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

6 months to
22 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 5,811 5,025 4,600
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.65% 15.47% 12.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.63% 17.10% 14.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,246 3,024 2,686
10th Percentile £250 £231 £259
25th Percentile £380 £375 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -0.60%
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 565 312 232
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.66 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.00
Median hourly rate £18.75 £19.63 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -4.46% +20.92% -70.37%
75th Percentile £37.50 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £71.85 £63.40 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £18.73 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.90% +15.40% -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 46,027 29,389 32,594
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.35% 90.49% 85.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,906 18,237 19,938
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
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 £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £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 1,808 1,420
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.24 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.69
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.09% -1.10%
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.08 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.61% -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 22 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 22 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 22 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 5,006 £500 +2.04% 9,460
UK excluding London -3 3,118 £450 - 6,265
London -11 2,154 £525 +4.90% 4,160
Work from Home -5 1,554 £500 - 4,286
South East -2 795 £478 +6.22% 1,555
North of England -9 726 £447 -5.84% 1,397
Midlands -5 607 £450 +2.39% 1,086
West Midlands -8 433 £450 -5.26% 648
North West -11 358 £450 -4.66% 764
South West -5 336 £500 +11.11% 744
Scotland -2 312 £450 - 454
Yorkshire -6 298 £450 -7.69% 446
East of England 0 280 £438 -12.94% 642
East Midlands +2 171 £475 +26.67% 437
North East -11 72 £375 -16.67% 204
Wales -7 63 £475 +22.58% 146
Northern Ireland -4 25 £419 -11.84% 348
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 (4.16%) SharePoint
2 241 (4.15%) Confluence
3 107 (1.84%) Microsoft Exchange
4 58 (1.00%) Apache Spark
5 45 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
6 42 (0.72%) Apache
7 32 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
8 30 (0.52%) SAS
9 28 (0.48%) CMS
10 18 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.28%) 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
1 339 (5.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 276 (4.75%) Microsoft Office
3 131 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (1.14%) Microsoft Project
5 61 (1.05%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.46%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 27 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.33%) Chatbot
8 17 (0.29%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.26%) Revit
9 15 (0.26%) Sketch
10 11 (0.19%) Trello
11 9 (0.15%) Navisworks
12 8 (0.14%) Windchill
13 7 (0.12%) CATIA
14 6 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
14 6 (0.10%) CPLEX
14 6 (0.10%) Final Cut Pro
15 4 (0.069%) Adobe XD
16 3 (0.052%) DaVinci Resolve
Business Applications
1 139 (2.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 40 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
4 31 (0.53%) NetSuite
5 29 (0.50%) SAP GRC
5 29 (0.50%) Workday HCM
6 26 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
7 15 (0.26%) iTrent
7 15 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
8 13 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.22%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.21%) Teamcenter
10 11 (0.19%) Aladdin
10 11 (0.19%) Finacle
11 10 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.17%) SAP CRM
11 10 (0.17%) SAP ERP
11 10 (0.17%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
