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

6 months to
3 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 7 12
Rank change year-on-year 0 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,579 4,175 3,953
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.82% 13.71% 10.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.56% 15.61% 11.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,847 2,409 2,515
10th Percentile £263 £274 £233
25th Percentile £385 £400 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £610 £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 266 167 218
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.06 £13.41
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £19.00 £19.50 £44.43
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -56.11% +49.34%
75th Percentile £35.30 £36.87 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.38 £65.10 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £20.26 £21.46 £42.31
% change year-on-year -5.62% -49.27% +58.27%

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 27,644 26,739 33,894
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 89.47% 87.82% 88.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,602 16,417 23,106
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £416 £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 1,795 955 1,428
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.22 £14.93
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.22 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +19.85%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.75
% change year-on-year -22.62% -25.71% +25.00%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 2,136 £500 -6.19% 1,140
North of England -3 684 £463 -2.63% 1,065
South East 0 634 £468 -6.40% 1,363
Midlands 0 507 £450 +3.45% 622
North West -1 382 £450 -2.70% 546
West Midlands 0 361 £491 +7.62% 364
South West -1 280 £488 +2.63% 391
Yorkshire -7 257 £480 -1.03% 409
East of England -3 208 £500 +11.11% 377
East Midlands -2 146 £402 +2.10% 251
North East -3 50 £450 -0.88% 127
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
1 180 (3.93%) Confluence
2 154 (3.36%) SharePoint
3 105 (2.29%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.38%) Apache Spark
5 59 (1.29%) SAS
6 53 (1.16%) Apache
7 44 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
8 32 (0.70%) CMS
9 30 (0.66%) Skype for Business
10 16 (0.35%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.31%) 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 (6.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 205 (4.48%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (2.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.55%) MS Visio
5 55 (1.20%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.31%) 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
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 (0.066%) Revit
14 2 (0.044%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.044%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.044%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 89 (1.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.44%) 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 (0.31%) NetSuite
6 14 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
6 14 (0.31%) SAP HR
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
1 879 (19.20%) Azure
2 705 (15.40%) AWS
3 327 (7.14%) GCP
4 305 (6.66%) Power Platform
5 284 (6.20%) Microsoft 365
6 214 (4.67%) GitHub
7 183 (4.00%) Azure DevOps
8 139 (3.04%) Serverless
9 118 (2.58%) Entra ID
10 114 (2.49%) SaaS
11 92 (2.01%) GitHub Actions
12 80 (1.75%) Amazon S3
13 75 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
14 70 (1.53%) Dynamics 365
15 68 (1.49%) Power Automate
15 68 (1.49%) Snowflake
16 66 (1.44%) PowerApps
17 60 (1.31%) PaaS
18 58 (1.27%) OpenShift
19 55 (1.20%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 159 (3.47%) Firewall
2 137 (2.99%) DNS
