Problem-Solving Contracts in the UK excluding London

Problem Solving
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Problem-Solving skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Problem-Solving over the 6 months leading up to 19 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 7 13
Rank change year-on-year +4 +6 +5
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 2,448 2,333 2,290
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 18.93% 11.49% 9.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 20.90% 13.63% 11.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,502 1,366 1,410
10th Percentile £200 £200 £200
25th Percentile £356 £325 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £486 £490
Median % change year-on-year -2.31% -0.77% +6.52%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £588
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £502 £525
% change year-on-year -0.40% -4.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 203 351 197
10th Percentile £14.20 £11.00 £13.29
25th Percentile £15.00 £13.03 £14.00
Median hourly rate £21.24 £15.00 £48.40
Median % change year-on-year +41.60% -69.01% +167.18%
75th Percentile £30.63 £30.94 £61.25
90th Percentile £64.90 £61.60 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £22.14 £16.50 £48.40
% change year-on-year +34.18% -65.91% +99.59%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

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 the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 11,711 17,111 20,579
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 90.54% 84.30% 89.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,292 10,219 14,183
10th Percentile £235 £250 £258
25th Percentile £375 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - +4.17%
75th Percentile £580 £600 £600
90th Percentile £651 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% +3.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 850 2,064 1,254
10th Percentile £14.02 £12.35 £10.63
25th Percentile £17.08 £15.25 £15.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.93% +7.14% +75.00%
75th Percentile £63.40 £61.30 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £73.74
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £36.05 £36.00
% change year-on-year -22.32% +0.13% +40.19%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing Problem-Solving as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Problem-Solving in the UK excluding London

Problem-Solving
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Problem-Solving in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Problem-Solving in the UK excluding London

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 19 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the UK excluding London

Problem-Solving
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Problem-Solving in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Problem-Solving in the UK excluding London

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Problem-Solving in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 19 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the UK excluding London

Problem-Solving
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 19 May 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
North of England +5 650 £490 - 1,881
South East +6 555 £500 +4.28% 2,393
North West +7 380 £490 -0.61% 1,038
Midlands +7 353 £443 -6.84% 1,115
Scotland +6 333 £465 -2.11% 465
West Midlands +9 260 £463 -7.50% 683
South West +3 241 £513 +2.50% 885
East of England +2 241 £467 -6.70% 813
Yorkshire +2 228 £485 +2.11% 581
East Midlands +2 91 £368 +5.00% 388
Wales +1 49 £331 -22.08% 201
Northern Ireland +2 48 £408 -6.32% 167
North East -3 41 £508 -7.73% 283
Channel Islands - 4 £425 - 1
Problem-Solving
UK

