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

6 months to
23 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 5,468 4,811 4,805
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.49% 16.28% 10.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.55% 17.99% 12.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,354 3,014 2,963
10th Percentile £288 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -0.11% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 322 205 405
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.90 £11.03
25th Percentile £15.27 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.53 £25.43 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -19.26% +43.51% -54.56%
75th Percentile £42.65 £43.39 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.03 £71.50 £68.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.30 £22.14 £15.89
% change year-on-year -21.86% +39.33% -42.22%

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 37,591 26,736 38,298
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.89% 90.46% 86.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,832 17,220 24,877
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 £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.54% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,217 938 2,335
10th Percentile £14.99 £15.21 £12.85
25th Percentile £18.50 £20.94 £16.00
Median hourly rate £31.50 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.08% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.51 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.28 £71.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.31 £31.76 £31.13
% change year-on-year -7.73% +2.04% -12.14%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 4,692 £489 -2.25% 3,310
UK excluding London -5 2,841 £475 -0.11% 2,698
London -7 2,039 £510 -2.86% 1,017
Work from Home -1 1,567 £477 -4.70% 1,316
North of England -4 774 £450 -7.22% 679
South East -2 684 £492 -1.60% 814
Midlands -2 513 £450 +0.45% 470
North West -4 384 £425 -10.53% 372
West Midlands -2 373 £475 +2.98% 273
Yorkshire -4 341 £475 -5.00% 229
South West -2 315 £525 - 315
Scotland 0 257 £425 -6.70% 132
East of England -3 230 £450 - 282
East Midlands -3 141 £405 +2.53% 196
Wales -3 68 £400 +2.56% 78
North East -2 58 £438 -2.78% 91
Northern Ireland -3 30 £449 +31.91% 20
Channel Islands 0 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 (4.08%) Confluence
2 166 (3.04%) SharePoint
3 107 (1.96%) Microsoft Exchange
4 90 (1.65%) Apache Spark
5 64 (1.17%) Apache
6 62 (1.13%) SAS
7 45 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
8 34 (0.62%) CMS
9 16 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.27%) nginx
11 14 (0.26%) Skype for Business
12 12 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
13 11 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.15%) Camunda
14 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
16 6 (0.11%) JBoss
16 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
17 5 (0.091%) ArcGIS
17 5 (0.091%) CICS
Applications
1 325 (5.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (4.08%) Microsoft Office
3 123 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (1.50%) Microsoft Project
4 82 (1.50%) MS Visio
5 26 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
6 21 (0.38%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.18%) Sketch
8 9 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.15%) Trello
10 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.091%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.073%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.073%) CATIA
12 4 (0.073%) InDesign
12 4 (0.073%) InVision
12 4 (0.073%) Maya
12 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.055%) Notion
Business Applications
1 96 (1.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 17 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
7 16 (0.29%) Workday HCM
8 15 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
9 14 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
10 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
10 13 (0.24%) SAP ERP
10 13 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
11 12 (0.22%) NetSuite
12 11 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
13 10 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
13 10 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
13 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
14 8 (0.15%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,178 (21.54%) Azure
2 866 (15.84%) AWS
3 385 (7.04%) GCP
