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

6 months to
4 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 4,638 3,956 4,058
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.91% 15.15% 10.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.87% 16.90% 12.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,927 2,315 2,542
10th Percentile £298 £259 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% -2.44% -5.09%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £706 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £489 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.20% - -7.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 242 153 332
10th Percentile £13.85 £15.13 £12.84
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.50 £24.18 £22.23
Median % change year-on-year -23.49% +8.80% -27.70%
75th Percentile £35.63 £45.00 £57.33
90th Percentile £69.42 £68.64 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £18.92 £25.43 £21.64
% change year-on-year -25.60% +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 29,221 23,402 33,182
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.65% 89.60% 87.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,693 14,362 22,190
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 1,820 750 1,958
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.01 £16.69
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £35.25
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -0.71% +0.71%
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 4 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 4 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 4 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 2,097 £520 -1.89% 920
North of England -3 723 £450 -5.26% 611
South East -2 647 £476 -4.75% 878
Midlands -2 515 £450 +4.29% 453
North West -1 381 £430 -6.01% 346
West Midlands 0 365 £492 +9.82% 293
South West -4 301 £525 +10.53% 352
Yorkshire -5 286 £482 -3.60% 205
East of England -4 215 £475 +1.82% 282
East Midlands -3 151 £402 +7.20% 160
North East -4 64 £450 -15.29% 70
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
1 193 (4.16%) Confluence
2 157 (3.39%) SharePoint
3 108 (2.33%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.38%) SAS
5 59 (1.27%) Apache Spark
6 55 (1.19%) Apache
7 38 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.63%) Skype for Business
9 26 (0.56%) 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
1 298 (6.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 202 (4.36%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (2.48%) 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 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 80 (1.72%) 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
6 16 (0.34%) 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 1,023 (22.06%) Azure
2 718 (15.48%) AWS
3 370 (7.98%) GCP
4 326 (7.03%) Power Platform
5 316 (6.81%) Microsoft 365
6 227 (4.89%) GitHub
7 212 (4.57%) Azure DevOps
8 149 (3.21%) Serverless
9 135 (2.91%) Entra ID
10 129 (2.78%) SaaS
11 109 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
12 76 (1.64%) Amazon S3
13 74 (1.60%) AWS Lambda
13 74 (1.60%) Snowflake
14 72 (1.55%) PaaS
15 69 (1.49%) OpenShift
16 68 (1.47%) Power Automate
17 66 (1.42%) Azure Data Factory
18 65 (1.40%) Dynamics 365
19 58 (1.25%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 164 (3.54%) Firewall
2 158 (3.41%) DNS
3 106 (2.29%) TCP/IP
4 105 (2.26%) Network Security
5 100 (2.16%) VPN
6 87 (1.88%) 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 (0.63%) Skype
12 29 (0.63%) VoIP
13 20 (0.43%) SAN
13 20 (0.43%) Wireless
13 20 (0.43%) Wireshark
14 19 (0.41%) HTTP
14 19 (0.41%) Internet
14 19 (0.41%) SSL
15 18 (0.39%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 255 (5.50%) Power BI
