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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -9 +4 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,547 5,334 4,608
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.52% 16.35% 11.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.37% 18.09% 13.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,172 3,265 2,836
10th Percentile £260 £250 £248
25th Percentile £380 £375 £383
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -1.60% -2.53%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £615
90th Percentile £700 £703 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £451 £463 £475
% change year-on-year -2.59% -2.63% -1.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 454 310 341
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.50
25th Percentile £15.00 £15.50 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.00 £21.34 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -6.26% +31.45% -69.09%
75th Percentile £41.69 £41.00 £31.71
90th Percentile £74.00 £66.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.00 £18.85 £15.90
% change year-on-year +0.80% +18.55% -68.98%

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 44,825 29,480 35,296
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.99% 90.35% 85.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,802 18,519 22,641
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,641 1,572 2,187
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £13.06
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.44 £16.86
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -10.31%
75th Percentile £68.50 £50.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £68.75 £73.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.34 £40.00
% change year-on-year +84.88% -39.15% -1.95%

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 22 July 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 22 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the UK

Problem-Solving
Top 17 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 22 July 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 -8 4,758 £497 -0.64% 3,664
UK excluding London -5 2,984 £451 -2.59% 2,642
London -12 2,018 £514 +2.80% 1,432
Work from Home -8 1,534 £492 -1.60% 1,436
South East -5 753 £486 -2.80% 805
North of England -9 745 £450 -5.26% 663
Midlands -8 542 £450 +5.88% 424
West Midlands -9 396 £450 - 245
North West -10 369 £450 -8.16% 352
South West -2 334 £500 +5.26% 331
Yorkshire -7 325 £450 -5.26% 218
Scotland -4 296 £425 -5.56% 115
East of England -2 256 £450 -5.01% 284
East Midlands -1 144 £460 +22.67% 179
Wales -3 66 £475 +26.67% 59
North East -14 57 £370 -17.78% 100
Northern Ireland -6 23 £380 -19.32% 37

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
1 236 (4.25%) Confluence
2 189 (3.41%) SharePoint
3 91 (1.64%) Microsoft Exchange
4 74 (1.33%) Apache Spark
5 51 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 45 (0.81%) Apache
7 36 (0.65%) SAS
8 33 (0.59%) CMS
9 31 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.34%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.20%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.20%) nginx
13 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 10 (0.18%) CICS
14 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.11%) Appian
15 6 (0.11%) Camunda
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 286 (5.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 245 (4.42%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (1.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 85 (1.53%) MS Visio
5 69 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
6 33 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.49%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 26 (0.47%) Chatbot
9 14 (0.25%) Sketch
10 13 (0.23%) AutoCAD
11 11 (0.20%) Revit
12 10 (0.18%) CATIA
13 9 (0.16%) Trello
14 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
15 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
15 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
15 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
16 5 (0.090%) Maya
17 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
18 3 (0.054%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 146 (2.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
3 34 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
4 25 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
5 23 (0.41%) NetSuite
6 21 (0.38%) SAP GRC
6 21 (0.38%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.31%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.25%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
10 12 (0.22%) iTrent
10 12 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
