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 20 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,449 4,736 4,815
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.53% 16.19% 10.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.57% 17.90% 12.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,341 2,969 2,975
10th Percentile £289 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -6.54%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 319 201 405
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.99 £11.03
25th Percentile £15.29 £17.13 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.36 £26.50 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -23.19% +49.55% -55.70%
75th Percentile £42.65 £43.75 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £77.50 £67.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.30 £22.14 £15.93
% change year-on-year -21.86% +38.98% -41.25%

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 37,403 26,465 38,354
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.99% 90.45% 86.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,742 17,048 24,949
10th Percentile £313 £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 £611 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.54% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,201 924 2,323
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.25 £12.99
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.41 £70.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £31.64 £31.13
% change year-on-year -11.50% +1.65% -11.14%

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 20 March 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 20 March 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 20 March 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 -3 4,674 £488 -2.50% 3,324
UK excluding London -5 2,830 £475 - 2,726
London -7 2,028 £509 -3.05% 1,049
Work from Home -1 1,563 £476 -4.85% 1,331
North of England -4 769 £450 -7.98% 665
South East -2 682 £492 -1.60% 858
Midlands -1 512 £450 +0.22% 466
North West -3 382 £425 -12.82% 360
West Midlands -1 373 £475 +1.71% 274
Yorkshire -4 338 £475 -5.00% 230
South West -2 314 £525 - 308
Scotland 0 256 £425 -6.08% 136
East of England -3 232 £450 - 293
East Midlands -2 140 £402 - 191
Wales -4 66 £400 +2.56% 76
North East -4 58 £438 -2.78% 89
Northern Ireland -3 30 £449 +31.91% 18
Channel Islands 0 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
1 223 (4.09%) Confluence
2 166 (3.05%) SharePoint
3 107 (1.96%) Microsoft Exchange
4 90 (1.65%) Apache Spark
5 63 (1.16%) Apache
6 61 (1.12%) SAS
7 44 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
8 35 (0.64%) CMS
9 16 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.28%) nginx
10 15 (0.28%) Skype for Business
11 11 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 11 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
12 8 (0.15%) Camunda
12 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.11%) JBoss
14 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
15 5 (0.092%) ArcGIS
15 5 (0.092%) CICS
Applications
1 326 (5.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (4.13%) Microsoft Office
3 123 (2.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 83 (1.52%) MS Visio
5 81 (1.49%) Microsoft Project
6 24 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) Trello
11 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.092%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.073%) Adobe Captivate
13 4 (0.073%) InDesign
13 4 (0.073%) InVision
13 4 (0.073%) Maya
13 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
14 3 (0.055%) Notion
Business Applications
1 94 (1.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
6 16 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
8 14 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
9 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
9 13 (0.24%) SAP ERP
9 13 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
10 12 (0.22%) NetSuite
11 11 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
12 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
13 8 (0.15%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,173 (21.53%) Azure
2 860 (15.78%) AWS
3 386 (7.08%) GCP
4 383 (7.03%) Power Platform
5 336 (6.17%) Microsoft 365
6 267 (4.90%) GitHub
7 257 (4.72%) Azure DevOps
8 194 (3.56%) Serverless
9 160 (2.94%) Entra ID
