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 17 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,259 5,057 4,717
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.45% 17.04% 10.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.32% 18.72% 12.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,060 3,134 2,840
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £381 £377 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.54% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £619
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £465 £475
% change year-on-year -2.15% -2.11% -2.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 408 279 426
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.21 £15.50 £13.90
Median hourly rate £20.56 £22.14 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -7.16% +36.41% -68.02%
75th Percentile £40.00 £41.00 £33.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £66.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.79 £19.91 £15.00
% change year-on-year -5.63% +32.73% -70.00%

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 42,679 27,009 37,072
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 91.00% 85.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,607 17,137 23,609
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,567 1,242 2,598
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.87 £16.03
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.27 £37.34
Median % change year-on-year +67.37% -29.66% +6.69%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +76.94% -34.02% +17.29%

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 17 June 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 17 June 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 17 June 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 -9 4,491 £500 - 5,418
UK excluding London -5 2,815 £455 -2.15% 5,449
London -12 1,907 £520 +1.96% 1,186
Work from Home -5 1,485 £492 -1.60% 4,148
North of England -11 716 £450 -5.26% 1,155
South East -6 676 £488 -2.50% 1,359
Midlands -9 509 £463 +9.00% 769
West Midlands -11 364 £469 +4.22% 384
North West -11 345 £441 -7.11% 581
Yorkshire -7 327 £451 -5.16% 378
South West -4 318 £500 - 549
Scotland -3 290 £443 -4.84% 481
East of England -2 245 £450 -3.64% 697
East Midlands -2 143 £447 +21.80% 386
Wales 0 66 £468 +41.17% 245
North East -15 50 £370 -17.78% 208
Northern Ireland -6 22 £365 -14.12% 324
Channel Islands -2 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
1 222 (4.22%) Confluence
2 160 (3.04%) SharePoint
3 86 (1.64%) Microsoft Exchange
4 78 (1.48%) Apache Spark
5 51 (0.97%) Apache
6 49 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
7 41 (0.78%) SAS
8 32 (0.61%) CMS
9 26 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.29%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.23%) nginx
12 11 (0.21%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.21%) CICS
12 11 (0.21%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 9 (0.17%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.15%) Camunda
15 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
15 7 (0.13%) Tomcat
16 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 305 (5.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 217 (4.13%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (2.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.37%) MS Visio
5 66 (1.25%) Microsoft Project
6 33 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 21 (0.40%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.27%) AutoCAD
10 12 (0.23%) Sketch
11 11 (0.21%) Revit
12 10 (0.19%) CATIA
13 7 (0.13%) CPLEX
13 7 (0.13%) Trello
14 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
15 5 (0.095%) Adobe After Effects
15 5 (0.095%) Final Cut Pro
15 5 (0.095%) Maya
16 4 (0.076%) Acrobat
16 4 (0.076%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 131 (2.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.44%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.34%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.30%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.29%) SAP GRC
8 14 (0.27%) NetSuite
9 13 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
10 12 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
10 12 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 11 (0.21%) Teamcenter
12 10 (0.19%) NEC Housing
12 10 (0.19%) SAP HCM
12 10 (0.19%) SAP SD
13 9 (0.17%) iTrent
14 8 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
14 8 (0.15%) SAP ERP
15 7 (0.13%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 1,062 (20.19%) Azure
2 795 (15.12%) AWS
