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 29 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 8 12
Rank change year-on-year +1 +4 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,560 4,194 4,018
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.85% 13.54% 10.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.54% 15.46% 11.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,839 2,408 2,559
10th Percentile £263 £275 £240
25th Percentile £385 £400 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £505
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -0.99% -6.48%
75th Percentile £600 £609 £625
90th Percentile £700 £708 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 264 171 222
10th Percentile £13.24 £15.00 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £18.96 £19.50 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -2.77% -57.50% +54.22%
75th Percentile £35.00 £36.87 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.73 £64.50 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £20.26 £21.46 £43.86
% change year-on-year -5.62% -51.07% +64.09%

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 27,575 27,131 34,572
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 89.77% 87.57% 88.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,561 16,585 23,601
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £418 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £502 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.48% -4.55% -
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 1,784 990 1,459
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.22 £14.63
25th Percentile £17.88 £20.27 £19.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.02 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.17% -21.31% +19.85%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £33.04 £43.84
% change year-on-year -23.87% -24.65% +25.26%

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 29 November 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 29 November 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 29 November 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 2,124 £500 -5.75% 1,034
North of England -3 675 £456 -4.00% 670
South East +2 642 £471 -5.80% 1,290
Midlands 0 508 £450 +3.54% 528
North West -1 376 £450 -1.64% 370
West Midlands 0 363 £488 +8.33% 338
South West -2 277 £475 - 375
Yorkshire -7 255 £492 +0.61% 215
East of England -2 211 £500 +11.11% 313
East Midlands -2 145 £402 +0.50% 184
North East -3 49 £450 -0.88% 88
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
1 181 (3.97%) Confluence
2 146 (3.20%) SharePoint
3 105 (2.30%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.40%) Apache Spark
5 57 (1.25%) SAS
6 54 (1.18%) Apache
7 44 (0.96%) 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 13 (0.29%) IIS
13 10 (0.22%) Anypoint
14 9 (0.20%) 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
1 308 (6.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 199 (4.36%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (2.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.60%) MS Visio
5 54 (1.18%) 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
12 4 (0.088%) Revit
13 3 (0.066%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.044%) Adobe Illustrator
14 2 (0.044%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 88 (1.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.44%) Oracle Payables
4 17 (0.37%) Oracle Receivables
4 17 (0.37%) SAP EWM
4 17 (0.37%) Workday HCM
5 16 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
6 15 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
6 15 (0.33%) SAP HR
7 14 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
8 13 (0.29%) NetSuite
8 13 (0.29%) SAP WM
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle EBS R12
11 10 (0.22%) Maximo
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
12 9 (0.20%) Aladdin
12 9 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
12 9 (0.20%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 887 (19.45%) Azure
2 707 (15.50%) AWS
3 328 (7.19%) GCP
4 307 (6.73%) Power Platform
5 274 (6.01%) Microsoft 365
6 213 (4.67%) GitHub
7 183 (4.01%) Azure DevOps
8 143 (3.14%) Serverless
9 117 (2.57%) Entra ID
9 117 (2.57%) SaaS
10 91 (2.00%) GitHub Actions
