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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,394 5,166 4,690
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.49% 16.80% 10.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.35% 18.48% 12.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,116 3,176 2,817
10th Percentile £263 £250 £248
25th Percentile £380 £375 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.25% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £621
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £463 £475
% change year-on-year -2.70% -2.63% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 427 290 412
10th Percentile £13.07 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.46 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.00 £21.95 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -8.88% +35.24% -68.49%
75th Percentile £37.88 £40.36 £32.63
90th Percentile £73.30 £65.25 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.79 £18.85 £15.14
% change year-on-year -0.32% +24.50% -69.72%

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 43,674 27,949 36,811
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.97% 90.88% 85.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,163 17,650 23,450
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £414 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.79% -4.57% -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £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 2,623 1,373 2,554
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.81%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.86 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +75.84% -34.42% +8.91%

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 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 1 July 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 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 -9 4,617 £493 -1.50% 3,836
UK excluding London -5 2,903 £450 -2.70% 2,971
London -12 1,953 £513 +2.50% 1,329
Work from Home -7 1,507 £488 -2.50% 1,639
North of England -11 728 £447 -5.89% 718
South East -5 718 £487 -0.66% 871
Midlands -7 525 £453 +6.47% 481
West Midlands -8 381 £465 +3.22% 268
North West -12 353 £445 -6.75% 389
Yorkshire -6 333 £450 -5.26% 237
South West -4 323 £500 - 347
Scotland -2 289 £438 -5.41% 141
East of England -2 257 £450 -4.26% 300
East Midlands -2 142 £449 +22.21% 214
Wales -2 68 £468 +24.67% 113
North East -16 48 £356 -20.83% 111
Northern Ireland -8 23 £380 -10.59% 85
Channel Islands -3 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
1 222 (4.12%) Confluence
2 161 (2.98%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 80 (1.48%) Apache Spark
5 50 (0.93%) Apache
6 49 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
7 40 (0.74%) SAS
8 33 (0.61%) CMS
9 30 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.24%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.20%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.20%) CICS
12 11 (0.20%) nginx
13 10 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 8 (0.15%) Camunda
16 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
17 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
17 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 299 (5.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 229 (4.25%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (1.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (1.52%) MS Visio
5 65 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
6 35 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 22 (0.41%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.26%) AutoCAD
10 12 (0.22%) Sketch
11 11 (0.20%) Revit
12 10 (0.19%) CATIA
13 8 (0.15%) CPLEX
14 7 (0.13%) Trello
15 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
15 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
15 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
16 5 (0.093%) Maya
17 3 (0.056%) Navisworks
17 3 (0.056%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 135 (2.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.33%) NetSuite
6 17 (0.32%) Workday HCM
7 16 (0.30%) Aladdin
7 16 (0.30%) SAP GRC
8 15 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
9 13 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
10 12 (0.22%) SAP SD
10 12 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 12 (0.22%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.19%) Finacle
11 10 (0.19%) iTrent
11 10 (0.19%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.15%) NEC Housing
12 8 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
