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

6 months to
20 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 5,564 4,701 4,740
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.62% 15.24% 10.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.69% 16.98% 12.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,434 2,811 2,957
10th Percentile £284 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £395 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% - -6.15%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £619
90th Percentile £700 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £467 £475
% change year-on-year +1.82% -1.79% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 320 182 375
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.62 £12.13
25th Percentile £15.62 £17.00 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.69 £27.06 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -27.25% +38.78% -36.83%
75th Percentile £37.44 £43.56 £50.13
90th Percentile £70.15 £69.88 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.24 £22.32 £17.50
% change year-on-year -22.76% +27.54% -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 35,472 27,688 38,644
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.86% 89.76% 87.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,461 17,051 25,269
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £410 £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 £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.84% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,140 862 2,156
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.64 £32.50 £34.77
Median % change year-on-year -21.12% -6.52% -0.67%
75th Percentile £60.25 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £30.45 £35.00
% change year-on-year -17.41% -13.00% -

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 4,745 £492 -1.60% 5,080
UK excluding London -3 2,847 £475 +1.82% 4,307
London -4 2,105 £513 -2.38% 1,449
Work from Home +1 1,627 £480 -4.00% 1,981
North of England -2 756 £450 -5.26% 931
South East -2 669 £483 -3.50% 1,348
Midlands -1 532 £460 +8.24% 655
North West -1 390 £424 -8.38% 517
West Midlands +1 384 £488 +10.16% 355
Yorkshire -3 312 £481 -3.75% 309
South West -1 305 £525 +5.00% 516
Scotland 0 285 £447 -0.61% 203
East of England -3 240 £475 +5.56% 578
East Midlands -2 149 £402 +9.54% 294
Wales +2 67 £400 - 143
North East -5 62 £450 -11.33% 116
Northern Ireland +2 36 £475 +45.04% 76
Channel Islands +1 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
1 222 (3.99%) Confluence
2 166 (2.98%) SharePoint
3 105 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 88 (1.58%) Apache Spark
5 68 (1.22%) Apache
6 64 (1.15%) SAS
7 50 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
8 35 (0.63%) CMS
9 25 (0.45%) Skype for Business
10 21 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.25%) nginx
12 11 (0.20%) JBoss
13 9 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
14 7 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.11%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
15 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 316 (5.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 228 (4.10%) Microsoft Office
3 122 (2.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 80 (1.44%) MS Visio
5 78 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
6 20 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 18 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.11%) Trello
12 5 (0.090%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.072%) Adobe Captivate
13 4 (0.072%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.072%) InVision
13 4 (0.072%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.072%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
14 3 (0.054%) InDesign
14 3 (0.054%) Notion
Business Applications
1 104 (1.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
4 18 (0.32%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.27%) NetSuite
5 15 (0.27%) SAP EWM
5 15 (0.27%) Workday HCM
6 14 (0.25%) SAP ERP
6 14 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 13 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.23%) Oracle Receivables
7 13 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
8 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
9 11 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 11 (0.20%) SAP HR
9 11 (0.20%) SAP WM
10 10 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,213 (21.80%) Azure
2 879 (15.80%) AWS
3 413 (7.42%) GCP
4 382 (6.87%) Power Platform
