Problem-Solving Contract Job Trends

Problem Solving
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Problem-Solving skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 24 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 8 12
Rank change year-on-year +1 +4 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,260 4,781 4,764
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 14.80% 13.07% 10.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.54% 15.06% 11.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,194 2,767 3,035
10th Percentile £252 £263 £244
25th Percentile £381 £398 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £619
90th Percentile £700 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 331 197 244
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.06 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.65 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £20.26 £21.00 £45.44
Median % change year-on-year -3.55% -53.79% +70.35%
75th Percentile £35.00 £36.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £62.46 £86.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.82 £17.00 £32.32
% change year-on-year +10.71% -47.40% +43.64%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 31,798 31,745 40,964
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.44% 86.76% 88.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,901 19,110 27,507
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £531
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.13% -3.45%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £740 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,102 1,148 1,575
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.20 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.12 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.90
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -20.27% +25.43%
75th Percentile £45.46 £64.56 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.74 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -30.05% -26.97% +39.06%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Problem-Solving relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Problem-Solving job vacancy trend in the UK

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Problem-Solving.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving over the 6 months to 24 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the UK

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Problem-Solving.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Problem-Solving over the 6 months to 24 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the UK

Problem-Solving
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 24 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
England +1 4,525 £479 -4.25% 3,535
UK excluding London 0 2,612 £450 -5.26% 3,116
London +3 2,114 £500 -6.54% 968
Work from Home +4 1,461 £492 +0.41% 1,781
North of England -3 661 £455 -4.32% 634
South East +1 624 £463 -7.50% 1,126
Midlands 0 518 £449 +3.34% 503
West Midlands +1 370 £478 +6.28% 329
North West 0 368 £450 -2.44% 371
South West +1 268 £481 +1.32% 363
Scotland +5 263 £450 +2.86% 155
Yorkshire -6 256 £480 -3.32% 185
East of England -2 213 £500 +11.11% 279
East Midlands -2 148 £400 -3.03% 164
Wales +2 75 £413 +3.13% 91
North East -6 42 £450 -3.12% 81
Northern Ireland +1 39 £475 - 47
Channel Islands -4 2 - -

