Problem-Solving Contracts in England

Problem Solving
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England requiring Problem-Solving skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Problem-Solving over the 6 months leading up to 3 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 10 16
Rank change year-on-year +5 +6 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,384 4,058 4,247
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 16.79% 10.86% 8.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.45% 12.70% 9.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,723 2,447 2,689
10th Percentile £250 £250 £266
25th Percentile £380 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 360 242
10th Percentile £13.96 £11.00 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.25 £14.16 £17.76
Median hourly rate £21.27 £16.23 £50.75
Median % change year-on-year +31.02% -68.02% +103.00%
75th Percentile £38.42 £33.24 £64.88
90th Percentile £65.78 £61.60 £77.00
UK median hourly rate £21.65 £16.23 £51.50
% change year-on-year +33.36% -68.49% +106.00%

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 23,765 31,961 42,529
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 91.03% 85.51% 89.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,278 20,746 29,768
10th Percentile £300 £305 £325
25th Percentile £406 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £750 £750 £775
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% +1.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,187 2,306 1,553
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.79 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.87 £16.06 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £38.12 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -34.02% +1.65% +44.23%
75th Percentile £55.00 £61.60 £64.63
90th Percentile £72.50 £73.75 £75.82
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £36.00
% change year-on-year -32.93% +4.17% +38.46%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Problem-Solving as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Problem-Solving in England

Problem-Solving
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Problem-Solving in England.

Daily rate trend for Problem-Solving in England

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in England over the 6 months to 3 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Problem-Solving in England

Problem-Solving
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Problem-Solving in England.

Hourly rate trend for Problem-Solving in England

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Problem-Solving in England over the 6 months to 3 July 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 July 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 +7 2,101 £500 -6.98% 5,151
North of England +3 684 £475 - 1,679
South East +7 575 £498 +4.19% 1,666
Midlands +9 407 £425 -10.53% 1,004
North West +8 393 £485 -0.62% 975
West Midlands +9 284 £450 -5.26% 604
East of England +3 256 £473 -5.50% 663
Yorkshire 0 256 £475 - 534
South West +5 243 £500 +3.90% 702
East Midlands +2 122 £367 -18.44% 383
North East -5 34 £450 -14.29% 187
Problem-Solving
UK

