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

6 months to
9 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 7 12
Rank change year-on-year 0 +5 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,285 4,839 4,695
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 14.57% 13.55% 10.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.39% 15.49% 11.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,246 2,821 2,975
10th Percentile £260 £263 £240
25th Percentile £387 £395 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £616
90th Percentile £700 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -2.63% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 316 184 249
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.15 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.72 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £20.15 £21.23 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.10% -39.34% +30.28%
75th Percentile £35.54 £38.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £65.25 £64.28 £86.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.19 £17.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +7.00% -43.33% +33.33%

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 32,247 31,236 40,271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.88% 87.47% 88.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,285 18,990 26,947
10th Percentile £300 £308 £310
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,090 1,084 1,559
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.25 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.19 £18.94
Median hourly rate £25.13 £33.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.86% -22.35% +21.43%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £74.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -30.37% -23.53% +30.77%

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 9 December 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 9 December 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 9 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
England -1 4,543 £483 -3.50% 3,675
UK excluding London 0 2,631 £463 -2.63% 3,218
London +2 2,113 £500 -5.66% 1,031
Work from Home +3 1,493 £488 -1.61% 3,048
North of England -3 682 £469 -1.26% 815
South East 0 632 £475 -5.00% 1,079
Midlands 0 504 £450 +3.63% 493
North West 0 375 £450 -2.70% 419
West Midlands 0 359 £490 +8.89% 308
South West -1 276 £490 +2.62% 338
Yorkshire -7 262 £480 -1.03% 294
Scotland +3 259 £450 +2.86% 125
East of England -2 205 £500 +11.11% 360
East Midlands -2 145 £402 +0.50% 183
Wales +4 79 £410 +2.50% 63
North East -1 52 £450 -18.18% 122
Northern Ireland 0 40 £475 +5.56% 47
Channel Islands -4 2 - - 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
1 183 (3.46%) Confluence
2 170 (3.22%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.06%) Microsoft Exchange
4 71 (1.34%) Apache Spark
5 61 (1.15%) Apache
6 60 (1.14%) SAS
7 49 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.76%) CMS
9 31 (0.59%) Skype for Business
10 27 (0.51%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 12 (0.23%) Anypoint
13 11 (0.21%) IIS
13 11 (0.21%) JBoss
13 11 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
14 10 (0.19%) Oracle Service Bus
15 8 (0.15%) HCL Notes
15 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
16 7 (0.13%) OpenStack
Applications
1 343 (6.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 235 (4.45%) Microsoft Office
3 139 (2.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 78 (1.48%) MS Visio
5 61 (1.15%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.26%) Chatbot
6 14 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.23%) Trello
8 10 (0.19%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.15%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
11 6 (0.11%) ProjectWise
12 5 (0.095%) Simulink
13 4 (0.076%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.076%) Notion
14 3 (0.057%) Adobe Illustrator
14 3 (0.057%) AutoCAD
14 3 (0.057%) Revit
15 2 (0.038%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 116 (2.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
3 26 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
4 19 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
4 19 (0.36%) SAP EWM
5 18 (0.34%) Workday HCM
6 17 (0.32%) Oracle Receivables
6 17 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
7 16 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
8 15 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
8 15 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
9 14 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
9 14 (0.26%) SAP ERP
9 14 (0.26%) SAP HR
10 13 (0.25%) NetSuite
10 13 (0.25%) Oracle Financials
10 13 (0.25%) Oracle General Ledger
10 13 (0.25%) SAP WM
