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 24 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -8 +4 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,571 5,218 4,516
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.39% 15.82% 11.63%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.28% 17.48% 13.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,142 3,146 2,724
10th Percentile £250 £250 £260
25th Percentile £375 £375 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.02% -2.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £590 £600 £608
90th Percentile £700 £700 £711
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £461 £475
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.89% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 489 318 273
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.77 £11.75
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.00 £20.26 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -6.20% +24.80% -70.49%
75th Percentile £37.50 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £70.30 £64.13 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.25 £18.82 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.03% +15.96% -71.17%

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 45,360 29,849 33,165
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.48% 85.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,797 18,603 21,010
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,875 1,763 1,706
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £13.87
25th Percentile £18.27 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -38.57% -3.67%
75th Percentile £67.89 £47.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.50
% change year-on-year +93.36% -46.51% +7.39%

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 24 August 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 24 August 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 24 August 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 -7 4,834 £500 +1.01% 4,160
UK excluding London -4 2,953 £450 -2.44% 3,667
London -12 2,109 £525 +5.00% 1,149
Work from Home -5 1,533 £500 - 1,361
South East -5 778 £480 +1.05% 1,019
North of England -11 716 £443 -6.74% 833
Midlands -7 532 £450 +2.39% 664
West Midlands -10 378 £450 -2.70% 397
North West -12 354 £445 -7.29% 414
South West -3 337 £495 +10.00% 548
Yorkshire -9 300 £450 -5.26% 301
Scotland -5 275 £450 - 176
East of England +1 254 £450 -10.00% 383
East Midlands 0 151 £463 +23.33% 268
North East -16 65 £375 -16.67% 131
Wales -4 64 £475 +26.67% 97
Northern Ireland -6 26 £388 -21.88% 70
Channel Islands -3 1 - - 4

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 (4.24%) SharePoint
2 231 (4.15%) Confluence
3 112 (2.01%) Microsoft Exchange
4 58 (1.04%) Apache Spark
5 42 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
6 37 (0.66%) Apache
7 35 (0.63%) Oracle Workflow
8 31 (0.56%) SAS
9 29 (0.52%) CMS
10 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.20%) CICS
11 11 (0.20%) Jupyter
11 11 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 8 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.13%) Appian
13 7 (0.13%) IIS
13 7 (0.13%) Mule
14 6 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 321 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 264 (4.74%) Microsoft Office
3 124 (2.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 78 (1.40%) MS Visio
5 63 (1.13%) Microsoft Project
6 32 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.47%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 19 (0.34%) Chatbot
9 17 (0.31%) AutoCAD
10 15 (0.27%) Sketch
11 13 (0.23%) Revit
12 11 (0.20%) Trello
13 10 (0.18%) CATIA
14 7 (0.13%) CPLEX
15 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
15 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
16 5 (0.090%) Navisworks
16 5 (0.090%) Windchill
17 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
17 4 (0.072%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 138 (2.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 40 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
4 27 (0.48%) NetSuite
4 27 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.48%) SAP GRC
5 25 (0.45%) Workday HCM
6 14 (0.25%) iTrent
6 14 (0.25%) SAP SD
7 13 (0.23%) Aladdin
7 13 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
7 13 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 11 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
9 10 (0.18%) Finacle
9 10 (0.18%) SAP CRM
9 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
10 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
10 9 (0.16%) SAP HCM
11 8 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
