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 4 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,265 4,968 4,736
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.16% 16.96% 10.98%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.21% 18.65% 12.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,173 3,091 2,895
10th Percentile £265 £250 £233
25th Percentile £385 £394 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -0.10% -4.67%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £716 £700 £727
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £470 £488
% change year-on-year -2.13% -3.59% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 248 411
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.42 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.84
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.69 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.34% +33.46% -64.88%
75th Percentile £51.27 £41.25 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.13 £21.34 £15.00
% change year-on-year -15.02% +42.23% -62.77%

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 39,853 26,632 37,270
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.47% 90.92% 86.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,078 17,168 24,015
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +1.46% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,383 1,080 2,442
10th Percentile £14.84 £14.63 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.83
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -19.06% -0.47%
75th Percentile £67.13 £61.69 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.40 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.57 £37.50
% change year-on-year +59.59% -26.48% +7.14%

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 4 May 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 4 May 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 4 May 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 4,509 £488 -2.50% 3,228
UK excluding London -5 2,797 £460 -2.13% 2,526
London -11 1,917 £510 -2.86% 1,029
Work from Home 0 1,500 £475 -5.00% 1,313
North of England -6 761 £450 -7.98% 643
South East -6 649 £488 -2.50% 751
Midlands -5 516 £450 +1.69% 448
North West -5 364 £405 -17.35% 360
West Midlands -5 352 £475 +5.20% 276
Yorkshire -5 350 £463 -2.63% 214
South West -1 323 £500 - 283
Scotland -1 259 £425 -5.56% 118
East of England -4 213 £450 - 265
East Midlands 0 163 £443 +11.04% 173
Wales -2 69 £400 +20.78% 60
North East -7 54 £425 -11.23% 78
Northern Ireland -2 27 £439 +25.29% 25
Channel Islands -4 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
1 211 (4.01%) Confluence
2 144 (2.74%) SharePoint
3 89 (1.69%) Microsoft Exchange
4 88 (1.67%) Apache Spark
5 62 (1.18%) Apache
6 49 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
7 47 (0.89%) SAS
8 29 (0.55%) CMS
9 19 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.25%) nginx
11 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
12 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.13%) Camunda
13 7 (0.13%) CICS
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
15 4 (0.076%) Jupyter
Applications
1 296 (5.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (4.24%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (2.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 80 (1.52%) Microsoft Project
5 76 (1.44%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 11 (0.21%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) CATIA
11 7 (0.13%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
11 7 (0.13%) Trello
12 6 (0.11%) Revit
13 5 (0.095%) Acrobat
13 5 (0.095%) Maya
14 4 (0.076%) InDesign
14 4 (0.076%) InVision
14 4 (0.076%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 120 (2.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 19 (0.36%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.27%) NEC Housing
9 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 12 (0.23%) SAP ERP
10 12 (0.23%) Teamcenter
10 12 (0.23%) Workday HCM
11 10 (0.19%) NetSuite
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
12 9 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
12 9 (0.17%) Shopify
13 8 (0.15%) Loan IQ
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
13 8 (0.15%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,067 (20.27%) Azure
2 811 (15.40%) AWS
3 397 (7.54%) Power Platform
4 348 (6.61%) GCP
5 347 (6.59%) Microsoft 365
6 237 (4.50%) Azure DevOps
7 215 (4.08%) GitHub
