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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,491 4,853 4,789
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.97% 16.61% 10.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.03% 18.33% 12.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,340 3,045 2,963
10th Percentile £281 £252 £213
25th Percentile £394 £399 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -0.11% -1.05% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 333 232 409
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.76 £11.06
25th Percentile £15.18 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £21.25 £24.42 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.98% +39.54% -56.79%
75th Percentile £47.50 £41.50 £40.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.63 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.69 £22.00 £15.63
% change year-on-year -15.07% +40.75% -47.02%

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 39,137 26,475 37,986
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.32% 90.62% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,793 17,183 24,611
10th Percentile £315 £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 £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.05% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,316 1,000 2,387
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.81
25th Percentile £19.34 £19.25 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.71 £31.04 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +18.27% -6.12% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.28 £70.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.71 £29.23 £33.07
% change year-on-year +25.59% -11.60% -7.64%

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 10 April 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 10 April 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 10 April 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 -4 4,717 £492 -1.60% 3,248
UK excluding London -5 2,858 £470 -0.11% 2,670
London -8 2,055 £513 -2.38% 986
Work from Home 0 1,553 £475 -5.00% 1,286
North of England -5 793 £450 -8.07% 662
South East -5 675 £492 -1.60% 802
Midlands -4 519 £450 +0.22% 478
North West -5 392 £425 -13.27% 365
West Midlands -5 372 £475 +2.70% 278
Yorkshire -4 353 £471 -0.95% 222
South West -2 317 £506 +1.25% 308
Scotland +1 255 £425 -5.56% 127
East of England -3 223 £450 - 288
East Midlands -1 148 £415 +12.24% 199
Wales -2 71 £395 +5.33% 81
North East -3 57 £438 -13.79% 92
Northern Ireland 0 29 £439 +28.97% 19
Channel Islands -5 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
1 227 (4.13%) Confluence
2 155 (2.82%) SharePoint
3 105 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 88 (1.60%) Apache Spark
5 67 (1.22%) SAS
6 64 (1.17%) Apache
7 46 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.60%) CMS
9 19 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.13%) Camunda
14 7 (0.13%) JBoss
15 6 (0.11%) CICS
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 312 (5.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (4.10%) Microsoft Office
3 119 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 85 (1.55%) Microsoft Project
5 82 (1.49%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) Trello
11 7 (0.13%) CATIA
11 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.091%) Acrobat
12 5 (0.091%) Maya
13 4 (0.073%) AutoCAD
13 4 (0.073%) InDesign
13 4 (0.073%) InVision
13 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.055%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 102 (1.86%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.36%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 14 (0.25%) NEC Housing
8 14 (0.25%) SAP ERP
8 14 (0.25%) Workday HCM
9 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
9 13 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
10 12 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
12 10 (0.18%) iTrent
12 10 (0.18%) NetSuite
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 10 (0.18%) SAP SD
12 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,147 (20.89%) Azure
2 873 (15.90%) AWS
3 394 (7.18%) Power Platform
4 379 (6.90%) GCP
5 347 (6.32%) Microsoft 365
6 256 (4.66%) Azure DevOps
7 241 (4.39%) GitHub
8 178 (3.24%) Serverless
9 174 (3.17%) Entra ID
10 148 (2.70%) SaaS
11 127 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
