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

6 months to
22 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 5,343 4,763 4,814
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 14.87% 12.96% 10.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.60% 14.99% 11.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,242 2,750 3,066
10th Percentile £254 £264 £248
25th Percentile £381 £395 £395
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 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -4.26% -1.05% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 338 203 245
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.00 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.63 £15.62 £16.25
Median hourly rate £20.15 £20.00 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year +0.74% -56.41% +77.76%
75th Percentile £35.00 £32.29 £65.11
90th Percentile £69.61 £59.56 £86.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.80 £17.00 £32.32
% change year-on-year +10.56% -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 32,181 31,778 41,284
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.57% 86.49% 88.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,153 19,119 27,753
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £740 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,131 1,159 1,593
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.12 £19.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.93 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year -25.88% -22.89% +25.71%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £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 -29.71% -26.97% +44.76%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 4,597 £480 -4.00% 5,911
UK excluding London 0 2,662 £450 -4.26% 4,035
London +3 2,141 £500 -5.66% 2,397
Work from Home +4 1,482 £492 +0.92% 2,990
North of England -3 670 £455 -4.32% 944
South East +3 635 £463 -7.50% 1,323
Midlands 0 527 £450 +5.08% 651
West Midlands +1 375 £482 +7.00% 425
North West -1 370 £450 -1.64% 576
South West 0 274 £475 - 453
Scotland +4 270 £450 +2.86% 203
Yorkshire -5 261 £486 +0.21% 266
East of England -2 222 £500 +11.11% 373
East Midlands -2 152 £400 +1.14% 215
Wales +4 75 £413 +3.13% 107
North East -3 44 £450 -0.44% 105
Northern Ireland +1 39 £475 - 78
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
1 193 (3.61%) Confluence
2 168 (3.14%) SharePoint
3 112 (2.10%) Microsoft Exchange
4 72 (1.35%) Apache Spark
5 62 (1.16%) Apache
6 58 (1.09%) SAS
7 49 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
8 44 (0.82%) CMS
9 31 (0.58%) Skype for Business
10 27 (0.51%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.30%) JBoss
12 15 (0.28%) IIS
13 14 (0.26%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 13 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
15 11 (0.21%) Anypoint
16 10 (0.19%) Oracle Service Bus
17 9 (0.17%) WebSphere
18 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
19 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
19 7 (0.13%) OpenStack
Applications
1 359 (6.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (4.17%) Microsoft Office
3 143 (2.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (1.53%) MS Visio
5 54 (1.01%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.26%) Chatbot
6 14 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.22%) 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%) AutoCAD
13 5 (0.094%) Revit
14 4 (0.075%) Autodesk Inventor
14 4 (0.075%) Notion
15 3 (0.056%) Adobe Illustrator
15 3 (0.056%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 124 (2.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
3 25 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
4 21 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
5 19 (0.36%) SAP EWM
6 18 (0.34%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
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%) SAP ERP
10 13 (0.24%) Oracle Cash Management
10 13 (0.24%) SAP WM
11 12 (0.22%) NetSuite
11 12 (0.22%) Oracle Financials
11 12 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
12 11 (0.21%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,034 (19.35%) Azure
2 828 (15.50%) AWS
3 374 (7.00%) GCP
4 348 (6.51%) Power Platform
5 311 (5.82%) Microsoft 365
6 234 (4.38%) GitHub
7 206 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
8 178 (3.33%) Serverless
9 128 (2.40%) SaaS
10 125 (2.34%) Entra ID
11 107 (2.00%) Amazon S3
