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

6 months to
26 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 4,675 4,030 4,097
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.45% 16.61% 10.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.43% 18.28% 12.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,908 2,566 2,532
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £502
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -0.40% -6.69%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £716 £705 £738
UK median daily rate £481 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.78% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 182 360
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.84 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.74 £16.95 £14.12
Median hourly rate £20.71 £23.99 £18.25
Median % change year-on-year -13.67% +31.45% -58.39%
75th Percentile £47.50 £48.56 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £77.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £20.71 £25.00 £17.72
% change year-on-year -17.16% +41.12% -55.71%

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 32,394 22,046 32,724
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.25% 90.85% 86.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,755 14,514 21,646
10th Percentile £313 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £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 1,983 845 2,157
10th Percentile £15.34 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.30 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.55 £32.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.38% -1.52% -12.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £76.20 £76.25 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £34.50 £32.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +7.81% -1.54% -9.72%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 2,041 £510 -2.86% 986
North of England -5 770 £450 -5.26% 662
South East -5 672 £495 -1.00% 802
Midlands -3 515 £450 +0.56% 478
North West -4 385 £425 -10.53% 365
West Midlands -2 372 £475 +3.26% 278
Yorkshire -4 338 £474 -5.20% 222
South West -2 315 £525 - 308
East of England -3 227 £450 - 288
East Midlands -1 144 £413 +7.49% 199
North East -3 56 £450 - 92
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
1 208 (4.45%) Confluence
2 147 (3.14%) SharePoint
3 102 (2.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 62 (1.33%) Apache Spark
5 55 (1.18%) SAS
6 51 (1.09%) Apache
7 32 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
8 28 (0.60%) CMS
9 16 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.30%) nginx
11 12 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
12 11 (0.24%) Skype for Business
13 9 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.17%) Camunda
14 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.13%) JBoss
15 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
16 5 (0.11%) CICS
16 5 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 291 (6.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 209 (4.47%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (2.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 76 (1.63%) Microsoft Project
5 71 (1.52%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.17%) Trello
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.086%) Maya
12 4 (0.086%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.064%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.064%) InVision
13 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.064%) Notion
13 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.043%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 78 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 22 (0.47%) Aladdin
3 21 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
4 18 (0.39%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.34%) Workday HCM
6 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
9 12 (0.26%) NEC Housing
9 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.17%) SAP MDG
13 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
14 7 (0.15%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 1,001 (21.41%) Azure
2 729 (15.59%) AWS
3 335 (7.17%) Power Platform
4 333 (7.12%) GCP
5 302 (6.46%) Microsoft 365
6 229 (4.90%) Azure DevOps
7 222 (4.75%) GitHub
8 158 (3.38%) Serverless
9 146 (3.12%) Entra ID
10 121 (2.59%) SaaS
11 112 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