11 12 (0.23%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,024 (19.38%) Azure
2 812 (15.36%) AWS
3 371 (7.02%) GCP
4 342 (6.47%) Power Platform
5 315 (5.96%) Microsoft 365
6 237 (4.48%) GitHub
7 203 (3.84%) Azure DevOps
8 173 (3.27%) Serverless
9 128 (2.42%) Entra ID
10 120 (2.27%) SaaS
11 111 (2.10%) GitHub Actions
12 97 (1.84%) Amazon S3
13 92 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
14 84 (1.59%) Dynamics 365
15 82 (1.55%) Snowflake
16 80 (1.51%) Power Automate
17 79 (1.49%) PowerApps
18 70 (1.32%) AWS CloudFormation
19 62 (1.17%) OpenShift
19 62 (1.17%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 197 (3.73%) Firewall
2 154 (2.91%) DNS
3 119 (2.25%) VPN
4 116 (2.19%) Network Security
5 108 (2.04%) TCP/IP
6 80 (1.51%) DHCP
7 72 (1.36%) WAN
8 70 (1.32%) LAN
9 46 (0.87%) VLAN
10 42 (0.79%) BGP
11 41 (0.78%) Wireless
12 37 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
13 30 (0.57%) HTTP
14 29 (0.55%) Skype
15 28 (0.53%) OSPF
15 28 (0.53%) SSL
16 27 (0.51%) VoIP
17 26 (0.49%) SSH
18 25 (0.47%) MPLS
18 25 (0.47%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 262 (4.96%) Power BI
2 188 (3.56%) Relational Database
3 183 (3.46%) PostgreSQL
4 165 (3.12%) SQL Server
5 150 (2.84%) Data Warehouse
6 118 (2.23%) NoSQL
7 109 (2.06%) MongoDB
8 93 (1.76%) Oracle Database
9 92 (1.74%) MySQL
10 91 (1.72%) Tableau
11 71 (1.34%) Metadata
12 63 (1.19%) Big Data
13 54 (1.02%) DB2
14 51 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
15 47 (0.89%) DynamoDB
16 43 (0.81%) Data Lake
17 41 (0.78%) Hadoop
18 38 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
18 38 (0.72%) RDBMS
19 36 (0.68%) Redis
Development Applications
1 477 (9.03%) JIRA
2 395 (7.47%) Git
3 269 (5.09%) Jenkins
4 163 (3.08%) GitLab
5 94 (1.78%) JUnit
6 79 (1.49%) Selenium
7 52 (0.98%) Postman
8 43 (0.81%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.61%) Maven
10 29 (0.55%) Bitbucket
11 27 (0.51%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.40%) JMeter
13 20 (0.38%) Mockito
13 20 (0.38%) SoapUI
14 18 (0.34%) Cypress.io
15 16 (0.30%) REST Assured
15 16 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
15 16 (0.30%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.28%) CircleCI
16 15 (0.28%) Eclipse
General
1 2,972 (56.23%) Social Skills
2 1,928 (36.48%) Analytical Skills
3 1,261 (23.86%) Finance
4 483 (9.14%) Public Sector
5 443 (8.38%) Banking
6 183 (3.46%) Organisational Skills
7 147 (2.78%) Telecoms
8 146 (2.76%) Legal
9 141 (2.67%) Influencing Skills
10 136 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
11 132 (2.50%) Manufacturing
12 131 (2.48%) Marketing
13 130 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 118 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
15 114 (2.16%) Investment Banking
16 113 (2.14%) Front Office
17 105 (1.99%) Retail
18 53 (1.00%) Financial Institution
19 52 (0.98%) Military
20 46 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 840 (15.89%) Developer
2 765 (14.47%) Analyst
3 462 (8.74%) Senior
4 326 (6.17%) Consultant
5 321 (6.07%) Architect
6 292 (5.53%) Lead
7 267 (5.05%) Business Analyst
8 204 (3.86%) Project Manager
9 178 (3.37%) Support Engineer
10 173 (3.27%) Java Developer
11 145 (2.74%) Data Engineer
12 134 (2.54%) Senior Developer
13 130 (2.46%) IT Support
14 113 (2.14%) Data Analyst
15 105 (1.99%) Support Analyst
16 97 (1.84%) Software Engineer
17 86 (1.63%) Python Developer
18 83 (1.57%) Administrator
18 83 (1.57%) Solutions Architect
19 77 (1.46%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 331 (6.26%) REST
2 217 (4.11%) RESTful
3 205 (3.88%) Kafka
4 188 (3.56%) Spring
5 183 (3.46%) .NET
6 166 (3.14%) SOAP
7 159 (3.01%) React
8 151 (2.86%) Node.js
9 140 (2.65%) HTML
10 126 (2.38%) Spring Boot
11 122 (2.31%) AngularJS
12 117 (2.21%) CSS
13 112 (2.12%) JSON
14 96 (1.82%) XML
15 87 (1.65%) OAuth
16 77 (1.46%) Middleware
17 69 (1.31%) Oracle Fusion
18 68 (1.29%) Web Services
19 67 (1.27%) GraphQL
20 56 (1.06%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 247 (4.67%) Product Ownership
2 218 (4.12%) Cloud Native
3 195 (3.69%) Management Information System
4 170 (3.22%) Onboarding
5 141 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
6 138 (2.61%) Data Structures
7 126 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
8 98 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
9 95 (1.80%) Data Centre
10 91 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
10 91 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
10 91 (1.72%) Virtual Team
11 87 (1.65%) Algorithms
12 74 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
13 72 (1.36%) CMDB
14 67 (1.27%) Mobile App
15 66 (1.25%) Security Posture
16 64 (1.21%) Equities
17 59 (1.12%) NHS
18 57 (1.08%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 504 (9.54%) Windows
