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

6 months to
6 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 7 12
Rank change year-on-year 0 +5 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,327 4,871 4,666
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 14.61% 13.54% 10.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.43% 15.48% 11.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,276 2,841 2,955
10th Percentile £261 £263 £240
25th Percentile £385 £397 £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 £463 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -2.63% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 317 187 248
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.19 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £20.26 £21.46 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.62% -38.69% +30.28%
75th Percentile £35.96 £37.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £66.85 £64.05 £86.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.46 £17.12 £29.83
% change year-on-year +7.83% -42.60% +32.56%

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 32,432 31,463 40,054
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.97% 87.43% 88.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,408 19,089 26,807
10th Percentile £300 £309 £312
25th Percentile £405 £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 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,095 1,098 1,556
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.24 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.20 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.75 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.21% -22.94% +21.43%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £74.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -30.37% -23.53% +30.77%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 4,583 £480 -4.00% 7,158
UK excluding London 0 2,653 £463 -2.63% 6,937
London +1 2,133 £500 -5.97% 1,115
Work from Home +3 1,507 £483 -2.57% 6,242
North of England -3 691 £458 -3.68% 1,621
South East 0 635 £475 -5.00% 1,973
Midlands 0 507 £450 +3.45% 1,185
North West -1 384 £450 -2.70% 811
West Midlands 0 362 £490 +8.89% 648
South West 0 281 £488 +2.63% 748
Scotland +3 262 £450 +2.86% 315
Yorkshire -6 262 £480 -1.03% 668
East of England -2 208 £500 +11.11% 952
East Midlands -2 145 £402 +0.50% 485
Wales +4 79 £410 +2.50% 170
North East -2 52 £450 -5.26% 160
Northern Ireland 0 39 £475 +2.70% 118
Channel Islands -4 2 - - 1

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 (3.51%) Confluence
2 170 (3.19%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.05%) Microsoft Exchange
4 72 (1.35%) Apache Spark
5 61 (1.15%) Apache
6 60 (1.13%) SAS
7 49 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
8 41 (0.77%) CMS
9 31 (0.58%) Skype for Business
10 27 (0.51%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.28%) JBoss
11 15 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 12 (0.23%) Anypoint
13 11 (0.21%) IIS
13 11 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
14 10 (0.19%) Oracle Service Bus
15 8 (0.15%) HCL Notes
15 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
16 7 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 347 (6.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 234 (4.39%) Microsoft Office
3 139 (2.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 78 (1.46%) MS Visio
5 61 (1.15%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.26%) Chatbot
6 14 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.23%) Trello
8 10 (0.19%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.15%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
11 6 (0.11%) ProjectWise
12 5 (0.094%) Simulink
13 4 (0.075%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.075%) Notion
14 3 (0.056%) Adobe Illustrator
14 3 (0.056%) AutoCAD
14 3 (0.056%) Revit
15 2 (0.038%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 116 (2.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
3 26 (0.49%) 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
6 17 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
7 16 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
8 15 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
8 15 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
9 14 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
9 14 (0.26%) SAP ERP
9 14 (0.26%) SAP HR
10 13 (0.24%) NetSuite
10 13 (0.24%) Oracle Financials
10 13 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
10 13 (0.24%) SAP WM
11 12 (0.23%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,031 (19.35%) Azure
2 825 (15.49%) AWS
3 371 (6.96%) GCP