12 93 (1.99%) AWS Lambda
13 89 (1.90%) Amazon S3
14 83 (1.78%) OpenShift
15 72 (1.54%) Azure Data Factory
16 68 (1.45%) Snowflake
17 56 (1.20%) PaaS
18 55 (1.18%) Power Automate
19 54 (1.16%) Google Workspace
20 52 (1.11%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 178 (3.81%) Firewall
2 174 (3.72%) DNS
3 115 (2.46%) TCP/IP
4 107 (2.29%) Network Security
5 97 (2.07%) VPN
6 93 (1.99%) WAN
7 89 (1.90%) DHCP
8 74 (1.58%) LAN
9 58 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
10 46 (0.98%) BGP
11 42 (0.90%) VLAN
12 39 (0.83%) SAN
13 34 (0.73%) OSPF
14 29 (0.62%) VoIP
15 26 (0.56%) SD-WAN
16 25 (0.53%) Wireless
17 20 (0.43%) Internet
17 20 (0.43%) MPLS
18 18 (0.39%) BIG-IP
19 17 (0.36%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 267 (5.71%) Power BI
2 169 (3.61%) SQL Server
3 140 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
4 129 (2.76%) Relational Database
5 121 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
6 90 (1.93%) MongoDB
7 86 (1.84%) Metadata
8 85 (1.82%) NoSQL
9 75 (1.60%) Tableau
10 67 (1.43%) Data Lake
11 59 (1.26%) Oracle Database
12 53 (1.13%) Big Data
13 52 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
14 51 (1.09%) MySQL
15 47 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 37 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
17 32 (0.68%) DynamoDB
18 29 (0.62%) Pentaho
19 28 (0.60%) Hadoop
20 27 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 475 (10.16%) JIRA
2 317 (6.78%) Git
3 244 (5.22%) Jenkins
4 155 (3.32%) GitLab
5 77 (1.65%) Selenium
6 49 (1.05%) JUnit
7 36 (0.77%) Postman
8 33 (0.71%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 24 (0.51%) Cypress.io
11 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
12 22 (0.47%) Maven
13 17 (0.36%) Mockito
14 16 (0.34%) JMeter
15 15 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
15 15 (0.32%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
17 12 (0.26%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,524 (53.99%) Social Skills
2 1,766 (37.78%) Analytical Skills
3 1,063 (22.74%) Finance
4 461 (9.86%) Public Sector
5 379 (8.11%) Banking
6 190 (4.06%) Organisational Skills
7 165 (3.53%) Documentation Skills
8 155 (3.32%) Legal
9 147 (3.14%) Retail
10 122 (2.61%) Presentation Skills
11 114 (2.44%) Influencing Skills
12 112 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 96 (2.05%) Front Office
14 85 (1.82%) Marketing
15 71 (1.52%) Telecoms
16 68 (1.45%) Investment Banking
17 57 (1.22%) Manufacturing
18 56 (1.20%) Military
19 45 (0.96%) Law
20 38 (0.81%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 665 (14.22%) Analyst
2 589 (12.60%) Developer
3 398 (8.51%) Senior
4 344 (7.36%) Architect
5 316 (6.76%) Lead
6 268 (5.73%) Business Analyst
7 227 (4.86%) Consultant
8 193 (4.13%) Project Manager
9 191 (4.09%) Data Engineer
10 115 (2.46%) Support Engineer
11 107 (2.29%) IT Support
12 93 (1.99%) Java Developer
12 93 (1.99%) Solutions Architect
13 91 (1.95%) Software Engineer
14 89 (1.90%) Data Analyst
15 85 (1.82%) Administrator
16 79 (1.69%) Senior Developer
17 77 (1.65%) Python Developer
18 75 (1.60%) IT Analyst
19 66 (1.41%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 309 (6.61%) REST
2 154 (3.29%) SOAP
3 153 (3.27%) RESTful
4 149 (3.19%) Kafka
5 145 (3.10%) .NET
6 132 (2.82%) Spring
7 124 (2.65%) React
8 112 (2.40%) Node.js
9 99 (2.12%) AngularJS
9 99 (2.12%) Spring Boot
10 94 (2.01%) JSON
11 92 (1.97%) XML
12 91 (1.95%) CSS
13 90 (1.93%) HTML
14 89 (1.90%) LDAP
15 88 (1.88%) Middleware
16 69 (1.48%) OAuth
17 63 (1.35%) Web Services
18 60 (1.28%) Oracle Fusion
19 58 (1.24%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 235 (5.03%) Product Ownership
2 192 (4.11%) Onboarding
3 185 (3.96%) Cloud Native
4 149 (3.19%) Management Information System
5 132 (2.82%) Data Centre
6 126 (2.70%) Analytical Mindset
7 116 (2.48%) Self-Motivation
8 102 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
9 98 (2.10%) Data Structures
10 94 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
11 87 (1.86%) Distributed Systems
11 87 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
12 74 (1.58%) Virtual Team
13 69 (1.48%) Algorithms
14 68 (1.45%) Security Posture
15 65 (1.39%) Hybrid Cloud
16 62 (1.33%) Mobile App
17 54 (1.16%) CMDB
18 52 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 49 (1.05%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 503 (10.76%) Windows
2 288 (6.16%) Linux
3 100 (2.14%) Windows 10
4 85 (1.82%) Unix
5 82 (1.75%) Windows Server
