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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -6 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,181 4,986 4,620
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.78% 17.07% 10.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.79% 18.76% 12.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,069 3,113 2,814
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £388 £390 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £500 £502
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% -0.40% -4.38%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £716 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £467 £475 £486
% change year-on-year -1.65% -2.31% -0.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 355 252 417
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.77 £15.62 £13.86
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.14 £16.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.15% +34.18% -65.91%
75th Percentile £42.51 £41.25 £35.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £66.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.25 £21.24 £15.00
% change year-on-year -14.08% +41.60% -69.01%

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 40,493 26,571 36,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.28% 90.99% 86.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,428 17,064 23,633
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.65% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.00% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,382 1,097 2,442
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.26 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.72 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.40 £28.18 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +50.46% -21.77% +0.06%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.23 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.39% -32.73% +7.14%

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 19 May 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 19 May 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 19 May 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 -5 4,424 £495 -1.00% 3,266
UK excluding London -5 2,774 £467 -1.65% 2,613
London -12 1,867 £520 -0.95% 1,002
Work from Home -3 1,477 £475 -5.00% 1,240
North of England -8 735 £450 -8.16% 671
South East -6 643 £490 -2.05% 790
Midlands -7 492 £467 +5.50% 419
North West -7 350 £422 -13.90% 363
Yorkshire -7 343 £469 -3.30% 226
West Midlands -10 337 £475 +2.70% 256
South West -1 333 £500 -2.44% 312
Scotland -2 270 £438 -5.91% 109
East of England -3 227 £450 -3.54% 281
East Midlands -1 154 £443 +20.41% 163
Wales -4 71 £400 +20.78% 67
North East -10 50 £425 -16.26% 89
Northern Ireland -5 26 £447 +9.69% 35
Channel Islands -4 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
1 213 (4.11%) Confluence
2 150 (2.90%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.60%) Microsoft Exchange
4 80 (1.54%) Apache Spark
5 54 (1.04%) Apache
6 46 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
6 46 (0.89%) SAS
7 31 (0.60%) CMS
8 20 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
9 13 (0.25%) nginx
10 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
11 9 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.14%) Camunda
13 7 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.12%) CICS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 4 (0.077%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 296 (5.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (4.28%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (2.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 75 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
5 71 (1.37%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.25%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 10 (0.19%) Sketch
10 8 (0.15%) CATIA
11 7 (0.14%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.14%) Photoshop
11 7 (0.14%) Trello
12 6 (0.12%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.12%) Revit
13 5 (0.097%) Maya
14 4 (0.077%) Acrobat
14 4 (0.077%) CPLEX
14 4 (0.077%) InDesign
15 3 (0.058%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 121 (2.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 21 (0.41%) Aladdin
5 18 (0.35%) Payment Gateway
6 16 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.27%) NEC Housing
7 14 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 12 (0.23%) SAP GRC
9 12 (0.23%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.23%) Workday HCM
10 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
10 10 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
10 10 (0.19%) SAP SD
11 9 (0.17%) iTrent
