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

6 months to
12 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -9 +4 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,605 5,419 4,731
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.58% 16.59% 11.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.43% 18.34% 12.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,231 3,337 2,858
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £381 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.01% -1.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £619
90th Percentile £700 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £463 £475
% change year-on-year -0.54% -2.63% -2.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 448 305 391
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.50
25th Percentile £15.00 £15.50 £14.08
Median hourly rate £20.48 £21.39 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -4.28% +31.79% -69.09%
75th Percentile £40.19 £41.00 £32.50
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.70 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.00 £18.85 £15.97
% change year-on-year +0.80% +18.03% -69.58%

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 45,103 29,546 36,633
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.18% 90.46% 85.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,058 18,631 23,390
10th Percentile £325 £300 £303
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.40% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £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 2,673 1,507 2,455
10th Percentile £14.85 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.50 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -4.70%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.63 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.45% -35.31% -2.91%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 4,802 £495 -1.00% 3,737
UK excluding London -5 3,018 £460 -0.54% 2,948
London -12 2,023 £512 +2.36% 1,341
Work from Home -6 1,564 £488 -2.50% 1,433
South East -5 760 £479 -2.24% 853
North of England -9 753 £448 -5.79% 754
Midlands -8 546 £464 +9.18% 452
West Midlands -8 395 £467 +3.74% 265
North West -11 373 £447 -6.88% 394
South West -3 344 £500 - 360
Yorkshire -7 335 £450 -5.26% 243
Scotland -3 291 £434 -6.22% 128
East of England -2 264 £473 +0.53% 263
East Midlands -1 149 £450 +22.62% 187
Wales -4 71 £468 +24.67% 57
North East -19 51 £366 -18.61% 131
Northern Ireland -7 23 £380 -10.59% 164
Channel Islands -3 1 - - 3

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
1 236 (4.21%) Confluence
2 171 (3.05%) SharePoint
3 91 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 83 (1.48%) Apache Spark
5 52 (0.93%) Apache
6 51 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
7 40 (0.71%) SAS
8 35 (0.62%) CMS
9 32 (0.57%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.20%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.20%) CICS
12 11 (0.20%) nginx
13 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.14%) Camunda
15 7 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
16 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 295 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 243 (4.34%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 87 (1.55%) MS Visio
5 65 (1.16%) Microsoft Project
6 35 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.45%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 25 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.23%) AutoCAD
8 13 (0.23%) Sketch
9 11 (0.20%) Revit
10 10 (0.18%) CATIA
11 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
11 8 (0.14%) Trello
12 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
12 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
12 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
13 5 (0.089%) Maya
14 3 (0.054%) Navisworks
14 3 (0.054%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 138 (2.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
4 22 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
5 20 (0.36%) Aladdin
6 19 (0.34%) NetSuite
7 18 (0.32%) Workday HCM
8 17 (0.30%) SAP GRC
9 14 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
10 13 (0.23%) SAP SD
11 12 (0.21%) iTrent
11 12 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
11 12 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
11 12 (0.21%) SAP HCM
11 12 (0.21%) Teamcenter
12 11 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
13 10 (0.18%) Finacle
14 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
15 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
Cloud Services
1 1,103 (19.68%) Azure
2 829 (14.79%) AWS
