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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 12
Rank change year-on-year -1 +6 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,506 4,001 3,774
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.15% 14.84% 10.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.03% 16.65% 11.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,841 2,326 2,392
10th Percentile £277 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £604 £612 £625
90th Percentile £715 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.45% - -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 236 156 247
10th Percentile £13.63 £15.00 £13.29
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.50 £21.46 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.79% -28.47% -3.69%
75th Percentile £33.17 £38.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £63.88 £67.09 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £18.87 £23.90 £27.50
% change year-on-year -21.05% -13.09% -8.33%

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 28,110 24,036 31,774
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.29% 89.17% 87.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,964 14,778 21,397
10th Percentile £304 £309 £305
25th Percentile £409 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £649 £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 1,739 771 1,493
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £14.18
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.63 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -17.65% +21.43%
75th Percentile £57.50 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.38 £75.00 £76.91
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +16.41%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +1 2,059 £525 -0.94% 819
North of England -1 705 £450 -5.26% 761
South East -2 626 £475 -5.00% 1,250
Midlands -1 497 £450 +5.88% 535
North West -2 357 £438 -5.41% 356
West Midlands -1 350 £495 +13.79% 274
Yorkshire -4 295 £487 -2.60% 285
South West 0 286 £525 +12.90% 467
East of England -4 203 £452 +6.35% 494
East Midlands -5 148 £402 +12.92% 256
North East -1 60 £450 -18.18% 132
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
1 183 (4.06%) Confluence
2 155 (3.44%) SharePoint
3 108 (2.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 62 (1.38%) SAS
5 52 (1.15%) Apache Spark
6 50 (1.11%) Apache
7 36 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.64%) Skype for Business
9 22 (0.49%) CMS
10 15 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.24%) JBoss
12 10 (0.22%) Anypoint
12 10 (0.22%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.18%) HCL Notes
14 7 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 7 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
14 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
15 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.11%) Appian
Applications
1 299 (6.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 202 (4.48%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (2.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 67 (1.49%) MS Visio
5 65 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
6 16 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 7 (0.16%) Adobe XD
8 7 (0.16%) Sketch
9 6 (0.13%) ProjectWise
9 6 (0.13%) Trello
10 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
11 4 (0.089%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.067%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.067%) Notion
13 2 (0.044%) InVision
13 2 (0.044%) Siemens NX
13 2 (0.044%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 88 (1.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.44%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.42%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.38%) SAP EWM
6 15 (0.33%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
8 13 (0.29%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
8 13 (0.29%) SAP WM
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.24%) SAP HR
10 11 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
12 9 (0.20%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 974 (21.62%) Azure
2 709 (15.73%) AWS
3 367 (8.14%) GCP
4 310 (6.88%) Power Platform
5 304 (6.75%) Microsoft 365
6 219 (4.86%) GitHub
7 195 (4.33%) Azure DevOps
8 146 (3.24%) Serverless
9 126 (2.80%) Entra ID
10 123 (2.73%) SaaS
11 110 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
