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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,383 4,935 4,797
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.70% 16.81% 10.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.76% 18.54% 12.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,273 3,092 2,962
10th Percentile £276 £250 £213
25th Percentile £388 £399 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -0.15% -4.62%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £712 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £469 £475
% change year-on-year - -1.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 331 238 410
10th Percentile £13.10 £14.56 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.98 £16.95 £13.83
Median hourly rate £22.00 £24.18 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.02% +38.17% -60.10%
75th Percentile £51.64 £41.44 £36.30
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.88 £61.82
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.33 £21.90 £15.00
% change year-on-year -11.74% +46.00% -51.61%

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 39,116 26,622 37,889
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.70% 86.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,735 17,238 24,535
10th Percentile £316 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £524 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.51% -0.26% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +0.41% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,315 1,028 2,411
10th Percentile £14.98 £14.96 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.43 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +23.25% -7.98% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £28.75 £33.07
% change year-on-year +39.13% -13.05% -7.64%

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 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 17 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 17 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 -4 4,624 £492 -1.60% 3,218
UK excluding London -5 2,808 £469 - 2,643
London -8 2,011 £512 -2.51% 974
Work from Home 0 1,526 £475 -5.00% 1,211
North of England -5 778 £450 -6.25% 644
South East -5 663 £492 -1.60% 754
Midlands -4 515 £450 +0.22% 486
North West -5 382 £425 -11.55% 338
West Midlands -5 365 £476 +2.86% 281
Yorkshire -4 350 £468 -1.47% 218
South West -2 317 £500 -2.44% 299
Scotland -1 253 £425 -5.56% 149
East of England -4 207 £450 - 290
East Midlands -1 151 £420 +14.44% 205
Wales -2 69 £390 +17.76% 75
North East -3 55 £425 -16.67% 100
Northern Ireland +1 27 £430 +26.47% 24
Channel Islands -5 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
1 227 (4.22%) Confluence
2 151 (2.81%) SharePoint
3 102 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 90 (1.67%) Apache Spark
5 71 (1.32%) SAS
6 65 (1.21%) Apache
7 47 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
8 31 (0.58%) CMS
9 19 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.13%) Camunda
14 7 (0.13%) CICS
14 7 (0.13%) JBoss
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 306 (5.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (4.20%) Microsoft Office
3 118 (2.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 81 (1.50%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (1.50%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
6 24 (0.45%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 10 (0.19%) Sketch
8 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
9 7 (0.13%) CATIA
9 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
10 6 (0.11%) Trello
11 5 (0.093%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.093%) AutoCAD
11 5 (0.093%) Maya
12 4 (0.074%) InDesign
12 4 (0.074%) InVision
12 4 (0.074%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.056%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 102 (1.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 21 (0.39%) Aladdin
5 17 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
6 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
7 15 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 14 (0.26%) NEC Housing
8 14 (0.26%) SAP ERP
8 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
9 12 (0.22%) NetSuite
10 11 (0.20%) iTrent
10 11 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.19%) Teamcenter
12 9 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
12 9 (0.17%) Shopify
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
13 8 (0.15%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,112 (20.66%) Azure
2 842 (15.64%) AWS
3 396 (7.36%) Power Platform
4 362 (6.72%) GCP
