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 17 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,520 4,619 4,772
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.73% 15.16% 10.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.79% 16.93% 12.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,432 2,751 2,965
10th Percentile £275 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £398 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.75% - -6.54%
75th Percentile £596 £600 £623
90th Percentile £700 £690 £714
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £467 £475
% change year-on-year +1.71% -1.68% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 317 175 382
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.62 £12.14
25th Percentile £15.50 £17.00 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.00 £27.00 £21.01
Median % change year-on-year -29.63% +28.54% -31.13%
75th Percentile £36.50 £44.38 £52.78
90th Percentile £69.67 £69.50 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.05 £22.00 £17.64
% change year-on-year -22.50% +24.72% -23.03%

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 34,951 27,281 38,890
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.91% 89.56% 87.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,148 16,723 25,428
10th Percentile £310 £306 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.59% -1.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,114 833 2,148
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -4.41% -2.86%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £60.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.12
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £30.78 £35.00
% change year-on-year -18.29% -12.06% +7.63%

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 17 February 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 17 February 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 17 February 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 -1 4,707 £492 -1.60% 3,120
UK excluding London -4 2,824 £475 +1.71% 2,721
London -3 2,092 £519 -1.23% 925
Work from Home +2 1,614 £481 -3.75% 1,297
North of England -2 748 £450 -5.26% 621
South East -1 672 £483 -3.50% 904
Midlands -1 524 £460 +8.88% 455
North West -2 391 £425 -8.11% 355
West Midlands +1 374 £488 +11.86% 274
Yorkshire -5 303 £482 -3.60% 197
South West -3 302 £525 +5.00% 338
Scotland 0 284 £447 -0.67% 111
East of England -3 235 £475 +4.63% 300
East Midlands -2 151 £402 +11.67% 181
Wales +2 67 £400 - 69
North East -4 62 £450 -11.33% 79
Northern Ireland +1 36 £475 +45.04% 31
Channel Islands 0 1 - - 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
1 223 (4.04%) Confluence
2 174 (3.15%) SharePoint
3 107 (1.94%) Microsoft Exchange
4 85 (1.54%) Apache Spark
5 64 (1.16%) Apache
6 56 (1.01%) SAS
7 49 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
8 34 (0.62%) CMS
9 29 (0.53%) Skype for Business
10 17 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.25%) nginx
12 11 (0.20%) JBoss
13 9 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
14 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.13%) Camunda
14 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
15 6 (0.11%) Mattermost
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 324 (5.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 228 (4.13%) Microsoft Office
3 127 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 81 (1.47%) MS Visio
5 77 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
6 20 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 19 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.11%) Trello
12 5 (0.091%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.072%) Adobe Captivate
13 4 (0.072%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.072%) InVision
13 4 (0.072%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.072%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
14 3 (0.054%) InDesign
14 3 (0.054%) Notion
Business Applications
1 103 (1.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.34%) Oracle Payables
5 18 (0.33%) Aladdin
6 17 (0.31%) SAP EWM
7 15 (0.27%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
7 15 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 15 (0.27%) Workday HCM
8 14 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
8 14 (0.25%) Oracle Receivables
8 14 (0.25%) SAP ERP
8 14 (0.25%) SAP WM
9 13 (0.24%) SAP EHS
10 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
10 12 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.22%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.20%) SAP HR
