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

6 months to
9 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,618 3,980 4,081
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.87% 15.30% 10.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.85% 17.05% 12.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,931 2,336 2,542
10th Percentile £275 £262 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £376
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.44% -5.09%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £703 £700 £730
UK median daily rate £487 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.60% - -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 245 151 341
10th Percentile £13.85 £15.10 £12.82
25th Percentile £15.67 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.82 £25.43 £21.64
Median % change year-on-year -25.99% +17.51% -30.07%
75th Percentile £35.71 £49.38 £56.40
90th Percentile £69.44 £77.50 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £19.00 £26.50 £21.12
% change year-on-year -28.30% +25.50% -29.62%

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 29,128 23,342 33,372
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.51% 89.73% 87.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,638 14,331 22,291
10th Percentile £306 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £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 1,831 740 1,986
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.96 £21.03 £16.54
Median hourly rate £25.47 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.23% - -
75th Percentile £60.13 £64.50 £61.62
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.66 £34.36
% change year-on-year -22.98% -4.95% +5.71%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 2,067 £520 -1.47% 911
North of England -3 724 £450 -5.26% 607
South East -2 661 £478 -4.50% 886
Midlands -2 514 £450 +5.88% 462
North West -2 378 £425 -7.61% 348
West Midlands +1 362 £488 +10.11% 292
South West -2 300 £525 +10.53% 354
Yorkshire -4 291 £482 -3.60% 200
East of England -4 221 £465 -1.06% 302
East Midlands -2 153 £402 +9.76% 170
North East -4 63 £450 -11.76% 69
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
1 197 (4.27%) Confluence
2 157 (3.40%) SharePoint
3 107 (2.32%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (1.28%) Apache Spark
5 55 (1.19%) Apache
6 52 (1.13%) SAS
7 37 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.63%) Skype for Business
9 27 (0.58%) CMS
10 13 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.22%) JBoss
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
15 7 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 7 (0.15%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.15%) Camunda
15 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 295 (6.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 197 (4.27%) Microsoft Office
3 114 (2.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (1.49%) MS Visio
5 64 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
6 21 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.13%) Trello
12 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.087%) Adobe Captivate
13 4 (0.087%) Autodesk Inventor
14 3 (0.065%) InVision
14 3 (0.065%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.065%) Notion
14 3 (0.065%) Zeplin
15 2 (0.043%) ProjectWise
15 2 (0.043%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 78 (1.69%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
4 18 (0.39%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.37%) SAP EWM
6 16 (0.35%) Aladdin
7 15 (0.32%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
7 15 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 14 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
8 14 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
9 13 (0.28%) SAP WM
9 13 (0.28%) Workday HCM
10 12 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.24%) NEC Housing
11 11 (0.24%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.24%) SAP HR
12 10 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
13 8 (0.17%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,015 (21.98%) Azure
2 718 (15.55%) AWS
3 363 (7.86%) GCP
4 325 (7.04%) Power Platform
5 315 (6.82%) Microsoft 365
6 221 (4.79%) GitHub
7 214 (4.63%) Azure DevOps
8 148 (3.20%) Serverless
9 135 (2.92%) Entra ID
10 124 (2.69%) SaaS
11 109 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
12 78 (1.69%) Amazon S3
