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 31 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,448 4,768 4,799
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.23% 16.40% 10.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.29% 18.13% 12.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,323 3,011 2,976
10th Percentile £288 £258 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £379
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £472 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -0.63% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 329 218 408
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.84 £11.05
25th Percentile £15.18 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.71 £24.88 £17.61
Median % change year-on-year -16.76% +41.32% -56.53%
75th Percentile £45.46 £41.50 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £69.13 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.35 £22.14 £15.69
% change year-on-year -21.64% +41.11% -47.70%

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 38,122 26,294 38,266
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.61% 90.44% 86.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,155 17,082 24,859
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £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 £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,251 966 2,351
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.00 £12.84
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.24 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £31.88 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.36% -1.91% -10.48%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.72 £70.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £31.50 £31.50
% change year-on-year +4.76% - -12.50%

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 31 March 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 31 March 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 31 March 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 -3 4,678 £492 -1.60% 3,248
UK excluding London -5 2,836 £472 -0.63% 2,670
London -7 2,038 £510 -2.86% 986
Work from Home -1 1,544 £477 -4.70% 1,286
North of England -5 776 £450 -5.26% 662
South East -5 670 £499 -0.25% 802
Midlands -4 517 £450 +0.45% 478
North West -5 386 £424 -10.79% 365
West Midlands -2 375 £476 +2.86% 278
Yorkshire -3 343 £471 -1.98% 222
South West -2 320 £525 +2.44% 308
Scotland +1 257 £442 -1.72% 127
East of England -3 227 £450 - 288
East Midlands -2 143 £410 +10.89% 199
Wales -3 68 £400 +3.23% 81
North East -4 56 £450 - 92
Northern Ireland -2 28 £447 +18.02% 19
Channel Islands -5 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
1 223 (4.09%) Confluence
2 159 (2.92%) SharePoint
3 105 (1.93%) Microsoft Exchange
4 86 (1.58%) Apache Spark
5 65 (1.19%) SAS
6 61 (1.12%) Apache
7 47 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.61%) CMS
9 16 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.28%) nginx
10 15 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
11 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
12 9 (0.17%) Camunda
13 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.11%) CICS
15 6 (0.11%) JBoss
15 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 316 (5.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (4.06%) Microsoft Office
3 118 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
5 81 (1.49%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.42%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.15%) Trello
11 6 (0.11%) CATIA
11 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.092%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.073%) InDesign
13 4 (0.073%) InVision
13 4 (0.073%) Maya
13 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.055%) Adobe Captivate
14 3 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 96 (1.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.37%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
6 15 (0.28%) SAP ERP
7 14 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
8 13 (0.24%) NEC Housing
8 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
9 11 (0.20%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
9 11 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
10 10 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.17%) SAP Payroll
11 9 (0.17%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 1,155 (21.20%) Azure
2 857 (15.73%) AWS
3 386 (7.09%) Power Platform
4 370 (6.79%) GCP
