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 19 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 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 5,330 4,674 4,806
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 14.93% 12.90% 10.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.63% 14.94% 11.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,230 2,708 3,066
10th Percentile £255 £264 £246
25th Percentile £381 £391 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £624
90th Percentile £700 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £464 £475
% change year-on-year -3.02% -2.32% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 338 182 247
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.00 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.58 £15.62 £16.38
Median hourly rate £20.02 £19.25 £46.06
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -58.20% +84.22%
75th Percentile £34.87 £30.00 £65.68
90th Percentile £69.31 £53.63 £86.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.82 £16.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +14.06% -50.00% +46.67%

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 32,049 31,289 41,011
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.77% 86.33% 88.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,064 18,819 27,584
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
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 2,120 1,102 1,587
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.11 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.14 £19.03
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +27.14%
75th Percentile £45.00 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £33.54 £44.50
% change year-on-year -31.43% -24.63% +50.85%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 4,583 £483 -3.50% 6,700
UK excluding London 0 2,658 £450 -3.02% 4,586
London +3 2,129 £500 -5.66% 2,573
Work from Home +4 1,465 £499 +2.36% 3,487
North of England -2 685 £458 -3.68% 1,075
South East +2 626 £461 -7.80% 1,448
Midlands 0 523 £450 +5.88% 769
North West +1 383 £450 -1.64% 597
West Midlands +1 373 £485 +11.81% 451
Scotland +4 273 £450 +2.86% 208
South West 0 265 £481 +1.32% 521
Yorkshire -5 263 £478 -1.04% 374
East of England -2 222 £500 +11.11% 457
East Midlands -2 150 £383 -2.17% 311
Wales +5 74 £413 +3.13% 127
North East -4 44 £450 -0.44% 108
Northern Ireland +1 40 £475 - 77
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
1 190 (3.56%) Confluence
2 166 (3.11%) SharePoint
3 111 (2.08%) Microsoft Exchange
4 69 (1.29%) Apache Spark
5 58 (1.09%) Apache
6 57 (1.07%) SAS
7 48 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
8 42 (0.79%) CMS
9 32 (0.60%) Skype for Business
10 28 (0.53%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.30%) IIS
11 16 (0.30%) JBoss
11 16 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 13 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
13 12 (0.23%) Oracle Service Bus
14 11 (0.21%) Anypoint
15 9 (0.17%) WebSphere
16 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
17 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
17 7 (0.13%) Mattermost
Applications
1 358 (6.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (4.13%) Microsoft Office
3 145 (2.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 84 (1.58%) MS Visio
5 56 (1.05%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.26%) Chatbot
6 14 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.23%) Trello
8 10 (0.19%) Sketch
9 8 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.15%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.13%) Simulink
11 6 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
11 6 (0.11%) AutoCAD
11 6 (0.11%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.11%) Revit
12 4 (0.075%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.075%) Navisworks
12 4 (0.075%) Notion
13 2 (0.038%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 127 (2.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
5 21 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
6 19 (0.36%) Oracle BPM
6 19 (0.36%) SAP EWM
7 18 (0.34%) Workday HCM
8 17 (0.32%) Oracle Receivables
8 17 (0.32%) SAP HR
9 16 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
10 15 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
10 15 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
10 15 (0.28%) SAP ERP
11 13 (0.24%) NetSuite
11 13 (0.24%) Oracle Cash Management
11 13 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
11 13 (0.24%) SAP WM
12 12 (0.23%) Oracle Financials
13 11 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,023 (19.19%) Azure
2 823 (15.44%) AWS
3 374 (7.02%) GCP
