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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -8 +4 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,570 5,172 4,516
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.38% 15.80% 11.63%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.28% 17.46% 13.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,137 3,112 2,720
10th Percentile £250 £246 £260
25th Percentile £375 £375 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.02% -2.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £608
90th Percentile £700 £700 £711
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £459 £475
% change year-on-year -1.91% -3.42% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 490 317 273
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.77 £11.75
25th Percentile £15.00 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.00 £20.26 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -6.20% +24.80% -70.49%
75th Percentile £38.63 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £70.75 £64.25 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.75 £18.82 £16.23
% change year-on-year -0.37% +15.96% -71.17%

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 45,365 29,616 33,160
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.47% 85.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,789 18,444 20,998
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £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 2,884 1,758 1,700
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £13.87
25th Percentile £18.00 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +65.23% -38.57% -3.67%
75th Percentile £67.99 £47.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £42.50
% change year-on-year +94.26% -46.75% +6.25%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -7 4,833 £500 +1.01% 4,152
UK excluding London -4 2,949 £450 -1.91% 3,739
London -12 2,113 £525 +5.00% 1,131
Work from Home -5 1,527 £500 - 1,396
South East -5 784 £480 +1.05% 1,017
North of England -11 706 £443 -6.74% 839
Midlands -6 531 £450 +2.27% 660
West Midlands -9 377 £450 -2.70% 400
North West -12 351 £445 -6.32% 413
South West -2 334 £495 +10.00% 601
Yorkshire -11 293 £450 -5.26% 304
Scotland -6 276 £450 - 182
East of England +1 257 £450 -10.00% 384
East Midlands 0 151 £463 +23.33% 261
North East -16 65 £375 -16.67% 136
Wales -4 63 £475 +26.67% 99
Northern Ireland -6 26 £388 -21.24% 86
Channel Islands -2 2 £525 +23.53% 4

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
1 239 (4.29%) SharePoint
2 226 (4.06%) Confluence
3 115 (2.06%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (1.06%) Apache Spark
5 43 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
6 37 (0.66%) Apache
7 35 (0.63%) Oracle Workflow
8 29 (0.52%) CMS
8 29 (0.52%) SAS
9 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.20%) Jupyter
10 11 (0.20%) WebLogic
11 10 (0.18%) CICS
12 8 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.13%) Appian
13 7 (0.13%) IIS
13 7 (0.13%) Mule
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 325 (5.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 265 (4.76%) Microsoft Office
3 126 (2.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 76 (1.36%) MS Visio
5 63 (1.13%) Microsoft Project
6 33 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.47%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 19 (0.34%) Chatbot
9 17 (0.31%) 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
15 6 (0.11%) Windchill
16 5 (0.090%) Navisworks
17 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
17 4 (0.072%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 138 (2.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
3 39 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
4 27 (0.48%) NetSuite
4 27 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.48%) SAP GRC
5 25 (0.45%) Workday HCM
6 14 (0.25%) iTrent
6 14 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
6 14 (0.25%) SAP SD
7 13 (0.23%) Aladdin
7 13 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
8 11 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
9 10 (0.18%) Finacle
9 10 (0.18%) SAP CRM
9 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
10 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
10 9 (0.16%) SAP HCM
11 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 1,123 (20.16%) Azure
2 814 (14.61%) AWS
3 488 (8.76%) Microsoft 365
4 434 (7.79%) Power Platform
5 329 (5.91%) GCP
6 281 (5.04%) Azure DevOps
7 233 (4.18%) Entra ID