3 105 (2.29%) Network Security
4 102 (2.23%) TCP/IP
5 100 (2.18%) VPN
6 72 (1.57%) DHCP
7 58 (1.27%) WAN
8 56 (1.22%) LAN
9 44 (0.96%) VLAN
10 37 (0.81%) BGP
11 31 (0.68%) 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 17 (0.37%) SAN
18 16 (0.35%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 232 (5.07%) Power BI
2 150 (3.28%) PostgreSQL
3 148 (3.23%) SQL Server
4 146 (3.19%) Relational Database
5 122 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
6 104 (2.27%) NoSQL
7 87 (1.90%) MongoDB
8 83 (1.81%) Oracle Database
9 77 (1.68%) Tableau
10 65 (1.42%) MySQL
11 61 (1.33%) Metadata
12 52 (1.14%) Big Data
13 44 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
13 44 (0.96%) DynamoDB
14 40 (0.87%) Data Lake
14 40 (0.87%) DB2
14 40 (0.87%) Hadoop
15 37 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
16 36 (0.79%) Redis
17 35 (0.76%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 444 (9.70%) JIRA
2 348 (7.60%) Git
3 242 (5.28%) Jenkins
4 144 (3.14%) GitLab
5 74 (1.62%) JUnit
6 72 (1.57%) Selenium
7 46 (1.00%) Postman
8 38 (0.83%) Cucumber
9 34 (0.74%) Maven
10 28 (0.61%) Bitbucket
11 25 (0.55%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.44%) 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 (0.31%) Eclipse
17 14 (0.31%) REST Assured
General
1 2,570 (56.13%) Social Skills
2 1,697 (37.06%) Analytical Skills
3 1,115 (24.35%) Finance
4 403 (8.80%) Public Sector
5 391 (8.54%) Banking
6 152 (3.32%) Organisational Skills
7 133 (2.90%) Legal
8 127 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
9 123 (2.69%) Marketing
10 119 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
10 119 (2.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 118 (2.58%) Telecoms
12 106 (2.31%) Presentation Skills
13 98 (2.14%) Manufacturing
14 96 (2.10%) Retail
15 93 (2.03%) Front Office
16 85 (1.86%) Investment Banking
17 51 (1.11%) Military
18 42 (0.92%) Financial Institution
19 41 (0.90%) Law
Job Titles
1 717 (15.66%) Developer
2 698 (15.24%) Analyst
3 409 (8.93%) Senior
4 280 (6.11%) Architect
5 261 (5.70%) Lead
6 252 (5.50%) Consultant
7 248 (5.42%) Business Analyst
8 177 (3.87%) Project Manager
9 169 (3.69%) Support Engineer
10 132 (2.88%) Java Developer
11 130 (2.84%) Senior Developer
12 124 (2.71%) IT Support
13 120 (2.62%) Data Engineer
14 95 (2.07%) Support Analyst
15 89 (1.94%) Data Analyst
16 83 (1.81%) Python Developer
17 80 (1.75%) Software Engineer
18 73 (1.59%) Administrator
19 72 (1.57%) Solutions Architect
20 69 (1.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 285 (6.22%) REST
2 194 (4.24%) RESTful
3 172 (3.76%) .NET
4 161 (3.52%) Kafka
5 154 (3.36%) Spring
6 141 (3.08%) React
7 140 (3.06%) SOAP
8 134 (2.93%) HTML
9 124 (2.71%) Node.js
10 113 (2.47%) AngularJS
11 112 (2.45%) CSS
12 107 (2.34%) Spring Boot
13 84 (1.83%) JSON
14 72 (1.57%) XML
15 71 (1.55%) OAuth
16 68 (1.49%) Web Services
17 65 (1.42%) Middleware
18 62 (1.35%) GraphQL
19 59 (1.29%) Oracle Fusion
20 48 (1.05%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 222 (4.85%) Product Ownership
2 183 (4.00%) Cloud Native
3 173 (3.78%) Management Information System
4 149 (3.25%) Onboarding
5 135 (2.95%) Analytical Mindset
6 111 (2.42%) Data Structures
7 104 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
8 95 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
9 84 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
10 82 (1.79%) Algorithms
11 79 (1.73%) Data Centre
12 74 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
13 65 (1.42%) Virtual Team
14 63 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
14 63 (1.38%) Mobile App
14 63 (1.38%) Security Posture
15 55 (1.20%) CMDB
16 49 (1.07%) NHS
17 48 (1.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 47 (1.03%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 444 (9.70%) Windows
2 325 (7.10%) Linux
3 107 (2.34%) Unix
4 103 (2.25%) Windows 10
5 86 (1.88%) Windows Server
6 54 (1.18%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.92%) Android