Problem-Solving
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 142 (3.24%) Confluence
2 139 (3.17%) SharePoint
3 71 (1.62%) Apache Spark
4 63 (1.44%) Microsoft Exchange
5 54 (1.23%) Apache
6 33 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.59%) CMS
8 17 (0.39%) IIS
9 16 (0.36%) IBM Domino
9 16 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 13 (0.30%) SAS
11 13 (0.30%) Skype for Business
12 11 (0.25%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.21%) CICS
13 9 (0.21%) Mattermost
13 9 (0.21%) Oracle Coherence
13 9 (0.21%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 9 (0.21%) Tomcat
14 8 (0.18%) GemFire
Applications
1 261 (5.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 172 (3.92%) Microsoft Office
3 141 (3.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 74 (1.69%) MS Visio
5 45 (1.03%) Microsoft Project
6 22 (0.50%) Trello
7 15 (0.34%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
9 9 (0.21%) Revit
10 8 (0.18%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.18%) Oracle Smart View
10 8 (0.18%) Sketch
11 7 (0.16%) Simulink
12 6 (0.14%) Photoshop
13 5 (0.11%) Chatbot
14 4 (0.091%) Adobe Illustrator
14 4 (0.091%) InDesign
15 3 (0.068%) Adobe Captivate
15 3 (0.068%) Adobe Creative Suite
16 2 (0.046%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 93 (2.12%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.78%) Oracle EBS
3 29 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
4 16 (0.36%) Oracle BPM
4 16 (0.36%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.34%) FLEXCUBE
6 14 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
6 14 (0.32%) Teamcenter
6 14 (0.32%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
7 13 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
7 13 (0.30%) SAP FI
7 13 (0.30%) Shopify
8 12 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
9 11 (0.25%) SAP CO
9 11 (0.25%) SAP FI/CO
9 11 (0.25%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 10 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 744 (16.97%) Azure
2 631 (14.39%) AWS
3 283 (6.46%) Power Platform
4 249 (5.68%) Microsoft 365
5 231 (5.27%) GCP
6 150 (3.42%) Azure DevOps
7 124 (2.83%) Serverless
8 121 (2.76%) Entra ID
8 121 (2.76%) SaaS
9 113 (2.58%) GitHub
10 91 (2.08%) Amazon S3
11 87 (1.98%) AWS Lambda
12 73 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
13 71 (1.62%) PowerApps
14 67 (1.53%) Cloud Computing
15 65 (1.48%) Snowflake
16 55 (1.25%) Power Automate
17 52 (1.19%) AWS CloudFormation
18 44 (1.00%) dbt
18 44 (1.00%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 165 (3.76%) Firewall
2 130 (2.97%) VPN
3 104 (2.37%) Network Security
4 99 (2.26%) DNS
5 81 (1.85%) LAN
6 77 (1.76%) WAN
7 72 (1.64%) TCP/IP
8 48 (1.09%) Wireless
9 47 (1.07%) DHCP
9 47 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
10 40 (0.91%) BGP
11 38 (0.87%) SAN
12 37 (0.84%) OSPF
13 35 (0.80%) MPLS
14 30 (0.68%) SSL
15 29 (0.66%) VLAN
16 27 (0.62%) Ethernet
16 27 (0.62%) SD-WAN
17 24 (0.55%) Remote Desktop
17 24 (0.55%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 223 (5.09%) Power BI
2 162 (3.70%) SQL Server
3 148 (3.38%) Data Warehouse
4 128 (2.92%) PostgreSQL
5 106 (2.42%) Tableau
6 98 (2.24%) Relational Database
7 77 (1.76%) NoSQL
8 74 (1.69%) MongoDB
9 72 (1.64%) Oracle Database
10 56 (1.28%) Big Data
11 53 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
12 49 (1.12%) MySQL
13 42 (0.96%) BigQuery
14 39 (0.89%) Data Lake
15 38 (0.87%) Redis
16 36 (0.82%) DynamoDB
17 35 (0.80%) DB2
18 32 (0.73%) Oracle Reports
19 31 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
19 31 (0.71%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 317 (7.23%) JIRA
2 252 (5.75%) Git
3 213 (4.86%) Jenkins
4 98 (2.24%) GitLab
5 69 (1.57%) Selenium
6 47 (1.07%) JUnit
