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

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -7 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,183 4,908 4,633
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.68% 17.16% 10.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.64% 18.85% 12.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,036 3,067 2,824
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £390 £388 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £625
90th Percentile £717 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £471 £475
% change year-on-year -0.64% -0.94% -3.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 374 241 423
10th Percentile £13.39 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.50 £13.84
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +35.55% -67.54%
75th Percentile £42.00 £35.00 £34.38
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.75 £20.25 £15.00
% change year-on-year -7.41% +35.00% -70.00%

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 40,998 26,034 36,602
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.45% 91.02% 85.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,676 16,714 23,582
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.74% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,430 1,064 2,485
10th Percentile £14.80 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.12 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.28 £27.45 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.01% -23.75% -3.49%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.01 £74.63 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.35 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +76.32% -32.93% +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 26 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 26 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 26 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 4,430 £500 - 3,365
UK excluding London -5 2,788 £468 -0.64% 2,507
London -11 1,856 £520 - 1,218
Work from Home -3 1,466 £475 -5.00% 1,504
North of England -8 738 £450 -7.69% 661
South East -7 637 £493 -1.40% 702
Midlands -9 500 £469 +6.60% 417
North West -8 350 £425 -13.27% 365
West Midlands -9 350 £475 +3.26% 261
Yorkshire -7 346 £469 -1.26% 228
South West -2 331 £500 -4.76% 296
Scotland -1 273 £438 -5.91% 116
East of England -3 236 £450 -5.63% 262
East Midlands -1 149 £443 +18.56% 157
Wales -2 71 £400 +6.67% 54
North East -10 50 £413 -8.33% 79
Northern Ireland -4 26 £447 +9.69% 61
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
1 216 (4.17%) Confluence
2 152 (2.93%) SharePoint
3 84 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 77 (1.49%) Apache Spark
5 50 (0.96%) Apache
6 47 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
7 45 (0.87%) SAS
8 30 (0.58%) CMS
9 22 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.25%) nginx
11 10 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 9 (0.17%) CICS
13 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.14%) Camunda
14 7 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.096%) Jupyter
Applications
1 296 (5.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (4.28%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (2.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 76 (1.47%) Microsoft Project
5 72 (1.39%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.29%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.25%) Sketch
10 9 (0.17%) CATIA
11 8 (0.15%) AutoCAD
12 7 (0.14%) Adobe XD
12 7 (0.14%) Photoshop
12 7 (0.14%) Trello
13 6 (0.12%) Revit
14 5 (0.096%) Maya
15 4 (0.077%) Acrobat
15 4 (0.077%) CPLEX
16 3 (0.058%) LaTeX
16 3 (0.058%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 124 (2.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.39%) Aladdin
5 16 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
5 16 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
6 13 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
6 13 (0.25%) SAP GRC
6 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 13 (0.25%) Teamcenter
6 13 (0.25%) Workday HCM
7 12 (0.23%) NEC Housing
7 12 (0.23%) SAP SD
8 9 (0.17%) iTrent
8 9 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.17%) SAP FI
9 8 (0.15%) NetSuite
9 8 (0.15%) Shopify
10 7 (0.14%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,044 (20.14%) Azure
2 769 (14.84%) AWS
3 394 (7.60%) Power Platform
4 351 (6.77%) Microsoft 365
5 323 (6.23%) GCP
