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 15 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -8 +4 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,620 5,227 4,468
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.48% 15.86% 11.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.34% 17.52% 13.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,165 3,144 2,757
10th Percentile £250 £250 £256
25th Percentile £375 £375 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -2.92% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £614
90th Percentile £700 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £451 £475
% change year-on-year -0.11% -5.16% -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 490 313 278
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.67 £11.75
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.13 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.00 £20.26 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -6.20% +24.80% -70.49%
75th Percentile £39.50 £35.00 £31.03
90th Percentile £73.08 £65.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.75 £18.82 £16.23
% change year-on-year -0.37% +15.96% -70.49%

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 45,525 29,831 33,211
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.86% 90.51% 85.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,003 18,596 21,236
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £424 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,834 1,716 1,828
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -39.40% -1.19%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.71 £68.00 £74.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +91.13% -45.88% +13.33%

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 15 August 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 15 August 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 15 August 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 -6 4,881 £498 +1.12% 9,027
UK excluding London -4 2,996 £450 -0.11% 5,609
London -12 2,107 £525 +5.00% 4,540
Work from Home -5 1,549 £500 - 3,462
South East -4 783 £481 +1.16% 1,385
North of England -11 719 £447 -5.89% 1,303
Midlands -4 555 £450 +4.53% 861
West Midlands -10 402 £450 -2.17% 546
South West -1 351 £500 +8.11% 699
North West -12 343 £450 -6.25% 709
Yorkshire -8 318 £450 -5.26% 426
Scotland -5 269 £458 +1.67% 475
East of England +1 257 £450 -10.00% 600
East Midlands 0 150 £470 +26.51% 316
Wales -4 65 £475 +26.67% 147
North East -17 63 £375 -16.67% 186
Northern Ireland -6 26 £388 -21.88% 276
Channel Islands -2 1 - - 2

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
1 231 (4.11%) Confluence
2 224 (3.99%) SharePoint
3 110 (1.96%) Microsoft Exchange
4 66 (1.17%) Apache Spark
5 43 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
6 42 (0.75%) Apache
6 42 (0.75%) SAS
7 33 (0.59%) Oracle Workflow
8 31 (0.55%) CMS
9 16 (0.28%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.20%) CICS
12 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.14%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.12%) Appian
14 7 (0.12%) Mule
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 317 (5.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 263 (4.68%) Microsoft Office
3 117 (2.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 77 (1.37%) MS Visio
5 63 (1.12%) Microsoft Project
6 33 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.48%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 22 (0.39%) Chatbot
9 17 (0.30%) AutoCAD
10 15 (0.27%) Sketch
11 13 (0.23%) Revit
12 12 (0.21%) Trello
13 10 (0.18%) CATIA
14 7 (0.12%) CPLEX
15 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
15 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
16 5 (0.089%) Navisworks
17 4 (0.071%) Adobe XD
17 4 (0.071%) Photoshop
17 4 (0.071%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 137 (2.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
3 39 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
4 27 (0.48%) NetSuite
4 27 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.44%) SAP GRC
6 19 (0.34%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.23%) Aladdin
7 13 (0.23%) iTrent
7 13 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
7 13 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
7 13 (0.23%) SAP SD
8 11 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
9 10 (0.18%) Finacle
9 10 (0.18%) SAP CRM
9 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
10 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
10 9 (0.16%) SAP HCM
11 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 1,101 (19.59%) Azure
