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

6 months to
11 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,449 4,877 4,785
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.91% 16.69% 10.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.96% 18.42% 12.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,311 3,065 2,957
10th Percentile £280 £250 £213
25th Percentile £394 £399 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £706 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -0.21% -1.05% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 330 232 406
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.44 £11.04
25th Percentile £15.18 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £21.25 £24.42 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.98% +39.54% -56.79%
75th Percentile £47.50 £41.50 £38.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.63 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.34 £22.00 £15.00
% change year-on-year -16.66% +46.67% -49.15%

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 39,019 26,482 37,961
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.25% 90.62% 86.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,692 17,180 24,590
10th Percentile £315 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £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 £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,316 1,006 2,380
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.99 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.38 £19.05 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.71 £31.04 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +18.27% -6.12% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.58
90th Percentile £77.75 £75.38 £70.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.00 £29.12 £33.03
% change year-on-year +27.08% -11.86% -6.76%

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 11 April 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 11 April 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 11 April 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 4,677 £490 -2.00% 3,248
UK excluding London -5 2,842 £469 -0.21% 2,670
London -8 2,031 £511 -2.69% 986
Work from Home 0 1,543 £475 -5.00% 1,286
North of England -5 788 £450 -7.98% 662
South East -5 674 £492 -1.60% 802
Midlands -3 517 £450 - 478
North West -5 390 £425 -13.18% 365
West Midlands -5 369 £475 +2.43% 278
Yorkshire -4 351 £470 -1.05% 222
South West -2 316 £506 - 308
Scotland +1 255 £425 -5.56% 127
East of England -3 217 £450 - 288
East Midlands -1 149 £418 +12.91% 199
Wales -2 71 £395 +15.98% 81
North East -2 56 £438 -13.79% 92
Northern Ireland -1 28 £430 +26.47% 19
Channel Islands -5 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
1 225 (4.13%) Confluence
2 153 (2.81%) SharePoint
3 104 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 88 (1.61%) Apache Spark
5 67 (1.23%) SAS
6 64 (1.17%) Apache
7 46 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.61%) CMS
9 19 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.13%) Camunda
14 7 (0.13%) JBoss
15 6 (0.11%) CICS
15 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 313 (5.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (4.13%) Microsoft Office
3 119 (2.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 84 (1.54%) Microsoft Project
5 82 (1.50%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.13%) CATIA
10 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.13%) Trello
11 5 (0.092%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.092%) Maya
12 4 (0.073%) AutoCAD
12 4 (0.073%) InDesign
12 4 (0.073%) InVision
12 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.055%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 102 (1.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.37%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 14 (0.26%) NEC Housing
8 14 (0.26%) SAP ERP
8 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
9 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
9 13 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
10 12 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
12 10 (0.18%) iTrent
12 10 (0.18%) NetSuite
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 10 (0.18%) SAP SD
12 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,135 (20.83%) Azure
2 858 (15.75%) AWS
3 392 (7.19%) Power Platform
4 376 (6.90%) GCP
5 347 (6.37%) Microsoft 365
6 252 (4.62%) Azure DevOps
