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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -7 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,219 4,957 4,638
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.67% 17.24% 10.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.61% 18.94% 12.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,033 3,093 2,831
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £389 £388 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.50% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £625
90th Percentile £716 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £466 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -0.96% -1.05% -3.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 390 249 424
10th Percentile £13.10 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.56 £13.85
Median hourly rate £20.88 £22.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.11% +35.55% -67.54%
75th Percentile £42.00 £35.00 £35.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £20.50 £15.00
% change year-on-year -9.76% +36.67% -70.00%

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 41,377 26,173 36,711
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 91.02% 85.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,864 16,755 23,656
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,474 1,096 2,500
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.87 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.30 £27.59 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.34% -24.42% +1.04%
75th Percentile £67.65 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.76 £74.38 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -5 4,461 £500 - 2,981
UK excluding London -5 2,789 £466 -0.96% 2,321
London -11 1,888 £520 - 1,036
Work from Home -4 1,476 £481 -3.75% 1,193
North of England -9 734 £450 -7.83% 597
South East -7 645 £492 -1.60% 684
Midlands -9 500 £465 +6.78% 370
Yorkshire -6 352 £465 -2.11% 187
West Midlands -10 352 £472 +4.12% 231
North West -8 345 £425 -13.62% 331
South West -2 324 £500 -3.61% 264
Scotland -2 281 £448 -3.76% 105
East of England -3 238 £450 -5.01% 260
East Midlands -2 147 £443 +18.96% 141
Wales -2 67 £406 +8.33% 50
North East -16 45 £413 -8.33% 90
Northern Ireland -5 24 £405 +3.51% 57
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
1 217 (4.16%) Confluence
2 156 (2.99%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.59%) Microsoft Exchange
4 75 (1.44%) Apache Spark
5 51 (0.98%) Apache
5 51 (0.98%) Apache Airflow
6 44 (0.84%) SAS
7 32 (0.61%) CMS
8 23 (0.44%) Oracle Workflow
9 13 (0.25%) nginx
10 11 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 11 (0.21%) CICS
11 10 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
12 8 (0.15%) Camunda
12 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 305 (5.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (4.33%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
5 72 (1.38%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 17 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.27%) Sketch
10 9 (0.17%) AutoCAD
10 9 (0.17%) CATIA
11 7 (0.13%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
11 7 (0.13%) Revit
11 7 (0.13%) Trello
12 5 (0.096%) Maya
13 4 (0.077%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.077%) Adobe After Effects
13 4 (0.077%) CPLEX
14 3 (0.057%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 127 (2.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 18 (0.34%) Aladdin
5 17 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
6 16 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
6 16 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
7 14 (0.27%) SAP GRC
7 14 (0.27%) Workday HCM
8 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 13 (0.25%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.23%) NEC Housing
9 12 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
9 12 (0.23%) SAP SD
10 9 (0.17%) iTrent
11 8 (0.15%) NetSuite
11 8 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
11 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
12 7 (0.13%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.13%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 1,058 (20.27%) Azure
2 772 (14.79%) AWS
3 402 (7.70%) Power Platform
4 355 (6.80%) Microsoft 365
5 324 (6.21%) GCP
6 235 (4.50%) Azure DevOps
7 199 (3.81%) GitHub
8 166 (3.18%) Entra ID
9 136 (2.61%) Serverless
10 129 (2.47%) SaaS
11 99 (1.90%) GitHub Actions
