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

6 months to
12 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 5,581 5,249 4,446
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.46% 15.92% 11.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.32% 17.60% 13.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,147 3,179 2,737
10th Percentile £250 £250 £255
25th Percentile £375 £375 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.92% -2.50% -2.55%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £614
90th Percentile £700 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £460 £475
% change year-on-year -2.07% -3.26% -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 492 313 282
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.76 £11.75
25th Percentile £14.40 £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 £39.63 £35.96 £31.03
90th Percentile £73.68 £65.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.75 £18.82 £16.23
% change year-on-year -0.37% +15.96% -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 45,292 29,826 33,298
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.86% 90.48% 85.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,883 18,657 21,289
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £423 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,827 1,696 1,836
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.80 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.08
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.77% -1.96%
75th Percentile £68.00 £47.66 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.51 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.84 £42.50
% change year-on-year +92.47% -46.26% +17.24%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -8 4,846 £495 +0.51% 8,933
UK excluding London -4 2,987 £450 -2.07% 5,507
London -12 2,084 £525 +5.00% 4,510
Work from Home -5 1,543 £492 -1.60% 3,420
South East -4 767 £477 -0.31% 1,414
North of England -9 727 £447 -5.89% 1,272
Midlands -5 549 £450 +4.65% 827
West Midlands -10 399 £450 -1.50% 513
South West -1 354 £500 +5.26% 685
North West -12 345 £450 -6.25% 698
Yorkshire -7 324 £450 -5.16% 412
Scotland -4 270 £438 -2.78% 445
East of England +1 259 £450 -10.00% 586
East Midlands 0 147 £475 +26.67% 313
Wales -5 65 £475 +26.67% 150
North East -16 63 £375 -16.67% 182
Northern Ireland -5 25 £384 -23.25% 266
Channel Islands -2 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
1 227 (4.07%) Confluence
2 221 (3.96%) SharePoint
3 111 (1.99%) Microsoft Exchange
4 65 (1.16%) Apache Spark
5 43 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
6 42 (0.75%) Apache
7 41 (0.73%) SAS
8 33 (0.59%) Oracle Workflow
9 30 (0.54%) CMS
10 18 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.20%) CICS
13 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 8 (0.14%) ArcGIS
16 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
16 7 (0.13%) Appian
16 7 (0.13%) Mule
17 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
17 6 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 314 (5.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 268 (4.80%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (2.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 79 (1.42%) MS Visio
5 63 (1.13%) Microsoft Project
6 33 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.48%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 24 (0.43%) Chatbot
9 17 (0.30%) AutoCAD
10 15 (0.27%) Sketch
11 13 (0.23%) Revit
12 11 (0.20%) Trello
13 10 (0.18%) CATIA
14 7 (0.13%) CPLEX
15 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
15 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
16 5 (0.090%) Navisworks
17 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
17 4 (0.072%) Photoshop
18 3 (0.054%) Acrobat
Business Applications
1 138 (2.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 39 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
4 27 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
5 26 (0.47%) NetSuite
6 22 (0.39%) SAP GRC
7 19 (0.34%) Workday HCM
8 14 (0.25%) Aladdin
9 13 (0.23%) iTrent
9 13 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
9 13 (0.23%) SAP SD
10 12 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
11 10 (0.18%) Finacle
11 10 (0.18%) SAP CRM
11 10 (0.18%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
12 9 (0.16%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.16%) Teamcenter
13 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
13 8 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 1,086 (19.46%) Azure
2 807 (14.46%) AWS
3 451 (8.08%) Microsoft 365
