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

6 months to
2 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 4,548 4,152 3,991
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.83% 13.68% 10.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.57% 15.60% 11.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,834 2,391 2,539
10th Percentile £263 £275 £234
25th Percentile £385 £400 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.50% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £609 £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 261 167 219
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.06 £13.41
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £19.00 £19.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -56.67% +48.76%
75th Percentile £35.00 £36.87 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £65.10 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £20.26 £21.46 £42.90
% change year-on-year -5.62% -49.98% +58.90%

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 27,450 26,620 34,219
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 89.50% 87.73% 88.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,481 16,323 23,332
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £419 £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 1,780 955 1,444
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.22 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.88 £20.24 £19.11
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +19.14%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £74.95 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £43.50
% change year-on-year -23.79% -24.14% +24.29%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 2,120 £500 -5.70% 1,180
North of England -3 679 £463 -2.63% 1,129
South East 0 631 £464 -7.25% 1,526
Midlands 0 503 £450 +3.45% 672
North West -1 379 £450 -5.26% 583
West Midlands 0 357 £490 +5.95% 372
South West 0 280 £481 +1.32% 438
Yorkshire -7 256 £480 -1.03% 440
East of England -3 206 £500 +11.11% 417
East Midlands -2 146 £402 +2.10% 287
North East -3 49 £450 -0.88% 126
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 (3.96%) Confluence
2 152 (3.34%) SharePoint
3 105 (2.31%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.41%) Apache Spark
5 59 (1.30%) SAS
6 54 (1.19%) Apache
7 44 (0.97%) 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 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
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
16 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
Applications
1 305 (6.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 200 (4.40%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (2.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.56%) MS Visio
5 54 (1.19%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.24%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.22%) Trello
9 8 (0.18%) 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 (0.088%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.088%) 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 (1.96%) 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 (0.29%) 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 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 878 (19.31%) Azure
2 704 (15.48%) AWS
3 326 (7.17%) GCP
4 303 (6.66%) Power Platform
5 279 (6.13%) Microsoft 365
6 214 (4.71%) GitHub
7 183 (4.02%) Azure DevOps
8 139 (3.06%) Serverless
9 117 (2.57%) Entra ID
10 113 (2.48%) SaaS
11 92 (2.02%) GitHub Actions
12 80 (1.76%) Amazon S3
13 75 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
14 70 (1.54%) Dynamics 365
15 68 (1.50%) Snowflake
16 67 (1.47%) Power Automate
17 65 (1.43%) PowerApps
18 60 (1.32%) PaaS
19 58 (1.28%) OpenShift
20 55 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 158 (3.47%) Firewall
2 135 (2.97%) DNS
3 104 (2.29%) Network Security
4 102 (2.24%) TCP/IP
5 100 (2.20%) VPN
6 71 (1.56%) DHCP
7 58 (1.28%) WAN
8 56 (1.23%) LAN
9 44 (0.97%) VLAN
10 37 (0.81%) BGP
