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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -5 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,216 4,964 4,693
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.98% 17.00% 10.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.02% 18.70% 12.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,117 3,102 2,868
10th Percentile £263 £250 £239
25th Percentile £382 £390 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £502
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -0.40% -4.38%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £715 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £461 £475 £488
% change year-on-year -2.89% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 243 410
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.24 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.83
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.14 £16.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.02% +34.18% -65.91%
75th Percentile £51.26 £41.25 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.21 £21.24 £15.00
% change year-on-year -14.27% +41.60% -63.05%

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 40,059 26,552 37,102
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.33% 90.94% 86.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,139 17,089 23,891
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £519 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.69% -1.24% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +2.93% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,402 1,086 2,440
10th Percentile £14.97 £14.42 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.87 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.40 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.48% -21.23% +0.29%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £26.50 £38.00
% change year-on-year +69.81% -30.26% +8.57%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -5 4,466 £492 -1.60% 3,089
UK excluding London -5 2,776 £461 -2.89% 2,484
London -11 1,898 £519 -1.23% 942
Work from Home -3 1,486 £475 -5.00% 1,155
North of England -8 742 £450 -7.98% 624
South East -7 648 £493 -1.50% 763
Midlands -6 508 £464 +4.04% 420
North West -6 359 £410 -16.16% 343
West Midlands -7 352 £475 +2.87% 259
Yorkshire -6 339 £460 -5.15% 205
South West -1 323 £500 - 289
Scotland -1 263 £431 -4.91% 102
East of England -6 214 £450 - 260
East Midlands -1 155 £434 +16.05% 162
Wales -3 70 £400 +20.78% 63
North East -9 51 £425 -11.23% 84
Northern Ireland -1 26 £430 +5.52% 26
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
1 214 (4.10%) Confluence
2 147 (2.82%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 83 (1.59%) Apache Spark
5 56 (1.07%) Apache
6 49 (0.94%) SAS
7 47 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
8 31 (0.59%) CMS
9 20 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.25%) nginx
11 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
12 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.13%) Camunda
13 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.12%) CICS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 4 (0.077%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 299 (5.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (4.29%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (2.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 79 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
5 76 (1.46%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.15%) CATIA
9 8 (0.15%) Sketch
10 7 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.13%) Trello
11 6 (0.12%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.12%) Revit
12 5 (0.096%) Maya
13 4 (0.077%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.077%) CPLEX
13 4 (0.077%) InDesign
14 3 (0.058%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 121 (2.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.38%) Aladdin
5 18 (0.35%) Payment Gateway
6 16 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.27%) NEC Housing
9 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 12 (0.23%) Teamcenter
11 11 (0.21%) SAP GRC
11 11 (0.21%) Workday HCM
12 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
13 9 (0.17%) iTrent
13 9 (0.17%) NetSuite
13 9 (0.17%) SAP SD
13 9 (0.17%) Shopify
14 8 (0.15%) Loan IQ
14 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,043 (20.00%) Azure
2 801 (15.36%) AWS
3 391 (7.50%) Power Platform
4 345 (6.61%) Microsoft 365
5 327 (6.27%) GCP
