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

6 months to
6 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,448 4,842 4,774
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.05% 16.56% 10.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.10% 18.29% 12.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,305 3,046 2,949
10th Percentile £281 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £398 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £715 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £469 £475
% change year-on-year +0.21% -1.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 333 224 409
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.84 £11.06
25th Percentile £15.00 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.79 £24.66 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.69% +40.91% -58.49%
75th Percentile £44.94 £41.50 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.58 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.69 £22.00 £15.63
% change year-on-year -19.59% +40.75% -49.15%

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 38,628 26,479 37,892
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.41% 90.55% 86.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,477 17,189 24,572
10th Percentile £314 £308 £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 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,295 988 2,354
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £19.99 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.91 £31.58 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.71% -2.83% -13.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.73 £70.27
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.55 £30.00 £32.12
% change year-on-year +18.50% -6.59% -13.90%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 -3 4,679 £490 -2.00% 3,248
UK excluding London -5 2,835 £470 +0.21% 2,670
London -7 2,039 £513 -2.38% 986
Work from Home 0 1,540 £475 -5.00% 1,286
North of England -5 784 £450 -5.26% 662
South East -5 665 £495 -1.00% 802
Midlands -4 517 £450 +0.67% 478
North West -5 389 £425 -10.53% 365
West Midlands -3 375 £475 +2.98% 278
Yorkshire -4 347 £470 -2.08% 222
South West -1 320 £520 +4.00% 308
Scotland +1 256 £431 -4.17% 127
East of England -3 218 £450 - 288
East Midlands -3 143 £411 +11.22% 199
Wales -3 71 £400 +6.67% 81
North East -4 57 £438 -2.78% 92
Northern Ireland -2 28 £447 +27.71% 19
Channel Islands -6 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
1 225 (4.13%) Confluence
2 157 (2.88%) SharePoint
3 102 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 87 (1.60%) Apache Spark
5 66 (1.21%) SAS
6 64 (1.17%) Apache
7 47 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.61%) CMS
9 17 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
9 17 (0.31%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.26%) nginx
11 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 8 (0.15%) Skype for Business
13 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.13%) Camunda
14 6 (0.11%) CICS
14 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 316 (5.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (4.07%) Microsoft Office
3 118 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
5 81 (1.49%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.15%) Trello
11 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
12 6 (0.11%) CATIA
13 5 (0.092%) Acrobat
13 5 (0.092%) Maya
14 4 (0.073%) InDesign
14 4 (0.073%) InVision
14 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
15 3 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
15 3 (0.055%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 96 (1.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.37%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 14 (0.26%) SAP ERP
8 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
9 13 (0.24%) NEC Housing
9 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
9 13 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
10 12 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
12 10 (0.18%) NetSuite
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 10 (0.18%) SAP SD
13 9 (0.17%) iTrent
13 9 (0.17%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,140 (20.93%) Azure
2 849 (15.58%) AWS
3 391 (7.18%) Power Platform
4 372 (6.83%) GCP
5 343 (6.30%) Microsoft 365
6 251 (4.61%) Azure DevOps
7 242 (4.44%) GitHub
8 182 (3.34%) Serverless
