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

6 months to
5 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 5,330 4,876 4,636
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 14.60% 13.50% 10.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.40% 15.44% 11.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,279 2,839 2,934
10th Percentile £260 £263 £240
25th Percentile £385 £398 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £595 £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 318 190 246
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.24 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £20.26 £21.46 £35.75
Median % change year-on-year -5.62% -39.97% +31.97%
75th Percentile £35.99 £37.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.31 £63.83 £86.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.73 £17.12 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.40% -42.93% +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 32,500 31,582 39,830
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.05% 87.42% 88.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,460 19,152 26,649
10th Percentile £300 £310 £312
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 £743 £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 1,551
10th Percentile £14.54 £15.25 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.23 £18.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.75 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.21% -22.94% +21.43%
75th Percentile £45.53 £63.51 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.93 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.71% -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 5 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 5 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 5 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 4,589 £476 -4.85% 8,070
UK excluding London 0 2,655 £463 -2.63% 7,825
London +2 2,133 £500 -5.66% 1,164
Work from Home +3 1,510 £481 -3.75% 5,892
North of England -3 694 £456 -4.00% 1,917
South East 0 635 £475 -5.00% 2,151
Midlands 0 509 £450 +2.39% 1,350
North West -1 385 £450 -5.26% 954
West Midlands 0 362 £490 +5.95% 732
South West -1 281 £488 +2.63% 791
Yorkshire -6 264 £478 -1.55% 766
Scotland +4 259 £450 +2.86% 319
East of England -3 207 £500 +11.11% 1,145
East Midlands -3 147 £402 -1.05% 560
Wales +5 79 £410 +2.50% 172
North East -2 52 £450 -5.26% 219
Northern Ireland -1 39 £475 +2.70% 118
Channel Islands -4 2 - - 3

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
1 186 (3.49%) Confluence
2 168 (3.15%) SharePoint
3 108 (2.03%) Microsoft Exchange
4 71 (1.33%) Apache Spark
5 60 (1.13%) SAS
6 59 (1.11%) Apache
7 48 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
8 42 (0.79%) CMS
9 31 (0.58%) Skype for Business
10 27 (0.51%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.28%) JBoss
11 15 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 12 (0.23%) Anypoint
13 11 (0.21%) IIS
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
1 347 (6.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 236 (4.43%) Microsoft Office
3 139 (2.61%) 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 (0.23%) 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
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 (0.038%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 120 (2.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.75%) 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 (0.24%) NetSuite
10 13 (0.24%) Oracle Financials
10 13 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
10 13 (0.24%) SAP WM
11 12 (0.23%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,022 (19.17%) Azure
2 819 (15.37%) AWS
3 369 (6.92%) GCP
4 342 (6.42%) Power Platform
5 314 (5.89%) Microsoft 365
6 239 (4.48%) GitHub
7 206 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
8 172 (3.23%) Serverless
9 127 (2.38%) Entra ID
10 121 (2.27%) SaaS
11 110 (2.06%) GitHub Actions
12 98 (1.84%) Amazon S3
13 92 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
14 85 (1.59%) Dynamics 365
15 81 (1.52%) Power Automate
