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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 22 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 9 15
Rank change year-on-year +4 +6 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,260 3,975 4,138
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 15.54% 12.24% 9.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.11% 14.21% 10.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,608 2,307 2,655
10th Percentile £250 £262 £255
25th Percentile £375 £399 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £603 £610 £638
90th Percentile £703 £713 £739
UK median daily rate £483 £500 £503
% change year-on-year -3.50% -0.60% -6.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 210 225
10th Percentile £13.25 £14.16 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.03 £18.63
Median hourly rate £18.85 £16.23 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.14% -70.49% +123.76%
75th Percentile £34.48 £30.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £63.40 £63.75 £81.02
UK median hourly rate £19.63 £16.23 £54.78
% change year-on-year +20.92% -70.37% +138.17%

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 24,904 27,976 37,781
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 90.83% 86.14% 89.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,795 17,344 26,141
10th Percentile £300 £313 £318
25th Percentile £405 £424 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £626 £645 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,504 1,266 1,448
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.00 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.00 £19.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £44.06
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -2.39% +51.91%
75th Percentile £47.50 £66.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.85 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £42.69 £43.00
% change year-on-year -41.09% -0.72% +48.79%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Problem-Solving as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Problem-Solving 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 22 September 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 22 September 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 22 September 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 +6 2,066 £501 -4.67% 2,006
North of England -1 620 £475 - 979
South East +3 534 £450 -7.69% 1,494
Midlands +2 455 £440 -4.20% 585
North West +1 347 £472 +2.05% 537
West Midlands +3 318 £475 +2.70% 344
South West +3 242 £450 -5.26% 461
Yorkshire -2 241 £488 +0.52% 304
East of England -1 228 £503 +5.79% 390
East Midlands -2 137 £375 -17.58% 233
North East -9 35 £450 -5.76% 150
Problem-Solving
UK

Problem-Solving
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 157 (3.69%) Confluence
2 133 (3.12%) SharePoint
3 71 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.50%) Apache Spark
5 44 (1.03%) Apache
6 41 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
7 33 (0.77%) CMS
8 27 (0.63%) SAS
8 27 (0.63%) Skype for Business
9 18 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.40%) IIS
11 15 (0.35%) Mattermost
12 11 (0.26%) JBoss
12 11 (0.26%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.21%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 9 (0.21%) Tomcat
13 9 (0.21%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.19%) Anypoint
14 8 (0.19%) CICS
15 7 (0.16%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 284 (6.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 179 (4.20%) Microsoft Office
3 134 (3.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.71%) MS Visio
5 43 (1.01%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.33%) Trello
7 12 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
8 8 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.19%) Chatbot
8 8 (0.19%) Simulink
9 7 (0.16%) Sketch
10 6 (0.14%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.14%) ProjectWise
10 6 (0.14%) Revit
11 5 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.12%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.094%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.094%) Navisworks
13 3 (0.070%) InDesign
14 2 (0.047%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 105 (2.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
5 19 (0.45%) SAP EWM
6 18 (0.42%) Oracle EBS R12
7 17 (0.40%) Teamcenter
8 15 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
9 14 (0.33%) Oracle BPM
10 13 (0.31%) SAP HR
10 13 (0.31%) SAP WM
11 12 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
12 11 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
