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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,264 5,064 4,753
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.44% 17.01% 10.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.31% 18.70% 12.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,062 3,132 2,861
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £381 £380 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £619
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £465 £475
% change year-on-year -3.17% -2.11% -2.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 409 281 429
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.51 £22.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -6.77% +35.55% -68.49%
75th Percentile £40.00 £41.00 £33.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £66.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.79 £19.87 £15.00
% change year-on-year -5.44% +32.47% -70.67%

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 42,754 27,087 37,306
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.83% 91.00% 85.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,630 17,192 23,755
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -3.79% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £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 2,570 1,249 2,608
10th Percentile £14.80 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.02 £17.87 £16.02
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +67.72% -29.51% +6.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.32 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +17.29%

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 18 June 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 18 June 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 18 June 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 -9 4,497 £500 - 3,342
UK excluding London -5 2,820 £450 -3.17% 2,714
London -11 1,906 £520 +1.96% 1,142
Work from Home -5 1,490 £488 -2.50% 1,302
North of England -11 717 £449 -5.53% 623
South East -6 681 £488 -2.50% 813
Midlands -8 507 £464 +9.18% 429
West Midlands -11 363 £469 +4.22% 246
North West -11 346 £440 -7.37% 360
Yorkshire -7 328 £451 -5.16% 180
South West -4 317 £500 - 333
Scotland -3 287 £438 -5.66% 115
East of England -2 249 £450 -3.74% 269
East Midlands -2 142 £447 +21.80% 183
Wales 0 66 £468 +41.17% 46
North East -18 49 £370 -17.78% 97
Northern Ireland -7 23 £380 -10.59% 186
Channel Islands -3 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
1 221 (4.20%) Confluence
2 161 (3.06%) SharePoint
3 86 (1.63%) Microsoft Exchange
4 79 (1.50%) Apache Spark
5 51 (0.97%) Apache
6 50 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
7 41 (0.78%) SAS
8 32 (0.61%) CMS
9 26 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.21%) ArcGIS
11 11 (0.21%) CICS
11 11 (0.21%) Jupyter
11 11 (0.21%) nginx
12 9 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 9 (0.17%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.15%) Camunda
14 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 7 (0.13%) Tomcat
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 306 (5.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 216 (4.10%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (2.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (1.37%) MS Visio
5 67 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
6 33 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.44%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 23 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.27%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.25%) Sketch
10 11 (0.21%) Revit
11 10 (0.19%) CATIA
12 8 (0.15%) CPLEX
13 7 (0.13%) Trello
14 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
14 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
