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

6 months to
2 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 5,397 5,201 4,723
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.49% 16.80% 10.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.34% 18.49% 12.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,108 3,200 2,841
10th Percentile £263 £250 £245
25th Percentile £380 £375 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £620
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £463 £475
% change year-on-year -2.70% -2.63% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 429 291 411
10th Percentile £13.09 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.47 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.00 £21.90 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -8.68% +34.94% -68.49%
75th Percentile £37.50 £39.71 £32.50
90th Percentile £73.15 £65.25 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.75 £18.85 £15.07
% change year-on-year -0.53% +25.08% -69.86%

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 43,739 28,136 37,017
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.99% 90.86% 85.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,189 17,763 23,600
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.08% -3.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £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 2,627 1,381 2,550
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.45%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.95 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +75.84% -34.42% +8.91%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 4,615 £492 -1.54% 3,824
UK excluding London -5 2,904 £450 -2.70% 2,851
London -11 1,955 £512 +2.45% 1,372
Work from Home -7 1,508 £488 -2.50% 1,613
North of England -12 725 £446 -6.05% 702
South East -5 718 £480 -3.76% 845
Midlands -7 529 £459 +7.94% 471
West Midlands -8 384 £466 +3.54% 264
North West -12 353 £446 -8.05% 387
Yorkshire -6 330 £450 -5.26% 225
South West -4 320 £500 - 339
Scotland -2 291 £434 -6.22% 142
East of England -2 259 £450 -4.76% 299
East Midlands -1 143 £449 +22.21% 208
Wales -1 69 £468 +32.40% 54
North East -17 48 £356 -20.83% 109
Northern Ireland -9 23 £380 -10.59% 81
Channel Islands -3 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
1 221 (4.09%) Confluence
2 164 (3.04%) SharePoint
3 88 (1.63%) Microsoft Exchange
4 80 (1.48%) Apache Spark
5 50 (0.93%) Apache
6 49 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
7 40 (0.74%) SAS
8 33 (0.61%) CMS
9 27 (0.50%) 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 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 8 (0.15%) Camunda
16 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
17 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
17 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 297 (5.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 233 (4.32%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (1.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 83 (1.54%) MS Visio
5 63 (1.17%) Microsoft Project
6 35 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 23 (0.43%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.26%) AutoCAD
10 12 (0.22%) Sketch
11 11 (0.20%) Revit
12 10 (0.19%) 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 (0.093%) Maya
17 3 (0.056%) Navisworks
17 3 (0.056%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 136 (2.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.33%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.33%) Workday HCM
6 16 (0.30%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.30%) SAP GRC
7 13 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
8 12 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
8 12 (0.22%) SAP SD
8 12 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 12 (0.22%) Teamcenter
9 10 (0.19%) Finacle
9 10 (0.19%) iTrent
9 10 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
9 10 (0.19%) SAP HCM
10 9 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
11 8 (0.15%) NEC Housing
11 8 (0.15%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,066 (19.75%) Azure
2 796 (14.75%) AWS
3 418 (7.75%) Power Platform
4 374 (6.93%) Microsoft 365
5 297 (5.50%) GCP
6 258 (4.78%) Azure DevOps
7 192 (3.56%) GitHub
8 185 (3.43%) Entra ID
9 141 (2.61%) SaaS
10 137 (2.54%) Serverless
11 96 (1.78%) GitHub Actions
12 92 (1.70%) Amazon S3
13 81 (1.50%) AWS Lambda
