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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,394 4,903 4,781
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.75% 16.74% 10.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.81% 18.45% 12.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,284 3,069 2,951
10th Percentile £275 £250 £213
25th Percentile £388 £399 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -0.20% -4.57%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £712 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £469 £475
% change year-on-year +0.21% -1.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 332 238 409
10th Percentile £13.14 £14.42 £11.06
25th Percentile £14.99 £16.80 £13.82
Median hourly rate £21.25 £24.09 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.79% +37.66% -60.10%
75th Percentile £51.45 £41.44 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.88 £64.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.87 £21.46 £15.00
% change year-on-year -12.07% +43.07% -51.61%

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 39,056 26,574 37,868
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.05% 90.71% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,707 17,203 24,522
10th Percentile £316 £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 £613 £635 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £488 £500
% change year-on-year - -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,310 1,024 2,401
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.93 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.54 £18.51 £15.89
Median hourly rate £37.16 £30.45 £33.55
Median % change year-on-year +22.04% -9.24% -7.45%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.83
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £29.00 £33.07
% change year-on-year +31.90% -12.29% -8.47%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 4,631 £490 -2.00% 3,201
UK excluding London -5 2,816 £470 +0.21% 2,642
London -8 2,011 £509 -3.05% 972
Work from Home 0 1,530 £475 -5.00% 1,272
North of England -5 780 £450 -7.98% 647
South East -4 665 £493 -1.40% 756
Midlands -4 513 £453 +0.78% 467
North West -5 383 £425 -13.09% 336
West Midlands -4 366 £475 +2.15% 272
Yorkshire -4 351 £467 -1.79% 223
South West -1 317 £506 +1.25% 300
Scotland 0 253 £425 -5.56% 147
East of England -3 212 £450 - 303
East Midlands -1 148 £420 +14.44% 195
Wales -2 70 £390 +17.76% 73
North East -4 55 £438 -14.22% 101
Northern Ireland 0 27 £430 +26.47% 29
Channel Islands -5 1 - - 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 (4.21%) Confluence
2 155 (2.87%) SharePoint
3 103 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 89 (1.65%) Apache Spark
5 70 (1.30%) SAS
6 64 (1.19%) Apache
7 46 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.61%) CMS
9 19 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.19%) 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%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 309 (5.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (4.17%) Microsoft Office
3 119 (2.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 81 (1.50%) Microsoft Project
5 80 (1.48%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.19%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.13%) CATIA
10 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
11 6 (0.11%) Trello
12 5 (0.093%) Acrobat
12 5 (0.093%) Maya
13 4 (0.074%) AutoCAD
13 4 (0.074%) InDesign
13 4 (0.074%) InVision
13 4 (0.074%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.056%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 102 (1.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.37%) Aladdin
5 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
5 16 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
6 15 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 14 (0.26%) NEC Housing
7 14 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
8 12 (0.22%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.20%) iTrent
9 11 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
10 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
10 10 (0.19%) Teamcenter
11 9 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
11 9 (0.17%) SAP SD
11 9 (0.17%) Shopify
12 8 (0.15%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,119 (20.75%) Azure
2 843 (15.63%) AWS
3 396 (7.34%) Power Platform
4 361 (6.69%) GCP
5 350 (6.49%) Microsoft 365
6 250 (4.63%) Azure DevOps
7 232 (4.30%) GitHub
8 174 (3.23%) Serverless
9 172 (3.19%) Entra ID
10 137 (2.54%) SaaS
11 122 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
