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

6 months to
18 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 4,690 3,972 4,107
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.70% 16.21% 10.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.69% 17.88% 12.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,919 2,508 2,539
10th Percentile £300 £266 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £588 £614 £635
90th Percentile £712 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 172 362
10th Percentile £13.97 £14.86 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.63 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.71 £25.22 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.87% +36.30% -57.40%
75th Percentile £44.37 £49.25 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.55 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £20.71 £26.50 £18.00
% change year-on-year -21.85% +47.22% -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 31,926 22,217 32,932
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.44% 90.67% 86.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,427 14,455 21,796
10th Percentile £313 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% - -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 1,975 819 2,151
10th Percentile £15.31 £15.14 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £31.00 £33.11 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -6.37% +1.88% -11.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.50
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -6 2,046 £505 -3.81% 977
North of England -4 761 £450 -8.16% 614
South East -2 684 £492 -1.60% 836
Midlands -2 510 £450 +2.86% 431
North West -3 379 £424 -12.68% 333
West Midlands -3 370 £475 +4.70% 263
Yorkshire -4 335 £475 -5.00% 210
South West -2 314 £525 - 305
East of England -3 238 £450 - 263
East Midlands -2 141 £404 -1.34% 168
North East -4 56 £450 - 87
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
1 207 (4.41%) Confluence
2 153 (3.26%) SharePoint
3 105 (2.24%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.36%) Apache Spark
5 55 (1.17%) SAS
6 52 (1.11%) Apache
7 33 (0.70%) 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 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 11 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.13%) Camunda
14 6 (0.13%) JBoss
14 6 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
14 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
15 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 298 (6.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 210 (4.48%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (2.41%) 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 (0.085%) Adobe Captivate
10 4 (0.085%) Maya
10 4 (0.085%) 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 75 (1.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.47%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) 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 (0.23%) Oracle Receivables
8 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
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
Cloud Services
1 1,018 (21.71%) Azure
2 732 (15.61%) AWS
3 340 (7.25%) GCP
4 339 (7.23%) Power Platform
5 303 (6.46%) Microsoft 365
6 233 (4.97%) GitHub
7 225 (4.80%) Azure DevOps
8 162 (3.45%) Serverless
9 152 (3.24%) Entra ID
10 121 (2.58%) SaaS
11 111 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
12 90 (1.92%) Amazon S3
13 89 (1.90%) OpenShift
14 88 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
15 72 (1.54%) Snowflake
16 71 (1.51%) Azure Data Factory
17 65 (1.39%) PaaS
18 54 (1.15%) Dynamics 365
18 54 (1.15%) Power Automate
19 53 (1.13%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 178 (3.80%) Firewall
2 171 (3.65%) DNS
3 116 (2.47%) TCP/IP
4 105 (2.24%) Network Security
5 97 (2.07%) VPN
6 95 (2.03%) WAN
7 93 (1.98%) DHCP
8 76 (1.62%) LAN
9 55 (1.17%) Wi-Fi
10 44 (0.94%) BGP
11 40 (0.85%) VLAN
12 35 (0.75%) SAN
13 32 (0.68%) OSPF
