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 4 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 7 12
Rank change year-on-year 0 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,613 4,206 3,920
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.81% 13.76% 10.34%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.55% 15.66% 11.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,868 2,430 2,496
10th Percentile £264 £268 £231
25th Percentile £387 £400 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £479 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.25% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £612 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 265 168 217
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.07 £13.41
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £19.00 £19.50 £43.86
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -55.54% +46.20%
75th Percentile £35.00 £36.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.62 £64.95 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £20.26 £21.46 £39.90
% change year-on-year -5.62% -46.22% +48.53%

All Process and 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 27,869 26,864 33,636
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 89.46% 87.86% 88.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,747 16,503 22,915
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £417 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,797 957 1,425
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.24 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.24 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +18.90%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.35 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.75 £43.63
% change year-on-year -23.21% -24.93% +24.64%

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 4 December 2025.

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 4 December 2025.

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 4 December 2025. 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 2,144 £500 -5.66% 864
North of England -3 700 £460 -3.16% 1,072
South East 0 634 £471 -5.80% 1,185
Midlands 0 511 £450 +3.45% 623
North West 0 386 £450 -5.26% 545
West Midlands 0 365 £490 +5.95% 374
South West -1 285 £488 +2.63% 372
Yorkshire -6 268 £481 -0.82% 390
East of England -3 208 £500 +11.11% 501
East Midlands -3 146 £402 +2.10% 243
North East -3 51 £450 -3.12% 157
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
1 179 (3.88%) Confluence
2 153 (3.32%) SharePoint
3 105 (2.28%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.37%) Apache Spark
5 59 (1.28%) SAS
6 54 (1.17%) Apache
7 44 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
8 32 (0.69%) CMS
9 30 (0.65%) Skype for Business
10 16 (0.35%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.30%) JBoss
12 12 (0.26%) IIS
13 10 (0.22%) Anypoint
14 8 (0.17%) HCL Notes
14 8 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
15 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
15 7 (0.15%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.15%) OpenStack
15 7 (0.15%) Tomcat
16 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
Applications
1 308 (6.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 211 (4.57%) Microsoft Office
3 114 (2.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.56%) MS Visio
5 55 (1.19%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.26%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.22%) Trello
9 8 (0.17%) Sketch
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
11 6 (0.13%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.13%) Simulink
12 4 (0.087%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.087%) Notion
13 3 (0.065%) Revit
14 2 (0.043%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.043%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.043%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 89 (1.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.43%) Oracle Payables
4 17 (0.37%) Oracle Receivables
4 17 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.37%) SAP EWM
4 17 (0.37%) Workday HCM
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
6 14 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
6 14 (0.30%) SAP HR
7 13 (0.28%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.28%) SAP WM
8 12 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
9 11 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
9 11 (0.24%) Oracle EBS R12
10 10 (0.22%) Maximo
10 10 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
11 9 (0.20%) Aladdin
11 9 (0.20%) SAP ERP
