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

6 months to
17 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 5,468 4,719 4,821
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.67% 16.07% 10.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.73% 17.78% 12.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,356 2,963 2,981
10th Percentile £289 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -5.66%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £701 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -0.21% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 320 201 412
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.99 £11.07
25th Percentile £15.18 £17.50 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.20 £26.50 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.78% +47.22% -54.43%
75th Percentile £42.44 £43.39 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £77.50 £69.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.14 £22.32 £16.12
% change year-on-year -23.21% +38.46% -39.57%

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 37,130 26,538 38,501
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.00% 90.38% 86.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,530 17,031 25,049
10th Percentile £313 £308 £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 £723 £745 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,210 919 2,337
10th Percentile £14.89 £15.25 £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 £64.62 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £31.76 £31.50
% change year-on-year -13.41% +0.83% -10.07%

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 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 17 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 17 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 4,689 £488 -2.50% 3,076
UK excluding London -4 2,832 £474 -0.21% 2,567
London -6 2,042 £510 -2.86% 948
Work from Home 0 1,574 £480 -4.00% 1,212
North of England -4 760 £450 -8.07% 619
South East -1 685 £492 -1.60% 825
Midlands -2 515 £450 +3.15% 431
North West -4 379 £425 -10.53% 340
West Midlands -2 374 £475 +4.78% 265
Yorkshire -4 335 £475 -5.00% 208
South West -1 311 £530 +0.95% 305
Scotland 0 259 £425 -5.56% 133
East of England -3 237 £450 - 256
East Midlands -3 142 £404 +2.15% 166
Wales -4 64 £400 +2.56% 72
North East -4 55 £438 -2.78% 85
Northern Ireland -2 32 £450 +36.36% 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
1 225 (4.11%) Confluence
2 165 (3.02%) SharePoint
3 108 (1.98%) Microsoft Exchange
4 90 (1.65%) Apache Spark
5 63 (1.15%) Apache
6 60 (1.10%) SAS
7 46 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
8 35 (0.64%) CMS
9 16 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.27%) Skype for Business
11 14 (0.26%) nginx
12 12 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 11 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
14 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.13%) Camunda
15 7 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 6 (0.11%) JBoss
16 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
17 5 (0.091%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 328 (6.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (4.11%) Microsoft Office
3 124 (2.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 83 (1.52%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (1.52%) MS Visio
5 24 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
6 22 (0.40%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.18%) Sketch
8 9 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
9 7 (0.13%) Trello
10 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.091%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.073%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.073%) InDesign
12 4 (0.073%) InVision
12 4 (0.073%) Maya
12 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.055%) Notion
Business Applications
1 93 (1.70%) 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 16 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
7 15 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
8 14 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
9 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
9 13 (0.24%) SAP ERP
9 13 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
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 1,184 (21.65%) Azure
2 862 (15.76%) AWS
