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

6 months to
28 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 4,752 4,030 4,072
As % of all contract jobs in England 13.37% 15.69% 10.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.34% 17.39% 12.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,985 2,443 2,545
10th Percentile £297 £258 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -1.96% -5.56%
75th Percentile £600 £614 £635
90th Percentile £711 £713 £732
UK median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.45% - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 255 156 341
10th Percentile £13.97 £15.00 £12.13
25th Percentile £15.71 £16.63 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.25 £25.43 £21.01
Median % change year-on-year -24.30% +21.04% -44.93%
75th Percentile £41.81 £49.25 £48.40
90th Percentile £73.35 £79.13 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £26.50 £19.50
% change year-on-year -24.53% +35.90% -38.15%

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 30,972 23,170 33,015
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.17% 90.22% 87.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,848 14,569 21,913
10th Percentile £313 £308 £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 £617 £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 1,919 779 2,056
10th Percentile £15.24 £15.59 £13.42
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £28.50 £35.00 £34.77
Median % change year-on-year -18.57% +0.68% -0.67%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £59.93
90th Percentile £72.51 £75.30 £72.17
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £33.50
% change year-on-year -15.38% -2.99% -4.29%

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 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 28 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 28 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 -3 2,079 £519 -1.23% 727
North of England -2 772 £450 -5.26% 542
South East -2 671 £488 -2.50% 784
Midlands -1 532 £450 +4.29% 390
West Midlands 0 387 £475 +5.56% 236
North West -2 385 £424 -10.42% 295
Yorkshire -4 335 £475 -5.00% 187
South West -3 320 £535 +7.00% 254
East of England -3 243 £465 +3.22% 255
East Midlands -2 146 £402 +8.72% 154
North East -3 60 £450 -6.40% 74
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
1 212 (4.46%) Confluence
2 153 (3.22%) SharePoint
3 106 (2.23%) Microsoft Exchange
4 66 (1.39%) Apache Spark
5 63 (1.33%) SAS
6 54 (1.14%) Apache
7 38 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.57%) CMS
9 22 (0.46%) Skype for Business
10 20 (0.42%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.29%) nginx
12 10 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 10 (0.21%) JBoss
13 9 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
15 7 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
16 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
16 6 (0.13%) Camunda
16 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 295 (6.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (4.63%) Microsoft Office
3 116 (2.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 77 (1.62%) MS Visio
5 68 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
6 21 (0.44%) Chatbot
7 17 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
8 9 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Trello
11 5 (0.11%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.084%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.084%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.063%) InVision
13 3 (0.063%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.063%) Notion
13 3 (0.063%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.042%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.042%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 77 (1.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.32%) Workday HCM
6 14 (0.29%) NetSuite
6 14 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
7 13 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.25%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.25%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
9 11 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 11 (0.23%) SAP HR
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
11 9 (0.19%) SAP ERP
12 8 (0.17%) SAP EWM
12 8 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,030 (21.68%) Azure
2 746 (15.70%) AWS
3 356 (7.49%) GCP
4 335 (7.05%) Power Platform
5 312 (6.57%) Microsoft 365
6 229 (4.82%) GitHub
