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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -7 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,173 4,978 4,621
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.74% 17.07% 10.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.75% 18.75% 12.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,063 3,108 2,814
10th Percentile £265 £250 £250
25th Percentile £390 £390 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £502
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% -0.40% -4.38%
75th Percentile £592 £600 £625
90th Percentile £716 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £486
% change year-on-year -1.37% -2.31% -2.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 357 250 417
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.86
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.91% +35.27% -67.00%
75th Percentile £42.65 £41.25 £35.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £66.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.25 £21.24 £15.00
% change year-on-year -14.08% +41.60% -69.51%

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 40,582 26,548 36,652
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.29% 91.02% 86.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,477 17,040 23,631
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.88% -2.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.21% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,387 1,106 2,443
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.35 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.17 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +50.90% -21.86% +0.13%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.70 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.93% -32.93% +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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -5 4,420 £500 - 3,340
UK excluding London -5 2,774 £469 -1.37% 2,670
London -13 1,862 £520 -0.95% 1,025
Work from Home -3 1,472 £475 -5.00% 1,314
North of England -8 739 £450 -8.16% 696
South East -6 641 £493 -1.50% 788
Midlands -8 492 £467 +6.23% 434
North West -7 350 £424 -13.87% 379
Yorkshire -7 347 £474 -0.21% 238
West Midlands -8 339 £475 +2.70% 260
South West -1 331 £500 -1.23% 304
Scotland -2 268 £438 -5.91% 122
East of England -3 229 £450 -3.54% 307
East Midlands -1 152 £444 +20.75% 174
Wales -2 72 £400 +20.78% 61
North East -11 50 £425 -16.26% 89
Northern Ireland -4 25 £449 +7.75% 33
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
1 211 (4.08%) Confluence
2 150 (2.90%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.60%) Microsoft Exchange
4 81 (1.57%) Apache Spark
5 53 (1.02%) Apache
6 45 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
6 45 (0.87%) SAS
7 30 (0.58%) CMS
8 21 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
9 13 (0.25%) nginx
10 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
11 9 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.14%) Camunda
13 7 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.12%) CICS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.097%) Jupyter
Applications
1 294 (5.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (4.27%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 75 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
5 71 (1.37%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.25%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 11 (0.21%) Sketch
10 8 (0.15%) CATIA
11 7 (0.14%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.14%) Trello
12 6 (0.12%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.12%) Photoshop
12 6 (0.12%) Revit
13 5 (0.097%) Maya
14 4 (0.077%) Acrobat
14 4 (0.077%) CPLEX
15 3 (0.058%) LaTeX
15 3 (0.058%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 121 (2.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 21 (0.41%) Aladdin
5 16 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
5 16 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
6 14 (0.27%) NEC Housing
6 14 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
7 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
8 12 (0.23%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.23%) Workday HCM
9 11 (0.21%) SAP GRC
9 11 (0.21%) SAP SD
10 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.17%) iTrent
12 8 (0.15%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.15%) NetSuite
12 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
12 8 (0.15%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 1,029 (19.89%) Azure
2 784 (15.16%) AWS