11 82 (1.80%) Amazon S3
12 76 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
13 70 (1.54%) Dynamics 365
14 68 (1.49%) Snowflake
15 67 (1.47%) Power Automate
16 65 (1.43%) PowerApps
17 59 (1.29%) OpenShift
17 59 (1.29%) PaaS
18 55 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 157 (3.44%) Firewall
2 135 (2.96%) DNS
3 105 (2.30%) Network Security
3 105 (2.30%) TCP/IP
4 100 (2.19%) VPN
5 70 (1.54%) DHCP
6 58 (1.27%) WAN
7 56 (1.23%) LAN
8 44 (0.96%) VLAN
9 37 (0.81%) BGP
10 31 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
11 30 (0.66%) Wireless
12 28 (0.61%) Skype
12 28 (0.61%) SSL
13 23 (0.50%) HTTP
13 23 (0.50%) OSPF
13 23 (0.50%) Wireshark
14 22 (0.48%) VoIP
15 16 (0.35%) Internet
15 16 (0.35%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 232 (5.09%) Power BI
2 152 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
3 151 (3.31%) SQL Server
4 149 (3.27%) Relational Database
5 126 (2.76%) Data Warehouse
6 109 (2.39%) NoSQL
7 85 (1.86%) MongoDB
8 78 (1.71%) Oracle Database
9 76 (1.67%) Tableau
10 65 (1.43%) MySQL
11 59 (1.29%) Metadata
12 50 (1.10%) Big Data
13 45 (0.99%) Amazon RDS
13 45 (0.99%) DynamoDB
14 41 (0.90%) DB2
14 41 (0.90%) Hadoop
15 40 (0.88%) Data Lake
16 38 (0.83%) BigQuery
17 37 (0.81%) Redis
18 33 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 445 (9.76%) JIRA
2 347 (7.61%) Git
3 239 (5.24%) Jenkins
4 143 (3.14%) GitLab
5 73 (1.60%) JUnit
5 73 (1.60%) Selenium
6 46 (1.01%) Postman
7 37 (0.81%) Cucumber
8 34 (0.75%) Maven
9 28 (0.61%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.55%) SonarQube
11 20 (0.44%) SoapUI
12 19 (0.42%) JMeter
12 19 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
13 18 (0.39%) 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 2,568 (56.32%) Social Skills
2 1,695 (37.17%) Analytical Skills
3 1,105 (24.23%) Finance
4 398 (8.73%) Public Sector
5 390 (8.55%) Banking
6 150 (3.29%) Organisational Skills
7 129 (2.83%) Legal
8 124 (2.72%) Influencing Skills
8 124 (2.72%) Marketing
9 121 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
10 117 (2.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 117 (2.57%) Telecoms
11 106 (2.32%) Presentation Skills
12 98 (2.15%) Retail
13 96 (2.11%) Front Office
13 96 (2.11%) Manufacturing
14 84 (1.84%) Investment Banking
15 49 (1.07%) Military
16 44 (0.96%) Financial Institution
17 42 (0.92%) Law
Job Titles
1 715 (15.68%) Developer
2 697 (15.29%) Analyst
3 400 (8.77%) Senior
4 281 (6.16%) Architect
5 270 (5.92%) Lead
6 250 (5.48%) Business Analyst
7 248 (5.44%) Consultant
8 174 (3.82%) Project Manager
8 174 (3.82%) Support Engineer
9 131 (2.87%) Java Developer
10 130 (2.85%) Senior Developer
11 123 (2.70%) IT Support
12 120 (2.63%) Data Engineer
13 95 (2.08%) Support Analyst
14 86 (1.89%) Data Analyst
15 84 (1.84%) Python Developer
16 80 (1.75%) Software Engineer
17 73 (1.60%) Administrator
18 71 (1.56%) Solutions Architect
19 68 (1.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 284 (6.23%) REST
2 194 (4.25%) RESTful
3 176 (3.86%) .NET
4 163 (3.57%) Kafka
5 151 (3.31%) Spring
6 140 (3.07%) React
7 138 (3.03%) SOAP
8 137 (3.00%) HTML
9 120 (2.63%) Node.js
10 114 (2.50%) AngularJS
10 114 (2.50%) CSS
11 104 (2.28%) Spring Boot
12 86 (1.89%) JSON
13 73 (1.60%) XML
14 70 (1.54%) OAuth
15 68 (1.49%) Web Services
16 67 (1.47%) Middleware
17 62 (1.36%) GraphQL
18 58 (1.27%) Oracle Fusion
19 49 (1.07%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 214 (4.69%) Product Ownership
2 185 (4.06%) Cloud Native
3 171 (3.75%) Management Information System
4 147 (3.22%) Onboarding
5 132 (2.89%) Analytical Mindset
6 112 (2.46%) Data Structures
7 104 (2.28%) Self-Motivation
8 95 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
9 85 (1.86%) Algorithms
9 85 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
10 76 (1.67%) Data Centre
11 75 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
12 67 (1.47%) Virtual Team
13 63 (1.38%) Security Posture
14 62 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
15 61 (1.34%) Mobile App
16 55 (1.21%) CMDB
17 51 (1.12%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 49 (1.07%) NHS
19 46 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 450 (9.87%) Windows
2 326 (7.15%) Linux
3 105 (2.30%) Unix
4 101 (2.21%) Windows 10
5 85 (1.86%) Windows Server
