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

6 months to
19 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 4,668 3,977 4,096
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.61% 16.25% 10.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.60% 17.92% 12.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,903 2,510 2,532
10th Percentile £300 £268 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £588 £614 £631
90th Percentile £711 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -5.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 253 170 360
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.84 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.67 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.71 £25.00 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.16% +35.14% -57.40%
75th Percentile £44.94 £50.25 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.75 £72.63
UK median hourly rate £20.71 £26.31 £18.00
% change year-on-year -21.28% +46.17% -55.00%

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 31,979 22,196 32,870
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.42% 90.71% 86.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,491 14,461 21,766
10th Percentile £313 £313 £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 £613 £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 1,970 819 2,143
10th Percentile £15.34 £15.08 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £31.45 £33.40 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.84% +2.77% -10.41%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.63
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.12
% change year-on-year -7.69% +1.20% -8.24%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 2,028 £505 -3.81% 1,041
North of England -5 763 £450 -8.07% 658
South East -2 679 £492 -1.60% 850
Midlands -2 511 £450 +0.45% 459
North West -3 380 £425 -12.55% 355
West Midlands -1 370 £475 +2.43% 271
Yorkshire -4 335 £475 -5.00% 226
South West -2 315 £525 - 306
East of England -2 234 £450 - 274
East Midlands -2 142 £402 -1.83% 188
North East -3 57 £450 - 91
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 (4.39%) Confluence
2 150 (3.21%) SharePoint
3 103 (2.21%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.37%) Apache Spark
5 55 (1.18%) SAS
6 52 (1.11%) Apache
7 33 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
8 28 (0.60%) CMS
9 16 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.32%) Skype for Business
11 13 (0.28%) nginx
12 11 (0.24%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 11 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
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
1 298 (6.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 212 (4.54%) Microsoft Office
3 114 (2.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.54%) Microsoft Project
4 72 (1.54%) MS Visio
5 23 (0.49%) Chatbot
6 20 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
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 (0.086%) Adobe Captivate
10 4 (0.086%) Maya
10 4 (0.086%) 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%) Autodesk Inventor
Business Applications
1 74 (1.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.47%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.39%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
5 16 (0.34%) Workday HCM
6 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
6 13 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
6 13 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 12 (0.26%) NEC Housing
7 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
7 12 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
8 11 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
9 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
9 10 (0.21%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
11 8 (0.17%) SAP MDG
11 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
12 7 (0.15%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,005 (21.53%) Azure
2 729 (15.62%) AWS
3 339 (7.26%) GCP
4 338 (7.24%) Power Platform
5 300 (6.43%) Microsoft 365
6 233 (4.99%) GitHub
7 224 (4.80%) Azure DevOps
8 158 (3.38%) Serverless
9 146 (3.13%) Entra ID
10 119 (2.55%) SaaS
11 111 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
12 92 (1.97%) OpenShift
13 91 (1.95%) Amazon S3
14 89 (1.91%) AWS Lambda
