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 13 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,262 5,036 4,718
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.52% 17.06% 10.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.41% 18.75% 12.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,054 3,128 2,851
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £387 £381 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.20% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £622
90th Percentile £714 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £456 £469 £475
% change year-on-year -2.88% -1.26% -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 406 270 430
10th Percentile £13.05 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.30 £15.50 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.48 £22.14 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -7.52% +36.41% -69.09%
75th Percentile £38.94 £41.00 £33.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £66.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.75 £20.25 £15.50
% change year-on-year -7.41% +30.65% -70.48%

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 42,415 26,864 37,189
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.78% 91.03% 85.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,461 17,061 23,740
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,543 1,206 2,581
10th Percentile £14.71 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.13 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.06% -25.68% +1.67%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% +9.23%

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 13 June 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 13 June 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 13 June 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 -9 4,491 £500 - 2,870
UK excluding London -5 2,800 £456 -2.88% 2,427
London -12 1,921 £520 +1.96% 805
Work from Home -5 1,484 £491 -1.80% 1,110
North of England -10 712 £450 -6.49% 595
South East -6 672 £488 -2.50% 738
Midlands -9 501 £465 +8.01% 419
West Midlands -11 357 £471 +4.56% 246
North West -10 342 £433 -11.55% 332
Yorkshire -6 329 £451 -5.16% 186
South West -3 321 £500 - 307
Scotland -3 288 £438 -6.12% 102
East of England -2 242 £450 -3.54% 272
East Midlands -1 143 £445 +21.36% 175
Wales -1 67 £468 +24.67% 36
North East -17 47 £373 -17.22% 88
Northern Ireland -6 24 £365 -6.71% 59
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
1 220 (4.18%) Confluence
2 153 (2.91%) SharePoint
3 88 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 77 (1.46%) Apache Spark
5 49 (0.93%) Apache
6 47 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
7 41 (0.78%) SAS
8 33 (0.63%) CMS
9 25 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.29%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.23%) nginx
12 11 (0.21%) CICS
13 10 (0.19%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 9 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.17%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.15%) Camunda
15 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
16 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
17 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 303 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 211 (4.01%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (2.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.37%) MS Visio
5 67 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
6 33 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 21 (0.40%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.25%) AutoCAD
10 12 (0.23%) Sketch
11 10 (0.19%) CATIA
11 10 (0.19%) Revit
12 7 (0.13%) Trello
13 6 (0.11%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.095%) Adobe After Effects
14 5 (0.095%) Final Cut Pro
14 5 (0.095%) Maya
15 4 (0.076%) Acrobat
16 3 (0.057%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 130 (2.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.34%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 16 (0.30%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.29%) SAP GRC
8 13 (0.25%) NetSuite
8 13 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
9 12 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
10 11 (0.21%) NEC Housing
10 11 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 11 (0.21%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.19%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.19%) SAP SD
12 9 (0.17%) iTrent
13 8 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
13 8 (0.15%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,065 (20.24%) Azure
2 799 (15.18%) AWS
3 402 (7.64%) Power Platform
