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

6 months to
16 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 5,547 5,346 4,708
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.54% 16.45% 11.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.39% 18.20% 12.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,188 3,276 2,860
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £381 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.61% -1.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £619
90th Percentile £700 £703 £717
UK excluding London median daily rate £457 £463 £475
% change year-on-year -1.24% -2.63% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 444 308 384
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.50
25th Percentile £15.00 £15.50 £14.12
Median hourly rate £20.56 £21.39 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -3.90% +31.79% -69.09%
75th Percentile £40.75 £41.00 £31.88
90th Percentile £74.00 £66.45 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.33 £18.85 £15.90
% change year-on-year +2.55% +18.55% -69.96%

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 44,779 29,366 36,386
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.09% 90.39% 85.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,858 18,449 23,259
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £419 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £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 2,648 1,547 2,431
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.22 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.21 £17.45 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.29%
75th Percentile £68.50 £52.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.65 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.34 £38.12
% change year-on-year +84.88% -36.15% -3.74%

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 16 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 16 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the UK

Problem-Solving
Top 17 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 16 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 -8 4,751 £496 -0.82% 3,526
UK excluding London -5 2,973 £457 -1.24% 3,086
London -12 2,017 £512 +2.45% 1,023
Work from Home -8 1,538 £490 -2.00% 1,839
South East -5 748 £481 -3.80% 860
North of England -9 737 £449 -5.53% 784
Midlands -7 540 £450 +5.88% 468
West Midlands -8 391 £463 +2.78% 240
North West -10 371 £450 -8.07% 387
South West -2 334 £500 +2.56% 347
Yorkshire -7 321 £450 -5.26% 297
Scotland -3 294 £425 -5.56% 171
East of England -2 261 £450 -5.26% 330
East Midlands -1 147 £450 +20.00% 227
Wales -3 68 £468 +41.17% 95
North East -22 51 £370 -17.78% 110
Northern Ireland -9 23 £380 -15.56% 111

