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

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,476 4,677 4,818
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.87% 15.87% 10.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.95% 17.56% 12.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,377 2,923 2,988
10th Percentile £288 £257 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.60% - -6.54%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £703 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 311 193 411
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.99 £11.07
25th Percentile £15.18 £17.50 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.00 £26.50 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.53% +47.22% -48.57%
75th Percentile £41.90 £43.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £71.50 £69.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.24 £22.50 £16.12
% change year-on-year -23.38% +39.58% -39.44%

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 36,632 26,629 38,749
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.08% 90.34% 86.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,216 16,983 25,185
10th Percentile £313 £306 £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 £743 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.84% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,179 898 2,347
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.57 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.89% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £64.75 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.68 £76.53 £71.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.55 £32.00 £31.80
% change year-on-year -17.02% +0.63% -9.14%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -2 4,688 £492 -1.60% 3,098
UK excluding London -4 2,833 £475 - 2,542
London -5 2,043 £513 -2.38% 1,047
Work from Home 0 1,590 £481 -3.75% 1,310
North of England -3 767 £450 -7.98% 594
South East -2 670 £492 -1.60% 811
Midlands -2 524 £450 +3.45% 420
West Midlands 0 383 £477 +5.03% 249
North West -2 381 £425 -10.53% 323
Yorkshire -4 337 £475 -5.00% 202
South West -1 309 £550 +4.76% 285
Scotland 0 261 £438 -2.78% 143
East of England -3 241 £450 - 259
East Midlands -4 142 £402 +7.20% 171
Wales -1 65 £400 +2.89% 83
North East -1 58 £438 -2.78% 80
Northern Ireland -1 32 £450 +36.36% 17
Channel Islands 0 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 (4.05%) Confluence
2 164 (2.99%) SharePoint
3 107 (1.95%) Microsoft Exchange
4 93 (1.70%) Apache Spark
5 67 (1.22%) Apache
6 65 (1.19%) SAS
7 47 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
8 35 (0.64%) CMS
9 21 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.27%) Skype for Business
11 14 (0.26%) nginx
12 13 (0.24%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 11 (0.20%) JBoss
14 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
15 8 (0.15%) Camunda
16 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
16 7 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
17 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
18 5 (0.091%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 322 (5.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 228 (4.16%) Microsoft Office
3 124 (2.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 80 (1.46%) MS Visio
5 77 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
6 22 (0.40%) Chatbot
6 22 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.18%) Sketch
8 9 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
9 7 (0.13%) Trello
10 5 (0.091%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.091%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.073%) Adobe Captivate
11 4 (0.073%) Autodesk Inventor
11 4 (0.073%) InDesign
11 4 (0.073%) InVision
11 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
12 3 (0.055%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.055%) Notion
Business Applications
1 97 (1.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.27%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
8 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.24%) SAP ERP
9 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
9 12 (0.22%) NetSuite
9 12 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 11 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.20%) SAP HR
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,176 (21.48%) Azure
2 865 (15.80%) AWS
3 392 (7.16%) GCP
4 379 (6.92%) Power Platform
5 331 (6.04%) Microsoft 365