12 103 (1.93%) GitHub Actions
13 98 (1.83%) AWS Lambda
14 93 (1.74%) Dynamics 365
15 84 (1.57%) PowerApps
16 81 (1.52%) Power Automate
17 79 (1.48%) Snowflake
18 69 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
19 64 (1.20%) Cloud Computing
20 62 (1.16%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 198 (3.71%) Firewall
2 149 (2.79%) DNS
3 119 (2.23%) Network Security
4 113 (2.11%) VPN
5 109 (2.04%) TCP/IP
6 74 (1.38%) DHCP
7 69 (1.29%) WAN
8 68 (1.27%) LAN
9 47 (0.88%) VLAN
10 43 (0.80%) Wireless
11 39 (0.73%) BGP
12 35 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
13 31 (0.58%) HTTP
13 31 (0.58%) SSL
14 29 (0.54%) Skype
14 29 (0.54%) VoIP
15 26 (0.49%) OSPF
15 26 (0.49%) Wireshark
16 25 (0.47%) SSH
17 22 (0.41%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (4.92%) Power BI
2 200 (3.74%) Relational Database
3 187 (3.50%) PostgreSQL
4 180 (3.37%) SQL Server
5 152 (2.84%) Data Warehouse
6 133 (2.49%) NoSQL
7 117 (2.19%) MongoDB
8 93 (1.74%) Oracle Database
9 91 (1.70%) Tableau
10 89 (1.67%) MySQL
11 69 (1.29%) Metadata
12 60 (1.12%) DB2
13 55 (1.03%) DynamoDB
14 54 (1.01%) Big Data
15 52 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
16 43 (0.80%) Data Lake
16 43 (0.80%) Hadoop
16 43 (0.80%) Redis
17 41 (0.77%) BigQuery
18 40 (0.75%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 481 (9.00%) JIRA
2 402 (7.52%) Git
3 267 (5.00%) Jenkins
4 153 (2.86%) GitLab
5 102 (1.91%) JUnit
6 81 (1.52%) Selenium
7 52 (0.97%) Postman
8 40 (0.75%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.71%) Maven
10 35 (0.66%) Bitbucket
11 29 (0.54%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.39%) Gradle
12 21 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
13 20 (0.37%) Cypress.io
13 20 (0.37%) Mockito
13 20 (0.37%) SoapUI
14 18 (0.34%) JMeter
15 17 (0.32%) REST Assured
16 15 (0.28%) Eclipse
16 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
General
1 3,068 (57.42%) Social Skills
2 1,993 (37.30%) Analytical Skills
3 1,268 (23.73%) Finance
4 467 (8.74%) Banking
4 467 (8.74%) Public Sector
5 182 (3.41%) Organisational Skills
6 149 (2.79%) Legal
7 147 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
8 146 (2.73%) Marketing
8 146 (2.73%) Telecoms
9 138 (2.58%) Manufacturing
10 132 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 131 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
12 125 (2.34%) Investment Banking
13 122 (2.28%) Presentation Skills
14 119 (2.23%) Front Office
15 111 (2.08%) Retail
16 55 (1.03%) Financial Institution
17 52 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
18 49 (0.92%) Military
Job Titles
1 841 (15.74%) Developer
2 806 (15.09%) Analyst
3 448 (8.38%) Senior
4 340 (6.36%) Architect
5 328 (6.14%) Consultant
6 306 (5.73%) Lead
7 273 (5.11%) Business Analyst
8 191 (3.57%) Support Engineer
9 190 (3.56%) Project Manager
10 180 (3.37%) Java Developer
11 146 (2.73%) Data Engineer
12 140 (2.62%) Senior Developer
13 131 (2.45%) IT Support
14 117 (2.19%) Data Analyst
15 113 (2.11%) Support Analyst
16 102 (1.91%) Software Engineer
17 87 (1.63%) Python Developer
18 84 (1.57%) Solutions Architect
19 82 (1.53%) Administrator
19 82 (1.53%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (6.21%) REST
2 225 (4.21%) RESTful
3 210 (3.93%) Kafka
4 206 (3.86%) .NET
5 188 (3.52%) Spring
6 168 (3.14%) React
7 165 (3.09%) SOAP
8 156 (2.92%) HTML
9 139 (2.60%) Node.js
10 134 (2.51%) CSS
11 124 (2.32%) AngularJS
12 118 (2.21%) Spring Boot
13 108 (2.02%) JSON
14 94 (1.76%) XML
15 86 (1.61%) OAuth
16 82 (1.53%) Web Services
17 78 (1.46%) Middleware
18 69 (1.29%) GraphQL
19 59 (1.10%) Oracle Fusion
20 56 (1.05%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 245 (4.59%) Product Ownership
2 210 (3.93%) Cloud Native
3 197 (3.69%) Management Information System
4 171 (3.20%) Onboarding
5 141 (2.64%) Data Structures
6 136 (2.55%) Analytical Mindset
7 123 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
8 100 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
8 100 (1.87%) Virtual Team
9 99 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
10 96 (1.80%) Algorithms
11 92 (1.72%) Data Centre
12 86 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
13 73 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
14 68 (1.27%) Security Posture
15 66 (1.24%) Equities
16 63 (1.18%) Mobile App
17 62 (1.16%) CMDB
18 57 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 57 (1.07%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 522 (9.77%) Windows
2 400 (7.49%) Linux