4 363 (6.90%) Microsoft 365
5 319 (6.06%) GCP
6 232 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
7 195 (3.71%) GitHub
8 173 (3.29%) Entra ID
9 139 (2.64%) Serverless
10 135 (2.57%) SaaS
11 101 (1.92%) GitHub Actions
12 92 (1.75%) Amazon S3
13 82 (1.56%) AWS Lambda
14 74 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
15 70 (1.33%) Snowflake
16 67 (1.27%) Power Automate
17 64 (1.22%) Azure Data Factory
18 62 (1.18%) OpenShift
19 61 (1.16%) PowerApps
20 47 (0.89%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 199 (3.78%) DNS
2 164 (3.12%) Firewall
3 122 (2.32%) TCP/IP
4 114 (2.17%) VPN
5 109 (2.07%) WAN
6 104 (1.98%) DHCP
7 85 (1.62%) Network Security
8 82 (1.56%) SAN
9 81 (1.54%) LAN
10 72 (1.37%) Wi-Fi
11 50 (0.95%) VLAN
12 48 (0.91%) BGP
12 48 (0.91%) SD-WAN
13 41 (0.78%) OSPF
14 35 (0.67%) Wireless
15 32 (0.61%) VoIP
16 28 (0.53%) VXLAN
17 27 (0.51%) MPLS
18 23 (0.44%) Internet
18 23 (0.44%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 316 (6.01%) Power BI
2 203 (3.86%) SQL Server
3 159 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
4 143 (2.72%) Relational Database
5 139 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
6 111 (2.11%) MongoDB
7 105 (2.00%) Metadata
8 91 (1.73%) Data Lake
9 89 (1.69%) NoSQL
9 89 (1.69%) Tableau
10 77 (1.46%) Big Data
11 51 (0.97%) MySQL
11 51 (0.97%) Oracle Database
12 50 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 49 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
14 36 (0.68%) Hadoop
15 30 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 28 (0.53%) Power Query
17 27 (0.51%) Db2
17 27 (0.51%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 505 (9.60%) JIRA
2 286 (5.44%) Git
3 184 (3.50%) Jenkins
4 133 (2.53%) GitLab
5 66 (1.25%) Selenium
6 41 (0.78%) Postman
7 37 (0.70%) REST Assured
8 30 (0.57%) Cucumber
9 27 (0.51%) Bitbucket
10 24 (0.46%) Cypress.io
11 22 (0.42%) JUnit
12 17 (0.32%) JMeter
12 17 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
12 17 (0.32%) WebDriver
13 16 (0.30%) Mockito
14 15 (0.29%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.27%) Maven
15 14 (0.27%) Zephyr
16 13 (0.25%) Gatling
17 12 (0.23%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,741 (52.09%) Social Skills
2 2,062 (39.19%) Analytical Skills
3 1,219 (23.17%) Finance
4 474 (9.01%) Public Sector
5 396 (7.53%) Banking
6 207 (3.93%) Organisational Skills
7 190 (3.61%) Documentation Skills
8 187 (3.55%) Retail
9 152 (2.89%) Legal
10 139 (2.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 110 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
12 109 (2.07%) Manufacturing
13 108 (2.05%) Presentation Skills
14 100 (1.90%) Front Office
15 92 (1.75%) Marketing
16 91 (1.73%) Telecoms
17 83 (1.58%) Investment Banking
18 75 (1.43%) Back Office
19 62 (1.18%) Law
20 57 (1.08%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 736 (13.99%) Analyst
2 598 (11.36%) Developer
3 451 (8.57%) Senior
4 366 (6.96%) Architect
5 341 (6.48%) Lead
6 284 (5.40%) Business Analyst
7 263 (5.00%) Consultant
8 235 (4.47%) Data Engineer
9 179 (3.40%) Project Manager
10 162 (3.08%) IT Support
11 156 (2.96%) Support Engineer
12 121 (2.30%) Data Analyst
13 114 (2.17%) Administrator
13 114 (2.17%) IT Engineer
14 110 (2.09%) Java Developer
15 107 (2.03%) Solutions Architect
16 96 (1.82%) Software Engineer
17 92 (1.75%) Network Engineer
18 89 (1.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 82 (1.56%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 314 (5.97%) REST
2 159 (3.02%) .NET
3 151 (2.87%) Kafka
4 138 (2.62%) SOAP
5 135 (2.57%) React
5 135 (2.57%) Spring
6 128 (2.43%) RESTful
7 121 (2.30%) CSS
8 108 (2.05%) HTML
8 108 (2.05%) JSON
9 105 (2.00%) Middleware
10 100 (1.90%) Spring Boot
11 92 (1.75%) XML
12 90 (1.71%) Node.js
13 89 (1.69%) AngularJS
14 86 (1.63%) LDAP
15 72 (1.37%) PySpark
16 65 (1.24%) Web Services
17 56 (1.06%) OAuth
18 47 (0.89%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 256 (4.87%) Product Ownership
2 240 (4.56%) Onboarding
3 216 (4.10%) Cloud Native
4 207 (3.93%) Data Centre
5 178 (3.38%) Self-Motivation
6 146 (2.77%) Analytical Mindset
7 145 (2.76%) Management Information System
8 134 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
9 130 (2.47%) Distributed Systems
10 129 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
11 123 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
12 117 (2.22%) Virtual Team
13 103 (1.96%) Data Structures
14 72 (1.37%) Driving Licence
15 70 (1.33%) Security Posture
16 68 (1.29%) Algorithms
17 62 (1.18%) AI Agents
18 53 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 51 (0.97%) Derivative
20 47 (0.89%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 640 (12.16%) Windows
