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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -9 +4 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,645 5,254 4,412
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.53% 15.97% 11.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.39% 17.66% 13.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,186 3,186 2,719
10th Percentile £250 £250 £250
25th Percentile £375 £375 £389
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.51% -2.50% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £613
90th Percentile £700 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £463 £475
% change year-on-year -2.70% -2.63% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 493 310 291
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.78 £11.75
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.00 £21.24 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -10.55% +30.87% -70.01%
75th Percentile £39.50 £37.25 £31.13
90th Percentile £73.95 £65.03 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.75 £18.82 £16.23
% change year-on-year -0.37% +15.96% -70.25%

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 45,557 29,755 33,330
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.99% 90.46% 85.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,078 18,625 21,348
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £726 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,814 1,660 1,859
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.22 £17.32 £18.22
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £64.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.10 £41.25
% change year-on-year +90.30% -44.00% +7.56%

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 8 August 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 8 August 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 8 August 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 4,906 £493 -0.40% 5,585
UK excluding London -3 3,027 £450 -2.70% 3,895
London -12 2,104 £520 +4.00% 2,323
Work from Home -7 1,548 £492 -1.60% 1,942
South East -3 782 £480 -2.04% 1,128
North of England -9 738 £450 -5.26% 899
Midlands -5 556 £450 +4.65% 638
West Midlands -9 404 £450 -0.81% 374
South West +1 353 £500 +5.26% 477
North West -11 351 £450 -8.35% 459
Yorkshire -7 331 £450 -5.26% 322
Scotland -3 276 £448 -0.56% 224
East of England +1 262 £450 -4.51% 414
East Midlands -1 149 £475 +26.67% 264
Wales -3 63 £475 +26.67% 113
North East -18 61 £375 -16.67% 129
Northern Ireland -4 25 £384 -24.75% 118
Channel Islands -2 1 - - 2

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
1 234 (4.15%) Confluence
2 220 (3.90%) SharePoint
3 110 (1.95%) Microsoft Exchange
4 64 (1.13%) Apache Spark
5 42 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
6 41 (0.73%) Apache
6 41 (0.73%) SAS
7 32 (0.57%) Oracle Workflow
8 31 (0.55%) CMS
9 18 (0.32%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.19%) CICS
12 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 9 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.12%) Appian
14 7 (0.12%) Mule
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 315 (5.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 267 (4.73%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (1.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 81 (1.43%) MS Visio
5 66 (1.17%) Microsoft Project
6 33 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.48%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 24 (0.43%) Chatbot
9 17 (0.30%) AutoCAD
10 15 (0.27%) Sketch
11 13 (0.23%) Revit
12 11 (0.19%) 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
16 5 (0.089%) Navisworks
17 4 (0.071%) Adobe XD
17 4 (0.071%) Photoshop
18 3 (0.053%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 141 (2.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
3 39 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.46%) NetSuite
4 26 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.39%) SAP GRC
6 20 (0.35%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.27%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.25%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.23%) iTrent
9 13 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
10 12 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
11 11 (0.19%) SAP HCM
12 10 (0.18%) Finacle
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
12 10 (0.18%) SAP ERP
12 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
13 9 (0.16%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,087 (19.26%) Azure
2 809 (14.33%) AWS
3 451 (7.99%) Microsoft 365
4 434 (7.69%) Power Platform
