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

6 months to
10 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 5,451 4,602 4,776
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.85% 14.99% 10.63%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.91% 16.77% 12.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,402 2,713 2,983
10th Percentile £275 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - -6.54%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £623
90th Percentile £700 £688 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £471 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +0.32% -1.16% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 304 176 374
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.53 £12.13
25th Percentile £15.62 £16.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.00 £26.50 £21.01
Median % change year-on-year -28.30% +26.16% -31.13%
75th Percentile £36.13 £43.75 £53.69
90th Percentile £69.18 £68.75 £77.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.05 £22.00 £17.50
% change year-on-year -22.50% +25.71% -27.08%

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 34,251 27,445 39,124
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.02% 89.42% 87.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,718 16,700 25,680
10th Percentile £306 £306 £300
25th Percentile £406 £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 £716 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.50% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,071 843 2,128
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -1.71% +1.74%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.12
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.08 £35.00
% change year-on-year -19.08% -11.20% +10.55%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 4,659 £492 -1.60% 3,060
UK excluding London -3 2,765 £471 +0.32% 2,630
London -3 2,088 £520 -1.23% 914
Work from Home +2 1,600 £485 -3.00% 1,358
North of England -3 728 £450 -5.01% 579
South East -2 670 £481 -3.88% 876
Midlands -2 517 £450 +5.88% 454
North West -2 381 £425 -7.61% 338
West Midlands +1 365 £488 +11.43% 290
South West -2 301 £525 +10.53% 339
Yorkshire -4 292 £482 -3.60% 187
Scotland +1 272 £450 +2.16% 107
East of England -3 223 £475 +0.53% 294
East Midlands -2 153 £402 +9.76% 164
North East -3 63 £450 -11.76% 64
Wales -1 61 £400 - 58
Northern Ireland +1 37 £475 +39.71% 28
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
1 215 (3.94%) Confluence
2 175 (3.21%) SharePoint
3 109 (2.00%) Microsoft Exchange
4 84 (1.54%) Apache Spark
5 66 (1.21%) Apache
6 54 (0.99%) SAS
7 51 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
8 36 (0.66%) CMS
9 29 (0.53%) Skype for Business
10 14 (0.26%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.22%) nginx
12 11 (0.20%) JBoss
13 9 (0.17%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 8 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.15%) Camunda
15 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
15 7 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.11%) Mattermost
Applications
1 324 (5.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 210 (3.85%) Microsoft Office
3 128 (2.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 79 (1.45%) MS Visio
5 76 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
6 20 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.33%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.11%) Trello
12 5 (0.092%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.073%) Adobe Captivate
13 4 (0.073%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.073%) InVision
13 4 (0.073%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
14 3 (0.055%) InDesign
14 3 (0.055%) Notion
Business Applications
1 102 (1.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.44%) Payment Gateway
4 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.31%) SAP EWM
6 16 (0.29%) Aladdin
7 15 (0.28%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
7 15 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 14 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
8 14 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
8 14 (0.26%) SAP WM
8 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
9 13 (0.24%) SAP EHS
9 13 (0.24%) SAP ERP
10 12 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.20%) NEC Housing
11 11 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.20%) SAP HR
11 11 (0.20%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 1,205 (22.11%) Azure
2 861 (15.80%) AWS
