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

6 months to
7 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 4,543 4,200 3,985
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.67% 13.85% 10.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.43% 15.76% 11.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,822 2,434 2,537
10th Percentile £263 £268 £231
25th Percentile £387 £400 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £611 £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 263 163 225
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.02 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £18.87 £19.50 £42.31
Median % change year-on-year -3.23% -53.91% +42.20%
75th Percentile £35.00 £37.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.41 £65.70 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £20.15 £21.23 £35.00
% change year-on-year -5.10% -39.34% +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 27,655 26,658 34,191
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 89.31% 87.92% 88.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,614 16,424 23,309
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £406 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £648 £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 1,796 941 1,445
10th Percentile £14.92 £15.25 £14.85
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.24 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +18.67%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.13 £33.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -23.86% -22.35% +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 7 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 7 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 7 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 2,113 £500 -5.66% 1,093
North of England -3 682 £469 -1.26% 1,710
South East 0 632 £475 -5.00% 2,074
Midlands 0 504 £450 +3.63% 1,390
North West 0 375 £450 -2.70% 864
West Midlands 0 359 £490 +8.89% 739
South West -1 276 £490 +2.62% 816
Yorkshire -7 262 £480 -1.03% 692
East of England -2 205 £500 +11.11% 1,067
East Midlands -2 145 £402 +0.50% 575
North East -1 52 £450 -18.18% 172
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
1 175 (3.85%) Confluence
2 156 (3.43%) SharePoint
3 106 (2.33%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (1.30%) SAS
5 58 (1.28%) Apache Spark
6 53 (1.17%) Apache
7 42 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
8 30 (0.66%) CMS
8 30 (0.66%) Skype for Business
9 16 (0.35%) WebLogic
10 11 (0.24%) IIS
11 10 (0.22%) Anypoint
11 10 (0.22%) JBoss
12 8 (0.18%) HCL Notes
12 8 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
13 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
13 7 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.15%) OpenStack
14 6 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
Applications
1 303 (6.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 211 (4.64%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (2.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.58%) MS Visio
5 54 (1.19%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.26%) 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
12 5 (0.11%) Simulink
13 4 (0.088%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.088%) Notion
14 3 (0.066%) Revit
15 2 (0.044%) AutoCAD
15 2 (0.044%) MicroStation
15 2 (0.044%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 87 (1.92%) 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 (0.29%) NetSuite
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
12 8 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
12 8 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 874 (19.24%) Azure
2 694 (15.28%) AWS
3 330 (7.26%) GCP
4 304 (6.69%) Power Platform
5 284 (6.25%) Microsoft 365
6 210 (4.62%) GitHub
7 177 (3.90%) Azure DevOps
8 141 (3.10%) Serverless
9 118 (2.60%) Entra ID
10 112 (2.47%) SaaS
11 91 (2.00%) GitHub Actions
12 78 (1.72%) Amazon S3
13 76 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
14 71 (1.56%) Power Automate
15 68 (1.50%) Dynamics 365
15 68 (1.50%) PowerApps
16 65 (1.43%) Snowflake