6 270 (4.93%) GitHub
7 253 (4.62%) Azure DevOps
8 200 (3.65%) Serverless
9 163 (2.98%) Entra ID
10 142 (2.59%) GitHub Actions
11 133 (2.43%) SaaS
12 110 (2.01%) Amazon S3
13 104 (1.90%) AWS Lambda
14 94 (1.72%) OpenShift
15 93 (1.70%) Snowflake
16 79 (1.44%) Azure Data Factory
17 78 (1.42%) Dynamics 365
18 69 (1.26%) PaaS
19 68 (1.24%) Power Automate
20 62 (1.13%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 208 (3.80%) Firewall
2 193 (3.52%) DNS
3 127 (2.32%) TCP/IP
4 111 (2.03%) Network Security
5 109 (1.99%) DHCP
6 108 (1.97%) WAN
7 106 (1.94%) VPN
8 85 (1.55%) LAN
9 61 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
10 50 (0.91%) BGP
11 47 (0.86%) VLAN
12 44 (0.80%) SAN
13 36 (0.66%) OSPF
14 34 (0.62%) VoIP
15 28 (0.51%) SD-WAN
16 25 (0.46%) Wireless
17 24 (0.44%) MPLS
18 23 (0.42%) Internet
19 22 (0.40%) SSH
20 21 (0.38%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (5.62%) Power BI
2 183 (3.34%) SQL Server
3 174 (3.18%) PostgreSQL
4 169 (3.09%) Data Warehouse
5 157 (2.87%) Relational Database
6 110 (2.01%) MongoDB
7 109 (1.99%) NoSQL
8 89 (1.63%) Metadata
9 83 (1.52%) Big Data
9 83 (1.52%) MySQL
9 83 (1.52%) Tableau
10 74 (1.35%) Oracle Database
11 73 (1.33%) Data Lake
12 56 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
13 52 (0.95%) Hadoop
14 49 (0.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 45 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
16 40 (0.73%) DynamoDB
17 36 (0.66%) Pentaho
18 33 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 505 (9.22%) JIRA
2 384 (7.01%) Git
3 279 (5.09%) Jenkins
4 180 (3.29%) GitLab
5 88 (1.61%) Selenium
6 65 (1.19%) JUnit
7 47 (0.86%) Postman
8 42 (0.77%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.69%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
12 25 (0.46%) JMeter
12 25 (0.46%) Maven
13 24 (0.44%) Cypress.io
14 21 (0.38%) Mockito
14 21 (0.38%) SonarQube
15 16 (0.29%) IntelliJ
16 15 (0.27%) CircleCI
16 15 (0.27%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.26%) WebDriver
General
1 2,968 (54.20%) Social Skills
2 2,013 (36.76%) Analytical Skills
3 1,230 (22.46%) Finance
4 557 (10.17%) Public Sector
5 443 (8.09%) Banking
6 209 (3.82%) Organisational Skills
7 177 (3.23%) Documentation Skills
8 176 (3.21%) Legal
9 149 (2.72%) Retail
10 143 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
11 133 (2.43%) Presentation Skills
12 131 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 104 (1.90%) Telecoms
14 98 (1.79%) Front Office
15 90 (1.64%) Marketing
16 87 (1.59%) Investment Banking
17 78 (1.42%) Manufacturing
18 64 (1.17%) Military
19 56 (1.02%) Financial Institution
20 46 (0.84%) Law
Job Titles
1 771 (14.08%) Developer
2 743 (13.57%) Analyst
3 485 (8.86%) Senior
4 372 (6.79%) Architect
5 347 (6.34%) Lead
6 316 (5.77%) Business Analyst
7 301 (5.50%) Consultant
8 217 (3.96%) Project Manager
9 214 (3.91%) Data Engineer
10 145 (2.65%) Support Engineer
11 131 (2.39%) Java Developer
12 120 (2.19%) IT Support
13 107 (1.95%) Senior Developer
14 103 (1.88%) Data Analyst
15 100 (1.83%) Software Engineer
16 96 (1.75%) Solutions Architect
17 90 (1.64%) Administrator
17 90 (1.64%) Python Developer
18 83 (1.52%) Network Engineer
19 76 (1.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 374 (6.83%) REST
2 188 (3.43%) Kafka
3 182 (3.32%) RESTful
4 181 (3.31%) SOAP
5 170 (3.10%) .NET
6 167 (3.05%) Node.js
7 165 (3.01%) Spring
8 158 (2.89%) React
9 129 (2.36%) CSS
9 129 (2.36%) HTML
10 125 (2.28%) AngularJS
11 121 (2.21%) JSON
12 111 (2.03%) Spring Boot
13 101 (1.84%) XML
14 94 (1.72%) LDAP
15 89 (1.63%) Middleware
16 83 (1.52%) OAuth
17 70 (1.28%) Oracle Fusion
18 69 (1.26%) PySpark
18 69 (1.26%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 267 (4.88%) Product Ownership
2 241 (4.40%) Cloud Native
3 195 (3.56%) Onboarding
4 173 (3.16%) Management Information System
5 151 (2.76%) Data Centre
6 139 (2.54%) Analytical Mindset
7 124 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
8 117 (2.14%) Data Structures
9 110 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
10 100 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
11 99 (1.81%) Virtual Team
12 93 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
13 92 (1.68%) Algorithms
14 88 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
15 77 (1.41%) Security Posture
16 71 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
17 69 (1.26%) CMDB
18 68 (1.24%) Mobile App
19 65 (1.19%) Driving Licence
20 55 (1.00%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 569 (10.39%) Windows