3 416 (7.63%) GCP
4 372 (6.82%) Power Platform
5 349 (6.40%) Microsoft 365
6 259 (4.75%) GitHub
7 245 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
8 185 (3.39%) Serverless
9 150 (2.75%) Entra ID
10 137 (2.51%) GitHub Actions
11 136 (2.49%) SaaS
12 96 (1.76%) Snowflake
13 94 (1.72%) Amazon S3
14 86 (1.58%) AWS Lambda
15 85 (1.56%) Dynamics 365
16 80 (1.47%) OpenShift
17 79 (1.45%) Azure Data Factory
18 77 (1.41%) Power Automate
19 68 (1.25%) PaaS
20 65 (1.19%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 207 (3.80%) Firewall
2 189 (3.47%) DNS
3 117 (2.15%) TCP/IP
3 117 (2.15%) VPN
4 116 (2.13%) Network Security
5 103 (1.89%) DHCP
6 91 (1.67%) WAN
7 69 (1.27%) LAN
8 49 (0.90%) VLAN
9 46 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
10 40 (0.73%) BGP
11 34 (0.62%) VoIP
12 29 (0.53%) Skype
13 28 (0.51%) SAN
14 27 (0.50%) SSH
14 27 (0.50%) Wireless
15 25 (0.46%) HTTP
15 25 (0.46%) SD-WAN
16 24 (0.44%) OSPF
16 24 (0.44%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 302 (5.54%) Power BI
2 173 (3.17%) Relational Database
3 165 (3.03%) SQL Server
4 159 (2.92%) Data Warehouse
4 159 (2.92%) PostgreSQL
5 105 (1.93%) NoSQL
6 100 (1.83%) MongoDB
7 89 (1.63%) MySQL
8 88 (1.61%) Metadata
9 82 (1.50%) Tableau
10 76 (1.39%) Big Data
11 73 (1.34%) Oracle Database
12 65 (1.19%) Data Lake
13 48 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
14 45 (0.83%) Hadoop
15 41 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
16 38 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
16 38 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 37 (0.68%) DynamoDB
18 32 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 486 (8.92%) JIRA
2 358 (6.57%) Git
3 264 (4.84%) Jenkins
4 177 (3.25%) GitLab
5 85 (1.56%) Selenium
6 68 (1.25%) JUnit
7 47 (0.86%) Postman
8 41 (0.75%) Cucumber
9 33 (0.61%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.50%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.48%) Maven
12 25 (0.46%) Sonatype Nexus
13 24 (0.44%) JMeter
14 23 (0.42%) Cypress.io
15 22 (0.40%) SonarQube
16 18 (0.33%) Mockito
17 16 (0.29%) CircleCI
18 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
19 14 (0.26%) Artifactory
20 13 (0.24%) IntelliJ
General
1 3,002 (55.07%) Social Skills
2 1,960 (35.96%) Analytical Skills
3 1,220 (22.38%) Finance
4 528 (9.69%) Public Sector
5 442 (8.11%) Banking
6 215 (3.94%) Organisational Skills
7 164 (3.01%) Legal
8 159 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
9 139 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
10 138 (2.53%) Retail
11 127 (2.33%) Presentation Skills
12 124 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 124 (2.27%) Telecoms
13 105 (1.93%) Front Office
14 103 (1.89%) Marketing
15 96 (1.76%) Investment Banking
16 95 (1.74%) Manufacturing
17 60 (1.10%) Military
18 58 (1.06%) Financial Institution
19 45 (0.83%) Law
Job Titles
1 799 (14.66%) Developer
2 763 (14.00%) Analyst
3 480 (8.81%) Senior
4 348 (6.38%) Architect
5 332 (6.09%) Lead
6 321 (5.89%) Consultant
7 310 (5.69%) Business Analyst
8 202 (3.71%) Project Manager
9 185 (3.39%) Data Engineer
10 158 (2.90%) Support Engineer
11 134 (2.46%) Java Developer
12 131 (2.40%) IT Support
13 116 (2.13%) Data Analyst
13 116 (2.13%) Senior Developer
14 100 (1.83%) Software Engineer
15 94 (1.72%) Support Analyst
16 92 (1.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 91 (1.67%) Solutions Architect
18 82 (1.50%) Administrator
18 82 (1.50%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 384 (7.04%) REST
2 193 (3.54%) SOAP
3 192 (3.52%) RESTful
4 180 (3.30%) Kafka
5 179 (3.28%) .NET
6 168 (3.08%) Node.js
7 164 (3.01%) React
8 162 (2.97%) Spring
9 146 (2.68%) HTML
10 129 (2.37%) CSS
11 125 (2.29%) AngularJS
12 118 (2.16%) Spring Boot
13 109 (2.00%) JSON
14 99 (1.82%) XML
15 91 (1.67%) LDAP
16 87 (1.60%) Middleware
17 76 (1.39%) OAuth
18 68 (1.25%) Oracle Fusion
19 62 (1.14%) PySpark
20 60 (1.10%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 276 (5.06%) Product Ownership
2 245 (4.49%) Cloud Native
3 195 (3.58%) Management Information System
4 194 (3.56%) Onboarding
5 137 (2.51%) Analytical Mindset
6 131 (2.40%) Data Structures
7 128 (2.35%) Data Centre
8 124 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
9 108 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
10 105 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
11 93 (1.71%) Virtual Team
12 90 (1.65%) Algorithms
12 90 (1.65%) Security Posture
13 89 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
14 82 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