3 389 (7.11%) Power Platform
4 387 (7.08%) GCP
5 332 (6.07%) Microsoft 365
6 267 (4.88%) GitHub
7 258 (4.72%) Azure DevOps
8 201 (3.68%) Serverless
9 167 (3.05%) Entra ID
10 140 (2.56%) GitHub Actions
11 133 (2.43%) SaaS
12 113 (2.07%) Amazon S3
13 105 (1.92%) AWS Lambda
14 94 (1.72%) OpenShift
15 91 (1.66%) Snowflake
16 79 (1.44%) Azure Data Factory
17 78 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
18 71 (1.30%) Power Automate
19 70 (1.28%) PaaS
20 63 (1.15%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 213 (3.90%) Firewall
2 195 (3.57%) DNS
3 128 (2.34%) TCP/IP
4 118 (2.16%) Network Security
5 115 (2.10%) WAN
6 112 (2.05%) DHCP
7 109 (1.99%) VPN
8 91 (1.66%) LAN
9 60 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
10 52 (0.95%) BGP
11 48 (0.88%) SAN
12 47 (0.86%) VLAN
13 38 (0.69%) OSPF
14 34 (0.62%) VoIP
15 33 (0.60%) SD-WAN
16 28 (0.51%) Wireless
17 27 (0.49%) MPLS
18 26 (0.48%) Internet
19 21 (0.38%) Junos
19 21 (0.38%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 315 (5.76%) Power BI
2 185 (3.38%) SQL Server
3 177 (3.24%) PostgreSQL
4 174 (3.18%) Data Warehouse
5 158 (2.89%) Relational Database
6 106 (1.94%) NoSQL
7 103 (1.88%) MongoDB
8 94 (1.72%) Metadata
9 87 (1.59%) Big Data
9 87 (1.59%) Tableau
10 83 (1.52%) MySQL
11 76 (1.39%) Data Lake
12 73 (1.34%) Oracle Database
13 57 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
14 52 (0.95%) Hadoop
15 49 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 47 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
17 40 (0.73%) DynamoDB
18 33 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
19 31 (0.57%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 507 (9.27%) JIRA
2 372 (6.80%) Git
3 273 (4.99%) Jenkins
4 179 (3.27%) GitLab
5 85 (1.55%) Selenium
6 57 (1.04%) JUnit
7 46 (0.84%) Postman
8 41 (0.75%) Cucumber
9 35 (0.64%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.48%) Sonatype Nexus
12 25 (0.46%) Cypress.io
12 25 (0.46%) JMeter
13 24 (0.44%) Maven
14 20 (0.37%) Mockito
14 20 (0.37%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.27%) CircleCI
15 15 (0.27%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.27%) WebDriver
16 14 (0.26%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,961 (54.15%) Social Skills
2 2,040 (37.31%) Analytical Skills
3 1,232 (22.53%) Finance
4 562 (10.28%) Public Sector
5 427 (7.81%) Banking
6 212 (3.88%) Organisational Skills
7 182 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
8 180 (3.29%) Legal
9 154 (2.82%) Retail
10 140 (2.56%) Influencing Skills
11 133 (2.43%) Presentation Skills
12 129 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 102 (1.87%) Telecoms
14 97 (1.77%) Front Office
15 92 (1.68%) Marketing
16 83 (1.52%) Investment Banking
17 81 (1.48%) Manufacturing
18 62 (1.13%) Military
19 55 (1.01%) Financial Institution
20 45 (0.82%) Law
Job Titles
1 752 (13.75%) Developer
2 737 (13.48%) Analyst
3 473 (8.65%) Senior
4 383 (7.00%) Architect
5 348 (6.36%) Lead
6 312 (5.71%) Business Analyst
7 301 (5.50%) Consultant
8 222 (4.06%) Project Manager
9 221 (4.04%) Data Engineer
10 141 (2.58%) Support Engineer
11 123 (2.25%) Java Developer
12 117 (2.14%) IT Support
13 103 (1.88%) Data Analyst
14 100 (1.83%) Senior Developer
15 96 (1.76%) Software Engineer
15 96 (1.76%) Solutions Architect
16 92 (1.68%) Administrator
17 90 (1.65%) Python Developer
18 85 (1.55%) Network Engineer
19 76 (1.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 365 (6.68%) REST
2 185 (3.38%) Kafka
3 173 (3.16%) RESTful
3 173 (3.16%) SOAP
4 168 (3.07%) .NET
5 158 (2.89%) Node.js
6 157 (2.87%) Spring
7 151 (2.76%) React
8 124 (2.27%) CSS
9 120 (2.19%) AngularJS
10 119 (2.18%) HTML
11 111 (2.03%) JSON
12 110 (2.01%) Spring Boot
13 96 (1.76%) XML
14 95 (1.74%) LDAP
15 91 (1.66%) Middleware
16 81 (1.48%) OAuth
17 73 (1.34%) PySpark
18 70 (1.28%) Oracle Fusion
19 67 (1.23%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 271 (4.96%) Product Ownership
2 246 (4.50%) Cloud Native
3 200 (3.66%) Onboarding
4 174 (3.18%) Management Information System
5 158 (2.89%) Data Centre
6 139 (2.54%) Analytical Mindset
7 125 (2.29%) Self-Motivation
8 118 (2.16%) Data Structures
9 109 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
10 100 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
10 100 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
11 98 (1.79%) Virtual Team
12 93 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
13 90 (1.65%) Algorithms
