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 13 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -9 +4 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,566 5,420 4,721
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.56% 16.58% 11.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.41% 18.34% 12.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,206 3,338 2,850
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £380 £375 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.01% -1.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £619
90th Percentile £700 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £456 £463 £475
% change year-on-year -1.41% -2.63% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 449 304 388
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.50
25th Percentile £15.00 £15.50 £14.12
Median hourly rate £20.44 £21.39 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -4.44% +31.79% -68.79%
75th Percentile £40.00 £41.00 £32.50
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.78 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.00 £18.85 £15.94
% change year-on-year +0.80% +18.29% -69.65%

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 44,845 29,559 36,499
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.12% 90.45% 85.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,888 18,632 23,279
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.81% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,665 1,513 2,446
10th Percentile £14.90 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.61 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -4.70%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +82.48% -35.31% +0.51%

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 13 July 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 13 July 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 13 July 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 4,769 £495 -1.00% 4,241
UK excluding London -5 2,995 £456 -1.41% 3,102
London -12 2,013 £512 +2.40% 1,830
Work from Home -8 1,552 £488 -2.50% 1,548
South East -5 751 £475 -3.06% 856
North of England -10 745 £447 -5.89% 744
Midlands -8 543 £464 +9.18% 444
West Midlands -8 393 £466 +3.54% 262
North West -11 373 £447 -6.88% 393
South West -3 341 £500 - 525
Yorkshire -7 328 £450 -5.26% 238
Scotland -3 290 £434 -6.22% 127
East of England -2 264 £473 +0.53% 277
East Midlands 0 148 £450 +22.62% 181
Wales -4 70 £468 +24.67% 53
North East -16 50 £366 -18.61% 123
Northern Ireland -9 23 £380 -10.59% 160
Channel Islands -3 1 - - 2

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
1 235 (4.22%) Confluence
2 171 (3.07%) SharePoint
3 89 (1.60%) Microsoft Exchange
4 83 (1.49%) Apache Spark
5 51 (0.92%) Apache
5 51 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 40 (0.72%) SAS
7 35 (0.63%) CMS
8 31 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
9 18 (0.32%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.20%) ArcGIS
11 11 (0.20%) CICS
11 11 (0.20%) nginx
12 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.14%) Camunda
15 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
16 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 292 (5.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 243 (4.37%) Microsoft Office
3 106 (1.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 87 (1.56%) MS Visio
5 65 (1.17%) Microsoft Project
6 35 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.45%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 25 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.23%) AutoCAD
8 13 (0.23%) Sketch
9 11 (0.20%) Revit
10 10 (0.18%) CATIA
11 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
11 8 (0.14%) Trello
12 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
12 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
12 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
13 5 (0.090%) Maya
14 3 (0.054%) Navisworks
14 3 (0.054%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 138 (2.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
4 22 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
5 19 (0.34%) Aladdin
5 19 (0.34%) NetSuite
6 18 (0.32%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.31%) SAP GRC
8 13 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
8 13 (0.23%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.22%) iTrent
9 12 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
9 12 (0.22%) SAP HCM
9 12 (0.22%) Teamcenter
10 11 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
10 11 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 10 (0.18%) Finacle
12 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
Cloud Services
1 1,094 (19.66%) Azure