12 110 (2.00%) Amazon S3
13 103 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
14 93 (1.69%) OpenShift
15 79 (1.44%) Snowflake
16 77 (1.40%) Dynamics 365
17 76 (1.38%) Azure Data Factory
18 75 (1.37%) Power Automate
19 63 (1.15%) PowerApps
20 60 (1.09%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 207 (3.77%) Firewall
2 198 (3.61%) DNS
3 125 (2.28%) TCP/IP
4 119 (2.17%) Network Security
5 115 (2.09%) VPN
6 109 (1.99%) WAN
7 105 (1.91%) DHCP
8 87 (1.58%) LAN
9 68 (1.24%) SAN
10 65 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
11 55 (1.00%) BGP
12 49 (0.89%) VLAN
13 41 (0.75%) OSPF
14 37 (0.67%) VoIP
15 36 (0.66%) SD-WAN
16 29 (0.53%) Internet
17 28 (0.51%) MPLS
17 28 (0.51%) Wireless
18 22 (0.40%) VXLAN
19 21 (0.38%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 315 (5.74%) Power BI
2 197 (3.59%) SQL Server
3 165 (3.00%) Data Warehouse
4 149 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
4 149 (2.71%) Relational Database
5 111 (2.02%) Metadata
6 96 (1.75%) NoSQL
7 91 (1.66%) MongoDB
8 88 (1.60%) Big Data
8 88 (1.60%) Tableau
9 86 (1.57%) Data Lake
10 69 (1.26%) MySQL
11 68 (1.24%) Oracle Database
12 62 (1.13%) Oracle Reports
13 47 (0.86%) Hadoop
14 46 (0.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 40 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
16 36 (0.66%) DynamoDB
16 36 (0.66%) Pentaho
17 32 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 521 (9.49%) JIRA
2 355 (6.47%) Git
3 251 (4.57%) Jenkins
4 164 (2.99%) GitLab
5 83 (1.51%) Selenium
6 52 (0.95%) JUnit
7 41 (0.75%) Postman
8 33 (0.60%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.53%) Bitbucket
9 29 (0.53%) REST Assured
10 23 (0.42%) Cypress.io
10 23 (0.42%) Maven
10 23 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
11 21 (0.38%) JMeter
11 21 (0.38%) Mockito
12 18 (0.33%) SonarQube
13 15 (0.27%) SpecFlow
13 15 (0.27%) WebDriver
14 14 (0.25%) Artifactory
14 14 (0.25%) CircleCI
General
1 2,913 (53.05%) Social Skills
2 2,073 (37.75%) Analytical Skills
3 1,255 (22.86%) Finance
4 554 (10.09%) Public Sector
5 429 (7.81%) Banking
6 216 (3.93%) Organisational Skills
7 193 (3.51%) Documentation Skills
8 177 (3.22%) Legal
8 177 (3.22%) Retail
9 138 (2.51%) Influencing Skills
10 134 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
11 123 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 101 (1.84%) Front Office
13 97 (1.77%) Telecoms
14 89 (1.62%) Marketing
15 83 (1.51%) Manufacturing
16 81 (1.48%) Investment Banking
17 59 (1.07%) Financial Institution
18 56 (1.02%) Military
19 53 (0.97%) Law
Job Titles
1 762 (13.88%) Analyst
2 724 (13.19%) Developer
3 488 (8.89%) Senior
4 383 (6.98%) Architect
5 348 (6.34%) Lead
6 321 (5.85%) Business Analyst
7 295 (5.37%) Consultant
8 230 (4.19%) Data Engineer
9 213 (3.88%) Project Manager
10 137 (2.49%) Support Engineer
11 135 (2.46%) Java Developer
12 124 (2.26%) IT Support
13 110 (2.00%) Data Analyst
14 107 (1.95%) Solutions Architect
15 100 (1.82%) Administrator
15 100 (1.82%) Software Engineer
16 96 (1.75%) Senior Developer
17 88 (1.60%) IT Engineer
17 88 (1.60%) Network Engineer
18 84 (1.53%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 358 (6.52%) REST
2 173 (3.15%) Kafka
3 163 (2.97%) RESTful
4 160 (2.91%) SOAP
5 155 (2.82%) .NET
6 152 (2.77%) Spring
7 137 (2.49%) React
8 135 (2.46%) Node.js
9 113 (2.06%) Spring Boot
10 112 (2.04%) CSS
11 111 (2.02%) AngularJS
12 110 (2.00%) HTML
13 106 (1.93%) JSON
14 99 (1.80%) LDAP
14 99 (1.80%) XML
15 93 (1.69%) Middleware
16 79 (1.44%) OAuth
17 72 (1.31%) PySpark
18 64 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
19 62 (1.13%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 285 (5.19%) Product Ownership
2 226 (4.12%) Cloud Native
3 219 (3.99%) Onboarding
4 174 (3.17%) Data Centre
5 158 (2.88%) Management Information System
6 148 (2.70%) Self-Motivation
7 144 (2.62%) Analytical Mindset
8 115 (2.09%) Data Structures
9 113 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
10 109 (1.99%) Distributed Systems
11 106 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
11 106 (1.93%) Virtual Team
12 105 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
13 74 (1.35%) Algorithms
14 72 (1.31%) Security Posture
15 68 (1.24%) Driving Licence
16 64 (1.17%) Mobile App
17 63 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
18 59 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 54 (0.98%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 606 (11.04%) Windows
