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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,614 4,705 4,699
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.19% 15.55% 10.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.26% 17.24% 12.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,462 2,893 2,929
10th Percentile £285 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.60% - -6.54%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 321 185 386
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.00 £11.75
25th Percentile £15.50 £17.08 £14.16
Median hourly rate £20.00 £26.50 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.53% +39.47% -45.71%
75th Percentile £40.75 £43.75 £45.82
90th Percentile £70.25 £71.50 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.30 £22.69 £17.22
% change year-on-year -23.75% +31.75% -35.58%

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 36,798 27,287 38,212
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.45% 90.16% 86.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,332 17,120 24,896
10th Percentile £313 £306 £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 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -2.03% -1.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,175 894 2,252
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.05 £16.11
Median hourly rate £28.00 £32.50 £32.85
Median % change year-on-year -13.85% -1.05% -6.16%
75th Percentile £63.75 £63.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £73.63 £75.00 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £33.28
% change year-on-year -20.81% -4.57% -4.91%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 -1 4,803 £492 -1.60% 3,546
UK excluding London -4 2,896 £475 - 2,909
London -3 2,109 £513 -2.38% 1,088
Work from Home 0 1,633 £481 -3.75% 1,555
North of England -2 779 £450 -7.41% 689
South East -2 676 £492 -1.60% 860
Midlands -1 536 £450 +3.54% 484
West Midlands 0 390 £475 +5.56% 274
North West -1 390 £424 -10.66% 370
Yorkshire -4 337 £475 -5.00% 248
South West -2 322 £535 +3.13% 332
Scotland 0 275 £447 -0.61% 147
East of England -3 248 £454 +0.89% 396
East Midlands -3 147 £402 +7.56% 207
Wales +1 69 £400 +2.89% 82
North East -4 61 £438 -9.00% 85
Northern Ireland 0 32 £450 +36.36% 22
Channel Islands 0 1 - - 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
1 226 (4.03%) Confluence
2 169 (3.01%) SharePoint
3 112 (2.00%) Microsoft Exchange
4 95 (1.69%) Apache Spark
5 69 (1.23%) Apache
6 67 (1.19%) SAS
7 52 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
8 36 (0.64%) CMS
9 21 (0.37%) Skype for Business
9 21 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.27%) nginx
11 11 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 11 (0.20%) JBoss
12 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.12%) Camunda
13 7 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 323 (5.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 234 (4.17%) Microsoft Office
3 129 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 85 (1.51%) MS Visio
5 79 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
6 23 (0.41%) Chatbot
7 18 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.11%) Trello
11 5 (0.089%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.089%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.071%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.071%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.071%) InDesign
12 4 (0.071%) InVision
12 4 (0.071%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.053%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.053%) Notion
Business Applications
1 99 (1.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.34%) Aladdin
5 18 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.25%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
7 14 (0.25%) SAP ERP
7 14 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 13 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.21%) NEC Housing
9 12 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.20%) SAP HR
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,216 (21.66%) Azure
2 882 (15.71%) AWS
3 410 (7.30%) GCP
4 385 (6.86%) Power Platform
5 350 (6.23%) Microsoft 365
6 270 (4.81%) GitHub
7 256 (4.56%) Azure DevOps
8 197 (3.51%) Serverless
9 169 (3.01%) Entra ID
10 142 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
11 138 (2.46%) SaaS
12 105 (1.87%) Amazon S3
13 100 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
14 95 (1.69%) OpenShift
