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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,778 5,108 4,584
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.65% 15.51% 11.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.60% 17.13% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,247 3,066 2,682
10th Percentile £250 £230 £250
25th Percentile £375 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.96%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £711 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 546 310 232
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.78 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.00
Median hourly rate £18.63 £19.63 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.10% +20.92% -69.76%
75th Percentile £37.50 £34.87 £30.00
90th Percentile £70.25 £63.88 £61.60
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 45,839 29,816 32,769
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.46% 90.52% 85.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,855 18,531 20,147
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
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 £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,070 1,799 1,460
10th Percentile £13.84 £14.25 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.36 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.68 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +83.63% -47.37% +5.81%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 4,979 £500 +2.46% 13,144
UK excluding London -3 3,092 £450 - 7,912
London -11 2,155 £525 +5.00% 6,655
Work from Home -5 1,558 £500 - 5,081
South East -3 789 £480 +6.67% 1,799
North of England -11 724 £445 -6.32% 1,793
Midlands -6 590 £450 +2.33% 1,299
West Midlands -8 425 £450 -4.05% 818
North West -9 361 £445 -6.32% 1,016
South West -4 343 £498 +10.56% 923
Scotland -1 313 £450 - 692
Yorkshire -8 295 £450 -6.25% 557
East of England 0 271 £425 -15.00% 858
East Midlands +2 162 £475 +26.67% 480
North East -16 70 £375 -16.67% 244
Wales -7 63 £471 +21.61% 195
Northern Ireland -5 24 £413 -14.68% 482
Channel Islands -3 5 £600 - 3

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 (4.19%) SharePoint
2 237 (4.10%) Confluence
3 109 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 57 (0.99%) Apache Spark
5 46 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 42 (0.73%) Apache
7 32 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
8 31 (0.54%) SAS
9 28 (0.48%) CMS
10 16 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.22%) WebSphere
12 12 (0.21%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.19%) CICS
14 10 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 8 (0.14%) IIS
16 7 (0.12%) Appian
16 7 (0.12%) ArcGIS
16 7 (0.12%) Mule
16 7 (0.12%) WordPress
17 6 (0.10%) Anypoint
Applications
1 332 (5.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 273 (4.72%) Microsoft Office
3 126 (2.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 65 (1.12%) Microsoft Project
5 62 (1.07%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.45%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 21 (0.36%) Chatbot
9 17 (0.29%) AutoCAD
10 15 (0.26%) Sketch
11 14 (0.24%) Revit
12 11 (0.19%) Trello
13 8 (0.14%) CATIA
13 8 (0.14%) Windchill
14 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
15 6 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
15 6 (0.10%) CPLEX
15 6 (0.10%) Final Cut Pro
16 4 (0.069%) Adobe XD
17 3 (0.052%) DaVinci Resolve
Business Applications
1 140 (2.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 52 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 41 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
4 31 (0.54%) NetSuite
5 29 (0.50%) SAP GRC
6 27 (0.47%) Workday HCM
7 25 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
8 16 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
9 15 (0.26%) iTrent
10 13 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.22%) SAP SD
11 12 (0.21%) Teamcenter
12 11 (0.19%) Finacle
13 10 (0.17%) Aladdin
13 10 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
13 10 (0.17%) SAP CRM
13 10 (0.17%) SAP ERP
14 9 (0.16%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.16%) Shopify
15 8 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 1,127 (19.51%) Azure
2 818 (14.16%) AWS
3 525 (9.09%) Microsoft 365
4 464 (8.03%) Power Platform
5 326 (5.64%) GCP
6 283 (4.90%) Azure DevOps
7 245 (4.24%) Entra ID
8 211 (3.65%) GitHub
9 158 (2.73%) SaaS