11 31 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
12 28 (0.62%) Skype
12 28 (0.62%) Wireless
13 27 (0.59%) SSL
14 23 (0.51%) OSPF
14 23 (0.51%) Wireshark
15 22 (0.48%) HTTP
16 21 (0.46%) VoIP
17 16 (0.35%) Internet
17 16 (0.35%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 230 (5.06%) Power BI
2 150 (3.30%) PostgreSQL
3 148 (3.25%) SQL Server
4 146 (3.21%) Relational Database
5 122 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
6 104 (2.29%) NoSQL
7 85 (1.87%) MongoDB
8 80 (1.76%) Oracle Database
9 76 (1.67%) Tableau
10 64 (1.41%) MySQL
11 61 (1.34%) Metadata
12 52 (1.14%) Big Data
13 44 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
13 44 (0.97%) DynamoDB
14 41 (0.90%) Hadoop
15 40 (0.88%) Data Lake
16 39 (0.86%) DB2
17 36 (0.79%) Redis
18 35 (0.77%) BigQuery
18 35 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 441 (9.70%) JIRA
2 347 (7.63%) Git
3 239 (5.26%) Jenkins
4 143 (3.14%) GitLab
5 74 (1.63%) JUnit
6 72 (1.58%) Selenium
7 46 (1.01%) Postman
8 37 (0.81%) Cucumber
9 34 (0.75%) Maven
10 28 (0.62%) Bitbucket
11 25 (0.55%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.44%) SoapUI
13 19 (0.42%) JMeter
13 19 (0.42%) 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 2,553 (56.13%) Social Skills
2 1,690 (37.16%) Analytical Skills
3 1,107 (24.34%) Finance
4 400 (8.80%) Public Sector
5 391 (8.60%) Banking
6 149 (3.28%) Organisational Skills
7 130 (2.86%) Legal
8 126 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
9 123 (2.70%) Marketing
10 118 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
10 118 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 118 (2.59%) Telecoms
11 105 (2.31%) Presentation Skills
12 98 (2.15%) Manufacturing
13 96 (2.11%) Retail
14 93 (2.04%) Front Office
15 85 (1.87%) Investment Banking
16 50 (1.10%) Military
17 42 (0.92%) Financial Institution
18 41 (0.90%) Law
Job Titles
1 714 (15.70%) Developer
2 695 (15.28%) Analyst
3 408 (8.97%) Senior
4 280 (6.16%) Architect
5 261 (5.74%) Lead
6 249 (5.47%) Consultant
7 248 (5.45%) Business Analyst
8 176 (3.87%) Project Manager
9 169 (3.72%) Support Engineer
10 132 (2.90%) Java Developer
11 130 (2.86%) Senior Developer
12 123 (2.70%) IT Support
13 121 (2.66%) Data Engineer
14 94 (2.07%) Support Analyst
15 87 (1.91%) Data Analyst
16 82 (1.80%) Python Developer
17 80 (1.76%) Software Engineer
18 73 (1.61%) Administrator
19 72 (1.58%) Solutions Architect
20 68 (1.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 285 (6.27%) REST
2 194 (4.27%) RESTful
3 172 (3.78%) .NET
4 160 (3.52%) Kafka
5 154 (3.39%) Spring
6 140 (3.08%) React
6 140 (3.08%) SOAP
7 134 (2.95%) HTML
8 122 (2.68%) Node.js
9 113 (2.48%) AngularJS
10 112 (2.46%) CSS
11 107 (2.35%) Spring Boot
12 84 (1.85%) JSON
13 72 (1.58%) XML
14 71 (1.56%) OAuth
15 68 (1.50%) Web Services
16 65 (1.43%) Middleware
17 61 (1.34%) GraphQL
18 58 (1.28%) Oracle Fusion
19 48 (1.06%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 217 (4.77%) Product Ownership
2 182 (4.00%) Cloud Native
3 170 (3.74%) Management Information System
4 146 (3.21%) Onboarding
5 134 (2.95%) Analytical Mindset
6 111 (2.44%) Data Structures
7 103 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
8 94 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
9 84 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
10 82 (1.80%) Algorithms
11 78 (1.72%) Data Centre
12 74 (1.63%) Distributed Systems
13 65 (1.43%) Virtual Team
14 63 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
14 63 (1.39%) Mobile App
14 63 (1.39%) Security Posture
15 55 (1.21%) CMDB
16 49 (1.08%) NHS
17 48 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 47 (1.03%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 441 (9.70%) Windows
2 321 (7.06%) Linux
3 105 (2.31%) Unix
4 101 (2.22%) Windows 10
5 86 (1.89%) Windows Server
6 52 (1.14%) Apple iOS
7 40 (0.88%) Android
8 38 (0.84%) 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 (0.088%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
16 3 (0.066%) Ubuntu
