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

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,559 4,734 4,765
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.35% 15.47% 10.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.40% 17.19% 12.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,438 2,869 2,985
10th Percentile £284 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £398 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.45% - -5.66%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +0.96% -1.05% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 317 185 379
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.33 £12.10
25th Percentile £15.50 £17.08 £14.16
Median hourly rate £20.00 £26.50 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -24.53% +35.90% -38.15%
75th Percentile £41.75 £43.75 £47.67
90th Percentile £70.75 £69.50 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.28 £22.50 £17.50
% change year-on-year -23.22% +28.57% -32.72%

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 36,087 27,535 38,701
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.65% 89.98% 86.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,916 17,126 25,279
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £412 £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 £723 £739 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £491 £500
% change year-on-year -1.83% -1.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,149 888 2,215
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £18.13 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £33.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -2.99% -4.29%
75th Percentile £63.32 £63.75 £59.47
90th Percentile £72.71 £75.08 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.81% -9.26% -

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 28 February 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 28 February 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 28 February 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 -1 4,752 £492 -1.60% 2,609
UK excluding London -4 2,871 £475 +0.96% 2,300
London -3 2,079 £519 -1.23% 734
Work from Home +1 1,627 £481 -3.88% 969
North of England -2 772 £450 -5.26% 541
South East -2 671 £488 -2.50% 788
Midlands -1 532 £450 +4.29% 390
West Midlands 0 387 £475 +5.56% 235
North West -2 385 £424 -10.42% 292
Yorkshire -4 335 £475 -5.00% 187
South West -3 320 £535 +7.00% 249
Scotland 0 279 £447 -0.67% 90
East of England -3 243 £465 +3.22% 259
East Midlands -2 146 £402 +8.72% 155
Wales +1 66 £400 +3.23% 54
North East -3 60 £450 -6.40% 76
Northern Ireland -1 30 £475 +45.04% 21
Channel Islands 0 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
1 228 (4.10%) Confluence
2 167 (3.00%) SharePoint
3 108 (1.94%) Microsoft Exchange
4 93 (1.67%) Apache Spark
5 68 (1.22%) SAS
6 67 (1.21%) Apache
7 50 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.67%) CMS
9 22 (0.40%) Skype for Business
10 21 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.27%) nginx
12 11 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 11 (0.20%) JBoss
13 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
14 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
15 7 (0.13%) Camunda
16 6 (0.11%) Anypoint
16 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 322 (5.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 235 (4.23%) Microsoft Office
3 126 (2.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 87 (1.57%) MS Visio
5 79 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
6 22 (0.40%) Chatbot
7 17 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.13%) Trello
11 5 (0.090%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.072%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.072%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.072%) InDesign
12 4 (0.072%) InVision
12 4 (0.072%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.072%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.054%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.054%) Notion
Business Applications
1 98 (1.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.34%) Aladdin
5 18 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.25%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.25%) SAP ERP
8 13 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
9 12 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
10 11 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.20%) SAP HR
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,208 (21.73%) Azure
2 882 (15.87%) AWS
3 405 (7.29%) GCP