2 342 (6.25%) Linux
3 112 (2.05%) Unix
4 111 (2.03%) Windows Server
5 97 (1.77%) Windows 10
6 70 (1.28%) Android
7 66 (1.21%) Apple iOS
8 63 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 57 (1.04%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.37%) VMS
11 15 (0.27%) Ubuntu
12 13 (0.24%) CentOS
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) Mac OS X
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
16 5 (0.091%) zOS
17 4 (0.073%) Debian
17 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,594 (29.11%) Agile
2 1,036 (18.92%) CI/CD
3 887 (16.20%) DevOps
4 830 (15.16%) Stakeholder Management
5 799 (14.59%) Continuous Improvement
6 631 (11.52%) Analytics
7 565 (10.32%) Migration
8 555 (10.14%) Decision-Making
9 507 (9.26%) AI
10 479 (8.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 478 (8.73%) Project Management
12 465 (8.49%) Data Modelling
13 447 (8.16%) Test Automation
14 420 (7.67%) Scrum
15 416 (7.60%) Validation
16 415 (7.58%) Business Intelligence
17 385 (7.03%) Containerisation
18 383 (6.99%) Customer Service
19 376 (6.87%) ITIL
20 374 (6.83%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 1,062 (19.39%) Python
2 946 (17.28%) SQL
3 507 (9.26%) Java
4 365 (6.67%) PowerShell
5 318 (5.81%) JavaScript
6 224 (4.09%) C#
7 218 (3.98%) TypeScript
8 153 (2.79%) Bash
9 81 (1.48%) Shell Script
10 74 (1.35%) PL/SQL
11 59 (1.08%) C++
12 58 (1.06%) Go
13 47 (0.86%) Perl
14 44 (0.80%) Scala
15 41 (0.75%) Bicep
16 39 (0.71%) T-SQL
17 38 (0.69%) Ruby
18 35 (0.64%) VBA
19 33 (0.60%) R
20 31 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,177 (21.49%) Security Cleared
2 827 (15.10%) SC Cleared
3 710 (12.97%) Degree
4 248 (4.53%) Computer Science Degree
5 210 (3.83%) DV Cleared
6 159 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
7 112 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
8 111 (2.03%) Master's Degree
9 103 (1.88%) PMI Certification
10 102 (1.86%) Microsoft Certification
10 102 (1.86%) PMP
11 97 (1.77%) CISSP
12 78 (1.42%) Azure Certification
13 62 (1.13%) CISM
14 56 (1.02%) CCNP
15 54 (0.99%) AWS Certification
16 49 (0.89%) CCNA
17 39 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
18 38 (0.69%) A+ Certification
19 32 (0.58%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 354 (6.46%) QA
2 328 (5.99%) Data Quality
3 162 (2.96%) GDPR
4 121 (2.21%) Accessibility
5 90 (1.64%) NIST
6 87 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 87 (1.59%) PMO
7 66 (1.21%) SLA
8 36 (0.66%) PCI DSS
9 35 (0.64%) GRC
10 33 (0.60%) WCAG
11 28 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
12 23 (0.42%) PSD2
12 23 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 18 (0.33%) ISO 20022
14 17 (0.31%) EU AI Act
14 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
15 16 (0.29%) HIPAA
16 13 (0.24%) HL7
16 13 (0.24%) IFRS
System Software
1 487 (8.89%) Docker
2 375 (6.85%) Active Directory
3 111 (2.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.82%) vSphere
5 35 (0.64%) VMware NSX
6 32 (0.58%) Hyper-V
7 24 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.37%) Firmware
9 19 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.16%) ACF2
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.15%) Squid
13 8 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 7 (0.13%) vCloud
15 5 (0.091%) HDFS
16 4 (0.073%) Snort
17 3 (0.055%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.055%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 537 (9.81%) Kubernetes
2 321 (5.86%) Terraform
3 201 (3.67%) Ansible
4 136 (2.48%) Grafana
5 117 (2.14%) Microsoft Intune
6 110 (2.01%) Prometheus
7 88 (1.61%) SCCM
8 48 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
9 36 (0.66%) FortiGate
9 36 (0.66%) Puppet
10 33 (0.60%) Kibana
11 32 (0.58%) Argo
12 30 (0.55%) vCenter Server
13 29 (0.53%) Nessus
14 25 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 25 (0.46%) Control-M
15 23 (0.42%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.27%) vRealize
17 13 (0.24%) Red Hat Satellite
18 12 (0.22%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 996 (18.19%) Microsoft
2 360 (6.57%) Oracle
3 264 (4.82%) SAP
4 239 (4.36%) ServiceNow
5 200 (3.65%) VMware
6 185 (3.38%) Google
7 160 (2.92%) Databricks
8 151 (2.76%) Splunk
9 135 (2.47%) Cisco
10 110 (2.01%) Salesforce
11 86 (1.57%) Red Hat
12 75 (1.37%) CyberArk
13 64 (1.17%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.06%) Workday
15 57 (1.04%) Citrix
15 57 (1.04%) Dell
15 57 (1.04%) IBM
15 57 (1.04%) Talend
16 55 (1.00%) Palo Alto
17 52 (0.95%) F5