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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +5
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,844 5,048 4,567
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.65% 15.44% 12.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.62% 17.06% 14.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,262 3,032 2,663
10th Percentile £250 £231 £260
25th Percentile £380 £375 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.96%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £713 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 573 312 229
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.66 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.00
Median hourly rate £18.75 £20.13 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -6.84% +24.01% -70.25%
75th Percentile £37.16 £34.48 £30.00
90th Percentile £72.30 £63.40 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £18.73 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.90% +15.40% -70.49%

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 46,309 29,588 32,312
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.42% 90.49% 85.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,063 18,372 19,750
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £627 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,189 1,818 1,403
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.25 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -48.10% +1.18%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 -7 5,035 £500 +2.46% 10,776
UK excluding London -3 3,136 £450 - 7,227
London -12 2,164 £525 +4.90% 4,509
Work from Home -4 1,563 £500 - 4,046
South East -3 800 £478 +6.22% 1,769
North of England -9 729 £449 -5.53% 1,618
Midlands -5 613 £450 +2.39% 1,243
West Midlands -8 437 £450 -5.26% 748
North West -10 359 £450 -4.05% 864
South West -6 337 £500 +11.11% 877
Scotland -2 314 £450 - 539
Yorkshire -6 300 £450 -7.64% 529
East of England 0 282 £438 -12.50% 732
East Midlands +2 173 £475 +26.67% 493
North East -12 72 £375 -16.67% 240
Wales -7 62 £475 +22.58% 189
Northern Ireland -5 25 £419 -11.84% 365
Channel Islands -3 5 £600 - 3

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
1 242 (4.14%) SharePoint
2 241 (4.12%) Confluence
3 107 (1.83%) Microsoft Exchange
4 58 (0.99%) Apache Spark
5 45 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
6 42 (0.72%) Apache
7 31 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
8 30 (0.51%) SAS
9 28 (0.48%) CMS
10 18 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 12 (0.21%) CICS
12 12 (0.21%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 8 (0.14%) IIS
15 7 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 7 (0.12%) Appian
15 7 (0.12%) Mule
15 7 (0.12%) WordPress
16 6 (0.10%) Anypoint
Applications
1 340 (5.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 276 (4.72%) Microsoft Office
3 131 (2.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (1.13%) Microsoft Project
5 61 (1.04%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.46%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 27 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.33%) Chatbot
8 17 (0.29%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.26%) Revit
9 15 (0.26%) Sketch
10 11 (0.19%) Trello
11 9 (0.15%) Navisworks
12 8 (0.14%) Windchill
13 6 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
13 6 (0.10%) CATIA
13 6 (0.10%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.10%) Final Cut Pro
14 4 (0.068%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.051%) DaVinci Resolve
Business Applications
1 139 (2.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
3 40 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
4 31 (0.53%) NetSuite
5 29 (0.50%) SAP GRC
5 29 (0.50%) Workday HCM
6 26 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
7 15 (0.26%) iTrent
7 15 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
8 13 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.22%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.21%) Teamcenter
10 11 (0.19%) Aladdin
10 11 (0.19%) Finacle
11 10 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.17%) SAP CRM
11 10 (0.17%) SAP ERP
11 10 (0.17%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
12 9 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,130 (19.34%) Azure
2 812 (13.89%) AWS
3 529 (9.05%) Microsoft 365
4 468 (8.01%) Power Platform
5 334 (5.72%) GCP
6 281 (4.81%) Azure DevOps
7 249 (4.26%) Entra ID
8 212 (3.63%) GitHub
