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

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -7 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,199 4,903 4,633
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.70% 17.14% 10.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.68% 18.83% 12.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,062 3,071 2,823
10th Percentile £266 £250 £250
25th Percentile £393 £388 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £625
90th Percentile £720 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £473 £475
% change year-on-year -0.74% -0.53% -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 368 235 418
10th Percentile £13.33 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.50 £13.83
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.14 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.15% +36.41% -67.54%
75th Percentile £42.38 £39.50 £35.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £21.24 £15.00
% change year-on-year -12.90% +41.60% -69.51%

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 41,015 26,042 36,506
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.42% 91.03% 86.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,698 16,721 23,544
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.59% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,419 1,056 2,449
10th Percentile £14.79 £14.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.97 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +51.98% -22.42% -2.58%
75th Percentile £67.50 £58.70 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +76.94% -33.82% +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 23 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 23 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 23 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 4,447 £500 - 3,439
UK excluding London -5 2,790 £469 -0.74% 2,697
London -12 1,869 £520 -0.72% 1,153
Work from Home -3 1,477 £475 -5.00% 1,414
North of England -8 742 £450 -7.46% 707
South East -6 645 £493 -1.40% 778
Midlands -9 494 £469 +6.71% 419
North West -8 351 £434 -11.43% 388
Yorkshire -7 348 £470 -1.05% 246
West Midlands -9 342 £475 +2.98% 266
South West -2 331 £500 -4.76% 299
Scotland -1 269 £438 -5.91% 127
East of England -3 234 £450 -5.63% 272
East Midlands -1 151 £447 +19.60% 154
Wales -3 71 £400 +6.67% 56
North East -11 51 £425 -5.56% 84
Northern Ireland -5 27 £447 +9.69% 104
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
1 216 (4.15%) Confluence
2 152 (2.92%) SharePoint
3 84 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 77 (1.48%) Apache Spark
5 50 (0.96%) Apache
6 48 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 45 (0.87%) SAS
8 29 (0.56%) CMS
9 21 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.25%) nginx
11 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 10 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
12 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.13%) Camunda
13 7 (0.13%) CICS
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.096%) Jupyter
Applications
1 296 (5.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (4.25%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (2.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 76 (1.46%) Microsoft Project
5 73 (1.40%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 11 (0.21%) Sketch
10 9 (0.17%) CATIA
11 8 (0.15%) AutoCAD
12 7 (0.13%) Trello
13 6 (0.12%) Adobe XD
13 6 (0.12%) Photoshop
13 6 (0.12%) Revit
14 5 (0.096%) Maya
15 4 (0.077%) Acrobat
15 4 (0.077%) CPLEX
16 3 (0.058%) LaTeX
16 3 (0.058%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 125 (2.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 21 (0.40%) Aladdin
5 16 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
5 16 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
6 14 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
7 13 (0.25%) SAP GRC
7 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 13 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 13 (0.25%) Workday HCM
8 12 (0.23%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.23%) SAP SD
9 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
10 9 (0.17%) iTrent
10 9 (0.17%) SAP FI
11 8 (0.15%) NetSuite
11 8 (0.15%) Shopify
12 7 (0.13%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,038 (19.97%) Azure
2 779 (14.98%) AWS
3 394 (7.58%) Power Platform
4 348 (6.69%) Microsoft 365
5 322 (6.19%) GCP
6 237 (4.56%) Azure DevOps
7 210 (4.04%) GitHub
8 159 (3.06%) Entra ID
9 143 (2.75%) Serverless
