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

6 months to
30 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 7 12
Rank change year-on-year 0 +5 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,251 4,849 4,710
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 14.65% 13.37% 10.28%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.43% 15.34% 11.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,223 2,812 2,993
10th Percentile £258 £263 £243
25th Percentile £384 £398 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £618
90th Percentile £700 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -4.21% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 314 194 243
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.15 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.69 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £20.15 £21.46 £43.50
Median % change year-on-year -6.12% -50.67% +62.74%
75th Percentile £35.30 £37.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.95 £63.75 £86.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.73 £17.12 £30.83
% change year-on-year +9.40% -44.46% +37.00%

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 31,961 31,602 40,569
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.17% 87.15% 88.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,061 19,103 27,192
10th Percentile £300 £310 £310
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £744 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,078 1,129 1,558
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.22 £14.33
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.19 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £43.63
Median % change year-on-year -23.79% -24.36% +24.64%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.74 £32.50 £44.25
% change year-on-year -30.05% -26.55% +38.28%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 0 4,522 £480 -4.00% 3,410
UK excluding London 0 2,617 £455 -4.21% 3,187
London +2 2,107 £500 -5.97% 1,023
Work from Home +2 1,479 £488 -1.52% 1,266
North of England -3 673 £458 -3.68% 642
South East +1 633 £463 -7.50% 1,226
Midlands 0 501 £450 +3.45% 500
North West -1 375 £450 -5.26% 366
West Midlands 0 359 £488 +6.96% 327
South West -1 275 £475 - 354
Yorkshire -7 254 £492 +1.44% 198
Scotland +3 253 £450 +2.86% 147
East of England -2 210 £500 +11.11% 294
East Midlands -3 142 £402 +2.10% 169
Wales +5 79 £410 +2.50% 84
North East -3 49 £450 -0.88% 81
Northern Ireland 0 40 £475 +2.70% 34
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 (3.60%) Confluence
2 160 (3.05%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.08%) Microsoft Exchange
4 76 (1.45%) Apache Spark
5 61 (1.16%) Apache
6 59 (1.12%) SAS
7 51 (0.97%) Apache Airflow
8 41 (0.78%) CMS
9 31 (0.59%) Skype for Business
10 27 (0.51%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.29%) JBoss
11 15 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 13 (0.25%) IIS
13 12 (0.23%) Anypoint
14 11 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
15 10 (0.19%) Oracle Service Bus
16 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
17 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
17 7 (0.13%) OpenStack
17 7 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 346 (6.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (4.28%) Microsoft Office
3 138 (2.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 76 (1.45%) MS Visio
5 59 (1.12%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.27%) 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 6 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
12 6 (0.11%) ProjectWise
12 6 (0.11%) Simulink
13 4 (0.076%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.076%) Notion
14 3 (0.057%) Revit
15 2 (0.038%) InVision
15 2 (0.038%) MicroStation
15 2 (0.038%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 119 (2.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
3 26 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
4 19 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
4 19 (0.36%) SAP EWM
5 18 (0.34%) Workday HCM
6 17 (0.32%) Oracle Receivables
7 16 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
7 16 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
8 15 (0.29%) Oracle BPM
8 15 (0.29%) Oracle Cash Management
8 15 (0.29%) SAP ERP
9 14 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
9 14 (0.27%) SAP HR
10 13 (0.25%) NetSuite
10 13 (0.25%) Oracle Financials
10 13 (0.25%) Oracle General Ledger
10 13 (0.25%) SAP WM
11 12 (0.23%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,017 (19.37%) Azure