4 348 (6.53%) Power Platform
5 304 (5.70%) Microsoft 365
6 236 (4.43%) GitHub
7 202 (3.79%) Azure DevOps
8 175 (3.28%) Serverless
9 129 (2.42%) SaaS
10 124 (2.33%) Entra ID
11 108 (2.03%) Amazon S3
12 105 (1.97%) GitHub Actions
13 97 (1.82%) AWS Lambda
14 89 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
15 82 (1.54%) PowerApps
16 79 (1.48%) Power Automate
16 79 (1.48%) Snowflake
17 69 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
18 63 (1.18%) Cloud Computing
19 62 (1.16%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 198 (3.71%) Firewall
2 150 (2.81%) DNS
3 118 (2.21%) Network Security
4 111 (2.08%) VPN
5 110 (2.06%) TCP/IP
6 74 (1.39%) DHCP
7 68 (1.28%) LAN
7 68 (1.28%) WAN
8 48 (0.90%) VLAN
9 43 (0.81%) Wireless
10 38 (0.71%) BGP
11 34 (0.64%) SSL
11 34 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
12 31 (0.58%) HTTP
13 30 (0.56%) Skype
14 28 (0.53%) VoIP
15 26 (0.49%) Wireshark
16 25 (0.47%) OSPF
17 24 (0.45%) SSH
18 22 (0.41%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 265 (4.97%) Power BI
2 198 (3.71%) Relational Database
3 184 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
4 181 (3.40%) SQL Server
5 150 (2.81%) Data Warehouse
6 130 (2.44%) NoSQL
7 116 (2.18%) MongoDB
8 98 (1.84%) Tableau
9 92 (1.73%) Oracle Database
10 87 (1.63%) MySQL
11 68 (1.28%) Metadata
12 60 (1.13%) DB2
13 55 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
13 55 (1.03%) Big Data
14 54 (1.01%) DynamoDB
15 43 (0.81%) Hadoop
15 43 (0.81%) Redis
16 42 (0.79%) Data Lake
17 40 (0.75%) BigQuery
18 39 (0.73%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 475 (8.91%) JIRA
2 400 (7.50%) Git
3 269 (5.05%) Jenkins
4 150 (2.81%) GitLab
5 102 (1.91%) JUnit
6 81 (1.52%) Selenium
7 52 (0.98%) Postman
8 40 (0.75%) Cucumber
9 36 (0.68%) Maven
10 34 (0.64%) Bitbucket
11 29 (0.54%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.39%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.39%) Gradle
12 21 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
13 20 (0.38%) Mockito
13 20 (0.38%) SoapUI
14 19 (0.36%) JMeter
15 18 (0.34%) REST Assured
16 15 (0.28%) Eclipse
16 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
General
1 3,059 (57.39%) Social Skills
2 1,993 (37.39%) Analytical Skills
3 1,260 (23.64%) Finance
4 476 (8.93%) Banking
5 450 (8.44%) Public Sector
6 180 (3.38%) Organisational Skills
7 146 (2.74%) Legal
8 145 (2.72%) Marketing
8 145 (2.72%) Telecoms
9 144 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
10 139 (2.61%) Manufacturing
11 133 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
12 130 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 130 (2.44%) Investment Banking
13 120 (2.25%) Front Office
14 118 (2.21%) Presentation Skills
15 110 (2.06%) Retail
16 59 (1.11%) Financial Institution
17 53 (0.99%) Pharmaceutical
18 50 (0.94%) Military
Job Titles
1 832 (15.61%) Developer
2 809 (15.18%) Analyst
3 442 (8.29%) Senior
4 343 (6.44%) Architect
5 331 (6.21%) Consultant
6 303 (5.68%) Lead
7 274 (5.14%) Business Analyst
8 190 (3.56%) Support Engineer
9 185 (3.47%) Project Manager
10 173 (3.25%) Java Developer
11 141 (2.65%) Data Engineer
12 137 (2.57%) Senior Developer
13 131 (2.46%) IT Support
14 119 (2.23%) Data Analyst
15 114 (2.14%) Support Analyst
16 102 (1.91%) Software Engineer
17 84 (1.58%) Python Developer
17 84 (1.58%) Solutions Architect
18 83 (1.56%) DevOps Engineer
19 82 (1.54%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (6.23%) REST
2 223 (4.18%) RESTful
3 205 (3.85%) .NET
3 205 (3.85%) Kafka
4 185 (3.47%) Spring
5 171 (3.21%) React
6 166 (3.11%) SOAP
7 160 (3.00%) HTML
8 138 (2.59%) CSS
9 136 (2.55%) Node.js
10 125 (2.35%) AngularJS
11 113 (2.12%) Spring Boot
12 106 (1.99%) JSON
13 94 (1.76%) XML
14 88 (1.65%) OAuth
15 86 (1.61%) Web Services
16 79 (1.48%) Middleware
17 69 (1.29%) GraphQL
18 59 (1.11%) Oracle Fusion
19 55 (1.03%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 246 (4.62%) Product Ownership
2 206 (3.86%) Cloud Native
3 194 (3.64%) Management Information System
4 166 (3.11%) Onboarding
5 138 (2.59%) Data Structures
6 133 (2.50%) Analytical Mindset
7 121 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
8 100 (1.88%) Virtual Team
9 99 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
10 98 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
11 94 (1.76%) Algorithms
12 89 (1.67%) Data Centre
13 84 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
14 73 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
15 68 (1.28%) Security Posture
16 65 (1.22%) Equities
17 61 (1.14%) CMDB
18 60 (1.13%) Mobile App
19 59 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 56 (1.05%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 527 (9.89%) Windows
