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 1 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -8 +4 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,601 5,155 4,557
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.44% 15.74% 11.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.35% 17.41% 13.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,158 3,104 2,713
10th Percentile £239 £250 £262
25th Percentile £375 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% -3.45% -2.91%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £605
90th Percentile £710 £700 £706
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £451 £475
% change year-on-year -0.11% -5.16% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 495 318 259
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.83 £11.80
25th Percentile £14.79 £15.25 £14.53
Median hourly rate £19.00 £19.92 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -4.59% +22.70% -70.25%
75th Percentile £39.25 £34.48 £29.63
90th Percentile £73.45 £64.13 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £18.82 £16.23
% change year-on-year -1.70% +15.96% -70.49%

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 45,369 29,617 32,996
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.56% 90.44% 85.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,730 18,446 20,728
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 2,902 1,758 1,607
10th Percentile £14.10 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.78 £17.30 £18.82
Median hourly rate £41.09 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.39% -40.82% +2.41%
75th Percentile £67.88 £47.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.56 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +92.49% -47.37% +14.67%

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 1 September 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 1 September 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 1 September 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 4,850 £500 +2.04% 9,730
UK excluding London -4 2,957 £450 -0.11% 6,399
London -12 2,127 £525 +5.00% 4,762
Work from Home -6 1,530 £500 - 3,747
South East -5 782 £475 +2.59% 1,452
North of England -12 707 £443 -6.74% 1,435
Midlands -6 544 £450 +0.67% 991
West Midlands -8 390 £450 -4.05% 621
North West -8 358 £445 -6.32% 801
South West -3 327 £490 +8.89% 868
Yorkshire -12 286 £450 -5.26% 448
Scotland -3 282 £438 -2.78% 524
East of England +1 256 £450 -10.00% 674
East Midlands -1 151 £475 +26.67% 372
North East -15 66 £375 -16.67% 208
Wales -6 62 £475 +26.67% 167
Northern Ireland -6 24 £388 -18.42% 411
Channel Islands -2 3 £525 - 6

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
2 227 (4.05%) Confluence
3 110 (1.96%) Microsoft Exchange
4 56 (1.00%) Apache Spark
5 43 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
6 39 (0.70%) Apache
7 34 (0.61%) Oracle Workflow
8 29 (0.52%) SAS
9 28 (0.50%) CMS
10 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.20%) Jupyter
11 11 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.16%) CICS
13 8 (0.14%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.12%) Appian
14 7 (0.12%) IIS
14 7 (0.12%) Mule
15 6 (0.11%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 320 (5.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 262 (4.68%) Microsoft Office
3 123 (2.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.21%) MS Visio
5 67 (1.20%) Microsoft Project
6 33 (0.59%) 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 11 (0.20%) 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
15 6 (0.11%) Windchill
16 5 (0.089%) Navisworks
17 4 (0.071%) Adobe XD
18 3 (0.054%) DaVinci Resolve
Business Applications
1 139 (2.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
3 37 (0.66%) Oracle EBS
4 30 (0.54%) NetSuite
5 29 (0.52%) SAP GRC
6 25 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
7 24 (0.43%) Workday HCM
8 15 (0.27%) iTrent
9 14 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
10 13 (0.23%) Aladdin
10 13 (0.23%) SAP SD
11 12 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
12 11 (0.20%) Finacle
12 11 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
12 11 (0.20%) Teamcenter
13 10 (0.18%) SAP CRM
14 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
14 9 (0.16%) SAP HCM
15 8 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
15 8 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,119 (19.98%) Azure
2 820 (14.64%) AWS
3 499 (8.91%) Microsoft 365
4 445 (7.95%) Power Platform
5 323 (5.77%) GCP