11 8 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,117 (20.05%) Azure
2 810 (14.54%) AWS
3 483 (8.67%) Microsoft 365
4 430 (7.72%) Power Platform
5 326 (5.85%) GCP
6 281 (5.04%) Azure DevOps
7 232 (4.16%) Entra ID
8 195 (3.50%) GitHub
9 150 (2.69%) SaaS
10 126 (2.26%) Serverless
11 99 (1.78%) Power Automate
12 94 (1.69%) GitHub Actions
13 85 (1.53%) Dynamics 365
14 74 (1.33%) OneDrive
15 73 (1.31%) PowerApps
16 72 (1.29%) Microsoft Copilot
17 69 (1.24%) Amazon S3
17 69 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
18 64 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
18 64 (1.15%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 224 (4.02%) DNS
2 192 (3.45%) Firewall
3 162 (2.91%) VPN
4 133 (2.39%) TCP/IP
4 133 (2.39%) WAN
5 132 (2.37%) DHCP
6 108 (1.94%) LAN
7 101 (1.81%) Network Security
8 82 (1.47%) Wi-Fi
9 75 (1.35%) SAN
10 60 (1.08%) Wireless
11 57 (1.02%) VLAN
12 51 (0.92%) BGP
13 41 (0.74%) SD-WAN
14 38 (0.68%) MPLS
15 37 (0.66%) VoIP
16 33 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.52%) OSPF
18 26 (0.47%) HTTP
19 24 (0.43%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 327 (5.87%) Power BI
2 217 (3.90%) SQL Server
3 182 (3.27%) Relational Database
4 170 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
5 153 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
6 105 (1.88%) Metadata
7 104 (1.87%) MongoDB
8 98 (1.76%) NoSQL
9 87 (1.56%) Tableau
10 79 (1.42%) Data Lake
11 57 (1.02%) Big Data
12 55 (0.99%) Oracle Database
13 54 (0.97%) MySQL
14 49 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
15 36 (0.65%) Db2
15 36 (0.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 29 (0.52%) DynamoDB
17 25 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
17 25 (0.45%) Pentaho
17 25 (0.45%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 489 (8.78%) JIRA
2 357 (6.41%) Git
3 177 (3.18%) Jenkins
4 140 (2.51%) GitLab
5 76 (1.36%) Selenium
6 41 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 39 (0.70%) Postman
8 38 (0.68%) Gradle
9 36 (0.65%) Maven
10 32 (0.57%) Bitbucket
11 29 (0.52%) REST Assured
12 27 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 25 (0.45%) JUnit
14 21 (0.38%) JMeter
15 18 (0.32%) Oracle Forms
16 17 (0.31%) WebDriver
17 16 (0.29%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 16 (0.29%) Mockito
17 16 (0.29%) SonarQube
18 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 2,960 (53.13%) Social Skills
2 2,357 (42.31%) Analytical Skills
3 1,298 (23.30%) Finance
4 576 (10.34%) Public Sector
5 448 (8.04%) Banking
6 247 (4.43%) Organisational Skills
7 202 (3.63%) Documentation Skills
8 200 (3.59%) Retail
9 188 (3.37%) Manufacturing
10 172 (3.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 151 (2.71%) Influencing Skills
12 145 (2.60%) Legal
13 124 (2.23%) Front Office
14 117 (2.10%) Telecoms
15 116 (2.08%) Marketing
16 109 (1.96%) Presentation Skills
17 92 (1.65%) Investment Banking
18 81 (1.45%) Back Office
19 65 (1.17%) Aerospace
20 63 (1.13%) Law
Job Titles
1 724 (13.00%) Analyst
2 699 (12.55%) Developer
3 512 (9.19%) Senior
4 421 (7.56%) Lead
5 346 (6.21%) Architect
6 261 (4.68%) Consultant
7 243 (4.36%) Business Analyst
8 221 (3.97%) Support Engineer
9 217 (3.90%) IT Support
10 210 (3.77%) Data Engineer
11 162 (2.91%) Project Manager
12 152 (2.73%) IT Engineer
13 137 (2.46%) Administrator
14 127 (2.28%) Java Developer
15 116 (2.08%) Data Analyst
16 113 (2.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 107 (1.92%) Solutions Architect
18 100 (1.80%) DevOps Engineer
18 100 (1.80%) IT Support Engineer
19 99 (1.78%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 371 (6.66%) REST
2 326 (5.85%) Terraform
3 182 (3.27%) RESTful
4 177 (3.18%) .NET
5 155 (2.78%) SOAP
6 153 (2.75%) React
7 143 (2.57%) Kafka
8 140 (2.51%) Spring
9 131 (2.35%) JSON
10 127 (2.28%) XML
11 123 (2.21%) CSS
12 121 (2.17%) HTML
13 112 (2.01%) Middleware
14 108 (1.94%) Spring Boot
15 104 (1.87%) Web Services
16 94 (1.69%) Node.js
17 87 (1.56%) AngularJS
18 83 (1.49%) OAuth
19 73 (1.31%) PySpark
20 56 (1.01%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 311 (5.58%) Onboarding
2 277 (4.97%) Product Ownership
3 258 (4.63%) Cloud Native
4 216 (3.88%) Self-Motivation
5 195 (3.50%) Data Centre
6 189 (3.39%) Enterprise Software
7 171 (3.07%) Distributed Systems
8 168 (3.02%) Management Information System
9 153 (2.75%) Analytical Mindset
10 135 (2.42%) Data Structures
11 133 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
12 122 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
13 95 (1.71%) Virtual Team
14 87 (1.56%) Driving Licence
15 72 (1.29%) AI Agents
16 71 (1.27%) CMDB
17 66 (1.18%) Algorithms
18 60 (1.08%) Mobile App
19 55 (0.99%) Derivative
