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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,461 5,318 4,726
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.49% 16.71% 10.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.34% 18.43% 12.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,145 3,269 2,848
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £380 £375 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £619
90th Percentile £700 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £457 £463 £475
% change year-on-year -1.24% -2.63% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 437 296 405
10th Percentile £13.10 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.49 £14.00
Median hourly rate £19.38 £21.39 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -9.42% +31.79% -68.02%
75th Percentile £37.50 £41.00 £32.50
90th Percentile £73.30 £65.25 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.75 £18.85 £15.89
% change year-on-year -0.53% +18.63% -67.70%

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 44,261 28,859 36,923
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.68% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,507 18,191 23,560
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.28% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,650 1,433 2,509
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £17.50 £16.12
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.32 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.83 £38.12
% change year-on-year +77.04% -34.86% +8.82%

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 7 July 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 7 July 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 7 July 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 -9 4,677 £494 -1.20% 3,874
UK excluding London -5 2,946 £457 -1.24% 3,244
London -12 1,973 £512 +2.36% 1,185
Work from Home -8 1,510 £488 -2.50% 4,546
North of England -9 736 £447 -5.89% 804
South East -5 734 £481 -1.84% 884
Midlands -7 538 £465 +9.41% 508
West Midlands -8 390 £469 +4.22% 260
North West -11 365 £447 -6.88% 423
Yorkshire -6 330 £450 -5.26% 269
South West -3 327 £500 - 385
Scotland -1 291 £430 -7.03% 184
East of England -2 261 £450 -4.26% 342
East Midlands -1 146 £450 +22.62% 248
Wales -1 69 £468 +32.40% 105
North East -23 47 £356 -20.83% 128
Northern Ireland -8 23 £380 -10.59% 116
Channel Islands -3 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
1 223 (4.08%) Confluence
2 165 (3.02%) SharePoint
3 90 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
4 81 (1.48%) Apache Spark
5 51 (0.93%) Apache
6 50 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 40 (0.73%) SAS
8 34 (0.62%) CMS
9 29 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.24%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.20%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.20%) CICS
12 11 (0.20%) nginx
13 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.15%) Camunda
15 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
16 6 (0.11%) Appian
16 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 298 (5.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 237 (4.34%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (1.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 85 (1.56%) MS Visio
5 66 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
6 35 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 23 (0.42%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.26%) AutoCAD
10 12 (0.22%) Sketch
11 11 (0.20%) Revit
12 10 (0.18%) CATIA
13 8 (0.15%) CPLEX
14 7 (0.13%) Trello
15 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
15 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
15 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
16 5 (0.092%) Maya
17 3 (0.055%) Navisworks
17 3 (0.055%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 136 (2.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
4 22 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
5 20 (0.37%) NetSuite
6 18 (0.33%) Aladdin
6 18 (0.33%) Workday HCM
7 16 (0.29%) SAP GRC
8 13 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
8 13 (0.24%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
9 12 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 12 (0.22%) Teamcenter
10 11 (0.20%) iTrent
11 10 (0.18%) Finacle
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
11 10 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
11 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.15%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.15%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,078 (19.74%) Azure
