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 9 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,294 4,959 4,715
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.09% 17.00% 10.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.13% 18.69% 12.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,172 3,098 2,876
10th Percentile £263 £250 £240
25th Percentile £382 £393 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £456 £475 £488
% change year-on-year -3.95% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 242 411
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.22 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.84
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.32 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.79% +31.29% -64.88%
75th Percentile £51.27 £41.25 £38.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.09 £21.24 £15.00
% change year-on-year -14.83% +41.60% -63.74%

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 40,321 26,530 37,209
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.49% 90.95% 86.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,358 17,078 23,948
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% -1.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.30% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,401 1,077 2,439
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.47 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.13 £37.50
% change year-on-year +62.21% -27.67% +7.14%

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 9 May 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 9 May 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 9 May 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 4,536 £490 -2.00% 3,024
UK excluding London -5 2,808 £456 -3.95% 2,384
London -12 1,932 £513 -2.38% 942
Work from Home -1 1,516 £475 -5.00% 1,179
North of England -7 753 £450 -7.98% 603
South East -7 654 £488 -2.50% 764
Midlands -5 523 £450 +0.45% 389
North West -5 364 £410 -16.16% 343
West Midlands -5 357 £474 +2.49% 238
Yorkshire -6 343 £460 -5.15% 193
South West -1 323 £500 - 271
Scotland -1 263 £425 -6.28% 95
East of England -4 216 £450 - 252
East Midlands 0 165 £443 +17.00% 152
Wales -3 71 £400 +20.78% 55
North East -9 53 £425 -11.23% 72
Northern Ireland -1 26 £430 +5.52% 23
Channel Islands -4 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
1 214 (4.04%) Confluence
2 148 (2.80%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.64%) Microsoft Exchange
4 86 (1.62%) Apache Spark
5 62 (1.17%) Apache
6 50 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
7 49 (0.93%) SAS
8 34 (0.64%) CMS
9 20 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.25%) nginx
11 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
12 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.13%) Camunda
13 7 (0.13%) CICS
13 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 4 (0.076%) Anypoint
Applications
1 297 (5.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (4.17%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (2.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 80 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
5 77 (1.45%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 10 (0.19%) Sketch
10 8 (0.15%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) CATIA
11 7 (0.13%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
11 7 (0.13%) Trello
12 6 (0.11%) Revit
13 5 (0.094%) Maya
14 4 (0.076%) Acrobat
14 4 (0.076%) CPLEX
14 4 (0.076%) InDesign
15 3 (0.057%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 121 (2.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.38%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
7 14 (0.26%) NEC Housing
8 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 12 (0.23%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.23%) Workday HCM
10 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
10 10 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
10 10 (0.19%) SAP GRC
11 9 (0.17%) iTrent
11 9 (0.17%) NetSuite
11 9 (0.17%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.17%) Shopify
12 8 (0.15%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,072 (20.25%) Azure
2 820 (15.49%) AWS
3 395 (7.46%) Power Platform
4 351 (6.63%) Microsoft 365
5 340 (6.42%) GCP
6 245 (4.63%) Azure DevOps
7 218 (4.12%) GitHub
8 161 (3.04%) Entra ID
9 149 (2.81%) Serverless
10 128 (2.42%) SaaS
11 113 (2.13%) GitHub Actions
