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

6 months to
23 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 5,298 4,808 4,790
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 14.83% 13.01% 10.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.57% 15.03% 11.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,214 2,780 3,053
10th Percentile £250 £264 £244
25th Percentile £380 £397 £398
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £623
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 335 203 245
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.00 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.71 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £20.26 £21.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.55% -53.33% +69.05%
75th Percentile £35.00 £36.19 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.78 £61.28 £86.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.82 £17.00 £32.32
% change year-on-year +10.71% -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 31,979 31,998 41,164
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.50% 86.61% 88.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,013 19,257 27,677
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £532
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.22% -3.36%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £743 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,115 1,171 1,588
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.12 £19.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £43.85
Median % change year-on-year -26.03% -22.46% +25.29%
75th Percentile £45.46 £64.50 £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 23 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 23 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 23 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 4,555 £478 -4.50% 3,564
UK excluding London 0 2,633 £450 -5.26% 3,156
London +3 2,128 £500 -6.19% 974
Work from Home +4 1,472 £492 +0.41% 1,486
North of England -3 665 £454 -4.37% 642
South East +3 628 £463 -7.50% 1,143
Midlands 0 521 £449 +3.40% 502
West Midlands +1 373 £478 +6.28% 329
North West 0 369 £450 -2.44% 374
South West +1 270 £475 - 368
Scotland +4 269 £450 +2.86% 160
Yorkshire -6 257 £480 -4.00% 188
East of England -2 215 £500 +11.11% 286
East Midlands -3 148 £400 - 163
Wales +4 75 £413 +3.13% 96
North East -4 44 £450 -3.12% 83
Northern Ireland +1 39 £475 - 48
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
1 191 (3.61%) Confluence
2 167 (3.15%) SharePoint
3 110 (2.08%) Microsoft Exchange
4 72 (1.36%) Apache Spark
5 61 (1.15%) Apache
6 58 (1.09%) SAS
7 49 (0.92%) 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 (6.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (4.19%) Microsoft Office
3 143 (2.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (1.55%) MS Visio
5 54 (1.02%) 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 7 (0.13%) Simulink
12 6 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
12 6 (0.11%) ProjectWise
13 5 (0.094%) Revit
14 4 (0.076%) AutoCAD
14 4 (0.076%) Autodesk Inventor
14 4 (0.076%) Notion
15 3 (0.057%) Adobe Illustrator
15 3 (0.057%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 124 (2.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (0.89%) 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%) Payment Gateway
9 15 (0.28%) SAP ERP
10 13 (0.25%) Oracle Cash Management
10 13 (0.25%) SAP WM
11 12 (0.23%) NetSuite
11 12 (0.23%) Oracle Financials
11 12 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
12 11 (0.21%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,024 (19.33%) Azure
2 814 (15.36%) AWS
3 372 (7.02%) GCP
4 344 (6.49%) Power Platform
5 307 (5.79%) Microsoft 365
6 234 (4.42%) GitHub
7 204 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
8 169 (3.19%) Serverless
9 127 (2.40%) SaaS
10 125 (2.36%) Entra ID
11 103 (1.94%) GitHub Actions
12 99 (1.87%) Amazon S3
13 91 (1.72%) Dynamics 365
14 90 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
15 83 (1.57%) PowerApps
16 80 (1.51%) Power Automate
17 79 (1.49%) Snowflake
18 68 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
