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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -3 +5 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,689 3,984 4,110
As % of all contract jobs in England 12.73% 16.22% 10.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.72% 17.89% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,920 2,516 2,539
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £588 £618 £635
90th Percentile £713 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 256 171 365
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.99 £11.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.53 £25.43 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.26% +37.46% -56.98%
75th Percentile £43.22 £49.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.75 £73.25
UK median hourly rate £20.20 £26.50 £18.00
% change year-on-year -23.78% +47.22% -54.43%

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 31,848 22,266 32,932
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.46% 90.63% 86.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,386 14,474 21,796
10th Percentile £313 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £640 £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 1,978 815 2,152
10th Percentile £15.29 £15.18 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.79 £34.11 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.73% +4.95% -12.87%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.50
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -6 2,042 £510 -2.86% 956
North of England -4 760 £450 -8.07% 617
South East -1 685 £492 -1.60% 825
Midlands -2 515 £450 +3.15% 430
North West -4 379 £425 -10.53% 339
West Midlands -2 374 £475 +4.78% 264
Yorkshire -4 335 £475 -5.00% 207
South West -1 311 £530 +0.95% 305
East of England -3 237 £450 - 256
East Midlands -3 142 £404 +2.15% 166
North East -4 55 £438 -2.78% 85
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 (4.44%) Confluence
2 153 (3.26%) SharePoint
3 106 (2.26%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.36%) Apache Spark
5 55 (1.17%) SAS
6 51 (1.09%) Apache
7 33 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
8 28 (0.60%) CMS
9 16 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.32%) Skype for Business
11 13 (0.28%) nginx
12 11 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 11 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.13%) Camunda
14 6 (0.13%) JBoss
14 6 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
14 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
15 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 301 (6.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 212 (4.52%) Microsoft Office
3 114 (2.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
4 73 (1.56%) MS Visio
5 22 (0.47%) Chatbot
6 20 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.19%) Sketch
8 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
9 7 (0.15%) Trello
10 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.085%) Adobe Captivate
11 4 (0.085%) Maya
11 4 (0.085%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.064%) InVision
12 3 (0.064%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.064%) Notion
12 3 (0.064%) Zeplin
13 2 (0.043%) Autodesk Inventor
Business Applications
1 75 (1.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.47%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.34%) Workday HCM
6 15 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
7 13 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
7 13 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.26%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
8 12 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
9 11 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
11 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
12 8 (0.17%) SAP MDG
12 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,015 (21.65%) Azure
2 730 (15.57%) AWS
3 342 (7.29%) Power Platform
4 340 (7.25%) GCP
5 303 (6.46%) Microsoft 365
6 232 (4.95%) GitHub
7 228 (4.86%) Azure DevOps
8 165 (3.52%) Serverless
9 151 (3.22%) Entra ID
10 122 (2.60%) SaaS
11 112 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
12 92 (1.96%) Amazon S3
13 90 (1.92%) AWS Lambda
14 87 (1.86%) OpenShift
15 72 (1.54%) Azure Data Factory
15 72 (1.54%) Snowflake
16 66 (1.41%) PaaS
17 55 (1.17%) Dynamics 365
18 54 (1.15%) Power Automate
