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 3 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,315 4,972 4,764
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.21% 16.98% 10.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.26% 18.68% 12.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,208 3,098 2,914
10th Percentile £265 £250 £232
25th Percentile £385 £394 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £505
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -1.04% -3.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £716 £700 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £470 £488
% change year-on-year -2.13% -3.59% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 339 246 414
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.42 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.86
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.32 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.79% +27.54% -63.25%
75th Percentile £51.26 £41.00 £36.69
90th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £63.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.17 £21.26 £15.00
% change year-on-year -14.53% +41.73% -62.77%

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 40,071 26,623 37,492
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.55% 90.89% 86.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,236 17,168 24,151
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +1.40% -3.85% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,397 1,072 2,456
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.67 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -18.31% -1.39%
75th Percentile £66.00 £60.84 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.31 £27.64 £37.18
% change year-on-year +56.68% -25.66% +6.23%

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 3 May 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 3 May 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 3 May 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 -4 4,555 £490 -2.00% 3,232
UK excluding London -5 2,815 £460 -2.13% 2,520
London -12 1,943 £512 -2.51% 1,029
Work from Home 0 1,518 £475 -5.00% 1,292
North of England -6 764 £450 -7.98% 651
South East -6 656 £488 -2.50% 750
Midlands -4 520 £450 +2.27% 453
North West -5 365 £404 -17.65% 363
West Midlands -5 355 £475 +5.56% 281
Yorkshire -5 352 £460 -3.16% 217
South West 0 328 £500 - 280
Scotland -1 261 £425 -5.56% 114
East of England -4 212 £450 - 255
East Midlands 0 164 £443 +11.20% 173
Wales -1 68 £400 +20.78% 59
North East -7 54 £425 -11.23% 80
Northern Ireland -2 27 £439 +25.29% 25
Channel Islands -4 1 - -

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
1 212 (3.99%) Confluence
2 145 (2.73%) SharePoint
3 90 (1.69%) Apache Spark
4 89 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
5 63 (1.19%) Apache
6 49 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 47 (0.88%) SAS
8 29 (0.55%) CMS
9 19 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.24%) nginx
11 11 (0.21%) WebLogic
12 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.13%) Camunda
14 7 (0.13%) CICS
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
16 4 (0.075%) WordPress
Applications
1 296 (5.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (4.21%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (2.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 81 (1.52%) Microsoft Project
5 76 (1.43%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 11 (0.21%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) CATIA
11 7 (0.13%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
11 7 (0.13%) Trello
12 6 (0.11%) Revit
13 5 (0.094%) Acrobat
13 5 (0.094%) Maya
14 4 (0.075%) InDesign
14 4 (0.075%) InVision
14 4 (0.075%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 120 (2.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 19 (0.36%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.26%) NEC Housing
9 13 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 12 (0.23%) SAP ERP
10 12 (0.23%) Teamcenter
10 12 (0.23%) Workday HCM
11 11 (0.21%) NetSuite
12 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
13 9 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
13 9 (0.17%) Shopify
14 8 (0.15%) Loan IQ
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
14 8 (0.15%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,074 (20.21%) Azure
2 817 (15.37%) AWS
3 398 (7.49%) Power Platform
4 349 (6.57%) GCP
5 348 (6.55%) Microsoft 365
6 242 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
7 216 (4.06%) GitHub
