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 8 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,496 4,845 4,776
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.01% 16.58% 10.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.07% 18.30% 12.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,333 3,049 2,950
10th Percentile £280 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £399 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £715 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £471 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +0.11% -1.05% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 225 409
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.84 £11.06
25th Percentile £15.18 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £21.00 £24.66 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.84% +40.91% -56.79%
75th Percentile £44.94 £41.50 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.52 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.13 £22.00 £15.63
% change year-on-year -17.59% +40.75% -47.90%

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 39,061 26,469 37,905
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.38% 90.57% 86.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,736 17,183 24,573
10th Percentile £314 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £636 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,329 996 2,365
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.77
25th Percentile £19.10 £19.99 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.00 £31.51 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.25% -4.52% -11.17%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.38 £70.23
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £30.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +20.00% -7.69% -10.34%

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 8 April 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 8 April 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 8 April 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 -3 4,719 £491 -1.80% 3,248
UK excluding London -5 2,859 £471 +0.11% 2,670
London -7 2,060 £513 -2.38% 986
Work from Home 0 1,552 £475 -5.00% 1,286
North of England -5 790 £450 -7.41% 662
South East -5 669 £495 -1.00% 802
Midlands -4 518 £450 +0.45% 478
North West -5 390 £425 -13.09% 365
West Midlands -3 373 £475 +2.70% 278
Yorkshire -3 352 £471 -0.95% 222
South West -2 322 £518 +3.50% 308
Scotland +1 258 £438 -2.78% 127
East of England -3 225 £450 - 288
East Midlands -2 146 £413 +11.56% 199
Wales -2 72 £400 +6.67% 81
North East -4 57 £438 -2.78% 92
Northern Ireland -2 29 £439 +25.29% 19
Channel Islands -6 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
1 226 (4.11%) Confluence
2 158 (2.87%) SharePoint
3 106 (1.93%) Microsoft Exchange
4 88 (1.60%) Apache Spark
5 66 (1.20%) SAS
6 65 (1.18%) Apache
7 47 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
8 34 (0.62%) CMS
9 17 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
9 17 (0.31%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.25%) nginx
11 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 8 (0.15%) Skype for Business
13 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.13%) Camunda
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 317 (5.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (4.11%) Microsoft Office
3 119 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 83 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
5 81 (1.47%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) Trello
11 7 (0.13%) CATIA
11 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.091%) Acrobat
12 5 (0.091%) Maya
13 4 (0.073%) InDesign
13 4 (0.073%) InVision
13 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
14 3 (0.055%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 98 (1.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.36%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 14 (0.25%) NEC Housing
8 14 (0.25%) SAP ERP
8 14 (0.25%) Workday HCM
9 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
9 13 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
10 12 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
12 10 (0.18%) iTrent
12 10 (0.18%) NetSuite
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 10 (0.18%) SAP SD
13 9 (0.16%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,144 (20.82%) Azure
2 856 (15.57%) AWS
3 396 (7.21%) Power Platform
4 372 (6.77%) GCP
5 348 (6.33%) Microsoft 365
6 253 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