10 129 (2.23%) Serverless
11 113 (1.96%) Power Automate
12 95 (1.64%) GitHub Actions
13 94 (1.63%) Microsoft Copilot
14 93 (1.61%) Dynamics 365
15 85 (1.47%) PowerApps
16 78 (1.35%) OneDrive
17 69 (1.19%) Snowflake
18 66 (1.14%) Amazon S3
19 65 (1.12%) AWS Lambda
20 63 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 226 (3.91%) DNS
2 197 (3.41%) Firewall
3 170 (2.94%) VPN
4 137 (2.37%) TCP/IP
5 132 (2.28%) DHCP
6 125 (2.16%) WAN
7 109 (1.89%) Network Security
8 102 (1.77%) LAN
9 87 (1.51%) Wi-Fi
10 65 (1.12%) SAN
11 62 (1.07%) Wireless
12 53 (0.92%) VLAN
13 46 (0.80%) BGP
14 39 (0.67%) VoIP
15 34 (0.59%) SD-WAN
16 33 (0.57%) MPLS
17 32 (0.55%) Structured Cabling
18 26 (0.45%) HTTP
18 26 (0.45%) SSL
19 24 (0.42%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 351 (6.07%) Power BI
2 218 (3.77%) SQL Server
3 198 (3.43%) Relational Database
4 171 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
5 163 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
6 108 (1.87%) Metadata
7 100 (1.73%) MongoDB
8 87 (1.51%) NoSQL
9 85 (1.47%) Tableau
10 79 (1.37%) Data Lake
11 65 (1.12%) Oracle Database
12 62 (1.07%) MySQL
13 47 (0.81%) Big Data
14 45 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
15 36 (0.62%) Db2
15 36 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 30 (0.52%) Power Query
17 28 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
18 27 (0.47%) Delta Lake
18 27 (0.47%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 504 (8.72%) JIRA
2 385 (6.66%) Git
3 200 (3.46%) Jenkins
4 141 (2.44%) GitLab
5 78 (1.35%) Selenium
6 48 (0.83%) Maven
7 43 (0.74%) Gradle
8 41 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 39 (0.67%) Postman
10 38 (0.66%) JUnit
11 36 (0.62%) Cucumber
12 29 (0.50%) Bitbucket
12 29 (0.50%) REST Assured
13 25 (0.43%) SonarQube
14 23 (0.40%) Mockito
15 20 (0.35%) JMeter
15 20 (0.35%) Oracle Forms
16 16 (0.28%) WebDriver
17 15 (0.26%) Gatling
17 15 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 3,136 (54.27%) Social Skills
2 2,440 (42.23%) Analytical Skills
3 1,317 (22.79%) Finance
4 606 (10.49%) Public Sector
5 460 (7.96%) Banking
6 289 (5.00%) Organisational Skills
7 220 (3.81%) Manufacturing
8 202 (3.50%) Documentation Skills
9 185 (3.20%) Retail
10 178 (3.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 174 (3.01%) Influencing Skills
12 147 (2.54%) Legal
13 128 (2.22%) Front Office
14 122 (2.11%) Presentation Skills
15 116 (2.01%) Marketing
16 113 (1.96%) Telecoms
17 99 (1.71%) Investment Banking
18 89 (1.54%) Back Office
19 68 (1.18%) Law
20 67 (1.16%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 758 (13.12%) Analyst
2 734 (12.70%) Developer
3 540 (9.35%) Senior
4 425 (7.36%) Lead
5 335 (5.80%) Architect
6 264 (4.57%) Consultant
7 256 (4.43%) Business Analyst
8 235 (4.07%) IT Support
9 222 (3.84%) Support Engineer
10 206 (3.57%) Data Engineer
11 161 (2.79%) Administrator
12 155 (2.68%) IT Engineer
12 155 (2.68%) Project Manager
13 141 (2.44%) Java Developer
14 125 (2.16%) Data Analyst
15 117 (2.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 110 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
17 109 (1.89%) Solutions Architect
18 107 (1.85%) Network Engineer
19 106 (1.83%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 403 (6.97%) REST
2 340 (5.88%) Terraform
3 191 (3.31%) .NET
4 190 (3.29%) RESTful
5 173 (2.99%) SOAP
6 160 (2.77%) React
7 152 (2.63%) Kafka
8 150 (2.60%) Spring
9 138 (2.39%) XML
10 136 (2.35%) HTML
11 134 (2.32%) JSON
12 132 (2.28%) CSS
13 125 (2.16%) Spring Boot
14 120 (2.08%) Web Services
15 114 (1.97%) Middleware
16 94 (1.63%) Node.js
17 93 (1.61%) AngularJS
18 87 (1.51%) OAuth
19 70 (1.21%) PySpark
20 57 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 330 (5.71%) Onboarding
2 287 (4.97%) Product Ownership
3 274 (4.74%) Cloud Native
4 224 (3.88%) Self-Motivation
5 211 (3.65%) Enterprise Software
6 197 (3.41%) Management Information System
7 182 (3.15%) Data Centre
8 165 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
9 144 (2.49%) Data Structures
10 134 (2.32%) Analytical Mindset
11 126 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
11 126 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
12 95 (1.64%) Virtual Team
13 85 (1.47%) Driving Licence
14 82 (1.42%) AI Agents
15 71 (1.23%) CMDB
16 61 (1.06%) Algorithms
17 60 (1.04%) Mobile App
18 58 (1.00%) PKI
19 57 (0.99%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 770 (13.33%) Windows
2 331 (5.73%) Linux
3 212 (3.67%) Windows Server
4 143 (2.47%) Windows 10