14 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
15 5 (0.095%) Maya
16 4 (0.076%) Acrobat
16 4 (0.076%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 132 (2.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.44%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.34%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.30%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.28%) SAP GRC
8 14 (0.27%) NetSuite
9 13 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 12 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
11 11 (0.21%) Teamcenter
12 10 (0.19%) SAP HCM
12 10 (0.19%) SAP SD
13 9 (0.17%) iTrent
13 9 (0.17%) NEC Housing
14 8 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
14 8 (0.15%) SAP ERP
15 7 (0.13%) Loan IQ
Cloud Services
1 1,056 (20.06%) Azure
2 788 (14.97%) AWS
3 406 (7.71%) Power Platform
4 368 (6.99%) Microsoft 365
5 302 (5.74%) GCP
6 234 (4.45%) Azure DevOps
7 186 (3.53%) GitHub
8 177 (3.36%) Entra ID
9 138 (2.62%) SaaS
9 138 (2.62%) Serverless
10 94 (1.79%) GitHub Actions
11 91 (1.73%) Amazon S3
12 80 (1.52%) AWS Lambda
13 73 (1.39%) Dynamics 365
14 69 (1.31%) Power Automate
15 68 (1.29%) Snowflake
16 65 (1.23%) Azure Data Factory
17 61 (1.16%) PowerApps
18 58 (1.10%) OpenShift
19 49 (0.93%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 192 (3.65%) DNS
2 162 (3.08%) Firewall
3 114 (2.17%) TCP/IP
4 112 (2.13%) VPN
5 109 (2.07%) WAN
6 104 (1.98%) DHCP
7 90 (1.71%) Network Security
8 81 (1.54%) LAN
9 79 (1.50%) SAN
10 73 (1.39%) Wi-Fi
11 51 (0.97%) VLAN
12 49 (0.93%) BGP
13 46 (0.87%) SD-WAN
14 41 (0.78%) OSPF
15 33 (0.63%) Wireless
16 32 (0.61%) VoIP
17 27 (0.51%) MPLS
17 27 (0.51%) VXLAN
18 22 (0.42%) NAS
19 21 (0.40%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 319 (6.06%) Power BI
2 204 (3.88%) SQL Server
3 158 (3.00%) Data Warehouse
4 145 (2.75%) Relational Database
5 136 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
6 114 (2.17%) MongoDB
7 101 (1.92%) Metadata
8 93 (1.77%) NoSQL
9 92 (1.75%) Data Lake
10 88 (1.67%) Tableau
11 76 (1.44%) Big Data
12 52 (0.99%) Oracle Database
13 51 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 49 (0.93%) MySQL
15 48 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
16 37 (0.70%) Hadoop
17 30 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
18 28 (0.53%) DynamoDB
18 28 (0.53%) Power Query
19 27 (0.51%) Db2
Development Applications
1 503 (9.56%) JIRA
2 278 (5.28%) Git
3 179 (3.40%) Jenkins
4 129 (2.45%) GitLab
5 64 (1.22%) Selenium
6 42 (0.80%) Postman
7 35 (0.66%) REST Assured
8 29 (0.55%) Cucumber
9 28 (0.53%) Bitbucket
10 26 (0.49%) Cypress.io
11 22 (0.42%) JUnit
12 18 (0.34%) WebDriver
13 17 (0.32%) JMeter
13 17 (0.32%) Mockito
14 16 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
15 15 (0.28%) SonarQube
16 14 (0.27%) Zephyr
17 12 (0.23%) Gatling
17 12 (0.23%) Maven
17 12 (0.23%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,733 (51.92%) Social Skills
2 2,061 (39.15%) Analytical Skills
3 1,224 (23.25%) Finance
4 478 (9.08%) Public Sector
5 391 (7.43%) Banking
6 211 (4.01%) Organisational Skills
7 193 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
8 187 (3.55%) Retail
9 153 (2.91%) Legal
10 143 (2.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 113 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
12 110 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
13 109 (2.07%) Manufacturing
14 101 (1.92%) Front Office
15 96 (1.82%) Telecoms
16 90 (1.71%) Marketing
17 80 (1.52%) Investment Banking
18 74 (1.41%) Back Office
19 60 (1.14%) Law
20 58 (1.10%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 727 (13.81%) Analyst
2 605 (11.49%) Developer
3 451 (8.57%) Senior
4 365 (6.93%) Architect
5 343 (6.52%) Lead
6 277 (5.26%) Business Analyst
7 260 (4.94%) Consultant
8 240 (4.56%) Data Engineer
9 179 (3.40%) Project Manager