15 80 (1.47%) CMDB
16 67 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
16 67 (1.23%) Mobile App
17 65 (1.19%) Driving Licence
18 58 (1.06%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 548 (10.05%) Windows
2 379 (6.95%) Linux
3 117 (2.15%) Unix
4 112 (2.05%) Windows Server
5 107 (1.96%) Windows 10
6 65 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 59 (1.08%) Apple iOS
8 57 (1.05%) Android
9 56 (1.03%) Mac OS
10 23 (0.42%) VMS
11 18 (0.33%) CentOS
12 14 (0.26%) Ubuntu
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.092%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
17 3 (0.055%) Debian
17 3 (0.055%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,595 (29.26%) Agile
2 997 (18.29%) CI/CD
3 858 (15.74%) DevOps
4 788 (14.46%) Stakeholder Management
5 739 (13.56%) Continuous Improvement
6 601 (11.03%) Analytics
7 548 (10.05%) Migration
8 527 (9.67%) Decision-Making
9 483 (8.86%) Project Management
10 470 (8.62%) AI
11 466 (8.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 439 (8.05%) Test Automation
13 428 (7.85%) Data Modelling
14 415 (7.61%) Scrum
15 398 (7.30%) Business Intelligence
16 391 (7.17%) Computer Science
17 390 (7.15%) Validation
18 389 (7.14%) ITIL
19 386 (7.08%) Containerisation
19 386 (7.08%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,068 (19.59%) Python
2 910 (16.69%) SQL
3 521 (9.56%) Java
4 373 (6.84%) PowerShell
5 336 (6.16%) JavaScript
6 237 (4.35%) C#
7 221 (4.05%) TypeScript
8 153 (2.81%) Bash
9 82 (1.50%) Shell Script
10 70 (1.28%) Go
11 67 (1.23%) PL/SQL
12 63 (1.16%) C++
13 51 (0.94%) Perl
14 44 (0.81%) Scala
15 41 (0.75%) VBA
16 39 (0.72%) R
16 39 (0.72%) Ruby
17 34 (0.62%) Bicep
18 32 (0.59%) PHP
18 32 (0.59%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,102 (20.22%) Security Cleared
2 795 (14.58%) SC Cleared
3 749 (13.74%) Degree
4 270 (4.95%) Computer Science Degree
5 191 (3.50%) DV Cleared
6 149 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
7 111 (2.04%) Master's Degree
8 105 (1.93%) PMI Certification
9 100 (1.83%) PMP
10 97 (1.78%) Microsoft Certification
11 96 (1.76%) CISSP
12 86 (1.58%) Azure Certification
13 79 (1.45%) Cisco Certification
14 61 (1.12%) AWS Certification
15 53 (0.97%) CISM
16 52 (0.95%) CCNP
17 40 (0.73%) A+ Certification
18 38 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
19 37 (0.68%) CCNA
20 29 (0.53%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 373 (6.84%) QA
2 309 (5.67%) Data Quality
3 170 (3.12%) GDPR
4 123 (2.26%) Accessibility
5 84 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 84 (1.54%) NIST
6 81 (1.49%) PMO
7 57 (1.05%) SLA
8 41 (0.75%) PCI DSS
9 32 (0.59%) WCAG
10 31 (0.57%) GRC
11 30 (0.55%) PSD2
12 24 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 23 (0.42%) ISO 20022
14 19 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
15 18 (0.33%) SEPA
16 16 (0.29%) EU AI Act
17 15 (0.28%) HIPAA
18 14 (0.26%) ISO 8583
19 13 (0.24%) HL7
System Software
1 483 (8.86%) Docker
2 384 (7.04%) Active Directory
3 129 (2.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.83%) Hyper-V
5 42 (0.77%) vSphere
6 31 (0.57%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
8 23 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
9 19 (0.35%) Firmware
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
13 8 (0.15%) HDFS
14 7 (0.13%) Squid
15 6 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
16 5 (0.092%) KVM
16 5 (0.092%) vCloud
17 3 (0.055%) ISA Server
17 3 (0.055%) NFS
17 3 (0.055%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 518 (9.50%) Kubernetes
2 311 (5.71%) Terraform
3 204 (3.74%) Ansible
4 130 (2.38%) Grafana
5 108 (1.98%) Microsoft Intune
6 101 (1.85%) Prometheus
6 101 (1.85%) SCCM
7 49 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
8 42 (0.77%) Puppet
9 38 (0.70%) Kibana
10 29 (0.53%) Argo
11 26 (0.48%) Nessus
12 23 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 23 (0.42%) vCenter Server
13 22 (0.40%) FortiGate
14 19 (0.35%) Red Hat Satellite
15 17 (0.31%) Control-M
16 16 (0.29%) IBM Guardium
16 16 (0.29%) SCOM
16 16 (0.29%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,032 (18.93%) Microsoft
2 353 (6.48%) Oracle
3 290 (5.32%) SAP
4 243 (4.46%) ServiceNow
5 215 (3.94%) VMware
6 179 (3.28%) Google
7 159 (2.92%) Databricks
8 151 (2.77%) Splunk
9 123 (2.26%) Cisco
10 122 (2.24%) Salesforce
11 85 (1.56%) Red Hat
12 80 (1.47%) CyberArk
13 69 (1.27%) BeyondTrust
14 57 (1.05%) IBM
15 56 (1.03%) Palo Alto
16 49 (0.90%) Workday
17 45 (0.83%) Adobe
17 45 (0.83%) Informatica
18 44 (0.81%) Talend
19 43 (0.79%) Dell