15 72 (1.54%) Snowflake
16 71 (1.52%) Azure Data Factory
17 61 (1.31%) PaaS
18 55 (1.18%) Dynamics 365
19 53 (1.14%) Google Workspace
19 53 (1.14%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 177 (3.79%) Firewall
2 172 (3.68%) DNS
3 115 (2.46%) TCP/IP
4 105 (2.25%) Network Security
5 96 (2.06%) VPN
6 95 (2.04%) WAN
7 92 (1.97%) DHCP
8 76 (1.63%) LAN
9 55 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
10 44 (0.94%) BGP
11 40 (0.86%) VLAN
12 35 (0.75%) SAN
13 32 (0.69%) OSPF
14 29 (0.62%) VoIP
15 26 (0.56%) SD-WAN
16 22 (0.47%) Wireless
17 21 (0.45%) Internet
18 20 (0.43%) MPLS
19 18 (0.39%) BIG-IP
20 17 (0.36%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 270 (5.78%) Power BI
2 163 (3.49%) SQL Server
3 137 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
4 134 (2.87%) Relational Database
5 132 (2.83%) PostgreSQL
6 93 (1.99%) MongoDB
7 90 (1.93%) NoSQL
8 81 (1.74%) Metadata
9 72 (1.54%) Tableau
10 62 (1.33%) Data Lake
11 61 (1.31%) Oracle Database
12 55 (1.18%) Big Data
13 54 (1.16%) Oracle Reports
14 52 (1.11%) MySQL
15 47 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 41 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
17 34 (0.73%) DynamoDB
18 30 (0.64%) Hadoop
19 29 (0.62%) Pentaho
20 27 (0.58%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 463 (9.92%) JIRA
2 324 (6.94%) Git
3 245 (5.25%) Jenkins
4 155 (3.32%) GitLab
5 78 (1.67%) Selenium
6 50 (1.07%) JUnit
7 39 (0.84%) Postman
8 34 (0.73%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.69%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
11 24 (0.51%) Cypress.io
11 24 (0.51%) Maven
12 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
13 18 (0.39%) JMeter
13 18 (0.39%) Mockito
14 17 (0.36%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
16 14 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
17 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
General
1 2,534 (54.28%) Social Skills
2 1,762 (37.75%) Analytical Skills
3 1,060 (22.71%) Finance
4 468 (10.03%) Public Sector
5 367 (7.86%) Banking
6 186 (3.98%) Organisational Skills
7 159 (3.41%) Legal
8 158 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
9 139 (2.98%) Retail
10 124 (2.66%) Presentation Skills
11 117 (2.51%) Influencing Skills
12 111 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 91 (1.95%) Front Office
14 87 (1.86%) Marketing
15 75 (1.61%) Telecoms
16 66 (1.41%) Investment Banking
17 60 (1.29%) Manufacturing
18 58 (1.24%) Military
19 44 (0.94%) Law
20 39 (0.84%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 661 (14.16%) Analyst
2 604 (12.94%) Developer
3 392 (8.40%) Senior
4 328 (7.03%) Architect
5 317 (6.79%) Lead
6 271 (5.81%) Business Analyst
7 230 (4.93%) Consultant
8 197 (4.22%) Project Manager
9 192 (4.11%) Data Engineer
10 120 (2.57%) Support Engineer
11 107 (2.29%) IT Support
12 91 (1.95%) Java Developer
13 87 (1.86%) Data Analyst
13 87 (1.86%) Software Engineer
14 81 (1.74%) Administrator
14 81 (1.74%) Senior Developer
15 80 (1.71%) Solutions Architect
16 79 (1.69%) Python Developer
17 71 (1.52%) IT Analyst
18 68 (1.46%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 311 (6.66%) REST
2 160 (3.43%) SOAP
3 153 (3.28%) RESTful
4 151 (3.23%) Kafka
5 145 (3.11%) .NET
6 140 (3.00%) Spring
7 133 (2.85%) React
8 123 (2.63%) Node.js
9 104 (2.23%) AngularJS
10 102 (2.19%) CSS
11 99 (2.12%) HTML
11 99 (2.12%) Spring Boot
12 94 (2.01%) JSON
13 92 (1.97%) XML
14 87 (1.86%) LDAP
15 86 (1.84%) Middleware
16 69 (1.48%) OAuth
17 62 (1.33%) Web Services
18 61 (1.31%) Oracle Fusion
19 57 (1.22%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 230 (4.93%) Product Ownership
2 196 (4.20%) Cloud Native
3 188 (4.03%) Onboarding
4 152 (3.26%) Management Information System
5 132 (2.83%) Data Centre
6 125 (2.68%) Analytical Mindset
7 106 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
8 102 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
9 99 (2.12%) Data Structures
10 92 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
11 86 (1.84%) Legacy Systems
12 78 (1.67%) Distributed Systems
13 74 (1.59%) Security Posture
14 73 (1.56%) Algorithms
15 71 (1.52%) Virtual Team
16 67 (1.44%) Hybrid Cloud
17 65 (1.39%) Mobile App
18 59 (1.26%) CMDB
19 49 (1.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 48 (1.03%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 499 (10.69%) Windows
2 286 (6.13%) Linux
3 95 (2.04%) Windows 10
