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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,533 4,643 4,744
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.50% 15.37% 10.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.56% 17.10% 12.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,422 2,808 2,967
10th Percentile £284 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £396 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% - -5.66%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £467 £475
% change year-on-year +1.71% -1.79% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 317 177 379
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.44 £12.10
25th Percentile £15.50 £17.08 £14.16
Median hourly rate £20.00 £27.13 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.27% +39.10% -37.10%
75th Percentile £41.75 £47.50 £47.83
90th Percentile £70.60 £73.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.25 £23.53 £17.50
% change year-on-year -26.68% +34.44% -27.08%

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 35,552 27,150 38,650
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.77% 89.86% 87.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,564 16,816 25,267
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.38% -1.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,120 854 2,192
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.96 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.77 £33.00 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.91% -2.94% -2.86%
75th Percentile £60.90 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.43 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.81% -9.26% -

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 24 February 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 24 February 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 24 February 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 -1 4,720 £492 -1.60% 2,825
UK excluding London -3 2,848 £475 +1.71% 2,443
London -4 2,079 £513 -2.38% 816
Work from Home 0 1,616 £479 -4.25% 1,055
North of England -2 757 £450 -5.26% 584
South East -2 668 £483 -3.50% 826
Midlands -1 533 £450 +5.88% 412
West Midlands 0 383 £482 +7.38% 253
North West -1 383 £420 -9.68% 326
Yorkshire -4 321 £481 -3.75% 192
South West -1 311 £525 +5.00% 263
Scotland 0 282 £447 -0.61% 89
East of England -3 241 £475 +5.56% 273
East Midlands -3 151 £402 +9.54% 158
Wales +3 67 £400 - 57
North East -4 61 £450 -6.40% 77
Northern Ireland -1 32 £475 +46.15% 23
Channel Islands +1 1 - - 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
1 219 (3.96%) Confluence
2 163 (2.95%) SharePoint
3 104 (1.88%) Microsoft Exchange
4 92 (1.66%) Apache Spark
5 67 (1.21%) Apache
5 67 (1.21%) SAS
6 50 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
7 35 (0.63%) CMS
8 24 (0.43%) Skype for Business
9 21 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.25%) nginx
11 11 (0.20%) JBoss
12 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
15 7 (0.13%) Camunda
16 6 (0.11%) Anypoint
16 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
16 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 313 (5.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 229 (4.14%) Microsoft Office
3 123 (2.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 80 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
5 78 (1.41%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.40%) Chatbot
7 18 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.11%) Trello
11 5 (0.090%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.072%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.072%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.072%) InDesign
12 4 (0.072%) InVision
12 4 (0.072%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.072%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.054%) Notion
Business Applications
1 98 (1.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
4 18 (0.33%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.27%) NetSuite
5 15 (0.27%) Workday HCM
6 14 (0.25%) SAP ERP
6 14 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 13 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.23%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
8 12 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
9 11 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 11 (0.20%) SAP HR
10 10 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
10 10 (0.18%) SAP EHS
10 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,200 (21.69%) Azure
2 874 (15.80%) AWS
