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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -8 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,160 4,949 4,653
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.56% 17.20% 10.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.47% 18.90% 12.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,993 3,077 2,827
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £388 £388 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.20% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £456 £469 £475
% change year-on-year -2.77% -1.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 391 259 429
10th Percentile £13.10 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £13.86
Median hourly rate £20.44 £22.14 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -7.68% +36.41% -68.73%
75th Percentile £40.75 £35.00 £33.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.05 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £20.00 £15.00
% change year-on-year -7.50% +33.33% -71.37%

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 41,363 26,184 36,825
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.68% 91.01% 85.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,810 16,717 23,641
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,496 1,118 2,535
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.98 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.69 £27.85 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.27% -23.70% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.84 £57.19 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.14 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 4,404 £500 - 3,768
UK excluding London -5 2,752 £456 -2.77% 2,805
London -12 1,873 £520 -0.38% 1,404
Work from Home -4 1,458 £488 -2.50% 1,931
North of England -10 708 £450 -7.22% 718
South East -6 651 £488 -2.50% 785
Midlands -9 493 £463 +6.32% 417
West Midlands -10 348 £469 +3.88% 257
Yorkshire -6 337 £460 -3.16% 232
North West -7 334 £425 -13.09% 404
South West -3 314 £500 - 326
Scotland -2 280 £438 -5.91% 146
East of England -2 241 £450 -5.26% 308
East Midlands -2 144 £443 +18.96% 160
Wales -2 66 £400 +6.67% 62
North East -16 45 £375 -16.67% 92
Northern Ireland -6 23 £380 +4.83% 120
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
1 218 (4.22%) Confluence
2 151 (2.93%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 77 (1.49%) Apache Spark
5 50 (0.97%) Apache
6 49 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
7 42 (0.81%) SAS
8 32 (0.62%) CMS
9 23 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.25%) nginx
11 11 (0.21%) CICS
11 11 (0.21%) WebLogic
12 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 10 (0.19%) ArcGIS
13 8 (0.16%) Camunda
13 8 (0.16%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.14%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 302 (5.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 215 (4.17%) Microsoft Office
3 108 (2.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
5 70 (1.36%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 17 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.27%) Sketch
10 10 (0.19%) AutoCAD
11 9 (0.17%) CATIA
12 8 (0.16%) Revit
13 7 (0.14%) Adobe XD
13 7 (0.14%) Trello
14 6 (0.12%) Photoshop
15 5 (0.097%) Maya
16 4 (0.078%) Acrobat
16 4 (0.078%) CPLEX
17 3 (0.058%) Adobe After Effects
17 3 (0.058%) Final Cut Pro
Business Applications
1 125 (2.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 18 (0.35%) Aladdin
5 16 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
5 16 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
6 15 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.27%) SAP GRC
8 13 (0.25%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
9 12 (0.23%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 11 (0.21%) NEC Housing
11 9 (0.17%) iTrent
12 8 (0.16%) NetSuite
12 8 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
12 8 (0.16%) SAP FI
13 7 (0.14%) Loan IQ
13 7 (0.14%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 1,052 (20.39%) Azure
2 767 (14.86%) AWS
3 396 (7.67%) Power Platform
4 349 (6.76%) Microsoft 365
5 319 (6.18%) GCP
6 232 (4.50%) Azure DevOps
7 194 (3.76%) GitHub
8 165 (3.20%) Entra ID
9 133 (2.58%) Serverless
10 130 (2.52%) SaaS
11 97 (1.88%) GitHub Actions
12 79 (1.53%) Amazon S3
13 77 (1.49%) Dynamics 365
14 72 (1.40%) AWS Lambda
15 71 (1.38%) Snowflake