5 321 (5.69%) GCP
6 266 (4.71%) Azure DevOps
7 227 (4.02%) Entra ID
8 200 (3.54%) GitHub
9 152 (2.69%) SaaS
10 125 (2.21%) Serverless
11 99 (1.75%) GitHub Actions
12 95 (1.68%) Power Automate
13 81 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
14 76 (1.35%) Amazon S3
15 73 (1.29%) AWS Lambda
16 71 (1.26%) PowerApps
17 68 (1.20%) OneDrive
18 66 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
19 65 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
20 64 (1.13%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 232 (4.11%) DNS
2 196 (3.47%) Firewall
3 151 (2.67%) VPN
4 139 (2.46%) DHCP
4 139 (2.46%) TCP/IP
5 127 (2.25%) WAN
6 105 (1.86%) LAN
7 97 (1.72%) Network Security
8 83 (1.47%) SAN
9 82 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
10 59 (1.05%) VLAN
11 56 (0.99%) Wireless
12 54 (0.96%) BGP
13 41 (0.73%) SD-WAN
14 38 (0.67%) OSPF
15 34 (0.60%) VoIP
16 33 (0.58%) MPLS
16 33 (0.58%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.51%) VXLAN
18 25 (0.44%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 335 (5.93%) Power BI
2 224 (3.97%) SQL Server
3 169 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
4 167 (2.96%) Relational Database
5 155 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
6 119 (2.11%) MongoDB
7 100 (1.77%) Metadata
8 93 (1.65%) NoSQL
9 90 (1.59%) Tableau
10 86 (1.52%) Data Lake
11 62 (1.10%) Big Data
12 57 (1.01%) MySQL
13 54 (0.96%) Oracle Database
14 51 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
15 46 (0.81%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 36 (0.64%) Db2
17 30 (0.53%) Pentaho
18 28 (0.50%) Power Query
19 27 (0.48%) DynamoDB
20 26 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 507 (8.98%) JIRA
2 349 (6.18%) Git
3 189 (3.35%) Jenkins
4 132 (2.34%) GitLab
5 76 (1.35%) Selenium
6 41 (0.73%) Cypress.io
7 38 (0.67%) Postman
8 36 (0.64%) Gradle
9 35 (0.62%) Maven
10 31 (0.55%) REST Assured
11 29 (0.51%) Cucumber
12 27 (0.48%) Bitbucket
13 25 (0.44%) JUnit
14 21 (0.37%) Mockito
15 20 (0.35%) JMeter
16 18 (0.32%) WebDriver
17 17 (0.30%) Atlassian Bamboo
18 15 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
18 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
19 14 (0.25%) SonarQube
General
1 2,949 (52.24%) Social Skills
2 2,339 (41.43%) Analytical Skills
3 1,318 (23.35%) Finance
4 583 (10.33%) Public Sector
5 442 (7.83%) Banking
6 246 (4.36%) Organisational Skills
7 205 (3.63%) Retail
8 199 (3.53%) Documentation Skills
9 184 (3.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 180 (3.19%) Manufacturing
11 145 (2.57%) Influencing Skills
11 145 (2.57%) Legal
12 121 (2.14%) Marketing
12 121 (2.14%) Presentation Skills
13 119 (2.11%) Front Office
14 108 (1.91%) Telecoms
15 92 (1.63%) Investment Banking
16 84 (1.49%) Back Office
17 68 (1.20%) Aerospace
18 61 (1.08%) Law
Job Titles
1 746 (13.22%) Analyst
2 691 (12.24%) Developer
3 517 (9.16%) Senior
4 420 (7.44%) Lead
5 366 (6.48%) Architect
6 262 (4.64%) Consultant
7 259 (4.59%) Business Analyst
8 233 (4.13%) Data Engineer
9 211 (3.74%) IT Support
10 203 (3.60%) Support Engineer
11 172 (3.05%) Project Manager
12 144 (2.55%) Administrator
13 142 (2.52%) IT Engineer
14 134 (2.37%) Java Developer
15 118 (2.09%) Data Analyst
16 110 (1.95%) Solutions Architect
17 104 (1.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 99 (1.75%) Network Engineer
19 98 (1.74%) Software Engineer
20 93 (1.65%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 355 (6.29%) REST
2 168 (2.98%) RESTful
3 160 (2.83%) .NET
4 152 (2.69%) Kafka
5 150 (2.66%) React
6 148 (2.62%) SOAP
7 143 (2.53%) Spring
8 129 (2.29%) JSON
9 120 (2.13%) CSS
10 115 (2.04%) XML
11 112 (1.98%) HTML
12 111 (1.97%) Middleware
13 104 (1.84%) Spring Boot
14 95 (1.68%) Node.js
15 87 (1.54%) AngularJS
16 85 (1.51%) Web Services
17 80 (1.42%) OAuth
18 73 (1.29%) PySpark
19 58 (1.03%) Playwright
20 49 (0.87%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 309 (5.47%) Onboarding
2 267 (4.73%) Product Ownership
3 245 (4.34%) Cloud Native
4 207 (3.67%) Self-Motivation
5 205 (3.63%) Data Centre
6 170 (3.01%) Enterprise Software
7 163 (2.89%) Distributed Systems
8 160 (2.83%) Management Information System
9 159 (2.82%) Analytical Mindset
10 130 (2.30%) Data Structures
10 130 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
11 128 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
12 101 (1.79%) Virtual Team
13 84 (1.49%) Driving Licence
14 68 (1.20%) AI Agents
14 68 (1.20%) Algorithms
15 62 (1.10%) CMDB
16 57 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 57 (1.01%) PKI
17 55 (0.97%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 749 (13.27%) Windows
2 310 (5.49%) Linux