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 1,211 (21.94%) Azure
2 873 (15.82%) AWS
3 411 (7.45%) GCP
4 380 (6.88%) Power Platform
5 347 (6.29%) Microsoft 365
6 261 (4.73%) GitHub
7 248 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
8 190 (3.44%) Serverless
9 147 (2.66%) Entra ID
10 137 (2.48%) GitHub Actions
10 137 (2.48%) SaaS
11 100 (1.81%) Amazon S3
12 95 (1.72%) Snowflake
13 92 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
14 86 (1.56%) OpenShift
15 84 (1.52%) Dynamics 365
16 80 (1.45%) Azure Data Factory
17 70 (1.27%) Power Automate
18 69 (1.25%) PaaS
19 61 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 213 (3.86%) Firewall
2 201 (3.64%) DNS
3 133 (2.41%) TCP/IP
4 123 (2.23%) VPN
5 115 (2.08%) DHCP
5 115 (2.08%) Network Security
6 100 (1.81%) WAN
7 80 (1.45%) LAN
8 54 (0.98%) VLAN
9 49 (0.89%) BGP
9 49 (0.89%) Wi-Fi
10 34 (0.62%) OSPF
10 34 (0.62%) VoIP
11 30 (0.54%) SAN
12 29 (0.53%) Skype
13 27 (0.49%) Wireless
14 26 (0.47%) HTTP
14 26 (0.47%) SSH
15 24 (0.43%) SD-WAN
16 23 (0.42%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (5.63%) Power BI
2 178 (3.22%) SQL Server
3 171 (3.10%) Relational Database
4 165 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
5 164 (2.97%) PostgreSQL
6 114 (2.07%) MongoDB
7 104 (1.88%) NoSQL
8 94 (1.70%) Metadata
9 89 (1.61%) MySQL
10 84 (1.52%) Tableau
11 78 (1.41%) Big Data
12 73 (1.32%) Oracle Database
13 71 (1.29%) Data Lake
14 49 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
15 46 (0.83%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 45 (0.82%) Hadoop
17 44 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
18 39 (0.71%) Elasticsearch
19 37 (0.67%) DynamoDB
20 35 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 497 (9.00%) JIRA
2 367 (6.65%) Git
3 269 (4.87%) Jenkins
4 177 (3.21%) GitLab
5 87 (1.58%) Selenium
6 67 (1.21%) JUnit
7 49 (0.89%) Postman
8 42 (0.76%) Cucumber
9 35 (0.63%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.47%) Maven
12 24 (0.43%) Cypress.io
12 24 (0.43%) JMeter
12 24 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
13 23 (0.42%) SonarQube
14 22 (0.40%) Mockito
15 17 (0.31%) SpecFlow
16 16 (0.29%) CircleCI
17 14 (0.25%) Artifactory
18 13 (0.24%) IntelliJ
General
1 3,025 (54.80%) Social Skills
2 1,981 (35.89%) Analytical Skills
3 1,235 (22.37%) Finance
4 536 (9.71%) Public Sector
5 448 (8.12%) Banking
6 217 (3.93%) Organisational Skills
7 169 (3.06%) Documentation Skills
7 169 (3.06%) Legal
8 141 (2.55%) Presentation Skills
9 139 (2.52%) Influencing Skills
9 139 (2.52%) Retail
10 137 (2.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 119 (2.16%) Telecoms
12 104 (1.88%) Front Office
13 99 (1.79%) Investment Banking
14 98 (1.78%) Marketing
15 92 (1.67%) Manufacturing
16 64 (1.16%) Military
17 58 (1.05%) Financial Institution
18 48 (0.87%) Law
Job Titles
1 795 (14.40%) Developer
2 782 (14.17%) Analyst
3 495 (8.97%) Senior
4 356 (6.45%) Architect
5 336 (6.09%) Lead
6 324 (5.87%) Business Analyst
7 318 (5.76%) Consultant
8 200 (3.62%) Project Manager
9 197 (3.57%) Data Engineer
10 164 (2.97%) Support Engineer
11 140 (2.54%) Java Developer
12 132 (2.39%) IT Support
13 118 (2.14%) Data Analyst
13 118 (2.14%) Senior Developer
14 105 (1.90%) Software Engineer
15 96 (1.74%) Solutions Architect
16 94 (1.70%) Support Analyst
17 90 (1.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 89 (1.61%) Python Developer
19 88 (1.59%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 385 (6.97%) REST
2 192 (3.48%) SOAP
3 191 (3.46%) RESTful
4 189 (3.42%) Kafka
5 177 (3.21%) .NET
6 168 (3.04%) Node.js
7 165 (2.99%) React
8 164 (2.97%) Spring
9 145 (2.63%) HTML
10 132 (2.39%) CSS
11 126 (2.28%) AngularJS
12 119 (2.16%) Spring Boot
13 115 (2.08%) JSON
14 102 (1.85%) XML
15 93 (1.68%) LDAP
16 89 (1.61%) Middleware
17 78 (1.41%) OAuth
18 69 (1.25%) Oracle Fusion
19 64 (1.16%) PySpark
20 61 (1.11%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 273 (4.95%) Product Ownership
2 253 (4.58%) Cloud Native
3 202 (3.66%) Onboarding
4 187 (3.39%) Management Information System
5 140 (2.54%) Data Centre
6 134 (2.43%) Analytical Mindset
7 133 (2.41%) Data Structures
8 125 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
9 109 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
10 107 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
11 94 (1.70%) Algorithms
11 94 (1.70%) Virtual Team
12 87 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
13 80 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
14 77 (1.39%) Security Posture
15 74 (1.34%) CMDB
16 72 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