10 121 (2.33%) SaaS
11 107 (2.06%) GitHub Actions
12 88 (1.69%) Amazon S3
13 77 (1.48%) AWS Lambda
14 76 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
15 72 (1.38%) Snowflake
16 71 (1.37%) OpenShift
17 70 (1.35%) Azure Data Factory
17 70 (1.35%) Power Automate
18 59 (1.13%) PowerApps
19 50 (0.96%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 192 (3.69%) DNS
2 166 (3.19%) Firewall
3 117 (2.25%) TCP/IP
4 108 (2.08%) VPN
5 106 (2.04%) WAN
6 103 (1.98%) DHCP
7 87 (1.67%) Network Security
8 83 (1.60%) SAN
9 79 (1.52%) LAN
10 68 (1.31%) Wi-Fi
11 49 (0.94%) VLAN
12 48 (0.92%) BGP
13 42 (0.81%) OSPF
14 40 (0.77%) SD-WAN
15 31 (0.60%) VoIP
15 31 (0.60%) Wireless
16 27 (0.52%) VXLAN
17 24 (0.46%) MPLS
18 23 (0.44%) Internet
19 21 (0.40%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (5.96%) Power BI
2 199 (3.83%) SQL Server
3 161 (3.10%) Data Warehouse
4 134 (2.58%) Relational Database
5 129 (2.48%) PostgreSQL
6 111 (2.14%) Metadata
7 95 (1.83%) MongoDB
8 87 (1.67%) Tableau
9 82 (1.58%) NoSQL
10 80 (1.54%) Big Data
10 80 (1.54%) Data Lake
11 58 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
12 55 (1.06%) MySQL
13 50 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 49 (0.94%) Oracle Database
15 40 (0.77%) Hadoop
16 30 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
17 28 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
17 28 (0.54%) Delta Lake
18 27 (0.52%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 490 (9.42%) JIRA
2 290 (5.58%) Git
3 187 (3.60%) Jenkins
4 126 (2.42%) GitLab
5 69 (1.33%) Selenium
6 39 (0.75%) Postman
7 31 (0.60%) REST Assured
8 30 (0.58%) Cucumber
9 23 (0.44%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.44%) Cypress.io
9 23 (0.44%) JUnit
10 20 (0.38%) JMeter
11 17 (0.33%) SonarQube
11 17 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
11 17 (0.33%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.31%) Mockito
13 14 (0.27%) SpecFlow
14 13 (0.25%) Gatling
14 13 (0.25%) Maven
14 13 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,664 (51.24%) Social Skills
2 2,003 (38.53%) Analytical Skills
3 1,199 (23.06%) Finance
4 489 (9.41%) Public Sector
5 396 (7.62%) Banking
6 217 (4.17%) Organisational Skills
7 185 (3.56%) Retail
8 177 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
9 150 (2.89%) Legal
10 113 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 113 (2.17%) Influencing Skills
10 113 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
11 98 (1.88%) Front Office
12 97 (1.87%) Manufacturing
13 92 (1.77%) Telecoms
14 88 (1.69%) Marketing
15 83 (1.60%) Investment Banking
16 64 (1.23%) Back Office
17 61 (1.17%) Law
18 52 (1.00%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 728 (14.00%) Analyst
2 617 (11.87%) Developer
3 451 (8.67%) Senior
4 349 (6.71%) Architect
5 320 (6.16%) Lead
6 287 (5.52%) Business Analyst
7 258 (4.96%) Consultant
8 232 (4.46%) Data Engineer
9 195 (3.75%) Project Manager
10 141 (2.71%) Support Engineer
11 135 (2.60%) IT Support
12 130 (2.50%) Data Analyst
13 105 (2.02%) Java Developer
14 102 (1.96%) IT Engineer
15 100 (1.92%) Administrator
16 98 (1.88%) Software Engineer
17 95 (1.83%) Solutions Architect
18 93 (1.79%) Network Engineer
19 92 (1.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 76 (1.46%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 300 (5.77%) REST
2 149 (2.87%) Kafka
3 147 (2.83%) .NET
4 137 (2.64%) SOAP
5 134 (2.58%) React
5 134 (2.58%) Spring
6 132 (2.54%) RESTful
7 118 (2.27%) CSS
8 111 (2.14%) HTML
9 100 (1.92%) Node.js
9 100 (1.92%) Spring Boot
10 99 (1.90%) Middleware
11 98 (1.88%) AngularJS
12 94 (1.81%) JSON
13 91 (1.75%) LDAP
14 88 (1.69%) XML
15 73 (1.40%) PySpark
16 62 (1.19%) OAuth
17 55 (1.06%) Web Services
18 52 (1.00%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 260 (5.00%) Product Ownership
2 225 (4.33%) Onboarding
3 208 (4.00%) Data Centre
4 201 (3.87%) Cloud Native
5 166 (3.19%) Self-Motivation
6 146 (2.81%) Analytical Mindset
7 139 (2.67%) Management Information System
8 121 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
9 120 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
10 118 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
11 114 (2.19%) Virtual Team
12 102 (1.96%) Data Structures
13 100 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
14 70 (1.35%) Driving Licence
15 68 (1.31%) Security Posture
16 61 (1.17%) Algorithms
17 57 (1.10%) AI Agents
18 54 (1.04%) Mobile App
19 49 (0.94%) CMDB
20 48 (0.92%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 599 (11.52%) Windows
2 298 (5.73%) Linux
