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 21 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +5
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,782 5,065 4,633
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.64% 15.51% 12.07%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.62% 17.13% 14.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,230 3,046 2,707
10th Percentile £250 £232 £259
25th Percentile £380 £375 £392
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% -3.75% -0.99%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £713 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 567 314 234
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.68 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.00
Median hourly rate £18.75 £19.25 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -2.60% +18.61% -70.01%
75th Percentile £37.50 £34.36 £30.00
90th Percentile £71.40 £63.40 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £18.46 £16.23
% change year-on-year -2.49% +13.74% -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 45,811 29,562 32,919
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.30% 90.52% 85.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,773 18,345 20,161
10th Percentile £325 £300 £309
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,152 1,818 1,440
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.23 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +0.58%
75th Percentile £67.47 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £66.15 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.06 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +84.00% -48.10% +1.18%

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 21 September 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 21 September 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 21 September 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 4,981 £500 +2.04% 13,343
UK excluding London -3 3,105 £450 - 8,068
London -12 2,142 £525 +4.95% 6,637
Work from Home -5 1,547 £500 - 5,481
South East -4 791 £479 +6.44% 1,891
North of England -9 719 £447 -5.89% 1,805
Midlands -5 604 £450 +2.86% 1,327
West Midlands -8 431 £450 -5.26% 827
North West -11 356 £450 -4.05% 1,022
South West -4 337 £500 +11.11% 943
Scotland -2 311 £450 - 692
Yorkshire -6 293 £450 -7.69% 568
East of England +1 281 £438 -12.50% 887
East Midlands +2 170 £475 +26.67% 499
North East -16 72 £375 -16.67% 236
Wales -7 62 £475 +22.58% 185
Northern Ireland -4 25 £419 -11.84% 443
Channel Islands -3 5 £600 - 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
1 242 (4.19%) SharePoint
2 240 (4.15%) Confluence
3 106 (1.83%) Microsoft Exchange
4 58 (1.00%) Apache Spark
5 45 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
6 40 (0.69%) Apache
7 32 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
8 30 (0.52%) SAS
9 28 (0.48%) CMS
10 16 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.22%) WebSphere
12 12 (0.21%) CICS
12 12 (0.21%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 8 (0.14%) IIS
15 7 (0.12%) Appian
15 7 (0.12%) Mule
15 7 (0.12%) WordPress
16 6 (0.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 6 (0.10%) Anypoint
Applications
1 338 (5.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 276 (4.77%) Microsoft Office
3 129 (2.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (1.14%) Microsoft Project
5 60 (1.04%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.45%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 19 (0.33%) Chatbot
9 17 (0.29%) AutoCAD
10 15 (0.26%) Revit
10 15 (0.26%) Sketch
11 11 (0.19%) Trello
12 9 (0.16%) Navisworks
13 8 (0.14%) Windchill
14 7 (0.12%) CATIA
15 6 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
15 6 (0.10%) CPLEX
15 6 (0.10%) Final Cut Pro
16 4 (0.069%) Adobe XD
17 3 (0.052%) DaVinci Resolve
Business Applications
1 139 (2.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 40 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
4 31 (0.54%) NetSuite
5 29 (0.50%) SAP GRC
6 27 (0.47%) Workday HCM
7 26 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
8 15 (0.26%) iTrent
8 15 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
9 13 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.22%) SAP SD
10 12 (0.21%) Teamcenter
11 11 (0.19%) Aladdin
11 11 (0.19%) Finacle
12 10 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
12 10 (0.17%) SAP CRM
12 10 (0.17%) SAP ERP
12 10 (0.17%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,122 (19.41%) Azure
2 807 (13.96%) AWS
3 523 (9.05%) Microsoft 365
4 468 (8.09%) Power Platform
5 331 (5.72%) GCP