3 424 (7.56%) Power Platform
4 394 (7.03%) Microsoft 365
5 319 (5.69%) GCP
6 264 (4.71%) Azure DevOps
7 201 (3.59%) Entra ID
8 197 (3.51%) GitHub
9 148 (2.64%) SaaS
10 138 (2.46%) Serverless
11 94 (1.68%) GitHub Actions
12 92 (1.64%) Amazon S3
13 82 (1.46%) AWS Lambda
14 80 (1.43%) Power Automate
15 79 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
16 71 (1.27%) PowerApps
17 67 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
17 67 (1.20%) OpenShift
17 67 (1.20%) Snowflake
18 52 (0.93%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 231 (4.12%) DNS
2 191 (3.41%) Firewall
3 135 (2.41%) VPN
4 134 (2.39%) TCP/IP
5 127 (2.27%) DHCP
6 112 (2.00%) WAN
7 102 (1.82%) Network Security
8 93 (1.66%) LAN
9 88 (1.57%) SAN
10 80 (1.43%) Wi-Fi
11 55 (0.98%) VLAN
12 54 (0.96%) BGP
13 49 (0.87%) Wireless
14 44 (0.79%) OSPF
15 40 (0.71%) SD-WAN
16 36 (0.64%) VoIP
17 30 (0.54%) MPLS
18 28 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
19 27 (0.48%) VXLAN
20 25 (0.45%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 329 (5.87%) Power BI
2 239 (4.26%) SQL Server
3 170 (3.03%) Relational Database
4 165 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
5 158 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
6 118 (2.11%) MongoDB
7 105 (1.87%) Metadata
8 93 (1.66%) Data Lake
9 92 (1.64%) NoSQL
10 89 (1.59%) Tableau
11 78 (1.39%) Big Data
12 62 (1.11%) MySQL
13 59 (1.05%) Oracle Database
14 51 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 50 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
16 37 (0.66%) Hadoop
17 34 (0.61%) Db2
18 31 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
19 28 (0.50%) Delta Lake
20 27 (0.48%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 530 (9.46%) JIRA
2 325 (5.80%) Git
3 198 (3.53%) Jenkins
4 133 (2.37%) GitLab
5 72 (1.28%) Selenium
6 46 (0.82%) Postman
7 38 (0.68%) REST Assured
8 35 (0.62%) Cypress.io
9 28 (0.50%) Cucumber
9 28 (0.50%) JUnit
10 24 (0.43%) Bitbucket
11 23 (0.41%) Gradle
11 23 (0.41%) Maven
12 22 (0.39%) Mockito
13 20 (0.36%) WebDriver
14 17 (0.30%) JMeter
15 16 (0.29%) SonarQube
15 16 (0.29%) Sonatype Nexus
16 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
17 13 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,906 (51.85%) Social Skills
2 2,260 (40.32%) Analytical Skills
3 1,319 (23.53%) Finance
4 553 (9.87%) Public Sector
5 431 (7.69%) Banking
6 222 (3.96%) Documentation Skills
7 221 (3.94%) Organisational Skills
8 194 (3.46%) Retail
9 159 (2.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 152 (2.71%) Legal
11 141 (2.52%) Manufacturing
12 139 (2.48%) Influencing Skills
13 116 (2.07%) Presentation Skills
14 112 (2.00%) Front Office
15 104 (1.86%) Marketing
16 103 (1.84%) Telecoms
17 92 (1.64%) Investment Banking
18 80 (1.43%) Back Office
19 64 (1.14%) Aerospace
20 58 (1.03%) Law
Job Titles
1 752 (13.42%) Analyst
2 682 (12.17%) Developer
3 503 (8.97%) Senior
4 396 (7.07%) Lead
5 383 (6.83%) Architect
6 287 (5.12%) Business Analyst
7 264 (4.71%) Consultant
8 241 (4.30%) Data Engineer
9 185 (3.30%) IT Support
9 185 (3.30%) Support Engineer
10 182 (3.25%) Project Manager
11 136 (2.43%) Java Developer
12 126 (2.25%) Administrator
13 125 (2.23%) IT Engineer
14 117 (2.09%) Data Analyst
15 109 (1.94%) Solutions Architect
16 108 (1.93%) Software Engineer
17 96 (1.71%) Network Engineer
18 92 (1.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 92 (1.64%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 337 (6.01%) REST
2 169 (3.02%) .NET
3 162 (2.89%) Kafka
4 160 (2.85%) Spring
5 159 (2.84%) RESTful
6 142 (2.53%) React
7 138 (2.46%) SOAP
8 121 (2.16%) CSS
8 121 (2.16%) JSON
9 120 (2.14%) Spring Boot
10 113 (2.02%) HTML
11 112 (2.00%) Middleware
12 107 (1.91%) XML
13 94 (1.68%) Node.js
14 91 (1.62%) AngularJS
15 80 (1.43%) PySpark
16 70 (1.25%) Web Services
17 62 (1.11%) OAuth
18 56 (1.00%) LDAP
19 52 (0.93%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 272 (4.85%) Product Ownership
2 269 (4.80%) Onboarding
3 248 (4.42%) Cloud Native
4 212 (3.78%) Data Centre
5 205 (3.66%) Self-Motivation
6 162 (2.89%) Analytical Mindset
7 152 (2.71%) Distributed Systems
8 151 (2.69%) Management Information System
9 138 (2.46%) Enterprise Software
10 133 (2.37%) Data Protection Act
10 133 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
11 129 (2.30%) Data Structures
12 121 (2.16%) Virtual Team
13 81 (1.45%) Driving Licence
14 71 (1.27%) Algorithms
15 61 (1.09%) AI Agents
15 61 (1.09%) CMDB
16 58 (1.03%) Derivative
17 56 (1.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 52 (0.93%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 699 (12.47%) Windows
2 304 (5.42%) Linux
3 142 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 117 (2.09%) Unix