4 382 (6.87%) Power Platform
5 342 (6.15%) Microsoft 365
6 264 (4.75%) GitHub
7 251 (4.52%) Azure DevOps
8 192 (3.45%) Serverless
9 165 (2.97%) Entra ID
10 139 (2.50%) SaaS
11 138 (2.48%) GitHub Actions
12 103 (1.85%) Amazon S3
13 96 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
14 92 (1.65%) Snowflake
15 91 (1.64%) OpenShift
16 83 (1.49%) Dynamics 365
17 82 (1.48%) Azure Data Factory
18 71 (1.28%) Power Automate
19 70 (1.26%) PaaS
20 62 (1.12%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 217 (3.90%) Firewall
2 205 (3.69%) DNS
3 139 (2.50%) TCP/IP
4 118 (2.12%) DHCP
5 116 (2.09%) VPN
6 114 (2.05%) Network Security
7 106 (1.91%) WAN
8 83 (1.49%) LAN
9 59 (1.06%) VLAN
10 58 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
11 51 (0.92%) BGP
12 39 (0.70%) SAN
13 37 (0.67%) OSPF
14 33 (0.59%) VoIP
15 27 (0.49%) Wireless
16 25 (0.45%) SSH
17 24 (0.43%) SD-WAN
18 23 (0.41%) SSL
19 22 (0.40%) HTTP
19 22 (0.40%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 312 (5.61%) Power BI
2 184 (3.31%) SQL Server
3 170 (3.06%) PostgreSQL
4 166 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
5 161 (2.90%) Relational Database
6 112 (2.01%) NoSQL
7 111 (2.00%) MongoDB
8 92 (1.65%) Metadata
9 89 (1.60%) MySQL
10 81 (1.46%) Big Data
10 81 (1.46%) Tableau
11 73 (1.31%) Data Lake
12 71 (1.28%) Oracle Database
13 55 (0.99%) Oracle Reports
14 53 (0.95%) Hadoop
15 50 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 44 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
17 39 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
18 38 (0.68%) DynamoDB
19 36 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 506 (9.10%) JIRA
2 385 (6.93%) Git
3 275 (4.95%) Jenkins
4 178 (3.20%) GitLab
5 85 (1.53%) Selenium
6 63 (1.13%) JUnit
7 46 (0.83%) Postman
8 43 (0.77%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.47%) Maven
12 25 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
13 24 (0.43%) Cypress.io
13 24 (0.43%) JMeter
14 23 (0.41%) SonarQube
15 19 (0.34%) Mockito
16 17 (0.31%) SpecFlow
17 16 (0.29%) CircleCI
18 15 (0.27%) IntelliJ
19 14 (0.25%) WebDriver
General
1 3,034 (54.58%) Social Skills
2 2,010 (36.16%) Analytical Skills
3 1,236 (22.23%) Finance
4 553 (9.95%) Public Sector
5 445 (8.01%) Banking
6 216 (3.89%) Organisational Skills
7 171 (3.08%) Documentation Skills
7 171 (3.08%) Legal
8 144 (2.59%) Retail
9 143 (2.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 142 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
11 135 (2.43%) Presentation Skills
12 106 (1.91%) Telecoms
13 104 (1.87%) Front Office
14 96 (1.73%) Marketing
15 91 (1.64%) Investment Banking
16 85 (1.53%) Manufacturing
17 64 (1.15%) Military
18 58 (1.04%) Financial Institution
19 45 (0.81%) Law
Job Titles
1 792 (14.25%) Developer
2 774 (13.92%) Analyst
3 488 (8.78%) Senior
4 371 (6.67%) Architect
5 348 (6.26%) Lead
6 317 (5.70%) Business Analyst
7 313 (5.63%) Consultant
8 218 (3.92%) Data Engineer
9 206 (3.71%) Project Manager
10 157 (2.82%) Support Engineer
11 136 (2.45%) Java Developer
12 130 (2.34%) IT Support
13 114 (2.05%) Data Analyst
14 111 (2.00%) Senior Developer
15 108 (1.94%) Software Engineer
16 96 (1.73%) Solutions Architect
17 93 (1.67%) Python Developer
18 90 (1.62%) Administrator
19 88 (1.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 85 (1.53%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 380 (6.84%) REST
2 189 (3.40%) Kafka
3 188 (3.38%) SOAP
4 186 (3.35%) RESTful
5 176 (3.17%) .NET
6 166 (2.99%) React
7 165 (2.97%) Node.js
8 163 (2.93%) Spring
9 138 (2.48%) HTML
10 132 (2.37%) CSS
11 127 (2.28%) AngularJS
12 118 (2.12%) JSON
13 113 (2.03%) Spring Boot
14 103 (1.85%) XML
15 94 (1.69%) LDAP
15 94 (1.69%) Middleware
16 77 (1.39%) OAuth
17 71 (1.28%) Oracle Fusion
18 66 (1.19%) PySpark
18 66 (1.19%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 272 (4.89%) Product Ownership
2 239 (4.30%) Cloud Native
3 197 (3.54%) Onboarding
4 177 (3.18%) Management Information System
5 146 (2.63%) Data Centre
6 143 (2.57%) Analytical Mindset
7 128 (2.30%) Data Structures
8 125 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
9 113 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
10 103 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
11 99 (1.78%) Virtual Team
12 98 (1.76%) Algorithms
13 91 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
14 83 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
15 82 (1.48%) Security Posture
16 74 (1.33%) CMDB
17 72 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
18 66 (1.19%) Driving Licence
18 66 (1.19%) Mobile App
19 56 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 582 (10.47%) Windows
