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 15 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,273 5,044 4,731
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.51% 17.03% 10.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.40% 18.71% 12.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,059 3,125 2,848
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £386 £380 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.20% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £619
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £456 £467 £475
% change year-on-year -2.36% -1.79% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 406 273 427
10th Percentile £13.05 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £13.93
Median hourly rate £20.48 £22.14 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -7.52% +36.41% -68.96%
75th Percentile £38.94 £41.00 £33.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.85 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.75 £20.25 £15.00
% change year-on-year -7.41% +35.00% -71.43%

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 42,531 26,963 37,192
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.77% 91.04% 85.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,533 17,106 23,691
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £507 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.08% -3.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,548 1,222 2,595
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.01
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.75 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.34% -28.05% +6.23%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.43 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +17.29%

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 15 June 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 15 June 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 15 June 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 -9 4,502 £500 - 2,844
UK excluding London -5 2,808 £456 -2.36% 2,413
London -12 1,924 £520 +1.96% 792
Work from Home -5 1,486 £490 -2.00% 1,120
North of England -10 713 £449 -5.53% 597
South East -6 674 £488 -2.50% 734
Midlands -10 503 £465 +9.41% 412
West Midlands -11 359 £471 +4.56% 242
North West -10 342 £433 -8.95% 335
Yorkshire -6 330 £450 -5.21% 190
South West -3 323 £500 - 301
Scotland -3 288 £438 -5.91% 105
East of England -2 243 £450 -3.54% 266
East Midlands -1 143 £445 +21.36% 171
Wales -1 67 £468 +32.40% 33
North East -19 47 £373 -17.22% 82
Northern Ireland -6 24 £365 -14.12% 63
Channel Islands -3 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
1 222 (4.21%) Confluence
2 153 (2.90%) SharePoint
3 88 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 77 (1.46%) Apache Spark
5 49 (0.93%) Apache
6 47 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
7 41 (0.78%) SAS
8 33 (0.63%) CMS
9 26 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.23%) nginx
12 11 (0.21%) CICS
13 10 (0.19%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 9 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.17%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.15%) Camunda
15 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
16 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
17 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 303 (5.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 214 (4.06%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (2.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.37%) MS Visio
5 67 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
6 33 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 21 (0.40%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.25%) AutoCAD
10 12 (0.23%) Sketch
11 10 (0.19%) CATIA
11 10 (0.19%) Revit
12 7 (0.13%) Trello
13 6 (0.11%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.095%) Adobe After Effects
14 5 (0.095%) Final Cut Pro
14 5 (0.095%) Maya
15 4 (0.076%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.057%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 131 (2.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.34%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 16 (0.30%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.28%) SAP GRC
8 13 (0.25%) NetSuite
8 13 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
9 12 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
10 11 (0.21%) NEC Housing
10 11 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 11 (0.21%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.19%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.19%) SAP SD
12 9 (0.17%) iTrent
13 8 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