3 404 (7.68%) Power Platform
4 367 (6.98%) Microsoft 365
5 307 (5.84%) GCP
6 234 (4.45%) Azure DevOps
7 186 (3.54%) GitHub
8 175 (3.33%) Entra ID
9 140 (2.66%) Serverless
10 138 (2.62%) SaaS
11 96 (1.83%) GitHub Actions
12 91 (1.73%) Amazon S3
13 81 (1.54%) AWS Lambda
14 75 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
15 70 (1.33%) Snowflake
16 69 (1.31%) Power Automate
17 65 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
18 61 (1.16%) PowerApps
19 58 (1.10%) OpenShift
20 48 (0.91%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 198 (3.76%) DNS
2 165 (3.14%) Firewall
3 120 (2.28%) TCP/IP
4 113 (2.15%) VPN
5 109 (2.07%) WAN
6 106 (2.02%) DHCP
7 89 (1.69%) Network Security
8 81 (1.54%) LAN
9 79 (1.50%) SAN
10 72 (1.37%) Wi-Fi
11 51 (0.97%) VLAN
12 49 (0.93%) BGP
13 46 (0.87%) SD-WAN
14 41 (0.78%) OSPF
15 32 (0.61%) VoIP
15 32 (0.61%) Wireless
16 28 (0.53%) VXLAN
17 27 (0.51%) MPLS
18 22 (0.42%) NAS
19 21 (0.40%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 318 (6.05%) Power BI
2 203 (3.86%) SQL Server
3 160 (3.04%) Data Warehouse
4 146 (2.78%) Relational Database
5 138 (2.62%) PostgreSQL
6 115 (2.19%) MongoDB
7 102 (1.94%) Metadata
8 92 (1.75%) NoSQL
9 91 (1.73%) Data Lake
10 89 (1.69%) Tableau
11 76 (1.45%) Big Data
12 52 (0.99%) Oracle Database
13 51 (0.97%) MySQL
14 50 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 49 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
16 36 (0.68%) Hadoop
17 30 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
18 29 (0.55%) DynamoDB
19 28 (0.53%) Power Query
20 27 (0.51%) Db2
Development Applications
1 503 (9.56%) JIRA
2 280 (5.32%) Git
3 181 (3.44%) Jenkins
4 133 (2.53%) GitLab
5 65 (1.24%) Selenium
6 43 (0.82%) Postman
7 36 (0.68%) REST Assured
8 30 (0.57%) Cucumber
9 27 (0.51%) Bitbucket
10 26 (0.49%) Cypress.io
11 22 (0.42%) JUnit
12 19 (0.36%) WebDriver
13 18 (0.34%) JMeter
14 17 (0.32%) Mockito
15 16 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
16 15 (0.29%) SonarQube
17 14 (0.27%) Zephyr
18 13 (0.25%) Gatling
19 12 (0.23%) Maven
19 12 (0.23%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,730 (51.91%) Social Skills
2 2,064 (39.25%) Analytical Skills
3 1,219 (23.18%) Finance
4 479 (9.11%) Public Sector
5 395 (7.51%) Banking
6 211 (4.01%) Organisational Skills
7 193 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
8 187 (3.56%) Retail
9 151 (2.87%) Legal
10 143 (2.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 111 (2.11%) Influencing Skills
12 110 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
13 109 (2.07%) Manufacturing
14 102 (1.94%) Front Office
15 94 (1.79%) Telecoms
16 91 (1.73%) Marketing
17 82 (1.56%) Investment Banking
18 76 (1.45%) Back Office
19 61 (1.16%) Law
20 57 (1.08%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 736 (14.00%) Analyst
2 599 (11.39%) Developer
3 455 (8.65%) Senior
4 365 (6.94%) Architect
5 341 (6.48%) Lead
6 281 (5.34%) Business Analyst
7 260 (4.94%) Consultant
8 239 (4.54%) Data Engineer
9 177 (3.37%) Project Manager
10 164 (3.12%) IT Support
11 158 (3.00%) Support Engineer
12 120 (2.28%) Data Analyst
13 117 (2.22%) Administrator
14 111 (2.11%) IT Engineer
14 111 (2.11%) Java Developer
15 109 (2.07%) Solutions Architect
16 96 (1.83%) Software Engineer
17 91 (1.73%) Network Engineer
18 86 (1.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 83 (1.58%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 297 (5.65%) REST
2 157 (2.99%) .NET
3 152 (2.89%) Kafka
4 137 (2.61%) Spring
5 136 (2.59%) React
6 132 (2.51%) RESTful
7 129 (2.45%) SOAP
8 119 (2.26%) CSS
9 108 (2.05%) JSON
10 105 (2.00%) HTML
11 103 (1.96%) Middleware
12 102 (1.94%) Spring Boot
13 89 (1.69%) XML
14 88 (1.67%) Node.js
15 86 (1.64%) AngularJS
16 78 (1.48%) LDAP
17 74 (1.41%) PySpark
18 65 (1.24%) Web Services
19 55 (1.05%) OAuth
20 47 (0.89%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 258 (4.91%) Product Ownership
2 241 (4.58%) Onboarding
3 220 (4.18%) Cloud Native
4 203 (3.86%) Data Centre
5 181 (3.44%) Self-Motivation
6 145 (2.76%) Analytical Mindset
7 143 (2.72%) Management Information System
8 136 (2.59%) Distributed Systems
9 133 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
10 130 (2.47%) Enterprise Software
11 121 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
12 115 (2.19%) Virtual Team
13 110 (2.09%) Data Structures
14 70 (1.33%) Algorithms
15 69 (1.31%) Driving Licence
16 67 (1.27%) Security Posture
17 62 (1.18%) AI Agents
18 55 (1.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 52 (0.99%) Derivative
20 46 (0.87%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 638 (12.13%) Windows
