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

6 months to
31 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 4,626 4,018 4,067
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.99% 15.15% 10.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.94% 16.93% 12.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,915 2,341 2,556
10th Percentile £298 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -5.09%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £710 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -7.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 239 156 325
10th Percentile £13.85 £15.05 £13.00
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.25 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.85% -5.32% -26.36%
75th Percentile £35.00 £44.06 £58.75
90th Percentile £68.85 £68.46 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £18.87 £25.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year -24.52% +11.11% -26.23%

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 29,029 23,736 33,256
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.78% 89.47% 87.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,558 14,524 22,275
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £643 £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 1,797 756 1,886
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £13.69
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.75 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.31 £36.42
Median % change year-on-year -26.69% -5.80% +4.05%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.88
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.96
% change year-on-year -22.62% -9.62% +12.38%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 -3 2,094 £520 -2.85% 853
North of England -3 723 £450 -5.26% 565
South East -2 642 £475 -5.00% 848
Midlands -2 513 £460 +8.24% 449
North West -3 380 £430 -6.78% 310
West Midlands 0 365 £492 +13.10% 282
South West -4 297 £525 +10.53% 336
Yorkshire -4 290 £485 -3.10% 193
East of England -3 217 £475 +0.53% 262
East Midlands -2 149 £402 +4.42% 167
North East -4 61 £450 -15.29% 73
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
1 195 (4.22%) Confluence
2 156 (3.37%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.36%) SAS
5 58 (1.25%) Apache Spark
6 54 (1.17%) Apache
7 36 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.63%) Skype for Business
9 27 (0.58%) CMS
10 12 (0.26%) WebLogic
11 10 (0.22%) JBoss
11 10 (0.22%) nginx
12 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Anypoint
13 8 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 7 (0.15%) Camunda
14 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
15 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 299 (6.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 204 (4.41%) Microsoft Office
3 114 (2.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.47%) MS Visio
5 64 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
6 20 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.32%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Trello
12 4 (0.086%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.086%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.065%) InVision
13 3 (0.065%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.065%) Notion
13 3 (0.065%) ProjectWise
13 3 (0.065%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.043%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 83 (1.79%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.41%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.37%) SAP EWM
6 16 (0.35%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.35%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
8 14 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
8 14 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 13 (0.28%) SAP WM
10 12 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
10 12 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
11 11 (0.24%) SAP HR
12 10 (0.22%) NEC Housing
12 10 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
13 9 (0.19%) Oracle Cash Management
13 9 (0.19%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,020 (22.05%) Azure
2 720 (15.56%) AWS
3 370 (8.00%) GCP
4 327 (7.07%) Power Platform
5 315 (6.81%) Microsoft 365
6 227 (4.91%) GitHub
7 213 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
8 151 (3.26%) Serverless
9 136 (2.94%) Entra ID
10 128 (2.77%) SaaS
11 110 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