13 8 (0.15%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,063 (20.16%) Azure
2 798 (15.13%) AWS
3 402 (7.62%) Power Platform
4 361 (6.85%) Microsoft 365
5 317 (6.01%) GCP
6 232 (4.40%) Azure DevOps
7 195 (3.70%) GitHub
8 173 (3.28%) Entra ID
9 139 (2.64%) Serverless
10 136 (2.58%) SaaS
11 101 (1.92%) GitHub Actions
12 92 (1.74%) Amazon S3
13 82 (1.56%) AWS Lambda
14 74 (1.40%) Dynamics 365
15 70 (1.33%) Snowflake
16 67 (1.27%) Power Automate
17 64 (1.21%) Azure Data Factory
18 62 (1.18%) OpenShift
19 61 (1.16%) PowerApps
20 48 (0.91%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 199 (3.77%) DNS
2 165 (3.13%) Firewall
3 122 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 114 (2.16%) VPN
5 110 (2.09%) WAN
6 104 (1.97%) DHCP
7 85 (1.61%) Network Security
8 82 (1.56%) LAN
8 82 (1.56%) SAN
9 72 (1.37%) Wi-Fi
10 50 (0.95%) VLAN
11 48 (0.91%) BGP
11 48 (0.91%) SD-WAN
12 41 (0.78%) OSPF
13 35 (0.66%) Wireless
14 32 (0.61%) VoIP
15 28 (0.53%) VXLAN
16 27 (0.51%) MPLS
17 23 (0.44%) Internet
17 23 (0.44%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 316 (5.99%) Power BI
2 203 (3.85%) SQL Server
3 159 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
4 144 (2.73%) Relational Database
5 139 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
6 111 (2.11%) MongoDB
7 105 (1.99%) Metadata
8 91 (1.73%) Data Lake
9 89 (1.69%) NoSQL
9 89 (1.69%) Tableau
10 77 (1.46%) Big Data
11 52 (0.99%) Oracle Database
12 51 (0.97%) MySQL
13 50 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 49 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
15 36 (0.68%) Hadoop
16 30 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
17 28 (0.53%) Power Query
18 27 (0.51%) Db2
18 27 (0.51%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 507 (9.62%) JIRA
2 287 (5.44%) Git
3 184 (3.49%) Jenkins
4 133 (2.52%) GitLab
5 66 (1.25%) Selenium
6 41 (0.78%) Postman
7 37 (0.70%) REST Assured
8 30 (0.57%) Cucumber
9 27 (0.51%) Bitbucket
10 24 (0.46%) Cypress.io
11 22 (0.42%) JUnit
12 17 (0.32%) JMeter
12 17 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
12 17 (0.32%) WebDriver
13 16 (0.30%) Mockito
14 15 (0.28%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.27%) Maven
15 14 (0.27%) Zephyr
16 13 (0.25%) Gatling
17 12 (0.23%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,743 (52.02%) Social Skills
2 2,065 (39.16%) Analytical Skills
3 1,227 (23.27%) Finance
4 476 (9.03%) Public Sector
5 399 (7.57%) Banking
6 208 (3.94%) Organisational Skills
7 191 (3.62%) Documentation Skills
8 187 (3.55%) Retail
9 153 (2.90%) Legal
10 141 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 110 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
12 109 (2.07%) Manufacturing
13 108 (2.05%) Presentation Skills
14 101 (1.92%) Front Office
15 92 (1.74%) Marketing
15 92 (1.74%) Telecoms
16 83 (1.57%) Investment Banking
17 76 (1.44%) Back Office
18 62 (1.18%) Law
19 57 (1.08%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 736 (13.96%) Analyst
2 599 (11.36%) Developer
3 452 (8.57%) Senior
4 363 (6.88%) Architect
5 343 (6.50%) Lead
6 284 (5.39%) Business Analyst
7 264 (5.01%) Consultant
8 235 (4.46%) Data Engineer
9 180 (3.41%) Project Manager
10 163 (3.09%) IT Support
11 157 (2.98%) Support Engineer
12 121 (2.29%) Data Analyst
13 115 (2.18%) Administrator
13 115 (2.18%) IT Engineer
14 110 (2.09%) Java Developer
15 107 (2.03%) Solutions Architect
16 96 (1.82%) Software Engineer
17 92 (1.74%) Network Engineer
18 89 (1.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 82 (1.56%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 312 (5.92%) REST
2 159 (3.02%) .NET
3 151 (2.86%) Kafka
4 136 (2.58%) SOAP
5 135 (2.56%) React
5 135 (2.56%) Spring
6 130 (2.47%) RESTful
7 121 (2.29%) CSS
8 108 (2.05%) HTML
8 108 (2.05%) JSON
9 105 (1.99%) Middleware
10 100 (1.90%) Spring Boot
11 92 (1.74%) XML
12 91 (1.73%) Node.js
13 89 (1.69%) AngularJS
14 83 (1.57%) LDAP
15 72 (1.37%) PySpark
16 65 (1.23%) Web Services
17 56 (1.06%) OAuth
18 47 (0.89%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 256 (4.85%) Product Ownership
2 241 (4.57%) Onboarding
3 216 (4.10%) Cloud Native
4 207 (3.93%) Data Centre
5 178 (3.38%) Self-Motivation
6 147 (2.79%) Analytical Mindset
7 145 (2.75%) Management Information System
8 134 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
9 131 (2.48%) Distributed Systems
10 126 (2.39%) Enterprise Software
11 123 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
12 116 (2.20%) Virtual Team
13 104 (1.97%) Data Structures
14 72 (1.37%) Driving Licence
15 69 (1.31%) Algorithms
16 68 (1.29%) Security Posture
17 62 (1.18%) AI Agents
18 53 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 51 (0.97%) Derivative