2 815 (14.50%) AWS
3 457 (8.13%) Microsoft 365
4 431 (7.67%) Power Platform
5 323 (5.75%) GCP
6 271 (4.82%) Azure DevOps
7 235 (4.18%) Entra ID
8 199 (3.54%) GitHub
9 157 (2.79%) SaaS
10 125 (2.22%) Serverless
11 98 (1.74%) GitHub Actions
12 93 (1.65%) Power Automate
13 81 (1.44%) Dynamics 365
14 73 (1.30%) Amazon S3
15 71 (1.26%) OneDrive
16 69 (1.23%) AWS Lambda
16 69 (1.23%) PowerApps
17 66 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
17 66 (1.17%) Microsoft Copilot
18 63 (1.12%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 235 (4.18%) DNS
2 198 (3.52%) Firewall
3 160 (2.85%) VPN
4 140 (2.49%) DHCP
5 137 (2.44%) TCP/IP
6 133 (2.37%) WAN
7 109 (1.94%) LAN
8 100 (1.78%) Network Security
9 83 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
10 81 (1.44%) SAN
11 61 (1.09%) Wireless
12 59 (1.05%) VLAN
13 56 (1.00%) BGP
14 43 (0.77%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.64%) MPLS
15 36 (0.64%) OSPF
16 35 (0.62%) VoIP
17 33 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
18 30 (0.53%) VXLAN
19 25 (0.44%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 331 (5.89%) Power BI
2 218 (3.88%) SQL Server
3 176 (3.13%) Relational Database
4 168 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
5 158 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
6 107 (1.90%) Metadata
6 107 (1.90%) MongoDB
7 99 (1.76%) NoSQL
8 87 (1.55%) Tableau
9 83 (1.48%) Data Lake
10 61 (1.09%) Big Data
11 58 (1.03%) MySQL
12 54 (0.96%) Oracle Database
13 50 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
14 39 (0.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 35 (0.62%) Db2
16 31 (0.55%) Pentaho
17 28 (0.50%) Power Query
18 27 (0.48%) DynamoDB
19 26 (0.46%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 491 (8.74%) JIRA
2 356 (6.33%) Git
3 186 (3.31%) Jenkins
4 136 (2.42%) GitLab
5 74 (1.32%) Selenium
6 39 (0.69%) Cypress.io
7 38 (0.68%) Gradle
8 37 (0.66%) Maven
8 37 (0.66%) Postman
9 30 (0.53%) Cucumber
10 28 (0.50%) REST Assured
11 27 (0.48%) Bitbucket
12 26 (0.46%) JUnit
13 21 (0.37%) JMeter
14 18 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 16 (0.28%) Mockito
15 16 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
16 15 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 14 (0.25%) SonarQube
17 14 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,958 (52.63%) Social Skills
2 2,351 (41.83%) Analytical Skills
3 1,308 (23.27%) Finance
4 584 (10.39%) Public Sector
5 439 (7.81%) Banking
6 242 (4.31%) Organisational Skills
7 205 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
8 200 (3.56%) Retail
9 184 (3.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 182 (3.24%) Manufacturing
11 148 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
12 146 (2.60%) Legal
13 125 (2.22%) Front Office
14 121 (2.15%) Marketing
15 115 (2.05%) Presentation Skills
15 115 (2.05%) Telecoms
16 91 (1.62%) Investment Banking
17 84 (1.49%) Back Office
18 66 (1.17%) Aerospace
19 60 (1.07%) Law
Job Titles
1 734 (13.06%) Analyst
2 697 (12.40%) Developer
3 517 (9.20%) Senior
4 424 (7.54%) Lead
5 360 (6.41%) Architect
6 256 (4.56%) Consultant
7 249 (4.43%) Business Analyst
8 231 (4.11%) Data Engineer
9 213 (3.79%) IT Support
10 205 (3.65%) Support Engineer
11 169 (3.01%) Project Manager
12 148 (2.63%) IT Engineer
13 138 (2.46%) Administrator
14 136 (2.42%) Java Developer
15 117 (2.08%) Data Analyst
16 110 (1.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 109 (1.94%) Solutions Architect
18 104 (1.85%) Network Engineer
19 96 (1.71%) Software Engineer
20 94 (1.67%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 361 (6.42%) REST
2 176 (3.13%) RESTful
3 166 (2.95%) .NET
4 152 (2.70%) React
5 149 (2.65%) Spring
6 148 (2.63%) Kafka
6 148 (2.63%) SOAP
7 127 (2.26%) JSON
8 122 (2.17%) CSS
9 121 (2.15%) XML
10 116 (2.06%) HTML
11 113 (2.01%) Middleware
12 111 (1.98%) Spring Boot
13 95 (1.69%) Web Services
14 94 (1.67%) Node.js
15 87 (1.55%) AngularJS
16 81 (1.44%) OAuth
17 76 (1.35%) PySpark
18 55 (0.98%) Playwright
19 52 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 306 (5.44%) Onboarding
2 270 (4.80%) Product Ownership
3 251 (4.47%) Cloud Native
4 212 (3.77%) Self-Motivation
5 205 (3.65%) Data Centre
6 182 (3.24%) Enterprise Software
7 166 (2.95%) Distributed Systems
8 164 (2.92%) Management Information System
9 159 (2.83%) Analytical Mindset
10 135 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
11 132 (2.35%) Data Structures
12 125 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
13 97 (1.73%) Virtual Team
14 86 (1.53%) Driving Licence
15 70 (1.25%) AI Agents
16 69 (1.23%) Algorithms
17 66 (1.17%) CMDB
18 59 (1.05%) PKI
