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 30 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,451 4,803 4,797
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.28% 16.40% 10.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.34% 18.13% 12.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,321 3,038 2,975
10th Percentile £288 £258 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £471 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -0.84% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 329 217 408
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.93 £11.05
25th Percentile £15.18 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.71 £25.00 £17.61
Median % change year-on-year -17.16% +42.01% -56.53%
75th Percentile £44.94 £41.50 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £69.25 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.33 £22.14 £15.69
% change year-on-year -21.75% +41.11% -46.81%

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 38,014 26,489 38,263
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.62% 90.44% 86.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,062 17,216 24,858
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £484 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.72% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,249 972 2,349
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.00 £12.84
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.26 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £31.88 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.36% -1.91% -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £70.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £31.50 £31.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% - -12.26%

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 30 March 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 30 March 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 30 March 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 -3 4,681 £490 -2.00% 3,248
UK excluding London -5 2,834 £471 -0.84% 2,670
London -7 2,043 £505 -3.81% 986
Work from Home -1 1,553 £476 -4.85% 1,286
North of England -5 773 £450 -5.26% 662
South East -5 673 £496 -0.75% 802
Midlands -4 515 £450 +0.45% 478
North West -4 387 £420 -11.58% 365
West Midlands -1 375 £476 +2.86% 278
Yorkshire -3 339 £468 -4.00% 222
South West -1 318 £525 +2.44% 308
Scotland +1 258 £447 -0.67% 127
East of England -3 228 £450 - 288
East Midlands -2 141 £408 +10.21% 199
Wales -4 67 £400 +3.23% 81
North East -4 56 £450 - 92
Northern Ireland -1 29 £449 +18.42% 19
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
1 223 (4.09%) Confluence
2 161 (2.95%) SharePoint
3 105 (1.93%) Microsoft Exchange
4 88 (1.61%) Apache Spark
5 64 (1.17%) SAS
6 63 (1.16%) Apache
7 48 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.61%) CMS
9 16 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.28%) nginx
11 13 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
12 11 (0.20%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 9 (0.17%) Camunda
15 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
17 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
17 6 (0.11%) CICS
17 6 (0.11%) JBoss
17 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 316 (5.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (4.07%) Microsoft Office
3 118 (2.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 83 (1.52%) Microsoft Project
5 81 (1.49%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.42%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.15%) Trello
11 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.092%) Acrobat
12 5 (0.092%) CATIA
13 4 (0.073%) InDesign
13 4 (0.073%) InVision
13 4 (0.073%) Maya
13 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.055%) Adobe Captivate
14 3 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 95 (1.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.37%) Aladdin
3 20 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
3 20 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
4 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.28%) SAP ERP
6 14 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
6 14 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
8 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
9 11 (0.20%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
9 11 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
10 10 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.17%) SAP Payroll
