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

6 months to
11 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 5,255 4,989 4,692
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.04% 16.97% 10.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.07% 18.66% 12.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,141 3,115 2,867
10th Percentile £263 £250 £239
25th Percentile £382 £393 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £503
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -0.60% -4.19%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £715 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £475 £488
% change year-on-year -3.16% -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 £18.13 £21.24 £15.00
% change year-on-year -14.64% +41.60% -62.77%

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 40,197 26,741 37,098
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.41% 90.94% 86.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,242 17,210 23,886
10th Percentile £320 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.30% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,406 1,094 2,440
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.44 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.87 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.13 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.52% -21.23% +0.69%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.00 £38.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -28.95% +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 11 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 11 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 11 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 4,501 £492 -1.60% 3,054
UK excluding London -5 2,796 £460 -3.16% 2,402
London -11 1,911 £513 -2.38% 971
Work from Home -1 1,505 £475 -5.00% 1,220
North of England -7 747 £449 -8.23% 591
South East -6 654 £492 -1.60% 761
Midlands -5 518 £453 +1.46% 391
North West -6 360 £410 -16.16% 343
West Midlands -5 355 £474 +2.76% 235
Yorkshire -6 341 £460 -5.15% 185
South West -1 324 £500 - 284
Scotland -1 264 £425 -7.00% 101
East of England -6 214 £450 - 267
East Midlands 0 162 £443 +18.56% 157
Wales -3 69 £400 +20.78% 53
North East -7 53 £425 -11.23% 68
Northern Ireland -2 26 £430 +5.52% 20
Channel Islands -4 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
1 214 (4.07%) Confluence
2 148 (2.82%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 84 (1.60%) Apache Spark
5 58 (1.10%) Apache
6 49 (0.93%) SAS
7 48 (0.91%) 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%) CICS
13 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 4 (0.076%) WordPress
Applications
1 297 (5.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (4.26%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 80 (1.52%) Microsoft Project
5 77 (1.47%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.17%) Sketch
10 8 (0.15%) CATIA
11 7 (0.13%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.13%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
11 7 (0.13%) Trello
12 6 (0.11%) Revit
13 5 (0.095%) Maya
14 4 (0.076%) Acrobat
14 4 (0.076%) CPLEX
14 4 (0.076%) InDesign
15 3 (0.057%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 122 (2.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.38%) Aladdin
5 18 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
6 16 (0.30%) 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%) Workday HCM
12 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
12 10 (0.19%) SAP GRC
13 9 (0.17%) iTrent
13 9 (0.17%) NetSuite
13 9 (0.17%) SAP ERP
13 9 (0.17%) SAP SD
13 9 (0.17%) Shopify
14 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,054 (20.06%) Azure
2 808 (15.38%) AWS
3 391 (7.44%) Power Platform
4 349 (6.64%) Microsoft 365
5 334 (6.36%) GCP
6 239 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
7 216 (4.11%) GitHub
8 158 (3.01%) Entra ID
9 148 (2.82%) Serverless
10 127 (2.42%) SaaS
11 112 (2.13%) GitHub Actions
12 94 (1.79%) Amazon S3
13 88 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
14 78 (1.48%) Dynamics 365
15 74 (1.41%) Power Automate
15 74 (1.41%) Snowflake
16 72 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
17 70 (1.33%) OpenShift
18 60 (1.14%) PowerApps