2 815 (15.52%) AWS
3 366 (6.97%) GCP
4 336 (6.40%) Power Platform
5 304 (5.79%) Microsoft 365
6 240 (4.57%) GitHub
7 206 (3.92%) Azure DevOps
8 169 (3.22%) Serverless
9 125 (2.38%) Entra ID
10 123 (2.34%) SaaS
11 110 (2.09%) GitHub Actions
12 100 (1.90%) Amazon S3
13 91 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
14 84 (1.60%) Dynamics 365
15 83 (1.58%) Snowflake
16 74 (1.41%) Power Automate
17 73 (1.39%) PowerApps
18 68 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
19 65 (1.24%) Amazon ECS
20 60 (1.14%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 191 (3.64%) Firewall
2 148 (2.82%) DNS
3 120 (2.29%) Network Security
4 113 (2.15%) VPN
5 108 (2.06%) TCP/IP
6 74 (1.41%) DHCP
7 70 (1.33%) WAN
8 69 (1.31%) LAN
9 46 (0.88%) VLAN
10 41 (0.78%) BGP
11 40 (0.76%) Wireless
12 36 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
13 31 (0.59%) HTTP
13 31 (0.59%) SSL
14 29 (0.55%) Skype
15 27 (0.51%) OSPF
15 27 (0.51%) VoIP
16 25 (0.48%) Wireshark
17 24 (0.46%) SSH
18 23 (0.44%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 256 (4.88%) Power BI
2 192 (3.66%) Relational Database
3 186 (3.54%) PostgreSQL
4 164 (3.12%) SQL Server
5 152 (2.89%) Data Warehouse
6 124 (2.36%) NoSQL
7 110 (2.09%) MongoDB
8 90 (1.71%) MySQL
8 90 (1.71%) Oracle Database
8 90 (1.71%) Tableau
9 68 (1.29%) Metadata
10 60 (1.14%) Big Data
11 58 (1.10%) DB2
12 55 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
13 46 (0.88%) DynamoDB
13 46 (0.88%) Hadoop
14 45 (0.86%) Data Lake
15 40 (0.76%) Redis
16 39 (0.74%) BigQuery
17 38 (0.72%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 480 (9.14%) JIRA
2 393 (7.48%) Git
3 266 (5.07%) Jenkins
4 158 (3.01%) GitLab
5 99 (1.89%) JUnit
6 82 (1.56%) Selenium
7 52 (0.99%) Postman
8 41 (0.78%) Cucumber
9 36 (0.69%) Maven
10 29 (0.55%) Bitbucket
11 27 (0.51%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.40%) JMeter
13 20 (0.38%) Mockito
13 20 (0.38%) SoapUI
13 20 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
14 19 (0.36%) Cypress.io
15 18 (0.34%) Gradle
16 16 (0.30%) REST Assured
16 16 (0.30%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.29%) Eclipse
General
1 2,971 (56.58%) Social Skills
2 1,942 (36.98%) Analytical Skills
3 1,246 (23.73%) Finance
4 472 (8.99%) Public Sector
5 444 (8.46%) Banking
6 176 (3.35%) Organisational Skills
7 145 (2.76%) Telecoms
8 144 (2.74%) Legal
9 138 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
10 137 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
10 137 (2.61%) Marketing
11 133 (2.53%) Manufacturing
12 129 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 115 (2.19%) Front Office
13 115 (2.19%) Investment Banking
14 114 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
15 105 (2.00%) Retail
16 51 (0.97%) Financial Institution
17 50 (0.95%) Military
18 49 (0.93%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 832 (15.84%) Developer
2 771 (14.68%) Analyst
3 453 (8.63%) Senior
4 322 (6.13%) Architect
4 322 (6.13%) Consultant
5 299 (5.69%) Lead
6 269 (5.12%) Business Analyst
7 200 (3.81%) Project Manager
8 184 (3.50%) Support Engineer
9 179 (3.41%) Java Developer
10 145 (2.76%) Data Engineer
11 135 (2.57%) Senior Developer
12 131 (2.49%) IT Support
13 110 (2.09%) Data Analyst
14 106 (2.02%) Support Analyst
15 96 (1.83%) Software Engineer
16 85 (1.62%) Python Developer
17 84 (1.60%) Solutions Architect
18 80 (1.52%) Administrator
19 79 (1.50%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (6.32%) REST
2 218 (4.15%) RESTful
3 208 (3.96%) Kafka
4 190 (3.62%) .NET
5 189 (3.60%) Spring
6 165 (3.14%) SOAP
7 161 (3.07%) React
8 142 (2.70%) HTML
9 140 (2.67%) Node.js
10 125 (2.38%) AngularJS
10 125 (2.38%) Spring Boot
11 121 (2.30%) CSS
12 110 (2.09%) JSON
13 95 (1.81%) XML
14 88 (1.68%) OAuth
15 76 (1.45%) Middleware
16 73 (1.39%) Web Services
17 67 (1.28%) GraphQL
18 65 (1.24%) Oracle Fusion
19 56 (1.07%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 237 (4.51%) Product Ownership
2 215 (4.09%) Cloud Native
3 191 (3.64%) Management Information System
4 167 (3.18%) Onboarding
5 140 (2.67%) Data Structures
6 139 (2.65%) Analytical Mindset
7 126 (2.40%) Self-Motivation
8 104 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
9 98 (1.87%) Virtual Team
10 95 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
11 92 (1.75%) Algorithms
11 92 (1.75%) Distributed Systems
12 90 (1.71%) Data Centre
13 74 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
14 69 (1.31%) CMDB
15 67 (1.28%) Mobile App
15 67 (1.28%) Security Posture
16 65 (1.24%) Equities
17 57 (1.09%) NHS
18 55 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 503 (9.58%) Windows
