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 29 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 8 13
Rank change year-on-year +2 +5 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,186 4,646 4,766
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.17% 12.63% 10.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.78% 14.66% 11.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,107 2,693 3,050
10th Percentile £250 £263 £250
25th Percentile £383 £384 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.40% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -2.63% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 196 238
10th Percentile £13.04 £14.58 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.62 £16.06
Median hourly rate £20.02 £17.00 £48.40
Median % change year-on-year +17.76% -64.88% +93.60%
75th Percentile £33.91 £30.00 £66.81
90th Percentile £65.10 £60.80 £86.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.82 £16.23 £45.88
% change year-on-year +15.96% -64.63% +103.91%

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 30,904 31,684 41,636
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.40% 86.12% 88.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,274 19,074 28,148
10th Percentile £300 £310 £313
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £620 £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 1,970 1,136 1,597
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.00 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.12 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.00 £43.86
Median % change year-on-year -32.03% -15.64% +25.31%
75th Percentile £42.78 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £66.55 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.27 £36.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -38.15% -15.29% +53.26%

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 29 October 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 29 October 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 29 October 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 +2 4,446 £488 -2.50% 6,269
UK excluding London 0 2,609 £463 -2.63% 5,163
London +4 2,075 £500 -4.76% 2,372
Work from Home +2 1,400 £500 +2.56% 2,457
North of England -2 645 £475 - 1,133
South East +2 579 £461 -5.63% 2,260
Midlands +2 517 £450 +3.45% 616
North West +1 372 £469 +1.96% 668
West Midlands +3 369 £482 +7.00% 366
Scotland +9 290 £450 +5.88% 205
South West +1 267 £475 -0.52% 458
Yorkshire -5 239 £494 +1.80% 324
East of England -1 238 £500 +11.11% 416
East Midlands -1 148 £375 -6.25% 245
Wales +5 74 £413 +3.13% 125
Northern Ireland +1 43 £475 - 67
North East -5 40 £450 - 157
Channel Islands -2 3 - - 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
1 181 (3.49%) Confluence
2 161 (3.10%) SharePoint
3 98 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 60 (1.16%) Apache Spark
5 54 (1.04%) SAS
6 46 (0.89%) Apache
7 44 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
8 42 (0.81%) CMS
9 37 (0.71%) Skype for Business
10 26 (0.50%) WebLogic
11 17 (0.33%) IIS
12 16 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 15 (0.29%) JBoss
13 15 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
14 12 (0.23%) Oracle Service Bus
15 11 (0.21%) Anypoint
15 11 (0.21%) Mattermost
16 10 (0.19%) Jupyter
17 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
17 8 (0.15%) WebSphere
Applications
1 346 (6.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 199 (3.84%) Microsoft Office
3 156 (3.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 81 (1.56%) MS Visio
5 51 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
6 15 (0.29%) Trello
7 14 (0.27%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
9 8 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.15%) AutoCAD
9 8 (0.15%) Simulink
10 7 (0.13%) Sketch
11 6 (0.12%) Adobe Captivate
11 6 (0.12%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.12%) Revit
12 5 (0.096%) Adobe XD
13 4 (0.077%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.077%) Navisworks
13 4 (0.077%) Notion
14 3 (0.058%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 128 (2.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
3 36 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
4 28 (0.54%) Oracle Payables
5 26 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
6 23 (0.44%) Oracle BPM
7 19 (0.37%) SAP EWM
8 18 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
8 18 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
9 16 (0.31%) SAP HR
10 15 (0.29%) Oracle Cash Management
10 15 (0.29%) SAP WM
10 15 (0.29%) Workday HCM
11 14 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
