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

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,644 3,986 4,037
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.90% 15.17% 10.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.86% 16.92% 12.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,936 2,334 2,531
10th Percentile £298 £259 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.30% -2.44% -5.09%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £703 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 245 154 332
10th Percentile £13.89 £15.15 £12.84
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.82 £24.47 £22.06
Median % change year-on-year -23.09% +10.95% -28.25%
75th Percentile £35.71 £46.88 £57.33
90th Percentile £69.44 £68.75 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £25.43 £21.64
% change year-on-year -25.29% +17.51% -27.87%

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 29,288 23,559 32,969
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.67% 89.65% 87.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,737 14,462 22,056
10th Percentile £306 £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 £640 £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 1,829 754 1,953
10th Percentile £15.16 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.88 £21.01 £16.66
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% - +1.21%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £61.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% +9.38%

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 5 February 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 February 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 February 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 -2 2,095 £520 -1.89% 1,105
North of England -3 723 £450 -5.26% 678
South East -2 650 £480 -4.00% 881
Midlands -2 520 £450 +4.29% 481
North West -1 380 £425 -7.61% 385
West Midlands 0 369 £490 +9.38% 310
South West -3 301 £525 +10.53% 351
Yorkshire -5 288 £485 -3.10% 229
East of England -3 219 £475 +1.82% 289
East Midlands -2 152 £402 +7.20% 171
North East -3 63 £450 -15.29% 75
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
1 196 (4.22%) Confluence
2 158 (3.40%) SharePoint
3 107 (2.30%) Microsoft Exchange
4 61 (1.31%) SAS
5 59 (1.27%) Apache Spark
6 55 (1.18%) Apache
7 38 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.62%) 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%) Palantir Foundry
14 7 (0.15%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.15%) Camunda
14 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
14 7 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
15 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
Applications
1 299 (6.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 201 (4.33%) Microsoft Office
3 116 (2.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (1.49%) MS Visio
5 63 (1.36%) Microsoft Project
6 19 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.13%) Trello
12 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.086%) Adobe Captivate
13 4 (0.086%) Autodesk Inventor
14 3 (0.065%) InVision
14 3 (0.065%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.065%) Notion
14 3 (0.065%) ProjectWise
14 3 (0.065%) Zeplin
15 2 (0.043%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 79 (1.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.41%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.37%) SAP EWM
6 16 (0.34%) Aladdin
7 15 (0.32%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
8 14 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
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 Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
11 11 (0.24%) SAP HR
11 11 (0.24%) Workday HCM
12 10 (0.22%) NEC Housing
12 10 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
13 9 (0.19%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,017 (21.90%) Azure
2 723 (15.57%) AWS
3 372 (8.01%) GCP
4 326 (7.02%) Power Platform
5 316 (6.80%) Microsoft 365
6 232 (5.00%) GitHub
7 212 (4.57%) Azure DevOps
8 149 (3.21%) Serverless
9 135 (2.91%) Entra ID
10 128 (2.76%) SaaS
11 110 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
12 76 (1.64%) Amazon S3
13 75 (1.61%) AWS Lambda
14 74 (1.59%) Snowflake
15 71 (1.53%) OpenShift
16 70 (1.51%) PaaS
