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

6 months to
9 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 5,476 4,699 4,818
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.97% 15.79% 10.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.04% 17.49% 12.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,388 2,935 2,985
10th Percentile £288 £256 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% - -6.54%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £701 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 314 196 414
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.00 £11.07
25th Percentile £15.20 £17.11 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.00 £26.31 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.98% +46.17% -48.57%
75th Percentile £41.50 £41.88 £43.75
90th Percentile £70.18 £69.38 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.28 £22.14 £16.23
% change year-on-year -21.97% +36.41% -39.16%

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 36,399 26,862 38,734
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.19% 90.27% 86.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,113 17,118 25,178
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 £612 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £491 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -1.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,154 913 2,346
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.52 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £29.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -10.77% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.52 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £76.25 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £31.76 £31.50
% change year-on-year -18.86% +0.83% -10.00%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 4,684 £492 -1.60% 3,939
UK excluding London -4 2,837 £475 - 3,461
London -5 2,041 £513 -2.38% 924
Work from Home 0 1,586 £480 -4.00% 1,793
North of England -3 760 £450 -8.40% 738
South East -2 669 £492 -1.60% 1,067
Midlands -1 529 £450 +3.45% 539
West Midlands 0 386 £475 +5.20% 294
North West -3 377 £425 -10.53% 382
Yorkshire -4 333 £475 -5.00% 272
South West -2 312 £543 +3.33% 418
Scotland 0 267 £447 -0.67% 185
East of England -3 242 £452 +0.44% 474
East Midlands -3 144 £402 +7.20% 237
Wales -2 66 £400 +3.23% 122
North East -1 59 £438 -3.63% 96
Northern Ireland -2 31 £450 +36.36% 27
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
1 221 (4.04%) Confluence
2 165 (3.01%) SharePoint
3 108 (1.97%) Microsoft Exchange
4 92 (1.68%) Apache Spark
5 68 (1.24%) Apache
6 65 (1.19%) SAS
7 48 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
8 36 (0.66%) CMS
9 21 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 17 (0.31%) Skype for Business
11 15 (0.27%) nginx
12 12 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 11 (0.20%) JBoss
14 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
15 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.13%) Camunda
15 7 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
17 5 (0.091%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 317 (5.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 228 (4.16%) Microsoft Office
3 124 (2.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 80 (1.46%) MS Visio
5 76 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
6 23 (0.42%) Chatbot
7 20 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.13%) Trello
11 5 (0.091%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.091%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.073%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.073%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.073%) InDesign
12 4 (0.073%) InVision
12 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.055%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.055%) Notion
Business Applications
1 92 (1.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.27%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
7 14 (0.26%) SAP ERP
8 13 (0.24%) NetSuite
8 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
9 12 (0.22%) 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 1,180 (21.55%) Azure
2 864 (15.78%) AWS
3 395 (7.21%) GCP
4 377 (6.88%) Power Platform
5 337 (6.15%) Microsoft 365
6 269 (4.91%) GitHub
7 252 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
8 198 (3.62%) Serverless
9 163 (2.98%) Entra ID
10 142 (2.59%) GitHub Actions
11 133 (2.43%) SaaS