6 280 (4.84%) Azure DevOps
7 246 (4.25%) Entra ID
8 210 (3.63%) GitHub
9 161 (2.78%) SaaS
10 128 (2.21%) Serverless
11 115 (1.99%) Power Automate
12 98 (1.69%) Microsoft Copilot
13 94 (1.63%) Dynamics 365
14 91 (1.57%) GitHub Actions
15 85 (1.47%) PowerApps
16 78 (1.35%) OneDrive
17 73 (1.26%) Snowflake
18 65 (1.12%) Amazon S3
19 63 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
20 61 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 220 (3.80%) DNS
2 197 (3.41%) Firewall
3 165 (2.85%) VPN
4 134 (2.32%) TCP/IP
5 133 (2.30%) DHCP
6 123 (2.13%) WAN
7 115 (1.99%) Network Security
8 100 (1.73%) LAN
9 84 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.14%) SAN
11 63 (1.09%) Wireless
12 54 (0.93%) VLAN
13 48 (0.83%) BGP
14 40 (0.69%) VoIP
15 34 (0.59%) MPLS
15 34 (0.59%) SD-WAN
16 32 (0.55%) Structured Cabling
17 27 (0.47%) HTTP
17 27 (0.47%) SSL
18 25 (0.43%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 354 (6.12%) Power BI
2 212 (3.67%) SQL Server
3 193 (3.34%) Relational Database
4 172 (2.97%) Data Warehouse
5 155 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
6 109 (1.89%) Metadata
7 100 (1.73%) MongoDB
8 85 (1.47%) NoSQL
9 83 (1.44%) Tableau
10 79 (1.37%) Data Lake
11 66 (1.14%) Oracle Database
12 60 (1.04%) MySQL
13 45 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
14 44 (0.76%) Big Data
15 35 (0.61%) Db2
16 34 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 31 (0.54%) Power Query
18 28 (0.48%) BigQuery
19 27 (0.47%) Delta Lake
20 26 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 500 (8.65%) JIRA
2 390 (6.75%) Git
3 199 (3.44%) Jenkins
4 143 (2.47%) GitLab
5 78 (1.35%) Selenium
6 47 (0.81%) Maven
7 43 (0.74%) Gradle
8 41 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 40 (0.69%) Postman
10 39 (0.67%) Cucumber
11 37 (0.64%) JUnit
12 32 (0.55%) Bitbucket
13 28 (0.48%) REST Assured
14 25 (0.43%) SonarQube
15 22 (0.38%) Mockito
16 21 (0.36%) JMeter
17 20 (0.35%) Oracle Forms
18 17 (0.29%) WebDriver
18 17 (0.29%) Zephyr
19 16 (0.28%) Gatling
General
1 3,119 (53.94%) Social Skills
2 2,461 (42.56%) Analytical Skills
3 1,305 (22.57%) Finance
4 604 (10.45%) Public Sector
5 457 (7.90%) Banking
6 292 (5.05%) Organisational Skills
7 236 (4.08%) Manufacturing
8 202 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
9 184 (3.18%) Retail
10 181 (3.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 178 (3.08%) Influencing Skills
12 148 (2.56%) Legal
13 126 (2.18%) Front Office
14 120 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
15 119 (2.06%) Marketing
15 119 (2.06%) Telecoms
16 92 (1.59%) Investment Banking
17 85 (1.47%) Back Office
18 71 (1.23%) Aerospace
19 70 (1.21%) Law
Job Titles
1 752 (13.01%) Analyst
2 733 (12.68%) Developer
3 542 (9.37%) Senior
4 415 (7.18%) Lead
5 332 (5.74%) Architect
6 258 (4.46%) Consultant
7 251 (4.34%) Business Analyst
8 237 (4.10%) IT Support
9 222 (3.84%) Support Engineer
10 204 (3.53%) Data Engineer
11 164 (2.84%) Administrator
12 154 (2.66%) Project Manager
13 153 (2.65%) IT Engineer
14 134 (2.32%) Java Developer
15 125 (2.16%) Data Analyst
16 117 (2.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 111 (1.92%) Network Engineer
18 108 (1.87%) IT Support Engineer
19 106 (1.83%) DevOps Engineer
20 105 (1.82%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 410 (7.09%) REST
2 335 (5.79%) Terraform
3 188 (3.25%) .NET
4 185 (3.20%) RESTful
5 173 (2.99%) SOAP
6 159 (2.75%) React
7 152 (2.63%) Kafka
8 145 (2.51%) Spring
9 139 (2.40%) HTML
10 137 (2.37%) JSON
11 136 (2.35%) XML
12 134 (2.32%) CSS
13 123 (2.13%) Web Services
14 122 (2.11%) Spring Boot
15 114 (1.97%) Middleware
16 95 (1.64%) Node.js
17 91 (1.57%) AngularJS
18 86 (1.49%) OAuth
19 67 (1.16%) PySpark
20 56 (0.97%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 329 (5.69%) Onboarding
2 277 (4.79%) Product Ownership
3 275 (4.76%) Cloud Native
4 218 (3.77%) Self-Motivation
5 210 (3.63%) Enterprise Software
6 204 (3.53%) Management Information System
7 181 (3.13%) Data Centre
8 158 (2.73%) Distributed Systems
9 145 (2.51%) Data Structures
10 132 (2.28%) Analytical Mindset
11 125 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
11 125 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
12 93 (1.61%) Driving Licence
13 91 (1.57%) Virtual Team
14 82 (1.42%) AI Agents
15 75 (1.30%) CMDB
16 61 (1.05%) PKI
17 60 (1.04%) Mobile App
18 57 (0.99%) Algorithms
18 57 (0.99%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 784 (13.56%) Windows
2 333 (5.76%) Linux
3 220 (3.80%) Windows Server
4 142 (2.46%) Windows 10
5 108 (1.87%) Unix
6 95 (1.64%) Apple iOS
7 91 (1.57%) Android
8 88 (1.52%) Mac OS
