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

6 months to
27 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 5,331 4,840 4,673
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 14.76% 13.19% 10.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.50% 15.17% 11.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,252 2,801 2,973
10th Percentile £255 £263 £245
25th Percentile £381 £397 £398
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £619
90th Percentile £700 £700 £712
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 326 199 242
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.08 £13.41
25th Percentile £15.74 £15.62 £16.31
Median hourly rate £20.26 £21.46 £45.44
Median % change year-on-year -5.62% -52.77% +70.70%
75th Percentile £35.00 £36.87 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.72 £63.75 £86.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.81 £17.24 £32.41
% change year-on-year +9.09% -46.81% +44.04%

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 32,304 31,906 40,162
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.43% 86.97% 88.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,227 19,221 26,955
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
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 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,107 1,156 1,551
10th Percentile £14.52 £15.22 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.52 £20.24 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.75 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.63% -21.02% +25.71%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -29.23% -26.97% +41.14%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 4,592 £478 -4.50% 5,074
UK excluding London 0 2,639 £450 -5.26% 4,614
London +3 2,153 £500 -6.19% 1,257
Work from Home +2 1,489 £492 +0.41% 2,288
North of England -3 671 £454 -4.42% 997
South East +3 637 £463 -7.50% 1,586
Midlands 0 522 £450 +3.63% 749
West Midlands 0 371 £488 +8.33% 443
North West 0 369 £450 -1.64% 559
South West +1 272 £475 - 513
Scotland +4 261 £450 +2.86% 231
Yorkshire -6 258 £480 -1.03% 344
East of England -2 210 £500 +11.11% 459
East Midlands -2 151 £402 +0.50% 284
Wales +4 75 £413 +3.13% 114
North East -3 49 £450 -3.12% 97
Northern Ireland +1 40 £475 +2.70% 72
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
1 194 (3.64%) Confluence
2 164 (3.08%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.04%) Microsoft Exchange
4 74 (1.39%) Apache Spark
5 61 (1.14%) Apache
6 58 (1.09%) SAS
7 50 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
8 43 (0.81%) CMS
9 31 (0.58%) Skype for Business
10 27 (0.51%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.30%) JBoss
12 15 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 14 (0.26%) IIS
14 13 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
15 11 (0.21%) Anypoint
16 10 (0.19%) Oracle Service Bus
17 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
18 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
18 7 (0.13%) OpenStack
18 7 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 360 (6.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (4.18%) Microsoft Office
3 144 (2.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 84 (1.58%) MS Visio
5 56 (1.05%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.24%) 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 (0.075%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.075%) Notion
13 4 (0.075%) Revit
14 3 (0.056%) Adobe Illustrator
14 3 (0.056%) AutoCAD
15 2 (0.038%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 124 (2.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
3 27 (0.51%) Oracle Payables
4 26 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
5 21 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
6 19 (0.36%) SAP EWM
7 18 (0.34%) Oracle Receivables
7 18 (0.34%) Workday HCM
8 17 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
8 17 (0.32%) SAP HR
9 16 (0.30%) Oracle BPM
9 16 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
9 16 (0.30%) SAP ERP
10 15 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
11 14 (0.26%) Oracle General Ledger
11 14 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
12 13 (0.24%) NetSuite
12 13 (0.24%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.24%) SAP WM
13 11 (0.21%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,030 (19.32%) Azure
2 821 (15.40%) AWS
3 369 (6.92%) GCP
4 345 (6.47%) Power Platform
5 304 (5.70%) Microsoft 365
6 240 (4.50%) GitHub
7 211 (3.96%) Azure DevOps
8 175 (3.28%) Serverless