15 92 (1.64%) Snowflake
16 83 (1.48%) Azure Data Factory
17 82 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
18 73 (1.30%) PaaS
19 71 (1.26%) Power Automate
20 66 (1.18%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 219 (3.90%) Firewall
2 202 (3.60%) DNS
3 136 (2.42%) TCP/IP
4 118 (2.10%) VPN
5 115 (2.05%) Network Security
6 113 (2.01%) DHCP
7 107 (1.91%) WAN
8 83 (1.48%) LAN
9 61 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
10 53 (0.94%) BGP
10 53 (0.94%) VLAN
11 40 (0.71%) SAN
12 38 (0.68%) OSPF
13 34 (0.61%) VoIP
14 27 (0.48%) Wireless
15 24 (0.43%) HTTP
15 24 (0.43%) SD-WAN
15 24 (0.43%) SSH
16 23 (0.41%) SSL
17 22 (0.39%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 313 (5.58%) Power BI
2 189 (3.37%) SQL Server
3 173 (3.08%) PostgreSQL
4 170 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
5 162 (2.89%) Relational Database
6 116 (2.07%) NoSQL
7 115 (2.05%) MongoDB
8 91 (1.62%) Metadata
9 90 (1.60%) MySQL
10 84 (1.50%) Tableau
11 82 (1.46%) Big Data
12 75 (1.34%) Data Lake
13 73 (1.30%) Oracle Database
14 55 (0.98%) Oracle Reports
15 53 (0.94%) Hadoop
16 50 (0.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 44 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
18 39 (0.69%) DynamoDB
19 37 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
19 37 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 511 (9.10%) JIRA
2 391 (6.96%) Git
3 279 (4.97%) Jenkins
4 181 (3.22%) GitLab
5 87 (1.55%) Selenium
6 64 (1.14%) JUnit
7 46 (0.82%) Postman
8 44 (0.78%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.48%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.46%) Maven
12 25 (0.45%) Cypress.io
12 25 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
13 24 (0.43%) JMeter
14 23 (0.41%) SonarQube
15 21 (0.37%) Mockito
16 17 (0.30%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.27%) CircleCI
17 15 (0.27%) IntelliJ
18 14 (0.25%) WebDriver
General
1 3,059 (54.49%) Social Skills
2 2,030 (36.16%) Analytical Skills
3 1,254 (22.34%) Finance
4 560 (9.98%) Public Sector
5 445 (7.93%) Banking
6 218 (3.88%) Organisational Skills
7 173 (3.08%) Documentation Skills
7 173 (3.08%) Legal
8 150 (2.67%) Retail
9 143 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
10 142 (2.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 137 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
12 105 (1.87%) Telecoms
13 102 (1.82%) Front Office
14 97 (1.73%) Marketing
15 91 (1.62%) Investment Banking
16 82 (1.46%) Manufacturing
17 65 (1.16%) Military
18 57 (1.02%) Financial Institution
19 45 (0.80%) Law
Job Titles
1 796 (14.18%) Developer
2 779 (13.88%) Analyst
3 492 (8.76%) Senior
4 373 (6.64%) Architect
5 353 (6.29%) Lead
6 318 (5.66%) Business Analyst
7 311 (5.54%) Consultant
8 219 (3.90%) Data Engineer
9 215 (3.83%) Project Manager
10 158 (2.81%) Support Engineer
11 139 (2.48%) Java Developer
12 133 (2.37%) IT Support
13 113 (2.01%) Data Analyst
14 111 (1.98%) Senior Developer
15 104 (1.85%) Software Engineer
16 96 (1.71%) Solutions Architect
17 93 (1.66%) Python Developer
18 91 (1.62%) Administrator
19 86 (1.53%) Network Engineer
19 86 (1.53%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 379 (6.75%) REST
2 192 (3.42%) RESTful
3 190 (3.38%) Kafka
4 189 (3.37%) SOAP
5 178 (3.17%) .NET
6 168 (2.99%) React
6 168 (2.99%) Spring
7 164 (2.92%) Node.js
8 137 (2.44%) HTML
9 131 (2.33%) CSS
10 128 (2.28%) AngularJS
11 122 (2.17%) JSON
12 116 (2.07%) Spring Boot
13 104 (1.85%) XML
14 94 (1.67%) LDAP
15 93 (1.66%) Middleware
16 81 (1.44%) OAuth
17 71 (1.26%) Oracle Fusion
18 69 (1.23%) PySpark
19 68 (1.21%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 273 (4.86%) Product Ownership
2 243 (4.33%) Cloud Native
3 206 (3.67%) Onboarding
4 180 (3.21%) Management Information System
5 151 (2.69%) Data Centre
6 139 (2.48%) Analytical Mindset
7 129 (2.30%) Data Structures
8 128 (2.28%) Self-Motivation
9 114 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
10 104 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
11 101 (1.80%) Virtual Team
12 99 (1.76%) Algorithms
13 94 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
14 88 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
15 83 (1.48%) Security Posture
16 73 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
17 72 (1.28%) CMDB
18 67 (1.19%) Driving Licence
19 66 (1.18%) Mobile App
20 56 (1.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 587 (10.46%) Windows
2 362 (6.45%) Linux
3 119 (2.12%) Unix
4 111 (1.98%) Windows Server
5 107 (1.91%) Windows 10