10 12 (0.22%) SAP HCM
11 11 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
11 11 (0.20%) Teamcenter
12 10 (0.18%) Finacle
13 9 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
13 9 (0.16%) SAP CRM
13 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
13 9 (0.16%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,064 (19.18%) Azure
2 814 (14.67%) AWS
3 419 (7.55%) Power Platform
4 408 (7.36%) Microsoft 365
5 312 (5.62%) GCP
6 249 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
7 211 (3.80%) Entra ID
8 204 (3.68%) GitHub
9 147 (2.65%) SaaS
10 129 (2.33%) Serverless
11 104 (1.87%) GitHub Actions
12 88 (1.59%) Amazon S3
13 87 (1.57%) Power Automate
14 80 (1.44%) AWS Lambda
15 79 (1.42%) Dynamics 365
16 73 (1.32%) PowerApps
17 66 (1.19%) OpenShift
18 62 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
19 61 (1.10%) Snowflake
20 58 (1.05%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 235 (4.24%) DNS
2 199 (3.59%) Firewall
3 144 (2.60%) VPN
4 141 (2.54%) TCP/IP
5 134 (2.42%) DHCP
6 114 (2.06%) WAN
7 99 (1.78%) Network Security
8 96 (1.73%) LAN
9 85 (1.53%) SAN
10 83 (1.50%) Wi-Fi
11 60 (1.08%) VLAN
12 55 (0.99%) BGP
13 52 (0.94%) Wireless
14 44 (0.79%) OSPF
15 40 (0.72%) SD-WAN
16 38 (0.69%) VoIP
17 35 (0.63%) MPLS
18 30 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
19 28 (0.50%) VXLAN
20 25 (0.45%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 326 (5.88%) Power BI
2 234 (4.22%) SQL Server
3 167 (3.01%) Relational Database
4 165 (2.97%) Data Warehouse
5 162 (2.92%) PostgreSQL
6 119 (2.15%) MongoDB
7 104 (1.87%) Metadata
8 90 (1.62%) NoSQL
9 89 (1.60%) Data Lake
10 87 (1.57%) Tableau
11 76 (1.37%) Big Data
12 63 (1.14%) MySQL
13 61 (1.10%) Oracle Database
14 51 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 47 (0.85%) Oracle Reports
16 35 (0.63%) Db2
17 34 (0.61%) Hadoop
18 28 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
19 27 (0.49%) DynamoDB
20 25 (0.45%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 521 (9.39%) JIRA
2 333 (6.00%) Git
3 192 (3.46%) Jenkins
4 124 (2.24%) GitLab
5 75 (1.35%) Selenium
6 41 (0.74%) Postman
7 37 (0.67%) Cypress.io
8 34 (0.61%) REST Assured
9 33 (0.59%) Gradle
10 31 (0.56%) Cucumber
11 30 (0.54%) Maven
12 26 (0.47%) JUnit
13 24 (0.43%) Bitbucket
14 21 (0.38%) Mockito
15 19 (0.34%) WebDriver
16 18 (0.32%) JMeter
17 16 (0.29%) SonarQube
18 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
19 13 (0.23%) Gatling
19 13 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,856 (51.49%) Social Skills
2 2,246 (40.49%) Analytical Skills
3 1,294 (23.33%) Finance
4 567 (10.22%) Public Sector
5 423 (7.63%) Banking
6 219 (3.95%) Organisational Skills
7 212 (3.82%) Documentation Skills
8 195 (3.52%) Retail
9 161 (2.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 148 (2.67%) Legal
10 148 (2.67%) Manufacturing
11 141 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
12 111 (2.00%) Telecoms
13 110 (1.98%) Presentation Skills
14 108 (1.95%) Marketing
15 107 (1.93%) Front Office
16 87 (1.57%) Investment Banking
17 83 (1.50%) Back Office
18 63 (1.14%) Aerospace
19 57 (1.03%) Law
Job Titles
1 736 (13.27%) Analyst
2 688 (12.40%) Developer
3 508 (9.16%) Senior
4 406 (7.32%) Lead
5 376 (6.78%) Architect
6 268 (4.83%) Business Analyst
7 256 (4.62%) Consultant
8 224 (4.04%) Data Engineer
9 188 (3.39%) IT Support
9 188 (3.39%) Support Engineer
10 180 (3.24%) Project Manager
11 137 (2.47%) Java Developer
12 125 (2.25%) Administrator
13 124 (2.24%) IT Engineer
14 118 (2.13%) Data Analyst
15 108 (1.95%) Solutions Architect
16 105 (1.89%) Software Engineer
17 97 (1.75%) Network Engineer
18 91 (1.64%) DevOps Engineer
18 91 (1.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 334 (6.02%) REST
2 165 (2.97%) RESTful
3 162 (2.92%) Spring
4 159 (2.87%) Kafka
5 158 (2.85%) .NET
6 141 (2.54%) SOAP
7 140 (2.52%) React
8 123 (2.22%) CSS
8 123 (2.22%) JSON
9 121 (2.18%) Spring Boot
10 115 (2.07%) HTML
11 109 (1.97%) Middleware
12 108 (1.95%) XML
13 91 (1.64%) Node.js
14 89 (1.60%) AngularJS
15 78 (1.41%) Web Services
16 72 (1.30%) PySpark
17 64 (1.15%) OAuth
18 55 (0.99%) LDAP
19 54 (0.97%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 279 (5.03%) Onboarding
1 279 (5.03%) Product Ownership
2 235 (4.24%) Cloud Native
3 205 (3.70%) Data Centre
3 205 (3.70%) Self-Motivation
4 158 (2.85%) Analytical Mindset
5 157 (2.83%) Distributed Systems
6 156 (2.81%) Management Information System
7 151 (2.72%) Enterprise Software
8 135 (2.43%) Data Protection Act
9 132 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
10 128 (2.31%) Data Structures
11 118 (2.13%) Virtual Team
12 87 (1.57%) Driving Licence
13 69 (1.24%) Algorithms
14 61 (1.10%) CMDB
15 59 (1.06%) AI Agents
16 57 (1.03%) Mobile App
17 53 (0.96%) Derivative