15 81 (1.52%) Snowflake
16 79 (1.48%) PowerApps
17 69 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
18 66 (1.24%) OpenShift
19 63 (1.18%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 197 (3.70%) Firewall
2 152 (2.85%) DNS
3 120 (2.25%) Network Security
4 117 (2.20%) VPN
5 107 (2.01%) TCP/IP
6 78 (1.46%) DHCP
7 72 (1.35%) WAN
8 70 (1.31%) LAN
9 46 (0.86%) VLAN
10 42 (0.79%) BGP
11 41 (0.77%) Wireless
12 37 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
13 29 (0.54%) HTTP
13 29 (0.54%) Skype
14 28 (0.53%) OSPF
14 28 (0.53%) SSL
15 27 (0.51%) VoIP
16 25 (0.47%) SSH
16 25 (0.47%) Wireshark
17 24 (0.45%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 262 (4.92%) Power BI
2 191 (3.58%) Relational Database
3 186 (3.49%) PostgreSQL
4 166 (3.11%) SQL Server
5 150 (2.81%) Data Warehouse
6 120 (2.25%) NoSQL
7 113 (2.12%) MongoDB
8 94 (1.76%) Oracle Database
9 92 (1.73%) MySQL
9 92 (1.73%) Tableau
10 73 (1.37%) Metadata
11 62 (1.16%) Big Data
12 58 (1.09%) DB2
13 52 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
14 47 (0.88%) DynamoDB
15 44 (0.83%) Data Lake
16 43 (0.81%) Hadoop
17 39 (0.73%) Redis
18 38 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
18 38 (0.71%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 485 (9.10%) JIRA
2 398 (7.47%) Git
3 272 (5.10%) Jenkins
4 163 (3.06%) GitLab
5 100 (1.88%) JUnit
6 82 (1.54%) Selenium
7 52 (0.98%) Postman
8 43 (0.81%) Cucumber
9 36 (0.68%) Maven
10 29 (0.54%) Bitbucket
11 27 (0.51%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.39%) JMeter
13 20 (0.38%) Mockito
13 20 (0.38%) SoapUI
13 20 (0.38%) 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 3,005 (56.38%) Social Skills
2 1,957 (36.72%) Analytical Skills
3 1,267 (23.77%) Finance
4 484 (9.08%) Public Sector
5 450 (8.44%) Banking
6 182 (3.41%) Organisational Skills
7 150 (2.81%) Legal
8 145 (2.72%) Telecoms
9 140 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
10 137 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
11 135 (2.53%) Marketing
12 133 (2.50%) Manufacturing
13 132 (2.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 118 (2.21%) Investment Banking
14 118 (2.21%) Presentation Skills
15 114 (2.14%) Front Office
16 107 (2.01%) Retail
17 53 (0.99%) Financial Institution
18 51 (0.96%) Military
19 48 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 857 (16.08%) Developer
2 775 (14.54%) Analyst
3 467 (8.76%) Senior
4 329 (6.17%) Consultant
5 324 (6.08%) Architect
6 295 (5.53%) Lead
7 272 (5.10%) Business Analyst
8 205 (3.85%) Project Manager
9 182 (3.41%) Java Developer
10 178 (3.34%) Support Engineer
11 145 (2.72%) Data Engineer
12 137 (2.57%) Senior Developer
13 131 (2.46%) IT Support
14 115 (2.16%) Data Analyst
15 106 (1.99%) Support Analyst
16 97 (1.82%) Software Engineer
17 86 (1.61%) Python Developer
18 85 (1.59%) Solutions Architect
19 82 (1.54%) Administrator
20 78 (1.46%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 337 (6.32%) REST
2 221 (4.15%) RESTful
3 208 (3.90%) Kafka
4 195 (3.66%) Spring
5 189 (3.55%) .NET
6 168 (3.15%) SOAP
7 164 (3.08%) React
8 150 (2.81%) Node.js
9 143 (2.68%) HTML
10 130 (2.44%) Spring Boot
11 128 (2.40%) AngularJS
12 121 (2.27%) CSS
13 111 (2.08%) JSON
14 96 (1.80%) XML
15 88 (1.65%) OAuth
16 75 (1.41%) Middleware
17 73 (1.37%) Web Services
18 68 (1.28%) Oracle Fusion
19 67 (1.26%) GraphQL
20 56 (1.05%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 249 (4.67%) Product Ownership
2 216 (4.05%) Cloud Native
3 195 (3.66%) Management Information System
4 172 (3.23%) Onboarding
5 143 (2.68%) Data Structures
6 140 (2.63%) Analytical Mindset
7 127 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
8 101 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
9 95 (1.78%) Data Centre
10 93 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
11 92 (1.73%) Virtual Team
12 91 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
13 90 (1.69%) Algorithms
14 74 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
15 72 (1.35%) CMDB
16 68 (1.28%) Mobile App
17 66 (1.24%) Equities
17 66 (1.24%) Security Posture
18 59 (1.11%) NHS
19 57 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 504 (9.46%) Windows