6 54 (1.18%) Apple iOS
7 40 (0.88%) Android
8 39 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 36 (0.79%) Mac OS
10 25 (0.55%) VMS
11 16 (0.35%) Windows Server 2012
12 13 (0.29%) CentOS
12 13 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 7 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 5 (0.11%) zOS
16 4 (0.088%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.088%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
17 2 (0.044%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,394 (30.57%) Agile
2 803 (17.61%) CI/CD
3 708 (15.53%) DevOps
4 637 (13.97%) Continuous Improvement
5 631 (13.84%) Stakeholder Management
6 496 (10.88%) Analytics
7 442 (9.69%) Migration
8 425 (9.32%) Decision-Making
9 415 (9.10%) Project Management
10 407 (8.93%) Scrum
11 384 (8.42%) Test Automation
12 369 (8.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 353 (7.74%) Computer Science
14 336 (7.37%) AI
15 332 (7.28%) Business Intelligence
16 331 (7.26%) Mentoring
17 316 (6.93%) Containerisation
18 315 (6.91%) Data Modelling
19 313 (6.86%) ITIL
20 310 (6.80%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 919 (20.15%) Python
2 773 (16.95%) SQL
3 473 (10.37%) Java
4 276 (6.05%) JavaScript
5 253 (5.55%) PowerShell
6 190 (4.17%) C#
7 145 (3.18%) TypeScript
8 144 (3.16%) Bash
9 79 (1.73%) Shell Script
10 73 (1.60%) Go
11 60 (1.32%) PL/SQL
12 59 (1.29%) C++
13 47 (1.03%) VBA
14 41 (0.90%) Scala
15 35 (0.77%) Apex Code
16 33 (0.72%) R
17 30 (0.66%) PHP
17 30 (0.66%) T-SQL
18 29 (0.64%) Perl
19 26 (0.57%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 816 (17.89%) Security Cleared
2 668 (14.65%) Degree
3 598 (13.11%) SC Cleared
4 256 (5.61%) Computer Science Degree
5 121 (2.65%) DV Cleared
6 96 (2.11%) CISSP
7 95 (2.08%) PMI Certification
8 94 (2.06%) Microsoft Certification
9 87 (1.91%) PMP
10 84 (1.84%) Master's Degree
11 74 (1.62%) Azure Certification
12 68 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
13 67 (1.47%) AWS Certification
14 62 (1.36%) Cisco Certification
15 48 (1.05%) CISM
16 41 (0.90%) A+ Certification
17 37 (0.81%) CCNP
18 36 (0.79%) MCP
19 29 (0.64%) ACCA
20 26 (0.57%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 323 (7.08%) QA
2 257 (5.64%) Data Quality
3 177 (3.88%) GDPR
4 97 (2.13%) Accessibility
5 88 (1.93%) NIST
6 86 (1.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 64 (1.40%) PMO
8 61 (1.34%) SLA
9 41 (0.90%) 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%) WCAG
14 18 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 18 (0.39%) HIPAA
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
1 417 (9.14%) Docker
2 284 (6.23%) Active Directory
3 98 (2.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.72%) Hyper-V
5 27 (0.59%) vSphere
6 26 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
7 19 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (0.39%) Firmware
9 17 (0.37%) VMware NSX
10 15 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
11 11 (0.24%) HDFS
12 9 (0.20%) RACF
13 8 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
13 8 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.13%) ACF2
15 5 (0.11%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.088%) KVM
17 3 (0.066%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.066%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 2 (0.044%) OpenDJ
Systems Management
1 441 (9.67%) Kubernetes
2 257 (5.64%) Terraform
3 166 (3.64%) Ansible
4 103 (2.26%) Grafana
5 82 (1.80%) Prometheus
6 78 (1.71%) SCCM
7 64 (1.40%) Microsoft Intune
8 35 (0.77%) 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 (0.39%) Kibana
14 16 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 16 (0.35%) HP ALM
15 15 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 15 (0.33%) vCenter Server
16 14 (0.31%) vRealize
17 13 (0.29%) Packer
18 12 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 943 (20.68%) Microsoft
2 331 (7.26%) Oracle
3 248 (5.44%) SAP
4 229 (5.02%) ServiceNow
5 184 (4.04%) Google
6 162 (3.55%) VMware
7 133 (2.92%) Splunk
8 128 (2.81%) Salesforce
9 104 (2.28%) Cisco
10 96 (2.11%) Databricks
11 65 (1.43%) IBM
12 64 (1.40%) Red Hat
13 62 (1.36%) Workday
14 55 (1.21%) Citrix
15 53 (1.16%) CyberArk
16 42 (0.92%) Talend
17 40 (0.88%) Palo Alto
18 35 (0.77%) BeyondTrust
18 35 (0.77%) MuleSoft
19 34 (0.75%) F5