7 239 (4.39%) GitHub
8 175 (3.21%) Serverless
9 172 (3.16%) Entra ID
10 147 (2.70%) SaaS
11 126 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
12 110 (2.02%) Amazon S3
13 103 (1.89%) AWS Lambda
14 92 (1.69%) OpenShift
15 78 (1.43%) Snowflake
16 76 (1.39%) Dynamics 365
17 75 (1.38%) Azure Data Factory
17 75 (1.38%) Power Automate
18 63 (1.16%) PowerApps
19 60 (1.10%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 205 (3.76%) Firewall
2 197 (3.62%) DNS
3 123 (2.26%) TCP/IP
4 118 (2.17%) Network Security
5 114 (2.09%) VPN
6 108 (1.98%) WAN
7 104 (1.91%) DHCP
8 86 (1.58%) LAN
9 68 (1.25%) SAN
10 64 (1.17%) Wi-Fi
11 55 (1.01%) BGP
12 48 (0.88%) VLAN
13 41 (0.75%) OSPF
14 37 (0.68%) VoIP
15 36 (0.66%) SD-WAN
16 29 (0.53%) Internet
17 28 (0.51%) MPLS
17 28 (0.51%) Wireless
18 22 (0.40%) VXLAN
19 21 (0.39%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 313 (5.74%) Power BI
2 196 (3.60%) SQL Server
3 164 (3.01%) Data Warehouse
4 150 (2.75%) Relational Database
5 147 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
6 111 (2.04%) Metadata
7 94 (1.73%) NoSQL
8 92 (1.69%) MongoDB
9 88 (1.61%) Big Data
10 86 (1.58%) Tableau
11 84 (1.54%) Data Lake
12 69 (1.27%) MySQL
13 68 (1.25%) Oracle Database
14 62 (1.14%) Oracle Reports
15 47 (0.86%) Hadoop
16 46 (0.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 40 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
18 36 (0.66%) DynamoDB
18 36 (0.66%) Pentaho
19 31 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 517 (9.49%) JIRA
2 351 (6.44%) Git
3 251 (4.61%) Jenkins
4 165 (3.03%) GitLab
5 83 (1.52%) Selenium
6 52 (0.95%) JUnit
7 41 (0.75%) Postman
8 33 (0.61%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.53%) Bitbucket
9 29 (0.53%) REST Assured
10 23 (0.42%) Cypress.io
10 23 (0.42%) Maven
10 23 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
11 21 (0.39%) JMeter
11 21 (0.39%) Mockito
12 18 (0.33%) SonarQube
13 15 (0.28%) WebDriver
14 14 (0.26%) Artifactory
14 14 (0.26%) CircleCI
14 14 (0.26%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,885 (52.95%) Social Skills
2 2,053 (37.68%) Analytical Skills
3 1,250 (22.94%) Finance
4 548 (10.06%) Public Sector
5 426 (7.82%) Banking
6 218 (4.00%) Organisational Skills
7 193 (3.54%) Documentation Skills
8 177 (3.25%) Legal
9 176 (3.23%) Retail
10 137 (2.51%) Influencing Skills
11 134 (2.46%) Presentation Skills
12 121 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 102 (1.87%) Front Office
14 96 (1.76%) Telecoms
15 87 (1.60%) Marketing
16 83 (1.52%) Manufacturing
17 80 (1.47%) Investment Banking
18 57 (1.05%) Financial Institution
19 54 (0.99%) Military
20 53 (0.97%) Law
Job Titles
1 750 (13.76%) Analyst
2 716 (13.14%) Developer
3 481 (8.83%) Senior
4 381 (6.99%) Architect
5 346 (6.35%) Lead
6 318 (5.84%) Business Analyst
7 292 (5.36%) Consultant
8 231 (4.24%) Data Engineer
9 211 (3.87%) Project Manager
10 136 (2.50%) Java Developer
11 135 (2.48%) Support Engineer
12 124 (2.28%) IT Support
13 110 (2.02%) Data Analyst
14 107 (1.96%) Solutions Architect
15 101 (1.85%) Administrator
16 100 (1.84%) Software Engineer
17 94 (1.73%) Senior Developer
18 87 (1.60%) IT Engineer
18 87 (1.60%) Network Engineer
19 85 (1.56%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 357 (6.55%) REST
2 174 (3.19%) Kafka
3 161 (2.95%) RESTful
4 160 (2.94%) SOAP
5 152 (2.79%) .NET
6 150 (2.75%) Spring
7 135 (2.48%) React
8 133 (2.44%) Node.js
9 111 (2.04%) CSS
9 111 (2.04%) Spring Boot
10 110 (2.02%) AngularJS
11 109 (2.00%) HTML
12 106 (1.95%) JSON
13 99 (1.82%) LDAP
13 99 (1.82%) XML
14 91 (1.67%) Middleware
15 79 (1.45%) OAuth
16 72 (1.32%) PySpark
17 63 (1.16%) Oracle Fusion
18 61 (1.12%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 282 (5.18%) Product Ownership
2 222 (4.07%) Cloud Native
3 219 (4.02%) Onboarding
4 173 (3.17%) Data Centre
5 158 (2.90%) Management Information System
6 148 (2.72%) Self-Motivation
7 143 (2.62%) Analytical Mindset
8 114 (2.09%) Data Structures
9 113 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
10 110 (2.02%) Distributed Systems
11 106 (1.95%) Virtual Team
12 104 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
12 104 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
13 73 (1.34%) Algorithms
14 71 (1.30%) Security Posture
15 68 (1.25%) Driving Licence
16 64 (1.17%) Mobile App
17 62 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
18 59 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 54 (0.99%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 601 (11.03%) Windows