17 61 (1.34%) OpenShift
18 60 (1.32%) PaaS
19 56 (1.23%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 159 (3.50%) Firewall
2 138 (3.04%) DNS
3 103 (2.27%) TCP/IP
3 103 (2.27%) VPN
4 99 (2.18%) Network Security
5 73 (1.61%) DHCP
6 59 (1.30%) WAN
7 56 (1.23%) LAN
8 44 (0.97%) VLAN
9 38 (0.84%) BGP
10 32 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
11 28 (0.62%) Skype
11 28 (0.62%) Wireless
12 25 (0.55%) SSL
13 24 (0.53%) OSPF
14 23 (0.51%) Wireshark
15 22 (0.48%) HTTP
15 22 (0.48%) VoIP
16 19 (0.42%) SAN
17 17 (0.37%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 232 (5.11%) Power BI
2 149 (3.28%) SQL Server
3 146 (3.21%) Relational Database
4 145 (3.19%) PostgreSQL
5 121 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
6 100 (2.20%) NoSQL
7 85 (1.87%) MongoDB
8 82 (1.80%) Oracle Database
9 76 (1.67%) Tableau
10 65 (1.43%) MySQL
11 62 (1.36%) Metadata
12 52 (1.14%) Big Data
13 45 (0.99%) DynamoDB
14 41 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
15 38 (0.84%) DB2
16 37 (0.81%) Data Lake
16 37 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
17 35 (0.77%) Hadoop
18 33 (0.73%) BigQuery
19 32 (0.70%) Redis
Development Applications
1 441 (9.71%) JIRA
2 344 (7.57%) Git
3 241 (5.30%) Jenkins
4 147 (3.24%) GitLab
5 69 (1.52%) JUnit
5 69 (1.52%) Selenium
6 46 (1.01%) Postman
7 38 (0.84%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.66%) Maven
9 28 (0.62%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.55%) SonarQube
11 20 (0.44%) SoapUI
12 19 (0.42%) JMeter
13 17 (0.37%) Cypress.io
14 16 (0.35%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.33%) Mockito
15 15 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
16 14 (0.31%) Eclipse
16 14 (0.31%) REST Assured
17 13 (0.29%) Gradle
General
1 2,548 (56.09%) Social Skills
2 1,670 (36.76%) Analytical Skills
3 1,108 (24.39%) Finance
4 406 (8.94%) Public Sector
5 386 (8.50%) Banking
6 156 (3.43%) Organisational Skills
7 131 (2.88%) Legal
8 128 (2.82%) Influencing Skills
9 119 (2.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 119 (2.62%) Telecoms
10 118 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
11 116 (2.55%) Marketing
12 107 (2.36%) Presentation Skills
13 96 (2.11%) Manufacturing
13 96 (2.11%) Retail
14 93 (2.05%) Front Office
15 84 (1.85%) Investment Banking
16 51 (1.12%) Military
17 43 (0.95%) Financial Institution
18 38 (0.84%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 704 (15.50%) Developer
2 687 (15.12%) Analyst
3 406 (8.94%) Senior
4 275 (6.05%) Architect
5 257 (5.66%) Lead
6 249 (5.48%) Consultant
7 246 (5.41%) Business Analyst
8 178 (3.92%) Project Manager
9 168 (3.70%) Support Engineer
10 127 (2.80%) Senior Developer
11 124 (2.73%) Java Developer
12 123 (2.71%) IT Support
13 120 (2.64%) Data Engineer
14 94 (2.07%) Support Analyst
15 87 (1.92%) Data Analyst
16 82 (1.80%) Python Developer
17 81 (1.78%) Software Engineer
18 75 (1.65%) Administrator
19 70 (1.54%) Solutions Architect
20 67 (1.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 279 (6.14%) REST
2 194 (4.27%) RESTful
3 165 (3.63%) .NET
4 157 (3.46%) Kafka
5 151 (3.32%) Spring
6 138 (3.04%) SOAP
7 137 (3.02%) React
8 129 (2.84%) HTML
9 128 (2.82%) Node.js
10 111 (2.44%) AngularJS
11 106 (2.33%) CSS
12 105 (2.31%) Spring Boot
13 86 (1.89%) JSON
14 74 (1.63%) XML
15 67 (1.47%) OAuth
16 66 (1.45%) Middleware
17 65 (1.43%) Web Services
18 62 (1.36%) GraphQL
18 62 (1.36%) Oracle Fusion
19 45 (0.99%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 224 (4.93%) Product Ownership
2 184 (4.05%) Cloud Native
3 173 (3.81%) Management Information System
4 150 (3.30%) Onboarding
5 134 (2.95%) Analytical Mindset
6 110 (2.42%) Data Structures
7 104 (2.29%) Self-Motivation
8 89 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
9 81 (1.78%) Data Centre
9 81 (1.78%) Enterprise Software
10 78 (1.72%) Algorithms
11 71 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
12 62 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
12 62 (1.36%) Mobile App
12 62 (1.36%) Security Posture
12 62 (1.36%) Virtual Team
13 57 (1.25%) CMDB
14 50 (1.10%) NHS
15 48 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
