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

6 months to
27 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 5,566 4,719 4,734
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.40% 15.40% 10.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.46% 17.13% 12.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,449 2,862 2,967
10th Percentile £284 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £397 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% - -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 +1.06% -1.05% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 315 184 379
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.44 £12.10
25th Percentile £15.42 £17.06 £14.16
Median hourly rate £20.00 £26.75 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -25.23% +37.18% -37.10%
75th Percentile £41.81 £44.06 £47.67
90th Percentile £71.00 £69.63 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.24 £22.32 £17.50
% change year-on-year -22.76% +27.54% -31.43%

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 36,013 27,550 38,397
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.71% 89.93% 86.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,879 17,122 25,100
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £411 £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 £721 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.58% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,136 871 2,197
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £18.03 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -1.71% -5.53%
75th Percentile £63.32 £63.75 £59.50
90th Percentile £72.96 £75.00 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.51% -9.60% -

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 4,750 £492 -1.60% 2,619
UK excluding London -3 2,876 £475 +1.06% 2,308
London -3 2,077 £514 -2.14% 737
Work from Home +1 1,627 £480 -4.00% 986
North of England -2 767 £450 -5.26% 547
South East -2 673 £485 -3.00% 786
Midlands -1 537 £450 +5.88% 391
West Midlands 0 390 £477 +5.89% 239
North West -1 383 £424 -10.32% 299
Yorkshire -4 331 £475 -5.00% 187
South West -2 319 £535 +5.68% 253
Scotland 0 283 £447 -0.61% 88
East of England -3 243 £475 +5.56% 258
East Midlands -2 148 £402 +9.54% 152
Wales 0 66 £400 +3.23% 54
North East -3 61 £450 -6.40% 75
Northern Ireland -2 31 £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
1 227 (4.08%) Confluence
2 164 (2.95%) SharePoint
3 104 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 93 (1.67%) Apache Spark
5 68 (1.22%) SAS
6 66 (1.19%) Apache
7 49 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
8 36 (0.65%) CMS
9 22 (0.40%) Skype for Business
10 21 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.27%) nginx
12 11 (0.20%) JBoss
13 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
15 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
16 7 (0.13%) Camunda
17 6 (0.11%) Anypoint
17 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
17 6 (0.11%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 321 (5.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 234 (4.20%) Microsoft Office
3 128 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 87 (1.56%) MS Visio
5 80 (1.44%) 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 99 (1.78%) 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 1,209 (21.72%) Azure
2 883 (15.86%) AWS
3 402 (7.22%) GCP
4 382 (6.86%) Power Platform
5 341 (6.13%) Microsoft 365
6 265 (4.76%) GitHub
7 248 (4.46%) Azure DevOps
8 193 (3.47%) Serverless
9 164 (2.95%) Entra ID
10 138 (2.48%) GitHub Actions
10 138 (2.48%) SaaS
11 103 (1.85%) Amazon S3
12 96 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
13 93 (1.67%) Snowflake
14 90 (1.62%) OpenShift
15 83 (1.49%) Azure Data Factory
15 83 (1.49%) Dynamics 365
16 71 (1.28%) PaaS
16 71 (1.28%) Power Automate
17 63 (1.13%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 219 (3.93%) Firewall
2 203 (3.65%) DNS
3 139 (2.50%) TCP/IP
4 118 (2.12%) DHCP
5 116 (2.08%) VPN
6 115 (2.07%) Network Security
