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 21 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,557 4,705 4,768
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.57% 15.31% 10.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.63% 17.05% 12.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,430 2,831 2,976
10th Percentile £283 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £395 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% - -6.10%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £623
90th Percentile £700 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £468 £475
% change year-on-year +1.39% -1.58% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 320 179 377
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.44 £12.13
25th Percentile £15.62 £17.00 £14.16
Median hourly rate £20.00 £27.13 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.27% +39.10% -36.83%
75th Percentile £40.01 £46.25 £50.00
90th Percentile £70.15 £71.50 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.25 £22.88 £17.50
% change year-on-year -24.59% +30.71% -25.77%

All Process & 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 35,563 27,597 38,882
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.83% 89.79% 87.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,526 17,059 25,424
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.54% -1.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,133 855 2,176
10th Percentile £14.62 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.77 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.71% -7.14% -
75th Percentile £60.46 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £75.00 £73.27
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.29 £35.00
% change year-on-year -19.62% -10.60% -

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 21 February 2026.

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 21 February 2026.

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 21 February 2026. 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 4,740 £492 -1.60% 2,989
UK excluding London -3 2,852 £474 +1.39% 2,628
London -3 2,095 £513 -2.38% 854
Work from Home +1 1,625 £480 -4.00% 1,209
North of England -2 757 £450 -5.26% 613
South East -2 673 £483 -3.50% 884
Midlands -1 533 £450 +5.88% 434
North West -1 387 £418 -10.11% 359
West Midlands +1 383 £483 +9.09% 268
Yorkshire -4 316 £481 -3.75% 184
South West -3 305 £525 +5.00% 308
Scotland 0 284 £447 -0.61% 106
East of England -3 242 £475 +5.56% 294
East Midlands -2 151 £402 +12.92% 165
Wales +3 67 £400 - 63
North East -5 62 £450 -11.33% 82
Northern Ireland 0 34 £475 +46.15% 29
Channel Islands +1 1 - - 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
1 219 (3.94%) Confluence
2 163 (2.93%) SharePoint
3 106 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 92 (1.66%) Apache Spark
5 68 (1.22%) Apache
6 65 (1.17%) SAS
7 50 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
8 35 (0.63%) CMS
9 24 (0.43%) Skype for Business
10 21 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.25%) nginx
12 11 (0.20%) JBoss
13 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
16 7 (0.13%) Camunda
17 6 (0.11%) Anypoint
17 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
17 6 (0.11%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 315 (5.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 229 (4.12%) Microsoft Office
3 123 (2.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 80 (1.44%) MS Visio
5 79 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
6 22 (0.40%) Chatbot
7 18 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.11%) Trello
12 5 (0.090%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.072%) Adobe Captivate
13 4 (0.072%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.072%) InVision
13 4 (0.072%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.072%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
14 3 (0.054%) InDesign
14 3 (0.054%) Notion
Business Applications
1 98 (1.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
4 18 (0.32%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.27%) NetSuite
5 15 (0.27%) Workday HCM
6 14 (0.25%) SAP ERP
6 14 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 13 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.23%) Oracle Receivables
7 13 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
8 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
9 11 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 11 (0.20%) SAP EWM
9 11 (0.20%) SAP HR
9 11 (0.20%) SAP WM
10 10 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,210 (21.77%) Azure
2 881 (15.85%) AWS