17 53 (0.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 696 (12.55%) Windows
2 295 (5.32%) Linux
3 144 (2.60%) Windows Server
4 113 (2.04%) Windows 10
5 112 (2.02%) Unix
6 93 (1.68%) Android
7 87 (1.57%) Apple iOS
7 87 (1.57%) Mac OS
8 45 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 20 (0.36%) Ubuntu
10 14 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
11 13 (0.23%) VMS
12 11 (0.20%) zOS
13 9 (0.16%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.14%) Solaris
15 6 (0.11%) CentOS
16 5 (0.090%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.090%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.072%) AIX
17 4 (0.072%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,513 (27.28%) Agile
2 1,053 (18.98%) Continuous Improvement
3 996 (17.96%) Stakeholder Management
4 903 (16.28%) CI/CD
5 842 (15.18%) DevOps
6 693 (12.49%) AI
7 609 (10.98%) Decision-Making
8 581 (10.47%) Analytics
9 576 (10.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 574 (10.35%) Migration
11 520 (9.37%) Customer Service
12 512 (9.23%) ITIL
13 441 (7.95%) Validation
14 430 (7.75%) Data Modelling
15 426 (7.68%) Business Intelligence
16 409 (7.37%) Test Automation
17 404 (7.28%) Scrum
18 374 (6.74%) Project Management
19 365 (6.58%) Roadmaps
20 356 (6.42%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 973 (17.54%) SQL
2 905 (16.32%) Python
3 450 (8.11%) Java
4 300 (5.41%) JavaScript
5 297 (5.35%) PowerShell
6 184 (3.32%) C#
7 139 (2.51%) Bash
8 121 (2.18%) TypeScript
9 94 (1.69%) PL/SQL
10 67 (1.21%) C++
11 52 (0.94%) T-SQL
12 49 (0.88%) Shell Script
13 44 (0.79%) Go
14 37 (0.67%) Kotlin
15 36 (0.65%) C
16 35 (0.63%) Bicep
17 34 (0.61%) R
18 33 (0.59%) Apex Code
19 32 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
20 24 (0.43%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,220 (21.99%) Security Cleared
2 832 (15.00%) SC Cleared
3 663 (11.95%) Degree
4 218 (3.93%) DV Cleared
5 182 (3.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 158 (2.85%) BPSS Clearance
7 149 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
8 140 (2.52%) Cisco Certification
9 84 (1.51%) CISSP
9 84 (1.51%) PMP
10 80 (1.44%) CCNA
11 79 (1.42%) PMI Certification
12 77 (1.39%) A+ Certification
13 72 (1.30%) Azure Certification
14 66 (1.19%) Master's Degree
15 57 (1.03%) Network+ Certification
16 55 (0.99%) CISM
17 54 (0.97%) MCSE
18 46 (0.83%) AWS Certification
19 43 (0.78%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 383 (6.90%) Data Quality
2 331 (5.97%) QA
3 153 (2.76%) GDPR
4 142 (2.56%) Accessibility
5 120 (2.16%) SLA
6 93 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 81 (1.46%) PMO
8 72 (1.30%) NIST
9 60 (1.08%) GRC
10 29 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
11 28 (0.50%) WCAG
12 27 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 22 (0.40%) GxP
14 16 (0.29%) ISO 20022
14 16 (0.29%) NCSC
14 16 (0.29%) PCI DSS
15 14 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 13 (0.23%) COBIT
17 12 (0.22%) HIPAA
18 11 (0.20%) GMP
System Software
1 419 (7.55%) Active Directory
2 364 (6.56%) Docker
3 131 (2.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 51 (0.92%) vSphere
5 48 (0.87%) VMware NSX
6 47 (0.85%) VMware ESXi
7 41 (0.74%) Hyper-V
8 31 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
9 28 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
10 21 (0.38%) vCloud
11 20 (0.36%) Firmware
12 18 (0.32%) IAG
13 11 (0.20%) Squid
14 9 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.13%) NFS
16 4 (0.072%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.072%) Snort
17 2 (0.036%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 2 (0.036%) SRDF
17 2 (0.036%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 439 (7.91%) Kubernetes
2 331 (5.97%) Terraform
3 173 (3.12%) Ansible
4 127 (2.29%) Microsoft Intune
5 115 (2.07%) Grafana
6 99 (1.78%) Prometheus
7 83 (1.50%) SCCM
8 56 (1.01%) vCenter Server
9 43 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
10 35 (0.63%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.54%) Control-M
12 24 (0.43%) SCOM
13 20 (0.36%) Argo
14 19 (0.34%) Nessus
15 18 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
16 17 (0.31%) IBM Guardium
17 16 (0.29%) WSUS
18 12 (0.22%) Kibana
18 12 (0.22%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
19 10 (0.18%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,097 (19.78%) Microsoft
2 411 (7.41%) Oracle
3 355 (6.40%) SAP
4 348 (6.27%) ServiceNow
5 199 (3.59%) VMware
6 178 (3.21%) Google
7 134 (2.42%) Salesforce
8 132 (2.38%) Splunk
9 126 (2.27%) Cisco
10 121 (2.18%) Databricks
11 83 (1.50%) Workday
12 70 (1.26%) Dynatrace
13 68 (1.23%) Dell
14 67 (1.21%) Adobe
15 59 (1.06%) Red Hat
16 57 (1.03%) MuleSoft
17 54 (0.97%) Apple
18 53 (0.96%) Citrix
18 53 (0.96%) CyberArk
19 50 (0.90%) IBM