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

6 months to
6 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 6 12
Rank change year-on-year -1 +6 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,583 4,228 3,960
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.73% 13.83% 10.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.48% 15.73% 11.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,851 2,451 2,519
10th Percentile £263 £268 £234
25th Percentile £385 £400 £399
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £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 264 166 224
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.05 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £18.90 £19.50 £39.90
Median % change year-on-year -3.10% -51.13% +34.13%
75th Percentile £35.10 £36.94 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.95 £65.25 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £20.26 £21.46 £35.00
% change year-on-year -5.62% -38.69% +30.28%

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 27,812 26,873 34,017
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 89.40% 87.89% 88.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,725 16,531 23,197
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £406 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £548
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% -4.11% -0.45%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £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 1,799 953 1,442
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.23 £14.78
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.24 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.25
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -20.90% +18.00%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.75 £42.50
% change year-on-year -23.21% -22.94% +21.43%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +1 2,133 £500 -5.97% 926
North of England -3 691 £458 -3.68% 1,079
South East 0 635 £475 -5.00% 1,239
Midlands 0 507 £450 +3.45% 667
North West -1 384 £450 -2.70% 524
West Midlands 0 362 £490 +8.89% 393
South West 0 281 £488 +2.63% 392
Yorkshire -6 262 £480 -1.03% 422
East of England -2 208 £500 +11.11% 553
East Midlands -2 145 £402 +0.50% 264
North East -2 52 £450 -5.26% 155
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
1 179 (3.91%) Confluence
2 156 (3.40%) SharePoint
3 106 (2.31%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (1.29%) Apache Spark
4 59 (1.29%) SAS
5 53 (1.16%) Apache
6 42 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 31 (0.68%) CMS
8 30 (0.65%) Skype for Business
9 16 (0.35%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.31%) JBoss
11 11 (0.24%) IIS
12 10 (0.22%) Anypoint
13 8 (0.17%) HCL Notes
13 8 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
14 7 (0.15%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.15%) OpenStack
14 7 (0.15%) Tomcat
15 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
Applications
1 307 (6.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 210 (4.58%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (2.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.57%) MS Visio
5 54 (1.18%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.26%) 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
12 5 (0.11%) Simulink
13 4 (0.087%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.087%) Notion
14 3 (0.065%) Revit
15 2 (0.044%) AutoCAD
15 2 (0.044%) MicroStation
15 2 (0.044%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 87 (1.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (0.68%) 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%) Payment Gateway
6 14 (0.31%) SAP HR
7 13 (0.28%) NetSuite
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
12 8 (0.17%) SAP ERP
12 8 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 880 (19.20%) Azure
2 707 (15.43%) AWS
3 330 (7.20%) GCP
4 305 (6.66%) Power Platform
5 285 (6.22%) Microsoft 365
6 212 (4.63%) GitHub
7 180 (3.93%) Azure DevOps
8 141 (3.08%) Serverless
9 118 (2.57%) Entra ID
10 114 (2.49%) SaaS
11 91 (1.99%) GitHub Actions
12 79 (1.72%) Amazon S3