6 276 (4.93%) Azure DevOps
7 236 (4.21%) Entra ID
8 195 (3.48%) GitHub
9 153 (2.73%) SaaS
10 124 (2.21%) Serverless
11 102 (1.82%) Power Automate
12 90 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
13 84 (1.50%) Dynamics 365
14 80 (1.43%) Microsoft Copilot
15 77 (1.37%) OneDrive
16 76 (1.36%) PowerApps
17 67 (1.20%) Snowflake
18 66 (1.18%) Amazon S3
19 64 (1.14%) AWS Lambda
20 62 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 223 (3.98%) DNS
2 193 (3.45%) Firewall
3 168 (3.00%) VPN
4 137 (2.45%) TCP/IP
5 133 (2.37%) DHCP
6 132 (2.36%) WAN
7 105 (1.87%) LAN
8 103 (1.84%) Network Security
9 81 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
10 74 (1.32%) SAN
11 61 (1.09%) Wireless
12 53 (0.95%) VLAN
13 49 (0.87%) BGP
14 43 (0.77%) SD-WAN
15 38 (0.68%) MPLS
16 36 (0.64%) VoIP
17 31 (0.55%) Structured Cabling
18 28 (0.50%) HTTP
18 28 (0.50%) OSPF
19 24 (0.43%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 338 (6.03%) Power BI
2 217 (3.87%) SQL Server
3 193 (3.45%) Relational Database
4 175 (3.12%) Data Warehouse
5 159 (2.84%) PostgreSQL
6 108 (1.93%) Metadata
7 97 (1.73%) MongoDB
8 90 (1.61%) NoSQL
9 88 (1.57%) Tableau
10 78 (1.39%) Data Lake
11 58 (1.04%) Big Data
11 58 (1.04%) MySQL
11 58 (1.04%) Oracle Database
12 46 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
13 37 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 34 (0.61%) Db2
15 28 (0.50%) Power Query
16 26 (0.46%) DynamoDB
17 25 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
18 24 (0.43%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 480 (8.57%) JIRA
2 348 (6.21%) Git
3 178 (3.18%) Jenkins
4 135 (2.41%) GitLab
5 74 (1.32%) Selenium
6 42 (0.75%) Cypress.io
7 40 (0.71%) Gradle
7 40 (0.71%) Postman
8 39 (0.70%) Maven
9 28 (0.50%) Bitbucket
9 28 (0.50%) Cucumber
9 28 (0.50%) REST Assured
10 27 (0.48%) JUnit
11 21 (0.37%) JMeter
12 20 (0.36%) Oracle Forms
13 17 (0.30%) SonarQube
14 16 (0.29%) Mockito
14 16 (0.29%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.27%) Gatling
15 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 3,005 (53.65%) Social Skills
2 2,380 (42.49%) Analytical Skills
3 1,301 (23.23%) Finance
4 587 (10.48%) Public Sector
5 445 (7.95%) Banking
6 258 (4.61%) Organisational Skills
7 206 (3.68%) Documentation Skills
8 193 (3.45%) Manufacturing
9 188 (3.36%) Retail
10 176 (3.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 161 (2.87%) Influencing Skills
12 141 (2.52%) Legal
13 126 (2.25%) Front Office
14 120 (2.14%) Telecoms
15 117 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
16 112 (2.00%) Marketing
17 96 (1.71%) Investment Banking
18 78 (1.39%) Back Office
19 67 (1.20%) Law
20 65 (1.16%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 732 (13.07%) Analyst
2 701 (12.52%) Developer
3 514 (9.18%) Senior
4 416 (7.43%) Lead
5 342 (6.11%) Architect
6 262 (4.68%) Consultant
7 244 (4.36%) Business Analyst
8 222 (3.96%) IT Support
9 220 (3.93%) Support Engineer
10 213 (3.80%) Data Engineer
11 158 (2.82%) Project Manager
12 154 (2.75%) IT Engineer
13 141 (2.52%) Administrator
14 129 (2.30%) Java Developer
15 120 (2.14%) Data Analyst
16 113 (2.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 106 (1.89%) Solutions Architect
18 105 (1.87%) DevOps Engineer
19 103 (1.84%) IT Support Engineer
20 99 (1.77%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 379 (6.77%) REST
2 333 (5.95%) Terraform
3 181 (3.23%) RESTful
4 178 (3.18%) .NET
5 161 (2.87%) SOAP
6 154 (2.75%) React
7 141 (2.52%) Kafka
7 141 (2.52%) Spring
8 132 (2.36%) XML
9 131 (2.34%) JSON
10 124 (2.21%) CSS
10 124 (2.21%) HTML
11 114 (2.04%) Middleware
12 112 (2.00%) Spring Boot
13 106 (1.89%) Web Services
14 93 (1.66%) Node.js
15 88 (1.57%) OAuth
16 86 (1.54%) AngularJS
17 73 (1.30%) PySpark
18 56 (1.00%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 311 (5.55%) Onboarding
2 281 (5.02%) Product Ownership
3 267 (4.77%) Cloud Native
4 213 (3.80%) Self-Motivation
5 194 (3.46%) Enterprise Software
6 186 (3.32%) Data Centre
7 177 (3.16%) Management Information System
8 165 (2.95%) Distributed Systems
9 144 (2.57%) Analytical Mindset
10 141 (2.52%) Data Structures
11 131 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
12 126 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
13 90 (1.61%) Virtual Team
14 86 (1.54%) Driving Licence
15 79 (1.41%) AI Agents
16 73 (1.30%) CMDB
17 62 (1.11%) Algorithms
17 62 (1.11%) Mobile App
18 56 (1.00%) Derivative
19 55 (0.98%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 757 (13.52%) Windows
2 314 (5.61%) Linux
3 209 (3.73%) Windows Server