6 237 (4.54%) Azure DevOps
7 213 (4.08%) GitHub
8 156 (2.99%) Entra ID
9 148 (2.84%) Serverless
10 126 (2.42%) SaaS
11 111 (2.13%) GitHub Actions
12 94 (1.80%) Amazon S3
13 88 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
14 77 (1.48%) Dynamics 365
15 72 (1.38%) Power Automate
15 72 (1.38%) Snowflake
16 69 (1.32%) Azure Data Factory
16 69 (1.32%) OpenShift
17 57 (1.09%) PowerApps
18 51 (0.98%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 186 (3.57%) DNS
2 173 (3.32%) Firewall
3 121 (2.32%) TCP/IP
4 106 (2.03%) VPN
5 105 (2.01%) WAN
6 101 (1.94%) DHCP
7 87 (1.67%) Network Security
8 84 (1.61%) SAN
9 78 (1.50%) LAN
10 66 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
11 50 (0.96%) BGP
12 49 (0.94%) VLAN
13 43 (0.82%) OSPF
14 40 (0.77%) SD-WAN
15 31 (0.59%) VoIP
16 29 (0.56%) Wireless
17 26 (0.50%) VXLAN
18 25 (0.48%) Internet
19 24 (0.46%) MPLS
20 21 (0.40%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 309 (5.92%) Power BI
2 197 (3.78%) SQL Server
3 159 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.59%) Relational Database
5 134 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
6 112 (2.15%) Metadata
7 86 (1.65%) MongoDB
8 85 (1.63%) Tableau
9 83 (1.59%) NoSQL
10 81 (1.55%) Big Data
11 75 (1.44%) Data Lake
12 61 (1.17%) MySQL
12 61 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
13 52 (1.00%) Oracle Database
14 48 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 41 (0.79%) Hadoop
16 33 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
17 31 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
17 31 (0.59%) Power Query
18 29 (0.56%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 498 (9.55%) JIRA
2 299 (5.73%) Git
3 193 (3.70%) Jenkins
4 139 (2.66%) GitLab
5 66 (1.27%) Selenium
6 39 (0.75%) Postman
7 31 (0.59%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.50%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.48%) REST Assured
10 24 (0.46%) JUnit
11 23 (0.44%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.40%) JMeter
13 18 (0.35%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.33%) WebDriver
15 16 (0.31%) Maven
15 16 (0.31%) Mockito
15 16 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
16 15 (0.29%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.27%) Zephyr
18 11 (0.21%) Appium
General
1 2,711 (51.97%) Social Skills
2 2,001 (38.36%) Analytical Skills
3 1,210 (23.20%) Finance
4 501 (9.61%) Public Sector
5 401 (7.69%) Banking
6 222 (4.26%) Organisational Skills
7 183 (3.51%) Retail
8 175 (3.36%) Documentation Skills
9 152 (2.91%) Legal
10 128 (2.45%) Presentation Skills
11 117 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 115 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
13 97 (1.86%) Front Office
14 92 (1.76%) Telecoms
15 90 (1.73%) Manufacturing
16 88 (1.69%) Marketing
17 78 (1.50%) Investment Banking
18 62 (1.19%) Back Office
19 59 (1.13%) Law
20 52 (1.00%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 728 (13.96%) Analyst
2 640 (12.27%) Developer
3 456 (8.74%) Senior
4 361 (6.92%) Architect
5 322 (6.17%) Lead
6 289 (5.54%) Business Analyst
7 258 (4.95%) Consultant
8 235 (4.51%) Data Engineer
9 198 (3.80%) Project Manager
10 140 (2.68%) Support Engineer
11 131 (2.51%) IT Support
12 124 (2.38%) Data Analyst
13 112 (2.15%) Java Developer
14 102 (1.96%) IT Engineer
15 97 (1.86%) Solutions Architect
16 96 (1.84%) Network Engineer
17 95 (1.82%) Administrator
17 95 (1.82%) Software Engineer
18 92 (1.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 76 (1.46%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 297 (5.69%) REST
2 149 (2.86%) Kafka
3 144 (2.76%) .NET
4 140 (2.68%) SOAP
5 137 (2.63%) RESTful
6 134 (2.57%) Spring
7 131 (2.51%) React
8 115 (2.20%) CSS
9 109 (2.09%) Node.js
10 107 (2.05%) HTML
11 103 (1.97%) AngularJS
12 101 (1.94%) Spring Boot
13 99 (1.90%) LDAP
14 97 (1.86%) Middleware
15 95 (1.82%) JSON
16 89 (1.71%) XML
17 72 (1.38%) PySpark
18 69 (1.32%) OAuth
19 56 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
20 54 (1.04%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 265 (5.08%) Product Ownership
2 225 (4.31%) Onboarding
3 204 (3.91%) Data Centre
4 202 (3.87%) Cloud Native
5 156 (2.99%) Self-Motivation
6 149 (2.86%) Analytical Mindset
7 143 (2.74%) Management Information System
8 119 (2.28%) Distributed Systems
9 115 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
10 112 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
10 112 (2.15%) Virtual Team
11 106 (2.03%) Data Structures
12 97 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
13 72 (1.38%) Driving Licence
