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

6 months to
1 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 5,450 4,770 4,800
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.20% 16.43% 10.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.25% 18.15% 12.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,328 3,010 2,977
10th Percentile £284 £256 £213
25th Percentile £400 £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 £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £471 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -0.95% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 325 219 408
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.84 £11.05
25th Percentile £15.18 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.75 £25.00 £17.61
Median % change year-on-year -17.00% +42.01% -56.53%
75th Percentile £44.94 £41.50 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £69.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.85 £22.14 £15.69
% change year-on-year -19.40% +41.11% -47.70%

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 38,255 26,278 38,264
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.62% 90.49% 86.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,265 17,064 24,859
10th Percentile £313 £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 £636 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,246 966 2,352
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.00 £12.84
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.26 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £32.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.94% -1.54% -11.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.72 £70.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.07 £31.50 £31.65
% change year-on-year +8.14% -0.47% -12.69%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -3 4,684 £490 -2.00% 3,248
UK excluding London -5 2,833 £471 -0.95% 2,670
London -7 2,041 £510 -2.86% 986
Work from Home -1 1,542 £477 -4.70% 1,286
North of England -5 777 £450 -5.26% 662
South East -5 670 £496 -0.75% 802
Midlands -4 513 £450 +0.45% 478
North West -4 388 £425 -10.53% 365
West Midlands -2 372 £475 +2.98% 278
Yorkshire -2 342 £469 -1.26% 222
South West -2 323 £514 -0.96% 308
Scotland +1 254 £438 -2.78% 127
East of England -3 226 £450 - 288
East Midlands -2 142 £410 +10.07% 199
Wales -3 69 £400 +3.23% 81
North East -3 56 £450 - 92
Northern Ireland -2 28 £447 +27.71% 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
1 223 (4.09%) Confluence
2 157 (2.88%) SharePoint
3 103 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 85 (1.56%) Apache Spark
5 65 (1.19%) SAS
6 61 (1.12%) Apache
7 47 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.61%) CMS
9 16 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
9 16 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.28%) nginx
11 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 8 (0.15%) Camunda
12 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 8 (0.15%) Skype for Business
13 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.11%) CICS
14 6 (0.11%) JBoss
14 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 313 (5.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (4.04%) Microsoft Office
3 118 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (1.50%) Microsoft Project
4 82 (1.50%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
6 23 (0.42%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.18%) Sketch
8 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.15%) Trello
10 7 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
11 6 (0.11%) CATIA
12 5 (0.092%) Acrobat
12 5 (0.092%) Maya
13 4 (0.073%) InDesign
13 4 (0.073%) InVision
13 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
14 3 (0.055%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 97 (1.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.37%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 14 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
7 14 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
8 13 (0.24%) NEC Housing
8 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
9 11 (0.20%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
9 11 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
10 10 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.17%) SAP Payroll
11 9 (0.17%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 1,147 (21.05%) Azure
2 857 (15.72%) AWS
3 385 (7.06%) Power Platform
4 371 (6.81%) GCP
5 330 (6.06%) Microsoft 365