2 341 (6.26%) Linux
3 118 (2.17%) Windows Server
4 111 (2.04%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.89%) Unix
6 83 (1.52%) Android
7 75 (1.38%) Apple iOS
8 67 (1.23%) Mac OS
9 62 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.37%) VMS
11 17 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) CentOS
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.15%) zOS
15 6 (0.11%) Debian
16 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.073%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,556 (28.56%) Agile
2 977 (17.93%) CI/CD
3 872 (16.00%) DevOps
4 823 (15.10%) Continuous Improvement
5 808 (14.83%) Stakeholder Management
6 638 (11.71%) Analytics
7 584 (10.72%) Migration
8 574 (10.53%) Decision-Making
9 549 (10.08%) AI
10 484 (8.88%) Project Management
11 476 (8.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 472 (8.66%) Data Modelling
13 435 (7.98%) Business Intelligence
14 430 (7.89%) Test Automation
15 429 (7.87%) Validation
16 414 (7.60%) Customer Service
17 404 (7.41%) Scrum
18 401 (7.36%) ITIL
19 392 (7.19%) Change Management
20 352 (6.46%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,030 (18.90%) Python
2 961 (17.64%) SQL
3 478 (8.77%) Java
4 363 (6.66%) PowerShell
5 294 (5.40%) JavaScript
6 220 (4.04%) C#
7 187 (3.43%) TypeScript
8 153 (2.81%) Bash
9 86 (1.58%) PL/SQL
10 71 (1.30%) Shell Script
11 67 (1.23%) C++
12 55 (1.01%) Go
13 44 (0.81%) Perl
14 43 (0.79%) Bicep
15 41 (0.75%) Scala
15 41 (0.75%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.73%) R
17 38 (0.70%) C
18 35 (0.64%) Apex Code
19 32 (0.59%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,182 (21.69%) Security Cleared
2 821 (15.07%) SC Cleared
3 670 (12.30%) Degree
4 226 (4.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 199 (3.65%) DV Cleared
6 177 (3.25%) BPSS Clearance
7 129 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
8 110 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
9 106 (1.95%) CISSP
10 103 (1.89%) PMP
11 101 (1.85%) PMI Certification
12 88 (1.61%) Master's Degree
13 69 (1.27%) Azure Certification
14 67 (1.23%) CISM
15 63 (1.16%) CCNA
16 54 (0.99%) CCNP
17 52 (0.95%) A+ Certification
18 47 (0.86%) MCSE
18 47 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
19 43 (0.79%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 358 (6.57%) Data Quality
2 348 (6.39%) QA
3 159 (2.92%) GDPR
4 113 (2.07%) Accessibility
5 99 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 98 (1.80%) PMO
7 92 (1.69%) NIST
8 76 (1.39%) SLA
9 44 (0.81%) GRC
10 35 (0.64%) WCAG
11 33 (0.61%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 27 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 25 (0.46%) PSD2
15 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
16 18 (0.33%) ISO 8583
17 16 (0.29%) HL7
18 15 (0.28%) IFRS
19 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
20 12 (0.22%) NCSC
System Software
1 419 (7.69%) Docker
2 409 (7.51%) Active Directory
3 118 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (0.90%) vSphere
5 40 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.61%) Hyper-V
7 21 (0.39%) Firmware
8 20 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
10 11 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
11 10 (0.18%) vCloud
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
12 9 (0.17%) Squid
13 6 (0.11%) IAG
14 4 (0.073%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.073%) NFS
14 4 (0.073%) Snort
Systems Management
1 490 (8.99%) Kubernetes
2 315 (5.78%) Terraform
3 189 (3.47%) Ansible
4 132 (2.42%) Microsoft Intune
5 125 (2.29%) Grafana
6 98 (1.80%) Prometheus
7 84 (1.54%) SCCM
8 44 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
9 39 (0.72%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.55%) Kibana
12 29 (0.53%) Puppet
13 27 (0.50%) Argo
14 23 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 20 (0.37%) Control-M
15 20 (0.37%) Nessus
16 16 (0.29%) vRealize
17 14 (0.26%) IBM Guardium
18 12 (0.22%) WSUS
19 11 (0.20%) Consul
Vendors
1 984 (18.06%) Microsoft
2 375 (6.88%) Oracle
3 281 (5.16%) SAP
4 236 (4.33%) ServiceNow
5 205 (3.76%) VMware
6 171 (3.14%) Google
7 166 (3.05%) Databricks
8 131 (2.40%) Cisco
9 128 (2.35%) Splunk
10 119 (2.18%) Salesforce
11 79 (1.45%) Red Hat
12 76 (1.39%) CyberArk
13 74 (1.36%) Dell
14 71 (1.30%) BeyondTrust
15 60 (1.10%) Citrix
16 57 (1.05%) Workday
17 55 (1.01%) Adobe
17 55 (1.01%) Talend
18 54 (0.99%) IBM
19 50 (0.92%) Palo Alto