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 25 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,434 4,767 4,809
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.38% 16.39% 10.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.41% 18.11% 12.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,330 3,010 2,967
10th Percentile £298 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £706 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 324 210 405
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.98 £11.03
25th Percentile £15.23 £17.08 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.71 £25.43 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -18.56% +43.51% -55.70%
75th Percentile £44.94 £43.66 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £70.25 £68.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.35 £22.14 £15.89
% change year-on-year -21.64% +39.33% -45.21%

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 37,704 26,329 38,303
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.90% 90.53% 86.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,901 17,073 24,878
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.13% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,218 942 2,338
10th Percentile £14.94 £15.20 £12.85
25th Percentile £18.50 £20.75 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.31 £57.75
90th Percentile £75.12 £77.10 £71.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £31.76 £31.50
% change year-on-year -5.54% +0.83% -12.50%

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 25 March 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 25 March 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 25 March 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 -3 4,668 £492 -1.60% 3,214
UK excluding London -5 2,823 £475 - 2,643
London -7 2,033 £511 -2.69% 971
Work from Home -1 1,552 £480 -4.00% 1,242
North of England -5 768 £450 -6.25% 653
South East -4 678 £495 -1.00% 809
Midlands -3 514 £450 +0.45% 472
North West -4 384 £425 -10.53% 361
West Midlands -1 371 £475 +2.70% 274
Yorkshire -4 338 £475 -4.04% 219
South West -1 313 £525 - 302
Scotland 0 255 £438 -4.16% 120
East of England -3 226 £450 - 285
East Midlands -1 144 £413 +7.49% 196
Wales -3 68 £400 +2.56% 78
North East -3 55 £450 - 89
Northern Ireland -3 30 £449 +31.91% 18
Channel Islands 0 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
1 220 (4.05%) Confluence
2 161 (2.96%) SharePoint
3 104 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 89 (1.64%) Apache Spark
5 64 (1.18%) Apache
6 62 (1.14%) SAS
7 45 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
8 34 (0.63%) CMS
9 16 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.28%) nginx
11 12 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
12 11 (0.20%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.15%) Camunda
14 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
16 6 (0.11%) JBoss
16 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
17 5 (0.092%) CICS
17 5 (0.092%) Tomcat
Applications
1 318 (5.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (4.09%) Microsoft Office
3 120 (2.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 85 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
5 81 (1.49%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.42%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) Trello
11 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.092%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.074%) Adobe Captivate
13 4 (0.074%) CATIA
13 4 (0.074%) InDesign
13 4 (0.074%) InVision
13 4 (0.074%) Maya
13 4 (0.074%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.055%) Notion
Business Applications
1 96 (1.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 19 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
6 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
7 16 (0.29%) Workday HCM
8 15 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
9 14 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
9 14 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
10 13 (0.24%) SAP ERP
11 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
11 12 (0.22%) NetSuite
12 11 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
12 11 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
13 10 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
13 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
14 8 (0.15%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,166 (21.46%) Azure
2 852 (15.68%) AWS
3 383 (7.05%) GCP
4 380 (6.99%) Power Platform