16 66 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
17 65 (1.26%) OpenShift
17 65 (1.26%) Power Automate
18 58 (1.12%) PowerApps
19 47 (0.91%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 194 (3.76%) DNS
2 162 (3.14%) Firewall
3 119 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 110 (2.13%) VPN
5 109 (2.11%) WAN
6 103 (2.00%) DHCP
7 86 (1.67%) Network Security
8 83 (1.61%) SAN
9 81 (1.57%) LAN
10 68 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
11 49 (0.95%) VLAN
12 46 (0.89%) BGP
13 44 (0.85%) SD-WAN
14 41 (0.79%) OSPF
15 34 (0.66%) Wireless
16 32 (0.62%) VoIP
17 28 (0.54%) VXLAN
18 25 (0.48%) MPLS
19 23 (0.45%) Internet
19 23 (0.45%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 307 (5.95%) Power BI
2 197 (3.82%) SQL Server
3 151 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
4 133 (2.58%) Relational Database
5 128 (2.48%) PostgreSQL
6 104 (2.02%) Metadata
7 95 (1.84%) MongoDB
8 87 (1.69%) Tableau
9 83 (1.61%) NoSQL
10 79 (1.53%) Data Lake
11 74 (1.43%) Big Data
12 54 (1.05%) Oracle Reports
13 49 (0.95%) MySQL
13 49 (0.95%) Oracle Database
14 47 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 37 (0.72%) Hadoop
16 29 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
17 28 (0.54%) Delta Lake
18 27 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
18 27 (0.52%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 494 (9.57%) JIRA
2 288 (5.58%) Git
3 173 (3.35%) Jenkins
4 124 (2.40%) GitLab
5 66 (1.28%) Selenium
6 40 (0.78%) Postman
7 31 (0.60%) REST Assured
8 27 (0.52%) Cucumber
9 25 (0.48%) Bitbucket
10 22 (0.43%) Cypress.io
10 22 (0.43%) JUnit
11 17 (0.33%) JMeter
11 17 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
11 17 (0.33%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.31%) Mockito
12 16 (0.31%) SonarQube
13 14 (0.27%) Maven
14 13 (0.25%) Zephyr
15 12 (0.23%) Gatling
16 11 (0.21%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,692 (52.17%) Social Skills
2 2,008 (38.91%) Analytical Skills
3 1,204 (23.33%) Finance
4 476 (9.22%) Public Sector
5 397 (7.69%) Banking
6 215 (4.17%) Organisational Skills
7 187 (3.62%) Retail
8 182 (3.53%) Documentation Skills
9 150 (2.91%) Legal
10 126 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 108 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
12 104 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
13 102 (1.98%) Manufacturing
14 101 (1.96%) Front Office
15 92 (1.78%) Marketing
16 91 (1.76%) Telecoms
17 81 (1.57%) Investment Banking
18 74 (1.43%) Back Office
19 63 (1.22%) Law
20 54 (1.05%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 724 (14.03%) Analyst
2 571 (11.07%) Developer
3 434 (8.41%) Senior
4 362 (7.02%) Architect
5 325 (6.30%) Lead
6 286 (5.54%) Business Analyst
7 254 (4.92%) Consultant
8 233 (4.52%) Data Engineer
9 185 (3.59%) Project Manager
10 149 (2.89%) IT Support
11 147 (2.85%) Support Engineer
12 123 (2.38%) Data Analyst
13 109 (2.11%) Administrator
14 106 (2.05%) IT Engineer
15 101 (1.96%) Solutions Architect
16 97 (1.88%) Java Developer
16 97 (1.88%) Software Engineer
17 93 (1.80%) Network Engineer
18 88 (1.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 80 (1.55%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 305 (5.91%) REST
2 155 (3.00%) .NET
3 140 (2.71%) Kafka
4 139 (2.69%) SOAP
5 132 (2.56%) React
6 127 (2.46%) RESTful
7 123 (2.38%) CSS
8 121 (2.34%) Spring
9 114 (2.21%) HTML
10 103 (2.00%) Middleware
11 95 (1.84%) JSON
12 91 (1.76%) AngularJS
12 91 (1.76%) LDAP
13 89 (1.72%) Node.js
14 88 (1.71%) Spring Boot
15 86 (1.67%) XML
16 75 (1.45%) PySpark
17 61 (1.18%) Web Services
18 55 (1.07%) OAuth
19 47 (0.91%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 255 (4.94%) Product Ownership
2 229 (4.44%) Onboarding
3 207 (4.01%) Data Centre
4 205 (3.97%) Cloud Native
5 166 (3.22%) Self-Motivation
6 146 (2.83%) Analytical Mindset
7 139 (2.69%) Management Information System
8 128 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
9 120 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
10 116 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
11 113 (2.19%) Enterprise Software
11 113 (2.19%) Virtual Team
12 96 (1.86%) Data Structures
13 71 (1.38%) Security Posture
14 70 (1.36%) Driving Licence
15 62 (1.20%) Algorithms
16 58 (1.12%) AI Agents
17 51 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 47 (0.91%) Mobile App
19 46 (0.89%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 614 (11.90%) Windows
2 284 (5.50%) Linux
