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

6 months to
4 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 7 12
Rank change year-on-year 0 +5 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,353 4,846 4,612
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 14.67% 13.47% 10.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.47% 15.41% 11.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,289 2,818 2,925
10th Percentile £262 £263 £239
25th Percentile £385 £396 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £617
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 318 190 240
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.24 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £20.26 £21.46 £39.90
Median % change year-on-year -5.62% -46.22% +48.53%
75th Percentile £35.82 £37.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.31 £63.83 £86.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.73 £17.12 £30.25
% change year-on-year +9.40% -43.40% +34.44%

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 32,497 31,445 39,587
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.04% 87.40% 88.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,429 19,051 26,476
10th Percentile £300 £310 £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 £744 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,092 1,104 1,536
10th Percentile £14.55 £15.25 £14.39
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.23 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.75 £43.63
Median % change year-on-year -23.21% -24.93% +24.64%
75th Percentile £45.53 £63.51 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 £32.50 £43.90
% change year-on-year -29.71% -25.97% +36.12%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 0 4,613 £479 -4.25% 4,168
UK excluding London 0 2,670 £463 -2.63% 3,880
London +2 2,144 £500 -5.66% 864
Work from Home +3 1,514 £481 -2.93% 2,373
North of England -3 700 £460 -3.16% 1,072
South East 0 634 £471 -5.80% 1,185
Midlands 0 511 £450 +3.45% 623
North West 0 386 £450 -5.26% 545
West Midlands 0 365 £490 +5.95% 374
South West -1 285 £488 +2.63% 372
Yorkshire -6 268 £481 -0.82% 390
Scotland +3 261 £450 +2.86% 127
East of England -3 208 £500 +11.11% 501
East Midlands -3 146 £402 +2.10% 243
Wales +4 79 £410 +2.50% 67
North East -3 51 £450 -3.12% 157
Northern Ireland 0 39 £475 +2.70% 29
Channel Islands -4 2 - - 1

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
1 187 (3.49%) Confluence
2 167 (3.12%) SharePoint
3 108 (2.02%) Microsoft Exchange
4 75 (1.40%) Apache Spark
5 61 (1.14%) Apache
5 61 (1.14%) SAS
6 50 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
7 42 (0.78%) CMS
8 31 (0.58%) Skype for Business
9 27 (0.50%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.28%) JBoss
10 15 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 12 (0.22%) Anypoint
11 12 (0.22%) IIS
12 11 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
13 10 (0.19%) Oracle Service Bus
14 8 (0.15%) HCL Notes
14 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.13%) OpenStack
15 7 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 347 (6.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 235 (4.39%) Microsoft Office
3 140 (2.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 78 (1.46%) MS Visio
5 61 (1.14%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.26%) Chatbot
6 14 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.22%) 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
11 6 (0.11%) Simulink
12 4 (0.075%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.075%) Notion
13 3 (0.056%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.056%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.056%) Revit
14 2 (0.037%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 121 (2.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
3 26 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
4 19 (0.35%) Oracle EBS R12
4 19 (0.35%) 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
8 15 (0.28%) SAP ERP
9 14 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
9 14 (0.26%) SAP HR
10 13 (0.24%) NetSuite
10 13 (0.24%) Oracle Financials
10 13 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
10 13 (0.24%) SAP WM
11 12 (0.22%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,034 (19.32%) Azure
2 829 (15.49%) AWS
3 371 (6.93%) GCP
4 343 (6.41%) Power Platform
5 315 (5.88%) Microsoft 365
6 244 (4.56%) GitHub
7 211 (3.94%) Azure DevOps
8 173 (3.23%) Serverless
9 129 (2.41%) Entra ID
10 122 (2.28%) SaaS
11 112 (2.09%) GitHub Actions
12 100 (1.87%) Amazon S3