5 109 (1.89%) Unix
6 97 (1.68%) Apple iOS
7 94 (1.63%) Android
8 87 (1.51%) Mac OS
9 50 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 23 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.29%) VMS
11 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 13 (0.22%) zOS
13 9 (0.16%) CentOS
13 9 (0.16%) Solaris
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
16 5 (0.087%) Rocky
16 5 (0.087%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,621 (28.05%) Agile
2 1,322 (22.88%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,273 (22.03%) Continuous Improvement
4 973 (16.84%) CI/CD
5 898 (15.54%) DevOps
6 772 (13.36%) AI
7 647 (11.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 646 (11.18%) Decision-Making
9 590 (10.21%) Analytics
10 584 (10.11%) Customer Service
11 583 (10.09%) Migration
12 522 (9.03%) ITIL
13 465 (8.05%) Test Automation
14 463 (8.01%) Validation
15 435 (7.53%) Scrum
16 424 (7.34%) Business Intelligence
17 418 (7.23%) Data Modelling
18 380 (6.58%) ITSM
19 372 (6.44%) Software Engineering
20 365 (6.32%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,017 (17.60%) SQL
2 902 (15.61%) Python
3 453 (7.84%) Java
4 349 (6.04%) JavaScript
5 337 (5.83%) PowerShell
6 223 (3.86%) C#
7 158 (2.73%) Bash
8 142 (2.46%) TypeScript
9 101 (1.75%) PL/SQL
10 69 (1.19%) C++
11 52 (0.90%) T-SQL
12 44 (0.76%) Go
13 43 (0.74%) Shell Script
14 37 (0.64%) Scala
15 35 (0.61%) Bicep
16 32 (0.55%) Kotlin
17 30 (0.52%) Apex Code
17 30 (0.52%) C
18 29 (0.50%) R
19 27 (0.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,268 (21.95%) Security Cleared
2 909 (15.73%) SC Cleared
3 652 (11.28%) Degree
4 222 (3.84%) DV Cleared
5 200 (3.46%) Computer Science Degree
6 183 (3.17%) BPSS Clearance
7 159 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
8 107 (1.85%) Cisco Certification
9 84 (1.45%) Azure Certification
10 76 (1.32%) CISSP
10 76 (1.32%) PMI Certification
11 74 (1.28%) PMP
12 72 (1.25%) A+ Certification
13 60 (1.04%) CCNA
14 56 (0.97%) Master's Degree
15 50 (0.87%) AWS Certification
16 48 (0.83%) DBS Check
17 47 (0.81%) Network+ Certification
18 43 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
19 42 (0.73%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 432 (7.48%) Data Quality
2 389 (6.73%) QA
3 152 (2.63%) Accessibility
4 130 (2.25%) SLA
5 127 (2.20%) GDPR
6 100 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 96 (1.66%) PMO
8 74 (1.28%) GRC
9 72 (1.25%) NIST
10 39 (0.67%) WCAG
11 25 (0.43%) GxP
12 23 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
12 23 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
14 17 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 17 (0.29%) NCSC
15 16 (0.28%) PCI DSS
16 15 (0.26%) ISO 20022
17 14 (0.24%) COBIT
18 13 (0.22%) GMP
System Software
1 456 (7.89%) Active Directory
2 364 (6.30%) Docker
3 168 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.23%) Hyper-V
5 67 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
6 54 (0.93%) VMware NSX
7 52 (0.90%) vSphere
8 37 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
9 32 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
10 27 (0.47%) IAG
11 26 (0.45%) vCloud
12 16 (0.28%) Firmware
13 9 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.10%) NFS
16 4 (0.069%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 4 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.069%) RACF
16 4 (0.069%) XenApp
16 4 (0.069%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 407 (7.04%) Kubernetes
2 175 (3.03%) Ansible
3 136 (2.35%) Microsoft Intune
4 101 (1.75%) SCCM
5 96 (1.66%) Grafana
6 74 (1.28%) Prometheus
7 55 (0.95%) vCenter Server
8 42 (0.73%) SCOM
9 31 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
10 23 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
11 22 (0.38%) WSUS
12 20 (0.35%) Control-M
13 14 (0.24%) FortiGate
14 13 (0.22%) Argo
14 13 (0.22%) Kibana
15 12 (0.21%) NetBackup
15 12 (0.21%) Puppet
16 11 (0.19%) Istio
17 10 (0.17%) Nessus
17 10 (0.17%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,347 (23.31%) Microsoft
2 427 (7.39%) Oracle
3 363 (6.28%) ServiceNow
4 359 (6.21%) SAP
5 218 (3.77%) VMware
6 172 (2.98%) Google
7 156 (2.70%) Salesforce
8 134 (2.32%) Cisco
9 130 (2.25%) Databricks
10 115 (1.99%) Splunk
11 79 (1.37%) Workday
12 68 (1.18%) Adobe
13 67 (1.16%) Dynatrace
14 61 (1.06%) Apple
15 58 (1.00%) IBM
16 54 (0.93%) MuleSoft
17 53 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 45 (0.78%) Red Hat
19 44 (0.76%) Dell
20 42 (0.73%) Palo Alto