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

6 months to
26 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 5,835 5,088 4,676
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.63% 15.38% 12.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.60% 16.99% 14.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,248 3,051 2,694
10th Percentile £250 £231 £260
25th Percentile £381 £375 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -0.20%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £710 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 578 312 231
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.52 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.05
Median hourly rate £18.38 £20.26 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -9.26% +24.80% -69.09%
75th Percentile £35.94 £34.61 £30.99
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.40 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £18.76 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.06% +15.60% -70.37%

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 46,293 29,942 32,892
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.37% 90.52% 85.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,017 18,609 19,950
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 £630 £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 3,198 1,849 1,396
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.23 £17.33 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £66.00 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.22
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.78% -47.67% +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 26 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 26 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 26 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 5,035 £500 +2.04% 12,091
UK excluding London -3 3,127 £450 - 7,743
London -12 2,161 £525 +3.93% 5,411
Work from Home -4 1,559 £500 - 4,666
South East -3 804 £475 +5.56% 1,905
North of England -9 729 £450 -5.26% 1,730
Midlands -5 615 £450 +2.33% 1,259
West Midlands -8 441 £450 -6.25% 762
North West -11 359 £450 -4.05% 920
South West -5 329 £500 +11.11% 915
Scotland -5 302 £438 -2.78% 606
Yorkshire -6 300 £454 -7.82% 583
East of England 0 285 £450 -10.00% 833
East Midlands +1 171 £450 +20.00% 495
North East -14 72 £375 -16.67% 244
Wales -7 64 £475 +22.58% 192
Northern Ireland -5 25 £419 -11.84% 414
Channel Islands -2 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
1 249 (4.27%) SharePoint
2 237 (4.06%) Confluence
3 104 (1.78%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (0.96%) Apache Spark
5 47 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
6 44 (0.75%) Apache
7 31 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
8 30 (0.51%) SAS
9 27 (0.46%) CMS
10 18 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.27%) 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%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 7 (0.12%) Appian
16 7 (0.12%) Mule
17 6 (0.10%) Anypoint
17 6 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 344 (5.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 277 (4.75%) Microsoft Office
3 134 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.10%) Microsoft Project
5 63 (1.08%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.48%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 26 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
8 18 (0.31%) AutoCAD
8 18 (0.31%) Chatbot
9 16 (0.27%) Revit
10 15 (0.26%) Sketch
11 11 (0.19%) Trello
12 9 (0.15%) Navisworks
12 9 (0.15%) Windchill
13 6 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
13 6 (0.10%) CATIA
13 6 (0.10%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.10%) Final Cut Pro
14 4 (0.069%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.051%) DaVinci Resolve
Business Applications
1 138 (2.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 55 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
3 39 (0.67%) 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 16 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
8 14 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.22%) iTrent
9 13 (0.22%) SAP SD
10 12 (0.21%) SAP HCM
10 12 (0.21%) Teamcenter
11 11 (0.19%) Aladdin
11 11 (0.19%) Finacle
12 10 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
12 10 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
12 10 (0.17%) SAP CRM
13 9 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
14 8 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,134 (19.43%) Azure
