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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +5
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,859 5,116 4,679
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.68% 15.44% 12.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.64% 17.04% 14.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,251 3,055 2,702
10th Percentile £259 £240 £263
25th Percentile £383 £375 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £711 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 599 323 224
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.52
Median hourly rate £18.75 £20.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% +23.23% -69.09%
75th Percentile £37.50 £34.24 £31.30
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.68 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £18.73 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.90% +15.40% -70.01%

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 46,356 30,019 32,670
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 90.58% 85.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,940 18,640 19,751
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £632 £625 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,287 1,869 1,348
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.17 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.72 £25.15 £42.27
Median % change year-on-year +53.96% -40.49% -0.55%
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.02 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.86% -48.10% +1.18%

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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3 October 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 -7 5,053 £500 +2.04% 13,314
UK excluding London -3 3,155 £450 - 9,487
London -12 2,157 £525 +5.00% 5,696
Work from Home -4 1,572 £500 - 6,305
South East -3 821 £475 +5.56% 2,121
North of England -10 733 £450 -5.26% 2,016
Midlands -5 621 £450 +1.47% 1,389
West Midlands -8 444 £450 -5.26% 831
North West -10 361 £450 -3.23% 1,002
South West -7 322 £500 +11.11% 1,032
Scotland -3 307 £439 -2.50% 1,086
Yorkshire -7 298 £475 -4.04% 690
East of England 0 290 £438 -12.94% 992
East Midlands +2 173 £446 +19.00% 558
North East -16 76 £375 -16.67% 346
Wales -7 63 £468 +15.43% 436
Northern Ireland -4 25 £419 -15.83% 536
Channel Islands -2 5 £600 - 4

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
1 251 (4.28%) SharePoint
2 248 (4.23%) Confluence
3 99 (1.69%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (1.01%) Apache Spark
5 49 (0.84%) Apache
6 47 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.46%) CMS
7 27 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 25 (0.43%) SAS
9 18 (0.31%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.26%) WebSphere
11 12 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 11 (0.19%) CICS
12 11 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 9 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.14%) IIS
15 7 (0.12%) Appian
15 7 (0.12%) Mule
15 7 (0.12%) WordPress
16 6 (0.10%) Anypoint
Applications
1 351 (5.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 274 (4.68%) Microsoft Office
3 135 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (1.18%) Microsoft Project
5 64 (1.09%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.48%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 23 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
8 18 (0.31%) Chatbot
9 17 (0.29%) AutoCAD
10 16 (0.27%) Revit
11 15 (0.26%) Sketch
12 10 (0.17%) Navisworks
12 10 (0.17%) Trello
12 10 (0.17%) Windchill
13 6 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
13 6 (0.10%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.10%) Final Cut Pro
14 4 (0.068%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.068%) CATIA
15 3 (0.051%) DaVinci Resolve
Business Applications
1 135 (2.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 55 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
3 38 (0.65%) Oracle EBS
4 32 (0.55%) NetSuite
5 29 (0.49%) Workday HCM
6 28 (0.48%) SAP GRC
7 25 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
8 16 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
8 16 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
8 16 (0.27%) Teamcenter
9 13 (0.22%) iTrent
9 13 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
10 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
10 12 (0.20%) SAP HCM
10 12 (0.20%) SAP SD
11 11 (0.19%) Aladdin
11 11 (0.19%) Finacle
12 10 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