17 2 (0.044%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,383 (30.41%) Agile
2 801 (17.61%) CI/CD
3 703 (15.46%) DevOps
4 638 (14.03%) Continuous Improvement
5 634 (13.94%) Stakeholder Management
6 493 (10.84%) Analytics
7 438 (9.63%) Migration
8 421 (9.26%) Decision-Making
9 414 (9.10%) Project Management
10 401 (8.82%) Scrum
11 384 (8.44%) Test Automation
12 369 (8.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 347 (7.63%) Computer Science
14 333 (7.32%) AI
15 328 (7.21%) Mentoring
16 327 (7.19%) Business Intelligence
17 315 (6.93%) Data Modelling
18 313 (6.88%) Containerisation
18 313 (6.88%) Microservices
19 310 (6.82%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 916 (20.14%) Python
2 764 (16.80%) SQL
3 472 (10.38%) Java
4 275 (6.05%) JavaScript
5 249 (5.47%) PowerShell
6 182 (4.00%) C#
7 145 (3.19%) TypeScript
8 143 (3.14%) Bash
9 79 (1.74%) Shell Script
10 73 (1.61%) Go
11 61 (1.34%) PL/SQL
12 57 (1.25%) C++
13 48 (1.06%) VBA
14 39 (0.86%) Scala
15 35 (0.77%) Apex Code
15 35 (0.77%) R
16 30 (0.66%) PHP
16 30 (0.66%) T-SQL
17 29 (0.64%) Perl
18 27 (0.59%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 815 (17.92%) Security Cleared
2 661 (14.53%) Degree
3 598 (13.15%) SC Cleared
4 252 (5.54%) Computer Science Degree
5 120 (2.64%) DV Cleared
6 96 (2.11%) CISSP
7 94 (2.07%) Microsoft Certification
7 94 (2.07%) PMI Certification
8 86 (1.89%) PMP
9 83 (1.82%) Master's Degree
10 73 (1.61%) Azure Certification
11 70 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
12 66 (1.45%) AWS Certification
13 61 (1.34%) Cisco Certification
14 48 (1.06%) CISM
15 41 (0.90%) A+ Certification
16 37 (0.81%) CCNP
17 36 (0.79%) MCP
18 29 (0.64%) ACCA
19 26 (0.57%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 323 (7.10%) QA
2 256 (5.63%) Data Quality
3 181 (3.98%) GDPR
4 96 (2.11%) Accessibility
5 89 (1.96%) NIST
6 87 (1.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 62 (1.36%) PMO
8 61 (1.34%) 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 (0.42%) EU AI Act
13 19 (0.42%) HIPAA
14 18 (0.40%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 18 (0.40%) WCAG
15 16 (0.35%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.33%) SEPA
17 12 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
18 9 (0.20%) SOC 2
System Software
1 418 (9.19%) Docker
2 280 (6.16%) Active Directory
3 97 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.75%) Hyper-V
5 26 (0.57%) vSphere
6 25 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.40%) Firmware
8 17 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.37%) VMware NSX
9 15 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.24%) HDFS
11 9 (0.20%) RACF
12 8 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 8 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
13 6 (0.13%) ACF2
14 5 (0.11%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.088%) KVM
16 3 (0.066%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.066%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 2 (0.044%) OpenDJ
Systems Management
1 440 (9.67%) Kubernetes
2 255 (5.61%) Terraform
3 163 (3.58%) Ansible
4 104 (2.29%) Grafana
5 82 (1.80%) Prometheus
6 76 (1.67%) SCCM
7 63 (1.39%) Microsoft Intune
8 32 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.59%) Puppet
10 26 (0.57%) Argo
11 20 (0.44%) Nessus
12 19 (0.42%) SCOM
13 18 (0.40%) Kibana
14 16 (0.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 16 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 16 (0.35%) HP ALM
14 16 (0.35%) vCenter Server
15 14 (0.31%) vRealize
16 13 (0.29%) Packer
17 12 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 939 (20.65%) Microsoft
2 330 (7.26%) Oracle
3 248 (5.45%) SAP
4 228 (5.01%) ServiceNow
5 180 (3.96%) Google
6 160 (3.52%) VMware
7 133 (2.92%) Splunk
8 129 (2.84%) Salesforce
9 102 (2.24%) Cisco
10 95 (2.09%) Databricks
11 61 (1.34%) IBM
11 61 (1.34%) Red Hat
11 61 (1.34%) Workday
12 53 (1.17%) CyberArk
13 52 (1.14%) Citrix
14 42 (0.92%) Talend
15 40 (0.88%) Palo Alto
16 35 (0.77%) BeyondTrust
16 35 (0.77%) MuleSoft
17 34 (0.75%) F5