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

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -9 +4 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,603 5,246 4,424
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.49% 15.96% 11.34%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.35% 17.65% 13.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,167 3,190 2,728
10th Percentile £250 £250 £250
25th Percentile £375 £375 £389
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -2.10% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £614
90th Percentile £700 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £451 £463 £475
% change year-on-year -2.59% -2.63% -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 489 309 293
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.77 £11.75
25th Percentile £14.45 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.00 £21.24 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -10.55% +30.87% -70.25%
75th Percentile £39.50 £38.00 £31.13
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.05 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £18.84 £16.23
% change year-on-year -1.78% +16.05% -70.37%

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 45,370 29,720 33,385
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.93% 90.44% 85.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,958 18,627 21,372
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £729 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,804 1,656 1,869
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.33 £18.13
Median hourly rate £42.68 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +69.69% -37.63% -5.12%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £64.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.30 £40.94
% change year-on-year +88.67% -43.09% +2.35%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 -7 4,870 £494 -0.40% 5,623
UK excluding London -3 3,010 £451 -2.59% 3,922
London -12 2,085 £520 +4.00% 2,328
Work from Home -7 1,541 £492 -1.60% 1,966
South East -3 780 £480 -2.04% 1,126
North of England -9 732 £450 -5.26% 912
Midlands -5 552 £450 +5.39% 658
West Midlands -9 401 £450 -0.33% 383
South West 0 350 £500 +5.26% 484
North West -12 346 £450 -8.35% 472
Yorkshire -7 331 £450 -5.26% 323
Scotland -4 277 £443 -1.67% 214
East of England +1 260 £450 -3.74% 420
East Midlands -1 148 £475 +27.86% 275
Wales -3 63 £475 +26.67% 113
North East -18 60 £375 -16.67% 128
Northern Ireland -4 24 £380 -25.49% 118
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
1 232 (4.14%) Confluence
2 217 (3.87%) SharePoint
3 108 (1.93%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.14%) Apache Spark
5 42 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
6 41 (0.73%) Apache
6 41 (0.73%) SAS
7 32 (0.57%) Oracle Workflow
8 31 (0.55%) CMS
9 18 (0.32%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.20%) CICS
12 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 9 (0.16%) 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%) WordPress
Applications
1 313 (5.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 266 (4.75%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 79 (1.41%) MS Visio
5 66 (1.18%) Microsoft Project
6 34 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.48%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 24 (0.43%) Chatbot
9 15 (0.27%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.27%) Sketch
10 12 (0.21%) Revit
11 11 (0.20%) Trello
12 10 (0.18%) CATIA
13 7 (0.12%) CPLEX
14 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
14 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
15 4 (0.071%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.071%) Navisworks
15 4 (0.071%) Photoshop
16 3 (0.054%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 140 (2.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
3 39 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.46%) NetSuite
4 26 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.39%) SAP GRC
6 19 (0.34%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.27%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.25%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.23%) iTrent
9 13 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
10 12 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
11 11 (0.20%) SAP HCM
12 10 (0.18%) Finacle
12 10 (0.18%) SAP ERP
12 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
13 9 (0.16%) SAP CRM
13 9 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 1,079 (19.26%) Azure
2 804 (14.35%) AWS
3 446 (7.96%) Microsoft 365
4 430 (7.67%) Power Platform
5 320 (5.71%) GCP