8 157 (2.98%) Entra ID
9 150 (2.85%) Serverless
10 125 (2.37%) SaaS
11 109 (2.07%) GitHub Actions
12 97 (1.84%) Amazon S3
13 89 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
14 76 (1.44%) Dynamics 365
15 74 (1.41%) OpenShift
16 73 (1.39%) Snowflake
17 72 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
17 72 (1.37%) Power Automate
18 58 (1.10%) PowerApps
19 52 (0.99%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 187 (3.55%) DNS
2 182 (3.46%) Firewall
3 120 (2.28%) TCP/IP
4 105 (1.99%) VPN
4 105 (1.99%) WAN
5 98 (1.86%) DHCP
6 97 (1.84%) Network Security
7 83 (1.58%) SAN
8 80 (1.52%) LAN
9 65 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
10 51 (0.97%) BGP
11 47 (0.89%) VLAN
12 44 (0.84%) OSPF
13 38 (0.72%) SD-WAN
14 31 (0.59%) VoIP
15 27 (0.51%) Wireless
16 26 (0.49%) Internet
16 26 (0.49%) VXLAN
17 25 (0.47%) MPLS
18 21 (0.40%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 314 (5.96%) Power BI
2 202 (3.84%) SQL Server
3 163 (3.10%) Data Warehouse
4 136 (2.58%) Relational Database
5 133 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
6 117 (2.22%) Metadata
7 90 (1.71%) Tableau
8 88 (1.67%) MongoDB
9 85 (1.61%) NoSQL
10 84 (1.60%) Big Data
11 79 (1.50%) Data Lake
12 64 (1.22%) MySQL
13 62 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
14 53 (1.01%) Oracle Database
15 49 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 44 (0.84%) Hadoop
17 34 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
18 32 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
19 30 (0.57%) BigQuery
19 30 (0.57%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 500 (9.50%) JIRA
2 307 (5.83%) Git
3 202 (3.84%) Jenkins
4 137 (2.60%) GitLab
5 65 (1.23%) Selenium
6 40 (0.76%) Postman
7 30 (0.57%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.49%) Bitbucket
8 26 (0.49%) REST Assured
9 24 (0.46%) JUnit
10 22 (0.42%) Cypress.io
11 21 (0.40%) JMeter
12 19 (0.36%) Maven
13 18 (0.34%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 16 (0.30%) Mockito
15 16 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
16 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.27%) Zephyr
18 12 (0.23%) Artifactory
General
1 2,739 (52.02%) Social Skills
2 2,026 (38.48%) Analytical Skills
3 1,220 (23.17%) Finance
4 501 (9.52%) Public Sector
5 404 (7.67%) Banking
6 223 (4.24%) Organisational Skills
7 182 (3.46%) Retail
8 176 (3.34%) Documentation Skills
9 159 (3.02%) Legal
10 129 (2.45%) Presentation Skills
11 121 (2.30%) Influencing Skills
12 115 (2.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 94 (1.79%) Front Office
14 93 (1.77%) Telecoms
15 91 (1.73%) Manufacturing
16 87 (1.65%) Marketing
17 74 (1.41%) Investment Banking
18 59 (1.12%) Back Office
18 59 (1.12%) Financial Institution
19 58 (1.10%) Law
Job Titles
1 732 (13.90%) Analyst
2 651 (12.36%) Developer
3 457 (8.68%) Senior
4 365 (6.93%) Architect
5 332 (6.31%) Lead
6 301 (5.72%) Business Analyst
7 266 (5.05%) Consultant
8 234 (4.44%) Data Engineer
9 201 (3.82%) Project Manager
10 135 (2.56%) Support Engineer
11 124 (2.36%) IT Support
12 115 (2.18%) Data Analyst
13 114 (2.17%) Java Developer
14 101 (1.92%) Administrator
15 100 (1.90%) Solutions Architect
16 96 (1.82%) IT Engineer
17 93 (1.77%) Network Engineer
17 93 (1.77%) Software Engineer
18 91 (1.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 79 (1.50%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 298 (5.66%) REST
2 153 (2.91%) Kafka
3 141 (2.68%) .NET
4 140 (2.66%) RESTful
5 139 (2.64%) SOAP
6 134 (2.55%) Spring
7 130 (2.47%) React
8 119 (2.26%) Node.js
9 115 (2.18%) CSS
10 108 (2.05%) HTML
11 103 (1.96%) AngularJS
11 103 (1.96%) Spring Boot
12 100 (1.90%) JSON
13 98 (1.86%) LDAP
14 91 (1.73%) Middleware
14 91 (1.73%) XML
15 72 (1.37%) OAuth
15 72 (1.37%) PySpark
16 54 (1.03%) Oracle Fusion
17 51 (0.97%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 273 (5.19%) Product Ownership
2 223 (4.24%) Onboarding
3 212 (4.03%) Cloud Native
4 199 (3.78%) Data Centre
5 155 (2.94%) Analytical Mindset
6 153 (2.91%) Self-Motivation
7 151 (2.87%) Management Information System
8 112 (2.13%) Distributed Systems
9 111 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
9 111 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
10 109 (2.07%) Virtual Team
11 106 (2.01%) Data Structures
12 99 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
13 71 (1.35%) Driving Licence
14 69 (1.31%) Security Posture
15 61 (1.16%) Mobile App
16 58 (1.10%) Algorithms
17 57 (1.08%) Hybrid Cloud