14 29 (0.62%) VoIP
15 26 (0.55%) SD-WAN
16 22 (0.47%) Wireless
17 21 (0.45%) Internet
18 20 (0.43%) MPLS
19 17 (0.36%) BIG-IP
19 17 (0.36%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 270 (5.76%) Power BI
2 162 (3.45%) SQL Server
3 140 (2.99%) PostgreSQL
4 139 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
5 131 (2.79%) Relational Database
6 93 (1.98%) MongoDB
7 91 (1.94%) NoSQL
8 78 (1.66%) Metadata
9 72 (1.54%) Tableau
10 65 (1.39%) Oracle Database
11 62 (1.32%) Data Lake
12 55 (1.17%) Big Data
12 55 (1.17%) MySQL
13 54 (1.15%) Oracle Reports
14 47 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 41 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
16 34 (0.72%) DynamoDB
17 31 (0.66%) Hadoop
18 29 (0.62%) Pentaho
19 27 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 466 (9.94%) JIRA
2 324 (6.91%) Git
3 244 (5.20%) Jenkins
4 156 (3.33%) GitLab
5 78 (1.66%) Selenium
6 50 (1.07%) JUnit
7 40 (0.85%) Postman
8 34 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 33 (0.70%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
11 24 (0.51%) Cypress.io
12 23 (0.49%) Maven
12 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
13 19 (0.41%) JMeter
14 18 (0.38%) Mockito
15 17 (0.36%) SonarQube
16 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
17 14 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
18 11 (0.23%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,537 (54.09%) Social Skills
2 1,770 (37.74%) Analytical Skills
3 1,062 (22.64%) Finance
4 465 (9.91%) Public Sector
5 369 (7.87%) Banking
6 186 (3.97%) Organisational Skills
7 162 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
8 158 (3.37%) Legal
9 139 (2.96%) Retail
10 124 (2.64%) Presentation Skills
11 121 (2.58%) Influencing Skills
12 112 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 92 (1.96%) Front Office
14 88 (1.88%) Marketing
15 76 (1.62%) Telecoms
16 65 (1.39%) Investment Banking
17 59 (1.26%) Manufacturing
18 58 (1.24%) Military
19 44 (0.94%) Law
20 40 (0.85%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 661 (14.09%) Analyst
2 616 (13.13%) Developer
3 394 (8.40%) Senior
4 328 (6.99%) Architect
5 316 (6.74%) Lead
6 266 (5.67%) Business Analyst
7 231 (4.93%) Consultant
8 196 (4.18%) Project Manager
9 194 (4.14%) Data Engineer
10 120 (2.56%) Support Engineer
11 107 (2.28%) IT Support
12 90 (1.92%) Java Developer
13 89 (1.90%) Data Analyst
14 87 (1.86%) Software Engineer
15 83 (1.77%) Python Developer
15 83 (1.77%) Senior Developer
16 81 (1.73%) Administrator
17 79 (1.68%) Solutions Architect
18 72 (1.54%) IT Analyst
19 71 (1.51%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 312 (6.65%) REST
2 161 (3.43%) SOAP
3 155 (3.30%) RESTful
4 151 (3.22%) Kafka
5 149 (3.18%) .NET
6 141 (3.01%) Spring
7 135 (2.88%) React
8 126 (2.69%) Node.js
9 104 (2.22%) AngularJS
9 104 (2.22%) CSS
10 100 (2.13%) HTML
11 99 (2.11%) Spring Boot
12 95 (2.03%) JSON
13 90 (1.92%) XML
14 87 (1.86%) LDAP
14 87 (1.86%) Middleware
15 70 (1.49%) OAuth
16 65 (1.39%) Web Services
17 63 (1.34%) Oracle Fusion
18 57 (1.22%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 231 (4.93%) Product Ownership
2 198 (4.22%) Cloud Native
3 187 (3.99%) Onboarding
4 153 (3.26%) Management Information System
5 132 (2.81%) Data Centre
6 125 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
7 105 (2.24%) Self-Motivation
8 100 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
8 100 (2.13%) Data Structures
9 95 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
10 86 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
11 76 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
12 75 (1.60%) Algorithms
12 75 (1.60%) Security Posture
13 70 (1.49%) Virtual Team
14 66 (1.41%) Mobile App
15 65 (1.39%) Hybrid Cloud
16 61 (1.30%) CMDB
17 50 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 49 (1.04%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 500 (10.66%) Windows
2 285 (6.08%) Linux
3 96 (2.05%) Windows 10
4 85 (1.81%) Unix
5 81 (1.73%) Windows Server
6 69 (1.47%) Android
