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

6 months to
3 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 5,393 5,249 4,744
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.47% 16.78% 10.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.31% 18.49% 12.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,108 3,228 2,862
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
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 £619
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 429 293 411
10th Percentile £13.09 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.50 £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 £41.00 £32.50
90th Percentile £73.15 £65.25 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.75 £18.85 £15.69
% change year-on-year -0.53% +20.14% -68.62%

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 43,799 28,390 37,058
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.78% 85.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,227 17,909 23,638
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.98% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,638 1,396 2,532
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.21 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.50 £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 £53.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.26% -35.31% +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 3 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 3 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 3 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 4,613 £492 -1.60% 3,684
UK excluding London -5 2,905 £450 -2.70% 2,797
London -12 1,952 £512 +2.36% 1,282
Work from Home -8 1,505 £488 -2.50% 1,541
South East -5 722 £482 -3.17% 834
North of England -11 722 £446 -6.05% 695
Midlands -7 530 £463 +8.82% 454
West Midlands -8 384 £467 +3.74% 247
North West -12 354 £446 -8.05% 383
Yorkshire -7 327 £450 -5.26% 219
South West -4 320 £500 - 338
Scotland -2 291 £434 -6.22% 132
East of England -2 259 £450 -4.76% 289
East Midlands -1 144 £449 +22.21% 208
Wales -2 69 £468 +32.40% 54
North East -21 47 £356 -20.83% 110
Northern Ireland -7 23 £380 -10.59% 79
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 (4.10%) Confluence
2 162 (3.00%) SharePoint
3 89 (1.65%) 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 34 (0.63%) CMS
9 28 (0.52%) 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%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 10 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.15%) Camunda
15 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
16 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 298 (5.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 235 (4.36%) Microsoft Office
3 108 (2.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 84 (1.56%) MS Visio
5 63 (1.17%) Microsoft Project
6 35 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.46%) 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
1 134 (2.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
4 22 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
5 20 (0.37%) NetSuite
6 18 (0.33%) Workday HCM
7 16 (0.30%) Aladdin
7 16 (0.30%) SAP GRC
8 13 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
9 12 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
9 12 (0.22%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 12 (0.22%) Teamcenter
10 11 (0.20%) iTrent
11 10 (0.19%) Finacle
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
12 9 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
12 9 (0.17%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.15%) Loan IQ
13 8 (0.15%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,068 (19.80%) Azure
2 793 (14.70%) AWS
3 420 (7.79%) Power Platform
4 378 (7.01%) Microsoft 365
5 298 (5.53%) GCP
6 256 (4.75%) Azure DevOps
7 186 (3.45%) GitHub
8 185 (3.43%) Entra ID
9 141 (2.61%) SaaS
10 135 (2.50%) Serverless
11 90 (1.67%) Amazon S3
11 90 (1.67%) GitHub Actions
12 80 (1.48%) AWS Lambda
13 77 (1.43%) Power Automate
14 76 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
15 69 (1.28%) PowerApps
16 67 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