13 76 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
14 71 (1.55%) Power Automate
15 68 (1.48%) Dynamics 365
15 68 (1.48%) PowerApps
16 65 (1.42%) OpenShift
16 65 (1.42%) Snowflake
17 60 (1.31%) PaaS
18 56 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 160 (3.49%) Firewall
2 138 (3.01%) DNS
3 103 (2.25%) TCP/IP
3 103 (2.25%) VPN
4 102 (2.23%) Network Security
5 73 (1.59%) DHCP
6 60 (1.31%) WAN
7 57 (1.24%) LAN
8 44 (0.96%) VLAN
9 38 (0.83%) BGP
10 32 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
11 28 (0.61%) Skype
11 28 (0.61%) Wireless
12 25 (0.55%) SSL
13 24 (0.52%) OSPF
14 23 (0.50%) Wireshark
15 22 (0.48%) HTTP
15 22 (0.48%) VoIP
16 19 (0.41%) SAN
17 17 (0.37%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 233 (5.08%) Power BI
2 150 (3.27%) SQL Server
3 147 (3.21%) PostgreSQL
4 146 (3.19%) Relational Database
5 122 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
6 100 (2.18%) NoSQL
7 85 (1.85%) MongoDB
8 83 (1.81%) Oracle Database
9 77 (1.68%) Tableau
10 65 (1.42%) MySQL
11 62 (1.35%) Metadata
12 52 (1.13%) Big Data
13 45 (0.98%) DynamoDB
14 42 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
15 38 (0.83%) Data Lake
15 38 (0.83%) DB2
16 37 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
17 36 (0.79%) Hadoop
18 33 (0.72%) BigQuery
18 33 (0.72%) Redis
Development Applications
1 451 (9.84%) JIRA
2 349 (7.62%) Git
3 245 (5.35%) Jenkins
4 148 (3.23%) GitLab
5 73 (1.59%) 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 (56.08%) Social Skills
2 1,693 (36.94%) Analytical Skills
3 1,114 (24.31%) Finance
4 409 (8.92%) Public Sector
5 393 (8.58%) Banking
6 156 (3.40%) Organisational Skills
7 133 (2.90%) Legal
8 128 (2.79%) Influencing Skills
9 120 (2.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 120 (2.62%) Marketing
10 119 (2.60%) Telecoms
11 118 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
12 107 (2.33%) Presentation Skills
13 98 (2.14%) Retail
14 97 (2.12%) Manufacturing
15 93 (2.03%) Front Office
16 86 (1.88%) Investment Banking
17 51 (1.11%) Military
18 43 (0.94%) Financial Institution
19 38 (0.83%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 713 (15.56%) Developer
2 692 (15.10%) Analyst
3 409 (8.92%) Senior
4 280 (6.11%) Architect
5 260 (5.67%) Lead
6 251 (5.48%) Consultant
7 248 (5.41%) Business Analyst
8 178 (3.88%) Project Manager
9 169 (3.69%) Support Engineer
10 129 (2.81%) Java Developer
11 128 (2.79%) Senior Developer
12 123 (2.68%) IT Support
13 121 (2.64%) Data Engineer
14 94 (2.05%) Support Analyst
15 87 (1.90%) Data Analyst
16 82 (1.79%) Python Developer
17 81 (1.77%) Software Engineer
18 75 (1.64%) Administrator
19 73 (1.59%) Solutions Architect
20 67 (1.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 287 (6.26%) REST
2 195 (4.25%) RESTful
3 169 (3.69%) .NET
4 158 (3.45%) Kafka
5 155 (3.38%) Spring
6 142 (3.10%) SOAP
7 141 (3.08%) React
8 132 (2.88%) HTML
9 128 (2.79%) Node.js
10 116 (2.53%) AngularJS
11 109 (2.38%) CSS
11 109 (2.38%) Spring Boot
12 86 (1.88%) JSON
13 74 (1.61%) XML
14 68 (1.48%) OAuth
14 68 (1.48%) Web Services
15 66 (1.44%) Middleware
16 62 (1.35%) GraphQL
16 62 (1.35%) Oracle Fusion
17 46 (1.00%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 226 (4.93%) Product Ownership
2 184 (4.01%) Cloud Native
3 174 (3.80%) Management Information System
4 150 (3.27%) Onboarding
5 134 (2.92%) Analytical Mindset
6 111 (2.42%) Data Structures
7 104 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
8 91 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
9 81 (1.77%) Data Centre
9 81 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
10 79 (1.72%) Algorithms
11 71 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
12 64 (1.40%) Virtual Team
13 63 (1.37%) Mobile App
14 62 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
14 62 (1.35%) Security Posture
15 57 (1.24%) CMDB
16 50 (1.09%) NHS
17 48 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
18 47 (1.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 444 (9.69%) Windows
2 327 (7.14%) Linux
3 106 (2.31%) Unix
4 103 (2.25%) Windows 10
5 86 (1.88%) Windows Server
6 56 (1.22%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.92%) Android