9 169 (3.10%) Entra ID
10 141 (2.59%) SaaS
11 128 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
12 108 (1.98%) Amazon S3
13 103 (1.89%) AWS Lambda
14 91 (1.67%) OpenShift
15 77 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
15 77 (1.41%) Snowflake
16 74 (1.36%) Dynamics 365
16 74 (1.36%) Power Automate
17 62 (1.14%) PaaS
17 62 (1.14%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 208 (3.82%) Firewall
2 196 (3.60%) DNS
3 126 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 117 (2.15%) Network Security
5 114 (2.09%) VPN
6 110 (2.02%) WAN
7 103 (1.89%) DHCP
8 88 (1.62%) LAN
9 66 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.12%) SAN
11 55 (1.01%) BGP
12 48 (0.88%) VLAN
13 41 (0.75%) OSPF
14 36 (0.66%) SD-WAN
14 36 (0.66%) VoIP
15 28 (0.51%) Internet
15 28 (0.51%) MPLS
15 28 (0.51%) Wireless
16 21 (0.39%) Junos
17 20 (0.37%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (5.71%) Power BI
2 191 (3.51%) SQL Server
3 164 (3.01%) Data Warehouse
4 149 (2.73%) Relational Database
5 148 (2.72%) PostgreSQL
6 107 (1.96%) Metadata
7 94 (1.73%) NoSQL
8 93 (1.71%) MongoDB
9 88 (1.62%) Big Data
10 86 (1.58%) Tableau
11 84 (1.54%) Data Lake
12 70 (1.28%) MySQL
13 69 (1.27%) Oracle Database
14 62 (1.14%) Oracle Reports
15 49 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 47 (0.86%) Hadoop
17 40 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
18 36 (0.66%) DynamoDB
18 36 (0.66%) Pentaho
19 32 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 514 (9.43%) JIRA
2 354 (6.50%) Git
3 252 (4.63%) Jenkins
4 163 (2.99%) GitLab
5 83 (1.52%) Selenium
6 54 (0.99%) JUnit
7 42 (0.77%) Postman
8 34 (0.62%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.53%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.42%) Cypress.io
11 23 (0.42%) Maven
11 23 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
12 22 (0.40%) Mockito
13 20 (0.37%) JMeter
14 18 (0.33%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.28%) WebDriver
16 14 (0.26%) Artifactory
16 14 (0.26%) CircleCI
General
1 2,910 (53.41%) Social Skills
2 2,045 (37.54%) Analytical Skills
3 1,233 (22.63%) Finance
4 547 (10.04%) Public Sector
5 437 (8.02%) Banking
6 216 (3.96%) Organisational Skills
7 189 (3.47%) Documentation Skills
8 181 (3.32%) Legal
9 171 (3.14%) Retail
10 136 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
11 134 (2.46%) Presentation Skills
12 124 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 104 (1.91%) Front Office
14 94 (1.73%) Telecoms
15 87 (1.60%) Marketing
16 81 (1.49%) Investment Banking
17 77 (1.41%) Manufacturing
18 57 (1.05%) Military
19 56 (1.03%) Financial Institution
20 51 (0.94%) Law
Job Titles
1 754 (13.84%) Analyst
2 716 (13.14%) Developer
3 476 (8.74%) Senior
4 384 (7.05%) Architect
5 345 (6.33%) Lead
6 313 (5.75%) Business Analyst
7 298 (5.47%) Consultant
8 229 (4.20%) Data Engineer
9 215 (3.95%) Project Manager
10 138 (2.53%) Support Engineer
11 133 (2.44%) Java Developer
12 127 (2.33%) IT Support
13 108 (1.98%) Data Analyst
13 108 (1.98%) Solutions Architect
14 98 (1.80%) Administrator
14 98 (1.80%) Software Engineer
15 96 (1.76%) Senior Developer
16 87 (1.60%) IT Engineer
16 87 (1.60%) Network Engineer
17 85 (1.56%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 349 (6.41%) REST
2 173 (3.18%) Kafka
3 167 (3.07%) RESTful
4 159 (2.92%) SOAP
5 156 (2.86%) .NET
6 150 (2.75%) Spring
7 135 (2.48%) Node.js
7 135 (2.48%) React
8 111 (2.04%) AngularJS
8 111 (2.04%) Spring Boot
9 108 (1.98%) JSON
10 106 (1.95%) CSS
11 104 (1.91%) HTML
12 98 (1.80%) LDAP
13 96 (1.76%) XML
14 94 (1.73%) Middleware
15 79 (1.45%) OAuth
16 72 (1.32%) PySpark
17 64 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
18 60 (1.10%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 279 (5.12%) Product Ownership
2 231 (4.24%) Cloud Native
3 215 (3.95%) Onboarding
4 170 (3.12%) Data Centre
5 161 (2.96%) Management Information System
6 145 (2.66%) Self-Motivation
7 142 (2.61%) Analytical Mindset
8 116 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
9 113 (2.07%) Data Structures
10 106 (1.95%) Distributed Systems
11 104 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
11 104 (1.91%) Virtual Team
12 99 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
13 74 (1.36%) Algorithms
14 71 (1.30%) Security Posture
15 66 (1.21%) Driving Licence
16 65 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
17 63 (1.16%) Mobile App
