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

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,484 4,770 4,804
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.34% 16.41% 10.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.39% 18.14% 12.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,350 3,015 2,977
10th Percentile £290 £258 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £711 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -0.21% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 325 214 404
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.89 £11.02
25th Percentile £15.34 £16.98 £13.96
Median hourly rate £20.71 £25.09 £17.61
Median % change year-on-year -17.46% +42.52% -55.99%
75th Percentile £45.46 £42.63 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £69.63 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.85 £22.14 £15.75
% change year-on-year -19.40% +40.57% -46.61%

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 38,117 26,296 38,255
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.75% 90.49% 86.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,146 17,083 24,839
10th Percentile £313 £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 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,236 956 2,346
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.12 £12.84
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.47 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% - -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.94 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.35 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.25 £31.64 £31.80
% change year-on-year -1.23% -0.50% -11.67%

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 28 March 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 28 March 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 28 March 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 4,711 £490 -2.00% 3,248
UK excluding London -5 2,851 £474 -0.21% 2,670
London -7 2,052 £509 -3.05% 986
Work from Home -1 1,565 £475 -5.00% 1,286
North of England -5 779 £450 -5.26% 662
South East -5 678 £499 -0.25% 802
Midlands -3 519 £450 +0.56% 478
North West -4 388 £422 -11.18% 365
West Midlands -2 376 £475 +2.70% 278
Yorkshire -3 344 £471 -3.49% 222
South West -1 320 £525 +2.44% 308
Scotland +1 257 £442 -2.27% 127
East of England -2 228 £450 - 288
East Midlands -1 144 £411 +12.06% 199
Wales -4 69 £400 +3.23% 81
North East -2 56 £450 - 92
Northern Ireland -3 30 £449 +18.42% 19
Channel Islands -3 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 (4.07%) Confluence
2 161 (2.94%) SharePoint
3 105 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 89 (1.62%) Apache Spark
5 65 (1.19%) SAS
6 64 (1.17%) Apache
7 48 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
8 34 (0.62%) CMS
9 16 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.27%) nginx
11 13 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
12 11 (0.20%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 9 (0.16%) Camunda
15 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
17 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
17 6 (0.11%) CICS
17 6 (0.11%) JBoss
17 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 318 (5.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (4.08%) Microsoft Office
3 120 (2.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 83 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
5 82 (1.50%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.42%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.15%) Trello
11 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.091%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.073%) CATIA
13 4 (0.073%) InDesign
13 4 (0.073%) InVision
13 4 (0.073%) Maya
13 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.055%) Adobe Captivate
14 3 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 97 (1.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.36%) Aladdin
3 20 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.27%) SAP ERP
7 14 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
7 14 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
8 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
9 12 (0.22%) NetSuite
10 11 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
12 9 (0.16%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 1,165 (21.24%) Azure
2 863 (15.74%) AWS
3 390 (7.11%) Power Platform
4 378 (6.89%) GCP
5 339 (6.18%) Microsoft 365
6 259 (4.72%) Azure DevOps