6 266 (4.75%) Azure DevOps
7 224 (4.00%) Entra ID
8 197 (3.52%) GitHub
9 149 (2.66%) SaaS
10 125 (2.23%) Serverless
11 98 (1.75%) GitHub Actions
12 93 (1.66%) Power Automate
13 80 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
14 76 (1.36%) Amazon S3
15 73 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
16 69 (1.23%) PowerApps
17 67 (1.20%) OneDrive
18 65 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
19 64 (1.14%) Microsoft Copilot
19 64 (1.14%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 231 (4.12%) DNS
2 193 (3.44%) Firewall
3 151 (2.69%) VPN
4 139 (2.48%) DHCP
4 139 (2.48%) TCP/IP
5 125 (2.23%) WAN
6 103 (1.84%) LAN
7 97 (1.73%) Network Security
8 83 (1.48%) SAN
8 83 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
9 59 (1.05%) VLAN
10 56 (1.00%) Wireless
11 52 (0.93%) BGP
12 41 (0.73%) SD-WAN
13 38 (0.68%) OSPF
14 35 (0.62%) VoIP
15 33 (0.59%) MPLS
16 32 (0.57%) Structured Cabling
17 27 (0.48%) VXLAN
18 25 (0.45%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 333 (5.94%) Power BI
2 224 (4.00%) SQL Server
3 168 (3.00%) Data Warehouse
4 166 (2.96%) Relational Database
5 155 (2.77%) PostgreSQL
6 119 (2.12%) MongoDB
7 99 (1.77%) Metadata
8 93 (1.66%) NoSQL
9 88 (1.57%) Tableau
10 86 (1.53%) Data Lake
11 62 (1.11%) Big Data
12 57 (1.02%) MySQL
13 54 (0.96%) Oracle Database
14 51 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
15 46 (0.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 36 (0.64%) Db2
17 30 (0.54%) Pentaho
18 27 (0.48%) DynamoDB
18 27 (0.48%) Power Query
19 26 (0.46%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 501 (8.94%) JIRA
2 344 (6.14%) Git
3 188 (3.36%) Jenkins
4 130 (2.32%) GitLab
5 73 (1.30%) Selenium
6 38 (0.68%) Cypress.io
7 36 (0.64%) Gradle
7 36 (0.64%) Postman
8 35 (0.62%) Maven
9 31 (0.55%) REST Assured
10 29 (0.52%) Cucumber
11 27 (0.48%) Bitbucket
12 25 (0.45%) JUnit
13 21 (0.37%) Mockito
14 18 (0.32%) JMeter
14 18 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 17 (0.30%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 15 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
16 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
17 14 (0.25%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,924 (52.19%) Social Skills
2 2,324 (41.48%) Analytical Skills
3 1,311 (23.40%) Finance
4 575 (10.26%) Public Sector
5 437 (7.80%) Banking
6 244 (4.35%) Organisational Skills
7 205 (3.66%) Retail
8 194 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
9 184 (3.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 171 (3.05%) Manufacturing
11 145 (2.59%) Legal
12 144 (2.57%) Influencing Skills
13 120 (2.14%) Marketing
13 120 (2.14%) Presentation Skills
14 117 (2.09%) Front Office
15 108 (1.93%) Telecoms
16 90 (1.61%) Investment Banking
17 82 (1.46%) Back Office
18 67 (1.20%) Aerospace
19 61 (1.09%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 741 (13.23%) Analyst
2 691 (12.33%) Developer
3 513 (9.16%) Senior
4 417 (7.44%) Lead
5 362 (6.46%) Architect
6 259 (4.62%) Business Analyst
7 255 (4.55%) Consultant
8 231 (4.12%) Data Engineer
9 208 (3.71%) IT Support
10 201 (3.59%) Support Engineer
11 171 (3.05%) Project Manager
12 143 (2.55%) Administrator
13 141 (2.52%) IT Engineer
14 134 (2.39%) Java Developer
15 117 (2.09%) Data Analyst
16 109 (1.95%) Solutions Architect
17 103 (1.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 99 (1.77%) Network Engineer
19 97 (1.73%) Software Engineer
20 92 (1.64%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 349 (6.23%) REST
2 167 (2.98%) RESTful
3 159 (2.84%) .NET
4 150 (2.68%) Kafka
5 148 (2.64%) React
6 146 (2.61%) SOAP
7 143 (2.55%) Spring
8 126 (2.25%) JSON
9 119 (2.12%) CSS
10 112 (2.00%) XML
11 111 (1.98%) HTML
12 108 (1.93%) Middleware
13 104 (1.86%) Spring Boot
14 95 (1.70%) Node.js
15 87 (1.55%) AngularJS
16 82 (1.46%) Web Services
17 79 (1.41%) OAuth
18 72 (1.29%) PySpark
19 55 (0.98%) Playwright
20 48 (0.86%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 309 (5.51%) Onboarding
2 266 (4.75%) Product Ownership
3 243 (4.34%) Cloud Native
4 207 (3.69%) Self-Motivation
5 202 (3.61%) Data Centre
6 167 (2.98%) Enterprise Software
7 163 (2.91%) Distributed Systems
8 160 (2.86%) Management Information System
9 159 (2.84%) Analytical Mindset
10 131 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
11 130 (2.32%) Data Structures
12 127 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
13 101 (1.80%) Virtual Team
14 83 (1.48%) Driving Licence
15 68 (1.21%) AI Agents
15 68 (1.21%) Algorithms
16 59 (1.05%) CMDB
17 57 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 56 (1.00%) PKI
19 55 (0.98%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 738 (13.17%) Windows