17 65 (1.21%) Snowflake
18 63 (1.17%) OpenShift
19 48 (0.89%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 213 (3.95%) DNS
2 166 (3.08%) Firewall
3 122 (2.26%) TCP/IP
3 122 (2.26%) VPN
4 116 (2.15%) DHCP
5 100 (1.85%) WAN
6 97 (1.80%) Network Security
7 85 (1.58%) SAN
8 79 (1.46%) LAN
9 76 (1.41%) Wi-Fi
10 51 (0.95%) BGP
10 51 (0.95%) VLAN
11 43 (0.80%) OSPF
12 42 (0.78%) Wireless
13 39 (0.72%) SD-WAN
14 36 (0.67%) VoIP
15 28 (0.52%) MPLS
16 27 (0.50%) VXLAN
17 23 (0.43%) NAS
17 23 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 326 (6.04%) Power BI
2 226 (4.19%) SQL Server
3 159 (2.95%) Data Warehouse
4 151 (2.80%) Relational Database
5 141 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
6 117 (2.17%) MongoDB
7 102 (1.89%) Metadata
8 92 (1.71%) NoSQL
9 91 (1.69%) Data Lake
10 89 (1.65%) Tableau
11 77 (1.43%) Big Data
12 57 (1.06%) Oracle Database
13 53 (0.98%) MySQL
14 50 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
16 37 (0.69%) Hadoop
17 31 (0.57%) Db2
18 28 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
19 27 (0.50%) Delta Lake
19 27 (0.50%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 510 (9.46%) JIRA
2 302 (5.60%) Git
3 192 (3.56%) Jenkins
4 130 (2.41%) GitLab
5 69 (1.28%) Selenium
6 44 (0.82%) Postman
7 38 (0.70%) REST Assured
8 31 (0.57%) Cypress.io
9 28 (0.52%) 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%) JMeter
14 16 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
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 2,788 (51.70%) Social Skills
2 2,155 (39.96%) Analytical Skills
3 1,267 (23.49%) Finance
4 522 (9.68%) Public Sector
5 411 (7.62%) Banking
6 214 (3.97%) Organisational Skills
7 208 (3.86%) Documentation Skills
8 190 (3.52%) Retail
9 151 (2.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 151 (2.80%) Legal
10 127 (2.35%) Manufacturing
11 126 (2.34%) Influencing Skills
12 116 (2.15%) Presentation Skills
13 112 (2.08%) Front Office
14 96 (1.78%) Marketing
14 96 (1.78%) Telecoms
15 93 (1.72%) Investment Banking
16 80 (1.48%) Back Office
17 60 (1.11%) Aerospace
18 56 (1.04%) Law
Job Titles
1 735 (13.63%) Analyst
2 641 (11.89%) Developer
3 475 (8.81%) Senior
4 379 (7.03%) Architect
5 363 (6.73%) Lead
6 282 (5.23%) Business Analyst
7 252 (4.67%) Consultant
8 236 (4.38%) Data Engineer
9 182 (3.37%) IT Support
10 178 (3.30%) Support Engineer
11 177 (3.28%) Project Manager
12 123 (2.28%) IT Engineer
12 123 (2.28%) 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 90 (1.67%) Technical Support
18 89 (1.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 88 (1.63%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 320 (5.93%) REST
2 164 (3.04%) .NET
3 156 (2.89%) Kafka
4 151 (2.80%) Spring
5 141 (2.61%) RESTful
6 138 (2.56%) React
7 134 (2.48%) SOAP
8 118 (2.19%) JSON
9 113 (2.10%) CSS
10 112 (2.08%) Spring Boot
11 109 (2.02%) Middleware
12 103 (1.91%) HTML
13 100 (1.85%) XML
14 90 (1.67%) AngularJS
15 88 (1.63%) Node.js
16 78 (1.45%) PySpark
17 66 (1.22%) Web Services
18 60 (1.11%) OAuth
19 59 (1.09%) LDAP
20 48 (0.89%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 267 (4.95%) Product Ownership
2 247 (4.58%) Onboarding
3 236 (4.38%) Cloud Native
4 206 (3.82%) Data Centre
5 194 (3.60%) Self-Motivation
6 163 (3.02%) Analytical Mindset
7 148 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
8 140 (2.60%) Management Information System
9 135 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
10 133 (2.47%) Enterprise Software
11 126 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
12 124 (2.30%) Data Structures
13 117 (2.17%) Virtual Team
14 71 (1.32%) Driving Licence
15 70 (1.30%) Algorithms
16 60 (1.11%) AI Agents
17 56 (1.04%) Derivative
17 56 (1.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 55 (1.02%) CMDB
19 54 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 672 (12.46%) Windows
2 291 (5.40%) Linux
3 132 (2.45%) Windows Server
4 114 (2.11%) Windows 10
5 112 (2.08%) Unix
6 88 (1.63%) Mac OS
7 86 (1.59%) Android
8 82 (1.52%) Apple iOS
9 49 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.35%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.22%) VMS
13 11 (0.20%) zOS