13 75 (1.62%) Snowflake
14 72 (1.56%) AWS Lambda
14 72 (1.56%) OpenShift
15 69 (1.49%) Azure Data Factory
16 64 (1.39%) PaaS
17 62 (1.34%) Dynamics 365
18 60 (1.30%) Power Automate
19 50 (1.08%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 169 (3.66%) Firewall
2 164 (3.55%) DNS
3 107 (2.32%) TCP/IP
4 103 (2.23%) Network Security
4 103 (2.23%) VPN
5 89 (1.93%) DHCP
6 70 (1.52%) WAN
7 53 (1.15%) LAN
8 43 (0.93%) VLAN
9 36 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
10 32 (0.69%) BGP
11 30 (0.65%) VoIP
12 29 (0.63%) Skype
13 21 (0.45%) SAN
13 21 (0.45%) Wireshark
14 20 (0.43%) Wireless
15 18 (0.39%) HTTP
15 18 (0.39%) Internet
15 18 (0.39%) OSPF
15 18 (0.39%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 259 (5.61%) Power BI
2 138 (2.99%) Relational Database
2 138 (2.99%) SQL Server
3 120 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
3 120 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
4 88 (1.91%) NoSQL
5 86 (1.86%) MongoDB
6 70 (1.52%) Metadata
7 67 (1.45%) Tableau
8 66 (1.43%) Oracle Database
9 61 (1.32%) MySQL
10 47 (1.02%) Data Lake
11 46 (1.00%) Big Data
11 46 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
12 34 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
12 34 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 33 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
13 33 (0.71%) DynamoDB
14 28 (0.61%) Hadoop
15 26 (0.56%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 436 (9.44%) JIRA
2 301 (6.52%) Git
3 231 (5.00%) Jenkins
4 156 (3.38%) GitLab
5 75 (1.62%) Selenium
6 55 (1.19%) JUnit
7 40 (0.87%) Postman
8 32 (0.69%) Cucumber
9 31 (0.67%) Bitbucket
10 24 (0.52%) Maven
10 24 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
11 20 (0.43%) Cypress.io
11 20 (0.43%) REST Assured
11 20 (0.43%) SonarQube
12 17 (0.37%) JMeter
13 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
13 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
14 14 (0.30%) Mockito
15 12 (0.26%) Artifactory
15 12 (0.26%) IntelliJ
General
1 2,539 (54.98%) Social Skills
2 1,684 (36.47%) Analytical Skills
3 1,058 (22.91%) Finance
4 426 (9.22%) Public Sector
5 379 (8.21%) Banking
6 183 (3.96%) Organisational Skills
7 146 (3.16%) Legal
8 143 (3.10%) Documentation Skills
9 123 (2.66%) Influencing Skills
9 123 (2.66%) Retail
10 117 (2.53%) Presentation Skills
11 108 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 98 (2.12%) Front Office
13 96 (2.08%) Telecoms
14 92 (1.99%) Marketing
15 74 (1.60%) Investment Banking
16 70 (1.52%) Manufacturing
17 57 (1.23%) Military
18 41 (0.89%) Financial Institution
18 41 (0.89%) Law
Job Titles
1 675 (14.62%) Analyst
2 655 (14.18%) Developer
3 398 (8.62%) Senior
4 294 (6.37%) Architect
5 288 (6.24%) Lead
6 269 (5.83%) Business Analyst
7 243 (5.26%) Consultant
8 176 (3.81%) Project Manager
9 150 (3.25%) Data Engineer
10 141 (3.05%) Support Engineer
11 120 (2.60%) IT Support
12 100 (2.17%) Senior Developer
13 94 (2.04%) Java Developer
14 89 (1.93%) Data Analyst
15 87 (1.88%) Software Engineer
15 87 (1.88%) Support Analyst
16 82 (1.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 76 (1.65%) IT Analyst
17 76 (1.65%) Solutions Architect
18 74 (1.60%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (7.10%) REST
2 175 (3.79%) SOAP
3 168 (3.64%) RESTful
4 159 (3.44%) .NET
5 143 (3.10%) Kafka
6 142 (3.07%) React
7 139 (3.01%) Node.js
8 135 (2.92%) Spring
9 124 (2.69%) HTML
10 108 (2.34%) CSS
11 107 (2.32%) AngularJS
12 100 (2.17%) Spring Boot
13 92 (1.99%) JSON
14 87 (1.88%) XML
15 80 (1.73%) LDAP
16 79 (1.71%) Middleware
17 64 (1.39%) Oracle Fusion
18 63 (1.36%) OAuth
19 59 (1.28%) Web Services
20 52 (1.13%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 230 (4.98%) Product Ownership
2 191 (4.14%) Cloud Native
3 172 (3.72%) Management Information System
4 171 (3.70%) Onboarding
5 124 (2.69%) Analytical Mindset
6 108 (2.34%) Data Structures
7 101 (2.19%) Data Centre
7 101 (2.19%) Enterprise Software
8 99 (2.14%) Self-Motivation
9 91 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
10 86 (1.86%) Security Posture
11 75 (1.62%) Algorithms
12 74 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
13 64 (1.39%) CMDB
13 64 (1.39%) Mobile App
13 64 (1.39%) Virtual Team
14 63 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
15 58 (1.26%) Hybrid Cloud
16 50 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 49 (1.06%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 476 (10.31%) Windows
2 315 (6.82%) Linux
3 106 (2.30%) Windows 10