12 8 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 886 (19.21%) Azure
2 714 (15.48%) AWS
3 332 (7.20%) GCP
4 308 (6.68%) Power Platform
5 284 (6.16%) Microsoft 365
6 217 (4.70%) GitHub
7 184 (3.99%) Azure DevOps
8 142 (3.08%) Serverless
9 119 (2.58%) Entra ID
10 114 (2.47%) SaaS
11 93 (2.02%) GitHub Actions
12 81 (1.76%) Amazon S3
13 76 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
14 72 (1.56%) Power Automate
15 70 (1.52%) Dynamics 365
16 69 (1.50%) PowerApps
17 68 (1.47%) OpenShift
17 68 (1.47%) Snowflake
18 60 (1.30%) PaaS
19 56 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 159 (3.45%) Firewall
2 137 (2.97%) DNS
3 106 (2.30%) Network Security
4 103 (2.23%) TCP/IP
5 100 (2.17%) VPN
6 72 (1.56%) DHCP
7 58 (1.26%) WAN
8 56 (1.21%) LAN
9 44 (0.95%) VLAN
10 37 (0.80%) BGP
11 31 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
12 28 (0.61%) Skype
12 28 (0.61%) Wireless
13 27 (0.59%) SSL
14 23 (0.50%) OSPF
14 23 (0.50%) Wireshark
15 22 (0.48%) HTTP
16 21 (0.46%) VoIP
17 18 (0.39%) SAN
18 16 (0.35%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 235 (5.09%) Power BI
2 152 (3.30%) SQL Server
3 151 (3.27%) PostgreSQL
4 147 (3.19%) Relational Database
5 126 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
6 105 (2.28%) NoSQL
7 88 (1.91%) MongoDB
8 83 (1.80%) Oracle Database
9 76 (1.65%) Tableau
10 66 (1.43%) MySQL
11 62 (1.34%) Metadata
12 52 (1.13%) Big Data
13 45 (0.98%) DynamoDB
14 44 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
15 40 (0.87%) Data Lake
15 40 (0.87%) DB2
15 40 (0.87%) Hadoop
16 37 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
17 36 (0.78%) Redis
18 34 (0.74%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 448 (9.71%) JIRA
2 349 (7.57%) Git
3 246 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 148 (3.21%) GitLab
5 74 (1.60%) JUnit
6 72 (1.56%) Selenium
7 46 (1.00%) Postman
8 38 (0.82%) Cucumber
9 34 (0.74%) Maven
10 28 (0.61%) Bitbucket
11 25 (0.54%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.43%) SoapUI
13 19 (0.41%) JMeter
13 19 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
14 17 (0.37%) Cypress.io
14 17 (0.37%) Gradle
15 16 (0.35%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.33%) Mockito
17 14 (0.30%) Eclipse
17 14 (0.30%) REST Assured
General
1 2,588 (56.10%) Social Skills
2 1,703 (36.92%) Analytical Skills
3 1,120 (24.28%) Finance
4 408 (8.84%) Public Sector
5 393 (8.52%) Banking
6 156 (3.38%) Organisational Skills
7 133 (2.88%) Legal
8 127 (2.75%) Influencing Skills
9 123 (2.67%) Marketing
10 121 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
10 121 (2.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 118 (2.56%) Telecoms
12 106 (2.30%) Presentation Skills
13 98 (2.12%) Manufacturing
14 96 (2.08%) Retail
15 93 (2.02%) Front Office
16 86 (1.86%) Investment Banking
17 51 (1.11%) Military
18 43 (0.93%) Financial Institution
19 42 (0.91%) Law
Job Titles
1 724 (15.69%) Developer
2 699 (15.15%) Analyst
3 412 (8.93%) Senior
4 281 (6.09%) Architect
5 263 (5.70%) Lead
6 252 (5.46%) Consultant
7 250 (5.42%) Business Analyst
8 179 (3.88%) Project Manager
9 170 (3.69%) Support Engineer
10 133 (2.88%) Java Developer
11 130 (2.82%) Senior Developer
12 124 (2.69%) IT Support
13 122 (2.64%) Data Engineer
14 95 (2.06%) Support Analyst
15 90 (1.95%) Data Analyst
16 83 (1.80%) Python Developer
17 81 (1.76%) Software Engineer
18 75 (1.63%) Administrator
19 72 (1.56%) Solutions Architect
20 70 (1.52%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 285 (6.18%) REST
2 196 (4.25%) RESTful
3 173 (3.75%) .NET
4 163 (3.53%) Kafka
5 157 (3.40%) Spring
6 143 (3.10%) React
7 140 (3.03%) SOAP
8 135 (2.93%) HTML
9 128 (2.77%) Node.js
10 116 (2.51%) AngularJS
11 113 (2.45%) CSS
12 110 (2.38%) Spring Boot
13 85 (1.84%) JSON
14 73 (1.58%) XML
15 71 (1.54%) OAuth
16 68 (1.47%) Web Services
17 65 (1.41%) Middleware
18 62 (1.34%) GraphQL
19 60 (1.30%) Oracle Fusion
20 48 (1.04%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 226 (4.90%) Product Ownership
2 184 (3.99%) Cloud Native
3 172 (3.73%) Management Information System
4 150 (3.25%) Onboarding
5 136 (2.95%) Analytical Mindset
6 112 (2.43%) Data Structures
7 105 (2.28%) Self-Motivation
8 96 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
9 84 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
10 82 (1.78%) Algorithms
11 80 (1.73%) Data Centre
12 74 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
13 65 (1.41%) Virtual Team
14 63 (1.37%) Mobile App
14 63 (1.37%) Security Posture
15 62 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
16 55 (1.19%) CMDB
17 49 (1.06%) NHS
18 48 (1.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 48 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 445 (9.65%) Windows
