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 6 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,292 4,985 4,736
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.11% 17.00% 10.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.16% 18.70% 12.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,181 3,115 2,896
10th Percentile £263 £250 £233
25th Percentile £382 £399 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -0.05% -4.71%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £707 £700 £727
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £474 £488
% change year-on-year -2.95% -2.77% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 248 410
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.42 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.98 £13.83
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.94 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.36% +34.93% -64.88%
75th Percentile £51.27 £41.25 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.13 £21.39 £15.00
% change year-on-year -15.24% +42.60% -63.05%

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 40,206 26,654 37,276
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.43% 90.92% 86.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,270 17,186 24,018
10th Percentile £320 £307 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £482 £500
% change year-on-year +1.09% -3.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,411 1,084 2,441
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.64 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.88 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.95
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -19.33% +0.42%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.69 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.50 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.70 £37.50
% change year-on-year +58.84% -26.13% +7.14%

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 6 May 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 6 May 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 6 May 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 -4 4,531 £488 -2.50% 3,379
UK excluding London -5 2,816 £460 -2.95% 2,645
London -11 1,922 £505 -3.81% 1,087
Work from Home -2 1,501 £475 -5.00% 1,309
North of England -5 766 £450 -8.07% 665
South East -6 654 £488 -2.50% 806
Midlands -5 520 £450 +0.45% 456
North West -5 367 £410 -16.33% 367
West Midlands -5 353 £475 +3.26% 280
Yorkshire -5 351 £469 -1.26% 216
South West 0 323 £500 - 297
Scotland -1 264 £425 -5.56% 127
East of England -4 214 £450 - 273
East Midlands 0 166 £443 +11.04% 177
Wales -3 70 £400 +20.78% 61
North East -4 55 £425 -11.23% 88
Northern Ireland -2 26 £430 +18.62% 29
Channel Islands -4 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
1 212 (4.01%) Confluence
2 144 (2.72%) SharePoint
3 88 (1.66%) Apache Spark
3 88 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 62 (1.17%) Apache
5 49 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 47 (0.89%) SAS
7 33 (0.62%) CMS
8 20 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
9 13 (0.25%) nginx
10 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
11 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
12 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
12 7 (0.13%) Camunda
12 7 (0.13%) CICS
12 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 4 (0.076%) Jupyter
Applications
1 300 (5.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (4.27%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (2.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 80 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
5 77 (1.46%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 11 (0.21%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) CATIA
11 7 (0.13%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
11 7 (0.13%) Trello
12 6 (0.11%) Revit
13 5 (0.094%) Acrobat
13 5 (0.094%) Maya
14 4 (0.076%) CPLEX
14 4 (0.076%) InDesign
14 4 (0.076%) InVision
Business Applications
1 119 (2.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 19 (0.36%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.26%) NEC Housing
9 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 12 (0.23%) Teamcenter
10 12 (0.23%) Workday HCM
11 10 (0.19%) iTrent
11 10 (0.19%) NetSuite
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
12 9 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
12 9 (0.17%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.17%) Shopify
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
13 8 (0.15%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,080 (20.41%) Azure