Problem-Solving
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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
1 109 (4.45%) SharePoint
2 103 (4.21%) Confluence
3 56 (2.29%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (1.10%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.98%) Apache
6 15 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
6 15 (0.61%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 14 (0.57%) IIS
8 13 (0.53%) Skype for Business
9 12 (0.49%) WebSphere
10 10 (0.41%) CMS
11 8 (0.33%) IBM Domino
11 8 (0.33%) Mattermost
12 7 (0.29%) WebLogic
13 6 (0.25%) ArcGIS
13 6 (0.25%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.20%) Anypoint
14 5 (0.20%) BizTalk Server
14 5 (0.20%) CICS
14 5 (0.20%) Mule
Applications
1 170 (6.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 133 (5.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 128 (5.23%) Microsoft Office
4 36 (1.47%) MS Visio
5 19 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.29%) Trello
8 3 (0.12%) Adobe Captivate
8 3 (0.12%) AutoCAD
8 3 (0.12%) CANalyzer
8 3 (0.12%) InfoPath
8 3 (0.12%) Revit
9 2 (0.082%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.082%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.082%) Simulink
9 2 (0.082%) Sketch
10 1 (0.041%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.041%) CATIA
10 1 (0.041%) QuarkXPress
10 1 (0.041%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 50 (2.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (1.72%) Oracle EBS
3 25 (1.02%) Oracle EBS R12
4 15 (0.61%) Maximo
5 13 (0.53%) Oracle ASCP
5 13 (0.53%) Teamcenter
6 11 (0.45%) SAP Oil and Gas
7 10 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
8 8 (0.33%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.33%) SAP HR
9 7 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
9 7 (0.29%) SAP CO
9 7 (0.29%) SAP FI
9 7 (0.29%) SAP FI/CO
10 6 (0.25%) SAP EWM
10 6 (0.25%) SAP Payroll
11 5 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
12 4 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
12 4 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 4 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 398 (16.26%) Azure
2 258 (10.54%) AWS
3 213 (8.70%) Microsoft 365
4 140 (5.72%) Power Platform
5 108 (4.41%) GCP
6 92 (3.76%) Entra ID
7 51 (2.08%) Azure DevOps
8 50 (2.04%) SaaS
9 46 (1.88%) Cloud Computing
10 45 (1.84%) Serverless
11 44 (1.80%) PowerApps
12 43 (1.76%) Amazon S3
13 38 (1.55%) GitHub
14 34 (1.39%) Power Automate
15 33 (1.35%) AWS Lambda
16 32 (1.31%) Snowflake
17 28 (1.14%) Dynamics 365
17 28 (1.14%) OCI
18 25 (1.02%) IaaS
19 23 (0.94%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 100 (4.08%) Firewall
2 97 (3.96%) VPN
3 75 (3.06%) Network Security
4 64 (2.61%) DNS
5 61 (2.49%) LAN
6 58 (2.37%) WAN
7 42 (1.72%) TCP/IP
8 36 (1.47%) DHCP
8 36 (1.47%) Wi-Fi
9 32 (1.31%) SAN
10 31 (1.27%) MPLS
10 31 (1.27%) Wireless
11 28 (1.14%) Remote Desktop
12 27 (1.10%) BGP
13 26 (1.06%) Ethernet
14 24 (0.98%) Internet
15 23 (0.94%) ATM
16 22 (0.90%) OSPF
17 20 (0.82%) LTE
17 20 (0.82%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 102 (4.17%) Power BI
2 84 (3.43%) SQL Server
3 74 (3.02%) MongoDB
4 71 (2.90%) Relational Database
5 62 (2.53%) Oracle Database
6 57 (2.33%) Data Warehouse
7 51 (2.08%) PostgreSQL
8 40 (1.63%) NoSQL
9 39 (1.59%) DB2
10 37 (1.51%) MySQL
11 36 (1.47%) Tableau
12 25 (1.02%) Big Data
13 22 (0.90%) Metadata
13 22 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
14 19 (0.78%) Data Lake
15 16 (0.65%) Hadoop
16 15 (0.61%) BigQuery
17 14 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
17 14 (0.57%) RDBMS
18 13 (0.53%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 179 (7.31%) JIRA
2 114 (4.66%) Git
3 92 (3.76%) Jenkins
4 49 (2.00%) GitLab