2 812 (13.92%) AWS
3 531 (9.10%) Microsoft 365
4 469 (8.04%) Power Platform
5 340 (5.83%) GCP
6 281 (4.82%) Azure DevOps
7 247 (4.23%) Entra ID
8 214 (3.67%) GitHub
9 158 (2.71%) SaaS
10 126 (2.16%) Serverless
11 117 (2.01%) Power Automate
12 99 (1.70%) Microsoft Copilot
13 98 (1.68%) Dynamics 365
14 93 (1.59%) GitHub Actions
15 89 (1.53%) PowerApps
16 77 (1.32%) OneDrive
17 75 (1.29%) Snowflake
18 65 (1.11%) Amazon S3
19 61 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
20 59 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 216 (3.70%) DNS
2 198 (3.39%) Firewall
3 165 (2.83%) VPN
4 131 (2.25%) TCP/IP
5 130 (2.23%) DHCP
6 123 (2.11%) WAN
7 117 (2.01%) Network Security
8 101 (1.73%) LAN
9 81 (1.39%) Wi-Fi
10 64 (1.10%) SAN
10 64 (1.10%) Wireless
11 51 (0.87%) VLAN
12 49 (0.84%) BGP
13 41 (0.70%) VoIP
14 34 (0.58%) MPLS
15 33 (0.57%) SD-WAN
16 31 (0.53%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.50%) HTTP
18 27 (0.46%) SSL
19 26 (0.45%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 351 (6.02%) Power BI
2 210 (3.60%) SQL Server
3 194 (3.32%) Relational Database
4 169 (2.90%) Data Warehouse
5 157 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
6 109 (1.87%) MongoDB
7 106 (1.82%) Metadata
8 88 (1.51%) NoSQL
9 81 (1.39%) Data Lake
10 80 (1.37%) Tableau
11 66 (1.13%) Oracle Database
12 63 (1.08%) MySQL
13 43 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
14 41 (0.70%) Big Data
15 36 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 34 (0.58%) Db2
17 32 (0.55%) BigQuery
18 30 (0.51%) Power Query
19 28 (0.48%) Pentaho
20 27 (0.46%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 490 (8.40%) JIRA
2 393 (6.74%) Git
3 205 (3.51%) Jenkins
4 145 (2.49%) GitLab
5 79 (1.35%) Selenium
6 48 (0.82%) Maven
7 44 (0.75%) Gradle
8 43 (0.74%) Cucumber
9 42 (0.72%) Cypress.io
10 40 (0.69%) Postman
11 39 (0.67%) JUnit
12 32 (0.55%) Bitbucket
13 28 (0.48%) REST Assured
14 27 (0.46%) SonarQube
15 23 (0.39%) JMeter
15 23 (0.39%) Mockito
16 20 (0.34%) Oracle Forms
17 18 (0.31%) Gatling
18 17 (0.29%) WebDriver
19 16 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 3,155 (54.07%) Social Skills
2 2,474 (42.40%) Analytical Skills
3 1,323 (22.67%) Finance
4 614 (10.52%) Public Sector
5 457 (7.83%) Banking
6 302 (5.18%) Organisational Skills
7 245 (4.20%) Manufacturing
8 199 (3.41%) Documentation Skills
9 180 (3.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 178 (3.05%) Influencing Skills
10 178 (3.05%) Retail
11 153 (2.62%) Legal
12 124 (2.13%) Front Office
12 124 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
13 123 (2.11%) Telecoms
14 119 (2.04%) Marketing
15 92 (1.58%) Investment Banking
16 88 (1.51%) Back Office
17 71 (1.22%) Law
18 68 (1.17%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 746 (12.78%) Analyst
2 728 (12.48%) Developer
3 551 (9.44%) Senior
4 424 (7.27%) Lead
5 327 (5.60%) Architect
6 258 (4.42%) Consultant
7 253 (4.34%) Business Analyst
8 238 (4.08%) IT Support
9 224 (3.84%) Support Engineer
10 207 (3.55%) Data Engineer
11 165 (2.83%) Administrator
12 159 (2.72%) Project Manager
13 153 (2.62%) IT Engineer
14 133 (2.28%) Java Developer
15 128 (2.19%) Data Analyst
16 120 (2.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 113 (1.94%) Network Engineer
18 111 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
19 110 (1.89%) IT Support Engineer
20 97 (1.66%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 413 (7.08%) REST
2 348 (5.96%) Terraform
3 189 (3.24%) .NET
4 186 (3.19%) RESTful
5 175 (3.00%) SOAP
6 161 (2.76%) React
7 151 (2.59%) Kafka
8 144 (2.47%) Spring
9 141 (2.42%) XML
10 140 (2.40%) HTML
11 137 (2.35%) JSON
12 136 (2.33%) CSS
13 123 (2.11%) Web Services
14 122 (2.09%) Spring Boot
15 116 (1.99%) Middleware
16 98 (1.68%) Node.js
17 91 (1.56%) AngularJS
18 85 (1.46%) OAuth
19 68 (1.17%) PySpark
20 58 (0.99%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 339 (5.81%) Onboarding
2 281 (4.82%) Cloud Native
3 276 (4.73%) Product Ownership
4 224 (3.84%) Self-Motivation
5 211 (3.62%) Enterprise Software
6 210 (3.60%) Management Information System
7 183 (3.14%) Data Centre
8 160 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
9 143 (2.45%) Data Structures
10 130 (2.23%) Analytical Mindset
11 126 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
12 124 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
13 95 (1.63%) Driving Licence
14 91 (1.56%) Virtual Team
15 82 (1.41%) AI Agents
16 74 (1.27%) CMDB
17 64 (1.10%) Mobile App
18 61 (1.05%) PKI
19 59 (1.01%) NHS
