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

6 months to
12 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 5,279 4,648 4,752
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.00% 12.83% 10.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.67% 14.89% 11.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,190 2,694 3,033
10th Percentile £255 £266 £247
25th Percentile £384 £396 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £715
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -2.13% -1.05% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 343 189 247
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.00 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.56 £15.62 £16.50
Median hourly rate £20.04 £18.70 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year +7.17% -59.24% +83.52%
75th Percentile £34.24 £30.00 £65.05
90th Percentile £65.25 £54.60 £86.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.82 £16.23 £32.50
% change year-on-year +15.96% -50.06% +44.44%

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 31,669 31,225 41,270
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.01% 86.16% 88.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,839 18,782 27,829
10th Percentile £297 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.43% -3.16%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,054 1,104 1,592
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.46 £20.12 £18.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.17
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -18.92% +23.33%
75th Percentile £43.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £73.50 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.53 £33.00 £43.83
% change year-on-year -31.73% -24.70% +51.64%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 4,532 £488 -2.50% 6,122
UK excluding London 0 2,625 £460 -2.13% 4,140
London +3 2,122 £500 -5.66% 2,466
Work from Home +3 1,442 £497 +1.95% 2,941
North of England -2 669 £475 - 903
South East +4 608 £460 -8.00% 1,394
Midlands 0 505 £450 +5.88% 627
North West 0 370 £461 -0.27% 526
West Midlands +1 357 £485 +7.83% 385
Scotland +5 281 £450 +4.65% 198
South West +1 270 £475 -5.00% 480
Yorkshire -6 262 £492 +2.50% 275
East of England -1 229 £500 +11.11% 423
East Midlands -3 148 £380 -2.81% 238
Wales +6 74 £413 +3.13% 112
North East -5 42 £450 - 106
Northern Ireland +3 39 £475 - 80
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
1 187 (3.54%) Confluence
2 160 (3.03%) SharePoint
3 103 (1.95%) Microsoft Exchange
4 68 (1.29%) Apache Spark
5 55 (1.04%) Apache
6 53 (1.00%) SAS
7 48 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
8 43 (0.81%) CMS
9 34 (0.64%) Skype for Business
10 28 (0.53%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.30%) IIS
11 16 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 15 (0.28%) JBoss
13 13 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
14 12 (0.23%) Oracle Service Bus
15 11 (0.21%) Anypoint
16 9 (0.17%) Mattermost
17 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
17 8 (0.15%) WebSphere
18 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 353 (6.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 211 (4.00%) Microsoft Office
3 146 (2.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 79 (1.50%) MS Visio
5 53 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
6 15 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.27%) Trello
8 13 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
9 10 (0.19%) Sketch
10 8 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.15%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.13%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.13%) Simulink
12 6 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
12 6 (0.11%) ProjectWise
12 6 (0.11%) Revit
13 4 (0.076%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.076%) Navisworks
13 4 (0.076%) Notion
14 3 (0.057%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 129 (2.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
3 32 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
4 29 (0.55%) Oracle Payables
5 24 (0.45%) Oracle EBS R12
6 20 (0.38%) Oracle BPM
7 19 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
7 19 (0.36%) SAP EWM
8 18 (0.34%) Oracle Assets
8 18 (0.34%) Workday HCM
9 17 (0.32%) SAP HR
10 15 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
10 15 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
10 15 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
11 14 (0.27%) SAP ERP
12 13 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
12 13 (0.25%) Oracle General Ledger
12 13 (0.25%) SAP WM
13 12 (0.23%) Oracle Financials
