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

6 months to
15 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -3 +5 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,508 4,770 4,818
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.74% 16.05% 10.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.80% 17.76% 12.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,373 2,986 2,988
10th Percentile £286 £258 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -6.19%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £703 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £471 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -0.84% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 320 203 410
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.99 £11.07
25th Percentile £15.18 £17.31 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.02 £26.50 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.45% +47.22% -55.00%
75th Percentile £42.44 £43.19 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £76.50 £69.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.23 £22.32 £16.23
% change year-on-year -22.80% +37.52% -40.14%

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 37,209 26,860 38,491
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.05% 90.36% 86.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,562 17,174 25,055
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 £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,222 913 2,330
10th Percentile £14.91 £15.29 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £31.88 £31.50
% change year-on-year -13.74% +1.21% -10.00%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 4,716 £488 -2.50% 3,073
UK excluding London -4 2,852 £471 -0.84% 2,566
London -6 2,054 £512 -2.51% 953
Work from Home 0 1,590 £477 -4.70% 1,202
North of England -4 767 £450 -8.16% 620
South East -2 686 £490 -2.00% 829
Midlands -2 520 £450 +2.86% 435
North West -3 380 £424 -10.66% 345
West Midlands -2 379 £475 +4.70% 266
Yorkshire -4 340 £475 -5.00% 205
South West -2 313 £535 +1.90% 310
Scotland 0 264 £425 -5.56% 122
East of England -3 238 £450 - 259
East Midlands -4 142 £402 +1.77% 169
Wales -4 66 £400 +2.56% 69
North East -3 56 £438 -2.78% 83
Northern Ireland -2 32 £450 +37.40% 16
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
1 226 (4.10%) Confluence
2 165 (3.00%) SharePoint
3 108 (1.96%) Microsoft Exchange
4 95 (1.72%) Apache Spark
5 68 (1.23%) Apache
6 60 (1.09%) SAS
7 46 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
8 36 (0.65%) CMS
9 21 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.27%) Skype for Business
11 14 (0.25%) nginx
12 12 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 11 (0.20%) JBoss
14 10 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
15 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.15%) Camunda
17 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
17 7 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
18 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
19 5 (0.091%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 326 (5.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (4.08%) Microsoft Office
3 123 (2.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 84 (1.53%) MS Visio
5 81 (1.47%) Microsoft Project
6 23 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.13%) Trello
11 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.091%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.073%) Adobe Captivate
13 4 (0.073%) InDesign
13 4 (0.073%) InVision
13 4 (0.073%) Maya
13 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.054%) Autodesk Inventor
14 3 (0.054%) Notion
Business Applications
1 95 (1.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
7 15 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
8 14 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
8 14 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
9 13 (0.24%) SAP ERP
10 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
10 12 (0.22%) NetSuite
10 12 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.20%) SAP HR
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
12 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
12 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,189 (21.59%) Azure
2 878 (15.94%) AWS
3 396 (7.19%) GCP
4 386 (7.01%) Power Platform
5 331 (6.01%) Microsoft 365
6 270 (4.90%) GitHub
7 255 (4.63%) Azure DevOps