2 332 (7.20%) Linux
3 107 (2.32%) Unix
4 103 (2.23%) Windows 10
5 86 (1.86%) Windows Server
6 55 (1.19%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.91%) Android
8 38 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 36 (0.78%) Mac OS
10 26 (0.56%) VMS
11 16 (0.35%) Windows Server 2012
12 12 (0.26%) CentOS
12 12 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
13 7 (0.15%) Mac OS X
13 7 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.13%) zOS
15 4 (0.087%) Ubuntu
15 4 (0.087%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
16 2 (0.043%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,403 (30.41%) Agile
2 814 (17.65%) CI/CD
3 716 (15.52%) DevOps
4 644 (13.96%) Continuous Improvement
5 638 (13.83%) Stakeholder Management
6 502 (10.88%) Analytics
7 446 (9.67%) Migration
8 434 (9.41%) Decision-Making
9 423 (9.17%) Project Management
10 404 (8.76%) Scrum
11 388 (8.41%) Test Automation
12 375 (8.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 350 (7.59%) Computer Science
14 343 (7.44%) AI
15 334 (7.24%) Mentoring
16 332 (7.20%) Business Intelligence
17 322 (6.98%) Containerisation
18 321 (6.96%) Microservices
19 320 (6.94%) Data Modelling
20 311 (6.74%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 930 (20.16%) Python
2 771 (16.71%) SQL
3 478 (10.36%) Java
4 278 (6.03%) JavaScript
5 249 (5.40%) PowerShell
6 186 (4.03%) C#
7 150 (3.25%) Bash
8 148 (3.21%) TypeScript
9 80 (1.73%) Shell Script
10 76 (1.65%) Go
11 62 (1.34%) PL/SQL
12 58 (1.26%) C++
13 48 (1.04%) VBA
14 40 (0.87%) Scala
15 35 (0.76%) Apex Code
15 35 (0.76%) R
16 31 (0.67%) T-SQL
17 30 (0.65%) Groovy
17 30 (0.65%) PHP
18 29 (0.63%) Perl
Qualifications
1 826 (17.91%) Security Cleared
2 677 (14.68%) Degree
3 605 (13.12%) SC Cleared
4 253 (5.48%) Computer Science Degree
5 125 (2.71%) DV Cleared
6 96 (2.08%) CISSP
7 95 (2.06%) Microsoft Certification
8 94 (2.04%) PMI Certification
9 86 (1.86%) PMP
10 84 (1.82%) Master's Degree
11 73 (1.58%) Azure Certification
12 72 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
13 66 (1.43%) AWS Certification
14 62 (1.34%) Cisco Certification
15 48 (1.04%) CISM
16 42 (0.91%) A+ Certification
17 37 (0.80%) CCNP
18 36 (0.78%) MCP
19 28 (0.61%) ACCA
20 26 (0.56%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 326 (7.07%) QA
2 259 (5.61%) Data Quality
3 181 (3.92%) GDPR
4 96 (2.08%) Accessibility
5 89 (1.93%) NIST
6 87 (1.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 63 (1.37%) PMO
8 61 (1.32%) SLA
9 42 (0.91%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 26 (0.56%) GRC
12 25 (0.54%) PSD2
13 19 (0.41%) EU AI Act
13 19 (0.41%) HIPAA
14 18 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 18 (0.39%) WCAG
15 16 (0.35%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.33%) SEPA
17 12 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
18 10 (0.22%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 428 (9.28%) Docker
2 284 (6.16%) Active Directory
3 97 (2.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.74%) Hyper-V
5 26 (0.56%) vSphere
6 25 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
7 19 (0.41%) Firmware
8 18 (0.39%) VMware NSX
9 17 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
10 16 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
11 11 (0.24%) HDFS
12 10 (0.22%) RACF
13 8 (0.17%) Time Sharing Option
13 8 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) ACF2
15 5 (0.11%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.087%) KVM
16 4 (0.087%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 3 (0.065%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.065%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 455 (9.86%) Kubernetes
2 265 (5.74%) Terraform
3 172 (3.73%) Ansible
4 107 (2.32%) Grafana
5 86 (1.86%) Prometheus
6 76 (1.65%) SCCM
7 65 (1.41%) Microsoft Intune
8 32 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
9 29 (0.63%) Puppet
10 26 (0.56%) Argo
11 20 (0.43%) Nessus
12 19 (0.41%) Kibana
12 19 (0.41%) SCOM
13 17 (0.37%) Data Guard
14 16 (0.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 16 (0.35%) HP ALM
14 16 (0.35%) vCenter Server
15 14 (0.30%) vRealize
16 13 (0.28%) Packer
17 12 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 954 (20.68%) Microsoft
2 338 (7.33%) Oracle
3 249 (5.40%) SAP
4 231 (5.01%) ServiceNow
5 179 (3.88%) Google
6 162 (3.51%) VMware
7 136 (2.95%) Splunk
8 129 (2.80%) Salesforce
9 102 (2.21%) Cisco
10 95 (2.06%) Databricks
11 62 (1.34%) IBM
11 62 (1.34%) Red Hat
12 61 (1.32%) Workday
13 53 (1.15%) CyberArk
14 52 (1.13%) Citrix
15 42 (0.91%) Talend
16 40 (0.87%) Palo Alto
17 35 (0.76%) BeyondTrust
17 35 (0.76%) F5
17 35 (0.76%) MuleSoft