4 431 (7.72%) Power Platform
5 317 (5.68%) GCP
6 268 (4.80%) Azure DevOps
7 232 (4.16%) Entra ID
8 199 (3.57%) GitHub
9 155 (2.78%) SaaS
10 125 (2.24%) Serverless
11 99 (1.77%) GitHub Actions
12 92 (1.65%) Power Automate
13 81 (1.45%) Dynamics 365
14 75 (1.34%) Amazon S3
15 71 (1.27%) AWS Lambda
16 69 (1.24%) OneDrive
17 68 (1.22%) PowerApps
18 66 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
19 64 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
19 64 (1.15%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 235 (4.21%) DNS
2 197 (3.53%) Firewall
3 154 (2.76%) VPN
4 142 (2.54%) DHCP
5 138 (2.47%) TCP/IP
6 130 (2.33%) WAN
7 107 (1.92%) LAN
8 99 (1.77%) Network Security
9 82 (1.47%) Wi-Fi
10 81 (1.45%) SAN
11 58 (1.04%) VLAN
12 56 (1.00%) Wireless
13 55 (0.99%) BGP
14 42 (0.75%) SD-WAN
15 37 (0.66%) OSPF
16 35 (0.63%) MPLS
16 35 (0.63%) VoIP
17 33 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
18 31 (0.56%) VXLAN
19 25 (0.45%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 329 (5.90%) Power BI
2 218 (3.91%) SQL Server
3 172 (3.08%) Relational Database
4 169 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
5 151 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
6 110 (1.97%) MongoDB
7 102 (1.83%) Metadata
8 96 (1.72%) NoSQL
9 88 (1.58%) Tableau
10 84 (1.51%) Data Lake
11 61 (1.09%) Big Data
12 57 (1.02%) MySQL
13 55 (0.99%) Oracle Database
14 49 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
15 42 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 35 (0.63%) Db2
17 30 (0.54%) Pentaho
18 28 (0.50%) Power Query
19 27 (0.48%) DynamoDB
20 26 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 488 (8.74%) JIRA
2 351 (6.29%) Git
3 185 (3.31%) Jenkins
4 134 (2.40%) GitLab
5 75 (1.34%) Selenium
6 40 (0.72%) Cypress.io
7 39 (0.70%) Postman
8 37 (0.66%) Gradle
8 37 (0.66%) Maven
9 30 (0.54%) Cucumber
10 29 (0.52%) REST Assured
11 25 (0.45%) Bitbucket
11 25 (0.45%) JUnit
12 21 (0.38%) JMeter
13 18 (0.32%) WebDriver
14 17 (0.30%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 16 (0.29%) Mockito
15 16 (0.29%) Oracle Forms
16 14 (0.25%) Visual Studio
16 14 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,925 (52.41%) Social Skills
2 2,322 (41.61%) Analytical Skills
3 1,304 (23.36%) Finance
4 575 (10.30%) Public Sector
5 435 (7.79%) Banking
6 243 (4.35%) Organisational Skills
7 205 (3.67%) Retail
8 199 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
9 185 (3.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 181 (3.24%) Manufacturing
11 145 (2.60%) Influencing Skills
12 144 (2.58%) Legal
13 123 (2.20%) Marketing
14 122 (2.19%) Front Office
15 119 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
16 109 (1.95%) Telecoms
17 91 (1.63%) Investment Banking
18 84 (1.51%) Back Office
19 67 (1.20%) Aerospace
20 60 (1.08%) Law
Job Titles
1 731 (13.10%) Analyst
2 681 (12.20%) Developer
3 508 (9.10%) Senior
4 422 (7.56%) Lead
5 358 (6.41%) Architect
6 252 (4.52%) Consultant
7 250 (4.48%) Business Analyst
8 227 (4.07%) Data Engineer
9 210 (3.76%) IT Support
10 201 (3.60%) Support Engineer
11 169 (3.03%) Project Manager
12 142 (2.54%) IT Engineer
13 141 (2.53%) Administrator
14 131 (2.35%) Java Developer
15 117 (2.10%) Data Analyst
16 107 (1.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 107 (1.92%) Solutions Architect
17 101 (1.81%) Network Engineer
18 97 (1.74%) Software Engineer
19 93 (1.67%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 356 (6.38%) REST
2 167 (2.99%) RESTful
3 161 (2.88%) .NET
4 150 (2.69%) React
5 148 (2.65%) SOAP
6 147 (2.63%) Spring
7 146 (2.62%) Kafka
8 127 (2.28%) JSON
9 118 (2.11%) CSS
10 117 (2.10%) XML
11 111 (1.99%) HTML
12 110 (1.97%) Middleware
13 108 (1.94%) Spring Boot
14 94 (1.68%) Node.js
15 91 (1.63%) Web Services
16 85 (1.52%) AngularJS
17 77 (1.38%) OAuth
18 69 (1.24%) PySpark
19 57 (1.02%) Playwright
20 49 (0.88%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 302 (5.41%) Onboarding
2 267 (4.78%) Product Ownership
3 246 (4.41%) Cloud Native
4 206 (3.69%) Data Centre
4 206 (3.69%) Self-Motivation
5 176 (3.15%) Enterprise Software
6 164 (2.94%) Management Information System
7 163 (2.92%) Distributed Systems
8 156 (2.80%) Analytical Mindset
9 132 (2.37%) Data Structures
9 132 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
10 126 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
11 97 (1.74%) Virtual Team
12 84 (1.51%) Driving Licence
13 69 (1.24%) AI Agents
14 68 (1.22%) Algorithms
15 66 (1.18%) CMDB
16 59 (1.06%) PKI
17 55 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 55 (0.99%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 752 (13.47%) Windows