5 349 (6.48%) Microsoft 365
6 247 (4.59%) Azure DevOps
7 227 (4.22%) GitHub
8 172 (3.20%) Serverless
9 171 (3.18%) Entra ID
10 137 (2.55%) SaaS
11 120 (2.23%) GitHub Actions
12 111 (2.06%) Amazon S3
13 102 (1.89%) AWS Lambda
14 91 (1.69%) OpenShift
15 76 (1.41%) Snowflake
16 75 (1.39%) Dynamics 365
17 74 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
18 73 (1.36%) Power Automate
19 63 (1.17%) PowerApps
20 58 (1.08%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 202 (3.75%) Firewall
2 195 (3.62%) DNS
3 123 (2.28%) TCP/IP
4 116 (2.15%) Network Security
5 112 (2.08%) VPN
6 107 (1.99%) WAN
7 104 (1.93%) DHCP
8 85 (1.58%) LAN
9 72 (1.34%) SAN
10 64 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
11 55 (1.02%) BGP
12 52 (0.97%) VLAN
13 41 (0.76%) OSPF
14 36 (0.67%) SD-WAN
15 35 (0.65%) VoIP
16 28 (0.52%) Internet
16 28 (0.52%) Wireless
17 27 (0.50%) MPLS
18 24 (0.45%) VXLAN
19 21 (0.39%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 315 (5.85%) Power BI
2 195 (3.62%) SQL Server
3 160 (2.97%) Data Warehouse
4 147 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
5 140 (2.60%) Relational Database
6 117 (2.17%) Metadata
7 94 (1.75%) MongoDB
7 94 (1.75%) NoSQL
8 89 (1.65%) Big Data
9 87 (1.62%) Tableau
10 83 (1.54%) Data Lake
11 66 (1.23%) Oracle Reports
12 65 (1.21%) Oracle Database
13 64 (1.19%) MySQL
14 47 (0.87%) Hadoop
15 46 (0.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 39 (0.72%) Pentaho
17 38 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
18 36 (0.67%) DynamoDB
19 31 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 518 (9.62%) JIRA
2 340 (6.32%) Git
3 240 (4.46%) Jenkins
4 159 (2.95%) GitLab
5 87 (1.62%) Selenium
6 50 (0.93%) JUnit
7 43 (0.80%) Postman
8 31 (0.58%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.54%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.50%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.43%) Cypress.io
12 22 (0.41%) JMeter
12 22 (0.41%) Maven
13 21 (0.39%) Mockito
14 19 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
15 17 (0.32%) SonarQube
16 16 (0.30%) WebDriver
17 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
18 14 (0.26%) CircleCI
18 14 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 2,836 (52.68%) Social Skills
2 2,047 (38.03%) Analytical Skills
3 1,244 (23.11%) Finance
4 535 (9.94%) Public Sector
5 420 (7.80%) Banking
6 215 (3.99%) Organisational Skills
7 187 (3.47%) Documentation Skills
8 177 (3.29%) Retail
9 171 (3.18%) Legal
10 142 (2.64%) Influencing Skills
11 132 (2.45%) Presentation Skills
12 122 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (1.82%) Front Office
14 92 (1.71%) Telecoms
15 87 (1.62%) Marketing
16 84 (1.56%) Manufacturing
17 79 (1.47%) Investment Banking
18 57 (1.06%) Financial Institution
19 54 (1.00%) Military
20 52 (0.97%) Law
Job Titles
1 737 (13.69%) Analyst
2 682 (12.67%) Developer
3 472 (8.77%) Senior
4 381 (7.08%) Architect
5 347 (6.45%) Lead
6 306 (5.68%) Business Analyst
7 280 (5.20%) Consultant
8 232 (4.31%) Data Engineer
9 209 (3.88%) Project Manager
10 131 (2.43%) Support Engineer
11 130 (2.42%) Java Developer
12 126 (2.34%) IT Support
13 111 (2.06%) Data Analyst
14 107 (1.99%) Solutions Architect
15 102 (1.89%) Administrator
16 95 (1.76%) Software Engineer
17 91 (1.69%) IT Engineer
18 89 (1.65%) Network Engineer
19 87 (1.62%) Python Developer
19 87 (1.62%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 342 (6.35%) REST
2 170 (3.16%) Kafka
3 154 (2.86%) RESTful
4 151 (2.81%) SOAP
5 144 (2.68%) Spring
6 143 (2.66%) .NET
7 132 (2.45%) React
8 125 (2.32%) Node.js
9 108 (2.01%) AngularJS
9 108 (2.01%) CSS
9 108 (2.01%) Spring Boot
10 107 (1.99%) HTML
11 104 (1.93%) JSON
12 94 (1.75%) XML
13 92 (1.71%) LDAP
14 89 (1.65%) Middleware
15 80 (1.49%) OAuth
16 72 (1.34%) PySpark
17 61 (1.13%) Oracle Fusion
18 60 (1.11%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 281 (5.22%) Product Ownership
2 220 (4.09%) Cloud Native
3 216 (4.01%) Onboarding
4 180 (3.34%) Data Centre
5 156 (2.90%) Management Information System
6 149 (2.77%) Self-Motivation
7 145 (2.69%) Analytical Mindset
8 114 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
9 108 (2.01%) Data Structures
10 107 (1.99%) Distributed Systems
10 107 (1.99%) Virtual Team
11 105 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
12 104 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
13 70 (1.30%) Security Posture
14 68 (1.26%) Algorithms
14 68 (1.26%) Driving Licence
15 63 (1.17%) Mobile App
16 60 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
17 55 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 51 (0.95%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 597 (11.09%) Windows
