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

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,342 4,959 4,747
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.54% 16.84% 10.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.61% 18.56% 12.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,229 3,111 2,918
10th Percentile £275 £250 £219
25th Percentile £388 £399 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £468 £475
% change year-on-year -1.07% -1.58% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 239 409
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.58 £11.06
25th Percentile £14.96 £16.85 £13.86
Median hourly rate £21.25 £24.00 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.46% +37.14% -63.16%
75th Percentile £51.27 £41.38 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.75 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.87 £21.46 £15.00
% change year-on-year -12.07% +43.07% -58.68%

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 39,258 26,720 37,503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.83% 90.74% 86.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,768 17,301 24,236
10th Percentile £318 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £484 £500
% change year-on-year +0.31% -3.30% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,351 1,041 2,413
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -14.29% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.00 £71.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £29.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.93% -17.14% -6.67%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -4 4,579 £490 -2.00% 3,128
UK excluding London -5 2,795 £463 -1.07% 2,612
London -10 1,979 £512 -2.51% 958
Work from Home 0 1,517 £475 -5.00% 1,246
North of England -5 781 £450 -5.26% 602
South East -5 664 £492 -1.60% 744
Midlands -5 502 £450 - 477
North West -5 375 £425 -12.82% 324
Yorkshire -5 358 £460 -3.06% 196
West Midlands -6 347 £475 +2.70% 272
South West -3 313 £500 - 290
Scotland -1 255 £425 -5.56% 135
East of England -4 206 £450 - 292
East Midlands -1 155 £420 +13.59% 205
Wales -2 69 £390 +17.76% 65
North East 0 57 £425 -16.26% 92
Northern Ireland -2 26 £405 +19.12% 74
Channel Islands -5 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 (4.21%) Confluence
2 148 (2.77%) SharePoint
3 105 (1.97%) Microsoft Exchange
4 91 (1.70%) Apache Spark
5 65 (1.22%) Apache
6 51 (0.95%) SAS
7 47 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
8 30 (0.56%) CMS
9 19 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.13%) Camunda
13 7 (0.13%) CICS
13 7 (0.13%) JBoss
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 307 (5.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (4.23%) Microsoft Office
3 116 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 80 (1.50%) Microsoft Project
5 78 (1.46%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.41%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 10 (0.19%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.13%) CATIA
10 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.13%) Trello
11 6 (0.11%) AutoCAD
12 5 (0.094%) Acrobat
12 5 (0.094%) Maya
13 4 (0.075%) InDesign
13 4 (0.075%) InVision
13 4 (0.075%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.056%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 103 (1.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.37%) Aladdin
5 17 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
6 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
7 15 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 14 (0.26%) NEC Housing
8 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
9 13 (0.24%) SAP ERP
10 12 (0.22%) NetSuite
11 11 (0.21%) iTrent
12 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.19%) Teamcenter
13 9 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
13 9 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
13 9 (0.17%) Shopify
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
14 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,103 (20.65%) Azure
2 831 (15.56%) AWS
3 394 (7.38%) Power Platform
4 362 (6.78%) GCP
5 350 (6.55%) Microsoft 365
6 245 (4.59%) Azure DevOps
7 228 (4.27%) GitHub
8 173 (3.24%) Entra ID
9 168 (3.14%) Serverless
10 131 (2.45%) SaaS
11 119 (2.23%) GitHub Actions
12 107 (2.00%) Amazon S3
13 97 (1.82%) AWS Lambda
14 80 (1.50%) OpenShift