2 143 (3.08%) Relational Database
2 143 (3.08%) SQL Server
3 124 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
4 121 (2.61%) Data Warehouse
5 95 (2.05%) NoSQL
6 84 (1.81%) MongoDB
7 69 (1.49%) Metadata
8 68 (1.47%) Tableau
9 66 (1.42%) MySQL
9 66 (1.42%) Oracle Database
10 48 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
11 47 (1.01%) Big Data
12 44 (0.95%) Data Lake
13 39 (0.84%) DynamoDB
14 38 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
15 37 (0.80%) Pentaho
16 34 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
17 31 (0.67%) RDBMS
17 31 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 443 (9.55%) JIRA
2 322 (6.94%) Git
3 247 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 157 (3.39%) GitLab
5 74 (1.60%) Selenium
6 56 (1.21%) JUnit
7 37 (0.80%) Postman
8 32 (0.69%) Bitbucket
9 31 (0.67%) Cucumber
10 30 (0.65%) Maven
11 25 (0.54%) SonarQube
12 24 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
13 20 (0.43%) REST Assured
14 19 (0.41%) Cypress.io
15 17 (0.37%) JMeter
15 17 (0.37%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
17 14 (0.30%) Mockito
18 13 (0.28%) Gradle
19 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
General
1 2,550 (54.98%) Social Skills
2 1,686 (36.35%) Analytical Skills
3 1,061 (22.88%) Finance
4 435 (9.38%) Public Sector
5 387 (8.34%) Banking
6 187 (4.03%) Organisational Skills
7 144 (3.10%) Legal
8 141 (3.04%) Documentation Skills
9 125 (2.70%) Influencing Skills
10 119 (2.57%) Presentation Skills
11 111 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 111 (2.39%) Retail
12 100 (2.16%) Telecoms
13 98 (2.11%) Front Office
14 91 (1.96%) Marketing
15 77 (1.66%) Investment Banking
16 72 (1.55%) Manufacturing
17 57 (1.23%) Military
18 43 (0.93%) Law
19 39 (0.84%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 674 (14.53%) Analyst
1 674 (14.53%) Developer
2 400 (8.62%) Senior
3 298 (6.43%) Architect
4 282 (6.08%) Lead
5 271 (5.84%) Business Analyst
6 247 (5.33%) Consultant
7 179 (3.86%) Project Manager
8 149 (3.21%) Data Engineer
9 143 (3.08%) Support Engineer
10 119 (2.57%) IT Support
11 106 (2.29%) Senior Developer
12 97 (2.09%) Java Developer
13 88 (1.90%) Data Analyst
14 87 (1.88%) Software Engineer
15 86 (1.85%) Support Analyst
16 82 (1.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 78 (1.68%) Solutions Architect
18 77 (1.66%) IT Analyst
19 75 (1.62%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 327 (7.05%) REST
2 179 (3.86%) RESTful
3 174 (3.75%) SOAP
4 165 (3.56%) .NET
5 144 (3.10%) React
6 141 (3.04%) Kafka
7 138 (2.98%) Node.js
8 136 (2.93%) Spring
9 124 (2.67%) HTML
10 111 (2.39%) AngularJS
11 107 (2.31%) CSS
12 103 (2.22%) Spring Boot
13 88 (1.90%) JSON
14 85 (1.83%) XML
15 79 (1.70%) LDAP
15 79 (1.70%) Middleware
16 68 (1.47%) Oracle Fusion
17 64 (1.38%) OAuth
18 59 (1.27%) Web Services
19 54 (1.16%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 239 (5.15%) Product Ownership
2 195 (4.20%) Cloud Native
3 179 (3.86%) Management Information System
4 171 (3.69%) Onboarding
5 127 (2.74%) Analytical Mindset
6 107 (2.31%) Data Structures
7 104 (2.24%) Enterprise Software
8 99 (2.13%) Data Centre
9 95 (2.05%) Self-Motivation
10 94 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
11 88 (1.90%) Security Posture
12 73 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
13 72 (1.55%) Algorithms
14 68 (1.47%) Virtual Team
15 65 (1.40%) Mobile App
16 63 (1.36%) CMDB
17 61 (1.32%) Distributed Systems
18 56 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
19 50 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 48 (1.03%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 469 (10.11%) Windows
2 315 (6.79%) Linux
3 105 (2.26%) Windows 10
4 95 (2.05%) Unix
5 87 (1.88%) Windows Server
6 54 (1.16%) Apple iOS
7 52 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 50 (1.08%) Android