8 195 (3.50%) GitHub
9 150 (2.69%) SaaS
10 126 (2.26%) Serverless
11 100 (1.80%) Power Automate
12 94 (1.69%) GitHub Actions
13 85 (1.53%) Dynamics 365
14 76 (1.36%) OneDrive
15 75 (1.35%) Microsoft Copilot
16 73 (1.31%) PowerApps
17 68 (1.22%) Amazon S3
18 67 (1.20%) AWS Lambda
19 65 (1.17%) Snowflake
20 64 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 224 (4.02%) DNS
2 189 (3.39%) Firewall
3 164 (2.94%) VPN
4 133 (2.39%) DHCP
5 130 (2.33%) TCP/IP
5 130 (2.33%) WAN
6 105 (1.89%) LAN
7 101 (1.81%) Network Security
8 79 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
9 75 (1.35%) SAN
10 57 (1.02%) Wireless
11 53 (0.95%) VLAN
12 51 (0.92%) BGP
13 41 (0.74%) SD-WAN
14 38 (0.68%) MPLS
15 37 (0.66%) VoIP
16 33 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.52%) OSPF
18 27 (0.48%) HTTP
19 24 (0.43%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 331 (5.94%) Power BI
2 216 (3.88%) SQL Server
3 183 (3.29%) Relational Database
4 171 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
5 151 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
6 106 (1.90%) Metadata
7 102 (1.83%) MongoDB
8 98 (1.76%) NoSQL
9 88 (1.58%) Tableau
10 81 (1.45%) Data Lake
11 57 (1.02%) Big Data
12 55 (0.99%) Oracle Database
13 53 (0.95%) MySQL
14 47 (0.84%) Oracle Reports
15 36 (0.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 35 (0.63%) Db2
17 28 (0.50%) DynamoDB
18 26 (0.47%) Power Query
19 25 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
19 25 (0.45%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 485 (8.71%) JIRA
2 353 (6.34%) Git
3 175 (3.14%) Jenkins
4 139 (2.50%) GitLab
5 76 (1.36%) Selenium
6 41 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 39 (0.70%) Postman
8 38 (0.68%) Gradle
9 36 (0.65%) Maven
10 30 (0.54%) Bitbucket
11 29 (0.52%) REST Assured
12 27 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 25 (0.45%) JUnit
14 21 (0.38%) JMeter
15 18 (0.32%) Oracle Forms
16 17 (0.31%) WebDriver
17 15 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 15 (0.27%) Mockito
17 15 (0.27%) SonarQube
17 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 2,960 (53.14%) Social Skills
2 2,357 (42.32%) Analytical Skills
3 1,298 (23.30%) Finance
4 576 (10.34%) Public Sector
5 446 (8.01%) Banking
6 253 (4.54%) Organisational Skills
7 202 (3.63%) Documentation Skills
8 200 (3.59%) Retail
9 188 (3.38%) Manufacturing
10 174 (3.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 152 (2.73%) Influencing Skills
12 145 (2.60%) Legal
13 126 (2.26%) Front Office
14 117 (2.10%) Telecoms
15 116 (2.08%) Marketing
16 111 (1.99%) Presentation Skills
17 92 (1.65%) Investment Banking
18 78 (1.40%) Back Office
19 66 (1.18%) Aerospace
20 65 (1.17%) Law
Job Titles
1 728 (13.07%) Analyst
2 698 (12.53%) Developer
3 510 (9.16%) Senior
4 422 (7.58%) Lead
5 345 (6.19%) Architect
6 264 (4.74%) Consultant
7 243 (4.36%) Business Analyst
8 221 (3.97%) Support Engineer
9 218 (3.91%) IT Support
10 209 (3.75%) Data Engineer
11 159 (2.85%) Project Manager
12 153 (2.75%) IT Engineer
13 138 (2.48%) Administrator
14 126 (2.26%) Java Developer
15 118 (2.12%) Data Analyst
16 111 (1.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 106 (1.90%) Solutions Architect
18 102 (1.83%) DevOps Engineer
19 101 (1.81%) IT Support Engineer
20 96 (1.72%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 370 (6.64%) REST
2 327 (5.87%) Terraform
3 181 (3.25%) RESTful
4 177 (3.18%) .NET
5 154 (2.76%) SOAP
6 153 (2.75%) React
7 141 (2.53%) Kafka
8 140 (2.51%) Spring
9 130 (2.33%) JSON
10 127 (2.28%) XML
11 122 (2.19%) CSS
12 121 (2.17%) HTML
13 111 (1.99%) Middleware
14 108 (1.94%) Spring Boot
15 103 (1.85%) Web Services
16 93 (1.67%) Node.js
17 86 (1.54%) AngularJS
18 84 (1.51%) OAuth
19 73 (1.31%) PySpark
20 56 (1.01%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 312 (5.60%) Onboarding
2 277 (4.97%) Product Ownership
3 260 (4.67%) Cloud Native
4 214 (3.84%) Self-Motivation
5 195 (3.50%) Data Centre
6 189 (3.39%) Enterprise Software
7 171 (3.07%) Management Information System
8 170 (3.05%) Distributed Systems
9 151 (2.71%) Analytical Mindset
10 136 (2.44%) Data Structures
11 133 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
12 124 (2.23%) Data Protection Act
13 92 (1.65%) Virtual Team
14 86 (1.54%) Driving Licence
15 74 (1.33%) AI Agents
16 71 (1.27%) CMDB
17 65 (1.17%) Algorithms
18 61 (1.10%) Mobile App
19 56 (1.01%) Derivative
20 55 (0.99%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 755 (13.55%) Windows
2 309 (5.55%) Linux
3 197 (3.54%) Windows Server
4 145 (2.60%) Windows 10
5 104 (1.87%) Unix