7 106 (1.90%) WAN
8 83 (1.49%) LAN
9 59 (1.06%) VLAN
10 57 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
11 51 (0.92%) BGP
12 40 (0.72%) SAN
13 37 (0.66%) OSPF
14 33 (0.59%) VoIP
15 28 (0.50%) Wireless
16 25 (0.45%) SSH
17 24 (0.43%) SD-WAN
18 23 (0.41%) SSL
19 22 (0.40%) Skype
20 21 (0.38%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 312 (5.61%) Power BI
2 184 (3.31%) SQL Server
3 172 (3.09%) PostgreSQL
4 167 (3.00%) Data Warehouse
4 167 (3.00%) Relational Database
5 115 (2.07%) MongoDB
6 112 (2.01%) NoSQL
7 94 (1.69%) Metadata
8 92 (1.65%) MySQL
9 82 (1.47%) Big Data
10 81 (1.46%) Tableau
11 74 (1.33%) Data Lake
12 72 (1.29%) Oracle Database
13 55 (0.99%) Oracle Reports
14 52 (0.93%) Hadoop
15 51 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 44 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
17 39 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
18 38 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
18 38 (0.68%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 507 (9.11%) JIRA
2 386 (6.93%) Git
3 276 (4.96%) Jenkins
4 177 (3.18%) GitLab
5 85 (1.53%) Selenium
6 66 (1.19%) JUnit
7 46 (0.83%) Postman
8 43 (0.77%) Cucumber
9 37 (0.66%) Bitbucket
10 26 (0.47%) REST Assured
11 25 (0.45%) Maven
11 25 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
12 24 (0.43%) Cypress.io
12 24 (0.43%) JMeter
13 23 (0.41%) SonarQube
14 21 (0.38%) Mockito
15 17 (0.31%) SpecFlow
16 16 (0.29%) CircleCI
17 15 (0.27%) IntelliJ
18 14 (0.25%) WebDriver
General
1 3,040 (54.62%) Social Skills
2 2,011 (36.13%) Analytical Skills
3 1,232 (22.13%) Finance
4 554 (9.95%) Public Sector
5 446 (8.01%) Banking
6 214 (3.84%) Organisational Skills
7 172 (3.09%) Documentation Skills
8 169 (3.04%) Legal
9 143 (2.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 143 (2.57%) Retail
10 142 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
11 136 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
12 108 (1.94%) Telecoms
13 103 (1.85%) Front Office
14 97 (1.74%) Marketing
15 93 (1.67%) Investment Banking
16 86 (1.55%) Manufacturing
17 64 (1.15%) Military
18 58 (1.04%) Financial Institution
19 45 (0.81%) Law
Job Titles
1 797 (14.32%) Developer
2 779 (14.00%) Analyst
3 492 (8.84%) Senior
4 371 (6.67%) Architect
5 345 (6.20%) Lead
6 319 (5.73%) Business Analyst
7 314 (5.64%) Consultant
8 219 (3.93%) Data Engineer
9 207 (3.72%) Project Manager
10 157 (2.82%) Support Engineer
11 138 (2.48%) Java Developer
12 132 (2.37%) IT Support
13 117 (2.10%) Data Analyst
14 112 (2.01%) Senior Developer
15 109 (1.96%) Software Engineer
16 97 (1.74%) Solutions Architect
17 93 (1.67%) Python Developer
18 90 (1.62%) Administrator
19 89 (1.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 86 (1.55%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 381 (6.85%) REST
2 191 (3.43%) Kafka
3 190 (3.41%) SOAP
4 187 (3.36%) RESTful
5 176 (3.16%) .NET
6 167 (3.00%) React
7 165 (2.96%) Node.js
7 165 (2.96%) Spring
8 140 (2.52%) HTML
9 133 (2.39%) CSS
10 127 (2.28%) AngularJS
11 118 (2.12%) JSON
12 115 (2.07%) Spring Boot
13 102 (1.83%) XML
14 94 (1.69%) LDAP
14 94 (1.69%) Middleware
15 76 (1.37%) OAuth
16 71 (1.28%) Oracle Fusion
17 67 (1.20%) PySpark
18 65 (1.17%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 271 (4.87%) Product Ownership
2 239 (4.29%) Cloud Native
3 194 (3.49%) Onboarding
4 178 (3.20%) Management Information System
5 147 (2.64%) Data Centre
6 145 (2.61%) Analytical Mindset
7 132 (2.37%) Data Structures
8 123 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
9 112 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
10 103 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
11 100 (1.80%) Virtual Team
12 99 (1.78%) Algorithms
13 91 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
14 85 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
15 81 (1.46%) Security Posture
16 74 (1.33%) CMDB
17 73 (1.31%) Hybrid Cloud
18 66 (1.19%) Driving Licence
18 66 (1.19%) Mobile App
19 57 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 577 (10.37%) Windows
2 374 (6.72%) Linux