13 92 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
14 86 (1.61%) Dynamics 365
15 84 (1.57%) Snowflake
16 81 (1.51%) Power Automate
17 80 (1.49%) PowerApps
18 69 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
19 68 (1.27%) OpenShift
20 65 (1.21%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 197 (3.68%) Firewall
2 152 (2.84%) DNS
3 123 (2.30%) Network Security
4 116 (2.17%) VPN
5 108 (2.02%) TCP/IP
6 78 (1.46%) DHCP
7 70 (1.31%) WAN
8 69 (1.29%) LAN
9 46 (0.86%) VLAN
10 41 (0.77%) BGP
11 40 (0.75%) Wireless
12 36 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
13 30 (0.56%) HTTP
13 30 (0.56%) SSL
14 29 (0.54%) Skype
15 27 (0.50%) OSPF
16 26 (0.49%) VoIP
17 25 (0.47%) SSH
17 25 (0.47%) Wireshark
18 24 (0.45%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 262 (4.89%) Power BI
2 191 (3.57%) Relational Database
3 188 (3.51%) PostgreSQL
4 168 (3.14%) SQL Server
5 154 (2.88%) Data Warehouse
6 123 (2.30%) NoSQL
7 113 (2.11%) MongoDB
8 94 (1.76%) Oracle Database
9 92 (1.72%) MySQL
10 90 (1.68%) Tableau
11 72 (1.35%) Metadata
12 62 (1.16%) Big Data
13 57 (1.06%) DB2
14 54 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
15 47 (0.88%) DynamoDB
16 46 (0.86%) Data Lake
17 45 (0.84%) Hadoop
18 40 (0.75%) Redis
19 38 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
19 38 (0.71%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 485 (9.06%) JIRA
2 399 (7.45%) Git
3 274 (5.12%) Jenkins
4 164 (3.06%) GitLab
5 100 (1.87%) JUnit
6 82 (1.53%) Selenium
7 52 (0.97%) Postman
8 43 (0.80%) Cucumber
9 36 (0.67%) Maven
10 29 (0.54%) Bitbucket
11 27 (0.50%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.39%) JMeter
13 20 (0.37%) Mockito
13 20 (0.37%) SoapUI
13 20 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
14 18 (0.34%) Cypress.io
14 18 (0.34%) Gradle
15 16 (0.30%) REST Assured
15 16 (0.30%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.28%) Eclipse
General
1 3,018 (56.38%) Social Skills
2 1,965 (36.71%) Analytical Skills
3 1,271 (23.74%) Finance
4 484 (9.04%) Public Sector
5 451 (8.43%) Banking
6 183 (3.42%) Organisational Skills
7 148 (2.76%) Legal
8 144 (2.69%) Telecoms
9 140 (2.62%) Influencing Skills
10 139 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
11 138 (2.58%) Marketing
12 134 (2.50%) Manufacturing
13 132 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 118 (2.20%) Investment Banking
15 116 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
16 114 (2.13%) Front Office
17 106 (1.98%) Retail
18 53 (0.99%) Financial Institution
19 52 (0.97%) Military
20 49 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 863 (16.12%) Developer
2 778 (14.53%) Analyst
3 467 (8.72%) Senior
4 330 (6.16%) Consultant
5 323 (6.03%) Architect
6 297 (5.55%) Lead
7 271 (5.06%) Business Analyst
8 205 (3.83%) Project Manager
9 183 (3.42%) Java Developer
10 180 (3.36%) Support Engineer
11 147 (2.75%) Data Engineer
12 137 (2.56%) Senior Developer
13 131 (2.45%) IT Support
14 116 (2.17%) Data Analyst
15 106 (1.98%) Support Analyst
16 97 (1.81%) Software Engineer
17 87 (1.63%) Python Developer
18 85 (1.59%) Solutions Architect
19 82 (1.53%) Administrator
19 82 (1.53%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 335 (6.26%) REST
2 222 (4.15%) RESTful
3 211 (3.94%) Kafka
4 196 (3.66%) Spring
5 192 (3.59%) .NET
6 167 (3.12%) SOAP
7 166 (3.10%) React
8 150 (2.80%) Node.js
9 146 (2.73%) HTML
10 131 (2.45%) Spring Boot
11 128 (2.39%) AngularJS
12 125 (2.34%) CSS
13 111 (2.07%) JSON
14 96 (1.79%) XML
15 91 (1.70%) OAuth
16 77 (1.44%) Middleware
17 73 (1.36%) Web Services
18 67 (1.25%) GraphQL
18 67 (1.25%) Oracle Fusion
19 56 (1.05%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 249 (4.65%) Product Ownership
2 217 (4.05%) Cloud Native
3 194 (3.62%) Management Information System
4 171 (3.19%) Onboarding
5 143 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
6 142 (2.65%) Data Structures
7 127 (2.37%) Self-Motivation
8 105 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
9 96 (1.79%) Virtual Team
10 95 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
11 94 (1.76%) Data Centre
11 94 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
12 91 (1.70%) Algorithms
13 74 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
14 69 (1.29%) CMDB
14 69 (1.29%) Mobile App
15 67 (1.25%) Security Posture
16 66 (1.23%) Equities
17 58 (1.08%) NHS
18 57 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 504 (9.42%) Windows
2 399 (7.45%) Linux
3 128 (2.39%) Unix
4 104 (1.94%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.92%) Windows Server
6 61 (1.14%) Apple iOS
7 47 (0.88%) Android
