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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -9 +4 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,555 5,270 4,427
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.51% 16.02% 11.29%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.38% 17.72% 13.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,156 3,204 2,733
10th Percentile £249 £250 £250
25th Percentile £375 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.51% -2.50% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £615
90th Percentile £700 £703 £714
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £460 £475
% change year-on-year -2.17% -3.16% -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 474 312 292
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.79 £11.75
25th Percentile £14.50 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.02 £21.24 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -10.48% +30.87% -70.01%
75th Percentile £40.00 £38.42 £31.15
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.23 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.75 £18.85 £16.23
% change year-on-year -0.53% +16.14% -70.25%

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 44,879 29,748 33,534
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.93% 90.41% 85.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,704 18,653 21,488
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,741 1,659 1,873
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.30 £18.14
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.05 £40.94
% change year-on-year +90.72% -43.70% +3.38%

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 4 August 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 4 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the UK

Problem-Solving
Top 17 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 4 August 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 -7 4,824 £494 -0.30% 5,637
UK excluding London -3 2,980 £450 -2.17% 3,944
London -12 2,068 £520 +4.00% 2,382
Work from Home -6 1,545 £492 -1.60% 2,230
South East -4 769 £475 -3.06% 1,141
North of England -9 735 £450 -5.26% 883
Midlands -6 544 £450 +5.88% 671
West Midlands -9 393 £450 - 385
North West -12 347 £450 -7.98% 461
South West 0 340 £500 +5.26% 477
Yorkshire -7 334 £450 -5.26% 311
Scotland -4 273 £438 -2.78% 215
East of England +1 258 £450 -4.51% 397
East Midlands 0 148 £473 +27.19% 286
Wales -4 65 £475 +26.67% 97
North East -17 59 £375 -16.67% 120
Northern Ireland -5 25 £380 -24.00% 174

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
1 233 (4.19%) Confluence
2 209 (3.76%) SharePoint
3 105 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 66 (1.19%) Apache Spark
5 41 (0.74%) Apache
5 41 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
6 39 (0.70%) SAS
7 31 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
8 30 (0.54%) CMS
9 19 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.20%) CICS
12 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.13%) Mule
16 6 (0.11%) Appian
16 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 6 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 300 (5.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 258 (4.64%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (1.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 79 (1.42%) MS Visio
5 67 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
6 32 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.49%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 26 (0.47%) Chatbot
9 15 (0.27%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.27%) Sketch
10 12 (0.22%) Revit
11 11 (0.20%) Trello
12 10 (0.18%) CATIA
13 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
14 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
14 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
15 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.072%) Navisworks
15 4 (0.072%) Photoshop
16 3 (0.054%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 139 (2.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
3 39 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.47%) NetSuite
4 26 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
5 21 (0.38%) SAP GRC
5 21 (0.38%) Workday HCM
6 15 (0.27%) Aladdin
7 14 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
7 14 (0.25%) SAP SD
8 13 (0.23%) iTrent
9 12 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
10 11 (0.20%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.18%) Finacle
11 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
12 9 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
