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 22 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 8 12
Rank change year-on-year +1 +4 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,597 4,131 4,088
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.03% 13.21% 10.34%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.69% 15.18% 11.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,826 2,382 2,615
10th Percentile £260 £275 £244
25th Percentile £381 £400 £399
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -2.44% -5.09%
75th Percentile £600 £604 £626
90th Percentile £700 £710 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 284 176 222
10th Percentile £13.16 £15.00 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £18.96 £18.39 £46.12
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -60.12% +56.33%
75th Percentile £34.61 £31.89 £65.96
90th Percentile £71.80 £62.68 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £20.15 £20.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year +0.74% -56.41% +77.76%

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 27,542 27,205 35,091
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 90.07% 87.01% 88.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,480 16,613 23,999
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,822 1,002 1,481
10th Percentile £14.86 £15.07 £14.54
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.00 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.36 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.87% -21.42% +26.76%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £74.72 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £33.93 £44.00
% change year-on-year -25.88% -22.89% +25.71%

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 22 November 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 22 November 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 22 November 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 +3 2,141 £500 -5.66% 2,375
North of England -3 670 £455 -4.32% 942
South East +3 635 £463 -7.50% 1,304
Midlands 0 527 £450 +5.08% 651
West Midlands +1 375 £482 +7.00% 425
North West -1 370 £450 -1.64% 575
South West 0 274 £475 - 449
Yorkshire -5 261 £486 +0.21% 263
East of England -2 222 £500 +11.11% 370
East Midlands -2 152 £400 +1.14% 215
North East -3 44 £450 -0.44% 107
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
1 183 (3.98%) Confluence
2 151 (3.28%) SharePoint
3 108 (2.35%) Microsoft Exchange
4 62 (1.35%) Apache Spark
5 56 (1.22%) SAS
6 55 (1.20%) Apache
7 43 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
8 34 (0.74%) CMS
9 30 (0.65%) Skype for Business
10 16 (0.35%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.33%) IIS
11 15 (0.33%) JBoss
12 10 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
13 9 (0.20%) Anypoint
14 8 (0.17%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
15 7 (0.15%) HCL Notes
15 7 (0.15%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.15%) OpenStack
15 7 (0.15%) Tomcat
Applications
1 319 (6.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 195 (4.24%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (2.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 76 (1.65%) MS Visio
5 49 (1.07%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.24%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.22%) Trello
9 8 (0.17%) Sketch
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.15%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.15%) Simulink
11 6 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
11 6 (0.13%) ProjectWise
12 5 (0.11%) AutoCAD
12 5 (0.11%) Revit
13 4 (0.087%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.087%) Notion
14 3 (0.065%) Navisworks
15 2 (0.044%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 92 (2.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.41%) Oracle Payables
4 17 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
4 17 (0.37%) SAP EWM
4 17 (0.37%) SAP HR
4 17 (0.37%) Workday HCM
5 16 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
5 16 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
6 14 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
7 13 (0.28%) Oracle EBS R12
7 13 (0.28%) SAP WM
8 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
9 10 (0.22%) Maximo
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
10 9 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
10 9 (0.20%) SAP ERP
10 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 887 (19.30%) Azure
2 713 (15.51%) AWS
3 334 (7.27%) GCP
4 308 (6.70%) Power Platform