8 38 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 36 (0.79%) Mac OS
10 25 (0.55%) 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 5 (0.11%) zOS
15 4 (0.087%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
16 3 (0.066%) Ubuntu
17 2 (0.044%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,393 (30.42%) Agile
2 803 (17.54%) CI/CD
3 705 (15.40%) DevOps
4 643 (14.04%) Continuous Improvement
5 637 (13.91%) Stakeholder Management
6 496 (10.83%) Analytics
7 440 (9.61%) Migration
8 427 (9.33%) Decision-Making
9 419 (9.15%) Project Management
10 403 (8.80%) Scrum
11 387 (8.45%) Test Automation
12 373 (8.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 349 (7.62%) Computer Science
14 339 (7.40%) AI
15 332 (7.25%) Mentoring
16 329 (7.18%) Business Intelligence
17 316 (6.90%) Containerisation
17 316 (6.90%) Data Modelling
18 314 (6.86%) Microservices
19 310 (6.77%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 921 (20.11%) Python
2 769 (16.79%) SQL
3 473 (10.33%) Java
4 276 (6.03%) JavaScript
5 249 (5.44%) PowerShell
6 183 (4.00%) C#
7 146 (3.19%) TypeScript
8 145 (3.17%) Bash
9 79 (1.73%) Shell Script
10 74 (1.62%) Go
11 62 (1.35%) PL/SQL
12 57 (1.24%) C++
13 48 (1.05%) VBA
14 39 (0.85%) Scala
15 35 (0.76%) Apex Code
15 35 (0.76%) R
16 30 (0.66%) PHP
16 30 (0.66%) T-SQL
17 29 (0.63%) Perl
18 28 (0.61%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 821 (17.93%) Security Cleared
2 668 (14.59%) Degree
3 602 (13.15%) SC Cleared
4 253 (5.53%) Computer Science Degree
5 124 (2.71%) DV Cleared
6 96 (2.10%) CISSP
7 95 (2.07%) Microsoft Certification
8 94 (2.05%) PMI Certification
9 86 (1.88%) PMP
10 83 (1.81%) Master's Degree
11 73 (1.59%) Azure Certification
12 70 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
13 66 (1.44%) AWS Certification
14 62 (1.35%) Cisco Certification
15 48 (1.05%) CISM
16 42 (0.92%) A+ Certification
17 37 (0.81%) CCNP
18 36 (0.79%) MCP
19 29 (0.63%) ACCA
20 26 (0.57%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 326 (7.12%) QA
2 259 (5.66%) Data Quality
3 181 (3.95%) GDPR
4 96 (2.10%) Accessibility
5 89 (1.94%) NIST
6 87 (1.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 63 (1.38%) PMO
8 62 (1.35%) SLA
9 42 (0.92%) PCI DSS
10 30 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 26 (0.57%) GRC
12 25 (0.55%) 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
1 421 (9.19%) Docker
2 283 (6.18%) Active Directory
3 97 (2.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.74%) Hyper-V
5 26 (0.57%) vSphere
6 25 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.39%) Firmware
7 18 (0.39%) VMware NSX
8 17 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
9 16 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.24%) HDFS
11 9 (0.20%) RACF
12 8 (0.17%) Time Sharing Option
12 8 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
13 6 (0.13%) ACF2
14 5 (0.11%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.087%) KVM
16 3 (0.066%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.066%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 2 (0.044%) OpenIDM
Systems Management
1 443 (9.67%) Kubernetes
2 256 (5.59%) Terraform
3 165 (3.60%) Ansible
4 104 (2.27%) Grafana
5 83 (1.81%) Prometheus
6 76 (1.66%) SCCM
7 64 (1.40%) Microsoft Intune
8 32 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.61%) Puppet
10 26 (0.57%) Argo
11 20 (0.44%) 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 (0.31%) vRealize
16 13 (0.28%) Packer
17 12 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 945 (20.64%) Microsoft
2 336 (7.34%) Oracle
3 249 (5.44%) SAP
4 231 (5.04%) ServiceNow
5 180 (3.93%) Google
6 161 (3.52%) VMware
7 135 (2.95%) Splunk
8 129 (2.82%) Salesforce
9 102 (2.23%) Cisco
10 94 (2.05%) Databricks
11 61 (1.33%) IBM
11 61 (1.33%) Red Hat
11 61 (1.33%) Workday
12 53 (1.16%) CyberArk
13 52 (1.14%) Citrix
14 42 (0.92%) Talend
15 40 (0.87%) Palo Alto
16 35 (0.76%) BeyondTrust
16 35 (0.76%) F5
16 35 (0.76%) MuleSoft