20 55 (0.94%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 792 (13.57%) Windows
2 342 (5.86%) Linux
3 221 (3.79%) Windows Server
4 139 (2.38%) Windows 10
5 115 (1.97%) Unix
6 92 (1.58%) Apple iOS
7 90 (1.54%) Android
8 89 (1.53%) Mac OS
9 57 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.34%) VMS
12 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.26%) Solaris
14 13 (0.22%) zOS
15 9 (0.15%) CentOS
15 9 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
16 8 (0.14%) AIX
16 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.086%) Embedded Linux
17 5 (0.086%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,600 (27.42%) Agile
2 1,398 (23.96%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,295 (22.19%) Continuous Improvement
4 991 (16.98%) CI/CD
5 888 (15.22%) DevOps
6 771 (13.21%) AI
7 651 (11.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 641 (10.99%) Decision-Making
9 604 (10.35%) Migration
10 596 (10.21%) Customer Service
11 581 (9.96%) Analytics
12 522 (8.95%) ITIL
13 480 (8.23%) Validation
14 476 (8.16%) Test Automation
15 426 (7.30%) Data Modelling
16 423 (7.25%) Scrum
17 419 (7.18%) Business Intelligence
18 383 (6.56%) ITSM
19 380 (6.51%) Technical Leadership
20 373 (6.39%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 1,011 (17.33%) SQL
2 890 (15.25%) Python
3 453 (7.76%) Java
4 360 (6.17%) JavaScript
5 336 (5.76%) PowerShell
6 222 (3.80%) C#
7 159 (2.72%) Bash
8 149 (2.55%) TypeScript
9 96 (1.65%) PL/SQL
10 60 (1.03%) C++
11 50 (0.86%) T-SQL
12 47 (0.81%) Go
12 47 (0.81%) Shell Script
13 36 (0.62%) Scala
14 35 (0.60%) Bicep
15 32 (0.55%) Kotlin
16 30 (0.51%) R
17 27 (0.46%) Apex Code
17 27 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 27 (0.46%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,281 (21.95%) Security Cleared
2 921 (15.78%) SC Cleared
3 663 (11.36%) Degree
4 226 (3.87%) DV Cleared
5 198 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
6 192 (3.29%) BPSS Clearance
7 153 (2.62%) Microsoft Certification
8 107 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
9 84 (1.44%) CISSP
10 82 (1.41%) Azure Certification
11 76 (1.30%) PMI Certification
12 72 (1.23%) PMP
13 66 (1.13%) A+ Certification
14 56 (0.96%) CCNA
14 56 (0.96%) Master's Degree
15 54 (0.93%) AWS Certification
16 50 (0.86%) DBS Check
17 46 (0.79%) CISM
18 42 (0.72%) ISTQB
18 42 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 432 (7.40%) Data Quality
2 389 (6.67%) QA
3 155 (2.66%) Accessibility
4 134 (2.30%) SLA
5 129 (2.21%) GDPR
6 101 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 92 (1.58%) PMO
8 71 (1.22%) NIST
9 69 (1.18%) GRC
10 39 (0.67%) WCAG
11 25 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
12 23 (0.39%) GxP
13 21 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
15 19 (0.33%) NCSC
16 18 (0.31%) PCI DSS
17 17 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
18 15 (0.26%) ISO 20022
19 14 (0.24%) GMP
20 13 (0.22%) COBIT
System Software
1 460 (7.88%) Active Directory
2 370 (6.34%) Docker
3 178 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.22%) Hyper-V
4 71 (1.22%) VMware ESXi
5 58 (0.99%) vSphere
6 54 (0.93%) VMware NSX
7 37 (0.63%) Virtual Desktop
8 32 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
9 25 (0.43%) IAG
9 25 (0.43%) vCloud
10 16 (0.27%) Firmware
11 11 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
12 7 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.10%) NFS
14 5 (0.086%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 5 (0.086%) RACF
14 5 (0.086%) Time Sharing Option
14 5 (0.086%) XenApp
14 5 (0.086%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 411 (7.04%) Kubernetes
2 172 (2.95%) Ansible
3 138 (2.37%) Microsoft Intune
4 97 (1.66%) Grafana
5 94 (1.61%) SCCM
6 77 (1.32%) Prometheus
7 50 (0.86%) vCenter Server
8 42 (0.72%) SCOM
9 32 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
10 25 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
11 20 (0.34%) Control-M
12 19 (0.33%) WSUS
13 15 (0.26%) NetBackup
14 14 (0.24%) FortiGate
15 13 (0.22%) Kibana
15 13 (0.22%) Nessus
16 12 (0.21%) VxRail
17 11 (0.19%) Istio
18 10 (0.17%) Puppet
19 9 (0.15%) Argo
Vendors
1 1,392 (23.86%) Microsoft
2 416 (7.13%) Oracle
3 364 (6.24%) SAP
4 361 (6.19%) ServiceNow
5 226 (3.87%) VMware
6 185 (3.17%) Google
7 148 (2.54%) Salesforce
8 146 (2.50%) Cisco
9 134 (2.30%) Databricks
10 119 (2.04%) Splunk
11 80 (1.37%) Workday
12 68 (1.17%) Adobe
13 67 (1.15%) Dynatrace
14 65 (1.11%) IBM
15 62 (1.06%) Apple
16 53 (0.91%) CyberArk
17 51 (0.87%) Red Hat
18 50 (0.86%) MuleSoft
19 44 (0.75%) Dell
20 43 (0.74%) Palo Alto