7 254 (4.63%) GitHub
8 191 (3.48%) Serverless
9 164 (2.99%) Entra ID
10 138 (2.52%) GitHub Actions
11 132 (2.41%) SaaS
12 109 (1.99%) Amazon S3
13 106 (1.93%) AWS Lambda
14 90 (1.64%) OpenShift
15 84 (1.53%) Snowflake
16 78 (1.42%) Azure Data Factory
17 74 (1.35%) Dynamics 365
18 72 (1.31%) Power Automate
19 63 (1.15%) Amazon EC2
19 63 (1.15%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 206 (3.76%) Firewall
2 197 (3.59%) DNS
3 126 (2.30%) TCP/IP
4 118 (2.15%) Network Security
5 112 (2.04%) WAN
6 108 (1.97%) VPN
7 105 (1.91%) DHCP
8 89 (1.62%) LAN
9 68 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
10 54 (0.98%) BGP
11 53 (0.97%) SAN
12 48 (0.88%) VLAN
13 40 (0.73%) OSPF
14 35 (0.64%) VoIP
15 34 (0.62%) SD-WAN
16 29 (0.53%) Wireless
17 27 (0.49%) MPLS
18 25 (0.46%) Internet
19 21 (0.38%) Junos
20 19 (0.35%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 313 (5.71%) Power BI
2 191 (3.48%) SQL Server
3 167 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
4 154 (2.81%) Relational Database
5 153 (2.79%) PostgreSQL
6 106 (1.93%) Metadata
7 100 (1.82%) MongoDB
8 98 (1.79%) NoSQL
9 90 (1.64%) Big Data
10 88 (1.60%) Tableau
11 81 (1.48%) Data Lake
12 76 (1.39%) MySQL
13 67 (1.22%) Oracle Database
14 56 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
15 50 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 49 (0.89%) Hadoop
17 42 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
18 38 (0.69%) DynamoDB
19 34 (0.62%) Pentaho
20 31 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 517 (9.43%) JIRA
2 367 (6.69%) Git
3 271 (4.94%) Jenkins
4 175 (3.19%) GitLab
5 85 (1.55%) Selenium
6 55 (1.00%) JUnit
7 42 (0.77%) Postman
8 39 (0.71%) Cucumber
9 34 (0.62%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 25 (0.46%) Cypress.io
12 23 (0.42%) Maven
12 23 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
13 21 (0.38%) JMeter
13 21 (0.38%) Mockito
14 18 (0.33%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.27%) CircleCI
15 15 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
15 15 (0.27%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.27%) WebDriver
General
1 2,956 (53.90%) Social Skills
2 2,056 (37.49%) Analytical Skills
3 1,247 (22.74%) Finance
4 566 (10.32%) Public Sector
5 442 (8.06%) Banking
6 219 (3.99%) Organisational Skills
7 188 (3.43%) Documentation Skills
8 184 (3.36%) Legal
9 167 (3.05%) Retail
10 136 (2.48%) Influencing Skills
11 134 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
12 127 (2.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 99 (1.81%) Telecoms
14 98 (1.79%) Front Office
15 89 (1.62%) Marketing
16 84 (1.53%) Investment Banking
17 77 (1.40%) Manufacturing
18 60 (1.09%) Military
19 56 (1.02%) Financial Institution
20 48 (0.88%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 756 (13.79%) Analyst
2 731 (13.33%) Developer
3 484 (8.83%) Senior
4 388 (7.08%) Architect
5 355 (6.47%) Lead
6 312 (5.69%) Business Analyst
7 300 (5.47%) Consultant
8 224 (4.08%) Data Engineer
9 221 (4.03%) Project Manager
10 139 (2.53%) Support Engineer
11 130 (2.37%) Java Developer
12 121 (2.21%) IT Support
13 107 (1.95%) Data Analyst
13 107 (1.95%) Solutions Architect
14 102 (1.86%) Senior Developer
15 99 (1.81%) Software Engineer
16 96 (1.75%) Administrator
17 86 (1.57%) Network Engineer
18 84 (1.53%) Python Developer
19 79 (1.44%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 357 (6.51%) REST
2 179 (3.26%) Kafka
3 172 (3.14%) RESTful
4 163 (2.97%) .NET
4 163 (2.97%) SOAP
5 152 (2.77%) Spring
6 140 (2.55%) Node.js
7 138 (2.52%) React
8 116 (2.12%) AngularJS
9 112 (2.04%) Spring Boot
10 111 (2.02%) JSON
11 110 (2.01%) CSS
12 109 (1.99%) HTML
13 98 (1.79%) XML
14 94 (1.71%) LDAP
15 93 (1.70%) Middleware
16 78 (1.42%) OAuth
17 73 (1.33%) PySpark
18 64 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
18 64 (1.17%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 279 (5.09%) Product Ownership
2 238 (4.34%) Cloud Native
3 208 (3.79%) Onboarding
4 166 (3.03%) Management Information System
5 160 (2.92%) Data Centre
6 143 (2.61%) Analytical Mindset
7 137 (2.50%) Self-Motivation
8 118 (2.15%) Data Structures
9 113 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
10 106 (1.93%) Distributed Systems
11 103 (1.88%) Virtual Team
12 102 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
12 102 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
13 82 (1.50%) Algorithms
14 71 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
14 71 (1.29%) Security Posture
15 64 (1.17%) Driving Licence
