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

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,556 4,001 3,865
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.07% 14.91% 10.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.97% 16.69% 12.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,880 2,326 2,426
10th Percentile £288 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -7.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 240 157 289
10th Percentile £13.85 £15.06 £13.29
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.62 £22.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.39% -12.00% -24.24%
75th Percentile £35.00 £38.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £68.80 £66.87 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £18.90 £24.18 £23.50
% change year-on-year -21.86% +2.89% -24.56%

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 28,535 23,973 32,137
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.13% 89.35% 87.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,262 14,701 21,581
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
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 1,781 779 1,693
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £17.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.50 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.10% -9.21% +8.57%
75th Percentile £58.00 £63.75 £63.29
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £75.16
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -13.33% +17.19%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 2,082 £523 -2.24% 901
North of England -2 710 £450 -5.26% 845
South East -1 631 £475 -5.00% 1,416
Midlands -2 500 £450 +5.88% 637
North West -3 364 £425 -8.11% 382
West Midlands -1 351 £492 +13.10% 303
Yorkshire -4 293 £487 -2.60% 333
South West 0 292 £525 +12.90% 593
East of England -3 211 £475 +5.56% 587
East Midlands -4 150 £402 +11.67% 325
North East 0 60 £450 -18.18% 141
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
1 184 (4.04%) Confluence
2 154 (3.38%) SharePoint
3 110 (2.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.38%) SAS
5 59 (1.29%) Apache Spark
6 56 (1.23%) Apache
7 37 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.64%) Skype for Business
9 25 (0.55%) CMS
10 15 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.24%) JBoss
12 10 (0.22%) Anypoint
13 9 (0.20%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
14 7 (0.15%) OpenStack
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 301 (6.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 201 (4.41%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (2.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.49%) MS Visio
5 65 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
6 17 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.29%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 8 (0.18%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
11 5 (0.11%) ProjectWise
11 5 (0.11%) Trello
12 4 (0.088%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.066%) InVision
13 3 (0.066%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.066%) Notion
13 3 (0.066%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.044%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 83 (1.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.50%) Payment Gateway
4 20 (0.44%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.37%) SAP EWM
6 15 (0.33%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.31%) Aladdin
7 14 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
7 14 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
7 14 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 13 (0.29%) SAP WM
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.24%) SAP HR
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
12 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
12 9 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,003 (22.01%) Azure
2 728 (15.98%) AWS
3 376 (8.25%) GCP
4 319 (7.00%) Power Platform
5 308 (6.76%) Microsoft 365
6 219 (4.81%) GitHub
7 205 (4.50%) Azure DevOps
8 149 (3.27%) Serverless
9 129 (2.83%) Entra ID
10 127 (2.79%) SaaS
11 109 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
12 75 (1.65%) Snowflake
13 72 (1.58%) AWS Lambda
14 71 (1.56%) Amazon S3
15 69 (1.51%) PaaS