3 129 (2.41%) Unix
4 105 (1.97%) Windows 10
5 100 (1.87%) Windows Server
6 64 (1.20%) Apple iOS
7 47 (0.88%) Android
8 44 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 43 (0.80%) Mac OS
10 24 (0.45%) VMS
11 16 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
12 15 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.24%) CentOS
14 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
15 5 (0.094%) Ubuntu
15 5 (0.094%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.094%) zOS
16 4 (0.075%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.056%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,593 (29.81%) Agile
2 923 (17.27%) CI/CD
3 832 (15.57%) DevOps
4 702 (13.14%) Continuous Improvement
5 691 (12.93%) Stakeholder Management
6 558 (10.44%) Analytics
7 527 (9.86%) Migration
8 477 (8.93%) Project Management
9 469 (8.78%) Decision-Making
10 443 (8.29%) Scrum
11 427 (7.99%) Test Automation
12 412 (7.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 400 (7.49%) Computer Science
14 387 (7.24%) Business Intelligence
15 385 (7.21%) AI
16 374 (7.00%) Mentoring
17 354 (6.63%) Data Modelling
18 352 (6.59%) ITIL
19 346 (6.48%) Microservices
20 344 (6.44%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,053 (19.71%) Python
2 907 (16.98%) SQL
3 572 (10.71%) Java
4 337 (6.31%) JavaScript
5 295 (5.52%) PowerShell
6 234 (4.38%) C#
7 174 (3.26%) TypeScript
8 163 (3.05%) Bash
9 114 (2.13%) Shell Script
10 89 (1.67%) Go
11 71 (1.33%) PL/SQL
12 68 (1.27%) C++
13 54 (1.01%) VBA
14 48 (0.90%) Scala
15 40 (0.75%) Apex Code
15 40 (0.75%) R
16 37 (0.69%) Perl
17 36 (0.67%) PHP
18 31 (0.58%) Groovy
18 31 (0.58%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 887 (16.60%) Security Cleared
2 768 (14.37%) Degree
3 652 (12.20%) SC Cleared
4 276 (5.17%) Computer Science Degree
5 122 (2.28%) DV Cleared
6 108 (2.02%) CISSP
7 104 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
8 103 (1.93%) Microsoft Certification
9 101 (1.89%) Master's Degree
9 101 (1.89%) PMI Certification
10 93 (1.74%) PMP
11 88 (1.65%) Azure Certification
12 86 (1.61%) AWS Certification
13 73 (1.37%) Cisco Certification
14 49 (0.92%) CISM
15 47 (0.88%) CCNP
16 42 (0.79%) A+ Certification
17 36 (0.67%) MCP
18 35 (0.66%) ACCA
18 35 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 389 (7.28%) QA
2 286 (5.35%) Data Quality
3 194 (3.63%) GDPR
4 117 (2.19%) Accessibility
5 90 (1.68%) NIST
6 89 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 78 (1.46%) SLA
8 71 (1.33%) PMO
9 42 (0.79%) PCI DSS
10 33 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 24 (0.45%) GRC
11 24 (0.45%) PSD2
12 21 (0.39%) HIPAA
12 21 (0.39%) WCAG
13 20 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
15 15 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
15 15 (0.28%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.28%) SEPA
16 10 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 459 (8.59%) Docker
2 311 (5.82%) Active Directory
3 115 (2.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.66%) Hyper-V
4 35 (0.66%) vSphere
5 30 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
6 24 (0.45%) VMware NSX
7 20 (0.37%) Firmware
8 19 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
10 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 11 (0.21%) HDFS
12 9 (0.17%) RACF
13 8 (0.15%) Time Sharing Option
14 6 (0.11%) ACF2
15 5 (0.094%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.075%) KVM
17 3 (0.056%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.056%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 2 (0.037%) OpenIDM
Systems Management
1 491 (9.19%) Kubernetes
2 297 (5.56%) Terraform
3 192 (3.59%) Ansible
4 120 (2.25%) Grafana
5 94 (1.76%) Prometheus
6 87 (1.63%) SCCM
7 80 (1.50%) Microsoft Intune
8 48 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (0.56%) Puppet
10 27 (0.51%) Argo
11 20 (0.37%) Nessus
12 19 (0.36%) Kibana
12 19 (0.36%) SCOM
13 18 (0.34%) Data Guard
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 (0.24%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,085 (20.31%) Microsoft
2 391 (7.32%) Oracle
3 342 (6.40%) SAP
4 267 (5.00%) ServiceNow
5 199 (3.72%) Google
6 184 (3.44%) VMware
7 151 (2.83%) Salesforce
8 146 (2.73%) Splunk
9 128 (2.40%) Cisco
10 93 (1.74%) Databricks
11 70 (1.31%) IBM
12 69 (1.29%) Workday
13 66 (1.24%) Red Hat
14 57 (1.07%) Citrix
15 55 (1.03%) CyberArk
16 43 (0.80%) Palo Alto
16 43 (0.80%) Talend
17 41 (0.77%) Sybase
18 38 (0.71%) Juniper
19 37 (0.69%) Adobe