5 279 (6.07%) Microsoft 365
6 210 (4.57%) GitHub
7 176 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
8 151 (3.28%) Serverless
9 120 (2.61%) SaaS
10 116 (2.52%) Entra ID
11 90 (1.96%) Amazon S3
12 87 (1.89%) GitHub Actions
13 83 (1.81%) AWS Lambda
14 72 (1.57%) Dynamics 365
15 68 (1.48%) PowerApps
16 67 (1.46%) Power Automate
17 66 (1.44%) Snowflake
18 61 (1.33%) OpenShift
19 58 (1.26%) PaaS
20 55 (1.20%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 162 (3.52%) Firewall
2 136 (2.96%) DNS
3 104 (2.26%) TCP/IP
4 103 (2.24%) Network Security
5 98 (2.13%) VPN
6 70 (1.52%) DHCP
7 56 (1.22%) WAN
8 55 (1.20%) LAN
9 44 (0.96%) VLAN
10 34 (0.74%) BGP
11 30 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
11 30 (0.65%) Wireless
12 28 (0.61%) Skype
12 28 (0.61%) SSL
13 24 (0.52%) Wireshark
14 23 (0.50%) HTTP
14 23 (0.50%) VoIP
15 21 (0.46%) OSPF
16 18 (0.39%) Internet
17 17 (0.37%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 231 (5.03%) Power BI
2 162 (3.52%) SQL Server
3 158 (3.44%) Relational Database
4 153 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
5 125 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
6 113 (2.46%) NoSQL
7 89 (1.94%) MongoDB
8 80 (1.74%) Oracle Database
9 77 (1.68%) Tableau
10 67 (1.46%) MySQL
11 56 (1.22%) Metadata
12 51 (1.11%) DynamoDB
13 45 (0.98%) Big Data
14 42 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
14 42 (0.91%) DB2
15 40 (0.87%) Hadoop
16 39 (0.85%) BigQuery
16 39 (0.85%) Redis
17 37 (0.80%) Data Lake
18 33 (0.72%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 442 (9.61%) JIRA
2 354 (7.70%) Git
3 237 (5.16%) Jenkins
4 137 (2.98%) GitLab
5 75 (1.63%) JUnit
6 71 (1.54%) Selenium
7 46 (1.00%) Postman
8 36 (0.78%) Maven
9 35 (0.76%) Cucumber
10 32 (0.70%) Bitbucket
11 26 (0.57%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.44%) Gradle
12 20 (0.44%) SoapUI
13 19 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
14 18 (0.39%) Cypress.io
15 16 (0.35%) JMeter
16 15 (0.33%) Mockito
16 15 (0.33%) REST Assured
16 15 (0.33%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.30%) Eclipse
General
1 2,622 (57.04%) Social Skills
2 1,718 (37.37%) Analytical Skills
3 1,114 (24.23%) Finance
4 407 (8.85%) Banking
5 385 (8.38%) Public Sector
6 151 (3.28%) Organisational Skills
7 130 (2.83%) Legal
8 129 (2.81%) Marketing
9 127 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
10 121 (2.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 119 (2.59%) Telecoms
12 117 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
13 111 (2.41%) Presentation Skills
14 101 (2.20%) Retail
15 100 (2.18%) Manufacturing
16 96 (2.09%) Front Office
17 93 (2.02%) Investment Banking
18 48 (1.04%) Military
19 45 (0.98%) Financial Institution
20 44 (0.96%) Law
Job Titles
1 720 (15.66%) Analyst
2 704 (15.31%) Developer
3 397 (8.64%) Senior
4 293 (6.37%) Architect
5 268 (5.83%) Lead
6 249 (5.42%) Business Analyst
7 248 (5.39%) Consultant
8 178 (3.87%) Support Engineer
9 164 (3.57%) Project Manager
10 133 (2.89%) Senior Developer
11 128 (2.78%) Java Developer
12 123 (2.68%) IT Support
13 120 (2.61%) Data Engineer
14 100 (2.18%) Support Analyst
15 90 (1.96%) Data Analyst
16 84 (1.83%) Software Engineer
17 83 (1.81%) Python Developer
18 75 (1.63%) Administrator
19 71 (1.54%) Solutions Architect
20 69 (1.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 282 (6.13%) REST
2 195 (4.24%) RESTful
3 185 (4.02%) .NET
4 163 (3.55%) Kafka
5 148 (3.22%) Spring
6 144 (3.13%) HTML
7 142 (3.09%) React
8 135 (2.94%) SOAP
9 121 (2.63%) CSS
10 118 (2.57%) Node.js
11 112 (2.44%) AngularJS
12 96 (2.09%) Spring Boot
13 83 (1.81%) JSON
14 76 (1.65%) Web Services
15 71 (1.54%) OAuth
15 71 (1.54%) XML
16 66 (1.44%) Middleware
17 63 (1.37%) GraphQL
18 52 (1.13%) Oracle Fusion
18 52 (1.13%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 218 (4.74%) Product Ownership
2 182 (3.96%) Cloud Native
3 174 (3.79%) Management Information System
4 148 (3.22%) Onboarding
5 130 (2.83%) Analytical Mindset
6 109 (2.37%) Data Structures
7 104 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
8 89 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
8 89 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
9 86 (1.87%) Algorithms
10 78 (1.70%) Data Centre
11 72 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
12 66 (1.44%) Virtual Team
13 64 (1.39%) Security Posture
14 61 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
15 57 (1.24%) Mobile App
16 53 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 49 (1.07%) NHS
18 48 (1.04%) CMDB
19 46 (1.00%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 462 (10.05%) Windows