7 241 (4.39%) GitHub
8 181 (3.29%) Serverless
9 171 (3.11%) Entra ID
10 147 (2.67%) SaaS
11 129 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
12 109 (1.98%) Amazon S3
13 103 (1.87%) AWS Lambda
14 92 (1.67%) OpenShift
15 78 (1.42%) Snowflake
16 77 (1.40%) Azure Data Factory
17 74 (1.35%) Dynamics 365
17 74 (1.35%) Power Automate
18 62 (1.13%) PaaS
18 62 (1.13%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 210 (3.82%) Firewall
2 201 (3.66%) DNS
3 127 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 119 (2.17%) Network Security
5 116 (2.11%) VPN
6 110 (2.00%) WAN
7 107 (1.95%) DHCP
8 88 (1.60%) LAN
9 66 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
10 65 (1.18%) SAN
11 55 (1.00%) BGP
12 49 (0.89%) VLAN
13 41 (0.75%) OSPF
14 37 (0.67%) VoIP
15 36 (0.66%) SD-WAN
16 28 (0.51%) MPLS
16 28 (0.51%) Wireless
17 27 (0.49%) Internet
18 21 (0.38%) Junos
18 21 (0.38%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 316 (5.75%) Power BI
2 194 (3.53%) SQL Server
3 165 (3.00%) Data Warehouse
4 151 (2.75%) Relational Database
5 148 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
6 111 (2.02%) Metadata
7 95 (1.73%) NoSQL
8 91 (1.66%) MongoDB
9 89 (1.62%) Tableau
10 88 (1.60%) Big Data
11 85 (1.55%) Data Lake
12 70 (1.27%) MySQL
13 67 (1.22%) Oracle Database
14 63 (1.15%) Oracle Reports
15 48 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 47 (0.86%) Hadoop
17 40 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
18 36 (0.66%) DynamoDB
18 36 (0.66%) Pentaho
19 32 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 515 (9.37%) JIRA
2 356 (6.48%) Git
3 252 (4.59%) Jenkins
4 163 (2.97%) GitLab
5 83 (1.51%) Selenium
6 53 (0.96%) JUnit
7 42 (0.76%) Postman
8 34 (0.62%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.53%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.42%) Cypress.io
11 23 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
12 22 (0.40%) Maven
12 22 (0.40%) Mockito
13 20 (0.36%) JMeter
14 18 (0.33%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.27%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.27%) WebDriver
16 14 (0.25%) Artifactory
16 14 (0.25%) CircleCI
General
1 2,924 (53.20%) Social Skills
2 2,065 (37.57%) Analytical Skills
3 1,245 (22.65%) Finance
4 553 (10.06%) Public Sector
5 437 (7.95%) Banking
6 218 (3.97%) Organisational Skills
7 192 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
8 179 (3.26%) Legal
9 173 (3.15%) Retail
10 137 (2.49%) Influencing Skills
11 135 (2.46%) Presentation Skills
12 125 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 105 (1.91%) Front Office
14 96 (1.75%) Telecoms
15 88 (1.60%) Marketing
16 82 (1.49%) Investment Banking
16 82 (1.49%) Manufacturing
17 58 (1.06%) Financial Institution
17 58 (1.06%) Military
18 53 (0.96%) Law
Job Titles
1 757 (13.77%) Analyst
2 728 (13.25%) Developer
3 479 (8.72%) Senior
4 382 (6.95%) Architect
5 345 (6.28%) Lead
6 318 (5.79%) Business Analyst
7 298 (5.42%) Consultant
8 230 (4.18%) Data Engineer
9 216 (3.93%) Project Manager
10 141 (2.57%) Support Engineer
11 135 (2.46%) Java Developer
12 125 (2.27%) IT Support
13 110 (2.00%) Data Analyst
14 108 (1.97%) Solutions Architect
15 100 (1.82%) Administrator
16 99 (1.80%) Software Engineer
17 96 (1.75%) Senior Developer
18 88 (1.60%) IT Engineer
19 87 (1.58%) Network Engineer
20 84 (1.53%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 351 (6.39%) REST
2 173 (3.15%) Kafka
3 168 (3.06%) RESTful
4 160 (2.91%) SOAP
5 158 (2.87%) .NET
6 153 (2.78%) Spring
7 136 (2.47%) React
8 135 (2.46%) Node.js
9 115 (2.09%) Spring Boot
10 109 (1.98%) AngularJS
10 109 (1.98%) CSS
11 107 (1.95%) HTML
11 107 (1.95%) JSON
12 98 (1.78%) LDAP
13 97 (1.76%) XML
14 95 (1.73%) Middleware
15 79 (1.44%) OAuth
16 72 (1.31%) PySpark
17 64 (1.16%) Oracle Fusion
18 60 (1.09%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 282 (5.13%) Product Ownership
2 228 (4.15%) Cloud Native
3 218 (3.97%) Onboarding
4 171 (3.11%) Data Centre
5 160 (2.91%) Management Information System
6 147 (2.67%) Self-Motivation
7 142 (2.58%) Analytical Mindset
8 115 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
8 115 (2.09%) Data Structures
9 105 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
9 105 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
9 105 (1.91%) Virtual Team
10 100 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
11 74 (1.35%) Algorithms
12 71 (1.29%) Security Posture
13 67 (1.22%) Driving Licence
14 65 (1.18%) Hybrid Cloud
14 65 (1.18%) Mobile App