12 96 (1.81%) Amazon S3
13 89 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
14 78 (1.47%) Dynamics 365
15 75 (1.42%) Snowflake
16 74 (1.40%) Power Automate
17 72 (1.36%) Azure Data Factory
18 71 (1.34%) OpenShift
19 60 (1.13%) PowerApps
20 53 (1.00%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 189 (3.57%) DNS
2 179 (3.38%) Firewall
3 122 (2.30%) TCP/IP
4 108 (2.04%) VPN
5 105 (1.98%) WAN
6 101 (1.91%) DHCP
7 96 (1.81%) Network Security
8 84 (1.59%) SAN
9 78 (1.47%) LAN
10 66 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
11 50 (0.94%) BGP
12 49 (0.93%) VLAN
13 43 (0.81%) OSPF
14 40 (0.76%) SD-WAN
15 31 (0.59%) VoIP
16 29 (0.55%) Wireless
17 26 (0.49%) VXLAN
18 25 (0.47%) Internet
19 24 (0.45%) MPLS
20 21 (0.40%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (5.86%) Power BI
2 201 (3.80%) SQL Server
3 164 (3.10%) Data Warehouse
4 136 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
4 136 (2.57%) Relational Database
5 116 (2.19%) Metadata
6 87 (1.64%) MongoDB
6 87 (1.64%) Tableau
7 85 (1.61%) NoSQL
8 83 (1.57%) Big Data
9 77 (1.45%) Data Lake
10 63 (1.19%) MySQL
10 63 (1.19%) Oracle Reports
11 55 (1.04%) Oracle Database
12 51 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 43 (0.81%) Hadoop
14 35 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
15 32 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
16 31 (0.59%) Power Query
17 29 (0.55%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 501 (9.46%) JIRA
2 307 (5.80%) Git
3 196 (3.70%) Jenkins
4 140 (2.64%) GitLab
5 66 (1.25%) Selenium
6 39 (0.74%) Postman
7 31 (0.59%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.49%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.47%) REST Assured
10 24 (0.45%) JUnit
11 23 (0.43%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.40%) JMeter
13 18 (0.34%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 16 (0.30%) Maven
15 16 (0.30%) Mockito
15 16 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
16 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.26%) Zephyr
18 11 (0.21%) Appium
General
1 2,758 (52.10%) Social Skills
2 2,036 (38.46%) Analytical Skills
3 1,228 (23.20%) Finance
4 505 (9.54%) Public Sector
5 406 (7.67%) Banking
6 225 (4.25%) Organisational Skills
7 186 (3.51%) Retail
8 180 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
9 154 (2.91%) Legal
10 129 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
11 119 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 117 (2.21%) Influencing Skills
13 97 (1.83%) Front Office
14 92 (1.74%) Telecoms
15 88 (1.66%) Manufacturing
16 87 (1.64%) Marketing
17 78 (1.47%) Investment Banking
18 61 (1.15%) Back Office
19 59 (1.11%) Law
20 57 (1.08%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 739 (13.96%) Analyst
2 650 (12.28%) Developer
3 463 (8.75%) Senior
4 366 (6.91%) Architect
5 329 (6.21%) Lead
6 301 (5.69%) Business Analyst
7 265 (5.01%) Consultant
8 238 (4.50%) Data Engineer
9 204 (3.85%) Project Manager
10 142 (2.68%) Support Engineer
11 131 (2.47%) IT Support
12 121 (2.29%) Data Analyst
13 111 (2.10%) Java Developer
14 102 (1.93%) IT Engineer
15 99 (1.87%) Solutions Architect
16 96 (1.81%) Administrator
16 96 (1.81%) Network Engineer
17 93 (1.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 93 (1.76%) Software Engineer
18 77 (1.45%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 296 (5.59%) REST
2 156 (2.95%) Kafka
3 148 (2.80%) .NET
4 140 (2.64%) RESTful
5 138 (2.61%) SOAP
6 134 (2.53%) React
7 132 (2.49%) Spring
8 115 (2.17%) CSS
9 114 (2.15%) Node.js
10 108 (2.04%) HTML
11 106 (2.00%) AngularJS
12 102 (1.93%) LDAP
12 102 (1.93%) Spring Boot
13 96 (1.81%) JSON
13 96 (1.81%) Middleware
14 89 (1.68%) XML
15 73 (1.38%) PySpark
16 70 (1.32%) OAuth
17 57 (1.08%) Oracle Fusion
18 53 (1.00%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 271 (5.12%) Product Ownership
2 233 (4.40%) Onboarding
3 210 (3.97%) Cloud Native
4 204 (3.85%) Data Centre
5 158 (2.98%) Self-Motivation
6 153 (2.89%) Analytical Mindset
7 147 (2.78%) Management Information System
8 118 (2.23%) Distributed Systems
9 117 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
10 115 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
11 112 (2.12%) Virtual Team
12 108 (2.04%) Data Structures
13 100 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
14 73 (1.38%) Driving Licence
15 65 (1.23%) Security Posture
16 63 (1.19%) Mobile App
17 58 (1.10%) Algorithms
18 56 (1.06%) AI Agents