2 284 (5.40%) Linux
3 122 (2.32%) Windows Server
4 115 (2.19%) Windows 10
5 105 (2.00%) Unix
6 86 (1.63%) Android
7 85 (1.62%) Mac OS
8 83 (1.58%) Apple iOS
9 45 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 23 (0.44%) Ubuntu
11 14 (0.27%) CentOS
12 13 (0.25%) VMS
12 13 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.19%) zOS
14 9 (0.17%) Windows 7
15 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
16 6 (0.11%) Solaris
17 5 (0.095%) Debian
17 5 (0.095%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.076%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,380 (26.23%) Agile
2 864 (16.42%) CI/CD
3 861 (16.36%) Continuous Improvement
4 804 (15.28%) Stakeholder Management
5 789 (14.99%) DevOps
6 614 (11.67%) AI
7 580 (11.02%) Decision-Making
8 574 (10.91%) Migration
9 564 (10.72%) Analytics
10 486 (9.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 482 (9.16%) Customer Service
12 446 (8.48%) ITIL
13 439 (8.34%) Data Modelling
14 432 (8.21%) Validation
15 416 (7.91%) Business Intelligence
16 414 (7.87%) Project Management
17 384 (7.30%) Test Automation
18 364 (6.92%) Scrum
19 349 (6.63%) Change Management
20 316 (6.01%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 942 (17.90%) Python
2 937 (17.81%) SQL
3 420 (7.98%) Java
4 324 (6.16%) PowerShell
5 266 (5.06%) JavaScript
6 197 (3.74%) C#
7 132 (2.51%) TypeScript
8 109 (2.07%) Bash
9 83 (1.58%) PL/SQL
10 74 (1.41%) C++
11 52 (0.99%) Shell Script
12 47 (0.89%) Go
13 41 (0.78%) T-SQL
14 40 (0.76%) R
15 39 (0.74%) C
16 35 (0.67%) Perl
17 32 (0.61%) Apex Code
17 32 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 31 (0.59%) Bicep
19 30 (0.57%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,106 (21.02%) Security Cleared
2 761 (14.46%) SC Cleared
3 634 (12.05%) Degree
4 192 (3.65%) Computer Science Degree
5 191 (3.63%) DV Cleared
6 165 (3.14%) BPSS Clearance
7 140 (2.66%) Microsoft Certification
8 137 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
9 90 (1.71%) CISSP
10 80 (1.52%) PMP
11 77 (1.46%) A+ Certification
11 77 (1.46%) CCNA
12 74 (1.41%) PMI Certification
13 70 (1.33%) Azure Certification
14 68 (1.29%) Master's Degree
15 67 (1.27%) Network+ Certification
16 63 (1.20%) CISM
17 59 (1.12%) MCSE
18 41 (0.78%) CCNP
19 39 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 357 (6.78%) Data Quality
2 279 (5.30%) QA
3 147 (2.79%) GDPR
4 121 (2.30%) Accessibility
5 99 (1.88%) SLA
6 92 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 82 (1.56%) PMO
8 76 (1.44%) NIST
9 55 (1.05%) GRC
10 27 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
11 26 (0.49%) WCAG
12 24 (0.46%) PCI DSS
12 24 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 18 (0.34%) ISO 20022
14 17 (0.32%) COBIT
15 16 (0.30%) NCSC
16 14 (0.27%) PSD2
17 12 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials
17 12 (0.23%) HL7
18 11 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 399 (7.58%) Active Directory
2 328 (6.23%) Docker
3 110 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.84%) vSphere
5 40 (0.76%) VMware NSX
6 35 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
7 34 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 27 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
9 25 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
10 21 (0.40%) Firmware
11 19 (0.36%) vCloud
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 7 (0.13%) IAG
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.076%) ACF2
14 4 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.076%) NFS
14 4 (0.076%) RACF
14 4 (0.076%) Snort
15 3 (0.057%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 400 (7.60%) Kubernetes
2 288 (5.47%) Terraform
3 169 (3.21%) Ansible
4 135 (2.57%) Microsoft Intune
5 112 (2.13%) Grafana
6 96 (1.82%) Prometheus
7 80 (1.52%) SCCM
8 49 (0.93%) vCenter Server
9 44 (0.84%) FortiGate
10 40 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (0.44%) Control-M
12 22 (0.42%) Argo
13 21 (0.40%) Kibana
13 21 (0.40%) Nessus
14 19 (0.36%) Puppet
15 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
15 17 (0.32%) SCOM
16 14 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 14 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
17 13 (0.25%) WSUS
Vendors
1 979 (18.61%) Microsoft
2 350 (6.65%) Oracle
3 308 (5.85%) SAP
4 288 (5.47%) ServiceNow
5 177 (3.36%) VMware
6 155 (2.95%) Google
7 138 (2.62%) Databricks
8 129 (2.45%) Splunk
9 123 (2.34%) Cisco
10 119 (2.26%) Salesforce
11 81 (1.54%) Dell
12 73 (1.39%) Workday
13 65 (1.24%) CyberArk
14 61 (1.16%) Adobe
15 59 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
16 56 (1.06%) Red Hat
17 52 (0.99%) Citrix
17 52 (0.99%) Dynatrace
18 46 (0.87%) MuleSoft
19 45 (0.86%) Informatica