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 4 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,570 4,663 4,717
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.22% 15.52% 10.66%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.28% 17.22% 12.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,437 2,860 2,940
10th Percentile £287 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% - -6.54%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 320 183 386
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.05 £11.75
25th Percentile £15.59 £17.10 £14.16
Median hourly rate £20.00 £26.50 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.53% +39.47% -45.71%
75th Percentile £41.00 £44.38 £46.18
90th Percentile £70.38 £72.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.30 £22.69 £17.22
% change year-on-year -23.75% +31.75% -35.58%

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 36,453 27,072 38,415
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.50% 90.11% 86.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,124 16,979 25,034
10th Percentile £313 £305 £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 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.13% -1.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,168 886 2,250
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.05 £16.13
Median hourly rate £27.94 £32.50 £32.85
Median % change year-on-year -14.03% -1.05% -6.16%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.31 £58.75
90th Percentile £73.46 £75.13 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £33.50
% change year-on-year -20.81% -5.19% -4.29%

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 4 March 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 4 March 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 4 March 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 -1 4,768 £492 -1.60% 3,712
UK excluding London -4 2,879 £475 - 3,160
London -3 2,087 £517 -1.57% 1,055
Work from Home +1 1,626 £481 -3.75% 1,619
North of England -2 775 £450 -6.74% 695
South East -1 674 £492 -1.60% 993
Midlands -1 534 £450 +3.63% 476
North West -1 389 £424 -10.66% 360
West Midlands 0 388 £475 +5.79% 254
Yorkshire -4 334 £475 -5.00% 250
South West -1 322 £535 +4.39% 349
Scotland 0 274 £447 -0.67% 160
East of England -3 244 £454 +0.89% 429
East Midlands -3 147 £402 +4.42% 220
Wales +1 67 £400 +3.23% 108
North East -4 60 £450 -0.88% 99
Northern Ireland -1 30 £475 +43.94% 51
Channel Islands 0 1 - - 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 (4.04%) Confluence
2 167 (3.00%) SharePoint
3 112 (2.01%) Microsoft Exchange
4 94 (1.69%) Apache Spark
5 68 (1.22%) Apache
6 67 (1.20%) SAS
7 51 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
8 36 (0.65%) CMS
9 22 (0.39%) Skype for Business
10 21 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.27%) nginx
12 11 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 11 (0.20%) JBoss
13 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
14 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.13%) Camunda
14 7 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 321 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 233 (4.18%) Microsoft Office
3 127 (2.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 84 (1.51%) MS Visio
5 79 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
6 22 (0.39%) Chatbot
7 18 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.11%) Trello
11 5 (0.090%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.090%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.072%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.072%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.072%) InDesign
12 4 (0.072%) InVision
12 4 (0.072%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.054%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.054%) Notion
Business Applications
1 99 (1.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.34%) Aladdin
5 18 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.25%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
7 14 (0.25%) SAP ERP
7 14 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 13 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
9 12 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.20%) SAP HR
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,205 (21.63%) Azure
2 874 (15.69%) AWS
3 402 (7.22%) GCP
4 382 (6.86%) Power Platform
5 348 (6.25%) Microsoft 365
6 267 (4.79%) GitHub
7 254 (4.56%) Azure DevOps
8 194 (3.48%) Serverless
9 167 (3.00%) Entra ID
10 141 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