6 236 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
7 202 (3.90%) GitHub
8 161 (3.11%) Entra ID
9 137 (2.64%) Serverless
10 123 (2.37%) SaaS
11 100 (1.93%) GitHub Actions
12 80 (1.54%) Amazon S3
13 77 (1.49%) Dynamics 365
14 73 (1.41%) Snowflake
15 72 (1.39%) AWS Lambda
15 72 (1.39%) OpenShift
16 68 (1.31%) Azure Data Factory
16 68 (1.31%) Power Automate
17 60 (1.16%) PowerApps
18 50 (0.96%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 193 (3.72%) DNS
2 167 (3.22%) Firewall
3 116 (2.24%) TCP/IP
4 109 (2.10%) VPN
5 107 (2.06%) WAN
6 104 (2.01%) DHCP
7 86 (1.66%) Network Security
8 84 (1.62%) SAN
9 82 (1.58%) LAN
10 69 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
11 49 (0.95%) VLAN
12 47 (0.91%) BGP
13 42 (0.81%) OSPF
14 40 (0.77%) SD-WAN
15 32 (0.62%) VoIP
15 32 (0.62%) Wireless
16 27 (0.52%) VXLAN
17 25 (0.48%) MPLS
18 23 (0.44%) Internet
19 22 (0.42%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 309 (5.96%) Power BI
2 198 (3.82%) SQL Server
3 158 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
4 131 (2.53%) Relational Database
5 129 (2.49%) PostgreSQL
6 110 (2.12%) Metadata
7 95 (1.83%) MongoDB
8 87 (1.68%) Tableau
9 85 (1.64%) NoSQL
10 81 (1.56%) Data Lake
11 77 (1.49%) Big Data
12 58 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
13 52 (1.00%) MySQL
14 49 (0.95%) Oracle Database
14 49 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 40 (0.77%) Hadoop
16 28 (0.54%) Delta Lake
17 27 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
17 27 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
17 27 (0.52%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 486 (9.38%) JIRA
2 289 (5.58%) Git
3 179 (3.45%) Jenkins
4 121 (2.33%) GitLab
5 65 (1.25%) Selenium
6 39 (0.75%) Postman
7 31 (0.60%) REST Assured
8 28 (0.54%) Cucumber
9 23 (0.44%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.44%) JUnit
10 21 (0.41%) Cypress.io
11 17 (0.33%) JMeter
11 17 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
11 17 (0.33%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.31%) Mockito
12 16 (0.31%) SonarQube
13 13 (0.25%) Zephyr
14 12 (0.23%) Gatling
14 12 (0.23%) Maven
14 12 (0.23%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,656 (51.24%) Social Skills
2 1,994 (38.47%) Analytical Skills
3 1,199 (23.13%) Finance
4 483 (9.32%) Public Sector
5 399 (7.70%) Banking
6 220 (4.24%) Organisational Skills
7 183 (3.53%) Retail
8 177 (3.42%) Documentation Skills
9 150 (2.89%) Legal
10 117 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 112 (2.16%) Influencing Skills
12 108 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
13 101 (1.95%) Manufacturing
14 100 (1.93%) Front Office
15 92 (1.78%) Telecoms
16 89 (1.72%) Marketing
17 85 (1.64%) Investment Banking
18 64 (1.23%) Back Office
19 62 (1.20%) Law
20 53 (1.02%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 725 (13.99%) Analyst
2 608 (11.73%) Developer
3 435 (8.39%) Senior
4 351 (6.77%) Architect
5 317 (6.12%) Lead
6 288 (5.56%) Business Analyst
7 260 (5.02%) Consultant
8 232 (4.48%) Data Engineer
9 193 (3.72%) Project Manager
10 141 (2.72%) Support Engineer
11 138 (2.66%) IT Support
12 131 (2.53%) Data Analyst
13 105 (2.03%) Java Developer
14 101 (1.95%) IT Engineer
15 100 (1.93%) Administrator
16 97 (1.87%) Software Engineer
16 97 (1.87%) Solutions Architect
17 94 (1.81%) Network Engineer
18 93 (1.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 77 (1.49%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 298 (5.75%) REST
2 148 (2.86%) Kafka
3 147 (2.84%) .NET
4 137 (2.64%) SOAP
5 135 (2.60%) RESTful
6 133 (2.57%) React
7 132 (2.55%) Spring
8 118 (2.28%) CSS
9 111 (2.14%) HTML
10 99 (1.91%) Middleware
11 98 (1.89%) Spring Boot
12 96 (1.85%) AngularJS
12 96 (1.85%) JSON
12 96 (1.85%) Node.js
13 91 (1.76%) LDAP
14 86 (1.66%) XML
15 73 (1.41%) PySpark
16 60 (1.16%) OAuth
17 57 (1.10%) Web Services
18 48 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 258 (4.98%) Product Ownership
2 225 (4.34%) Onboarding
3 207 (3.99%) Data Centre
4 196 (3.78%) Cloud Native
5 162 (3.13%) Self-Motivation
6 145 (2.80%) Analytical Mindset
7 137 (2.64%) Management Information System
8 123 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
9 118 (2.28%) Distributed Systems
10 116 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
11 114 (2.20%) Virtual Team
12 103 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
13 99 (1.91%) Data Structures
14 72 (1.39%) Driving Licence
15 68 (1.31%) Security Posture