9 128 (2.40%) SaaS
10 126 (2.36%) Entra ID
11 109 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
12 103 (1.93%) Amazon S3
13 93 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
14 88 (1.65%) Dynamics 365
15 81 (1.52%) Snowflake
16 79 (1.48%) Power Automate
17 78 (1.46%) PowerApps
18 69 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
19 64 (1.20%) Amazon ECS
20 60 (1.13%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 195 (3.66%) Firewall
2 146 (2.74%) DNS
3 122 (2.29%) Network Security
4 113 (2.12%) VPN
5 110 (2.06%) TCP/IP
6 73 (1.37%) DHCP
7 69 (1.29%) WAN
8 68 (1.28%) LAN
9 47 (0.88%) VLAN
10 43 (0.81%) Wireless
11 40 (0.75%) BGP
12 35 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
13 31 (0.58%) HTTP
13 31 (0.58%) SSL
14 29 (0.54%) Skype
15 27 (0.51%) VoIP
16 26 (0.49%) OSPF
16 26 (0.49%) Wireshark
17 24 (0.45%) SSH
18 23 (0.43%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (4.93%) Power BI
2 197 (3.70%) Relational Database
3 186 (3.49%) PostgreSQL
4 173 (3.25%) SQL Server
5 153 (2.87%) Data Warehouse
6 125 (2.34%) NoSQL
7 114 (2.14%) MongoDB
8 92 (1.73%) MySQL
8 92 (1.73%) Oracle Database
9 91 (1.71%) Tableau
10 68 (1.28%) Metadata
11 60 (1.13%) DB2
12 59 (1.11%) Big Data
13 55 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
14 48 (0.90%) DynamoDB
15 45 (0.84%) Hadoop
16 44 (0.83%) Data Lake
17 42 (0.79%) Redis
18 41 (0.77%) BigQuery
19 38 (0.71%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 484 (9.08%) JIRA
2 395 (7.41%) Git
3 268 (5.03%) Jenkins
4 158 (2.96%) GitLab
5 102 (1.91%) JUnit
6 83 (1.56%) Selenium
7 52 (0.98%) Postman
8 42 (0.79%) Cucumber
9 37 (0.69%) Maven
10 30 (0.56%) Bitbucket
11 28 (0.53%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.39%) JMeter
13 20 (0.38%) Mockito
13 20 (0.38%) SoapUI
14 19 (0.36%) Cypress.io
14 19 (0.36%) Gradle
14 19 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
15 17 (0.32%) REST Assured
16 15 (0.28%) Eclipse
16 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
General
1 3,043 (57.08%) Social Skills
2 1,991 (37.35%) Analytical Skills
3 1,270 (23.82%) Finance
4 467 (8.76%) Public Sector
5 458 (8.59%) Banking
6 177 (3.32%) Organisational Skills
7 146 (2.74%) Legal
7 146 (2.74%) Telecoms
8 144 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
9 143 (2.68%) Marketing
10 136 (2.55%) Manufacturing
11 134 (2.51%) Influencing Skills
12 131 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 122 (2.29%) Investment Banking
14 119 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
15 117 (2.19%) Front Office
16 113 (2.12%) Retail
17 54 (1.01%) Financial Institution
18 51 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
19 49 (0.92%) Military
Job Titles
1 844 (15.83%) Developer
2 807 (15.14%) Analyst
3 458 (8.59%) Senior
4 329 (6.17%) Architect
4 329 (6.17%) Consultant
5 307 (5.76%) Lead
6 277 (5.20%) Business Analyst
7 195 (3.66%) Project Manager
8 184 (3.45%) Support Engineer
9 181 (3.40%) Java Developer
10 144 (2.70%) Data Engineer
11 140 (2.63%) Senior Developer
12 131 (2.46%) IT Support
13 119 (2.23%) Data Analyst
14 108 (2.03%) Support Analyst
15 99 (1.86%) Software Engineer
16 87 (1.63%) Python Developer
17 85 (1.59%) Solutions Architect
18 80 (1.50%) Administrator
19 79 (1.48%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 335 (6.28%) REST
2 221 (4.15%) RESTful
3 209 (3.92%) Kafka
4 202 (3.79%) .NET
5 191 (3.58%) Spring
6 168 (3.15%) SOAP
7 163 (3.06%) React
8 150 (2.81%) HTML
9 142 (2.66%) Node.js
10 129 (2.42%) CSS
11 124 (2.33%) AngularJS
12 120 (2.25%) Spring Boot
13 110 (2.06%) JSON
14 97 (1.82%) XML
15 87 (1.63%) OAuth
16 80 (1.50%) Middleware
17 78 (1.46%) Web Services
18 70 (1.31%) GraphQL
19 65 (1.22%) Oracle Fusion
20 56 (1.05%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 244 (4.58%) Product Ownership
2 215 (4.03%) Cloud Native
3 199 (3.73%) Management Information System
4 168 (3.15%) Onboarding
5 144 (2.70%) Data Structures
6 139 (2.61%) Analytical Mindset
7 126 (2.36%) Self-Motivation
8 103 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
9 100 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
9 100 (1.88%) Virtual Team
10 94 (1.76%) Algorithms
11 93 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
12 92 (1.73%) Data Centre
13 73 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
14 67 (1.26%) Security Posture
15 66 (1.24%) CMDB
15 66 (1.24%) Equities
16 64 (1.20%) Mobile App
17 57 (1.07%) NHS
18 55 (1.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 510 (9.57%) Windows
2 395 (7.41%) Linux
3 125 (2.34%) Unix