12 8 (0.15%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,068 (19.80%) Azure
2 800 (14.83%) AWS
3 418 (7.75%) Power Platform
4 371 (6.88%) Microsoft 365
5 298 (5.52%) GCP
6 257 (4.76%) Azure DevOps
7 189 (3.50%) GitHub
8 182 (3.37%) Entra ID
9 145 (2.69%) SaaS
10 138 (2.56%) Serverless
11 96 (1.78%) GitHub Actions
12 92 (1.71%) Amazon S3
13 81 (1.50%) AWS Lambda
14 76 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
15 74 (1.37%) Power Automate
16 67 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
17 66 (1.22%) PowerApps
18 65 (1.21%) Snowflake
19 63 (1.17%) OpenShift
20 49 (0.91%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 209 (3.87%) DNS
2 166 (3.08%) Firewall
3 124 (2.30%) TCP/IP
4 118 (2.19%) VPN
5 114 (2.11%) DHCP
6 106 (1.97%) WAN
7 97 (1.80%) Network Security
8 85 (1.58%) SAN
9 82 (1.52%) LAN
10 75 (1.39%) Wi-Fi
11 51 (0.95%) VLAN
12 50 (0.93%) BGP
13 42 (0.78%) OSPF
14 41 (0.76%) SD-WAN
15 40 (0.74%) Wireless
16 36 (0.67%) VoIP
17 28 (0.52%) MPLS
18 27 (0.50%) VXLAN
19 23 (0.43%) NAS
19 23 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 327 (6.06%) Power BI
2 224 (4.15%) SQL Server
3 159 (2.95%) Data Warehouse
4 150 (2.78%) Relational Database
5 140 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
6 116 (2.15%) MongoDB
7 102 (1.89%) Metadata
8 92 (1.71%) NoSQL
9 91 (1.69%) Data Lake
10 89 (1.65%) Tableau
11 77 (1.43%) Big Data
12 57 (1.06%) Oracle Database
13 53 (0.98%) MySQL
14 50 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 46 (0.85%) Oracle Reports
16 36 (0.67%) Hadoop
17 31 (0.57%) Db2
18 30 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
19 28 (0.52%) Power Query
20 27 (0.50%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 511 (9.47%) JIRA
2 302 (5.60%) Git
3 191 (3.54%) Jenkins
4 130 (2.41%) GitLab
5 70 (1.30%) Selenium
6 45 (0.83%) Postman
7 39 (0.72%) REST Assured
8 32 (0.59%) Cypress.io
9 29 (0.54%) Cucumber
10 25 (0.46%) JUnit
11 23 (0.43%) Bitbucket
12 21 (0.39%) Mockito
13 20 (0.37%) WebDriver
14 16 (0.30%) JMeter
14 16 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
15 15 (0.28%) Maven
15 15 (0.28%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.28%) Zephyr
16 14 (0.26%) Gradle
17 11 (0.20%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,787 (51.67%) Social Skills
2 2,150 (39.86%) Analytical Skills
3 1,268 (23.51%) Finance
4 518 (9.60%) Public Sector
5 409 (7.58%) Banking
6 215 (3.99%) Organisational Skills
7 208 (3.86%) Documentation Skills
8 189 (3.50%) Retail
9 152 (2.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 149 (2.76%) Legal
11 124 (2.30%) Influencing Skills
11 124 (2.30%) Manufacturing
12 116 (2.15%) Presentation Skills
13 111 (2.06%) Front Office
14 98 (1.82%) Telecoms
15 96 (1.78%) Marketing
16 92 (1.71%) Investment Banking
17 80 (1.48%) Back Office
18 59 (1.09%) Aerospace
19 57 (1.06%) Law
Job Titles
1 729 (13.52%) Analyst
2 641 (11.88%) Developer
3 473 (8.77%) Senior
4 380 (7.04%) Architect
5 363 (6.73%) Lead
6 278 (5.15%) Business Analyst
7 255 (4.73%) Consultant
8 239 (4.43%) Data Engineer
9 178 (3.30%) IT Support
9 178 (3.30%) Project Manager
10 172 (3.19%) Support Engineer
11 121 (2.24%) IT Engineer
11 121 (2.24%) Java Developer
12 120 (2.22%) Administrator
13 117 (2.17%) Data Analyst
14 111 (2.06%) Solutions Architect
15 98 (1.82%) Software Engineer
16 89 (1.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 89 (1.65%) Network Engineer
16 89 (1.65%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 315 (5.84%) REST
2 163 (3.02%) .NET
3 157 (2.91%) Kafka
4 150 (2.78%) Spring
5 140 (2.60%) React
5 140 (2.60%) RESTful
6 128 (2.37%) SOAP
7 117 (2.17%) CSS
7 117 (2.17%) JSON
8 111 (2.06%) Spring Boot
9 110 (2.04%) Middleware
10 106 (1.97%) HTML
11 97 (1.80%) XML
12 91 (1.69%) AngularJS
13 86 (1.59%) Node.js
14 78 (1.45%) PySpark
15 64 (1.19%) Web Services
16 61 (1.13%) LDAP
17 60 (1.11%) OAuth
18 49 (0.91%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 266 (4.93%) Product Ownership
2 247 (4.58%) Onboarding
3 232 (4.30%) Cloud Native
4 206 (3.82%) Data Centre
5 189 (3.50%) Self-Motivation
6 160 (2.97%) Analytical Mindset
7 144 (2.67%) Distributed Systems
8 138 (2.56%) Management Information System
9 133 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
10 131 (2.43%) Enterprise Software
11 124 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
12 123 (2.28%) Data Structures
13 114 (2.11%) Virtual Team
14 71 (1.32%) Algorithms
14 71 (1.32%) Driving Licence
15 60 (1.11%) AI Agents
16 56 (1.04%) CMDB
17 55 (1.02%) Security Posture
18 54 (1.00%) Derivative
18 54 (1.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 661 (12.25%) Windows
2 291 (5.39%) Linux
