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

6 months to
6 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,595 4,754 4,737
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.12% 15.60% 10.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.18% 17.29% 12.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,451 2,930 2,946
10th Percentile £285 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% - -5.66%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -0.21% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 322 185 390
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.00 £11.75
25th Percentile £15.62 £17.08 £14.16
Median hourly rate £20.02 £26.50 £19.38
Median % change year-on-year -24.45% +36.77% -42.59%
75th Percentile £41.84 £43.75 £46.18
90th Percentile £71.38 £71.50 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.30 £22.69 £17.50
% change year-on-year -23.75% +29.64% -34.26%

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 36,846 27,490 38,514
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.38% 90.18% 86.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,348 17,263 25,101
10th Percentile £313 £306 £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 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -2.18% -1.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,189 895 2,262
10th Percentile £14.79 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.32 £21.05 £16.13
Median hourly rate £28.00 £32.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.85% -1.52% -5.71%
75th Percentile £63.75 £63.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £71.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.38 £31.76 £33.28
% change year-on-year -20.09% -4.57% -4.91%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 -1 4,784 £492 -1.60% 3,442
UK excluding London -4 2,881 £474 -0.21% 2,872
London -3 2,103 £513 -2.38% 1,116
Work from Home 0 1,629 £481 -3.88% 1,556
North of England -2 774 £450 -7.98% 651
South East -2 675 £492 -1.60% 921
Midlands -2 533 £450 +3.45% 456
West Midlands +1 387 £475 +5.20% 256
North West -1 386 £424 -10.79% 355
Yorkshire -4 336 £475 -5.00% 219
South West -2 321 £535 +3.13% 329
Scotland 0 274 £447 -0.67% 150
East of England -3 244 £450 - 364
East Midlands -3 147 £402 +7.56% 198
Wales +1 67 £400 +2.89% 84
North East -3 61 £438 -9.00% 90
Northern Ireland -1 32 £450 +36.36% 20
Channel Islands 0 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
1 228 (4.08%) Confluence
2 169 (3.02%) SharePoint
3 111 (1.98%) Microsoft Exchange
4 94 (1.68%) Apache Spark
5 69 (1.23%) Apache
6 65 (1.16%) SAS
7 51 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
8 36 (0.64%) CMS
9 21 (0.38%) Skype for Business
9 21 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.27%) nginx
11 11 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 11 (0.20%) JBoss
12 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.13%) Camunda
13 7 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 323 (5.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 233 (4.16%) Microsoft Office
3 129 (2.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 86 (1.54%) MS Visio
5 79 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
6 23 (0.41%) Chatbot
7 18 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.11%) Trello
11 5 (0.089%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.089%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.071%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.071%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.071%) InDesign
12 4 (0.071%) InVision
12 4 (0.071%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.054%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.054%) Notion
Business Applications
1 95 (1.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.34%) Aladdin
5 18 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
7 14 (0.25%) SAP ERP
8 13 (0.23%) NetSuite
8 13 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 12 (0.21%) NEC Housing
9 12 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.20%) SAP HR
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,208 (21.59%) Azure
2 878 (15.69%) AWS
3 403 (7.20%) GCP
4 383 (6.85%) Power Platform
5 349 (6.24%) Microsoft 365
6 270 (4.83%) GitHub
7 257 (4.59%) Azure DevOps
8 199 (3.56%) Serverless
9 168 (3.00%) Entra ID
10 141 (2.52%) GitHub Actions
11 138 (2.47%) SaaS
12 108 (1.93%) Amazon S3
13 102 (1.82%) AWS Lambda
14 94 (1.68%) OpenShift
15 92 (1.64%) Snowflake