2 826 (14.84%) AWS
3 422 (7.58%) Power Platform
4 391 (7.02%) Microsoft 365
5 320 (5.75%) GCP
6 261 (4.69%) Azure DevOps
7 201 (3.61%) Entra ID
8 194 (3.49%) GitHub
9 148 (2.66%) SaaS
10 136 (2.44%) Serverless
11 93 (1.67%) GitHub Actions
12 91 (1.63%) Amazon S3
13 81 (1.46%) AWS Lambda
14 80 (1.44%) Power Automate
15 79 (1.42%) Dynamics 365
16 70 (1.26%) PowerApps
17 67 (1.20%) OpenShift
18 66 (1.19%) Azure Data Factory
19 63 (1.13%) Snowflake
20 52 (0.93%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 230 (4.13%) DNS
2 191 (3.43%) Firewall
3 134 (2.41%) TCP/IP
3 134 (2.41%) VPN
4 126 (2.26%) DHCP
5 111 (1.99%) WAN
6 101 (1.81%) Network Security
7 92 (1.65%) LAN
8 87 (1.56%) SAN
9 80 (1.44%) Wi-Fi
10 55 (0.99%) VLAN
11 54 (0.97%) BGP
12 48 (0.86%) Wireless
13 44 (0.79%) OSPF
14 40 (0.72%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.65%) VoIP
16 30 (0.54%) MPLS
17 28 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
18 27 (0.49%) VXLAN
19 25 (0.45%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 329 (5.91%) Power BI
2 239 (4.29%) SQL Server
3 170 (3.05%) Relational Database
4 165 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
5 159 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
6 117 (2.10%) MongoDB
7 104 (1.87%) Metadata
8 93 (1.67%) Data Lake
9 92 (1.65%) NoSQL
10 89 (1.60%) Tableau
11 78 (1.40%) Big Data
12 63 (1.13%) MySQL
13 59 (1.06%) Oracle Database
14 51 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 50 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
16 37 (0.66%) Hadoop
17 34 (0.61%) Db2
18 31 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
19 28 (0.50%) Delta Lake
20 27 (0.49%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 526 (9.45%) JIRA
2 324 (5.82%) Git
3 197 (3.54%) Jenkins
4 132 (2.37%) GitLab
5 71 (1.28%) Selenium
6 45 (0.81%) Postman
7 37 (0.66%) REST Assured
8 34 (0.61%) Cypress.io
9 28 (0.50%) Cucumber
9 28 (0.50%) JUnit
10 24 (0.43%) Bitbucket
10 24 (0.43%) Gradle
10 24 (0.43%) Maven
11 22 (0.40%) Mockito
12 19 (0.34%) WebDriver
13 17 (0.31%) JMeter
14 16 (0.29%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
15 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
16 13 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,887 (51.87%) Social Skills
2 2,245 (40.33%) Analytical Skills
3 1,311 (23.55%) Finance
4 553 (9.94%) Public Sector
5 427 (7.67%) Banking
6 221 (3.97%) Documentation Skills
7 218 (3.92%) Organisational Skills
8 194 (3.49%) Retail
9 158 (2.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 152 (2.73%) Legal
11 141 (2.53%) Manufacturing
12 133 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
13 116 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
14 111 (1.99%) Front Office
15 103 (1.85%) Marketing
15 103 (1.85%) Telecoms
16 91 (1.63%) Investment Banking
17 80 (1.44%) Back Office
18 64 (1.15%) Aerospace
19 58 (1.04%) Law
Job Titles
1 746 (13.40%) Analyst
2 680 (12.22%) Developer
3 501 (9.00%) Senior
4 394 (7.08%) Lead
5 383 (6.88%) Architect
6 283 (5.08%) Business Analyst
7 260 (4.67%) Consultant
8 240 (4.31%) Data Engineer
9 185 (3.32%) Support Engineer
10 184 (3.31%) IT Support
11 180 (3.23%) Project Manager
12 136 (2.44%) Java Developer
13 126 (2.26%) Administrator
14 124 (2.23%) IT Engineer
15 116 (2.08%) Data Analyst
16 109 (1.96%) Solutions Architect
17 105 (1.89%) Software Engineer
18 93 (1.67%) Network Engineer
19 92 (1.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 91 (1.63%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 334 (6.00%) REST
2 168 (3.02%) .NET
3 162 (2.91%) Kafka
4 161 (2.89%) Spring
5 160 (2.87%) RESTful
6 142 (2.55%) React
7 138 (2.48%) SOAP
8 121 (2.17%) CSS
8 121 (2.17%) Spring Boot
9 120 (2.16%) JSON
10 113 (2.03%) HTML
11 112 (2.01%) Middleware
12 106 (1.90%) XML
13 93 (1.67%) Node.js
14 90 (1.62%) AngularJS
15 79 (1.42%) PySpark
16 70 (1.26%) Web Services
17 62 (1.11%) OAuth
18 56 (1.01%) LDAP
19 50 (0.90%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 269 (4.83%) Product Ownership
2 266 (4.78%) Onboarding
3 244 (4.38%) Cloud Native
4 210 (3.77%) Data Centre
5 203 (3.65%) Self-Motivation
6 160 (2.87%) Analytical Mindset
7 152 (2.73%) Distributed Systems
8 149 (2.68%) Management Information System
9 137 (2.46%) Enterprise Software
10 132 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
11 130 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
12 129 (2.32%) Data Structures
13 120 (2.16%) Virtual Team
14 81 (1.46%) Driving Licence
15 70 (1.26%) Algorithms
16 61 (1.10%) CMDB
17 60 (1.08%) AI Agents
18 58 (1.04%) Derivative
19 55 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 52 (0.93%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 696 (12.50%) Windows
2 300 (5.39%) Linux