11 9 (0.17%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 1,159 (21.26%) Azure
2 857 (15.72%) AWS
3 387 (7.10%) Power Platform
4 373 (6.84%) GCP
5 340 (6.24%) Microsoft 365
6 257 (4.71%) Azure DevOps
7 251 (4.60%) GitHub
8 189 (3.47%) Serverless
9 165 (3.03%) Entra ID
10 136 (2.49%) GitHub Actions
11 133 (2.44%) SaaS
12 110 (2.02%) Amazon S3
13 105 (1.93%) AWS Lambda
14 89 (1.63%) OpenShift
15 83 (1.52%) Snowflake
16 78 (1.43%) Azure Data Factory
17 74 (1.36%) Dynamics 365
18 72 (1.32%) Power Automate
19 63 (1.16%) Amazon EC2
20 62 (1.14%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 205 (3.76%) Firewall
2 197 (3.61%) DNS
3 127 (2.33%) TCP/IP
4 117 (2.15%) Network Security
5 109 (2.00%) WAN
6 107 (1.96%) VPN
7 105 (1.93%) DHCP
8 89 (1.63%) LAN
9 68 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
10 54 (0.99%) BGP
11 53 (0.97%) SAN
12 48 (0.88%) VLAN
13 40 (0.73%) OSPF
14 35 (0.64%) VoIP
15 33 (0.61%) SD-WAN
16 29 (0.53%) Wireless
17 26 (0.48%) MPLS
18 24 (0.44%) Internet
19 21 (0.39%) Junos
20 18 (0.33%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (5.69%) Power BI
2 191 (3.50%) SQL Server
3 167 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
4 153 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
5 152 (2.79%) Relational Database
6 106 (1.94%) Metadata
7 98 (1.80%) MongoDB
8 97 (1.78%) NoSQL
9 89 (1.63%) Big Data
10 86 (1.58%) Tableau
11 81 (1.49%) Data Lake
12 75 (1.38%) MySQL
13 67 (1.23%) Oracle Database
14 56 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
15 50 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 48 (0.88%) Hadoop
17 42 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
18 37 (0.68%) DynamoDB
19 34 (0.62%) Pentaho
20 31 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 513 (9.41%) JIRA
2 361 (6.62%) Git
3 267 (4.90%) Jenkins
4 172 (3.16%) GitLab
5 85 (1.56%) Selenium
6 55 (1.01%) JUnit
7 42 (0.77%) Postman
8 39 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 34 (0.62%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 25 (0.46%) Cypress.io
12 23 (0.42%) Maven
12 23 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
13 21 (0.39%) JMeter
13 21 (0.39%) Mockito
14 18 (0.33%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.28%) CircleCI
15 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.28%) WebDriver
16 14 (0.26%) Artifactory
General
1 2,935 (53.84%) Social Skills
2 2,044 (37.50%) Analytical Skills
3 1,235 (22.66%) Finance
4 561 (10.29%) Public Sector
5 436 (8.00%) Banking
6 220 (4.04%) Organisational Skills
7 186 (3.41%) Documentation Skills
8 185 (3.39%) Legal
9 167 (3.06%) Retail
10 136 (2.49%) Influencing Skills
11 134 (2.46%) Presentation Skills
12 126 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (1.80%) Telecoms
14 97 (1.78%) Front Office
15 89 (1.63%) Marketing
16 84 (1.54%) Investment Banking
17 76 (1.39%) Manufacturing
18 58 (1.06%) Military
19 56 (1.03%) Financial Institution
20 48 (0.88%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 753 (13.81%) Analyst
2 726 (13.32%) Developer
3 481 (8.82%) Senior
4 385 (7.06%) Architect
5 352 (6.46%) Lead
6 307 (5.63%) Business Analyst
7 296 (5.43%) Consultant
8 225 (4.13%) Data Engineer
9 220 (4.04%) Project Manager
10 139 (2.55%) Support Engineer
11 129 (2.37%) Java Developer
12 121 (2.22%) IT Support
13 107 (1.96%) Solutions Architect
14 106 (1.94%) Data Analyst
15 101 (1.85%) Senior Developer
16 98 (1.80%) Software Engineer
17 96 (1.76%) Administrator
18 85 (1.56%) Network Engineer
18 85 (1.56%) Python Developer
19 79 (1.45%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 355 (6.51%) REST
2 177 (3.25%) Kafka
3 171 (3.14%) RESTful
4 161 (2.95%) SOAP
5 160 (2.94%) .NET
6 152 (2.79%) Spring
7 139 (2.55%) Node.js
8 137 (2.51%) React
9 114 (2.09%) AngularJS
10 112 (2.05%) Spring Boot
11 109 (2.00%) JSON
12 108 (1.98%) CSS
13 107 (1.96%) HTML
14 98 (1.80%) XML
15 94 (1.72%) LDAP
16 91 (1.67%) Middleware
17 78 (1.43%) OAuth
18 72 (1.32%) PySpark
19 64 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
20 60 (1.10%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 275 (5.04%) Product Ownership
2 237 (4.35%) Cloud Native
3 209 (3.83%) Onboarding
4 165 (3.03%) Management Information System
5 160 (2.94%) Data Centre
6 142 (2.61%) Analytical Mindset
7 137 (2.51%) Self-Motivation
8 118 (2.16%) Data Structures
9 113 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
10 106 (1.94%) Distributed Systems
11 103 (1.89%) Virtual Team
12 102 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
13 99 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
14 80 (1.47%) Algorithms
15 70 (1.28%) Security Posture