7 220 (4.63%) Azure DevOps
8 155 (3.26%) Serverless
9 149 (3.14%) Entra ID
10 126 (2.65%) SaaS
11 110 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
12 84 (1.77%) Amazon S3
12 84 (1.77%) OpenShift
13 82 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
14 73 (1.54%) Azure Data Factory
14 73 (1.54%) Snowflake
15 66 (1.39%) PaaS
16 61 (1.28%) Dynamics 365
17 56 (1.18%) Power Automate
18 53 (1.12%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 179 (3.77%) DNS
1 179 (3.77%) Firewall
2 127 (2.67%) TCP/IP
3 102 (2.15%) DHCP
3 102 (2.15%) Network Security
4 101 (2.13%) VPN
5 84 (1.77%) WAN
6 67 (1.41%) LAN
7 52 (1.09%) VLAN
8 50 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
9 43 (0.90%) BGP
10 31 (0.65%) OSPF
11 29 (0.61%) SAN
12 28 (0.59%) VoIP
13 22 (0.46%) Skype
14 21 (0.44%) Wireless
15 18 (0.38%) Internet
16 17 (0.36%) SD-WAN
16 17 (0.36%) SSL
17 16 (0.34%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 270 (5.68%) Power BI
2 160 (3.37%) SQL Server
3 134 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
4 133 (2.80%) Relational Database
5 129 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
6 99 (2.08%) MongoDB
7 96 (2.02%) NoSQL
8 74 (1.56%) Metadata
9 65 (1.37%) Tableau
10 64 (1.35%) Oracle Database
11 63 (1.33%) MySQL
12 57 (1.20%) Data Lake
13 53 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
14 47 (0.99%) Big Data
15 46 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 37 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
17 35 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
18 34 (0.72%) DynamoDB
19 33 (0.69%) Hadoop
19 33 (0.69%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 462 (9.72%) JIRA
2 329 (6.92%) Git
3 245 (5.16%) Jenkins
4 157 (3.30%) GitLab
5 76 (1.60%) Selenium
6 53 (1.12%) JUnit
7 40 (0.84%) Postman
8 36 (0.76%) Bitbucket
9 35 (0.74%) Cucumber
10 24 (0.51%) Maven
10 24 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
11 22 (0.46%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.44%) Cypress.io
13 20 (0.42%) SonarQube
14 18 (0.38%) JMeter
15 17 (0.36%) SpecFlow
16 16 (0.34%) Mockito
17 15 (0.32%) CircleCI
18 14 (0.29%) IntelliJ
19 12 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,592 (54.55%) Social Skills
2 1,742 (36.66%) Analytical Skills
3 1,069 (22.50%) Finance
4 449 (9.45%) Public Sector
5 379 (7.98%) Banking
6 187 (3.94%) Organisational Skills
7 154 (3.24%) Documentation Skills
8 152 (3.20%) Legal
9 132 (2.78%) Retail
10 126 (2.65%) Presentation Skills
11 125 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
12 123 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (2.06%) Front Office
14 91 (1.91%) Marketing
15 79 (1.66%) Telecoms
16 70 (1.47%) Investment Banking
17 66 (1.39%) Manufacturing
18 61 (1.28%) Military
19 44 (0.93%) Law
20 43 (0.90%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 690 (14.52%) Analyst
2 651 (13.70%) Developer
3 408 (8.59%) Senior
4 322 (6.78%) Architect
5 308 (6.48%) Lead
6 272 (5.72%) Business Analyst
7 240 (5.05%) Consultant
8 187 (3.94%) Data Engineer
9 182 (3.83%) Project Manager
10 139 (2.93%) Support Engineer
11 120 (2.53%) IT Support
12 96 (2.02%) Java Developer
12 96 (2.02%) Software Engineer
13 93 (1.96%) Senior Developer
14 91 (1.91%) Data Analyst
15 84 (1.77%) Python Developer
16 82 (1.73%) Administrator
17 81 (1.70%) Solutions Architect
17 81 (1.70%) Support Analyst
18 80 (1.68%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (6.90%) REST
2 174 (3.66%) SOAP
3 162 (3.41%) RESTful
4 155 (3.26%) .NET
5 153 (3.22%) Kafka
6 146 (3.07%) React
7 138 (2.90%) Spring
8 134 (2.82%) Node.js
9 118 (2.48%) HTML
10 113 (2.38%) CSS
11 108 (2.27%) AngularJS
12 101 (2.13%) JSON
13 96 (2.02%) Spring Boot
14 92 (1.94%) XML
15 87 (1.83%) Middleware
16 84 (1.77%) LDAP
17 67 (1.41%) Oracle Fusion
18 66 (1.39%) OAuth
19 65 (1.37%) Web Services
20 53 (1.12%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 227 (4.78%) Product Ownership
2 185 (3.89%) Cloud Native
3 180 (3.79%) Onboarding
4 157 (3.30%) Management Information System
5 131 (2.76%) Analytical Mindset
6 117 (2.46%) Data Centre
7 108 (2.27%) Data Structures
8 102 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
9 100 (2.10%) Self-Motivation
10 96 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
11 81 (1.70%) Algorithms
12 78 (1.64%) Security Posture
13 76 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
14 68 (1.43%) Virtual Team
15 66 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
16 64 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
16 64 (1.35%) Mobile App
17 59 (1.24%) CMDB