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
1 235 (4.24%) Confluence
2 183 (3.30%) SharePoint
3 91 (1.64%) Microsoft Exchange
4 82 (1.48%) Apache Spark
5 51 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 50 (0.90%) Apache
7 37 (0.67%) SAS
8 35 (0.63%) CMS
9 32 (0.58%) 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
14 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.14%) Camunda
16 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
17 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
17 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 289 (5.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 247 (4.45%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (1.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 87 (1.57%) MS Visio
5 66 (1.19%) Microsoft Project
6 34 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.47%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 26 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.27%) Sketch
9 13 (0.23%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.20%) Revit
11 10 (0.18%) CATIA
12 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
12 8 (0.14%) Trello
13 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
13 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
13 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.090%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.090%) Maya
15 3 (0.054%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 140 (2.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
3 34 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
4 23 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
5 21 (0.38%) NetSuite
6 19 (0.34%) SAP GRC
7 18 (0.32%) Aladdin
7 18 (0.32%) Workday HCM
8 14 (0.25%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
10 12 (0.22%) iTrent
10 12 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
10 12 (0.22%) SAP HCM
11 11 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
11 11 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
11 11 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 11 (0.20%) Teamcenter
12 10 (0.18%) Finacle
13 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
14 8 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,082 (19.51%) Azure
2 820 (14.78%) AWS
3 422 (7.61%) Power Platform
4 395 (7.12%) Microsoft 365
5 314 (5.66%) GCP
6 258 (4.65%) Azure DevOps
7 204 (3.68%) Entra ID
8 197 (3.55%) GitHub
9 148 (2.67%) SaaS
10 134 (2.42%) Serverless
11 98 (1.77%) GitHub Actions
12 90 (1.62%) Amazon S3
13 83 (1.50%) Power Automate
14 81 (1.46%) AWS Lambda
15 77 (1.39%) Dynamics 365
16 71 (1.28%) PowerApps
17 65 (1.17%) OpenShift
18 63 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
18 63 (1.14%) Snowflake
19 56 (1.01%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 229 (4.13%) DNS
2 194 (3.50%) Firewall
3 138 (2.49%) VPN
4 137 (2.47%) TCP/IP
5 127 (2.29%) DHCP
6 110 (1.98%) WAN
7 101 (1.82%) Network Security
8 93 (1.68%) LAN
9 86 (1.55%) SAN
10 81 (1.46%) Wi-Fi
11 56 (1.01%) BGP
11 56 (1.01%) VLAN
12 49 (0.88%) Wireless
13 45 (0.81%) OSPF
14 38 (0.69%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.65%) VoIP
16 31 (0.56%) MPLS
17 28 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
18 27 (0.49%) VXLAN
19 25 (0.45%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 330 (5.95%) Power BI
2 238 (4.29%) SQL Server
3 170 (3.06%) Relational Database
4 166 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
5 163 (2.94%) PostgreSQL
6 116 (2.09%) MongoDB
7 101 (1.82%) Metadata
8 94 (1.69%) Data Lake
9 91 (1.64%) NoSQL
10 86 (1.55%) Tableau
11 77 (1.39%) Big Data
12 62 (1.12%) MySQL
13 60 (1.08%) Oracle Database
14 51 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 49 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
16 37 (0.67%) Hadoop
17 36 (0.65%) Db2
18 31 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
19 27 (0.49%) Power Query
19 27 (0.49%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 519 (9.36%) JIRA
2 333 (6.00%) Git
3 193 (3.48%) Jenkins
4 129 (2.33%) GitLab
5 77 (1.39%) Selenium
6 46 (0.83%) Postman
7 38 (0.69%) Cypress.io
8 37 (0.67%) REST Assured
9 32 (0.58%) Gradle
10 29 (0.52%) Cucumber
11 28 (0.50%) JUnit
12 26 (0.47%) Maven
13 22 (0.40%) Bitbucket
13 22 (0.40%) Mockito
14 20 (0.36%) WebDriver
15 17 (0.31%) JMeter
16 16 (0.29%) SonarQube
17 14 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
17 14 (0.25%) Zephyr
18 13 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,868 (51.70%) Social Skills
2 2,253 (40.62%) Analytical Skills
3 1,299 (23.42%) Finance
4 560 (10.10%) Public Sector
5 423 (7.63%) Banking
6 218 (3.93%) Documentation Skills
6 218 (3.93%) Organisational Skills
7 199 (3.59%) Retail
8 155 (2.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 147 (2.65%) Legal
10 146 (2.63%) Manufacturing
11 138 (2.49%) Influencing Skills
12 115 (2.07%) Presentation Skills
13 107 (1.93%) Front Office
14 105 (1.89%) Marketing
15 103 (1.86%) Telecoms
16 90 (1.62%) Investment Banking
17 79 (1.42%) Back Office
18 64 (1.15%) Aerospace
19 58 (1.05%) Law
Job Titles
1 747 (13.47%) Analyst
2 688 (12.40%) Developer
3 497 (8.96%) Senior
4 403 (7.27%) Lead
5 379 (6.83%) Architect
6 281 (5.07%) Business Analyst
7 256 (4.62%) Consultant
8 230 (4.15%) Data Engineer
9 188 (3.39%) Support Engineer
10 186 (3.35%) IT Support
11 176 (3.17%) Project Manager
12 136 (2.45%) Java Developer
13 126 (2.27%) Administrator
13 126 (2.27%) IT Engineer
14 117 (2.11%) Data Analyst
15 108 (1.95%) Solutions Architect
16 105 (1.89%) Software Engineer
17 97 (1.75%) Network Engineer
18 91 (1.64%) DevOps Engineer
19 89 (1.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 339 (6.11%) REST
2 164 (2.96%) .NET
2 164 (2.96%) RESTful
3 161 (2.90%) Spring
4 158 (2.85%) Kafka
