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

6 months to
23 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -9 +4 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,603 5,210 4,487
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.40% 15.80% 11.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.28% 17.46% 13.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,162 3,142 2,722
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 £593 £600 £608
90th Percentile £700 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £460 £475
% change year-on-year -2.17% -3.16% -1.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 490 317 276
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.77 £11.75
25th Percentile £14.50 £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 £70.28 £64.25 £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 45,630 29,844 33,104
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.69% 90.49% 85.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,001 18,599 21,039
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% -3.54%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £728 £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 1,760 1,727
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £13.87
25th Percentile £18.29 £17.30 £18.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £67.86 £47.66 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.05
% change year-on-year +93.36% -45.93% +12.12%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 4,867 £500 +1.01% 4,081
UK excluding London -4 2,976 £450 -2.17% 3,619
London -12 2,117 £525 +5.00% 1,084
Work from Home -5 1,535 £500 - 1,310
South East -4 782 £480 +1.05% 1,014
North of England -12 723 £443 -6.74% 840
Midlands -7 540 £450 +2.39% 640
West Midlands -10 384 £450 -2.70% 376
North West -12 354 £445 -7.29% 416
South West -3 343 £498 +10.56% 540
Yorkshire -8 307 £450 -5.26% 303
Scotland -5 274 £450 - 174
East of England +1 254 £450 -10.00% 386
East Midlands 0 153 £475 +26.67% 264
North East -15 67 £375 -16.67% 135
Wales -5 63 £475 +26.67% 99
Northern Ireland -6 26 £388 -21.88% 53
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 (4.21%) SharePoint
2 235 (4.19%) Confluence
3 112 (2.00%) Microsoft Exchange
4 59 (1.05%) Apache Spark
5 42 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
6 37 (0.66%) Apache
7 35 (0.62%) Oracle Workflow
8 33 (0.59%) 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 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.12%) Appian
13 7 (0.12%) IIS
13 7 (0.12%) Mule
14 6 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 323 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 264 (4.71%) Microsoft Office
3 125 (2.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 78 (1.39%) MS Visio
5 64 (1.14%) Microsoft Project
6 32 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.46%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 19 (0.34%) Chatbot
9 17 (0.30%) AutoCAD
10 15 (0.27%) Sketch
11 13 (0.23%) Revit
12 12 (0.21%) Trello
13 10 (0.18%) CATIA
14 7 (0.12%) CPLEX
15 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
15 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
16 5 (0.089%) Navisworks
16 5 (0.089%) Windchill
17 4 (0.071%) Adobe XD
17 4 (0.071%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 138 (2.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
3 40 (0.71%) 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%) SAP SD
7 13 (0.23%) Aladdin
7 13 (0.23%) iTrent
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 1,121 (20.01%) Azure
2 811 (14.47%) AWS
3 485 (8.66%) Microsoft 365
4 431 (7.69%) Power Platform
5 325 (5.80%) GCP
6 281 (5.02%) Azure DevOps
7 233 (4.16%) Entra ID
8 195 (3.48%) GitHub
9 151 (2.69%) SaaS
10 125 (2.23%) Serverless
11 99 (1.77%) Power Automate
12 93 (1.66%) GitHub Actions
13 85 (1.52%) Dynamics 365
14 74 (1.32%) OneDrive
15 73 (1.30%) PowerApps
16 72 (1.29%) Microsoft Copilot
17 70 (1.25%) Amazon S3
18 69 (1.23%) AWS Lambda
19 65 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
