Problem-Solving Contracts

Problem Solving
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Problem-Solving skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Problem-Solving over the 6 months to 7 December 2023 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
7 Dec 2023
Same period 2022 Same period 2021
Rank 12 21 25
Rank change year-on-year +9 +4 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,638 6,338 6,153
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 10.33% 8.26% 6.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.67% 9.16% 7.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,938 3,946 3,797
10th Percentile £237 £289 £280
25th Percentile £391 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £540 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% +8.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £616 £650 £600
90th Percentile £715 £750 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% +12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 240 230 296
10th Percentile £13.41 £10.50 £10.78
25th Percentile £16.25 £13.41 £13.25
Median hourly rate £35.75 £26.87 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.07% +49.25% -20.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.00 £44.69
90th Percentile £86.50 £70.00 £54.56
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £22.50 £16.74
% change year-on-year +33.33% +34.41% -7.64%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Problem-Solving is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 39,726 69,214 81,237
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.51% 90.15% 90.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,590 47,923 56,854
10th Percentile £310 £338 £319
25th Percentile £425 £450 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £550 £523
Median % change year-on-year -3.18% +5.26% +10.00%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £623
90th Percentile £745 £750 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £463
% change year-on-year - +8.11% +7.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,525 1,676 1,999
10th Percentile £14.45 £13.41 £11.99
25th Percentile £18.95 £17.56 £13.50
Median hourly rate £42.50 £35.00 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +21.43% +62.79% -17.31%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £46.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £72.73 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.90 £32.50 £18.00
% change year-on-year +35.08% +80.56% -20.00%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Problem-Solving as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Problem-Solving in the UK

Problem-Solving
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Problem-Solving.

Daily rate trend for Problem-Solving in the UK

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving over the 6 months to 7 December 2023.

Daily rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the UK

Problem-Solving
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Problem-Solving.

Hourly rate trend for Problem-Solving in the UK

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Problem-Solving over the 6 months to 7 December 2023.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the UK

Problem-Solving
Top 17 Contract 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 7 December 2023. 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 +8 3,931 £500 -7.41% 5,363
UK excluding London +4 2,220 £475 -5.00% 3,781
London +6 1,846 £534 -7.93% 1,921
Work from Home +12 1,646 £500 -7.41% 2,523
South East +7 600 £450 -10.00% 1,017
North of England +6 547 £500 +5.26% 973
Midlands +1 309 £500 - 653
North West +6 278 £500 +12.36% 536
Yorkshire +10 257 £500 - 311
Scotland +15 251 £467 +3.78% 248
South West +11 246 £559 +4.44% 438
East of England +8 229 £443 -11.50% 432
West Midlands -2 219 £525 +0.96% 433
East Midlands +5 83 £450 +5.88% 219
Wales +22 55 £508 +26.88% 94
Northern Ireland +2 24 £280 -43.43% 48
North East +15 12 £161 -66.21% 142

