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

6 months to
25 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 5,289 4,762 4,752
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 14.77% 13.11% 10.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.51% 15.11% 11.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,219 2,752 3,029
10th Percentile £255 £263 £245
25th Percentile £381 £396 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £620
90th Percentile £700 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 328 196 241
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.05 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.66 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £20.26 £20.62 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.76% -54.18% +72.61%
75th Percentile £35.00 £36.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.61 £60.78 £86.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.81 £17.00 £32.32
% change year-on-year +10.63% -47.40% +43.64%

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 32,027 31,522 40,787
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.46% 86.80% 88.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,051 18,965 27,382
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
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 2,103 1,143 1,561
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.22 £14.27
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.15 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +27.14%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -29.69% -26.97% +48.33%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 4,550 £478 -4.50% 4,326
UK excluding London 0 2,618 £450 -5.26% 3,756
London +3 2,133 £500 -6.19% 1,235
Work from Home +4 1,469 £492 +0.41% 2,432
North of England -2 661 £454 -4.37% 826
South East +2 628 £463 -7.50% 1,322
Midlands -1 521 £450 +3.66% 637
West Midlands 0 370 £478 +6.28% 393
North West 0 368 £450 -2.17% 463
South West +1 268 £481 +1.32% 422
Scotland +5 263 £450 +2.86% 160
Yorkshire -6 256 £480 -2.64% 277
East of England -2 211 £500 +11.11% 333
East Midlands -2 151 £401 -1.29% 237
Wales +3 75 £413 +3.13% 90
North East -6 42 £450 -3.12% 89
Northern Ireland +1 40 £475 - 58
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
1 189 (3.57%) Confluence
2 165 (3.12%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.06%) Microsoft Exchange
4 73 (1.38%) Apache Spark
5 61 (1.15%) Apache
6 58 (1.10%) SAS
7 50 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
8 43 (0.81%) CMS
9 31 (0.59%) Skype for Business
10 27 (0.51%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.30%) JBoss
12 14 (0.26%) IIS
12 14 (0.26%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 13 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
14 11 (0.21%) Anypoint
15 10 (0.19%) Oracle Service Bus
16 9 (0.17%) WebSphere
17 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
18 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
18 7 (0.13%) OpenStack
Applications
1 358 (6.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (4.18%) Microsoft Office
3 144 (2.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (1.55%) MS Visio
5 55 (1.04%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.26%) 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 7 (0.13%) Simulink
13 6 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
13 6 (0.11%) ProjectWise
14 4 (0.076%) Autodesk Inventor
14 4 (0.076%) Notion
14 4 (0.076%) Revit
15 3 (0.057%) Adobe Illustrator
15 3 (0.057%) AutoCAD
16 2 (0.038%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 123 (2.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
3 25 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
4 21 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
5 19 (0.36%) SAP EWM
6 18 (0.34%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.32%) SAP HR
8 16 (0.30%) Oracle BPM
8 16 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
8 16 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
9 15 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
9 15 (0.28%) SAP ERP
10 14 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
11 13 (0.25%) NetSuite
11 13 (0.25%) Oracle Cash Management
11 13 (0.25%) SAP WM
12 12 (0.23%) Oracle Financials
12 12 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
13 11 (0.21%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,026 (19.40%) Azure
2 818 (15.47%) AWS
3 372 (7.03%) GCP
4 345 (6.52%) Power Platform
5 306 (5.79%) Microsoft 365
6 239 (4.52%) GitHub
7 208 (3.93%) Azure DevOps
8 171 (3.23%) Serverless