12 11 (0.26%) Workday HCM
13 10 (0.23%) FLEXCUBE
13 10 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
13 10 (0.23%) Oracle Cash Management
13 10 (0.23%) Shopify
14 8 (0.19%) Maximo
14 8 (0.19%) Oracle HRMS
Cloud Services
1 744 (17.46%) Azure
2 638 (14.98%) AWS
3 267 (6.27%) Power Platform
4 266 (6.24%) GCP
5 247 (5.80%) Microsoft 365
6 148 (3.47%) GitHub
7 134 (3.15%) Serverless
8 129 (3.03%) Azure DevOps
9 103 (2.42%) SaaS
10 102 (2.39%) Entra ID
11 91 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 83 (1.95%) AWS Lambda
13 74 (1.74%) Dynamics 365
14 73 (1.71%) PowerApps
15 64 (1.50%) Snowflake
16 61 (1.43%) Power Automate
17 56 (1.31%) GitHub Actions
18 54 (1.27%) AWS CloudFormation
19 51 (1.20%) Cloud Computing
20 47 (1.10%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 131 (3.08%) Firewall
2 112 (2.63%) DNS
3 110 (2.58%) VPN
4 94 (2.21%) TCP/IP
5 72 (1.69%) Network Security
6 53 (1.24%) DHCP
6 53 (1.24%) LAN
7 45 (1.06%) WAN
8 41 (0.96%) VLAN
9 36 (0.85%) SSL
9 36 (0.85%) Wireless
10 35 (0.82%) BGP
11 33 (0.77%) Wireshark
12 29 (0.68%) OSPF
12 29 (0.68%) SAN
13 26 (0.61%) Skype
14 25 (0.59%) HTTP
15 24 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
16 23 (0.54%) MPLS
17 21 (0.49%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 201 (4.72%) Power BI
2 178 (4.18%) SQL Server
3 130 (3.05%) PostgreSQL
4 125 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
5 106 (2.49%) Relational Database
6 99 (2.32%) NoSQL
7 85 (2.00%) Tableau
8 76 (1.78%) MongoDB
9 73 (1.71%) Oracle Database
10 55 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
11 54 (1.27%) MySQL
12 50 (1.17%) Big Data
13 46 (1.08%) DynamoDB
14 45 (1.06%) Redis
15 42 (0.99%) Metadata
16 40 (0.94%) DB2
17 37 (0.87%) BigQuery
18 35 (0.82%) Hadoop
19 28 (0.66%) Data Lake
20 26 (0.61%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 373 (8.76%) JIRA
2 282 (6.62%) Git
3 186 (4.37%) Jenkins
4 91 (2.14%) GitLab
5 61 (1.43%) Selenium
6 60 (1.41%) JUnit
7 43 (1.01%) Postman
8 37 (0.87%) Cucumber
9 34 (0.80%) Maven
10 30 (0.70%) SonarQube
11 25 (0.59%) Bitbucket
12 21 (0.49%) Gradle
13 19 (0.45%) REST Assured
14 18 (0.42%) JMeter
15 17 (0.40%) Cypress.io
15 17 (0.40%) SoapUI
15 17 (0.40%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.35%) webpack
17 14 (0.33%) Mockito
18 13 (0.31%) Eclipse
General
1 2,485 (58.33%) Social Skills
2 1,601 (37.58%) Analytical Skills
3 1,082 (25.40%) Finance
4 406 (9.53%) Banking
5 298 (7.00%) Public Sector
6 158 (3.71%) Telecoms
7 141 (3.31%) Organisational Skills
8 128 (3.00%) Marketing
9 121 (2.84%) Legal
10 119 (2.79%) Presentation Skills
11 113 (2.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 106 (2.49%) Investment Banking
13 100 (2.35%) Retail
14 98 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
15 96 (2.25%) Manufacturing
16 94 (2.21%) Influencing Skills
17 80 (1.88%) Front Office
18 60 (1.41%) Financial Institution
19 45 (1.06%) Back Office
20 44 (1.03%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 683 (16.03%) Analyst
2 592 (13.90%) Developer
3 363 (8.52%) Senior
4 318 (7.46%) Architect
5 231 (5.42%) Consultant
6 230 (5.40%) Lead
7 223 (5.23%) Business Analyst
8 163 (3.83%) Support Engineer
9 157 (3.69%) Project Manager
10 132 (3.10%) Java Developer
11 121 (2.84%) IT Support
12 111 (2.61%) Support Analyst
13 105 (2.46%) Senior Developer
14 101 (2.37%) Data Engineer
15 93 (2.18%) Data Analyst
16 71 (1.67%) Software Engineer
16 71 (1.67%) Solutions Architect
17 65 (1.53%) Administrator
18 64 (1.50%) SAP Consultant
19 63 (1.48%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 196 (4.60%) REST
2 166 (3.90%) RESTful
3 156 (3.66%) HTML
4 147 (3.45%) Kafka
5 143 (3.36%) .NET
6 129 (3.03%) CSS
7 125 (2.93%) React
8 122 (2.86%) Spring
9 102 (2.39%) AngularJS
10 85 (2.00%) SOAP
10 85 (2.00%) Web Services
11 80 (1.88%) Spring Boot
12 74 (1.74%) Node.js
13 62 (1.46%) JSON
14 60 (1.41%) Middleware
15 56 (1.31%) GraphQL
16 54 (1.27%) OAuth
17 50 (1.17%) XML
18 36 (0.85%) HTML5
18 36 (0.85%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 169 (3.97%) Product Ownership
2 168 (3.94%) Management Information System
3 132 (3.10%) Self-Motivation
4 130 (3.05%) Cloud Native
5 117 (2.75%) Onboarding
6 100 (2.35%) Analytical Mindset
7 96 (2.25%) Data Structures
8 91 (2.14%) Enterprise Software
9 90 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
10 83 (1.95%) Algorithms
11 68 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
12 64 (1.50%) Virtual Team
13 63 (1.48%) Data Centre
14 58 (1.36%) Security Posture
15 50 (1.17%) Legacy Systems
16 42 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 35 (0.82%) Equities
18 34 (0.80%) Mobile App
19 33 (0.77%) Fixed Income
