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

6 months to
23 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 4,692 4,064 4,088
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.55% 16.46% 10.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.54% 18.13% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,924 2,561 2,517
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.25% - -7.06%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £635
90th Percentile £711 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 175 360
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.84 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.69 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.53 £24.76 £18.25
Median % change year-on-year -17.07% +35.67% -55.04%
75th Percentile £44.94 £48.38 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £77.50 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £20.53 £25.43 £17.72
% change year-on-year -19.26% +43.51% -54.56%

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 32,274 22,410 32,751
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.33% 90.76% 86.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,683 14,625 21,650
10th Percentile £313 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.05% - -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 1,981 836 2,152
10th Percentile £15.38 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.86 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.00 £33.26 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.25% +2.32% -13.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.69
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.35 £71.87
UK median hourly rate £31.50 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -3.08% - -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 23 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 23 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 23 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 2,039 £510 -2.86% 1,103
North of England -4 774 £450 -7.22% 675
South East -2 684 £492 -1.60% 874
Midlands -2 513 £450 +0.45% 480
North West -4 384 £425 -10.53% 366
West Midlands -2 373 £475 +2.98% 275
Yorkshire -4 341 £475 -5.00% 234
South West -2 315 £525 - 318
East of England -3 230 £450 - 319
East Midlands -3 141 £405 +2.53% 204
North East -2 58 £438 -2.78% 88
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
1 205 (4.37%) Confluence
2 153 (3.26%) SharePoint
3 105 (2.24%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.36%) Apache Spark
5 56 (1.19%) SAS
6 51 (1.09%) Apache
7 31 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.58%) CMS
9 16 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.30%) nginx
10 14 (0.30%) Skype for Business
11 12 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
12 10 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.15%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.13%) JBoss
15 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
16 5 (0.11%) ArcGIS
16 5 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 299 (6.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 210 (4.48%) Microsoft Office
3 114 (2.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
4 73 (1.56%) MS Visio
5 22 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
6 21 (0.45%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.19%) Sketch
8 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
8 8 (0.17%) Trello
9 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 4 (0.085%) Adobe Captivate
10 4 (0.085%) Maya
10 4 (0.085%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.064%) InVision
11 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
11 3 (0.064%) Notion
11 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
12 2 (0.043%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 78 (1.66%) 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 (0.26%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
8 12 (0.26%) 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 1,013 (21.59%) Azure
2 732 (15.60%) AWS
3 340 (7.25%) GCP
4 336 (7.16%) Power Platform
5 306 (6.52%) Microsoft 365
