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

6 months to
2 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 5,442 4,778 4,806
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.16% 16.44% 10.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.20% 18.16% 12.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,318 3,018 2,979
10th Percentile £283 £256 £213
25th Percentile £400 £399 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -0.10% -4.67%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £471 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +0.21% -1.05% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 323 218 409
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.84 £11.06
25th Percentile £15.18 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.79 £24.88 £17.71
Median % change year-on-year -16.44% +40.49% -56.27%
75th Percentile £44.94 £41.50 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.75 £65.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.35 £22.14 £15.63
% change year-on-year -21.64% +41.65% -47.02%

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 38,313 26,307 38,195
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.58% 90.51% 86.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,289 17,086 24,815
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 £635 £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 2,251 967 2,341
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.00 £12.82
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.24 £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 £76.25 £70.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.85 £31.08 £31.65
% change year-on-year +12.13% -1.80% -12.39%

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 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 2 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 2 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 4,675 £491 -1.80% 3,248
UK excluding London -5 2,826 £471 +0.21% 2,670
London -7 2,039 £512 -2.51% 986
Work from Home -1 1,541 £475 -5.00% 1,286
North of England -5 780 £450 -5.26% 662
South East -5 669 £495 -1.00% 802
Midlands -4 510 £450 +0.56% 478
North West -5 388 £424 -10.66% 365
West Midlands -2 370 £475 +2.98% 278
Yorkshire -4 344 £471 -0.95% 222
South West -2 320 £520 -0.95% 308
Scotland +1 253 £438 -2.78% 127
East of England -3 223 £450 - 288
East Midlands -3 141 £410 +10.89% 199
Wales -3 69 £400 +6.67% 81
North East -2 57 £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 (4.10%) Confluence
2 157 (2.88%) SharePoint
3 103 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 87 (1.60%) Apache Spark
5 65 (1.19%) SAS
6 62 (1.14%) Apache
7 47 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.61%) CMS
9 17 (0.31%) WebLogic
10 16 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
11 14 (0.26%) nginx
12 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.15%) Skype for Business
14 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.11%) CICS
15 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 312 (5.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (4.06%) Microsoft Office
3 117 (2.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 83 (1.53%) Microsoft Project
5 81 (1.49%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.42%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
9 9 (0.17%) 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 (0.074%) InDesign
13 4 (0.074%) InVision
13 4 (0.074%) 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 16 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 14 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
8 14 (0.26%) SAP ERP
8 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
9 13 (0.24%) NEC Housing
9 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.20%) NetSuite
11 11 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 9 (0.17%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.17%) SAP SD
14 8 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,142 (20.98%) Azure
2 849 (15.60%) AWS
3 389 (7.15%) Power Platform