Problem-Solving
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 169 (3.64%) SharePoint
2 115 (2.48%) Confluence
3 48 (1.03%) Apache Spark
4 29 (0.63%) Apache
5 28 (0.60%) MS Exchange
6 23 (0.50%) CMS
7 20 (0.43%) OpenStack
8 18 (0.39%) SAS
9 16 (0.34%) IIS
9 16 (0.34%) Skype for Business
9 16 (0.34%) Tomcat
10 10 (0.22%) WebLogic
11 9 (0.19%) Apache Airflow
11 9 (0.19%) nginx
12 7 (0.15%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
13 6 (0.13%) CICS
13 6 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
13 6 (0.13%) Jupyter
13 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 6 (0.13%) WordPress
Applications
1 276 (5.95%) Microsoft Office
2 207 (4.46%) Microsoft Excel
3 123 (2.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 62 (1.34%) MS Visio
5 48 (1.03%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.30%) Sketch
7 13 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.28%) Trello
8 10 (0.22%) Adobe XD
9 9 (0.19%) InVision
9 9 (0.19%) Zeplin
10 8 (0.17%) Revit
11 7 (0.15%) AutoCAD
12 4 (0.086%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 4 (0.086%) CATIA
12 4 (0.086%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.086%) UXPin
13 3 (0.065%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.065%) Camtasia
13 3 (0.065%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 80 (1.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 59 (1.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.41%) SAP PM
4 16 (0.34%) Dynamics AX
4 16 (0.34%) Endur
5 14 (0.30%) SAP FI
5 14 (0.30%) SAP WM
5 14 (0.30%) Shopify
6 12 (0.26%) SAP Payroll
6 12 (0.26%) Workday HCM
7 11 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
7 11 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
7 11 (0.24%) SAP HCM
8 10 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
8 10 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
8 10 (0.22%) SAP CO
8 10 (0.22%) SAP EWM
8 10 (0.22%) SAP MM
9 9 (0.19%) CA PPM
9 9 (0.19%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 723 (15.59%) Azure
2 502 (10.82%) AWS
3 294 (6.34%) Power Platform
4 270 (5.82%) Microsoft 365
5 187 (4.03%) GCP
6 125 (2.70%) Dynamics 365
7 119 (2.57%) SaaS
8 117 (2.52%) Azure DevOps
9 98 (2.11%) PowerApps
10 90 (1.94%) Cloud Computing
11 76 (1.64%) GitHub
12 73 (1.57%) Power Automate
13 70 (1.51%) Entra ID
13 70 (1.51%) Serverless
14 61 (1.32%) Azure Data Factory
15 55 (1.19%) Amazon S3
16 54 (1.16%) SuccessFactors
17 48 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
18 47 (1.01%) IaaS
19 44 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 214 (4.61%) Firewall
2 122 (2.63%) Network Security
3 112 (2.41%) DNS
4 107 (2.31%) LAN
5 99 (2.13%) VPN
6 95 (2.05%) WAN
7 88 (1.90%) TCP/IP
8 81 (1.75%) Wireless
9 71 (1.53%) DHCP
10 54 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
11 52 (1.12%) VLAN
12 47 (1.01%) BGP
13 46 (0.99%) SAN
14 39 (0.84%) OSPF
15 38 (0.82%) Internet
16 30 (0.65%) Intrusion Detection
17 27 (0.58%) Cisco ASA
17 27 (0.58%) IPsec
17 27 (0.58%) VoIP
18 23 (0.50%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 251 (5.41%) Power BI
2 183 (3.95%) SQL Server
3 154 (3.32%) Data Warehouse
4 95 (2.05%) Relational Database
5 82 (1.77%) Tableau
6 74 (1.60%) PostgreSQL
7 70 (1.51%) Big Data
8 65 (1.40%) MySQL
9 48 (1.03%) Metadata
10 46 (0.99%) Data Lake
10 46 (0.99%) NoSQL
11 41 (0.88%) Hadoop
12 35 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 35 (0.75%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 33 (0.71%) MongoDB
13 33 (0.71%) Power Query
14 32 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
15 30 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
15 30 (0.65%) Oracle Database
16 26 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 247 (5.33%) JIRA