12 80 (1.53%) Amazon S3
13 79 (1.51%) Dynamics 365
14 75 (1.44%) OpenShift
15 74 (1.42%) Snowflake
16 72 (1.38%) AWS Lambda
17 71 (1.36%) Power Automate
18 67 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
19 65 (1.25%) PowerApps
20 49 (0.94%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 196 (3.76%) DNS
2 166 (3.18%) Firewall
3 117 (2.24%) TCP/IP
4 110 (2.11%) VPN
5 108 (2.07%) WAN
6 105 (2.01%) DHCP
7 87 (1.67%) Network Security
8 85 (1.63%) SAN
9 81 (1.55%) LAN
10 68 (1.30%) Wi-Fi
11 49 (0.94%) VLAN
12 45 (0.86%) BGP
13 43 (0.82%) SD-WAN
14 40 (0.77%) OSPF
15 34 (0.65%) Wireless
16 32 (0.61%) VoIP
17 27 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 25 (0.48%) MPLS
19 23 (0.44%) Internet
19 23 (0.44%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 312 (5.98%) Power BI
2 203 (3.89%) SQL Server
3 157 (3.01%) Data Warehouse
4 133 (2.55%) Relational Database
5 129 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
6 108 (2.07%) Metadata
7 96 (1.84%) MongoDB
8 90 (1.72%) Tableau
9 83 (1.59%) NoSQL
10 80 (1.53%) Data Lake
11 76 (1.46%) Big Data
12 56 (1.07%) Oracle Reports
13 52 (1.00%) MySQL
13 52 (1.00%) Oracle Database
14 49 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 37 (0.71%) Hadoop
16 28 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
16 28 (0.54%) Delta Lake
17 27 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
17 27 (0.52%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 493 (9.45%) JIRA
2 294 (5.63%) Git
3 180 (3.45%) Jenkins
4 123 (2.36%) GitLab
5 66 (1.26%) Selenium
6 40 (0.77%) Postman
7 31 (0.59%) REST Assured
8 29 (0.56%) Cucumber
9 24 (0.46%) Bitbucket
10 23 (0.44%) JUnit
11 21 (0.40%) Cypress.io
12 17 (0.33%) JMeter
12 17 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
12 17 (0.33%) WebDriver
13 16 (0.31%) Mockito
13 16 (0.31%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.27%) Maven
15 13 (0.25%) Zephyr
16 12 (0.23%) Gatling
17 11 (0.21%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,706 (51.85%) Social Skills
2 2,010 (38.51%) Analytical Skills
3 1,212 (23.22%) Finance
4 476 (9.12%) Public Sector
5 398 (7.63%) Banking
6 220 (4.22%) Organisational Skills
7 186 (3.56%) Retail
8 183 (3.51%) Documentation Skills
9 148 (2.84%) Legal
10 117 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 108 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
12 107 (2.05%) Presentation Skills
13 104 (1.99%) Manufacturing
14 101 (1.94%) Front Office
15 95 (1.82%) Marketing
16 90 (1.72%) Telecoms
17 84 (1.61%) Investment Banking
18 70 (1.34%) Back Office
19 62 (1.19%) Law
20 55 (1.05%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 727 (13.93%) Analyst
2 594 (11.38%) Developer
3 442 (8.47%) Senior
4 357 (6.84%) Architect
5 324 (6.21%) Lead
6 286 (5.48%) Business Analyst
7 264 (5.06%) Consultant
8 236 (4.52%) Data Engineer
9 189 (3.62%) Project Manager
10 145 (2.78%) Support Engineer
11 144 (2.76%) IT Support
12 127 (2.43%) Data Analyst
13 107 (2.05%) Administrator
14 104 (1.99%) IT Engineer
15 101 (1.94%) Java Developer
16 99 (1.90%) Solutions Architect
17 98 (1.88%) Software Engineer
18 93 (1.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 93 (1.78%) Network Engineer
19 79 (1.51%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 300 (5.75%) REST
2 154 (2.95%) .NET
3 145 (2.78%) Kafka
4 137 (2.63%) SOAP
5 134 (2.57%) React
6 132 (2.53%) RESTful
7 127 (2.43%) Spring
8 120 (2.30%) CSS
9 112 (2.15%) HTML
10 100 (1.92%) Middleware
11 97 (1.86%) Node.js
12 95 (1.82%) JSON
13 94 (1.80%) AngularJS
14 93 (1.78%) Spring Boot
15 90 (1.72%) LDAP
16 87 (1.67%) XML
17 74 (1.42%) PySpark
18 59 (1.13%) Web Services
19 58 (1.11%) OAuth
20 48 (0.92%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 264 (5.06%) Product Ownership
2 229 (4.39%) Onboarding
3 208 (3.99%) Data Centre
4 203 (3.89%) Cloud Native
5 167 (3.20%) Self-Motivation
6 148 (2.84%) Analytical Mindset
7 141 (2.70%) Management Information System
8 128 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
9 120 (2.30%) Distributed Systems
10 116 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
11 113 (2.17%) Virtual Team
12 109 (2.09%) Enterprise Software
13 98 (1.88%) Data Structures
14 70 (1.34%) Driving Licence
15 67 (1.28%) Security Posture
16 62 (1.19%) Algorithms
17 59 (1.13%) AI Agents
18 50 (0.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 49 (0.94%) Derivative
19 49 (0.94%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 611 (11.71%) Windows
2 296 (5.67%) Linux