18 53 (1.12%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 48 (1.01%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 507 (10.67%) Windows
2 315 (6.63%) Linux
3 100 (2.10%) Windows 10
4 99 (2.08%) Unix
5 81 (1.70%) Windows Server
6 68 (1.43%) Android
7 65 (1.37%) Apple iOS
8 61 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 46 (0.97%) Mac OS
10 22 (0.46%) 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 5 (0.11%) zOS
17 4 (0.084%) Debian
17 4 (0.084%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.084%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,392 (29.29%) Agile
2 879 (18.50%) CI/CD
3 773 (16.27%) DevOps
4 712 (14.98%) Continuous Improvement
4 712 (14.98%) Stakeholder Management
5 542 (11.41%) Analytics
6 489 (10.29%) Migration
7 484 (10.19%) Decision-Making
8 432 (9.09%) AI
9 429 (9.03%) Project Management
10 417 (8.78%) Test Automation
11 405 (8.52%) Data Modelling
12 404 (8.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 375 (7.89%) Scrum
14 364 (7.66%) Validation
15 363 (7.64%) Business Intelligence
16 349 (7.34%) ITIL
17 341 (7.18%) Computer Science
18 339 (7.13%) Customer Service
19 336 (7.07%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 946 (19.91%) Python
2 838 (17.63%) SQL
3 426 (8.96%) Java
4 313 (6.59%) PowerShell
5 272 (5.72%) JavaScript
6 195 (4.10%) C#
7 174 (3.66%) TypeScript
8 138 (2.90%) Bash
9 73 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.28%) C++
11 52 (1.09%) Go
12 51 (1.07%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.82%) Perl
14 37 (0.78%) Scala
14 37 (0.78%) T-SQL
15 35 (0.74%) VBA
16 31 (0.65%) Bicep
17 30 (0.63%) Apex Code
17 30 (0.63%) C
17 30 (0.63%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,062 (22.35%) Security Cleared
2 748 (15.74%) SC Cleared
3 634 (13.34%) Degree
4 238 (5.01%) Computer Science Degree
5 196 (4.12%) DV Cleared
6 110 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
7 101 (2.13%) Microsoft Certification
8 94 (1.98%) PMP
9 90 (1.89%) PMI Certification
10 89 (1.87%) CISSP
10 89 (1.87%) Master's Degree
11 81 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
12 74 (1.56%) Azure Certification
13 57 (1.20%) CISM
14 46 (0.97%) AWS Certification
15 41 (0.86%) CCNP
16 37 (0.78%) A+ Certification
16 37 (0.78%) CCNA
17 31 (0.65%) Network+ Certification
18 30 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 308 (6.48%) QA
2 285 (6.00%) Data Quality
3 151 (3.18%) GDPR
4 92 (1.94%) Accessibility
5 84 (1.77%) NIST
6 81 (1.70%) PMO
7 80 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 54 (1.14%) SLA
9 35 (0.74%) PCI DSS
10 32 (0.67%) GRC
11 24 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.48%) PSD2
13 22 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
14 20 (0.42%) WCAG
15 16 (0.34%) EU AI Act
15 16 (0.34%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.32%) HIPAA
16 15 (0.32%) ISO 8583
17 14 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 12 (0.25%) IFRS
System Software
1 432 (9.09%) Docker
2 357 (7.51%) Active Directory
3 105 (2.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.80%) Hyper-V
5 34 (0.72%) vSphere
6 27 (0.57%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
9 17 (0.36%) Firmware
10 11 (0.23%) RACF
11 10 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.19%) ACF2
13 8 (0.17%) Squid
14 7 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
15 6 (0.13%) vCloud
16 5 (0.11%) HDFS
16 5 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
17 4 (0.084%) Snort
18 3 (0.063%) ISA Server
18 3 (0.063%) NFS
Systems Management
1 470 (9.89%) Kubernetes
2 264 (5.56%) Terraform
3 175 (3.68%) Ansible
4 115 (2.42%) Grafana
5 110 (2.31%) Microsoft Intune
6 91 (1.91%) Prometheus
7 85 (1.79%) SCCM
8 40 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.78%) Puppet
10 34 (0.72%) Kibana
11 31 (0.65%) Nessus
12 30 (0.63%) Argo
13 29 (0.61%) FortiGate
14 25 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 25 (0.53%) vCenter Server
15 23 (0.48%) Control-M
16 22 (0.46%) IBM Guardium
17 18 (0.38%) Red Hat Satellite
18 12 (0.25%) vRealize
19 11 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 912 (19.19%) Microsoft
2 330 (6.94%) Oracle
3 215 (4.52%) SAP
4 208 (4.38%) ServiceNow
5 195 (4.10%) VMware
6 158 (3.32%) Google
7 147 (3.09%) Splunk
8 142 (2.99%) Databricks
9 111 (2.34%) Cisco
10 107 (2.25%) Salesforce
11 85 (1.79%) Red Hat
12 72 (1.52%) CyberArk
13 61 (1.28%) BeyondTrust
14 54 (1.14%) Citrix
15 53 (1.12%) Workday
16 50 (1.05%) IBM
17 48 (1.01%) Talend
18 44 (0.93%) Informatica
19 43 (0.90%) F5
19 43 (0.90%) Palo Alto