3 401 (7.25%) GCP
4 380 (6.87%) Power Platform
5 342 (6.18%) Microsoft 365
6 265 (4.79%) GitHub
7 246 (4.45%) Azure DevOps
8 189 (3.42%) Serverless
9 161 (2.91%) Entra ID
10 139 (2.51%) SaaS
11 138 (2.49%) GitHub Actions
12 101 (1.83%) Amazon S3
13 92 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
14 91 (1.64%) Snowflake
15 90 (1.63%) OpenShift
16 82 (1.48%) Dynamics 365
17 81 (1.46%) Azure Data Factory
18 71 (1.28%) Power Automate
19 70 (1.27%) PaaS
20 64 (1.16%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 215 (3.89%) Firewall
2 204 (3.69%) DNS
3 134 (2.42%) TCP/IP
4 117 (2.11%) Network Security
5 116 (2.10%) DHCP
6 115 (2.08%) VPN
7 101 (1.83%) WAN
8 80 (1.45%) LAN
9 54 (0.98%) VLAN
9 54 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
10 49 (0.89%) BGP
11 36 (0.65%) OSPF
12 35 (0.63%) SAN
13 33 (0.60%) VoIP
14 26 (0.47%) Wireless
15 25 (0.45%) SD-WAN
15 25 (0.45%) SSH
16 24 (0.43%) Skype
17 23 (0.42%) HTTP
17 23 (0.42%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 309 (5.58%) Power BI
2 181 (3.27%) SQL Server
3 168 (3.04%) Relational Database
4 167 (3.02%) PostgreSQL
5 165 (2.98%) Data Warehouse
6 112 (2.02%) MongoDB
7 108 (1.95%) NoSQL
8 94 (1.70%) Metadata
9 91 (1.64%) MySQL
10 84 (1.52%) Big Data
11 81 (1.46%) Tableau
12 72 (1.30%) Data Lake
12 72 (1.30%) Oracle Database
13 52 (0.94%) Hadoop
14 51 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 50 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
16 44 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
17 38 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
17 38 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
18 37 (0.67%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 500 (9.04%) JIRA
2 374 (6.76%) Git
3 277 (5.01%) Jenkins
4 175 (3.16%) GitLab
5 87 (1.57%) Selenium
6 66 (1.19%) JUnit
7 47 (0.85%) Postman
8 42 (0.76%) Cucumber
9 34 (0.61%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.47%) Maven
12 25 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
13 24 (0.43%) Cypress.io
13 24 (0.43%) JMeter
14 21 (0.38%) SonarQube
15 20 (0.36%) Mockito
16 17 (0.31%) SpecFlow
17 16 (0.29%) CircleCI
18 14 (0.25%) Artifactory
18 14 (0.25%) IntelliJ
General
1 3,025 (54.67%) Social Skills
2 1,991 (35.98%) Analytical Skills
3 1,232 (22.27%) Finance
4 544 (9.83%) Public Sector
5 447 (8.08%) Banking
6 216 (3.90%) Organisational Skills
7 173 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
8 170 (3.07%) Legal
9 141 (2.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 140 (2.53%) Retail
11 139 (2.51%) Influencing Skills
12 138 (2.49%) Presentation Skills
13 111 (2.01%) Telecoms
14 105 (1.90%) Front Office
15 96 (1.74%) Investment Banking
16 95 (1.72%) Marketing
17 84 (1.52%) Manufacturing
18 66 (1.19%) Military
19 58 (1.05%) Financial Institution
20 46 (0.83%) Law
Job Titles
1 792 (14.31%) Developer
2 782 (14.13%) Analyst
3 492 (8.89%) Senior
4 365 (6.60%) Architect
5 340 (6.14%) Lead
6 320 (5.78%) Business Analyst
7 310 (5.60%) Consultant
8 214 (3.87%) Data Engineer
9 204 (3.69%) Project Manager
10 158 (2.86%) Support Engineer
11 140 (2.53%) Java Developer
12 137 (2.48%) IT Support
13 117 (2.11%) Data Analyst
14 115 (2.08%) Senior Developer
15 108 (1.95%) Software Engineer
16 96 (1.74%) Solutions Architect
17 93 (1.68%) Python Developer
18 90 (1.63%) Administrator
18 90 (1.63%) Support Analyst
19 88 (1.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 378 (6.83%) REST
2 191 (3.45%) Kafka
3 190 (3.43%) RESTful
4 187 (3.38%) SOAP
5 175 (3.16%) .NET
6 167 (3.02%) React
7 166 (3.00%) Spring
8 164 (2.96%) Node.js
9 143 (2.58%) HTML
10 134 (2.42%) CSS
11 126 (2.28%) AngularJS
12 117 (2.11%) Spring Boot
13 115 (2.08%) JSON
14 101 (1.83%) XML
15 92 (1.66%) LDAP
16 91 (1.64%) Middleware
17 76 (1.37%) OAuth
18 68 (1.23%) Oracle Fusion
19 67 (1.21%) PySpark
20 62 (1.12%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 272 (4.92%) Product Ownership
2 246 (4.45%) Cloud Native
3 193 (3.49%) Onboarding
4 182 (3.29%) Management Information System
5 141 (2.55%) Data Centre
6 137 (2.48%) Analytical Mindset
7 133 (2.40%) Data Structures
8 119 (2.15%) Self-Motivation
9 112 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
10 103 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
11 96 (1.74%) Algorithms
11 96 (1.74%) Virtual Team
12 88 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
13 84 (1.52%) Distributed Systems
14 80 (1.45%) Security Posture
15 74 (1.34%) CMDB
16 72 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
17 66 (1.19%) Mobile App
18 64 (1.16%) Driving Licence