6 254 (4.66%) Azure DevOps
7 248 (4.55%) GitHub
8 184 (3.38%) Serverless
9 163 (2.99%) Entra ID
10 134 (2.46%) SaaS
11 131 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
12 109 (2.00%) Amazon S3
13 103 (1.89%) AWS Lambda
14 91 (1.67%) OpenShift
15 80 (1.47%) Snowflake
16 77 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
17 74 (1.36%) Dynamics 365
18 70 (1.28%) Power Automate
19 63 (1.16%) PaaS
20 61 (1.12%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 205 (3.76%) Firewall
2 195 (3.58%) DNS
3 123 (2.26%) TCP/IP
4 116 (2.13%) Network Security
5 110 (2.02%) VPN
5 110 (2.02%) WAN
6 102 (1.87%) DHCP
7 89 (1.63%) LAN
8 67 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
9 58 (1.06%) SAN
10 55 (1.01%) BGP
11 48 (0.88%) VLAN
12 41 (0.75%) OSPF
13 35 (0.64%) SD-WAN
13 35 (0.64%) VoIP
14 28 (0.51%) MPLS
15 27 (0.50%) Wireless
16 26 (0.48%) Internet
17 21 (0.39%) Junos
18 19 (0.35%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 309 (5.67%) Power BI
2 190 (3.49%) SQL Server
3 163 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
4 149 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
5 146 (2.68%) Relational Database
6 108 (1.98%) Metadata
7 96 (1.76%) MongoDB
8 93 (1.71%) NoSQL
9 86 (1.58%) Big Data
9 86 (1.58%) Tableau
10 84 (1.54%) Data Lake
11 71 (1.30%) MySQL
12 67 (1.23%) Oracle Database
13 60 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
14 49 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 46 (0.84%) Hadoop
16 41 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
17 36 (0.66%) DynamoDB
18 35 (0.64%) Pentaho
19 31 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 513 (9.41%) JIRA
2 359 (6.59%) Git
3 261 (4.79%) Jenkins
4 170 (3.12%) GitLab
5 84 (1.54%) Selenium
6 53 (0.97%) JUnit
7 43 (0.79%) Postman
8 39 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 32 (0.59%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 25 (0.46%) Cypress.io
12 23 (0.42%) Maven
12 23 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
13 21 (0.39%) Mockito
14 20 (0.37%) JMeter
15 18 (0.33%) SonarQube
16 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.28%) WebDriver
17 14 (0.26%) Artifactory
17 14 (0.26%) CircleCI
General
1 2,915 (53.49%) Social Skills
2 2,044 (37.50%) Analytical Skills
3 1,234 (22.64%) Finance
4 560 (10.28%) Public Sector
5 435 (7.98%) Banking
6 218 (4.00%) Organisational Skills
7 188 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
8 183 (3.36%) Legal
9 169 (3.10%) Retail
10 137 (2.51%) Influencing Skills
11 133 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
12 122 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 102 (1.87%) Front Office
14 96 (1.76%) Telecoms
15 89 (1.63%) Marketing
16 84 (1.54%) Investment Banking
17 78 (1.43%) Manufacturing
18 56 (1.03%) Financial Institution
18 56 (1.03%) Military
19 50 (0.92%) Law
Job Titles
1 749 (13.74%) Analyst
2 720 (13.21%) Developer
3 477 (8.75%) Senior
4 389 (7.14%) Architect
5 345 (6.33%) Lead
6 304 (5.58%) Business Analyst
7 299 (5.49%) Consultant
8 224 (4.11%) Data Engineer
9 221 (4.06%) Project Manager
10 138 (2.53%) Support Engineer
11 129 (2.37%) Java Developer
12 122 (2.24%) IT Support
13 109 (2.00%) Solutions Architect
14 105 (1.93%) Data Analyst
15 100 (1.83%) Software Engineer
16 97 (1.78%) Administrator
16 97 (1.78%) Senior Developer
17 85 (1.56%) Network Engineer
18 84 (1.54%) Python Developer
19 83 (1.52%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 351 (6.44%) REST
2 174 (3.19%) Kafka
3 168 (3.08%) RESTful
4 162 (2.97%) SOAP
5 157 (2.88%) .NET
6 148 (2.72%) Spring
7 142 (2.61%) Node.js
8 136 (2.50%) React
9 113 (2.07%) AngularJS
10 109 (2.00%) JSON
10 109 (2.00%) Spring Boot
11 106 (1.94%) CSS
12 105 (1.93%) HTML
13 99 (1.82%) XML
14 95 (1.74%) LDAP
15 93 (1.71%) Middleware
16 80 (1.47%) OAuth
17 71 (1.30%) PySpark
18 64 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
19 59 (1.08%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 277 (5.08%) Product Ownership
2 233 (4.28%) Cloud Native
3 214 (3.93%) Onboarding
4 166 (3.05%) Data Centre
5 162 (2.97%) Management Information System
6 143 (2.62%) Analytical Mindset
7 142 (2.61%) Self-Motivation
8 115 (2.11%) Data Structures
9 112 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
10 108 (1.98%) Distributed Systems
11 106 (1.94%) Virtual Team
12 103 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
13 100 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
14 80 (1.47%) Algorithms
15 70 (1.28%) Security Posture
16 66 (1.21%) Driving Licence