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 1,390 (29.97%) Agile
2 855 (18.43%) CI/CD
3 748 (16.13%) DevOps
4 697 (15.03%) Stakeholder Management
5 664 (14.32%) Continuous Improvement
6 517 (11.15%) Analytics
7 458 (9.87%) Migration
8 446 (9.62%) Decision-Making
9 432 (9.31%) Project Management
10 411 (8.86%) Test Automation
11 404 (8.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 399 (8.60%) AI
13 384 (8.28%) Scrum
14 375 (8.09%) Data Modelling
15 345 (7.44%) Computer Science
16 343 (7.40%) ITIL
17 339 (7.31%) Business Intelligence
18 338 (7.29%) Containerisation
18 338 (7.29%) Validation
19 324 (6.99%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 928 (20.01%) Python
2 817 (17.62%) SQL
3 426 (9.18%) Java
4 316 (6.81%) PowerShell
5 273 (5.89%) JavaScript
6 203 (4.38%) C#
7 175 (3.77%) TypeScript
8 133 (2.87%) Bash
9 64 (1.38%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.27%) C++
10 59 (1.27%) Go
11 56 (1.21%) Shell Script
12 40 (0.86%) Perl
12 40 (0.86%) Scala
12 40 (0.86%) VBA
13 30 (0.65%) R
13 30 (0.65%) Ruby
14 29 (0.63%) Apex Code
14 29 (0.63%) T-SQL
15 27 (0.58%) C
Qualifications
1 990 (21.35%) Security Cleared
2 708 (15.27%) SC Cleared
3 640 (13.80%) Degree
4 251 (5.41%) Computer Science Degree
5 170 (3.67%) DV Cleared
6 96 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
7 93 (2.01%) PMI Certification
8 92 (1.98%) PMP
9 91 (1.96%) CISSP
9 91 (1.96%) Microsoft Certification
10 90 (1.94%) Master's Degree
11 80 (1.72%) Azure Certification
12 59 (1.27%) Cisco Certification
13 52 (1.12%) CISM
14 51 (1.10%) AWS Certification
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
1 310 (6.68%) QA
2 272 (5.86%) Data Quality
3 160 (3.45%) GDPR
4 91 (1.96%) Accessibility
5 80 (1.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 79 (1.70%) NIST
7 72 (1.55%) PMO
8 46 (0.99%) SLA
9 41 (0.88%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.67%) GRC
11 30 (0.65%) PSD2
12 22 (0.47%) ISO 20022
12 22 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 21 (0.45%) WCAG
14 17 (0.37%) SEPA
15 16 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
15 16 (0.34%) EU AI Act
15 16 (0.34%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 14 (0.30%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 442 (9.53%) Docker
2 350 (7.55%) Active Directory
3 106 (2.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.88%) Hyper-V
5 31 (0.67%) vSphere
6 23 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
7 21 (0.45%) VMware NSX
8 19 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
9 16 (0.34%) Firmware
10 11 (0.24%) RACF
11 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.19%) ACF2
13 8 (0.17%) HDFS
14 6 (0.13%) Squid
15 5 (0.11%) KVM
15 5 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
16 4 (0.086%) vCloud
17 3 (0.065%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.065%) ISA Server
17 3 (0.065%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 461 (9.94%) Kubernetes
2 258 (5.56%) Terraform
3 171 (3.69%) Ansible
4 101 (2.18%) Grafana
5 99 (2.13%) Microsoft Intune
6 88 (1.90%) SCCM
7 82 (1.77%) Prometheus
8 39 (0.84%) Puppet
9 37 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
10 34 (0.73%) Kibana
11 25 (0.54%) Argo
12 24 (0.52%) Nessus
13 23 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 18 (0.39%) 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
1 916 (19.75%) Microsoft
2 334 (7.20%) Oracle
3 217 (4.68%) SAP
4 201 (4.33%) ServiceNow
5 185 (3.99%) VMware
6 161 (3.47%) Google
7 133 (2.87%) Databricks
7 133 (2.87%) Splunk
8 121 (2.61%) Salesforce
9 100 (2.16%) Cisco
10 79 (1.70%) CyberArk
11 70 (1.51%) Red Hat
12 67 (1.44%) BeyondTrust
13 50 (1.08%) IBM
14 48 (1.03%) Workday
15 47 (1.01%) Talend
16 44 (0.95%) Palo Alto
17 40 (0.86%) Citrix
18 38 (0.82%) Adobe
18 38 (0.82%) Informatica