8 201 (3.65%) Serverless
9 166 (3.01%) Entra ID
10 140 (2.54%) GitHub Actions
11 135 (2.45%) SaaS
12 113 (2.05%) Amazon S3
13 105 (1.91%) AWS Lambda
14 94 (1.71%) OpenShift
15 92 (1.67%) Snowflake
16 79 (1.43%) Azure Data Factory
16 79 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
17 72 (1.31%) PaaS
18 70 (1.27%) Power Automate
19 63 (1.14%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 214 (3.89%) Firewall
2 197 (3.58%) DNS
3 129 (2.34%) TCP/IP
4 117 (2.12%) Network Security
5 115 (2.09%) WAN
6 113 (2.05%) DHCP
7 109 (1.98%) VPN
8 91 (1.65%) LAN
9 61 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
10 52 (0.94%) BGP
11 47 (0.85%) SAN
11 47 (0.85%) VLAN
12 38 (0.69%) OSPF
13 34 (0.62%) VoIP
14 33 (0.60%) SD-WAN
15 28 (0.51%) Wireless
16 27 (0.49%) MPLS
17 26 (0.47%) Internet
18 22 (0.40%) SSH
19 21 (0.38%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 312 (5.66%) Power BI
2 185 (3.36%) SQL Server
3 177 (3.21%) PostgreSQL
4 175 (3.18%) Data Warehouse
5 158 (2.87%) Relational Database
6 110 (2.00%) MongoDB
7 106 (1.92%) NoSQL
8 93 (1.69%) Metadata
9 88 (1.60%) Big Data
10 87 (1.58%) Tableau
11 85 (1.54%) MySQL
12 76 (1.38%) Data Lake
13 72 (1.31%) Oracle Database
14 57 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
15 53 (0.96%) Hadoop
16 49 (0.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 47 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
18 40 (0.73%) DynamoDB
19 33 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
20 31 (0.56%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 510 (9.26%) JIRA
2 380 (6.90%) Git
3 277 (5.03%) Jenkins
4 182 (3.30%) GitLab
5 90 (1.63%) Selenium
6 64 (1.16%) JUnit
7 48 (0.87%) Postman
8 41 (0.74%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.69%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
12 25 (0.45%) Cypress.io
12 25 (0.45%) JMeter
13 24 (0.44%) Maven
14 20 (0.36%) Mockito
14 20 (0.36%) SonarQube
15 16 (0.29%) IntelliJ
16 15 (0.27%) CircleCI
16 15 (0.27%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.27%) WebDriver
General
1 2,981 (54.12%) Social Skills
2 2,044 (37.11%) Analytical Skills
3 1,239 (22.49%) Finance
4 559 (10.15%) Public Sector
5 436 (7.92%) Banking
6 210 (3.81%) Organisational Skills
7 179 (3.25%) Documentation Skills
8 178 (3.23%) Legal
9 156 (2.83%) Retail
10 145 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
11 134 (2.43%) Presentation Skills
12 132 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 106 (1.92%) Telecoms
14 99 (1.80%) Front Office
15 92 (1.67%) Marketing
16 86 (1.56%) Investment Banking
17 82 (1.49%) Manufacturing
18 63 (1.14%) Military
19 58 (1.05%) Financial Institution
20 46 (0.84%) Law
Job Titles
1 762 (13.83%) Developer
2 744 (13.51%) Analyst
3 479 (8.70%) Senior
4 383 (6.95%) Architect
5 350 (6.35%) Lead
6 315 (5.72%) Business Analyst
7 309 (5.61%) Consultant
8 219 (3.98%) Data Engineer
8 219 (3.98%) Project Manager
9 143 (2.60%) Support Engineer
10 128 (2.32%) Java Developer
11 120 (2.18%) IT Support
12 103 (1.87%) Data Analyst
13 102 (1.85%) Senior Developer
14 99 (1.80%) Solutions Architect
15 98 (1.78%) Software Engineer
16 91 (1.65%) Administrator
17 89 (1.62%) Python Developer
18 84 (1.53%) Network Engineer
19 77 (1.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 373 (6.77%) REST
2 188 (3.41%) Kafka
3 179 (3.25%) SOAP
4 176 (3.20%) RESTful
5 171 (3.10%) .NET
6 166 (3.01%) Spring
7 162 (2.94%) Node.js
8 156 (2.83%) React
9 130 (2.36%) CSS
9 130 (2.36%) HTML
10 125 (2.27%) AngularJS
11 120 (2.18%) JSON
12 112 (2.03%) Spring Boot
13 102 (1.85%) XML
14 95 (1.72%) LDAP
15 91 (1.65%) Middleware
16 82 (1.49%) OAuth
17 73 (1.33%) PySpark
18 71 (1.29%) Oracle Fusion
19 69 (1.25%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 270 (4.90%) Product Ownership
2 246 (4.47%) Cloud Native
3 200 (3.63%) Onboarding
4 173 (3.14%) Management Information System
5 157 (2.85%) Data Centre
6 142 (2.58%) Analytical Mindset
7 124 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
8 119 (2.16%) Data Structures
9 110 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
10 100 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
11 99 (1.80%) Virtual Team
12 98 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
13 93 (1.69%) Algorithms
14 90 (1.63%) Distributed Systems
15 77 (1.40%) Security Posture
16 70 (1.27%) Hybrid Cloud
17 68 (1.23%) CMDB
17 68 (1.23%) Driving Licence
17 68 (1.23%) Mobile App
