) WAN
7 93 (1.97%) DHCP
8 78 (1.65%) LAN
9 57 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
10 46 (0.98%) BGP
11 40 (0.85%) VLAN
12 37 (0.79%) SAN
13 34 (0.72%) OSPF
14 29 (0.62%) VoIP
15 26 (0.55%) SD-WAN
16 24 (0.51%) Wireless
17 21 (0.45%) Internet
18 20 (0.42%) MPLS
19 18 (0.38%) BIG-IP
20 17 (0.36%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 267 (5.67%) Power BI
2 165 (3.50%) SQL Server
3 136 (2.89%) Data Warehouse
4 133 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
4 133 (2.82%) Relational Database
5 92 (1.95%) MongoDB
6 90 (1.91%) NoSQL
7 81 (1.72%) Metadata
8 72 (1.53%) Tableau
9 63 (1.34%) Data Lake
10 60 (1.27%) Oracle Database
11 56 (1.19%) Big Data
12 54 (1.15%) Oracle Reports
13 52 (1.10%) MySQL
14 46 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 39 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
16 32 (0.68%) DynamoDB
17 31 (0.66%) Hadoop
18 29 (0.62%) Pentaho
19 27 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 470 (9.97%) JIRA
2 325 (6.90%) Git
3 248 (5.26%) Jenkins
4 157 (3.33%) GitLab
5 78 (1.65%) Selenium
6 50 (1.06%) JUnit
7 38 (0.81%) Postman
8 34 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
11 24 (0.51%) Cypress.io
11 24 (0.51%) REST Assured
12 23 (0.49%) Maven
13 18 (0.38%) Mockito
14 17 (0.36%) JMeter
14 17 (0.36%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
16 14 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
17 12 (0.25%) Artifactory
General
1 2,547 (54.04%) Social Skills
2 1,779 (37.75%) Analytical Skills
3 1,075 (22.81%) Finance
4 472 (10.01%) Public Sector
5 375 (7.96%) Banking
6 189 (4.01%) Organisational Skills
7 162 (3.44%) Documentation Skills
8 157 (3.33%) Legal
9 141 (2.99%) Retail
10 124 (2.63%) Presentation Skills
11 118 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
12 111 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 95 (2.02%) Front Office
14 86 (1.82%) Marketing
15 75 (1.59%) Telecoms
16 69 (1.46%) Investment Banking
17 61 (1.29%) Manufacturing
18 58 (1.23%) Military
19 44 (0.93%) Law
20 39 (0.83%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 669 (14.19%) Analyst
2 605 (12.84%) Developer
3 401 (8.51%) Senior
4 334 (7.09%) Architect
5 319 (6.77%) Lead
6 274 (5.81%) Business Analyst
7 234 (4.96%) Consultant
8 197 (4.18%) Project Manager
9 191 (4.05%) Data Engineer
10 119 (2.52%) Support Engineer
11 106 (2.25%) IT Support
12 93 (1.97%) Java Developer
13 91 (1.93%) Software Engineer
14 88 (1.87%) Data Analyst
15 83 (1.76%) Administrator
15 83 (1.76%) Solutions Architect
16 82 (1.74%) Senior Developer
17 80 (1.70%) Python Developer
18 75 (1.59%) IT Analyst
19 68 (1.44%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 312 (6.62%) REST
2 160 (3.39%) SOAP
3 153 (3.25%) RESTful
4 152 (3.23%) Kafka
5 146 (3.10%) .NET
6 142 (3.01%) Spring
7 133 (2.82%) React
8 122 (2.59%) Node.js
9 105 (2.23%) AngularJS
10 103 (2.19%) CSS
11 101 (2.14%) Spring Boot
12 100 (2.12%) HTML
13 94 (1.99%) JSON
14 92 (1.95%) XML
15 89 (1.89%) LDAP
16 87 (1.85%) Middleware
17 70 (1.49%) OAuth
18 62 (1.32%) Web Services
19 59 (1.25%) Oracle Fusion
20 58 (1.23%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 232 (4.92%) Product Ownership
2 195 (4.14%) Onboarding
3 192 (4.07%) Cloud Native
4 153 (3.25%) Management Information System
5 135 (2.86%) Data Centre
6 128 (2.72%) Analytical Mindset
7 110 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
8 100 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
9 98 (2.08%) Data Structures
10 95 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
11 88 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
12 85 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
13 73 (1.55%) Security Posture
13 73 (1.55%) Virtual Team
14 71 (1.51%) Algorithms
15 67 (1.42%) Hybrid Cloud
16 64 (1.36%) Mobile App
17 59 (1.25%) CMDB
18 51 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 49 (1.04%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 501 (10.63%) Windows
2 291 (6.17%) Linux
3 96 (2.04%) Windows 10
4 87 (1.85%) Unix
5 79 (1.68%) Windows Server
6 68 (1.44%) Android
7 61 (1.29%) Apple iOS
8 55 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 46 (0.98%) Mac OS