20 31 (0.73%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 418 (9.81%) Windows
2 295 (6.92%) Linux
3 105 (2.46%) Unix
4 95 (2.23%) Windows 10
5 72 (1.69%) Windows Server
6 70 (1.64%) Apple iOS
7 48 (1.13%) Android
8 34 (0.80%) Mac OS
9 23 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 18 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
11 17 (0.40%) CentOS
11 17 (0.40%) VMS
12 16 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
13 15 (0.35%) zOS
14 8 (0.19%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
15 7 (0.16%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.14%) Check Point GAiA
17 5 (0.12%) Ubuntu
18 4 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,198 (28.12%) Agile
2 560 (13.15%) CI/CD
3 540 (12.68%) DevOps
4 509 (11.95%) Stakeholder Management
5 498 (11.69%) Continuous Improvement
6 430 (10.09%) Project Management
7 426 (10.00%) Migration
8 399 (9.37%) Decision-Making
9 361 (8.47%) Scrum
10 360 (8.45%) Analytics
11 329 (7.72%) Computer Science
12 309 (7.25%) ITIL
13 297 (6.97%) Business Intelligence
14 286 (6.71%) Test Automation
15 283 (6.64%) Mentoring
16 276 (6.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 273 (6.41%) Customer Service
18 258 (6.06%) Data Modelling
19 252 (5.92%) Artificial Intelligence
20 246 (5.77%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 744 (17.46%) Python
2 701 (16.46%) SQL
3 426 (10.00%) Java
4 244 (5.73%) JavaScript
5 195 (4.58%) PowerShell
6 169 (3.97%) C#
7 103 (2.42%) TypeScript
8 100 (2.35%) Bash
9 84 (1.97%) Shell Script
10 59 (1.38%) Go
11 53 (1.24%) C++
12 48 (1.13%) PL/SQL
13 36 (0.85%) Scala
13 36 (0.85%) VBA
14 32 (0.75%) R
15 28 (0.66%) Apex Code
16 24 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 21 (0.49%) C
17 21 (0.49%) PHP
18 20 (0.47%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 628 (14.74%) Security Cleared
2 621 (14.58%) Degree
3 464 (10.89%) SC Cleared
4 229 (5.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 98 (2.30%) Microsoft Certification
6 78 (1.83%) DV Cleared
6 78 (1.83%) PMI Certification
7 77 (1.81%) PMP
8 75 (1.76%) CISSP
9 71 (1.67%) AWS Certification
10 68 (1.60%) Master's Degree
11 59 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
11 59 (1.38%) Cisco Certification
12 56 (1.31%) Azure Certification
13 50 (1.17%) A+ Certification
14 37 (0.87%) CCNP
15 36 (0.85%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 35 (0.82%) CISM
16 35 (0.82%) ISTQB
17 29 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 248 (5.82%) QA
2 206 (4.84%) Data Quality
3 158 (3.71%) GDPR
4 75 (1.76%) Accessibility
5 71 (1.67%) SLA
6 67 (1.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 64 (1.50%) NIST
8 61 (1.43%) PMO
9 32 (0.75%) PCI DSS
9 32 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 20 (0.47%) HIPAA
11 19 (0.45%) GRC
12 18 (0.42%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 16 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.35%) WCAG
15 14 (0.33%) SEPA
16 13 (0.31%) PSD2
17 11 (0.26%) ISO 20022
17 11 (0.26%) NCSC
18 10 (0.23%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 263 (6.17%) Docker
2 249 (5.85%) Active Directory
3 80 (1.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
5 28 (0.66%) Hyper-V
6 22 (0.52%) vSphere
7 16 (0.38%) Firmware
7 16 (0.38%) Oracle RAC
8 14 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
8 14 (0.33%) VMware NSX
9 10 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 8 (0.19%) RACF
11 7 (0.16%) HDFS
12 5 (0.12%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.094%) KVM
13 4 (0.094%) Time Sharing Option
14 3 (0.070%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 3 (0.070%) XenApp
15 2 (0.047%) NFS
15 2 (0.047%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 319 (7.49%) Kubernetes
2 194 (4.55%) Terraform
3 143 (3.36%) Ansible
4 82 (1.92%) Grafana
5 66 (1.55%) Prometheus
5 66 (1.55%) SCCM
6 65 (1.53%) Microsoft Intune
7 33 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
8 26 (0.61%) Puppet
8 26 (0.61%) SCOM
9 17 (0.40%) Data Guard
10 16 (0.38%) FortiGate
10 16 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
11 15 (0.35%) Nessus
12 13 (0.31%) vCenter Server
13 12 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
14 11 (0.26%) Progress Chef
14 11 (0.26%) yum
15 10 (0.23%) Tivoli Identity Manager
15 10 (0.23%) vRealize
Vendors
1 914 (21.46%) Microsoft
2 314 (7.37%) Oracle
3 278 (6.53%) SAP
4 197 (4.62%) ServiceNow
5 157 (3.69%) Google
6 125 (2.93%) VMware
7 120 (2.82%) Salesforce
8 119 (2.79%) Splunk
9 105 (2.46%) Cisco
10 74 (1.74%) Databricks
11 62 (1.46%) IBM
12 58 (1.36%) Workday
13 52 (1.22%) Red Hat
14 49 (1.15%) Citrix
15 40 (0.94%) CyberArk
16 37 (0.87%) Adobe
16 37 (0.87%) Juniper
17 34 (0.80%) F5
18 31 (0.73%) Dynatrace
18 31 (0.73%) Palo Alto