2 279 (5.31%) Linux
3 121 (2.30%) Windows Server
4 115 (2.19%) Windows 10
5 102 (1.94%) Unix
6 85 (1.62%) Android
6 85 (1.62%) Mac OS
7 83 (1.58%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 23 (0.44%) Ubuntu
10 14 (0.27%) CentOS
10 14 (0.27%) VMS
11 13 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 10 (0.19%) zOS
13 9 (0.17%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.11%) Solaris
16 5 (0.095%) Debian
16 5 (0.095%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.076%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,391 (26.45%) Agile
2 873 (16.60%) Continuous Improvement
3 863 (16.41%) CI/CD
4 818 (15.55%) Stakeholder Management
5 791 (15.04%) DevOps
6 616 (11.71%) AI
7 590 (11.22%) Decision-Making
8 567 (10.78%) Migration
9 566 (10.76%) Analytics
10 491 (9.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 478 (9.09%) Customer Service
12 455 (8.65%) ITIL
13 441 (8.39%) Data Modelling
14 434 (8.25%) Validation
15 418 (7.95%) Business Intelligence
16 404 (7.68%) Project Management
17 384 (7.30%) Test Automation
18 367 (6.98%) Scrum
19 347 (6.60%) Change Management
20 320 (6.08%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 946 (17.99%) SQL
2 933 (17.74%) Python
3 417 (7.93%) Java
4 312 (5.93%) PowerShell
5 267 (5.08%) JavaScript
6 197 (3.75%) C#
7 128 (2.43%) TypeScript
8 108 (2.05%) Bash
9 84 (1.60%) PL/SQL
10 73 (1.39%) C++
11 50 (0.95%) Shell Script
12 47 (0.89%) Go
13 40 (0.76%) C
13 40 (0.76%) T-SQL
14 39 (0.74%) R
15 34 (0.65%) Perl
16 32 (0.61%) Apex Code
16 32 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 31 (0.59%) Bicep
18 30 (0.57%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,110 (21.11%) Security Cleared
2 758 (14.41%) SC Cleared
3 634 (12.06%) Degree
4 192 (3.65%) DV Cleared
5 189 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 163 (3.10%) BPSS Clearance
7 140 (2.66%) Microsoft Certification
8 134 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
9 90 (1.71%) CISSP
10 80 (1.52%) PMP
11 76 (1.45%) A+ Certification
12 74 (1.41%) CCNA
12 74 (1.41%) PMI Certification
13 71 (1.35%) Master's Degree
14 70 (1.33%) Azure Certification
15 64 (1.22%) Network+ Certification
16 63 (1.20%) CISM
17 57 (1.08%) MCSE
18 41 (0.78%) AWS Certification
18 41 (0.78%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 361 (6.86%) Data Quality
2 279 (5.31%) QA
3 150 (2.85%) GDPR
4 123 (2.34%) Accessibility
5 100 (1.90%) SLA
6 93 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (1.52%) PMO
8 77 (1.46%) NIST
9 56 (1.06%) GRC
10 27 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
11 26 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 26 (0.49%) WCAG
12 23 (0.44%) PCI DSS
13 18 (0.34%) COBIT
14 17 (0.32%) ISO 20022
15 16 (0.30%) NCSC
16 13 (0.25%) PSD2
17 11 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
17 11 (0.21%) HIPAA
17 11 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 394 (7.49%) Active Directory
2 330 (6.27%) Docker
3 110 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.84%) vSphere
5 40 (0.76%) VMware NSX
6 35 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
7 32 (0.61%) Hyper-V
8 26 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
9 25 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
10 22 (0.42%) Firmware
11 19 (0.36%) vCloud
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 7 (0.13%) IAG
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.076%) ACF2
14 4 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.076%) NFS
14 4 (0.076%) RACF
14 4 (0.076%) Snort
15 3 (0.057%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 398 (7.57%) Kubernetes
2 284 (5.40%) Terraform
3 164 (3.12%) Ansible
4 135 (2.57%) Microsoft Intune
5 109 (2.07%) Grafana
6 95 (1.81%) Prometheus
7 81 (1.54%) SCCM
8 49 (0.93%) vCenter Server
9 44 (0.84%) FortiGate
10 40 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
11 24 (0.46%) Control-M
12 21 (0.40%) Argo
12 21 (0.40%) Nessus
13 20 (0.38%) Kibana
14 18 (0.34%) Puppet
15 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
15 17 (0.32%) SCOM
16 15 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
17 14 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 14 (0.27%) WSUS
Vendors
1 988 (18.79%) Microsoft
2 355 (6.75%) Oracle
3 311 (5.91%) SAP
4 290 (5.51%) ServiceNow
5 175 (3.33%) VMware
6 151 (2.87%) Google
7 138 (2.62%) Databricks
8 125 (2.38%) Splunk
9 123 (2.34%) Cisco
10 122 (2.32%) Salesforce
11 75 (1.43%) Dell
11 75 (1.43%) Workday
12 63 (1.20%) Adobe
13 58 (1.10%) CyberArk
14 55 (1.05%) Red Hat
15 52 (0.99%) BeyondTrust
16 51 (0.97%) Citrix
16 51 (0.97%) Dynatrace
17 48 (0.91%) MuleSoft
18 45 (0.86%) Palo Alto