2 395 (7.41%) Linux
3 127 (2.38%) Unix
4 104 (1.95%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.93%) Windows Server
6 60 (1.13%) Apple iOS
7 46 (0.86%) Android
8 42 (0.79%) Mac OS
8 42 (0.79%) 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 (0.23%) CentOS
13 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
13 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.11%) zOS
15 5 (0.094%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.075%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.075%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.056%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,595 (29.92%) Agile
2 928 (17.41%) CI/CD
3 822 (15.42%) DevOps
4 707 (13.26%) Continuous Improvement
4 707 (13.26%) Stakeholder Management
5 558 (10.47%) Analytics
6 536 (10.06%) Migration
7 480 (9.01%) Project Management
8 474 (8.89%) Decision-Making
9 439 (8.24%) Scrum
10 425 (7.97%) Test Automation
11 421 (7.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 403 (7.56%) AI
13 391 (7.34%) Computer Science
14 379 (7.11%) Mentoring
15 376 (7.05%) Business Intelligence
16 359 (6.74%) Microservices
17 356 (6.68%) Data Modelling
18 346 (6.49%) Containerisation
18 346 (6.49%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 1,040 (19.51%) Python
2 893 (16.75%) SQL
3 571 (10.71%) Java
4 316 (5.93%) JavaScript
5 277 (5.20%) PowerShell
6 216 (4.05%) C#
7 180 (3.38%) TypeScript
8 159 (2.98%) Bash
9 112 (2.10%) Shell Script
10 91 (1.71%) Go
11 75 (1.41%) PL/SQL
12 66 (1.24%) C++
13 50 (0.94%) VBA
14 45 (0.84%) R
14 45 (0.84%) Scala
15 39 (0.73%) Apex Code
16 36 (0.68%) Perl
16 36 (0.68%) PHP
17 34 (0.64%) T-SQL
18 31 (0.58%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 908 (17.04%) Security Cleared
2 773 (14.50%) Degree
3 666 (12.50%) SC Cleared
4 268 (5.03%) Computer Science Degree
5 130 (2.44%) DV Cleared
6 109 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 108 (2.03%) CISSP
8 103 (1.93%) Master's Degree
9 102 (1.91%) Microsoft Certification
10 99 (1.86%) PMI Certification
11 89 (1.67%) PMP
12 87 (1.63%) Azure Certification
13 77 (1.44%) AWS Certification
14 75 (1.41%) Cisco Certification
15 52 (0.98%) CISM
16 48 (0.90%) CCNP
17 42 (0.79%) A+ Certification
18 36 (0.68%) ACCA
18 36 (0.68%) MCP
19 31 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 394 (7.39%) QA
2 291 (5.46%) Data Quality
3 192 (3.60%) GDPR
4 114 (2.14%) Accessibility
5 93 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 93 (1.74%) NIST
6 72 (1.35%) SLA
7 71 (1.33%) PMO
8 44 (0.83%) PCI DSS
9 33 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 28 (0.53%) GRC
11 25 (0.47%) PSD2
12 20 (0.38%) HIPAA
13 19 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
13 19 (0.36%) WCAG
14 16 (0.30%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.28%) SEPA
16 13 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
17 11 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 474 (8.89%) Docker
2 305 (5.72%) Active Directory
3 112 (2.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.69%) Hyper-V
5 32 (0.60%) vSphere
6 26 (0.49%) 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 (0.094%) 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
1 499 (9.36%) Kubernetes
2 305 (5.72%) Terraform
3 193 (3.62%) Ansible
4 124 (2.33%) Grafana
5 95 (1.78%) Prometheus
6 88 (1.65%) SCCM
7 76 (1.43%) Microsoft Intune
8 38 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
9 33 (0.62%) Puppet
10 27 (0.51%) Argo
11 21 (0.39%) 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
15 15 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 15 (0.28%) vRealize
16 13 (0.24%) CSIRT
16 13 (0.24%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,076 (20.19%) Microsoft
2 399 (7.49%) Oracle
3 327 (6.14%) SAP
4 273 (5.12%) ServiceNow
5 194 (3.64%) Google
6 181 (3.40%) VMware
7 147 (2.76%) Splunk
8 146 (2.74%) Salesforce
9 123 (2.31%) Cisco
10 100 (1.88%) Databricks
11 64 (1.20%) Workday
12 63 (1.18%) IBM
13 61 (1.14%) Red Hat
14 53 (0.99%) Citrix
15 52 (0.98%) CyberArk
16 44 (0.83%) Talend
17 41 (0.77%) Palo Alto
18 40 (0.75%) HP
19 39 (0.73%) F5
19 39 (0.73%) Sybase