3 390 (7.54%) Power Platform
4 343 (6.63%) Microsoft 365
5 320 (6.19%) GCP
6 237 (4.58%) Azure DevOps
7 210 (4.06%) GitHub
8 155 (3.00%) Entra ID
9 146 (2.82%) Serverless
10 123 (2.38%) SaaS
11 108 (2.09%) GitHub Actions
12 90 (1.74%) Amazon S3
13 79 (1.53%) AWS Lambda
13 79 (1.53%) Dynamics 365
14 71 (1.37%) OpenShift
15 70 (1.35%) Power Automate
15 70 (1.35%) Snowflake
16 69 (1.33%) Azure Data Factory
17 59 (1.14%) PowerApps
18 51 (0.99%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 188 (3.63%) DNS
2 166 (3.21%) Firewall
3 116 (2.24%) TCP/IP
4 109 (2.11%) VPN
5 105 (2.03%) WAN
6 101 (1.95%) DHCP
7 87 (1.68%) Network Security
8 83 (1.60%) SAN
9 78 (1.51%) LAN
10 67 (1.30%) Wi-Fi
11 48 (0.93%) BGP
11 48 (0.93%) VLAN
12 42 (0.81%) OSPF
13 39 (0.75%) SD-WAN
14 30 (0.58%) VoIP
15 28 (0.54%) Wireless
16 26 (0.50%) VXLAN
17 23 (0.44%) Internet
17 23 (0.44%) MPLS
18 21 (0.41%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 307 (5.93%) Power BI
2 198 (3.83%) SQL Server
3 157 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
4 133 (2.57%) Relational Database
5 131 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
6 109 (2.11%) Metadata
7 91 (1.76%) MongoDB
8 85 (1.64%) NoSQL
8 85 (1.64%) Tableau
9 81 (1.57%) Big Data
10 78 (1.51%) Data Lake
11 58 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
12 57 (1.10%) MySQL
13 50 (0.97%) Oracle Database
13 50 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 41 (0.79%) Hadoop
15 30 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
16 28 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
17 27 (0.52%) Delta Lake
18 26 (0.50%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 483 (9.34%) JIRA
2 291 (5.63%) Git
3 194 (3.75%) Jenkins
4 132 (2.55%) GitLab
5 70 (1.35%) Selenium
6 39 (0.75%) Postman
7 31 (0.60%) Cucumber
7 31 (0.60%) REST Assured
8 25 (0.48%) Bitbucket
9 24 (0.46%) Cypress.io
9 24 (0.46%) JUnit
10 21 (0.41%) JMeter
11 17 (0.33%) SonarQube
11 17 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
11 17 (0.33%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.31%) Mockito
13 15 (0.29%) Maven
14 14 (0.27%) Gatling
14 14 (0.27%) SpecFlow
15 13 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,669 (51.59%) Social Skills
2 1,984 (38.35%) Analytical Skills
3 1,193 (23.06%) Finance
4 492 (9.51%) Public Sector
5 392 (7.58%) Banking
6 219 (4.23%) Organisational Skills
7 182 (3.52%) Retail
8 176 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
9 152 (2.94%) Legal
10 116 (2.24%) Presentation Skills
11 115 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 113 (2.18%) Influencing Skills
13 96 (1.86%) Front Office
14 94 (1.82%) Manufacturing
15 88 (1.70%) Marketing
15 88 (1.70%) Telecoms
16 80 (1.55%) Investment Banking
17 65 (1.26%) Back Office
18 61 (1.18%) Law
19 52 (1.01%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 720 (13.92%) Analyst
2 625 (12.08%) Developer
3 451 (8.72%) Senior
4 351 (6.79%) Architect
5 318 (6.15%) Lead
6 283 (5.47%) Business Analyst
7 255 (4.93%) Consultant
8 230 (4.45%) Data Engineer
9 196 (3.79%) Project Manager
10 140 (2.71%) Support Engineer
11 133 (2.57%) IT Support
12 126 (2.44%) Data Analyst
13 107 (2.07%) Java Developer
14 101 (1.95%) IT Engineer
15 96 (1.86%) Solutions Architect
16 94 (1.82%) Administrator
16 94 (1.82%) Network Engineer
16 94 (1.82%) Software Engineer
17 93 (1.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 76 (1.47%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 301 (5.82%) REST
2 153 (2.96%) Kafka
3 146 (2.82%) .NET
4 140 (2.71%) SOAP
5 134 (2.59%) RESTful
6 133 (2.57%) Spring
7 132 (2.55%) React
8 115 (2.22%) CSS
9 109 (2.11%) HTML
10 106 (2.05%) Node.js
11 100 (1.93%) AngularJS
11 100 (1.93%) Middleware
12 99 (1.91%) Spring Boot
13 95 (1.84%) JSON
14 93 (1.80%) LDAP
15 88 (1.70%) XML
16 74 (1.43%) PySpark
17 64 (1.24%) OAuth
18 55 (1.06%) Web Services
19 53 (1.02%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 255 (4.93%) Product Ownership
2 226 (4.37%) Onboarding
3 206 (3.98%) Data Centre
4 204 (3.94%) Cloud Native
5 164 (3.17%) Self-Motivation
6 145 (2.80%) Analytical Mindset
7 141 (2.73%) Management Information System
8 122 (2.36%) Distributed Systems
9 118 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
10 117 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
11 113 (2.18%) Virtual Team
12 101 (1.95%) Data Structures
13 97 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
14 67 (1.30%) Driving Licence
14 67 (1.30%) Security Posture
15 61 (1.18%) Algorithms
16 55 (1.06%) AI Agents
16 55 (1.06%) Mobile App
17 48 (0.93%) CMDB
17 48 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 592 (11.44%) Windows
