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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,720 3,955 4,054
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.49% 15.58% 10.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.46% 17.29% 12.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,966 2,391 2,530
10th Percentile £300 £258 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £509
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -1.67% -5.83%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £629
90th Percentile £708 £700 £730
UK median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 257 148 341
10th Percentile £13.91 £15.00 £12.13
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.83 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.00 £26.75 £21.01
Median % change year-on-year -28.97% +27.32% -41.64%
75th Percentile £41.87 £51.19 £48.40
90th Percentile £72.90 £80.75 £83.41
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -26.27% +39.10% -37.10%

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 30,532 22,872 32,975
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.28% 90.11% 87.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,556 14,324 21,897
10th Percentile £313 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £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 1,892 747 2,040
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.48 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £27.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.43% - -
75th Percentile £63.40 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £76.18 £72.00
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £33.00 £34.00
% change year-on-year -21.91% -2.94% -2.86%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -4 2,079 £513 -2.38% 817
North of England -2 757 £450 -5.26% 585
South East -2 668 £483 -3.50% 827
Midlands -1 533 £450 +5.88% 412
West Midlands 0 383 £482 +7.38% 253
North West -1 383 £420 -9.68% 327
Yorkshire -4 321 £481 -3.75% 192
South West -1 311 £525 +5.00% 264
East of England -3 241 £475 +5.56% 273
East Midlands -3 151 £402 +9.54% 158
North East -4 61 £450 -6.40% 77
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
1 203 (4.30%) Confluence
2 149 (3.16%) SharePoint
3 102 (2.16%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.36%) Apache Spark
5 62 (1.31%) SAS
6 54 (1.14%) Apache
7 38 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
8 26 (0.55%) CMS
9 24 (0.51%) Skype for Business
10 20 (0.42%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.28%) nginx
12 10 (0.21%) JBoss
13 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
15 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 287 (6.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 214 (4.53%) Microsoft Office
3 114 (2.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (1.46%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (1.46%) MS Visio
5 21 (0.44%) Chatbot
6 18 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.19%) Sketch
8 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
9 6 (0.13%) Trello
10 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.085%) Adobe Captivate
11 4 (0.085%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.064%) InVision
12 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.064%) Notion
12 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
13 2 (0.042%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.042%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 76 (1.61%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.38%) Aladdin
3 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
3 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
4 15 (0.32%) NetSuite
5 14 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.30%) Workday HCM
6 13 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
6 13 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
7 12 (0.25%) NEC Housing
7 12 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
7 12 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
8 11 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
9 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
10 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
10 9 (0.19%) SAP EWM
11 8 (0.17%) SAP WM
11 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,021 (21.63%) Azure
2 737 (15.61%) AWS
3 354 (7.50%) GCP
4 333 (7.06%) Power Platform
5 310 (6.57%) Microsoft 365
6 231 (4.89%) GitHub
7 216 (4.58%) Azure DevOps
8 152 (3.22%) Serverless
9 145 (3.07%) Entra ID