2 331 (7.20%) Linux
3 107 (2.33%) Unix
4 103 (2.24%) Windows 10
5 86 (1.87%) Windows Server
6 59 (1.28%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.91%) Android
8 39 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 36 (0.78%) Mac OS
10 24 (0.52%) VMS
11 16 (0.35%) Windows Server 2012
12 14 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.28%) CentOS
14 7 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
15 5 (0.11%) Ubuntu
15 5 (0.11%) zOS
16 4 (0.087%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
17 2 (0.044%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,383 (30.08%) Agile
2 799 (17.38%) CI/CD
3 711 (15.47%) DevOps
4 639 (13.90%) Continuous Improvement
5 626 (13.62%) Stakeholder Management
6 499 (10.85%) Analytics
7 440 (9.57%) Migration
8 431 (9.38%) Decision-Making
9 410 (8.92%) Project Management
10 403 (8.77%) Scrum
11 381 (8.29%) Test Automation
12 364 (7.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 351 (7.64%) Computer Science
14 337 (7.33%) Business Intelligence
15 329 (7.16%) AI
16 325 (7.07%) Mentoring
17 318 (6.92%) Data Modelling
17 318 (6.92%) ITIL
18 313 (6.81%) Containerisation
19 302 (6.57%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 925 (20.12%) Python
2 779 (16.95%) SQL
3 476 (10.35%) Java
4 288 (6.26%) JavaScript
5 255 (5.55%) PowerShell
6 196 (4.26%) C#
7 145 (3.15%) Bash
8 144 (3.13%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.81%) Shell Script
10 74 (1.61%) Go
11 59 (1.28%) PL/SQL
12 58 (1.26%) C++
13 52 (1.13%) VBA
14 43 (0.94%) Scala
15 36 (0.78%) Apex Code
16 32 (0.70%) R
17 31 (0.67%) PHP
18 29 (0.63%) Perl
18 29 (0.63%) T-SQL
19 28 (0.61%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 807 (17.55%) Security Cleared
2 663 (14.42%) Degree
3 592 (12.88%) SC Cleared
4 255 (5.55%) Computer Science Degree
5 119 (2.59%) DV Cleared
6 96 (2.09%) CISSP
6 96 (2.09%) Microsoft Certification
7 94 (2.04%) PMI Certification
8 87 (1.89%) PMP
9 80 (1.74%) Master's Degree
10 75 (1.63%) Azure Certification
11 70 (1.52%) AWS Certification
12 69 (1.50%) BPSS Clearance
13 60 (1.31%) Cisco Certification
14 46 (1.00%) CISM
15 42 (0.91%) A+ Certification
16 36 (0.78%) CCNP
16 36 (0.78%) MCP
17 30 (0.65%) ACCA
18 27 (0.59%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 315 (6.85%) QA
2 256 (5.57%) Data Quality
3 183 (3.98%) GDPR
4 95 (2.07%) Accessibility
5 85 (1.85%) NIST
6 82 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 65 (1.41%) SLA
8 63 (1.37%) PMO
9 40 (0.87%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 24 (0.52%) PSD2
12 23 (0.50%) GRC
13 20 (0.44%) HIPAA
14 19 (0.41%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 19 (0.41%) EU AI Act
14 19 (0.41%) WCAG
15 15 (0.33%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.33%) SEPA
16 14 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
17 9 (0.20%) SOC 2
System Software
1 409 (8.90%) Docker
2 290 (6.31%) Active Directory
3 100 (2.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.74%) Hyper-V
5 27 (0.59%) vSphere
6 26 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
7 19 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (0.39%) Firmware
8 18 (0.39%) VMware NSX
9 15 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.24%) HDFS
11 10 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
12 9 (0.20%) RACF
13 8 (0.17%) Time Sharing Option
14 6 (0.13%) ACF2
15 5 (0.11%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.087%) KVM
17 3 (0.065%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.065%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 2 (0.044%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 437 (9.51%) Kubernetes
2 256 (5.57%) Terraform
3 168 (3.65%) Ansible
4 103 (2.24%) Grafana
5 82 (1.78%) Prometheus
6 74 (1.61%) SCCM
7 69 (1.50%) Microsoft Intune
8 40 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.57%) Argo
9 26 (0.57%) Puppet
10 20 (0.44%) Nessus
11 19 (0.41%) SCOM
12 17 (0.37%) Kibana
13 16 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 15 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 14 (0.30%) HP ALM
15 14 (0.30%) Packer
15 14 (0.30%) vCenter Server
16 13 (0.28%) vRealize
17 12 (0.26%) Control-M
Vendors
1 956 (20.80%) Microsoft
2 331 (7.20%) Oracle
3 261 (5.68%) SAP
4 229 (4.98%) ServiceNow
5 184 (4.00%) Google
6 165 (3.59%) VMware
7 131 (2.85%) Salesforce
7 131 (2.85%) Splunk
8 104 (2.26%) Cisco
9 86 (1.87%) Databricks
10 67 (1.46%) IBM
11 64 (1.39%) Red Hat
11 64 (1.39%) Workday
12 56 (1.22%) Citrix
13 55 (1.20%) CyberArk
14 41 (0.89%) Palo Alto
14 41 (0.89%) Talend
15 35 (0.76%) BeyondTrust
16 34 (0.74%) F5
16 34 (0.74%) Juniper