12 77 (1.66%) Amazon S3
13 75 (1.62%) AWS Lambda
13 75 (1.62%) Snowflake
14 71 (1.53%) PaaS
15 69 (1.49%) Power Automate
16 67 (1.45%) Dynamics 365
17 65 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
17 65 (1.41%) OpenShift
18 59 (1.28%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 163 (3.52%) Firewall
2 155 (3.35%) DNS
3 107 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 106 (2.29%) Network Security
5 99 (2.14%) VPN
6 86 (1.86%) DHCP
7 70 (1.51%) WAN
8 53 (1.15%) LAN
9 39 (0.84%) VLAN
10 34 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
11 31 (0.67%) BGP
12 29 (0.63%) Skype
13 28 (0.61%) VoIP
14 20 (0.43%) Internet
14 20 (0.43%) Wireless
14 20 (0.43%) Wireshark
15 19 (0.41%) SAN
15 19 (0.41%) SSL
16 18 (0.39%) HTTP
16 18 (0.39%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 254 (5.49%) Power BI
2 145 (3.13%) Relational Database
3 143 (3.09%) SQL Server
4 122 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
4 122 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
5 95 (2.05%) NoSQL
6 85 (1.84%) MongoDB
7 68 (1.47%) Metadata
8 67 (1.45%) Oracle Database
8 67 (1.45%) Tableau
9 65 (1.41%) MySQL
10 48 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
11 46 (0.99%) Big Data
12 42 (0.91%) Data Lake
13 39 (0.84%) DynamoDB
14 38 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
15 37 (0.80%) Pentaho
16 34 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
17 32 (0.69%) RDBMS
17 32 (0.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 441 (9.53%) JIRA
2 324 (7.00%) Git
3 244 (5.27%) Jenkins
4 156 (3.37%) GitLab
5 73 (1.58%) Selenium
6 57 (1.23%) JUnit
7 37 (0.80%) Postman
8 32 (0.69%) Bitbucket
9 31 (0.67%) Cucumber
10 30 (0.65%) Maven
11 26 (0.56%) SonarQube
12 24 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
13 20 (0.43%) Cypress.io
14 19 (0.41%) REST Assured
15 17 (0.37%) JMeter
15 17 (0.37%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
17 14 (0.30%) Mockito
18 13 (0.28%) Artifactory
18 13 (0.28%) Gradle
General
1 2,551 (55.14%) Social Skills
2 1,692 (36.58%) Analytical Skills
3 1,055 (22.81%) Finance
4 430 (9.30%) Public Sector
5 386 (8.34%) Banking
6 186 (4.02%) Organisational Skills
7 144 (3.11%) Legal
8 139 (3.00%) Documentation Skills
9 126 (2.72%) Influencing Skills
10 119 (2.57%) Presentation Skills
11 114 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 109 (2.36%) Retail
13 100 (2.16%) Telecoms
14 96 (2.08%) Front Office
15 95 (2.05%) Marketing
16 77 (1.66%) Investment Banking
17 71 (1.53%) Manufacturing
18 55 (1.19%) Military
19 43 (0.93%) Law
20 40 (0.86%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 679 (14.68%) Developer
2 673 (14.55%) Analyst
3 401 (8.67%) Senior
4 298 (6.44%) Architect
5 281 (6.07%) Lead
6 270 (5.84%) Business Analyst
7 251 (5.43%) Consultant
8 177 (3.83%) Project Manager
9 147 (3.18%) Data Engineer
10 145 (3.13%) Support Engineer
11 121 (2.62%) IT Support
12 109 (2.36%) Senior Developer
13 98 (2.12%) Java Developer
14 87 (1.88%) Support Analyst
15 86 (1.86%) Data Analyst
16 85 (1.84%) Software Engineer
17 82 (1.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 78 (1.69%) Solutions Architect
19 77 (1.66%) IT Analyst
20 76 (1.64%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (7.03%) REST
2 182 (3.93%) RESTful
3 174 (3.76%) SOAP
4 164 (3.55%) .NET
5 146 (3.16%) React
6 141 (3.05%) Node.js
7 139 (3.00%) Kafka
8 137 (2.96%) Spring
9 123 (2.66%) HTML
10 108 (2.33%) AngularJS
11 105 (2.27%) CSS
12 103 (2.23%) Spring Boot
13 85 (1.84%) JSON
14 84 (1.82%) XML
15 79 (1.71%) LDAP
15 79 (1.71%) Middleware
16 68 (1.47%) Oracle Fusion
17 65 (1.41%) OAuth
18 59 (1.28%) Web Services
19 55 (1.19%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 243 (5.25%) Product Ownership
2 191 (4.13%) Cloud Native
3 180 (3.89%) Management Information System
4 171 (3.70%) Onboarding
5 131 (2.83%) Analytical Mindset
6 107 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
7 105 (2.27%) Data Structures
8 99 (2.14%) Data Centre
9 93 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
9 93 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
10 88 (1.90%) Security Posture
11 72 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
12 71 (1.53%) Algorithms
13 66 (1.43%) Mobile App
13 66 (1.43%) Virtual Team
14 62 (1.34%) CMDB
15 60 (1.30%) Distributed Systems
16 54 (1.17%) Hybrid Cloud
17 50 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 50 (1.08%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 468 (10.12%) Windows
2 318 (6.87%) Linux