11 139 (2.50%) SaaS
12 104 (1.87%) Amazon S3
13 99 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
14 94 (1.69%) OpenShift
15 92 (1.65%) Snowflake
16 83 (1.49%) Azure Data Factory
17 82 (1.47%) Dynamics 365
18 72 (1.29%) PaaS
19 70 (1.26%) Power Automate
20 64 (1.15%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 218 (3.91%) Firewall
2 199 (3.57%) DNS
3 132 (2.37%) TCP/IP
4 117 (2.10%) VPN
5 115 (2.06%) Network Security
6 113 (2.03%) DHCP
7 106 (1.90%) WAN
8 83 (1.49%) LAN
9 61 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
10 53 (0.95%) VLAN
11 52 (0.93%) BGP
12 40 (0.72%) SAN
13 38 (0.68%) OSPF
14 34 (0.61%) VoIP
15 27 (0.48%) Wireless
16 24 (0.43%) SD-WAN
16 24 (0.43%) SSH
17 23 (0.41%) SSL
18 22 (0.39%) Skype
19 21 (0.38%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (5.58%) Power BI
2 187 (3.36%) SQL Server
3 172 (3.09%) PostgreSQL
4 169 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
5 162 (2.91%) Relational Database
6 114 (2.05%) MongoDB
7 113 (2.03%) NoSQL
8 91 (1.63%) Metadata
9 90 (1.62%) MySQL
10 83 (1.49%) Tableau
11 80 (1.44%) Big Data
12 74 (1.33%) Data Lake
13 73 (1.31%) Oracle Database
14 55 (0.99%) Oracle Reports
15 53 (0.95%) Hadoop
16 50 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 43 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
18 39 (0.70%) DynamoDB
19 37 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
19 37 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 509 (9.14%) JIRA
2 387 (6.95%) Git
3 279 (5.01%) Jenkins
4 180 (3.23%) GitLab
5 87 (1.56%) Selenium
6 64 (1.15%) JUnit
7 46 (0.83%) Postman
8 44 (0.79%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.48%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.47%) Maven
12 25 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
13 24 (0.43%) Cypress.io
13 24 (0.43%) JMeter
14 23 (0.41%) SonarQube
15 21 (0.38%) Mockito
16 17 (0.31%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.27%) CircleCI
17 15 (0.27%) IntelliJ
18 14 (0.25%) WebDriver
General
1 3,034 (54.47%) Social Skills
2 2,013 (36.14%) Analytical Skills
3 1,236 (22.19%) Finance
4 556 (9.98%) Public Sector
5 443 (7.95%) Banking
6 215 (3.86%) Organisational Skills
7 172 (3.09%) Legal
8 171 (3.07%) Documentation Skills
9 147 (2.64%) Retail
10 142 (2.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 142 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
11 136 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
12 102 (1.83%) Front Office
12 102 (1.83%) Telecoms
13 96 (1.72%) Marketing
14 91 (1.63%) Investment Banking
15 81 (1.45%) Manufacturing
16 65 (1.17%) Military
17 57 (1.02%) Financial Institution
18 45 (0.81%) Law
Job Titles
1 790 (14.18%) Developer
2 776 (13.93%) Analyst
3 489 (8.78%) Senior
4 372 (6.68%) Architect
5 349 (6.27%) Lead
6 317 (5.69%) Business Analyst
7 310 (5.57%) Consultant
8 218 (3.91%) Data Engineer
9 210 (3.77%) Project Manager
10 155 (2.78%) Support Engineer
11 137 (2.46%) Java Developer
12 133 (2.39%) IT Support
13 114 (2.05%) Data Analyst
14 111 (1.99%) Senior Developer
15 104 (1.87%) Software Engineer
16 96 (1.72%) Solutions Architect
17 92 (1.65%) Python Developer
18 90 (1.62%) Administrator
19 86 (1.54%) Network Engineer
19 86 (1.54%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 378 (6.79%) REST
2 190 (3.41%) Kafka
3 189 (3.39%) RESTful
3 189 (3.39%) SOAP
4 178 (3.20%) .NET
5 167 (3.00%) React
6 166 (2.98%) Spring
7 165 (2.96%) Node.js
8 136 (2.44%) HTML
9 130 (2.33%) CSS
10 127 (2.28%) AngularJS
11 119 (2.14%) JSON
12 116 (2.08%) Spring Boot
13 104 (1.87%) XML
14 94 (1.69%) LDAP
15 93 (1.67%) Middleware
16 78 (1.40%) OAuth
17 71 (1.27%) Oracle Fusion
18 68 (1.22%) Web Services
19 67 (1.20%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 272 (4.88%) Product Ownership
2 243 (4.36%) Cloud Native
3 205 (3.68%) Onboarding
4 179 (3.21%) Management Information System
5 150 (2.69%) Data Centre
6 138 (2.48%) Analytical Mindset
7 129 (2.32%) Data Structures
8 127 (2.28%) Self-Motivation
9 114 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
10 103 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
11 99 (1.78%) Virtual Team
12 98 (1.76%) Algorithms
13 93 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
14 88 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
15 82 (1.47%) Security Posture
16 73 (1.31%) CMDB
17 72 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
18 66 (1.18%) Mobile App
19 65 (1.17%) Driving Licence
20 56 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 583 (10.47%) Windows
2 362 (6.50%) Linux
3 119 (2.14%) Unix
4 109 (1.96%) Windows Server
