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 17 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,821 5,108 4,584
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.65% 15.51% 11.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.60% 17.13% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,271 3,066 2,682
10th Percentile £250 £230 £250
25th Percentile £375 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.96%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £711 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 548 310 232
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.78 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.00
Median hourly rate £18.75 £19.63 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -4.46% +20.92% -69.76%
75th Percentile £37.50 £34.87 £30.00
90th Percentile £71.18 £63.88 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £18.73 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.90% +15.40% -70.49%

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 46,183 29,816 32,769
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 90.52% 85.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,080 18,531 20,147
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,092 1,799 1,460
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.25 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.42 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.68 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +84.31% -47.37% +5.81%

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 17 September 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 -7 5,016 £500 +2.46% 13,443
UK excluding London -3 3,116 £450 - 8,180
London -11 2,169 £525 +5.00% 6,661
Work from Home -4 1,561 £500 - 5,199
South East -3 793 £480 +6.67% 1,892
North of England -10 732 £446 -6.11% 1,862
Midlands -6 597 £450 +2.33% 1,311
West Midlands -8 430 £450 -4.05% 815
North West -9 365 £448 -5.79% 1,045
South West -4 344 £495 +10.00% 936
Scotland -1 315 £450 - 717
Yorkshire -8 297 £450 -6.25% 592
East of England 0 272 £425 -15.00% 902
East Midlands +2 164 £475 +26.67% 495
North East -15 72 £375 -16.67% 249
Wales -7 63 £471 +21.61% 194
Northern Ireland -5 25 £419 -13.39% 494
Channel Islands -3 5 £600 - 3

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
1 243 (4.17%) SharePoint
2 238 (4.09%) Confluence
3 109 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 58 (1.00%) Apache Spark
5 46 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
6 42 (0.72%) Apache
7 32 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
7 32 (0.55%) SAS
8 28 (0.48%) CMS
9 16 (0.27%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.22%) WebSphere
11 12 (0.21%) Jupyter
12 11 (0.19%) CICS
13 10 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 8 (0.14%) IIS
15 7 (0.12%) Appian
15 7 (0.12%) ArcGIS
15 7 (0.12%) Mule
15 7 (0.12%) WordPress
16 6 (0.10%) Anypoint
Applications
1 335 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 273 (4.69%) Microsoft Office
3 126 (2.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 65 (1.12%) Microsoft Project
5 62 (1.07%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.45%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 21 (0.36%) Chatbot
9 17 (0.29%) AutoCAD
10 15 (0.26%) Sketch
11 14 (0.24%) Revit
12 11 (0.19%) Trello
13 8 (0.14%) CATIA
13 8 (0.14%) Windchill
14 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
15 6 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
15 6 (0.10%) CPLEX
15 6 (0.10%) Final Cut Pro
16 4 (0.069%) Adobe XD
17 3 (0.052%) DaVinci Resolve
Business Applications
1 140 (2.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 52 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
3 42 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
4 31 (0.53%) NetSuite
5 29 (0.50%) SAP GRC
6 27 (0.46%) Workday HCM
7 25 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
8 16 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
9 15 (0.26%) iTrent
10 13 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.22%) SAP SD
11 12 (0.21%) Teamcenter
12 11 (0.19%) Finacle
13 10 (0.17%) Aladdin
13 10 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
13 10 (0.17%) SAP CRM
13 10 (0.17%) SAP ERP
14 9 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
14 9 (0.15%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.15%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 1,134 (19.48%) Azure
2 824 (14.16%) AWS
3 526 (9.04%) Microsoft 365
4 465 (7.99%) Power Platform
5 328 (5.63%) GCP