18 56 (1.02%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 574 (10.42%) Windows
2 346 (6.28%) Linux
3 110 (2.00%) Unix
3 110 (2.00%) Windows Server
4 98 (1.78%) Windows 10
5 70 (1.27%) Android
6 65 (1.18%) Apple iOS
6 65 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 57 (1.03%) Mac OS
8 19 (0.34%) VMS
9 15 (0.27%) Ubuntu
10 13 (0.24%) CentOS
11 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
12 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
13 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
15 5 (0.091%) zOS
16 4 (0.073%) Debian
16 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,594 (28.94%) Agile
2 1,034 (18.77%) CI/CD
3 888 (16.12%) DevOps
4 832 (15.11%) Stakeholder Management
5 798 (14.49%) Continuous Improvement
6 633 (11.49%) Analytics
7 571 (10.37%) Migration
8 554 (10.06%) Decision-Making
9 514 (9.33%) AI
10 484 (8.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 483 (8.77%) Project Management
12 473 (8.59%) Data Modelling
13 447 (8.12%) Test Automation
14 423 (7.68%) Validation
15 420 (7.63%) Business Intelligence
16 413 (7.50%) Scrum
17 388 (7.04%) Customer Service
18 384 (6.97%) Change Management
18 384 (6.97%) ITIL
19 383 (6.95%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,069 (19.41%) Python
2 950 (17.25%) SQL
3 505 (9.17%) Java
4 371 (6.74%) PowerShell
5 317 (5.76%) JavaScript
6 223 (4.05%) C#
7 212 (3.85%) TypeScript
8 154 (2.80%) Bash
9 81 (1.47%) Shell Script
10 75 (1.36%) PL/SQL
11 59 (1.07%) C++
12 57 (1.03%) Go
13 48 (0.87%) Perl
14 47 (0.85%) Scala
15 42 (0.76%) Bicep
16 39 (0.71%) Ruby
17 38 (0.69%) T-SQL
18 35 (0.64%) VBA
19 34 (0.62%) R
20 33 (0.60%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,187 (21.55%) Security Cleared
2 828 (15.03%) SC Cleared
3 713 (12.94%) Degree
4 249 (4.52%) Computer Science Degree
5 212 (3.85%) DV Cleared
6 159 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
7 115 (2.09%) Cisco Certification
8 113 (2.05%) Master's Degree
9 106 (1.92%) PMP
10 105 (1.91%) PMI Certification
11 102 (1.85%) Microsoft Certification
12 99 (1.80%) CISSP
13 78 (1.42%) Azure Certification
14 63 (1.14%) CISM
15 56 (1.02%) CCNP
16 54 (0.98%) AWS Certification
17 50 (0.91%) CCNA
18 40 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
19 39 (0.71%) A+ Certification
20 33 (0.60%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 356 (6.46%) QA
2 332 (6.03%) Data Quality
3 165 (3.00%) GDPR
4 119 (2.16%) Accessibility
5 92 (1.67%) NIST
6 88 (1.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 88 (1.60%) PMO
7 66 (1.20%) SLA
8 36 (0.65%) GRC
8 36 (0.65%) PCI DSS
9 33 (0.60%) WCAG
10 30 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
11 24 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.42%) PSD2
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 15 (0.27%) HL7
17 13 (0.24%) IFRS
System Software
1 481 (8.73%) Docker
2 379 (6.88%) Active Directory
3 110 (2.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.80%) vSphere
5 36 (0.65%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.60%) Hyper-V
7 22 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.36%) Firmware
9 19 (0.34%) 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%) vCloud
14 7 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
15 5 (0.091%) HDFS
16 4 (0.073%) Snort
17 3 (0.054%) ISA Server
17 3 (0.054%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 529 (9.60%) Kubernetes
2 325 (5.90%) Terraform
3 201 (3.65%) Ansible
4 138 (2.51%) Grafana
5 122 (2.21%) Microsoft Intune
6 113 (2.05%) Prometheus
7 86 (1.56%) SCCM
8 48 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.67%) FortiGate
10 35 (0.64%) Puppet
11 32 (0.58%) Argo
11 32 (0.58%) Kibana
12 31 (0.56%) vCenter Server
13 30 (0.54%) Nessus
14 26 (0.47%) Control-M
15 25 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 24 (0.44%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.27%) vRealize
18 13 (0.24%) Red Hat Satellite
19 11 (0.20%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,000 (18.16%) Microsoft
2 361 (6.55%) Oracle
3 272 (4.94%) SAP
4 233 (4.23%) ServiceNow
5 201 (3.65%) VMware
6 183 (3.32%) Google
7 166 (3.01%) Databricks
8 152 (2.76%) Splunk
9 135 (2.45%) Cisco
10 112 (2.03%) Salesforce
11 87 (1.58%) Red Hat
12 74 (1.34%) CyberArk
13 65 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
14 60 (1.09%) Dell
15 59 (1.07%) Workday
16 56 (1.02%) Citrix
16 56 (1.02%) IBM
17 55 (1.00%) Palo Alto
18 54 (0.98%) Informatica
19 53 (0.96%) Talend