9 162 (2.77%) SaaS
10 128 (2.19%) Serverless
11 116 (1.98%) Power Automate
12 98 (1.68%) Microsoft Copilot
13 95 (1.63%) Dynamics 365
14 91 (1.56%) GitHub Actions
15 86 (1.47%) PowerApps
16 78 (1.33%) OneDrive
17 73 (1.25%) Snowflake
18 65 (1.11%) Amazon S3
19 63 (1.08%) AWS Lambda
20 61 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 222 (3.80%) DNS
2 199 (3.41%) Firewall
3 166 (2.84%) VPN
4 134 (2.29%) TCP/IP
5 133 (2.28%) DHCP
6 123 (2.10%) WAN
7 116 (1.98%) Network Security
8 100 (1.71%) LAN
9 83 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.13%) SAN
11 65 (1.11%) Wireless
12 54 (0.92%) VLAN
13 48 (0.82%) BGP
14 40 (0.68%) VoIP
15 34 (0.58%) MPLS
15 34 (0.58%) SD-WAN
16 31 (0.53%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.50%) HTTP
18 27 (0.46%) SSL
19 25 (0.43%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 354 (6.06%) Power BI
2 213 (3.64%) SQL Server
3 196 (3.35%) Relational Database
4 172 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
5 158 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
6 109 (1.87%) Metadata
7 103 (1.76%) MongoDB
8 86 (1.47%) NoSQL
9 83 (1.42%) Tableau
10 80 (1.37%) Data Lake
11 66 (1.13%) Oracle Database
12 63 (1.08%) MySQL
13 44 (0.75%) Big Data
13 44 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
14 35 (0.60%) Db2
15 34 (0.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 32 (0.55%) Power Query
17 29 (0.50%) BigQuery
18 27 (0.46%) Delta Lake
18 27 (0.46%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 503 (8.61%) JIRA
2 395 (6.76%) Git
3 204 (3.49%) Jenkins
4 144 (2.46%) GitLab
5 80 (1.37%) Selenium
6 48 (0.82%) Maven
7 44 (0.75%) Gradle
8 42 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 41 (0.70%) Cypress.io
10 40 (0.68%) JUnit
10 40 (0.68%) Postman
11 32 (0.55%) Bitbucket
12 28 (0.48%) REST Assured
13 27 (0.46%) SonarQube
14 23 (0.39%) Mockito
15 22 (0.38%) JMeter
16 20 (0.34%) Oracle Forms
17 17 (0.29%) Gatling
17 17 (0.29%) WebDriver
17 17 (0.29%) Zephyr
General
1 3,153 (53.95%) Social Skills
2 2,477 (42.39%) Analytical Skills
3 1,323 (22.64%) Finance
4 609 (10.42%) Public Sector
5 464 (7.94%) Banking
6 297 (5.08%) Organisational Skills
7 239 (4.09%) Manufacturing
8 201 (3.44%) Documentation Skills
9 184 (3.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 183 (3.13%) Retail
11 178 (3.05%) Influencing Skills
12 150 (2.57%) Legal
13 127 (2.17%) Front Office
14 122 (2.09%) Telecoms
15 121 (2.07%) Marketing
15 121 (2.07%) Presentation Skills
16 95 (1.63%) Investment Banking
17 86 (1.47%) Back Office
18 71 (1.21%) Law
19 69 (1.18%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 753 (12.89%) Analyst
2 740 (12.66%) Developer
3 553 (9.46%) Senior
4 421 (7.20%) Lead
5 335 (5.73%) Architect
6 262 (4.48%) Consultant
7 252 (4.31%) Business Analyst
8 237 (4.06%) IT Support
9 222 (3.80%) Support Engineer
10 205 (3.51%) Data Engineer
11 167 (2.86%) Administrator
12 159 (2.72%) Project Manager
13 153 (2.62%) IT Engineer
14 136 (2.33%) Java Developer
15 127 (2.17%) Data Analyst
16 120 (2.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 112 (1.92%) Network Engineer
18 108 (1.85%) IT Support Engineer
19 107 (1.83%) DevOps Engineer
20 106 (1.81%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 412 (7.05%) REST
2 338 (5.78%) Terraform
3 190 (3.25%) .NET
4 187 (3.20%) RESTful
5 174 (2.98%) SOAP
6 161 (2.75%) React
7 153 (2.62%) Kafka
8 147 (2.52%) Spring
9 141 (2.41%) HTML
10 139 (2.38%) XML
11 138 (2.36%) JSON
12 136 (2.33%) CSS
13 124 (2.12%) Spring Boot
13 124 (2.12%) Web Services
14 116 (1.98%) Middleware
15 99 (1.69%) Node.js
16 94 (1.61%) AngularJS
17 87 (1.49%) OAuth
18 67 (1.15%) PySpark
19 57 (0.98%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 339 (5.80%) Onboarding
2 278 (4.76%) Product Ownership
3 276 (4.72%) Cloud Native
4 222 (3.80%) Self-Motivation
5 212 (3.63%) Enterprise Software
6 206 (3.52%) Management Information System
7 182 (3.11%) Data Centre
8 160 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
9 145 (2.48%) Data Structures
10 133 (2.28%) Analytical Mindset
11 126 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
11 126 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
12 94 (1.61%) Driving Licence
13 92 (1.57%) Virtual Team
14 82 (1.40%) AI Agents
15 75 (1.28%) CMDB
16 62 (1.06%) Mobile App
17 61 (1.04%) PKI
18 58 (0.99%) Algorithms
18 58 (0.99%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 789 (13.50%) Windows
2 340 (5.82%) Linux
3 220 (3.76%) Windows Server
4 143 (2.45%) Windows 10
5 112 (1.92%) Unix
