Problem-Solving Contracts

Problem Solving
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Problem-Solving skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Problem-Solving over the 6 months leading up to 6 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 10 17
Rank change year-on-year +5 +7 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,321 4,733 5,092
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 16.71% 10.93% 8.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.42% 12.81% 10.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,270 2,850 3,228
10th Percentile £250 £250 £266
25th Percentile £375 £380 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £638
90th Percentile £700 £719 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £488
% change year-on-year -2.63% -2.56% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 297 405 268
10th Percentile £14.20 £11.07 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.44 £14.00 £17.95
Median hourly rate £21.39 £16.23 £52.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.79% -68.79% +114.43%
75th Percentile £41.00 £32.50 £66.00
90th Percentile £65.25 £61.60 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.85 £15.89 £51.25
% change year-on-year +18.63% -69.00% +162.82%

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 28,883 36,949 50,825
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.68% 85.32% 89.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,181 23,576 35,000
10th Percentile £300 £300 £325
25th Percentile £405 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% +0.92%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,432 2,509 1,726
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.75 £12.28
25th Percentile £17.42 £16.12 £16.85
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £38.18
Median % change year-on-year -32.93% -1.77% +46.83%
75th Percentile £53.75 £61.30 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £75.59
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.66 £38.12 £35.00
% change year-on-year -35.31% +8.91% +66.67%

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 6 July 2025.

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 6 July 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the UK

Problem-Solving
Top 18 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 6 July 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 +5 4,444 £500 - 10,104
UK excluding London +4 2,627 £463 -2.63% 6,207
London +7 2,128 £500 -6.98% 4,696
Work from Home +7 1,566 £500 - 4,235
North of England +2 696 £475 -1.04% 1,643
South East +7 581 £490 +3.16% 1,661
Midlands +8 413 £425 -10.53% 955
North West +8 397 £480 -2.09% 943
Scotland +7 357 £463 -2.63% 405
West Midlands +10 290 £450 -5.26% 582
Yorkshire 0 264 £475 - 524
East of England +3 260 £468 -6.50% 644
South West +5 247 £500 +5.26% 692
East Midlands +1 122 £367 -18.44% 361
Wales -1 53 £353 -11.73% 187
Northern Ireland +4 51 £425 +28.30% 151
North East -6 34 £450 -14.29% 192
Channel Islands - 5 £425 - 1

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
1 175 (3.29%) Confluence
2 166 (3.12%) SharePoint
3 80 (1.50%) Apache Spark
4 70 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
5 62 (1.17%) Apache
6 38 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
7 34 (0.64%) CMS
8 21 (0.39%) IIS
9 19 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 16 (0.30%) IBM Domino
12 15 (0.28%) SAS
12 15 (0.28%) WebSphere
13 14 (0.26%) Skype for Business
13 14 (0.26%) WebLogic
14 11 (0.21%) OpenStack
14 11 (0.21%) Tomcat
15 10 (0.19%) Anypoint
15 10 (0.19%) JBoss