12 108 (1.97%) Amazon S3
13 102 (1.86%) AWS Lambda
14 94 (1.72%) OpenShift
14 94 (1.72%) Snowflake
15 79 (1.44%) Azure Data Factory
16 77 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
17 68 (1.24%) PaaS
18 67 (1.22%) Power Automate
19 63 (1.15%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 209 (3.82%) Firewall
2 192 (3.51%) DNS
3 130 (2.37%) TCP/IP
4 111 (2.03%) Network Security
5 110 (2.01%) DHCP
5 110 (2.01%) VPN
6 107 (1.95%) WAN
7 84 (1.53%) LAN
8 60 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
9 50 (0.91%) BGP
10 49 (0.89%) VLAN
11 42 (0.77%) SAN
12 36 (0.66%) OSPF
13 34 (0.62%) VoIP
14 27 (0.49%) SD-WAN
15 26 (0.47%) Wireless
16 24 (0.44%) MPLS
17 22 (0.40%) Internet
17 22 (0.40%) SSH
18 21 (0.38%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (5.62%) Power BI
2 184 (3.36%) SQL Server
3 172 (3.14%) PostgreSQL
4 167 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
5 161 (2.94%) Relational Database
6 112 (2.05%) MongoDB
7 110 (2.01%) NoSQL
8 88 (1.61%) MySQL
9 87 (1.59%) Metadata
10 84 (1.53%) Tableau
11 82 (1.50%) Big Data
12 73 (1.33%) Data Lake
12 73 (1.33%) Oracle Database
13 55 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
14 50 (0.91%) Hadoop
15 49 (0.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 45 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
17 39 (0.71%) DynamoDB
18 36 (0.66%) Pentaho
19 34 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 505 (9.22%) JIRA
2 386 (7.05%) Git
3 279 (5.09%) Jenkins
4 179 (3.27%) GitLab
5 87 (1.59%) Selenium
6 64 (1.17%) JUnit
7 44 (0.80%) Postman
8 43 (0.79%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.69%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.49%) Maven
10 27 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 25 (0.46%) Sonatype Nexus
12 24 (0.44%) Cypress.io
13 23 (0.42%) JMeter
14 21 (0.38%) Mockito
14 21 (0.38%) SonarQube
15 16 (0.29%) IntelliJ
16 15 (0.27%) CircleCI
16 15 (0.27%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.26%) WebDriver
General
1 2,981 (54.44%) Social Skills
2 1,990 (36.34%) Analytical Skills
3 1,218 (22.24%) Finance
4 554 (10.12%) Public Sector
5 438 (8.00%) Banking
6 210 (3.83%) Organisational Skills
7 173 (3.16%) Legal
8 172 (3.14%) Documentation Skills
9 148 (2.70%) Retail
10 143 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
11 134 (2.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 131 (2.39%) Presentation Skills
13 102 (1.86%) Telecoms
14 99 (1.81%) Front Office
15 91 (1.66%) Marketing
16 87 (1.59%) Investment Banking
17 77 (1.41%) Manufacturing
18 65 (1.19%) Military
19 55 (1.00%) Financial Institution
20 45 (0.82%) Law
Job Titles
1 775 (14.15%) Developer
2 753 (13.75%) Analyst
3 486 (8.88%) Senior
4 367 (6.70%) Architect
5 346 (6.32%) Lead
6 316 (5.77%) Business Analyst
7 297 (5.42%) Consultant
8 214 (3.91%) Project Manager
9 213 (3.89%) Data Engineer
10 149 (2.72%) Support Engineer
11 131 (2.39%) Java Developer
12 126 (2.30%) IT Support
13 106 (1.94%) Senior Developer
14 105 (1.92%) Data Analyst
15 102 (1.86%) Software Engineer
16 94 (1.72%) Solutions Architect
17 93 (1.70%) Administrator
18 90 (1.64%) Python Developer
19 83 (1.52%) Network Engineer
20 79 (1.44%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 372 (6.79%) REST
2 188 (3.43%) Kafka
3 183 (3.34%) RESTful
3 183 (3.34%) SOAP
4 170 (3.10%) .NET
5 167 (3.05%) Node.js
6 164 (2.99%) Spring
7 160 (2.92%) React
8 132 (2.41%) HTML
9 130 (2.37%) CSS
10 124 (2.26%) AngularJS
11 120 (2.19%) JSON
12 110 (2.01%) Spring Boot
13 101 (1.84%) XML
14 93 (1.70%) LDAP
15 88 (1.61%) Middleware
16 80 (1.46%) OAuth
17 70 (1.28%) Oracle Fusion
18 69 (1.26%) Web Services
19 66 (1.21%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 267 (4.88%) Product Ownership
2 241 (4.40%) Cloud Native
3 201 (3.67%) Onboarding
4 171 (3.12%) Management Information System
5 148 (2.70%) Data Centre
6 137 (2.50%) Analytical Mindset
7 123 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
8 119 (2.17%) Data Structures
9 111 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
10 100 (1.83%) Virtual Team
11 98 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
12 92 (1.68%) Algorithms
13 91 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
14 87 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
15 80 (1.46%) Security Posture
16 70 (1.28%) Hybrid Cloud
17 69 (1.26%) CMDB
18 66 (1.21%) Mobile App
19 65 (1.19%) Driving Licence
20 55 (1.00%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 571 (10.43%) Windows