15 64 (1.17%) Mobile App
16 62 (1.13%) CMDB
17 54 (0.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 581 (10.59%) Windows
2 340 (6.20%) Linux
3 110 (2.01%) Windows Server
4 105 (1.91%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.88%) Unix
6 74 (1.35%) Android
7 66 (1.20%) Apple iOS
8 62 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 57 (1.04%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.36%) VMS
11 16 (0.29%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.20%) CentOS
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.13%) zOS
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.091%) Debian
17 5 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
18 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,590 (28.99%) Agile
2 1,004 (18.31%) CI/CD
3 890 (16.23%) DevOps
4 838 (15.28%) Stakeholder Management
5 836 (15.24%) Continuous Improvement
6 641 (11.69%) Analytics
7 567 (10.34%) Decision-Making
8 566 (10.32%) Migration
9 540 (9.85%) AI
10 502 (9.15%) Project Management
11 482 (8.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 471 (8.59%) Data Modelling
13 440 (8.02%) Test Automation
14 429 (7.82%) Business Intelligence
15 426 (7.77%) Validation
16 415 (7.57%) Scrum
17 397 (7.24%) Change Management
18 394 (7.18%) ITIL
19 392 (7.15%) Customer Service
20 361 (6.58%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,051 (19.16%) Python
2 945 (17.23%) SQL
3 479 (8.73%) Java
4 370 (6.75%) PowerShell
5 298 (5.43%) JavaScript
6 227 (4.14%) C#
7 194 (3.54%) TypeScript
8 157 (2.86%) Bash
9 82 (1.50%) PL/SQL
10 73 (1.33%) Shell Script
11 64 (1.17%) C++
12 57 (1.04%) Go
13 44 (0.80%) Perl
14 42 (0.77%) Bicep
14 42 (0.77%) T-SQL
15 40 (0.73%) Scala
16 39 (0.71%) R
17 36 (0.66%) C
18 35 (0.64%) Apex Code
19 32 (0.58%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,204 (21.95%) Security Cleared
2 838 (15.28%) SC Cleared
3 688 (12.55%) Degree
4 232 (4.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 212 (3.87%) DV Cleared
6 170 (3.10%) BPSS Clearance
7 120 (2.19%) Cisco Certification
8 110 (2.01%) PMP
9 109 (1.99%) PMI Certification
10 101 (1.84%) CISSP
10 101 (1.84%) Master's Degree
10 101 (1.84%) Microsoft Certification
11 71 (1.29%) Azure Certification
12 67 (1.22%) CISM
13 57 (1.04%) CCNP
14 54 (0.98%) CCNA
15 44 (0.80%) AWS Certification
16 43 (0.78%) A+ Certification
16 43 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
17 38 (0.69%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 362 (6.60%) QA
2 347 (6.33%) Data Quality
3 164 (2.99%) GDPR
4 120 (2.19%) Accessibility
5 101 (1.84%) PMO
6 92 (1.68%) NIST
7 90 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 71 (1.29%) SLA
9 43 (0.78%) GRC
10 35 (0.64%) WCAG
11 34 (0.62%) PCI DSS
12 29 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.47%) PSD2
13 26 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.36%) ISO 20022
15 18 (0.33%) ISO 8583
16 15 (0.27%) HL7
17 14 (0.26%) IFRS
18 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 447 (8.15%) Docker
2 388 (7.08%) Active Directory
3 113 (2.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (0.89%) vSphere
5 40 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 31 (0.57%) Hyper-V
7 24 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.36%) Firmware
9 15 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.16%) ACF2
12 9 (0.16%) Squid
12 9 (0.16%) vCloud
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 4 (0.073%) IAG
14 4 (0.073%) Snort
15 3 (0.055%) ISA Server
15 3 (0.055%) NFS
Systems Management
1 509 (9.28%) Kubernetes
2 327 (5.96%) Terraform
3 200 (3.65%) Ansible
4 132 (2.41%) Grafana
5 126 (2.30%) Microsoft Intune
6 104 (1.90%) Prometheus
7 86 (1.57%) SCCM
8 44 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.67%) FortiGate
10 35 (0.64%) vCenter Server
11 31 (0.57%) Kibana
11 31 (0.57%) Puppet
12 27 (0.49%) Argo
13 24 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 21 (0.38%) Nessus
15 19 (0.35%) Control-M
16 15 (0.27%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.27%) vRealize
17 12 (0.22%) HP ALM
18 11 (0.20%) VxRail
Vendors
1 982 (17.91%) Microsoft
2 360 (6.56%) Oracle
3 265 (4.83%) SAP
4 235 (4.29%) ServiceNow
5 203 (3.70%) VMware
6 177 (3.23%) Google
7 169 (3.08%) Databricks
8 141 (2.57%) Splunk
9 132 (2.41%) Cisco
10 116 (2.12%) Salesforce
11 80 (1.46%) Red Hat
12 70 (1.28%) CyberArk
13 66 (1.20%) BeyondTrust
14 63 (1.15%) Dell
15 61 (1.11%) Citrix
16 58 (1.06%) IBM
17 56 (1.02%) Talend
18 54 (0.98%) Palo Alto
19 53 (0.97%) Informatica
19 53 (0.97%) Workday