5 336 (6.17%) Microsoft 365
6 256 (4.70%) Azure DevOps
7 247 (4.53%) GitHub
8 189 (3.47%) Serverless
9 165 (3.03%) Entra ID
10 134 (2.46%) SaaS
11 131 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
12 109 (2.00%) Amazon S3
13 105 (1.93%) AWS Lambda
14 91 (1.67%) OpenShift
15 83 (1.52%) Snowflake
16 78 (1.43%) Azure Data Factory
17 74 (1.36%) Dynamics 365
18 71 (1.30%) Power Automate
19 63 (1.16%) PaaS
20 61 (1.12%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 204 (3.74%) Firewall
2 197 (3.62%) DNS
3 125 (2.29%) TCP/IP
4 116 (2.13%) Network Security
5 109 (2.00%) WAN
6 108 (1.98%) VPN
7 104 (1.91%) DHCP
8 88 (1.62%) LAN
9 68 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
10 54 (0.99%) BGP
11 53 (0.97%) SAN
12 48 (0.88%) VLAN
13 40 (0.73%) OSPF
14 35 (0.64%) VoIP
15 34 (0.62%) SD-WAN
16 27 (0.50%) MPLS
16 27 (0.50%) Wireless
17 25 (0.46%) Internet
18 21 (0.39%) Junos
19 19 (0.35%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (5.69%) Power BI
2 191 (3.51%) SQL Server
3 167 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
4 152 (2.79%) PostgreSQL
5 149 (2.73%) Relational Database
6 107 (1.96%) Metadata
7 98 (1.80%) MongoDB
8 93 (1.71%) NoSQL
9 87 (1.60%) Big Data
10 85 (1.56%) Tableau
11 82 (1.51%) Data Lake
12 72 (1.32%) MySQL
13 67 (1.23%) Oracle Database
14 59 (1.08%) Oracle Reports
15 50 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 46 (0.84%) Hadoop
17 41 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
18 36 (0.66%) DynamoDB
19 35 (0.64%) Pentaho
20 31 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 514 (9.43%) JIRA
2 358 (6.57%) Git
3 262 (4.81%) Jenkins
4 170 (3.12%) GitLab
5 83 (1.52%) Selenium
6 55 (1.01%) JUnit
7 42 (0.77%) Postman
8 39 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.59%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 25 (0.46%) Cypress.io
12 23 (0.42%) Maven
12 23 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
13 21 (0.39%) Mockito
14 20 (0.37%) JMeter
15 18 (0.33%) SonarQube
16 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.28%) WebDriver
17 14 (0.26%) Artifactory
17 14 (0.26%) CircleCI
General
1 2,926 (53.71%) Social Skills
2 2,040 (37.44%) Analytical Skills
3 1,236 (22.69%) Finance
4 559 (10.26%) Public Sector
5 437 (8.02%) Banking
6 220 (4.04%) Organisational Skills
7 188 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
8 185 (3.40%) Legal
9 169 (3.10%) Retail
10 136 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
11 135 (2.48%) Presentation Skills
12 126 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 100 (1.84%) Front Office
14 96 (1.76%) Telecoms
15 89 (1.63%) Marketing
16 84 (1.54%) Investment Banking
17 77 (1.41%) Manufacturing
18 58 (1.06%) Military
19 56 (1.03%) Financial Institution
20 49 (0.90%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 748 (13.73%) Analyst
2 721 (13.23%) Developer
3 476 (8.74%) Senior
4 389 (7.14%) Architect
5 348 (6.39%) Lead
6 303 (5.56%) Business Analyst
7 298 (5.47%) Consultant
8 226 (4.15%) Data Engineer
9 220 (4.04%) Project Manager
10 138 (2.53%) Support Engineer
11 129 (2.37%) Java Developer
12 121 (2.22%) IT Support
13 110 (2.02%) Solutions Architect
14 104 (1.91%) Data Analyst
15 98 (1.80%) Software Engineer
16 97 (1.78%) Senior Developer
17 96 (1.76%) Administrator
18 84 (1.54%) Python Developer
19 83 (1.52%) Network Engineer
20 79 (1.45%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 354 (6.50%) REST
2 176 (3.23%) Kafka
3 169 (3.10%) RESTful
4 163 (2.99%) SOAP
5 159 (2.92%) .NET
6 152 (2.79%) Spring
7 141 (2.59%) Node.js
8 136 (2.50%) React
9 114 (2.09%) AngularJS
10 112 (2.06%) Spring Boot
11 108 (1.98%) JSON
12 107 (1.96%) CSS
13 106 (1.95%) HTML
14 98 (1.80%) XML
15 94 (1.73%) LDAP
16 92 (1.69%) Middleware
17 78 (1.43%) OAuth
18 72 (1.32%) PySpark
19 65 (1.19%) Oracle Fusion
20 60 (1.10%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 276 (5.07%) Product Ownership
2 238 (4.37%) Cloud Native
3 212 (3.89%) Onboarding
4 162 (2.97%) Management Information System
5 160 (2.94%) Data Centre
6 140 (2.57%) Analytical Mindset
6 140 (2.57%) Self-Motivation
7 117 (2.15%) Data Structures
8 112 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
9 109 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
10 105 (1.93%) Virtual Team
11 102 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
12 99 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
13 79 (1.45%) Algorithms
14 69 (1.27%) Security Posture
15 67 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
16 66 (1.21%) Driving Licence
