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

6 months to
8 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 8 13
Rank change year-on-year +1 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,492 4,062 4,061
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.09% 13.04% 10.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.68% 15.05% 11.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,752 2,355 2,607
10th Percentile £260 £275 £250
25th Percentile £384 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £630
90th Percentile £703 £705 £725
UK median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 293 165 224
10th Percentile £13.25 £15.00 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £16.19
Median hourly rate £19.25 £16.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% -64.27% +58.64%
75th Percentile £34.00 £30.00 £65.39
90th Percentile £64.80 £60.96 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £20.26 £17.22 £45.88
% change year-on-year +17.61% -62.46% +83.52%

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 26,934 26,984 35,457
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 90.48% 86.62% 88.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,108 16,470 24,373
10th Percentile £298 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £416 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £534
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.69% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,747 976 1,492
10th Percentile £14.69 £15.00 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.74 £20.00 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.03% -16.85% +27.14%
75th Percentile £45.46 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.35 £74.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.79
% change year-on-year -28.14% -20.08% +25.12%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 2,108 £500 -5.21% 4,047
North of England -3 658 £475 - 1,390
South East +3 600 £461 -7.90% 4,011
Midlands 0 501 £450 +5.88% 756
North West -1 365 £467 +0.97% 840
West Midlands +1 359 £482 +8.81% 428
South West +1 271 £475 -3.06% 604
Yorkshire -5 258 £492 +1.44% 378
East of England -1 225 £500 +11.11% 550
East Midlands -3 142 £375 -6.25% 296
North East -6 40 £452 +0.44% 176
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
1 177 (3.94%) Confluence
2 141 (3.14%) SharePoint
3 98 (2.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 57 (1.27%) Apache Spark
5 51 (1.14%) SAS
6 43 (0.96%) Apache
7 41 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.73%) Skype for Business
9 32 (0.71%) CMS
10 17 (0.38%) IIS
10 17 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.31%) JBoss
12 11 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
13 9 (0.20%) Anypoint
13 9 (0.20%) Mattermost
14 8 (0.18%) HCL Notes
15 7 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
15 7 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.16%) Tomcat
15 7 (0.16%) WebSphere
Applications
1 311 (6.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 187 (4.16%) Microsoft Office
3 120 (2.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 74 (1.65%) MS Visio
5 44 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
6 13 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.27%) Trello
8 11 (0.24%) Chatbot
9 8 (0.18%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.16%) Simulink
11 6 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
11 6 (0.13%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.13%) Revit
11 6 (0.13%) Sketch
12 5 (0.11%) Adobe XD
13 4 (0.089%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.089%) Navisworks
13 4 (0.089%) Notion
14 3 (0.067%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 96 (2.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.51%) Oracle Payables
4 20 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
5 19 (0.42%) Oracle Receivables
6 18 (0.40%) SAP HR
7 17 (0.38%) SAP EWM
8 16 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
8 16 (0.36%) Workday HCM
9 15 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
10 13 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
10 13 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
10 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
10 13 (0.29%) SAP WM
11 12 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
12 11 (0.24%) NetSuite
13 10 (0.22%) Maximo
13 10 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
13 10 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
14 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 843 (18.77%) Azure