2 163 (3.51%) Git
3 117 (2.52%) Jenkins
4 56 (1.21%) GitLab
5 37 (0.80%) Rational DOORS
6 33 (0.71%) Selenium
7 32 (0.69%) Visual Studio
8 31 (0.67%) Bitbucket
9 29 (0.63%) TeamCity
10 22 (0.47%) Cucumber
10 22 (0.47%) Rational Rhapsody
11 21 (0.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 19 (0.41%) Oracle APEX
12 19 (0.41%) Subversion
13 16 (0.34%) Postman
14 12 (0.26%) Maven
15 11 (0.24%) Artifactory
15 11 (0.24%) Axure RP
15 11 (0.24%) Robot Framework
16 10 (0.22%) SonarQube
General
1 2,699 (58.19%) Social Skills
2 1,841 (39.69%) Analytical Skills
3 1,010 (21.78%) Finance
4 417 (8.99%) Public Sector
5 343 (7.40%) Banking
6 231 (4.98%) Presentation Skills
7 197 (4.25%) Organisational Skills
8 160 (3.45%) Marketing
9 146 (3.15%) Telecoms
10 125 (2.70%) Influencing Skills
11 118 (2.54%) Retail
12 100 (2.16%) Manufacturing
13 95 (2.05%) Legal
14 88 (1.90%) Investment Banking
15 81 (1.75%) Front Office
16 67 (1.44%) Documentation Skills
17 65 (1.40%) Financial Institution
18 59 (1.27%) Electronics
19 50 (1.08%) Law
20 47 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 702 (15.14%) Analyst
2 587 (12.66%) Developer
3 328 (7.07%) Senior
4 314 (6.77%) Consultant
5 293 (6.32%) Architect
6 258 (5.56%) Business Analyst
7 244 (5.26%) Project Manager
8 221 (4.76%) Lead
9 180 (3.88%) Support Engineer
10 127 (2.74%) Software Engineer
11 111 (2.39%) Data Engineer
11 111 (2.39%) Service Analyst
12 96 (2.07%) Administrator
13 92 (1.98%) Data Analyst
14 89 (1.92%) Network Engineer
15 87 (1.88%) SAP Consultant
16 85 (1.83%) IT Engineer
16 85 (1.83%) Solutions Architect
17 83 (1.79%) DevOps Engineer
17 83 (1.79%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 181 (3.90%) .NET
2 170 (3.67%) HTML
3 149 (3.21%) CSS
4 130 (2.80%) REST
5 125 (2.70%) React
6 91 (1.96%) RESTful
7 82 (1.77%) Node.js
8 71 (1.53%) JSON
9 66 (1.42%) Web Services
10 62 (1.34%) .NET Framework
11 54 (1.16%) XML
12 52 (1.12%) SOAP
13 50 (1.08%) Spring
14 48 (1.03%) AngularJS
14 48 (1.03%) Kafka
15 43 (0.93%) ASP.NET
16 36 (0.78%) .NET Core
17 33 (0.71%) TensorFlow
18 29 (0.63%) Middleware
18 29 (0.63%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 247 (5.33%) Management Information System
2 242 (5.22%) Self-Motivation
3 155 (3.34%) Product Ownership
4 136 (2.93%) Data Centre
5 91 (1.96%) Virtual Team
6 81 (1.75%) Driving Licence
7 79 (1.70%) Algorithms
8 77 (1.66%) Analytical Mindset
9 75 (1.62%) Onboarding
10 69 (1.49%) Legacy Systems
11 49 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
11 49 (1.06%) PKI
11 49 (1.06%) Team-Oriented Environment
12 46 (0.99%) CMDB
13 44 (0.95%) NHS
13 44 (0.95%) Public Cloud
14 39 (0.84%) Hedge funds
15 38 (0.82%) Mobile App
16 36 (0.78%) Derivative
17 34 (0.73%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 561 (12.10%) Windows
2 333 (7.18%) Linux
3 160 (3.45%) Windows 10
4 153 (3.30%) Unix
5 145 (3.13%) Windows Server
6 102 (2.20%) Windows 7
7 92 (1.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 81 (1.75%) Android
9 51 (1.10%) Apple iOS
10 41 (0.88%) Solaris
11 38 (0.82%) Windows Server 2012
12 34 (0.73%) Windows Server 2016
13 33 (0.71%) Mac OS
14 28 (0.60%) VMS
15 27 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
16 25 (0.54%) Ubuntu
17 24 (0.52%) AIX
18 22 (0.47%) Mac OS X
19 20 (0.43%) SUSE
19 20 (0.43%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,053 (22.70%) Agile
2 639 (13.78%) Project Management
3 509 (10.97%) Computer Science
4 450 (9.70%) Migration
5 432 (9.31%) DevOps
6 430 (9.27%) Decision-Making
7 428 (9.23%) Customer Service
8 402 (8.67%) ITIL
9 374 (8.06%) Stakeholder Management
10 338 (7.29%) Continuous Improvement
11 335 (7.22%) Business Intelligence
12 330 (7.12%) Analytics