17 68 (1.46%) Power Automate
18 66 (1.42%) Azure Data Factory
19 65 (1.40%) Dynamics 365
20 57 (1.23%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 164 (3.53%) Firewall
2 160 (3.45%) DNS
3 106 (2.28%) TCP/IP
4 104 (2.24%) Network Security
5 100 (2.15%) VPN
6 87 (1.87%) DHCP
7 70 (1.51%) WAN
8 52 (1.12%) LAN
9 40 (0.86%) VLAN
10 35 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
11 31 (0.67%) BGP
12 29 (0.62%) Skype
12 29 (0.62%) VoIP
13 21 (0.45%) Wireshark
14 20 (0.43%) HTTP
14 20 (0.43%) SAN
14 20 (0.43%) Wireless
15 19 (0.41%) Internet
15 19 (0.41%) SSL
16 18 (0.39%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 256 (5.51%) Power BI
2 143 (3.08%) SQL Server
3 142 (3.06%) Relational Database
4 124 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
5 119 (2.56%) Data Warehouse
6 94 (2.02%) NoSQL
7 84 (1.81%) MongoDB
8 69 (1.49%) Metadata
9 68 (1.46%) Tableau
10 66 (1.42%) MySQL
11 65 (1.40%) Oracle Database
12 48 (1.03%) Big Data
13 47 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
14 44 (0.95%) Data Lake
15 39 (0.84%) DynamoDB
16 38 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
17 34 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
17 34 (0.73%) Pentaho
18 31 (0.67%) RDBMS
18 31 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 442 (9.52%) JIRA
2 313 (6.74%) Git
3 247 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 157 (3.38%) GitLab
5 75 (1.61%) Selenium
6 56 (1.21%) JUnit
7 39 (0.84%) Postman
8 32 (0.69%) Cucumber
9 31 (0.67%) Bitbucket
10 29 (0.62%) Maven
11 25 (0.54%) SonarQube
12 24 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
13 21 (0.45%) Cypress.io
14 20 (0.43%) REST Assured
15 17 (0.37%) JMeter
15 17 (0.37%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
17 14 (0.30%) Mockito
18 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
18 12 (0.26%) Gradle
General
1 2,554 (55.00%) Social Skills
2 1,691 (36.41%) Analytical Skills
3 1,065 (22.93%) Finance
4 433 (9.32%) Public Sector
5 386 (8.31%) Banking
6 183 (3.94%) Organisational Skills
7 144 (3.10%) Legal
8 141 (3.04%) Documentation Skills
9 125 (2.69%) Influencing Skills
10 119 (2.56%) Presentation Skills
11 113 (2.43%) Retail
12 109 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 100 (2.15%) Telecoms
14 98 (2.11%) Front Office
15 91 (1.96%) Marketing
16 76 (1.64%) Investment Banking
17 72 (1.55%) Manufacturing
18 56 (1.21%) Military
19 42 (0.90%) Law
20 39 (0.84%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 679 (14.62%) Analyst
2 669 (14.41%) Developer
3 402 (8.66%) Senior
4 300 (6.46%) Architect
5 284 (6.12%) Lead
6 273 (5.88%) Business Analyst
7 248 (5.34%) Consultant
8 180 (3.88%) Project Manager
9 148 (3.19%) Data Engineer
10 143 (3.08%) Support Engineer
11 119 (2.56%) IT Support
12 106 (2.28%) Senior Developer
13 96 (2.07%) Java Developer
14 89 (1.92%) Data Analyst
15 88 (1.89%) Software Engineer
16 87 (1.87%) Support Analyst
17 81 (1.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 78 (1.68%) IT Analyst
18 78 (1.68%) Solutions Architect
19 73 (1.57%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 327 (7.04%) REST
2 178 (3.83%) RESTful
3 174 (3.75%) SOAP
4 166 (3.57%) .NET
5 144 (3.10%) React
6 142 (3.06%) Kafka
7 140 (3.01%) Node.js
8 135 (2.91%) Spring
9 126 (2.71%) HTML
10 111 (2.39%) AngularJS
11 108 (2.33%) CSS
12 105 (2.26%) Spring Boot
13 88 (1.89%) JSON
14 85 (1.83%) XML
15 79 (1.70%) LDAP
16 78 (1.68%) Middleware
17 67 (1.44%) Oracle Fusion
18 64 (1.38%) OAuth
19 58 (1.25%) Web Services
20 54 (1.16%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 236 (5.08%) Product Ownership
2 196 (4.22%) Cloud Native
3 177 (3.81%) Management Information System
4 173 (3.73%) Onboarding
5 125 (2.69%) Analytical Mindset
6 106 (2.28%) Data Structures
7 104 (2.24%) Enterprise Software
8 99 (2.13%) Data Centre
9 97 (2.09%) Self-Motivation
10 94 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
11 87 (1.87%) Security Posture
12 74 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
13 72 (1.55%) Algorithms
14 67 (1.44%) Virtual Team
15 65 (1.40%) Mobile App
16 64 (1.38%) CMDB
17 62 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
18 58 (1.25%) Hybrid Cloud
19 50 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 49 (1.06%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 472 (10.16%) Windows
2 314 (6.76%) Linux