16 82 (1.47%) Azure Data Factory
17 81 (1.45%) Dynamics 365
18 73 (1.30%) PaaS
19 70 (1.25%) Power Automate
20 66 (1.18%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 217 (3.88%) Firewall
2 201 (3.59%) DNS
3 136 (2.43%) TCP/IP
4 117 (2.09%) VPN
5 114 (2.04%) Network Security
6 112 (2.00%) DHCP
7 107 (1.91%) WAN
8 84 (1.50%) LAN
9 61 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
10 53 (0.95%) BGP
11 52 (0.93%) VLAN
12 40 (0.71%) SAN
13 39 (0.70%) OSPF
14 34 (0.61%) VoIP
15 27 (0.48%) Wireless
16 25 (0.45%) SD-WAN
17 24 (0.43%) HTTP
17 24 (0.43%) SSH
18 23 (0.41%) SSL
19 22 (0.39%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (5.56%) Power BI
2 189 (3.38%) SQL Server
3 174 (3.11%) PostgreSQL
4 171 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
5 163 (2.91%) Relational Database
6 115 (2.06%) MongoDB
6 115 (2.06%) NoSQL
7 89 (1.59%) Metadata
8 88 (1.57%) MySQL
9 84 (1.50%) Tableau
10 82 (1.47%) Big Data
11 75 (1.34%) Data Lake
12 73 (1.30%) Oracle Database
13 55 (0.98%) Oracle Reports
14 53 (0.95%) Hadoop
15 50 (0.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 44 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
17 40 (0.71%) DynamoDB
18 37 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
18 37 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 513 (9.17%) JIRA
2 392 (7.01%) Git
3 281 (5.02%) Jenkins
4 182 (3.25%) GitLab
5 87 (1.55%) Selenium
6 64 (1.14%) JUnit
7 46 (0.82%) Postman
8 44 (0.79%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.48%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.46%) Maven
12 25 (0.45%) Cypress.io
12 25 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
13 23 (0.41%) JMeter
13 23 (0.41%) SonarQube
14 21 (0.38%) Mockito
15 17 (0.30%) SpecFlow
16 16 (0.29%) IntelliJ
17 15 (0.27%) CircleCI
18 14 (0.25%) WebDriver
General
1 3,050 (54.51%) Social Skills
2 2,025 (36.19%) Analytical Skills
3 1,246 (22.27%) Finance
4 562 (10.04%) Public Sector
5 442 (7.90%) Banking
6 216 (3.86%) Organisational Skills
7 174 (3.11%) Legal
8 173 (3.09%) Documentation Skills
9 150 (2.68%) Retail
10 143 (2.56%) Influencing Skills
11 140 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 138 (2.47%) Presentation Skills
13 105 (1.88%) Telecoms
14 102 (1.82%) Front Office
15 97 (1.73%) Marketing
16 90 (1.61%) Investment Banking
17 82 (1.47%) Manufacturing
18 66 (1.18%) Military
19 57 (1.02%) Financial Institution
20 45 (0.80%) Law
Job Titles
1 796 (14.23%) Developer
2 775 (13.85%) Analyst
3 493 (8.81%) Senior
4 372 (6.65%) Architect
5 352 (6.29%) Lead
6 319 (5.70%) Business Analyst
7 307 (5.49%) Consultant
8 220 (3.93%) Data Engineer
9 217 (3.88%) Project Manager
10 155 (2.77%) Support Engineer
11 138 (2.47%) Java Developer
12 129 (2.31%) IT Support
13 111 (1.98%) Senior Developer
14 109 (1.95%) Data Analyst
15 103 (1.84%) Software Engineer
16 96 (1.72%) Solutions Architect
17 92 (1.64%) Python Developer
18 90 (1.61%) Administrator
19 86 (1.54%) Network Engineer
19 86 (1.54%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 377 (6.74%) REST
2 190 (3.40%) Kafka
2 190 (3.40%) RESTful
3 188 (3.36%) SOAP
4 177 (3.16%) .NET
5 169 (3.02%) React
6 168 (3.00%) Spring
7 165 (2.95%) Node.js
8 135 (2.41%) HTML
9 131 (2.34%) CSS
10 129 (2.31%) AngularJS
11 122 (2.18%) JSON
12 116 (2.07%) Spring Boot
13 104 (1.86%) XML
14 94 (1.68%) LDAP
15 91 (1.63%) Middleware
16 81 (1.45%) OAuth
17 71 (1.27%) Oracle Fusion
18 68 (1.22%) PySpark
18 68 (1.22%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 273 (4.88%) Product Ownership
2 242 (4.33%) Cloud Native
3 206 (3.68%) Onboarding
4 179 (3.20%) Management Information System
5 150 (2.68%) Data Centre
6 139 (2.48%) Analytical Mindset
7 127 (2.27%) Data Structures
8 125 (2.23%) Self-Motivation
9 115 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
10 102 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
11 100 (1.79%) Virtual Team
12 99 (1.77%) Algorithms
13 94 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
14 87 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
15 82 (1.47%) Security Posture
16 73 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
17 72 (1.29%) CMDB
18 67 (1.20%) Driving Licence
19 66 (1.18%) Mobile App
20 56 (1.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 585 (10.46%) Windows
2 357 (6.38%) Linux
3 117 (2.09%) Unix
4 111 (1.98%) Windows Server
5 106 (1.89%) Windows 10
6 70 (1.25%) Android
7 67 (1.20%) Apple iOS
8 66 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 57 (1.02%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.36%) VMS