8 38 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 36 (0.79%) Mac OS
10 26 (0.57%) 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 6 (0.13%) zOS
15 5 (0.11%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.087%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.065%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,400 (30.55%) Agile
2 804 (17.54%) CI/CD
3 712 (15.54%) DevOps
4 646 (14.10%) Continuous Improvement
5 639 (13.94%) Stakeholder Management
6 492 (10.74%) Analytics
7 442 (9.64%) Migration
8 430 (9.38%) Decision-Making
9 418 (9.12%) Project Management
10 398 (8.68%) Scrum
11 383 (8.36%) Test Automation
12 372 (8.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 348 (7.59%) Computer Science
14 343 (7.48%) AI
15 332 (7.24%) Mentoring
16 330 (7.20%) Business Intelligence
17 320 (6.98%) Microservices
18 318 (6.94%) Data Modelling
19 315 (6.87%) Containerisation
20 311 (6.79%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 910 (19.86%) Python
2 767 (16.74%) SQL
3 472 (10.30%) Java
4 273 (5.96%) JavaScript
5 242 (5.28%) PowerShell
6 183 (3.99%) C#
7 149 (3.25%) TypeScript
8 141 (3.08%) Bash
9 80 (1.75%) Shell Script
10 76 (1.66%) Go
11 63 (1.37%) PL/SQL
12 57 (1.24%) C++
13 48 (1.05%) VBA
14 40 (0.87%) Scala
15 36 (0.79%) Apex Code
16 35 (0.76%) R
17 31 (0.68%) T-SQL
18 30 (0.65%) PHP
19 29 (0.63%) Groovy
19 29 (0.63%) Perl
Qualifications
1 830 (18.11%) Security Cleared
2 676 (14.75%) Degree
3 608 (13.27%) SC Cleared
4 251 (5.48%) Computer Science Degree
5 126 (2.75%) DV Cleared
6 96 (2.09%) CISSP
7 94 (2.05%) PMI Certification
8 93 (2.03%) Microsoft Certification
9 84 (1.83%) Master's Degree
10 82 (1.79%) PMP
11 73 (1.59%) Azure Certification
12 72 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
13 64 (1.40%) AWS Certification
14 63 (1.37%) Cisco Certification
15 48 (1.05%) CISM
16 41 (0.89%) A+ Certification
17 38 (0.83%) CCNP
18 35 (0.76%) MCP
19 26 (0.57%) ACCA
19 26 (0.57%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 324 (7.07%) QA
2 263 (5.74%) Data Quality
3 180 (3.93%) GDPR
4 95 (2.07%) Accessibility
5 88 (1.92%) NIST
6 85 (1.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 63 (1.37%) PMO
8 60 (1.31%) SLA
9 42 (0.92%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 25 (0.55%) GRC
11 25 (0.55%) PSD2
12 19 (0.41%) EU AI Act
12 19 (0.41%) HIPAA
13 18 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 17 (0.37%) 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
1 426 (9.30%) Docker
2 280 (6.11%) Active Directory
3 97 (2.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.74%) Hyper-V
5 27 (0.59%) vSphere
6 22 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.39%) Firmware
7 18 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
7 18 (0.39%) VMware NSX
8 16 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
9 11 (0.24%) HDFS
10 10 (0.22%) RACF
11 8 (0.17%) Time Sharing Option
11 8 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
12 6 (0.13%) ACF2
13 5 (0.11%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.087%) KVM
14 4 (0.087%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 3 (0.065%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.065%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 447 (9.75%) Kubernetes
2 260 (5.67%) Terraform
3 169 (3.69%) Ansible
4 104 (2.27%) Grafana
5 83 (1.81%) Prometheus
6 74 (1.61%) SCCM
7 66 (1.44%) Microsoft Intune
8 30 (0.65%) Puppet
8 30 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.57%) Argo
10 20 (0.44%) Kibana
10 20 (0.44%) Nessus
11 19 (0.41%) SCOM
12 17 (0.37%) Data Guard
13 16 (0.35%) HP ALM
13 16 (0.35%) vCenter Server
14 15 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 15 (0.33%) vRealize
15 12 (0.26%) Control-M
15 12 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 951 (20.75%) Microsoft
2 340 (7.42%) Oracle
3 246 (5.37%) SAP
4 232 (5.06%) ServiceNow
5 176 (3.84%) Google
6 163 (3.56%) VMware
7 133 (2.90%) Splunk
8 130 (2.84%) Salesforce
9 104 (2.27%) Cisco
10 93 (2.03%) Databricks
11 60 (1.31%) IBM
12 59 (1.29%) Red Hat
13 58 (1.27%) Workday
14 52 (1.13%) Citrix
14 52 (1.13%) CyberArk
15 42 (0.92%) Talend
16 40 (0.87%) Palo Alto
17 36 (0.79%) HP
17 36 (0.79%) MuleSoft
18 35 (0.76%) BeyondTrust