5 143 (2.58%) React
6 141 (2.54%) SOAP
7 123 (2.22%) JSON
8 122 (2.20%) CSS
9 121 (2.18%) Spring Boot
10 115 (2.07%) HTML
11 113 (2.04%) Middleware
12 109 (1.97%) XML
13 92 (1.66%) AngularJS
13 92 (1.66%) Node.js
14 77 (1.39%) PySpark
15 74 (1.33%) Web Services
16 64 (1.15%) OAuth
17 55 (0.99%) LDAP
18 53 (0.96%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 271 (4.89%) Product Ownership
2 268 (4.83%) Onboarding
3 237 (4.27%) Cloud Native
4 210 (3.79%) Data Centre
5 206 (3.71%) Self-Motivation
6 157 (2.83%) Analytical Mindset
7 154 (2.78%) Distributed Systems
8 152 (2.74%) Management Information System
9 140 (2.52%) Enterprise Software
10 136 (2.45%) Data Protection Act
11 130 (2.34%) Data Structures
11 130 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
12 117 (2.11%) Virtual Team
13 81 (1.46%) Driving Licence
14 70 (1.26%) Algorithms
15 61 (1.10%) CMDB
16 60 (1.08%) AI Agents
17 58 (1.05%) Mobile App
18 56 (1.01%) Derivative
19 52 (0.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 686 (12.37%) Windows
2 295 (5.32%) Linux
3 136 (2.45%) Windows Server
4 116 (2.09%) Windows 10
5 115 (2.07%) Unix
6 91 (1.64%) Android
7 87 (1.57%) Mac OS
8 86 (1.55%) Apple iOS
9 47 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 14 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.22%) VMS
13 11 (0.20%) zOS
14 9 (0.16%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.14%) Solaris
16 7 (0.13%) CentOS
16 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.090%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.072%) AIX
18 4 (0.072%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,504 (27.11%) Agile
2 1,035 (18.66%) Continuous Improvement
3 968 (17.45%) Stakeholder Management
4 915 (16.50%) CI/CD
5 856 (15.43%) DevOps
6 684 (12.33%) AI
7 617 (11.12%) Decision-Making
8 585 (10.55%) Migration
9 584 (10.53%) Analytics
10 573 (10.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 517 (9.32%) ITIL
12 506 (9.12%) Customer Service
13 448 (8.08%) Validation
14 441 (7.95%) Data Modelling
15 430 (7.75%) Business Intelligence
16 409 (7.37%) Test Automation
17 402 (7.25%) Scrum
18 376 (6.78%) Project Management
19 361 (6.51%) Change Management
20 360 (6.49%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 983 (17.72%) SQL
2 925 (16.68%) Python
3 458 (8.26%) Java
4 296 (5.34%) PowerShell
5 294 (5.30%) JavaScript
6 191 (3.44%) C#
7 136 (2.45%) Bash
8 127 (2.29%) TypeScript
9 94 (1.69%) PL/SQL
10 72 (1.30%) C++
11 51 (0.92%) Shell Script
11 51 (0.92%) T-SQL
12 44 (0.79%) Go
13 43 (0.78%) C
14 38 (0.69%) Apex Code
15 37 (0.67%) R
16 36 (0.65%) Kotlin
17 34 (0.61%) Bicep
17 34 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 29 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,219 (21.98%) Security Cleared
2 825 (14.87%) SC Cleared
3 667 (12.02%) Degree
4 218 (3.93%) DV Cleared
5 189 (3.41%) Computer Science Degree
6 163 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
7 147 (2.65%) Microsoft Certification
8 141 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
9 88 (1.59%) CISSP
10 81 (1.46%) CCNA
10 81 (1.46%) PMP
11 79 (1.42%) A+ Certification
12 77 (1.39%) PMI Certification
13 72 (1.30%) Azure Certification
14 71 (1.28%) Master's Degree
15 59 (1.06%) Network+ Certification
16 55 (0.99%) CISM
17 54 (0.97%) MCSE
18 49 (0.88%) AWS Certification
19 45 (0.81%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 387 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 328 (5.91%) QA
3 154 (2.78%) GDPR
4 138 (2.49%) Accessibility
5 118 (2.13%) SLA
6 89 (1.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 82 (1.48%) PMO
8 72 (1.30%) NIST
9 57 (1.03%) GRC
10 29 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
11 26 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.43%) WCAG
13 21 (0.38%) GxP
14 20 (0.36%) PCI DSS
15 16 (0.29%) ISO 20022
16 15 (0.27%) NCSC
17 14 (0.25%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.23%) 21 CFR Part 11
18 13 (0.23%) COBIT
19 12 (0.22%) GMP
System Software
1 406 (7.32%) Active Directory
2 364 (6.56%) Docker
3 130 (2.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 50 (0.90%) VMware NSX
4 50 (0.90%) vSphere
5 44 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
6 39 (0.70%) Hyper-V
7 30 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
8 27 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
9 21 (0.38%) vCloud
10 19 (0.34%) Firmware
11 17 (0.31%) IAG
12 11 (0.20%) Squid
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.13%) NFS
15 4 (0.072%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.072%) Snort
16 3 (0.054%) BitLocker
17 2 (0.036%) KVM
17 2 (0.036%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 439 (7.91%) Kubernetes
2 327 (5.90%) Terraform
3 175 (3.15%) Ansible
4 128 (2.31%) Microsoft Intune
5 115 (2.07%) Grafana
6 102 (1.84%) Prometheus
7 83 (1.50%) SCCM
8 54 (0.97%) vCenter Server
9 43 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
10 35 (0.63%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.54%) Control-M
12 24 (0.43%) SCOM
13 20 (0.36%) Argo
13 20 (0.36%) Nessus
14 19 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
15 18 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
16 16 (0.29%) Kibana
16 16 (0.29%) WSUS
17 11 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 11 (0.20%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 1,078 (19.43%) Microsoft
2 414 (7.46%) Oracle
3 346 (6.24%) SAP
4 344 (6.20%) ServiceNow
5 197 (3.55%) VMware
6 176 (3.17%) Google
7 137 (2.47%) Salesforce
8 132 (2.38%) Splunk
9 124 (2.24%) Cisco
10 123 (2.22%) Databricks
11 81 (1.46%) Workday
12 69 (1.24%) Dell
13 67 (1.21%) Adobe
14 66 (1.19%) Dynatrace
15 60 (1.08%) Red Hat
16 56 (1.01%) MuleSoft
17 53 (0.96%) Apple
18 52 (0.94%) Citrix
19 50 (0.90%) CyberArk
19 50 (0.90%) IBM