3 114 (2.18%) Windows Server
4 113 (2.17%) Windows 10
5 105 (2.01%) Unix
6 89 (1.71%) Android
7 85 (1.63%) Apple iOS
8 79 (1.51%) Mac OS
9 52 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.42%) Ubuntu
11 15 (0.29%) VMS
12 14 (0.27%) CentOS
13 13 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 11 (0.21%) zOS
15 9 (0.17%) Windows 7
16 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
17 7 (0.13%) Debian
18 6 (0.11%) Solaris
19 5 (0.096%) Windows Server 2012
20 4 (0.077%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,384 (26.52%) Agile
2 846 (16.21%) CI/CD
3 814 (15.60%) Continuous Improvement
4 769 (14.73%) DevOps
5 759 (14.54%) Stakeholder Management
6 587 (11.25%) AI
7 580 (11.11%) Decision-Making
8 561 (10.75%) Migration
9 559 (10.71%) Analytics
10 459 (8.79%) Customer Service
11 453 (8.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 447 (8.56%) Data Modelling
13 438 (8.39%) Project Management
14 430 (8.24%) ITIL
15 421 (8.07%) Validation
16 408 (7.82%) Business Intelligence
17 379 (7.26%) Test Automation
18 350 (6.71%) Scrum
19 348 (6.67%) Change Management
20 314 (6.02%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 932 (17.86%) Python
2 908 (17.40%) SQL
3 407 (7.80%) Java
4 316 (6.05%) PowerShell
5 262 (5.02%) JavaScript
6 199 (3.81%) C#
7 142 (2.72%) TypeScript
8 117 (2.24%) Bash
9 76 (1.46%) C++
10 73 (1.40%) PL/SQL
11 57 (1.09%) Shell Script
12 47 (0.90%) Go
13 40 (0.77%) R
14 37 (0.71%) Bicep
14 37 (0.71%) C
15 36 (0.69%) T-SQL
16 35 (0.67%) Perl
17 34 (0.65%) Apex Code
18 32 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 30 (0.57%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,102 (21.12%) Security Cleared
2 750 (14.37%) SC Cleared
3 635 (12.17%) Degree
4 194 (3.72%) Computer Science Degree
5 191 (3.66%) DV Cleared
6 164 (3.14%) BPSS Clearance
7 136 (2.61%) Cisco Certification
8 130 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
9 92 (1.76%) CISSP
10 83 (1.59%) PMP
11 78 (1.49%) CCNA
12 76 (1.46%) PMI Certification
13 74 (1.42%) A+ Certification
14 71 (1.36%) Master's Degree
15 68 (1.30%) Network+ Certification
16 64 (1.23%) Azure Certification
17 61 (1.17%) CISM
18 58 (1.11%) MCSE
19 43 (0.82%) CCNP
20 39 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 350 (6.71%) Data Quality
2 269 (5.15%) QA
3 148 (2.84%) GDPR
4 112 (2.15%) Accessibility
5 94 (1.80%) SLA
6 91 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 87 (1.67%) PMO
8 74 (1.42%) NIST
9 54 (1.03%) GRC
10 28 (0.54%) WCAG
11 27 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
11 27 (0.52%) PCI DSS
12 25 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 18 (0.34%) ISO 20022
14 14 (0.27%) COBIT
14 14 (0.27%) NCSC
14 14 (0.27%) PSD2
15 13 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
16 12 (0.23%) HIPAA
16 12 (0.23%) IFRS
System Software
1 383 (7.34%) Active Directory
2 318 (6.09%) Docker
3 108 (2.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.79%) vSphere
5 37 (0.71%) VMware NSX
6 36 (0.69%) Hyper-V
7 27 (0.52%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
9 20 (0.38%) Firmware
9 20 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
10 18 (0.34%) vCloud
11 11 (0.21%) Squid
12 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.13%) IAG
14 5 (0.096%) RACF
15 4 (0.077%) ACF2
15 4 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.077%) NFS
15 4 (0.077%) Snort
16 3 (0.057%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 398 (7.63%) Kubernetes
2 276 (5.29%) Terraform
3 180 (3.45%) Ansible
4 128 (2.45%) Microsoft Intune
5 114 (2.18%) Grafana
6 97 (1.86%) Prometheus
7 74 (1.42%) SCCM
8 45 (0.86%) vCenter Server
9 42 (0.80%) FortiGate
9 42 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
10 27 (0.52%) Kibana
11 23 (0.44%) Control-M
11 23 (0.44%) Puppet
12 22 (0.42%) Nessus
13 21 (0.40%) Argo
14 17 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
15 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 14 (0.27%) SCOM
17 12 (0.23%) WSUS
18 10 (0.19%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 967 (18.53%) Microsoft
2 336 (6.44%) Oracle
3 304 (5.82%) SAP
4 250 (4.79%) ServiceNow
5 183 (3.51%) VMware
6 146 (2.80%) Databricks
7 145 (2.78%) Google
8 128 (2.45%) Cisco
8 128 (2.45%) Splunk
9 114 (2.18%) Salesforce
10 84 (1.61%) Dell
11 69 (1.32%) CyberArk
12 65 (1.25%) Workday
13 64 (1.23%) Red Hat
14 63 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
15 62 (1.19%) Adobe
16 48 (0.92%) Citrix
17 47 (0.90%) F5
17 47 (0.90%) Palo Alto
18 46 (0.88%) HP