17 62 (1.14%) Mobile App
18 61 (1.12%) CMDB
19 55 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 578 (10.61%) Windows
2 340 (6.24%) Linux
3 111 (2.04%) Windows Server
4 106 (1.95%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.89%) Unix
6 74 (1.36%) Android
7 66 (1.21%) Apple iOS
8 63 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 58 (1.06%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.37%) VMS
11 16 (0.29%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.20%) CentOS
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.13%) zOS
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.092%) Debian
17 5 (0.092%) Windows Server 2003
18 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,573 (28.87%) Agile
2 989 (18.15%) CI/CD
3 883 (16.21%) DevOps
4 832 (15.27%) Continuous Improvement
5 829 (15.22%) Stakeholder Management
6 643 (11.80%) Analytics
7 563 (10.33%) Migration
8 561 (10.30%) Decision-Making
9 541 (9.93%) AI
10 496 (9.10%) Project Management
11 484 (8.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 469 (8.61%) Data Modelling
13 435 (7.98%) Test Automation
14 426 (7.82%) Business Intelligence
15 421 (7.73%) Validation
16 416 (7.64%) Scrum
17 398 (7.31%) Change Management
18 396 (7.27%) ITIL
19 395 (7.25%) Customer Service
20 354 (6.50%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,040 (19.09%) Python
2 936 (17.18%) SQL
3 475 (8.72%) Java
4 369 (6.77%) PowerShell
5 294 (5.40%) JavaScript
6 220 (4.04%) C#
7 194 (3.56%) TypeScript
8 151 (2.77%) Bash
9 84 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 74 (1.36%) Shell Script
11 65 (1.19%) C++
12 52 (0.95%) Go
13 44 (0.81%) Perl
14 42 (0.77%) Bicep
15 41 (0.75%) T-SQL
16 39 (0.72%) Scala
17 38 (0.70%) R
18 35 (0.64%) C
19 33 (0.61%) Apex Code
20 32 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,195 (21.93%) Security Cleared
2 835 (15.33%) SC Cleared
3 678 (12.44%) Degree
4 230 (4.22%) Computer Science Degree
5 214 (3.93%) DV Cleared
6 171 (3.14%) BPSS Clearance
7 119 (2.18%) Cisco Certification
8 110 (2.02%) PMP
9 109 (2.00%) PMI Certification
10 102 (1.87%) CISSP
11 99 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
12 97 (1.78%) Master's Degree
13 69 (1.27%) Azure Certification
14 67 (1.23%) CISM
15 57 (1.05%) CCNP
16 53 (0.97%) CCNA
17 43 (0.79%) A+ Certification
17 43 (0.79%) AWS Certification
17 43 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
18 38 (0.70%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 357 (6.55%) QA
2 347 (6.37%) Data Quality
3 164 (3.01%) GDPR
4 115 (2.11%) Accessibility
5 101 (1.85%) PMO
6 92 (1.69%) NIST
7 90 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 69 (1.27%) SLA
9 45 (0.83%) GRC
10 34 (0.62%) WCAG
11 33 (0.61%) PCI DSS
12 29 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.48%) PSD2
14 24 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
16 18 (0.33%) ISO 8583
17 15 (0.28%) HL7
18 14 (0.26%) IFRS
19 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
19 13 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 438 (8.04%) Docker
2 390 (7.16%) Active Directory
3 114 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.88%) vSphere
5 39 (0.72%) VMware NSX
6 31 (0.57%) Hyper-V
7 24 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.35%) Firmware
9 15 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
12 9 (0.17%) Squid
12 9 (0.17%) vCloud
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 5 (0.092%) IAG
15 4 (0.073%) Snort
16 3 (0.055%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.055%) NFS
Systems Management
1 503 (9.23%) Kubernetes
2 321 (5.89%) Terraform
3 191 (3.51%) Ansible
4 129 (2.37%) Grafana
5 128 (2.35%) Microsoft Intune
6 102 (1.87%) Prometheus
7 85 (1.56%) SCCM
8 43 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
10 34 (0.62%) vCenter Server
11 31 (0.57%) Kibana
11 31 (0.57%) Puppet
12 28 (0.51%) Argo
13 24 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 21 (0.39%) Nessus
15 19 (0.35%) Control-M
16 15 (0.28%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.28%) vRealize
17 12 (0.22%) HP ALM
18 11 (0.20%) VxRail
Vendors
1 982 (18.02%) Microsoft
2 364 (6.68%) Oracle
3 264 (4.85%) SAP
4 237 (4.35%) ServiceNow
5 201 (3.69%) VMware
6 169 (3.10%) Google
7 168 (3.08%) Databricks
8 141 (2.59%) Splunk
9 129 (2.37%) Cisco
10 113 (2.07%) Salesforce
11 80 (1.47%) Red Hat
12 70 (1.28%) CyberArk
13 67 (1.23%) BeyondTrust
14 63 (1.16%) Dell
15 62 (1.14%) Citrix
16 57 (1.05%) Talend
17 55 (1.01%) IBM
18 54 (0.99%) Palo Alto
19 53 (0.97%) Informatica
20 51 (0.94%) Workday