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

6 months to
1 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 5,228 4,816 4,705
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 14.63% 13.38% 10.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.42% 15.35% 11.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,214 2,796 2,987
10th Percentile £258 £263 £242
25th Percentile £384 £397 £400
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 £460 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -3.16% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 313 190 243
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.24 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.67 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £20.04 £21.46 £42.31
Median % change year-on-year -6.62% -49.27% +57.47%
75th Percentile £35.00 £37.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.02 £63.83 £86.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.73 £17.12 £30.66
% change year-on-year +9.40% -44.17% +36.28%

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 31,830 31,370 40,452
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.08% 87.18% 88.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,997 18,966 27,094
10th Percentile £300 £310 £310
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.59% -3.00%
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 2,072 1,117 1,558
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.22 £14.33
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.24 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £43.42
Median % change year-on-year -23.79% -23.99% +24.04%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £32.50 £43.90
% change year-on-year -30.37% -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 1 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 1 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 1 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 4,503 £475 -5.00% 4,173
UK excluding London 0 2,607 £460 -3.16% 3,909
London +2 2,099 £500 -5.66% 1,125
Work from Home +3 1,477 £483 -2.42% 2,730
North of England -3 674 £464 -2.37% 820
South East 0 628 £463 -7.50% 1,448
Midlands 0 498 £450 +3.45% 638
North West -1 376 £450 -5.26% 417
West Midlands 0 356 £489 +7.18% 364
South West -1 275 £475 - 418
Scotland +4 254 £450 +2.56% 167
Yorkshire -6 254 £480 -1.84% 318
East of England -3 206 £500 +11.11% 377
East Midlands -2 142 £402 +2.10% 262
Wales +5 80 £410 +2.50% 105
North East -3 49 £450 -0.88% 89
Northern Ireland 0 39 £475 +2.70% 36
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
1 188 (3.60%) Confluence
2 158 (3.02%) SharePoint
3 105 (2.01%) Microsoft Exchange
4 76 (1.45%) Apache Spark
5 60 (1.15%) Apache
6 59 (1.13%) SAS
7 49 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
8 41 (0.78%) CMS
9 31 (0.59%) Skype for Business
10 27 (0.52%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.29%) JBoss
11 15 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 12 (0.23%) Anypoint
12 12 (0.23%) IIS
13 11 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
14 10 (0.19%) Oracle Service Bus
15 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
16 7 (0.13%) HCL Notes
16 7 (0.13%) OpenStack
Applications
1 343 (6.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (4.25%) Microsoft Office
3 136 (2.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 76 (1.45%) MS Visio
5 59 (1.13%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.25%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.23%) Trello
9 10 (0.19%) Sketch
10 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 8 (0.15%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
12 6 (0.11%) ProjectWise
12 6 (0.11%) Simulink
13 4 (0.077%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.077%) Notion
14 3 (0.057%) Revit
15 2 (0.038%) InVision
15 2 (0.038%) MicroStation
15 2 (0.038%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 118 (2.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
3 26 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
4 19 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
4 19 (0.36%) SAP EWM
5 18 (0.34%) Workday HCM
6 17 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
7 16 (0.31%) Oracle Assets
7 16 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
8 15 (0.29%) Oracle BPM
8 15 (0.29%) Oracle Cash Management
8 15 (0.29%) SAP ERP
9 14 (0.27%) NetSuite
9 14 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
9 14 (0.27%) SAP HR
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 1,011 (19.34%) Azure