16 68 (1.25%) Hybrid Cloud
17 66 (1.21%) Driving Licence
18 62 (1.14%) Mobile App
19 61 (1.12%) CMDB
20 54 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 578 (10.60%) Windows
2 337 (6.18%) Linux
3 110 (2.02%) Windows Server
4 104 (1.91%) Unix
4 104 (1.91%) Windows 10
5 74 (1.36%) Android
6 65 (1.19%) Apple iOS
7 62 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 58 (1.06%) Mac OS
9 20 (0.37%) VMS
10 16 (0.29%) Ubuntu
11 11 (0.20%) CentOS
12 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
14 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.13%) zOS
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.092%) Debian
16 5 (0.092%) Windows Server 2003
17 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,573 (28.86%) Agile
2 994 (18.24%) CI/CD
3 884 (16.22%) DevOps
4 831 (15.24%) Continuous Improvement
5 828 (15.19%) Stakeholder Management
6 638 (11.70%) Analytics
7 564 (10.35%) Decision-Making
8 559 (10.25%) Migration
9 541 (9.92%) AI
10 498 (9.14%) Project Management
11 481 (8.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 467 (8.57%) Data Modelling
13 439 (8.05%) Test Automation
14 426 (7.82%) Business Intelligence
15 420 (7.71%) Validation
16 415 (7.61%) Scrum
17 396 (7.26%) Change Management
18 395 (7.25%) Customer Service
18 395 (7.25%) ITIL
19 358 (6.57%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,045 (19.17%) Python
2 938 (17.21%) SQL
3 476 (8.73%) Java
4 370 (6.79%) PowerShell
5 295 (5.41%) JavaScript
6 224 (4.11%) C#
7 192 (3.52%) TypeScript
8 154 (2.83%) Bash
9 81 (1.49%) PL/SQL
10 73 (1.34%) Shell Script
11 63 (1.16%) C++
12 56 (1.03%) Go
13 44 (0.81%) Perl
14 42 (0.77%) Bicep
15 41 (0.75%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.73%) Scala
17 38 (0.70%) R
18 35 (0.64%) C
19 33 (0.61%) Apex Code
20 32 (0.59%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,192 (21.87%) Security Cleared
2 831 (15.24%) SC Cleared
3 683 (12.53%) Degree
4 233 (4.27%) Computer Science Degree
5 213 (3.91%) DV Cleared
6 168 (3.08%) BPSS Clearance
7 120 (2.20%) Cisco Certification
8 110 (2.02%) PMP
9 109 (2.00%) PMI Certification
10 101 (1.85%) CISSP
10 101 (1.85%) Microsoft Certification
11 98 (1.80%) Master's Degree
12 70 (1.28%) Azure Certification
13 67 (1.23%) CISM
14 57 (1.05%) CCNP
15 54 (0.99%) CCNA
16 43 (0.79%) A+ Certification
16 43 (0.79%) AWS Certification
16 43 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
17 38 (0.70%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (6.59%) QA
2 348 (6.38%) Data Quality
3 164 (3.01%) GDPR
4 118 (2.16%) Accessibility
5 101 (1.85%) PMO
6 92 (1.69%) NIST
7 90 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 70 (1.28%) SLA
9 44 (0.81%) GRC
10 34 (0.62%) WCAG
11 33 (0.61%) PCI DSS
12 29 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.48%) PSD2
14 25 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
16 18 (0.33%) ISO 8583
17 15 (0.28%) HL7
18 14 (0.26%) IFRS
19 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
19 13 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 441 (8.09%) Docker
2 390 (7.15%) Active Directory
3 113 (2.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.88%) vSphere
5 39 (0.72%) VMware NSX
6 31 (0.57%) Hyper-V
7 24 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.37%) Firmware
9 14 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
12 9 (0.17%) Squid
12 9 (0.17%) vCloud
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 4 (0.073%) IAG
14 4 (0.073%) Snort
15 3 (0.055%) ISA Server
15 3 (0.055%) NFS
Systems Management
1 503 (9.23%) Kubernetes
2 322 (5.91%) Terraform
3 195 (3.58%) Ansible
4 130 (2.38%) Grafana
5 127 (2.33%) Microsoft Intune
6 102 (1.87%) Prometheus
7 85 (1.56%) SCCM
8 43 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
10 34 (0.62%) vCenter Server
11 31 (0.57%) Kibana
11 31 (0.57%) Puppet
12 27 (0.50%) Argo
13 24 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 21 (0.39%) Nessus
15 19 (0.35%) Control-M
16 15 (0.28%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.28%) vRealize
17 12 (0.22%) HP ALM
18 11 (0.20%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 979 (17.96%) Microsoft
2 359 (6.59%) Oracle
3 263 (4.82%) SAP
4 236 (4.33%) ServiceNow
5 201 (3.69%) VMware
6 173 (3.17%) Google
7 168 (3.08%) Databricks
8 141 (2.59%) Splunk
9 132 (2.42%) Cisco
10 113 (2.07%) Salesforce
11 80 (1.47%) Red Hat
12 70 (1.28%) CyberArk
13 66 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
14 63 (1.16%) Dell
15 61 (1.12%) Citrix
16 56 (1.03%) Talend
17 55 (1.01%) IBM
18 54 (0.99%) Palo Alto
19 53 (0.97%) Informatica
20 52 (0.95%) Workday