16 68 (1.49%) Power Automate
17 67 (1.47%) Dynamics 365
18 63 (1.38%) OpenShift
19 62 (1.36%) Azure Data Factory
20 58 (1.27%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 151 (3.31%) Firewall
2 142 (3.12%) DNS
3 103 (2.26%) Network Security
4 100 (2.19%) TCP/IP
5 92 (2.02%) VPN
6 79 (1.73%) DHCP
7 67 (1.47%) WAN
8 50 (1.10%) LAN
9 40 (0.88%) VLAN
10 33 (0.72%) Wi-Fi
11 31 (0.68%) BGP
12 29 (0.64%) Skype
13 28 (0.61%) VoIP
14 22 (0.48%) Wireless
15 21 (0.46%) Wireshark
16 19 (0.42%) SSL
17 18 (0.40%) HTTP
17 18 (0.40%) OSPF
18 17 (0.37%) Internet
18 17 (0.37%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 250 (5.49%) Power BI
2 147 (3.23%) SQL Server
3 141 (3.09%) Relational Database
4 124 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
5 120 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
6 96 (2.11%) NoSQL
7 84 (1.84%) MongoDB
8 70 (1.54%) Metadata
9 69 (1.51%) Oracle Database
10 65 (1.43%) Tableau
11 64 (1.40%) MySQL
12 48 (1.05%) Oracle Reports
13 47 (1.03%) Big Data
14 42 (0.92%) DynamoDB
15 41 (0.90%) Data Lake
16 39 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
17 37 (0.81%) Pentaho
18 31 (0.68%) RDBMS
19 29 (0.64%) BigQuery
19 29 (0.64%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 425 (9.33%) JIRA
2 326 (7.16%) Git
3 236 (5.18%) Jenkins
4 151 (3.31%) GitLab
5 70 (1.54%) Selenium
6 57 (1.25%) JUnit
7 35 (0.77%) Postman
8 30 (0.66%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.64%) Maven
10 25 (0.55%) Bitbucket
11 20 (0.44%) Cypress.io
11 20 (0.44%) SonarQube
12 19 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
13 17 (0.37%) REST Assured
14 16 (0.35%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.33%) CircleCI
15 15 (0.33%) JMeter
16 13 (0.29%) Gradle
16 13 (0.29%) Mockito
17 12 (0.26%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,524 (55.40%) Social Skills
2 1,673 (36.72%) Analytical Skills
3 1,057 (23.20%) Finance
4 422 (9.26%) Public Sector
5 394 (8.65%) Banking
6 177 (3.88%) Organisational Skills
7 142 (3.12%) Legal
8 129 (2.83%) Influencing Skills
9 127 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
10 119 (2.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 118 (2.59%) Presentation Skills
12 105 (2.30%) Retail
13 97 (2.13%) Front Office
14 95 (2.09%) Marketing
14 95 (2.09%) Telecoms
15 77 (1.69%) Investment Banking
16 73 (1.60%) Manufacturing
17 53 (1.16%) Military
18 40 (0.88%) Law
19 39 (0.86%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 672 (14.75%) Developer
2 663 (14.55%) Analyst
3 395 (8.67%) Senior
4 290 (6.37%) Architect
5 274 (6.01%) Lead
6 264 (5.79%) Business Analyst
7 249 (5.47%) Consultant
8 178 (3.91%) Project Manager
9 148 (3.25%) Support Engineer
10 143 (3.14%) Data Engineer
11 122 (2.68%) IT Support
12 109 (2.39%) Senior Developer
13 100 (2.19%) Java Developer
14 90 (1.98%) Support Analyst
15 86 (1.89%) Software Engineer
16 80 (1.76%) Data Analyst
17 77 (1.69%) Administrator
17 77 (1.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 75 (1.65%) IT Analyst
18 75 (1.65%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 315 (6.91%) REST
2 180 (3.95%) RESTful
3 167 (3.67%) SOAP
4 160 (3.51%) .NET
5 143 (3.14%) React
6 137 (3.01%) Kafka
6 137 (3.01%) Node.js
7 132 (2.90%) Spring
8 122 (2.68%) HTML
9 108 (2.37%) AngularJS
10 101 (2.22%) CSS
11 99 (2.17%) Spring Boot
12 82 (1.80%) JSON
13 79 (1.73%) XML
14 78 (1.71%) Middleware
15 67 (1.47%) Oracle Fusion
16 64 (1.40%) LDAP
16 64 (1.40%) OAuth
17 57 (1.25%) Web Services
18 52 (1.14%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 231 (5.07%) Product Ownership
2 195 (4.28%) Cloud Native
3 184 (4.04%) Management Information System
4 169 (3.71%) Onboarding
5 128 (2.81%) Analytical Mindset
6 110 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
7 104 (2.28%) Data Structures
8 97 (2.13%) Self-Motivation
9 95 (2.09%) Data Centre
10 92 (2.02%) Security Posture
11 89 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
12 72 (1.58%) Algorithms
13 68 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
13 68 (1.49%) Legacy Systems
14 61 (1.34%) Mobile App
15 60 (1.32%) CMDB
15 60 (1.32%) Virtual Team
16 54 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
17 51 (1.12%) NHS
18 49 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 453 (9.94%) Windows
2 315 (6.91%) Linux
3 107 (2.35%) Windows 10