12 111 (2.06%) Amazon S3
13 104 (1.93%) AWS Lambda
14 92 (1.71%) OpenShift
15 76 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
16 75 (1.39%) Snowflake
17 74 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
17 74 (1.37%) Power Automate
18 64 (1.19%) PowerApps
19 59 (1.09%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 203 (3.76%) Firewall
2 197 (3.65%) DNS
3 123 (2.28%) TCP/IP
4 118 (2.19%) Network Security
5 111 (2.06%) VPN
6 108 (2.00%) WAN
7 105 (1.95%) DHCP
8 86 (1.59%) LAN
9 72 (1.33%) SAN
10 67 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
11 55 (1.02%) BGP
12 52 (0.96%) VLAN
13 41 (0.76%) OSPF
14 37 (0.69%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.67%) VoIP
16 28 (0.52%) Internet
16 28 (0.52%) MPLS
16 28 (0.52%) Wireless
17 24 (0.44%) VXLAN
18 21 (0.39%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 314 (5.82%) Power BI
2 195 (3.62%) SQL Server
3 161 (2.98%) Data Warehouse
4 147 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
5 145 (2.69%) Relational Database
6 117 (2.17%) Metadata
7 95 (1.76%) NoSQL
8 94 (1.74%) MongoDB
9 89 (1.65%) Big Data
10 87 (1.61%) Tableau
11 83 (1.54%) Data Lake
12 66 (1.22%) Oracle Database
12 66 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
13 65 (1.21%) MySQL
14 47 (0.87%) Hadoop
15 46 (0.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 39 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
16 39 (0.72%) Pentaho
17 36 (0.67%) DynamoDB
18 31 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 517 (9.58%) JIRA
2 341 (6.32%) Git
3 247 (4.58%) Jenkins
4 162 (3.00%) GitLab
5 85 (1.58%) Selenium
6 50 (0.93%) JUnit
7 43 (0.80%) Postman
8 32 (0.59%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.54%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.52%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.43%) Cypress.io
11 23 (0.43%) Maven
12 22 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
13 21 (0.39%) JMeter
13 21 (0.39%) Mockito
14 18 (0.33%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.28%) WebDriver
16 14 (0.26%) Artifactory
16 14 (0.26%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 2,849 (52.82%) Social Skills
2 2,045 (37.91%) Analytical Skills
3 1,245 (23.08%) Finance
4 535 (9.92%) Public Sector
5 418 (7.75%) Banking
6 218 (4.04%) Organisational Skills
7 186 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
8 178 (3.30%) Retail
9 173 (3.21%) Legal
10 141 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
11 130 (2.41%) Presentation Skills
12 121 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 97 (1.80%) Front Office
14 94 (1.74%) Telecoms
15 88 (1.63%) Marketing
16 84 (1.56%) Manufacturing
17 76 (1.41%) Investment Banking
18 56 (1.04%) Financial Institution
19 54 (1.00%) Military
20 52 (0.96%) Law
Job Titles
1 735 (13.63%) Analyst
2 689 (12.77%) Developer
3 476 (8.82%) Senior
4 384 (7.12%) Architect
5 346 (6.41%) Lead
6 307 (5.69%) Business Analyst
7 283 (5.25%) Consultant
8 232 (4.30%) Data Engineer
9 212 (3.93%) Project Manager
10 134 (2.48%) Support Engineer
11 133 (2.47%) Java Developer
12 127 (2.35%) IT Support
13 109 (2.02%) Data Analyst
13 109 (2.02%) Solutions Architect
14 102 (1.89%) Administrator
15 98 (1.82%) Software Engineer
16 93 (1.72%) IT Engineer
17 90 (1.67%) Network Engineer
17 90 (1.67%) Senior Developer
18 87 (1.61%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 345 (6.40%) REST
2 172 (3.19%) Kafka
3 155 (2.87%) RESTful
4 152 (2.82%) SOAP
5 146 (2.71%) .NET
5 146 (2.71%) Spring
6 134 (2.48%) React
7 129 (2.39%) Node.js
8 111 (2.06%) CSS
9 110 (2.04%) Spring Boot
10 109 (2.02%) AngularJS
10 109 (2.02%) HTML
11 103 (1.91%) JSON
12 95 (1.76%) XML
13 92 (1.71%) LDAP
14 90 (1.67%) Middleware
15 80 (1.48%) OAuth
16 71 (1.32%) PySpark
17 62 (1.15%) Oracle Fusion
18 58 (1.08%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 274 (5.08%) Product Ownership
2 222 (4.12%) Cloud Native
3 214 (3.97%) Onboarding
4 179 (3.32%) Data Centre
5 156 (2.89%) Management Information System
6 150 (2.78%) Self-Motivation
7 145 (2.69%) Analytical Mindset
8 112 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
9 108 (2.00%) Data Structures
9 108 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
10 107 (1.98%) Virtual Team
11 106 (1.97%) Legacy Systems
12 105 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
13 71 (1.32%) Security Posture
14 70 (1.30%) Algorithms
15 69 (1.28%) Driving Licence
16 64 (1.19%) Mobile App
17 60 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
18 55 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 52 (0.96%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 600 (11.12%) Windows