10 126 (2.67%) SaaS
11 111 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
12 83 (1.76%) OpenShift
13 82 (1.74%) Amazon S3
14 78 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
15 73 (1.55%) Azure Data Factory
16 72 (1.53%) Snowflake
17 66 (1.40%) PaaS
18 60 (1.27%) Dynamics 365
19 56 (1.19%) Power Automate
20 55 (1.17%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 179 (3.79%) DNS
2 176 (3.73%) Firewall
3 123 (2.61%) TCP/IP
4 104 (2.20%) Network Security
5 101 (2.14%) DHCP
6 100 (2.12%) VPN
7 79 (1.67%) WAN
8 64 (1.36%) LAN
9 48 (1.02%) VLAN
10 45 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
11 41 (0.87%) BGP
12 30 (0.64%) OSPF
13 28 (0.59%) VoIP
14 26 (0.55%) SAN
15 24 (0.51%) Skype
16 19 (0.40%) Wireless
17 18 (0.38%) Internet
17 18 (0.38%) SD-WAN
18 17 (0.36%) HTTP
18 17 (0.36%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 267 (5.66%) Power BI
2 157 (3.33%) SQL Server
3 134 (2.84%) Relational Database
4 131 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
5 127 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
6 100 (2.12%) MongoDB
7 92 (1.95%) NoSQL
8 74 (1.57%) Metadata
9 65 (1.38%) Oracle Database
9 65 (1.38%) Tableau
10 62 (1.31%) MySQL
11 55 (1.17%) Data Lake
12 50 (1.06%) Big Data
13 49 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
14 47 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 37 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
16 34 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
17 33 (0.70%) DynamoDB
18 32 (0.68%) Hadoop
18 32 (0.68%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 455 (9.64%) JIRA
2 315 (6.67%) Git
3 247 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 155 (3.28%) GitLab
5 78 (1.65%) Selenium
6 54 (1.14%) JUnit
7 41 (0.87%) Postman
8 34 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 24 (0.51%) Maven
10 24 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
11 22 (0.47%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.44%) Cypress.io
13 19 (0.40%) SonarQube
14 18 (0.38%) JMeter
15 17 (0.36%) SpecFlow
16 16 (0.34%) Mockito
17 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
18 13 (0.28%) IntelliJ
19 12 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,577 (54.60%) Social Skills
2 1,720 (36.44%) Analytical Skills
3 1,064 (22.54%) Finance
4 441 (9.34%) Public Sector
5 378 (8.01%) Banking
6 186 (3.94%) Organisational Skills
7 155 (3.28%) Documentation Skills
8 151 (3.20%) Legal
9 128 (2.71%) Presentation Skills
10 127 (2.69%) Retail
11 122 (2.58%) Influencing Skills
12 121 (2.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (2.08%) Front Office
14 87 (1.84%) Marketing
15 84 (1.78%) Telecoms
16 73 (1.55%) Investment Banking
17 64 (1.36%) Manufacturing
18 63 (1.33%) Military
19 45 (0.95%) Law
20 43 (0.91%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 693 (14.68%) Analyst
2 648 (13.73%) Developer
3 411 (8.71%) Senior
4 316 (6.69%) Architect
5 300 (6.36%) Lead
6 275 (5.83%) Business Analyst
7 238 (5.04%) Consultant
8 182 (3.86%) Data Engineer
9 181 (3.83%) Project Manager
10 139 (2.94%) Support Engineer
11 125 (2.65%) IT Support
12 99 (2.10%) Java Developer
13 97 (2.06%) Senior Developer
14 95 (2.01%) Software Engineer
15 90 (1.91%) Data Analyst
16 84 (1.78%) Python Developer
16 84 (1.78%) Support Analyst
17 82 (1.74%) Administrator
18 81 (1.72%) IT Analyst
18 81 (1.72%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 324 (6.86%) REST
2 171 (3.62%) SOAP
3 166 (3.52%) RESTful
4 155 (3.28%) .NET
4 155 (3.28%) Kafka
5 147 (3.11%) React
6 140 (2.97%) Spring
7 134 (2.84%) Node.js
8 121 (2.56%) HTML
9 113 (2.39%) CSS
10 107 (2.27%) AngularJS
11 100 (2.12%) Spring Boot
12 98 (2.08%) JSON
13 90 (1.91%) XML
14 84 (1.78%) Middleware
15 82 (1.74%) LDAP
16 65 (1.38%) OAuth
17 64 (1.36%) Oracle Fusion
18 61 (1.29%) Web Services
19 56 (1.19%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 227 (4.81%) Product Ownership
2 193 (4.09%) Cloud Native
3 173 (3.67%) Onboarding
4 160 (3.39%) Management Information System
5 126 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
6 112 (2.37%) Data Centre
7 110 (2.33%) Data Structures
8 101 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
9 95 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
10 94 (1.99%) Self-Motivation
11 79 (1.67%) Algorithms
12 76 (1.61%) Security Posture
13 73 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
14 67 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
15 66 (1.40%) Virtual Team
16 64 (1.36%) Hybrid Cloud
16 64 (1.36%) Mobile App
17 58 (1.23%) CMDB
