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

6 months to
28 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 6 12
Rank change year-on-year -1 +6 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,246 4,786 4,487
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 14.20% 14.26% 10.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.13% 16.16% 11.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,240 2,825 2,836
10th Percentile £268 £263 £225
25th Percentile £400 £398 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £619
90th Percentile £703 £693 £712
UK excluding London median daily rate £472 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -0.68% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 294 183 254
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.51 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £14.55
Median hourly rate £20.00 £22.00 £31.27
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% -29.64% +5.99%
75th Percentile £35.99 £37.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.39 £65.70 £86.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £18.67 £26.00
% change year-on-year -3.58% -28.20% +14.61%

All Process & 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 32,524 29,621 38,311
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.04% 88.28% 88.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,487 18,059 25,534
10th Percentile £300 £308 £306
25th Percentile £406 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £528
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.57% -4.00%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,055 961 1,540
10th Percentile £14.69 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.42
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -25.14% +24.04%
75th Percentile £51.65 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £74.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.58 £30.78 £45.00
% change year-on-year -23.41% -31.60% +50.00%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 4,532 £488 -2.50% 8,258
UK excluding London -3 2,622 £472 -0.68% 6,940
London 0 2,084 £520 -2.21% 1,999
Work from Home +2 1,503 £485 -3.10% 3,799
North of England -3 691 £458 -3.68% 1,698
South East 0 633 £475 -5.00% 1,904
Midlands -1 503 £450 +3.99% 1,154
West Midlands -1 359 £492 +9.33% 622
North West -2 359 £448 -4.58% 901
Yorkshire -6 282 £480 -4.00% 642
South West 0 279 £519 +9.21% 791
Scotland +1 245 £450 +2.16% 293
East of England -4 204 £475 +5.56% 962
East Midlands -3 145 £402 +3.74% 477
Wales +3 69 £405 +1.25% 187
North East -3 57 £450 -18.18% 168
Northern Ireland +1 40 £475 +8.57% 98
Channel Islands 0 1 - - 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 (3.62%) Confluence
2 171 (3.26%) SharePoint
3 108 (2.06%) Microsoft Exchange
4 72 (1.37%) Apache Spark
5 60 (1.14%) SAS
6 59 (1.12%) Apache
7 49 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.76%) CMS
9 29 (0.55%) Skype for Business
10 24 (0.46%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 12 (0.23%) JBoss
13 11 (0.21%) Anypoint
14 10 (0.19%) Oracle Service Bus
15 9 (0.17%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.15%) HCL Notes
17 7 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
17 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
17 7 (0.13%) IIS
17 7 (0.13%) OpenStack
Applications
1 333 (6.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (4.27%) Microsoft Office
3 125 (2.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 75 (1.43%) MS Visio
5 68 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
6 16 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
8 11 (0.21%) Trello
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.17%) Sketch
10 8 (0.15%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
11 6 (0.11%) ProjectWise
12 4 (0.076%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.076%) Notion
13 3 (0.057%) Acrobat
13 3 (0.057%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.057%) InVision
13 3 (0.057%) Zeplin
14 2 (0.038%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 110 (2.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
3 22 (0.42%) Oracle Payables
4 20 (0.38%) SAP EWM
5 18 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
6 16 (0.30%) Oracle Cash Management
6 16 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
7 14 (0.27%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.27%) Oracle EBS R12
7 14 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
7 14 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
7 14 (0.27%) SAP HR
7 14 (0.27%) SAP WM
8 13 (0.25%) SAP EHS
8 13 (0.25%) SAP ERP
8 13 (0.25%) Workday HCM
9 11 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