6 68 (1.45%) Android
7 62 (1.33%) Apple iOS
8 54 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 46 (0.98%) Mac OS
10 19 (0.41%) VMS
11 16 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.24%) CentOS
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 7 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.15%) zOS
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.11%) Debian
17 4 (0.086%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.086%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,373 (29.37%) Agile
2 854 (18.27%) CI/CD
3 777 (16.62%) DevOps
4 743 (15.89%) Continuous Improvement
5 728 (15.57%) Stakeholder Management
6 556 (11.89%) Analytics
7 493 (10.55%) Migration
8 484 (10.35%) Decision-Making
9 473 (10.12%) AI
10 463 (9.90%) Project Management
11 414 (8.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 409 (8.75%) Data Modelling
12 409 (8.75%) Test Automation
13 371 (7.94%) Scrum
14 360 (7.70%) Validation
15 359 (7.68%) Business Intelligence
16 352 (7.53%) Change Management
17 351 (7.51%) ITIL
18 339 (7.25%) Customer Service
19 318 (6.80%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 922 (19.72%) Python
2 827 (17.69%) SQL
3 404 (8.64%) Java
4 319 (6.82%) PowerShell
5 240 (5.13%) JavaScript
6 186 (3.98%) C#
7 157 (3.36%) TypeScript
8 143 (3.06%) Bash
9 78 (1.67%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.30%) C++
11 47 (1.01%) Go
12 44 (0.94%) Shell Script
13 40 (0.86%) T-SQL
14 38 (0.81%) Bicep
15 35 (0.75%) C
15 35 (0.75%) Perl
16 33 (0.71%) Apex Code
17 31 (0.66%) Scala
18 30 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 27 (0.58%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,076 (23.02%) Security Cleared
2 741 (15.85%) SC Cleared
3 595 (12.73%) Degree
4 215 (4.60%) Computer Science Degree
5 205 (4.39%) DV Cleared
6 120 (2.57%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (2.20%) PMP
8 98 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
9 95 (2.03%) PMI Certification
10 94 (2.01%) CISSP
11 90 (1.93%) Microsoft Certification
12 86 (1.84%) Master's Degree
13 68 (1.45%) Azure Certification
14 62 (1.33%) CISM
15 45 (0.96%) CCNA
16 43 (0.92%) CCNP
17 36 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
18 35 (0.75%) AWS Certification
19 34 (0.73%) A+ Certification
20 29 (0.62%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 311 (6.65%) QA
2 293 (6.27%) Data Quality
3 156 (3.34%) GDPR
4 92 (1.97%) Accessibility
5 90 (1.93%) PMO
6 86 (1.84%) NIST
7 84 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 60 (1.28%) SLA
9 42 (0.90%) GRC
10 33 (0.71%) PCI DSS
11 25 (0.53%) PSD2
12 24 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.45%) WCAG
15 18 (0.39%) ISO 20022
16 17 (0.36%) HIPAA
17 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
18 14 (0.30%) HL7
19 13 (0.28%) SEPA
20 12 (0.26%) NCSC
System Software
1 398 (8.51%) Docker
2 350 (7.49%) Active Directory
3 102 (2.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.88%) vSphere
5 33 (0.71%) VMware NSX
6 28 (0.60%) Hyper-V
7 24 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.34%) Firmware
9 15 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.24%) RACF
11 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 9 (0.19%) Squid
12 9 (0.19%) vCloud
13 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.086%) IAG
15 4 (0.086%) Snort
16 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 444 (9.50%) Kubernetes
2 276 (5.90%) Terraform
3 173 (3.70%) Ansible
4 118 (2.52%) Microsoft Intune
5 109 (2.33%) Grafana
6 85 (1.82%) Prometheus
7 76 (1.63%) SCCM
8 40 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
9 34 (0.73%) vCenter Server
10 32 (0.68%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.64%) Kibana
11 30 (0.64%) Puppet
12 26 (0.56%) Argo
13 24 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 20 (0.43%) Nessus
15 19 (0.41%) Control-M
16 15 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
17 14 (0.30%) vRealize
18 12 (0.26%) HP ALM
19 11 (0.24%) VxRail
Vendors
1 855 (18.29%) Microsoft
2 318 (6.80%) Oracle
3 215 (4.60%) SAP
4 203 (4.34%) ServiceNow
5 190 (4.06%) VMware
6 153 (3.27%) Google
7 146 (3.12%) Databricks
8 130 (2.78%) Splunk
9 111 (2.37%) Cisco
10 106 (2.27%) Salesforce
11 74 (1.58%) Red Hat
12 70 (1.50%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.35%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.24%) Citrix
15 53 (1.13%) Workday
16 50 (1.07%) IBM
17 48 (1.03%) Informatica
18 46 (0.98%) Dell
18 46 (0.98%) Talend
19 42 (0.90%) Juniper