3 409 (7.36%) GCP
4 380 (6.84%) Power Platform
5 343 (6.17%) Microsoft 365
6 264 (4.75%) GitHub
7 250 (4.50%) Azure DevOps
8 192 (3.46%) Serverless
9 160 (2.88%) Entra ID
10 140 (2.52%) SaaS
11 138 (2.48%) GitHub Actions
12 102 (1.84%) Amazon S3
13 92 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
13 92 (1.66%) Snowflake
14 90 (1.62%) OpenShift
15 83 (1.49%) Dynamics 365
16 81 (1.46%) Azure Data Factory
17 71 (1.28%) Power Automate
18 68 (1.22%) PaaS
19 63 (1.13%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 216 (3.89%) Firewall
2 203 (3.65%) DNS
3 135 (2.43%) TCP/IP
4 116 (2.09%) DHCP
4 116 (2.09%) VPN
5 115 (2.07%) Network Security
6 101 (1.82%) WAN
7 81 (1.46%) LAN
8 54 (0.97%) VLAN
9 53 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
10 49 (0.88%) BGP
11 35 (0.63%) OSPF
12 34 (0.61%) SAN
13 33 (0.59%) VoIP
14 28 (0.50%) Wireless
15 26 (0.47%) SD-WAN
15 26 (0.47%) SSH
16 25 (0.45%) HTTP
17 24 (0.43%) Skype
18 23 (0.41%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (5.54%) Power BI
2 182 (3.28%) SQL Server
3 171 (3.08%) Relational Database
4 168 (3.02%) PostgreSQL
5 164 (2.95%) Data Warehouse
6 113 (2.03%) MongoDB
7 107 (1.93%) NoSQL
8 96 (1.73%) Metadata
9 93 (1.67%) MySQL
10 84 (1.51%) Big Data
11 79 (1.42%) Tableau
12 73 (1.31%) Data Lake
12 73 (1.31%) Oracle Database
13 51 (0.92%) Hadoop
13 51 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 50 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
15 44 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
16 38 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
17 37 (0.67%) DynamoDB
18 36 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 497 (8.94%) JIRA
2 377 (6.78%) Git
3 277 (4.98%) Jenkins
4 176 (3.17%) GitLab
5 88 (1.58%) Selenium
6 66 (1.19%) JUnit
7 48 (0.86%) Postman
8 44 (0.79%) Cucumber
9 34 (0.61%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.50%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.47%) JMeter
11 26 (0.47%) Maven
12 24 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
13 23 (0.41%) Cypress.io
14 22 (0.40%) Mockito
15 21 (0.38%) SonarQube
16 17 (0.31%) SpecFlow
17 16 (0.29%) CircleCI
18 14 (0.25%) Artifactory
18 14 (0.25%) WebDriver
General
1 3,037 (54.65%) Social Skills
2 1,998 (35.95%) Analytical Skills
3 1,235 (22.22%) Finance
4 545 (9.81%) Public Sector
5 444 (7.99%) Banking
6 219 (3.94%) Organisational Skills
7 174 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
8 172 (3.10%) Legal
9 142 (2.56%) Retail
10 141 (2.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 141 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
10 141 (2.54%) Presentation Skills
11 113 (2.03%) Telecoms
12 104 (1.87%) Front Office
13 98 (1.76%) Marketing
14 95 (1.71%) Investment Banking
15 85 (1.53%) Manufacturing
16 66 (1.19%) Military
17 59 (1.06%) Financial Institution
18 48 (0.86%) Law
Job Titles
1 794 (14.29%) Developer
2 790 (14.22%) Analyst
3 493 (8.87%) Senior
4 363 (6.53%) Architect
5 337 (6.06%) Lead
6 325 (5.85%) Business Analyst
7 310 (5.58%) Consultant
8 215 (3.87%) Data Engineer
9 202 (3.64%) Project Manager
10 160 (2.88%) Support Engineer
11 143 (2.57%) Java Developer
12 138 (2.48%) IT Support
13 117 (2.11%) Senior Developer
14 116 (2.09%) Data Analyst
15 108 (1.94%) Software Engineer
16 96 (1.73%) Solutions Architect
17 93 (1.67%) Support Analyst
18 92 (1.66%) Python Developer
19 90 (1.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 89 (1.60%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 382 (6.87%) REST
2 195 (3.51%) Kafka
3 190 (3.42%) RESTful
3 190 (3.42%) SOAP
4 176 (3.17%) .NET
5 167 (3.01%) Node.js
5 167 (3.01%) React
6 166 (2.99%) Spring
7 144 (2.59%) HTML
8 135 (2.43%) CSS
9 126 (2.27%) AngularJS
10 117 (2.11%) Spring Boot
11 116 (2.09%) JSON
12 101 (1.82%) XML
13 92 (1.66%) LDAP
13 92 (1.66%) Middleware
14 76 (1.37%) OAuth
15 68 (1.22%) Oracle Fusion
16 67 (1.21%) PySpark
17 62 (1.12%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 274 (4.93%) Product Ownership
2 249 (4.48%) Cloud Native
3 198 (3.56%) Onboarding
4 186 (3.35%) Management Information System
5 142 (2.56%) Data Centre
6 138 (2.48%) Analytical Mindset
7 134 (2.41%) Data Structures
8 119 (2.14%) Self-Motivation
9 113 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
10 104 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
11 96 (1.73%) Algorithms
11 96 (1.73%) Virtual Team
12 91 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
13 85 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
14 80 (1.44%) Security Posture
15 73 (1.31%) CMDB
16 72 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
17 66 (1.19%) Driving Licence
18 65 (1.17%) Mobile App