5 331 (6.09%) Microsoft 365
6 262 (4.82%) GitHub
7 259 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
8 190 (3.50%) Serverless
9 160 (2.94%) Entra ID
10 138 (2.54%) GitHub Actions
11 129 (2.37%) SaaS
12 109 (2.01%) Amazon S3
13 104 (1.91%) AWS Lambda
14 97 (1.79%) OpenShift
15 85 (1.56%) Snowflake
16 78 (1.44%) Azure Data Factory
17 74 (1.36%) Dynamics 365
18 71 (1.31%) Power Automate
19 63 (1.16%) Amazon EC2
20 62 (1.14%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 207 (3.81%) Firewall
2 199 (3.66%) DNS
3 127 (2.34%) TCP/IP
4 120 (2.21%) Network Security
5 112 (2.06%) WAN
6 109 (2.01%) VPN
7 108 (1.99%) DHCP
8 90 (1.66%) LAN
9 66 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
10 54 (0.99%) BGP
11 52 (0.96%) SAN
12 49 (0.90%) VLAN
13 40 (0.74%) OSPF
14 35 (0.64%) VoIP
15 33 (0.61%) SD-WAN
16 28 (0.52%) Wireless
17 27 (0.50%) MPLS
18 26 (0.48%) Internet
19 21 (0.39%) Junos
20 20 (0.37%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 305 (5.61%) Power BI
2 189 (3.48%) SQL Server
3 164 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
4 160 (2.94%) PostgreSQL
5 154 (2.83%) Relational Database
6 102 (1.88%) Metadata
7 99 (1.82%) NoSQL
8 98 (1.80%) MongoDB
9 86 (1.58%) Big Data
9 86 (1.58%) Tableau
10 81 (1.49%) Data Lake
11 75 (1.38%) MySQL
12 67 (1.23%) Oracle Database
13 58 (1.07%) Oracle Reports
14 50 (0.92%) Hadoop
14 50 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 43 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
16 37 (0.68%) DynamoDB
17 31 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
17 31 (0.57%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 509 (9.37%) JIRA
2 362 (6.66%) Git
3 271 (4.99%) Jenkins
4 175 (3.22%) GitLab
5 85 (1.56%) Selenium
6 54 (0.99%) JUnit
7 42 (0.77%) Postman
8 39 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 34 (0.63%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.52%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.48%) Cypress.io
12 24 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
13 23 (0.42%) Maven
14 21 (0.39%) JMeter
15 20 (0.37%) Mockito
16 18 (0.33%) SonarQube
17 15 (0.28%) CircleCI
17 15 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
17 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.28%) WebDriver
General
1 2,935 (54.01%) Social Skills
2 2,018 (37.14%) Analytical Skills
3 1,232 (22.67%) Finance
4 568 (10.45%) Public Sector
5 433 (7.97%) Banking
6 217 (3.99%) Organisational Skills
7 184 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
8 179 (3.29%) Legal
9 157 (2.89%) Retail
10 134 (2.47%) Presentation Skills
11 133 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
12 129 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 102 (1.88%) Front Office
14 96 (1.77%) Telecoms
15 90 (1.66%) Marketing
16 85 (1.56%) Investment Banking
16 85 (1.56%) Manufacturing
17 61 (1.12%) Military
18 53 (0.98%) Financial Institution
19 49 (0.90%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 737 (13.56%) Analyst
2 728 (13.40%) Developer
3 477 (8.78%) Senior
4 387 (7.12%) Architect
5 353 (6.50%) Lead
6 311 (5.72%) Business Analyst
7 297 (5.47%) Consultant
8 221 (4.07%) Project Manager
9 214 (3.94%) Data Engineer
10 138 (2.54%) Support Engineer
11 127 (2.34%) Java Developer
12 115 (2.12%) IT Support
13 105 (1.93%) Data Analyst
14 102 (1.88%) Solutions Architect
15 101 (1.86%) Senior Developer
16 98 (1.80%) Software Engineer
17 95 (1.75%) Administrator
18 87 (1.60%) Network Engineer
19 81 (1.49%) Python Developer
20 77 (1.42%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 351 (6.46%) REST
2 175 (3.22%) Kafka
3 169 (3.11%) RESTful
4 163 (3.00%) .NET
4 163 (3.00%) SOAP
5 156 (2.87%) Spring
6 148 (2.72%) Node.js
7 144 (2.65%) React
8 118 (2.17%) AngularJS
9 115 (2.12%) CSS
10 113 (2.08%) HTML
11 110 (2.02%) Spring Boot
12 108 (1.99%) JSON
13 97 (1.79%) XML
14 95 (1.75%) LDAP
15 91 (1.67%) Middleware
16 78 (1.44%) OAuth
17 72 (1.32%) PySpark
18 66 (1.21%) Oracle Fusion
19 63 (1.16%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 274 (5.04%) Product Ownership
2 241 (4.44%) Cloud Native
3 206 (3.79%) Onboarding
4 169 (3.11%) Management Information System
5 159 (2.93%) Data Centre
6 139 (2.56%) Analytical Mindset
7 134 (2.47%) Self-Motivation
8 113 (2.08%) Data Structures
9 111 (2.04%) Data Protection Act
10 102 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
11 101 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
11 101 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
11 101 (1.86%) Virtual Team
12 85 (1.56%) Algorithms
13 70 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