4 85 (1.82%) Unix
5 81 (1.74%) Windows Server
6 69 (1.48%) Android
7 62 (1.33%) Apple iOS
8 56 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 46 (0.99%) Mac OS
10 19 (0.41%) VMS
11 16 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.26%) 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 (0.086%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.086%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,358 (29.09%) Agile
2 861 (18.44%) CI/CD
3 770 (16.50%) DevOps
4 727 (15.57%) Stakeholder Management
5 718 (15.38%) Continuous Improvement
6 550 (11.78%) Analytics
7 487 (10.43%) Migration
8 473 (10.13%) Decision-Making
9 454 (9.73%) AI
9 454 (9.73%) Project Management
10 413 (8.85%) Data Modelling
11 410 (8.78%) Test Automation
12 409 (8.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 367 (7.86%) Scrum
14 361 (7.73%) Business Intelligence
15 357 (7.65%) Validation
16 344 (7.37%) Change Management
17 343 (7.35%) ITIL
18 335 (7.18%) Customer Service
19 334 (7.16%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 923 (19.77%) Python
2 828 (17.74%) SQL
3 409 (8.76%) Java
4 319 (6.83%) PowerShell
5 252 (5.40%) JavaScript
6 183 (3.92%) C#
7 167 (3.58%) TypeScript
8 138 (2.96%) Bash
9 73 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.20%) C++
11 47 (1.01%) Go
12 45 (0.96%) Shell Script
13 38 (0.81%) T-SQL
14 35 (0.75%) Bicep
14 35 (0.75%) Perl
15 33 (0.71%) Scala
16 32 (0.69%) Apex Code
16 32 (0.69%) Ruby
17 31 (0.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 29 (0.62%) C
Qualifications
1 1,071 (22.94%) Security Cleared
2 733 (15.70%) SC Cleared
3 608 (13.02%) Degree
4 225 (4.82%) Computer Science Degree
5 206 (4.41%) DV Cleared
6 115 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (2.21%) PMP
8 95 (2.04%) PMI Certification
9 93 (1.99%) CISSP
10 92 (1.97%) Cisco Certification
11 88 (1.89%) Master's Degree
12 87 (1.86%) Microsoft Certification
13 64 (1.37%) Azure Certification
14 60 (1.29%) CISM
15 42 (0.90%) CCNP
16 41 (0.88%) CCNA
17 38 (0.81%) AWS Certification
18 35 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
19 31 (0.66%) A+ Certification
20 25 (0.54%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 308 (6.60%) QA
2 285 (6.11%) Data Quality
3 152 (3.26%) GDPR
4 91 (1.95%) Accessibility
5 86 (1.84%) NIST
6 85 (1.82%) PMO
7 80 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 57 (1.22%) SLA
9 36 (0.77%) GRC
10 34 (0.73%) PCI DSS
11 25 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.51%) PSD2
13 22 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.43%) WCAG
15 17 (0.36%) ISO 20022
16 16 (0.34%) HIPAA
17 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
18 14 (0.30%) EU AI Act
18 14 (0.30%) HL7
19 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 408 (8.74%) Docker
2 345 (7.39%) Active Directory
3 101 (2.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.88%) vSphere
5 33 (0.71%) VMware NSX
6 28 (0.60%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.34%) Firmware
8 16 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.24%) RACF
10 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 8 (0.17%) Squid
12 8 (0.17%) vCloud
13 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.086%) HDFS
15 4 (0.086%) Snort
16 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 451 (9.66%) Kubernetes
2 271 (5.81%) Terraform
3 172 (3.68%) Ansible
4 116 (2.49%) Microsoft Intune
5 107 (2.29%) Grafana
6 83 (1.78%) Prometheus
7 75 (1.61%) SCCM
8 40 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
9 35 (0.75%) Argo
10 34 (0.73%) vCenter Server
11 31 (0.66%) FortiGate
12 30 (0.64%) Kibana
13 27 (0.58%) Puppet
14 24 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 22 (0.47%) Nessus
16 19 (0.41%) Control-M
17 17 (0.36%) IBM Guardium
18 14 (0.30%) vRealize
19 12 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
20 11 (0.24%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 872 (18.68%) Microsoft
2 317 (6.79%) Oracle
3 206 (4.41%) SAP
4 198 (4.24%) ServiceNow
5 189 (4.05%) VMware
6 159 (3.41%) Google
7 140 (3.00%) Databricks
8 134 (2.87%) Splunk
9 114 (2.44%) Cisco
10 104 (2.23%) Salesforce
11 83 (1.78%) Red Hat
12 70 (1.50%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.35%) BeyondTrust
14 55 (1.18%) Citrix
15 54 (1.16%) Workday
16 49 (1.05%) IBM
17 47 (1.01%) Informatica
18 45 (0.96%) Talend
19 44 (0.94%) Dell
19 44 (0.94%) F5