2 802 (14.69%) AWS
3 421 (7.71%) Power Platform
4 387 (7.09%) Microsoft 365
5 304 (5.57%) GCP
6 260 (4.76%) Azure DevOps
7 194 (3.55%) Entra ID
8 188 (3.44%) GitHub
9 144 (2.64%) SaaS
10 137 (2.51%) Serverless
11 92 (1.68%) Amazon S3
12 91 (1.67%) GitHub Actions
13 82 (1.50%) AWS Lambda
14 77 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
14 77 (1.41%) Power Automate
15 69 (1.26%) PowerApps
16 67 (1.23%) Snowflake
17 66 (1.21%) Azure Data Factory
18 65 (1.19%) OpenShift
19 49 (0.90%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 219 (4.01%) DNS
2 175 (3.20%) Firewall
3 128 (2.34%) VPN
4 126 (2.31%) TCP/IP
5 118 (2.16%) DHCP
6 106 (1.94%) WAN
7 99 (1.81%) Network Security
8 87 (1.59%) LAN
9 86 (1.57%) SAN
10 77 (1.41%) Wi-Fi
11 52 (0.95%) BGP
11 52 (0.95%) VLAN
12 45 (0.82%) Wireless
13 43 (0.79%) OSPF
14 39 (0.71%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.66%) VoIP
16 29 (0.53%) MPLS
17 27 (0.49%) VXLAN
18 26 (0.48%) Structured Cabling
19 24 (0.44%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 326 (5.97%) Power BI
2 228 (4.18%) SQL Server
3 160 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
4 155 (2.84%) Relational Database
5 142 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
6 117 (2.14%) MongoDB
7 103 (1.89%) Metadata
8 93 (1.70%) Data Lake
9 91 (1.67%) NoSQL
10 89 (1.63%) Tableau
11 77 (1.41%) Big Data
12 58 (1.06%) Oracle Database
13 53 (0.97%) MySQL
14 50 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 45 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
16 37 (0.68%) Hadoop
17 33 (0.60%) Db2
18 31 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
19 27 (0.49%) Delta Lake
19 27 (0.49%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 512 (9.38%) JIRA
2 307 (5.62%) Git
3 195 (3.57%) Jenkins
4 130 (2.38%) GitLab
5 70 (1.28%) Selenium
6 44 (0.81%) Postman
7 38 (0.70%) REST Assured
8 32 (0.59%) Cypress.io
9 28 (0.51%) Cucumber
10 26 (0.48%) JUnit
11 23 (0.42%) Bitbucket
12 21 (0.38%) Mockito
13 18 (0.33%) WebDriver
14 16 (0.29%) Gradle
14 16 (0.29%) JMeter
14 16 (0.29%) Maven
14 16 (0.29%) Sonatype Nexus
15 15 (0.27%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
16 12 (0.22%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,832 (51.86%) Social Skills
2 2,182 (39.96%) Analytical Skills
3 1,290 (23.62%) Finance
4 530 (9.71%) Public Sector
5 421 (7.71%) Banking
6 216 (3.96%) Organisational Skills
7 211 (3.86%) Documentation Skills
8 189 (3.46%) Retail
9 153 (2.80%) Legal
10 151 (2.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 134 (2.45%) Manufacturing
12 131 (2.40%) Influencing Skills
13 115 (2.11%) Presentation Skills
14 114 (2.09%) Front Office
15 101 (1.85%) Marketing
16 100 (1.83%) Telecoms
17 93 (1.70%) Investment Banking
18 81 (1.48%) Back Office
19 62 (1.14%) Aerospace
20 58 (1.06%) Law
Job Titles
1 735 (13.46%) Analyst
2 652 (11.94%) Developer
3 486 (8.90%) Senior
4 380 (6.96%) Architect
5 370 (6.78%) Lead
6 278 (5.09%) Business Analyst
7 256 (4.69%) Consultant
8 240 (4.39%) Data Engineer
9 184 (3.37%) IT Support
10 181 (3.31%) Support Engineer
11 178 (3.26%) Project Manager
12 127 (2.33%) Java Developer
13 124 (2.27%) Administrator
13 124 (2.27%) IT Engineer
14 115 (2.11%) Data Analyst
15 109 (2.00%) Solutions Architect
16 100 (1.83%) Software Engineer
17 93 (1.70%) Network Engineer
18 90 (1.65%) Technical Support
19 88 (1.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 327 (5.99%) REST
2 167 (3.06%) .NET
3 157 (2.87%) Kafka
4 152 (2.78%) Spring
5 144 (2.64%) RESTful
6 140 (2.56%) React
7 137 (2.51%) SOAP
8 120 (2.20%) JSON
9 114 (2.09%) CSS
9 114 (2.09%) Middleware
10 113 (2.07%) Spring Boot
11 106 (1.94%) HTML
12 102 (1.87%) XML
13 90 (1.65%) AngularJS
14 89 (1.63%) Node.js
15 78 (1.43%) PySpark
16 69 (1.26%) Web Services
17 60 (1.10%) OAuth
18 57 (1.04%) LDAP
19 50 (0.92%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 267 (4.89%) Product Ownership
2 255 (4.67%) Onboarding
3 239 (4.38%) Cloud Native
4 208 (3.81%) Data Centre
5 198 (3.63%) Self-Motivation
6 162 (2.97%) Analytical Mindset
7 149 (2.73%) Distributed Systems
8 142 (2.60%) Management Information System
9 135 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
10 134 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
11 130 (2.38%) Data Protection Act
12 125 (2.29%) Data Structures
13 117 (2.14%) Virtual Team
14 76 (1.39%) Driving Licence
15 71 (1.30%) Algorithms
16 61 (1.12%) AI Agents
17 58 (1.06%) Derivative
18 57 (1.04%) CMDB
19 56 (1.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 52 (0.95%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 686 (12.56%) Windows