11 14 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
12 13 (0.25%) Oracle General Ledger
13 12 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
13 12 (0.23%) Oracle Financials
14 10 (0.19%) SAP MDG
15 9 (0.17%) SAP VC
Cloud Services
1 965 (18.61%) Azure
2 804 (15.50%) AWS
3 343 (6.61%) GCP
4 334 (6.44%) Power Platform
5 307 (5.92%) Microsoft 365
6 215 (4.15%) GitHub
7 182 (3.51%) Azure DevOps
8 178 (3.43%) Serverless
9 123 (2.37%) SaaS
10 113 (2.18%) Amazon S3
11 107 (2.06%) Entra ID
12 100 (1.93%) AWS Lambda
13 95 (1.83%) GitHub Actions
14 92 (1.77%) Dynamics 365
15 80 (1.54%) Snowflake
16 79 (1.52%) PowerApps
17 74 (1.43%) Power Automate
18 71 (1.37%) Cloud Computing
19 62 (1.20%) AWS CloudFormation
20 59 (1.14%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 182 (3.51%) Firewall
2 138 (2.66%) DNS
3 113 (2.18%) VPN
4 105 (2.02%) TCP/IP
5 94 (1.81%) Network Security
6 70 (1.35%) DHCP
7 68 (1.31%) WAN
8 67 (1.29%) LAN
9 48 (0.93%) VLAN
10 46 (0.89%) Wireless
11 41 (0.79%) SSL
12 39 (0.75%) BGP
13 35 (0.67%) Skype
14 34 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
15 30 (0.58%) HTTP
16 27 (0.52%) OSPF
16 27 (0.52%) Wireshark
17 22 (0.42%) SSH
18 20 (0.39%) Internet
18 20 (0.39%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 261 (5.03%) Power BI
2 196 (3.78%) Relational Database
3 186 (3.59%) SQL Server
4 178 (3.43%) PostgreSQL
5 159 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
6 132 (2.55%) NoSQL
7 118 (2.28%) MongoDB
8 102 (1.97%) Tableau
9 91 (1.75%) Oracle Database
10 84 (1.62%) MySQL
11 65 (1.25%) DB2
12 60 (1.16%) DynamoDB
13 59 (1.14%) Metadata
14 57 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
14 57 (1.10%) Big Data
15 45 (0.87%) Redis
16 41 (0.79%) Data Lake
17 40 (0.77%) BigQuery
18 39 (0.75%) RDBMS
19 38 (0.73%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 450 (8.68%) JIRA
2 386 (7.44%) Git
3 261 (5.03%) Jenkins
4 132 (2.55%) GitLab
5 106 (2.04%) JUnit
6 85 (1.64%) Selenium
7 51 (0.98%) Postman
8 42 (0.81%) Cucumber
9 35 (0.67%) Maven
10 31 (0.60%) Bitbucket
11 29 (0.56%) SonarQube
12 24 (0.46%) Cypress.io
13 22 (0.42%) Gradle
14 20 (0.39%) Mockito
14 20 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
15 19 (0.37%) SoapUI
16 18 (0.35%) JMeter
16 18 (0.35%) SpecFlow
17 17 (0.33%) REST Assured
18 15 (0.29%) webpack
General
1 3,000 (57.85%) Social Skills
2 1,911 (36.85%) Analytical Skills
3 1,223 (23.58%) Finance
4 478 (9.22%) Banking
5 430 (8.29%) Public Sector
6 166 (3.20%) Organisational Skills
7 151 (2.91%) Legal
8 149 (2.87%) Telecoms
9 141 (2.72%) Marketing
10 136 (2.62%) Investment Banking
11 135 (2.60%) Manufacturing
12 130 (2.51%) Documentation Skills
13 123 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 122 (2.35%) Front Office
15 114 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
16 111 (2.14%) Presentation Skills
17 104 (2.01%) Retail
18 58 (1.12%) Financial Institution
19 54 (1.04%) Pharmaceutical
20 52 (1.00%) Military
Job Titles
1 799 (15.41%) Developer
2 786 (15.16%) Analyst
3 448 (8.64%) Senior
4 353 (6.81%) Architect
5 332 (6.40%) Consultant
6 284 (5.48%) Lead
7 251 (4.84%) Business Analyst
8 188 (3.63%) Support Engineer
9 178 (3.43%) Project Manager
10 173 (3.34%) Java Developer
11 139 (2.68%) Senior Developer
12 136 (2.62%) Data Engineer
13 128 (2.47%) IT Support
14 120 (2.31%) Data Analyst
14 120 (2.31%) Support Analyst
15 95 (1.83%) Software Engineer
16 87 (1.68%) SAP Consultant
17 85 (1.64%) Solutions Architect
18 79 (1.52%) DevOps Engineer
19 75 (1.45%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 317 (6.11%) REST
2 215 (4.15%) RESTful
3 197 (3.80%) .NET
4 193 (3.72%) Kafka
5 187 (3.61%) Spring
6 175 (3.37%) React
7 170 (3.28%) HTML
8 154 (2.97%) SOAP
9 142 (2.74%) CSS
10 128 (2.47%) AngularJS
11 118 (2.28%) Node.js
12 112 (2.16%) Spring Boot
13 103 (1.99%) Web Services
14 101 (1.95%) JSON
15 90 (1.74%) XML
16 79 (1.52%) OAuth
17 76 (1.47%) Middleware
18 63 (1.21%) GraphQL
19 55 (1.06%) FastAPI
20 53 (1.02%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 216 (4.17%) Product Ownership
2 188 (3.63%) Cloud Native
3 186 (3.59%) Management Information System
4 150 (2.89%) Onboarding
5 136 (2.62%) Data Structures
6 129 (2.49%) Self-Motivation
7 124 (2.39%) Analytical Mindset
8 105 (2.02%) Virtual Team
9 96 (1.85%) Algorithms
9 96 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
9 96 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
10 86 (1.66%) Data Centre
11 84 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
12 65 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
13 64 (1.23%) Equities
14 62 (1.20%) Security Posture
15 58 (1.12%) CMDB
16 52 (1.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 51 (0.98%) NHS