5 39 (1.59%) JUnit
6 37 (1.51%) Selenium
7 22 (0.90%) Bitbucket
7 22 (0.90%) Visual Studio
8 17 (0.69%) Cucumber
9 14 (0.57%) TestRail
10 12 (0.49%) Maven
11 10 (0.41%) REST Assured
12 9 (0.37%) Postman
13 8 (0.33%) JMeter
14 7 (0.29%) Cypress.io
14 7 (0.29%) SonarQube
15 6 (0.25%) GoogleTest
15 6 (0.25%) LabVIEW
15 6 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
15 6 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,456 (59.48%) Social Skills
2 890 (36.36%) Analytical Skills
3 466 (19.04%) Finance
4 187 (7.64%) Public Sector
5 157 (6.41%) Banking
6 110 (4.49%) Telecoms
7 87 (3.55%) Legal
8 85 (3.47%) Manufacturing
9 75 (3.06%) Presentation Skills
10 73 (2.98%) Organisational Skills
11 59 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 55 (2.25%) Documentation Skills
13 44 (1.80%) Marketing
14 41 (1.67%) Investment Banking
15 37 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
16 36 (1.47%) Front Office
16 36 (1.47%) Pharmaceutical
17 35 (1.43%) Retail
18 28 (1.14%) Electronics
19 25 (1.02%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 342 (13.97%) Analyst
2 280 (11.44%) Developer
3 184 (7.52%) Architect
4 157 (6.41%) Senior
5 123 (5.02%) Lead
6 117 (4.78%) Support Engineer
7 104 (4.25%) Consultant
8 96 (3.92%) Business Analyst
9 87 (3.55%) Project Manager
10 80 (3.27%) Service Analyst
11 74 (3.02%) Data Engineer
11 74 (3.02%) Java Developer
12 73 (2.98%) Administrator
13 67 (2.74%) IT Support
14 63 (2.57%) Service Desk Analyst
15 61 (2.49%) Solutions Architect
16 55 (2.25%) Network Engineer
17 51 (2.08%) Support Analyst
18 45 (1.84%) IT Engineer
19 42 (1.72%) Desktop Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (3.02%) React
2 69 (2.82%) REST
3 66 (2.70%) HTML
3 66 (2.70%) RESTful
4 65 (2.66%) Kafka
5 61 (2.49%) CSS
6 60 (2.45%) Spring
7 45 (1.84%) Web Services
8 43 (1.76%) .NET
9 42 (1.72%) AngularJS
10 35 (1.43%) JSON
11 32 (1.31%) SOAP
12 30 (1.23%) Middleware
13 27 (1.10%) JMS
13 27 (1.10%) Spring Boot
14 23 (0.94%) XML
15 22 (0.90%) Node.js
16 17 (0.69%) OAuth
16 17 (0.69%) PySpark
17 15 (0.61%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 129 (5.27%) Management Information System
2 101 (4.13%) Self-Motivation
3 70 (2.86%) Product Ownership
4 64 (2.61%) Data Centre
5 60 (2.45%) Data Protection Act
6 56 (2.29%) Data Structures
7 50 (2.04%) Cloud Native
8 46 (1.88%) Onboarding
9 41 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
10 37 (1.51%) Algorithms
10 37 (1.51%) Enterprise Software
11 34 (1.39%) Equities
12 30 (1.23%) iPhone
13 29 (1.18%) iPad
14 28 (1.14%) CMDB
14 28 (1.14%) Security Posture
15 27 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
16 26 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
17 25 (1.02%) Replication
17 25 (1.02%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 384 (15.69%) Windows
2 218 (8.91%) Linux
3 98 (4.00%) Windows Server
4 76 (3.10%) Windows 10
5 56 (2.29%) Unix
6 30 (1.23%) Android
6 30 (1.23%) Apple iOS
7 26 (1.06%) Mac OS
8 24 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 17 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
10 13 (0.53%) zOS
11 12 (0.49%) Windows Server 2012
12 10 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
13 7 (0.29%) Embedded Linux
14 6 (0.25%) AIX
14 6 (0.25%) Check Point GAiA
14 6 (0.25%) Windows 8
14 6 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
14 6 (0.25%) Windows XP
15 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 571 (23.33%) Agile
2 272 (11.11%) ITIL
2 272 (11.11%) Project Management
3 261 (10.66%) Stakeholder Management
4 244 (9.97%) Customer Service
5 231 (9.44%) Migration
6 229 (9.35%) CI/CD
7 224 (9.15%) Continuous Improvement
8 223 (9.11%) DevOps
9 219 (8.95%) Decision-Making
10 161 (6.58%) Computer Science
11 160 (6.54%) Service Delivery