16 9 (0.17%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 315 (5.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 207 (3.89%) Microsoft Office
3 176 (3.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (1.54%) MS Visio
5 59 (1.11%) Microsoft Project
6 31 (0.58%) Trello
7 15 (0.28%) AutoCAD
8 12 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
9 10 (0.19%) Sketch
10 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 9 (0.17%) Revit
11 8 (0.15%) Oracle Smart View
12 7 (0.13%) Chatbot
12 7 (0.13%) Simulink
13 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 4 (0.075%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.075%) Adobe Illustrator
15 4 (0.075%) InDesign
16 2 (0.038%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 149 (2.80%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.81%) Oracle EBS
3 36 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
4 22 (0.41%) Oracle Payables
5 19 (0.36%) Oracle BPM
6 18 (0.34%) Oracle EBS R12
6 18 (0.34%) Workday HCM
7 16 (0.30%) SAP FI
7 16 (0.30%) SAP PP
8 15 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
8 15 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
9 14 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
9 14 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
9 14 (0.26%) SAP CO
9 14 (0.26%) SAP VC
9 14 (0.26%) Shopify
9 14 (0.26%) Teamcenter
10 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
10 13 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
10 13 (0.24%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 918 (17.25%) Azure
2 784 (14.73%) AWS
3 335 (6.30%) Power Platform
4 293 (5.51%) GCP
4 293 (5.51%) Microsoft 365
5 183 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
6 150 (2.82%) Serverless
7 141 (2.65%) GitHub
8 138 (2.59%) SaaS
9 136 (2.56%) Entra ID
10 124 (2.33%) Amazon S3
11 108 (2.03%) AWS Lambda
12 96 (1.80%) Cloud Computing
13 89 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
14 87 (1.64%) PowerApps
15 74 (1.39%) Snowflake
16 69 (1.30%) Power Automate
17 56 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
18 51 (0.96%) OCI
19 49 (0.92%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 183 (3.44%) Firewall
2 148 (2.78%) VPN
3 124 (2.33%) Network Security
4 113 (2.12%) DNS
5 94 (1.77%) LAN
6 90 (1.69%) WAN
7 85 (1.60%) TCP/IP
8 60 (1.13%) Wireless
9 55 (1.03%) DHCP
10 51 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
11 48 (0.90%) BGP
12 45 (0.85%) OSPF
13 42 (0.79%) SAN
14 39 (0.73%) MPLS
15 33 (0.62%) SSL
15 33 (0.62%) VLAN
16 32 (0.60%) SD-WAN
17 28 (0.53%) Remote Desktop
18 27 (0.51%) Ethernet
18 27 (0.51%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 265 (4.98%) Power BI
2 187 (3.51%) SQL Server
3 167 (3.14%) Data Warehouse
4 157 (2.95%) Relational Database
5 141 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
6 122 (2.29%) MongoDB
7 121 (2.27%) Tableau
8 95 (1.79%) NoSQL
9 87 (1.64%) Oracle Database
10 69 (1.30%) DB2
11 65 (1.22%) Amazon RDS
11 65 (1.22%) Big Data
12 62 (1.17%) MySQL
13 50 (0.94%) BigQuery
14 49 (0.92%) DynamoDB
15 44 (0.83%) Oracle Reports
16 43 (0.81%) Data Lake
17 40 (0.75%) Metadata
18 39 (0.73%) Redis
19 36 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 397 (7.46%) JIRA
2 314 (5.90%) Git
3 240 (4.51%) Jenkins
4 121 (2.27%) GitLab
5 88 (1.65%) JUnit
6 76 (1.43%) Selenium
7 44 (0.83%) Postman
8 42 (0.79%) Bitbucket
9 36 (0.68%) Cucumber
10 34 (0.64%) Maven
11 32 (0.60%) JMeter
12 27 (0.51%) Cypress.io
12 27 (0.51%) REST Assured
13 18 (0.34%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.32%) Visual Studio
15 16 (0.30%) Gradle
15 16 (0.30%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.28%) webpack