12 70 (1.55%) AWS Lambda
12 70 (1.55%) Snowflake
13 69 (1.53%) Power Automate
14 68 (1.51%) Amazon S3
14 68 (1.51%) Dynamics 365
14 68 (1.51%) PaaS
15 63 (1.40%) OpenShift
16 62 (1.38%) PowerApps
17 59 (1.31%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 151 (3.35%) Firewall
2 139 (3.08%) DNS
3 102 (2.26%) TCP/IP
4 98 (2.17%) Network Security
5 94 (2.09%) VPN
6 78 (1.73%) DHCP
7 65 (1.44%) WAN
8 49 (1.09%) LAN
9 41 (0.91%) VLAN
10 32 (0.71%) BGP
10 32 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
11 29 (0.64%) Skype
12 28 (0.62%) VoIP
13 22 (0.49%) Wireless
14 21 (0.47%) SSL
14 21 (0.47%) Wireshark
15 18 (0.40%) HTTP
15 18 (0.40%) OSPF
16 17 (0.38%) SD-WAN
17 16 (0.36%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 240 (5.33%) Power BI
2 142 (3.15%) SQL Server
3 141 (3.13%) Relational Database
4 119 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
5 118 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
6 92 (2.04%) NoSQL
7 84 (1.86%) MongoDB
8 72 (1.60%) Oracle Database
9 69 (1.53%) Metadata
10 64 (1.42%) Tableau
11 63 (1.40%) MySQL
12 46 (1.02%) Big Data
12 46 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
13 43 (0.95%) DynamoDB
14 37 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
14 37 (0.82%) Data Lake
15 36 (0.80%) Pentaho
16 30 (0.67%) RDBMS
17 29 (0.64%) Hadoop
17 29 (0.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 423 (9.39%) JIRA
2 322 (7.15%) Git
3 231 (5.13%) Jenkins
4 147 (3.26%) GitLab
5 69 (1.53%) Selenium
6 56 (1.24%) JUnit
7 32 (0.71%) Postman
8 31 (0.69%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.64%) Maven
10 27 (0.60%) Bitbucket
11 20 (0.44%) SonarQube
12 18 (0.40%) Cypress.io
12 18 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
13 16 (0.36%) JMeter
13 16 (0.36%) SpecFlow
14 15 (0.33%) CircleCI
15 13 (0.29%) Gradle
15 13 (0.29%) REST Assured
16 12 (0.27%) Mockito
17 11 (0.24%) Artifactory
General
1 2,491 (55.28%) Social Skills
2 1,640 (36.40%) Analytical Skills
3 1,063 (23.59%) Finance
4 416 (9.23%) Public Sector
5 398 (8.83%) Banking
6 174 (3.86%) Organisational Skills
7 142 (3.15%) Legal
8 132 (2.93%) Influencing Skills
9 120 (2.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 117 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
11 112 (2.49%) Presentation Skills
12 103 (2.29%) Retail
13 97 (2.15%) Marketing
13 97 (2.15%) Telecoms
14 96 (2.13%) Front Office
15 80 (1.78%) Investment Banking
16 74 (1.64%) Manufacturing
17 53 (1.18%) Military
18 40 (0.89%) Financial Institution
19 39 (0.87%) Law
Job Titles
1 665 (14.76%) Developer
2 661 (14.67%) Analyst
3 393 (8.72%) Senior
4 286 (6.35%) Architect
5 269 (5.97%) Lead
6 262 (5.81%) Business Analyst
7 248 (5.50%) Consultant
8 180 (3.99%) Project Manager
9 146 (3.24%) Support Engineer
10 134 (2.97%) Data Engineer
11 122 (2.71%) IT Support
12 111 (2.46%) Senior Developer
13 101 (2.24%) Java Developer
14 93 (2.06%) Support Analyst
15 85 (1.89%) Software Engineer
16 79 (1.75%) Data Analyst
17 77 (1.71%) Administrator
18 76 (1.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 74 (1.64%) IT Analyst
20 72 (1.60%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 303 (6.72%) REST
2 177 (3.93%) RESTful
3 164 (3.64%) SOAP
4 160 (3.55%) .NET
5 136 (3.02%) Kafka
6 135 (3.00%) React
7 133 (2.95%) Node.js
8 129 (2.86%) Spring
9 119 (2.64%) HTML
10 101 (2.24%) AngularJS
11 99 (2.20%) CSS
12 94 (2.09%) Spring Boot
13 81 (1.80%) JSON
14 79 (1.75%) XML
15 73 (1.62%) Middleware
16 66 (1.46%) LDAP
16 66 (1.46%) Oracle Fusion
17 64 (1.42%) OAuth
18 57 (1.26%) Web Services
19 55 (1.22%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 227 (5.04%) Product Ownership
2 191 (4.24%) Cloud Native
3 183 (4.06%) Management Information System
4 168 (3.73%) Onboarding
5 128 (2.84%) Analytical Mindset
6 110 (2.44%) Enterprise Software
7 104 (2.31%) Data Structures
8 97 (2.15%) Self-Motivation
9 93 (2.06%) Data Centre
10 91 (2.02%) Security Posture
11 87 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
12 74 (1.64%) Algorithms
13 66 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
14 64 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
15 59 (1.31%) CMDB
15 59 (1.31%) Mobile App
15 59 (1.31%) Virtual Team
16 53 (1.18%) Hybrid Cloud
17 52 (1.15%) NHS
18 50 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 450 (9.99%) Windows
2 317 (7.04%) Linux
3 104 (2.31%) Windows 10
4 92 (2.04%) Unix
5 91 (2.02%) Windows Server
6 55 (1.22%) Apple iOS