3 142 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 116 (2.08%) Unix
4 116 (2.08%) Windows 10
5 90 (1.62%) Mac OS
6 86 (1.55%) Android
7 81 (1.46%) Apple iOS
8 48 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 20 (0.36%) Ubuntu
10 14 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
11 12 (0.22%) VMS
12 11 (0.20%) zOS
13 9 (0.16%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.14%) Solaris
15 7 (0.13%) CentOS
15 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.090%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.072%) AIX
17 4 (0.072%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,485 (26.68%) Agile
2 1,015 (18.24%) Continuous Improvement
3 952 (17.10%) Stakeholder Management
4 923 (16.58%) CI/CD
5 863 (15.50%) DevOps
6 665 (11.95%) AI
7 620 (11.14%) Decision-Making
8 595 (10.69%) Analytics
9 591 (10.62%) Migration
10 560 (10.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 519 (9.32%) ITIL
12 508 (9.13%) Customer Service
13 455 (8.17%) Validation
14 450 (8.08%) Data Modelling
15 432 (7.76%) Business Intelligence
16 409 (7.35%) Test Automation
17 395 (7.10%) Scrum
18 384 (6.90%) Project Management
19 364 (6.54%) Change Management
20 362 (6.50%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,000 (17.97%) SQL
2 943 (16.94%) Python
3 457 (8.21%) Java
4 300 (5.39%) PowerShell
5 291 (5.23%) JavaScript
6 198 (3.56%) C#
7 135 (2.43%) Bash
8 126 (2.26%) TypeScript
9 94 (1.69%) PL/SQL
10 73 (1.31%) C++
11 51 (0.92%) Shell Script
11 51 (0.92%) T-SQL
12 48 (0.86%) Go
13 44 (0.79%) C
14 38 (0.68%) Apex Code
14 38 (0.68%) R
15 37 (0.66%) Bicep
16 35 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 30 (0.54%) Kotlin
18 29 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,223 (21.97%) Security Cleared
2 832 (14.95%) SC Cleared
3 677 (12.16%) Degree
4 215 (3.86%) DV Cleared
5 199 (3.58%) Computer Science Degree
6 163 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
7 150 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
8 141 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
9 92 (1.65%) CISSP
10 82 (1.47%) CCNA
10 82 (1.47%) PMP
11 81 (1.46%) A+ Certification
12 76 (1.37%) PMI Certification
13 73 (1.31%) Azure Certification
13 73 (1.31%) Master's Degree
14 61 (1.10%) Network+ Certification
15 58 (1.04%) CISM
16 55 (0.99%) MCSE
17 48 (0.86%) AWS Certification
18 44 (0.79%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 394 (7.08%) Data Quality
2 328 (5.89%) QA
3 149 (2.68%) GDPR
4 134 (2.41%) Accessibility
5 118 (2.12%) SLA
6 91 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 82 (1.47%) PMO
8 75 (1.35%) NIST
9 57 (1.02%) GRC
10 30 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
11 27 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 22 (0.40%) WCAG
13 21 (0.38%) GxP
13 21 (0.38%) PCI DSS
14 18 (0.32%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.27%) NCSC
16 13 (0.23%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 13 (0.23%) COBIT
16 13 (0.23%) GMP
16 13 (0.23%) HIPAA
System Software
1 410 (7.37%) Active Directory
2 370 (6.65%) Docker
3 130 (2.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (0.88%) vSphere
5 48 (0.86%) VMware NSX
6 43 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
7 40 (0.72%) Hyper-V
8 29 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (0.36%) Firmware
10 20 (0.36%) vCloud
11 15 (0.27%) IAG
12 11 (0.20%) Squid
13 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.13%) NFS
15 4 (0.072%) ACF2
15 4 (0.072%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.072%) RACF
15 4 (0.072%) Snort
15 4 (0.072%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 447 (8.03%) Kubernetes
2 324 (5.82%) Terraform
3 175 (3.14%) Ansible
4 131 (2.35%) Microsoft Intune
5 115 (2.07%) Grafana
6 102 (1.83%) Prometheus
7 86 (1.55%) SCCM
8 53 (0.95%) vCenter Server
9 44 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
10 37 (0.66%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.54%) Control-M
12 23 (0.41%) SCOM
13 22 (0.40%) Nessus
14 20 (0.36%) Argo
15 19 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
16 18 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
17 17 (0.31%) WSUS
18 16 (0.29%) Kibana
19 12 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
19 12 (0.22%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,078 (19.37%) Microsoft
2 414 (7.44%) Oracle
3 343 (6.16%) SAP
4 340 (6.11%) ServiceNow
5 199 (3.58%) VMware
6 171 (3.07%) Google
7 135 (2.43%) Salesforce
8 134 (2.41%) Splunk
9 130 (2.34%) Databricks
10 123 (2.21%) Cisco
11 80 (1.44%) Workday
12 74 (1.33%) Dell
13 64 (1.15%) Dynatrace
14 63 (1.13%) Adobe
15 60 (1.08%) Red Hat
16 57 (1.02%) MuleSoft
17 54 (0.97%) Citrix
18 53 (0.95%) Apple
19 50 (0.90%) CyberArk
19 50 (0.90%) IBM