15 77 (1.44%) Dynamics 365
16 75 (1.40%) Power Automate
17 74 (1.39%) Azure Data Factory
17 74 (1.39%) Snowflake
18 63 (1.18%) PowerApps
19 57 (1.07%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 194 (3.63%) Firewall
2 189 (3.54%) DNS
3 122 (2.28%) TCP/IP
4 115 (2.15%) Network Security
5 112 (2.10%) VPN
6 105 (1.97%) WAN
7 103 (1.93%) DHCP
8 82 (1.54%) LAN
9 72 (1.35%) SAN
10 65 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
11 57 (1.07%) BGP
12 53 (0.99%) VLAN
13 44 (0.82%) OSPF
14 37 (0.69%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.67%) VoIP
16 29 (0.54%) Wireless
17 28 (0.52%) Internet
18 27 (0.51%) MPLS
19 26 (0.49%) VXLAN
20 21 (0.39%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 313 (5.86%) Power BI
2 196 (3.67%) SQL Server
3 155 (2.90%) Data Warehouse
4 145 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
5 133 (2.49%) Relational Database
6 113 (2.12%) Metadata
7 95 (1.78%) MongoDB
8 94 (1.76%) NoSQL
9 89 (1.67%) Big Data
10 87 (1.63%) Tableau
11 83 (1.55%) Data Lake
12 64 (1.20%) MySQL
12 64 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
13 55 (1.03%) Oracle Database
14 47 (0.88%) Hadoop
15 45 (0.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 37 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
17 35 (0.66%) DynamoDB
18 31 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
18 31 (0.58%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 511 (9.57%) JIRA
2 313 (5.86%) Git
3 218 (4.08%) Jenkins
4 145 (2.71%) GitLab
5 74 (1.39%) Selenium
6 42 (0.79%) Postman
7 39 (0.73%) JUnit
8 31 (0.58%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.54%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.47%) REST Assured
11 22 (0.41%) Cypress.io
11 22 (0.41%) JMeter
11 22 (0.41%) Maven
12 21 (0.39%) Mockito
13 19 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
14 17 (0.32%) SonarQube
15 16 (0.30%) WebDriver
16 14 (0.26%) CircleCI
16 14 (0.26%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 2,806 (52.53%) Social Skills
2 2,045 (38.28%) Analytical Skills
3 1,240 (23.21%) Finance
4 526 (9.85%) Public Sector
5 415 (7.77%) Banking
6 220 (4.12%) Organisational Skills
7 184 (3.44%) Documentation Skills
8 181 (3.39%) Retail
9 168 (3.14%) Legal
10 140 (2.62%) Influencing Skills
11 130 (2.43%) Presentation Skills
12 123 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 97 (1.82%) Front Office
14 91 (1.70%) Telecoms
15 88 (1.65%) Manufacturing
16 85 (1.59%) Marketing
17 78 (1.46%) Investment Banking
18 57 (1.07%) Financial Institution
19 56 (1.05%) Back Office
20 54 (1.01%) Military
Job Titles
1 736 (13.78%) Analyst
2 670 (12.54%) Developer
3 468 (8.76%) Senior
4 379 (7.09%) Architect
5 335 (6.27%) Lead
6 305 (5.71%) Business Analyst
7 279 (5.22%) Consultant
8 229 (4.29%) Data Engineer
9 206 (3.86%) Project Manager
10 131 (2.45%) Support Engineer
11 130 (2.43%) Java Developer
12 127 (2.38%) IT Support
13 112 (2.10%) Data Analyst
14 103 (1.93%) Administrator
14 103 (1.93%) Solutions Architect
15 96 (1.80%) Software Engineer
16 92 (1.72%) IT Engineer
17 87 (1.63%) Network Engineer
18 86 (1.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 83 (1.55%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 318 (5.95%) REST
2 172 (3.22%) Kafka
3 152 (2.85%) RESTful
4 147 (2.75%) SOAP
5 144 (2.70%) .NET
6 143 (2.68%) Spring
7 131 (2.45%) React
8 123 (2.30%) Node.js
9 109 (2.04%) CSS
10 108 (2.02%) Spring Boot
11 107 (2.00%) HTML
12 105 (1.97%) AngularJS
13 104 (1.95%) JSON
14 94 (1.76%) LDAP
15 92 (1.72%) XML
16 88 (1.65%) Middleware
17 76 (1.42%) OAuth
18 71 (1.33%) PySpark
19 61 (1.14%) Oracle Fusion
20 55 (1.03%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 285 (5.34%) Product Ownership
2 218 (4.08%) Cloud Native
3 217 (4.06%) Onboarding
4 183 (3.43%) Data Centre
5 158 (2.96%) Management Information System
6 153 (2.86%) Self-Motivation
7 145 (2.71%) Analytical Mindset
8 112 (2.10%) Data Protection Act
9 109 (2.04%) Distributed Systems
10 108 (2.02%) Virtual Team
11 106 (1.98%) Data Structures
12 105 (1.97%) Legacy Systems
13 103 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
14 70 (1.31%) Security Posture
15 68 (1.27%) Driving Licence
16 66 (1.24%) Algorithms
17 61 (1.14%) Mobile App
18 60 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
19 54 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 50 (0.94%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 593 (11.10%) Windows