2 810 (15.49%) AWS
3 363 (6.94%) GCP
4 334 (6.39%) Power Platform
5 301 (5.76%) Microsoft 365
6 239 (4.57%) GitHub
7 206 (3.94%) Azure DevOps
8 168 (3.21%) Serverless
9 124 (2.37%) Entra ID
10 120 (2.30%) SaaS
11 110 (2.10%) GitHub Actions
12 99 (1.89%) Amazon S3
13 91 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
14 84 (1.61%) Dynamics 365
15 82 (1.57%) Snowflake
16 74 (1.42%) Power Automate
17 73 (1.40%) PowerApps
18 68 (1.30%) AWS CloudFormation
19 64 (1.22%) Amazon ECS
20 59 (1.13%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 191 (3.65%) Firewall
2 147 (2.81%) DNS
3 120 (2.30%) Network Security
4 113 (2.16%) VPN
5 107 (2.05%) TCP/IP
6 74 (1.42%) DHCP
7 70 (1.34%) WAN
8 69 (1.32%) LAN
9 46 (0.88%) VLAN
10 41 (0.78%) BGP
11 40 (0.77%) Wireless
12 36 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
13 30 (0.57%) HTTP
13 30 (0.57%) SSL
14 29 (0.55%) Skype
15 27 (0.52%) OSPF
16 26 (0.50%) VoIP
17 25 (0.48%) Wireshark
18 24 (0.46%) SSH
19 23 (0.44%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 254 (4.86%) Power BI
2 190 (3.63%) Relational Database
3 185 (3.54%) PostgreSQL
4 161 (3.08%) SQL Server
5 148 (2.83%) Data Warehouse
6 122 (2.33%) NoSQL
7 110 (2.10%) MongoDB
8 89 (1.70%) MySQL
8 89 (1.70%) Oracle Database
9 88 (1.68%) Tableau
10 68 (1.30%) Metadata
11 60 (1.15%) Big Data
12 56 (1.07%) DB2
13 54 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
14 46 (0.88%) DynamoDB
14 46 (0.88%) Hadoop
15 45 (0.86%) Data Lake
16 40 (0.77%) Redis
17 38 (0.73%) RDBMS
18 36 (0.69%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 477 (9.12%) JIRA
2 391 (7.48%) Git
3 265 (5.07%) Jenkins
4 157 (3.00%) GitLab
5 99 (1.89%) JUnit
6 82 (1.57%) Selenium
7 52 (0.99%) Postman
8 41 (0.78%) Cucumber
9 36 (0.69%) Maven
10 29 (0.55%) Bitbucket
11 27 (0.52%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.40%) 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 (0.31%) REST Assured
15 16 (0.31%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.29%) Eclipse
General
1 2,955 (56.52%) Social Skills
2 1,934 (36.99%) Analytical Skills
3 1,242 (23.76%) Finance
4 470 (8.99%) Public Sector
5 444 (8.49%) Banking
6 174 (3.33%) Organisational Skills
7 144 (2.75%) Legal
8 143 (2.74%) Telecoms
9 135 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
9 135 (2.58%) Influencing Skills
9 135 (2.58%) Marketing
10 132 (2.52%) Manufacturing
11 129 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 115 (2.20%) Investment Banking
13 114 (2.18%) Front Office
13 114 (2.18%) Presentation Skills
14 105 (2.01%) Retail
15 51 (0.98%) Financial Institution
16 50 (0.96%) Military
17 49 (0.94%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 840 (16.07%) Developer
2 765 (14.63%) Analyst
3 451 (8.63%) Senior
4 318 (6.08%) Architect
4 318 (6.08%) Consultant
5 293 (5.60%) Lead
6 268 (5.13%) Business Analyst
7 200 (3.83%) Project Manager
8 179 (3.42%) Java Developer
9 178 (3.40%) Support Engineer
10 144 (2.75%) Data Engineer
11 135 (2.58%) Senior Developer
12 130 (2.49%) IT Support
13 109 (2.08%) Data Analyst
14 105 (2.01%) Support Analyst
15 95 (1.82%) Software Engineer
16 84 (1.61%) Python Developer
16 84 (1.61%) Solutions Architect
17 79 (1.51%) Administrator
17 79 (1.51%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 331 (6.33%) REST
2 216 (4.13%) RESTful
3 206 (3.94%) Kafka
4 190 (3.63%) .NET
5 189 (3.62%) Spring
6 165 (3.16%) SOAP
7 161 (3.08%) React
8 142 (2.72%) HTML
9 140 (2.68%) Node.js
10 125 (2.39%) Spring Boot
11 124 (2.37%) AngularJS
12 121 (2.31%) CSS
13 109 (2.08%) JSON
14 95 (1.82%) XML
15 86 (1.64%) OAuth
16 75 (1.43%) Middleware
17 73 (1.40%) Web Services
18 66 (1.26%) GraphQL
19 64 (1.22%) Oracle Fusion
20 56 (1.07%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 237 (4.53%) Product Ownership
2 213 (4.07%) Cloud Native
3 191 (3.65%) Management Information System
4 166 (3.18%) Onboarding
5 140 (2.68%) Analytical Mindset
6 139 (2.66%) Data Structures
7 126 (2.41%) Self-Motivation
8 103 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
9 96 (1.84%) Virtual Team
10 95 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
11 92 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
12 91 (1.74%) Algorithms
13 90 (1.72%) Data Centre
14 74 (1.42%) Legacy Systems
15 68 (1.30%) CMDB
16 67 (1.28%) Mobile App
16 67 (1.28%) Security Posture
17 65 (1.24%) Equities
18 57 (1.09%) NHS
19 55 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 496 (9.49%) Windows
2 385 (7.36%) Linux
3 126 (2.41%) Unix
4 101 (1.93%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.89%) Windows Server
6 60 (1.15%) Apple iOS