9 126 (2.38%) SaaS
10 124 (2.34%) Entra ID
11 108 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
12 103 (1.95%) Amazon S3
13 91 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
14 88 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
15 81 (1.53%) PowerApps
16 79 (1.49%) Snowflake
17 78 (1.47%) Power Automate
18 69 (1.30%) AWS CloudFormation
19 62 (1.17%) Amazon ECS
20 60 (1.13%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 196 (3.71%) Firewall
2 147 (2.78%) DNS
3 120 (2.27%) Network Security
4 113 (2.14%) VPN
5 109 (2.06%) TCP/IP
6 73 (1.38%) DHCP
7 68 (1.29%) LAN
7 68 (1.29%) WAN
8 47 (0.89%) VLAN
9 43 (0.81%) Wireless
10 39 (0.74%) BGP
11 35 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
12 31 (0.59%) HTTP
12 31 (0.59%) SSL
13 29 (0.55%) Skype
14 27 (0.51%) VoIP
15 26 (0.49%) OSPF
15 26 (0.49%) Wireshark
16 25 (0.47%) SSH
17 22 (0.42%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 262 (4.95%) Power BI
2 197 (3.72%) Relational Database
3 186 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
4 175 (3.31%) SQL Server
5 150 (2.84%) Data Warehouse
6 127 (2.40%) NoSQL
7 116 (2.19%) MongoDB
8 92 (1.74%) MySQL
8 92 (1.74%) Oracle Database
9 89 (1.68%) Tableau
10 68 (1.29%) Metadata
11 60 (1.13%) DB2
12 56 (1.06%) Big Data
13 55 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
14 47 (0.89%) DynamoDB
15 44 (0.83%) Data Lake
16 43 (0.81%) Hadoop
17 42 (0.79%) Redis
18 41 (0.78%) BigQuery
19 38 (0.72%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 478 (9.04%) JIRA
2 398 (7.53%) Git
3 269 (5.09%) Jenkins
4 156 (2.95%) GitLab
5 102 (1.93%) JUnit
6 83 (1.57%) Selenium
7 52 (0.98%) Postman
8 41 (0.78%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.72%) Maven
10 33 (0.62%) Bitbucket
11 27 (0.51%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.38%) Gradle
12 20 (0.38%) Mockito
12 20 (0.38%) SoapUI
13 19 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
14 18 (0.34%) Cypress.io
14 18 (0.34%) JMeter
15 17 (0.32%) REST Assured
16 15 (0.28%) Eclipse
16 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
General
1 3,023 (57.16%) Social Skills
2 1,978 (37.40%) Analytical Skills
3 1,259 (23.80%) Finance
4 459 (8.68%) Public Sector
5 457 (8.64%) Banking
6 180 (3.40%) Organisational Skills
7 146 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
7 146 (2.76%) Legal
8 144 (2.72%) Marketing
9 143 (2.70%) Telecoms
10 137 (2.59%) Manufacturing
11 132 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
12 128 (2.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 123 (2.33%) Investment Banking
14 118 (2.23%) Front Office
15 116 (2.19%) Presentation Skills
16 111 (2.10%) Retail
17 54 (1.02%) Financial Institution
18 51 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
19 49 (0.93%) Military
Job Titles
1 837 (15.83%) Developer
2 799 (15.11%) Analyst
3 451 (8.53%) Senior
4 328 (6.20%) Architect
5 326 (6.16%) Consultant
6 303 (5.73%) Lead
7 271 (5.12%) Business Analyst
8 193 (3.65%) Project Manager
9 186 (3.52%) Support Engineer
10 179 (3.38%) Java Developer
11 144 (2.72%) Data Engineer
12 139 (2.63%) Senior Developer
13 130 (2.46%) IT Support
14 117 (2.21%) Data Analyst
15 108 (2.04%) Support Analyst
16 98 (1.85%) Software Engineer
17 87 (1.64%) Python Developer
18 84 (1.59%) Solutions Architect
19 82 (1.55%) DevOps Engineer
20 80 (1.51%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 333 (6.30%) REST
2 219 (4.14%) RESTful
3 208 (3.93%) Kafka
4 202 (3.82%) .NET
5 189 (3.57%) Spring
6 166 (3.14%) SOAP
7 162 (3.06%) React
8 152 (2.87%) HTML
9 139 (2.63%) Node.js
10 131 (2.48%) CSS
11 124 (2.34%) AngularJS
12 118 (2.23%) Spring Boot
13 107 (2.02%) JSON
14 94 (1.78%) XML
15 88 (1.66%) OAuth
16 78 (1.47%) Web Services
17 77 (1.46%) Middleware
18 68 (1.29%) GraphQL
19 60 (1.13%) Oracle Fusion
20 56 (1.06%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 243 (4.59%) Product Ownership
2 210 (3.97%) Cloud Native
3 196 (3.71%) Management Information System
4 169 (3.20%) Onboarding
5 143 (2.70%) Data Structures
6 138 (2.61%) Analytical Mindset
7 123 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
8 100 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
8 100 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
8 100 (1.89%) Virtual Team
9 94 (1.78%) Algorithms
10 91 (1.72%) Data Centre
11 89 (1.68%) Distributed Systems
12 73 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
13 68 (1.29%) Security Posture
14 66 (1.25%) Equities
15 64 (1.21%) CMDB
16 62 (1.17%) Mobile App
17 56 (1.06%) NHS
18 55 (1.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 509 (9.62%) Windows