2 302 (5.39%) Linux
3 173 (3.09%) Windows Server
4 125 (2.23%) Windows 10
5 113 (2.02%) Unix
6 92 (1.64%) Android
7 89 (1.59%) Apple iOS
8 88 (1.57%) Mac OS
9 48 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.27%) VMS
13 12 (0.21%) zOS
14 9 (0.16%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.14%) Solaris
16 6 (0.11%) CentOS
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.089%) Debian
17 5 (0.089%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,536 (27.41%) Agile
2 1,133 (20.22%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,052 (18.78%) Stakeholder Management
4 932 (16.63%) CI/CD
5 878 (15.67%) DevOps
6 718 (12.81%) AI
7 607 (10.83%) Decision-Making
8 603 (10.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 596 (10.64%) Analytics
10 567 (10.12%) Migration
11 542 (9.67%) Customer Service
12 514 (9.17%) ITIL
13 441 (7.87%) Validation
14 437 (7.80%) Business Intelligence
15 436 (7.78%) Data Modelling
16 428 (7.64%) Test Automation
17 402 (7.17%) Scrum
18 356 (6.35%) Project Management
18 356 (6.35%) Roadmaps
19 341 (6.09%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 984 (17.56%) SQL
2 913 (16.29%) Python
3 441 (7.87%) Java
4 314 (5.60%) JavaScript
5 306 (5.46%) PowerShell
6 186 (3.32%) C#
7 150 (2.68%) Bash
8 123 (2.20%) TypeScript
9 94 (1.68%) PL/SQL
10 73 (1.30%) C++
11 51 (0.91%) T-SQL
12 44 (0.79%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.70%) Go
14 36 (0.64%) C
14 36 (0.64%) Kotlin
14 36 (0.64%) Scala
15 35 (0.62%) Bicep
16 33 (0.59%) Apex Code
17 31 (0.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 31 (0.55%) R
Qualifications
1 1,224 (21.85%) Security Cleared
2 839 (14.97%) SC Cleared
3 650 (11.60%) Degree
4 222 (3.96%) DV Cleared
5 191 (3.41%) Computer Science Degree
6 161 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
7 157 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
8 136 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
9 82 (1.46%) CISSP
10 79 (1.41%) CCNA
11 77 (1.37%) Azure Certification
12 75 (1.34%) A+ Certification
13 74 (1.32%) PMP
14 70 (1.25%) PMI Certification
15 55 (0.98%) Network+ Certification
16 54 (0.96%) Master's Degree
16 54 (0.96%) MCSE
17 51 (0.91%) CISM
18 43 (0.77%) AWS Certification
19 41 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 389 (6.94%) Data Quality
2 339 (6.05%) QA
3 145 (2.59%) Accessibility
4 142 (2.53%) GDPR
5 121 (2.16%) SLA
6 95 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 92 (1.64%) PMO
8 75 (1.34%) NIST
9 64 (1.14%) GRC
10 33 (0.59%) WCAG
11 29 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 26 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
13 24 (0.43%) GxP
14 17 (0.30%) ISO 20022
15 16 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 16 (0.29%) NCSC
15 16 (0.29%) PCI DSS
16 15 (0.27%) COBIT
16 15 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
17 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 434 (7.75%) Active Directory
2 366 (6.53%) Docker
3 146 (2.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 56 (1.00%) Hyper-V
5 54 (0.96%) VMware ESXi
6 51 (0.91%) vSphere
7 50 (0.89%) VMware NSX
8 30 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
9 29 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
10 24 (0.43%) vCloud
11 21 (0.37%) Firmware
12 19 (0.34%) IAG
13 12 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.11%) NFS
15 5 (0.089%) Squid
15 5 (0.089%) Virtual Servers
16 4 (0.071%) Microsoft App-V
17 3 (0.054%) Snort
18 2 (0.036%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 2 (0.036%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 414 (7.39%) Kubernetes
2 327 (5.84%) Terraform
3 171 (3.05%) Ansible
4 135 (2.41%) Microsoft Intune
5 98 (1.75%) Grafana
6 90 (1.61%) SCCM
7 87 (1.55%) Prometheus
8 58 (1.04%) vCenter Server
9 35 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
10 33 (0.59%) SCOM
11 28 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 27 (0.48%) Control-M
13 21 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
14 19 (0.34%) WSUS
15 17 (0.30%) Argo
16 15 (0.27%) Nessus
17 14 (0.25%) NetBackup
18 13 (0.23%) IBM Guardium
19 12 (0.21%) Kibana
19 12 (0.21%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,173 (20.94%) Microsoft
2 399 (7.12%) Oracle
3 352 (6.28%) ServiceNow
4 351 (6.26%) SAP
5 214 (3.82%) VMware
6 180 (3.21%) Google
7 145 (2.59%) Salesforce
8 134 (2.39%) Cisco
9 122 (2.18%) Splunk
10 121 (2.16%) Databricks
11 81 (1.45%) Workday
12 69 (1.23%) Adobe
13 68 (1.21%) Dynatrace
14 65 (1.16%) Dell
15 60 (1.07%) Apple
16 57 (1.02%) MuleSoft
17 54 (0.96%) CyberArk
18 53 (0.95%) Citrix
19 50 (0.89%) Red Hat
20 49 (0.87%) IBM