19 52 (0.99%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 188 (3.58%) DNS
2 173 (3.29%) Firewall
3 121 (2.30%) TCP/IP
4 106 (2.02%) VPN
5 105 (2.00%) WAN
6 101 (1.92%) DHCP
7 89 (1.69%) Network Security
8 84 (1.60%) SAN
9 78 (1.48%) LAN
10 66 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
11 50 (0.95%) BGP
12 49 (0.93%) VLAN
13 43 (0.82%) OSPF
14 40 (0.76%) SD-WAN
15 31 (0.59%) VoIP
16 29 (0.55%) Wireless
17 26 (0.49%) VXLAN
18 25 (0.48%) Internet
19 24 (0.46%) MPLS
20 21 (0.40%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 307 (5.84%) Power BI
2 198 (3.77%) SQL Server
3 164 (3.12%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.57%) Relational Database
5 134 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
6 115 (2.19%) Metadata
7 87 (1.66%) MongoDB
8 86 (1.64%) Tableau
9 83 (1.58%) NoSQL
10 82 (1.56%) Big Data
11 76 (1.45%) Data Lake
12 62 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
13 61 (1.16%) MySQL
14 52 (0.99%) Oracle Database
15 51 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 42 (0.80%) Hadoop
17 34 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
18 31 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
18 31 (0.59%) Power Query
19 29 (0.55%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 500 (9.51%) JIRA
2 304 (5.78%) Git
3 196 (3.73%) Jenkins
4 139 (2.65%) GitLab
5 66 (1.26%) Selenium
6 39 (0.74%) Postman
7 31 (0.59%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.49%) 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 (0.34%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 16 (0.30%) Maven
15 16 (0.30%) Mockito
15 16 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
16 15 (0.29%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.27%) Zephyr
18 11 (0.21%) Appium
General
1 2,742 (52.18%) Social Skills
2 2,018 (38.40%) Analytical Skills
3 1,218 (23.18%) Finance
4 504 (9.59%) Public Sector
5 404 (7.69%) Banking
6 225 (4.28%) Organisational Skills
7 185 (3.52%) Retail
8 178 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
9 153 (2.91%) Legal
10 129 (2.45%) Presentation Skills
11 118 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 117 (2.23%) Influencing Skills
13 97 (1.85%) Front Office
14 92 (1.75%) Telecoms
15 90 (1.71%) Manufacturing
16 87 (1.66%) Marketing
17 79 (1.50%) Investment Banking
18 62 (1.18%) Back Office
19 59 (1.12%) Law
20 55 (1.05%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 736 (14.01%) Analyst
2 641 (12.20%) Developer
3 461 (8.77%) Senior
4 364 (6.93%) Architect
5 328 (6.24%) Lead
6 298 (5.67%) Business Analyst
7 262 (4.99%) Consultant
8 236 (4.49%) Data Engineer
9 202 (3.84%) Project Manager
10 141 (2.68%) Support Engineer
11 130 (2.47%) IT Support
12 122 (2.32%) Data Analyst
13 112 (2.13%) Java Developer
14 102 (1.94%) IT Engineer
15 99 (1.88%) Solutions Architect
16 96 (1.83%) Administrator
16 96 (1.83%) Network Engineer
17 94 (1.79%) Software Engineer
18 92 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 76 (1.45%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 299 (5.69%) REST
2 153 (2.91%) Kafka
3 144 (2.74%) .NET
4 140 (2.66%) SOAP
5 137 (2.61%) RESTful
6 134 (2.55%) Spring
7 130 (2.47%) React
8 114 (2.17%) CSS
9 110 (2.09%) Node.js
10 107 (2.04%) HTML
11 104 (1.98%) AngularJS
12 102 (1.94%) Spring Boot
13 101 (1.92%) LDAP
14 97 (1.85%) Middleware
15 95 (1.81%) JSON
16 89 (1.69%) XML
17 73 (1.39%) PySpark
18 69 (1.31%) OAuth
19 57 (1.08%) Oracle Fusion
20 53 (1.01%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 268 (5.10%) Product Ownership
2 228 (4.34%) Onboarding
3 208 (3.96%) Cloud Native
4 204 (3.88%) Data Centre
5 158 (3.01%) Self-Motivation
6 152 (2.89%) Analytical Mindset
7 147 (2.80%) Management Information System
8 119 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
9 116 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
10 113 (2.15%) Virtual Team
11 112 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
12 107 (2.04%) Data Structures
13 98 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
14 73 (1.39%) Driving Licence
15 65 (1.24%) Security Posture
16 62 (1.18%) Mobile App
17 59 (1.12%) Algorithms
18 55 (1.05%) AI Agents
19 53 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
20 49 (0.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 593 (11.28%) Windows
2 303 (5.77%) Linux
3 109 (2.07%) Windows 10
