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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,262 4,963 4,720
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.09% 17.05% 10.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.13% 18.75% 12.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,151 3,097 2,887
10th Percentile £263 £250 £235
25th Percentile £381 £393 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £456 £475 £488
% change year-on-year -3.95% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 246 408
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.31 £11.05
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.74
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.32 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.79% +31.29% -64.88%
75th Percentile £51.27 £41.25 £37.38
90th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.13 £21.24 £15.00
% change year-on-year -14.64% +41.60% -63.74%

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 40,077 26,470 37,223
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.45% 90.96% 86.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,204 17,026 23,967
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +1.77% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,387 1,075 2,431
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.38 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.35 £37.50
% change year-on-year +60.88% -27.07% +7.14%

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 8 May 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 8 May 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 8 May 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 -4 4,509 £488 -2.50% 3,050
UK excluding London -5 2,804 £456 -3.95% 2,423
London -12 1,910 £512 -2.51% 951
Work from Home -2 1,499 £475 -5.00% 1,171
North of England -6 753 £450 -7.98% 620
South East -6 654 £488 -2.50% 747
Midlands -5 520 £450 +0.67% 405
North West -5 364 £410 -16.16% 350
West Midlands -4 355 £475 +3.15% 244
Yorkshire -6 343 £460 -3.16% 201
South West -1 321 £500 -1.23% 270
Scotland -1 263 £425 -5.56% 109
East of England -4 216 £450 - 256
East Midlands 0 164 £444 +15.26% 162
Wales -3 71 £400 +20.78% 61
North East -9 53 £425 -11.23% 75
Northern Ireland -2 26 £430 +9.90% 24
Channel Islands -4 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
1 211 (4.01%) Confluence
2 148 (2.81%) SharePoint
3 88 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 86 (1.63%) Apache Spark
5 62 (1.18%) Apache
6 50 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
7 47 (0.89%) SAS
8 33 (0.63%) CMS
9 20 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.25%) nginx
11 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
12 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.13%) Camunda
13 7 (0.13%) CICS
13 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 4 (0.076%) WordPress
Applications
1 294 (5.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (4.20%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (2.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 80 (1.52%) Microsoft Project
5 77 (1.46%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 10 (0.19%) Sketch
10 8 (0.15%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) CATIA
11 7 (0.13%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
11 7 (0.13%) Trello
12 6 (0.11%) Revit
13 5 (0.095%) Maya
14 4 (0.076%) Acrobat
14 4 (0.076%) CPLEX
14 4 (0.076%) InDesign
15 3 (0.057%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 121 (2.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 19 (0.36%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.27%) NEC Housing
9 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 12 (0.23%) Teamcenter
10 12 (0.23%) Workday HCM
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
11 10 (0.19%) SAP GRC
12 9 (0.17%) iTrent
12 9 (0.17%) NetSuite
12 9 (0.17%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.17%) Shopify
13 8 (0.15%) Loan IQ
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,070 (20.33%) Azure
2 817 (15.53%) AWS
3 393 (7.47%) Power Platform
4 351 (6.67%) Microsoft 365
5 339 (6.44%) GCP
6 244 (4.64%) Azure DevOps
7 218 (4.14%) GitHub
8 161 (3.06%) Entra ID
9 149 (2.83%) Serverless
10 126 (2.39%) SaaS
11 113 (2.15%) GitHub Actions
12 96 (1.82%) Amazon S3
13 89 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
14 76 (1.44%) Dynamics 365