19 55 (0.99%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 755 (13.55%) Windows
2 311 (5.58%) Linux
3 198 (3.55%) Windows Server
4 141 (2.53%) Windows 10
5 105 (1.88%) Unix
6 92 (1.65%) Apple iOS
7 91 (1.63%) Android
8 85 (1.53%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 19 (0.34%) VMS
12 16 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 12 (0.22%) zOS
14 8 (0.14%) CentOS
14 8 (0.14%) Solaris
14 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
15 6 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.090%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,551 (27.84%) Agile
2 1,173 (21.06%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,136 (20.39%) Stakeholder Management
4 943 (16.93%) CI/CD
5 877 (15.74%) DevOps
6 721 (12.94%) AI
7 614 (11.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 592 (10.63%) Decision-Making
9 574 (10.30%) Analytics
10 568 (10.20%) Migration
11 546 (9.80%) Customer Service
12 529 (9.50%) ITIL
13 458 (8.22%) Validation
14 442 (7.93%) Test Automation
15 418 (7.50%) Data Modelling
16 414 (7.43%) Business Intelligence
17 413 (7.41%) Scrum
18 362 (6.50%) ITSM
19 354 (6.35%) Roadmaps
20 348 (6.25%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 979 (17.57%) SQL
2 906 (16.26%) Python
3 435 (7.81%) Java
4 327 (5.87%) PowerShell
5 324 (5.82%) JavaScript
6 199 (3.57%) C#
7 157 (2.82%) Bash
8 124 (2.23%) TypeScript
9 90 (1.62%) PL/SQL
10 74 (1.33%) C++
11 49 (0.88%) T-SQL
12 38 (0.68%) Bicep
12 38 (0.68%) Go
12 38 (0.68%) Shell Script
13 37 (0.66%) Scala
14 34 (0.61%) Kotlin
15 33 (0.59%) Apex Code
15 33 (0.59%) C
16 31 (0.56%) R
17 25 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,195 (21.45%) Security Cleared
2 832 (14.93%) SC Cleared
3 647 (11.61%) Degree
4 208 (3.73%) DV Cleared
5 205 (3.68%) Computer Science Degree
6 160 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
7 155 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
8 123 (2.21%) Cisco Certification
9 79 (1.42%) A+ Certification
9 79 (1.42%) Azure Certification
10 78 (1.40%) PMP
11 75 (1.35%) CISSP
12 74 (1.33%) CCNA
12 74 (1.33%) PMI Certification
13 59 (1.06%) Master's Degree
14 55 (0.99%) Network+ Certification
15 50 (0.90%) MCSE
16 45 (0.81%) CISM
17 43 (0.77%) AWS Certification
18 42 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 398 (7.14%) Data Quality
2 367 (6.59%) QA
3 144 (2.58%) Accessibility
4 134 (2.41%) GDPR
5 127 (2.28%) SLA
6 97 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 92 (1.65%) PMO
8 73 (1.31%) GRC
8 73 (1.31%) NIST
9 34 (0.61%) WCAG
10 27 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 24 (0.43%) GxP
12 23 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
13 17 (0.31%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 17 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
14 16 (0.29%) NCSC
15 15 (0.27%) COBIT
15 15 (0.27%) PCI DSS
16 14 (0.25%) ISO 20022
17 12 (0.22%) IFRS
System Software
1 455 (8.17%) Active Directory
2 360 (6.46%) Docker
3 161 (2.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 64 (1.15%) Hyper-V
5 61 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
6 53 (0.95%) VMware NSX
7 51 (0.92%) vSphere
8 37 (0.66%) Virtual Desktop
9 28 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
10 26 (0.47%) vCloud
11 23 (0.41%) IAG
12 20 (0.36%) Firmware
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
14 8 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.11%) NFS
16 4 (0.072%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.072%) Squid
17 3 (0.054%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.054%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 2 (0.036%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 393 (7.05%) Kubernetes
2 169 (3.03%) Ansible
3 136 (2.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 97 (1.74%) SCCM
5 93 (1.67%) Grafana
6 73 (1.31%) Prometheus
7 58 (1.04%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.66%) SCOM
9 33 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.39%) Control-M
10 22 (0.39%) WSUS
11 20 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
12 18 (0.32%) FortiGate
13 14 (0.25%) Argo
14 12 (0.22%) NetBackup
14 12 (0.22%) Puppet
15 11 (0.20%) Kibana
15 11 (0.20%) Progress Chef
16 10 (0.18%) Istio
17 9 (0.16%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,238 (22.22%) Microsoft
2 406 (7.29%) Oracle
3 363 (6.52%) ServiceNow
4 349 (6.26%) SAP
5 216 (3.88%) VMware
6 171 (3.07%) Google
7 153 (2.75%) Salesforce
8 130 (2.33%) Cisco
9 122 (2.19%) Databricks
10 105 (1.88%) Splunk
11 83 (1.49%) Workday
12 72 (1.29%) Dynatrace
13 68 (1.22%) Adobe
14 65 (1.17%) Apple
15 57 (1.02%) Dell
16 54 (0.97%) CyberArk
16 54 (0.97%) MuleSoft
17 53 (0.95%) IBM
18 44 (0.79%) Citrix
18 44 (0.79%) Red Hat