10 19 (0.40%) VMS
11 16 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.23%) 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
15 6 (0.13%) zOS
16 5 (0.11%) Debian
17 4 (0.085%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,376 (29.20%) Agile
2 868 (18.42%) CI/CD
3 787 (16.70%) DevOps
4 731 (15.51%) Stakeholder Management
5 730 (15.49%) Continuous Improvement
6 554 (11.75%) Analytics
7 487 (10.33%) Migration
8 480 (10.18%) Decision-Making
9 469 (9.95%) AI
10 460 (9.76%) Project Management
11 412 (8.74%) Test Automation
12 411 (8.72%) Data Modelling
12 411 (8.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 372 (7.89%) Scrum
14 359 (7.62%) Business Intelligence
15 357 (7.57%) Validation
16 349 (7.41%) Change Management
16 349 (7.41%) ITIL
17 340 (7.21%) Customer Service
18 336 (7.13%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 933 (19.80%) Python
2 830 (17.61%) SQL
3 413 (8.76%) Java
4 327 (6.94%) PowerShell
5 252 (5.35%) JavaScript
6 187 (3.97%) C#
7 167 (3.54%) TypeScript
8 142 (3.01%) Bash
9 75 (1.59%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.19%) C++
11 49 (1.04%) Go
12 47 (1.00%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.83%) T-SQL
14 38 (0.81%) Bicep
15 36 (0.76%) Perl
16 33 (0.70%) Apex Code
16 33 (0.70%) Scala
17 32 (0.68%) Ruby
18 30 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 29 (0.62%) C
Qualifications
1 1,091 (23.15%) Security Cleared
2 753 (15.98%) SC Cleared
3 609 (12.92%) Degree
4 227 (4.82%) Computer Science Degree
5 206 (4.37%) DV Cleared
6 117 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
7 104 (2.21%) PMP
8 95 (2.02%) CISSP
8 95 (2.02%) PMI Certification
9 94 (1.99%) Cisco Certification
10 91 (1.93%) Microsoft Certification
11 88 (1.87%) Master's Degree
12 68 (1.44%) Azure Certification
13 61 (1.29%) CISM
14 43 (0.91%) CCNA
15 42 (0.89%) CCNP
16 38 (0.81%) AWS Certification
17 35 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
18 32 (0.68%) A+ Certification
19 27 (0.57%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 313 (6.64%) QA
2 287 (6.09%) Data Quality
3 155 (3.29%) GDPR
4 94 (1.99%) Accessibility
5 87 (1.85%) NIST
6 86 (1.82%) PMO
7 84 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 58 (1.23%) SLA
9 39 (0.83%) GRC
10 33 (0.70%) PCI DSS
11 25 (0.53%) PSD2
12 24 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 21 (0.45%) WCAG
14 18 (0.38%) ISO 20022
15 17 (0.36%) HIPAA
16 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
17 14 (0.30%) HL7
18 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 13 (0.28%) SEPA
System Software
1 415 (8.81%) Docker
2 351 (7.45%) Active Directory
3 99 (2.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.87%) vSphere
5 33 (0.70%) VMware NSX
6 28 (0.59%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.34%) Firmware
8 16 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.23%) RACF
10 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
11 9 (0.19%) Squid
12 8 (0.17%) vCloud
13 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.085%) HDFS
15 4 (0.085%) Snort
16 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 459 (9.74%) Kubernetes
2 277 (5.88%) Terraform
3 176 (3.73%) Ansible
4 118 (2.50%) Microsoft Intune
5 109 (2.31%) Grafana
6 85 (1.80%) Prometheus
7 76 (1.61%) SCCM
8 42 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
9 35 (0.74%) Argo
10 34 (0.72%) vCenter Server
11 32 (0.68%) FortiGate
12 30 (0.64%) Kibana
12 30 (0.64%) Puppet
13 24 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 22 (0.47%) Nessus
15 21 (0.45%) Control-M
16 17 (0.36%) IBM Guardium
17 14 (0.30%) vRealize
18 12 (0.25%) HP ALM
18 12 (0.25%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 878 (18.63%) Microsoft
2 316 (6.70%) Oracle
3 213 (4.52%) SAP
4 202 (4.29%) ServiceNow
5 188 (3.99%) VMware
6 161 (3.42%) Google
7 143 (3.03%) Databricks
8 134 (2.84%) Splunk
9 114 (2.42%) Cisco
10 105 (2.23%) Salesforce
11 84 (1.78%) Red Hat
12 71 (1.51%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.34%) BeyondTrust
14 57 (1.21%) Citrix
15 54 (1.15%) Workday
16 49 (1.04%) IBM
17 47 (1.00%) Informatica
18 45 (0.95%) Dell
18 45 (0.95%) Talend
19 43 (0.91%) F5