2 344 (6.28%) Linux
3 113 (2.06%) Unix
4 110 (2.01%) Windows Server
5 102 (1.86%) Windows 10
6 70 (1.28%) Android
7 67 (1.22%) Apple iOS
8 65 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 55 (1.00%) Mac OS
10 21 (0.38%) VMS
11 15 (0.27%) Ubuntu
12 14 (0.26%) CentOS
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
16 5 (0.091%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
16 5 (0.091%) zOS
17 4 (0.073%) Debian
17 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,600 (29.22%) Agile
2 1,032 (18.85%) CI/CD
3 888 (16.22%) DevOps
4 833 (15.21%) Stakeholder Management
5 795 (14.52%) Continuous Improvement
6 621 (11.34%) Analytics
7 562 (10.26%) Migration
8 556 (10.15%) Decision-Making
9 505 (9.22%) AI
10 475 (8.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 473 (8.64%) Project Management
12 459 (8.38%) Data Modelling
13 450 (8.22%) Test Automation
14 422 (7.71%) Scrum
15 413 (7.54%) Business Intelligence
16 410 (7.49%) Validation
17 385 (7.03%) Containerisation
18 382 (6.98%) Customer Service
18 382 (6.98%) ITIL
19 376 (6.87%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 1,057 (19.30%) Python
2 942 (17.20%) SQL
3 503 (9.19%) Java
4 364 (6.65%) PowerShell
5 322 (5.88%) JavaScript
6 226 (4.13%) C#
7 221 (4.04%) TypeScript
8 154 (2.81%) Bash
9 81 (1.48%) Shell Script
10 74 (1.35%) PL/SQL
11 59 (1.08%) C++
11 59 (1.08%) Go
12 47 (0.86%) Perl
13 44 (0.80%) Scala
14 41 (0.75%) Bicep
15 38 (0.69%) T-SQL
16 37 (0.68%) Ruby
17 35 (0.64%) VBA
18 32 (0.58%) C
18 32 (0.58%) R
Qualifications
1 1,178 (21.51%) Security Cleared
2 828 (15.12%) SC Cleared
3 711 (12.98%) Degree
4 245 (4.47%) Computer Science Degree
5 211 (3.85%) DV Cleared
6 160 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
7 111 (2.03%) Master's Degree
8 108 (1.97%) Cisco Certification
9 104 (1.90%) Microsoft Certification
10 103 (1.88%) PMI Certification
11 102 (1.86%) PMP
12 96 (1.75%) CISSP
13 75 (1.37%) Azure Certification
14 61 (1.11%) CISM
15 56 (1.02%) CCNP
16 55 (1.00%) AWS Certification
17 47 (0.86%) CCNA
18 39 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
19 38 (0.69%) A+ Certification
20 30 (0.55%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (6.56%) QA
2 329 (6.01%) Data Quality
3 158 (2.89%) GDPR
4 120 (2.19%) Accessibility
5 86 (1.57%) NIST
5 86 (1.57%) PMO
6 83 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 65 (1.19%) SLA
8 37 (0.68%) PCI DSS
9 34 (0.62%) GRC
10 33 (0.60%) WCAG
11 27 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
12 23 (0.42%) PSD2
13 22 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 18 (0.33%) ISO 20022
15 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
16 16 (0.29%) EU AI Act
17 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.24%) HL7
18 13 (0.24%) IFRS
System Software
1 490 (8.95%) Docker
2 380 (6.94%) Active Directory
3 111 (2.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.80%) vSphere
5 34 (0.62%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.60%) Hyper-V
7 24 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.37%) Firmware
9 19 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.16%) ACF2
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.15%) Squid
13 8 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 7 (0.13%) vCloud
15 5 (0.091%) HDFS
16 4 (0.073%) Snort
17 3 (0.055%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.055%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 535 (9.77%) Kubernetes
2 321 (5.86%) Terraform
3 203 (3.71%) Ansible
4 134 (2.45%) Grafana
5 118 (2.15%) Microsoft Intune
6 108 (1.97%) Prometheus
7 95 (1.73%) SCCM
8 47 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
9 36 (0.66%) FortiGate
9 36 (0.66%) Puppet
10 35 (0.64%) Kibana
11 31 (0.57%) Argo
11 31 (0.57%) Nessus
12 29 (0.53%) vCenter Server
13 25 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 24 (0.44%) Control-M
15 23 (0.42%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.27%) vRealize
17 14 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
18 12 (0.22%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,007 (18.39%) Microsoft
2 360 (6.57%) Oracle
3 258 (4.71%) SAP
4 241 (4.40%) ServiceNow
5 200 (3.65%) VMware
6 181 (3.31%) Google
7 159 (2.90%) Databricks
8 148 (2.70%) Splunk
9 135 (2.47%) Cisco
10 113 (2.06%) Salesforce
11 86 (1.57%) Red Hat
12 74 (1.35%) CyberArk
13 64 (1.17%) BeyondTrust
14 57 (1.04%) Talend
15 56 (1.02%) IBM
15 56 (1.02%) Palo Alto
15 56 (1.02%) Workday
16 55 (1.00%) Citrix
16 55 (1.00%) Dell
17 51 (0.93%) Informatica