4 370 (6.80%) GCP
5 333 (6.12%) Microsoft 365
6 249 (4.58%) Azure DevOps
7 245 (4.50%) GitHub
8 183 (3.36%) Serverless
9 163 (3.00%) Entra ID
10 136 (2.50%) SaaS
11 130 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
12 109 (2.00%) Amazon S3
13 103 (1.89%) AWS Lambda
14 91 (1.67%) OpenShift
15 79 (1.45%) Azure Data Factory
15 79 (1.45%) Snowflake
16 75 (1.38%) Dynamics 365
17 73 (1.34%) Power Automate
18 62 (1.14%) Amazon EC2
18 62 (1.14%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 206 (3.79%) Firewall
2 194 (3.56%) DNS
3 123 (2.26%) TCP/IP
4 116 (2.13%) Network Security
5 110 (2.02%) VPN
6 108 (1.98%) WAN
7 101 (1.86%) DHCP
8 87 (1.60%) LAN
9 67 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
10 58 (1.07%) SAN
11 55 (1.01%) BGP
12 48 (0.88%) VLAN
13 41 (0.75%) OSPF
14 36 (0.66%) VoIP
15 34 (0.62%) SD-WAN
16 28 (0.51%) MPLS
17 27 (0.50%) Wireless
18 26 (0.48%) Internet
19 21 (0.39%) Junos
20 19 (0.35%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 312 (5.73%) Power BI
2 190 (3.49%) SQL Server
3 165 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
4 150 (2.76%) PostgreSQL
5 146 (2.68%) Relational Database
6 108 (1.98%) Metadata
7 95 (1.75%) MongoDB
8 93 (1.71%) NoSQL
9 86 (1.58%) Big Data
9 86 (1.58%) Tableau
10 85 (1.56%) Data Lake
11 70 (1.29%) MySQL
12 67 (1.23%) Oracle Database
13 60 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
14 49 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 46 (0.85%) Hadoop
16 41 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
17 36 (0.66%) DynamoDB
18 35 (0.64%) Pentaho
19 32 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 510 (9.37%) JIRA
2 357 (6.56%) Git
3 255 (4.69%) Jenkins
4 168 (3.09%) GitLab
5 82 (1.51%) Selenium
6 54 (0.99%) JUnit
7 41 (0.75%) Postman
8 36 (0.66%) Cucumber
9 31 (0.57%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 24 (0.44%) Cypress.io
12 23 (0.42%) Maven
12 23 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
13 22 (0.40%) 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 2,913 (53.53%) Social Skills
2 2,040 (37.49%) Analytical Skills
3 1,230 (22.60%) Finance
4 556 (10.22%) Public Sector
5 435 (7.99%) Banking
6 216 (3.97%) Organisational Skills
7 190 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
8 182 (3.34%) Legal
9 168 (3.09%) Retail
10 137 (2.52%) Influencing Skills
11 133 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
12 123 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 100 (1.84%) Front Office
14 95 (1.75%) Telecoms
15 89 (1.64%) Marketing
16 82 (1.51%) Investment Banking
17 77 (1.41%) Manufacturing
18 56 (1.03%) Financial Institution
18 56 (1.03%) Military
19 52 (0.96%) Law
Job Titles
1 747 (13.73%) Analyst
2 720 (13.23%) Developer
3 477 (8.77%) Senior
4 390 (7.17%) Architect
5 345 (6.34%) Lead
6 307 (5.64%) Business Analyst
7 299 (5.49%) Consultant
8 227 (4.17%) Data Engineer
9 220 (4.04%) Project Manager
10 136 (2.50%) Support Engineer
11 133 (2.44%) Java Developer
12 122 (2.24%) IT Support
13 110 (2.02%) Solutions Architect
14 105 (1.93%) Data Analyst
15 100 (1.84%) Software Engineer
16 97 (1.78%) Administrator
16 97 (1.78%) Senior Developer
17 86 (1.58%) Network Engineer
18 85 (1.56%) Python Developer
19 83 (1.53%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 347 (6.38%) REST
2 173 (3.18%) Kafka
3 167 (3.07%) RESTful
4 158 (2.90%) SOAP
5 157 (2.88%) .NET
6 149 (2.74%) Spring
7 140 (2.57%) Node.js
8 136 (2.50%) React
9 110 (2.02%) Spring Boot
10 109 (2.00%) AngularJS
11 107 (1.97%) JSON
12 103 (1.89%) CSS
13 102 (1.87%) HTML
14 97 (1.78%) XML
15 96 (1.76%) LDAP
16 93 (1.71%) Middleware
17 80 (1.47%) OAuth
18 71 (1.30%) PySpark
19 64 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
20 60 (1.10%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 278 (5.11%) Product Ownership
2 230 (4.23%) Cloud Native
3 213 (3.91%) Onboarding
4 165 (3.03%) Data Centre
5 163 (3.00%) Management Information System
6 141 (2.59%) Self-Motivation
7 140 (2.57%) Analytical Mindset
8 114 (2.09%) Data Structures
9 111 (2.04%) Data Protection Act
10 106 (1.95%) Distributed Systems