2 816 (15.42%) AWS
3 400 (7.56%) Power Platform
4 350 (6.61%) Microsoft 365
5 349 (6.59%) GCP
6 240 (4.54%) Azure DevOps
7 217 (4.10%) GitHub
8 159 (3.00%) Entra ID
9 151 (2.85%) Serverless
10 126 (2.38%) SaaS
11 111 (2.10%) GitHub Actions
12 97 (1.83%) Amazon S3
13 90 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
14 77 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
15 74 (1.40%) OpenShift
16 73 (1.38%) Snowflake
17 72 (1.36%) Power Automate
18 71 (1.34%) Azure Data Factory
19 59 (1.11%) PowerApps
20 52 (0.98%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 189 (3.57%) DNS
2 180 (3.40%) Firewall
3 120 (2.27%) TCP/IP
4 106 (2.00%) VPN
5 104 (1.97%) WAN
6 99 (1.87%) DHCP
7 97 (1.83%) Network Security
8 83 (1.57%) SAN
9 78 (1.47%) LAN
10 64 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
11 50 (0.94%) BGP
12 47 (0.89%) VLAN
13 43 (0.81%) OSPF
14 38 (0.72%) SD-WAN
15 31 (0.59%) VoIP
16 27 (0.51%) Wireless
17 26 (0.49%) Internet
17 26 (0.49%) VXLAN
18 25 (0.47%) MPLS
19 21 (0.40%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 316 (5.97%) Power BI
2 204 (3.85%) SQL Server
3 162 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.55%) Relational Database
5 133 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
6 116 (2.19%) Metadata
7 88 (1.66%) MongoDB
7 88 (1.66%) Tableau
8 85 (1.61%) NoSQL
9 84 (1.59%) Big Data
10 78 (1.47%) Data Lake
11 62 (1.17%) MySQL
11 62 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
12 55 (1.04%) Oracle Database
13 51 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 43 (0.81%) Hadoop
15 34 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
16 32 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
17 31 (0.59%) Power Query
18 29 (0.55%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 498 (9.41%) JIRA
2 307 (5.80%) Git
3 200 (3.78%) Jenkins
4 137 (2.59%) GitLab
5 66 (1.25%) Selenium
6 39 (0.74%) Postman
7 31 (0.59%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.49%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.47%) REST Assured
10 24 (0.45%) JUnit
11 23 (0.43%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.40%) JMeter
13 18 (0.34%) Maven
13 18 (0.34%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 16 (0.30%) Mockito
15 16 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
16 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.26%) Zephyr
18 12 (0.23%) Artifactory
General
1 2,754 (52.04%) Social Skills
2 2,034 (38.44%) Analytical Skills
3 1,229 (23.22%) Finance
4 503 (9.50%) Public Sector
5 409 (7.73%) Banking
6 228 (4.31%) Organisational Skills
7 183 (3.46%) Retail
8 178 (3.36%) Documentation Skills
9 158 (2.99%) Legal
10 129 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
11 121 (2.29%) Influencing Skills
12 116 (2.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 94 (1.78%) Front Office
14 93 (1.76%) Telecoms
15 91 (1.72%) Manufacturing
16 87 (1.64%) Marketing
17 75 (1.42%) Investment Banking
18 60 (1.13%) Back Office
18 60 (1.13%) Law
19 58 (1.10%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 739 (13.96%) Analyst
2 652 (12.32%) Developer
3 460 (8.69%) Senior
4 364 (6.88%) Architect
5 335 (6.33%) Lead
6 299 (5.65%) Business Analyst
7 263 (4.97%) Consultant
8 235 (4.44%) Data Engineer
9 200 (3.78%) Project Manager
10 141 (2.66%) Support Engineer
11 128 (2.42%) IT Support
12 117 (2.21%) Data Analyst
13 113 (2.14%) Java Developer
14 100 (1.89%) Administrator
15 98 (1.85%) IT Engineer
15 98 (1.85%) Solutions Architect
16 95 (1.80%) Software Engineer
17 92 (1.74%) Network Engineer
18 91 (1.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 78 (1.47%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 295 (5.57%) REST
2 155 (2.93%) Kafka
3 144 (2.72%) .NET
4 140 (2.65%) RESTful
5 137 (2.59%) SOAP
6 135 (2.55%) Spring
7 130 (2.46%) React
8 117 (2.21%) Node.js
9 116 (2.19%) CSS
10 109 (2.06%) HTML
11 105 (1.98%) AngularJS
12 103 (1.95%) Spring Boot
13 100 (1.89%) LDAP
14 96 (1.81%) JSON
15 92 (1.74%) Middleware
16 89 (1.68%) XML
17 72 (1.36%) PySpark
18 69 (1.30%) OAuth
19 55 (1.04%) Oracle Fusion
20 51 (0.96%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 275 (5.20%) Product Ownership
2 229 (4.33%) Onboarding
3 211 (3.99%) Cloud Native
4 203 (3.84%) Data Centre
5 155 (2.93%) Self-Motivation
6 154 (2.91%) Analytical Mindset
7 150 (2.83%) Management Information System
8 113 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
8 113 (2.14%) Distributed Systems
9 110 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
10 108 (2.04%) Virtual Team
11 107 (2.02%) Data Structures
12 100 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
13 73 (1.38%) Driving Licence
14 67 (1.27%) Security Posture