8 159 (2.99%) Entra ID
9 153 (2.88%) Serverless
10 125 (2.35%) SaaS
11 110 (2.07%) GitHub Actions
12 98 (1.84%) Amazon S3
13 90 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
14 76 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
15 74 (1.39%) OpenShift
16 73 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
16 73 (1.37%) Power Automate
16 73 (1.37%) Snowflake
17 59 (1.11%) PowerApps
18 53 (1.00%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 188 (3.54%) DNS
2 183 (3.44%) Firewall
3 120 (2.26%) TCP/IP
4 106 (1.99%) VPN
5 105 (1.98%) WAN
6 99 (1.86%) Network Security
7 98 (1.84%) DHCP
8 83 (1.56%) SAN
9 80 (1.51%) LAN
10 65 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
11 51 (0.96%) BGP
12 47 (0.88%) VLAN
13 44 (0.83%) OSPF
14 39 (0.73%) SD-WAN
15 32 (0.60%) VoIP
16 27 (0.51%) Wireless
17 26 (0.49%) Internet
17 26 (0.49%) MPLS
17 26 (0.49%) VXLAN
18 21 (0.40%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 314 (5.91%) Power BI
2 201 (3.78%) SQL Server
3 163 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
4 136 (2.56%) Relational Database
5 135 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
6 118 (2.22%) Metadata
7 90 (1.69%) Tableau
8 89 (1.67%) MongoDB
9 85 (1.60%) Big Data
9 85 (1.60%) NoSQL
10 79 (1.49%) Data Lake
11 64 (1.20%) MySQL
12 62 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
13 53 (1.00%) Oracle Database
14 49 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 45 (0.85%) Hadoop
16 34 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
17 32 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
18 30 (0.56%) BigQuery
18 30 (0.56%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 505 (9.50%) JIRA
2 311 (5.85%) Git
3 203 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 137 (2.58%) GitLab
5 67 (1.26%) Selenium
6 41 (0.77%) Postman
7 32 (0.60%) Cucumber
8 28 (0.53%) Bitbucket
9 27 (0.51%) REST Assured
10 25 (0.47%) JUnit
11 22 (0.41%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.40%) JMeter
13 20 (0.38%) Maven
14 18 (0.34%) SonarQube
15 17 (0.32%) Mockito
15 17 (0.32%) WebDriver
16 16 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
17 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
18 14 (0.26%) Zephyr
19 12 (0.23%) Artifactory
General
1 2,763 (51.98%) Social Skills
2 2,046 (38.49%) Analytical Skills
3 1,234 (23.22%) Finance
4 506 (9.52%) Public Sector
5 409 (7.70%) Banking
6 224 (4.21%) Organisational Skills
7 184 (3.46%) Retail
8 179 (3.37%) Documentation Skills
9 161 (3.03%) Legal
10 130 (2.45%) Presentation Skills
11 125 (2.35%) Influencing Skills
12 116 (2.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 97 (1.83%) Front Office
13 97 (1.83%) Telecoms
14 93 (1.75%) Manufacturing
15 88 (1.66%) Marketing
16 75 (1.41%) Investment Banking
17 60 (1.13%) Back Office
18 59 (1.11%) Financial Institution
19 58 (1.09%) Law
Job Titles
1 740 (13.92%) Analyst
2 664 (12.49%) Developer
3 461 (8.67%) Senior
4 367 (6.90%) Architect
5 334 (6.28%) Lead
6 303 (5.70%) Business Analyst
7 267 (5.02%) Consultant
8 235 (4.42%) Data Engineer
9 205 (3.86%) Project Manager
10 137 (2.58%) Support Engineer
11 126 (2.37%) IT Support
12 119 (2.24%) Java Developer
13 115 (2.16%) Data Analyst
14 101 (1.90%) Solutions Architect
15 100 (1.88%) Administrator
16 97 (1.83%) IT Engineer
17 94 (1.77%) Software Engineer
18 93 (1.75%) Network Engineer
19 91 (1.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 80 (1.51%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 301 (5.66%) REST
2 156 (2.94%) Kafka
3 145 (2.73%) RESTful
4 144 (2.71%) .NET
5 140 (2.63%) SOAP
6 138 (2.60%) Spring
7 131 (2.46%) React
8 122 (2.30%) Node.js
9 116 (2.18%) CSS
10 109 (2.05%) HTML
11 105 (1.98%) AngularJS
11 105 (1.98%) Spring Boot
12 101 (1.90%) JSON
13 98 (1.84%) LDAP
14 92 (1.73%) XML
15 91 (1.71%) Middleware
16 72 (1.35%) OAuth
16 72 (1.35%) PySpark
17 54 (1.02%) Oracle Fusion
18 51 (0.96%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 278 (5.23%) Product Ownership
2 224 (4.21%) Onboarding
3 215 (4.05%) Cloud Native
4 198 (3.73%) Data Centre
5 156 (2.94%) Analytical Mindset
6 155 (2.92%) Self-Motivation
7 154 (2.90%) Management Information System
8 113 (2.13%) Distributed Systems
9 112 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
9 112 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
10 109 (2.05%) Virtual Team
11 108 (2.03%) Data Structures
12 100 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
13 73 (1.37%) Driving Licence
14 69 (1.30%) Security Posture
15 61 (1.15%) Mobile App
16 59 (1.11%) Algorithms