7 45 (0.86%) Android
8 42 (0.80%) Mac OS
8 42 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 25 (0.48%) VMS
10 16 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
11 13 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
12 12 (0.23%) CentOS
13 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
13 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
14 5 (0.096%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.096%) zOS
15 4 (0.077%) Windows Server 2003
16 3 (0.057%) Oracle Linux
16 3 (0.057%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,568 (29.99%) Agile
2 918 (17.56%) CI/CD
3 808 (15.46%) DevOps
4 692 (13.24%) Continuous Improvement
5 691 (13.22%) Stakeholder Management
6 549 (10.50%) Analytics
7 526 (10.06%) Migration
8 470 (8.99%) Project Management
9 461 (8.82%) Decision-Making
10 440 (8.42%) Scrum
11 423 (8.09%) Test Automation
12 413 (7.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 389 (7.44%) Computer Science
14 386 (7.38%) AI
15 369 (7.06%) Mentoring
16 367 (7.02%) Business Intelligence
17 350 (6.69%) Data Modelling
18 347 (6.64%) Microservices
19 343 (6.56%) Containerisation
20 341 (6.52%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 1,031 (19.72%) Python
2 879 (16.81%) SQL
3 559 (10.69%) Java
4 312 (5.97%) JavaScript
5 281 (5.37%) PowerShell
6 213 (4.07%) C#
7 172 (3.29%) TypeScript
8 160 (3.06%) Bash
9 110 (2.10%) Shell Script
10 88 (1.68%) Go
11 72 (1.38%) PL/SQL
12 65 (1.24%) C++
13 49 (0.94%) VBA
14 44 (0.84%) Scala
15 42 (0.80%) R
16 38 (0.73%) Apex Code
17 36 (0.69%) Perl
18 35 (0.67%) PHP
19 33 (0.63%) T-SQL
20 28 (0.54%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 887 (16.97%) Security Cleared
2 756 (14.46%) Degree
3 654 (12.51%) SC Cleared
4 268 (5.13%) Computer Science Degree
5 122 (2.33%) DV Cleared
6 106 (2.03%) CISSP
7 103 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (1.97%) Master's Degree
8 101 (1.93%) Microsoft Certification
9 100 (1.91%) PMI Certification
10 91 (1.74%) PMP
11 85 (1.63%) Azure Certification
12 79 (1.51%) AWS Certification
13 73 (1.40%) Cisco Certification
14 51 (0.98%) CISM
15 47 (0.90%) CCNP
16 41 (0.78%) A+ Certification
17 37 (0.71%) ACCA
18 36 (0.69%) MCP
19 31 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 390 (7.46%) QA
2 283 (5.41%) Data Quality
3 188 (3.60%) GDPR
4 114 (2.18%) Accessibility
5 93 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 93 (1.78%) NIST
6 71 (1.36%) SLA
7 70 (1.34%) PMO
8 43 (0.82%) PCI DSS
9 32 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 27 (0.52%) GRC
11 25 (0.48%) PSD2
12 20 (0.38%) WCAG
13 19 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
13 19 (0.36%) HIPAA
14 16 (0.31%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.29%) SEPA
16 13 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
17 11 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 464 (8.88%) Docker
2 300 (5.74%) Active Directory
3 108 (2.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.65%) Hyper-V
5 32 (0.61%) vSphere
6 29 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
7 23 (0.44%) VMware NSX
8 20 (0.38%) Firmware
9 17 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
9 17 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
10 12 (0.23%) HDFS
11 9 (0.17%) RACF
12 8 (0.15%) Time Sharing Option
12 8 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
13 6 (0.11%) ACF2
14 5 (0.096%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.077%) KVM
16 3 (0.057%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.057%) Embedded Firmware
16 3 (0.057%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 488 (9.33%) Kubernetes
2 296 (5.66%) Terraform
3 185 (3.54%) Ansible
4 123 (2.35%) Grafana
5 93 (1.78%) Prometheus
6 88 (1.68%) SCCM
7 74 (1.42%) Microsoft Intune
8 40 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (0.59%) Puppet
10 27 (0.52%) Argo
11 20 (0.38%) Kibana
11 20 (0.38%) Nessus
12 18 (0.34%) Data Guard
12 18 (0.34%) SCOM
13 16 (0.31%) HP ALM
14 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 15 (0.29%) vCenter Server
14 15 (0.29%) vRealize
15 14 (0.27%) Packer
16 13 (0.25%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,046 (20.01%) Microsoft
2 383 (7.33%) Oracle
3 323 (6.18%) SAP
4 266 (5.09%) ServiceNow
5 196 (3.75%) Google
6 174 (3.33%) VMware
7 147 (2.81%) Splunk
8 145 (2.77%) Salesforce
9 121 (2.31%) Cisco
10 102 (1.95%) Databricks
11 66 (1.26%) Workday
12 65 (1.24%) IBM
13 63 (1.21%) Red Hat
14 53 (1.01%) Citrix
15 52 (0.99%) CyberArk
16 44 (0.84%) Talend
17 41 (0.78%) Palo Alto
18 39 (0.75%) HP
18 39 (0.75%) Sybase
19 38 (0.73%) Juniper