11 15 (0.27%) CentOS
11 15 (0.27%) Ubuntu
12 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.14%) Mac OS X
15 5 (0.089%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.089%) Windows Server 2003
15 5 (0.089%) zOS
16 4 (0.071%) Debian
16 4 (0.071%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,628 (29.10%) Agile
2 1,045 (18.68%) CI/CD
3 895 (16.00%) DevOps
4 841 (15.03%) Stakeholder Management
5 802 (14.33%) Continuous Improvement
6 634 (11.33%) Analytics
7 577 (10.31%) Migration
8 561 (10.03%) Decision-Making
9 510 (9.12%) AI
10 485 (8.67%) Project Management
11 480 (8.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 465 (8.31%) Data Modelling
13 453 (8.10%) Test Automation
14 428 (7.65%) Scrum
15 422 (7.54%) Business Intelligence
16 419 (7.49%) Validation
17 394 (7.04%) Customer Service
18 392 (7.01%) Containerisation
19 390 (6.97%) ITIL
20 386 (6.90%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 1,078 (19.27%) Python
2 961 (17.18%) SQL
3 520 (9.29%) Java
4 372 (6.65%) PowerShell
5 331 (5.92%) JavaScript
6 234 (4.18%) C#
7 220 (3.93%) TypeScript
8 158 (2.82%) Bash
9 82 (1.47%) Shell Script
10 74 (1.32%) PL/SQL
11 61 (1.09%) C++
12 60 (1.07%) Go
13 49 (0.88%) Perl
14 46 (0.82%) Scala
15 42 (0.75%) Bicep
16 40 (0.71%) T-SQL
17 38 (0.68%) Ruby
18 36 (0.64%) VBA
19 33 (0.59%) Apex Code
19 33 (0.59%) C
Qualifications
1 1,191 (21.29%) Security Cleared
2 838 (14.98%) SC Cleared
3 742 (13.26%) Degree
4 253 (4.52%) Computer Science Degree
5 208 (3.72%) DV Cleared
6 160 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
7 113 (2.02%) Master's Degree
8 106 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
8 106 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
9 104 (1.86%) PMI Certification
10 103 (1.84%) PMP
11 95 (1.70%) CISSP
12 78 (1.39%) Azure Certification
13 60 (1.07%) CISM
14 56 (1.00%) CCNP
15 54 (0.97%) AWS Certification
16 45 (0.80%) CCNA
17 38 (0.68%) A+ Certification
17 38 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
18 30 (0.54%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 363 (6.49%) QA
2 331 (5.92%) Data Quality
3 162 (2.90%) GDPR
4 123 (2.20%) Accessibility
5 90 (1.61%) PMO
6 86 (1.54%) NIST
7 85 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 64 (1.14%) SLA
9 37 (0.66%) PCI DSS
10 34 (0.61%) GRC
10 34 (0.61%) WCAG
11 27 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
12 23 (0.41%) PSD2
12 23 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 18 (0.32%) ISO 20022
14 17 (0.30%) ISO 8583
15 16 (0.29%) EU AI Act
16 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
16 15 (0.27%) IFRS
17 14 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 495 (8.85%) Docker
2 394 (7.04%) Active Directory
3 115 (2.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.79%) vSphere
5 35 (0.63%) Hyper-V
6 34 (0.61%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
8 21 (0.38%) Firmware
8 21 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.20%) RACF
10 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.16%) ACF2
12 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 8 (0.14%) Squid
12 8 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
13 7 (0.13%) vCloud
14 6 (0.11%) HDFS
15 4 (0.071%) Snort
16 3 (0.054%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.054%) NFS
Systems Management
1 540 (9.65%) Kubernetes
2 324 (5.79%) Terraform
3 206 (3.68%) Ansible
4 135 (2.41%) Grafana
5 120 (2.14%) Microsoft Intune
6 108 (1.93%) Prometheus
7 99 (1.77%) SCCM
8 53 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
9 38 (0.68%) Puppet
10 36 (0.64%) FortiGate
10 36 (0.64%) Kibana
11 33 (0.59%) Nessus
12 31 (0.55%) Argo
13 29 (0.52%) vCenter Server
14 25 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 24 (0.43%) Control-M
16 23 (0.41%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.27%) Red Hat Satellite
17 15 (0.27%) vRealize
18 12 (0.21%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,043 (18.64%) Microsoft
2 369 (6.60%) Oracle
3 269 (4.81%) SAP
4 250 (4.47%) ServiceNow
5 206 (3.68%) VMware
6 185 (3.31%) Google
7 162 (2.90%) Databricks
8 157 (2.81%) Splunk
9 136 (2.43%) Cisco
10 116 (2.07%) Salesforce
11 88 (1.57%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.30%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.13%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.04%) Workday
15 57 (1.02%) Citrix
15 57 (1.02%) IBM
15 57 (1.02%) Palo Alto
15 57 (1.02%) Talend
16 53 (0.95%) Dell
17 51 (0.91%) Informatica