14 76 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
15 75 (1.39%) Power Automate
16 67 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
16 67 (1.24%) PowerApps
17 65 (1.20%) Snowflake
18 63 (1.17%) OpenShift
19 49 (0.91%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 212 (3.93%) DNS
2 167 (3.09%) Firewall
3 121 (2.24%) TCP/IP
4 120 (2.22%) VPN
5 116 (2.15%) DHCP
6 102 (1.89%) WAN
7 99 (1.83%) Network Security
8 85 (1.57%) SAN
9 81 (1.50%) LAN
10 75 (1.39%) Wi-Fi
11 52 (0.96%) VLAN
12 51 (0.94%) BGP
13 43 (0.80%) OSPF
14 41 (0.76%) Wireless
15 39 (0.72%) SD-WAN
16 37 (0.69%) VoIP
17 28 (0.52%) MPLS
18 27 (0.50%) VXLAN
19 23 (0.43%) NAS
19 23 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 326 (6.04%) Power BI
2 226 (4.19%) SQL Server
3 160 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
4 150 (2.78%) Relational Database
5 140 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
6 116 (2.15%) MongoDB
7 102 (1.89%) Metadata
8 92 (1.70%) NoSQL
9 91 (1.69%) Data Lake
10 89 (1.65%) Tableau
11 77 (1.43%) Big Data
12 58 (1.07%) Oracle Database
13 53 (0.98%) MySQL
14 51 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 45 (0.83%) Oracle Reports
16 36 (0.67%) Hadoop
17 31 (0.57%) Db2
18 30 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
19 28 (0.52%) Power Query
20 27 (0.50%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 510 (9.45%) JIRA
2 303 (5.61%) Git
3 192 (3.56%) Jenkins
4 129 (2.39%) GitLab
5 69 (1.28%) Selenium
6 44 (0.82%) Postman
7 38 (0.70%) REST Assured
8 31 (0.57%) Cypress.io
9 29 (0.54%) Cucumber
10 25 (0.46%) JUnit
11 23 (0.43%) Bitbucket
12 21 (0.39%) Mockito
13 18 (0.33%) WebDriver
14 16 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
15 15 (0.28%) JMeter
15 15 (0.28%) Maven
15 15 (0.28%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.28%) Zephyr
16 14 (0.26%) Gradle
17 12 (0.22%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,793 (51.75%) Social Skills
2 2,151 (39.86%) Analytical Skills
3 1,271 (23.55%) Finance
4 520 (9.63%) Public Sector
5 410 (7.60%) Banking
6 215 (3.98%) Organisational Skills
7 209 (3.87%) Documentation Skills
8 191 (3.54%) Retail
9 151 (2.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 150 (2.78%) Legal
11 126 (2.33%) Influencing Skills
12 125 (2.32%) Manufacturing
13 117 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
14 111 (2.06%) Front Office
15 97 (1.80%) Telecoms
16 94 (1.74%) Marketing
17 93 (1.72%) Investment Banking
18 80 (1.48%) Back Office
19 60 (1.11%) Aerospace
20 55 (1.02%) Law
Job Titles
1 729 (13.51%) Analyst
2 640 (11.86%) Developer
3 474 (8.78%) Senior
4 377 (6.99%) Architect
5 365 (6.76%) Lead
6 281 (5.21%) Business Analyst
7 256 (4.74%) Consultant
8 238 (4.41%) Data Engineer
9 179 (3.32%) IT Support
10 177 (3.28%) Project Manager
11 175 (3.24%) Support Engineer
12 122 (2.26%) IT Engineer
12 122 (2.26%) Java Developer
13 121 (2.24%) Administrator
14 117 (2.17%) Data Analyst
15 110 (2.04%) Solutions Architect
16 98 (1.82%) Software Engineer
17 91 (1.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 90 (1.67%) Technical Support
19 89 (1.65%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 319 (5.91%) REST
2 164 (3.04%) .NET
3 156 (2.89%) Kafka
4 151 (2.80%) Spring
5 141 (2.61%) RESTful
6 139 (2.58%) React
7 131 (2.43%) SOAP
8 116 (2.15%) JSON
9 114 (2.11%) CSS
10 112 (2.08%) Spring Boot
11 109 (2.02%) Middleware
12 103 (1.91%) HTML
13 97 (1.80%) XML
14 90 (1.67%) AngularJS
15 88 (1.63%) Node.js
16 78 (1.45%) PySpark
17 65 (1.20%) Web Services
18 60 (1.11%) LDAP
18 60 (1.11%) OAuth
19 49 (0.91%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 265 (4.91%) Product Ownership
2 246 (4.56%) Onboarding
3 235 (4.35%) Cloud Native
4 207 (3.84%) Data Centre
5 193 (3.58%) Self-Motivation
6 161 (2.98%) Analytical Mindset
7 144 (2.67%) Distributed Systems
8 138 (2.56%) Management Information System
9 133 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
10 131 (2.43%) Enterprise Software
11 126 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
12 124 (2.30%) Data Structures
13 116 (2.15%) Virtual Team
14 71 (1.32%) Algorithms
14 71 (1.32%) Driving Licence
15 60 (1.11%) AI Agents
16 55 (1.02%) CMDB
16 55 (1.02%) Derivative
16 55 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 54 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 666 (12.34%) Windows
2 292 (5.41%) Linux
3 130 (2.41%) Windows Server
4 114 (2.11%) Windows 10
5 111 (2.06%) Unix
6 88 (1.63%) Mac OS