18 58 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 52 (0.95%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 598 (10.98%) Windows
2 337 (6.19%) Linux
3 113 (2.07%) Windows Server
4 110 (2.02%) Windows 10
5 101 (1.85%) Unix
6 77 (1.41%) Android
7 70 (1.28%) Apple iOS
8 64 (1.17%) Mac OS
9 60 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.39%) VMS
11 17 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.20%) CentOS
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.13%) zOS
16 6 (0.11%) Debian
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.092%) Windows Server 2003
18 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,552 (28.49%) Agile
2 971 (17.82%) CI/CD
3 870 (15.97%) DevOps
4 827 (15.18%) Continuous Improvement
5 813 (14.92%) Stakeholder Management
6 634 (11.64%) Analytics
7 573 (10.52%) Migration
8 563 (10.33%) Decision-Making
9 536 (9.84%) AI
10 493 (9.05%) Project Management
11 481 (8.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 465 (8.54%) Data Modelling
13 430 (7.89%) Business Intelligence
13 430 (7.89%) Test Automation
14 424 (7.78%) Validation
15 412 (7.56%) Customer Service
16 404 (7.42%) Scrum
17 403 (7.40%) ITIL
18 392 (7.20%) Change Management
19 350 (6.42%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,023 (18.78%) Python
2 950 (17.44%) SQL
3 475 (8.72%) Java
4 362 (6.64%) PowerShell
5 291 (5.34%) JavaScript
6 218 (4.00%) C#
7 187 (3.43%) TypeScript
8 152 (2.79%) Bash
9 85 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 71 (1.30%) Shell Script
11 65 (1.19%) C++
12 53 (0.97%) Go
13 45 (0.83%) Perl
14 43 (0.79%) Bicep
15 42 (0.77%) T-SQL
16 39 (0.72%) R
16 39 (0.72%) Scala
17 35 (0.64%) Apex Code
17 35 (0.64%) C
18 33 (0.61%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,187 (21.79%) Security Cleared
2 825 (15.14%) SC Cleared
3 672 (12.33%) Degree
4 228 (4.19%) Computer Science Degree
5 206 (3.78%) DV Cleared
6 173 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
7 127 (2.33%) Cisco Certification
8 108 (1.98%) Microsoft Certification
8 108 (1.98%) PMP
9 106 (1.95%) PMI Certification
10 103 (1.89%) CISSP
11 88 (1.62%) Master's Degree
12 72 (1.32%) Azure Certification
13 67 (1.23%) CISM
14 60 (1.10%) CCNA
15 56 (1.03%) CCNP
16 50 (0.92%) A+ Certification
17 45 (0.83%) MCSE
18 44 (0.81%) Network+ Certification
19 42 (0.77%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 358 (6.57%) Data Quality
2 350 (6.42%) QA
3 162 (2.97%) GDPR
4 112 (2.06%) Accessibility
5 101 (1.85%) PMO
6 92 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 91 (1.67%) NIST
8 73 (1.34%) SLA
9 43 (0.79%) GRC
10 35 (0.64%) WCAG
11 33 (0.61%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.48%) PSD2
14 25 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
16 18 (0.33%) ISO 8583
17 15 (0.28%) HL7
17 15 (0.28%) IFRS
18 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 430 (7.89%) Docker
2 401 (7.36%) Active Directory
3 115 (2.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (0.90%) vSphere
5 40 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 31 (0.57%) Hyper-V
7 22 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.35%) Firmware
9 16 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
11 10 (0.18%) vCloud
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
12 9 (0.17%) Squid
12 9 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.092%) IAG
15 4 (0.073%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.073%) Snort
16 3 (0.055%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 497 (9.12%) Kubernetes
2 313 (5.75%) Terraform
3 185 (3.40%) Ansible
4 130 (2.39%) Microsoft Intune
5 125 (2.29%) Grafana
6 99 (1.82%) Prometheus
7 84 (1.54%) SCCM
8 44 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
9 37 (0.68%) vCenter Server
10 31 (0.57%) Kibana
11 30 (0.55%) Puppet
12 27 (0.50%) Argo
13 24 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 20 (0.37%) Nessus
15 19 (0.35%) Control-M
16 15 (0.28%) vRealize
17 14 (0.26%) IBM Guardium
18 12 (0.22%) HP ALM
19 11 (0.20%) Consul
Vendors
1 983 (18.04%) Microsoft
2 374 (6.86%) Oracle
3 269 (4.94%) SAP
4 234 (4.30%) ServiceNow
5 202 (3.71%) VMware
6 174 (3.19%) Google
7 165 (3.03%) Databricks
8 137 (2.51%) Splunk
9 127 (2.33%) Cisco
10 115 (2.11%) Salesforce
11 77 (1.41%) Red Hat
12 71 (1.30%) CyberArk
13 70 (1.28%) Dell
14 67 (1.23%) BeyondTrust
15 61 (1.12%) Citrix
16 57 (1.05%) Talend
17 54 (0.99%) IBM
18 53 (0.97%) Workday
19 51 (0.94%) Informatica
19 51 (0.94%) Palo Alto