19 62 (1.17%) OpenShift
20 61 (1.15%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 197 (3.72%) Firewall
2 148 (2.79%) DNS
3 119 (2.25%) Network Security
4 113 (2.13%) VPN
5 109 (2.06%) TCP/IP
6 74 (1.40%) DHCP
7 69 (1.30%) WAN
8 68 (1.28%) LAN
9 47 (0.89%) VLAN
10 43 (0.81%) Wireless
11 39 (0.74%) BGP
12 35 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
13 31 (0.59%) HTTP
13 31 (0.59%) SSL
14 29 (0.55%) Skype
14 29 (0.55%) 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
2 196 (3.70%) Relational Database
3 186 (3.51%) PostgreSQL
4 174 (3.28%) SQL Server
5 149 (2.81%) Data Warehouse
6 129 (2.43%) NoSQL
7 116 (2.19%) MongoDB
8 93 (1.76%) Oracle Database
9 91 (1.72%) Tableau
10 89 (1.68%) MySQL
11 67 (1.26%) Metadata
12 60 (1.13%) DB2
13 54 (1.02%) Big Data
14 52 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
15 49 (0.92%) DynamoDB
16 43 (0.81%) Data Lake
16 43 (0.81%) Hadoop
17 42 (0.79%) Redis
18 41 (0.77%) BigQuery
19 38 (0.72%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 478 (9.02%) JIRA
2 402 (7.59%) Git
3 265 (5.00%) Jenkins
4 153 (2.89%) GitLab
5 102 (1.93%) JUnit
6 81 (1.53%) Selenium
7 52 (0.98%) Postman
8 40 (0.76%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.72%) Maven
10 34 (0.64%) Bitbucket
11 29 (0.55%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.40%) Gradle
12 21 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
13 20 (0.38%) Cypress.io
13 20 (0.38%) Mockito
13 20 (0.38%) SoapUI
14 18 (0.34%) JMeter
15 17 (0.32%) REST Assured
16 15 (0.28%) Eclipse
17 14 (0.26%) SpecFlow
General
1 3,033 (57.25%) Social Skills
2 1,975 (37.28%) Analytical Skills
3 1,261 (23.80%) Finance
4 461 (8.70%) Banking
4 461 (8.70%) Public Sector
5 181 (3.42%) Organisational Skills
6 148 (2.79%) Legal
7 147 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
8 146 (2.76%) Telecoms
9 145 (2.74%) Marketing
10 138 (2.60%) Manufacturing
11 131 (2.47%) Influencing Skills
12 130 (2.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 123 (2.32%) Investment Banking
14 118 (2.23%) Front Office
15 116 (2.19%) Presentation Skills
16 111 (2.10%) Retail
17 55 (1.04%) Financial Institution
18 51 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
19 49 (0.92%) Military
Job Titles
1 833 (15.72%) Developer
2 799 (15.08%) Analyst
3 440 (8.31%) Senior
4 332 (6.27%) Architect
5 328 (6.19%) Consultant
6 302 (5.70%) Lead
7 270 (5.10%) Business Analyst
8 190 (3.59%) Project Manager
9 187 (3.53%) Support Engineer
10 179 (3.38%) Java Developer
11 143 (2.70%) Data Engineer
12 137 (2.59%) Senior Developer
13 132 (2.49%) IT Support
14 117 (2.21%) Data Analyst
15 112 (2.11%) Support Analyst
16 102 (1.93%) Software Engineer
17 86 (1.62%) Python Developer
18 84 (1.59%) Solutions Architect
19 82 (1.55%) DevOps Engineer
20 80 (1.51%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (6.19%) REST
2 222 (4.19%) RESTful
3 207 (3.91%) Kafka
4 199 (3.76%) .NET
5 187 (3.53%) Spring
6 167 (3.15%) React
7 164 (3.10%) SOAP
8 155 (2.93%) HTML
9 139 (2.62%) Node.js
10 134 (2.53%) CSS
11 121 (2.28%) AngularJS
12 118 (2.23%) Spring Boot
13 107 (2.02%) JSON
14 93 (1.76%) XML
15 85 (1.60%) OAuth
16 82 (1.55%) Web Services
17 77 (1.45%) Middleware
18 68 (1.28%) GraphQL
19 59 (1.11%) Oracle Fusion
20 56 (1.06%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 241 (4.55%) Product Ownership
2 208 (3.93%) Cloud Native
3 196 (3.70%) Management Information System
4 169 (3.19%) Onboarding
5 141 (2.66%) Data Structures
6 136 (2.57%) Analytical Mindset
7 122 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
8 100 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
8 100 (1.89%) Virtual Team
9 99 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
10 94 (1.77%) Algorithms
11 92 (1.74%) Data Centre
12 86 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
13 73 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
14 68 (1.28%) Security Posture
15 65 (1.23%) Equities
16 63 (1.19%) Mobile App
17 62 (1.17%) CMDB
18 57 (1.08%) NHS
19 56 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 516 (9.74%) Windows
2 396 (7.47%) Linux
3 129 (2.43%) Unix
4 104 (1.96%) Windows 10
5 100 (1.89%) Windows Server
6 65 (1.23%) Apple iOS