15 62 (1.17%) Mobile App
16 59 (1.11%) Algorithms
17 56 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
18 54 (1.02%) AI Agents
19 49 (0.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 600 (11.34%) Windows
2 313 (5.91%) Linux
3 110 (2.08%) Windows 10
4 104 (1.97%) Windows Server
5 99 (1.87%) Unix
6 94 (1.78%) Android
7 86 (1.63%) Apple iOS
8 71 (1.34%) Mac OS
9 53 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.40%) Ubuntu
10 21 (0.40%) VMS
11 15 (0.28%) CentOS
12 12 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.17%) zOS
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
15 7 (0.13%) Debian
16 4 (0.076%) Rocky
16 4 (0.076%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.076%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,456 (27.51%) Agile
2 895 (16.91%) CI/CD
3 803 (15.17%) DevOps
4 800 (15.12%) Continuous Improvement
5 766 (14.47%) Stakeholder Management
6 582 (11.00%) Analytics
6 582 (11.00%) Decision-Making
7 581 (10.98%) Migration
8 575 (10.87%) AI
9 456 (8.62%) Project Management
10 455 (8.60%) Data Modelling
11 445 (8.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 428 (8.09%) Validation
13 427 (8.07%) Customer Service
14 423 (7.99%) Business Intelligence
15 402 (7.60%) ITIL
16 395 (7.46%) Test Automation
17 373 (7.05%) Change Management
18 366 (6.92%) Scrum
19 331 (6.25%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 968 (18.29%) Python
2 914 (17.27%) SQL
3 435 (8.22%) Java
4 329 (6.22%) PowerShell
5 278 (5.25%) JavaScript
6 202 (3.82%) C#
7 171 (3.23%) TypeScript
8 126 (2.38%) Bash
9 85 (1.61%) PL/SQL
10 70 (1.32%) C++
11 59 (1.11%) Shell Script
12 52 (0.98%) Go
13 47 (0.89%) R
14 38 (0.72%) Bicep
14 38 (0.72%) C
14 38 (0.72%) T-SQL
15 36 (0.68%) Perl
16 35 (0.66%) Apex Code
17 33 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 31 (0.59%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,147 (21.67%) Security Cleared
2 791 (14.95%) SC Cleared
3 638 (12.06%) Degree
4 213 (4.02%) Computer Science Degree
5 194 (3.67%) DV Cleared
6 171 (3.23%) BPSS Clearance
7 138 (2.61%) Cisco Certification
8 126 (2.38%) Microsoft Certification
9 97 (1.83%) CISSP
10 88 (1.66%) PMP
11 84 (1.59%) PMI Certification
12 76 (1.44%) CCNA
13 75 (1.42%) Master's Degree
14 70 (1.32%) A+ Certification
15 65 (1.23%) Azure Certification
15 65 (1.23%) CISM
15 65 (1.23%) Network+ Certification
16 60 (1.13%) MCSE
17 47 (0.89%) CCNP
18 36 (0.68%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 351 (6.63%) Data Quality
2 315 (5.95%) QA
3 160 (3.02%) GDPR
4 109 (2.06%) Accessibility
5 101 (1.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 93 (1.76%) PMO
7 85 (1.61%) NIST
8 73 (1.38%) SLA
9 48 (0.91%) GRC
10 36 (0.68%) WCAG
11 31 (0.59%) PCI DSS
12 29 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
13 28 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.38%) ISO 20022
15 19 (0.36%) PSD2
16 18 (0.34%) IFRS
17 14 (0.26%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.26%) HL7
17 14 (0.26%) ISO 8583
17 14 (0.26%) NCSC
System Software
1 385 (7.28%) Active Directory
2 349 (6.59%) Docker
3 117 (2.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.91%) vSphere
5 39 (0.74%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.62%) Hyper-V
7 22 (0.42%) Firmware
8 21 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
9 18 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
10 12 (0.23%) vCloud
11 11 (0.21%) RACF
11 11 (0.21%) Squid
12 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
13 9 (0.17%) ACF2
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.11%) IAG
16 4 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.076%) NFS
16 4 (0.076%) Snort
Systems Management
1 433 (8.18%) Kubernetes
2 296 (5.59%) Terraform
3 184 (3.48%) Ansible
4 123 (2.32%) Microsoft Intune
5 121 (2.29%) Grafana
6 90 (1.70%) Prometheus
7 84 (1.59%) SCCM
8 43 (0.81%) vCenter Server
9 40 (0.76%) FortiGate
10 39 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.51%) Argo
11 27 (0.51%) Kibana
12 25 (0.47%) Puppet
13 23 (0.43%) Control-M
14 21 (0.40%) Nessus
15 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
16 14 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 14 (0.26%) WSUS
17 12 (0.23%) CA Endevor
17 12 (0.23%) vRealize
Vendors
1 970 (18.33%) Microsoft
2 359 (6.78%) Oracle
3 297 (5.61%) SAP
4 233 (4.40%) ServiceNow
5 196 (3.70%) VMware
6 160 (3.02%) Databricks
7 159 (3.00%) Google
8 133 (2.51%) Cisco
9 124 (2.34%) Splunk
10 117 (2.21%) Salesforce
11 87 (1.64%) Dell
12 77 (1.46%) CyberArk
13 71 (1.34%) BeyondTrust
14 65 (1.23%) Red Hat
15 61 (1.15%) Workday
16 60 (1.13%) Adobe
17 55 (1.04%) Citrix
18 51 (0.96%) Palo Alto
19 50 (0.94%) HP
20 49 (0.93%) IBM