14 11 (0.21%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 1,005 (19.04%) Azure
2 816 (15.46%) AWS
3 363 (6.88%) GCP
4 340 (6.44%) Power Platform
5 302 (5.72%) Microsoft 365
6 229 (4.34%) GitHub
7 196 (3.71%) Azure DevOps
8 176 (3.33%) Serverless
9 121 (2.29%) Entra ID
10 120 (2.27%) SaaS
11 111 (2.10%) Amazon S3
12 100 (1.89%) GitHub Actions
13 95 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
14 88 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
15 79 (1.50%) Snowflake
16 78 (1.48%) PowerApps
17 73 (1.38%) Power Automate
18 66 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
19 65 (1.23%) Cloud Computing
20 62 (1.17%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 187 (3.54%) Firewall
2 142 (2.69%) DNS
3 114 (2.16%) Network Security
4 108 (2.05%) VPN
5 101 (1.91%) TCP/IP
6 67 (1.27%) DHCP
6 67 (1.27%) LAN
7 66 (1.25%) WAN
8 45 (0.85%) VLAN
9 42 (0.80%) Wireless
10 36 (0.68%) BGP
11 35 (0.66%) SSL
12 33 (0.63%) Wi-Fi
13 32 (0.61%) Skype
14 30 (0.57%) HTTP
15 26 (0.49%) Wireshark
16 25 (0.47%) VoIP
17 24 (0.45%) OSPF
17 24 (0.45%) SSH
18 20 (0.38%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (4.98%) Power BI
2 194 (3.67%) Relational Database
3 181 (3.43%) PostgreSQL
4 176 (3.33%) SQL Server
5 154 (2.92%) Data Warehouse
6 130 (2.46%) NoSQL
7 115 (2.18%) MongoDB
8 102 (1.93%) Tableau
9 94 (1.78%) Oracle Database
10 82 (1.55%) MySQL
11 67 (1.27%) Metadata
12 61 (1.16%) DB2
13 60 (1.14%) DynamoDB
14 55 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
15 53 (1.00%) Big Data
16 44 (0.83%) Redis
17 43 (0.81%) Data Lake
18 42 (0.80%) Hadoop
19 41 (0.78%) BigQuery
20 40 (0.76%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 459 (8.69%) JIRA
2 392 (7.43%) Git
3 266 (5.04%) Jenkins
4 138 (2.61%) GitLab
5 106 (2.01%) JUnit
6 84 (1.59%) Selenium
7 53 (1.00%) Postman
8 42 (0.80%) Cucumber
9 37 (0.70%) Maven
10 32 (0.61%) Bitbucket
11 28 (0.53%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.40%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.40%) Gradle
12 21 (0.40%) Mockito
12 21 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
13 20 (0.38%) SoapUI
14 19 (0.36%) JMeter
14 19 (0.36%) REST Assured
15 16 (0.30%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.28%) webpack
General
1 3,024 (57.28%) Social Skills
2 1,970 (37.32%) Analytical Skills
3 1,248 (23.64%) Finance
4 475 (9.00%) Banking
5 441 (8.35%) Public Sector
6 176 (3.33%) Organisational Skills
7 146 (2.77%) Telecoms
8 145 (2.75%) Legal
9 143 (2.71%) Marketing
10 139 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
11 138 (2.61%) Manufacturing
12 132 (2.50%) Investment Banking
13 129 (2.44%) Influencing Skills
14 124 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 119 (2.25%) Front Office
16 108 (2.05%) Retail
17 106 (2.01%) Presentation Skills
18 62 (1.17%) Financial Institution
19 55 (1.04%) Pharmaceutical
20 52 (0.99%) Military
Job Titles
1 823 (15.59%) Developer
2 803 (15.21%) Analyst
3 445 (8.43%) Senior
4 347 (6.57%) Architect
5 329 (6.23%) Consultant
6 299 (5.66%) Lead
7 267 (5.06%) Business Analyst
8 191 (3.62%) Support Engineer
9 185 (3.50%) Project Manager
10 175 (3.32%) Java Developer
11 142 (2.69%) Senior Developer
12 135 (2.56%) Data Engineer
13 133 (2.52%) IT Support
14 120 (2.27%) Data Analyst
14 120 (2.27%) Support Analyst
15 100 (1.89%) Software Engineer
16 83 (1.57%) DevOps Engineer
17 82 (1.55%) Solutions Architect
18 80 (1.52%) Python Developer
19 77 (1.46%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (6.16%) REST
2 219 (4.15%) RESTful
3 202 (3.83%) .NET
3 202 (3.83%) Kafka
4 188 (3.56%) Spring
5 170 (3.22%) React
6 166 (3.14%) HTML
7 161 (3.05%) SOAP
8 140 (2.65%) CSS
9 130 (2.46%) Node.js
10 127 (2.41%) AngularJS
11 113 (2.14%) Spring Boot
12 108 (2.05%) JSON
13 94 (1.78%) XML
14 91 (1.72%) Web Services
15 83 (1.57%) OAuth
16 77 (1.46%) Middleware
17 64 (1.21%) GraphQL
18 54 (1.02%) FastAPI
18 54 (1.02%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 238 (4.51%) Product Ownership
2 201 (3.81%) Cloud Native
2 201 (3.81%) Management Information System
3 159 (3.01%) Onboarding
4 137 (2.60%) Data Structures
5 131 (2.48%) Analytical Mindset
6 126 (2.39%) Self-Motivation
7 104 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
7 104 (1.97%) Virtual Team
8 101 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
9 98 (1.86%) Algorithms
10 84 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
11 83 (1.57%) Data Centre
12 69 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
13 68 (1.29%) Security Posture
14 66 (1.25%) Equities
15 61 (1.16%) CMDB
16 58 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 56 (1.06%) NHS
18 54 (1.02%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 512 (9.70%) Windows
2 391 (7.41%) Linux