4 383 (7.00%) Power Platform
5 336 (6.14%) Microsoft 365
6 271 (4.96%) GitHub
7 260 (4.75%) Azure DevOps
8 196 (3.58%) Serverless
9 161 (2.94%) Entra ID
10 143 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
11 129 (2.36%) SaaS
12 113 (2.07%) Amazon S3
13 105 (1.92%) AWS Lambda
14 98 (1.79%) OpenShift
15 87 (1.59%) Snowflake
16 79 (1.44%) Azure Data Factory
17 77 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
18 72 (1.32%) Power Automate
19 64 (1.17%) Amazon EC2
20 63 (1.15%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 208 (3.80%) Firewall
2 200 (3.66%) DNS
3 129 (2.36%) TCP/IP
4 120 (2.19%) Network Security
5 114 (2.08%) WAN
6 110 (2.01%) DHCP
7 109 (1.99%) VPN
8 92 (1.68%) LAN
9 65 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
10 54 (0.99%) BGP
11 51 (0.93%) SAN
12 47 (0.86%) VLAN
13 40 (0.73%) OSPF
14 34 (0.62%) SD-WAN
14 34 (0.62%) VoIP
15 28 (0.51%) Wireless
16 27 (0.49%) MPLS
17 25 (0.46%) Internet
18 21 (0.38%) Junos
18 21 (0.38%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (5.63%) Power BI
2 186 (3.40%) SQL Server
3 169 (3.09%) PostgreSQL
4 167 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
5 158 (2.89%) Relational Database
6 104 (1.90%) NoSQL
7 101 (1.85%) MongoDB
8 99 (1.81%) Metadata
9 88 (1.61%) Big Data
10 86 (1.57%) Tableau
11 78 (1.43%) Data Lake
12 77 (1.41%) MySQL
13 67 (1.23%) Oracle Database
14 58 (1.06%) Oracle Reports
15 52 (0.95%) Hadoop
16 49 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 45 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
18 38 (0.69%) DynamoDB
19 31 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
19 31 (0.57%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 508 (9.29%) JIRA
2 371 (6.78%) Git
3 276 (5.05%) Jenkins
4 178 (3.26%) GitLab
5 86 (1.57%) Selenium
6 56 (1.02%) JUnit
7 43 (0.79%) Postman
8 40 (0.73%) Cucumber
9 34 (0.62%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.48%) Cypress.io
11 26 (0.48%) Sonatype Nexus
12 23 (0.42%) Maven
13 22 (0.40%) JMeter
14 20 (0.37%) Mockito
15 19 (0.35%) SonarQube
16 15 (0.27%) CircleCI
16 15 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
16 15 (0.27%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.27%) WebDriver
General
1 2,950 (53.95%) Social Skills
2 2,034 (37.20%) Analytical Skills
3 1,235 (22.59%) Finance
4 568 (10.39%) Public Sector
5 434 (7.94%) Banking
6 216 (3.95%) Organisational Skills
7 181 (3.31%) Documentation Skills
8 177 (3.24%) Legal
9 156 (2.85%) Retail
10 136 (2.49%) Presentation Skills
11 134 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
12 128 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 100 (1.83%) Front Office
13 100 (1.83%) Telecoms
14 89 (1.63%) Marketing
15 86 (1.57%) Investment Banking
16 83 (1.52%) Manufacturing
17 61 (1.12%) Military
18 53 (0.97%) Financial Institution
19 47 (0.86%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 740 (13.53%) Developer
2 738 (13.50%) Analyst
3 482 (8.81%) Senior
4 386 (7.06%) Architect
5 358 (6.55%) Lead
6 313 (5.72%) Business Analyst
7 299 (5.47%) Consultant
8 222 (4.06%) Project Manager
9 216 (3.95%) Data Engineer
10 141 (2.58%) Support Engineer
11 129 (2.36%) Java Developer
12 117 (2.14%) IT Support
13 103 (1.88%) Senior Developer
14 102 (1.87%) Data Analyst
15 99 (1.81%) Software Engineer
15 99 (1.81%) Solutions Architect
16 95 (1.74%) Administrator
17 87 (1.59%) Python Developer
18 86 (1.57%) Network Engineer
19 79 (1.44%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 356 (6.51%) REST
2 182 (3.33%) Kafka
3 172 (3.15%) RESTful
4 166 (3.04%) SOAP
5 165 (3.02%) .NET
6 161 (2.94%) Spring
7 152 (2.78%) Node.js
8 149 (2.72%) React
9 119 (2.18%) AngularJS
9 119 (2.18%) CSS
10 115 (2.10%) HTML
11 113 (2.07%) Spring Boot
12 111 (2.03%) JSON
13 99 (1.81%) XML
14 96 (1.76%) LDAP
15 93 (1.70%) Middleware
16 78 (1.43%) OAuth
17 72 (1.32%) PySpark
18 65 (1.19%) Oracle Fusion
19 62 (1.13%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 274 (5.01%) Product Ownership
2 244 (4.46%) Cloud Native
3 208 (3.80%) Onboarding
4 172 (3.15%) Management Information System
5 161 (2.94%) Data Centre
6 143 (2.62%) Analytical Mindset
7 131 (2.40%) Self-Motivation
8 116 (2.12%) Data Structures
9 111 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
10 102 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
11 101 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
11 101 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
12 100 (1.83%) Virtual Team
13 87 (1.59%) Algorithms
14 72 (1.32%) Hybrid Cloud
15 71 (1.30%) Security Posture
16 66 (1.21%) Driving Licence
17 64 (1.17%) CMDB