2 402 (7.54%) Linux
3 130 (2.44%) Unix
4 104 (1.95%) Windows 10
5 101 (1.89%) Windows Server
6 65 (1.22%) Apple iOS
7 47 (0.88%) Android
8 46 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 42 (0.79%) Mac OS
10 23 (0.43%) VMS
11 16 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
12 15 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.24%) CentOS
14 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
15 5 (0.094%) Ubuntu
15 5 (0.094%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.075%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.075%) zOS
17 3 (0.056%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,585 (29.74%) Agile
2 924 (17.34%) CI/CD
3 821 (15.40%) DevOps
4 701 (13.15%) Continuous Improvement
5 679 (12.74%) Stakeholder Management
6 552 (10.36%) Analytics
7 522 (9.79%) Migration
8 477 (8.95%) Project Management
9 467 (8.76%) Decision-Making
10 445 (8.35%) Scrum
11 421 (7.90%) Test Automation
12 408 (7.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 406 (7.62%) Computer Science
14 389 (7.30%) Business Intelligence
15 383 (7.19%) AI
16 376 (7.05%) Mentoring
17 350 (6.57%) ITIL
18 349 (6.55%) Data Modelling
19 338 (6.34%) Microservices
20 337 (6.32%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,036 (19.44%) Python
2 907 (17.02%) SQL
3 562 (10.54%) Java
4 336 (6.30%) JavaScript
5 292 (5.48%) PowerShell
6 233 (4.37%) C#
7 175 (3.28%) TypeScript
8 159 (2.98%) Bash
9 111 (2.08%) Shell Script
10 89 (1.67%) Go
11 73 (1.37%) PL/SQL
12 67 (1.26%) C++
13 54 (1.01%) VBA
14 48 (0.90%) Scala
15 40 (0.75%) Apex Code
16 39 (0.73%) R
17 36 (0.68%) Perl
18 33 (0.62%) PHP
19 31 (0.58%) T-SQL
20 29 (0.54%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 870 (16.32%) Security Cleared
2 767 (14.39%) Degree
3 643 (12.06%) SC Cleared
4 276 (5.18%) Computer Science Degree
5 117 (2.20%) DV Cleared
6 106 (1.99%) CISSP
7 102 (1.91%) Microsoft Certification
8 100 (1.88%) Master's Degree
8 100 (1.88%) PMI Certification
9 99 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
10 93 (1.74%) PMP
11 86 (1.61%) AWS Certification
12 85 (1.59%) Azure Certification
13 71 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
14 47 (0.88%) CISM
15 45 (0.84%) CCNP
16 42 (0.79%) A+ Certification
17 36 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
17 36 (0.68%) MCP
18 35 (0.66%) ACCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 384 (7.20%) QA
2 282 (5.29%) Data Quality
3 189 (3.55%) GDPR
4 120 (2.25%) Accessibility
5 88 (1.65%) NIST
6 87 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 78 (1.46%) SLA
8 70 (1.31%) PMO
9 41 (0.77%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 24 (0.45%) PSD2
12 23 (0.43%) GRC
13 21 (0.39%) HIPAA
14 20 (0.38%) WCAG
15 19 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
16 17 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
16 17 (0.32%) SEPA
17 13 (0.24%) ISO 20022
18 11 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 456 (8.56%) Docker
2 313 (5.87%) Active Directory
3 112 (2.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.64%) Hyper-V
4 34 (0.64%) vSphere
5 29 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
6 23 (0.43%) VMware NSX
7 20 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.36%) Firmware
9 17 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
10 12 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
11 11 (0.21%) HDFS
12 8 (0.15%) RACF
12 8 (0.15%) Time Sharing Option
13 6 (0.11%) ACF2
14 5 (0.094%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.075%) KVM
16 3 (0.056%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.056%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 2 (0.038%) NFS
Systems Management
1 484 (9.08%) Kubernetes
2 293 (5.50%) Terraform
3 187 (3.51%) Ansible
4 117 (2.20%) Grafana
5 95 (1.78%) Prometheus
6 89 (1.67%) SCCM
7 79 (1.48%) Microsoft Intune
8 46 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (0.58%) Puppet
10 26 (0.49%) Argo
11 20 (0.38%) Nessus
11 20 (0.38%) SCOM
12 19 (0.36%) Kibana
13 18 (0.34%) Data Guard
14 15 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 15 (0.28%) Packer
15 14 (0.26%) vCenter Server
16 13 (0.24%) CSIRT
16 13 (0.24%) HP ALM
17 12 (0.23%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,075 (20.17%) Microsoft
2 395 (7.41%) Oracle
3 345 (6.47%) SAP
4 266 (4.99%) ServiceNow
5 200 (3.75%) Google
6 180 (3.38%) VMware
7 152 (2.85%) Salesforce
8 148 (2.78%) Splunk
9 128 (2.40%) Cisco
10 86 (1.61%) Databricks
11 70 (1.31%) Workday
12 69 (1.29%) IBM
13 66 (1.24%) Red Hat
14 57 (1.07%) Citrix
15 54 (1.01%) CyberArk
16 42 (0.79%) Palo Alto
16 42 (0.79%) Talend
17 41 (0.77%) Sybase
18 39 (0.73%) MuleSoft
19 37 (0.69%) Juniper