20 64 (1.14%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 226 (4.03%) DNS
2 194 (3.46%) Firewall
3 163 (2.91%) VPN
4 134 (2.39%) DHCP
4 134 (2.39%) WAN
5 133 (2.37%) TCP/IP
6 109 (1.95%) LAN
7 103 (1.84%) Network Security
8 83 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
9 76 (1.36%) SAN
10 61 (1.09%) Wireless
11 58 (1.04%) VLAN
12 52 (0.93%) BGP
13 41 (0.73%) SD-WAN
14 38 (0.68%) MPLS
15 37 (0.66%) VoIP
16 33 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
17 30 (0.54%) OSPF
18 26 (0.46%) HTTP
19 24 (0.43%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 328 (5.85%) Power BI
2 218 (3.89%) SQL Server
3 181 (3.23%) Relational Database
4 169 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
5 155 (2.77%) PostgreSQL
6 104 (1.86%) Metadata
6 104 (1.86%) MongoDB
7 98 (1.75%) NoSQL
8 86 (1.53%) Tableau
9 79 (1.41%) Data Lake
10 57 (1.02%) Big Data
11 54 (0.96%) MySQL
12 53 (0.95%) Oracle Database
13 49 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
14 36 (0.64%) Db2
14 36 (0.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 28 (0.50%) DynamoDB
16 27 (0.48%) Power Query
17 26 (0.46%) Pentaho
18 25 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 496 (8.85%) JIRA
2 358 (6.39%) Git
3 178 (3.18%) Jenkins
4 140 (2.50%) GitLab
5 77 (1.37%) Selenium
6 42 (0.75%) Cypress.io
7 39 (0.70%) Postman
8 38 (0.68%) Gradle
9 36 (0.64%) Maven
10 32 (0.57%) Bitbucket
11 29 (0.52%) REST Assured
12 27 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 25 (0.45%) JUnit
14 21 (0.37%) JMeter
15 18 (0.32%) Oracle Forms
16 17 (0.30%) WebDriver
17 16 (0.29%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 16 (0.29%) Mockito
17 16 (0.29%) SonarQube
18 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 2,977 (53.13%) Social Skills
2 2,366 (42.23%) Analytical Skills
3 1,307 (23.33%) Finance
4 581 (10.37%) Public Sector
5 451 (8.05%) Banking
6 248 (4.43%) Organisational Skills
7 202 (3.61%) Documentation Skills
8 200 (3.57%) Retail
9 189 (3.37%) Manufacturing
10 173 (3.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 151 (2.69%) Influencing Skills
12 147 (2.62%) Legal
13 125 (2.23%) Front Office
14 117 (2.09%) Telecoms
15 116 (2.07%) Marketing
16 109 (1.95%) Presentation Skills
17 93 (1.66%) Investment Banking
18 81 (1.45%) Back Office
19 66 (1.18%) Aerospace
20 63 (1.12%) Law
Job Titles
1 728 (12.99%) Analyst
2 705 (12.58%) Developer
3 514 (9.17%) Senior
4 423 (7.55%) Lead
5 348 (6.21%) Architect
6 262 (4.68%) Consultant
7 244 (4.35%) Business Analyst
8 221 (3.94%) Support Engineer
9 217 (3.87%) IT Support
10 211 (3.77%) Data Engineer
11 167 (2.98%) Project Manager
12 153 (2.73%) IT Engineer
13 139 (2.48%) Administrator
14 127 (2.27%) Java Developer
15 117 (2.09%) Data Analyst
16 113 (2.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 106 (1.89%) Solutions Architect
18 101 (1.80%) Network Engineer
19 100 (1.78%) DevOps Engineer
19 100 (1.78%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 370 (6.60%) REST
2 327 (5.84%) Terraform
3 182 (3.25%) RESTful
4 176 (3.14%) .NET
5 155 (2.77%) SOAP
6 152 (2.71%) React
7 144 (2.57%) Kafka
8 140 (2.50%) Spring
9 131 (2.34%) JSON
10 127 (2.27%) XML
11 122 (2.18%) CSS
12 120 (2.14%) HTML
13 113 (2.02%) Middleware
14 108 (1.93%) Spring Boot
15 104 (1.86%) Web Services
16 93 (1.66%) Node.js
17 86 (1.53%) AngularJS
18 82 (1.46%) OAuth
19 74 (1.32%) PySpark
20 57 (1.02%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 309 (5.51%) Onboarding
2 278 (4.96%) Product Ownership
3 258 (4.60%) Cloud Native
4 217 (3.87%) Self-Motivation
5 197 (3.52%) Data Centre
6 189 (3.37%) Enterprise Software
7 171 (3.05%) Distributed Systems
8 169 (3.02%) Management Information System
9 154 (2.75%) Analytical Mindset
10 134 (2.39%) Data Structures
11 133 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
12 122 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
13 96 (1.71%) Virtual Team
14 87 (1.55%) Driving Licence
15 72 (1.29%) CMDB
16 71 (1.27%) AI Agents
17 66 (1.18%) Algorithms
18 60 (1.07%) Mobile App
19 56 (1.00%) PKI
20 55 (0.98%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 759 (13.55%) Windows