7 86 (1.59%) Android
8 82 (1.52%) Apple iOS
9 51 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.22%) VMS
13 11 (0.20%) zOS
14 10 (0.19%) CentOS
15 9 (0.17%) Mac OS X
16 8 (0.15%) Solaris
16 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.093%) Debian
17 5 (0.093%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.074%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,432 (26.53%) Agile
2 950 (17.60%) Continuous Improvement
3 891 (16.51%) Stakeholder Management
4 887 (16.44%) CI/CD
5 839 (15.55%) DevOps
6 646 (11.97%) AI
7 604 (11.19%) Decision-Making
8 583 (10.80%) Analytics
8 583 (10.80%) Migration
9 532 (9.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 493 (9.13%) Customer Service
11 491 (9.10%) ITIL
12 445 (8.25%) Validation
13 432 (8.00%) Data Modelling
14 424 (7.86%) Business Intelligence
15 395 (7.32%) Test Automation
16 381 (7.06%) Project Management
17 378 (7.00%) Scrum
18 352 (6.52%) Change Management
19 337 (6.24%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 976 (18.08%) SQL
2 921 (17.07%) Python
3 431 (7.99%) Java
4 293 (5.43%) PowerShell
5 274 (5.08%) JavaScript
6 195 (3.61%) C#
7 127 (2.35%) TypeScript
8 126 (2.33%) Bash
9 89 (1.65%) PL/SQL
10 74 (1.37%) C++
11 50 (0.93%) T-SQL
12 49 (0.91%) Shell Script
13 47 (0.87%) Go
14 44 (0.82%) C
15 38 (0.70%) R
16 36 (0.67%) Apex Code
16 36 (0.67%) Bicep
17 35 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 28 (0.52%) Scala
19 27 (0.50%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,168 (21.64%) Security Cleared
2 795 (14.73%) SC Cleared
3 650 (12.04%) Degree
4 203 (3.76%) DV Cleared
5 188 (3.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 155 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
7 146 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
8 141 (2.61%) Cisco Certification
9 89 (1.65%) CISSP
10 82 (1.52%) CCNA
11 81 (1.50%) A+ Certification
11 81 (1.50%) PMP
12 73 (1.35%) PMI Certification
13 68 (1.26%) Azure Certification
14 66 (1.22%) Master's Degree
15 64 (1.19%) Network+ Certification
16 57 (1.06%) CISM
17 56 (1.04%) MCSE
18 45 (0.83%) AWS Certification
19 43 (0.80%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 375 (6.95%) Data Quality
2 306 (5.67%) QA
3 153 (2.83%) GDPR
4 128 (2.37%) Accessibility
5 111 (2.06%) SLA
6 92 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 77 (1.43%) PMO
8 73 (1.35%) NIST
9 55 (1.02%) GRC
10 29 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
11 27 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.44%) PCI DSS
13 22 (0.41%) WCAG
14 18 (0.33%) ISO 20022
15 17 (0.31%) NCSC
16 14 (0.26%) COBIT
16 14 (0.26%) GxP
17 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
18 12 (0.22%) PSD2
19 11 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 388 (7.19%) Active Directory
2 347 (6.43%) Docker
3 121 (2.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.83%) vSphere
5 41 (0.76%) VMware NSX
6 39 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
7 36 (0.67%) Hyper-V
8 29 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
9 25 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
10 21 (0.39%) Firmware
11 19 (0.35%) vCloud
12 13 (0.24%) IAG
13 11 (0.20%) Squid
14 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.11%) NFS
16 4 (0.074%) ACF2
16 4 (0.074%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.074%) RACF
16 4 (0.074%) Snort
16 4 (0.074%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 419 (7.76%) Kubernetes
2 305 (5.65%) Terraform
3 172 (3.19%) Ansible
4 128 (2.37%) Microsoft Intune
5 112 (2.08%) Grafana
6 99 (1.83%) Prometheus
7 83 (1.54%) SCCM
8 51 (0.94%) vCenter Server
9 42 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
10 38 (0.70%) FortiGate
11 27 (0.50%) Control-M
12 22 (0.41%) Nessus
13 21 (0.39%) SCOM
14 20 (0.37%) Argo
15 18 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
16 17 (0.31%) Kibana
16 17 (0.31%) WSUS
17 16 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
18 13 (0.24%) Puppet
19 12 (0.22%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,031 (19.10%) Microsoft
2 376 (6.97%) Oracle
3 333 (6.17%) SAP
4 325 (6.02%) ServiceNow
5 186 (3.45%) VMware
6 160 (2.96%) Google
7 131 (2.43%) Databricks
8 129 (2.39%) Splunk
9 127 (2.35%) Salesforce
10 118 (2.19%) Cisco
11 79 (1.46%) Workday
12 75 (1.39%) Dell
13 61 (1.13%) Dynatrace
13 61 (1.13%) Red Hat
14 59 (1.09%) Adobe
15 55 (1.02%) MuleSoft
16 53 (0.98%) Citrix
17 49 (0.91%) Apple
18 48 (0.89%) IBM
19 47 (0.87%) CyberArk