12 9 (0.16%) SAP CRM
12 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 1,072 (19.30%) Azure
2 807 (14.53%) AWS
3 432 (7.78%) Microsoft 365
4 429 (7.72%) Power Platform
5 318 (5.72%) GCP
6 262 (4.72%) Azure DevOps
7 216 (3.89%) Entra ID
8 193 (3.47%) GitHub
9 149 (2.68%) SaaS
10 130 (2.34%) Serverless
11 97 (1.75%) GitHub Actions
12 89 (1.60%) Power Automate
13 79 (1.42%) Dynamics 365
14 78 (1.40%) Amazon S3
15 76 (1.37%) AWS Lambda
16 68 (1.22%) PowerApps
17 64 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
18 63 (1.13%) Microsoft Copilot
18 63 (1.13%) OneDrive
19 62 (1.12%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 231 (4.16%) DNS
2 195 (3.51%) Firewall
3 149 (2.68%) VPN
4 139 (2.50%) TCP/IP
5 138 (2.48%) DHCP
6 122 (2.20%) WAN
7 103 (1.85%) LAN
8 95 (1.71%) Network Security
9 83 (1.49%) SAN
10 82 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
11 61 (1.10%) VLAN
12 56 (1.01%) Wireless
13 52 (0.94%) BGP
14 39 (0.70%) SD-WAN
15 38 (0.68%) OSPF
16 36 (0.65%) VoIP
17 32 (0.58%) MPLS
17 32 (0.58%) Structured Cabling
18 26 (0.47%) VXLAN
19 25 (0.45%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 332 (5.98%) Power BI
2 227 (4.09%) SQL Server
3 167 (3.01%) Data Warehouse
4 166 (2.99%) Relational Database
5 157 (2.83%) PostgreSQL
6 123 (2.21%) MongoDB
7 98 (1.76%) Metadata
8 92 (1.66%) NoSQL
9 88 (1.58%) Tableau
10 87 (1.57%) Data Lake
11 65 (1.17%) Big Data
12 58 (1.04%) MySQL
13 54 (0.97%) Oracle Database
14 51 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
15 49 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 36 (0.65%) Db2
17 28 (0.50%) DynamoDB
18 27 (0.49%) Pentaho
18 27 (0.49%) Power Query
19 26 (0.47%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 503 (9.05%) JIRA
2 343 (6.17%) Git
3 186 (3.35%) Jenkins
4 127 (2.29%) GitLab
5 72 (1.30%) Selenium
6 38 (0.68%) Cypress.io
7 37 (0.67%) Postman
8 34 (0.61%) Gradle
9 33 (0.59%) Maven
10 31 (0.56%) REST Assured
11 29 (0.52%) Cucumber
12 27 (0.49%) Bitbucket
13 25 (0.45%) JUnit
14 21 (0.38%) Mockito
15 18 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 18 (0.32%) JMeter
15 18 (0.32%) WebDriver
16 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
17 14 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
18 13 (0.23%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,884 (51.92%) Social Skills
2 2,285 (41.13%) Analytical Skills
3 1,300 (23.40%) Finance
4 575 (10.35%) Public Sector
5 429 (7.72%) Banking
6 231 (4.16%) Organisational Skills
7 214 (3.85%) Retail
8 199 (3.58%) Documentation Skills
9 183 (3.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 159 (2.86%) Manufacturing
11 146 (2.63%) Legal
12 141 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
13 118 (2.12%) Marketing
14 117 (2.11%) Presentation Skills
15 116 (2.09%) Front Office
16 104 (1.87%) Telecoms
17 88 (1.58%) Investment Banking
18 81 (1.46%) Back Office
19 62 (1.12%) Aerospace
20 58 (1.04%) Law
Job Titles
1 734 (13.21%) Analyst
2 693 (12.48%) Developer
3 514 (9.25%) Senior
4 420 (7.56%) Lead
5 362 (6.52%) Architect
6 257 (4.63%) Business Analyst
6 257 (4.63%) Consultant
7 234 (4.21%) Data Engineer
8 200 (3.60%) IT Support
9 194 (3.49%) Support Engineer
10 167 (3.01%) Project Manager
11 137 (2.47%) Java Developer
12 135 (2.43%) Administrator
12 135 (2.43%) IT Engineer
13 116 (2.09%) Data Analyst
14 109 (1.96%) Solutions Architect
15 100 (1.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 99 (1.78%) Software Engineer
17 98 (1.76%) Network Engineer
18 93 (1.67%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 347 (6.25%) REST
2 167 (3.01%) RESTful
3 159 (2.86%) .NET
4 153 (2.75%) Kafka
5 148 (2.66%) React
5 148 (2.66%) Spring
6 147 (2.65%) SOAP
7 128 (2.30%) JSON
8 121 (2.18%) CSS
9 112 (2.02%) HTML
10 111 (2.00%) XML
11 109 (1.96%) Middleware
11 109 (1.96%) Spring Boot
12 95 (1.71%) Node.js
13 87 (1.57%) AngularJS
14 83 (1.49%) Web Services
15 77 (1.39%) OAuth
16 73 (1.31%) PySpark
17 55 (0.99%) Playwright
18 48 (0.86%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 298 (5.36%) Onboarding
2 265 (4.77%) Product Ownership
3 239 (4.30%) Cloud Native
4 206 (3.71%) Data Centre
5 203 (3.65%) Self-Motivation
6 166 (2.99%) Enterprise Software
7 164 (2.95%) Distributed Systems
8 157 (2.83%) Analytical Mindset
9 156 (2.81%) Management Information System
10 130 (2.34%) Data Structures
10 130 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
11 129 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
12 106 (1.91%) Virtual Team
13 92 (1.66%) Driving Licence
14 72 (1.30%) Algorithms
15 67 (1.21%) AI Agents
16 58 (1.04%) CMDB
17 57 (1.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 55 (0.99%) Derivative