6 235 (5.01%) GitHub
7 230 (4.90%) Azure DevOps
8 160 (3.41%) Serverless
9 147 (3.13%) Entra ID
10 118 (2.51%) SaaS
11 115 (2.45%) GitHub Actions
12 91 (1.94%) Amazon S3
12 91 (1.94%) OpenShift
13 90 (1.92%) AWS Lambda
14 73 (1.56%) Azure Data Factory
15 69 (1.47%) Snowflake
16 56 (1.19%) Google Workspace
16 56 (1.19%) PaaS
17 55 (1.17%) Power Automate
18 53 (1.13%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 178 (3.79%) Firewall
2 175 (3.73%) DNS
3 117 (2.49%) TCP/IP
4 107 (2.28%) Network Security
5 98 (2.09%) VPN
6 95 (2.02%) WAN
7 92 (1.96%) DHCP
8 77 (1.64%) LAN
9 58 (1.24%) 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 (0.43%) MPLS
19 18 (0.38%) BIG-IP
20 17 (0.36%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 267 (5.69%) Power BI
2 164 (3.50%) SQL Server
3 136 (2.90%) Data Warehouse
4 132 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
4 132 (2.81%) Relational Database
5 92 (1.96%) MongoDB
6 90 (1.92%) NoSQL
7 82 (1.75%) Metadata
8 72 (1.53%) Tableau
9 63 (1.34%) Data Lake
10 59 (1.26%) Oracle Database
11 55 (1.17%) Big Data
11 55 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
12 51 (1.09%) MySQL
13 46 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 39 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
15 32 (0.68%) DynamoDB
16 31 (0.66%) Hadoop
17 29 (0.62%) Pentaho
18 27 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 465 (9.91%) JIRA
2 323 (6.88%) Git
3 247 (5.26%) Jenkins
4 156 (3.32%) GitLab
5 78 (1.66%) Selenium
6 49 (1.04%) JUnit
7 37 (0.79%) Postman
8 34 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
11 24 (0.51%) Cypress.io
12 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
13 22 (0.47%) Maven
14 17 (0.36%) JMeter
14 17 (0.36%) Mockito
15 16 (0.34%) SonarQube
16 15 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
16 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
18 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,532 (53.96%) Social Skills
2 1,765 (37.62%) Analytical Skills
3 1,067 (22.74%) Finance
4 470 (10.02%) Public Sector
5 373 (7.95%) Banking
6 188 (4.01%) Organisational Skills
7 163 (3.47%) Documentation Skills
8 154 (3.28%) Legal
9 142 (3.03%) Retail
10 125 (2.66%) Presentation Skills
11 116 (2.47%) Influencing Skills
12 111 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 94 (2.00%) Front Office
14 86 (1.83%) Marketing
15 75 (1.60%) Telecoms
16 68 (1.45%) Investment Banking
17 60 (1.28%) Manufacturing
18 57 (1.21%) Military
19 44 (0.94%) Law
20 38 (0.81%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 666 (14.19%) Analyst
2 600 (12.79%) Developer
3 400 (8.53%) Senior
4 334 (7.12%) Architect
5 320 (6.82%) Lead
6 271 (5.78%) Business Analyst
7 231 (4.92%) Consultant
8 195 (4.16%) Project Manager
9 192 (4.09%) Data Engineer
10 118 (2.51%) Support Engineer
11 106 (2.26%) IT Support
12 92 (1.96%) Java Developer
13 90 (1.92%) Software Engineer
14 87 (1.85%) Data Analyst
15 83 (1.77%) Administrator
15 83 (1.77%) Solutions Architect
16 82 (1.75%) Senior Developer
17 80 (1.71%) Python Developer
18 76 (1.62%) IT Analyst
19 69 (1.47%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 307 (6.54%) REST
2 156 (3.32%) SOAP
3 153 (3.26%) RESTful
4 151 (3.22%) Kafka
5 146 (3.11%) .NET
6 141 (3.01%) Spring
7 132 (2.81%) React
8 122 (2.60%) Node.js
9 103 (2.20%) AngularJS
10 100 (2.13%) CSS
10 100 (2.13%) Spring Boot
11 97 (2.07%) HTML
12 94 (2.00%) JSON
13 92 (1.96%) XML
14 89 (1.90%) LDAP
15 88 (1.88%) Middleware
16 68 (1.45%) OAuth
17 61 (1.30%) Web Services
18 60 (1.28%) Oracle Fusion
19 58 (1.24%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 232 (4.94%) Product Ownership
2 194 (4.13%) Onboarding
3 192 (4.09%) Cloud Native
4 151 (3.22%) Management Information System
5 134 (2.86%) Data Centre
6 128 (2.73%) Analytical Mindset
7 111 (2.37%) Self-Motivation
8 100 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
9 99 (2.11%) Data Structures
10 94 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
11 87 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
12 84 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
13 73 (1.56%) Virtual Team
14 71 (1.51%) Algorithms
15 69 (1.47%) Security Posture