19 53 (1.13%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 178 (3.80%) Firewall
2 170 (3.63%) DNS
3 116 (2.47%) TCP/IP
4 105 (2.24%) Network Security
5 95 (2.03%) VPN
6 94 (2.00%) DHCP
7 93 (1.98%) WAN
8 74 (1.58%) LAN
9 53 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
10 44 (0.94%) BGP
11 40 (0.85%) VLAN
12 35 (0.75%) SAN
13 32 (0.68%) OSPF
14 29 (0.62%) VoIP
15 25 (0.53%) SD-WAN
16 22 (0.47%) Internet
16 22 (0.47%) Wireless
17 19 (0.41%) MPLS
18 17 (0.36%) BIG-IP
18 17 (0.36%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 273 (5.82%) Power BI
2 163 (3.48%) SQL Server
3 141 (3.01%) PostgreSQL
4 140 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
5 132 (2.82%) Relational Database
6 94 (2.00%) MongoDB
7 92 (1.96%) NoSQL
8 78 (1.66%) Metadata
9 72 (1.54%) Tableau
10 65 (1.39%) Oracle Database
11 61 (1.30%) Data Lake
12 57 (1.22%) MySQL
13 54 (1.15%) Big Data
13 54 (1.15%) Oracle Reports
14 46 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 41 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
16 36 (0.77%) DynamoDB
17 31 (0.66%) Hadoop
18 29 (0.62%) Pentaho
19 27 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 464 (9.90%) JIRA
2 323 (6.89%) Git
3 243 (5.18%) Jenkins
4 156 (3.33%) GitLab
5 77 (1.64%) Selenium
6 49 (1.04%) JUnit
7 40 (0.85%) Postman
8 34 (0.73%) Cucumber
9 33 (0.70%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
11 23 (0.49%) Cypress.io
11 23 (0.49%) Maven
11 23 (0.49%) REST Assured
12 19 (0.41%) JMeter
13 17 (0.36%) Mockito
13 17 (0.36%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.32%) SpecFlow
15 14 (0.30%) CircleCI
15 14 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
16 11 (0.23%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,536 (54.08%) Social Skills
2 1,767 (37.68%) Analytical Skills
3 1,067 (22.76%) Finance
4 463 (9.87%) Public Sector
5 367 (7.83%) Banking
6 186 (3.97%) Organisational Skills
7 163 (3.48%) Documentation Skills
8 158 (3.37%) Legal
9 140 (2.99%) Retail
10 123 (2.62%) Presentation Skills
11 122 (2.60%) Influencing Skills
12 111 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 92 (1.96%) Front Office
14 89 (1.90%) Marketing
15 77 (1.64%) Telecoms
16 65 (1.39%) Investment Banking
17 59 (1.26%) Manufacturing
18 58 (1.24%) Military
19 44 (0.94%) Law
20 40 (0.85%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 664 (14.16%) Analyst
2 617 (13.16%) Developer
3 393 (8.38%) Senior
4 331 (7.06%) Architect
5 310 (6.61%) Lead
6 270 (5.76%) Business Analyst
7 232 (4.95%) Consultant
8 195 (4.16%) Project Manager
9 194 (4.14%) Data Engineer
10 119 (2.54%) Support Engineer
11 107 (2.28%) IT Support
12 88 (1.88%) Data Analyst
12 88 (1.88%) Java Developer
13 86 (1.83%) Software Engineer
14 83 (1.77%) Python Developer
15 81 (1.73%) Senior Developer
16 80 (1.71%) Administrator
16 80 (1.71%) Solutions Architect
17 71 (1.51%) IT Analyst
18 70 (1.49%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 316 (6.74%) REST
2 163 (3.48%) SOAP
3 154 (3.28%) RESTful
4 153 (3.26%) Kafka
5 149 (3.18%) .NET
6 138 (2.94%) Spring
7 136 (2.90%) React
8 128 (2.73%) Node.js
9 105 (2.24%) CSS
10 104 (2.22%) AngularJS
11 101 (2.15%) HTML
12 97 (2.07%) Spring Boot
13 95 (2.03%) JSON
14 89 (1.90%) XML
15 88 (1.88%) LDAP
16 86 (1.83%) Middleware
17 71 (1.51%) OAuth
18 66 (1.41%) Web Services
19 65 (1.39%) Oracle Fusion
20 58 (1.24%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 228 (4.86%) Product Ownership
2 197 (4.20%) Cloud Native
3 185 (3.95%) Onboarding
4 153 (3.26%) Management Information System
5 131 (2.79%) Data Centre
6 125 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
7 104 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
8 100 (2.13%) Data Structures
9 99 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
10 93 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
11 86 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
12 76 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
13 74 (1.58%) Algorithms
13 74 (1.58%) Security Posture
14 70 (1.49%) Virtual Team
15 66 (1.41%) Mobile App
16 63 (1.34%) Hybrid Cloud
17 61 (1.30%) CMDB
18 51 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 49 (1.04%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 496 (10.58%) Windows
2 284 (6.06%) Linux
3 94 (2.00%) Windows 10
4 85 (1.81%) Unix
5 82 (1.75%) Windows Server
6 68 (1.45%) Android
7 62 (1.32%) Apple iOS
