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 9 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 6 9
Rank change year-on-year -6 +3 +4
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,854 5,061 4,705
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.74% 15.26% 12.39%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.70% 16.87% 14.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,244 3,024 2,717
10th Percentile £260 £240 £263
25th Percentile £388 £377 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -0.10%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £705 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £454 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +0.89% -5.26% -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 604 329 218
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.40
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.25 £19.25 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.19% +18.61% -69.42%
75th Percentile £34.68 £33.75 £31.43
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.47 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £18.76 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.06% +15.60% -69.76%

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 46,102 30,004 32,672
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 90.46% 86.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,718 18,629 19,703
10th Percentile £325 £294 £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 £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,326 1,885 1,303
10th Percentile £13.58 £14.33 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -8.31%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.52 £65.00 £73.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £41.25
% change year-on-year +68.43% -46.02% -2.94%

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 9 October 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 9 October 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 9 October 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 -6 5,057 £500 +2.56% 12,577
UK excluding London -2 3,148 £454 +0.89% 7,358
London -11 2,159 £525 +5.00% 5,898
Work from Home -4 1,575 £500 - 4,663
South East -3 822 £475 +5.56% 1,766
North of England -9 740 £450 -5.26% 1,694
Midlands -5 610 £450 +2.27% 1,141
West Midlands -8 438 £450 -5.26% 700
North West -9 369 £450 -1.32% 853
South West -7 320 £506 +9.41% 845
Scotland -5 300 £434 -3.61% 586
East of England 0 297 £425 -15.84% 892
Yorkshire -8 292 £475 -4.04% 589
East Midlands +2 168 £425 +13.33% 441
North East -10 81 £375 -16.67% 268
Wales -8 60 £468 +14.02% 208
Northern Ireland -4 27 £425 -14.57% 325
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
1 254 (4.34%) SharePoint
2 252 (4.30%) Confluence
3 95 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 62 (1.06%) Apache Spark
5 49 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
6 47 (0.80%) Apache
7 27 (0.46%) CMS
8 24 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
9 23 (0.39%) SAS
10 19 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 12 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.19%) CICS
14 9 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 9 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 8 (0.14%) IIS
16 7 (0.12%) Appian
16 7 (0.12%) Mule
16 7 (0.12%) WebLogic Portal
16 7 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 350 (5.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 268 (4.58%) Microsoft Office
3 139 (2.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 67 (1.14%) Microsoft Project
5 64 (1.09%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.44%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 23 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
8 17 (0.29%) AutoCAD
9 16 (0.27%) Chatbot
9 16 (0.27%) Revit
10 15 (0.26%) Sketch
11 10 (0.17%) Navisworks
11 10 (0.17%) Trello
11 10 (0.17%) Windchill
12 6 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
12 6 (0.10%) CPLEX
12 6 (0.10%) Final Cut Pro
13 4 (0.068%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.051%) CATIA
14 3 (0.051%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 130 (2.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 57 (0.97%) Dynamics CRM
3 37 (0.63%) Oracle EBS
4 32 (0.55%) NetSuite
5 30 (0.51%) Workday HCM
6 28 (0.48%) SAP GRC
7 24 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
8 17 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
9 15 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
10 14 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
10 14 (0.24%) Teamcenter
11 13 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
12 12 (0.20%) Aladdin
12 12 (0.20%) SAP HCM