15 59 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 53 (0.96%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 608 (11.06%) Windows
2 344 (6.26%) Linux
3 120 (2.18%) Windows Server
4 113 (2.06%) Windows 10
5 102 (1.86%) Unix
6 81 (1.47%) Android
7 72 (1.31%) Apple iOS
8 66 (1.20%) Mac OS
9 61 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.38%) VMS
11 17 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.20%) CentOS
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.13%) zOS
17 6 (0.11%) Debian
18 5 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
19 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,573 (28.62%) Agile
2 976 (17.76%) CI/CD
3 877 (15.96%) DevOps
4 837 (15.23%) Continuous Improvement
5 815 (14.83%) Stakeholder Management
6 640 (11.64%) Analytics
7 576 (10.48%) Migration
8 570 (10.37%) Decision-Making
9 543 (9.88%) AI
10 495 (9.01%) Project Management
11 482 (8.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 472 (8.59%) Data Modelling
13 437 (7.95%) Business Intelligence
14 431 (7.84%) Test Automation
14 431 (7.84%) Validation
15 417 (7.59%) Customer Service
16 405 (7.37%) Scrum
17 402 (7.31%) ITIL
18 394 (7.17%) Change Management
19 355 (6.46%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,031 (18.76%) Python
2 962 (17.50%) SQL
3 479 (8.72%) Java
4 364 (6.62%) PowerShell
5 294 (5.35%) JavaScript
6 222 (4.04%) C#
7 187 (3.40%) TypeScript
8 154 (2.80%) Bash
9 83 (1.51%) PL/SQL
10 71 (1.29%) Shell Script
11 65 (1.18%) C++
12 53 (0.96%) Go
13 45 (0.82%) Perl
14 43 (0.78%) Bicep
15 42 (0.76%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.75%) R
16 41 (0.75%) Scala
17 35 (0.64%) Apex Code
18 34 (0.62%) C
19 33 (0.60%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,199 (21.82%) Security Cleared
2 832 (15.14%) SC Cleared
3 675 (12.28%) Degree
4 229 (4.17%) Computer Science Degree
5 210 (3.82%) DV Cleared
6 176 (3.20%) BPSS Clearance
7 128 (2.33%) Cisco Certification
8 111 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
9 108 (1.97%) PMP
10 106 (1.93%) PMI Certification
11 103 (1.87%) CISSP
12 88 (1.60%) Master's Degree
13 72 (1.31%) Azure Certification
14 67 (1.22%) CISM
15 61 (1.11%) CCNA
16 56 (1.02%) CCNP
17 50 (0.91%) A+ Certification
18 46 (0.84%) MCSE
19 44 (0.80%) Network+ Certification
20 42 (0.76%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (6.53%) Data Quality
2 351 (6.39%) QA
3 163 (2.97%) GDPR
4 114 (2.07%) Accessibility
5 100 (1.82%) PMO
6 94 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 91 (1.66%) NIST
8 75 (1.36%) SLA
9 43 (0.78%) GRC
10 35 (0.64%) WCAG
11 33 (0.60%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.47%) PSD2
14 25 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 21 (0.38%) ISO 20022
16 18 (0.33%) ISO 8583
17 16 (0.29%) HL7
18 15 (0.27%) IFRS
19 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
19 13 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 428 (7.79%) Docker
2 411 (7.48%) Active Directory
3 121 (2.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 50 (0.91%) vSphere
5 40 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 35 (0.64%) Hyper-V
7 22 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.35%) Firmware
9 17 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
10 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 11 (0.20%) RACF
12 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 10 (0.18%) vCloud
13 9 (0.16%) ACF2
13 9 (0.16%) Squid
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.091%) IAG
16 4 (0.073%) BitLocker
16 4 (0.073%) NFS
16 4 (0.073%) Snort
Systems Management
1 496 (9.02%) Kubernetes
2 316 (5.75%) Terraform
3 188 (3.42%) Ansible
4 132 (2.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 126 (2.29%) Grafana
6 100 (1.82%) Prometheus
7 85 (1.55%) SCCM
8 44 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
9 39 (0.71%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.67%) FortiGate
11 31 (0.56%) Kibana
12 30 (0.55%) Puppet
13 28 (0.51%) Argo
14 24 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 20 (0.36%) Nessus
16 19 (0.35%) Control-M
17 16 (0.29%) vRealize
18 14 (0.25%) IBM Guardium
19 12 (0.22%) HP ALM
19 12 (0.22%) WSUS
Vendors
1 995 (18.10%) Microsoft
2 374 (6.80%) Oracle
3 276 (5.02%) SAP
4 233 (4.24%) ServiceNow
5 208 (3.78%) VMware
6 173 (3.15%) Google
7 167 (3.04%) Databricks
8 137 (2.49%) Splunk
9 131 (2.38%) Cisco
10 116 (2.11%) Salesforce
11 79 (1.44%) Red Hat
12 71 (1.29%) CyberArk
12 71 (1.29%) Dell
13 67 (1.22%) BeyondTrust
14 62 (1.13%) Citrix
15 56 (1.02%) Talend
16 55 (1.00%) Workday
17 54 (0.98%) IBM
18 51 (0.93%) Adobe
18 51 (0.93%) Informatica