14 9 (0.17%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.15%) CentOS
15 8 (0.15%) Solaris
15 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.093%) Debian
16 5 (0.093%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.074%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,434 (26.59%) Agile
2 959 (17.78%) Continuous Improvement
3 896 (16.61%) Stakeholder Management
4 880 (16.32%) CI/CD
5 835 (15.48%) DevOps
6 643 (11.92%) AI
7 607 (11.26%) Decision-Making
8 584 (10.83%) Analytics
9 581 (10.77%) Migration
10 535 (9.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 498 (9.23%) Customer Service
12 497 (9.22%) ITIL
13 446 (8.27%) Validation
14 432 (8.01%) Data Modelling
15 421 (7.81%) Business Intelligence
16 396 (7.34%) Test Automation
17 381 (7.06%) Project Management
18 378 (7.01%) Scrum
19 351 (6.51%) Change Management
20 341 (6.32%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 975 (18.08%) SQL
2 915 (16.97%) Python
3 436 (8.08%) Java
4 292 (5.41%) PowerShell
5 277 (5.14%) JavaScript
6 196 (3.63%) C#
7 128 (2.37%) TypeScript
8 126 (2.34%) Bash
9 87 (1.61%) PL/SQL
10 74 (1.37%) C++
11 51 (0.95%) T-SQL
12 50 (0.93%) Shell Script
13 48 (0.89%) 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 1,174 (21.77%) Security Cleared
2 800 (14.83%) SC Cleared
3 652 (12.09%) Degree
4 203 (3.76%) DV Cleared
5 189 (3.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 157 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
7 145 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
8 141 (2.61%) Cisco Certification
9 90 (1.67%) CISSP
10 82 (1.52%) CCNA
11 81 (1.50%) A+ Certification
11 81 (1.50%) PMP
12 73 (1.35%) PMI Certification
13 67 (1.24%) Azure Certification
13 67 (1.24%) Master's Degree
14 64 (1.19%) Network+ Certification
15 58 (1.08%) CISM
16 56 (1.04%) MCSE
17 45 (0.83%) AWS Certification
18 43 (0.80%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 375 (6.95%) Data Quality
2 308 (5.71%) QA
3 154 (2.86%) GDPR
4 129 (2.39%) Accessibility
5 115 (2.13%) SLA
6 94 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 76 (1.41%) NIST
7 76 (1.41%) PMO
8 55 (1.02%) GRC
9 30 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
10 27 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 23 (0.43%) PCI DSS
12 22 (0.41%) WCAG
13 18 (0.33%) ISO 20022
14 17 (0.32%) NCSC
15 16 (0.30%) GxP
16 14 (0.26%) COBIT
17 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
18 12 (0.22%) PSD2
19 11 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 394 (7.31%) Active Directory
2 348 (6.45%) Docker
3 120 (2.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.83%) vSphere
5 42 (0.78%) VMware NSX
6 40 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
7 36 (0.67%) Hyper-V
8 29 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (0.37%) Firmware
10 20 (0.37%) vCloud
11 13 (0.24%) IAG
12 11 (0.20%) Squid
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.11%) NFS
15 4 (0.074%) ACF2
15 4 (0.074%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.074%) RACF
15 4 (0.074%) Snort
15 4 (0.074%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 420 (7.79%) Kubernetes
2 306 (5.67%) Terraform
3 170 (3.15%) Ansible
4 128 (2.37%) Microsoft Intune
5 113 (2.10%) Grafana
6 99 (1.84%) Prometheus
7 84 (1.56%) SCCM
8 52 (0.96%) vCenter Server
9 41 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
10 38 (0.70%) FortiGate
11 27 (0.50%) Control-M
12 22 (0.41%) Nessus
12 22 (0.41%) SCOM
13 20 (0.37%) Argo
14 18 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
15 17 (0.32%) WSUS
16 16 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
16 16 (0.30%) Kibana
17 12 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 12 (0.22%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,039 (19.27%) Microsoft
2 377 (6.99%) Oracle
3 332 (6.16%) SAP
4 330 (6.12%) ServiceNow
5 187 (3.47%) VMware
6 162 (3.00%) Google
7 131 (2.43%) Databricks
8 130 (2.41%) Splunk
9 128 (2.37%) Salesforce
10 117 (2.17%) Cisco
11 80 (1.48%) Workday
12 75 (1.39%) Dell
13 62 (1.15%) Dynatrace
14 60 (1.11%) Adobe
15 59 (1.09%) Red Hat
16 55 (1.02%) MuleSoft
17 53 (0.98%) Citrix
18 49 (0.91%) Apple
19 46 (0.85%) CyberArk
19 46 (0.85%) IBM