9 55 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 19 (0.33%) VMS
12 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.24%) zOS
14 11 (0.19%) Solaris
15 9 (0.16%) CentOS
15 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
16 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.10%) AIX
17 6 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
18 5 (0.086%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,596 (27.60%) Agile
2 1,352 (23.38%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,282 (22.17%) Continuous Improvement
4 977 (16.90%) CI/CD
5 880 (15.22%) DevOps
6 762 (13.18%) AI
7 654 (11.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 640 (11.07%) Decision-Making
9 589 (10.19%) Migration
10 586 (10.13%) Customer Service
11 582 (10.07%) Analytics
12 525 (9.08%) ITIL
13 471 (8.15%) Validation
14 469 (8.11%) Test Automation
15 424 (7.33%) Business Intelligence
15 424 (7.33%) Data Modelling
16 421 (7.28%) Scrum
17 384 (6.64%) ITSM
18 372 (6.43%) Technical Leadership
19 370 (6.40%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,008 (17.43%) SQL
2 893 (15.44%) Python
3 447 (7.73%) Java
4 351 (6.07%) JavaScript
5 331 (5.72%) PowerShell
6 220 (3.80%) C#
7 153 (2.65%) Bash
8 145 (2.51%) TypeScript
9 101 (1.75%) PL/SQL
10 67 (1.16%) C++
11 50 (0.86%) T-SQL
12 44 (0.76%) Shell Script
13 43 (0.74%) Go
14 36 (0.62%) Scala
15 32 (0.55%) Bicep
15 32 (0.55%) Kotlin
16 30 (0.52%) C
17 28 (0.48%) Apex Code
17 28 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 28 (0.48%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,263 (21.84%) Security Cleared
2 906 (15.67%) SC Cleared
3 658 (11.38%) Degree
4 223 (3.86%) DV Cleared
5 198 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 184 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
7 156 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
8 109 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
9 83 (1.44%) Azure Certification
10 80 (1.38%) CISSP
11 75 (1.30%) PMI Certification
12 72 (1.25%) PMP
13 69 (1.19%) A+ Certification
14 57 (0.99%) CCNA
15 55 (0.95%) Master's Degree
16 53 (0.92%) AWS Certification
17 49 (0.85%) DBS Check
18 45 (0.78%) CISM
19 44 (0.76%) Network+ Certification
20 43 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 435 (7.52%) Data Quality
2 387 (6.69%) QA
3 149 (2.58%) Accessibility
4 133 (2.30%) SLA
5 125 (2.16%) GDPR
6 100 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 92 (1.59%) PMO
8 72 (1.25%) NIST
9 71 (1.23%) GRC
10 39 (0.67%) WCAG
11 25 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
12 23 (0.40%) GxP
13 20 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
13 20 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 19 (0.33%) NCSC
15 17 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 17 (0.29%) PCI DSS
16 14 (0.24%) ISO 20022
17 13 (0.22%) COBIT
17 13 (0.22%) IFRS
System Software
1 454 (7.85%) Active Directory
2 360 (6.23%) Docker
3 172 (2.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.23%) Hyper-V
5 69 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
6 53 (0.92%) VMware NSX
6 53 (0.92%) vSphere
7 37 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
8 32 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
9 26 (0.45%) IAG
9 26 (0.45%) vCloud
10 16 (0.28%) Firmware
11 11 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
12 7 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.10%) NFS
14 5 (0.086%) RACF
14 5 (0.086%) Time Sharing Option
15 4 (0.069%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 4 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.069%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 402 (6.95%) Kubernetes
2 171 (2.96%) Ansible
3 135 (2.33%) Microsoft Intune
4 97 (1.68%) SCCM
5 96 (1.66%) Grafana
6 77 (1.33%) Prometheus
7 51 (0.88%) vCenter Server
8 42 (0.73%) SCOM
9 29 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
10 23 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
11 21 (0.36%) WSUS
12 19 (0.33%) Control-M
13 14 (0.24%) NetBackup
14 13 (0.22%) FortiGate
14 13 (0.22%) Kibana
14 13 (0.22%) Nessus
15 12 (0.21%) VxRail
16 11 (0.19%) Istio
17 9 (0.16%) Argo
17 9 (0.16%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,355 (23.43%) Microsoft
2 421 (7.28%) Oracle
3 365 (6.31%) ServiceNow
4 364 (6.30%) SAP
5 221 (3.82%) VMware
6 178 (3.08%) Google
7 150 (2.59%) Salesforce
8 142 (2.46%) Cisco
9 132 (2.28%) Databricks
10 115 (1.99%) Splunk
11 78 (1.35%) Workday
12 69 (1.19%) Dynatrace
13 66 (1.14%) Adobe
14 62 (1.07%) IBM
15 61 (1.05%) Apple
16 53 (0.92%) CyberArk
17 52 (0.90%) MuleSoft
18 46 (0.80%) Red Hat
19 44 (0.76%) Dell
20 43 (0.74%) Palo Alto