5 344 (6.18%) Microsoft 365
6 264 (4.74%) GitHub
7 250 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
8 192 (3.45%) Serverless
9 154 (2.77%) Entra ID
10 138 (2.48%) GitHub Actions
10 138 (2.48%) SaaS
11 101 (1.82%) Amazon S3
12 92 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
12 92 (1.65%) Snowflake
13 89 (1.60%) OpenShift
14 83 (1.49%) Dynamics 365
15 82 (1.47%) Azure Data Factory
16 71 (1.28%) Power Automate
17 68 (1.22%) PaaS
18 62 (1.11%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 218 (3.92%) Firewall
2 202 (3.63%) DNS
3 135 (2.43%) TCP/IP
4 117 (2.10%) VPN
5 115 (2.07%) DHCP
6 114 (2.05%) Network Security
7 101 (1.82%) WAN
8 81 (1.46%) LAN
9 54 (0.97%) VLAN
10 52 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
11 49 (0.88%) BGP
12 35 (0.63%) OSPF
13 34 (0.61%) SAN
14 33 (0.59%) VoIP
15 27 (0.49%) Wireless
16 26 (0.47%) HTTP
16 26 (0.47%) SD-WAN
16 26 (0.47%) SSH
17 25 (0.45%) Skype
18 22 (0.40%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (5.57%) Power BI
2 181 (3.25%) SQL Server
3 173 (3.11%) Relational Database
4 169 (3.04%) Data Warehouse
5 165 (2.97%) PostgreSQL
6 114 (2.05%) MongoDB
7 103 (1.85%) NoSQL
8 96 (1.73%) Metadata
9 89 (1.60%) MySQL
10 83 (1.49%) Big Data
11 81 (1.46%) Tableau
12 74 (1.33%) Data Lake
13 73 (1.31%) Oracle Database
14 51 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 50 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
16 48 (0.86%) Hadoop
17 43 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
18 39 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
19 37 (0.66%) DynamoDB
20 35 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 498 (8.95%) JIRA
2 375 (6.74%) Git
3 277 (4.98%) Jenkins
4 175 (3.15%) GitLab
5 89 (1.60%) Selenium
6 68 (1.22%) JUnit
7 48 (0.86%) Postman
8 44 (0.79%) Cucumber
9 35 (0.63%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.50%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.47%) JMeter
12 25 (0.45%) Maven
13 24 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
14 23 (0.41%) Cypress.io
15 22 (0.40%) Mockito
15 22 (0.40%) SonarQube
16 17 (0.31%) SpecFlow
17 16 (0.29%) CircleCI
18 14 (0.25%) Artifactory
18 14 (0.25%) WebDriver
General
1 3,041 (54.65%) Social Skills
2 1,999 (35.93%) Analytical Skills
3 1,238 (22.25%) Finance
4 548 (9.85%) Public Sector
5 448 (8.05%) Banking
6 218 (3.92%) Organisational Skills
7 172 (3.09%) Legal
8 171 (3.07%) Documentation Skills
9 141 (2.53%) Influencing Skills
10 140 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 140 (2.52%) Presentation Skills
11 139 (2.50%) Retail
12 116 (2.08%) Telecoms
13 104 (1.87%) Front Office
14 99 (1.78%) Marketing
15 98 (1.76%) Investment Banking
16 86 (1.55%) Manufacturing
17 66 (1.19%) Military
18 58 (1.04%) Financial Institution
19 48 (0.86%) Law
Job Titles
1 805 (14.47%) Developer
2 787 (14.14%) Analyst
3 498 (8.95%) Senior
4 362 (6.51%) Architect
5 335 (6.02%) Lead
6 325 (5.84%) Business Analyst
7 317 (5.70%) Consultant
8 212 (3.81%) Data Engineer
9 203 (3.65%) Project Manager
10 161 (2.89%) Support Engineer
11 147 (2.64%) Java Developer
12 136 (2.44%) IT Support
13 119 (2.14%) Senior Developer
14 118 (2.12%) Data Analyst
15 108 (1.94%) Software Engineer
16 96 (1.73%) Solutions Architect
17 93 (1.67%) Support Analyst
18 92 (1.65%) Python Developer
19 91 (1.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 88 (1.58%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 382 (6.87%) REST
2 195 (3.50%) Kafka
3 192 (3.45%) RESTful
4 191 (3.43%) SOAP
5 178 (3.20%) .NET
6 169 (3.04%) Spring
7 166 (2.98%) Node.js
8 165 (2.97%) React
9 144 (2.59%) HTML
10 134 (2.41%) CSS
11 125 (2.25%) AngularJS
12 119 (2.14%) Spring Boot
13 115 (2.07%) JSON
14 101 (1.82%) XML
15 93 (1.67%) LDAP
16 92 (1.65%) Middleware
17 77 (1.38%) OAuth
18 68 (1.22%) Oracle Fusion
19 66 (1.19%) PySpark
20 61 (1.10%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 275 (4.94%) Product Ownership
2 251 (4.51%) Cloud Native
3 204 (3.67%) Onboarding
4 187 (3.36%) Management Information System
5 142 (2.55%) Data Centre
6 135 (2.43%) Analytical Mindset
6 135 (2.43%) Data Structures
7 121 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
8 113 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
9 105 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
10 96 (1.73%) Algorithms
11 95 (1.71%) Virtual Team
12 92 (1.65%) Legacy Systems
13 83 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
14 79 (1.42%) Security Posture
15 74 (1.33%) CMDB
16 72 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
17 66 (1.19%) Mobile App
18 65 (1.17%) Driving Licence