17 14 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
17 14 (0.26%) Xcode
General
1 3,174 (59.65%) Social Skills
2 2,086 (39.20%) Analytical Skills
3 1,337 (25.13%) Finance
4 489 (9.19%) Banking
5 372 (6.99%) Public Sector
6 177 (3.33%) Telecoms
7 169 (3.18%) Legal
8 166 (3.12%) Presentation Skills
9 159 (2.99%) Investment Banking
10 149 (2.80%) Manufacturing
11 144 (2.71%) Marketing
12 141 (2.65%) Organisational Skills
13 129 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
14 127 (2.39%) Retail
15 125 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 121 (2.27%) Front Office
17 94 (1.77%) Influencing Skills
18 83 (1.56%) Financial Institution
19 76 (1.43%) Pharmaceutical
20 54 (1.01%) Law
Job Titles
1 776 (14.58%) Developer
2 770 (14.47%) Analyst
3 463 (8.70%) Senior
4 453 (8.51%) Architect
5 319 (6.00%) Lead
6 301 (5.66%) Business Analyst
7 295 (5.54%) Consultant
8 221 (4.15%) Project Manager
9 187 (3.51%) Java Developer
10 169 (3.18%) Support Engineer
11 140 (2.63%) Data Engineer
12 123 (2.31%) Data Analyst
13 118 (2.22%) Senior Developer
14 103 (1.94%) Administrator
15 100 (1.88%) Solutions Architect
16 98 (1.84%) Network Engineer
17 96 (1.80%) IT Support
18 92 (1.73%) SAP Consultant
18 92 (1.73%) Support Analyst
19 83 (1.56%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 196 (3.68%) REST
2 185 (3.48%) RESTful
3 184 (3.46%) Kafka
4 181 (3.40%) .NET
5 178 (3.35%) React
6 175 (3.29%) HTML
7 168 (3.16%) CSS
8 158 (2.97%) Spring
9 138 (2.59%) AngularJS
10 122 (2.29%) Web Services
11 84 (1.58%) SOAP
12 76 (1.43%) Middleware
13 74 (1.39%) JSON
14 72 (1.35%) Node.js
14 72 (1.35%) Spring Boot
15 71 (1.33%) OAuth
16 65 (1.22%) XML
17 48 (0.90%) SAML
18 47 (0.88%) OpenID
19 46 (0.86%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 197 (3.70%) Management Information System
2 179 (3.36%) Product Ownership
3 156 (2.93%) Self-Motivation
4 138 (2.59%) Data Structures
5 121 (2.27%) Onboarding
6 107 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
7 104 (1.95%) Cloud Native
8 100 (1.88%) Algorithms
9 93 (1.75%) Analytical Mindset
10 92 (1.73%) Data Centre
10 92 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
11 84 (1.58%) Virtual Team
12 78 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
13 75 (1.41%) Equities
14 71 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
15 54 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 50 (0.94%) Derivative
16 50 (0.94%) Mobile App
17 47 (0.88%) Security Posture
18 46 (0.86%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 560 (10.52%) Windows
2 417 (7.84%) Linux
3 129 (2.42%) Unix
4 123 (2.31%) Windows Server
5 105 (1.97%) Windows 10
6 92 (1.73%) Apple iOS
7 76 (1.43%) Android
8 51 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 35 (0.66%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.38%) zOS
11 19 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
12 14 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
13 12 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
14 10 (0.19%) CentOS
14 10 (0.19%) Solaris
15 9 (0.17%) AIX
16 8 (0.15%) VMS
17 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
18 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.11%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,390 (26.12%) Agile
2 672 (12.63%) DevOps
3 641 (12.05%) Stakeholder Management
4 638 (11.99%) CI/CD
5 606 (11.39%) Project Management
6 519 (9.75%) Migration
7 500 (9.40%) Continuous Improvement
8 479 (9.00%) Decision-Making
9 443 (8.33%) Computer Science
10 401 (7.54%) Analytics
11 378 (7.10%) ITIL
12 360 (6.77%) Business Intelligence
13 350 (6.58%) Scrum
14 338 (6.35%) Customer Service
15 318 (5.98%) Risk Management
