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

6 months to
5 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 4,589 4,236 3,938
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.73% 13.80% 10.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.46% 15.70% 11.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,856 2,451 2,502
10th Percentile £263 £275 £231
25th Percentile £385 £400 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.85% - -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 265 168 222
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.07 £13.41
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £19.00 £19.50 £42.90
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -54.55% +43.01%
75th Percentile £35.40 £36.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.62 £64.95 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £20.26 £21.46 £35.75
% change year-on-year -5.62% -39.97% +31.97%

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 27,877 26,975 33,843
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 89.47% 87.88% 88.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,778 16,586 23,069
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £418 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £649 £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 1,797 956 1,438
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.24 £14.72
25th Percentile £17.88 £20.23 £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 £68.04 £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 5 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 5 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 5 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 2,133 £500 -5.66% 870
North of England -3 694 £456 -4.00% 1,043
South East 0 635 £475 -5.00% 1,223
Midlands 0 509 £450 +2.39% 652
North West -1 385 £450 -5.26% 513
West Midlands 0 362 £490 +5.95% 379
South West -1 281 £488 +2.63% 381
Yorkshire -6 264 £478 -1.55% 398
East of England -3 207 £500 +11.11% 549
East Midlands -3 147 £402 -1.05% 263
North East -2 52 £450 -5.26% 152
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
1 178 (3.88%) Confluence
2 154 (3.36%) SharePoint
3 105 (2.29%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (1.29%) Apache Spark
4 59 (1.29%) SAS
5 52 (1.13%) Apache
6 42 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.70%) 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 (6.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 212 (4.62%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (2.46%) 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
11 6 (0.13%) Simulink
12 4 (0.087%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.087%) Notion
13 3 (0.065%) Revit
14 2 (0.044%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.044%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.044%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 88 (1.92%) 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%) 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
1 875 (19.07%) Azure
2 704 (15.34%) AWS
3 329 (7.17%) GCP
4 305 (6.65%) Power Platform
5 283 (6.17%) Microsoft 365
6 212 (4.62%) GitHub
7 179 (3.90%) Azure DevOps
8 141 (3.07%) Serverless
9 117 (2.55%) Entra ID
10 113 (2.46%) SaaS
11 91 (1.98%) GitHub Actions
12 79 (1.72%) Amazon S3
13 76 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
14 72 (1.57%) Power Automate
15 69 (1.50%) Dynamics 365
16 68 (1.48%) PowerApps
17 66 (1.44%) OpenShift
18 65 (1.42%) Snowflake
19 60 (1.31%) PaaS
20 56 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 159 (3.46%) Firewall
2 137 (2.99%) DNS
3 103 (2.24%) Network Security
4 102 (2.22%) TCP/IP
5 101 (2.20%) VPN
6 72 (1.57%) DHCP
7 59 (1.29%) WAN
8 56 (1.22%) LAN
9 44 (0.96%) VLAN
10 38 (0.83%) BGP
11 32 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
12 28 (0.61%) Skype
12 28 (0.61%) Wireless
13 25 (0.54%) SSL
14 24 (0.52%) OSPF
15 23 (0.50%) Wireshark
16 22 (0.48%) VoIP
17 21 (0.46%) HTTP
18 18 (0.39%) SAN
19 16 (0.35%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 233 (5.08%) Power BI
2 150 (3.27%) SQL Server
3 148 (3.23%) PostgreSQL
4 147 (3.20%) Relational Database
5 122 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
6 102 (2.22%) NoSQL
7 88 (1.92%) 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 41 (0.89%) DB2
16 38 (0.83%) Data Lake
16 38 (0.83%) Hadoop
17 37 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
18 35 (0.76%) Redis
19 33 (0.72%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 448 (9.76%) JIRA
2 348 (7.58%) Git
3 244 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 147 (3.20%) GitLab
5 74 (1.61%) 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 (0.54%) 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 2,577 (56.16%) Social Skills
2 1,694 (36.91%) Analytical Skills
3 1,116 (24.32%) Finance
4 408 (8.89%) Public Sector
5 393 (8.56%) Banking
6 155 (3.38%) Organisational Skills
7 134 (2.92%) Legal
8 127 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
9 121 (2.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 120 (2.61%) Marketing
11 119 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
11 119 (2.59%) Telecoms
12 107 (2.33%) Presentation Skills
13 97 (2.11%) Manufacturing
13 97 (2.11%) Retail
14 93 (2.03%) Front Office
15 86 (1.87%) Investment Banking
16 50 (1.09%) Military
17 43 (0.94%) Financial Institution
18 39 (0.85%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 719 (15.67%) Developer
2 696 (15.17%) Analyst
3 412 (8.98%) Senior
4 280 (6.10%) Architect
5 261 (5.69%) Lead
6 251 (5.47%) Business Analyst
6 251 (5.47%) Consultant
7 179 (3.90%) Project Manager
8 168 (3.66%) Support Engineer
9 132 (2.88%) Java Developer