11 104 (1.91%) Virtual Team
12 103 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
13 99 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
14 78 (1.43%) Algorithms
15 70 (1.29%) Security Posture
16 65 (1.19%) Driving Licence
16 65 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
17 61 (1.12%) Mobile App
18 59 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 55 (1.01%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 583 (10.71%) Windows
2 339 (6.23%) Linux
3 113 (2.08%) Windows Server
4 107 (1.97%) Windows 10
5 101 (1.86%) Unix
6 75 (1.38%) Android
7 67 (1.23%) Apple iOS
8 62 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 60 (1.10%) 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 (0.074%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,552 (28.52%) Agile
2 974 (17.90%) CI/CD
3 866 (15.91%) DevOps
4 825 (15.16%) Continuous Improvement
5 822 (15.10%) Stakeholder Management
6 641 (11.78%) Analytics
7 572 (10.51%) Migration
8 560 (10.29%) Decision-Making
9 532 (9.78%) AI
10 498 (9.15%) Project Management
11 485 (8.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 468 (8.60%) Data Modelling
13 429 (7.88%) Business Intelligence
14 427 (7.85%) Test Automation
15 421 (7.74%) Validation
16 405 (7.44%) Scrum
17 402 (7.39%) ITIL
18 399 (7.33%) Customer Service
19 396 (7.28%) Change Management
20 353 (6.49%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,028 (18.89%) Python
2 946 (17.38%) SQL
3 477 (8.77%) Java
4 362 (6.65%) PowerShell
5 292 (5.37%) JavaScript
6 220 (4.04%) C#
7 192 (3.53%) TypeScript
8 152 (2.79%) Bash
9 85 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 72 (1.32%) Shell Script
11 66 (1.21%) C++
12 53 (0.97%) Go
13 45 (0.83%) Perl
14 43 (0.79%) Bicep
14 43 (0.79%) T-SQL
15 39 (0.72%) R
15 39 (0.72%) Scala
16 35 (0.64%) Apex Code
16 35 (0.64%) C
17 33 (0.61%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,189 (21.85%) Security Cleared
2 826 (15.18%) SC Cleared
3 676 (12.42%) Degree
4 230 (4.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 212 (3.90%) DV Cleared
6 172 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
7 125 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
8 111 (2.04%) PMP
9 109 (2.00%) PMI Certification
10 103 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
11 102 (1.87%) CISSP
12 93 (1.71%) Master's Degree
13 68 (1.25%) Azure Certification
14 66 (1.21%) CISM
15 57 (1.05%) CCNA
15 57 (1.05%) CCNP
16 46 (0.85%) A+ Certification
17 43 (0.79%) AWS Certification
18 42 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
18 42 (0.77%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 356 (6.54%) QA
2 355 (6.52%) Data Quality
3 163 (3.00%) GDPR
4 110 (2.02%) Accessibility
5 101 (1.86%) PMO
6 92 (1.69%) NIST
7 91 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 73 (1.34%) SLA
9 46 (0.85%) GRC
10 34 (0.62%) WCAG
11 33 (0.61%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.48%) PSD2
14 25 (0.46%) 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
1 430 (7.90%) Docker
2 391 (7.18%) 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 23 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.35%) Firmware
9 15 (0.28%) 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 (0.074%) Snort
16 3 (0.055%) ISA Server
16 3 (0.055%) NFS
Systems Management
1 495 (9.10%) Kubernetes
2 314 (5.77%) Terraform
3 188 (3.45%) Ansible
4 129 (2.37%) Grafana
5 128 (2.35%) Microsoft Intune
6 101 (1.86%) Prometheus
7 84 (1.54%) SCCM
8 43 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
10 36 (0.66%) vCenter Server
11 31 (0.57%) Kibana
12 30 (0.55%) 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
1 972 (17.86%) Microsoft
2 364 (6.69%) Oracle
3 265 (4.87%) SAP
4 231 (4.24%) ServiceNow
5 203 (3.73%) VMware
6 171 (3.14%) Google
7 167 (3.07%) Databricks
8 139 (2.55%) Splunk
9 127 (2.33%) Cisco
10 114 (2.09%) Salesforce
11 79 (1.45%) Red Hat
12 70 (1.29%) CyberArk
13 67 (1.23%) BeyondTrust
13 67 (1.23%) Dell
14 60 (1.10%) Citrix
15 57 (1.05%) Talend
16 54 (0.99%) IBM
17 52 (0.96%) Informatica
17 52 (0.96%) Palo Alto
18 51 (0.94%) Workday