7 51 (1.13%) Android
8 50 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 41 (0.91%) Mac OS
10 24 (0.53%) VMS
11 18 (0.40%) CentOS
12 12 (0.27%) Ubuntu
13 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
15 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
16 4 (0.089%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.089%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.067%) Debian
17 3 (0.067%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,383 (30.69%) Agile
2 817 (18.13%) CI/CD
3 721 (16.00%) DevOps
4 663 (14.71%) Stakeholder Management
5 646 (14.34%) Continuous Improvement
6 492 (10.92%) Analytics
7 436 (9.68%) Project Management
8 429 (9.52%) Decision-Making
9 423 (9.39%) Migration
10 403 (8.94%) Test Automation
11 399 (8.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 379 (8.41%) Scrum
13 355 (7.88%) AI
14 352 (7.81%) Data Modelling
15 329 (7.30%) Computer Science
16 328 (7.28%) Business Intelligence
17 320 (7.10%) ITIL
18 319 (7.08%) Containerisation
19 313 (6.95%) Mentoring
20 311 (6.90%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 909 (20.17%) Python
2 777 (17.24%) SQL
3 428 (9.50%) Java
4 298 (6.61%) PowerShell
5 273 (6.06%) JavaScript
6 194 (4.31%) C#
7 157 (3.48%) TypeScript
8 133 (2.95%) Bash
9 72 (1.60%) Go
10 64 (1.42%) PL/SQL
11 62 (1.38%) Shell Script
12 52 (1.15%) C++
13 39 (0.87%) Perl
13 39 (0.87%) VBA
14 37 (0.82%) Scala
15 32 (0.71%) R
16 31 (0.69%) Ruby
17 30 (0.67%) T-SQL
18 27 (0.60%) PHP
19 26 (0.58%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 910 (20.20%) Security Cleared
2 666 (14.78%) SC Cleared
3 630 (13.98%) Degree
4 242 (5.37%) Computer Science Degree
5 140 (3.11%) DV Cleared
6 94 (2.09%) PMI Certification
7 91 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
8 90 (2.00%) CISSP
8 90 (2.00%) PMP
9 82 (1.82%) Master's Degree
10 78 (1.73%) Azure Certification
11 77 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
12 59 (1.31%) Cisco Certification
13 53 (1.18%) AWS Certification
14 46 (1.02%) CISM
15 36 (0.80%) A+ Certification
16 35 (0.78%) CCNP
16 35 (0.78%) MCP
17 28 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
18 25 (0.55%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 302 (6.70%) QA
2 252 (5.59%) Data Quality
3 160 (3.55%) GDPR
4 91 (2.02%) Accessibility
5 81 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 80 (1.78%) NIST
7 71 (1.58%) PMO
8 42 (0.93%) SLA
9 40 (0.89%) PCI DSS
10 29 (0.64%) GRC
11 28 (0.62%) PSD2
12 22 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.44%) ISO 20022
13 20 (0.44%) WCAG
14 16 (0.36%) EU AI Act
15 15 (0.33%) SEPA
16 14 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
16 14 (0.31%) HIPAA
17 13 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 13 (0.29%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 430 (9.54%) Docker
2 328 (7.28%) Active Directory
3 95 (2.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 43 (0.95%) Hyper-V
5 24 (0.53%) vSphere
6 20 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
7 17 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
8 15 (0.33%) Firmware
8 15 (0.33%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.24%) HDFS
10 11 (0.24%) RACF
11 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.20%) ACF2
13 5 (0.11%) KVM
14 4 (0.089%) Lustre
14 4 (0.089%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 4 (0.089%) vCloud
14 4 (0.089%) VMware ESXi
15 3 (0.067%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 448 (9.94%) Kubernetes
2 245 (5.44%) Terraform
3 179 (3.97%) Ansible
4 94 (2.09%) Grafana
5 86 (1.91%) Microsoft Intune
6 81 (1.80%) SCCM
7 64 (1.42%) Prometheus
8 39 (0.87%) Puppet
9 30 (0.67%) Kibana
10 29 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (0.51%) Argo
12 21 (0.47%) Nessus
13 18 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 16 (0.36%) Red Hat Satellite
14 16 (0.36%) SCOM
14 16 (0.36%) vCenter Server
15 15 (0.33%) HP ALM
15 15 (0.33%) vRealize
16 12 (0.27%) Data Guard
16 12 (0.27%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 904 (20.06%) Microsoft
2 325 (7.21%) Oracle
3 221 (4.90%) SAP
4 194 (4.31%) ServiceNow
5 174 (3.86%) VMware
6 156 (3.46%) Google
7 125 (2.77%) Databricks
7 125 (2.77%) Splunk
8 119 (2.64%) Salesforce
9 101 (2.24%) Cisco
10 80 (1.78%) CyberArk
11 65 (1.44%) BeyondTrust
12 60 (1.33%) Red Hat
13 52 (1.15%) IBM
14 47 (1.04%) Workday
15 45 (1.00%) Palo Alto
16 44 (0.98%) Citrix
16 44 (0.98%) Talend
17 42 (0.93%) MuleSoft
18 40 (0.89%) HP