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

6 months to
21 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 6 12
Rank change year-on-year -1 +6 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,538 4,165 3,805
As % of all contract jobs in England 14.46% 14.46% 10.27%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.31% 16.32% 11.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,815 2,434 2,437
10th Percentile £275 £268 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.60% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £703 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 255 160 212
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.24 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.87 £15.62 £15.94
Median hourly rate £18.87 £20.00 £39.90
Median % change year-on-year -5.65% -49.88% +33.01%
75th Percentile £35.20 £36.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.05 £66.00 £86.50
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £21.46 £34.25
% change year-on-year -6.80% -37.34% +25.27%

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 27,831 25,521 32,842
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.70% 88.62% 88.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,689 15,759 22,371
10th Percentile £300 £310 £310
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,818 840 1,378
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £14.70
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £19.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +19.85%
75th Percentile £55.00 £64.73 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.25 £74.88 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.84
% change year-on-year -22.62% -25.86% +25.25%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 0 2,092 £513 -4.65% 832
North of England -2 677 £459 -3.42% 1,112
South East 0 639 £475 -5.00% 1,136
Midlands -1 507 £450 +3.69% 593
West Midlands -1 362 £490 +8.89% 326
North West -1 357 £450 -1.64% 481
South West -1 277 £525 +10.53% 426
Yorkshire -5 273 £475 -5.00% 481
East of England -4 208 £475 +5.09% 604
East Midlands -3 146 £402 +7.20% 267
North East -3 54 £450 -18.18% 166
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 (3.92%) Confluence
2 156 (3.44%) SharePoint
3 102 (2.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 60 (1.32%) Apache Spark
5 58 (1.28%) SAS
6 52 (1.15%) Apache
7 45 (0.99%) Apache Airflow
8 30 (0.66%) Skype for Business
9 29 (0.64%) CMS
10 16 (0.35%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.24%) Anypoint
11 11 (0.24%) JBoss
12 8 (0.18%) HCL Notes
12 8 (0.18%) IIS
13 7 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
13 7 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.15%) OpenStack
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.13%) Mattermost
Applications
1 300 (6.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 207 (4.56%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (2.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (1.54%) MS Visio
5 56 (1.23%) Microsoft Project
6 15 (0.33%) Chatbot
7 12 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
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 4 (0.088%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.088%) Notion
13 3 (0.066%) Simulink
14 2 (0.044%) InVision
14 2 (0.044%) Siemens NX
14 2 (0.044%) Zeplin
15 1 (0.022%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 86 (1.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.42%) Oracle Payables
4 18 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
5 17 (0.37%) Oracle Receivables
5 17 (0.37%) SAP EWM
5 17 (0.37%) Workday HCM
6 16 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
7 14 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.31%) SAP HR
8 13 (0.29%) NetSuite
8 13 (0.29%) Oracle Cash Management
8 13 (0.29%) SAP WM
9 10 (0.22%) Aladdin
9 10 (0.22%) Maximo
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
10 9 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
10 9 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 9 (0.20%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 921 (20.30%) Azure
2 702 (15.47%) AWS
3 366 (8.07%) GCP
4 306 (6.74%) Power Platform
5 289 (6.37%) Microsoft 365
6 214 (4.72%) GitHub
7 185 (4.08%) Azure DevOps
8 140 (3.09%) Serverless
9 125 (2.75%) Entra ID
10 112 (2.47%) SaaS
11 100 (2.20%) GitHub Actions