13 313 (6.75%) Change Management
14 300 (6.47%) Project Delivery
15 290 (6.25%) Data Modelling
16 282 (6.08%) CI/CD
17 254 (5.48%) Scrum
18 248 (5.35%) Software Engineering
19 241 (5.20%) Data Analysis
20 234 (5.05%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 618 (13.32%) Python
2 592 (12.76%) SQL
3 298 (6.43%) JavaScript
4 277 (5.97%) Java
5 240 (5.17%) PowerShell
6 203 (4.38%) C#
7 135 (2.91%) C++
8 94 (2.03%) Bash
9 89 (1.92%) C
10 64 (1.38%) TypeScript
11 47 (1.01%) PL/SQL
12 43 (0.93%) PHP
12 43 (0.93%) Shell Script
13 42 (0.91%) Perl
14 39 (0.84%) Scala
15 37 (0.80%) R
15 37 (0.80%) Ruby
16 35 (0.75%) Embedded C++
16 35 (0.75%) Go
17 31 (0.67%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 967 (20.85%) Degree
2 757 (16.32%) Security Cleared
3 553 (11.92%) SC Cleared
4 379 (8.17%) Computer Science Degree
5 163 (3.51%) DV Cleared
5 163 (3.51%) Master's Degree
6 140 (3.02%) Cisco Certification
7 106 (2.29%) CCNA
8 92 (1.98%) Microsoft Certification
9 84 (1.81%) CISSP
9 84 (1.81%) PMI Certification
10 83 (1.79%) PMP
11 73 (1.57%) Azure Certification
12 71 (1.53%) CCNP
13 61 (1.32%) A+ Certification
14 58 (1.25%) AWS Certification
15 54 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
16 50 (1.08%) CISM
17 40 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
17 40 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 268 (5.78%) QA
2 199 (4.29%) Data Quality
3 170 (3.67%) SLA
4 83 (1.79%) PMO
5 63 (1.36%) NIST
6 62 (1.34%) GDPR
7 50 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 33 (0.71%) Accessibility
9 27 (0.58%) PCI DSS
10 19 (0.41%) NCSC
11 16 (0.34%) HIPAA
12 15 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
13 14 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 12 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
15 11 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 11 (0.24%) GRC
15 11 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 11 (0.24%) WCAG
16 10 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
16 10 (0.22%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 278 (5.99%) Active Directory
2 149 (3.21%) Docker
3 136 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 55 (1.19%) Hyper-V
5 51 (1.10%) Firmware
6 50 (1.08%) Virtual Machines
7 23 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
8 17 (0.37%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.34%) vSphere
10 13 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 9 (0.19%) Ceph
13 8 (0.17%) NFS
13 8 (0.17%) vCloud
13 8 (0.17%) VMware Workstation
14 7 (0.15%) KVM
15 6 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
16 5 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
17 4 (0.086%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 174 (3.75%) Terraform
2 172 (3.71%) Kubernetes
3 127 (2.74%) Ansible
4 111 (2.39%) SCCM
5 61 (1.32%) Microsoft Intune
6 49 (1.06%) Progress Chef
6 49 (1.06%) Puppet
7 38 (0.82%) Grafana
8 37 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
9 23 (0.50%) Prometheus
10 21 (0.45%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.45%) PowerBroker
11 19 (0.41%) SCOM
12 17 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 17 (0.37%) Kibana
13 16 (0.34%) Nagios
13 16 (0.34%) vRealize
14 14 (0.30%) NetBackup
15 13 (0.28%) Data Guard
16 11 (0.24%) EMC NetWorker
Vendors
1 867 (18.69%) Microsoft
2 355 (7.65%) SAP
3 259 (5.58%) Oracle
4 175 (3.77%) Cisco
5 170 (3.67%) VMware
6 152 (3.28%) ServiceNow
7 135 (2.91%) Google
8 93 (2.01%) HP
9 83 (1.79%) Red Hat
10 78 (1.68%) Salesforce
11 61 (1.32%) IBM
11 61 (1.32%) Palo Alto
12 58 (1.25%) Dell
13 53 (1.14%) Adobe
13 53 (1.14%) Citrix
14 52 (1.12%) Apple
15 51 (1.10%) Splunk
16 49 (1.06%) Databricks
17 39 (0.84%) Atlassian
18 36 (0.78%) Workday