3 127 (2.35%) Windows Server
4 113 (2.09%) Windows 10
5 109 (2.02%) Unix
6 87 (1.61%) Android
7 86 (1.59%) Mac OS
8 82 (1.52%) Apple iOS
9 52 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.41%) Ubuntu
11 12 (0.22%) VMS
11 12 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
12 11 (0.20%) CentOS
12 11 (0.20%) zOS
13 9 (0.17%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) Solaris
14 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.093%) Debian
15 5 (0.093%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.074%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,434 (26.59%) Agile
2 944 (17.50%) Continuous Improvement
3 886 (16.43%) CI/CD
4 882 (16.35%) Stakeholder Management
5 837 (15.52%) DevOps
6 642 (11.90%) AI
7 600 (11.12%) Decision-Making
8 584 (10.83%) Analytics
9 576 (10.68%) Migration
10 524 (9.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 493 (9.14%) Customer Service
12 487 (9.03%) ITIL
13 447 (8.29%) Validation
14 432 (8.01%) Data Modelling
15 424 (7.86%) Business Intelligence
16 396 (7.34%) Test Automation
17 391 (7.25%) Project Management
18 380 (7.04%) Scrum
19 349 (6.47%) Change Management
20 337 (6.25%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 974 (18.06%) SQL
2 922 (17.09%) Python
3 428 (7.93%) Java
4 291 (5.39%) PowerShell
5 279 (5.17%) JavaScript
6 194 (3.60%) C#
7 129 (2.39%) TypeScript
8 123 (2.28%) Bash
9 88 (1.63%) PL/SQL
10 74 (1.37%) C++
11 49 (0.91%) Shell Script
11 49 (0.91%) T-SQL
12 48 (0.89%) Go
13 44 (0.82%) C
14 38 (0.70%) R
15 36 (0.67%) Apex Code
15 36 (0.67%) Bicep
16 35 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 28 (0.52%) Scala
18 27 (0.50%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,168 (21.65%) Security Cleared
2 798 (14.79%) SC Cleared
3 653 (12.11%) Degree
4 203 (3.76%) DV Cleared
5 190 (3.52%) Computer Science Degree
6 157 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
7 146 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
8 140 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
9 91 (1.69%) CISSP
10 82 (1.52%) CCNA
11 81 (1.50%) A+ Certification
12 78 (1.45%) PMP
13 70 (1.30%) PMI Certification
14 68 (1.26%) Azure Certification
14 68 (1.26%) Master's Degree
15 64 (1.19%) Network+ Certification
16 61 (1.13%) CISM
17 56 (1.04%) MCSE
18 45 (0.83%) AWS Certification
19 42 (0.78%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 375 (6.95%) Data Quality
2 302 (5.60%) QA
3 153 (2.84%) GDPR
4 129 (2.39%) Accessibility
5 112 (2.08%) SLA
6 94 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 79 (1.46%) PMO
8 75 (1.39%) NIST
9 57 (1.06%) GRC
10 28 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
11 27 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.44%) PCI DSS
13 23 (0.43%) WCAG
14 18 (0.33%) ISO 20022
15 17 (0.32%) NCSC
16 16 (0.30%) COBIT
17 14 (0.26%) GxP
18 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
19 12 (0.22%) PSD2
20 11 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 382 (7.08%) Active Directory
2 350 (6.49%) Docker
3 117 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.83%) vSphere
5 40 (0.74%) VMware NSX
6 37 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
7 35 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 29 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
10 21 (0.39%) Firmware
11 19 (0.35%) vCloud
12 12 (0.22%) IAG
13 11 (0.20%) Squid
14 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.11%) NFS
16 4 (0.074%) ACF2
16 4 (0.074%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.074%) RACF
16 4 (0.074%) Snort
16 4 (0.074%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 419 (7.77%) Kubernetes
2 303 (5.62%) Terraform
3 169 (3.13%) Ansible
4 129 (2.39%) Microsoft Intune
5 112 (2.08%) Grafana
6 99 (1.84%) Prometheus
7 82 (1.52%) SCCM
8 49 (0.91%) vCenter Server
9 42 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
10 40 (0.74%) FortiGate
11 27 (0.50%) Control-M
12 22 (0.41%) Nessus
13 20 (0.37%) Argo
13 20 (0.37%) SCOM
14 18 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
15 17 (0.32%) Kibana
15 17 (0.32%) WSUS
16 16 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
17 13 (0.24%) Puppet
18 12 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 1,023 (18.97%) Microsoft
2 377 (6.99%) Oracle
3 327 (6.06%) SAP
4 318 (5.90%) ServiceNow
5 182 (3.37%) VMware
6 158 (2.93%) Google
7 132 (2.45%) Databricks
8 128 (2.37%) Splunk
9 126 (2.34%) Salesforce
10 121 (2.24%) Cisco
11 77 (1.43%) Workday
12 75 (1.39%) Dell
13 62 (1.15%) Red Hat
14 60 (1.11%) Adobe
14 60 (1.11%) Dynatrace
15 55 (1.02%) MuleSoft
16 52 (0.96%) Citrix
17 48 (0.89%) IBM
18 47 (0.87%) Apple
19 46 (0.85%) CyberArk