4 140 (2.50%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.84%) Unix
6 92 (1.64%) Apple iOS
7 91 (1.62%) Android
8 86 (1.54%) Mac OS
9 49 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 19 (0.34%) VMS
12 17 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 11 (0.20%) zOS
14 9 (0.16%) CentOS
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.14%) Solaris
15 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
16 6 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.071%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,553 (27.73%) Agile
2 1,205 (21.51%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,183 (21.12%) Stakeholder Management
4 938 (16.75%) CI/CD
5 871 (15.55%) DevOps
6 733 (13.09%) AI
7 634 (11.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 617 (11.02%) Decision-Making
9 582 (10.39%) Analytics
10 569 (10.16%) Migration
11 549 (9.80%) Customer Service
12 529 (9.44%) ITIL
13 452 (8.07%) Validation
14 437 (7.80%) Test Automation
15 421 (7.52%) Data Modelling
16 417 (7.45%) Business Intelligence
17 410 (7.32%) Scrum
18 371 (6.62%) ITSM
19 362 (6.46%) Roadmaps
20 352 (6.28%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 990 (17.68%) SQL
2 908 (16.21%) Python
3 435 (7.77%) Java
4 334 (5.96%) PowerShell
5 325 (5.80%) JavaScript
6 202 (3.61%) C#
7 160 (2.86%) Bash
8 124 (2.21%) TypeScript
9 93 (1.66%) PL/SQL
10 71 (1.27%) C++
11 50 (0.89%) T-SQL
12 38 (0.68%) Go
12 38 (0.68%) Scala
12 38 (0.68%) Shell Script
13 36 (0.64%) Bicep
14 34 (0.61%) Kotlin
15 31 (0.55%) Apex Code
15 31 (0.55%) C
15 31 (0.55%) R
16 27 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,218 (21.75%) Security Cleared
2 860 (15.35%) SC Cleared
3 642 (11.46%) Degree
4 211 (3.77%) DV Cleared
5 204 (3.64%) Computer Science Degree
6 163 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
7 161 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
8 111 (1.98%) Cisco Certification
9 84 (1.50%) Azure Certification
10 77 (1.37%) A+ Certification
11 76 (1.36%) PMP
12 75 (1.34%) CISSP
13 73 (1.30%) PMI Certification
14 67 (1.20%) CCNA
15 57 (1.02%) Master's Degree
16 52 (0.93%) Network+ Certification
17 49 (0.87%) AWS Certification
18 46 (0.82%) MCSE
19 44 (0.79%) CISM
20 41 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 414 (7.39%) Data Quality
2 377 (6.73%) QA
3 146 (2.61%) Accessibility
4 133 (2.37%) GDPR
5 127 (2.27%) SLA
6 97 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 94 (1.68%) PMO
8 75 (1.34%) GRC
8 75 (1.34%) NIST
9 37 (0.66%) WCAG
10 26 (0.46%) GxP
10 26 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 21 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
12 19 (0.34%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 17 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
14 16 (0.29%) PCI DSS
15 15 (0.27%) COBIT
15 15 (0.27%) ISO 20022
16 14 (0.25%) GMP
16 14 (0.25%) NCSC
System Software
1 454 (8.11%) Active Directory
2 355 (6.34%) Docker
3 163 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 69 (1.23%) Hyper-V
5 63 (1.12%) VMware ESXi
6 55 (0.98%) VMware NSX
7 51 (0.91%) vSphere
8 38 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
9 30 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
10 27 (0.48%) vCloud
11 25 (0.45%) IAG
12 16 (0.29%) Firmware
13 8 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.11%) NFS
16 5 (0.089%) Microsoft App-V
17 3 (0.054%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.054%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 3 (0.054%) Squid
18 2 (0.036%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 398 (7.11%) Kubernetes
2 172 (3.07%) Ansible
3 132 (2.36%) Microsoft Intune
4 100 (1.79%) SCCM
5 95 (1.70%) Grafana
6 72 (1.29%) Prometheus
7 56 (1.00%) vCenter Server
8 42 (0.75%) SCOM
9 32 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
10 23 (0.41%) Control-M
11 22 (0.39%) WSUS
12 21 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
13 15 (0.27%) FortiGate
14 14 (0.25%) Argo
15 12 (0.21%) Kibana
15 12 (0.21%) NetBackup
16 11 (0.20%) Istio
16 11 (0.20%) Nessus
17 10 (0.18%) Puppet
18 9 (0.16%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,267 (22.62%) Microsoft
2 413 (7.37%) Oracle
3 365 (6.52%) ServiceNow
4 348 (6.21%) SAP
5 216 (3.86%) VMware
6 169 (3.02%) Google
7 155 (2.77%) Salesforce
8 129 (2.30%) Cisco
9 125 (2.23%) Databricks
10 113 (2.02%) Splunk
11 80 (1.43%) Workday
12 69 (1.23%) Dynatrace
13 68 (1.21%) Adobe
14 66 (1.18%) Apple
15 55 (0.98%) CyberArk
15 55 (0.98%) IBM
16 53 (0.95%) MuleSoft
17 52 (0.93%) Dell
18 45 (0.80%) Red Hat
19 41 (0.73%) Citrix