15 318 (5.98%) Test Automation
16 298 (5.60%) Change Management
17 290 (5.45%) Validation
18 289 (5.43%) Mentoring
19 287 (5.39%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 913 (17.16%) Python
2 903 (16.97%) SQL
3 512 (9.62%) Java
4 316 (5.94%) JavaScript
5 282 (5.30%) PowerShell
6 244 (4.59%) C#
7 153 (2.88%) Bash
8 117 (2.20%) TypeScript
9 104 (1.95%) PL/SQL
10 100 (1.88%) Shell Script
11 72 (1.35%) C++
12 57 (1.07%) Scala
13 41 (0.77%) Go
14 38 (0.71%) ABAP
15 36 (0.68%) Perl
16 35 (0.66%) PHP
17 32 (0.60%) R
18 30 (0.56%) Bicep
19 29 (0.55%) Ruby
19 29 (0.55%) VBA
Qualifications
1 790 (14.85%) Security Cleared
2 776 (14.58%) Degree
3 613 (11.52%) SC Cleared
4 293 (5.51%) Computer Science Degree
5 138 (2.59%) Cisco Certification
6 126 (2.37%) Microsoft Certification
7 110 (2.07%) CCNP
8 101 (1.90%) PMI Certification
9 98 (1.84%) DV Cleared
10 97 (1.82%) AWS Certification
10 97 (1.82%) Master's Degree
10 97 (1.82%) PMP
11 93 (1.75%) CISSP
12 88 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
13 60 (1.13%) Azure Certification
14 58 (1.09%) ITIL Certification
15 54 (1.01%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 54 (1.01%) CISM
16 50 (0.94%) A+ Certification
17 42 (0.79%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 334 (6.28%) QA
2 221 (4.15%) Data Quality
3 153 (2.88%) GDPR
4 106 (1.99%) Accessibility
5 103 (1.94%) SLA
6 80 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 75 (1.41%) NIST
8 72 (1.35%) PMO
9 43 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 36 (0.68%) HIPAA
11 33 (0.62%) PCI DSS
12 27 (0.51%) GRC
13 25 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
14 19 (0.36%) Disclosure Scotland
15 17 (0.32%) MiFID
16 16 (0.30%) NCSC
17 13 (0.24%) WCAG
18 10 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 9 (0.17%) SEPA
19 9 (0.17%) SOC 2
System Software
1 334 (6.28%) Active Directory
2 267 (5.02%) Docker
3 113 (2.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 46 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
5 33 (0.62%) vSphere
6 23 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
7 19 (0.36%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.36%) VMware NSX
8 16 (0.30%) Firmware
9 12 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
10 11 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
11 8 (0.15%) GridGain
11 8 (0.15%) RACF
12 7 (0.13%) Time Sharing Option
13 6 (0.11%) NFS
13 6 (0.11%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 4 (0.075%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.056%) Job Entry Subsystem
15 3 (0.056%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 326 (6.13%) Kubernetes
2 250 (4.70%) Terraform
3 203 (3.82%) Ansible
4 92 (1.73%) Microsoft Intune
5 82 (1.54%) SCCM
6 65 (1.22%) Grafana
7 63 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
8 58 (1.09%) Prometheus
9 48 (0.90%) Puppet
10 31 (0.58%) Progress Chef
11 27 (0.51%) Oracle RMAN
12 21 (0.39%) vCenter Server
13 19 (0.36%) SCOM
14 16 (0.30%) FortiGate
14 16 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
14 16 (0.30%) NetBackup
15 14 (0.26%) Podman
16 11 (0.21%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
17 10 (0.19%) Data Guard
17 10 (0.19%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,015 (19.08%) Microsoft
2 401 (7.54%) Oracle
3 386 (7.25%) SAP
4 270 (5.07%) ServiceNow
5 208 (3.91%) Google
6 200 (3.76%) Cisco
7 139 (2.61%) VMware
8 129 (2.42%) Salesforce
9 96 (1.80%) Splunk
10 88 (1.65%) Databricks
11 82 (1.54%) IBM
12 71 (1.33%) Red Hat
13 67 (1.26%) Juniper
14 60 (1.13%) Workday
15 58 (1.09%) Sybase
16 56 (1.05%) Citrix
17 54 (1.01%) Adobe
18 44 (0.83%) CyberArk
19 39 (0.73%) Dell
19 39 (0.73%) F5