18 55 (0.99%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 721 (12.98%) Windows
2 296 (5.33%) Linux
3 167 (3.01%) Windows Server
4 122 (2.20%) Windows 10
5 110 (1.98%) Unix
6 92 (1.66%) Android
7 87 (1.57%) Apple iOS
8 84 (1.51%) Mac OS
9 46 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.34%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.27%) VMS
13 12 (0.22%) zOS
14 9 (0.16%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.14%) Solaris
16 6 (0.11%) CentOS
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.090%) Windows Server 2016
18 4 (0.072%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,516 (27.29%) Agile
2 1,110 (19.98%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,030 (18.54%) Stakeholder Management
4 922 (16.60%) CI/CD
5 864 (15.55%) DevOps
6 707 (12.73%) AI
7 606 (10.91%) Decision-Making
8 591 (10.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 583 (10.50%) Analytics
10 566 (10.19%) Migration
11 537 (9.67%) Customer Service
12 507 (9.13%) ITIL
13 437 (7.87%) Business Intelligence
14 436 (7.85%) Validation
15 432 (7.78%) Data Modelling
16 414 (7.45%) Test Automation
17 404 (7.27%) Scrum
18 361 (6.50%) Roadmaps
19 358 (6.44%) Project Management
20 341 (6.14%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 979 (17.62%) SQL
2 908 (16.35%) Python
3 444 (7.99%) Java
4 312 (5.62%) JavaScript
5 302 (5.44%) PowerShell
6 186 (3.35%) C#
7 147 (2.65%) Bash
8 124 (2.23%) TypeScript
9 93 (1.67%) PL/SQL
10 68 (1.22%) C++
11 53 (0.95%) T-SQL
12 44 (0.79%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.70%) Kotlin
14 38 (0.68%) Go
15 37 (0.67%) Bicep
16 34 (0.61%) Apex Code
16 34 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 34 (0.61%) Scala
17 32 (0.58%) C
17 32 (0.58%) R
Qualifications
1 1,215 (21.87%) Security Cleared
2 836 (15.05%) SC Cleared
3 644 (11.59%) Degree
4 219 (3.94%) DV Cleared
5 185 (3.33%) Computer Science Degree
6 160 (2.88%) Microsoft Certification
7 154 (2.77%) BPSS Clearance
8 137 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
9 81 (1.46%) CISSP
10 79 (1.42%) CCNA
11 75 (1.35%) A+ Certification
11 75 (1.35%) Azure Certification
11 75 (1.35%) PMP
12 71 (1.28%) PMI Certification
13 55 (0.99%) Master's Degree
13 55 (0.99%) Network+ Certification
14 54 (0.97%) MCSE
15 51 (0.92%) CISM
16 43 (0.77%) AWS Certification
17 41 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (6.86%) Data Quality
2 337 (6.07%) QA
3 144 (2.59%) Accessibility
4 142 (2.56%) GDPR
5 121 (2.18%) SLA
6 94 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 89 (1.60%) PMO
8 73 (1.31%) NIST
9 63 (1.13%) GRC
10 32 (0.58%) WCAG
11 28 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 27 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.41%) GxP
14 16 (0.29%) NCSC
15 15 (0.27%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 15 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
15 15 (0.27%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.27%) PCI DSS
16 14 (0.25%) COBIT
17 12 (0.22%) HIPAA
System Software
1 428 (7.70%) Active Directory
2 364 (6.55%) Docker
3 141 (2.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 54 (0.97%) Hyper-V
5 53 (0.95%) VMware ESXi
6 50 (0.90%) VMware NSX
6 50 (0.90%) vSphere
7 32 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
8 29 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
9 23 (0.41%) vCloud
10 20 (0.36%) Firmware
11 18 (0.32%) IAG
12 12 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.11%) NFS
13 6 (0.11%) Squid
14 5 (0.090%) Virtual Servers
15 4 (0.072%) Microsoft App-V
16 3 (0.054%) Snort
17 2 (0.036%) BitLocker
17 2 (0.036%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 416 (7.49%) Kubernetes
2 328 (5.90%) Terraform
3 170 (3.06%) Ansible
4 131 (2.36%) Microsoft Intune
5 100 (1.80%) Grafana
6 89 (1.60%) Prometheus
6 89 (1.60%) SCCM
7 57 (1.03%) vCenter Server
8 34 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
9 29 (0.52%) FortiGate
9 29 (0.52%) SCOM
10 27 (0.49%) Control-M
11 18 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
12 17 (0.31%) Argo
12 17 (0.31%) WSUS
13 15 (0.27%) Nessus
14 14 (0.25%) NetBackup
15 13 (0.23%) IBM Guardium
16 12 (0.22%) Kibana
16 12 (0.22%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,144 (20.59%) Microsoft
2 398 (7.16%) Oracle
3 351 (6.32%) ServiceNow
4 346 (6.23%) SAP
5 209 (3.76%) VMware
6 179 (3.22%) Google
7 145 (2.61%) Salesforce
8 133 (2.39%) Cisco
9 125 (2.25%) Databricks
10 123 (2.21%) Splunk
11 83 (1.49%) Workday
12 69 (1.24%) Dynatrace
13 66 (1.19%) Adobe
14 64 (1.15%) Dell
15 59 (1.06%) MuleSoft
16 55 (0.99%) Apple
16 55 (0.99%) Citrix
17 54 (0.97%) CyberArk
18 52 (0.94%) Red Hat
19 49 (0.88%) IBM