2 331 (6.14%) Linux
3 118 (2.19%) Windows Server
4 111 (2.06%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.82%) Unix
6 87 (1.61%) Android
7 78 (1.45%) Apple iOS
8 68 (1.26%) Mac OS
9 62 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.37%) VMS
11 17 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) CentOS
13 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.15%) zOS
15 6 (0.11%) Debian
16 4 (0.074%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.074%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,531 (28.38%) Agile
2 956 (17.72%) CI/CD
3 855 (15.85%) DevOps
4 805 (14.92%) Continuous Improvement
5 797 (14.78%) Stakeholder Management
6 630 (11.68%) Analytics
7 584 (10.83%) Migration
8 574 (10.64%) Decision-Making
9 551 (10.22%) AI
10 485 (8.99%) Project Management
11 468 (8.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 467 (8.66%) Data Modelling
13 430 (7.97%) Business Intelligence
14 426 (7.90%) Test Automation
15 425 (7.88%) Validation
16 419 (7.77%) Customer Service
17 395 (7.32%) Scrum
18 390 (7.23%) ITIL
19 389 (7.21%) Change Management
20 351 (6.51%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,013 (18.78%) Python
2 949 (17.59%) SQL
3 473 (8.77%) Java
4 347 (6.43%) PowerShell
5 285 (5.28%) JavaScript
6 209 (3.87%) C#
7 184 (3.41%) TypeScript
8 149 (2.76%) Bash
9 83 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 67 (1.24%) Shell Script
11 66 (1.22%) C++
12 55 (1.02%) Go
13 45 (0.83%) Perl
14 42 (0.78%) Bicep
15 39 (0.72%) R
15 39 (0.72%) Scala
16 38 (0.70%) C
17 37 (0.69%) T-SQL
18 32 (0.59%) Apex Code
19 30 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,185 (21.97%) Security Cleared
2 826 (15.31%) SC Cleared
3 663 (12.29%) Degree
4 227 (4.21%) Computer Science Degree
5 200 (3.71%) DV Cleared
6 178 (3.30%) BPSS Clearance
7 133 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
8 116 (2.15%) Microsoft Certification
9 101 (1.87%) PMP
10 100 (1.85%) CISSP
11 95 (1.76%) PMI Certification
12 87 (1.61%) Master's Degree
13 70 (1.30%) Azure Certification
14 67 (1.24%) CCNA
15 62 (1.15%) CISM
16 56 (1.04%) A+ Certification
17 55 (1.02%) CCNP
18 52 (0.96%) Network+ Certification
19 51 (0.95%) MCSE
20 43 (0.80%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (6.66%) Data Quality
2 335 (6.21%) QA
3 157 (2.91%) GDPR
4 110 (2.04%) Accessibility
5 97 (1.80%) PMO
6 95 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 87 (1.61%) NIST
8 73 (1.35%) SLA
9 44 (0.82%) GRC
10 35 (0.65%) WCAG
11 29 (0.54%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
13 27 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.39%) PSD2
15 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
16 16 (0.30%) IFRS
17 15 (0.28%) HL7
18 14 (0.26%) ISO 8583
18 14 (0.26%) NCSC
19 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
System Software
1 412 (7.64%) Docker
2 401 (7.43%) Active Directory
3 120 (2.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.89%) vSphere
5 39 (0.72%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.61%) Hyper-V
7 21 (0.39%) Firmware
8 20 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
10 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 11 (0.20%) RACF
12 10 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
12 10 (0.19%) Squid
12 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
12 10 (0.19%) vCloud
13 9 (0.17%) ACF2
14 6 (0.11%) IAG
15 4 (0.074%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.074%) NFS
15 4 (0.074%) Snort
Systems Management
1 486 (9.01%) Kubernetes
2 311 (5.77%) Terraform
3 188 (3.49%) Ansible
4 130 (2.41%) Microsoft Intune
5 127 (2.35%) Grafana
6 99 (1.84%) Prometheus
7 83 (1.54%) SCCM
8 43 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
9 40 (0.74%) vCenter Server
10 38 (0.70%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.56%) Kibana
12 29 (0.54%) Puppet
13 27 (0.50%) Argo
14 24 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 23 (0.43%) Control-M
15 23 (0.43%) Nessus
16 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
17 16 (0.30%) vRealize
18 13 (0.24%) WSUS
19 11 (0.20%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 978 (18.13%) Microsoft
2 378 (7.01%) Oracle
3 281 (5.21%) SAP
4 232 (4.30%) ServiceNow
5 205 (3.80%) VMware
6 168 (3.11%) Google
7 167 (3.10%) Databricks
8 135 (2.50%) Cisco
9 125 (2.32%) Splunk
10 114 (2.11%) Salesforce
11 79 (1.46%) Red Hat
12 78 (1.45%) Dell
13 70 (1.30%) CyberArk
14 65 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
15 62 (1.15%) Citrix
16 59 (1.09%) Workday
17 58 (1.08%) Talend
18 56 (1.04%) Adobe
19 54 (1.00%) IBM
20 50 (0.93%) Palo Alto