9 11 (0.21%) SAP SD
10 10 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 1,095 (20.87%) Azure
2 822 (15.67%) AWS
3 410 (7.82%) GCP
4 346 (6.60%) Power Platform
5 319 (6.08%) Microsoft 365
6 247 (4.71%) GitHub
7 205 (3.91%) Azure DevOps
8 177 (3.37%) Serverless
9 140 (2.67%) Entra ID
10 129 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
11 122 (2.33%) SaaS
12 88 (1.68%) Amazon S3
13 86 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
14 84 (1.60%) Power Automate
15 83 (1.58%) Snowflake
16 82 (1.56%) Dynamics 365
17 77 (1.47%) PowerApps
18 72 (1.37%) PaaS
19 67 (1.28%) OpenShift
20 63 (1.20%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 207 (3.95%) Firewall
2 171 (3.26%) DNS
3 121 (2.31%) VPN
4 119 (2.27%) Network Security
4 119 (2.27%) TCP/IP
5 89 (1.70%) DHCP
6 78 (1.49%) WAN
7 72 (1.37%) LAN
8 45 (0.86%) VLAN
9 40 (0.76%) BGP
10 39 (0.74%) Wireless
11 35 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
12 32 (0.61%) VoIP
13 30 (0.57%) SSH
13 30 (0.57%) SSL
14 29 (0.55%) HTTP
14 29 (0.55%) Skype
15 25 (0.48%) OSPF
15 25 (0.48%) Wireshark
16 24 (0.46%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 270 (5.15%) Power BI
2 179 (3.41%) Relational Database
3 173 (3.30%) PostgreSQL
4 171 (3.26%) SQL Server
5 152 (2.90%) Data Warehouse
6 113 (2.15%) NoSQL
7 107 (2.04%) MongoDB
8 91 (1.73%) MySQL
8 91 (1.73%) Oracle Database
9 84 (1.60%) Tableau
10 76 (1.45%) Metadata
11 65 (1.24%) Big Data
12 49 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
13 47 (0.90%) DynamoDB
14 46 (0.88%) Data Lake
15 44 (0.84%) DB2
15 44 (0.84%) Oracle Reports
16 42 (0.80%) Hadoop
17 38 (0.72%) RDBMS
18 36 (0.69%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 471 (8.98%) JIRA
2 393 (7.49%) Git
3 261 (4.98%) Jenkins
4 165 (3.15%) GitLab
5 81 (1.54%) JUnit
6 75 (1.43%) Selenium
7 49 (0.93%) Postman
8 37 (0.71%) Cucumber
9 33 (0.63%) Maven
10 29 (0.55%) Bitbucket
11 28 (0.53%) SonarQube
12 22 (0.42%) JMeter
13 20 (0.38%) Mockito
14 19 (0.36%) REST Assured
14 19 (0.36%) SoapUI
14 19 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
15 17 (0.32%) Cypress.io
16 15 (0.29%) CircleCI
16 15 (0.29%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.27%) Gradle
General
1 2,927 (55.79%) Social Skills
2 1,887 (35.97%) Analytical Skills
3 1,218 (23.22%) Finance
4 503 (9.59%) Public Sector
5 449 (8.56%) Banking
6 195 (3.72%) Organisational Skills
7 150 (2.86%) Legal
8 136 (2.59%) Influencing Skills
9 135 (2.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 134 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
11 128 (2.44%) Telecoms
12 118 (2.25%) Presentation Skills
13 117 (2.23%) Marketing
14 113 (2.15%) Manufacturing
14 113 (2.15%) Retail
15 109 (2.08%) Front Office
15 109 (2.08%) Investment Banking
16 53 (1.01%) Financial Institution
17 52 (0.99%) Military
18 41 (0.78%) Law
Job Titles
1 818 (15.59%) Developer
2 747 (14.24%) Analyst
3 465 (8.86%) Senior
4 338 (6.44%) Architect
5 321 (6.12%) Consultant
6 299 (5.70%) Lead
7 273 (5.20%) Business Analyst
8 202 (3.85%) Project Manager
9 169 (3.22%) Support Engineer
10 158 (3.01%) Java Developer
11 147 (2.80%) Data Engineer
12 130 (2.48%) IT Support
13 129 (2.46%) Senior Developer
14 111 (2.12%) Data Analyst
15 103 (1.96%) Support Analyst
16 98 (1.87%) Software Engineer
17 87 (1.66%) Administrator
18 84 (1.60%) Solutions Architect
19 79 (1.51%) IT Analyst
20 78 (1.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 356 (6.79%) REST
2 202 (3.85%) RESTful
3 190 (3.62%) SOAP
4 188 (3.58%) Kafka
5 180 (3.43%) .NET
6 167 (3.18%) Spring
7 163 (3.11%) Node.js
8 154 (2.94%) React
9 137 (2.61%) HTML
10 119 (2.27%) AngularJS
11 115 (2.19%) Spring Boot
12 113 (2.15%) CSS
13 107 (2.04%) JSON
14 99 (1.89%) XML
15 87 (1.66%) OAuth
16 86 (1.64%) Middleware
17 70 (1.33%) Oracle Fusion
18 68 (1.30%) GraphQL
19 67 (1.28%) Web Services
20 66 (1.26%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 237 (4.52%) Product Ownership
2 218 (4.16%) Cloud Native
3 200 (3.81%) Management Information System
4 178 (3.39%) Onboarding
5 141 (2.69%) Analytical Mindset
6 129 (2.46%) Data Structures
7 124 (2.36%) Self-Motivation
8 110 (2.10%) Data Centre
8 110 (2.10%) Enterprise Software
9 98 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
10 90 (1.72%) Security Posture
11 85 (1.62%) Algorithms
12 84 (1.60%) Virtual Team
13 83 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
14 73 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
15 68 (1.30%) CMDB
16 65 (1.24%) Mobile App
17 63 (1.20%) Equities
18 61 (1.16%) NHS
19 59 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 503 (9.59%) Windows
2 396 (7.55%) Linux
3 121 (2.31%) Unix
4 112 (2.13%) Windows Server