7 48 (0.91%) Android
8 44 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 42 (0.79%) Mac OS
10 24 (0.45%) VMS
11 16 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
12 15 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.25%) CentOS
14 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
15 5 (0.094%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.094%) zOS
16 4 (0.076%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.076%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.057%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,582 (29.86%) Agile
2 918 (17.33%) CI/CD
3 822 (15.52%) DevOps
4 696 (13.14%) Continuous Improvement
5 687 (12.97%) Stakeholder Management
6 553 (10.44%) Analytics
7 525 (9.91%) Migration
8 474 (8.95%) Project Management
9 465 (8.78%) Decision-Making
10 440 (8.31%) Scrum
11 425 (8.02%) Test Automation
12 411 (7.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 396 (7.47%) Computer Science
14 385 (7.27%) AI
15 384 (7.25%) Business Intelligence
16 370 (6.98%) Mentoring
17 351 (6.63%) Data Modelling
18 349 (6.59%) ITIL
19 341 (6.44%) Microservices
20 340 (6.42%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,040 (19.63%) Python
2 896 (16.91%) SQL
3 566 (10.68%) Java
4 329 (6.21%) JavaScript
5 293 (5.53%) PowerShell
6 228 (4.30%) C#
7 174 (3.28%) TypeScript
8 163 (3.08%) Bash
9 114 (2.15%) Shell Script
10 89 (1.68%) Go
11 71 (1.34%) PL/SQL
12 68 (1.28%) C++
13 53 (1.00%) VBA
14 46 (0.87%) Scala
15 40 (0.76%) Apex Code
15 40 (0.76%) R
16 37 (0.70%) Perl
17 36 (0.68%) PHP
18 31 (0.59%) T-SQL
19 30 (0.57%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 877 (16.55%) Security Cleared
2 759 (14.33%) Degree
3 647 (12.21%) SC Cleared
4 273 (5.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 120 (2.27%) DV Cleared
6 108 (2.04%) CISSP
7 103 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
7 103 (1.94%) Microsoft Certification
8 101 (1.91%) Master's Degree
8 101 (1.91%) PMI Certification
9 93 (1.76%) PMP
10 87 (1.64%) Azure Certification
11 84 (1.59%) AWS Certification
12 73 (1.38%) Cisco Certification
13 49 (0.92%) CISM
14 47 (0.89%) CCNP
15 41 (0.77%) A+ Certification
16 36 (0.68%) MCP
17 35 (0.66%) ACCA
17 35 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 387 (7.30%) QA
2 283 (5.34%) Data Quality
3 193 (3.64%) GDPR
4 115 (2.17%) Accessibility
5 89 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 89 (1.68%) NIST
6 78 (1.47%) SLA
7 71 (1.34%) PMO
8 42 (0.79%) PCI DSS
9 33 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 24 (0.45%) GRC
10 24 (0.45%) PSD2
11 21 (0.40%) HIPAA
11 21 (0.40%) WCAG
12 19 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
13 15 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.28%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.28%) SEPA
14 10 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 456 (8.61%) Docker
2 305 (5.76%) Active Directory
3 112 (2.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.66%) Hyper-V
4 35 (0.66%) 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
10 11 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
11 9 (0.17%) RACF
12 8 (0.15%) Time Sharing Option
13 6 (0.11%) ACF2
14 5 (0.094%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.076%) KVM
16 3 (0.057%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.057%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 2 (0.038%) OpenDJ
Systems Management
1 487 (9.19%) Kubernetes
2 296 (5.59%) Terraform
3 191 (3.61%) Ansible
4 120 (2.27%) Grafana
5 94 (1.77%) Prometheus
6 86 (1.62%) SCCM
7 80 (1.51%) 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%) Packer
15 14 (0.26%) HP ALM
15 14 (0.26%) vCenter Server
15 14 (0.26%) vRealize
16 13 (0.25%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,076 (20.31%) Microsoft
2 390 (7.36%) Oracle
3 341 (6.44%) SAP
4 267 (5.04%) ServiceNow
5 198 (3.74%) Google
6 181 (3.42%) VMware
7 151 (2.85%) Salesforce
8 146 (2.76%) Splunk
9 128 (2.42%) Cisco
10 93 (1.76%) Databricks
11 69 (1.30%) IBM
11 69 (1.30%) Workday
12 66 (1.25%) Red Hat
13 57 (1.08%) Citrix
14 54 (1.02%) CyberArk
15 43 (0.81%) Palo Alto
15 43 (0.81%) Talend
16 41 (0.77%) Sybase
17 38 (0.72%) Juniper
18 37 (0.70%) F5