12 9 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,127 (19.39%) Azure
2 811 (13.96%) AWS
3 526 (9.05%) Microsoft 365
4 467 (8.04%) Power Platform
5 333 (5.73%) GCP
6 281 (4.84%) Azure DevOps
7 248 (4.27%) Entra ID
8 212 (3.65%) GitHub
9 162 (2.79%) SaaS
10 128 (2.20%) Serverless
11 116 (2.00%) Power Automate
12 98 (1.69%) Microsoft Copilot
13 94 (1.62%) Dynamics 365
14 91 (1.57%) GitHub Actions
15 86 (1.48%) PowerApps
16 78 (1.34%) OneDrive
17 73 (1.26%) Snowflake
18 65 (1.12%) Amazon S3
19 63 (1.08%) AWS Lambda
20 61 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 221 (3.80%) DNS
2 199 (3.42%) Firewall
3 166 (2.86%) VPN
4 134 (2.31%) TCP/IP
5 133 (2.29%) DHCP
6 123 (2.12%) WAN
7 116 (2.00%) Network Security
8 100 (1.72%) LAN
9 84 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.14%) SAN
11 64 (1.10%) 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 31 (0.53%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.50%) HTTP
18 27 (0.46%) SSL
19 25 (0.43%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 353 (6.07%) Power BI
2 213 (3.67%) SQL Server
3 196 (3.37%) Relational Database
4 173 (2.98%) Data Warehouse
5 158 (2.72%) PostgreSQL
6 109 (1.88%) Metadata
7 103 (1.77%) MongoDB
8 86 (1.48%) NoSQL
9 83 (1.43%) Tableau
10 80 (1.38%) Data Lake
11 66 (1.14%) Oracle Database
12 63 (1.08%) MySQL
13 45 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
14 44 (0.76%) Big Data
15 35 (0.60%) Db2
16 34 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 32 (0.55%) Power Query
18 28 (0.48%) BigQuery
19 27 (0.46%) Delta Lake
19 27 (0.46%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 502 (8.64%) JIRA
2 394 (6.78%) Git
3 204 (3.51%) Jenkins
4 144 (2.48%) GitLab
5 80 (1.38%) Selenium
6 48 (0.83%) Maven
7 44 (0.76%) Gradle
8 42 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 41 (0.71%) Cypress.io
10 40 (0.69%) JUnit
10 40 (0.69%) Postman
11 32 (0.55%) Bitbucket
12 28 (0.48%) REST Assured
13 27 (0.46%) SonarQube
14 23 (0.40%) Mockito
15 22 (0.38%) JMeter
16 20 (0.34%) Oracle Forms
17 17 (0.29%) Gatling
17 17 (0.29%) WebDriver
17 17 (0.29%) Zephyr
General
1 3,133 (53.91%) Social Skills
2 2,473 (42.56%) Analytical Skills
3 1,314 (22.61%) Finance
4 607 (10.45%) Public Sector
5 460 (7.92%) Banking
6 293 (5.04%) Organisational Skills
7 237 (4.08%) Manufacturing
8 200 (3.44%) Documentation Skills
9 183 (3.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 182 (3.13%) Retail
11 178 (3.06%) Influencing Skills
12 150 (2.58%) Legal
13 127 (2.19%) Front Office
14 121 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
14 121 (2.08%) Telecoms
15 120 (2.07%) Marketing
16 94 (1.62%) Investment Banking
17 85 (1.46%) Back Office
18 71 (1.22%) Law
19 70 (1.20%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 752 (12.94%) Analyst
2 736 (12.67%) Developer
3 548 (9.43%) Senior
4 418 (7.19%) Lead
5 333 (5.73%) Architect
6 261 (4.49%) Consultant
7 251 (4.32%) Business Analyst
8 238 (4.10%) IT Support
9 222 (3.82%) Support Engineer
10 204 (3.51%) Data Engineer
11 164 (2.82%) Administrator
12 157 (2.70%) Project Manager
13 153 (2.63%) IT Engineer
14 136 (2.34%) Java Developer
15 126 (2.17%) Data Analyst
16 119 (2.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 111 (1.91%) Network Engineer
18 108 (1.86%) IT Support Engineer
19 107 (1.84%) DevOps Engineer
20 106 (1.82%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 412 (7.09%) REST
2 337 (5.80%) Terraform
3 188 (3.24%) .NET
4 187 (3.22%) RESTful
5 174 (2.99%) SOAP
6 161 (2.77%) React
7 153 (2.63%) Kafka
8 147 (2.53%) Spring
9 140 (2.41%) HTML
10 139 (2.39%) XML
11 138 (2.37%) JSON
12 135 (2.32%) CSS
13 125 (2.15%) Web Services
14 124 (2.13%) Spring Boot
15 117 (2.01%) Middleware
16 99 (1.70%) Node.js
17 94 (1.62%) AngularJS
18 87 (1.50%) OAuth
19 67 (1.15%) PySpark
20 57 (0.98%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 336 (5.78%) Onboarding
2 277 (4.77%) Product Ownership
3 276 (4.75%) Cloud Native
4 219 (3.77%) Self-Motivation
5 211 (3.63%) Enterprise Software
6 204 (3.51%) Management Information System
7 182 (3.13%) Data Centre
8 159 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
9 146 (2.51%) Data Structures
10 132 (2.27%) Analytical Mindset
11 126 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
12 125 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
13 92 (1.58%) Driving Licence
13 92 (1.58%) Virtual Team