4 343 (6.44%) Power Platform
5 316 (5.93%) Microsoft 365
6 239 (4.49%) GitHub
7 207 (3.89%) Azure DevOps
8 173 (3.25%) Serverless
9 128 (2.40%) Entra ID
10 122 (2.29%) SaaS
11 111 (2.08%) GitHub Actions
12 98 (1.84%) Amazon S3
13 92 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
14 84 (1.58%) Dynamics 365
15 82 (1.54%) Snowflake
16 80 (1.50%) Power Automate
17 79 (1.48%) PowerApps
18 70 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
19 66 (1.24%) OpenShift
20 63 (1.18%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 198 (3.72%) Firewall
2 154 (2.89%) DNS
3 119 (2.23%) Network Security
3 119 (2.23%) VPN
4 108 (2.03%) TCP/IP
5 80 (1.50%) DHCP
6 73 (1.37%) WAN
7 71 (1.33%) LAN
8 46 (0.86%) VLAN
9 42 (0.79%) BGP
10 41 (0.77%) Wireless
11 37 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
12 30 (0.56%) HTTP
13 29 (0.54%) Skype
14 28 (0.53%) OSPF
14 28 (0.53%) SSL
15 27 (0.51%) VoIP
16 25 (0.47%) MPLS
16 25 (0.47%) SSH
16 25 (0.47%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (4.94%) Power BI
2 188 (3.53%) Relational Database
3 185 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
4 166 (3.12%) SQL Server
5 151 (2.83%) Data Warehouse
6 118 (2.22%) NoSQL
7 109 (2.05%) MongoDB
8 94 (1.76%) Oracle Database
9 92 (1.73%) MySQL
9 92 (1.73%) Tableau
10 72 (1.35%) Metadata
11 63 (1.18%) Big Data
12 54 (1.01%) DB2
13 52 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
14 47 (0.88%) DynamoDB
15 44 (0.83%) Data Lake
16 42 (0.79%) Hadoop
17 38 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
17 38 (0.71%) RDBMS
18 37 (0.69%) Redis
Development Applications
1 487 (9.14%) JIRA
2 400 (7.51%) Git
3 273 (5.12%) Jenkins
4 164 (3.08%) GitLab
5 98 (1.84%) JUnit
6 82 (1.54%) Selenium
7 52 (0.98%) Postman
8 43 (0.81%) Cucumber
9 36 (0.68%) Maven
10 29 (0.54%) Bitbucket
11 27 (0.51%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.39%) JMeter
13 20 (0.38%) Mockito
13 20 (0.38%) SoapUI
13 20 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
14 18 (0.34%) Cypress.io
14 18 (0.34%) Gradle
15 16 (0.30%) REST Assured
15 16 (0.30%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.28%) CircleCI
General
1 2,994 (56.20%) Social Skills
2 1,952 (36.64%) Analytical Skills
3 1,269 (23.82%) Finance
4 487 (9.14%) Public Sector
5 451 (8.47%) Banking
6 183 (3.44%) Organisational Skills
7 149 (2.80%) Legal
8 146 (2.74%) Telecoms
9 141 (2.65%) Influencing Skills
10 136 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
11 135 (2.53%) Marketing
12 133 (2.50%) Manufacturing
13 131 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 118 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
15 117 (2.20%) Investment Banking
16 113 (2.12%) Front Office
17 107 (2.01%) Retail
18 53 (0.99%) Financial Institution
19 52 (0.98%) Military
20 46 (0.86%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 849 (15.94%) Developer
2 772 (14.49%) Analyst
3 465 (8.73%) Senior
4 328 (6.16%) Consultant
5 327 (6.14%) Architect
6 295 (5.54%) Lead
7 270 (5.07%) Business Analyst
8 204 (3.83%) Project Manager
9 179 (3.36%) Support Engineer
10 177 (3.32%) Java Developer
11 146 (2.74%) Data Engineer
12 135 (2.53%) Senior Developer
13 130 (2.44%) IT Support
14 113 (2.12%) Data Analyst
15 105 (1.97%) Support Analyst
16 97 (1.82%) Software Engineer
17 86 (1.61%) Python Developer
17 86 (1.61%) Solutions Architect
18 83 (1.56%) Administrator
19 77 (1.45%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 339 (6.36%) REST
2 220 (4.13%) RESTful
3 205 (3.85%) Kafka
4 193 (3.62%) Spring
5 188 (3.53%) .NET
6 171 (3.21%) SOAP
7 164 (3.08%) React
8 150 (2.82%) Node.js
9 143 (2.68%) HTML
10 130 (2.44%) Spring Boot
11 128 (2.40%) AngularJS
12 120 (2.25%) CSS
13 112 (2.10%) JSON
14 97 (1.82%) XML
15 88 (1.65%) OAuth
16 78 (1.46%) Middleware
17 71 (1.33%) Web Services
18 69 (1.30%) Oracle Fusion
19 67 (1.26%) GraphQL
20 56 (1.05%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 250 (4.69%) Product Ownership
2 218 (4.09%) Cloud Native
3 196 (3.68%) Management Information System
4 170 (3.19%) Onboarding
5 141 (2.65%) Analytical Mindset
6 139 (2.61%) Data Structures
7 126 (2.37%) Self-Motivation
8 100 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
9 95 (1.78%) Data Centre
10 94 (1.76%) Virtual Team
11 91 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
11 91 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
12 88 (1.65%) Algorithms
13 74 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
14 72 (1.35%) CMDB
15 68 (1.28%) Mobile App
16 66 (1.24%) Security Posture
17 64 (1.20%) Equities
18 59 (1.11%) NHS
19 57 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 504 (9.46%) Windows
2 395 (7.42%) Linux
3 128 (2.40%) Unix
4 104 (1.95%) Windows 10