3 109 (2.07%) Windows Server
4 99 (1.88%) Unix
5 98 (1.86%) Android
6 89 (1.69%) Apple iOS
7 73 (1.39%) Mac OS
8 53 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 21 (0.40%) Ubuntu
10 19 (0.36%) VMS
11 15 (0.29%) CentOS
12 12 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.17%) zOS
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
15 7 (0.13%) Debian
16 4 (0.076%) AIX
16 4 (0.076%) Rocky
16 4 (0.076%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,430 (27.21%) Agile
2 881 (16.76%) CI/CD
3 792 (15.07%) Continuous Improvement
4 791 (15.05%) DevOps
5 753 (14.33%) Stakeholder Management
6 585 (11.13%) Decision-Making
7 571 (10.87%) Migration
8 570 (10.85%) AI
9 565 (10.75%) Analytics
10 460 (8.75%) Project Management
11 458 (8.72%) Data Modelling
12 441 (8.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 427 (8.13%) Customer Service
14 425 (8.09%) Validation
15 414 (7.88%) Business Intelligence
16 404 (7.69%) ITIL
17 396 (7.54%) Test Automation
18 363 (6.91%) Scrum
19 361 (6.87%) Change Management
20 321 (6.11%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 946 (18.00%) Python
2 912 (17.35%) SQL
3 429 (8.16%) Java
4 327 (6.22%) PowerShell
5 279 (5.31%) JavaScript
6 201 (3.82%) C#
7 169 (3.22%) TypeScript
8 118 (2.25%) Bash
9 84 (1.60%) PL/SQL
10 72 (1.37%) C++
11 59 (1.12%) Shell Script
12 51 (0.97%) Go
13 45 (0.86%) R
14 38 (0.72%) Bicep
14 38 (0.72%) 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 1,151 (21.90%) Security Cleared
2 793 (15.09%) SC Cleared
3 628 (11.95%) Degree
4 203 (3.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 195 (3.71%) DV Cleared
6 167 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
7 139 (2.65%) Cisco Certification
8 125 (2.38%) Microsoft Certification
9 93 (1.77%) CISSP
10 88 (1.67%) PMP
11 82 (1.56%) PMI Certification
12 77 (1.47%) CCNA
13 73 (1.39%) Master's Degree
14 71 (1.35%) A+ Certification
15 67 (1.27%) Azure Certification
15 67 (1.27%) Network+ Certification
16 64 (1.22%) CISM
17 58 (1.10%) MCSE
18 47 (0.89%) CCNP
19 38 (0.72%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 349 (6.64%) Data Quality
2 303 (5.77%) QA
3 156 (2.97%) GDPR
4 102 (1.94%) Accessibility
5 101 (1.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 93 (1.77%) PMO
7 84 (1.60%) NIST
8 74 (1.41%) SLA
9 50 (0.95%) GRC
10 30 (0.57%) WCAG
11 29 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
12 28 (0.53%) PCI DSS
13 27 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.40%) ISO 20022
15 17 (0.32%) IFRS
15 17 (0.32%) PSD2
16 15 (0.29%) NCSC
17 14 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
18 13 (0.25%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 385 (7.33%) Active Directory
2 339 (6.45%) Docker
3 118 (2.25%) VMware Infrastructure
4 46 (0.88%) vSphere
5 39 (0.74%) VMware NSX
6 35 (0.67%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.44%) Firmware
8 22 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
9 20 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
10 18 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
11 14 (0.27%) vCloud
12 11 (0.21%) RACF
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
14 9 (0.17%) ACF2
15 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.11%) IAG
17 4 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
17 4 (0.076%) NFS
17 4 (0.076%) Snort
Systems Management
1 421 (8.01%) Kubernetes
2 281 (5.35%) Terraform
3 179 (3.41%) Ansible
4 119 (2.26%) Microsoft Intune
5 117 (2.23%) Grafana
6 90 (1.71%) Prometheus
7 80 (1.52%) SCCM
8 43 (0.82%) vCenter Server
9 41 (0.78%) FortiGate
10 39 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.51%) Kibana
12 24 (0.46%) Argo
12 24 (0.46%) Puppet
13 22 (0.42%) Control-M
14 21 (0.40%) Nessus
15 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 14 (0.27%) WSUS
18 12 (0.23%) CA Endevor
18 12 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 951 (18.10%) Microsoft
2 351 (6.68%) Oracle
3 295 (5.61%) SAP
4 229 (4.36%) ServiceNow
5 196 (3.73%) VMware
6 156 (2.97%) Databricks
7 151 (2.87%) Google
8 132 (2.51%) Cisco
9 126 (2.40%) Splunk
10 111 (2.11%) Salesforce
11 86 (1.64%) Dell
12 75 (1.43%) CyberArk
13 70 (1.33%) BeyondTrust
14 65 (1.24%) Red Hat
15 61 (1.16%) Workday
16 54 (1.03%) Adobe
17 52 (0.99%) Citrix
17 52 (0.99%) Palo Alto
18 50 (0.95%) HP
18 50 (0.95%) IBM