2 296 (5.72%) Linux
3 112 (2.17%) Windows 10
4 111 (2.15%) Windows Server
5 101 (1.95%) Unix
6 88 (1.70%) Android
7 86 (1.66%) Apple iOS
8 78 (1.51%) Mac OS
9 52 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.41%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.33%) VMS
12 14 (0.27%) CentOS
12 14 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.17%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.14%) Debian
15 7 (0.14%) zOS
16 5 (0.097%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.077%) Rocky
17 4 (0.077%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,397 (27.01%) Agile
2 854 (16.51%) CI/CD
3 787 (15.21%) Continuous Improvement
4 779 (15.06%) DevOps
5 738 (14.27%) Stakeholder Management
6 578 (11.17%) Decision-Making
7 569 (11.00%) AI
8 560 (10.83%) Migration
9 546 (10.55%) Analytics
10 447 (8.64%) Project Management
11 444 (8.58%) Data Modelling
12 440 (8.51%) Customer Service
13 432 (8.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 419 (8.10%) Validation
15 414 (8.00%) ITIL
16 403 (7.79%) Business Intelligence
17 384 (7.42%) Test Automation
18 357 (6.90%) Scrum
19 354 (6.84%) Change Management
20 315 (6.09%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 925 (17.88%) Python
2 887 (17.15%) SQL
3 418 (8.08%) Java
4 308 (5.95%) PowerShell
5 267 (5.16%) JavaScript
6 200 (3.87%) C#
7 155 (3.00%) TypeScript
8 119 (2.30%) Bash
9 77 (1.49%) PL/SQL
10 72 (1.39%) C++
11 56 (1.08%) Shell Script
12 45 (0.87%) Go
13 43 (0.83%) R
14 38 (0.73%) Bicep
14 38 (0.73%) C
15 35 (0.68%) Perl
15 35 (0.68%) T-SQL
16 34 (0.66%) Apex Code
17 31 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 30 (0.58%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,116 (21.57%) Security Cleared
2 761 (14.71%) SC Cleared
3 629 (12.16%) Degree
4 198 (3.83%) DV Cleared
5 197 (3.81%) Computer Science Degree
6 163 (3.15%) BPSS Clearance
7 137 (2.65%) Cisco Certification
8 127 (2.46%) Microsoft Certification
9 88 (1.70%) CISSP
10 85 (1.64%) PMP
11 77 (1.49%) PMI Certification
12 76 (1.47%) CCNA
13 72 (1.39%) A+ Certification
13 72 (1.39%) Master's Degree
14 68 (1.31%) Network+ Certification
15 65 (1.26%) Azure Certification
16 58 (1.12%) MCSE
17 57 (1.10%) CISM
18 45 (0.87%) CCNP
19 33 (0.64%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 342 (6.61%) Data Quality
2 281 (5.43%) QA
3 145 (2.80%) GDPR
4 108 (2.09%) Accessibility
5 91 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 85 (1.64%) PMO
7 80 (1.55%) SLA
8 77 (1.49%) NIST
9 54 (1.04%) GRC
10 28 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
10 28 (0.54%) WCAG
11 27 (0.52%) PCI DSS
12 24 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 19 (0.37%) ISO 20022
14 16 (0.31%) IFRS
15 15 (0.29%) NCSC
15 15 (0.29%) PSD2
16 14 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
17 13 (0.25%) HIPAA
17 13 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 377 (7.29%) Active Directory
2 333 (6.44%) Docker
3 107 (2.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.75%) vSphere
5 34 (0.66%) Hyper-V
5 34 (0.66%) VMware NSX
6 24 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
7 22 (0.43%) Firmware
7 22 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
8 19 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 16 (0.31%) vCloud
10 11 (0.21%) Squid
11 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
12 5 (0.097%) IAG
13 4 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.077%) RACF
13 4 (0.077%) Snort
14 3 (0.058%) ACF2
14 3 (0.058%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.058%) NFS
Systems Management
1 406 (7.85%) Kubernetes
2 271 (5.24%) Terraform
3 181 (3.50%) Ansible
4 120 (2.32%) Microsoft Intune
5 117 (2.26%) Grafana
6 95 (1.84%) Prometheus
7 78 (1.51%) SCCM
8 42 (0.81%) FortiGate
8 42 (0.81%) vCenter Server
9 40 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
10 28 (0.54%) Kibana
11 24 (0.46%) Puppet
12 22 (0.43%) Control-M
12 22 (0.43%) Nessus
13 21 (0.41%) Argo
14 17 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
15 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 13 (0.25%) SCOM
17 12 (0.23%) WSUS
18 9 (0.17%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 940 (18.17%) Microsoft
2 343 (6.63%) Oracle
3 294 (5.68%) SAP
4 237 (4.58%) ServiceNow
5 182 (3.52%) VMware
6 153 (2.96%) Databricks
7 142 (2.75%) Google
8 131 (2.53%) Splunk
9 128 (2.47%) Cisco
10 111 (2.15%) Salesforce
11 84 (1.62%) Dell
12 68 (1.31%) CyberArk
13 64 (1.24%) Red Hat
14 63 (1.22%) BeyondTrust
15 62 (1.20%) Workday
16 56 (1.08%) Adobe
17 49 (0.95%) F5
18 48 (0.93%) HP
19 47 (0.91%) Citrix
19 47 (0.91%) Palo Alto