19 54 (1.02%) Hybrid Cloud
20 49 (0.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 599 (11.31%) Windows
2 311 (5.87%) Linux
3 110 (2.08%) Windows 10
4 109 (2.06%) Windows Server
5 102 (1.93%) Unix
6 97 (1.83%) Android
7 90 (1.70%) Apple iOS
8 74 (1.40%) Mac OS
9 53 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 19 (0.36%) VMS
12 15 (0.28%) CentOS
13 12 (0.23%) 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 4 (0.076%) AIX
17 4 (0.076%) Rocky
17 4 (0.076%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,444 (27.28%) Agile
2 892 (16.85%) CI/CD
3 801 (15.13%) DevOps
4 796 (15.04%) Continuous Improvement
5 760 (14.36%) Stakeholder Management
6 588 (11.11%) Decision-Making
7 577 (10.90%) AI
7 577 (10.90%) Migration
8 575 (10.86%) Analytics
9 462 (8.73%) Project Management
10 459 (8.67%) Data Modelling
11 444 (8.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 430 (8.12%) Validation
13 426 (8.05%) Customer Service
14 417 (7.88%) Business Intelligence
15 409 (7.73%) ITIL
16 395 (7.46%) Test Automation
17 367 (6.93%) Change Management
18 365 (6.89%) Scrum
19 323 (6.10%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 959 (18.11%) Python
2 917 (17.32%) SQL
3 431 (8.14%) Java
4 331 (6.25%) PowerShell
5 282 (5.33%) JavaScript
6 204 (3.85%) C#
7 170 (3.21%) TypeScript
8 121 (2.29%) Bash
9 87 (1.64%) PL/SQL
10 72 (1.36%) C++
11 59 (1.11%) Shell Script
12 51 (0.96%) Go
13 47 (0.89%) R
14 39 (0.74%) Bicep
15 38 (0.72%) C
16 36 (0.68%) T-SQL
17 35 (0.66%) Apex Code
17 35 (0.66%) Perl
18 33 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 32 (0.60%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,159 (21.89%) Security Cleared
2 801 (15.13%) SC Cleared
3 633 (11.96%) Degree
4 207 (3.91%) Computer Science Degree
5 195 (3.68%) DV Cleared
6 169 (3.19%) BPSS Clearance
7 140 (2.64%) Cisco Certification
8 125 (2.36%) Microsoft Certification
9 95 (1.79%) CISSP
10 88 (1.66%) PMP
11 84 (1.59%) PMI Certification
12 77 (1.45%) CCNA
13 74 (1.40%) Master's Degree
14 71 (1.34%) A+ Certification
15 67 (1.27%) Azure Certification
15 67 (1.27%) Network+ Certification
16 65 (1.23%) CISM
17 58 (1.10%) MCSE
18 48 (0.91%) CCNP
19 38 (0.72%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 353 (6.67%) Data Quality
2 308 (5.82%) QA
3 159 (3.00%) GDPR
4 104 (1.96%) Accessibility
5 102 (1.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 94 (1.78%) PMO
7 85 (1.61%) NIST
8 73 (1.38%) SLA
9 50 (0.94%) GRC
10 31 (0.59%) WCAG
11 30 (0.57%) PCI DSS
12 29 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
13 27 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.40%) ISO 20022
15 19 (0.36%) PSD2
16 17 (0.32%) IFRS
17 15 (0.28%) NCSC
18 14 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials
18 14 (0.26%) HIPAA
18 14 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 390 (7.37%) Active Directory
2 342 (6.46%) Docker
3 118 (2.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 47 (0.89%) vSphere
5 39 (0.74%) VMware NSX
6 35 (0.66%) Hyper-V
7 24 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
8 23 (0.43%) Firmware
9 19 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
10 18 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
11 13 (0.25%) vCloud
12 11 (0.21%) RACF
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
14 9 (0.17%) ACF2
15 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.11%) IAG
17 4 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
17 4 (0.076%) NFS
17 4 (0.076%) Snort
Systems Management
1 425 (8.03%) Kubernetes
2 286 (5.40%) Terraform
3 182 (3.44%) Ansible
4 122 (2.30%) Microsoft Intune
5 117 (2.21%) Grafana
6 90 (1.70%) Prometheus
7 82 (1.55%) SCCM
8 43 (0.81%) vCenter Server
9 41 (0.77%) FortiGate
10 39 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
11 28 (0.53%) Kibana
12 25 (0.47%) Argo
12 25 (0.47%) Puppet
13 23 (0.43%) Control-M
14 21 (0.40%) Nessus
15 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 14 (0.26%) WSUS
18 12 (0.23%) CA Endevor
18 12 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 960 (18.13%) Microsoft
2 357 (6.74%) Oracle
3 293 (5.53%) SAP
4 231 (4.36%) ServiceNow
5 197 (3.72%) VMware
6 158 (2.98%) Databricks
7 155 (2.93%) Google
8 132 (2.49%) Cisco
9 126 (2.38%) Splunk
10 111 (2.10%) Salesforce
11 86 (1.62%) Dell
12 77 (1.45%) CyberArk
13 71 (1.34%) BeyondTrust
14 65 (1.23%) Red Hat
15 60 (1.13%) Workday
16 55 (1.04%) Adobe
17 54 (1.02%) Citrix
18 52 (0.98%) Palo Alto
19 50 (0.94%) IBM
20 49 (0.93%) HP