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 30 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,334 4,946 4,790
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.31% 16.92% 10.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.36% 18.63% 12.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,217 3,084 2,940
10th Percentile £272 £250 £230
25th Percentile £385 £399 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -0.05% -4.71%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £719 £700 £726
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £473 £484
% change year-on-year -2.65% -2.38% -3.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 241 411
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.42 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.95 £15.90 £13.86
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.14 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.02% +26.51% -60.10%
75th Percentile £51.27 £41.00 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.25 £21.26 £15.00
% change year-on-year -14.16% +41.73% -59.82%

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 39,921 26,554 37,629
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.61% 90.86% 86.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,152 17,143 24,256
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +1.04% -3.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,393 1,068 2,439
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.81 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.07 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +42.95% -16.94% -6.17%
75th Percentile £66.00 £62.24 £59.95
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.71 £28.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +52.52% -23.29% +1.39%

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 30 April 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 30 April 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 30 April 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 -4 4,569 £488 -2.50% 2,544
UK excluding London -5 2,812 £460 -2.65% 2,213
London -11 1,959 £513 -2.38% 694
Work from Home 0 1,517 £475 -5.00% 965
North of England -6 770 £448 -7.73% 542
South East -5 659 £488 -2.50% 658
Midlands -4 513 £450 +0.67% 392
North West -5 363 £402 -17.54% 301
Yorkshire -5 359 £460 -3.16% 172
West Midlands -6 349 £475 +5.44% 239
South West -1 324 £500 - 249
Scotland -2 261 £425 -6.28% 97
East of England -4 212 £450 - 236
East Midlands 0 163 £443 +15.47% 154
Wales -2 68 £395 +19.27% 49
North East -4 55 £425 -16.67% 78
Northern Ireland -1 27 £439 +25.29% 61
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
1 215 (4.03%) Confluence
2 145 (2.72%) SharePoint
3 91 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 90 (1.69%) Apache Spark
5 66 (1.24%) Apache
6 49 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 47 (0.88%) SAS
8 29 (0.54%) CMS
9 19 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.24%) nginx
11 12 (0.22%) WebLogic
12 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.13%) Camunda
13 7 (0.13%) CICS
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
15 4 (0.075%) WordPress
Applications
1 302 (5.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 230 (4.31%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (2.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (1.54%) Microsoft Project
5 75 (1.41%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 11 (0.21%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) CATIA
11 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
11 7 (0.13%) Trello
12 6 (0.11%) AutoCAD
13 5 (0.094%) Acrobat
13 5 (0.094%) Maya
13 5 (0.094%) Revit
14 4 (0.075%) InDesign
14 4 (0.075%) InVision
14 4 (0.075%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 115 (2.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 19 (0.36%) Aladdin
6 17 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
7 16 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.26%) NEC Housing
8 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
9 13 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 12 (0.22%) SAP ERP
11 11 (0.21%) NetSuite
11 11 (0.21%) Teamcenter
12 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
13 9 (0.17%) iTrent
13 9 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
13 9 (0.17%) Shopify
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
14 8 (0.15%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,083 (20.30%) Azure
2 816 (15.30%) AWS
3 398 (7.46%) Power Platform
4 351 (6.58%) GCP