3 112 (2.17%) Windows 10
3 112 (2.17%) Windows Server
4 103 (2.00%) Unix
5 88 (1.71%) Android
6 85 (1.65%) Apple iOS
7 84 (1.63%) Mac OS
8 53 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 21 (0.41%) 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 (0.16%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.12%) Debian
15 6 (0.12%) Solaris
16 5 (0.097%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.078%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,372 (26.59%) Agile
2 840 (16.28%) CI/CD
3 820 (15.89%) Continuous Improvement
4 763 (14.79%) Stakeholder Management
5 762 (14.77%) DevOps
6 584 (11.32%) AI
7 571 (11.07%) Decision-Making
8 557 (10.79%) Migration
9 547 (10.60%) Analytics
10 466 (9.03%) Customer Service
11 461 (8.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 439 (8.51%) Data Modelling
13 437 (8.47%) ITIL
14 426 (8.26%) Project Management
15 418 (8.10%) Validation
16 402 (7.79%) Business Intelligence
17 376 (7.29%) Test Automation
18 352 (6.82%) Scrum
19 341 (6.61%) Change Management
20 310 (6.01%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 913 (17.69%) Python
2 900 (17.44%) SQL
3 398 (7.71%) Java
4 319 (6.18%) PowerShell
5 260 (5.04%) JavaScript
6 195 (3.78%) C#
7 136 (2.64%) TypeScript
8 113 (2.19%) Bash
9 74 (1.43%) C++
10 72 (1.40%) PL/SQL
11 55 (1.07%) Shell Script
12 44 (0.85%) Go
13 38 (0.74%) R
14 37 (0.72%) C
15 35 (0.68%) Perl
15 35 (0.68%) T-SQL
16 34 (0.66%) Bicep
17 33 (0.64%) Apex Code
18 31 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 29 (0.56%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,092 (21.16%) Security Cleared
2 745 (14.44%) SC Cleared
3 627 (12.15%) Degree
4 195 (3.78%) Computer Science Degree
5 184 (3.57%) DV Cleared
6 160 (3.10%) BPSS Clearance
7 138 (2.67%) Cisco Certification
8 130 (2.52%) Microsoft Certification
9 94 (1.82%) CISSP
10 84 (1.63%) PMP
11 78 (1.51%) CCNA
12 77 (1.49%) PMI Certification
13 75 (1.45%) A+ Certification
14 73 (1.41%) Master's Degree
15 67 (1.30%) Network+ Certification
16 64 (1.24%) Azure Certification
16 64 (1.24%) CISM
17 57 (1.10%) MCSE
18 43 (0.83%) CCNP
19 39 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 342 (6.63%) Data Quality
2 269 (5.21%) QA
3 146 (2.83%) GDPR
4 114 (2.21%) Accessibility
5 93 (1.80%) SLA
6 92 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 86 (1.67%) PMO
8 75 (1.45%) NIST
9 55 (1.07%) GRC
10 28 (0.54%) WCAG
11 27 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
12 26 (0.50%) PCI DSS
13 24 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 18 (0.35%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.29%) COBIT
15 15 (0.29%) NCSC
16 14 (0.27%) PSD2
17 13 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
18 12 (0.23%) HL7
18 12 (0.23%) IFRS
System Software
1 383 (7.42%) Active Directory
2 311 (6.03%) Docker
3 105 (2.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.79%) vSphere
5 37 (0.72%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.64%) Hyper-V
7 28 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
9 21 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
10 19 (0.37%) Firmware
11 18 (0.35%) vCloud
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 7 (0.14%) IAG
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.078%) ACF2
14 4 (0.078%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.078%) NFS
14 4 (0.078%) RACF
14 4 (0.078%) Snort
15 3 (0.058%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 386 (7.48%) Kubernetes
2 266 (5.16%) Terraform
3 171 (3.31%) Ansible
4 131 (2.54%) Microsoft Intune
5 110 (2.13%) Grafana
6 93 (1.80%) Prometheus
7 76 (1.47%) SCCM
8 45 (0.87%) vCenter Server
9 42 (0.81%) FortiGate
9 42 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
10 26 (0.50%) Kibana
11 23 (0.45%) Control-M
12 22 (0.43%) Nessus
13 21 (0.41%) Argo
13 21 (0.41%) Puppet
14 17 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
15 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 14 (0.27%) SCOM
17 12 (0.23%) WSUS
18 11 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 955 (18.51%) Microsoft
2 331 (6.41%) Oracle
3 299 (5.79%) SAP
4 260 (5.04%) ServiceNow
5 177 (3.43%) VMware
6 147 (2.85%) Google
7 145 (2.81%) Databricks
8 127 (2.46%) Splunk
9 126 (2.44%) Cisco
10 114 (2.21%) Salesforce
11 82 (1.59%) Dell
12 70 (1.36%) CyberArk
13 67 (1.30%) Workday
14 63 (1.22%) BeyondTrust
14 63 (1.22%) Red Hat
15 60 (1.16%) Adobe
16 48 (0.93%) Citrix
17 47 (0.91%) Palo Alto
18 46 (0.89%) F5
18 46 (0.89%) MuleSoft