18 54 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 49 (1.04%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 492 (10.42%) Windows
2 316 (6.69%) Linux
3 98 (2.08%) Windows 10
4 97 (2.06%) Unix
5 82 (1.74%) Windows Server
6 65 (1.38%) Android
7 62 (1.31%) Apple iOS
8 61 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 46 (0.97%) Mac OS
10 22 (0.47%) VMS
11 17 (0.36%) CentOS
12 15 (0.32%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.17%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.085%) Debian
16 4 (0.085%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.064%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,383 (29.30%) Agile
2 869 (18.41%) CI/CD
3 763 (16.17%) DevOps
4 707 (14.98%) Stakeholder Management
5 701 (14.85%) Continuous Improvement
6 539 (11.42%) Analytics
7 485 (10.28%) Decision-Making
8 478 (10.13%) Migration
9 426 (9.03%) Project Management
10 425 (9.00%) AI
11 411 (8.71%) Test Automation
12 402 (8.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 396 (8.39%) Data Modelling
14 367 (7.78%) Scrum
15 353 (7.48%) Business Intelligence
16 350 (7.42%) Validation
17 344 (7.29%) ITIL
18 343 (7.27%) Computer Science
19 340 (7.20%) Containerisation
20 336 (7.12%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 938 (19.87%) Python
2 828 (17.54%) SQL
3 429 (9.09%) Java
4 310 (6.57%) PowerShell
5 273 (5.78%) JavaScript
6 199 (4.22%) C#
7 175 (3.71%) TypeScript
8 137 (2.90%) Bash
9 70 (1.48%) PL/SQL
10 58 (1.23%) C++
11 53 (1.12%) Go
12 49 (1.04%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.83%) Perl
14 38 (0.81%) Scala
15 35 (0.74%) T-SQL
15 35 (0.74%) VBA
16 31 (0.66%) Ruby
17 30 (0.64%) Apex Code
17 30 (0.64%) Bicep
17 30 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,046 (22.16%) Security Cleared
2 734 (15.55%) SC Cleared
3 638 (13.52%) Degree
4 240 (5.08%) Computer Science Degree
5 197 (4.17%) DV Cleared
6 111 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
7 100 (2.12%) Microsoft Certification
8 93 (1.97%) PMP
9 90 (1.91%) Master's Degree
10 89 (1.89%) PMI Certification
11 88 (1.86%) CISSP
12 75 (1.59%) Azure Certification
13 72 (1.53%) Cisco Certification
14 56 (1.19%) CISM
15 46 (0.97%) AWS Certification
16 38 (0.81%) A+ Certification
16 38 (0.81%) CCNP
17 34 (0.72%) CCNA
18 30 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
18 30 (0.64%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 303 (6.42%) QA
2 282 (5.97%) Data Quality
3 151 (3.20%) GDPR
4 91 (1.93%) Accessibility
5 83 (1.76%) NIST
6 80 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 78 (1.65%) PMO
8 49 (1.04%) SLA
9 38 (0.81%) PCI DSS
10 30 (0.64%) GRC
11 24 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.49%) PSD2
13 21 (0.44%) WCAG
14 20 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
15 18 (0.38%) ISO 20022
16 16 (0.34%) EU AI Act
17 15 (0.32%) HIPAA
17 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
18 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 12 (0.25%) SEPA
System Software
1 431 (9.13%) Docker
2 352 (7.46%) Active Directory
3 104 (2.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.83%) Hyper-V
5 34 (0.72%) vSphere
6 26 (0.55%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
9 14 (0.30%) Firmware
10 11 (0.23%) RACF
11 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.19%) ACF2
13 7 (0.15%) Squid
14 6 (0.13%) HDFS
14 6 (0.13%) vCloud
14 6 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
15 4 (0.085%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.085%) Snort
16 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 470 (9.96%) Kubernetes
2 263 (5.57%) Terraform
3 171 (3.62%) Ansible
4 113 (2.39%) Grafana
5 104 (2.20%) Microsoft Intune
6 89 (1.89%) Prometheus
7 86 (1.82%) SCCM
8 39 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
9 35 (0.74%) Kibana
9 35 (0.74%) Puppet
10 31 (0.66%) Nessus
11 30 (0.64%) Argo
12 27 (0.57%) FortiGate
13 25 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 24 (0.51%) vCenter Server
15 23 (0.49%) Control-M
16 22 (0.47%) IBM Guardium
17 18 (0.38%) Red Hat Satellite
18 12 (0.25%) SCOM
18 12 (0.25%) vRealize
Vendors
1 901 (19.09%) Microsoft
2 321 (6.80%) Oracle
3 213 (4.51%) SAP
4 206 (4.36%) ServiceNow
5 193 (4.09%) VMware
6 161 (3.41%) Google
7 145 (3.07%) Splunk
8 143 (3.03%) Databricks
9 111 (2.35%) Cisco
10 109 (2.31%) Salesforce
11 85 (1.80%) Red Hat
12 72 (1.53%) CyberArk
13 61 (1.29%) BeyondTrust
14 52 (1.10%) Workday
15 51 (1.08%) Citrix
16 49 (1.04%) IBM
17 47 (1.00%) Talend
18 44 (0.93%) Informatica
19 41 (0.87%) Adobe
19 41 (0.87%) F5