19 59 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 559 (10.05%) Windows
2 384 (6.90%) Linux
3 122 (2.19%) Unix
4 110 (1.98%) Windows Server
5 100 (1.80%) Windows 10
6 69 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 63 (1.13%) Android
8 61 (1.10%) Apple iOS
9 56 (1.01%) Mac OS
10 22 (0.40%) VMS
11 18 (0.32%) CentOS
12 15 (0.27%) Ubuntu
13 10 (0.18%) Mac OS X
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.090%) Windows Server 2003
17 4 (0.072%) Debian
17 4 (0.072%) Windows 8
18 3 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,621 (29.13%) Agile
2 1,027 (18.46%) CI/CD
3 877 (15.76%) DevOps
4 806 (14.49%) Stakeholder Management
5 784 (14.09%) Continuous Improvement
6 613 (11.02%) Analytics
7 574 (10.32%) Migration
8 559 (10.05%) Decision-Making
9 497 (8.93%) AI
10 479 (8.61%) Project Management
11 476 (8.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 453 (8.14%) Data Modelling
13 446 (8.02%) Test Automation
14 420 (7.55%) Scrum
15 413 (7.42%) Business Intelligence
16 401 (7.21%) Validation
17 392 (7.05%) Containerisation
18 389 (6.99%) Computer Science
18 389 (6.99%) Mentoring
19 386 (6.94%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 1,082 (19.45%) Python
2 945 (16.98%) SQL
3 538 (9.67%) Java
4 363 (6.52%) PowerShell
5 338 (6.07%) JavaScript
6 241 (4.33%) C#
7 225 (4.04%) TypeScript
8 153 (2.75%) Bash
9 85 (1.53%) Shell Script
10 74 (1.33%) PL/SQL
11 68 (1.22%) Go
12 62 (1.11%) C++
13 49 (0.88%) Perl
14 44 (0.79%) Scala
15 40 (0.72%) Ruby
16 39 (0.70%) T-SQL
17 38 (0.68%) R
17 38 (0.68%) VBA
18 35 (0.63%) Bicep
19 33 (0.59%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,156 (20.78%) Security Cleared
2 823 (14.79%) SC Cleared
3 761 (13.68%) Degree
4 261 (4.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 204 (3.67%) DV Cleared
6 161 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
7 109 (1.96%) Master's Degree
8 104 (1.87%) Microsoft Certification
9 100 (1.80%) PMI Certification
10 98 (1.76%) PMP
11 92 (1.65%) CISSP
12 91 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
13 86 (1.55%) Azure Certification
14 59 (1.06%) AWS Certification
15 55 (0.99%) CCNP
15 55 (0.99%) CISM
16 42 (0.75%) A+ Certification
16 42 (0.75%) CCNA
17 36 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
18 33 (0.59%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 367 (6.60%) QA
2 330 (5.93%) Data Quality
3 167 (3.00%) GDPR
4 122 (2.19%) Accessibility
5 87 (1.56%) PMO
6 85 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 85 (1.53%) NIST
7 59 (1.06%) SLA
8 39 (0.70%) PCI DSS
9 34 (0.61%) WCAG
10 31 (0.56%) GRC
11 26 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
12 25 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 23 (0.41%) PSD2
14 20 (0.36%) ISO 20022
15 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
16 16 (0.29%) EU AI Act
17 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 13 (0.23%) HL7
System Software
1 494 (8.88%) Docker
2 380 (6.83%) Active Directory
3 125 (2.25%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.81%) Hyper-V
5 44 (0.79%) vSphere
6 33 (0.59%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
8 23 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (0.32%) Firmware
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.16%) ACF2
13 8 (0.14%) Squid
14 7 (0.13%) HDFS
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
16 5 (0.090%) vCloud
17 4 (0.072%) KVM
17 4 (0.072%) Snort
18 3 (0.054%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 539 (9.69%) Kubernetes
2 319 (5.73%) Terraform
3 206 (3.70%) Ansible
4 138 (2.48%) Grafana
5 109 (1.96%) Prometheus
6 108 (1.94%) Microsoft Intune
7 98 (1.76%) SCCM
8 50 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
9 41 (0.74%) Puppet
10 39 (0.70%) Kibana
11 32 (0.58%) FortiGate
12 31 (0.56%) Argo
12 31 (0.56%) Nessus
13 25 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 24 (0.43%) vCenter Server
15 22 (0.40%) Control-M
16 21 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
17 19 (0.34%) Red Hat Satellite
18 14 (0.25%) SCOM
18 14 (0.25%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,029 (18.49%) Microsoft
2 359 (6.45%) Oracle
3 284 (5.10%) SAP
4 236 (4.24%) ServiceNow
5 213 (3.83%) VMware
6 185 (3.32%) Google
7 163 (2.93%) Databricks
8 153 (2.75%) Splunk
9 137 (2.46%) Cisco
10 122 (2.19%) Salesforce
11 91 (1.64%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.31%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.13%) BeyondTrust
14 56 (1.01%) IBM
14 56 (1.01%) Palo Alto
15 54 (0.97%) Workday
16 53 (0.95%) Talend
17 52 (0.93%) Dell
18 51 (0.92%) Citrix
19 50 (0.90%) Informatica