16 66 (1.41%) Hybrid Cloud
17 63 (1.34%) Mobile App
18 56 (1.19%) CMDB
19 51 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 49 (1.04%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 501 (10.68%) Windows
2 291 (6.20%) Linux
3 96 (2.05%) Windows 10
4 86 (1.83%) Unix
5 79 (1.68%) Windows Server
6 68 (1.45%) Android
7 61 (1.30%) 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 1,370 (29.20%) Agile
2 866 (18.46%) CI/CD
3 785 (16.73%) DevOps
4 731 (15.58%) Continuous Improvement
5 728 (15.52%) Stakeholder Management
6 552 (11.76%) Analytics
7 482 (10.27%) Migration
8 478 (10.19%) Decision-Making
9 466 (9.93%) AI
10 457 (9.74%) Project Management
11 411 (8.76%) Test Automation
12 409 (8.72%) Data Modelling
13 408 (8.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 370 (7.89%) Scrum
15 361 (7.69%) Business Intelligence
16 358 (7.63%) Validation
17 352 (7.50%) ITIL
18 350 (7.46%) Change Management
19 341 (7.27%) Customer Service
20 334 (7.12%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 931 (19.84%) Python
2 830 (17.69%) SQL
3 412 (8.78%) Java
4 324 (6.91%) PowerShell
5 247 (5.26%) JavaScript
6 187 (3.99%) C#
7 166 (3.54%) TypeScript
8 142 (3.03%) Bash
9 76 (1.62%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.19%) C++
11 49 (1.04%) Go
12 46 (0.98%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.83%) T-SQL
14 38 (0.81%) Bicep
15 36 (0.77%) Perl
16 33 (0.70%) Apex Code
16 33 (0.70%) Scala
17 32 (0.68%) Ruby
18 30 (0.64%) C
18 30 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,086 (23.15%) Security Cleared
2 751 (16.01%) SC Cleared
3 607 (12.94%) Degree
4 227 (4.84%) Computer Science Degree
5 206 (4.39%) DV Cleared
6 117 (2.49%) BPSS Clearance
7 102 (2.17%) PMP
8 94 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
9 93 (1.98%) CISSP
9 93 (1.98%) PMI Certification
10 89 (1.90%) Microsoft Certification
11 88 (1.88%) Master's Degree
12 68 (1.45%) Azure Certification
13 61 (1.30%) CISM
14 43 (0.92%) CCNA
15 42 (0.90%) CCNP
16 38 (0.81%) AWS Certification
17 35 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
18 32 (0.68%) A+ Certification
19 27 (0.58%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 310 (6.61%) QA
2 286 (6.10%) Data Quality
3 156 (3.32%) GDPR
4 94 (2.00%) Accessibility
5 87 (1.85%) NIST
6 86 (1.83%) PMO
7 84 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 58 (1.24%) SLA
9 39 (0.83%) GRC
10 33 (0.70%) PCI DSS
11 25 (0.53%) PSD2
12 24 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.45%) WCAG
15 18 (0.38%) ISO 20022
16 17 (0.36%) HIPAA
17 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
18 14 (0.30%) HL7
19 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 13 (0.28%) SEPA
System Software
1 412 (8.78%) Docker
2 351 (7.48%) Active Directory
3 99 (2.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.85%) vSphere
5 32 (0.68%) VMware NSX
6 28 (0.60%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.34%) Firmware
9 15 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.23%) RACF
11 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 9 (0.19%) Squid
13 8 (0.17%) vCloud
14 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.085%) HDFS
16 4 (0.085%) Snort
17 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
17 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 456 (9.72%) Kubernetes
2 277 (5.90%) Terraform
3 176 (3.75%) Ansible
4 118 (2.51%) Microsoft Intune
5 109 (2.32%) Grafana
6 85 (1.81%) Prometheus
7 75 (1.60%) SCCM
8 42 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
9 35 (0.75%) Argo
10 33 (0.70%) 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 (0.26%) HP ALM
18 12 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 872 (18.58%) Microsoft
2 316 (6.73%) Oracle
3 212 (4.52%) SAP
4 199 (4.24%) ServiceNow
5 187 (3.99%) VMware
6 161 (3.43%) Google
7 143 (3.05%) Databricks
8 131 (2.79%) Splunk
9 114 (2.43%) Cisco
10 104 (2.22%) Salesforce
11 84 (1.79%) Red Hat
12 71 (1.51%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.34%) BeyondTrust
14 57 (1.21%) Citrix
15 53 (1.13%) Workday
16 49 (1.04%) IBM
17 47 (1.00%) Informatica
18 45 (0.96%) Dell
18 45 (0.96%) Talend
19 43 (0.92%) Adobe