2 324 (6.02%) Linux
3 117 (2.17%) Windows Server
4 111 (2.06%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.80%) Unix
6 87 (1.62%) Android
7 78 (1.45%) Apple iOS
8 68 (1.26%) Mac OS
9 62 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.37%) VMS
11 17 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) CentOS
13 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.17%) zOS
15 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
15 8 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
16 6 (0.11%) Debian
17 4 (0.074%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.074%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,528 (28.39%) Agile
2 948 (17.61%) CI/CD
3 845 (15.70%) DevOps
4 814 (15.12%) Continuous Improvement
5 801 (14.88%) Stakeholder Management
6 631 (11.72%) Analytics
7 582 (10.81%) Migration
8 577 (10.72%) Decision-Making
9 553 (10.27%) AI
10 484 (8.99%) Project Management
11 466 (8.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 464 (8.62%) Data Modelling
13 432 (8.03%) Validation
14 431 (8.01%) Business Intelligence
15 428 (7.95%) Test Automation
16 417 (7.75%) Customer Service
17 397 (7.38%) Scrum
18 395 (7.34%) ITIL
19 387 (7.19%) Change Management
20 348 (6.46%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,013 (18.82%) Python
2 946 (17.57%) SQL
3 467 (8.68%) Java
4 347 (6.45%) PowerShell
5 283 (5.26%) JavaScript
6 209 (3.88%) C#
7 180 (3.34%) TypeScript
8 147 (2.73%) Bash
9 83 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 66 (1.23%) C++
10 66 (1.23%) Shell Script
11 53 (0.98%) Go
12 44 (0.82%) Perl
13 43 (0.80%) Bicep
14 41 (0.76%) R
15 39 (0.72%) Scala
16 38 (0.71%) C
16 38 (0.71%) T-SQL
17 34 (0.63%) Apex Code
18 30 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,184 (22.00%) Security Cleared
2 827 (15.36%) SC Cleared
3 663 (12.32%) Degree
4 225 (4.18%) Computer Science Degree
5 200 (3.72%) DV Cleared
6 176 (3.27%) BPSS Clearance
7 133 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
8 116 (2.15%) Microsoft Certification
9 100 (1.86%) CISSP
10 98 (1.82%) PMP
11 93 (1.73%) PMI Certification
12 87 (1.62%) Master's Degree
13 70 (1.30%) Azure Certification
14 67 (1.24%) CCNA
15 63 (1.17%) CISM
16 55 (1.02%) A+ Certification
16 55 (1.02%) CCNP
17 52 (0.97%) Network+ Certification
18 51 (0.95%) MCSE
19 41 (0.76%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 360 (6.69%) Data Quality
2 333 (6.19%) QA
3 156 (2.90%) GDPR
4 109 (2.02%) Accessibility
5 97 (1.80%) PMO
6 96 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 86 (1.60%) NIST
8 73 (1.36%) SLA
9 44 (0.82%) GRC
10 34 (0.63%) WCAG
11 29 (0.54%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
13 27 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.39%) PSD2
15 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
16 16 (0.30%) IFRS
17 15 (0.28%) HL7
18 14 (0.26%) ISO 8583
18 14 (0.26%) NCSC
19 12 (0.22%) HIPAA
System Software
1 403 (7.49%) Docker
2 399 (7.41%) Active Directory
3 120 (2.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.89%) vSphere
5 39 (0.72%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.61%) Hyper-V
7 21 (0.39%) Firmware
8 19 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
10 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 11 (0.20%) Squid
12 10 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
12 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
12 10 (0.19%) vCloud
13 9 (0.17%) ACF2
14 6 (0.11%) IAG
15 4 (0.074%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.074%) NFS
15 4 (0.074%) Snort
Systems Management
1 479 (8.90%) Kubernetes
2 310 (5.76%) Terraform
3 184 (3.42%) Ansible
4 130 (2.42%) Microsoft Intune
5 125 (2.32%) Grafana
6 97 (1.80%) Prometheus
7 84 (1.56%) SCCM
8 43 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
9 40 (0.74%) vCenter Server
10 38 (0.71%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.56%) Kibana
12 29 (0.54%) Puppet
13 28 (0.52%) Argo
14 24 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 23 (0.43%) Control-M
15 23 (0.43%) Nessus
16 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
17 16 (0.30%) vRealize
18 14 (0.26%) WSUS
19 11 (0.20%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 978 (18.17%) Microsoft
2 374 (6.95%) Oracle
3 280 (5.20%) SAP
4 232 (4.31%) ServiceNow
5 205 (3.81%) VMware
6 168 (3.12%) Databricks
6 168 (3.12%) Google
7 135 (2.51%) Cisco
8 124 (2.30%) Splunk
9 114 (2.12%) Salesforce
10 79 (1.47%) Red Hat
11 78 (1.45%) Dell
12 71 (1.32%) CyberArk
13 66 (1.23%) BeyondTrust
14 62 (1.15%) Citrix
15 58 (1.08%) Talend
15 58 (1.08%) Workday
16 57 (1.06%) Adobe
17 52 (0.97%) IBM
18 49 (0.91%) HP