16 63 (1.22%) Algorithms
17 58 (1.12%) AI Agents
18 52 (1.00%) Mobile App
19 48 (0.93%) Derivative
19 48 (0.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 601 (11.60%) Windows
2 295 (5.69%) Linux
3 116 (2.24%) Windows Server
4 112 (2.16%) Windows 10
5 104 (2.01%) Unix
6 87 (1.68%) Android
7 84 (1.62%) Apple iOS
8 78 (1.50%) 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 10 (0.19%) zOS
14 9 (0.17%) Windows 7
15 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
16 7 (0.14%) Debian
17 6 (0.12%) Solaris
18 5 (0.096%) Windows Server 2012
19 4 (0.077%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,385 (26.72%) Agile
2 836 (16.13%) CI/CD
3 801 (15.45%) Continuous Improvement
4 761 (14.68%) DevOps
5 746 (14.39%) Stakeholder Management
6 581 (11.21%) Decision-Making
7 577 (11.13%) AI
8 557 (10.75%) Migration
9 550 (10.61%) Analytics
10 446 (8.61%) Customer Service
11 445 (8.59%) Project Management
12 444 (8.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 443 (8.55%) Data Modelling
14 425 (8.20%) ITIL
15 421 (8.12%) Validation
16 406 (7.83%) Business Intelligence
17 373 (7.20%) Test Automation
18 353 (6.81%) Change Management
19 351 (6.77%) Scrum
20 310 (5.98%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 916 (17.67%) Python
2 894 (17.25%) SQL
3 408 (7.87%) Java
4 312 (6.02%) PowerShell
5 259 (5.00%) JavaScript
6 196 (3.78%) C#
7 143 (2.76%) TypeScript
8 114 (2.20%) Bash
9 75 (1.45%) C++
10 73 (1.41%) PL/SQL
11 58 (1.12%) Shell Script
12 46 (0.89%) Go
13 42 (0.81%) R
14 37 (0.71%) Bicep
14 37 (0.71%) C
15 35 (0.68%) Perl
16 34 (0.66%) Apex Code
17 33 (0.64%) T-SQL
18 31 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 30 (0.58%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,113 (21.47%) Security Cleared
2 758 (14.62%) SC Cleared
3 623 (12.02%) Degree
4 198 (3.82%) DV Cleared
5 187 (3.61%) Computer Science Degree
6 159 (3.07%) BPSS Clearance
7 137 (2.64%) Cisco Certification
8 130 (2.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 92 (1.78%) CISSP
10 83 (1.60%) PMP
11 78 (1.50%) CCNA
12 76 (1.47%) PMI Certification
13 74 (1.43%) A+ Certification
14 68 (1.31%) Network+ Certification
15 67 (1.29%) Master's Degree
16 63 (1.22%) Azure Certification
17 61 (1.18%) CISM
18 58 (1.12%) MCSE
19 44 (0.85%) CCNP
20 36 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 346 (6.68%) Data Quality
2 270 (5.21%) QA
3 146 (2.82%) GDPR
4 111 (2.14%) Accessibility
5 92 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 90 (1.74%) SLA
7 86 (1.66%) PMO
8 75 (1.45%) NIST
9 53 (1.02%) GRC
10 28 (0.54%) PCI DSS
10 28 (0.54%) WCAG
11 27 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 19 (0.37%) ISO 20022
14 16 (0.31%) IFRS
15 15 (0.29%) NCSC
15 15 (0.29%) PSD2
16 14 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
17 13 (0.25%) HIPAA
17 13 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 384 (7.41%) Active Directory
2 316 (6.10%) Docker
3 109 (2.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.79%) vSphere
5 37 (0.71%) VMware NSX
6 35 (0.68%) Hyper-V
7 26 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
8 25 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
9 20 (0.39%) Firmware
10 19 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
11 18 (0.35%) vCloud
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.12%) IAG
15 4 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.077%) RACF
15 4 (0.077%) Snort
16 3 (0.058%) ACF2
16 3 (0.058%) NFS
16 3 (0.058%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 396 (7.64%) Kubernetes
2 271 (5.23%) Terraform
3 177 (3.42%) Ansible
4 126 (2.43%) Microsoft Intune
5 112 (2.16%) Grafana
6 95 (1.83%) Prometheus
7 78 (1.50%) SCCM
8 45 (0.87%) vCenter Server
9 42 (0.81%) FortiGate
10 38 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.52%) Kibana
12 23 (0.44%) Control-M
12 23 (0.44%) Puppet
13 22 (0.42%) Nessus
14 20 (0.39%) Argo
15 17 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 15 (0.29%) SCOM
17 12 (0.23%) WSUS
18 9 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 948 (18.29%) Microsoft
2 336 (6.48%) Oracle
3 297 (5.73%) SAP
4 245 (4.73%) ServiceNow
5 185 (3.57%) VMware
6 145 (2.80%) Databricks
7 140 (2.70%) Google
8 128 (2.47%) Cisco
9 126 (2.43%) Splunk
10 112 (2.16%) Salesforce
11 84 (1.62%) Dell
12 68 (1.31%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.22%) BeyondTrust
13 63 (1.22%) Red Hat
13 63 (1.22%) Workday
14 58 (1.12%) Adobe
15 48 (0.93%) HP
16 47 (0.91%) Citrix
16 47 (0.91%) F5
16 47 (0.91%) Palo Alto