4 93 (2.04%) Unix
5 90 (1.98%) Windows Server
6 54 (1.19%) Apple iOS
7 52 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 50 (1.10%) Android
9 41 (0.90%) Mac OS
10 24 (0.53%) VMS
11 19 (0.42%) CentOS
12 13 (0.29%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
15 5 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.088%) Windows Server 2016
17 3 (0.066%) Debian
17 3 (0.066%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,392 (30.55%) Agile
2 841 (18.46%) CI/CD
3 741 (16.26%) DevOps
4 684 (15.01%) Stakeholder Management
5 658 (14.44%) Continuous Improvement
6 500 (10.97%) Analytics
7 436 (9.57%) Project Management
8 430 (9.44%) Migration
9 427 (9.37%) Decision-Making
10 410 (9.00%) Test Automation
11 399 (8.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 384 (8.43%) Scrum
13 376 (8.25%) AI
14 366 (8.03%) Data Modelling
15 337 (7.40%) Computer Science
16 336 (7.37%) Business Intelligence
17 325 (7.13%) ITIL
18 323 (7.09%) Containerisation
18 323 (7.09%) Mentoring
19 320 (7.02%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 938 (20.59%) Python
2 799 (17.54%) SQL
3 432 (9.48%) Java
4 302 (6.63%) PowerShell
5 270 (5.93%) JavaScript
6 196 (4.30%) C#
7 166 (3.64%) TypeScript
8 133 (2.92%) Bash
9 70 (1.54%) Go
10 63 (1.38%) PL/SQL
10 63 (1.38%) Shell Script
11 56 (1.23%) C++
12 43 (0.94%) Scala
13 40 (0.88%) Perl
13 40 (0.88%) VBA
14 32 (0.70%) R
14 32 (0.70%) Ruby
15 30 (0.66%) T-SQL
16 28 (0.61%) Apex Code
17 26 (0.57%) PHP
Qualifications
1 931 (20.43%) Security Cleared
2 677 (14.86%) SC Cleared
3 631 (13.85%) Degree
4 248 (5.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 146 (3.20%) DV Cleared
6 95 (2.09%) PMI Certification
7 94 (2.06%) CISSP
8 93 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
9 91 (2.00%) Microsoft Certification
10 90 (1.98%) PMP
11 85 (1.87%) Master's Degree
12 81 (1.78%) Azure Certification
13 62 (1.36%) Cisco Certification
14 57 (1.25%) AWS Certification
15 47 (1.03%) CISM
16 38 (0.83%) A+ Certification
17 37 (0.81%) CCNP
18 34 (0.75%) MCP
19 29 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
20 28 (0.61%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 300 (6.58%) QA
2 258 (5.66%) Data Quality
3 161 (3.53%) GDPR
4 88 (1.93%) Accessibility
5 80 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 80 (1.76%) NIST
6 73 (1.60%) PMO
7 44 (0.97%) PCI DSS
8 41 (0.90%) SLA
9 31 (0.68%) GRC
10 30 (0.66%) PSD2
11 22 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.44%) ISO 20022
12 20 (0.44%) WCAG
13 16 (0.35%) EU AI Act
13 16 (0.35%) HIPAA
13 16 (0.35%) ISO 8583
14 15 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.33%) SEPA
15 14 (0.31%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 437 (9.59%) Docker
2 331 (7.27%) Active Directory
3 99 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.92%) Hyper-V
5 24 (0.53%) vSphere
6 20 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
7 18 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.40%) VMware NSX
8 15 (0.33%) Firmware
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.24%) HDFS
10 11 (0.24%) RACF
11 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.20%) ACF2
13 5 (0.11%) KVM
14 4 (0.088%) Lustre
14 4 (0.088%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 4 (0.088%) vCloud
14 4 (0.088%) VMware ESXi
15 3 (0.066%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 451 (9.90%) Kubernetes
2 246 (5.40%) Terraform
3 177 (3.88%) Ansible
4 93 (2.04%) Microsoft Intune
5 92 (2.02%) Grafana
6 83 (1.82%) SCCM
7 68 (1.49%) Prometheus
8 41 (0.90%) Puppet
9 34 (0.75%) Kibana
10 29 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (0.50%) Argo
12 22 (0.48%) Nessus
13 20 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 16 (0.35%) Red Hat Satellite
14 16 (0.35%) SCOM
14 16 (0.35%) vCenter Server
15 15 (0.33%) vRealize
16 13 (0.29%) HP ALM
17 12 (0.26%) Control-M
17 12 (0.26%) Data Guard
Vendors
1 903 (19.82%) Microsoft
2 329 (7.22%) Oracle
3 213 (4.68%) SAP
4 193 (4.24%) ServiceNow
5 178 (3.91%) VMware
6 160 (3.51%) Google
7 129 (2.83%) Splunk
8 128 (2.81%) Databricks
9 123 (2.70%) Salesforce
10 101 (2.22%) Cisco
11 79 (1.73%) CyberArk
12 65 (1.43%) BeyondTrust
13 62 (1.36%) Red Hat
14 51 (1.12%) IBM
15 47 (1.03%) Workday
16 46 (1.01%) Palo Alto
17 45 (0.99%) Talend
18 42 (0.92%) Citrix
18 42 (0.92%) MuleSoft
19 39 (0.86%) HP