12 10 (0.17%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,145 (19.54%) Azure
2 799 (13.64%) AWS
3 524 (8.94%) Microsoft 365
4 463 (7.90%) Power Platform
5 343 (5.85%) GCP
6 291 (4.97%) Azure DevOps
7 249 (4.25%) Entra ID
8 222 (3.79%) GitHub
9 155 (2.65%) SaaS
10 129 (2.20%) Serverless
11 118 (2.01%) Power Automate
12 99 (1.69%) Microsoft Copilot
13 98 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
13 98 (1.67%) GitHub Actions
14 91 (1.55%) PowerApps
15 79 (1.35%) Snowflake
16 77 (1.31%) OneDrive
17 65 (1.11%) Amazon S3
17 65 (1.11%) OpenShift
18 60 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 215 (3.67%) DNS
2 200 (3.41%) Firewall
3 162 (2.76%) VPN
4 130 (2.22%) DHCP
4 130 (2.22%) TCP/IP
5 124 (2.12%) Network Security
5 124 (2.12%) WAN
6 103 (1.76%) LAN
7 81 (1.38%) Wi-Fi
8 67 (1.14%) Wireless
9 60 (1.02%) SAN
10 50 (0.85%) VLAN
11 48 (0.82%) BGP
12 44 (0.75%) VoIP
13 32 (0.55%) MPLS
13 32 (0.55%) SD-WAN
14 30 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
15 29 (0.49%) HTTP
16 28 (0.48%) SSL
17 27 (0.46%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 346 (5.91%) Power BI
2 213 (3.64%) SQL Server
3 198 (3.38%) Relational Database
4 168 (2.87%) Data Warehouse
5 154 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
6 109 (1.86%) Metadata
6 109 (1.86%) MongoDB
7 89 (1.52%) NoSQL
8 80 (1.37%) Tableau
9 78 (1.33%) Data Lake
10 68 (1.16%) Oracle Database
11 63 (1.08%) MySQL
12 42 (0.72%) Big Data
13 40 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
14 36 (0.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 33 (0.56%) Db2
16 31 (0.53%) BigQuery
17 28 (0.48%) Delta Lake
17 28 (0.48%) Power Query
18 27 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 504 (8.60%) JIRA
2 392 (6.69%) Git
3 208 (3.55%) Jenkins
4 150 (2.56%) GitLab
5 79 (1.35%) Selenium
6 51 (0.87%) Maven
7 46 (0.79%) Gradle
8 44 (0.75%) Cucumber
9 42 (0.72%) Cypress.io
10 39 (0.67%) Postman
11 38 (0.65%) JUnit
12 34 (0.58%) Bitbucket
13 29 (0.49%) REST Assured
14 27 (0.46%) SonarQube
15 23 (0.39%) JMeter
16 21 (0.36%) Mockito
17 18 (0.31%) Gatling
17 18 (0.31%) Oracle Forms
18 17 (0.29%) WebDriver
19 15 (0.26%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 3,160 (53.93%) Social Skills
2 2,499 (42.65%) Analytical Skills
3 1,349 (23.02%) Finance
4 628 (10.72%) Public Sector
5 464 (7.92%) Banking
6 319 (5.44%) Organisational Skills
7 271 (4.63%) Manufacturing
8 195 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
9 181 (3.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 178 (3.04%) Influencing Skills
11 170 (2.90%) Retail
12 153 (2.61%) Legal
13 126 (2.15%) Presentation Skills
14 122 (2.08%) Marketing
15 120 (2.05%) Telecoms
16 118 (2.01%) Front Office
17 99 (1.69%) Investment Banking
18 86 (1.47%) Back Office
19 76 (1.30%) Aerospace
20 66 (1.13%) Military
Job Titles
1 750 (12.80%) Analyst
2 734 (12.53%) Developer
3 572 (9.76%) Senior
4 427 (7.29%) Lead
5 319 (5.44%) Architect
6 269 (4.59%) Consultant
7 263 (4.49%) Business Analyst
8 234 (3.99%) IT Support
9 222 (3.79%) Support Engineer
10 196 (3.35%) Data Engineer
11 172 (2.94%) Administrator
12 170 (2.90%) Project Manager
13 147 (2.51%) IT Engineer
14 130 (2.22%) Java Developer
15 128 (2.18%) Data Analyst
16 118 (2.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 116 (1.98%) Network Engineer
18 110 (1.88%) DevOps Engineer
19 109 (1.86%) IT Support Engineer
20 95 (1.62%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 421 (7.19%) REST
2 356 (6.08%) Terraform
3 192 (3.28%) .NET
4 188 (3.21%) RESTful
5 171 (2.92%) SOAP
6 161 (2.75%) React
7 152 (2.59%) Kafka
8 145 (2.47%) Spring
9 143 (2.44%) HTML
9 143 (2.44%) XML
10 138 (2.36%) CSS
10 138 (2.36%) JSON
11 126 (2.15%) Web Services
12 124 (2.12%) Spring Boot
13 118 (2.01%) Middleware
14 95 (1.62%) Node.js
15 88 (1.50%) AngularJS
16 82 (1.40%) OAuth
17 67 (1.14%) PySpark
18 59 (1.01%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 342 (5.84%) Onboarding
2 285 (4.86%) Cloud Native
3 277 (4.73%) Product Ownership
4 221 (3.77%) Enterprise Software
5 220 (3.75%) Management Information System
5 220 (3.75%) Self-Motivation
6 180 (3.07%) Data Centre
7 153 (2.61%) Distributed Systems
8 145 (2.47%) Data Structures
9 127 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
10 126 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
11 122 (2.08%) Analytical Mindset
12 93 (1.59%) Driving Licence
13 88 (1.50%) Virtual Team
14 84 (1.43%) AI Agents
15 75 (1.28%) CMDB
16 62 (1.06%) Mobile App
16 62 (1.06%) NHS
17 59 (1.01%) PKI
18 58 (0.99%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 779 (13.30%) Windows
2 340 (5.80%) Linux
