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

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,597 4,005 4,010
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.01% 15.14% 10.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.94% 16.93% 12.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,903 2,331 2,519
10th Percentile £298 £258 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -5.09%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -7.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 236 153 310
10th Percentile £13.85 £15.13 £13.05
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.00 £23.56
Median % change year-on-year -15.91% -6.60% -23.88%
75th Percentile £35.10 £43.00 £59.98
90th Percentile £69.00 £67.74 £84.00
UK median hourly rate £18.87 £24.43 £23.00
% change year-on-year -22.76% +6.22% -23.33%

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 28,832 23,662 32,842
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.89% 89.43% 87.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,449 14,467 21,997
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.53% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £642 £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 1,786 760 1,829
10th Percentile £15.05 £15.62 £13.99
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.03% -6.85% +4.29%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.98
% change year-on-year -22.62% -9.67% +12.44%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -2 2,098 £521 -1.97% 856
North of England -3 714 £450 -5.26% 726
South East -2 637 £475 -5.00% 1,218
Midlands -2 508 £455 +7.06% 580
North West -3 371 £430 -7.03% 364
West Midlands 0 359 £492 +13.10% 314
South West -3 293 £525 +10.53% 478
Yorkshire -5 288 £487 -2.60% 267
East of England -4 209 £475 +4.63% 458
East Midlands -3 150 £402 +7.92% 262
North East -4 62 £450 -15.29% 106
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 (4.20%) Confluence
2 152 (3.31%) SharePoint
3 111 (2.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.37%) SAS
5 57 (1.24%) Apache Spark
6 54 (1.17%) Apache
7 36 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.63%) Skype for Business
9 26 (0.57%) CMS
10 15 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.24%) JBoss
12 9 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.20%) nginx
13 8 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.17%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
15 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
15 6 (0.13%) OpenStack
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 293 (6.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 201 (4.37%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (2.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (1.50%) MS Visio
5 64 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
6 18 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.20%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.11%) Trello
12 4 (0.087%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.087%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.087%) ProjectWise
13 3 (0.065%) InVision
13 3 (0.065%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.065%) Notion
13 3 (0.065%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.044%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 83 (1.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.50%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.41%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.37%) SAP EWM
6 15 (0.33%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.33%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
7 14 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
7 14 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 13 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
8 13 (0.28%) SAP WM
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.24%) SAP HR
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
12 9 (0.20%) NEC Housing
12 9 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
12 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,016 (22.10%) Azure
2 730 (15.88%) AWS
3 379 (8.24%) GCP
4 323 (7.03%) Power Platform
5 312 (6.79%) Microsoft 365
6 223 (4.85%) GitHub
7 206 (4.48%) Azure DevOps
8 153 (3.33%) Serverless
9 134 (2.91%) Entra ID
10 128 (2.78%) SaaS
11 109 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
12 78 (1.70%) Amazon S3