10 130 (2.83%) Senior Developer
11 124 (2.70%) IT Support
12 121 (2.64%) Data Engineer
13 95 (2.07%) Support Analyst
14 89 (1.94%) Data Analyst
15 82 (1.79%) Python Developer
16 81 (1.77%) Software Engineer
17 75 (1.63%) Administrator
18 72 (1.57%) Solutions Architect
19 67 (1.46%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 286 (6.23%) REST
2 195 (4.25%) RESTful
3 170 (3.70%) .NET
4 160 (3.49%) Kafka
5 156 (3.40%) Spring
6 141 (3.07%) React
7 140 (3.05%) SOAP
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 85 (1.85%) JSON
13 73 (1.59%) XML
14 68 (1.48%) OAuth
14 68 (1.48%) Web Services
15 63 (1.37%) Middleware
16 62 (1.35%) GraphQL
17 61 (1.33%) Oracle Fusion
18 46 (1.00%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 226 (4.92%) Product Ownership
2 183 (3.99%) Cloud Native
3 172 (3.75%) Management Information System
4 151 (3.29%) Onboarding
5 133 (2.90%) Analytical Mindset
6 113 (2.46%) Data Structures
7 105 (2.29%) Self-Motivation
8 92 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
9 83 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
10 81 (1.77%) Algorithms
10 81 (1.77%) Data Centre
11 71 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
12 63 (1.37%) Mobile App
13 62 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
13 62 (1.35%) Security Posture
13 62 (1.35%) Virtual Team
14 57 (1.24%) CMDB
15 50 (1.09%) NHS
16 48 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
17 47 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 445 (9.70%) Windows
2 328 (7.15%) Linux
3 106 (2.31%) Unix
4 103 (2.24%) Windows 10
5 86 (1.87%) Windows Server
6 55 (1.20%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.92%) Android
8 38 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 36 (0.78%) 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 4 (0.087%) Ubuntu
15 4 (0.087%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
16 2 (0.044%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,395 (30.40%) Agile
2 802 (17.48%) CI/CD
3 708 (15.43%) DevOps
4 647 (14.10%) Continuous Improvement
5 638 (13.90%) Stakeholder Management
6 493 (10.74%) Analytics
7 442 (9.63%) Migration
8 431 (9.39%) Decision-Making
9 418 (9.11%) Project Management
10 399 (8.69%) Scrum
11 382 (8.32%) Test Automation
12 374 (8.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 345 (7.52%) Computer Science
14 342 (7.45%) AI
15 331 (7.21%) Mentoring
16 330 (7.19%) Business Intelligence
17 320 (6.97%) Microservices
18 317 (6.91%) Data Modelling
19 315 (6.86%) Containerisation
20 312 (6.80%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 912 (19.87%) Python
2 768 (16.74%) SQL
3 476 (10.37%) Java
4 273 (5.95%) JavaScript
5 242 (5.27%) PowerShell
6 184 (4.01%) C#
7 149 (3.25%) TypeScript
8 142 (3.09%) Bash
9 80 (1.74%) 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 35 (0.76%) Apex Code
15 35 (0.76%) R
16 31 (0.68%) T-SQL
17 30 (0.65%) PHP
18 29 (0.63%) Groovy
18 29 (0.63%) Perl
Qualifications
1 828 (18.04%) Security Cleared
2 673 (14.67%) Degree
3 606 (13.21%) SC Cleared
4 250 (5.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 125 (2.72%) DV Cleared
6 96 (2.09%) CISSP
7 95 (2.07%) Microsoft Certification
8 93 (2.03%) PMI Certification
9 84 (1.83%) PMP
10 83 (1.81%) Master's Degree
11 73 (1.59%) Azure Certification
12 71 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
13 64 (1.39%) AWS Certification
14 63 (1.37%) Cisco Certification
15 48 (1.05%) CISM
16 42 (0.92%) A+ Certification
17 38 (0.83%) CCNP
18 36 (0.78%) MCP
19 28 (0.61%) ACCA
20 26 (0.57%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 324 (7.06%) QA
2 261 (5.69%) Data Quality
3 180 (3.92%) GDPR
4 95 (2.07%) Accessibility
5 88 (1.92%) NIST
6 85 (1.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 62 (1.35%) PMO
8 61 (1.33%) SLA
9 42 (0.92%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 26 (0.57%) GRC
12 25 (0.54%) PSD2
13 19 (0.41%) EU AI Act
13 19 (0.41%) HIPAA
14 18 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 17 (0.37%) WCAG
16 16 (0.35%) ISO 20022
17 15 (0.33%) SEPA
18 12 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
19 10 (0.22%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 425 (9.26%) Docker
2 282 (6.15%) Active Directory
3 97 (2.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.74%) Hyper-V
5 26 (0.57%) vSphere
6 22 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.39%) Firmware
7 18 (0.39%) 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 (0.17%) Time Sharing Option
12 8 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
13 6 (0.13%) ACF2
14 5 (0.11%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.087%) KVM
15 4 (0.087%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.065%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.065%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 449 (9.78%) Kubernetes
2 260 (5.67%) Terraform
3 169 (3.68%) Ansible
4 104 (2.27%) Grafana
5 83 (1.81%) Prometheus
6 76 (1.66%) SCCM
7 65 (1.42%) Microsoft Intune
8 30 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
9 29 (0.63%) Puppet
10 26 (0.57%) Argo
11 20 (0.44%) Nessus
12 19 (0.41%) Kibana
12 19 (0.41%) 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
16 14 (0.31%) vRealize
17 12 (0.26%) Packer
17 12 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 955 (20.81%) Microsoft
2 340 (7.41%) Oracle
3 247 (5.38%) SAP
4 233 (5.08%) ServiceNow
5 178 (3.88%) Google
6 162 (3.53%) VMware
7 132 (2.88%) Splunk
8 129 (2.81%) Salesforce
9 103 (2.24%) Cisco
10 93 (2.03%) Databricks
11 59 (1.29%) IBM
11 59 (1.29%) Red Hat
11 59 (1.29%) Workday
12 52 (1.13%) Citrix
12 52 (1.13%) CyberArk
13 42 (0.92%) Talend
14 40 (0.87%) Palo Alto
15 36 (0.78%) F5
16 35 (0.76%) BeyondTrust
16 35 (0.76%) MuleSoft