6 284 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
7 245 (4.21%) Entra ID
8 215 (3.69%) GitHub
9 159 (2.73%) SaaS
10 130 (2.23%) Serverless
11 113 (1.94%) Power Automate
12 95 (1.63%) GitHub Actions
13 94 (1.61%) Microsoft Copilot
14 93 (1.60%) Dynamics 365
15 85 (1.46%) PowerApps
16 78 (1.34%) OneDrive
17 69 (1.19%) Snowflake
18 67 (1.15%) Amazon S3
19 66 (1.13%) AWS Lambda
20 64 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 226 (3.88%) DNS
2 197 (3.38%) Firewall
3 170 (2.92%) VPN
4 138 (2.37%) TCP/IP
5 132 (2.27%) DHCP
6 126 (2.16%) WAN
7 110 (1.89%) Network Security
8 103 (1.77%) LAN
9 87 (1.49%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.13%) SAN
11 63 (1.08%) Wireless
12 54 (0.93%) VLAN
13 49 (0.84%) BGP
14 39 (0.67%) VoIP
15 35 (0.60%) SD-WAN
16 34 (0.58%) MPLS
17 32 (0.55%) Structured Cabling
18 26 (0.45%) HTTP
18 26 (0.45%) SSL
19 25 (0.43%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 352 (6.05%) Power BI
2 219 (3.76%) SQL Server
3 198 (3.40%) Relational Database
4 172 (2.95%) Data Warehouse
5 163 (2.80%) PostgreSQL
6 111 (1.91%) Metadata
7 100 (1.72%) MongoDB
8 87 (1.49%) NoSQL
9 85 (1.46%) Tableau
10 80 (1.37%) Data Lake
11 66 (1.13%) Oracle Database
12 62 (1.07%) MySQL
13 47 (0.81%) Big Data
14 46 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
15 36 (0.62%) Db2
15 36 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 31 (0.53%) Power Query
17 28 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
18 27 (0.46%) Delta Lake
18 27 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 506 (8.69%) JIRA
2 390 (6.70%) Git
3 202 (3.47%) Jenkins
4 144 (2.47%) GitLab
5 78 (1.34%) Selenium
6 48 (0.82%) Maven
7 43 (0.74%) Gradle
8 41 (0.70%) Cypress.io
9 39 (0.67%) Postman
10 38 (0.65%) JUnit
11 36 (0.62%) Cucumber
12 30 (0.52%) Bitbucket
13 29 (0.50%) REST Assured
14 25 (0.43%) SonarQube
15 23 (0.40%) Mockito
16 20 (0.34%) JMeter
16 20 (0.34%) Oracle Forms
17 17 (0.29%) Zephyr
18 16 (0.27%) WebDriver
19 15 (0.26%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 3,155 (54.20%) Social Skills
2 2,458 (42.23%) Analytical Skills
3 1,324 (22.75%) Finance
4 607 (10.43%) Public Sector
5 464 (7.97%) Banking
6 289 (4.96%) Organisational Skills
7 221 (3.80%) Manufacturing
8 203 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
9 185 (3.18%) Retail
10 178 (3.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 174 (2.99%) Influencing Skills
12 147 (2.53%) Legal
13 129 (2.22%) Front Office
14 122 (2.10%) Presentation Skills
15 117 (2.01%) Marketing
15 117 (2.01%) Telecoms
16 100 (1.72%) Investment Banking
17 89 (1.53%) Back Office
18 69 (1.19%) Law
19 67 (1.15%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 763 (13.11%) Analyst
2 745 (12.80%) Developer
3 547 (9.40%) Senior
4 426 (7.32%) Lead
5 340 (5.84%) Architect
6 265 (4.55%) Consultant
7 258 (4.43%) Business Analyst
8 236 (4.05%) IT Support
9 223 (3.83%) Support Engineer
10 208 (3.57%) Data Engineer
11 161 (2.77%) Administrator
12 156 (2.68%) IT Engineer
13 155 (2.66%) Project Manager
14 141 (2.42%) Java Developer
15 125 (2.15%) Data Analyst
16 117 (2.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 111 (1.91%) DevOps Engineer
18 110 (1.89%) Network Engineer
18 110 (1.89%) Solutions Architect
19 107 (1.84%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 408 (7.01%) REST
2 342 (5.88%) Terraform
3 191 (3.28%) .NET
3 191 (3.28%) RESTful
4 175 (3.01%) SOAP
5 162 (2.78%) React
6 152 (2.61%) Kafka
7 151 (2.59%) Spring
8 139 (2.39%) XML
9 138 (2.37%) HTML
9 138 (2.37%) JSON
10 134 (2.30%) CSS
11 126 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 122 (2.10%) Web Services
13 114 (1.96%) Middleware
14 95 (1.63%) Node.js
15 93 (1.60%) AngularJS
16 87 (1.49%) OAuth
17 70 (1.20%) PySpark
18 57 (0.98%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 332 (5.70%) Onboarding
2 288 (4.95%) Product Ownership
3 277 (4.76%) Cloud Native
4 224 (3.85%) Self-Motivation
5 214 (3.68%) Enterprise Software
6 199 (3.42%) Management Information System
7 186 (3.20%) Data Centre
8 167 (2.87%) Distributed Systems
9 147 (2.53%) Data Structures
10 134 (2.30%) Analytical Mindset
11 127 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
12 126 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
13 95 (1.63%) Virtual Team
14 86 (1.48%) Driving Licence
15 83 (1.43%) AI Agents
16 73 (1.25%) CMDB
17 61 (1.05%) Algorithms
18 60 (1.03%) Mobile App
19 58 (1.00%) PKI
20 57 (0.98%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 776 (13.33%) Windows
2 334 (5.74%) Linux