20 47 (0.89%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 642 (12.18%) Windows
2 284 (5.39%) Linux
3 122 (2.31%) Windows Server
4 115 (2.18%) Windows 10
5 105 (1.99%) Unix
6 86 (1.63%) Android
7 85 (1.61%) Mac OS
8 83 (1.57%) Apple iOS
9 45 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 23 (0.44%) Ubuntu
11 14 (0.27%) CentOS
12 13 (0.25%) VMS
12 13 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.19%) zOS
14 9 (0.17%) Windows 7
15 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
16 6 (0.11%) Solaris
17 5 (0.095%) Debian
17 5 (0.095%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.076%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,382 (26.21%) Agile
2 867 (16.44%) Continuous Improvement
3 866 (16.42%) CI/CD
4 809 (15.34%) Stakeholder Management
5 790 (14.98%) DevOps
6 617 (11.70%) AI
7 581 (11.02%) Decision-Making
8 574 (10.89%) Migration
9 564 (10.70%) Analytics
10 486 (9.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 483 (9.16%) Customer Service
12 449 (8.52%) ITIL
13 439 (8.33%) Data Modelling
14 432 (8.19%) Validation
15 416 (7.89%) Business Intelligence
16 413 (7.83%) Project Management
17 384 (7.28%) Test Automation
18 366 (6.94%) Scrum
19 350 (6.64%) Change Management
20 318 (6.03%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 940 (17.83%) Python
2 939 (17.81%) SQL
3 421 (7.98%) Java
4 321 (6.09%) PowerShell
5 266 (5.04%) JavaScript
6 198 (3.75%) C#
7 133 (2.52%) TypeScript
8 109 (2.07%) Bash
9 83 (1.57%) PL/SQL
10 74 (1.40%) C++
11 52 (0.99%) Shell Script
12 48 (0.91%) Go
13 41 (0.78%) T-SQL
14 40 (0.76%) R
15 39 (0.74%) C
16 35 (0.66%) Perl
17 32 (0.61%) Apex Code
17 32 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 31 (0.59%) Bicep
19 30 (0.57%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,106 (20.97%) Security Cleared
2 760 (14.41%) SC Cleared
3 636 (12.06%) Degree
4 192 (3.64%) Computer Science Degree
4 192 (3.64%) DV Cleared
5 165 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
6 140 (2.66%) Microsoft Certification
7 137 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
8 90 (1.71%) CISSP
9 82 (1.56%) PMP
10 77 (1.46%) A+ Certification
10 77 (1.46%) CCNA
11 76 (1.44%) PMI Certification
12 70 (1.33%) Azure Certification
13 68 (1.29%) Master's Degree
14 67 (1.27%) Network+ Certification
15 63 (1.19%) CISM
16 59 (1.12%) MCSE
17 41 (0.78%) CCNP
18 40 (0.76%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (6.81%) Data Quality
2 280 (5.31%) QA
3 147 (2.79%) GDPR
4 121 (2.29%) Accessibility
5 99 (1.88%) SLA
6 92 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 82 (1.56%) PMO
8 76 (1.44%) NIST
9 57 (1.08%) GRC
10 27 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
11 26 (0.49%) WCAG
12 24 (0.46%) PCI DSS
12 24 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 18 (0.34%) ISO 20022
14 17 (0.32%) COBIT
15 16 (0.30%) NCSC
16 14 (0.27%) PSD2
17 12 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials
17 12 (0.23%) HL7
18 11 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 396 (7.51%) Active Directory
2 330 (6.26%) Docker
3 110 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.83%) vSphere
5 40 (0.76%) VMware NSX
6 35 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
7 34 (0.64%) Hyper-V
8 27 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
9 25 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
10 21 (0.40%) Firmware
11 19 (0.36%) vCloud
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 7 (0.13%) IAG
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.076%) ACF2
14 4 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.076%) NFS
14 4 (0.076%) RACF
14 4 (0.076%) Snort
15 3 (0.057%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 402 (7.62%) Kubernetes
2 288 (5.46%) Terraform
3 169 (3.21%) Ansible
4 135 (2.56%) Microsoft Intune
5 112 (2.12%) Grafana
6 96 (1.82%) Prometheus
7 81 (1.54%) SCCM
8 49 (0.93%) vCenter Server
9 44 (0.83%) FortiGate
10 40 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (0.44%) Control-M
12 22 (0.42%) Argo
13 21 (0.40%) Kibana
13 21 (0.40%) Nessus
14 19 (0.36%) Puppet
15 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
15 17 (0.32%) SCOM
16 14 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 14 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
17 13 (0.25%) WSUS
Vendors
1 980 (18.59%) Microsoft
2 352 (6.68%) Oracle
3 309 (5.86%) SAP
4 290 (5.50%) ServiceNow
5 177 (3.36%) VMware
6 155 (2.94%) Google
7 138 (2.62%) Databricks
8 129 (2.45%) Splunk
9 123 (2.33%) Cisco
10 119 (2.26%) Salesforce
11 81 (1.54%) Dell
12 73 (1.38%) Workday
13 62 (1.18%) CyberArk
14 61 (1.16%) Adobe
15 56 (1.06%) BeyondTrust
15 56 (1.06%) Red Hat
16 52 (0.99%) Citrix
16 52 (0.99%) Dynatrace
17 46 (0.87%) MuleSoft
18 45 (0.85%) Informatica