14 78 (1.43%) Security Posture
15 70 (1.28%) Hybrid Cloud
16 69 (1.26%) CMDB
17 67 (1.23%) Driving Licence
18 66 (1.21%) Mobile App
19 54 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 568 (10.39%) Windows
2 341 (6.24%) Linux
3 110 (2.01%) Windows Server
4 104 (1.90%) Unix
5 96 (1.76%) Windows 10
6 68 (1.24%) Android
7 64 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 63 (1.15%) Apple iOS
9 56 (1.02%) Mac OS
10 19 (0.35%) VMS
11 15 (0.27%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) CentOS
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.11%) zOS
17 5 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
18 4 (0.073%) Debian
18 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,578 (28.86%) Agile
2 1,016 (18.58%) CI/CD
3 879 (16.08%) DevOps
4 837 (15.31%) Stakeholder Management
5 792 (14.48%) Continuous Improvement
6 631 (11.54%) Analytics
7 569 (10.41%) Migration
8 549 (10.04%) Decision-Making
9 512 (9.36%) AI
10 490 (8.96%) Project Management
11 489 (8.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 475 (8.69%) Data Modelling
13 442 (8.08%) Test Automation
14 422 (7.72%) Business Intelligence
15 421 (7.70%) Validation
16 407 (7.44%) Scrum
17 389 (7.11%) Change Management
18 382 (6.99%) Customer Service
18 382 (6.99%) ITIL
19 375 (6.86%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,057 (19.33%) Python
2 935 (17.10%) SQL
3 489 (8.94%) Java
4 373 (6.82%) PowerShell
5 311 (5.69%) JavaScript
6 218 (3.99%) C#
7 210 (3.84%) TypeScript
8 154 (2.82%) Bash
9 76 (1.39%) PL/SQL
9 76 (1.39%) Shell Script
10 57 (1.04%) C++
10 57 (1.04%) Go
11 45 (0.82%) Perl
12 42 (0.77%) Bicep
13 41 (0.75%) Scala
14 39 (0.71%) Ruby
15 38 (0.69%) T-SQL
16 35 (0.64%) VBA
17 34 (0.62%) R
18 33 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,190 (21.76%) Security Cleared
2 827 (15.12%) SC Cleared
3 711 (13.00%) Degree
4 246 (4.50%) Computer Science Degree
5 213 (3.90%) DV Cleared
6 159 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
7 115 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
8 111 (2.03%) Master's Degree
9 110 (2.01%) PMP
10 107 (1.96%) PMI Certification
11 103 (1.88%) Microsoft Certification
12 100 (1.83%) CISSP
13 75 (1.37%) Azure Certification
14 64 (1.17%) CISM
15 56 (1.02%) CCNP
16 51 (0.93%) AWS Certification
17 50 (0.91%) CCNA
18 40 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
19 38 (0.69%) A+ Certification
20 32 (0.59%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 354 (6.47%) QA
2 331 (6.05%) Data Quality
3 165 (3.02%) GDPR
4 119 (2.18%) Accessibility
5 95 (1.74%) NIST
6 91 (1.66%) PMO
7 89 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 67 (1.23%) SLA
9 37 (0.68%) GRC
10 36 (0.66%) PCI DSS
11 33 (0.60%) WCAG
12 30 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
13 24 (0.44%) PSD2
14 23 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 19 (0.35%) ISO 20022
16 17 (0.31%) EU AI Act
16 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
17 16 (0.29%) HIPAA
18 14 (0.26%) HL7
19 13 (0.24%) IFRS
System Software
1 465 (8.50%) Docker
2 378 (6.91%) Active Directory
3 109 (1.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.82%) vSphere
5 36 (0.66%) VMware NSX
6 32 (0.59%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.42%) 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%) vCloud
13 8 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 5 (0.091%) HDFS
15 4 (0.073%) Snort
16 3 (0.055%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.055%) NFS
Systems Management
1 520 (9.51%) Kubernetes
2 323 (5.91%) Terraform
3 198 (3.62%) Ansible
4 136 (2.49%) Grafana
5 122 (2.23%) Microsoft Intune
6 111 (2.03%) Prometheus
7 86 (1.57%) SCCM
8 47 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
10 32 (0.59%) Argo
10 32 (0.59%) Kibana
11 31 (0.57%) vCenter Server
12 30 (0.55%) Puppet
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 12 (0.22%) Red Hat Satellite
18 11 (0.20%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 999 (18.27%) Microsoft
2 361 (6.60%) Oracle
3 261 (4.77%) SAP
4 233 (4.26%) ServiceNow
5 198 (3.62%) VMware
6 179 (3.27%) Google
7 164 (3.00%) Databricks
8 148 (2.71%) Splunk
9 136 (2.49%) Cisco
10 111 (2.03%) Salesforce
11 85 (1.55%) Red Hat
12 75 (1.37%) CyberArk
13 66 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
14 60 (1.10%) Dell
14 60 (1.10%) Workday
15 57 (1.04%) Citrix
16 56 (1.02%) IBM
17 55 (1.01%) Palo Alto
18 54 (0.99%) Informatica
19 53 (0.97%) Talend