2 296 (5.42%) Linux
3 137 (2.51%) Windows Server
4 117 (2.14%) Windows 10
5 115 (2.11%) Unix
6 91 (1.67%) Mac OS
7 87 (1.59%) Android
8 82 (1.50%) Apple iOS
9 49 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.22%) VMS
13 11 (0.20%) zOS
14 9 (0.16%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.15%) CentOS
15 8 (0.15%) Solaris
15 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.092%) Debian
16 5 (0.092%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.073%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,452 (26.59%) Agile
2 979 (17.93%) Continuous Improvement
3 914 (16.74%) Stakeholder Management
4 891 (16.32%) CI/CD
5 850 (15.56%) DevOps
6 657 (12.03%) AI
7 616 (11.28%) Decision-Making
8 593 (10.86%) Analytics
9 585 (10.71%) Migration
10 544 (9.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 508 (9.30%) ITIL
12 505 (9.25%) Customer Service
13 448 (8.20%) Validation
14 435 (7.97%) Data Modelling
15 423 (7.75%) Business Intelligence
16 401 (7.34%) Test Automation
17 384 (7.03%) Project Management
17 384 (7.03%) Scrum
18 359 (6.57%) Change Management
19 349 (6.39%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 986 (18.06%) SQL
2 922 (16.88%) Python
3 444 (8.13%) Java
4 291 (5.33%) PowerShell
5 283 (5.18%) JavaScript
6 199 (3.64%) C#
7 129 (2.36%) TypeScript
8 126 (2.31%) Bash
9 88 (1.61%) PL/SQL
10 74 (1.36%) C++
11 51 (0.93%) T-SQL
12 50 (0.92%) Shell Script
13 48 (0.88%) Go
14 44 (0.81%) C
15 38 (0.70%) R
16 37 (0.68%) Bicep
17 36 (0.66%) Apex Code
18 35 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 28 (0.51%) Kotlin
19 28 (0.51%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,195 (21.88%) Security Cleared
2 812 (14.87%) SC Cleared
3 660 (12.09%) Degree
4 208 (3.81%) DV Cleared
5 195 (3.57%) Computer Science Degree
6 157 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
7 146 (2.67%) Microsoft Certification
8 141 (2.58%) Cisco Certification
9 91 (1.67%) CISSP
10 82 (1.50%) CCNA
11 81 (1.48%) A+ Certification
11 81 (1.48%) PMP
12 74 (1.36%) PMI Certification
13 71 (1.30%) Master's Degree
14 69 (1.26%) Azure Certification
15 64 (1.17%) Network+ Certification
16 58 (1.06%) CISM
17 56 (1.03%) MCSE
18 45 (0.82%) AWS Certification
19 43 (0.79%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (6.92%) Data Quality
2 312 (5.71%) QA
3 153 (2.80%) GDPR
4 128 (2.34%) Accessibility
5 116 (2.12%) SLA
6 95 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 79 (1.45%) PMO
8 75 (1.37%) NIST
9 56 (1.03%) GRC
10 30 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
11 27 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.42%) PCI DSS
13 21 (0.38%) WCAG
14 18 (0.33%) GxP
14 18 (0.33%) ISO 20022
15 17 (0.31%) NCSC
16 14 (0.26%) COBIT
17 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
18 12 (0.22%) PSD2
19 11 (0.20%) IFRS
System Software
1 401 (7.34%) Active Directory
2 351 (6.43%) Docker
3 122 (2.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 46 (0.84%) vSphere
5 45 (0.82%) VMware NSX
6 42 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
7 35 (0.64%) Hyper-V
8 29 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
10 21 (0.38%) vCloud
11 20 (0.37%) Firmware
12 14 (0.26%) IAG
13 11 (0.20%) Squid
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.13%) NFS
16 4 (0.073%) ACF2
16 4 (0.073%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.073%) RACF
16 4 (0.073%) Snort
16 4 (0.073%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 426 (7.80%) Kubernetes
2 312 (5.71%) Terraform
3 172 (3.15%) Ansible
4 131 (2.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 114 (2.09%) Grafana
6 100 (1.83%) Prometheus
7 86 (1.57%) SCCM
8 54 (0.99%) vCenter Server
9 43 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
10 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
11 28 (0.51%) Control-M
12 23 (0.42%) SCOM
13 22 (0.40%) Nessus
14 20 (0.37%) Argo
15 18 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
15 18 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
16 17 (0.31%) WSUS
17 16 (0.29%) Kibana
18 12 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 12 (0.22%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,052 (19.26%) Microsoft
2 387 (7.09%) Oracle
3 339 (6.21%) SAP
4 334 (6.12%) ServiceNow
5 191 (3.50%) VMware
6 165 (3.02%) Google
7 132 (2.42%) Splunk
8 131 (2.40%) Databricks
9 129 (2.36%) Salesforce
10 119 (2.18%) Cisco
11 80 (1.46%) Workday
12 75 (1.37%) Dell
13 62 (1.14%) Dynatrace
14 61 (1.12%) Adobe
15 59 (1.08%) Red Hat
16 55 (1.01%) MuleSoft
17 54 (0.99%) Citrix
18 51 (0.93%) Apple
19 46 (0.84%) IBM
20 45 (0.82%) F5