6 95 (1.63%) Apple iOS
7 91 (1.56%) Android
7 91 (1.56%) Mac OS
8 56 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 22 (0.38%) Ubuntu
10 20 (0.34%) VMS
11 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 14 (0.24%) Solaris
12 14 (0.24%) zOS
13 9 (0.15%) CentOS
13 9 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
14 8 (0.14%) AIX
14 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
16 5 (0.086%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,610 (27.55%) Agile
2 1,371 (23.46%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,289 (22.06%) Continuous Improvement
4 986 (16.87%) CI/CD
5 883 (15.11%) DevOps
6 768 (13.14%) AI
7 657 (11.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 645 (11.04%) Decision-Making
9 600 (10.27%) Migration
10 590 (10.10%) Customer Service
11 585 (10.01%) Analytics
12 528 (9.03%) ITIL
13 478 (8.18%) Validation
14 477 (8.16%) Test Automation
15 425 (7.27%) Business Intelligence
15 425 (7.27%) Data Modelling
16 424 (7.26%) Scrum
17 387 (6.62%) ITSM
18 378 (6.47%) Technical Leadership
19 371 (6.35%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,015 (17.37%) SQL
2 904 (15.47%) Python
3 453 (7.75%) Java
4 359 (6.14%) JavaScript
5 336 (5.75%) PowerShell
6 222 (3.80%) C#
7 156 (2.67%) Bash
8 147 (2.52%) TypeScript
9 100 (1.71%) PL/SQL
10 68 (1.16%) C++
11 50 (0.86%) T-SQL
12 48 (0.82%) Shell Script
13 44 (0.75%) Go
14 36 (0.62%) Scala
15 32 (0.55%) Bicep
15 32 (0.55%) Kotlin
16 30 (0.51%) R
17 29 (0.50%) C
17 29 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 28 (0.48%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,280 (21.90%) Security Cleared
2 921 (15.76%) SC Cleared
3 664 (11.36%) Degree
4 225 (3.85%) DV Cleared
5 200 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 188 (3.22%) BPSS Clearance
7 157 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
8 110 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
9 84 (1.44%) CISSP
10 83 (1.42%) Azure Certification
11 76 (1.30%) PMI Certification
12 73 (1.25%) PMP
13 69 (1.18%) A+ Certification
14 58 (0.99%) CCNA
15 56 (0.96%) Master's Degree
16 53 (0.91%) AWS Certification
17 50 (0.86%) DBS Check
18 46 (0.79%) CISM
19 44 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
19 44 (0.75%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 438 (7.49%) Data Quality
2 389 (6.66%) QA
3 152 (2.60%) Accessibility
4 133 (2.28%) SLA
5 127 (2.17%) GDPR
6 102 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 93 (1.59%) PMO
8 73 (1.25%) NIST
9 72 (1.23%) GRC
10 39 (0.67%) WCAG
11 26 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
12 23 (0.39%) GxP
13 21 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
15 19 (0.33%) NCSC
16 17 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 17 (0.29%) PCI DSS
17 14 (0.24%) ISO 20022
18 13 (0.22%) COBIT
18 13 (0.22%) GMP
System Software
1 458 (7.84%) Active Directory
2 365 (6.25%) Docker
3 178 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.21%) Hyper-V
4 71 (1.21%) VMware ESXi
5 57 (0.98%) vSphere
6 54 (0.92%) VMware NSX
7 37 (0.63%) Virtual Desktop
8 33 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
9 26 (0.44%) IAG
9 26 (0.44%) vCloud
10 16 (0.27%) Firmware
11 11 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
12 7 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.10%) NFS
14 5 (0.086%) RACF
14 5 (0.086%) Time Sharing Option
15 4 (0.068%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 4 (0.068%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.068%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 408 (6.98%) Kubernetes
2 174 (2.98%) Ansible
3 138 (2.36%) Microsoft Intune
4 98 (1.68%) SCCM
5 96 (1.64%) Grafana
6 77 (1.32%) Prometheus
7 51 (0.87%) vCenter Server
8 42 (0.72%) SCOM
9 31 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
10 25 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
11 21 (0.36%) WSUS
12 19 (0.33%) Control-M
13 15 (0.26%) NetBackup
14 13 (0.22%) FortiGate
14 13 (0.22%) Kibana
14 13 (0.22%) Nessus
15 12 (0.21%) VxRail
16 11 (0.19%) Istio
17 9 (0.15%) Argo
17 9 (0.15%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,367 (23.39%) Microsoft
2 423 (7.24%) Oracle
3 367 (6.28%) ServiceNow
4 365 (6.25%) SAP
5 228 (3.90%) VMware
6 182 (3.11%) Google
7 151 (2.58%) Salesforce
8 144 (2.46%) Cisco
9 133 (2.28%) Databricks
10 115 (1.97%) Splunk
11 80 (1.37%) Workday
12 69 (1.18%) Dynatrace
13 68 (1.16%) Adobe
14 66 (1.13%) IBM
15 64 (1.10%) Apple
16 53 (0.91%) CyberArk
17 52 (0.89%) MuleSoft
18 48 (0.82%) Red Hat
19 45 (0.77%) Dell
20 43 (0.74%) Palo Alto