2 343 (6.25%) Linux
3 118 (2.15%) Windows Server
4 111 (2.02%) Windows 10
5 104 (1.89%) Unix
6 83 (1.51%) Android
7 75 (1.37%) Apple iOS
8 67 (1.22%) Mac OS
9 63 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.38%) VMS
11 17 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) CentOS
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
15 8 (0.15%) zOS
16 6 (0.11%) Debian
17 5 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
18 4 (0.073%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,571 (28.61%) Agile
2 982 (17.88%) CI/CD
3 881 (16.04%) DevOps
4 837 (15.24%) Continuous Improvement
5 819 (14.92%) Stakeholder Management
6 643 (11.71%) Analytics
7 588 (10.71%) Migration
8 575 (10.47%) Decision-Making
9 553 (10.07%) AI
10 489 (8.91%) Project Management
11 478 (8.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 471 (8.58%) Data Modelling
13 437 (7.96%) Business Intelligence
14 430 (7.83%) Test Automation
14 430 (7.83%) Validation
15 418 (7.61%) Customer Service
16 407 (7.41%) Scrum
17 403 (7.34%) ITIL
18 394 (7.18%) Change Management
19 353 (6.43%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,037 (18.89%) Python
2 966 (17.59%) SQL
3 481 (8.76%) Java
4 366 (6.67%) PowerShell
5 296 (5.39%) JavaScript
6 221 (4.02%) C#
7 188 (3.42%) TypeScript
8 154 (2.80%) Bash
9 86 (1.57%) PL/SQL
10 71 (1.29%) Shell Script
11 67 (1.22%) C++
12 56 (1.02%) Go
13 44 (0.80%) Bicep
13 44 (0.80%) Perl
14 41 (0.75%) Scala
14 41 (0.75%) T-SQL
15 40 (0.73%) R
16 38 (0.69%) C
17 35 (0.64%) Apex Code
18 33 (0.60%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,196 (21.78%) Security Cleared
2 832 (15.15%) SC Cleared
3 674 (12.27%) Degree
4 227 (4.13%) Computer Science Degree
5 201 (3.66%) DV Cleared
6 178 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
7 130 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
8 112 (2.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 106 (1.93%) CISSP
10 104 (1.89%) PMP
11 102 (1.86%) PMI Certification
12 88 (1.60%) Master's Degree
13 71 (1.29%) Azure Certification
14 67 (1.22%) CISM
15 63 (1.15%) CCNA
16 55 (1.00%) CCNP
17 52 (0.95%) A+ Certification
18 48 (0.87%) MCSE
19 47 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
20 43 (0.78%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 356 (6.48%) Data Quality
2 352 (6.41%) QA
3 161 (2.93%) GDPR
4 112 (2.04%) Accessibility
5 99 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 98 (1.78%) PMO
7 94 (1.71%) NIST
8 76 (1.38%) SLA
9 45 (0.82%) GRC
10 35 (0.64%) WCAG
11 33 (0.60%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 27 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 26 (0.47%) PSD2
15 21 (0.38%) ISO 20022
16 18 (0.33%) ISO 8583
17 16 (0.29%) HL7
18 15 (0.27%) IFRS
19 14 (0.25%) HIPAA
20 12 (0.22%) SEPA
System Software
1 422 (7.69%) Docker
2 412 (7.50%) Active Directory
3 118 (2.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (0.89%) vSphere
5 40 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.60%) Hyper-V
7 21 (0.38%) Firmware
8 20 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
10 11 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
11 10 (0.18%) vCloud
12 9 (0.16%) ACF2
12 9 (0.16%) Squid
13 6 (0.11%) IAG
14 4 (0.073%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.073%) NFS
14 4 (0.073%) Snort
Systems Management
1 493 (8.98%) Kubernetes
2 318 (5.79%) Terraform
3 189 (3.44%) Ansible
4 132 (2.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 125 (2.28%) Grafana
6 98 (1.78%) Prometheus
7 84 (1.53%) SCCM
8 44 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
9 39 (0.71%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.67%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.55%) Kibana
12 29 (0.53%) Puppet
13 28 (0.51%) Argo
14 23 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 20 (0.36%) Control-M
15 20 (0.36%) Nessus
16 16 (0.29%) vRealize
17 14 (0.25%) IBM Guardium
18 12 (0.22%) WSUS
19 11 (0.20%) Consul
Vendors
1 990 (18.03%) Microsoft
2 378 (6.88%) Oracle
3 283 (5.15%) SAP
4 239 (4.35%) ServiceNow
5 206 (3.75%) VMware
6 171 (3.11%) Google
7 167 (3.04%) Databricks
8 137 (2.49%) Splunk
9 132 (2.40%) Cisco
10 119 (2.17%) Salesforce
11 80 (1.46%) Red Hat
12 76 (1.38%) CyberArk
13 74 (1.35%) Dell
14 71 (1.29%) BeyondTrust
15 60 (1.09%) Citrix
16 57 (1.04%) Workday
17 55 (1.00%) Adobe
17 55 (1.00%) Talend
18 53 (0.97%) IBM
19 50 (0.91%) Informatica