5 102 (1.94%) Windows 10
6 59 (1.12%) Apple iOS
7 54 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 50 (0.95%) Android
9 49 (0.93%) Mac OS
10 28 (0.53%) VMS
11 16 (0.30%) CentOS
11 16 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
12 11 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
13 9 (0.17%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
15 5 (0.095%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.076%) zOS
17 3 (0.057%) Debian
17 3 (0.057%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,587 (30.25%) Agile
2 927 (17.67%) CI/CD
3 816 (15.55%) DevOps
4 727 (13.86%) Stakeholder Management
5 701 (13.36%) Continuous Improvement
6 548 (10.45%) Analytics
7 523 (9.97%) Migration
8 474 (9.04%) Project Management
9 472 (9.00%) Decision-Making
10 442 (8.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 427 (8.14%) Test Automation
12 422 (8.04%) Scrum
13 394 (7.51%) AI
14 388 (7.40%) Data Modelling
15 385 (7.34%) Computer Science
16 378 (7.21%) Mentoring
17 376 (7.17%) Business Intelligence
18 353 (6.73%) Containerisation
19 347 (6.61%) Microservices
20 342 (6.52%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 1,047 (19.96%) Python
2 890 (16.97%) SQL
3 533 (10.16%) Java
4 326 (6.21%) PowerShell
5 317 (6.04%) JavaScript
6 217 (4.14%) C#
7 195 (3.72%) TypeScript
8 161 (3.07%) Bash
9 109 (2.08%) Shell Script
10 87 (1.66%) Go
11 77 (1.47%) PL/SQL
12 59 (1.12%) C++
13 45 (0.86%) Scala
13 45 (0.86%) VBA
14 44 (0.84%) R
15 42 (0.80%) Perl
16 37 (0.71%) Apex Code
17 36 (0.69%) PHP
18 34 (0.65%) T-SQL
19 32 (0.61%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 952 (18.15%) Security Cleared
2 739 (14.09%) Degree
3 692 (13.19%) SC Cleared
4 270 (5.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 138 (2.63%) DV Cleared
6 113 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
7 108 (2.06%) CISSP
8 105 (2.00%) PMI Certification
9 102 (1.94%) Master's Degree
10 100 (1.91%) Microsoft Certification
11 95 (1.81%) PMP
12 93 (1.77%) Azure Certification
13 84 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
14 70 (1.33%) AWS Certification
15 52 (0.99%) CCNP
16 51 (0.97%) CISM
17 39 (0.74%) A+ Certification
18 36 (0.69%) MCP
19 33 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
20 31 (0.59%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 365 (6.96%) QA
2 291 (5.55%) Data Quality
3 190 (3.62%) GDPR
4 112 (2.13%) Accessibility
5 95 (1.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 93 (1.77%) NIST
7 70 (1.33%) PMO
8 61 (1.16%) SLA
9 44 (0.84%) PCI DSS
10 28 (0.53%) GRC
10 28 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 27 (0.51%) WCAG
12 26 (0.50%) PSD2
13 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
14 18 (0.34%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 18 (0.34%) ISO 20022
15 16 (0.30%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
16 14 (0.27%) SEPA
17 12 (0.23%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 483 (9.21%) Docker
2 335 (6.39%) Active Directory
3 112 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.84%) Hyper-V
5 33 (0.63%) vSphere
6 25 (0.48%) VMware NSX
7 23 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
8 19 (0.36%) Firmware
9 18 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
10 16 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
11 12 (0.23%) HDFS
12 8 (0.15%) RACF
13 7 (0.13%) Time Sharing Option
13 7 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.11%) ACF2
15 5 (0.095%) KVM
16 4 (0.076%) Lustre
16 4 (0.076%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 4 (0.076%) Terminal Services
17 3 (0.057%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 504 (9.61%) Kubernetes
2 308 (5.87%) Terraform
3 209 (3.98%) Ansible
4 123 (2.34%) Grafana
5 91 (1.73%) SCCM
6 88 (1.68%) Prometheus
7 86 (1.64%) Microsoft Intune
8 40 (0.76%) Puppet
9 37 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
10 31 (0.59%) Kibana
11 28 (0.53%) Argo
12 20 (0.38%) Nessus
12 20 (0.38%) vCenter Server
13 19 (0.36%) SCOM
14 18 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 16 (0.30%) Data Guard
15 16 (0.30%) Red Hat Satellite
15 16 (0.30%) vRealize
16 15 (0.29%) FortiGate
17 14 (0.27%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 1,043 (19.88%) Microsoft
2 375 (7.15%) Oracle
3 301 (5.74%) SAP
4 236 (4.50%) ServiceNow
5 195 (3.72%) VMware
6 188 (3.58%) Google
7 148 (2.82%) Splunk
8 138 (2.63%) Salesforce
9 131 (2.50%) Cisco
10 121 (2.31%) Databricks
11 78 (1.49%) CyberArk
12 71 (1.35%) Red Hat
13 62 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
14 61 (1.16%) IBM
15 56 (1.07%) Workday
16 54 (1.03%) Palo Alto
17 50 (0.95%) Citrix
18 45 (0.86%) HP
19 43 (0.82%) Talend
20 42 (0.80%) MuleSoft