15 75 (1.43%) Snowflake
16 73 (1.39%) Power Automate
17 71 (1.35%) Azure Data Factory
17 71 (1.35%) OpenShift
18 58 (1.10%) PowerApps
19 52 (0.99%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 190 (3.61%) DNS
2 179 (3.40%) Firewall
3 122 (2.32%) TCP/IP
4 107 (2.03%) VPN
5 105 (2.00%) WAN
6 101 (1.92%) DHCP
7 96 (1.82%) Network Security
8 84 (1.60%) SAN
9 78 (1.48%) LAN
10 65 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
11 50 (0.95%) BGP
12 49 (0.93%) VLAN
13 43 (0.82%) OSPF
14 40 (0.76%) SD-WAN
15 30 (0.57%) VoIP
16 29 (0.55%) Wireless
17 26 (0.49%) VXLAN
18 25 (0.48%) Internet
19 24 (0.46%) MPLS
20 21 (0.40%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (5.89%) Power BI
2 201 (3.82%) SQL Server
3 162 (3.08%) Data Warehouse
4 136 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
5 133 (2.53%) Relational Database
6 116 (2.20%) Metadata
7 87 (1.65%) MongoDB
7 87 (1.65%) Tableau
8 85 (1.62%) NoSQL
9 83 (1.58%) Big Data
10 77 (1.46%) Data Lake
11 63 (1.20%) MySQL
12 62 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
13 53 (1.01%) Oracle Database
14 51 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 43 (0.82%) Hadoop
16 35 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
17 32 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
18 31 (0.59%) Power Query
19 29 (0.55%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 497 (9.45%) JIRA
2 307 (5.83%) Git
3 196 (3.72%) Jenkins
4 140 (2.66%) GitLab
5 66 (1.25%) Selenium
6 39 (0.74%) Postman
7 31 (0.59%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.49%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.48%) REST Assured
10 24 (0.46%) JUnit
11 23 (0.44%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.40%) JMeter
13 18 (0.34%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 16 (0.30%) Maven
15 16 (0.30%) Mockito
15 16 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
16 15 (0.29%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.27%) Zephyr
18 11 (0.21%) Appium
General
1 2,742 (52.11%) Social Skills
2 2,024 (38.46%) Analytical Skills
3 1,217 (23.13%) Finance
4 496 (9.43%) Public Sector
5 402 (7.64%) Banking
6 225 (4.28%) Organisational Skills
7 184 (3.50%) Retail
8 179 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
9 155 (2.95%) Legal
10 128 (2.43%) Presentation Skills
11 118 (2.24%) Influencing Skills
12 117 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 94 (1.79%) Front Office
14 91 (1.73%) Telecoms
15 88 (1.67%) Manufacturing
16 85 (1.62%) Marketing
17 75 (1.43%) Investment Banking
18 60 (1.14%) Back Office
19 59 (1.12%) Law
20 58 (1.10%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 731 (13.89%) Analyst
2 645 (12.26%) Developer
3 461 (8.76%) Senior
4 364 (6.92%) Architect
5 328 (6.23%) Lead
6 297 (5.64%) Business Analyst
7 265 (5.04%) Consultant
8 235 (4.47%) Data Engineer
9 202 (3.84%) Project Manager
10 141 (2.68%) Support Engineer
11 130 (2.47%) IT Support
12 118 (2.24%) Data Analyst
13 110 (2.09%) Java Developer
14 101 (1.92%) IT Engineer
15 98 (1.86%) Administrator
15 98 (1.86%) Solutions Architect
16 95 (1.81%) Network Engineer
17 92 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 92 (1.75%) Software Engineer
18 76 (1.44%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 296 (5.63%) REST
2 156 (2.96%) Kafka
3 147 (2.79%) .NET
4 139 (2.64%) RESTful
5 138 (2.62%) SOAP
6 132 (2.51%) React
6 132 (2.51%) Spring
7 115 (2.19%) CSS
8 113 (2.15%) Node.js
9 108 (2.05%) HTML
10 106 (2.01%) AngularJS
11 102 (1.94%) LDAP
11 102 (1.94%) Spring Boot
12 96 (1.82%) JSON
12 96 (1.82%) Middleware
13 89 (1.69%) XML
14 73 (1.39%) PySpark
15 70 (1.33%) OAuth
16 56 (1.06%) Oracle Fusion
17 53 (1.01%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 270 (5.13%) Product Ownership
2 232 (4.41%) Onboarding
3 210 (3.99%) Cloud Native
4 203 (3.86%) Data Centre
5 156 (2.96%) Self-Motivation
6 152 (2.89%) Analytical Mindset
7 146 (2.77%) Management Information System
8 117 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
9 114 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
10 113 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
11 110 (2.09%) Virtual Team
12 107 (2.03%) Data Structures
13 100 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
14 72 (1.37%) Driving Licence
15 65 (1.24%) Security Posture
16 63 (1.20%) Mobile App
17 57 (1.08%) Algorithms
18 56 (1.06%) AI Agents
19 54 (1.03%) Hybrid Cloud