4 104 (1.95%) Windows Server
5 61 (1.15%) Apple iOS
6 46 (0.86%) Android
7 44 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 42 (0.79%) Mac OS
9 26 (0.49%) VMS
10 16 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
11 13 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
12 12 (0.23%) CentOS
13 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
13 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.11%) zOS
15 5 (0.094%) Ubuntu
15 5 (0.094%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.075%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.056%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,600 (30.04%) Agile
2 931 (17.48%) CI/CD
3 826 (15.51%) DevOps
4 710 (13.33%) Stakeholder Management
5 705 (13.23%) Continuous Improvement
6 556 (10.44%) Analytics
7 536 (10.06%) Migration
8 479 (8.99%) Project Management
9 473 (8.88%) Decision-Making
10 438 (8.22%) Scrum
11 425 (7.98%) Test Automation
12 422 (7.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 404 (7.58%) AI
14 391 (7.34%) Computer Science
15 380 (7.13%) Mentoring
16 377 (7.08%) Business Intelligence
17 359 (6.74%) Microservices
18 357 (6.70%) Data Modelling
19 348 (6.53%) Containerisation
20 347 (6.51%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 1,040 (19.52%) Python
2 889 (16.69%) SQL
3 565 (10.61%) Java
4 316 (5.93%) JavaScript
5 279 (5.24%) PowerShell
6 216 (4.05%) C#
7 180 (3.38%) TypeScript
8 160 (3.00%) Bash
9 112 (2.10%) Shell Script
10 91 (1.71%) Go
11 75 (1.41%) PL/SQL
12 66 (1.24%) C++
13 50 (0.94%) VBA
14 45 (0.84%) Scala
15 44 (0.83%) R
16 40 (0.75%) Apex Code
17 36 (0.68%) Perl
17 36 (0.68%) PHP
18 34 (0.64%) T-SQL
19 31 (0.58%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 912 (17.12%) Security Cleared
2 774 (14.53%) Degree
3 669 (12.56%) SC Cleared
4 268 (5.03%) Computer Science Degree
5 132 (2.48%) DV Cleared
6 110 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
7 108 (2.03%) CISSP
8 104 (1.95%) Master's Degree
9 100 (1.88%) Microsoft Certification
9 100 (1.88%) PMI Certification
10 88 (1.65%) Azure Certification
11 87 (1.63%) PMP
12 78 (1.46%) AWS Certification
13 75 (1.41%) Cisco Certification
14 52 (0.98%) CISM
15 48 (0.90%) CCNP
16 41 (0.77%) A+ Certification
17 35 (0.66%) MCP
18 34 (0.64%) ACCA
19 31 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 393 (7.38%) QA
2 293 (5.50%) Data Quality
3 192 (3.60%) GDPR
4 114 (2.14%) Accessibility
5 93 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 93 (1.75%) NIST
6 72 (1.35%) PMO
7 71 (1.33%) SLA
8 44 (0.83%) PCI DSS
9 33 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 27 (0.51%) GRC
11 25 (0.47%) PSD2
12 20 (0.38%) HIPAA
13 19 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
13 19 (0.36%) WCAG
14 16 (0.30%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.28%) SEPA
16 14 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
17 11 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 476 (8.94%) Docker
2 305 (5.73%) Active Directory
3 112 (2.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.71%) Hyper-V
5 33 (0.62%) vSphere
6 26 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
7 24 (0.45%) VMware NSX
8 20 (0.38%) Firmware
9 18 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
9 18 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
10 12 (0.23%) HDFS
11 10 (0.19%) RACF
12 8 (0.15%) Time Sharing Option
12 8 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
13 6 (0.11%) ACF2
14 5 (0.094%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.075%) KVM
15 4 (0.075%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.056%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.056%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 499 (9.37%) Kubernetes
2 306 (5.74%) Terraform
3 194 (3.64%) Ansible
4 124 (2.33%) Grafana
5 95 (1.78%) Prometheus
6 86 (1.61%) SCCM
7 77 (1.45%) Microsoft Intune
8 38 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
9 35 (0.66%) Puppet
10 27 (0.51%) Argo
11 22 (0.41%) Kibana
12 20 (0.38%) Nessus
13 19 (0.36%) Data Guard
13 19 (0.36%) SCOM
14 16 (0.30%) HP ALM
14 16 (0.30%) vCenter Server
14 16 (0.30%) vRealize
15 15 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 13 (0.24%) CSIRT
17 12 (0.23%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,073 (20.14%) Microsoft
2 399 (7.49%) Oracle
3 323 (6.06%) SAP
4 273 (5.12%) ServiceNow
5 192 (3.60%) Google
6 182 (3.42%) VMware
7 148 (2.78%) Splunk
8 147 (2.76%) Salesforce
9 124 (2.33%) Cisco
10 101 (1.90%) Databricks
11 64 (1.20%) IBM
12 63 (1.18%) Red Hat
12 63 (1.18%) Workday
13 53 (0.99%) Citrix
13 53 (0.99%) CyberArk
14 44 (0.83%) Talend
15 41 (0.77%) HP
15 41 (0.77%) Palo Alto
16 38 (0.71%) Adobe
16 38 (0.71%) Juniper