10 140 (2.57%) GitHub Actions
11 129 (2.37%) SaaS
12 113 (2.07%) Amazon S3
13 104 (1.91%) AWS Lambda
14 98 (1.80%) OpenShift
15 88 (1.61%) Snowflake
16 78 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
17 76 (1.39%) Azure Data Factory
18 71 (1.30%) Power Automate
19 63 (1.16%) Amazon EC2
19 63 (1.16%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 208 (3.82%) Firewall
2 199 (3.65%) DNS
3 127 (2.33%) TCP/IP
4 120 (2.20%) Network Security
5 117 (2.15%) WAN
6 111 (2.04%) DHCP
7 108 (1.98%) VPN
8 94 (1.73%) LAN
9 64 (1.17%) Wi-Fi
10 54 (0.99%) BGP
11 48 (0.88%) SAN
12 47 (0.86%) VLAN
13 40 (0.73%) OSPF
14 34 (0.62%) SD-WAN
14 34 (0.62%) VoIP
15 28 (0.51%) Wireless
16 27 (0.50%) MPLS
17 25 (0.46%) Internet
18 21 (0.39%) Junos
18 21 (0.39%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 309 (5.67%) Power BI
2 185 (3.40%) SQL Server
3 169 (3.10%) PostgreSQL
4 166 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
5 158 (2.90%) Relational Database
6 103 (1.89%) NoSQL
7 100 (1.84%) MongoDB
8 97 (1.78%) Metadata
9 87 (1.60%) Big Data
10 86 (1.58%) Tableau
11 77 (1.41%) Data Lake
11 77 (1.41%) MySQL
12 68 (1.25%) Oracle Database
13 57 (1.05%) Oracle Reports
14 51 (0.94%) Hadoop
15 49 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 45 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
17 37 (0.68%) DynamoDB
18 31 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
18 31 (0.57%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 508 (9.32%) JIRA
2 372 (6.83%) Git
3 274 (5.03%) Jenkins
4 176 (3.23%) GitLab
5 85 (1.56%) Selenium
6 58 (1.06%) JUnit
7 44 (0.81%) Postman
8 40 (0.73%) Cucumber
9 34 (0.62%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.48%) Cypress.io
11 26 (0.48%) Sonatype Nexus
12 24 (0.44%) Maven
13 22 (0.40%) JMeter
14 21 (0.39%) Mockito
15 20 (0.37%) SonarQube
16 15 (0.28%) CircleCI
16 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.28%) WebDriver
17 14 (0.26%) Artifactory
General
1 2,951 (54.16%) Social Skills
2 2,025 (37.16%) Analytical Skills
3 1,228 (22.54%) Finance
4 569 (10.44%) Public Sector
5 428 (7.85%) Banking
6 216 (3.96%) Organisational Skills
7 180 (3.30%) Legal
8 179 (3.29%) Documentation Skills
9 154 (2.83%) Retail
10 136 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
11 135 (2.48%) Presentation Skills
12 130 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 100 (1.84%) Telecoms
14 97 (1.78%) Front Office
15 89 (1.63%) Marketing
16 83 (1.52%) Investment Banking
17 82 (1.50%) Manufacturing
18 62 (1.14%) Military
19 54 (0.99%) Financial Institution
20 45 (0.83%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 737 (13.53%) Developer
2 734 (13.47%) Analyst
3 481 (8.83%) Senior
4 383 (7.03%) Architect
5 352 (6.46%) Lead
6 315 (5.78%) Business Analyst
7 299 (5.49%) Consultant
8 224 (4.11%) Project Manager
9 215 (3.95%) Data Engineer
10 142 (2.61%) Support Engineer
11 126 (2.31%) Java Developer
12 118 (2.17%) IT Support
13 103 (1.89%) Data Analyst
14 100 (1.84%) Senior Developer
15 99 (1.82%) Software Engineer
16 98 (1.80%) Solutions Architect
17 93 (1.71%) Administrator
18 87 (1.60%) Network Engineer
18 87 (1.60%) Python Developer
19 75 (1.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 360 (6.61%) REST
2 183 (3.36%) Kafka
3 170 (3.12%) RESTful
4 169 (3.10%) SOAP
5 164 (3.01%) .NET
6 159 (2.92%) Spring
7 153 (2.81%) Node.js
8 149 (2.73%) React
9 121 (2.22%) CSS
10 119 (2.18%) AngularJS
11 117 (2.15%) HTML
12 112 (2.06%) Spring Boot
13 110 (2.02%) JSON
14 99 (1.82%) XML
15 95 (1.74%) LDAP
16 92 (1.69%) Middleware
17 79 (1.45%) OAuth
18 72 (1.32%) PySpark
19 64 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
20 63 (1.16%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 270 (4.96%) Product Ownership
2 244 (4.48%) Cloud Native
3 200 (3.67%) Onboarding
4 172 (3.16%) Management Information System
5 158 (2.90%) Data Centre
6 139 (2.55%) Analytical Mindset
7 130 (2.39%) Self-Motivation
8 116 (2.13%) Data Structures
9 109 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
10 102 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
11 100 (1.84%) Legacy Systems
11 100 (1.84%) Virtual Team
12 98 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
13 86 (1.58%) Algorithms
14 75 (1.38%) Security Posture
15 73 (1.34%) Hybrid Cloud
16 67 (1.23%) CMDB
17 65 (1.19%) Driving Licence
18 64 (1.17%) Mobile App
19 53 (0.97%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 568 (10.42%) Windows