3 178 (3.15%) Windows Server
4 128 (2.27%) Windows 10
5 115 (2.04%) Unix
6 93 (1.65%) Android
7 89 (1.58%) Apple iOS
8 87 (1.54%) Mac OS
9 48 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.35%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.27%) VMS
13 12 (0.21%) zOS
14 9 (0.16%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.14%) Solaris
16 6 (0.11%) CentOS
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
16 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
17 5 (0.089%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,551 (27.48%) Agile
2 1,140 (20.19%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,061 (18.80%) Stakeholder Management
4 941 (16.67%) CI/CD
5 882 (15.62%) DevOps
6 720 (12.75%) AI
7 608 (10.77%) Decision-Making
7 608 (10.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 600 (10.63%) Analytics
9 574 (10.17%) Migration
10 545 (9.65%) Customer Service
11 516 (9.14%) ITIL
12 449 (7.95%) Validation
13 440 (7.79%) Data Modelling
14 438 (7.76%) Business Intelligence
15 436 (7.72%) Test Automation
16 409 (7.25%) Scrum
17 360 (6.38%) Roadmaps
18 358 (6.34%) Project Management
19 343 (6.08%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 991 (17.56%) SQL
2 922 (16.33%) Python
3 445 (7.88%) Java
4 318 (5.63%) JavaScript
5 308 (5.46%) PowerShell
6 188 (3.33%) C#
7 151 (2.67%) Bash
8 125 (2.21%) TypeScript
9 96 (1.70%) PL/SQL
10 73 (1.29%) C++
11 51 (0.90%) T-SQL
12 44 (0.78%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.69%) Go
14 37 (0.66%) Scala
15 36 (0.64%) C
15 36 (0.64%) Kotlin
16 35 (0.62%) Bicep
17 33 (0.58%) Apex Code
18 31 (0.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 31 (0.55%) R
Qualifications
1 1,233 (21.84%) Security Cleared
2 848 (15.02%) SC Cleared
3 655 (11.60%) Degree
4 220 (3.90%) DV Cleared
5 195 (3.45%) Computer Science Degree
6 162 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
7 159 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
8 136 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
9 82 (1.45%) CISSP
10 79 (1.40%) CCNA
11 77 (1.36%) Azure Certification
12 76 (1.35%) A+ Certification
13 74 (1.31%) PMP
14 70 (1.24%) PMI Certification
15 56 (0.99%) Network+ Certification
16 54 (0.96%) Master's Degree
16 54 (0.96%) MCSE
17 51 (0.90%) CISM
18 43 (0.76%) AWS Certification
19 41 (0.73%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 392 (6.94%) Data Quality
2 346 (6.13%) QA
3 145 (2.57%) Accessibility
4 141 (2.50%) GDPR
5 122 (2.16%) SLA
6 96 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 93 (1.65%) PMO
8 76 (1.35%) NIST
9 64 (1.13%) GRC
10 33 (0.58%) WCAG
11 29 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 27 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
13 24 (0.43%) GxP
14 19 (0.34%) NCSC
15 17 (0.30%) ISO 20022
16 16 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 16 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
16 16 (0.28%) PCI DSS
17 15 (0.27%) COBIT
18 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 440 (7.79%) Active Directory
2 368 (6.52%) Docker
3 149 (2.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 59 (1.05%) Hyper-V
5 54 (0.96%) VMware ESXi
6 51 (0.90%) VMware NSX
6 51 (0.90%) vSphere
7 31 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
8 30 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (0.43%) vCloud
10 21 (0.37%) Firmware
11 19 (0.34%) IAG
12 12 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.11%) NFS
15 5 (0.089%) Squid
16 4 (0.071%) Microsoft App-V
17 3 (0.053%) Snort
18 2 (0.035%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 2 (0.035%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 415 (7.35%) Kubernetes
2 327 (5.79%) Terraform
3 173 (3.06%) Ansible
4 138 (2.44%) Microsoft Intune
5 99 (1.75%) Grafana
6 94 (1.67%) SCCM
7 87 (1.54%) Prometheus
8 58 (1.03%) vCenter Server
9 35 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
10 33 (0.58%) SCOM
11 28 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 27 (0.48%) Control-M
13 21 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
14 19 (0.34%) WSUS
15 17 (0.30%) Argo
16 15 (0.27%) Nessus
17 14 (0.25%) NetBackup
18 13 (0.23%) IBM Guardium
19 12 (0.21%) Kibana
19 12 (0.21%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,187 (21.03%) Microsoft
2 402 (7.12%) Oracle
3 356 (6.31%) ServiceNow
4 353 (6.25%) SAP
5 217 (3.84%) VMware
6 181 (3.21%) Google
7 145 (2.57%) Salesforce
8 136 (2.41%) Cisco
9 123 (2.18%) Databricks
9 123 (2.18%) Splunk
10 82 (1.45%) Workday
11 70 (1.24%) Adobe
12 69 (1.22%) Dynatrace
13 65 (1.15%) Dell
14 60 (1.06%) Apple
15 57 (1.01%) MuleSoft
16 54 (0.96%) Citrix
16 54 (0.96%) CyberArk
17 52 (0.92%) Red Hat
18 51 (0.90%) IBM