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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +5
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,855 5,121 4,677
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.67% 15.46% 12.28%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.62% 17.06% 14.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,250 3,063 2,698
10th Percentile £259 £238 £262
25th Percentile £382 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £710 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -2.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 592 321 225
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.50
Median hourly rate £18.38 £20.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -8.10% +23.23% -69.09%
75th Percentile £36.63 £34.48 £30.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.40 £62.14
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £18.73 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.90% +15.40% -70.37%

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 46,382 30,011 32,696
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.49% 90.62% 85.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,976 18,637 19,780
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 £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £734 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,269 1,869 1,352
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.17 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.72 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.96% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.02 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.86% -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 2 October 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 2 October 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 2 October 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 5,045 £500 +2.04% 12,926
UK excluding London -3 3,152 £450 - 8,259
London -11 2,151 £525 +5.00% 5,848
Work from Home -4 1,569 £500 - 4,937
South East -4 815 £475 +5.56% 2,025
North of England -11 737 £450 -5.26% 1,845
Midlands -5 621 £450 +2.27% 1,293
West Midlands -8 444 £450 -5.26% 803
North West -10 361 £448 -4.58% 950
South West -7 324 £500 +8.11% 964
Scotland -4 307 £445 -1.11% 710
Yorkshire -7 302 £475 -4.04% 637
East of England 0 287 £438 -13.37% 904
East Midlands +2 173 £450 +20.00% 490
North East -14 76 £375 -16.67% 278
Wales -7 63 £468 +20.65% 254
Northern Ireland -5 25 £419 -11.84% 362
Channel Islands -2 5 £600 - 5

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
1 250 (4.27%) SharePoint
2 246 (4.20%) Confluence
3 100 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 60 (1.02%) Apache Spark
5 50 (0.85%) Apache
6 46 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.46%) CMS
7 27 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 25 (0.43%) SAS
9 19 (0.32%) WebLogic
10 16 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 12 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 11 (0.19%) CICS
12 11 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 9 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.14%) IIS
15 7 (0.12%) Appian
15 7 (0.12%) Mule
15 7 (0.12%) WordPress
16 6 (0.10%) Anypoint
Applications
1 349 (5.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 276 (4.71%) Microsoft Office
3 135 (2.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (1.20%) Microsoft Project
5 64 (1.09%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.48%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 23 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
8 18 (0.31%) Chatbot
9 17 (0.29%) AutoCAD
10 15 (0.26%) Revit
10 15 (0.26%) Sketch
11 11 (0.19%) Trello
12 9 (0.15%) Navisworks
12 9 (0.15%) Windchill
13 6 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
13 6 (0.10%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.10%) Final Cut Pro
14 4 (0.068%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.068%) CATIA
15 3 (0.051%) DaVinci Resolve
Business Applications
1 135 (2.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 55 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
3 37 (0.63%) Oracle EBS
4 31 (0.53%) NetSuite
5 29 (0.50%) Workday HCM
6 28 (0.48%) SAP GRC
7 25 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
8 16 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
8 16 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
8 16 (0.27%) Teamcenter
9 13 (0.22%) iTrent
9 13 (0.22%) Oracle General Ledger
9 13 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
10 12 (0.20%) SAP HCM
10 12 (0.20%) SAP SD