2 345 (6.33%) Linux
3 105 (1.93%) Unix
3 105 (1.93%) Windows Server
4 97 (1.78%) Windows 10
5 70 (1.28%) Android
6 64 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 63 (1.16%) Apple iOS
8 55 (1.01%) Mac OS
9 19 (0.35%) VMS
10 16 (0.29%) Ubuntu
11 11 (0.20%) CentOS
12 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
14 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.11%) zOS
16 5 (0.092%) Debian
16 5 (0.092%) Windows Server 2003
17 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,576 (28.92%) Agile
2 1,011 (18.55%) CI/CD
3 893 (16.39%) DevOps
4 832 (15.27%) Stakeholder Management
5 801 (14.70%) Continuous Improvement
6 630 (11.56%) Analytics
7 561 (10.30%) Migration
8 551 (10.11%) Decision-Making
9 521 (9.56%) AI
10 498 (9.14%) Project Management
11 477 (8.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 463 (8.50%) Data Modelling
13 432 (7.93%) Test Automation
14 417 (7.65%) Business Intelligence
15 413 (7.58%) Scrum
15 413 (7.58%) Validation
16 393 (7.21%) Change Management
17 385 (7.07%) ITIL
18 383 (7.03%) Customer Service
19 372 (6.83%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,050 (19.27%) Python
2 927 (17.01%) SQL
3 491 (9.01%) Java
4 373 (6.85%) PowerShell
5 309 (5.67%) JavaScript
6 221 (4.06%) C#
7 208 (3.82%) TypeScript
8 154 (2.83%) Bash
9 77 (1.41%) PL/SQL
10 76 (1.39%) Shell Script
11 58 (1.06%) C++
11 58 (1.06%) Go
12 46 (0.84%) Perl
13 42 (0.77%) Scala
14 41 (0.75%) T-SQL
15 39 (0.72%) Bicep
15 39 (0.72%) Ruby
16 35 (0.64%) Apex Code
17 33 (0.61%) R
18 31 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,208 (22.17%) Security Cleared
2 842 (15.45%) SC Cleared
3 701 (12.86%) Degree
4 241 (4.42%) Computer Science Degree
5 213 (3.91%) DV Cleared
6 162 (2.97%) BPSS Clearance
7 115 (2.11%) Cisco Certification
8 110 (2.02%) PMP
9 109 (2.00%) Master's Degree
10 108 (1.98%) PMI Certification
11 99 (1.82%) CISSP
12 98 (1.80%) Microsoft Certification
13 69 (1.27%) Azure Certification
14 63 (1.16%) CISM
15 56 (1.03%) CCNP
16 49 (0.90%) CCNA
17 47 (0.86%) AWS Certification
18 41 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
19 37 (0.68%) A+ Certification
20 33 (0.61%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (6.59%) QA
2 329 (6.04%) Data Quality
3 162 (2.97%) GDPR
4 122 (2.24%) Accessibility
5 93 (1.71%) PMO
6 85 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 85 (1.56%) NIST
7 66 (1.21%) SLA
8 37 (0.68%) GRC
9 35 (0.64%) PCI DSS
9 35 (0.64%) WCAG
10 29 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
11 25 (0.46%) PSD2
12 23 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
14 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
15 16 (0.29%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.26%) HL7
17 13 (0.24%) IFRS
17 13 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 464 (8.52%) Docker
2 378 (6.94%) Active Directory
3 112 (2.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (0.90%) vSphere
5 40 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 32 (0.59%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.37%) Firmware
9 17 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
12 9 (0.17%) Squid
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.15%) vCloud
13 8 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 5 (0.092%) HDFS
15 4 (0.073%) Snort
16 3 (0.055%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.055%) NFS
Systems Management
1 521 (9.56%) Kubernetes
2 328 (6.02%) Terraform
3 203 (3.73%) Ansible
4 132 (2.42%) Grafana
5 124 (2.28%) Microsoft Intune
6 105 (1.93%) Prometheus
7 87 (1.60%) SCCM
8 48 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
10 36 (0.66%) Argo
11 35 (0.64%) vCenter Server
12 31 (0.57%) Kibana
13 28 (0.51%) Puppet
14 24 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 23 (0.42%) Nessus
16 20 (0.37%) Control-M
17 17 (0.31%) IBM Guardium
18 15 (0.28%) vRealize
19 12 (0.22%) Red Hat Satellite
20 11 (0.20%) VxRail
Vendors
1 992 (18.21%) Microsoft
2 353 (6.48%) Oracle
3 258 (4.73%) SAP
4 230 (4.22%) ServiceNow
5 202 (3.71%) VMware
6 180 (3.30%) Google
7 161 (2.95%) Databricks
8 145 (2.66%) Splunk
9 135 (2.48%) Cisco
10 114 (2.09%) Salesforce
11 90 (1.65%) Red Hat
12 72 (1.32%) CyberArk
13 66 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
14 59 (1.08%) Dell
15 57 (1.05%) Citrix
16 56 (1.03%) IBM
16 56 (1.03%) Palo Alto
17 55 (1.01%) Workday
18 53 (0.97%) Informatica
18 53 (0.97%) Talend