3 115 (2.21%) Windows Server
4 112 (2.15%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.98%) Unix
6 88 (1.69%) Android
7 86 (1.65%) Apple iOS
8 78 (1.50%) Mac OS
9 52 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.31%) VMS
12 14 (0.27%) CentOS
12 14 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.17%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) zOS
15 7 (0.13%) Debian
16 5 (0.096%) Solaris
16 5 (0.096%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.077%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,399 (26.91%) Agile
2 850 (16.35%) CI/CD
3 802 (15.43%) Continuous Improvement
4 773 (14.87%) DevOps
5 747 (14.37%) Stakeholder Management
6 586 (11.27%) Decision-Making
7 579 (11.14%) AI
8 557 (10.71%) Migration
9 552 (10.62%) Analytics
10 446 (8.58%) Data Modelling
11 445 (8.56%) Project Management
12 441 (8.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 439 (8.44%) Customer Service
14 425 (8.17%) Validation
15 422 (8.12%) ITIL
16 407 (7.83%) Business Intelligence
17 382 (7.35%) Test Automation
18 356 (6.85%) Change Management
19 355 (6.83%) Scrum
20 315 (6.06%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 923 (17.75%) Python
2 898 (17.27%) SQL
3 412 (7.92%) Java
4 314 (6.04%) PowerShell
5 265 (5.10%) JavaScript
6 201 (3.87%) C#
7 152 (2.92%) TypeScript
8 116 (2.23%) Bash
9 75 (1.44%) C++
9 75 (1.44%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.08%) Shell Script
11 45 (0.87%) Go
12 43 (0.83%) R
13 38 (0.73%) Bicep
13 38 (0.73%) C
14 35 (0.67%) T-SQL
15 34 (0.65%) Perl
16 33 (0.63%) Apex Code
17 31 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 30 (0.58%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,123 (21.60%) Security Cleared
2 765 (14.71%) SC Cleared
3 629 (12.10%) Degree
4 198 (3.81%) DV Cleared
5 194 (3.73%) Computer Science Degree
6 162 (3.12%) BPSS Clearance
7 137 (2.64%) Cisco Certification
8 127 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
9 91 (1.75%) CISSP
10 82 (1.58%) PMP
11 77 (1.48%) CCNA
12 75 (1.44%) PMI Certification
13 73 (1.40%) A+ Certification
14 70 (1.35%) Master's Degree
15 68 (1.31%) Network+ Certification
16 62 (1.19%) Azure Certification
17 60 (1.15%) CISM
18 58 (1.12%) MCSE
19 44 (0.85%) CCNP
20 35 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 348 (6.69%) Data Quality
2 276 (5.31%) QA
3 145 (2.79%) GDPR
4 111 (2.14%) Accessibility
5 93 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 85 (1.63%) PMO
7 84 (1.62%) SLA
8 77 (1.48%) NIST
9 56 (1.08%) GRC
10 27 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
10 27 (0.52%) PCI DSS
10 27 (0.52%) WCAG
11 24 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.37%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.29%) IFRS
13 15 (0.29%) NCSC
13 15 (0.29%) PSD2
14 14 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
15 13 (0.25%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 382 (7.35%) Active Directory
2 328 (6.31%) Docker
3 108 (2.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.77%) vSphere
5 37 (0.71%) VMware NSX
6 34 (0.65%) Hyper-V
7 25 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
8 24 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
9 21 (0.40%) Firmware
10 19 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
11 18 (0.35%) vCloud
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.12%) IAG
15 4 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.077%) RACF
15 4 (0.077%) Snort
16 3 (0.058%) ACF2
16 3 (0.058%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.058%) NFS
Systems Management
1 399 (7.67%) Kubernetes
2 275 (5.29%) Terraform
3 178 (3.42%) Ansible
4 125 (2.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 114 (2.19%) Grafana
6 94 (1.81%) Prometheus
7 78 (1.50%) SCCM
8 45 (0.87%) vCenter Server
9 42 (0.81%) FortiGate
10 38 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
11 28 (0.54%) Kibana
12 24 (0.46%) Puppet
13 23 (0.44%) Control-M
14 22 (0.42%) Nessus
15 20 (0.38%) Argo
16 17 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 15 (0.29%) SCOM
18 12 (0.23%) WSUS
19 9 (0.17%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 944 (18.16%) Microsoft
2 340 (6.54%) Oracle
3 300 (5.77%) SAP
4 246 (4.73%) ServiceNow
5 184 (3.54%) VMware
6 148 (2.85%) Databricks
7 142 (2.73%) Google
8 131 (2.52%) Splunk
9 128 (2.46%) Cisco
10 111 (2.14%) Salesforce
11 84 (1.62%) Dell
12 68 (1.31%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
13 63 (1.21%) Red Hat
13 63 (1.21%) Workday
14 56 (1.08%) Adobe
15 49 (0.94%) HP
16 48 (0.92%) F5
17 47 (0.90%) Citrix
17 47 (0.90%) Palo Alto