19 58 (1.03%) Mobile App
20 55 (0.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 756 (13.45%) Windows
2 308 (5.48%) Linux
3 189 (3.36%) Windows Server
4 131 (2.33%) Windows 10
5 107 (1.90%) Unix
6 97 (1.73%) Android
7 92 (1.64%) Apple iOS
8 84 (1.49%) Mac OS
9 43 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.28%) VMS
11 16 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.21%) zOS
13 8 (0.14%) Solaris
14 7 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
15 6 (0.11%) CentOS
15 6 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
15 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,559 (27.74%) Agile
2 1,163 (20.69%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,097 (19.52%) Stakeholder Management
4 950 (16.90%) CI/CD
5 892 (15.87%) DevOps
6 719 (12.79%) AI
7 613 (10.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 600 (10.68%) Decision-Making
9 594 (10.57%) Analytics
10 570 (10.14%) Migration
11 541 (9.63%) Customer Service
12 520 (9.25%) ITIL
13 457 (8.13%) Validation
14 440 (7.83%) Test Automation
15 433 (7.70%) Business Intelligence
16 429 (7.63%) Data Modelling
17 415 (7.38%) Scrum
18 356 (6.33%) ITSM
19 355 (6.32%) Roadmaps
20 352 (6.26%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 992 (17.65%) SQL
2 917 (16.32%) Python
3 445 (7.92%) Java
4 321 (5.71%) JavaScript
5 318 (5.66%) PowerShell
6 189 (3.36%) C#
7 151 (2.69%) Bash
8 124 (2.21%) TypeScript
9 95 (1.69%) PL/SQL
10 79 (1.41%) C++
11 48 (0.85%) T-SQL
12 41 (0.73%) Shell Script
13 40 (0.71%) Go
14 37 (0.66%) Scala
15 36 (0.64%) Bicep
15 36 (0.64%) C
16 34 (0.60%) Kotlin
17 32 (0.57%) Apex Code
18 31 (0.55%) R
19 28 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,219 (21.69%) Security Cleared
2 845 (15.04%) SC Cleared
3 649 (11.55%) Degree
4 210 (3.74%) DV Cleared
5 202 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 165 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
7 158 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
8 135 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
9 82 (1.46%) Azure Certification
10 80 (1.42%) CISSP
11 78 (1.39%) A+ Certification
11 78 (1.39%) PMP
12 76 (1.35%) CCNA
13 74 (1.32%) PMI Certification
14 58 (1.03%) Master's Degree
15 56 (1.00%) Network+ Certification
16 53 (0.94%) MCSE
17 51 (0.91%) CISM
18 43 (0.77%) AWS Certification
19 41 (0.73%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 404 (7.19%) Data Quality
2 356 (6.33%) QA
3 150 (2.67%) Accessibility
4 139 (2.47%) GDPR
5 123 (2.19%) SLA
6 96 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 90 (1.60%) PMO
8 72 (1.28%) NIST
9 68 (1.21%) GRC
10 35 (0.62%) WCAG
11 29 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 26 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.41%) GxP
14 16 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 16 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
14 16 (0.28%) NCSC
15 15 (0.27%) COBIT
15 15 (0.27%) PCI DSS
16 14 (0.25%) ISO 20022
17 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 448 (7.97%) Active Directory
2 365 (6.49%) Docker
3 153 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.09%) Hyper-V
5 58 (1.03%) VMware ESXi
6 51 (0.91%) VMware NSX
7 49 (0.87%) vSphere
8 33 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
9 30 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
10 25 (0.44%) vCloud
11 22 (0.39%) IAG
12 21 (0.37%) Firmware
13 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
14 8 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.11%) NFS
16 5 (0.089%) Microsoft App-V
17 4 (0.071%) Squid
18 3 (0.053%) BitLocker
18 3 (0.053%) Microsoft Virtual Server
19 2 (0.036%) UAG
Systems Management
1 404 (7.19%) Kubernetes
2 330 (5.87%) Terraform
3 171 (3.04%) Ansible
4 142 (2.53%) Microsoft Intune
5 97 (1.73%) SCCM
6 91 (1.62%) Grafana
7 77 (1.37%) Prometheus
8 57 (1.01%) vCenter Server
9 35 (0.62%) SCOM
10 34 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.46%) FortiGate
12 23 (0.41%) Control-M
13 21 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
13 21 (0.37%) WSUS
14 15 (0.27%) Argo
15 13 (0.23%) NetBackup
16 12 (0.21%) Puppet
17 11 (0.20%) Kibana
17 11 (0.20%) Progress Chef
18 10 (0.18%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,204 (21.42%) Microsoft
2 407 (7.24%) Oracle
3 361 (6.42%) ServiceNow
4 353 (6.28%) SAP
5 217 (3.86%) VMware
6 177 (3.15%) Google
7 151 (2.69%) Salesforce
8 138 (2.46%) Cisco
9 120 (2.14%) Databricks
9 120 (2.14%) Splunk
10 79 (1.41%) Workday
11 72 (1.28%) Dynatrace
12 70 (1.25%) Adobe
13 63 (1.12%) Dell
14 62 (1.10%) Apple
15 58 (1.03%) MuleSoft
16 54 (0.96%) CyberArk
17 53 (0.94%) Citrix
17 53 (0.94%) IBM
18 45 (0.80%) Red Hat