11 11 (0.19%) Aladdin
11 11 (0.19%) Finacle
11 11 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
12 10 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.17%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,149 (19.62%) Azure
2 798 (13.63%) AWS
3 528 (9.02%) Microsoft 365
4 465 (7.94%) Power Platform
5 344 (5.88%) GCP
6 293 (5.00%) Azure DevOps
7 248 (4.24%) Entra ID
8 219 (3.74%) GitHub
9 157 (2.68%) SaaS
10 128 (2.19%) Serverless
11 120 (2.05%) Power Automate
12 100 (1.71%) Microsoft Copilot
13 98 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
14 96 (1.64%) GitHub Actions
15 91 (1.55%) PowerApps
16 77 (1.32%) OneDrive
17 76 (1.30%) Snowflake
18 65 (1.11%) Amazon S3
18 65 (1.11%) OpenShift
19 62 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 214 (3.65%) DNS
2 202 (3.45%) Firewall
3 163 (2.78%) VPN
4 130 (2.22%) DHCP
4 130 (2.22%) TCP/IP
5 124 (2.12%) WAN
6 123 (2.10%) Network Security
7 103 (1.76%) LAN
8 81 (1.38%) Wi-Fi
9 67 (1.14%) Wireless
10 60 (1.02%) SAN
11 50 (0.85%) VLAN
12 48 (0.82%) BGP
13 45 (0.77%) VoIP
14 32 (0.55%) MPLS
14 32 (0.55%) SD-WAN
15 30 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
16 29 (0.50%) HTTP
17 27 (0.46%) Intranet
17 27 (0.46%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 348 (5.94%) Power BI
2 213 (3.64%) SQL Server
3 199 (3.40%) Relational Database
4 168 (2.87%) Data Warehouse
5 155 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
6 107 (1.83%) Metadata
6 107 (1.83%) MongoDB
7 90 (1.54%) NoSQL
8 78 (1.33%) Tableau
9 77 (1.32%) Data Lake
10 68 (1.16%) Oracle Database
11 64 (1.09%) MySQL
12 42 (0.72%) Big Data
13 40 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
14 36 (0.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 33 (0.56%) Db2
16 30 (0.51%) BigQuery
17 28 (0.48%) Power Query
18 27 (0.46%) Delta Lake
18 27 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 502 (8.57%) JIRA
2 394 (6.73%) Git
3 208 (3.55%) Jenkins
4 150 (2.56%) GitLab
5 79 (1.35%) Selenium
6 51 (0.87%) Maven
7 46 (0.79%) Gradle
8 44 (0.75%) Cucumber
9 42 (0.72%) Cypress.io
10 39 (0.67%) JUnit
10 39 (0.67%) Postman
11 34 (0.58%) Bitbucket
12 29 (0.50%) REST Assured
13 27 (0.46%) SonarQube
14 23 (0.39%) JMeter
15 22 (0.38%) Mockito
16 18 (0.31%) Gatling
16 18 (0.31%) Oracle Forms
17 17 (0.29%) WebDriver
18 15 (0.26%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 3,156 (53.90%) Social Skills
2 2,489 (42.51%) Analytical Skills
3 1,341 (22.90%) Finance
4 622 (10.62%) Public Sector
5 463 (7.91%) Banking
6 316 (5.40%) Organisational Skills
7 268 (4.58%) Manufacturing
8 197 (3.36%) Documentation Skills
9 183 (3.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 177 (3.02%) Influencing Skills
11 171 (2.92%) Retail
12 149 (2.54%) Legal
13 126 (2.15%) Presentation Skills
14 122 (2.08%) Marketing
15 120 (2.05%) Telecoms
16 117 (2.00%) Front Office
17 98 (1.67%) Investment Banking
18 86 (1.47%) Back Office
19 75 (1.28%) Aerospace
20 67 (1.14%) Law
Job Titles
1 746 (12.74%) Analyst
2 737 (12.59%) Developer
3 571 (9.75%) Senior
4 425 (7.26%) Lead
5 320 (5.47%) Architect
6 270 (4.61%) Consultant
7 262 (4.47%) Business Analyst
8 235 (4.01%) IT Support
9 222 (3.79%) Support Engineer
10 198 (3.38%) Data Engineer
11 171 (2.92%) Administrator
11 171 (2.92%) Project Manager
12 148 (2.53%) IT Engineer
13 134 (2.29%) Java Developer
14 128 (2.19%) Data Analyst
15 118 (2.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 117 (2.00%) Network Engineer
17 109 (1.86%) DevOps Engineer
17 109 (1.86%) IT Support Engineer
18 97 (1.66%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 423 (7.22%) REST
2 355 (6.06%) Terraform
3 193 (3.30%) .NET
4 190 (3.25%) RESTful
5 172 (2.94%) SOAP
6 161 (2.75%) React
7 152 (2.60%) Kafka
8 147 (2.51%) Spring
9 144 (2.46%) HTML
10 143 (2.44%) XML
11 139 (2.37%) CSS
12 138 (2.36%) JSON
13 126 (2.15%) Spring Boot
13 126 (2.15%) Web Services
14 118 (2.02%) Middleware
15 95 (1.62%) Node.js
16 89 (1.52%) AngularJS
17 82 (1.40%) OAuth
18 67 (1.14%) PySpark
19 59 (1.01%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 338 (5.77%) Onboarding
2 284 (4.85%) Cloud Native
3 277 (4.73%) Product Ownership
4 220 (3.76%) Enterprise Software
5 219 (3.74%) Management Information System
5 219 (3.74%) Self-Motivation
6 179 (3.06%) Data Centre
7 153 (2.61%) Distributed Systems
8 145 (2.48%) Data Structures
9 128 (2.19%) Legacy Systems
10 126 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
11 121 (2.07%) Analytical Mindset
12 93 (1.59%) Driving Licence
13 88 (1.50%) Virtual Team
14 84 (1.43%) AI Agents
15 75 (1.28%) CMDB
16 62 (1.06%) Mobile App
17 61 (1.04%) NHS
18 59 (1.01%) PKI