7 35 (0.80%) Cucumber
8 31 (0.71%) Maven
9 30 (0.68%) Postman
10 28 (0.64%) Bitbucket
11 27 (0.62%) JMeter
12 22 (0.50%) REST Assured
13 21 (0.48%) Cypress.io
14 16 (0.36%) SonarQube
14 16 (0.36%) Visual Studio
15 15 (0.34%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.32%) Gradle
17 13 (0.30%) LoadRunner
17 13 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
17 13 (0.30%) webpack
General
1 2,583 (58.92%) Social Skills
2 1,679 (38.30%) Analytical Skills
3 1,077 (24.57%) Finance
4 390 (8.90%) Banking
5 257 (5.86%) Public Sector
6 155 (3.54%) Telecoms
7 153 (3.49%) Presentation Skills
8 139 (3.17%) Legal
9 130 (2.97%) Marketing
10 121 (2.76%) Organisational Skills
11 115 (2.62%) Investment Banking
12 108 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
12 108 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 108 (2.46%) Manufacturing
13 106 (2.42%) Retail
14 86 (1.96%) Front Office
15 75 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
16 68 (1.55%) Financial Institution
17 63 (1.44%) Pharmaceutical
18 47 (1.07%) Law
Job Titles
1 640 (14.60%) Analyst
2 597 (13.62%) Developer
3 388 (8.85%) Senior
4 374 (8.53%) Architect
5 276 (6.30%) Lead
6 247 (5.63%) Business Analyst
7 221 (5.04%) Consultant
8 181 (4.13%) Project Manager
9 157 (3.58%) Support Engineer
10 121 (2.76%) Java Developer
11 117 (2.67%) Data Engineer
12 101 (2.30%) Data Analyst
13 99 (2.26%) Senior Developer
14 90 (2.05%) IT Support
15 82 (1.87%) Network Engineer
16 79 (1.80%) Administrator
16 79 (1.80%) Support Analyst
17 75 (1.71%) Solutions Architect
18 69 (1.57%) DevOps Engineer
19 68 (1.55%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 160 (3.65%) REST
2 148 (3.38%) .NET
3 147 (3.35%) HTML
4 138 (3.15%) Kafka
4 138 (3.15%) React
4 138 (3.15%) RESTful
5 135 (3.08%) CSS
6 114 (2.60%) AngularJS
7 103 (2.35%) Web Services
8 100 (2.28%) Spring
9 63 (1.44%) SOAP
10 59 (1.35%) Middleware
11 57 (1.30%) Node.js
12 55 (1.25%) OAuth
13 54 (1.23%) Spring Boot
14 50 (1.14%) JSON
15 46 (1.05%) XML
16 39 (0.89%) OpenID
17 37 (0.84%) SAML
18 35 (0.80%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 157 (3.58%) Management Information System
2 143 (3.26%) Self-Motivation
3 142 (3.24%) Product Ownership
4 106 (2.42%) Onboarding
5 91 (2.08%) Algorithms
6 85 (1.94%) Data Structures
7 84 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
8 82 (1.87%) Cloud Native
9 80 (1.82%) Analytical Mindset
10 77 (1.76%) Data Centre
11 75 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
12 58 (1.32%) Virtual Team
13 53 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
14 52 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
15 45 (1.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 45 (1.03%) Security Posture
16 40 (0.91%) iPhone
17 39 (0.89%) Equities
18 38 (0.87%) iPad
19 37 (0.84%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 477 (10.88%) Windows
2 317 (7.23%) Linux
3 106 (2.42%) Unix
4 102 (2.33%) Windows Server
5 96 (2.19%) Windows 10
6 81 (1.85%) Apple iOS
7 62 (1.41%) Android
8 35 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 29 (0.66%) Mac OS
10 19 (0.43%) zOS
11 18 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
12 14 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
13 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.21%) CentOS
15 7 (0.16%) Solaris
15 7 (0.16%) VMS
16 6 (0.14%) Check Point GAiA
16 6 (0.14%) Windows 8
16 6 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
17 5 (0.11%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,115 (25.43%) Agile
2 539 (12.29%) Stakeholder Management
3 531 (12.11%) DevOps
4 507 (11.56%) CI/CD
5 493 (11.25%) Project Management
6 433 (9.88%) Migration
7 428 (9.76%) Continuous Improvement
8 395 (9.01%) Decision-Making
9 361 (8.23%) Computer Science