13 77 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
14 76 (1.65%) Snowflake
15 71 (1.54%) PaaS
16 68 (1.48%) Power Automate
17 67 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
18 65 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
19 63 (1.37%) OpenShift
20 58 (1.26%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 160 (3.48%) Firewall
2 150 (3.26%) DNS
3 106 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 102 (2.22%) Network Security
5 96 (2.09%) VPN
6 84 (1.83%) DHCP
7 70 (1.52%) WAN
8 52 (1.13%) LAN
9 38 (0.83%) VLAN
10 32 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
11 31 (0.67%) BGP
12 29 (0.63%) Skype
13 28 (0.61%) VoIP
14 21 (0.46%) Wireshark
15 20 (0.44%) Internet
15 20 (0.44%) Wireless
16 19 (0.41%) SSL
17 18 (0.39%) HTTP
17 18 (0.39%) OSPF
17 18 (0.39%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 251 (5.46%) Power BI
2 145 (3.15%) SQL Server
3 143 (3.11%) Relational Database
4 125 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
5 123 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
6 95 (2.07%) NoSQL
7 83 (1.81%) MongoDB
8 68 (1.48%) Metadata
9 67 (1.46%) Oracle Database
10 66 (1.44%) Tableau
11 65 (1.41%) MySQL
12 48 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
13 45 (0.98%) Big Data
14 42 (0.91%) Data Lake
15 40 (0.87%) DynamoDB
16 39 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
17 37 (0.80%) Pentaho
18 34 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
19 32 (0.70%) RDBMS
20 31 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 435 (9.46%) JIRA
2 320 (6.96%) Git
3 241 (5.24%) Jenkins
4 152 (3.31%) GitLab
5 72 (1.57%) Selenium
6 58 (1.26%) JUnit
7 36 (0.78%) Postman
8 32 (0.70%) Cucumber
9 31 (0.67%) Bitbucket
10 30 (0.65%) Maven
11 26 (0.57%) SonarQube
12 23 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
13 19 (0.41%) Cypress.io
14 17 (0.37%) JMeter
14 17 (0.37%) REST Assured
14 17 (0.37%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.33%) CircleCI
16 14 (0.30%) Mockito
17 13 (0.28%) Artifactory
17 13 (0.28%) Gradle
General
1 2,541 (55.28%) Social Skills
2 1,668 (36.28%) Analytical Skills
3 1,061 (23.08%) Finance
4 428 (9.31%) Public Sector
5 388 (8.44%) Banking
6 181 (3.94%) Organisational Skills
7 142 (3.09%) Legal
8 135 (2.94%) Documentation Skills
9 124 (2.70%) Influencing Skills
10 118 (2.57%) Presentation Skills
11 115 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 106 (2.31%) Retail
13 98 (2.13%) Telecoms
14 95 (2.07%) Front Office
15 94 (2.04%) Marketing
16 77 (1.68%) Investment Banking
17 73 (1.59%) Manufacturing
18 54 (1.17%) Military
19 40 (0.87%) Financial Institution
19 40 (0.87%) Law
Job Titles
1 678 (14.75%) Developer
2 667 (14.51%) Analyst
3 402 (8.74%) Senior
4 293 (6.37%) Architect
5 281 (6.11%) Lead
6 267 (5.81%) Business Analyst
7 251 (5.46%) Consultant
8 179 (3.89%) Project Manager
9 147 (3.20%) Support Engineer
10 144 (3.13%) Data Engineer
11 122 (2.65%) IT Support
12 110 (2.39%) Senior Developer
13 99 (2.15%) Java Developer
14 89 (1.94%) Support Analyst
15 86 (1.87%) Software Engineer
16 81 (1.76%) Data Analyst
17 80 (1.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 78 (1.70%) IT Analyst
19 77 (1.68%) Python Developer
20 75 (1.63%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 318 (6.92%) REST
2 184 (4.00%) RESTful
3 170 (3.70%) SOAP
4 162 (3.52%) .NET
5 145 (3.15%) React
6 139 (3.02%) Spring
7 138 (3.00%) Kafka
7 138 (3.00%) Node.js
8 122 (2.65%) HTML
9 107 (2.33%) AngularJS
10 104 (2.26%) Spring Boot
11 102 (2.22%) CSS
12 80 (1.74%) Middleware
12 80 (1.74%) XML
13 79 (1.72%) JSON
13 79 (1.72%) LDAP
14 69 (1.50%) Oracle Fusion
15 64 (1.39%) OAuth
16 59 (1.28%) Web Services
17 53 (1.15%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 236 (5.13%) Product Ownership
2 192 (4.18%) Cloud Native
3 182 (3.96%) Management Information System
4 167 (3.63%) Onboarding
5 127 (2.76%) Analytical Mindset
6 106 (2.31%) Data Structures
6 106 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
7 99 (2.15%) Data Centre
8 93 (2.02%) Self-Motivation
9 91 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
9 91 (1.98%) Security Posture
10 72 (1.57%) Algorithms
10 72 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
11 69 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
12 65 (1.41%) Virtual Team
13 63 (1.37%) Mobile App
14 61 (1.33%) CMDB
15 52 (1.13%) Hybrid Cloud
16 50 (1.09%) NHS
17 49 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 461 (10.03%) Windows
