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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -8 +4 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,591 5,207 4,477
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.44% 15.87% 11.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.32% 17.54% 13.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,154 3,130 2,742
10th Percentile £250 £250 £260
25th Percentile £375 £375 £399
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% -2.50% -3.85%
75th Percentile £590 £600 £614
90th Percentile £702 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £460 £475
% change year-on-year -2.17% -3.16% -2.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 489 316 276
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.45 £11.75
25th Percentile £14.97 £15.22 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.00 £20.26 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -6.20% +24.80% -70.49%
75th Percentile £39.00 £34.61 £30.00
90th Percentile £73.00 £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 45,377 29,691 33,202
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.71% 90.48% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,881 18,495 21,183
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,839 1,731 1,775
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.38 £17.30 £18.15
Median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +65.23% -38.57% +0.61%
75th Percentile £68.00 £49.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.30 £42.50
% change year-on-year +88.67% -45.18% +18.88%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 -8 4,861 £500 +1.63% 7,294
UK excluding London -4 2,977 £450 -2.17% 5,243
London -12 2,102 £525 +5.00% 3,229
Work from Home -5 1,543 £500 - 2,760
South East -3 779 £480 +1.05% 1,293
North of England -11 723 £445 -6.32% 1,163
Midlands -6 549 £450 +3.45% 819
West Midlands -10 392 £450 -2.70% 512
North West -12 350 £450 -6.25% 613
South West 0 349 £500 +8.11% 650
Yorkshire -8 312 £450 -5.26% 388
Scotland -5 268 £458 +1.67% 438
East of England +1 250 £450 -10.00% 603
East Midlands 0 154 £470 +25.33% 308
North East -15 66 £375 -16.67% 184
Wales -5 62 £475 +26.67% 149
Northern Ireland -5 26 £388 -21.88% 267
Channel Islands -4 1 - - 3

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
1 233 (4.17%) Confluence
2 229 (4.10%) SharePoint
3 115 (2.06%) Microsoft Exchange
4 65 (1.16%) Apache Spark
5 42 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
6 41 (0.73%) SAS
7 39 (0.70%) Apache
8 35 (0.63%) Oracle Workflow
9 29 (0.52%) CMS
10 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.20%) CICS
11 11 (0.20%) Jupyter
11 11 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 8 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 8 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.13%) Appian
13 7 (0.13%) IIS
13 7 (0.13%) Mule
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 320 (5.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 261 (4.67%) Microsoft Office
3 122 (2.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 77 (1.38%) MS Visio
5 64 (1.14%) 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 (0.13%) CPLEX
15 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
15 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
16 5 (0.089%) Navisworks
16 5 (0.089%) Windchill
17 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
17 4 (0.072%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 134 (2.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 39 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
4 27 (0.48%) NetSuite
4 27 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.45%) SAP GRC
6 22 (0.39%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.25%) SAP SD
8 13 (0.23%) Aladdin
8 13 (0.23%) iTrent
8 13 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
9 11 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
10 10 (0.18%) Finacle
10 10 (0.18%) SAP CRM
10 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
11 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.16%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 1,115 (19.94%) Azure
2 816 (14.59%) AWS
3 470 (8.41%) Microsoft 365
4 429 (7.67%) Power Platform
5 325 (5.81%) GCP
6 278 (4.97%) Azure DevOps
7 239 (4.27%) Entra ID
8 195 (3.49%) GitHub
9 154 (2.75%) SaaS
10 123 (2.20%) Serverless
11 95 (1.70%) GitHub Actions
12 94 (1.68%) Power Automate