2 390 (7.43%) Linux
3 126 (2.40%) Unix
4 102 (1.94%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.89%) Windows Server
6 60 (1.14%) Apple iOS
7 45 (0.86%) Android
8 43 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 42 (0.80%) Mac OS
10 25 (0.48%) VMS
11 16 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
12 13 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.23%) 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%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.057%) Oracle Linux
17 3 (0.057%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,578 (30.05%) Agile
2 922 (17.56%) CI/CD
3 811 (15.44%) DevOps
4 695 (13.24%) Continuous Improvement
5 694 (13.22%) Stakeholder Management
6 553 (10.53%) Analytics
7 529 (10.07%) Migration
8 472 (8.99%) Project Management
9 466 (8.87%) Decision-Making
10 443 (8.44%) Scrum
11 424 (8.07%) Test Automation
12 415 (7.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 393 (7.48%) Computer Science
14 388 (7.39%) AI
15 374 (7.12%) Mentoring
16 373 (7.10%) Business Intelligence
17 351 (6.68%) Data Modelling
18 349 (6.65%) Microservices
19 347 (6.61%) Containerisation
20 344 (6.55%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 1,038 (19.77%) Python
2 887 (16.89%) SQL
3 561 (10.68%) Java
4 312 (5.94%) JavaScript
5 287 (5.47%) PowerShell
6 214 (4.08%) C#
7 173 (3.29%) TypeScript
8 160 (3.05%) Bash
9 110 (2.09%) Shell Script
10 88 (1.68%) Go
11 72 (1.37%) PL/SQL
12 66 (1.26%) C++
13 49 (0.93%) VBA
14 45 (0.86%) Scala
15 42 (0.80%) R
16 39 (0.74%) Apex Code
17 36 (0.69%) Perl
18 35 (0.67%) PHP
19 33 (0.63%) T-SQL
20 28 (0.53%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 893 (17.01%) Security Cleared
2 761 (14.49%) Degree
3 657 (12.51%) SC Cleared
4 271 (5.16%) Computer Science Degree
5 126 (2.40%) DV Cleared
6 106 (2.02%) CISSP
7 104 (1.98%) Master's Degree
8 103 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
9 101 (1.92%) Microsoft Certification
10 100 (1.90%) PMI Certification
11 91 (1.73%) PMP
12 87 (1.66%) Azure Certification
13 80 (1.52%) AWS Certification
14 73 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
15 51 (0.97%) CISM
16 47 (0.90%) CCNP
17 41 (0.78%) A+ Certification
18 37 (0.70%) ACCA
19 36 (0.69%) MCP
20 31 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 393 (7.48%) QA
2 285 (5.43%) Data Quality
3 188 (3.58%) GDPR
4 114 (2.17%) Accessibility
5 93 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 93 (1.77%) NIST
6 72 (1.37%) SLA
7 71 (1.35%) PMO
8 43 (0.82%) PCI DSS
9 32 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 27 (0.51%) GRC
11 25 (0.48%) PSD2
12 20 (0.38%) WCAG
13 19 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
13 19 (0.36%) HIPAA
14 16 (0.30%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.29%) SEPA
16 13 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
17 11 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 466 (8.87%) Docker
2 304 (5.79%) Active Directory
3 112 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.65%) Hyper-V
5 33 (0.63%) vSphere
6 30 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
7 23 (0.44%) VMware NSX
8 20 (0.38%) Firmware
9 19 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
10 17 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
11 12 (0.23%) HDFS
12 9 (0.17%) RACF
12 9 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
13 8 (0.15%) Time Sharing Option
14 6 (0.11%) ACF2
15 5 (0.095%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.076%) KVM
17 3 (0.057%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.057%) Embedded Firmware
17 3 (0.057%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 490 (9.33%) Kubernetes
2 299 (5.69%) Terraform
3 188 (3.58%) Ansible
4 123 (2.34%) Grafana
5 94 (1.79%) Prometheus
6 91 (1.73%) SCCM
7 74 (1.41%) Microsoft Intune
8 42 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (0.59%) Puppet
10 27 (0.51%) Argo
11 20 (0.38%) Kibana
11 20 (0.38%) Nessus
12 19 (0.36%) SCOM
13 18 (0.34%) Data Guard
14 16 (0.30%) HP ALM
15 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 15 (0.29%) vCenter Server
15 15 (0.29%) vRealize
16 14 (0.27%) Packer
17 13 (0.25%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,056 (20.11%) Microsoft
2 388 (7.39%) Oracle
3 325 (6.19%) SAP
4 266 (5.07%) ServiceNow
5 198 (3.77%) Google
6 179 (3.41%) VMware
7 148 (2.82%) Splunk
8 146 (2.78%) Salesforce
9 123 (2.34%) Cisco
10 103 (1.96%) Databricks
11 69 (1.31%) IBM
12 67 (1.28%) Workday
13 65 (1.24%) Red Hat
14 56 (1.07%) Citrix
15 52 (0.99%) CyberArk
16 44 (0.84%) Talend
17 41 (0.78%) Palo Alto
18 39 (0.74%) HP
18 39 (0.74%) Sybase
19 38 (0.72%) Juniper