13 11 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
13 11 (0.19%) SAP SD
14 10 (0.17%) Finacle
14 10 (0.17%) iTrent
14 10 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
14 10 (0.17%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,142 (19.51%) Azure
2 793 (13.55%) AWS
3 514 (8.78%) Microsoft 365
4 458 (7.82%) Power Platform
5 335 (5.72%) GCP
6 292 (4.99%) Azure DevOps
7 243 (4.15%) Entra ID
8 225 (3.84%) GitHub
9 146 (2.49%) SaaS
10 133 (2.27%) Serverless
11 118 (2.02%) Power Automate
12 101 (1.73%) GitHub Actions
12 101 (1.73%) Microsoft Copilot
13 98 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
14 92 (1.57%) PowerApps
15 80 (1.37%) Snowflake
16 78 (1.33%) OneDrive
17 64 (1.09%) OpenShift
18 63 (1.08%) Amazon S3
19 61 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 214 (3.66%) DNS
2 199 (3.40%) Firewall
3 159 (2.72%) VPN
4 127 (2.17%) TCP/IP
5 125 (2.14%) Network Security
6 123 (2.10%) DHCP
6 123 (2.10%) WAN
7 101 (1.73%) LAN
8 82 (1.40%) Wi-Fi
9 66 (1.13%) Wireless
10 50 (0.85%) SAN
10 50 (0.85%) VLAN
11 48 (0.82%) BGP
12 46 (0.79%) VoIP
13 32 (0.55%) MPLS
13 32 (0.55%) SD-WAN
14 30 (0.51%) Intranet
15 29 (0.50%) HTTP
15 29 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
16 27 (0.46%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 338 (5.77%) Power BI
2 210 (3.59%) SQL Server
3 194 (3.31%) Relational Database
4 171 (2.92%) Data Warehouse
5 156 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
6 111 (1.90%) MongoDB
7 108 (1.84%) Metadata
8 90 (1.54%) NoSQL
9 78 (1.33%) Tableau
10 76 (1.30%) Data Lake
11 69 (1.18%) Oracle Database
12 64 (1.09%) MySQL
13 42 (0.72%) Big Data
14 39 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
15 37 (0.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 32 (0.55%) Db2
17 29 (0.50%) DynamoDB
18 28 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
18 28 (0.48%) Delta Lake
18 28 (0.48%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 510 (8.71%) JIRA
2 404 (6.90%) Git
3 216 (3.69%) Jenkins
4 150 (2.56%) GitLab
5 80 (1.37%) Selenium
6 53 (0.91%) Maven
7 48 (0.82%) Cucumber
7 48 (0.82%) Gradle
8 43 (0.73%) JUnit
9 42 (0.72%) Cypress.io
10 39 (0.67%) Postman
11 35 (0.60%) Bitbucket
12 28 (0.48%) REST Assured
12 28 (0.48%) SonarQube
13 23 (0.39%) JMeter
13 23 (0.39%) Mockito
14 19 (0.32%) Gatling
15 18 (0.31%) Oracle Forms
16 17 (0.29%) WebDriver
17 16 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 3,169 (54.13%) Social Skills
2 2,495 (42.62%) Analytical Skills
3 1,349 (23.04%) Finance
4 629 (10.74%) Public Sector
5 473 (8.08%) Banking
6 324 (5.53%) Organisational Skills
7 277 (4.73%) Manufacturing
8 199 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
9 182 (3.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 177 (3.02%) Influencing Skills
11 164 (2.80%) Retail
12 156 (2.66%) Legal
13 128 (2.19%) Telecoms
14 124 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
15 123 (2.10%) Marketing
16 116 (1.98%) Front Office
17 102 (1.74%) Investment Banking
18 85 (1.45%) Aerospace
19 82 (1.40%) Back Office
20 66 (1.13%) Military
Job Titles
1 750 (12.81%) Analyst
2 741 (12.66%) Developer
3 572 (9.77%) Senior
4 423 (7.23%) Lead
5 317 (5.42%) Architect
6 282 (4.82%) Consultant
7 267 (4.56%) Business Analyst
8 238 (4.07%) IT Support
9 221 (3.78%) Support Engineer
10 195 (3.33%) Data Engineer
11 181 (3.09%) Administrator
12 172 (2.94%) Project Manager
13 141 (2.41%) IT Engineer
14 133 (2.27%) Java Developer
15 123 (2.10%) Data Analyst
16 115 (1.96%) Network Engineer
17 112 (1.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 110 (1.88%) DevOps Engineer
19 108 (1.84%) IT Support Engineer
20 98 (1.67%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 424 (7.24%) REST
2 352 (6.01%) Terraform
3 198 (3.38%) .NET
4 195 (3.33%) RESTful
5 169 (2.89%) SOAP
6 168 (2.87%) React
7 156 (2.66%) Kafka
8 145 (2.48%) Spring
9 142 (2.43%) HTML
10 141 (2.41%) XML
11 137 (2.34%) JSON
12 134 (2.29%) CSS
13 130 (2.22%) Web Services
14 124 (2.12%) Spring Boot
15 120 (2.05%) Middleware
16 102 (1.74%) Node.js
17 91 (1.55%) AngularJS
18 86 (1.47%) OAuth
19 69 (1.18%) PySpark
20 62 (1.06%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 344 (5.88%) Onboarding
2 289 (4.94%) Cloud Native
3 279 (4.77%) Product Ownership
4 228 (3.89%) Management Information System
5 226 (3.86%) Enterprise Software
6 223 (3.81%) Self-Motivation
7 176 (3.01%) Data Centre
8 154 (2.63%) Distributed Systems
9 146 (2.49%) Data Structures
10 125 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
11 122 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
12 118 (2.02%) Analytical Mindset
13 92 (1.57%) Driving Licence
14 86 (1.47%) Virtual Team
15 84 (1.43%) AI Agents
16 72 (1.23%) CMDB
17 62 (1.06%) NHS
18 61 (1.04%) Algorithms
19 59 (1.01%) PKI