3 106 (2.28%) Windows 10
4 96 (2.07%) Unix
5 87 (1.87%) Windows Server
6 54 (1.16%) Apple iOS
7 52 (1.12%) Android
7 52 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 42 (0.90%) Mac OS
9 23 (0.50%) VMS
10 18 (0.39%) CentOS
11 14 (0.30%) Ubuntu
12 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.086%) Windows 8
15 4 (0.086%) Windows Server 2003
16 3 (0.065%) Debian
16 3 (0.065%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,389 (29.91%) Agile
2 851 (18.32%) CI/CD
3 746 (16.06%) DevOps
4 701 (15.09%) Stakeholder Management
5 668 (14.38%) Continuous Improvement
6 514 (11.07%) Analytics
7 460 (9.91%) Migration
8 449 (9.67%) Decision-Making
9 434 (9.35%) Project Management
10 408 (8.79%) Test Automation
11 406 (8.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 401 (8.63%) AI
13 385 (8.29%) Scrum
14 371 (7.99%) Data Modelling
15 345 (7.43%) ITIL
16 344 (7.41%) Computer Science
17 341 (7.34%) Containerisation
18 338 (7.28%) Validation
19 335 (7.21%) Business Intelligence
20 327 (7.04%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 927 (19.96%) Python
2 810 (17.44%) SQL
3 429 (9.24%) Java
4 316 (6.80%) PowerShell
5 276 (5.94%) JavaScript
6 204 (4.39%) C#
7 175 (3.77%) TypeScript
8 135 (2.91%) Bash
9 64 (1.38%) PL/SQL
10 60 (1.29%) Go
11 59 (1.27%) C++
12 53 (1.14%) Shell Script
13 40 (0.86%) Perl
13 40 (0.86%) VBA
14 39 (0.84%) Scala
15 31 (0.67%) Ruby
16 30 (0.65%) T-SQL
17 29 (0.62%) R
18 28 (0.60%) Apex Code
19 27 (0.58%) C
Qualifications
1 987 (21.25%) Security Cleared
2 706 (15.20%) SC Cleared
3 640 (13.78%) Degree
4 250 (5.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 172 (3.70%) DV Cleared
6 98 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
7 94 (2.02%) PMI Certification
8 93 (2.00%) PMP
9 91 (1.96%) Master's Degree
9 91 (1.96%) Microsoft Certification
10 90 (1.94%) CISSP
11 80 (1.72%) Azure Certification
12 59 (1.27%) Cisco Certification
13 51 (1.10%) AWS Certification
13 51 (1.10%) CISM
14 39 (0.84%) A+ Certification
15 37 (0.80%) CCNP
16 30 (0.65%) CCNA
16 30 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
17 27 (0.58%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 312 (6.72%) QA
2 270 (5.81%) Data Quality
3 159 (3.42%) GDPR
4 91 (1.96%) Accessibility
5 79 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 79 (1.70%) NIST
6 73 (1.57%) PMO
7 46 (0.99%) SLA
8 40 (0.86%) PCI DSS
9 31 (0.67%) GRC
10 29 (0.62%) PSD2
11 22 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.45%) ISO 20022
12 21 (0.45%) WCAG
13 16 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
13 16 (0.34%) EU AI Act
13 16 (0.34%) HIPAA
13 16 (0.34%) SEPA
14 14 (0.30%) ISO 8583
15 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 440 (9.47%) Docker
2 351 (7.56%) Active Directory
3 109 (2.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.88%) Hyper-V
5 33 (0.71%) vSphere
6 23 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
6 23 (0.50%) VMware NSX
7 19 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
8 16 (0.34%) Firmware
9 11 (0.24%) RACF
10 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 8 (0.17%) 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%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.065%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.065%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 460 (9.91%) Kubernetes
2 260 (5.60%) Terraform
3 170 (3.66%) Ansible
4 105 (2.26%) Grafana
5 99 (2.13%) Microsoft Intune
6 89 (1.92%) SCCM
7 82 (1.77%) Prometheus
8 39 (0.84%) Puppet
9 37 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
10 35 (0.75%) Kibana
11 27 (0.58%) Argo
12 24 (0.52%) Nessus
13 23 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 20 (0.43%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.37%) Control-M
16 16 (0.34%) IBM Guardium
16 16 (0.34%) Red Hat Satellite
16 16 (0.34%) SCOM
17 15 (0.32%) FortiGate
17 15 (0.32%) vRealize
Vendors
1 914 (19.68%) Microsoft
2 326 (7.02%) Oracle
3 218 (4.69%) SAP
4 202 (4.35%) ServiceNow
5 188 (4.05%) VMware
6 162 (3.49%) Google
7 135 (2.91%) Splunk
8 131 (2.82%) Databricks
9 119 (2.56%) Salesforce
10 100 (2.15%) Cisco
11 79 (1.70%) CyberArk
12 72 (1.55%) Red Hat
13 67 (1.44%) BeyondTrust
14 50 (1.08%) IBM
15 47 (1.01%) Workday
16 44 (0.95%) Palo Alto
16 44 (0.95%) Talend
17 40 (0.86%) Citrix
18 39 (0.84%) Adobe
19 37 (0.80%) HP