6 92 (1.65%) Android
6 92 (1.65%) Apple iOS
7 85 (1.53%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 21 (0.38%) Ubuntu
10 19 (0.34%) VMS
11 16 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 11 (0.20%) zOS
13 8 (0.14%) CentOS
13 8 (0.14%) Solaris
13 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
13 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
14 6 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
14 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.072%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,541 (27.67%) Agile
2 1,181 (21.20%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,143 (20.52%) Stakeholder Management
4 943 (16.93%) CI/CD
5 880 (15.80%) DevOps
6 724 (13.00%) AI
7 611 (10.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 592 (10.63%) Decision-Making
9 577 (10.36%) Analytics
10 570 (10.23%) Migration
11 548 (9.84%) Customer Service
12 529 (9.50%) ITIL
13 459 (8.24%) Validation
14 438 (7.86%) Test Automation
15 419 (7.52%) Data Modelling
16 415 (7.45%) Business Intelligence
17 412 (7.40%) Scrum
18 365 (6.55%) ITSM
19 353 (6.34%) Roadmaps
20 347 (6.23%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 981 (17.61%) SQL
2 904 (16.23%) Python
3 434 (7.79%) Java
4 323 (5.80%) PowerShell
5 322 (5.78%) JavaScript
6 198 (3.55%) C#
7 155 (2.78%) Bash
8 121 (2.17%) TypeScript
9 91 (1.63%) PL/SQL
10 74 (1.33%) C++
11 49 (0.88%) T-SQL
12 38 (0.68%) Bicep
12 38 (0.68%) Scala
13 37 (0.66%) Go
13 37 (0.66%) Shell Script
14 34 (0.61%) Kotlin
15 33 (0.59%) Apex Code
15 33 (0.59%) C
16 32 (0.57%) R
17 25 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,189 (21.35%) Security Cleared
2 827 (14.85%) SC Cleared
3 640 (11.49%) Degree
4 209 (3.75%) DV Cleared
5 200 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 160 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
7 158 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
8 118 (2.12%) Cisco Certification
9 80 (1.44%) A+ Certification
10 79 (1.42%) Azure Certification
11 75 (1.35%) PMP
12 74 (1.33%) CISSP
13 71 (1.27%) CCNA
13 71 (1.27%) PMI Certification
14 59 (1.06%) Master's Degree
15 56 (1.01%) Network+ Certification
16 50 (0.90%) MCSE
17 45 (0.81%) CISM
18 43 (0.77%) AWS Certification
19 42 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 402 (7.22%) Data Quality
2 368 (6.61%) QA
3 145 (2.60%) Accessibility
4 134 (2.41%) GDPR
5 128 (2.30%) SLA
6 98 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 92 (1.65%) PMO
8 74 (1.33%) NIST
9 73 (1.31%) GRC
10 35 (0.63%) WCAG
11 26 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.43%) GxP
13 17 (0.31%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 17 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
14 16 (0.29%) NCSC
15 15 (0.27%) COBIT
15 15 (0.27%) PCI DSS
16 14 (0.25%) ISO 20022
17 12 (0.22%) HIPAA
System Software
1 454 (8.15%) Active Directory
2 357 (6.41%) Docker
3 160 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 64 (1.15%) Hyper-V
5 60 (1.08%) VMware ESXi
6 52 (0.93%) VMware NSX
7 51 (0.92%) vSphere
8 38 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
9 28 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
10 26 (0.47%) vCloud
11 23 (0.41%) IAG
12 18 (0.32%) Firmware
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
14 8 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.11%) NFS
16 4 (0.072%) Microsoft App-V
17 3 (0.054%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.054%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 3 (0.054%) Squid
18 2 (0.036%) UAG
Systems Management
1 390 (7.00%) Kubernetes
2 168 (3.02%) Ansible
3 135 (2.42%) Microsoft Intune
4 100 (1.80%) SCCM
5 91 (1.63%) Grafana
6 71 (1.27%) Prometheus
7 57 (1.02%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.66%) SCOM
9 31 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.39%) Control-M
10 22 (0.39%) WSUS
11 20 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
12 17 (0.31%) FortiGate
13 14 (0.25%) Argo
14 12 (0.22%) Kibana
14 12 (0.22%) NetBackup
15 10 (0.18%) Istio
15 10 (0.18%) Puppet
16 9 (0.16%) Progress Chef
16 9 (0.16%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,244 (22.33%) Microsoft
2 405 (7.27%) Oracle
3 365 (6.55%) ServiceNow
4 349 (6.27%) SAP
5 213 (3.82%) VMware
6 171 (3.07%) Google
7 155 (2.78%) Salesforce
8 130 (2.33%) Cisco
9 123 (2.21%) Databricks
10 106 (1.90%) Splunk
11 82 (1.47%) Workday
12 71 (1.27%) Dynatrace
13 68 (1.22%) Adobe
14 66 (1.18%) Apple
15 57 (1.02%) Dell
16 54 (0.97%) CyberArk
16 54 (0.97%) MuleSoft
17 53 (0.95%) IBM
18 43 (0.77%) Citrix
18 43 (0.77%) Red Hat