12 75 (1.65%) Power Automate
13 70 (1.54%) Amazon S3
13 70 (1.54%) AWS Lambda
13 70 (1.54%) Dynamics 365
13 70 (1.54%) PowerApps
14 68 (1.50%) PaaS
15 67 (1.48%) OpenShift
15 67 (1.48%) Snowflake
16 54 (1.19%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 171 (3.77%) Firewall
2 150 (3.31%) DNS
3 109 (2.40%) TCP/IP
4 106 (2.34%) VPN
5 104 (2.29%) Network Security
6 81 (1.78%) DHCP
7 57 (1.26%) WAN
8 55 (1.21%) LAN
9 44 (0.97%) VLAN
10 37 (0.82%) BGP
11 31 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
12 29 (0.64%) Skype
12 29 (0.64%) Wireless
13 28 (0.62%) VoIP
14 27 (0.59%) SSL
15 23 (0.51%) OSPF
15 23 (0.51%) Wireshark
16 21 (0.46%) HTTP
16 21 (0.46%) SAN
17 18 (0.40%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 229 (5.05%) Power BI
2 154 (3.39%) SQL Server
3 148 (3.26%) Relational Database
4 139 (3.06%) PostgreSQL
5 128 (2.82%) Data Warehouse
6 96 (2.12%) NoSQL
7 85 (1.87%) MongoDB
8 81 (1.78%) Oracle Database
9 71 (1.56%) Tableau
10 65 (1.43%) Metadata
11 64 (1.41%) MySQL
12 53 (1.17%) Big Data
13 43 (0.95%) DynamoDB
14 42 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
15 38 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
15 38 (0.84%) Data Lake
16 35 (0.77%) Hadoop
17 34 (0.75%) BigQuery
17 34 (0.75%) DB2
18 32 (0.71%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 433 (9.54%) JIRA
2 348 (7.67%) Git
3 235 (5.18%) Jenkins
4 149 (3.28%) GitLab
5 71 (1.56%) Selenium
6 61 (1.34%) JUnit
7 47 (1.04%) Postman
8 32 (0.71%) Cucumber
9 31 (0.68%) Maven
10 26 (0.57%) SonarQube
11 25 (0.55%) Bitbucket
12 20 (0.44%) SoapUI
13 19 (0.42%) JMeter
14 17 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
14 17 (0.37%) SpecFlow
15 16 (0.35%) CircleCI
15 16 (0.35%) Cypress.io
16 15 (0.33%) Mockito
16 15 (0.33%) REST Assured
17 14 (0.31%) Gradle
General
1 2,535 (55.86%) Social Skills
2 1,674 (36.89%) Analytical Skills
3 1,088 (23.98%) Finance
4 431 (9.50%) Public Sector
5 390 (8.59%) Banking
6 162 (3.57%) Organisational Skills
7 134 (2.95%) Legal
8 131 (2.89%) Influencing Skills
9 121 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 120 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
11 110 (2.42%) Telecoms
12 109 (2.40%) Marketing
12 109 (2.40%) Presentation Skills
13 102 (2.25%) Retail
14 91 (2.01%) Front Office
15 87 (1.92%) Manufacturing
16 85 (1.87%) Investment Banking
17 51 (1.12%) Military
18 42 (0.93%) Financial Institution
19 41 (0.90%) Law
Job Titles
1 690 (15.20%) Developer
2 682 (15.03%) Analyst
3 405 (8.92%) Senior
4 288 (6.35%) Architect
5 259 (5.71%) Lead
6 249 (5.49%) Business Analyst
7 245 (5.40%) Consultant
8 179 (3.94%) Project Manager
9 164 (3.61%) Support Engineer
10 123 (2.71%) IT Support
11 122 (2.69%) Data Engineer
11 122 (2.69%) Senior Developer
12 114 (2.51%) Java Developer
13 94 (2.07%) Support Analyst
14 88 (1.94%) Data Analyst
15 81 (1.78%) Software Engineer
16 78 (1.72%) Administrator
17 76 (1.67%) Python Developer
18 75 (1.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 71 (1.56%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 292 (6.43%) REST
2 187 (4.12%) RESTful
3 167 (3.68%) .NET
4 159 (3.50%) SOAP
5 143 (3.15%) Kafka
6 138 (3.04%) Spring
7 137 (3.02%) React
8 133 (2.93%) Node.js
9 124 (2.73%) HTML
10 109 (2.40%) AngularJS
11 99 (2.18%) CSS
12 97 (2.14%) Spring Boot
13 85 (1.87%) JSON
14 83 (1.83%) XML
15 75 (1.65%) Middleware
16 66 (1.45%) OAuth
16 66 (1.45%) Web Services
17 64 (1.41%) Oracle Fusion
18 63 (1.39%) GraphQL
19 46 (1.01%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 212 (4.67%) Product Ownership
2 181 (3.99%) Cloud Native
3 171 (3.77%) Management Information System
4 152 (3.35%) Onboarding
5 141 (3.11%) Analytical Mindset
6 109 (2.40%) Data Structures
7 107 (2.36%) Self-Motivation
8 94 (2.07%) Enterprise Software
9 92 (2.03%) Data Centre
10 88 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
11 79 (1.74%) Security Posture
12 78 (1.72%) Algorithms
13 66 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
14 63 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
15 60 (1.32%) Mobile App
15 60 (1.32%) Virtual Team
16 55 (1.21%) NHS
17 53 (1.17%) CMDB
18 50 (1.10%) Hybrid Cloud
19 49 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 435 (9.59%) Windows
2 328 (7.23%) Linux
3 101 (2.23%) Unix
4 100 (2.20%) Windows 10
5 91 (2.01%) Windows Server
6 55 (1.21%) Apple iOS
7 44 (0.97%) Android