18 63 (1.15%) Mobile App
19 54 (0.99%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 572 (10.46%) Windows
2 347 (6.35%) Linux
3 105 (1.92%) Unix
3 105 (1.92%) Windows Server
4 98 (1.79%) Windows 10
5 70 (1.28%) Android
6 63 (1.15%) Apple iOS
6 63 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 56 (1.02%) Mac OS
8 19 (0.35%) VMS
9 16 (0.29%) Ubuntu
10 11 (0.20%) CentOS
11 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
12 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
13 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
14 6 (0.11%) zOS
15 5 (0.091%) Debian
15 5 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,583 (28.95%) Agile
2 1,015 (18.56%) CI/CD
3 900 (16.46%) DevOps
4 831 (15.20%) Stakeholder Management
5 813 (14.87%) Continuous Improvement
6 631 (11.54%) Analytics
7 559 (10.22%) Migration
8 554 (10.13%) Decision-Making
9 531 (9.71%) AI
10 496 (9.07%) Project Management
11 477 (8.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 461 (8.43%) Data Modelling
13 438 (8.01%) Test Automation
14 418 (7.64%) Business Intelligence
15 417 (7.63%) Validation
16 414 (7.57%) Scrum
17 396 (7.24%) Change Management
18 392 (7.17%) ITIL
19 389 (7.11%) Customer Service
20 377 (6.89%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,057 (19.33%) Python
2 934 (17.08%) SQL
3 494 (9.03%) Java
4 378 (6.91%) PowerShell
5 305 (5.58%) JavaScript
6 224 (4.10%) C#
7 208 (3.80%) TypeScript
8 158 (2.89%) Bash
9 78 (1.43%) PL/SQL
10 76 (1.39%) Shell Script
11 59 (1.08%) Go
12 58 (1.06%) C++
13 46 (0.84%) Perl
14 42 (0.77%) Bicep
14 42 (0.77%) Scala
15 41 (0.75%) T-SQL
16 39 (0.71%) Ruby
17 35 (0.64%) Apex Code
18 34 (0.62%) R
19 31 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,211 (22.15%) Security Cleared
2 848 (15.51%) SC Cleared
3 704 (12.87%) Degree
4 245 (4.48%) Computer Science Degree
5 214 (3.91%) DV Cleared
6 164 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
7 118 (2.16%) Cisco Certification
8 109 (1.99%) Master's Degree
8 109 (1.99%) PMP
9 107 (1.96%) PMI Certification
10 101 (1.85%) Microsoft Certification
11 100 (1.83%) CISSP
12 73 (1.34%) Azure Certification
13 65 (1.19%) CISM
14 56 (1.02%) CCNP
15 52 (0.95%) CCNA
16 49 (0.90%) AWS Certification
17 41 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
18 40 (0.73%) A+ Certification
19 36 (0.66%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (6.57%) QA
2 329 (6.02%) Data Quality
3 166 (3.04%) GDPR
4 123 (2.25%) Accessibility
5 95 (1.74%) PMO
6 90 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 90 (1.65%) NIST
7 66 (1.21%) SLA
8 40 (0.73%) GRC
9 35 (0.64%) PCI DSS
9 35 (0.64%) WCAG
10 29 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
11 25 (0.46%) PSD2
11 25 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
13 17 (0.31%) HIPAA
13 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
14 14 (0.26%) HL7
15 13 (0.24%) IFRS
15 13 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 465 (8.50%) Docker
2 381 (6.97%) Active Directory
3 112 (2.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.88%) vSphere
5 39 (0.71%) VMware NSX
6 32 (0.59%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.37%) Firmware
9 16 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.16%) ACF2
12 9 (0.16%) Squid
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.15%) vCloud
13 8 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 5 (0.091%) HDFS
15 4 (0.073%) Snort
16 3 (0.055%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.055%) NFS
Systems Management
1 523 (9.56%) Kubernetes
2 332 (6.07%) Terraform
3 207 (3.79%) Ansible
4 133 (2.43%) Grafana
5 126 (2.30%) Microsoft Intune
6 105 (1.92%) Prometheus
7 88 (1.61%) SCCM
8 49 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
10 36 (0.66%) Argo
11 34 (0.62%) vCenter Server
12 31 (0.57%) Kibana
12 31 (0.57%) Puppet
13 24 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 23 (0.42%) Nessus
15 21 (0.38%) Control-M
16 17 (0.31%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.27%) vRealize
18 12 (0.22%) HP ALM
18 12 (0.22%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 991 (18.12%) Microsoft
2 355 (6.49%) Oracle
3 262 (4.79%) SAP
4 231 (4.22%) ServiceNow
5 202 (3.69%) VMware
6 180 (3.29%) Google
7 164 (3.00%) Databricks
8 143 (2.62%) Splunk
9 134 (2.45%) Cisco
10 113 (2.07%) Salesforce
11 90 (1.65%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.34%) CyberArk
13 66 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
14 62 (1.13%) Dell
15 59 (1.08%) Citrix
16 57 (1.04%) IBM
17 56 (1.02%) Palo Alto
18 55 (1.01%) Workday
19 53 (0.97%) Informatica
19 53 (0.97%) Talend