14 65 (1.25%) Security Posture
15 62 (1.19%) Mobile App
16 59 (1.13%) Algorithms
17 55 (1.05%) AI Agents
18 52 (1.00%) Hybrid Cloud
19 50 (0.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 590 (11.31%) Windows
2 303 (5.81%) Linux
3 109 (2.09%) Windows 10
3 109 (2.09%) Windows Server
4 98 (1.88%) Android
4 98 (1.88%) Unix
5 89 (1.71%) Apple iOS
6 72 (1.38%) Mac OS
7 53 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 21 (0.40%) Ubuntu
9 19 (0.36%) VMS
10 15 (0.29%) CentOS
11 12 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
12 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
12 8 (0.15%) zOS
13 7 (0.13%) Debian
14 4 (0.077%) Solaris
14 4 (0.077%) Windows 8
14 4 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,416 (27.15%) Agile
2 873 (16.74%) CI/CD
3 788 (15.11%) Continuous Improvement
4 784 (15.03%) DevOps
5 742 (14.23%) Stakeholder Management
6 583 (11.18%) Decision-Making
7 566 (10.85%) AI
8 564 (10.81%) Migration
9 561 (10.76%) Analytics
10 457 (8.76%) Project Management
11 456 (8.74%) Data Modelling
12 433 (8.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 426 (8.17%) Customer Service
14 421 (8.07%) Validation
15 414 (7.94%) Business Intelligence
16 403 (7.73%) ITIL
17 392 (7.52%) Test Automation
18 360 (6.90%) Scrum
19 359 (6.88%) Change Management
20 319 (6.12%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 936 (17.94%) Python
2 905 (17.35%) SQL
3 429 (8.22%) Java
4 323 (6.19%) PowerShell
5 277 (5.31%) JavaScript
6 201 (3.85%) C#
7 168 (3.22%) TypeScript
8 116 (2.22%) Bash
9 83 (1.59%) PL/SQL
10 72 (1.38%) C++
11 57 (1.09%) Shell Script
12 51 (0.98%) Go
13 45 (0.86%) R
14 38 (0.73%) Bicep
14 38 (0.73%) C
15 36 (0.69%) T-SQL
16 35 (0.67%) Apex Code
16 35 (0.67%) Perl
17 33 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 31 (0.59%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,142 (21.89%) Security Cleared
2 785 (15.05%) SC Cleared
3 627 (12.02%) Degree
4 203 (3.89%) Computer Science Degree
5 194 (3.72%) DV Cleared
6 167 (3.20%) BPSS Clearance
7 139 (2.66%) Cisco Certification
8 125 (2.40%) Microsoft Certification
9 91 (1.74%) CISSP
10 88 (1.69%) PMP
11 82 (1.57%) PMI Certification
12 77 (1.48%) CCNA
13 73 (1.40%) Master's Degree
14 71 (1.36%) A+ Certification
15 67 (1.28%) Azure Certification
15 67 (1.28%) Network+ Certification
16 62 (1.19%) CISM
17 58 (1.11%) MCSE
18 47 (0.90%) CCNP
19 38 (0.73%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 345 (6.61%) Data Quality
2 300 (5.75%) QA
3 154 (2.95%) GDPR
4 101 (1.94%) Accessibility
5 98 (1.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 93 (1.78%) PMO
7 82 (1.57%) NIST
8 74 (1.42%) SLA
9 51 (0.98%) GRC
10 29 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
10 29 (0.56%) WCAG
11 28 (0.54%) PCI DSS
12 27 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 21 (0.40%) ISO 20022
14 17 (0.33%) IFRS
14 17 (0.33%) PSD2
15 15 (0.29%) NCSC
16 14 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
17 13 (0.25%) HIPAA
17 13 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 381 (7.30%) Active Directory
2 338 (6.48%) Docker
3 116 (2.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.84%) vSphere
5 37 (0.71%) VMware NSX
6 35 (0.67%) Hyper-V
7 22 (0.42%) Firmware
7 22 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
10 14 (0.27%) vCloud
11 11 (0.21%) RACF
11 11 (0.21%) Squid
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
12 9 (0.17%) Time Sharing Option
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.12%) IAG
15 4 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.077%) NFS
15 4 (0.077%) Snort
Systems Management
1 417 (7.99%) Kubernetes
2 275 (5.27%) Terraform
3 178 (3.41%) Ansible
4 118 (2.26%) Microsoft Intune
5 116 (2.22%) Grafana
6 90 (1.73%) Prometheus
7 79 (1.51%) SCCM
8 42 (0.81%) vCenter Server
9 41 (0.79%) FortiGate
10 39 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.52%) Kibana
12 24 (0.46%) Puppet
13 23 (0.44%) Argo
14 22 (0.42%) Control-M
15 21 (0.40%) Nessus
16 17 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 14 (0.27%) WSUS
19 12 (0.23%) CA Endevor
19 12 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 944 (18.10%) Microsoft
2 350 (6.71%) Oracle
3 293 (5.62%) SAP
4 228 (4.37%) ServiceNow
5 194 (3.72%) VMware
6 155 (2.97%) Databricks
7 150 (2.88%) Google
8 132 (2.53%) Cisco
9 124 (2.38%) Splunk
10 111 (2.13%) Salesforce
11 86 (1.65%) Dell
12 73 (1.40%) CyberArk
13 68 (1.30%) BeyondTrust
14 64 (1.23%) Red Hat
15 61 (1.17%) Workday
16 53 (1.02%) Adobe
17 52 (1.00%) Citrix
17 52 (1.00%) Palo Alto
18 50 (0.96%) HP
19 49 (0.94%) IBM