Problem-Solving
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 189 (3.59%) Confluence
2 165 (3.14%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.07%) Microsoft Exchange
4 72 (1.37%) Apache Spark
5 61 (1.16%) Apache
6 58 (1.10%) SAS
7 49 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
8 43 (0.82%) CMS
9 31 (0.59%) Skype for Business
10 27 (0.51%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.30%) JBoss
12 14 (0.27%) IIS
12 14 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 13 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
14 11 (0.21%) Anypoint
15 10 (0.19%) Oracle Service Bus
16 9 (0.17%) WebSphere
17 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
18 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
18 7 (0.13%) OpenStack
Applications
1 356 (6.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (4.20%) Microsoft Office
3 143 (2.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (1.56%) MS Visio
5 54 (1.03%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.25%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.23%) Trello
9 10 (0.19%) Sketch
10 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 8 (0.15%) Adobe XD
12 7 (0.13%) Simulink
13 6 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
13 6 (0.11%) ProjectWise
14 4 (0.076%) Autodesk Inventor
14 4 (0.076%) Notion
14 4 (0.076%) Revit
15 3 (0.057%) Adobe Illustrator
15 3 (0.057%) AutoCAD
16 2 (0.038%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 123 (2.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
3 25 (0.48%) Oracle Payables
4 21 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
5 19 (0.36%) SAP EWM
6 18 (0.34%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.32%) SAP HR
8 16 (0.30%) Oracle BPM
8 16 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
8 16 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
9 15 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
9 15 (0.29%) SAP ERP
10 14 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
11 13 (0.25%) Oracle Cash Management
11 13 (0.25%) SAP WM
12 12 (0.23%) NetSuite
12 12 (0.23%) Oracle Financials
12 12 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
13 11 (0.21%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,020 (19.39%) Azure
2 804 (15.29%) AWS
3 369 (7.02%) GCP
4 344 (6.54%) Power Platform
5 305 (5.80%) Microsoft 365
6 233 (4.43%) GitHub
7 205 (3.90%) Azure DevOps
8 165 (3.14%) Serverless
9 125 (2.38%) SaaS
10 124 (2.36%) Entra ID
11 102 (1.94%) GitHub Actions
12 96 (1.83%) Amazon S3
13 89 (1.69%) Dynamics 365
14 86 (1.63%) AWS Lambda
15 81 (1.54%) PowerApps
16 79 (1.50%) Snowflake
17 78 (1.48%) Power Automate
18 68 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
19 60 (1.14%) OpenShift
20 59 (1.12%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 196 (3.73%) Firewall
2 147 (2.79%) DNS
3 119 (2.26%) Network Security
4 113 (2.15%) VPN
5 109 (2.07%) TCP/IP
6 73 (1.39%) DHCP
7 68 (1.29%) LAN
7 68 (1.29%) WAN
8 47 (0.89%) VLAN
9 43 (0.82%) Wireless
10 39 (0.74%) BGP
11 35 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
12 31 (0.59%) HTTP
12 31 (0.59%) SSL
13 29 (0.55%) Skype
14 27 (0.51%) VoIP
15 26 (0.49%) OSPF
15 26 (0.49%) Wireshark
16 25 (0.48%) SSH
17 22 (0.42%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 262 (4.98%) Power BI
2 193 (3.67%) Relational Database
3 186 (3.54%) PostgreSQL
4 174 (3.31%) SQL Server
5 148 (2.81%) Data Warehouse
6 127 (2.41%) NoSQL
7 116 (2.21%) MongoDB
8 92 (1.75%) Oracle Database
9 89 (1.69%) MySQL
9 89 (1.69%) Tableau
10 67 (1.27%) Metadata
11 60 (1.14%) DB2
12 53 (1.01%) Big Data
13 52 (0.99%) Amazon RDS
14 46 (0.87%) DynamoDB
15 44 (0.84%) Data Lake
16 43 (0.82%) Hadoop
17 42 (0.80%) Redis
18 41 (0.78%) BigQuery
19 38 (0.72%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 475 (9.03%) JIRA
2 396 (7.53%) Git
3 264 (5.02%) Jenkins
4 153 (2.91%) GitLab
5 102 (1.94%) JUnit
6 81 (1.54%) Selenium
7 52 (0.99%) Postman
8 40 (0.76%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.72%) Maven
10 33 (0.63%) Bitbucket
11 27 (0.51%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.38%) Gradle
12 20 (0.38%) Mockito
12 20 (0.38%) SoapUI
13 19 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
14 18 (0.34%) Cypress.io
14 18 (0.34%) JMeter
15 17 (0.32%) REST Assured
16 15 (0.29%) Eclipse
17 14 (0.27%) SpecFlow
General
1 3,008 (57.19%) Social Skills
2 1,963 (37.32%) Analytical Skills
3 1,253 (23.82%) Finance
4 457 (8.69%) Banking
5 456 (8.67%) Public Sector
6 180 (3.42%) Organisational Skills
7 146 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
7 146 (2.78%) Legal
8 143 (2.72%) Marketing
8 143 (2.72%) Telecoms
9 137 (2.60%) Manufacturing
10 131 (2.49%) Influencing Skills
11 128 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 123 (2.34%) Investment Banking
13 117 (2.22%) Front Office
14 115 (2.19%) Presentation Skills
15 110 (2.09%) Retail
16 54 (1.03%) Financial Institution
17 51 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
18 48 (0.91%) Military
Job Titles
1 825 (15.68%) Developer
2 794 (15.10%) Analyst
3 440 (8.37%) Senior
4 328 (6.24%) Architect
5 326 (6.20%) Consultant
6 300 (5.70%) Lead
7 270 (5.13%) Business Analyst
8 191 (3.63%) Project Manager
9 186 (3.54%) Support Engineer
10 178 (3.38%) Java Developer
11 143 (2.72%) Data Engineer
12 137 (2.60%) Senior Developer
13 131 (2.49%) IT Support
14 116 (2.21%) Data Analyst
15 109 (2.07%) Support Analyst
16 98 (1.86%) Software Engineer
17 85 (1.62%) Python Developer
18 84 (1.60%) Solutions Architect
19 81 (1.54%) DevOps Engineer
20 80 (1.52%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (6.18%) REST
2 216 (4.11%) RESTful
3 206 (3.92%) Kafka
4 198 (3.76%) .NET
5 187 (3.56%) Spring
6 164 (3.12%) SOAP