5 349 (6.54%) Microsoft 365
6 245 (4.59%) Azure DevOps
7 221 (4.14%) GitHub
8 164 (3.07%) Entra ID
9 155 (2.91%) Serverless
10 125 (2.34%) SaaS
11 111 (2.08%) GitHub Actions
12 97 (1.82%) Amazon S3
13 90 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
14 76 (1.42%) Dynamics 365
15 75 (1.41%) OpenShift
15 75 (1.41%) Snowflake
16 73 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
16 73 (1.37%) Power Automate
17 59 (1.11%) PowerApps
18 55 (1.03%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 186 (3.49%) DNS
2 185 (3.47%) Firewall
3 120 (2.25%) TCP/IP
4 109 (2.04%) VPN
5 106 (1.99%) Network Security
5 106 (1.99%) WAN
6 98 (1.84%) DHCP
7 79 (1.48%) LAN
8 78 (1.46%) SAN
9 63 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
10 51 (0.96%) BGP
11 47 (0.88%) VLAN
12 44 (0.82%) OSPF
13 40 (0.75%) SD-WAN
14 33 (0.62%) VoIP
15 26 (0.49%) MPLS
15 26 (0.49%) VXLAN
16 25 (0.47%) Internet
16 25 (0.47%) Wireless
17 21 (0.39%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 314 (5.89%) Power BI
2 201 (3.77%) SQL Server
3 164 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
5 136 (2.55%) Relational Database
6 117 (2.19%) Metadata
7 91 (1.71%) Tableau
8 90 (1.69%) MongoDB
9 85 (1.59%) Big Data
10 84 (1.57%) NoSQL
11 79 (1.48%) Data Lake
12 64 (1.20%) MySQL
13 63 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
14 56 (1.05%) Oracle Database
15 49 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 45 (0.84%) Hadoop
17 34 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
18 32 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
19 29 (0.54%) BigQuery
20 28 (0.52%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 504 (9.45%) JIRA
2 311 (5.83%) Git
3 203 (3.81%) Jenkins
4 140 (2.62%) GitLab
5 69 (1.29%) Selenium
6 40 (0.75%) Postman
7 32 (0.60%) Cucumber
8 29 (0.54%) Bitbucket
9 28 (0.52%) JUnit
10 26 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 22 (0.41%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.39%) JMeter
13 20 (0.37%) Maven
14 19 (0.36%) Mockito
15 18 (0.34%) SonarQube
15 18 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
16 17 (0.32%) WebDriver
17 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
18 14 (0.26%) Zephyr
19 12 (0.22%) Artifactory
General
1 2,783 (52.17%) Social Skills
2 2,048 (38.40%) Analytical Skills
3 1,247 (23.38%) Finance
4 512 (9.60%) Public Sector
5 412 (7.72%) Banking
6 226 (4.24%) Organisational Skills
7 185 (3.47%) Retail
8 181 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
9 161 (3.02%) Legal
10 135 (2.53%) Influencing Skills
11 131 (2.46%) Presentation Skills
12 121 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (1.84%) Front Office
13 98 (1.84%) Telecoms
14 88 (1.65%) Marketing
15 87 (1.63%) Manufacturing
16 75 (1.41%) Investment Banking
17 59 (1.11%) Financial Institution
18 58 (1.09%) Back Office
19 55 (1.03%) Law
Job Titles
1 743 (13.93%) Analyst
2 665 (12.47%) Developer
3 465 (8.72%) Senior
4 373 (6.99%) Architect
5 338 (6.34%) Lead
6 305 (5.72%) Business Analyst
7 268 (5.02%) Consultant
8 231 (4.33%) Data Engineer
9 204 (3.82%) Project Manager
10 134 (2.51%) Support Engineer
11 127 (2.38%) IT Support
12 121 (2.27%) Java Developer
13 119 (2.23%) Data Analyst
14 106 (1.99%) Administrator
15 101 (1.89%) Solutions Architect
16 94 (1.76%) IT Engineer
17 93 (1.74%) Software Engineer
18 92 (1.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 91 (1.71%) Network Engineer
20 81 (1.52%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 308 (5.77%) REST
2 159 (2.98%) Kafka
3 148 (2.77%) RESTful
4 146 (2.74%) SOAP
5 142 (2.66%) .NET
6 140 (2.62%) Spring
7 132 (2.47%) React
8 122 (2.29%) Node.js
9 115 (2.16%) CSS
10 108 (2.02%) HTML
11 106 (1.99%) AngularJS
11 106 (1.99%) Spring Boot
12 101 (1.89%) JSON
13 93 (1.74%) LDAP
14 91 (1.71%) Middleware
14 91 (1.71%) XML
15 73 (1.37%) OAuth
16 72 (1.35%) PySpark
17 54 (1.01%) Oracle Fusion
18 52 (0.97%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 278 (5.21%) Product Ownership
2 226 (4.24%) Onboarding
3 218 (4.09%) Cloud Native
4 194 (3.64%) Data Centre
5 158 (2.96%) Management Information System
6 154 (2.89%) Self-Motivation
7 150 (2.81%) Analytical Mindset
8 113 (2.12%) Distributed Systems
9 112 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
10 111 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
11 110 (2.06%) Data Structures
12 108 (2.02%) Virtual Team
13 101 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
14 71 (1.33%) Driving Licence
15 70 (1.31%) Security Posture
16 62 (1.16%) Algorithms
17 61 (1.14%) Mobile App