19 58 (0.99%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 785 (13.41%) Windows
2 341 (5.82%) Linux
3 218 (3.72%) Windows Server
4 138 (2.36%) Windows 10
5 114 (1.95%) Unix
6 97 (1.66%) Apple iOS
7 90 (1.54%) Android
8 87 (1.49%) Mac OS
9 57 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.31%) VMS
12 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.26%) Solaris
14 13 (0.22%) zOS
15 9 (0.15%) CentOS
15 9 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
16 8 (0.14%) AIX
16 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
18 5 (0.085%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,621 (27.69%) Agile
2 1,436 (24.53%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,311 (22.39%) Continuous Improvement
4 1,004 (17.15%) CI/CD
5 901 (15.39%) DevOps
6 780 (13.32%) AI
7 659 (11.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 651 (11.12%) Decision-Making
9 604 (10.32%) Migration
10 588 (10.04%) Customer Service
11 570 (9.74%) Analytics
12 511 (8.73%) ITIL
13 486 (8.30%) Test Automation
14 483 (8.25%) Validation
15 436 (7.45%) Scrum
16 419 (7.16%) Data Modelling
17 411 (7.02%) Business Intelligence
18 384 (6.56%) ITSM
19 383 (6.54%) Technical Leadership
20 381 (6.51%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,015 (17.34%) SQL
2 883 (15.08%) Python
3 452 (7.72%) Java
4 360 (6.15%) JavaScript
5 342 (5.84%) PowerShell
6 229 (3.91%) C#
7 160 (2.73%) Bash
8 147 (2.51%) TypeScript
9 93 (1.59%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.04%) C++
11 50 (0.85%) T-SQL
12 48 (0.82%) Shell Script
13 46 (0.79%) Go
14 37 (0.63%) Bicep
15 34 (0.58%) Scala
16 29 (0.50%) Kotlin
17 27 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 26 (0.44%) Groovy
19 25 (0.43%) Apex Code
19 25 (0.43%) C
Qualifications
1 1,285 (21.95%) Security Cleared
2 926 (15.82%) SC Cleared
3 675 (11.53%) Degree
4 229 (3.91%) DV Cleared
5 198 (3.38%) Computer Science Degree
6 193 (3.30%) BPSS Clearance
7 147 (2.51%) Microsoft Certification
8 102 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
9 85 (1.45%) Azure Certification
9 85 (1.45%) PMI Certification
10 81 (1.38%) CISSP
10 81 (1.38%) PMP
11 61 (1.04%) A+ Certification
12 58 (0.99%) Master's Degree
13 54 (0.92%) AWS Certification
13 54 (0.92%) DBS Check
14 52 (0.89%) CCNA
15 46 (0.79%) CISM
16 44 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
17 42 (0.72%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 427 (7.29%) Data Quality
2 394 (6.73%) QA
3 158 (2.70%) Accessibility
4 129 (2.20%) GDPR
5 127 (2.17%) SLA
6 97 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 97 (1.66%) PMO
7 68 (1.16%) GRC
8 66 (1.13%) NIST
9 40 (0.68%) WCAG
10 25 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
11 23 (0.39%) GxP
12 21 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
13 20 (0.34%) NCSC
13 20 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 17 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 17 (0.29%) PCI DSS
15 15 (0.26%) GMP
15 15 (0.26%) ISO 20022
16 12 (0.20%) COBIT
System Software
1 454 (7.75%) Active Directory
2 368 (6.29%) Docker
3 176 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.21%) Hyper-V
5 70 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
6 59 (1.01%) vSphere
7 54 (0.92%) VMware NSX
8 40 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
9 30 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
10 24 (0.41%) IAG
10 24 (0.41%) vCloud
11 17 (0.29%) Firmware
12 11 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.12%) NFS
13 7 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.085%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 5 (0.085%) RACF
15 5 (0.085%) XenApp
15 5 (0.085%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 417 (7.12%) Kubernetes
2 178 (3.04%) Ansible
3 138 (2.36%) Microsoft Intune
4 96 (1.64%) Grafana
5 95 (1.62%) SCCM
6 77 (1.32%) Prometheus
7 48 (0.82%) vCenter Server
8 42 (0.72%) SCOM
9 31 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
10 25 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
11 20 (0.34%) Control-M
12 18 (0.31%) WSUS
13 15 (0.26%) FortiGate
13 15 (0.26%) NetBackup
14 13 (0.22%) Nessus
15 12 (0.20%) Kibana
15 12 (0.20%) VxRail
16 11 (0.19%) Istio
17 10 (0.17%) Puppet
18 8 (0.14%) McAfee ePO
Vendors
1 1,402 (23.95%) Microsoft
2 418 (7.14%) Oracle
3 369 (6.30%) SAP
4 357 (6.10%) ServiceNow
5 224 (3.83%) VMware
6 184 (3.14%) Google
7 149 (2.54%) Cisco
8 145 (2.48%) Salesforce
9 136 (2.32%) Databricks
10 118 (2.02%) Splunk
11 81 (1.38%) Workday
12 68 (1.16%) Adobe
13 65 (1.11%) Apple
13 65 (1.11%) IBM
14 64 (1.09%) Dynatrace
15 54 (0.92%) CyberArk
16 52 (0.89%) Red Hat
17 50 (0.85%) MuleSoft
18 47 (0.80%) Palo Alto
19 40 (0.68%) Dell