2 312 (5.57%) Linux
3 198 (3.53%) Windows Server
4 142 (2.53%) Windows 10
5 106 (1.89%) Unix
6 93 (1.66%) Apple iOS
7 92 (1.64%) Android
8 86 (1.53%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 19 (0.34%) VMS
12 16 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 12 (0.21%) 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 (0.089%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,563 (27.90%) Agile
2 1,176 (20.99%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,139 (20.33%) Stakeholder Management
4 950 (16.96%) CI/CD
5 882 (15.74%) DevOps
6 724 (12.92%) AI
7 616 (10.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 595 (10.62%) Decision-Making
9 578 (10.32%) Analytics
10 570 (10.17%) Migration
11 547 (9.76%) Customer Service
12 532 (9.49%) ITIL
13 456 (8.14%) Validation
14 445 (7.94%) Test Automation
15 420 (7.50%) Data Modelling
16 418 (7.46%) Business Intelligence
16 418 (7.46%) Scrum
17 366 (6.53%) ITSM
18 355 (6.34%) Roadmaps
19 351 (6.26%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 986 (17.60%) SQL
2 911 (16.26%) Python
3 435 (7.76%) Java
4 328 (5.85%) PowerShell
5 324 (5.78%) JavaScript
6 199 (3.55%) C#
7 157 (2.80%) Bash
8 123 (2.20%) TypeScript
9 91 (1.62%) PL/SQL
10 75 (1.34%) C++
11 49 (0.87%) 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 (0.55%) R
17 26 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,204 (21.49%) Security Cleared
2 837 (14.94%) SC Cleared
3 650 (11.60%) Degree
4 211 (3.77%) DV Cleared
5 207 (3.69%) Computer Science Degree
6 161 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
7 156 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
8 126 (2.25%) Cisco Certification
9 80 (1.43%) PMP
10 79 (1.41%) A+ Certification
10 79 (1.41%) Azure Certification
11 76 (1.36%) CISSP
11 76 (1.36%) PMI Certification
12 74 (1.32%) CCNA
13 60 (1.07%) Master's Degree
14 55 (0.98%) Network+ Certification
15 50 (0.89%) MCSE
16 46 (0.82%) CISM
17 43 (0.77%) AWS Certification
17 43 (0.77%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 398 (7.10%) Data Quality
2 367 (6.55%) QA
3 145 (2.59%) Accessibility
4 134 (2.39%) GDPR
5 128 (2.28%) SLA
6 97 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 93 (1.66%) PMO
8 73 (1.30%) GRC
8 73 (1.30%) 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 (0.30%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 17 (0.30%) 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 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 456 (8.14%) Active Directory
2 361 (6.44%) Docker
3 161 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 64 (1.14%) Hyper-V
5 61 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
6 53 (0.95%) VMware NSX
7 51 (0.91%) vSphere
8 37 (0.66%) Virtual Desktop
9 28 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
10 27 (0.48%) 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 (0.071%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.071%) Squid
17 3 (0.054%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.054%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 2 (0.036%) FreeRADIUS
Systems Management
1 395 (7.05%) Kubernetes
2 170 (3.03%) Ansible
3 139 (2.48%) Microsoft Intune
4 99 (1.77%) SCCM
5 94 (1.68%) Grafana
6 74 (1.32%) Prometheus
7 59 (1.05%) vCenter Server
8 37 (0.66%) SCOM
9 33 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 23 (0.41%) Control-M
11 22 (0.39%) WSUS
12 20 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
13 19 (0.34%) FortiGate
14 14 (0.25%) Argo
15 12 (0.21%) NetBackup
15 12 (0.21%) Puppet
16 11 (0.20%) Kibana
16 11 (0.20%) Progress Chef
17 10 (0.18%) Istio
18 9 (0.16%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,245 (22.22%) Microsoft
2 406 (7.25%) Oracle
3 369 (6.59%) ServiceNow
4 349 (6.23%) SAP
5 219 (3.91%) VMware
6 173 (3.09%) Google
7 154 (2.75%) Salesforce
8 133 (2.37%) Cisco
9 121 (2.16%) Databricks
10 109 (1.95%) Splunk
11 84 (1.50%) Workday
12 73 (1.30%) Dynatrace
13 68 (1.21%) Adobe
14 65 (1.16%) Apple
15 57 (1.02%) Dell
16 54 (0.96%) CyberArk
16 54 (0.96%) MuleSoft
17 53 (0.95%) IBM
18 45 (0.80%) Citrix
19 44 (0.79%) Red Hat