5 106 (1.90%) Windows 10
6 70 (1.26%) Android
7 67 (1.20%) Apple iOS
7 67 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 57 (1.02%) Mac OS
9 21 (0.38%) VMS
10 16 (0.29%) CentOS
11 15 (0.27%) Ubuntu
12 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.14%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.090%) Windows Server 2003
16 5 (0.090%) zOS
17 4 (0.072%) Debian
17 4 (0.072%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,624 (29.16%) Agile
2 1,040 (18.67%) CI/CD
3 896 (16.09%) DevOps
4 828 (14.87%) Stakeholder Management
5 800 (14.36%) Continuous Improvement
6 626 (11.24%) Analytics
7 577 (10.36%) Migration
8 557 (10.00%) Decision-Making
9 504 (9.05%) AI
10 478 (8.58%) Project Management
11 474 (8.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 462 (8.29%) Data Modelling
13 457 (8.20%) Test Automation
14 429 (7.70%) Scrum
15 420 (7.54%) Business Intelligence
16 415 (7.45%) Validation
17 392 (7.04%) Customer Service
18 390 (7.00%) ITIL
19 387 (6.95%) Containerisation
20 382 (6.86%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,078 (19.35%) Python
2 955 (17.15%) SQL
3 519 (9.32%) Java
4 371 (6.66%) PowerShell
5 333 (5.98%) JavaScript
6 234 (4.20%) C#
7 219 (3.93%) TypeScript
8 155 (2.78%) Bash
9 83 (1.49%) Shell Script
10 74 (1.33%) PL/SQL
11 62 (1.11%) C++
11 62 (1.11%) Go
12 49 (0.88%) Perl
13 42 (0.75%) Scala
14 40 (0.72%) Bicep
14 40 (0.72%) T-SQL
15 38 (0.68%) Ruby
16 36 (0.65%) VBA
17 35 (0.63%) R
18 33 (0.59%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,184 (21.26%) Security Cleared
2 835 (14.99%) SC Cleared
3 742 (13.32%) Degree
4 253 (4.54%) Computer Science Degree
5 209 (3.75%) DV Cleared
6 157 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
7 112 (2.01%) Master's Degree
8 104 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
8 104 (1.87%) PMI Certification
9 103 (1.85%) Microsoft Certification
10 102 (1.83%) PMP
11 95 (1.71%) CISSP
12 77 (1.38%) Azure Certification
13 60 (1.08%) CISM
14 56 (1.01%) AWS Certification
14 56 (1.01%) CCNP
15 44 (0.79%) CCNA
16 39 (0.70%) A+ Certification
16 39 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
17 30 (0.54%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 361 (6.48%) QA
2 331 (5.94%) Data Quality
3 159 (2.85%) GDPR
4 121 (2.17%) Accessibility
5 89 (1.60%) PMO
6 86 (1.54%) NIST
7 85 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 63 (1.13%) SLA
9 37 (0.66%) PCI DSS
10 34 (0.61%) GRC
11 33 (0.59%) WCAG
12 27 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.41%) PSD2
14 22 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 18 (0.32%) ISO 20022
16 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
17 16 (0.29%) EU AI Act
18 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
18 15 (0.27%) IFRS
19 14 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 492 (8.83%) Docker
2 392 (7.04%) Active Directory
3 118 (2.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.79%) vSphere
5 36 (0.65%) Hyper-V
6 34 (0.61%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
8 21 (0.38%) Firmware
8 21 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.20%) RACF
10 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.16%) ACF2
12 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 8 (0.14%) Squid
12 8 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
13 7 (0.13%) vCloud
14 6 (0.11%) HDFS
15 4 (0.072%) Snort
16 3 (0.054%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.054%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 538 (9.66%) Kubernetes
2 319 (5.73%) Terraform
3 206 (3.70%) Ansible
4 137 (2.46%) Grafana
5 121 (2.17%) Microsoft Intune
6 110 (1.97%) Prometheus
7 100 (1.80%) SCCM
8 50 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
9 39 (0.70%) Puppet
10 36 (0.65%) FortiGate
10 36 (0.65%) Kibana
11 32 (0.57%) Argo
11 32 (0.57%) Nessus
12 29 (0.52%) vCenter Server
13 25 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 23 (0.41%) Control-M
15 22 (0.39%) IBM Guardium
16 16 (0.29%) Red Hat Satellite
17 15 (0.27%) vRealize
18 12 (0.22%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,040 (18.67%) Microsoft
2 369 (6.62%) Oracle
3 272 (4.88%) SAP
4 250 (4.49%) ServiceNow
5 209 (3.75%) VMware
6 178 (3.20%) Google
7 163 (2.93%) Databricks
8 161 (2.89%) Splunk
9 136 (2.44%) Cisco
10 114 (2.05%) Salesforce
11 89 (1.60%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.31%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.13%) BeyondTrust
14 58 (1.04%) Workday
15 57 (1.02%) Citrix
15 57 (1.02%) IBM
15 57 (1.02%) Palo Alto
15 57 (1.02%) Talend
16 54 (0.97%) Dell
17 51 (0.92%) Informatica