4 117 (2.09%) Windows 10
5 90 (1.61%) Mac OS
6 86 (1.53%) Android
7 81 (1.45%) Apple iOS
8 50 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 22 (0.39%) Ubuntu
10 14 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
11 12 (0.21%) VMS
12 11 (0.20%) zOS
13 9 (0.16%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.14%) CentOS
14 8 (0.14%) Solaris
15 7 (0.12%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.089%) Debian
16 5 (0.089%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.071%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,496 (26.69%) Agile
2 1,020 (18.20%) Continuous Improvement
3 954 (17.02%) Stakeholder Management
4 931 (16.61%) CI/CD
5 870 (15.52%) DevOps
6 672 (11.99%) AI
7 625 (11.15%) Decision-Making
8 601 (10.72%) Analytics
9 597 (10.65%) Migration
10 563 (10.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 525 (9.37%) ITIL
12 512 (9.13%) Customer Service
13 461 (8.22%) Validation
14 451 (8.05%) Data Modelling
15 432 (7.71%) Business Intelligence
16 413 (7.37%) Test Automation
17 397 (7.08%) Scrum
18 389 (6.94%) Project Management
19 366 (6.53%) Change Management
20 362 (6.46%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,004 (17.91%) SQL
2 949 (16.93%) Python
3 459 (8.19%) Java
4 301 (5.37%) PowerShell
5 294 (5.25%) JavaScript
6 202 (3.60%) C#
7 135 (2.41%) Bash
8 130 (2.32%) TypeScript
9 94 (1.68%) PL/SQL
10 74 (1.32%) C++
11 53 (0.95%) Shell Script
12 51 (0.91%) T-SQL
13 49 (0.87%) Go
14 44 (0.79%) C
15 38 (0.68%) Apex Code
15 38 (0.68%) R
16 37 (0.66%) Bicep
17 35 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 30 (0.54%) Kotlin
19 29 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,227 (21.89%) Security Cleared
2 835 (14.90%) SC Cleared
3 683 (12.19%) Degree
4 216 (3.85%) DV Cleared
5 201 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 164 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
7 152 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
8 143 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
9 92 (1.64%) CISSP
10 83 (1.48%) CCNA
11 82 (1.46%) A+ Certification
11 82 (1.46%) PMP
12 76 (1.36%) PMI Certification
13 74 (1.32%) Master's Degree
14 73 (1.30%) Azure Certification
15 63 (1.12%) Network+ Certification
16 58 (1.03%) CISM
17 56 (1.00%) MCSE
18 48 (0.86%) AWS Certification
19 45 (0.80%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 397 (7.08%) Data Quality
2 332 (5.92%) QA
3 151 (2.69%) GDPR
4 135 (2.41%) Accessibility
5 120 (2.14%) SLA
6 93 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 82 (1.46%) PMO
8 75 (1.34%) NIST
9 57 (1.02%) GRC
10 31 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
11 27 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.41%) WCAG
13 21 (0.37%) GxP
13 21 (0.37%) PCI DSS
14 18 (0.32%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.27%) NCSC
16 13 (0.23%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 13 (0.23%) COBIT
16 13 (0.23%) GMP
16 13 (0.23%) HIPAA
System Software
1 413 (7.37%) Active Directory
2 372 (6.64%) Docker
3 130 (2.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (0.87%) vSphere
5 48 (0.86%) VMware NSX
6 43 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
7 40 (0.71%) Hyper-V
8 29 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (0.36%) Firmware
10 20 (0.36%) vCloud
11 15 (0.27%) IAG
12 11 (0.20%) Squid
13 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.12%) NFS
15 4 (0.071%) ACF2
15 4 (0.071%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.071%) RACF
15 4 (0.071%) Snort
15 4 (0.071%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 447 (7.98%) Kubernetes
2 325 (5.80%) Terraform
3 177 (3.16%) Ansible
4 133 (2.37%) Microsoft Intune
5 115 (2.05%) Grafana
6 102 (1.82%) Prometheus
7 86 (1.53%) SCCM
8 53 (0.95%) vCenter Server
9 44 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
10 37 (0.66%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.54%) Control-M
12 23 (0.41%) SCOM
13 22 (0.39%) Nessus
14 20 (0.36%) Argo
15 19 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
16 18 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
17 17 (0.30%) WSUS
18 16 (0.29%) Kibana
19 12 (0.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
19 12 (0.21%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,082 (19.30%) Microsoft
2 414 (7.39%) Oracle
3 345 (6.16%) SAP
4 341 (6.08%) ServiceNow
5 199 (3.55%) VMware
6 171 (3.05%) Google
7 137 (2.44%) Salesforce
8 134 (2.39%) Databricks
8 134 (2.39%) Splunk
9 124 (2.21%) Cisco
10 80 (1.43%) Workday
11 75 (1.34%) Dell
12 64 (1.14%) Dynatrace
13 63 (1.12%) Adobe
14 61 (1.09%) Red Hat
15 57 (1.02%) MuleSoft
16 54 (0.96%) Citrix
17 53 (0.95%) Apple
18 50 (0.89%) CyberArk
18 50 (0.89%) IBM