14 82 (1.41%) AI Agents
15 75 (1.29%) CMDB
16 61 (1.05%) Mobile App
16 61 (1.05%) PKI
17 58 (1.00%) Algorithms
18 57 (0.98%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 786 (13.53%) Windows
2 335 (5.76%) Linux
3 220 (3.79%) Windows Server
4 143 (2.46%) Windows 10
5 109 (1.88%) Unix
6 95 (1.63%) Apple iOS
7 91 (1.57%) Android
8 88 (1.51%) 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 (0.15%) CentOS
15 9 (0.15%) 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 1,604 (27.60%) Agile
2 1,363 (23.46%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,286 (22.13%) Continuous Improvement
4 984 (16.93%) CI/CD
5 883 (15.20%) DevOps
6 765 (13.16%) AI
7 656 (11.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 643 (11.07%) Decision-Making
9 592 (10.19%) Migration
10 586 (10.08%) Customer Service
11 585 (10.07%) Analytics
12 527 (9.07%) ITIL
13 474 (8.16%) Validation
14 473 (8.14%) Test Automation
15 425 (7.31%) Business Intelligence
15 425 (7.31%) Data Modelling
16 422 (7.26%) Scrum
17 386 (6.64%) ITSM
18 376 (6.47%) Technical Leadership
19 371 (6.38%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,013 (17.43%) SQL
2 899 (15.47%) Python
3 452 (7.78%) Java
4 356 (6.13%) JavaScript
5 334 (5.75%) PowerShell
6 220 (3.79%) C#
7 155 (2.67%) Bash
8 147 (2.53%) TypeScript
9 101 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 68 (1.17%) C++
11 50 (0.86%) T-SQL
12 45 (0.77%) Shell Script
13 44 (0.76%) Go
14 36 (0.62%) Scala
15 32 (0.55%) Bicep
15 32 (0.55%) Kotlin
16 29 (0.50%) C
16 29 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 29 (0.50%) R
17 28 (0.48%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,270 (21.86%) Security Cleared
2 913 (15.71%) SC Cleared
3 660 (11.36%) Degree
4 224 (3.85%) DV Cleared
5 200 (3.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 187 (3.22%) BPSS Clearance
7 156 (2.68%) Microsoft Certification
8 110 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
9 83 (1.43%) Azure Certification
9 83 (1.43%) CISSP
10 76 (1.31%) PMI Certification
11 73 (1.26%) PMP
12 69 (1.19%) A+ Certification
13 58 (1.00%) CCNA
14 55 (0.95%) Master's Degree
15 53 (0.91%) AWS Certification
16 50 (0.86%) DBS Check
17 46 (0.79%) CISM
18 44 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
18 44 (0.76%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 437 (7.52%) Data Quality
2 389 (6.69%) QA
3 151 (2.60%) Accessibility
4 133 (2.29%) SLA
5 125 (2.15%) GDPR
6 102 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 92 (1.58%) PMO
8 73 (1.26%) NIST
9 72 (1.24%) GRC
10 39 (0.67%) WCAG
11 26 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
12 23 (0.40%) GxP
13 21 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
15 19 (0.33%) NCSC
16 17 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 17 (0.29%) PCI DSS
17 14 (0.24%) ISO 20022
18 13 (0.22%) COBIT
18 13 (0.22%) GMP
System Software
1 457 (7.86%) Active Directory
2 365 (6.28%) Docker
3 173 (2.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.22%) Hyper-V
5 70 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
6 55 (0.95%) vSphere
7 53 (0.91%) VMware NSX
8 37 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
9 33 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
10 26 (0.45%) IAG
10 26 (0.45%) vCloud
11 16 (0.28%) Firmware
12 11 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.10%) NFS
15 5 (0.086%) RACF
15 5 (0.086%) Time Sharing Option
16 4 (0.069%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 4 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.069%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 407 (7.00%) Kubernetes
2 173 (2.98%) Ansible
3 136 (2.34%) Microsoft Intune
4 98 (1.69%) SCCM
5 96 (1.65%) Grafana
6 77 (1.33%) Prometheus
7 51 (0.88%) vCenter Server
8 42 (0.72%) SCOM
9 30 (0.52%) 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 (0.15%) Argo
17 9 (0.15%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,361 (23.42%) Microsoft
2 423 (7.28%) Oracle
3 366 (6.30%) ServiceNow
4 365 (6.28%) SAP
5 223 (3.84%) VMware
6 180 (3.10%) Google
7 150 (2.58%) Salesforce
8 143 (2.46%) Cisco
9 133 (2.29%) Databricks
10 115 (1.98%) Splunk
11 80 (1.38%) Workday
12 69 (1.19%) Dynatrace
13 67 (1.15%) Adobe
14 65 (1.12%) IBM
15 61 (1.05%) Apple
16 53 (0.91%) CyberArk
17 52 (0.89%) MuleSoft
18 47 (0.81%) Red Hat
19 44 (0.76%) Dell
20 43 (0.74%) Palo Alto