2 393 (7.43%) Linux
3 126 (2.38%) Unix
4 103 (1.95%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.83%) Windows Server
6 61 (1.15%) Apple iOS
7 46 (0.87%) Android
8 44 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 41 (0.78%) Mac OS
10 24 (0.45%) VMS
11 16 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
12 14 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.25%) CentOS
14 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
15 5 (0.095%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.095%) zOS
16 4 (0.076%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.076%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.057%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,586 (29.99%) Agile
2 925 (17.49%) CI/CD
3 823 (15.56%) DevOps
4 699 (13.22%) Continuous Improvement
5 690 (13.05%) Stakeholder Management
6 555 (10.49%) Analytics
7 526 (9.95%) Migration
8 474 (8.96%) Project Management
9 467 (8.83%) Decision-Making
10 444 (8.39%) Scrum
11 425 (8.04%) Test Automation
12 411 (7.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 398 (7.53%) Computer Science
14 384 (7.26%) AI
15 383 (7.24%) Business Intelligence
16 370 (7.00%) Mentoring
17 356 (6.73%) Data Modelling
18 349 (6.60%) ITIL
19 346 (6.54%) Microservices
20 344 (6.50%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,042 (19.70%) Python
2 902 (17.05%) SQL
3 565 (10.68%) Java
4 322 (6.09%) JavaScript
5 290 (5.48%) PowerShell
6 231 (4.37%) C#
7 170 (3.21%) TypeScript
8 163 (3.08%) Bash
9 113 (2.14%) Shell Script
10 89 (1.68%) Go
11 73 (1.38%) PL/SQL
12 68 (1.29%) C++
13 53 (1.00%) VBA
14 45 (0.85%) Scala
15 41 (0.78%) R
16 40 (0.76%) Apex Code
17 36 (0.68%) Perl
17 36 (0.68%) PHP
18 33 (0.62%) T-SQL
19 30 (0.57%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 878 (16.60%) Security Cleared
2 760 (14.37%) Degree
3 647 (12.23%) SC Cleared
4 275 (5.20%) Computer Science Degree
5 119 (2.25%) DV Cleared
6 106 (2.00%) CISSP
7 103 (1.95%) Microsoft Certification
8 102 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
9 101 (1.91%) Master's Degree
9 101 (1.91%) PMI Certification
10 93 (1.76%) PMP
11 87 (1.64%) Azure Certification
12 80 (1.51%) AWS Certification
13 73 (1.38%) Cisco Certification
14 49 (0.93%) CISM
15 47 (0.89%) CCNP
16 41 (0.78%) A+ Certification
17 36 (0.68%) MCP
18 35 (0.66%) ACCA
19 34 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 390 (7.37%) QA
2 285 (5.39%) Data Quality
3 194 (3.67%) GDPR
4 115 (2.17%) Accessibility
5 90 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 90 (1.70%) NIST
6 77 (1.46%) SLA
7 71 (1.34%) PMO
8 42 (0.79%) PCI DSS
9 33 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 27 (0.51%) GRC
11 24 (0.45%) PSD2
12 21 (0.40%) HIPAA
12 21 (0.40%) WCAG
13 19 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
14 15 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.28%) ISO 20022
14 15 (0.28%) SEPA
15 10 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 460 (8.70%) Docker
2 302 (5.71%) Active Directory
3 110 (2.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.64%) Hyper-V
4 34 (0.64%) vSphere
5 30 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
6 24 (0.45%) VMware NSX
7 20 (0.38%) Firmware
8 19 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.21%) HDFS
11 9 (0.17%) RACF
11 9 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.15%) Time Sharing Option
13 6 (0.11%) ACF2
14 5 (0.095%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.076%) KVM
16 3 (0.057%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.057%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 2 (0.038%) OpenIDM
Systems Management
1 489 (9.25%) Kubernetes
2 299 (5.65%) Terraform
3 190 (3.59%) Ansible
4 123 (2.33%) Grafana
5 94 (1.78%) Prometheus
6 86 (1.63%) SCCM
7 79 (1.49%) Microsoft Intune
8 47 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (0.57%) Puppet
10 27 (0.51%) Argo
11 20 (0.38%) Nessus
12 19 (0.36%) Kibana
13 18 (0.34%) Data Guard
13 18 (0.34%) SCOM
14 15 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 15 (0.28%) HP ALM
14 15 (0.28%) Packer
15 14 (0.26%) vCenter Server
15 14 (0.26%) vRealize
16 13 (0.25%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,070 (20.23%) Microsoft
2 390 (7.37%) Oracle
3 339 (6.41%) SAP
4 265 (5.01%) ServiceNow
5 196 (3.71%) Google
6 179 (3.38%) VMware
7 150 (2.84%) Salesforce
7 150 (2.84%) Splunk
8 125 (2.36%) Cisco
9 96 (1.82%) Databricks
10 70 (1.32%) IBM
11 69 (1.30%) Workday
12 66 (1.25%) Red Hat
13 57 (1.08%) Citrix
14 54 (1.02%) CyberArk
15 44 (0.83%) Talend
16 43 (0.81%) Palo Alto
17 41 (0.78%) Sybase
18 38 (0.72%) Juniper
19 37 (0.70%) HP