10 350 (7.98%) Analytics
11 326 (7.44%) ITIL
12 302 (6.89%) Business Intelligence
13 289 (6.59%) Customer Service
14 282 (6.43%) Scrum
15 256 (5.84%) Risk Management
16 255 (5.82%) Test Automation
17 248 (5.66%) Change Management
18 246 (5.61%) Validation
19 234 (5.34%) Collaborative Working
20 231 (5.27%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 741 (16.90%) SQL
2 737 (16.81%) Python
3 402 (9.17%) Java
4 245 (5.59%) JavaScript
5 242 (5.52%) PowerShell
6 192 (4.38%) C#
7 134 (3.06%) Bash
8 93 (2.12%) PL/SQL
8 93 (2.12%) TypeScript
9 68 (1.55%) Shell Script
10 65 (1.48%) C++
11 54 (1.23%) Scala
12 35 (0.80%) Go
13 29 (0.66%) Perl
13 29 (0.66%) PHP
14 28 (0.64%) ABAP
14 28 (0.64%) Bicep
15 26 (0.59%) Ruby
15 26 (0.59%) VBA
16 24 (0.55%) C
Qualifications
1 694 (15.83%) Security Cleared
2 623 (14.21%) Degree
3 540 (12.32%) SC Cleared
4 235 (5.36%) Computer Science Degree
5 123 (2.81%) Cisco Certification
6 101 (2.30%) Microsoft Certification
7 97 (2.21%) DV Cleared
8 96 (2.19%) CCNP
9 83 (1.89%) PMI Certification
10 80 (1.82%) PMP
11 75 (1.71%) Master's Degree
12 72 (1.64%) CISSP
13 71 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
14 68 (1.55%) AWS Certification
15 52 (1.19%) ITIL Certification
16 46 (1.05%) A+ Certification
17 44 (1.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 43 (0.98%) Azure Certification
19 39 (0.89%) CISM
20 37 (0.84%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 258 (5.89%) QA
2 181 (4.13%) Data Quality
3 133 (3.03%) GDPR
4 85 (1.94%) SLA
5 68 (1.55%) Accessibility
6 67 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 64 (1.46%) NIST
8 56 (1.28%) PMO
9 39 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 34 (0.78%) HIPAA
11 25 (0.57%) PCI DSS
12 23 (0.52%) GRC
13 21 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
14 16 (0.36%) NCSC
15 14 (0.32%) MiFID
16 10 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 10 (0.23%) WCAG
17 8 (0.18%) Basel II
17 8 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
17 8 (0.18%) SEPA
System Software
1 297 (6.77%) Active Directory
2 218 (4.97%) Docker
3 106 (2.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.89%) Virtual Machines
5 30 (0.68%) vSphere
6 20 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
7 19 (0.43%) VMware NSX
8 14 (0.32%) Firmware
9 13 (0.30%) Hyper-V
10 9 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
11 8 (0.18%) GridGain
11 8 (0.18%) RACF
12 7 (0.16%) Time Sharing Option
13 6 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.14%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 5 (0.11%) NFS
15 4 (0.091%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.068%) Job Entry Subsystem
16 3 (0.068%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
16 3 (0.068%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 275 (6.27%) Kubernetes
2 219 (5.00%) Terraform
3 172 (3.92%) Ansible
4 82 (1.87%) Microsoft Intune
5 67 (1.53%) SCCM
6 56 (1.28%) Grafana
7 51 (1.16%) Prometheus
8 49 (1.12%) Single Sign-On
9 45 (1.03%) Puppet
10 27 (0.62%) Progress Chef
11 21 (0.48%) vCenter Server
12 19 (0.43%) Oracle RMAN
13 18 (0.41%) SCOM
14 16 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
15 14 (0.32%) FortiGate
16 13 (0.30%) Podman
17 12 (0.27%) NetBackup
18 10 (0.23%) Kibana
19 9 (0.21%) Tivoli Identity Manager
20 8 (0.18%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 861 (19.64%) Microsoft
2 324 (7.39%) Oracle
3 275 (6.27%) SAP
4 227 (5.18%) ServiceNow
5 174 (3.97%) Cisco
6 173 (3.95%) Google
7 129 (2.94%) VMware
8 99 (2.26%) Salesforce
9 85 (1.94%) Splunk
10 70 (1.60%) IBM
11 68 (1.55%) Databricks
12 64 (1.46%) Red Hat
13 63 (1.44%) Juniper
14 54 (1.23%) Citrix
15 50 (1.14%) Workday
16 47 (1.07%) Adobe
17 37 (0.84%) F5
18 35 (0.80%) CyberArk
19 33 (0.75%) Palo Alto
20 30 (0.68%) Dell