12 151 (6.17%) Collaborative Working
13 149 (6.09%) Change Management
14 144 (5.88%) Business Intelligence
15 139 (5.68%) Time Management
16 133 (5.43%) Risk Management
17 129 (5.27%) Validation
18 126 (5.15%) Scrum
19 124 (5.07%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 384 (15.69%) SQL
2 335 (13.68%) Python
3 191 (7.80%) Java
4 166 (6.78%) PowerShell
5 105 (4.29%) JavaScript
6 71 (2.90%) C#
7 64 (2.61%) Bash
8 57 (2.33%) PL/SQL
9 53 (2.17%) Shell Script
10 33 (1.35%) TypeScript
11 25 (1.02%) C++
12 24 (0.98%) Perl
13 23 (0.94%) Scala
14 18 (0.74%) PHP
15 16 (0.65%) Delphi
16 14 (0.57%) ABAP
17 13 (0.53%) C
18 11 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 11 (0.45%) Ruby
19 10 (0.41%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 416 (16.99%) Security Cleared
2 313 (12.79%) SC Cleared
3 309 (12.62%) Degree
4 103 (4.21%) Cisco Certification
4 103 (4.21%) Computer Science Degree
5 96 (3.92%) Microsoft Certification
6 80 (3.27%) CCNP
7 73 (2.98%) DV Cleared
8 67 (2.74%) ITIL Certification
9 55 (2.25%) A+ Certification
10 42 (1.72%) CISSP
10 42 (1.72%) PMI Certification
11 39 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
12 38 (1.55%) Master's Degree
13 37 (1.51%) Azure Certification
14 36 (1.47%) AWS Certification
15 35 (1.43%) PMP
16 31 (1.27%) ISTQB
17 30 (1.23%) CCNA
18 29 (1.18%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 141 (5.76%) QA
2 87 (3.55%) Data Quality
3 63 (2.57%) SLA
4 61 (2.49%) GDPR
5 34 (1.39%) Accessibility
6 27 (1.10%) PMO
7 26 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.98%) NIST
9 20 (0.82%) Disclosure Scotland
10 19 (0.78%) PCI DSS
11 14 (0.57%) HIPAA
12 8 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.29%) GRC
14 5 (0.20%) NCSC
14 5 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
15 4 (0.16%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 4 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials
15 4 (0.16%) MiFID
15 4 (0.16%) PMBOK
15 4 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 238 (9.72%) Active Directory
2 104 (4.25%) Docker
3 81 (3.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (1.14%) Virtual Machines
5 27 (1.10%) vSphere
6 21 (0.86%) Hyper-V
7 17 (0.69%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.53%) Virtual Servers
9 9 (0.37%) Oracle RAC
10 8 (0.33%) RACF
11 7 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
12 4 (0.16%) Firmware
12 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 4 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
13 3 (0.12%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.082%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 2 (0.082%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.082%) NFS
14 2 (0.082%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 2 (0.082%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 112 (4.58%) Kubernetes
2 98 (4.00%) Ansible
3 78 (3.19%) Terraform
4 69 (2.82%) Microsoft Intune
5 52 (2.12%) SCCM
6 31 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
7 25 (1.02%) Puppet
8 23 (0.94%) Oracle RMAN
8 23 (0.94%) vCenter Server
9 17 (0.69%) Jamf Pro
9 17 (0.69%) Progress Chef
10 16 (0.65%) Grafana
11 14 (0.57%) SCOM
12 12 (0.49%) FortiGate
13 11 (0.45%) NetBackup
13 11 (0.45%) Podman
14 10 (0.41%) Kibana
15 9 (0.37%) Prometheus
16 7 (0.29%) Failover Clustering
16 7 (0.29%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 557 (22.75%) Microsoft
2 217 (8.86%) Oracle
3 146 (5.96%) ServiceNow
4 143 (5.84%) SAP
5 126 (5.15%) Cisco
6 96 (3.92%) VMware
7 82 (3.35%) Google
8 48 (1.96%) Juniper
9 43 (1.76%) Citrix
10 40 (1.63%) IBM
11 34 (1.39%) Red Hat
12 32 (1.31%) Sybase
13 29 (1.18%) Dell
14 28 (1.14%) Splunk
15 27 (1.10%) Databricks
16 24 (0.98%) HP
17 22 (0.90%) CyberArk
17 22 (0.90%) Nokia
18 21 (0.86%) F5
18 21 (0.86%) Palo Alto