19 58 (1.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 565 (10.17%) Windows
2 380 (6.84%) Linux
3 122 (2.20%) Unix
4 110 (1.98%) Windows Server
5 100 (1.80%) Windows 10
6 69 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 64 (1.15%) Android
8 62 (1.12%) Apple iOS
9 56 (1.01%) Mac OS
10 22 (0.40%) VMS
11 17 (0.31%) CentOS
12 15 (0.27%) Ubuntu
13 10 (0.18%) Mac OS X
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.090%) Windows Server 2003
17 4 (0.072%) Debian
17 4 (0.072%) Windows 8
18 3 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,616 (29.08%) Agile
2 1,030 (18.54%) CI/CD
3 879 (15.82%) DevOps
4 807 (14.52%) Stakeholder Management
5 785 (14.13%) Continuous Improvement
6 617 (11.10%) Analytics
7 569 (10.24%) Migration
8 561 (10.10%) Decision-Making
9 497 (8.94%) AI
10 476 (8.57%) Project Management
11 469 (8.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 451 (8.12%) Data Modelling
13 449 (8.08%) Test Automation
14 418 (7.52%) Scrum
15 412 (7.41%) Business Intelligence
16 402 (7.23%) Validation
17 388 (6.98%) Containerisation
18 387 (6.96%) Computer Science
19 386 (6.95%) ITIL
20 385 (6.93%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,079 (19.42%) Python
2 941 (16.93%) SQL
3 534 (9.61%) Java
4 365 (6.57%) PowerShell
5 336 (6.05%) JavaScript
6 239 (4.30%) C#
7 221 (3.98%) TypeScript
8 153 (2.75%) Bash
9 83 (1.49%) Shell Script
10 74 (1.33%) PL/SQL
11 66 (1.19%) Go
12 63 (1.13%) C++
13 49 (0.88%) Perl
14 44 (0.79%) Scala
15 40 (0.72%) Ruby
16 38 (0.68%) R
16 38 (0.68%) T-SQL
16 38 (0.68%) VBA
17 37 (0.67%) Bicep
18 33 (0.59%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,156 (20.80%) Security Cleared
2 820 (14.76%) SC Cleared
3 758 (13.64%) Degree
4 259 (4.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 201 (3.62%) DV Cleared
6 160 (2.88%) BPSS Clearance
7 109 (1.96%) Master's Degree
8 106 (1.91%) Microsoft Certification
9 99 (1.78%) PMI Certification
10 97 (1.75%) PMP
11 93 (1.67%) CISSP
12 92 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
13 86 (1.55%) Azure Certification
14 58 (1.04%) AWS Certification
14 58 (1.04%) CISM
15 55 (0.99%) CCNP
16 42 (0.76%) A+ Certification
17 41 (0.74%) CCNA
18 37 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
19 33 (0.59%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 366 (6.59%) QA
2 327 (5.88%) Data Quality
3 164 (2.95%) GDPR
4 122 (2.20%) Accessibility
5 86 (1.55%) PMO
6 85 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 85 (1.53%) NIST
7 60 (1.08%) SLA
8 40 (0.72%) PCI DSS
9 34 (0.61%) WCAG
10 31 (0.56%) GRC
11 26 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 25 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.41%) PSD2
14 20 (0.36%) ISO 20022
15 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
16 16 (0.29%) EU AI Act
17 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.23%) HL7
18 13 (0.23%) IFRS
System Software
1 491 (8.84%) Docker
2 385 (6.93%) Active Directory
3 124 (2.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.79%) Hyper-V
4 44 (0.79%) vSphere
5 33 (0.59%) VMware NSX
6 25 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
6 25 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
7 19 (0.34%) Firmware
8 11 (0.20%) RACF
9 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
10 9 (0.16%) ACF2
11 8 (0.14%) Squid
12 7 (0.13%) HDFS
12 7 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.090%) vCloud
15 4 (0.072%) Snort
16 3 (0.054%) KVM
16 3 (0.054%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 540 (9.72%) Kubernetes
2 319 (5.74%) Terraform
3 204 (3.67%) Ansible
4 137 (2.47%) Grafana
5 108 (1.94%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.93%) Microsoft Intune
7 99 (1.78%) SCCM
8 50 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
9 39 (0.70%) Puppet
10 38 (0.68%) Kibana
11 32 (0.58%) FortiGate
12 31 (0.56%) Argo
12 31 (0.56%) Nessus
13 25 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 24 (0.43%) vCenter Server
15 22 (0.40%) Control-M
16 21 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
17 18 (0.32%) Red Hat Satellite
18 14 (0.25%) vRealize
19 13 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,028 (18.50%) Microsoft
2 361 (6.50%) Oracle
3 278 (5.00%) SAP
4 240 (4.32%) ServiceNow
5 212 (3.82%) VMware
6 182 (3.28%) Google
7 164 (2.95%) Databricks
8 157 (2.83%) Splunk
9 135 (2.43%) Cisco
10 120 (2.16%) Salesforce
11 91 (1.64%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.31%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.13%) BeyondTrust
14 56 (1.01%) IBM
15 55 (0.99%) Palo Alto
16 54 (0.97%) Talend
16 54 (0.97%) Workday
17 52 (0.94%) Citrix
18 51 (0.92%) Dell
19 50 (0.90%) Informatica