18 53 (1.01%) AI Agents
19 50 (0.95%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 587 (11.15%) Windows
2 308 (5.85%) Linux
3 110 (2.09%) Windows 10
4 104 (1.98%) Windows Server
5 97 (1.84%) Unix
6 93 (1.77%) Android
7 84 (1.60%) Apple iOS
8 69 (1.31%) Mac OS
9 53 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.40%) Ubuntu
10 21 (0.40%) VMS
11 15 (0.28%) CentOS
12 12 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.17%) zOS
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
15 7 (0.13%) Debian
16 4 (0.076%) AIX
16 4 (0.076%) Solaris
16 4 (0.076%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,449 (27.52%) Agile
2 886 (16.83%) CI/CD
3 796 (15.12%) DevOps
4 794 (15.08%) Continuous Improvement
5 766 (14.55%) Stakeholder Management
6 582 (11.05%) Analytics
6 582 (11.05%) Migration
7 579 (11.00%) Decision-Making
8 573 (10.88%) AI
9 457 (8.68%) Project Management
10 451 (8.57%) Data Modelling
11 450 (8.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 424 (8.05%) Customer Service
12 424 (8.05%) Validation
13 420 (7.98%) Business Intelligence
14 397 (7.54%) ITIL
15 395 (7.50%) Test Automation
16 370 (7.03%) Change Management
17 367 (6.97%) Scrum
18 332 (6.31%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 961 (18.25%) Python
2 905 (17.19%) SQL
3 432 (8.21%) Java
4 326 (6.19%) PowerShell
5 276 (5.24%) JavaScript
6 199 (3.78%) C#
7 172 (3.27%) TypeScript
8 125 (2.37%) Bash
9 82 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 70 (1.33%) C++
11 60 (1.14%) Shell Script
12 52 (0.99%) Go
13 48 (0.91%) R
14 38 (0.72%) Bicep
14 38 (0.72%) C
15 36 (0.68%) Perl
16 35 (0.66%) Apex Code
16 35 (0.66%) T-SQL
17 32 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 31 (0.59%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,142 (21.69%) Security Cleared
2 789 (14.99%) SC Cleared
3 639 (12.14%) Degree
4 215 (4.08%) Computer Science Degree
5 194 (3.68%) DV Cleared
6 169 (3.21%) BPSS Clearance
7 136 (2.58%) Cisco Certification
8 126 (2.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 97 (1.84%) CISSP
10 89 (1.69%) PMP
11 84 (1.60%) PMI Certification
12 76 (1.44%) CCNA
12 76 (1.44%) Master's Degree
13 70 (1.33%) A+ Certification
14 65 (1.23%) Network+ Certification
15 64 (1.22%) CISM
16 63 (1.20%) Azure Certification
17 60 (1.14%) MCSE
18 46 (0.87%) CCNP
19 33 (0.63%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 349 (6.63%) Data Quality
2 316 (6.00%) QA
3 157 (2.98%) GDPR
4 109 (2.07%) Accessibility
5 98 (1.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 91 (1.73%) PMO
7 84 (1.60%) NIST
8 74 (1.41%) SLA
9 48 (0.91%) GRC
10 36 (0.68%) WCAG
11 31 (0.59%) PCI DSS
12 29 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
13 28 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.38%) ISO 20022
15 19 (0.36%) PSD2
16 17 (0.32%) IFRS
17 15 (0.28%) HL7
18 14 (0.27%) HIPAA
18 14 (0.27%) ISO 8583
18 14 (0.27%) NCSC
System Software
1 379 (7.20%) Active Directory
2 348 (6.61%) Docker
3 114 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.91%) vSphere
5 39 (0.74%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.63%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.44%) Firmware
8 18 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 17 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.21%) RACF
10 11 (0.21%) Squid
10 11 (0.21%) vCloud
11 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.11%) IAG
15 4 (0.076%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.076%) NFS
15 4 (0.076%) Snort
Systems Management
1 432 (8.21%) Kubernetes
2 294 (5.58%) Terraform
3 182 (3.46%) Ansible
4 124 (2.36%) Microsoft Intune
5 121 (2.30%) Grafana
6 90 (1.71%) Prometheus
7 81 (1.54%) SCCM
8 41 (0.78%) vCenter Server
9 40 (0.76%) FortiGate
10 37 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.51%) Argo
11 27 (0.51%) Kibana
12 25 (0.47%) Puppet
13 23 (0.44%) Control-M
14 21 (0.40%) Nessus
15 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
16 14 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 14 (0.27%) WSUS
17 12 (0.23%) CA Endevor
17 12 (0.23%) vRealize
Vendors
1 960 (18.23%) Microsoft
2 354 (6.72%) Oracle
3 296 (5.62%) SAP
4 232 (4.41%) ServiceNow
5 193 (3.67%) VMware
6 159 (3.02%) Google
7 156 (2.96%) Databricks
8 133 (2.53%) Cisco
9 120 (2.28%) Splunk
10 118 (2.24%) Salesforce
11 86 (1.63%) Dell
12 74 (1.41%) CyberArk
13 69 (1.31%) BeyondTrust
14 65 (1.23%) Red Hat
15 60 (1.14%) Adobe
16 59 (1.12%) Workday
17 54 (1.03%) Citrix
18 51 (0.97%) Palo Alto
19 50 (0.95%) IBM
20 49 (0.93%) F5