7 63 (1.34%) Apple iOS
8 56 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 46 (0.98%) 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 (0.085%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,365 (29.10%) Agile
2 864 (18.42%) CI/CD
3 768 (16.38%) DevOps
4 731 (15.59%) Stakeholder Management
5 716 (15.27%) Continuous Improvement
6 553 (11.79%) Analytics
7 492 (10.49%) Migration
8 476 (10.15%) Decision-Making
9 456 (9.72%) AI
10 454 (9.68%) Project Management
11 418 (8.91%) Data Modelling
12 415 (8.85%) Test Automation
13 414 (8.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 363 (7.74%) Scrum
15 362 (7.72%) Validation
16 361 (7.70%) Business Intelligence
17 346 (7.38%) Change Management
17 346 (7.38%) ITIL
18 335 (7.14%) Customer Service
19 334 (7.12%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 929 (19.81%) Python
2 833 (17.76%) SQL
3 406 (8.66%) Java
4 319 (6.80%) PowerShell
5 252 (5.37%) JavaScript
6 182 (3.88%) C#
7 168 (3.58%) TypeScript
8 138 (2.94%) Bash
9 74 (1.58%) PL/SQL
10 55 (1.17%) C++
11 48 (1.02%) Go
12 45 (0.96%) Shell Script
13 37 (0.79%) T-SQL
14 35 (0.75%) Bicep
14 35 (0.75%) Perl
15 33 (0.70%) Scala
16 32 (0.68%) Apex Code
16 32 (0.68%) Ruby
17 31 (0.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 31 (0.66%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,071 (22.84%) Security Cleared
2 736 (15.69%) SC Cleared
3 608 (12.96%) Degree
4 227 (4.84%) Computer Science Degree
5 207 (4.41%) DV Cleared
6 113 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
7 104 (2.22%) PMP
8 95 (2.03%) PMI Certification
9 93 (1.98%) CISSP
10 91 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
11 89 (1.90%) Microsoft Certification
12 88 (1.88%) Master's Degree
13 65 (1.39%) Azure Certification
14 60 (1.28%) CISM
15 41 (0.87%) CCNA
15 41 (0.87%) CCNP
16 40 (0.85%) AWS Certification
17 35 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
18 31 (0.66%) A+ Certification
19 25 (0.53%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 308 (6.57%) QA
2 286 (6.10%) Data Quality
3 152 (3.24%) GDPR
4 90 (1.92%) Accessibility
4 90 (1.92%) NIST
5 83 (1.77%) PMO
6 81 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 57 (1.22%) SLA
8 36 (0.77%) GRC
9 34 (0.72%) PCI DSS
10 25 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
11 24 (0.51%) PSD2
12 21 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 19 (0.41%) WCAG
14 17 (0.36%) EU AI Act
14 17 (0.36%) ISO 20022
15 16 (0.34%) HIPAA
16 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
17 14 (0.30%) HL7
18 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 415 (8.85%) Docker
2 348 (7.42%) Active Directory
3 99 (2.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.83%) vSphere
5 31 (0.66%) 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 (0.23%) 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 (0.085%) HDFS
15 4 (0.085%) Snort
16 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 457 (9.74%) Kubernetes
2 270 (5.76%) Terraform
3 169 (3.60%) Ansible
4 116 (2.47%) Microsoft Intune
5 112 (2.39%) Grafana
6 89 (1.90%) Prometheus
7 76 (1.62%) SCCM
8 40 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
9 33 (0.70%) Argo
10 32 (0.68%) vCenter Server
11 31 (0.66%) FortiGate
11 31 (0.66%) Kibana
12 29 (0.62%) Puppet
13 28 (0.60%) Nessus
14 25 (0.53%) Control-M
15 24 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 23 (0.49%) IBM Guardium
17 14 (0.30%) vRealize
18 12 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
19 11 (0.23%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 876 (18.68%) Microsoft
2 320 (6.82%) Oracle
3 210 (4.48%) SAP
4 202 (4.31%) ServiceNow
5 186 (3.97%) VMware
6 160 (3.41%) Google
7 141 (3.01%) Databricks
8 134 (2.86%) Splunk
9 113 (2.41%) Cisco
10 102 (2.17%) Salesforce
11 81 (1.73%) Red Hat
12 71 (1.51%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.34%) BeyondTrust
14 57 (1.22%) Workday
15 55 (1.17%) Citrix
16 49 (1.04%) IBM
17 47 (1.00%) Informatica
18 45 (0.96%) Talend
19 44 (0.94%) Dell
19 44 (0.94%) F5