13 82 (1.47%) Dynamics 365
14 72 (1.29%) Amazon S3
15 71 (1.27%) OneDrive
16 69 (1.23%) AWS Lambda
16 69 (1.23%) Microsoft Copilot
16 69 (1.23%) PowerApps
17 64 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
18 63 (1.13%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 229 (4.10%) DNS
2 193 (3.45%) Firewall
3 161 (2.88%) VPN
4 137 (2.45%) DHCP
5 130 (2.33%) TCP/IP
6 129 (2.31%) WAN
7 106 (1.90%) LAN
8 104 (1.86%) Network Security
9 81 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
10 76 (1.36%) SAN
11 61 (1.09%) Wireless
12 59 (1.06%) VLAN
13 52 (0.93%) BGP
14 41 (0.73%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.64%) MPLS
15 36 (0.64%) VoIP
16 33 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
17 31 (0.55%) OSPF
18 25 (0.45%) HTTP
18 25 (0.45%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 329 (5.88%) Power BI
2 221 (3.95%) SQL Server
3 178 (3.18%) Relational Database
4 166 (2.97%) Data Warehouse
5 157 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
6 105 (1.88%) MongoDB
7 103 (1.84%) Metadata
7 103 (1.84%) NoSQL
8 86 (1.54%) Tableau
9 79 (1.41%) Data Lake
10 60 (1.07%) Big Data
11 58 (1.04%) MySQL
12 54 (0.97%) Oracle Database
13 49 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
14 35 (0.63%) Db2
14 35 (0.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 31 (0.55%) Pentaho
16 28 (0.50%) DynamoDB
16 28 (0.50%) Power Query
17 26 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 495 (8.85%) JIRA
2 362 (6.47%) Git
3 185 (3.31%) Jenkins
4 140 (2.50%) GitLab
5 75 (1.34%) Selenium
6 42 (0.75%) Cypress.io
7 38 (0.68%) Gradle
7 38 (0.68%) Postman
8 37 (0.66%) Maven
9 31 (0.55%) Bitbucket
10 29 (0.52%) REST Assured
11 27 (0.48%) Cucumber
12 25 (0.45%) JUnit
13 19 (0.34%) JMeter
14 18 (0.32%) Oracle Forms
15 17 (0.30%) WebDriver
16 16 (0.29%) Mockito
17 15 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 15 (0.27%) SonarQube
18 14 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,956 (52.87%) Social Skills
2 2,351 (42.05%) Analytical Skills
3 1,310 (23.43%) Finance
4 586 (10.48%) Public Sector
5 442 (7.91%) Banking
6 245 (4.38%) Organisational Skills
7 204 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
8 202 (3.61%) Retail
9 186 (3.33%) Manufacturing
10 174 (3.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 148 (2.65%) Influencing Skills
12 144 (2.58%) Legal
13 124 (2.22%) Front Office
14 118 (2.11%) Marketing
15 112 (2.00%) Telecoms
16 108 (1.93%) Presentation Skills
17 92 (1.65%) Investment Banking
18 81 (1.45%) Back Office
19 68 (1.22%) Aerospace
20 60 (1.07%) Law
Job Titles
1 735 (13.15%) Analyst
2 700 (12.52%) Developer
3 511 (9.14%) Senior
4 425 (7.60%) Lead
5 354 (6.33%) Architect
6 258 (4.61%) Consultant
7 244 (4.36%) Business Analyst
8 222 (3.97%) Data Engineer
9 215 (3.85%) IT Support
10 211 (3.77%) Support Engineer
11 164 (2.93%) Project Manager
12 149 (2.66%) IT Engineer
13 139 (2.49%) Administrator
14 129 (2.31%) Java Developer
15 117 (2.09%) Data Analyst
16 114 (2.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 106 (1.90%) Solutions Architect
18 99 (1.77%) Network Engineer
19 98 (1.75%) DevOps Engineer
20 96 (1.72%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 365 (6.53%) REST
2 181 (3.24%) RESTful
3 172 (3.08%) .NET
4 153 (2.74%) React
5 151 (2.70%) SOAP
6 146 (2.61%) Kafka
7 143 (2.56%) Spring
8 128 (2.29%) JSON
9 125 (2.24%) XML
10 122 (2.18%) CSS
11 118 (2.11%) HTML
12 112 (2.00%) Middleware
13 108 (1.93%) Spring Boot
14 101 (1.81%) Web Services
15 95 (1.70%) Node.js
16 87 (1.56%) AngularJS
17 83 (1.48%) OAuth
18 75 (1.34%) PySpark
19 56 (1.00%) Playwright
20 54 (0.97%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 306 (5.47%) Onboarding
2 273 (4.88%) Product Ownership
3 255 (4.56%) Cloud Native
4 213 (3.81%) Self-Motivation
5 197 (3.52%) Data Centre
6 187 (3.34%) Enterprise Software
7 172 (3.08%) Distributed Systems
8 168 (3.00%) Management Information System
9 156 (2.79%) Analytical Mindset
10 132 (2.36%) Data Structures
11 131 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
12 122 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
13 99 (1.77%) Virtual Team
14 85 (1.52%) Driving Licence
15 70 (1.25%) AI Agents
16 68 (1.22%) Algorithms
16 68 (1.22%) CMDB
17 59 (1.06%) Mobile App
18 56 (1.00%) PKI
19 54 (0.97%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 756 (13.52%) Windows
2 309 (5.53%) Linux
3 195 (3.49%) Windows Server
4 141 (2.52%) Windows 10