18 50 (0.96%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 508 (9.80%) Windows
2 377 (7.27%) Linux
3 124 (2.39%) Unix
4 105 (2.02%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.99%) Windows Server
6 62 (1.20%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 40 (0.77%) Mac OS
9 39 (0.75%) Android
10 18 (0.35%) VMS
11 16 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
12 15 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
13 12 (0.23%) CentOS
14 8 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
15 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
15 7 (0.13%) zOS
16 5 (0.096%) Ubuntu
17 3 (0.058%) Windows Server 2003
18 2 (0.039%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,524 (29.39%) Agile
2 842 (16.24%) CI/CD
3 763 (14.71%) DevOps
4 645 (12.44%) Continuous Improvement
5 615 (11.86%) Stakeholder Management
6 518 (9.99%) Migration
7 502 (9.68%) Analytics
8 474 (9.14%) Project Management
9 455 (8.77%) Decision-Making
10 432 (8.33%) Scrum
11 394 (7.60%) Computer Science
11 394 (7.60%) Test Automation
12 380 (7.33%) Business Intelligence
13 365 (7.04%) Mentoring
14 361 (6.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 354 (6.83%) AI
16 350 (6.75%) ITIL
17 344 (6.63%) Customer Service
18 341 (6.58%) Data Modelling
19 326 (6.29%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 978 (18.86%) Python
2 895 (17.26%) SQL
3 549 (10.59%) Java
4 320 (6.17%) JavaScript
5 262 (5.05%) PowerShell
6 224 (4.32%) C#
7 161 (3.10%) TypeScript
8 142 (2.74%) Bash
9 111 (2.14%) Shell Script
10 81 (1.56%) Go
11 70 (1.35%) PL/SQL
12 66 (1.27%) C++
13 47 (0.91%) VBA
14 43 (0.83%) Scala
15 37 (0.71%) R
16 36 (0.69%) Apex Code
17 33 (0.64%) Perl
18 32 (0.62%) Groovy
18 32 (0.62%) PHP
19 30 (0.58%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 789 (15.21%) Security Cleared
2 749 (14.44%) Degree
3 576 (11.11%) SC Cleared
4 263 (5.07%) Computer Science Degree
5 111 (2.14%) DV Cleared
6 105 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
7 100 (1.93%) Master's Degree
8 94 (1.81%) PMI Certification
9 93 (1.79%) PMP
10 88 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
11 86 (1.66%) CISSP
12 82 (1.58%) AWS Certification
13 78 (1.50%) Azure Certification
14 68 (1.31%) Cisco Certification
15 45 (0.87%) CCNP
16 43 (0.83%) A+ Certification
17 38 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
18 37 (0.71%) CISM
19 36 (0.69%) MCP
20 31 (0.60%) ACCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 348 (6.71%) QA
2 273 (5.26%) Data Quality
3 180 (3.47%) GDPR
4 116 (2.24%) Accessibility
5 84 (1.62%) SLA
6 80 (1.54%) NIST
7 76 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 64 (1.23%) PMO
9 37 (0.71%) PCI DSS
10 30 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 23 (0.44%) HIPAA
12 20 (0.39%) GRC
13 19 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 19 (0.37%) EU AI Act
13 19 (0.37%) PSD2
14 17 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
14 17 (0.33%) SEPA
15 15 (0.29%) WCAG
16 12 (0.23%) ISO 20022
17 11 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 420 (8.10%) Docker
2 289 (5.57%) Active Directory
3 93 (1.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
5 33 (0.64%) Hyper-V
6 26 (0.50%) vSphere
7 20 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.33%) Firmware
9 16 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
10 15 (0.29%) VMware NSX
11 12 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
12 9 (0.17%) HDFS
13 5 (0.096%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.077%) KVM
15 3 (0.058%) RACF
16 2 (0.039%) Embedded Firmware
16 2 (0.039%) ProxySG
16 2 (0.039%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 2 (0.039%) Virtual Servers
16 2 (0.039%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 443 (8.54%) Kubernetes
2 249 (4.80%) Terraform
3 172 (3.32%) Ansible
4 111 (2.14%) Grafana
5 94 (1.81%) Prometheus
6 86 (1.66%) SCCM
7 73 (1.41%) Microsoft Intune
8 47 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (0.58%) Puppet
10 23 (0.44%) SCOM
11 20 (0.39%) Nessus
12 19 (0.37%) Argo
13 17 (0.33%) Data Guard
14 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 15 (0.29%) Kibana
15 14 (0.27%) FortiGate
15 14 (0.27%) Packer
16 13 (0.25%) CSIRT
17 12 (0.23%) Red Hat Satellite
18 11 (0.21%) yum
Vendors
1 1,050 (20.25%) Microsoft
2 391 (7.54%) Oracle
3 348 (6.71%) SAP
4 252 (4.86%) ServiceNow
5 184 (3.55%) Google
6 159 (3.07%) VMware
7 150 (2.89%) Splunk
8 149 (2.87%) Salesforce
9 125 (2.41%) Cisco
10 85 (1.64%) Databricks
11 68 (1.31%) Red Hat
12 67 (1.29%) IBM
13 66 (1.27%) Workday
14 51 (0.98%) Citrix
15 46 (0.89%) CyberArk
16 45 (0.87%) Sybase
17 38 (0.73%) MuleSoft
18 37 (0.71%) Palo Alto
19 35 (0.67%) F5
19 35 (0.67%) HP