11 9 (0.17%) Shopify
12 8 (0.15%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.15%) NetSuite
12 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,032 (19.92%) Azure
2 783 (15.11%) AWS
3 390 (7.53%) Power Platform
4 345 (6.66%) Microsoft 365
5 317 (6.12%) GCP
6 237 (4.57%) Azure DevOps
7 210 (4.05%) GitHub
8 156 (3.01%) Entra ID
9 143 (2.76%) Serverless
10 123 (2.37%) SaaS
11 108 (2.08%) GitHub Actions
12 90 (1.74%) Amazon S3
13 79 (1.52%) AWS Lambda
13 79 (1.52%) Dynamics 365
14 71 (1.37%) OpenShift
15 70 (1.35%) Power Automate
15 70 (1.35%) Snowflake
16 69 (1.33%) Azure Data Factory
17 59 (1.14%) PowerApps
18 51 (0.98%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 187 (3.61%) DNS
2 166 (3.20%) Firewall
3 117 (2.26%) TCP/IP
4 109 (2.10%) VPN
5 105 (2.03%) WAN
6 100 (1.93%) DHCP
7 85 (1.64%) Network Security
8 83 (1.60%) SAN
9 78 (1.51%) LAN
10 67 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
11 48 (0.93%) BGP
11 48 (0.93%) VLAN
12 42 (0.81%) OSPF
13 39 (0.75%) SD-WAN
14 30 (0.58%) VoIP
15 28 (0.54%) Wireless
16 26 (0.50%) VXLAN
17 23 (0.44%) Internet
17 23 (0.44%) MPLS
18 21 (0.41%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 307 (5.93%) Power BI
2 197 (3.80%) SQL Server
3 157 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
4 134 (2.59%) Relational Database
5 128 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
6 109 (2.10%) Metadata
7 89 (1.72%) MongoDB
8 84 (1.62%) Tableau
9 83 (1.60%) NoSQL
10 79 (1.52%) Big Data
11 77 (1.49%) Data Lake
12 58 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
13 56 (1.08%) MySQL
14 50 (0.97%) Oracle Database
14 50 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 40 (0.77%) Hadoop
16 30 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
17 29 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
18 27 (0.52%) Delta Lake
18 27 (0.52%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 482 (9.30%) JIRA
2 292 (5.64%) Git
3 194 (3.74%) Jenkins
4 132 (2.55%) GitLab
5 70 (1.35%) Selenium
6 40 (0.77%) Postman
7 31 (0.60%) Cucumber
7 31 (0.60%) REST Assured
8 25 (0.48%) Bitbucket
9 24 (0.46%) Cypress.io
9 24 (0.46%) JUnit
10 21 (0.41%) JMeter
11 17 (0.33%) SonarQube
11 17 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
11 17 (0.33%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.31%) Maven
12 16 (0.31%) Mockito
13 14 (0.27%) Gatling
13 14 (0.27%) SpecFlow
14 13 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,677 (51.67%) Social Skills
2 1,991 (38.43%) Analytical Skills
3 1,193 (23.03%) Finance
4 495 (9.55%) Public Sector
5 391 (7.55%) Banking
6 220 (4.25%) Organisational Skills
7 183 (3.53%) Retail
8 175 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
9 152 (2.93%) Legal
10 117 (2.26%) Presentation Skills
11 114 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 110 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
13 96 (1.85%) Front Office
14 93 (1.80%) Manufacturing
15 90 (1.74%) Telecoms
16 88 (1.70%) Marketing
17 79 (1.52%) Investment Banking
18 65 (1.25%) Back Office
19 60 (1.16%) Law
20 52 (1.00%) Military
Job Titles
1 721 (13.92%) Analyst
2 626 (12.08%) Developer
3 453 (8.74%) Senior
4 351 (6.77%) Architect
5 318 (6.14%) Lead
6 284 (5.48%) Business Analyst
7 257 (4.96%) Consultant
8 231 (4.46%) Data Engineer
9 197 (3.80%) Project Manager
10 141 (2.72%) Support Engineer
11 133 (2.57%) IT Support
12 126 (2.43%) Data Analyst
13 109 (2.10%) Java Developer
14 101 (1.95%) IT Engineer
15 96 (1.85%) Solutions Architect
16 95 (1.83%) Network Engineer
16 95 (1.83%) Software Engineer
17 93 (1.80%) Administrator
18 92 (1.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 75 (1.45%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 299 (5.77%) REST
2 148 (2.86%) Kafka
3 144 (2.78%) .NET
4 139 (2.68%) SOAP
5 135 (2.61%) Spring
6 133 (2.57%) RESTful
7 128 (2.47%) React
8 116 (2.24%) CSS
9 109 (2.10%) HTML
10 105 (2.03%) Node.js
11 102 (1.97%) AngularJS
12 101 (1.95%) Spring Boot
13 98 (1.89%) Middleware
14 95 (1.83%) JSON
14 95 (1.83%) LDAP
15 88 (1.70%) XML
16 74 (1.43%) PySpark
17 64 (1.24%) OAuth
18 55 (1.06%) Web Services
19 51 (0.98%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 254 (4.90%) Product Ownership
2 226 (4.36%) Onboarding
3 207 (4.00%) Data Centre
4 201 (3.88%) Cloud Native
5 160 (3.09%) Self-Motivation
6 146 (2.82%) Analytical Mindset
7 141 (2.72%) Management Information System
8 120 (2.32%) Distributed Systems
9 117 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
10 114 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
11 112 (2.16%) Virtual Team
12 104 (2.01%) Data Structures
13 98 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
14 70 (1.35%) Driving Licence
15 67 (1.29%) Security Posture
16 62 (1.20%) Algorithms
17 56 (1.08%) AI Agents
17 56 (1.08%) Mobile App