3 105 (2.27%) Windows 10
4 95 (2.05%) Unix
5 88 (1.90%) Windows Server
6 57 (1.23%) Apple iOS
7 53 (1.15%) Android
8 52 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 42 (0.91%) Mac OS
10 23 (0.50%) VMS
11 18 (0.39%) CentOS
12 14 (0.30%) Ubuntu
13 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
15 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.086%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.086%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.065%) Debian
17 3 (0.065%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,407 (30.42%) Agile
2 860 (18.59%) CI/CD
3 753 (16.28%) DevOps
4 697 (15.07%) Stakeholder Management
5 664 (14.35%) Continuous Improvement
6 518 (11.20%) Analytics
7 452 (9.77%) Migration
8 448 (9.68%) Decision-Making
9 432 (9.34%) Project Management
10 412 (8.91%) Test Automation
11 405 (8.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 396 (8.56%) AI
13 387 (8.37%) Scrum
14 372 (8.04%) Data Modelling
15 345 (7.46%) Computer Science
16 340 (7.35%) Business Intelligence
17 338 (7.31%) ITIL
18 334 (7.22%) Containerisation
19 332 (7.18%) Validation
20 323 (6.98%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 928 (20.06%) Python
2 818 (17.68%) SQL
3 432 (9.34%) Java
4 315 (6.81%) PowerShell
5 273 (5.90%) JavaScript
6 202 (4.37%) C#
7 174 (3.76%) TypeScript
8 132 (2.85%) Bash
9 64 (1.38%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.32%) Go
11 58 (1.25%) Shell Script
12 57 (1.23%) C++
13 41 (0.89%) Scala
14 40 (0.86%) Perl
14 40 (0.86%) VBA
15 32 (0.69%) Ruby
16 30 (0.65%) R
17 29 (0.63%) Apex Code
17 29 (0.63%) T-SQL
18 26 (0.56%) C
Qualifications
1 980 (21.18%) Security Cleared
2 705 (15.24%) SC Cleared
3 641 (13.86%) Degree
4 253 (5.47%) Computer Science Degree
5 166 (3.59%) DV Cleared
6 94 (2.03%) BPSS Clearance
7 93 (2.01%) PMI Certification
8 92 (1.99%) Microsoft Certification
9 91 (1.97%) CISSP
9 91 (1.97%) PMP
10 87 (1.88%) Master's Degree
11 82 (1.77%) Azure Certification
12 60 (1.30%) Cisco Certification
13 52 (1.12%) AWS Certification
14 51 (1.10%) CISM
15 39 (0.84%) A+ Certification
16 37 (0.80%) CCNP
17 30 (0.65%) CCNA
17 30 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
18 27 (0.58%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 308 (6.66%) QA
2 269 (5.81%) Data Quality
3 160 (3.46%) GDPR
4 90 (1.95%) Accessibility
5 80 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 79 (1.71%) NIST
7 71 (1.53%) PMO
8 44 (0.95%) SLA
9 41 (0.89%) PCI DSS
10 32 (0.69%) GRC
11 30 (0.65%) PSD2
12 22 (0.48%) ISO 20022
12 22 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.43%) WCAG
14 17 (0.37%) SEPA
15 16 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
15 16 (0.35%) EU AI Act
15 16 (0.35%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 14 (0.30%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 441 (9.53%) Docker
2 349 (7.54%) Active Directory
3 105 (2.27%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.89%) Hyper-V
5 30 (0.65%) vSphere
6 23 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
7 20 (0.43%) VMware NSX
8 19 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
9 16 (0.35%) Firmware
10 11 (0.24%) RACF
11 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 9 (0.19%) HDFS
13 6 (0.13%) Squid
14 5 (0.11%) KVM
14 5 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
15 4 (0.086%) vCloud
16 3 (0.065%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.065%) Oracle RAC
16 3 (0.065%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 454 (9.81%) Kubernetes
2 257 (5.56%) Terraform
3 172 (3.72%) Ansible
4 99 (2.14%) Grafana
5 98 (2.12%) Microsoft Intune
6 86 (1.86%) SCCM
7 80 (1.73%) Prometheus
8 39 (0.84%) Puppet
9 36 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
10 34 (0.73%) Kibana
11 24 (0.52%) Argo
11 24 (0.52%) Nessus
12 23 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 17 (0.37%) Control-M
13 17 (0.37%) vCenter Server
14 16 (0.35%) IBM Guardium
14 16 (0.35%) Red Hat Satellite
14 16 (0.35%) SCOM
15 15 (0.32%) vRealize
16 14 (0.30%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 920 (19.89%) Microsoft
2 331 (7.16%) Oracle
3 221 (4.78%) SAP
4 199 (4.30%) ServiceNow
5 184 (3.98%) VMware
6 160 (3.46%) Google
7 133 (2.88%) Databricks
8 131 (2.83%) Splunk
9 122 (2.64%) Salesforce
10 101 (2.18%) Cisco
11 79 (1.71%) CyberArk
12 68 (1.47%) Red Hat
13 67 (1.45%) BeyondTrust
14 51 (1.10%) IBM
15 45 (0.97%) Palo Alto
15 45 (0.97%) Talend
15 45 (0.97%) Workday
16 40 (0.86%) Citrix
17 39 (0.84%) MuleSoft
18 38 (0.82%) Adobe