16 47 (1.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 444 (9.77%) Windows
2 323 (7.11%) Linux
3 103 (2.27%) Windows 10
4 102 (2.25%) Unix
5 86 (1.89%) Windows Server
6 57 (1.25%) Apple iOS
7 43 (0.95%) Android
8 38 (0.84%) 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%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.13%) zOS
15 5 (0.11%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.088%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.066%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,387 (30.53%) Agile
2 802 (17.65%) CI/CD
3 707 (15.56%) DevOps
4 639 (14.07%) Continuous Improvement
5 635 (13.98%) Stakeholder Management
6 487 (10.72%) Analytics
7 439 (9.66%) Migration
8 425 (9.36%) Decision-Making
9 412 (9.07%) Project Management
10 392 (8.63%) Scrum
11 378 (8.32%) Test Automation
12 371 (8.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 343 (7.55%) Computer Science
14 339 (7.46%) AI
15 329 (7.24%) Business Intelligence
15 329 (7.24%) Mentoring
16 317 (6.98%) Data Modelling
17 315 (6.93%) Microservices
18 313 (6.89%) Containerisation
19 309 (6.80%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 903 (19.88%) Python
2 763 (16.80%) SQL
3 462 (10.17%) Java
4 271 (5.97%) JavaScript
5 240 (5.28%) PowerShell
6 182 (4.01%) C#
7 145 (3.19%) TypeScript
8 140 (3.08%) Bash
9 76 (1.67%) Go
9 76 (1.67%) Shell Script
10 63 (1.39%) PL/SQL
11 57 (1.25%) C++
12 48 (1.06%) VBA
13 40 (0.88%) Scala
14 35 (0.77%) Apex Code
14 35 (0.77%) R
15 31 (0.68%) T-SQL
16 30 (0.66%) PHP
17 29 (0.64%) Groovy
17 29 (0.64%) Perl
Qualifications
1 826 (18.18%) Security Cleared
2 671 (14.77%) Degree
3 604 (13.30%) SC Cleared
4 249 (5.48%) Computer Science Degree
5 126 (2.77%) DV Cleared
6 95 (2.09%) CISSP
7 94 (2.07%) PMI Certification
8 93 (2.05%) Microsoft Certification
9 83 (1.83%) Master's Degree
10 82 (1.80%) PMP
11 72 (1.58%) Azure Certification
12 70 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
13 63 (1.39%) AWS Certification
13 63 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
14 47 (1.03%) CISM
15 41 (0.90%) A+ Certification
16 38 (0.84%) CCNP
17 35 (0.77%) MCP
18 26 (0.57%) ACCA
18 26 (0.57%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 320 (7.04%) QA
2 262 (5.77%) Data Quality
3 178 (3.92%) GDPR
4 95 (2.09%) Accessibility
5 87 (1.92%) NIST
6 85 (1.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 63 (1.39%) PMO
8 60 (1.32%) 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 (0.42%) EU AI Act
13 18 (0.40%) HIPAA
14 17 (0.37%) 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
1 425 (9.36%) Docker
2 278 (6.12%) Active Directory
3 96 (2.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.75%) Hyper-V
5 27 (0.59%) vSphere
6 21 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.40%) Firmware
7 18 (0.40%) VMware NSX
8 17 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
9 16 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.24%) HDFS
11 10 (0.22%) 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
15 4 (0.088%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.066%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.066%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 445 (9.80%) Kubernetes
2 259 (5.70%) Terraform
3 169 (3.72%) Ansible
4 104 (2.29%) Grafana
5 83 (1.83%) Prometheus
6 74 (1.63%) SCCM
7 66 (1.45%) Microsoft Intune
8 30 (0.66%) Puppet
9 29 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
10 26 (0.57%) Argo
11 20 (0.44%) Kibana
11 20 (0.44%) Nessus
12 19 (0.42%) SCOM
13 17 (0.37%) Data Guard
14 16 (0.35%) HP ALM
14 16 (0.35%) vCenter Server
15 15 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 15 (0.33%) vRealize
16 12 (0.26%) Control-M
16 12 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 942 (20.74%) Microsoft
2 336 (7.40%) Oracle
3 246 (5.41%) SAP
4 226 (4.97%) ServiceNow
5 173 (3.81%) Google
6 162 (3.57%) VMware
7 132 (2.91%) Splunk
8 128 (2.82%) Salesforce
9 103 (2.27%) Cisco
10 93 (2.05%) Databricks
11 59 (1.30%) IBM
11 59 (1.30%) Red Hat
12 58 (1.28%) Workday
13 52 (1.14%) CyberArk
14 51 (1.12%) Citrix
15 42 (0.92%) Talend
16 40 (0.88%) Palo Alto
17 36 (0.79%) HP
18 35 (0.77%) F5
18 35 (0.77%) MuleSoft