3 119 (2.14%) Unix
4 107 (1.92%) Windows Server
5 100 (1.80%) Windows 10
6 70 (1.26%) Android
7 69 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 68 (1.22%) Apple iOS
9 57 (1.02%) 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%) Mac OS X
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.090%) Windows Server 2003
16 5 (0.090%) zOS
17 4 (0.072%) Debian
17 4 (0.072%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,626 (29.21%) Agile
2 1,037 (18.63%) CI/CD
3 888 (15.95%) DevOps
4 819 (14.71%) Stakeholder Management
5 787 (14.14%) Continuous Improvement
6 626 (11.25%) Analytics
7 573 (10.29%) Migration
8 564 (10.13%) Decision-Making
9 498 (8.95%) AI
10 474 (8.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 470 (8.44%) Project Management
12 460 (8.26%) Data Modelling
13 452 (8.12%) Test Automation
14 423 (7.60%) Scrum
15 422 (7.58%) Business Intelligence
16 411 (7.38%) Validation
17 387 (6.95%) ITIL
18 386 (6.93%) Computer Science
18 386 (6.93%) Customer Service
19 385 (6.92%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,083 (19.46%) Python
2 954 (17.14%) SQL
3 524 (9.41%) Java
4 366 (6.58%) PowerShell
5 334 (6.00%) JavaScript
6 234 (4.20%) C#
7 220 (3.95%) TypeScript
8 154 (2.77%) Bash
9 83 (1.49%) 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 39 (0.70%) Ruby
17 37 (0.66%) Bicep
17 37 (0.66%) R
17 37 (0.66%) VBA
18 33 (0.59%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,182 (21.24%) Security Cleared
2 839 (15.07%) SC Cleared
3 748 (13.44%) Degree
4 261 (4.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 204 (3.67%) DV Cleared
6 159 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
7 111 (1.99%) Microsoft Certification
8 110 (1.98%) Master's Degree
9 102 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
9 102 (1.83%) PMI Certification
10 100 (1.80%) PMP
11 93 (1.67%) CISSP
12 84 (1.51%) Azure Certification
13 58 (1.04%) CISM
14 57 (1.02%) AWS Certification
14 57 (1.02%) CCNP
15 44 (0.79%) CCNA
16 42 (0.75%) A+ Certification
17 37 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
18 36 (0.65%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 361 (6.49%) QA
2 333 (5.98%) Data Quality
3 161 (2.89%) GDPR
4 124 (2.23%) Accessibility
5 87 (1.56%) PMO
6 84 (1.51%) NIST
7 83 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 62 (1.11%) SLA
9 37 (0.66%) PCI DSS
10 33 (0.59%) WCAG
11 32 (0.57%) GRC
12 27 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 23 (0.41%) PSD2
15 18 (0.32%) ISO 20022
16 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
17 16 (0.29%) EU AI Act
18 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
18 15 (0.27%) IFRS
19 14 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 492 (8.84%) Docker
2 385 (6.92%) Active Directory
3 124 (2.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.75%) Hyper-V
4 42 (0.75%) vSphere
5 34 (0.61%) VMware NSX
6 26 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
7 23 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
8 22 (0.40%) 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 6 (0.11%) HDFS
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.11%) vCloud
14 4 (0.072%) Snort
15 3 (0.054%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.054%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 541 (9.72%) Kubernetes
2 319 (5.73%) Terraform
3 210 (3.77%) Ansible
4 141 (2.53%) Grafana
5 119 (2.14%) 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 (0.66%) Kibana
11 35 (0.63%) FortiGate
12 32 (0.57%) 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 1,038 (18.65%) Microsoft
2 372 (6.68%) Oracle
3 275 (4.94%) SAP
4 248 (4.46%) ServiceNow
5 216 (3.88%) VMware
6 177 (3.18%) Google
7 165 (2.96%) Databricks
8 161 (2.89%) Splunk
9 135 (2.43%) Cisco
10 116 (2.08%) Salesforce
11 91 (1.63%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.31%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.13%) BeyondTrust
14 59 (1.06%) Workday
15 58 (1.04%) Palo Alto
16 56 (1.01%) Citrix
16 56 (1.01%) Talend
17 55 (0.99%) IBM
18 53 (0.95%) Dell
19 51 (0.92%) Informatica