7 44 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 42 (0.93%) Mac OS
9 27 (0.59%) VMS
10 18 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
11 13 (0.29%) CentOS
12 12 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
13 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.13%) Ubuntu
15 5 (0.11%) zOS
16 4 (0.088%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.066%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,379 (30.39%) Agile
2 791 (17.43%) CI/CD
3 715 (15.76%) DevOps
4 644 (14.19%) Continuous Improvement
5 643 (14.17%) Stakeholder Management
6 487 (10.73%) Analytics
7 443 (9.76%) Migration
8 421 (9.28%) Decision-Making
9 410 (9.03%) Project Management
10 390 (8.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 389 (8.57%) Test Automation
12 385 (8.48%) Scrum
13 342 (7.54%) Computer Science
13 342 (7.54%) Data Modelling
14 338 (7.45%) AI
15 332 (7.32%) Mentoring
16 321 (7.07%) Business Intelligence
17 319 (7.03%) Containerisation
18 310 (6.83%) Microservices
19 309 (6.81%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 917 (20.21%) Python
2 776 (17.10%) SQL
3 451 (9.94%) Java
4 270 (5.95%) PowerShell
5 267 (5.88%) JavaScript
6 190 (4.19%) C#
7 153 (3.37%) TypeScript
8 147 (3.24%) Bash
9 78 (1.72%) Go
10 77 (1.70%) Shell Script
11 65 (1.43%) PL/SQL
12 53 (1.17%) C++
13 47 (1.04%) VBA
14 39 (0.86%) Scala
15 35 (0.77%) R
16 34 (0.75%) Apex Code
17 32 (0.71%) PHP
17 32 (0.71%) T-SQL
18 30 (0.66%) Perl
19 29 (0.64%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 866 (19.08%) Security Cleared
2 666 (14.68%) Degree
3 632 (13.93%) SC Cleared
4 252 (5.55%) Computer Science Degree
5 126 (2.78%) DV Cleared
6 99 (2.18%) CISSP
7 95 (2.09%) PMI Certification
8 93 (2.05%) Microsoft Certification
9 89 (1.96%) Master's Degree
10 86 (1.90%) PMP
11 76 (1.67%) Azure Certification
12 69 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
13 63 (1.39%) BPSS Clearance
14 58 (1.28%) AWS Certification
15 48 (1.06%) CISM
16 40 (0.88%) CCNP
17 38 (0.84%) A+ Certification
18 36 (0.79%) MCP
19 28 (0.62%) CEH
20 27 (0.59%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 312 (6.88%) QA
2 271 (5.97%) Data Quality
3 177 (3.90%) GDPR
4 89 (1.96%) Accessibility
5 88 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 88 (1.94%) NIST
6 60 (1.32%) PMO
7 54 (1.19%) SLA
8 45 (0.99%) PCI DSS
9 26 (0.57%) GRC
9 26 (0.57%) PSD2
10 25 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 20 (0.44%) WCAG
12 19 (0.42%) EU AI Act
13 18 (0.40%) ISO 20022
14 17 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 15 (0.33%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.31%) SEPA
17 13 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
18 12 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 429 (9.45%) Docker
2 297 (6.54%) Active Directory
3 99 (2.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.88%) Hyper-V
5 27 (0.59%) vSphere
6 21 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
7 19 (0.42%) Firmware
8 18 (0.40%) VMware NSX
9 17 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
11 11 (0.24%) HDFS
12 9 (0.20%) RACF
13 7 (0.15%) Time Sharing Option
14 6 (0.13%) ACF2
14 6 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
15 5 (0.11%) KVM
15 5 (0.11%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.088%) Lustre
16 4 (0.088%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 3 (0.066%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 451 (9.94%) Kubernetes
2 264 (5.82%) Terraform
3 179 (3.94%) Ansible
4 107 (2.36%) Grafana
5 80 (1.76%) Prometheus
6 78 (1.72%) SCCM
7 72 (1.59%) Microsoft Intune
8 32 (0.71%) Puppet
9 27 (0.59%) Argo
9 27 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 26 (0.57%) Kibana
11 20 (0.44%) Nessus
12 18 (0.40%) SCOM
13 17 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 17 (0.37%) vCenter Server
14 16 (0.35%) Red Hat Satellite
15 15 (0.33%) HP ALM
15 15 (0.33%) vRealize
16 14 (0.31%) Data Guard
17 12 (0.26%) Control-M
Vendors
1 929 (20.47%) Microsoft
2 333 (7.34%) Oracle
3 237 (5.22%) SAP
4 208 (4.58%) ServiceNow
5 175 (3.86%) Google
6 174 (3.83%) VMware
7 134 (2.95%) Splunk
8 130 (2.86%) Salesforce
9 106 (2.34%) Cisco
10 105 (2.31%) Databricks
11 70 (1.54%) CyberArk
12 63 (1.39%) Red Hat
13 59 (1.30%) Workday
14 57 (1.26%) IBM
15 53 (1.17%) BeyondTrust
16 50 (1.10%) Citrix
17 44 (0.97%) Palo Alto
18 42 (0.93%) Talend
19 41 (0.90%) HP
20 40 (0.88%) MuleSoft