4 96 (2.08%) Unix
5 88 (1.91%) Windows Server
6 55 (1.19%) Apple iOS
7 54 (1.17%) Android
7 54 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 44 (0.95%) Mac OS
9 23 (0.50%) VMS
10 18 (0.39%) CentOS
11 14 (0.30%) Ubuntu
12 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.087%) Windows 8
15 4 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
16 3 (0.065%) Debian
16 3 (0.065%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,358 (29.41%) Agile
2 836 (18.10%) CI/CD
3 737 (15.96%) DevOps
4 686 (14.85%) Stakeholder Management
5 656 (14.21%) Continuous Improvement
6 512 (11.09%) Analytics
7 462 (10.00%) Migration
8 453 (9.81%) Decision-Making
9 429 (9.29%) Project Management
10 400 (8.66%) AI
11 399 (8.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 399 (8.64%) Test Automation
12 370 (8.01%) Scrum
13 367 (7.95%) Data Modelling
14 347 (7.51%) Computer Science
15 344 (7.45%) Validation
16 341 (7.38%) ITIL
17 334 (7.23%) Containerisation
18 333 (7.21%) Business Intelligence
19 320 (6.93%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 922 (19.97%) Python
2 792 (17.15%) SQL
3 423 (9.16%) Java
4 319 (6.91%) PowerShell
5 271 (5.87%) JavaScript
6 199 (4.31%) C#
7 175 (3.79%) TypeScript
8 136 (2.94%) Bash
9 63 (1.36%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.28%) Go
11 58 (1.26%) C++
12 50 (1.08%) Shell Script
13 42 (0.91%) Perl
14 39 (0.84%) VBA
15 38 (0.82%) Scala
16 31 (0.67%) Ruby
17 29 (0.63%) Apex Code
17 29 (0.63%) T-SQL
18 27 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 27 (0.58%) R
Qualifications
1 986 (21.35%) Security Cleared
2 704 (15.24%) SC Cleared
3 637 (13.79%) Degree
4 251 (5.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 181 (3.92%) DV Cleared
6 99 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
7 93 (2.01%) PMI Certification
8 92 (1.99%) PMP
9 91 (1.97%) Master's Degree
9 91 (1.97%) Microsoft Certification
10 88 (1.91%) CISSP
11 77 (1.67%) Azure Certification
12 60 (1.30%) Cisco Certification
13 50 (1.08%) AWS Certification
13 50 (1.08%) CISM
14 38 (0.82%) A+ Certification
14 38 (0.82%) CCNP
15 31 (0.67%) CCNA
15 31 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
16 27 (0.58%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 311 (6.73%) QA
2 263 (5.70%) Data Quality
3 159 (3.44%) GDPR
4 93 (2.01%) Accessibility
5 78 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 78 (1.69%) NIST
6 72 (1.56%) PMO
7 48 (1.04%) SLA
8 39 (0.84%) PCI DSS
9 30 (0.65%) GRC
10 29 (0.63%) PSD2
11 22 (0.48%) ISO 20022
11 22 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.43%) WCAG
13 17 (0.37%) SEPA
14 16 (0.35%) EU AI Act
15 15 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
15 15 (0.32%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.30%) ISO 8583
17 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 422 (9.14%) Docker
2 354 (7.67%) Active Directory
3 110 (2.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.89%) Hyper-V
5 33 (0.71%) vSphere
6 23 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
6 23 (0.50%) VMware NSX
7 21 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
8 15 (0.32%) Firmware
9 11 (0.24%) RACF
10 10 (0.22%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 7 (0.15%) HDFS
12 7 (0.15%) Squid
13 5 (0.11%) KVM
13 5 (0.11%) vCloud
13 5 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
14 3 (0.065%) BitLocker
14 3 (0.065%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.065%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 447 (9.68%) Kubernetes
2 253 (5.48%) Terraform
3 168 (3.64%) Ansible
4 105 (2.27%) Grafana
5 101 (2.19%) Microsoft Intune
6 89 (1.93%) SCCM
7 83 (1.80%) Prometheus
8 38 (0.82%) Puppet
8 38 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
9 35 (0.76%) Kibana
10 27 (0.58%) Argo
11 24 (0.52%) Nessus
12 23 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 21 (0.45%) vCenter Server
14 17 (0.37%) Control-M
15 16 (0.35%) FortiGate
15 16 (0.35%) IBM Guardium
15 16 (0.35%) Red Hat Satellite
15 16 (0.35%) SCOM
16 15 (0.32%) vRealize
Vendors
1 901 (19.51%) Microsoft
2 313 (6.78%) Oracle
3 220 (4.76%) SAP
4 203 (4.40%) ServiceNow
5 190 (4.11%) VMware
6 158 (3.42%) Google
7 135 (2.92%) Databricks
7 135 (2.92%) Splunk
8 112 (2.43%) Salesforce
9 100 (2.17%) Cisco
10 79 (1.71%) CyberArk
11 75 (1.62%) Red Hat
12 67 (1.45%) BeyondTrust
13 50 (1.08%) IBM
14 45 (0.97%) Workday
15 44 (0.95%) Palo Alto
16 41 (0.89%) Citrix
17 39 (0.84%) Informatica
18 38 (0.82%) Adobe
19 37 (0.80%) HP