2 301 (5.39%) Linux
3 183 (3.28%) Windows Server
4 127 (2.28%) Windows 10
5 108 (1.94%) Unix
6 93 (1.67%) Android
7 89 (1.59%) Apple iOS
8 85 (1.52%) Mac OS
9 45 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.27%) VMS
13 12 (0.22%) zOS
14 8 (0.14%) Solaris
15 6 (0.11%) CentOS
15 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
16 5 (0.090%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,528 (27.38%) Agile
2 1,145 (20.52%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,070 (19.17%) Stakeholder Management
4 935 (16.75%) CI/CD
5 872 (15.62%) DevOps
6 714 (12.79%) AI
7 602 (10.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 601 (10.77%) Decision-Making
9 585 (10.48%) Analytics
10 570 (10.21%) Migration
11 542 (9.71%) Customer Service
12 515 (9.23%) ITIL
13 447 (8.01%) Validation
14 433 (7.76%) Test Automation
15 431 (7.72%) Business Intelligence
16 428 (7.67%) Data Modelling
17 406 (7.27%) Scrum
18 355 (6.36%) Roadmaps
19 351 (6.29%) Project Management
20 345 (6.18%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 988 (17.70%) SQL
2 904 (16.20%) Python
3 440 (7.88%) Java
4 321 (5.75%) JavaScript
5 314 (5.63%) PowerShell
6 184 (3.30%) C#
7 151 (2.71%) Bash
8 123 (2.20%) TypeScript
9 96 (1.72%) PL/SQL
10 75 (1.34%) C++
11 49 (0.88%) T-SQL
12 43 (0.77%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.70%) Go
14 37 (0.66%) Scala
15 35 (0.63%) Bicep
15 35 (0.63%) C
16 34 (0.61%) Kotlin
17 32 (0.57%) Apex Code
18 31 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 31 (0.56%) R
Qualifications
1 1,206 (21.61%) Security Cleared
2 831 (14.89%) SC Cleared
3 648 (11.61%) Degree
4 211 (3.78%) DV Cleared
5 194 (3.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 164 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
7 154 (2.76%) BPSS Clearance
8 135 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
9 81 (1.45%) CISSP
10 80 (1.43%) Azure Certification
11 77 (1.38%) CCNA
12 75 (1.34%) A+ Certification
13 73 (1.31%) PMP
14 69 (1.24%) PMI Certification
15 55 (0.99%) Master's Degree
15 55 (0.99%) Network+ Certification
16 53 (0.95%) MCSE
17 51 (0.91%) CISM
18 42 (0.75%) AWS Certification
19 41 (0.73%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 393 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 347 (6.22%) QA
3 145 (2.60%) Accessibility
4 139 (2.49%) GDPR
5 122 (2.19%) SLA
6 94 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 89 (1.59%) PMO
8 72 (1.29%) NIST
9 65 (1.16%) GRC
10 35 (0.63%) WCAG
11 29 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 27 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
13 24 (0.43%) GxP
14 16 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 16 (0.29%) NCSC
14 16 (0.29%) PCI DSS
15 15 (0.27%) COBIT
15 15 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
16 14 (0.25%) ISO 20022
17 12 (0.22%) HIPAA
System Software
1 444 (7.96%) Active Directory
2 360 (6.45%) Docker
3 153 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 62 (1.11%) Hyper-V
5 54 (0.97%) VMware ESXi
6 52 (0.93%) VMware NSX
7 51 (0.91%) vSphere
8 33 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
9 30 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
10 23 (0.41%) vCloud
11 21 (0.38%) Firmware
12 20 (0.36%) IAG
13 11 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
14 8 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.11%) NFS
16 5 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
17 4 (0.072%) Squid
18 3 (0.054%) BitLocker
18 3 (0.054%) Microsoft Virtual Server
19 2 (0.036%) UAG
Systems Management
1 404 (7.24%) Kubernetes
2 328 (5.88%) Terraform
3 169 (3.03%) Ansible
4 140 (2.51%) Microsoft Intune
5 97 (1.74%) SCCM
6 90 (1.61%) Grafana
7 78 (1.40%) Prometheus
8 56 (1.00%) vCenter Server
9 34 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
10 33 (0.59%) SCOM
11 28 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 24 (0.43%) Control-M
13 21 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
13 21 (0.38%) WSUS
14 17 (0.30%) Argo
15 13 (0.23%) NetBackup
16 12 (0.22%) Puppet
17 11 (0.20%) Kibana
17 11 (0.20%) Progress Chef
18 10 (0.18%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,189 (21.30%) Microsoft
2 403 (7.22%) Oracle
3 357 (6.40%) ServiceNow
4 349 (6.25%) SAP
5 216 (3.87%) VMware
6 176 (3.15%) Google
7 148 (2.65%) Salesforce
8 139 (2.49%) Cisco
9 120 (2.15%) Splunk
10 117 (2.10%) Databricks
11 79 (1.42%) Workday
12 69 (1.24%) Adobe
12 69 (1.24%) Dynatrace
13 63 (1.13%) Dell
14 60 (1.08%) Apple
15 58 (1.04%) MuleSoft
16 54 (0.97%) Citrix
16 54 (0.97%) CyberArk
17 52 (0.93%) IBM
18 48 (0.86%) Red Hat