18 57 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
19 54 (1.01%) AI Agents
20 53 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 592 (11.10%) Windows
2 314 (5.89%) Linux
3 111 (2.08%) Windows 10
4 104 (1.95%) Windows Server
5 101 (1.89%) Unix
6 90 (1.69%) Android
7 81 (1.52%) Apple iOS
8 69 (1.29%) Mac OS
9 56 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.37%) VMS
12 15 (0.28%) CentOS
13 12 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.17%) zOS
15 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.13%) Debian
17 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
18 4 (0.075%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,479 (27.73%) Agile
2 892 (16.72%) CI/CD
3 813 (15.24%) Continuous Improvement
4 807 (15.13%) DevOps
5 784 (14.70%) Stakeholder Management
6 596 (11.17%) Analytics
7 584 (10.95%) Migration
8 583 (10.93%) Decision-Making
9 576 (10.80%) AI
10 464 (8.70%) Project Management
11 457 (8.57%) Data Modelling
12 455 (8.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 426 (7.99%) Validation
14 421 (7.89%) Business Intelligence
14 421 (7.89%) Customer Service
15 404 (7.57%) ITIL
16 394 (7.39%) Test Automation
17 379 (7.11%) Change Management
18 378 (7.09%) Scrum
19 345 (6.47%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 971 (18.20%) Python
2 921 (17.27%) SQL
3 449 (8.42%) Java
4 326 (6.11%) PowerShell
5 283 (5.31%) JavaScript
6 200 (3.75%) C#
7 174 (3.26%) TypeScript
8 125 (2.34%) Bash
9 84 (1.57%) PL/SQL
10 69 (1.29%) C++
11 63 (1.18%) Shell Script
12 53 (0.99%) Go
13 47 (0.88%) R
14 40 (0.75%) Bicep
15 38 (0.71%) C
16 37 (0.69%) Perl
17 36 (0.67%) Apex Code
18 35 (0.66%) T-SQL
19 33 (0.62%) Scala
20 30 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,153 (21.62%) Security Cleared
2 804 (15.07%) SC Cleared
3 659 (12.35%) Degree
4 223 (4.18%) Computer Science Degree
5 192 (3.60%) DV Cleared
6 174 (3.26%) BPSS Clearance
7 129 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
8 122 (2.29%) Microsoft Certification
9 98 (1.84%) CISSP
10 91 (1.71%) PMP
11 87 (1.63%) PMI Certification
12 81 (1.52%) Master's Degree
13 70 (1.31%) CCNA
14 67 (1.26%) A+ Certification
15 65 (1.22%) Azure Certification
16 62 (1.16%) CISM
17 59 (1.11%) Network+ Certification
18 56 (1.05%) MCSE
19 44 (0.82%) CCNP
20 34 (0.64%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 351 (6.58%) Data Quality
2 326 (6.11%) QA
3 158 (2.96%) GDPR
4 110 (2.06%) Accessibility
5 94 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 94 (1.76%) PMO
6 80 (1.50%) NIST
7 75 (1.41%) SLA
8 53 (0.99%) GRC
9 36 (0.67%) WCAG
10 30 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 29 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
11 29 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
13 19 (0.36%) PSD2
14 17 (0.32%) IFRS
15 15 (0.28%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.26%) HL7
16 14 (0.26%) ISO 8583
16 14 (0.26%) NCSC
System Software
1 381 (7.14%) Active Directory
2 360 (6.75%) Docker
3 114 (2.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.90%) vSphere
5 38 (0.71%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.62%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.43%) Firmware
8 18 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 16 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.21%) RACF
10 11 (0.21%) Squid
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
11 10 (0.19%) vCloud
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
13 6 (0.11%) IAG
14 4 (0.075%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.075%) NFS
14 4 (0.075%) Snort
Systems Management
1 445 (8.34%) Kubernetes
2 296 (5.55%) Terraform
3 185 (3.47%) Ansible
4 126 (2.36%) Microsoft Intune
5 122 (2.29%) Grafana
6 91 (1.71%) Prometheus
7 82 (1.54%) SCCM
8 40 (0.75%) FortiGate
8 40 (0.75%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
10 30 (0.56%) Kibana
11 27 (0.51%) Argo
12 26 (0.49%) Puppet
13 23 (0.43%) Control-M
14 21 (0.39%) Nessus
15 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.28%) WSUS
17 14 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 13 (0.24%) vRealize
19 12 (0.22%) CA Endevor
Vendors
1 981 (18.39%) Microsoft
2 359 (6.73%) Oracle
3 295 (5.53%) SAP
4 240 (4.50%) ServiceNow
5 194 (3.64%) VMware
6 166 (3.11%) Google
7 155 (2.91%) Databricks
8 133 (2.49%) Cisco
9 124 (2.32%) Splunk
10 120 (2.25%) Salesforce
11 81 (1.52%) Dell
12 70 (1.31%) CyberArk
13 68 (1.27%) Red Hat
14 65 (1.22%) BeyondTrust
15 62 (1.16%) Workday
16 59 (1.11%) Adobe
17 55 (1.03%) Citrix
18 52 (0.97%) IBM
19 51 (0.96%) Palo Alto
20 49 (0.92%) F5