17 57 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
18 54 (1.02%) AI Agents
19 52 (0.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 590 (11.10%) Windows
2 311 (5.85%) Linux
3 110 (2.07%) Windows 10
4 104 (1.96%) Windows Server
5 100 (1.88%) Unix
6 93 (1.75%) Android
7 84 (1.58%) Apple iOS
8 69 (1.30%) Mac OS
9 54 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.40%) Ubuntu
10 21 (0.40%) VMS
11 15 (0.28%) CentOS
12 12 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.17%) zOS
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
15 7 (0.13%) Debian
16 4 (0.075%) Rocky
16 4 (0.075%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.075%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,471 (27.68%) Agile
2 893 (16.80%) CI/CD
3 807 (15.18%) Continuous Improvement
4 804 (15.13%) DevOps
5 777 (14.62%) Stakeholder Management
6 587 (11.04%) Analytics
7 586 (11.03%) Migration
8 582 (10.95%) Decision-Making
9 578 (10.87%) AI
10 461 (8.67%) Project Management
11 454 (8.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 453 (8.52%) Data Modelling
13 427 (8.03%) Validation
14 425 (8.00%) Customer Service
15 421 (7.92%) Business Intelligence
16 400 (7.53%) ITIL
17 399 (7.51%) Test Automation
18 374 (7.04%) Scrum
19 372 (7.00%) Change Management
20 337 (6.34%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 965 (18.16%) Python
2 912 (17.16%) SQL
3 445 (8.37%) Java
4 326 (6.13%) PowerShell
5 278 (5.23%) JavaScript
6 202 (3.80%) C#
7 173 (3.25%) TypeScript
8 125 (2.35%) Bash
9 82 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 70 (1.32%) C++
11 63 (1.19%) Shell Script
12 52 (0.98%) Go
13 48 (0.90%) R
14 39 (0.73%) Bicep
15 38 (0.71%) C
16 37 (0.70%) Perl
17 36 (0.68%) Apex Code
18 35 (0.66%) T-SQL
19 32 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 32 (0.60%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,156 (21.75%) Security Cleared
2 800 (15.05%) SC Cleared
3 647 (12.17%) Degree
4 217 (4.08%) Computer Science Degree
5 194 (3.65%) DV Cleared
6 172 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
7 136 (2.56%) Cisco Certification
8 126 (2.37%) Microsoft Certification
9 97 (1.83%) CISSP
10 90 (1.69%) PMP
11 86 (1.62%) PMI Certification
12 77 (1.45%) Master's Degree
13 76 (1.43%) CCNA
14 71 (1.34%) A+ Certification
15 65 (1.22%) Network+ Certification
16 64 (1.20%) CISM
17 63 (1.19%) Azure Certification
18 60 (1.13%) MCSE
19 46 (0.87%) CCNP
20 33 (0.62%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 349 (6.57%) Data Quality
2 321 (6.04%) QA
3 157 (2.95%) GDPR
4 109 (2.05%) Accessibility
5 98 (1.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 92 (1.73%) PMO
7 84 (1.58%) NIST
8 75 (1.41%) SLA
9 48 (0.90%) GRC
10 36 (0.68%) WCAG
11 31 (0.58%) PCI DSS
12 29 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
13 28 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.38%) ISO 20022
15 19 (0.36%) PSD2
16 17 (0.32%) IFRS
17 15 (0.28%) HL7
18 14 (0.26%) HIPAA
18 14 (0.26%) ISO 8583
18 14 (0.26%) NCSC
System Software
1 380 (7.15%) Active Directory
2 353 (6.64%) Docker
3 114 (2.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.90%) vSphere
5 39 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.62%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.43%) Firmware
8 18 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 17 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.21%) RACF
10 11 (0.21%) Squid
10 11 (0.21%) vCloud
11 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.11%) IAG
15 4 (0.075%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.075%) NFS
15 4 (0.075%) Snort
Systems Management
1 438 (8.24%) Kubernetes
2 296 (5.57%) Terraform
3 183 (3.44%) Ansible
4 124 (2.33%) Microsoft Intune
5 121 (2.28%) Grafana
6 90 (1.69%) Prometheus
7 81 (1.52%) SCCM
8 41 (0.77%) vCenter Server
9 40 (0.75%) FortiGate
10 37 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.51%) Argo
11 27 (0.51%) Kibana
12 25 (0.47%) Puppet
13 23 (0.43%) Control-M
14 21 (0.40%) Nessus
15 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
16 14 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 14 (0.26%) WSUS
17 12 (0.23%) CA Endevor
17 12 (0.23%) vRealize
Vendors
1 969 (18.23%) Microsoft
2 355 (6.68%) Oracle
3 299 (5.63%) SAP
4 234 (4.40%) ServiceNow
5 193 (3.63%) VMware
6 162 (3.05%) Google
7 157 (2.95%) Databricks
8 133 (2.50%) Cisco
9 122 (2.30%) Splunk
10 120 (2.26%) Salesforce
11 86 (1.62%) Dell
12 74 (1.39%) CyberArk
13 69 (1.30%) BeyondTrust
14 66 (1.24%) Red Hat
15 60 (1.13%) Adobe
16 59 (1.11%) Workday
17 54 (1.02%) Citrix
18 52 (0.98%) IBM
19 51 (0.96%) Palo Alto
20 49 (0.92%) F5