3 130 (2.46%) Unix
4 106 (2.01%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.86%) Windows Server
6 61 (1.16%) Apple iOS
7 45 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 40 (0.76%) Android
9 39 (0.74%) Mac OS
10 19 (0.36%) VMS
11 16 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
12 15 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.23%) CentOS
14 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.076%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.076%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.076%) zOS
17 3 (0.057%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,577 (29.87%) Agile
2 885 (16.76%) CI/CD
3 793 (15.02%) DevOps
4 685 (12.98%) Continuous Improvement
5 658 (12.46%) Stakeholder Management
6 544 (10.30%) Analytics
7 521 (9.87%) Migration
8 471 (8.92%) Project Management
9 459 (8.69%) Decision-Making
10 446 (8.45%) Scrum
11 411 (7.79%) Computer Science
12 410 (7.77%) Test Automation
13 393 (7.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 380 (7.20%) Business Intelligence
15 377 (7.14%) AI
16 376 (7.12%) Mentoring
17 347 (6.57%) ITIL
18 341 (6.46%) Data Modelling
19 338 (6.40%) Microservices
20 334 (6.33%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 1,017 (19.27%) Python
2 895 (16.95%) SQL
3 558 (10.57%) Java
4 330 (6.25%) JavaScript
5 276 (5.23%) PowerShell
6 230 (4.36%) C#
7 165 (3.13%) TypeScript
8 154 (2.92%) Bash
9 115 (2.18%) Shell Script
10 83 (1.57%) Go
11 69 (1.31%) PL/SQL
12 67 (1.27%) C++
13 50 (0.95%) VBA
14 47 (0.89%) Scala
15 38 (0.72%) R
16 37 (0.70%) Apex Code
17 35 (0.66%) Perl
18 33 (0.63%) PHP
19 30 (0.57%) Groovy
19 30 (0.57%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 834 (15.80%) Security Cleared
2 770 (14.59%) Degree
3 617 (11.69%) SC Cleared
4 276 (5.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 116 (2.20%) DV Cleared
6 103 (1.95%) CISSP
7 100 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
8 98 (1.86%) Master's Degree
9 96 (1.82%) PMI Certification
10 95 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
11 93 (1.76%) PMP
12 81 (1.53%) Azure Certification
13 80 (1.52%) AWS Certification
14 67 (1.27%) Cisco Certification
15 44 (0.83%) CISM
16 42 (0.80%) A+ Certification
16 42 (0.80%) CCNP
17 35 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
17 35 (0.66%) MCP
18 33 (0.63%) ACCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 366 (6.93%) QA
2 274 (5.19%) Data Quality
3 186 (3.52%) GDPR
4 123 (2.33%) Accessibility
5 86 (1.63%) NIST
6 85 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (1.52%) SLA
8 67 (1.27%) PMO
9 41 (0.78%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 23 (0.44%) GRC
12 22 (0.42%) PSD2
13 21 (0.40%) HIPAA
14 20 (0.38%) WCAG
15 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
16 18 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
17 17 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 17 (0.32%) SEPA
18 12 (0.23%) SOC 2
19 11 (0.21%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 443 (8.39%) Docker
2 300 (5.68%) Active Directory
3 98 (1.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.61%) Hyper-V
5 30 (0.57%) vSphere
6 28 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
7 20 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
7 20 (0.38%) VMware NSX
8 19 (0.36%) Firmware
9 17 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
10 12 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.19%) HDFS
12 5 (0.095%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.076%) KVM
14 3 (0.057%) BitLocker
14 3 (0.057%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.038%) Embedded Firmware
15 2 (0.038%) Lustre
15 2 (0.038%) ProxySG
15 2 (0.038%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 465 (8.81%) Kubernetes
2 281 (5.32%) Terraform
3 183 (3.47%) Ansible
4 116 (2.20%) Grafana
5 96 (1.82%) Prometheus
6 87 (1.65%) SCCM
7 80 (1.52%) Microsoft Intune
8 46 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
9 32 (0.61%) Puppet
10 23 (0.44%) Argo
11 21 (0.40%) SCOM
12 20 (0.38%) Nessus
13 19 (0.36%) Kibana
14 18 (0.34%) Data Guard
15 15 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 15 (0.28%) Packer
16 13 (0.25%) CSIRT
16 13 (0.25%) HP ALM
16 13 (0.25%) vCenter Server
17 12 (0.23%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,065 (20.17%) Microsoft
2 390 (7.39%) Oracle
3 344 (6.52%) SAP
4 261 (4.94%) ServiceNow
5 199 (3.77%) Google
6 164 (3.11%) VMware
7 152 (2.88%) Splunk
8 148 (2.80%) Salesforce
9 122 (2.31%) Cisco
10 84 (1.59%) Databricks
11 72 (1.36%) Workday
12 68 (1.29%) Red Hat
13 65 (1.23%) IBM
14 52 (0.99%) Citrix
15 51 (0.97%) CyberArk
16 42 (0.80%) Sybase
17 38 (0.72%) Talend
18 37 (0.70%) MuleSoft
18 37 (0.70%) Palo Alto
19 36 (0.68%) Adobe