3 217 (3.70%) Windows Server
4 137 (2.34%) Windows 10
5 114 (1.95%) Unix
6 96 (1.64%) Apple iOS
7 89 (1.52%) Android
8 86 (1.47%) Mac OS
9 57 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.31%) VMS
12 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.26%) Solaris
14 13 (0.22%) zOS
15 9 (0.15%) CentOS
15 9 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
16 8 (0.14%) AIX
16 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
18 5 (0.085%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,624 (27.72%) Agile
2 1,443 (24.63%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,321 (22.55%) Continuous Improvement
4 1,002 (17.10%) CI/CD
5 900 (15.36%) DevOps
6 782 (13.35%) AI
7 662 (11.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 654 (11.16%) Decision-Making
9 598 (10.21%) Migration
10 584 (9.97%) Customer Service
11 570 (9.73%) Analytics
12 508 (8.67%) ITIL
13 485 (8.28%) Test Automation
13 485 (8.28%) Validation
14 436 (7.44%) Scrum
15 420 (7.17%) Data Modelling
16 406 (6.93%) Business Intelligence
17 384 (6.55%) ITSM
17 384 (6.55%) Technical Leadership
18 381 (6.50%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,010 (17.24%) SQL
2 882 (15.05%) Python
3 447 (7.63%) Java
4 358 (6.11%) JavaScript
5 340 (5.80%) PowerShell
6 229 (3.91%) C#
7 161 (2.75%) Bash
8 146 (2.49%) TypeScript
9 93 (1.59%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.04%) C++
11 48 (0.82%) Shell Script
11 48 (0.82%) T-SQL
12 46 (0.79%) Go
13 36 (0.61%) Bicep
14 34 (0.58%) Scala
15 29 (0.49%) Kotlin
16 27 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 27 (0.46%) Groovy
17 25 (0.43%) C
17 25 (0.43%) R
Qualifications
1 1,288 (21.98%) Security Cleared
2 927 (15.82%) SC Cleared
3 673 (11.49%) Degree
4 232 (3.96%) DV Cleared
5 197 (3.36%) Computer Science Degree
6 195 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 146 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
8 102 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
9 84 (1.43%) Azure Certification
9 84 (1.43%) PMI Certification
10 81 (1.38%) CISSP
11 79 (1.35%) PMP
12 61 (1.04%) A+ Certification
13 58 (0.99%) Master's Degree
14 55 (0.94%) AWS Certification
15 54 (0.92%) DBS Check
16 52 (0.89%) CCNA
17 46 (0.79%) CISM
18 43 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
19 42 (0.72%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 425 (7.25%) Data Quality
2 391 (6.67%) QA
3 158 (2.70%) Accessibility
4 130 (2.22%) GDPR
5 128 (2.18%) SLA
6 98 (1.67%) PMO
7 97 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 67 (1.14%) GRC
9 66 (1.13%) NIST
10 40 (0.68%) WCAG
11 25 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
12 23 (0.39%) GxP
13 21 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.36%) NCSC
14 19 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 17 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 17 (0.29%) PCI DSS
16 15 (0.26%) GMP
16 15 (0.26%) ISO 20022
17 11 (0.19%) IFRS
System Software
1 453 (7.73%) Active Directory
2 368 (6.28%) Docker
3 176 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.21%) Hyper-V
5 70 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
6 59 (1.01%) vSphere
7 54 (0.92%) VMware NSX
8 40 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
9 30 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
10 24 (0.41%) IAG
10 24 (0.41%) vCloud
11 17 (0.29%) Firmware
12 11 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.12%) NFS
13 7 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.085%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 5 (0.085%) RACF
15 5 (0.085%) XenApp
15 5 (0.085%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 418 (7.13%) Kubernetes
2 178 (3.04%) Ansible
3 137 (2.34%) Microsoft Intune
4 96 (1.64%) Grafana
5 94 (1.60%) SCCM
6 77 (1.31%) Prometheus
7 48 (0.82%) vCenter Server
8 42 (0.72%) SCOM
9 31 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
10 25 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
11 20 (0.34%) Control-M
12 18 (0.31%) WSUS
13 15 (0.26%) FortiGate
13 15 (0.26%) NetBackup
14 13 (0.22%) Nessus
15 12 (0.20%) Kibana
15 12 (0.20%) VxRail
16 11 (0.19%) Istio
17 10 (0.17%) Puppet
18 9 (0.15%) Functional Safety
Vendors
1 1,402 (23.93%) Microsoft
2 418 (7.13%) Oracle
3 368 (6.28%) SAP
4 355 (6.06%) ServiceNow
5 224 (3.82%) VMware
6 183 (3.12%) Google
7 148 (2.53%) Cisco
8 144 (2.46%) Salesforce
9 138 (2.36%) Databricks
10 119 (2.03%) Splunk
11 81 (1.38%) Workday
12 68 (1.16%) Adobe
13 65 (1.11%) Apple
13 65 (1.11%) IBM
14 64 (1.09%) Dynatrace
15 54 (0.92%) CyberArk
16 52 (0.89%) Red Hat
17 50 (0.85%) MuleSoft
18 47 (0.80%) Palo Alto
19 40 (0.68%) Dell