3 214 (3.68%) Windows Server
4 144 (2.47%) Windows 10
5 111 (1.91%) Unix
6 97 (1.67%) Apple iOS
7 94 (1.61%) Android
8 87 (1.49%) Mac OS
9 51 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 23 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.29%) VMS
11 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 13 (0.22%) zOS
13 9 (0.15%) CentOS
13 9 (0.15%) Solaris
13 9 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
14 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
16 5 (0.086%) Rocky
16 5 (0.086%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,632 (28.04%) Agile
2 1,332 (22.88%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,284 (22.06%) Continuous Improvement
4 984 (16.90%) CI/CD
5 903 (15.51%) DevOps
6 780 (13.40%) AI
7 651 (11.18%) Decision-Making
8 650 (11.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 594 (10.20%) Analytics
10 592 (10.17%) Migration
11 586 (10.07%) Customer Service
12 527 (9.05%) ITIL
13 472 (8.11%) Validation
14 470 (8.07%) Test Automation
15 435 (7.47%) Scrum
16 425 (7.30%) Business Intelligence
16 425 (7.30%) Data Modelling
17 383 (6.58%) ITSM
18 378 (6.49%) Software Engineering
19 371 (6.37%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,026 (17.63%) SQL
2 914 (15.70%) Python
3 458 (7.87%) Java
4 351 (6.03%) JavaScript
5 340 (5.84%) PowerShell
6 223 (3.83%) C#
7 160 (2.75%) Bash
8 144 (2.47%) TypeScript
9 102 (1.75%) PL/SQL
10 69 (1.19%) C++
11 52 (0.89%) T-SQL
12 45 (0.77%) Go
13 44 (0.76%) Shell Script
14 37 (0.64%) Scala
15 35 (0.60%) Bicep
16 32 (0.55%) Kotlin
17 30 (0.52%) Apex Code
17 30 (0.52%) C
18 29 (0.50%) R
19 28 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,277 (21.94%) Security Cleared
2 916 (15.74%) SC Cleared
3 658 (11.30%) Degree
4 224 (3.85%) DV Cleared
5 203 (3.49%) Computer Science Degree
6 185 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
7 159 (2.73%) Microsoft Certification
8 109 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
9 84 (1.44%) Azure Certification
10 77 (1.32%) CISSP
11 76 (1.31%) PMI Certification
12 74 (1.27%) PMP
13 72 (1.24%) A+ Certification
14 60 (1.03%) CCNA
15 56 (0.96%) Master's Degree
16 50 (0.86%) AWS Certification
17 49 (0.84%) DBS Check
18 47 (0.81%) Network+ Certification
19 43 (0.74%) CISM
19 43 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 440 (7.56%) Data Quality
2 392 (6.73%) QA
3 153 (2.63%) Accessibility
4 130 (2.23%) SLA
5 128 (2.20%) GDPR
6 101 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 96 (1.65%) PMO
8 74 (1.27%) GRC
9 73 (1.25%) NIST
10 40 (0.69%) WCAG
11 25 (0.43%) GxP
12 24 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
13 23 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
15 17 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 17 (0.29%) NCSC
16 16 (0.27%) PCI DSS
17 15 (0.26%) ISO 20022
18 14 (0.24%) COBIT
19 13 (0.22%) GMP
System Software
1 457 (7.85%) Active Directory
2 367 (6.30%) Docker
3 171 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.22%) Hyper-V
5 67 (1.15%) VMware ESXi
6 57 (0.98%) VMware NSX
7 53 (0.91%) vSphere
8 37 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
9 32 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
10 27 (0.46%) IAG
11 26 (0.45%) vCloud
12 16 (0.27%) Firmware
13 9 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.10%) NFS
16 4 (0.069%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 4 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.069%) RACF
16 4 (0.069%) XenApp
16 4 (0.069%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 410 (7.04%) Kubernetes
2 180 (3.09%) Ansible
3 136 (2.34%) Microsoft Intune
4 101 (1.74%) SCCM
5 99 (1.70%) Grafana
6 75 (1.29%) Prometheus
7 55 (0.94%) vCenter Server
8 42 (0.72%) SCOM
9 31 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
10 23 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
11 22 (0.38%) WSUS
12 20 (0.34%) Control-M
13 14 (0.24%) FortiGate
14 13 (0.22%) Argo
14 13 (0.22%) Kibana
15 12 (0.21%) NetBackup
15 12 (0.21%) Puppet
16 11 (0.19%) Istio
17 10 (0.17%) Nessus
17 10 (0.17%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,353 (23.24%) Microsoft
2 432 (7.42%) Oracle
3 370 (6.36%) ServiceNow
4 359 (6.17%) SAP
5 221 (3.80%) VMware
6 175 (3.01%) Google
7 156 (2.68%) Salesforce
8 139 (2.39%) Cisco
9 131 (2.25%) Databricks
10 117 (2.01%) Splunk
11 79 (1.36%) Workday
12 69 (1.19%) Dynatrace
13 68 (1.17%) Adobe
14 61 (1.05%) Apple
15 58 (1.00%) IBM
16 54 (0.93%) MuleSoft
17 53 (0.91%) CyberArk
18 47 (0.81%) Red Hat
19 44 (0.76%) Dell
20 42 (0.72%) Palo Alto