2 371 (6.67%) Linux
3 120 (2.16%) Unix
4 107 (1.92%) Windows Server
5 102 (1.83%) Windows 10
6 70 (1.26%) Android
7 69 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 68 (1.22%) Apple iOS
9 57 (1.03%) Mac OS
10 22 (0.40%) VMS
11 17 (0.31%) CentOS
12 15 (0.27%) Ubuntu
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.14%) Mac OS X
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.090%) Windows Server 2003
17 5 (0.090%) zOS
18 4 (0.072%) Debian
18 4 (0.072%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,618 (29.11%) Agile
2 1,037 (18.65%) CI/CD
3 891 (16.03%) DevOps
4 818 (14.71%) Stakeholder Management
5 795 (14.30%) Continuous Improvement
6 623 (11.21%) Analytics
7 575 (10.34%) Migration
8 561 (10.09%) Decision-Making
9 498 (8.96%) AI
10 471 (8.47%) Project Management
10 471 (8.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 460 (8.27%) Data Modelling
12 451 (8.11%) Test Automation
13 425 (7.65%) Scrum
14 423 (7.61%) Business Intelligence
15 411 (7.39%) Validation
16 391 (7.03%) ITIL
17 386 (6.94%) Customer Service
18 385 (6.93%) Containerisation
19 381 (6.85%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,083 (19.48%) Python
2 949 (17.07%) SQL
3 521 (9.37%) Java
4 366 (6.58%) PowerShell
5 332 (5.97%) JavaScript
6 233 (4.19%) C#
7 220 (3.96%) TypeScript
8 154 (2.77%) Bash
9 82 (1.48%) Shell Script
10 75 (1.35%) PL/SQL
11 65 (1.17%) C++
12 64 (1.15%) Go
13 49 (0.88%) Perl
14 43 (0.77%) Scala
15 40 (0.72%) T-SQL
16 38 (0.68%) Bicep
16 38 (0.68%) Ruby
17 37 (0.67%) VBA
18 36 (0.65%) R
19 33 (0.59%) C
Qualifications
1 1,180 (21.23%) Security Cleared
2 838 (15.07%) SC Cleared
3 741 (13.33%) Degree
4 256 (4.61%) Computer Science Degree
5 204 (3.67%) DV Cleared
6 157 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
7 109 (1.96%) Master's Degree
7 109 (1.96%) Microsoft Certification
8 103 (1.85%) PMI Certification
9 102 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
10 101 (1.82%) PMP
11 95 (1.71%) CISSP
12 82 (1.48%) Azure Certification
13 60 (1.08%) CISM
14 57 (1.03%) AWS Certification
15 56 (1.01%) CCNP
16 43 (0.77%) CCNA
17 41 (0.74%) A+ Certification
18 36 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
19 35 (0.63%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (6.46%) QA
2 332 (5.97%) Data Quality
3 161 (2.90%) GDPR
4 124 (2.23%) Accessibility
5 89 (1.60%) PMO
6 86 (1.55%) NIST
7 85 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 63 (1.13%) SLA
9 37 (0.67%) PCI DSS
10 33 (0.59%) GRC
10 33 (0.59%) WCAG
11 27 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
12 26 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 23 (0.41%) PSD2
14 18 (0.32%) ISO 20022
15 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
16 16 (0.29%) EU AI Act
17 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
17 15 (0.27%) IFRS
18 14 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 491 (8.83%) Docker
2 388 (6.98%) Active Directory
3 122 (2.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.76%) Hyper-V
4 42 (0.76%) vSphere
5 34 (0.61%) VMware NSX
6 25 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
7 22 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
8 21 (0.38%) Firmware
9 11 (0.20%) RACF
10 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.16%) ACF2
12 8 (0.14%) Squid
12 8 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.11%) HDFS
14 6 (0.11%) vCloud
15 4 (0.072%) Snort
16 3 (0.054%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.054%) NFS
Systems Management
1 541 (9.73%) Kubernetes
2 320 (5.76%) Terraform
3 209 (3.76%) Ansible
4 141 (2.54%) Grafana
5 118 (2.12%) Microsoft Intune
6 112 (2.01%) Prometheus
7 99 (1.78%) SCCM
8 51 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
9 40 (0.72%) Puppet
10 37 (0.67%) Kibana
11 35 (0.63%) FortiGate
12 32 (0.58%) Nessus
13 31 (0.56%) Argo
14 26 (0.47%) vCenter Server
15 25 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 23 (0.41%) Control-M
17 22 (0.40%) IBM Guardium
18 18 (0.32%) Red Hat Satellite
19 13 (0.23%) vRealize
20 12 (0.22%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,036 (18.64%) Microsoft
2 371 (6.67%) Oracle
3 274 (4.93%) SAP
4 247 (4.44%) ServiceNow
5 214 (3.85%) VMware
6 177 (3.18%) Google
7 163 (2.93%) Databricks
8 162 (2.91%) Splunk
9 134 (2.41%) Cisco
10 117 (2.10%) Salesforce
11 91 (1.64%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.31%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.13%) BeyondTrust
14 57 (1.03%) IBM
14 57 (1.03%) Palo Alto
14 57 (1.03%) Workday
15 56 (1.01%) Citrix
15 56 (1.01%) Talend
16 52 (0.94%) Dell
17 51 (0.92%) Informatica