4 103 (1.93%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.82%) Windows Server
6 59 (1.11%) Apple iOS
7 44 (0.83%) Android
7 44 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 41 (0.77%) Mac OS
9 24 (0.45%) VMS
10 16 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
11 14 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
12 13 (0.24%) CentOS
13 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
13 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
14 5 (0.094%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.094%) zOS
15 4 (0.075%) Ubuntu
15 4 (0.075%) Windows Server 2003
16 3 (0.056%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,600 (30.01%) Agile
2 928 (17.41%) CI/CD
3 825 (15.48%) DevOps
4 705 (13.22%) Continuous Improvement
4 705 (13.22%) Stakeholder Management
5 564 (10.58%) Analytics
6 535 (10.04%) Migration
7 478 (8.97%) Decision-Making
8 477 (8.95%) Project Management
9 447 (8.38%) Scrum
10 426 (7.99%) Test Automation
11 417 (7.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 403 (7.56%) Computer Science
13 389 (7.30%) AI
14 383 (7.18%) Business Intelligence
15 372 (6.98%) Mentoring
16 357 (6.70%) Data Modelling
17 351 (6.58%) ITIL
18 350 (6.57%) Containerisation
18 350 (6.57%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 1,048 (19.66%) Python
2 908 (17.03%) SQL
3 569 (10.67%) Java
4 321 (6.02%) JavaScript
5 289 (5.42%) PowerShell
6 230 (4.31%) C#
7 174 (3.26%) TypeScript
8 162 (3.04%) Bash
9 112 (2.10%) Shell Script
10 89 (1.67%) Go
11 74 (1.39%) PL/SQL
12 69 (1.29%) C++
13 54 (1.01%) VBA
14 45 (0.84%) Scala
15 43 (0.81%) R
16 40 (0.75%) Apex Code
17 36 (0.68%) Perl
18 35 (0.66%) PHP
19 33 (0.62%) T-SQL
20 30 (0.56%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 887 (16.64%) Security Cleared
2 772 (14.48%) Degree
3 655 (12.29%) SC Cleared
4 279 (5.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 119 (2.23%) DV Cleared
6 107 (2.01%) CISSP
7 105 (1.97%) Master's Degree
8 104 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
9 103 (1.93%) Microsoft Certification
10 101 (1.89%) PMI Certification
11 93 (1.74%) PMP
12 86 (1.61%) Azure Certification
13 80 (1.50%) AWS Certification
14 74 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
15 50 (0.94%) CISM
16 47 (0.88%) CCNP
17 41 (0.77%) A+ Certification
18 36 (0.68%) MCP
19 35 (0.66%) ACCA
20 34 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 394 (7.39%) QA
2 289 (5.42%) Data Quality
3 194 (3.64%) GDPR
4 118 (2.21%) Accessibility
5 92 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 92 (1.73%) NIST
6 76 (1.43%) SLA
7 71 (1.33%) PMO
8 42 (0.79%) PCI DSS
9 33 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 27 (0.51%) GRC
11 25 (0.47%) PSD2
12 21 (0.39%) HIPAA
12 21 (0.39%) WCAG
13 19 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
14 16 (0.30%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
15 15 (0.28%) SEPA
16 10 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 466 (8.74%) Docker
2 304 (5.70%) Active Directory
3 111 (2.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.66%) vSphere
5 34 (0.64%) Hyper-V
6 30 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
7 24 (0.45%) VMware NSX
8 21 (0.39%) Firmware
9 19 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
10 17 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
11 11 (0.21%) 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 (0.094%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.075%) KVM
17 3 (0.056%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.056%) Embedded Firmware
17 3 (0.056%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 491 (9.21%) Kubernetes
2 300 (5.63%) Terraform
3 191 (3.58%) Ansible
4 122 (2.29%) Grafana
5 93 (1.74%) Prometheus
6 87 (1.63%) SCCM
7 76 (1.43%) Microsoft Intune
8 46 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (0.58%) Puppet
10 27 (0.51%) Argo
11 20 (0.38%) Kibana
11 20 (0.38%) Nessus
12 18 (0.34%) Data Guard
12 18 (0.34%) SCOM
13 15 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 15 (0.28%) HP ALM
13 15 (0.28%) vRealize
14 14 (0.26%) Packer
14 14 (0.26%) vCenter Server
15 13 (0.24%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,073 (20.13%) Microsoft
2 397 (7.45%) Oracle
3 340 (6.38%) SAP
4 265 (4.97%) ServiceNow
5 199 (3.73%) Google
6 180 (3.38%) VMware
7 149 (2.79%) Splunk
8 147 (2.76%) Salesforce
9 126 (2.36%) Cisco
10 98 (1.84%) Databricks
11 70 (1.31%) IBM
12 69 (1.29%) Workday
13 66 (1.24%) Red Hat
14 57 (1.07%) Citrix
15 54 (1.01%) CyberArk
16 44 (0.83%) Talend
17 43 (0.81%) Palo Alto
18 41 (0.77%) Sybase
19 39 (0.73%) Juniper
20 38 (0.71%) HP