18 48 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
19 47 (0.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 591 (11.41%) Windows
2 297 (5.73%) Linux
3 112 (2.16%) Windows 10
4 111 (2.14%) Windows Server
5 101 (1.95%) Unix
6 90 (1.74%) Android
7 87 (1.68%) Apple iOS
8 78 (1.51%) Mac OS
9 52 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.41%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.31%) VMS
12 14 (0.27%) CentOS
12 14 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.17%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) zOS
15 7 (0.14%) Debian
16 5 (0.097%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.077%) Rocky
17 4 (0.077%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,391 (26.85%) Agile
2 851 (16.43%) CI/CD
3 783 (15.11%) Continuous Improvement
4 775 (14.96%) DevOps
5 738 (14.24%) Stakeholder Management
6 576 (11.12%) Decision-Making
7 570 (11.00%) AI
8 558 (10.77%) Migration
9 552 (10.65%) Analytics
10 449 (8.67%) Project Management
11 447 (8.63%) Data Modelling
12 439 (8.47%) Customer Service
13 428 (8.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 418 (8.07%) Validation
15 415 (8.01%) ITIL
16 403 (7.78%) Business Intelligence
17 384 (7.41%) Test Automation
18 357 (6.89%) Change Management
19 355 (6.85%) Scrum
20 317 (6.12%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 928 (17.91%) Python
2 888 (17.14%) SQL
3 419 (8.09%) Java
4 311 (6.00%) PowerShell
5 269 (5.19%) JavaScript
6 200 (3.86%) C#
7 158 (3.05%) TypeScript
8 119 (2.30%) Bash
9 77 (1.49%) PL/SQL
10 72 (1.39%) C++
11 56 (1.08%) Shell Script
12 45 (0.87%) Go
13 44 (0.85%) R
14 39 (0.75%) Bicep
15 38 (0.73%) C
16 35 (0.68%) Perl
16 35 (0.68%) T-SQL
17 33 (0.64%) Apex Code
18 31 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 30 (0.58%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,123 (21.68%) Security Cleared
2 766 (14.78%) SC Cleared
3 630 (12.16%) Degree
4 199 (3.84%) Computer Science Degree
4 199 (3.84%) DV Cleared
5 165 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
6 137 (2.64%) Cisco Certification
7 127 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
8 90 (1.74%) CISSP
9 86 (1.66%) PMP
10 79 (1.52%) PMI Certification
11 76 (1.47%) CCNA
12 73 (1.41%) Master's Degree
13 72 (1.39%) A+ Certification
14 68 (1.31%) Network+ Certification
15 64 (1.24%) Azure Certification
16 59 (1.14%) CISM
17 58 (1.12%) MCSE
18 45 (0.87%) CCNP
19 33 (0.64%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 341 (6.58%) Data Quality
2 284 (5.48%) QA
3 149 (2.88%) GDPR
4 107 (2.07%) Accessibility
5 94 (1.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 86 (1.66%) PMO
7 80 (1.54%) NIST
7 80 (1.54%) SLA
8 55 (1.06%) GRC
9 29 (0.56%) WCAG
10 28 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
10 28 (0.54%) PCI DSS
11 26 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.41%) ISO 20022
13 16 (0.31%) IFRS
14 15 (0.29%) NCSC
14 15 (0.29%) PSD2
15 14 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
16 13 (0.25%) HIPAA
16 13 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 379 (7.32%) Active Directory
2 329 (6.35%) Docker
3 106 (2.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.77%) vSphere
5 36 (0.69%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.64%) Hyper-V
7 24 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
8 22 (0.42%) Firmware
9 21 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
10 19 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
11 16 (0.31%) vCloud
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.12%) IAG
15 5 (0.097%) RACF
16 4 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.077%) Snort
17 3 (0.058%) ACF2
17 3 (0.058%) NFS
17 3 (0.058%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 403 (7.78%) Kubernetes
2 272 (5.25%) Terraform
3 178 (3.44%) Ansible
4 121 (2.34%) Microsoft Intune
5 118 (2.28%) Grafana
6 95 (1.83%) Prometheus
7 78 (1.51%) SCCM
8 42 (0.81%) FortiGate
8 42 (0.81%) vCenter Server
9 40 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
10 27 (0.52%) Kibana
11 24 (0.46%) Puppet
12 22 (0.42%) Control-M
12 22 (0.42%) Nessus
13 21 (0.41%) Argo
14 17 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
15 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 13 (0.25%) SCOM
17 12 (0.23%) WSUS
18 10 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 944 (18.22%) Microsoft
2 341 (6.58%) Oracle
3 297 (5.73%) SAP
4 234 (4.52%) ServiceNow
5 183 (3.53%) VMware
6 155 (2.99%) Databricks
7 142 (2.74%) Google
8 131 (2.53%) Splunk
9 128 (2.47%) Cisco
10 110 (2.12%) Salesforce
11 84 (1.62%) Dell
12 70 (1.35%) CyberArk
13 65 (1.25%) BeyondTrust
14 64 (1.24%) Red Hat
15 62 (1.20%) Workday
16 57 (1.10%) Adobe
17 49 (0.95%) F5
17 49 (0.95%) HP
18 48 (0.93%) Palo Alto
19 47 (0.91%) Citrix