6 70 (1.25%) Android
7 67 (1.19%) Apple iOS
7 67 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 58 (1.03%) Mac OS
9 21 (0.37%) VMS
10 16 (0.29%) CentOS
11 15 (0.27%) Ubuntu
12 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.14%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.089%) Windows Server 2003
16 5 (0.089%) zOS
17 4 (0.071%) Debian
17 4 (0.071%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,632 (29.07%) Agile
2 1,048 (18.67%) CI/CD
3 900 (16.03%) DevOps
4 835 (14.87%) Stakeholder Management
5 804 (14.32%) Continuous Improvement
6 637 (11.35%) Analytics
7 580 (10.33%) Migration
8 560 (9.98%) Decision-Making
9 510 (9.08%) AI
10 482 (8.59%) Project Management
11 479 (8.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 464 (8.27%) Data Modelling
13 456 (8.12%) Test Automation
14 429 (7.64%) Scrum
15 423 (7.53%) Business Intelligence
16 419 (7.46%) Validation
17 397 (7.07%) Customer Service
18 394 (7.02%) Containerisation
19 389 (6.93%) ITIL
20 386 (6.88%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 1,088 (19.38%) Python
2 965 (17.19%) SQL
3 523 (9.32%) Java
4 373 (6.64%) PowerShell
5 333 (5.93%) JavaScript
6 234 (4.17%) C#
7 219 (3.90%) TypeScript
8 159 (2.83%) Bash
9 83 (1.48%) Shell Script
10 74 (1.32%) PL/SQL
11 62 (1.10%) C++
11 62 (1.10%) Go
12 49 (0.87%) Perl
13 42 (0.75%) Bicep
13 42 (0.75%) Scala
14 40 (0.71%) T-SQL
15 38 (0.68%) Ruby
16 36 (0.64%) VBA
17 35 (0.62%) R
18 33 (0.59%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,190 (21.20%) Security Cleared
2 838 (14.93%) SC Cleared
3 746 (13.29%) Degree
4 255 (4.54%) Computer Science Degree
5 209 (3.72%) DV Cleared
6 157 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
7 115 (2.05%) Master's Degree
8 106 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
9 105 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
10 104 (1.85%) PMI Certification
11 102 (1.82%) PMP
12 95 (1.69%) CISSP
13 78 (1.39%) Azure Certification
14 60 (1.07%) CISM
15 56 (1.00%) AWS Certification
15 56 (1.00%) CCNP
16 44 (0.78%) CCNA
17 39 (0.69%) A+ Certification
17 39 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
18 30 (0.53%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 363 (6.47%) QA
2 333 (5.93%) Data Quality
3 160 (2.85%) GDPR
4 124 (2.21%) Accessibility
5 90 (1.60%) PMO
6 86 (1.53%) NIST
7 85 (1.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 63 (1.12%) SLA
9 37 (0.66%) PCI DSS
10 34 (0.61%) GRC
10 34 (0.61%) WCAG
11 27 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
12 23 (0.41%) PSD2
13 22 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 18 (0.32%) ISO 20022
15 17 (0.30%) ISO 8583
16 16 (0.29%) EU AI Act
17 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
17 15 (0.27%) IFRS
18 14 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 498 (8.87%) Docker
2 395 (7.04%) Active Directory
3 118 (2.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.78%) vSphere
5 36 (0.64%) Hyper-V
6 34 (0.61%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
8 22 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
9 21 (0.37%) Firmware
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.16%) ACF2
13 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.14%) Squid
13 8 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
14 7 (0.12%) vCloud
15 6 (0.11%) HDFS
16 4 (0.071%) Snort
17 3 (0.053%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.053%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 545 (9.71%) Kubernetes
2 323 (5.75%) Terraform
3 208 (3.71%) Ansible
4 138 (2.46%) Grafana
5 121 (2.16%) Microsoft Intune
6 111 (1.98%) Prometheus
7 100 (1.78%) SCCM
8 53 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
9 39 (0.69%) Puppet
10 36 (0.64%) FortiGate
10 36 (0.64%) Kibana
11 33 (0.59%) Nessus
12 32 (0.57%) Argo
13 29 (0.52%) vCenter Server
14 25 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 24 (0.43%) Control-M
16 23 (0.41%) IBM Guardium
17 16 (0.29%) Red Hat Satellite
18 15 (0.27%) vRealize
19 12 (0.21%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,047 (18.65%) Microsoft
2 370 (6.59%) Oracle
3 273 (4.86%) SAP
4 251 (4.47%) ServiceNow
5 209 (3.72%) VMware
6 186 (3.31%) Google
7 163 (2.90%) Databricks
8 161 (2.87%) Splunk
9 137 (2.44%) Cisco
10 114 (2.03%) Salesforce
11 89 (1.59%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.30%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.03%) Workday
15 57 (1.02%) Citrix
15 57 (1.02%) IBM
15 57 (1.02%) Palo Alto
15 57 (1.02%) Talend
16 54 (0.96%) Dell
17 52 (0.93%) F5