19 57 (1.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 565 (10.21%) Windows
2 375 (6.78%) Linux
3 119 (2.15%) Unix
4 107 (1.93%) Windows Server
5 100 (1.81%) Windows 10
6 69 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 67 (1.21%) Android
8 65 (1.17%) Apple iOS
9 57 (1.03%) Mac OS
10 22 (0.40%) VMS
11 17 (0.31%) CentOS
12 15 (0.27%) Ubuntu
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.14%) Mac OS X
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.090%) Windows Server 2003
18 4 (0.072%) Debian
18 4 (0.072%) Windows 8
19 3 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,611 (29.12%) Agile
2 1,029 (18.60%) CI/CD
3 880 (15.90%) DevOps
4 811 (14.66%) Stakeholder Management
5 784 (14.17%) Continuous Improvement
6 622 (11.24%) Analytics
7 565 (10.21%) Migration
8 560 (10.12%) Decision-Making
9 490 (8.86%) AI
10 469 (8.48%) Project Management
11 468 (8.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 452 (8.17%) Data Modelling
13 446 (8.06%) Test Automation
14 417 (7.54%) Scrum
15 413 (7.46%) Business Intelligence
16 397 (7.18%) Validation
17 388 (7.01%) Containerisation
18 387 (6.99%) ITIL
19 386 (6.98%) Computer Science
20 383 (6.92%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,077 (19.47%) Python
2 943 (17.04%) SQL
3 526 (9.51%) Java
4 364 (6.58%) PowerShell
5 335 (6.05%) JavaScript
6 237 (4.28%) C#
7 220 (3.98%) TypeScript
8 153 (2.77%) Bash
9 81 (1.46%) Shell Script
10 73 (1.32%) PL/SQL
11 65 (1.17%) Go
12 62 (1.12%) C++
13 49 (0.89%) Perl
14 44 (0.80%) Scala
15 40 (0.72%) Ruby
16 38 (0.69%) R
16 38 (0.69%) T-SQL
17 37 (0.67%) Bicep
17 37 (0.67%) VBA
18 33 (0.60%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,161 (20.98%) Security Cleared
2 821 (14.84%) SC Cleared
3 751 (13.57%) Degree
4 260 (4.70%) Computer Science Degree
5 205 (3.71%) DV Cleared
6 161 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
7 110 (1.99%) Master's Degree
8 107 (1.93%) Microsoft Certification
9 101 (1.83%) PMI Certification
10 99 (1.79%) PMP
11 94 (1.70%) CISSP
12 93 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
13 84 (1.52%) Azure Certification
14 59 (1.07%) CISM
15 57 (1.03%) AWS Certification
16 54 (0.98%) CCNP
17 41 (0.74%) A+ Certification
18 39 (0.70%) CCNA
19 37 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
20 33 (0.60%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (6.49%) QA
2 329 (5.95%) Data Quality
3 162 (2.93%) GDPR
4 122 (2.20%) Accessibility
5 86 (1.55%) PMO
6 85 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 85 (1.54%) NIST
7 60 (1.08%) SLA
8 40 (0.72%) PCI DSS
9 34 (0.61%) WCAG
10 31 (0.56%) GRC
11 26 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 25 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.42%) PSD2
14 20 (0.36%) ISO 20022
15 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
16 16 (0.29%) EU AI Act
17 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 13 (0.23%) IFRS
System Software
1 489 (8.84%) Docker
2 384 (6.94%) Active Directory
3 122 (2.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 43 (0.78%) Hyper-V
5 42 (0.76%) vSphere
6 33 (0.60%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
8 23 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (0.33%) Firmware
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.16%) ACF2
13 7 (0.13%) HDFS
13 7 (0.13%) Squid
13 7 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.11%) vCloud
15 4 (0.072%) Snort
16 3 (0.054%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.054%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 539 (9.74%) Kubernetes
2 318 (5.75%) Terraform
3 204 (3.69%) Ansible
4 137 (2.48%) Grafana
5 112 (2.02%) Microsoft Intune
6 108 (1.95%) Prometheus
7 100 (1.81%) SCCM
8 50 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
9 39 (0.70%) Puppet
10 38 (0.69%) Kibana
11 33 (0.60%) FortiGate
12 32 (0.58%) Nessus
13 31 (0.56%) Argo
14 25 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 25 (0.45%) vCenter Server
15 23 (0.42%) Control-M
16 22 (0.40%) IBM Guardium
17 18 (0.33%) Red Hat Satellite
18 13 (0.23%) vRealize
19 12 (0.22%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,027 (18.56%) Microsoft
2 361 (6.52%) Oracle
3 273 (4.93%) SAP
4 246 (4.45%) ServiceNow
5 213 (3.85%) VMware
6 180 (3.25%) Google
7 164 (2.96%) Databricks
8 160 (2.89%) Splunk
9 134 (2.42%) Cisco
10 119 (2.15%) Salesforce
11 91 (1.64%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.32%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.14%) BeyondTrust
14 56 (1.01%) IBM
14 56 (1.01%) Workday
15 55 (0.99%) Palo Alto
15 55 (0.99%) Talend
16 53 (0.96%) Citrix
17 50 (0.90%) Informatica
18 49 (0.89%) Dell