2 315 (6.85%) Linux
3 108 (2.35%) Windows 10
4 96 (2.09%) Unix
5 88 (1.91%) Windows Server
6 53 (1.15%) Apple iOS
7 51 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 49 (1.07%) Android
9 40 (0.87%) Mac OS
10 23 (0.50%) VMS
11 18 (0.39%) CentOS
12 13 (0.28%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
15 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.087%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.065%) Debian
17 3 (0.065%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,405 (30.56%) Agile
2 852 (18.53%) CI/CD
3 747 (16.25%) DevOps
4 688 (14.97%) Stakeholder Management
5 662 (14.40%) Continuous Improvement
6 504 (10.96%) Analytics
7 443 (9.64%) Migration
8 438 (9.53%) Decision-Making
9 432 (9.40%) Project Management
10 405 (8.81%) Test Automation
11 402 (8.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 390 (8.48%) Scrum
13 387 (8.42%) AI
14 364 (7.92%) Data Modelling
15 341 (7.42%) Computer Science
16 338 (7.35%) Business Intelligence
17 337 (7.33%) ITIL
18 329 (7.16%) Containerisation
19 325 (7.07%) Validation
20 324 (7.05%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 935 (20.34%) Python
2 810 (17.62%) SQL
3 439 (9.55%) Java
4 311 (6.77%) PowerShell
5 272 (5.92%) JavaScript
6 198 (4.31%) C#
7 172 (3.74%) TypeScript
8 130 (2.83%) Bash
9 70 (1.52%) Go
10 66 (1.44%) PL/SQL
11 58 (1.26%) Shell Script
12 56 (1.22%) C++
13 41 (0.89%) Scala
14 40 (0.87%) Perl
14 40 (0.87%) VBA
15 32 (0.70%) Ruby
16 30 (0.65%) R
16 30 (0.65%) T-SQL
17 29 (0.63%) Apex Code
18 26 (0.57%) PHP
Qualifications
1 968 (21.06%) Security Cleared
2 698 (15.18%) SC Cleared
3 637 (13.86%) Degree
4 249 (5.42%) Computer Science Degree
5 162 (3.52%) DV Cleared
6 95 (2.07%) CISSP
7 93 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
8 91 (1.98%) PMI Certification
9 90 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
10 89 (1.94%) PMP
11 86 (1.87%) Master's Degree
12 78 (1.70%) Azure Certification
13 61 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
14 52 (1.13%) AWS Certification
14 52 (1.13%) CISM
15 41 (0.89%) A+ Certification
16 37 (0.80%) CCNP
17 32 (0.70%) MCP
18 31 (0.67%) CCNA
19 30 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 302 (6.57%) QA
2 260 (5.66%) Data Quality
3 162 (3.52%) GDPR
4 88 (1.91%) Accessibility
5 82 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 81 (1.76%) NIST
7 71 (1.54%) PMO
8 43 (0.94%) SLA
9 41 (0.89%) PCI DSS
10 32 (0.70%) GRC
11 27 (0.59%) PSD2
12 22 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.44%) ISO 20022
13 20 (0.44%) WCAG
14 17 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
15 16 (0.35%) EU AI Act
15 16 (0.35%) HIPAA
16 15 (0.33%) SEPA
17 14 (0.30%) ISO 8583
18 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 440 (9.57%) Docker
2 346 (7.53%) Active Directory
3 102 (2.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.89%) Hyper-V
5 27 (0.59%) vSphere
6 21 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
7 18 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.39%) VMware NSX
8 16 (0.35%) Firmware
9 11 (0.24%) RACF
10 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.20%) ACF2
11 9 (0.20%) HDFS
12 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.13%) Squid
13 5 (0.11%) KVM
14 4 (0.087%) vCloud
14 4 (0.087%) VMware ESXi
15 3 (0.065%) ISA Server
15 3 (0.065%) NFS
Systems Management
1 460 (10.01%) Kubernetes
2 252 (5.48%) Terraform
3 174 (3.79%) Ansible
4 99 (2.15%) Grafana
5 93 (2.02%) Microsoft Intune
6 84 (1.83%) SCCM
7 80 (1.74%) Prometheus
8 40 (0.87%) Puppet
9 36 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
10 34 (0.74%) Kibana
11 25 (0.54%) Nessus
12 23 (0.50%) Argo
13 22 (0.48%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 16 (0.35%) Control-M
14 16 (0.35%) Red Hat Satellite
14 16 (0.35%) SCOM
14 16 (0.35%) vCenter Server
15 15 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
15 15 (0.33%) vRealize
16 13 (0.28%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 909 (19.77%) Microsoft
2 331 (7.20%) Oracle
3 216 (4.70%) SAP
4 195 (4.24%) ServiceNow
5 178 (3.87%) VMware
6 160 (3.48%) Google
7 132 (2.87%) Databricks
8 130 (2.83%) Splunk
9 120 (2.61%) Salesforce
10 100 (2.18%) Cisco
11 81 (1.76%) CyberArk
12 68 (1.48%) BeyondTrust
13 67 (1.46%) Red Hat
14 51 (1.11%) IBM
15 45 (0.98%) Palo Alto
15 45 (0.98%) Talend
16 44 (0.96%) Workday
17 40 (0.87%) Citrix
18 39 (0.85%) MuleSoft
19 38 (0.83%) HP