13 70 (1.29%) Security Posture
14 65 (1.20%) Driving Licence
15 63 (1.16%) Mobile App
16 62 (1.14%) CMDB
17 54 (0.99%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 571 (10.51%) Windows
2 342 (6.29%) Linux
3 107 (1.97%) Windows Server
4 103 (1.90%) Unix
5 100 (1.84%) Windows 10
6 72 (1.32%) Android
7 65 (1.20%) Apple iOS
8 62 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 57 (1.05%) Mac OS
10 19 (0.35%) VMS
11 16 (0.29%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.20%) CentOS
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.11%) zOS
17 5 (0.092%) Debian
17 5 (0.092%) Windows Server 2003
18 4 (0.074%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,578 (29.04%) Agile
2 1,001 (18.42%) CI/CD
3 888 (16.34%) DevOps
4 831 (15.29%) Stakeholder Management
5 814 (14.98%) Continuous Improvement
6 631 (11.61%) Analytics
7 563 (10.36%) Migration
8 554 (10.20%) Decision-Making
9 526 (9.68%) AI
10 495 (9.11%) Project Management
11 482 (8.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 458 (8.43%) Data Modelling
13 434 (7.99%) Test Automation
14 416 (7.66%) Validation
15 414 (7.62%) Business Intelligence
16 408 (7.51%) Scrum
17 396 (7.29%) Change Management
18 388 (7.14%) Customer Service
19 386 (7.10%) ITIL
20 366 (6.74%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,038 (19.10%) Python
2 926 (17.04%) SQL
3 485 (8.93%) Java
4 369 (6.79%) PowerShell
5 300 (5.52%) JavaScript
6 224 (4.12%) C#
7 201 (3.70%) TypeScript
8 157 (2.89%) Bash
9 80 (1.47%) PL/SQL
10 72 (1.32%) Shell Script
11 62 (1.14%) C++
12 57 (1.05%) Go
13 45 (0.83%) Perl
14 42 (0.77%) Bicep
14 42 (0.77%) T-SQL
15 40 (0.74%) Scala
16 38 (0.70%) Ruby
17 35 (0.64%) Apex Code
18 34 (0.63%) C
18 34 (0.63%) R
Qualifications
1 1,202 (22.12%) Security Cleared
2 842 (15.50%) SC Cleared
3 697 (12.83%) Degree
4 238 (4.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 211 (3.88%) DV Cleared
6 166 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 120 (2.21%) Cisco Certification
8 109 (2.01%) PMP
9 108 (1.99%) Master's Degree
9 108 (1.99%) PMI Certification
10 100 (1.84%) CISSP
11 99 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
12 71 (1.31%) Azure Certification
13 65 (1.20%) CISM
14 57 (1.05%) CCNP
15 52 (0.96%) CCNA
16 45 (0.83%) AWS Certification
17 42 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
18 40 (0.74%) A+ Certification
19 36 (0.66%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (6.61%) QA
2 330 (6.07%) Data Quality
3 163 (3.00%) GDPR
4 120 (2.21%) Accessibility
5 99 (1.82%) PMO
6 87 (1.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 87 (1.60%) NIST
7 67 (1.23%) SLA
8 40 (0.74%) GRC
9 35 (0.64%) PCI DSS
9 35 (0.64%) WCAG
10 29 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
11 25 (0.46%) PSD2
11 25 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
13 17 (0.31%) HIPAA
13 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
14 14 (0.26%) HL7
15 13 (0.24%) IFRS
15 13 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 453 (8.34%) Docker
2 377 (6.94%) Active Directory
3 113 (2.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (0.90%) vSphere
5 40 (0.74%) VMware NSX
6 31 (0.57%) Hyper-V
7 24 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.37%) Firmware
9 15 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
12 9 (0.17%) Squid
12 9 (0.17%) vCloud
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 4 (0.074%) Snort
15 3 (0.055%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.055%) HDFS
15 3 (0.055%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 513 (9.44%) Kubernetes
2 325 (5.98%) Terraform
3 200 (3.68%) Ansible
4 131 (2.41%) Grafana
5 125 (2.30%) Microsoft Intune
6 103 (1.90%) Prometheus
7 87 (1.60%) SCCM
8 46 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
10 35 (0.64%) Argo
10 35 (0.64%) vCenter Server
11 31 (0.57%) Kibana
11 31 (0.57%) Puppet
12 24 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 22 (0.40%) Nessus
14 20 (0.37%) Control-M
15 16 (0.29%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.28%) vRealize
17 12 (0.22%) HP ALM
18 11 (0.20%) VxRail
Vendors
1 975 (17.94%) Microsoft
2 356 (6.55%) Oracle
3 263 (4.84%) SAP
4 227 (4.18%) ServiceNow
5 203 (3.74%) VMware
6 178 (3.28%) Google
7 167 (3.07%) Databricks
8 141 (2.59%) Splunk
9 131 (2.41%) Cisco
10 114 (2.10%) Salesforce
11 88 (1.62%) Red Hat
12 72 (1.32%) CyberArk
13 66 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
14 62 (1.14%) Dell
15 61 (1.12%) Citrix
16 58 (1.07%) IBM
17 55 (1.01%) Palo Alto
17 55 (1.01%) Workday
18 53 (0.98%) Informatica
19 52 (0.96%) Talend