2 693 (15.43%) AWS
3 314 (6.99%) GCP
4 297 (6.61%) Power Platform
5 265 (5.90%) Microsoft 365
6 201 (4.47%) GitHub
7 159 (3.54%) Azure DevOps
8 148 (3.29%) Serverless
9 112 (2.49%) SaaS
10 107 (2.38%) Entra ID
11 90 (2.00%) Amazon S3
12 81 (1.80%) GitHub Actions
13 79 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
14 68 (1.51%) Dynamics 365
15 67 (1.49%) Snowflake
16 60 (1.34%) OpenShift
16 60 (1.34%) PowerApps
17 58 (1.29%) Power Automate
18 57 (1.27%) PaaS
19 53 (1.18%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 151 (3.36%) Firewall
2 127 (2.83%) DNS
3 98 (2.18%) TCP/IP
4 97 (2.16%) VPN
5 92 (2.05%) Network Security
6 66 (1.47%) DHCP
7 56 (1.25%) LAN
7 56 (1.25%) WAN
8 44 (0.98%) VLAN
9 34 (0.76%) BGP
9 34 (0.76%) SSL
10 31 (0.69%) Skype
10 31 (0.69%) Wireless
11 29 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
12 24 (0.53%) Wireshark
13 22 (0.49%) OSPF
14 20 (0.45%) HTTP
15 19 (0.42%) VoIP
16 18 (0.40%) Internet
17 17 (0.38%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 230 (5.12%) Power BI
2 157 (3.50%) SQL Server
3 150 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
4 149 (3.32%) Relational Database
5 125 (2.78%) Data Warehouse
6 109 (2.43%) NoSQL
7 87 (1.94%) Tableau
8 86 (1.91%) MongoDB
9 80 (1.78%) Oracle Database
10 62 (1.38%) MySQL
11 53 (1.18%) DynamoDB
12 49 (1.09%) Metadata
13 45 (1.00%) Big Data
14 43 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
15 42 (0.93%) DB2
16 41 (0.91%) Redis
17 39 (0.87%) BigQuery
18 38 (0.85%) Hadoop
19 36 (0.80%) Data Lake
20 33 (0.73%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 417 (9.28%) JIRA
2 340 (7.57%) Git
3 232 (5.16%) Jenkins
4 121 (2.69%) GitLab
5 78 (1.74%) JUnit
6 76 (1.69%) Selenium
7 46 (1.02%) Postman
8 37 (0.82%) Cucumber
9 35 (0.78%) Maven
10 28 (0.62%) Bitbucket
11 27 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.45%) Cypress.io
12 20 (0.45%) Gradle
12 20 (0.45%) SoapUI
13 19 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
14 17 (0.38%) JMeter
14 17 (0.38%) REST Assured
15 16 (0.36%) Mockito
15 16 (0.36%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.31%) Eclipse
General
1 2,545 (56.66%) Social Skills
2 1,675 (37.29%) Analytical Skills
3 1,079 (24.02%) Finance
4 410 (9.13%) Banking
5 359 (7.99%) Public Sector
6 145 (3.23%) Organisational Skills
7 127 (2.83%) Marketing
8 126 (2.80%) Telecoms
9 122 (2.72%) Legal
10 116 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
11 114 (2.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 113 (2.52%) Influencing Skills
13 102 (2.27%) Manufacturing
14 97 (2.16%) Investment Banking
15 96 (2.14%) Front Office
16 94 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
16 94 (2.09%) Retail
17 48 (1.07%) Back Office
17 48 (1.07%) Financial Institution
18 47 (1.05%) Military
Job Titles
1 708 (15.76%) Analyst
2 676 (15.05%) Developer
3 395 (8.79%) Senior
4 297 (6.61%) Architect
5 257 (5.72%) Lead
6 245 (5.45%) Consultant
7 234 (5.21%) Business Analyst
8 183 (4.07%) Support Engineer
9 157 (3.50%) Project Manager
10 133 (2.96%) Senior Developer
11 128 (2.85%) IT Support
12 122 (2.72%) Java Developer
13 110 (2.45%) Data Engineer
14 107 (2.38%) Support Analyst
15 93 (2.07%) Data Analyst
16 82 (1.83%) Software Engineer
17 75 (1.67%) Python Developer
18 68 (1.51%) DevOps Engineer
18 68 (1.51%) Solutions Architect
19 67 (1.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (6.19%) REST
2 188 (4.19%) RESTful
3 178 (3.96%) .NET
4 156 (3.47%) HTML
5 150 (3.34%) Kafka
6 148 (3.29%) Spring
7 147 (3.27%) React
8 131 (2.92%) SOAP
9 129 (2.87%) CSS
10 116 (2.58%) AngularJS
11 107 (2.38%) Node.js
12 90 (2.00%) Spring Boot
13 85 (1.89%) Web Services
14 82 (1.83%) JSON
15 70 (1.56%) XML
16 68 (1.51%) OAuth
17 64 (1.42%) Middleware
18 57 (1.27%) GraphQL
19 50 (1.11%) SAML
20 46 (1.02%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 206 (4.59%) Product Ownership
2 173 (3.85%) Management Information System
3 168 (3.74%) Cloud Native
4 129 (2.87%) Onboarding
5 125 (2.78%) Analytical Mindset
6 108 (2.40%) Self-Motivation
7 101 (2.25%) Data Structures
8 89 (1.98%) Algorithms
8 89 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
9 86 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
10 70 (1.56%) Data Centre
10 70 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
11 69 (1.54%) Virtual Team
12 65 (1.45%) Security Posture
13 57 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
14 53 (1.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 49 (1.09%) CMDB
16 47 (1.05%) NHS
17 45 (1.00%) Mobile App