8 42 (0.78%) Mac OS
8 42 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 26 (0.49%) VMS
10 16 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
11 13 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
12 12 (0.22%) CentOS
13 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
13 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.11%) zOS
15 5 (0.093%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.075%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.075%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.056%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,603 (29.95%) Agile
2 940 (17.56%) CI/CD
3 829 (15.49%) DevOps
4 706 (13.19%) Stakeholder Management
5 704 (13.15%) Continuous Improvement
6 566 (10.57%) Analytics
7 538 (10.05%) Migration
8 485 (9.06%) Project Management
9 478 (8.93%) Decision-Making
10 445 (8.31%) Scrum
11 432 (8.07%) Test Automation
12 422 (7.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 403 (7.53%) AI
14 396 (7.40%) Computer Science
15 381 (7.12%) Mentoring
16 376 (7.02%) Business Intelligence
17 360 (6.73%) Microservices
18 358 (6.69%) Data Modelling
19 353 (6.59%) Containerisation
20 345 (6.44%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 1,057 (19.75%) Python
2 895 (16.72%) SQL
3 573 (10.70%) Java
4 321 (6.00%) JavaScript
5 284 (5.31%) PowerShell
6 219 (4.09%) C#
7 179 (3.34%) TypeScript
8 167 (3.12%) Bash
9 112 (2.09%) Shell Script
10 91 (1.70%) Go
11 74 (1.38%) PL/SQL
12 67 (1.25%) C++
13 50 (0.93%) VBA
14 45 (0.84%) Scala
15 44 (0.82%) R
16 39 (0.73%) Apex Code
17 36 (0.67%) Perl
17 36 (0.67%) PHP
18 34 (0.64%) T-SQL
19 32 (0.60%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 906 (16.93%) Security Cleared
2 777 (14.52%) Degree
3 665 (12.42%) SC Cleared
4 271 (5.06%) Computer Science Degree
5 130 (2.43%) DV Cleared
6 109 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
7 107 (2.00%) CISSP
8 104 (1.94%) Master's Degree
9 102 (1.91%) Microsoft Certification
10 100 (1.87%) PMI Certification
11 91 (1.70%) PMP
12 87 (1.63%) Azure Certification
13 79 (1.48%) AWS Certification
14 74 (1.38%) Cisco Certification
15 51 (0.95%) CISM
16 47 (0.88%) CCNP
17 42 (0.78%) A+ Certification
18 36 (0.67%) ACCA
18 36 (0.67%) MCP
19 31 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 396 (7.40%) QA
2 289 (5.40%) Data Quality
3 193 (3.61%) GDPR
4 115 (2.15%) Accessibility
5 94 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 94 (1.76%) NIST
6 72 (1.35%) SLA
7 71 (1.33%) PMO
8 44 (0.82%) PCI DSS
9 33 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 27 (0.50%) GRC
11 25 (0.47%) PSD2
12 20 (0.37%) HIPAA
12 20 (0.37%) WCAG
13 19 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 19 (0.35%) EU AI Act
14 16 (0.30%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.28%) SEPA
16 13 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
17 11 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 477 (8.91%) Docker
2 307 (5.74%) Active Directory
3 112 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.69%) Hyper-V
5 32 (0.60%) vSphere
6 29 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
7 24 (0.45%) VMware NSX
8 21 (0.39%) Firmware
9 18 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 17 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
11 12 (0.22%) 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 (0.093%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.075%) KVM
16 4 (0.075%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 3 (0.056%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.056%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 505 (9.43%) Kubernetes
2 310 (5.79%) Terraform
3 196 (3.66%) Ansible
4 127 (2.37%) Grafana
5 98 (1.83%) Prometheus
6 88 (1.64%) SCCM
7 76 (1.42%) Microsoft Intune
8 40 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
9 33 (0.62%) Puppet
10 27 (0.50%) Argo
11 21 (0.39%) Kibana
12 20 (0.37%) Nessus
13 19 (0.35%) Data Guard
13 19 (0.35%) SCOM
14 16 (0.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 16 (0.30%) HP ALM
14 16 (0.30%) vCenter Server
15 15 (0.28%) vRealize
16 14 (0.26%) Packer
17 13 (0.24%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,075 (20.08%) Microsoft
2 396 (7.40%) Oracle
3 329 (6.15%) SAP
4 269 (5.03%) ServiceNow
5 195 (3.64%) Google
6 181 (3.38%) VMware
7 151 (2.82%) Splunk
8 147 (2.75%) Salesforce
9 123 (2.30%) Cisco
10 102 (1.91%) Databricks
11 66 (1.23%) IBM
11 66 (1.23%) Workday
12 64 (1.20%) Red Hat
13 53 (0.99%) Citrix
13 53 (0.99%) CyberArk
14 44 (0.82%) Talend
15 41 (0.77%) Palo Alto
16 39 (0.73%) HP
16 39 (0.73%) Sybase
17 38 (0.71%) Adobe