5 107 (1.91%) Unix
6 95 (1.70%) Android
6 95 (1.70%) Apple iOS
7 85 (1.52%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 21 (0.38%) Ubuntu
10 17 (0.30%) VMS
11 16 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.21%) zOS
13 8 (0.14%) CentOS
13 8 (0.14%) Solaris
13 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
14 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
15 6 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.089%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,556 (27.83%) Agile
2 1,173 (20.98%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,121 (20.05%) Stakeholder Management
4 955 (17.08%) CI/CD
5 892 (15.95%) DevOps
6 718 (12.84%) AI
7 611 (10.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 592 (10.59%) Decision-Making
9 587 (10.50%) Analytics
10 568 (10.16%) Migration
11 536 (9.59%) Customer Service
12 528 (9.44%) ITIL
13 452 (8.08%) Validation
14 447 (7.99%) Test Automation
15 427 (7.64%) Business Intelligence
16 425 (7.60%) Data Modelling
17 419 (7.49%) Scrum
18 360 (6.44%) ITSM
19 350 (6.26%) Roadmaps
20 348 (6.22%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 987 (17.65%) SQL
2 912 (16.31%) Python
3 438 (7.83%) Java
4 324 (5.80%) PowerShell
5 321 (5.74%) JavaScript
6 195 (3.49%) C#
7 154 (2.75%) Bash
8 123 (2.20%) TypeScript
9 89 (1.59%) PL/SQL
10 76 (1.36%) C++
11 48 (0.86%) T-SQL
12 39 (0.70%) Shell Script
13 38 (0.68%) Bicep
13 38 (0.68%) Go
14 37 (0.66%) Scala
15 35 (0.63%) C
15 35 (0.63%) Kotlin
16 33 (0.59%) Apex Code
17 31 (0.55%) R
18 27 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,203 (21.52%) Security Cleared
2 836 (14.95%) SC Cleared
3 647 (11.57%) Degree
4 206 (3.68%) Computer Science Degree
4 206 (3.68%) DV Cleared
5 162 (2.90%) Microsoft Certification
6 159 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
7 128 (2.29%) Cisco Certification
8 81 (1.45%) CISSP
9 80 (1.43%) Azure Certification
10 78 (1.40%) A+ Certification
10 78 (1.40%) PMP
11 74 (1.32%) PMI Certification
12 73 (1.31%) CCNA
13 62 (1.11%) Master's Degree
14 55 (0.98%) Network+ Certification
15 50 (0.89%) CISM
15 50 (0.89%) MCSE
16 44 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
17 43 (0.77%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 402 (7.19%) Data Quality
2 359 (6.42%) QA
3 148 (2.65%) Accessibility
4 137 (2.45%) GDPR
5 123 (2.20%) SLA
6 97 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 88 (1.57%) PMO
8 74 (1.32%) NIST
9 69 (1.23%) GRC
10 35 (0.63%) WCAG
11 28 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 25 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
13 24 (0.43%) GxP
14 17 (0.30%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 17 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
15 16 (0.29%) NCSC
15 16 (0.29%) PCI DSS
16 15 (0.27%) COBIT
17 14 (0.25%) ISO 20022
18 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 458 (8.19%) Active Directory
2 369 (6.60%) Docker
3 161 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 64 (1.14%) Hyper-V
5 60 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
6 52 (0.93%) vSphere
7 51 (0.91%) VMware NSX
8 37 (0.66%) Virtual Desktop
9 30 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
10 25 (0.45%) vCloud
11 23 (0.41%) IAG
12 21 (0.38%) 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 (0.072%) Squid
18 3 (0.054%) BitLocker
18 3 (0.054%) Microsoft Virtual Server
19 2 (0.036%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 403 (7.21%) Kubernetes
2 328 (5.87%) Terraform
3 170 (3.04%) Ansible
4 142 (2.54%) Microsoft Intune
5 100 (1.79%) SCCM
6 90 (1.61%) Grafana
7 74 (1.32%) Prometheus
8 56 (1.00%) vCenter Server
9 35 (0.63%) SCOM
10 33 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (0.41%) Control-M
12 22 (0.39%) WSUS
13 20 (0.36%) FortiGate
13 20 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
14 14 (0.25%) Argo
15 12 (0.21%) NetBackup
15 12 (0.21%) Puppet
16 11 (0.20%) Kibana
16 11 (0.20%) Progress Chef
17 9 (0.16%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,229 (21.98%) Microsoft
2 408 (7.30%) Oracle
3 365 (6.53%) ServiceNow
4 347 (6.21%) SAP
5 220 (3.93%) VMware
6 178 (3.18%) Google
7 151 (2.70%) Salesforce
8 132 (2.36%) Cisco
9 119 (2.13%) Databricks
10 113 (2.02%) Splunk
11 82 (1.47%) Workday
12 74 (1.32%) Dynatrace
13 70 (1.25%) Adobe
14 66 (1.18%) Apple
15 57 (1.02%) Dell
16 54 (0.97%) CyberArk
16 54 (0.97%) MuleSoft
17 51 (0.91%) IBM
18 50 (0.89%) Citrix
19 45 (0.80%) Red Hat