20 58 (0.99%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 759 (12.97%) Windows
2 334 (5.71%) Linux
3 213 (3.64%) Windows Server
4 136 (2.32%) Windows 10
5 113 (1.93%) Unix
6 90 (1.54%) Apple iOS
7 84 (1.43%) Android
8 81 (1.38%) Mac OS
9 55 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.34%) VMS
12 18 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 13 (0.22%) Solaris
14 12 (0.20%) zOS
15 9 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
16 8 (0.14%) CentOS
16 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
17 6 (0.10%) AIX
17 6 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
18 5 (0.085%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,630 (27.84%) Agile
2 1,482 (25.32%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,323 (22.60%) Continuous Improvement
4 1,017 (17.37%) CI/CD
5 903 (15.43%) DevOps
6 775 (13.24%) AI
7 669 (11.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 647 (11.05%) Decision-Making
9 592 (10.11%) Migration
10 569 (9.72%) Customer Service
11 559 (9.55%) Analytics
12 504 (8.61%) ITIL
13 498 (8.51%) Test Automation
14 485 (8.28%) Validation
15 440 (7.52%) Scrum
16 413 (7.06%) Data Modelling
17 392 (6.70%) Business Intelligence
18 390 (6.66%) Technical Leadership
19 384 (6.56%) Software Engineering
20 381 (6.51%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 1,000 (17.08%) SQL
2 875 (14.95%) Python
3 442 (7.55%) Java
4 361 (6.17%) JavaScript
5 343 (5.86%) PowerShell
6 229 (3.91%) C#
7 163 (2.78%) Bash
8 155 (2.65%) TypeScript
9 94 (1.61%) PL/SQL
10 56 (0.96%) C++
11 51 (0.87%) Shell Script
12 50 (0.85%) T-SQL
13 42 (0.72%) Go
14 36 (0.61%) Bicep
15 33 (0.56%) Scala
16 32 (0.55%) Kotlin
17 28 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 27 (0.46%) Groovy
19 25 (0.43%) Perl
20 23 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 1,288 (22.00%) Security Cleared
2 936 (15.99%) SC Cleared
3 677 (11.56%) Degree
4 232 (3.96%) DV Cleared
5 205 (3.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 201 (3.43%) BPSS Clearance
7 134 (2.29%) Microsoft Certification
8 96 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
9 85 (1.45%) PMI Certification
10 84 (1.43%) Azure Certification
11 80 (1.37%) CISSP
12 79 (1.35%) PMP
13 59 (1.01%) Master's Degree
14 56 (0.96%) AWS Certification
15 55 (0.94%) DBS Check
16 53 (0.91%) A+ Certification
17 46 (0.79%) CISM
18 45 (0.77%) CCNA
19 43 (0.73%) CCNP
19 43 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 431 (7.36%) Data Quality
2 393 (6.71%) QA
3 158 (2.70%) Accessibility
4 132 (2.25%) GDPR
5 125 (2.14%) SLA
6 101 (1.73%) PMO
7 94 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 66 (1.13%) GRC
9 64 (1.09%) NIST
10 39 (0.67%) WCAG
11 23 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
12 22 (0.38%) NCSC
13 21 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.36%) GxP
14 18 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 17 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 17 (0.29%) PCI DSS
16 14 (0.24%) ISO 20022
17 13 (0.22%) GMP
18 12 (0.20%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 441 (7.53%) Active Directory
2 370 (6.32%) Docker
3 171 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 67 (1.14%) Hyper-V
4 67 (1.14%) VMware ESXi
5 58 (0.99%) vSphere
6 53 (0.91%) VMware NSX
7 41 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
8 29 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (0.41%) vCloud
10 23 (0.39%) IAG
11 16 (0.27%) Firmware
12 11 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.10%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 6 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.10%) NFS
13 6 (0.10%) XenApp
13 6 (0.10%) XenDesktop
14 5 (0.085%) RACF
14 5 (0.085%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 418 (7.14%) Kubernetes
2 173 (2.96%) Ansible
3 134 (2.29%) Microsoft Intune
4 98 (1.67%) Grafana
5 93 (1.59%) SCCM
6 77 (1.32%) Prometheus
7 45 (0.77%) vCenter Server
8 42 (0.72%) SCOM
9 31 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
10 24 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
11 20 (0.34%) Control-M
12 16 (0.27%) FortiGate
12 16 (0.27%) WSUS
13 15 (0.26%) NetBackup
14 13 (0.22%) Nessus
15 12 (0.20%) Kibana
15 12 (0.20%) VxRail
16 11 (0.19%) Istio
17 10 (0.17%) Puppet
18 8 (0.14%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,401 (23.93%) Microsoft
2 408 (6.97%) Oracle
3 362 (6.18%) SAP
4 344 (5.88%) ServiceNow
5 217 (3.71%) VMware
6 181 (3.09%) Google
7 145 (2.48%) Cisco
8 142 (2.43%) Salesforce
9 138 (2.36%) Databricks
10 120 (2.05%) Splunk
11 76 (1.30%) Workday
12 66 (1.13%) IBM
13 65 (1.11%) Dynatrace
14 64 (1.09%) Adobe
15 60 (1.02%) Apple
16 54 (0.92%) CyberArk
17 50 (0.85%) Red Hat
18 49 (0.84%) MuleSoft
18 49 (0.84%) Palo Alto
19 37 (0.63%) Citrix