18 43 (0.96%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 445 (9.91%) Windows
2 312 (6.95%) Linux
3 104 (2.32%) Windows 10
4 103 (2.29%) Unix
5 84 (1.87%) Windows Server
6 54 (1.20%) Apple iOS
7 38 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 34 (0.76%) Android
9 31 (0.69%) Mac OS
10 19 (0.42%) VMS
11 16 (0.36%) Windows Server 2012
12 14 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.27%) CentOS
14 7 (0.16%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
15 6 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.089%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.089%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.089%) zOS
17 2 (0.045%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,335 (29.72%) Agile
2 745 (16.59%) CI/CD
3 655 (14.58%) DevOps
4 611 (13.60%) Continuous Improvement
5 587 (13.07%) Stakeholder Management
6 473 (10.53%) Analytics
7 431 (9.59%) Migration
8 420 (9.35%) Decision-Making
9 403 (8.97%) Project Management
10 400 (8.90%) Scrum
11 358 (7.97%) Computer Science
12 354 (7.88%) Test Automation
13 340 (7.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 329 (7.32%) Business Intelligence
15 324 (7.21%) Mentoring
16 314 (6.99%) ITIL
17 310 (6.90%) AI
18 306 (6.81%) Data Modelling
19 289 (6.43%) Microservices
20 288 (6.41%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 875 (19.48%) Python
2 758 (16.87%) SQL
3 459 (10.22%) Java
4 279 (6.21%) JavaScript
5 232 (5.16%) PowerShell
6 186 (4.14%) C#
7 134 (2.98%) TypeScript
8 133 (2.96%) Bash
9 82 (1.83%) Shell Script
10 70 (1.56%) Go
11 56 (1.25%) C++
12 54 (1.20%) PL/SQL
13 49 (1.09%) VBA
14 42 (0.93%) Scala
15 33 (0.73%) Apex Code
16 29 (0.65%) R
17 28 (0.62%) PHP
17 28 (0.62%) T-SQL
18 27 (0.60%) Groovy
18 27 (0.60%) Perl
Qualifications
1 736 (16.38%) Security Cleared
2 662 (14.74%) Degree
3 537 (11.95%) SC Cleared
4 250 (5.57%) Computer Science Degree
5 111 (2.47%) DV Cleared
6 92 (2.05%) Microsoft Certification
7 87 (1.94%) CISSP
7 87 (1.94%) PMI Certification
8 86 (1.91%) PMP
9 77 (1.71%) Master's Degree
10 69 (1.54%) Azure Certification
11 65 (1.45%) AWS Certification
12 63 (1.40%) BPSS Clearance
13 57 (1.27%) Cisco Certification
14 43 (0.96%) A+ Certification
15 38 (0.85%) CISM
16 36 (0.80%) MCP
17 34 (0.76%) CCNP
18 28 (0.62%) ACCA
18 28 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 286 (6.37%) QA
2 237 (5.28%) Data Quality
3 169 (3.76%) GDPR
4 100 (2.23%) Accessibility
5 77 (1.71%) NIST
6 73 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 68 (1.51%) SLA
8 59 (1.31%) PMO
9 37 (0.82%) PCI DSS
10 29 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 22 (0.49%) GRC
12 20 (0.45%) HIPAA
12 20 (0.45%) PSD2
13 19 (0.42%) EU AI Act
14 17 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
15 16 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 16 (0.36%) SEPA
15 16 (0.36%) WCAG
16 11 (0.24%) ISO 20022
16 11 (0.24%) SOC 2
System Software
1 390 (8.68%) Docker
2 266 (5.92%) Active Directory
3 81 (1.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.71%) Hyper-V
5 25 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
6 22 (0.49%) vSphere
7 19 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.36%) Firmware
9 15 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
10 14 (0.31%) VMware NSX
11 10 (0.22%) HDFS
11 10 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
12 5 (0.11%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.089%) KVM
14 3 (0.067%) BitLocker
15 2 (0.045%) ProxySG
15 2 (0.045%) RACF
15 2 (0.045%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.045%) XenApp
16 1 (0.022%) Squid
Systems Management
1 406 (9.04%) Kubernetes
2 231 (5.14%) Terraform
3 156 (3.47%) Ansible
4 98 (2.18%) Grafana
5 84 (1.87%) Prometheus
6 69 (1.54%) SCCM
7 67 (1.49%) Microsoft Intune
8 38 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.60%) Puppet
10 21 (0.47%) SCOM
11 20 (0.45%) Argo
11 20 (0.45%) Nessus
12 16 (0.36%) Data Guard
12 16 (0.36%) Kibana
13 15 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 14 (0.31%) Packer
15 13 (0.29%) HP ALM
16 12 (0.27%) FortiGate
16 12 (0.27%) Red Hat Satellite
17 11 (0.24%) yum
Vendors
1 922 (20.53%) Microsoft
2 326 (7.26%) Oracle
3 266 (5.92%) SAP
4 226 (5.03%) ServiceNow
5 178 (3.96%) Google
6 144 (3.21%) VMware
7 136 (3.03%) Splunk
8 131 (2.92%) Salesforce
9 101 (2.25%) Cisco
10 78 (1.74%) Databricks
11 66 (1.47%) Workday
12 65 (1.45%) Red Hat
13 64 (1.42%) IBM
14 49 (1.09%) Citrix
15 48 (1.07%) CyberArk
16 36 (0.80%) Palo Alto
17 33 (0.73%) Adobe
17 33 (0.73%) Talend
18 32 (0.71%) F5
18 32 (0.71%) HP