17 66 (1.20%) Mobile App
18 65 (1.18%) Driving Licence
19 57 (1.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 555 (10.05%) Windows
2 385 (6.97%) Linux
3 119 (2.16%) Unix
4 112 (2.03%) Windows Server
5 104 (1.88%) Windows 10
6 68 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 60 (1.09%) Apple iOS
8 58 (1.05%) Android
9 57 (1.03%) Mac OS
10 22 (0.40%) VMS
11 18 (0.33%) CentOS
12 14 (0.25%) Ubuntu
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
17 4 (0.072%) Windows 8
18 3 (0.054%) Debian
18 3 (0.054%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,596 (28.91%) Agile
2 1,014 (18.37%) CI/CD
3 867 (15.71%) DevOps
4 802 (14.53%) Stakeholder Management
5 764 (13.84%) Continuous Improvement
6 603 (10.92%) Analytics
7 569 (10.31%) Migration
8 553 (10.02%) Decision-Making
9 489 (8.86%) AI
10 483 (8.75%) Project Management
11 470 (8.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 446 (8.08%) Data Modelling
13 440 (7.97%) Test Automation
14 418 (7.57%) Scrum
15 408 (7.39%) Business Intelligence
16 399 (7.23%) Validation
17 395 (7.16%) Containerisation
18 394 (7.14%) ITIL
19 389 (7.05%) Mentoring
20 387 (7.01%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,071 (19.40%) Python
2 933 (16.90%) SQL
3 533 (9.66%) Java
4 360 (6.52%) PowerShell
5 335 (6.07%) JavaScript
6 241 (4.37%) C#
7 224 (4.06%) TypeScript
8 154 (2.79%) Bash
9 86 (1.56%) Shell Script
10 71 (1.29%) PL/SQL
11 69 (1.25%) Go
12 62 (1.12%) C++
13 51 (0.92%) Perl
14 44 (0.80%) Scala
15 40 (0.72%) VBA
16 39 (0.71%) Ruby
17 38 (0.69%) T-SQL
18 37 (0.67%) R
19 36 (0.65%) Bicep
20 34 (0.62%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,142 (20.69%) Security Cleared
2 816 (14.78%) SC Cleared
3 772 (13.99%) Degree
4 265 (4.80%) Computer Science Degree
5 205 (3.71%) DV Cleared
6 159 (2.88%) BPSS Clearance
7 111 (2.01%) Master's Degree
8 100 (1.81%) PMI Certification
9 99 (1.79%) Microsoft Certification
10 97 (1.76%) PMP
11 90 (1.63%) CISSP
12 85 (1.54%) Azure Certification
12 85 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
13 59 (1.07%) AWS Certification
14 53 (0.96%) CCNP
14 53 (0.96%) CISM
15 40 (0.72%) A+ Certification
16 39 (0.71%) CCNA
16 39 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
17 30 (0.54%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 375 (6.79%) QA
2 320 (5.80%) Data Quality
3 168 (3.04%) GDPR
4 120 (2.17%) Accessibility
5 86 (1.56%) PMO
6 85 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 84 (1.52%) NIST
8 61 (1.11%) SLA
9 39 (0.71%) PCI DSS
10 32 (0.58%) WCAG
11 31 (0.56%) GRC
12 27 (0.49%) PSD2
13 25 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 24 (0.43%) ISO 20022
15 22 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
16 16 (0.29%) EU AI Act
16 16 (0.29%) ISO 8583
16 16 (0.29%) SEPA
17 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.24%) HL7
System Software
1 487 (8.82%) Docker
2 385 (6.97%) Active Directory
3 127 (2.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 46 (0.83%) Hyper-V
5 44 (0.80%) vSphere
6 34 (0.62%) VMware NSX
7 24 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
8 23 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
9 19 (0.34%) Firmware
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.16%) ACF2
13 8 (0.14%) Squid
14 7 (0.13%) HDFS
15 6 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
16 5 (0.091%) Oracle RAC
16 5 (0.091%) vCloud
17 4 (0.072%) KVM
17 4 (0.072%) Snort
18 3 (0.054%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 534 (9.67%) Kubernetes
2 317 (5.74%) Terraform
3 204 (3.70%) Ansible
4 137 (2.48%) Grafana
5 109 (1.97%) Microsoft Intune
6 108 (1.96%) Prometheus
7 103 (1.87%) SCCM
8 51 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
9 41 (0.74%) Puppet
10 39 (0.71%) Kibana
11 32 (0.58%) Argo
12 31 (0.56%) FortiGate
12 31 (0.56%) Nessus
13 25 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 25 (0.45%) vCenter Server
14 22 (0.40%) Control-M
15 21 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
16 19 (0.34%) Red Hat Satellite
17 16 (0.29%) SCOM
18 15 (0.27%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,037 (18.79%) Microsoft
2 356 (6.45%) Oracle
3 286 (5.18%) SAP
4 241 (4.37%) ServiceNow
5 211 (3.82%) VMware
6 182 (3.30%) Google
7 164 (2.97%) Databricks
8 158 (2.86%) Splunk
9 131 (2.37%) Cisco
10 122 (2.21%) Salesforce
11 91 (1.65%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.32%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.14%) BeyondTrust
14 56 (1.01%) IBM
14 56 (1.01%) Palo Alto
15 52 (0.94%) Workday
16 46 (0.83%) Dell
16 46 (0.83%) Informatica
17 45 (0.82%) Adobe
17 45 (0.82%) F5