16 66 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
17 61 (1.12%) Mobile App
18 60 (1.10%) CMDB
19 58 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 579 (10.62%) Windows
2 340 (6.24%) Linux
3 112 (2.06%) Windows Server
4 106 (1.94%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.89%) Unix
6 74 (1.36%) Android
7 66 (1.21%) Apple iOS
8 63 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 59 (1.08%) Mac OS
10 21 (0.39%) VMS
11 17 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.20%) CentOS
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.13%) zOS
16 6 (0.11%) Debian
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.092%) Windows Server 2003
18 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,564 (28.70%) Agile
2 982 (18.02%) CI/CD
3 875 (16.06%) DevOps
4 830 (15.23%) Continuous Improvement
5 828 (15.19%) Stakeholder Management
6 642 (11.78%) Analytics
7 566 (10.39%) Migration
8 562 (10.31%) Decision-Making
9 534 (9.80%) AI
10 498 (9.14%) Project Management
11 486 (8.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 468 (8.59%) Data Modelling
13 434 (7.96%) Test Automation
14 426 (7.82%) Business Intelligence
15 423 (7.76%) Validation
16 413 (7.58%) Scrum
17 400 (7.34%) Change Management
18 399 (7.32%) ITIL
19 398 (7.30%) Customer Service
20 353 (6.48%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,036 (19.01%) Python
2 942 (17.28%) SQL
3 476 (8.73%) Java
4 367 (6.73%) PowerShell
5 295 (5.41%) JavaScript
6 220 (4.04%) C#
7 194 (3.56%) TypeScript
8 153 (2.81%) Bash
9 85 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 72 (1.32%) Shell Script
11 67 (1.23%) C++
12 53 (0.97%) Go
13 45 (0.83%) Perl
14 42 (0.77%) Bicep
15 41 (0.75%) T-SQL
16 39 (0.72%) R
16 39 (0.72%) Scala
17 35 (0.64%) C
18 34 (0.62%) Apex Code
19 33 (0.61%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,195 (21.93%) Security Cleared
2 832 (15.27%) SC Cleared
3 677 (12.42%) Degree
4 230 (4.22%) Computer Science Degree
5 213 (3.91%) DV Cleared
6 172 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
7 125 (2.29%) Cisco Certification
8 110 (2.02%) PMP
9 109 (2.00%) PMI Certification
10 102 (1.87%) CISSP
10 102 (1.87%) Microsoft Certification
11 97 (1.78%) Master's Degree
12 69 (1.27%) Azure Certification
13 66 (1.21%) CISM
14 57 (1.05%) CCNA
14 57 (1.05%) CCNP
15 46 (0.84%) A+ Certification
16 43 (0.79%) AWS Certification
17 42 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
17 42 (0.77%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 356 (6.53%) QA
2 350 (6.42%) Data Quality
3 164 (3.01%) GDPR
4 110 (2.02%) Accessibility
5 101 (1.85%) PMO
6 93 (1.71%) NIST
7 91 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 73 (1.34%) SLA
9 45 (0.83%) GRC
10 34 (0.62%) WCAG
11 33 (0.61%) PCI DSS
12 29 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.48%) PSD2
14 24 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
16 18 (0.33%) ISO 8583
17 15 (0.28%) HL7
17 15 (0.28%) IFRS
18 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 434 (7.96%) Docker
2 390 (7.16%) Active Directory
3 115 (2.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.88%) vSphere
5 39 (0.72%) VMware NSX
6 31 (0.57%) Hyper-V
7 24 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.35%) Firmware
9 16 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
11 10 (0.18%) vCloud
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
12 9 (0.17%) Squid
12 9 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.092%) IAG
15 4 (0.073%) Snort
16 3 (0.055%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.055%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 500 (9.17%) Kubernetes
2 319 (5.85%) Terraform
3 191 (3.50%) Ansible
4 130 (2.39%) Grafana
5 128 (2.35%) Microsoft Intune
6 101 (1.85%) Prometheus
7 83 (1.52%) SCCM
8 43 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
10 36 (0.66%) vCenter Server
11 32 (0.59%) Kibana
12 31 (0.57%) Puppet
13 28 (0.51%) Argo
14 24 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 20 (0.37%) Nessus
16 19 (0.35%) Control-M
17 15 (0.28%) vRealize
18 14 (0.26%) IBM Guardium
19 12 (0.22%) HP ALM
20 11 (0.20%) Consul
Vendors
1 973 (17.85%) Microsoft
2 363 (6.66%) Oracle
3 265 (4.86%) SAP
4 235 (4.31%) ServiceNow
5 203 (3.72%) VMware
6 170 (3.12%) Google
7 167 (3.06%) Databricks
8 141 (2.59%) Splunk
9 129 (2.37%) Cisco
10 115 (2.11%) Salesforce
11 80 (1.47%) Red Hat
12 70 (1.28%) CyberArk
13 67 (1.23%) BeyondTrust
13 67 (1.23%) Dell
14 61 (1.12%) Citrix
15 57 (1.05%) Talend
16 55 (1.01%) IBM
17 53 (0.97%) Informatica
17 53 (0.97%) Palo Alto
18 51 (0.94%) Workday