2 324 (6.07%) Linux
3 112 (2.10%) Windows 10
3 112 (2.10%) Windows Server
4 97 (1.82%) Unix
5 89 (1.67%) Android
6 79 (1.48%) Apple iOS
7 70 (1.31%) Mac OS
8 63 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 19 (0.36%) VMS
10 17 (0.32%) Ubuntu
11 12 (0.22%) CentOS
12 11 (0.21%) 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%) Windows Server 2012
16 6 (0.11%) Debian
17 4 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
17 4 (0.075%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,495 (27.99%) Agile
2 920 (17.22%) CI/CD
3 821 (15.37%) DevOps
4 813 (15.22%) Continuous Improvement
5 778 (14.56%) Stakeholder Management
6 604 (11.31%) Analytics
7 578 (10.82%) Decision-Making
8 574 (10.75%) Migration
9 557 (10.43%) AI
10 479 (8.97%) Project Management
11 459 (8.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 456 (8.54%) Data Modelling
13 426 (7.97%) Validation
14 421 (7.88%) Business Intelligence
15 420 (7.86%) Customer Service
16 405 (7.58%) Test Automation
17 395 (7.39%) ITIL
18 387 (7.24%) Change Management
19 383 (7.17%) Scrum
20 351 (6.57%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 989 (18.51%) Python
2 930 (17.41%) SQL
3 460 (8.61%) Java
4 344 (6.44%) PowerShell
5 281 (5.26%) JavaScript
6 204 (3.82%) C#
7 178 (3.33%) TypeScript
8 144 (2.70%) Bash
9 83 (1.55%) PL/SQL
10 65 (1.22%) C++
11 64 (1.20%) Shell Script
12 54 (1.01%) Go
13 43 (0.80%) Perl
13 43 (0.80%) R
14 42 (0.79%) Bicep
15 39 (0.73%) Scala
16 38 (0.71%) C
17 34 (0.64%) Apex Code
17 34 (0.64%) T-SQL
18 30 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,157 (21.66%) Security Cleared
2 809 (15.14%) SC Cleared
3 660 (12.35%) Degree
4 225 (4.21%) Computer Science Degree
5 192 (3.59%) DV Cleared
6 178 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 130 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
8 113 (2.12%) Microsoft Certification
9 103 (1.93%) CISSP
10 96 (1.80%) PMP
11 92 (1.72%) PMI Certification
12 86 (1.61%) Master's Degree
13 69 (1.29%) Azure Certification
14 67 (1.25%) CCNA
15 64 (1.20%) CISM
16 55 (1.03%) A+ Certification
17 53 (0.99%) CCNP
18 52 (0.97%) Network+ Certification
19 51 (0.95%) MCSE
20 39 (0.73%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 351 (6.57%) Data Quality
2 328 (6.14%) QA
3 161 (3.01%) GDPR
4 107 (2.00%) Accessibility
5 98 (1.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 94 (1.76%) PMO
7 86 (1.61%) NIST
8 75 (1.40%) SLA
9 47 (0.88%) GRC
10 35 (0.66%) WCAG
11 30 (0.56%) PCI DSS
12 29 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
13 28 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.39%) PSD2
15 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
16 16 (0.30%) IFRS
17 15 (0.28%) HL7
18 14 (0.26%) HIPAA
18 14 (0.26%) ISO 8583
18 14 (0.26%) NCSC
System Software
1 395 (7.39%) Active Directory
2 383 (7.17%) Docker
3 122 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (0.92%) vSphere
5 40 (0.75%) VMware NSX
6 32 (0.60%) Hyper-V
7 20 (0.37%) Firmware
8 18 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
10 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 11 (0.21%) RACF
11 11 (0.21%) Squid
12 10 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
12 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
12 10 (0.19%) vCloud
13 9 (0.17%) ACF2
14 6 (0.11%) IAG
15 4 (0.075%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.075%) NFS
15 4 (0.075%) Snort
Systems Management
1 460 (8.61%) Kubernetes
2 307 (5.75%) Terraform
3 185 (3.46%) Ansible
4 131 (2.45%) Microsoft Intune
5 124 (2.32%) Grafana
6 96 (1.80%) Prometheus
7 83 (1.55%) SCCM
8 40 (0.75%) vCenter Server
9 38 (0.71%) FortiGate
10 37 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
11 30 (0.56%) Kibana
12 29 (0.54%) Puppet
13 28 (0.52%) Argo
14 23 (0.43%) Control-M
14 23 (0.43%) Nessus
15 19 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
17 16 (0.30%) vRealize
18 15 (0.28%) WSUS
19 11 (0.21%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 977 (18.29%) Microsoft
2 361 (6.76%) Oracle
3 283 (5.30%) SAP
4 238 (4.46%) ServiceNow
5 204 (3.82%) VMware
6 165 (3.09%) Databricks
6 165 (3.09%) Google
7 138 (2.58%) Cisco
8 126 (2.36%) Splunk
9 112 (2.10%) Salesforce
10 80 (1.50%) Red Hat
11 79 (1.48%) Dell
12 71 (1.33%) CyberArk
13 66 (1.24%) BeyondTrust
14 63 (1.18%) Citrix
15 60 (1.12%) Workday
16 57 (1.07%) Adobe
17 51 (0.95%) IBM
18 50 (0.94%) HP
18 50 (0.94%) Talend