2 392 (7.42%) Linux
3 124 (2.35%) Unix
4 104 (1.97%) Windows 10
4 104 (1.97%) Windows Server
5 62 (1.17%) Apple iOS
6 47 (0.89%) Android
7 44 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 42 (0.79%) Mac OS
9 26 (0.49%) VMS
10 16 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
11 13 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
12 12 (0.23%) CentOS
13 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.11%) zOS
15 5 (0.095%) Ubuntu
15 5 (0.095%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.076%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.057%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,585 (29.99%) Agile
2 929 (17.58%) CI/CD
3 820 (15.52%) DevOps
4 706 (13.36%) Stakeholder Management
5 697 (13.19%) Continuous Improvement
6 551 (10.43%) Analytics
7 533 (10.09%) Migration
8 473 (8.95%) Project Management
9 468 (8.86%) Decision-Making
10 432 (8.17%) Scrum
11 420 (7.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 420 (7.95%) Test Automation
12 399 (7.55%) AI
13 386 (7.30%) Computer Science
14 377 (7.13%) Mentoring
15 376 (7.11%) Business Intelligence
16 356 (6.74%) Data Modelling
17 354 (6.70%) Microservices
18 346 (6.55%) Containerisation
19 345 (6.53%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 1,032 (19.53%) Python
2 885 (16.75%) SQL
3 555 (10.50%) Java
4 315 (5.96%) JavaScript
5 277 (5.24%) PowerShell
6 214 (4.05%) C#
7 177 (3.35%) TypeScript
8 159 (3.01%) Bash
9 109 (2.06%) Shell Script
10 91 (1.72%) Go
11 75 (1.42%) PL/SQL
12 66 (1.25%) C++
13 50 (0.95%) VBA
14 45 (0.85%) Scala
15 44 (0.83%) R
16 39 (0.74%) Apex Code
17 36 (0.68%) Perl
17 36 (0.68%) PHP
18 34 (0.64%) T-SQL
19 31 (0.59%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 908 (17.18%) Security Cleared
2 769 (14.55%) Degree
3 665 (12.58%) SC Cleared
4 266 (5.03%) Computer Science Degree
5 132 (2.50%) DV Cleared
6 109 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
7 107 (2.02%) CISSP
8 103 (1.95%) Master's Degree
9 100 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
9 100 (1.89%) PMI Certification
10 87 (1.65%) Azure Certification
10 87 (1.65%) PMP
11 77 (1.46%) AWS Certification
12 75 (1.42%) Cisco Certification
13 51 (0.96%) CISM
14 48 (0.91%) CCNP
15 41 (0.78%) A+ Certification
16 35 (0.66%) MCP
17 34 (0.64%) ACCA
18 31 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 389 (7.36%) QA
2 292 (5.53%) Data Quality
3 190 (3.60%) GDPR
4 113 (2.14%) Accessibility
5 93 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 92 (1.74%) NIST
7 72 (1.36%) PMO
8 71 (1.34%) SLA
9 44 (0.83%) PCI DSS
10 33 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 27 (0.51%) GRC
12 25 (0.47%) PSD2
13 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
13 19 (0.36%) HIPAA
13 19 (0.36%) WCAG
14 18 (0.34%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 16 (0.30%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.28%) SEPA
17 14 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
18 11 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 475 (8.99%) Docker
2 303 (5.73%) Active Directory
3 111 (2.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.72%) Hyper-V
5 33 (0.62%) vSphere
6 25 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
7 24 (0.45%) VMware NSX
8 20 (0.38%) Firmware
9 18 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 17 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
11 12 (0.23%) HDFS
12 10 (0.19%) RACF
13 8 (0.15%) Time Sharing Option
13 8 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.11%) ACF2
15 5 (0.095%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.076%) KVM
16 4 (0.076%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 3 (0.057%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.057%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 497 (9.40%) Kubernetes
2 305 (5.77%) Terraform
3 194 (3.67%) Ansible
4 124 (2.35%) Grafana
5 95 (1.80%) Prometheus
6 86 (1.63%) SCCM
7 77 (1.46%) Microsoft Intune
8 37 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
9 35 (0.66%) Puppet
10 27 (0.51%) Argo
11 22 (0.42%) Kibana
12 20 (0.38%) Nessus
13 19 (0.36%) Data Guard
13 19 (0.36%) SCOM
14 16 (0.30%) HP ALM
14 16 (0.30%) vCenter Server
14 16 (0.30%) vRealize
15 15 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 13 (0.25%) CSIRT
17 12 (0.23%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,063 (20.11%) Microsoft
2 395 (7.47%) Oracle
3 323 (6.11%) SAP
4 267 (5.05%) ServiceNow
5 189 (3.58%) Google
6 181 (3.42%) VMware
7 147 (2.78%) Splunk
8 145 (2.74%) Salesforce
9 123 (2.33%) Cisco
10 101 (1.91%) Databricks
11 63 (1.19%) IBM
11 63 (1.19%) Red Hat
11 63 (1.19%) Workday
12 53 (1.00%) CyberArk
13 52 (0.98%) Citrix
14 44 (0.83%) Talend
15 41 (0.78%) HP
15 41 (0.78%) Palo Alto
16 38 (0.72%) Adobe
16 38 (0.72%) Juniper