7 161 (3.06%) React
8 151 (2.87%) HTML
9 137 (2.60%) Node.js
10 130 (2.47%) CSS
11 121 (2.30%) AngularJS
12 116 (2.21%) Spring Boot
13 107 (2.03%) JSON
14 93 (1.77%) XML
15 85 (1.62%) OAuth
16 78 (1.48%) Web Services
17 76 (1.44%) Middleware
18 68 (1.29%) GraphQL
19 59 (1.12%) Oracle Fusion
20 56 (1.06%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 241 (4.58%) Product Ownership
2 206 (3.92%) Cloud Native
3 196 (3.73%) Management Information System
4 168 (3.19%) Onboarding
5 141 (2.68%) Data Structures
6 137 (2.60%) Analytical Mindset
7 121 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
8 100 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
8 100 (1.90%) Virtual Team
9 98 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
10 93 (1.77%) Algorithms
11 91 (1.73%) Data Centre
12 86 (1.63%) Distributed Systems
13 73 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
14 68 (1.29%) Security Posture
15 65 (1.24%) Equities
16 62 (1.18%) CMDB
16 62 (1.18%) Mobile App
17 56 (1.06%) NHS
18 55 (1.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 511 (9.71%) Windows
2 392 (7.45%) Linux
3 126 (2.40%) Unix
4 103 (1.96%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.84%) Windows Server
6 63 (1.20%) Apple iOS
7 46 (0.87%) Android
8 44 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 41 (0.78%) Mac OS
10 24 (0.46%) VMS
11 16 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
12 14 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.25%) CentOS
14 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
15 5 (0.095%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.095%) zOS
16 4 (0.076%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.076%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.057%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,572 (29.89%) Agile
2 911 (17.32%) CI/CD
3 813 (15.46%) DevOps
4 693 (13.17%) Continuous Improvement
5 684 (13.00%) Stakeholder Management
6 551 (10.48%) Analytics
7 524 (9.96%) Migration
8 470 (8.94%) Project Management
9 465 (8.84%) Decision-Making
10 440 (8.37%) Scrum
11 421 (8.00%) Test Automation
12 409 (7.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 395 (7.51%) Computer Science
14 382 (7.26%) Business Intelligence
15 381 (7.24%) AI
16 366 (6.96%) Mentoring
17 348 (6.62%) Data Modelling
18 347 (6.60%) ITIL
19 339 (6.44%) Microservices
20 337 (6.41%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,033 (19.64%) Python
2 890 (16.92%) SQL
3 561 (10.67%) Java
4 319 (6.06%) JavaScript
5 289 (5.49%) PowerShell
6 225 (4.28%) C#
7 168 (3.19%) TypeScript
8 162 (3.08%) Bash
9 113 (2.15%) Shell Script
10 89 (1.69%) Go
11 71 (1.35%) PL/SQL
12 68 (1.29%) C++
13 53 (1.01%) VBA
14 45 (0.86%) Scala
15 41 (0.78%) R
16 40 (0.76%) Apex Code
17 36 (0.68%) Perl
17 36 (0.68%) PHP
18 31 (0.59%) T-SQL
19 30 (0.57%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 870 (16.54%) Security Cleared
2 757 (14.39%) Degree
3 642 (12.21%) SC Cleared
4 272 (5.17%) Computer Science Degree
5 119 (2.26%) DV Cleared
6 106 (2.02%) CISSP
7 103 (1.96%) Microsoft Certification
8 101 (1.92%) BPSS Clearance
8 101 (1.92%) Master's Degree
8 101 (1.92%) PMI Certification
9 93 (1.77%) PMP
10 87 (1.65%) Azure Certification
11 79 (1.50%) AWS Certification
12 73 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
13 49 (0.93%) CISM
14 47 (0.89%) CCNP
15 41 (0.78%) A+ Certification
16 36 (0.68%) MCP
17 35 (0.67%) ACCA
18 34 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 385 (7.32%) QA
2 282 (5.36%) Data Quality
3 192 (3.65%) GDPR
4 115 (2.19%) Accessibility
5 89 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 89 (1.69%) NIST
6 77 (1.46%) SLA
7 71 (1.35%) PMO
8 42 (0.80%) PCI DSS
9 33 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 24 (0.46%) GRC
10 24 (0.46%) PSD2
11 21 (0.40%) HIPAA
11 21 (0.40%) WCAG
12 19 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
13 15 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.29%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.29%) SEPA
14 10 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 452 (8.59%) Docker
2 302 (5.74%) Active Directory
3 110 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.65%) Hyper-V
4 34 (0.65%) vSphere
5 30 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
6 24 (0.46%) VMware NSX
7 20 (0.38%) Firmware
8 19 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.21%) HDFS
11 9 (0.17%) RACF
11 9 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.15%) Time Sharing Option
13 6 (0.11%) ACF2
14 5 (0.095%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.076%) KVM
16 3 (0.057%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.057%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 2 (0.038%) OpenDJ
Systems Management
1 484 (9.20%) Kubernetes
2 295 (5.61%) Terraform
3 190 (3.61%) Ansible
4 120 (2.28%) Grafana
5 94 (1.79%) Prometheus
6 86 (1.63%) SCCM
7 79 (1.50%) Microsoft Intune
8 47 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (0.57%) Puppet
10 27 (0.51%) Argo
11 20 (0.38%) Nessus
12 19 (0.36%) Kibana
13 18 (0.34%) Data Guard
13 18 (0.34%) SCOM
14 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 15 (0.29%) Packer
15 14 (0.27%) HP ALM
15 14 (0.27%) vCenter Server
15 14 (0.27%) vRealize
16 13 (0.25%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,066 (20.27%) Microsoft
2 389 (7.40%) Oracle
3 339 (6.44%) SAP
4 265 (5.04%) ServiceNow
5 197 (3.75%) Google
6 179 (3.40%) VMware
7 149 (2.83%) Salesforce
8 146 (2.78%) Splunk
9 125 (2.38%) Cisco
10 95 (1.81%) Databricks
11 69 (1.31%) IBM
11 69 (1.31%) Workday
12 66 (1.25%) Red Hat
13 57 (1.08%) Citrix
14 54 (1.03%) CyberArk
15 44 (0.84%) Talend
16 43 (0.82%) Palo Alto
17 41 (0.78%) Sybase
18 38 (0.72%) Juniper
19 37 (0.70%) F5