20 48 (0.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 595 (11.31%) Windows
2 308 (5.85%) Linux
3 109 (2.07%) Windows 10
3 109 (2.07%) Windows Server
4 100 (1.90%) Unix
5 94 (1.79%) Android
6 88 (1.67%) Apple iOS
7 70 (1.33%) Mac OS
8 53 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 21 (0.40%) Ubuntu
10 19 (0.36%) VMS
11 15 (0.29%) CentOS
12 12 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.17%) zOS
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
15 7 (0.13%) Debian
16 4 (0.076%) AIX
16 4 (0.076%) Rocky
16 4 (0.076%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,439 (27.35%) Agile
2 891 (16.93%) CI/CD
3 799 (15.18%) DevOps
4 792 (15.05%) Continuous Improvement
5 756 (14.37%) Stakeholder Management
6 581 (11.04%) Decision-Making
7 574 (10.91%) Analytics
7 574 (10.91%) Migration
8 572 (10.87%) AI
9 458 (8.70%) Project Management
10 455 (8.65%) Data Modelling
11 441 (8.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 427 (8.11%) Validation
13 424 (8.06%) Customer Service
14 416 (7.91%) Business Intelligence
15 407 (7.73%) ITIL
16 394 (7.49%) Test Automation
17 365 (6.94%) Change Management
18 364 (6.92%) Scrum
19 321 (6.10%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 955 (18.15%) Python
2 907 (17.24%) SQL
3 428 (8.13%) Java
4 332 (6.31%) PowerShell
5 279 (5.30%) JavaScript
6 202 (3.84%) C#
7 169 (3.21%) TypeScript
8 121 (2.30%) Bash
9 84 (1.60%) PL/SQL
10 71 (1.35%) C++
11 58 (1.10%) Shell Script
12 51 (0.97%) Go
13 46 (0.87%) R
14 39 (0.74%) Bicep
15 38 (0.72%) C
16 36 (0.68%) T-SQL
17 35 (0.67%) Apex Code
17 35 (0.67%) Perl
18 33 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 32 (0.61%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,152 (21.89%) Security Cleared
2 796 (15.13%) SC Cleared
3 626 (11.90%) Degree
4 207 (3.93%) Computer Science Degree
5 195 (3.71%) DV Cleared
6 168 (3.19%) BPSS Clearance
7 139 (2.64%) Cisco Certification
8 123 (2.34%) Microsoft Certification
9 95 (1.81%) CISSP
10 87 (1.65%) PMP
11 83 (1.58%) PMI Certification
12 76 (1.44%) CCNA
13 74 (1.41%) Master's Degree
14 71 (1.35%) A+ Certification
15 67 (1.27%) Network+ Certification
16 66 (1.25%) Azure Certification
17 65 (1.24%) CISM
18 58 (1.10%) MCSE
19 47 (0.89%) CCNP
20 38 (0.72%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 352 (6.69%) Data Quality
2 309 (5.87%) QA
3 158 (3.00%) GDPR
4 103 (1.96%) Accessibility
5 102 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 93 (1.77%) PMO
7 85 (1.62%) NIST
8 73 (1.39%) SLA
9 50 (0.95%) GRC
10 31 (0.59%) WCAG
11 30 (0.57%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
13 27 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.40%) ISO 20022
15 19 (0.36%) PSD2
16 17 (0.32%) IFRS
17 15 (0.29%) NCSC
18 14 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
18 14 (0.27%) HIPAA
18 14 (0.27%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 390 (7.41%) Active Directory
2 343 (6.52%) Docker
3 118 (2.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 47 (0.89%) vSphere
5 39 (0.74%) VMware NSX
6 34 (0.65%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.44%) Firmware
7 23 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
10 13 (0.25%) vCloud
11 11 (0.21%) RACF
11 11 (0.21%) Squid
12 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
13 9 (0.17%) ACF2
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.11%) IAG
16 4 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.076%) NFS
16 4 (0.076%) Snort
Systems Management
1 426 (8.10%) Kubernetes
2 287 (5.45%) Terraform
3 183 (3.48%) Ansible
4 121 (2.30%) Microsoft Intune
5 117 (2.22%) Grafana
6 90 (1.71%) Prometheus
7 80 (1.52%) SCCM
8 43 (0.82%) vCenter Server
9 41 (0.78%) FortiGate
10 39 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
11 28 (0.53%) Kibana
12 25 (0.48%) Argo
12 25 (0.48%) Puppet
13 23 (0.44%) Control-M
14 21 (0.40%) Nessus
15 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 14 (0.27%) WSUS
18 12 (0.23%) CA Endevor
18 12 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 955 (18.15%) Microsoft
2 353 (6.71%) Oracle
3 292 (5.55%) SAP
4 230 (4.37%) ServiceNow
5 197 (3.74%) VMware
6 157 (2.98%) Databricks
7 154 (2.93%) Google
8 133 (2.53%) Cisco
9 125 (2.38%) Splunk
10 109 (2.07%) Salesforce
11 86 (1.63%) Dell
12 77 (1.46%) CyberArk
13 71 (1.35%) BeyondTrust
14 65 (1.24%) Red Hat
15 61 (1.16%) Workday
16 55 (1.05%) Adobe
16 55 (1.05%) Citrix
17 52 (0.99%) Palo Alto
18 50 (0.95%) IBM
19 49 (0.93%) HP