8 55 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 46 (0.98%) Mac OS
10 19 (0.41%) VMS
11 15 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.26%) CentOS
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
14 7 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.13%) zOS
16 4 (0.085%) Debian
16 4 (0.085%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,366 (29.13%) Agile
2 864 (18.43%) CI/CD
3 766 (16.34%) DevOps
4 732 (15.61%) Stakeholder Management
5 711 (15.16%) Continuous Improvement
6 552 (11.77%) Analytics
7 491 (10.47%) Migration
8 476 (10.15%) Decision-Making
9 452 (9.64%) AI
10 451 (9.62%) Project Management
11 420 (8.96%) Data Modelling
12 418 (8.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 412 (8.79%) Test Automation
14 363 (7.74%) Business Intelligence
14 363 (7.74%) Scrum
14 363 (7.74%) Validation
15 343 (7.31%) Change Management
16 341 (7.27%) ITIL
17 336 (7.17%) Customer Service
18 335 (7.14%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 930 (19.83%) Python
2 831 (17.72%) SQL
3 406 (8.66%) Java
4 318 (6.78%) PowerShell
5 253 (5.40%) JavaScript
6 181 (3.86%) C#
7 169 (3.60%) TypeScript
8 137 (2.92%) Bash
9 74 (1.58%) PL/SQL
10 55 (1.17%) C++
11 47 (1.00%) Go
12 46 (0.98%) Shell Script
13 36 (0.77%) Bicep
13 36 (0.77%) T-SQL
14 35 (0.75%) Perl
15 33 (0.70%) Scala
15 33 (0.70%) VBA
16 32 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 32 (0.68%) Ruby
17 31 (0.66%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,066 (22.73%) Security Cleared
2 732 (15.61%) SC Cleared
3 610 (13.01%) Degree
4 227 (4.84%) Computer Science Degree
5 205 (4.37%) DV Cleared
6 111 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (2.20%) PMP
8 94 (2.00%) PMI Certification
9 93 (1.98%) CISSP
10 92 (1.96%) Microsoft Certification
11 91 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
12 89 (1.90%) Master's Degree
13 68 (1.45%) Azure Certification
14 60 (1.28%) CISM
15 41 (0.87%) AWS Certification
15 41 (0.87%) CCNA
15 41 (0.87%) CCNP
16 35 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
17 31 (0.66%) A+ Certification
18 25 (0.53%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 305 (6.50%) QA
2 285 (6.08%) Data Quality
3 155 (3.31%) GDPR
4 92 (1.96%) NIST
5 89 (1.90%) Accessibility
6 83 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 83 (1.77%) PMO
7 58 (1.24%) SLA
8 36 (0.77%) GRC
9 34 (0.73%) PCI DSS
10 25 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
11 24 (0.51%) PSD2
12 21 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 19 (0.41%) WCAG
14 17 (0.36%) EU AI Act
14 17 (0.36%) ISO 20022
15 16 (0.34%) HIPAA
16 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
17 14 (0.30%) HL7
18 13 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 412 (8.79%) Docker
2 347 (7.40%) Active Directory
3 96 (2.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.79%) vSphere
5 29 (0.62%) VMware NSX
6 28 (0.60%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.34%) Firmware
8 16 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.23%) RACF
10 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.19%) ACF2
12 8 (0.17%) Squid
12 8 (0.17%) vCloud
13 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.085%) HDFS
15 4 (0.085%) Snort
16 3 (0.064%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.064%) NFS
Systems Management
1 452 (9.64%) Kubernetes
2 269 (5.74%) Terraform
3 167 (3.56%) Ansible
4 114 (2.43%) Microsoft Intune
5 110 (2.35%) Grafana
6 89 (1.90%) Prometheus
7 74 (1.58%) SCCM
8 40 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (0.66%) Argo
9 31 (0.66%) FortiGate
9 31 (0.66%) Kibana
10 30 (0.64%) vCenter Server
11 29 (0.62%) Puppet
12 28 (0.60%) Nessus
13 25 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 25 (0.53%) Control-M
14 23 (0.49%) IBM Guardium
15 14 (0.30%) vRealize
16 12 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
17 11 (0.23%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 880 (18.77%) Microsoft
2 321 (6.85%) Oracle
3 210 (4.48%) SAP
4 202 (4.31%) ServiceNow
5 183 (3.90%) VMware
6 161 (3.43%) Google
7 142 (3.03%) Databricks
8 134 (2.86%) Splunk
9 113 (2.41%) Cisco
10 102 (2.18%) Salesforce
11 79 (1.68%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.56%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.34%) BeyondTrust
14 57 (1.22%) Workday
15 55 (1.17%) Citrix
16 49 (1.04%) IBM
17 47 (1.00%) Informatica
18 45 (0.96%) F5
18 45 (0.96%) Talend
19 44 (0.94%) Dell