10 165 (3.13%) IT Support
11 158 (3.00%) Support Engineer
12 119 (2.26%) Data Analyst
13 115 (2.18%) Administrator
14 111 (2.11%) IT Engineer
15 109 (2.07%) Java Developer
15 109 (2.07%) Solutions Architect
16 95 (1.80%) Software Engineer
17 90 (1.71%) Network Engineer
18 86 (1.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 84 (1.60%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 302 (5.74%) REST
2 156 (2.96%) .NET
3 151 (2.87%) Kafka
4 137 (2.60%) Spring
5 136 (2.58%) React
6 131 (2.49%) RESTful
6 131 (2.49%) SOAP
7 120 (2.28%) CSS
8 111 (2.11%) JSON
9 106 (2.01%) HTML
10 105 (1.99%) Middleware
11 101 (1.92%) Spring Boot
12 93 (1.77%) XML
13 86 (1.63%) AngularJS
14 85 (1.61%) Node.js
15 76 (1.44%) LDAP
16 75 (1.42%) PySpark
17 65 (1.23%) Web Services
18 57 (1.08%) OAuth
19 46 (0.87%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 258 (4.90%) Product Ownership
2 241 (4.58%) Onboarding
3 221 (4.20%) Cloud Native
4 202 (3.84%) Data Centre
5 181 (3.44%) Self-Motivation
6 148 (2.81%) Analytical Mindset
7 142 (2.70%) Management Information System
8 136 (2.58%) Distributed Systems
9 132 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
10 131 (2.49%) Enterprise Software
11 122 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
12 114 (2.17%) Virtual Team
13 111 (2.11%) Data Structures
14 71 (1.35%) Algorithms
15 69 (1.31%) Driving Licence
16 66 (1.25%) Security Posture
17 63 (1.20%) AI Agents
18 54 (1.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 52 (0.99%) Derivative
20 49 (0.93%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 635 (12.06%) Windows
2 275 (5.22%) Linux
3 121 (2.30%) Windows Server
4 115 (2.18%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.96%) Unix
6 85 (1.61%) Android
6 85 (1.61%) Mac OS
7 83 (1.58%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 23 (0.44%) Ubuntu
10 14 (0.27%) CentOS
10 14 (0.27%) VMS
11 13 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 10 (0.19%) zOS
13 9 (0.17%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.11%) Solaris
16 5 (0.095%) Debian
16 5 (0.095%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.076%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,396 (26.52%) Agile
2 879 (16.70%) Continuous Improvement
3 863 (16.39%) CI/CD
4 826 (15.69%) Stakeholder Management
5 796 (15.12%) DevOps
6 617 (11.72%) AI
7 594 (11.28%) Decision-Making
8 569 (10.81%) Migration
9 566 (10.75%) Analytics
10 494 (9.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 476 (9.04%) Customer Service
12 459 (8.72%) ITIL
13 438 (8.32%) Data Modelling
14 434 (8.24%) Validation
15 420 (7.98%) Business Intelligence
16 400 (7.60%) Project Management
17 383 (7.28%) Test Automation
18 368 (6.99%) Scrum
19 347 (6.59%) Change Management
20 322 (6.12%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 946 (17.97%) SQL
2 934 (17.74%) Python
3 412 (7.83%) Java
4 310 (5.89%) PowerShell
5 270 (5.13%) JavaScript
6 196 (3.72%) C#
7 125 (2.37%) TypeScript
8 106 (2.01%) Bash
9 85 (1.61%) PL/SQL
10 73 (1.39%) C++
11 47 (0.89%) Shell Script
12 45 (0.85%) Go
13 42 (0.80%) T-SQL
14 41 (0.78%) C
15 39 (0.74%) R
16 34 (0.65%) Perl
17 33 (0.63%) Apex Code
18 32 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 31 (0.59%) Bicep
20 30 (0.57%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,114 (21.16%) Security Cleared
2 762 (14.48%) SC Cleared
3 628 (11.93%) Degree
4 194 (3.69%) DV Cleared
5 184 (3.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 161 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
7 140 (2.66%) Microsoft Certification
8 132 (2.51%) Cisco Certification
9 91 (1.73%) CISSP
10 79 (1.50%) PMP
11 76 (1.44%) A+ Certification
12 75 (1.42%) CCNA
13 72 (1.37%) PMI Certification
14 70 (1.33%) Azure Certification
15 68 (1.29%) Master's Degree
16 64 (1.22%) Network+ Certification
17 63 (1.20%) CISM
18 57 (1.08%) MCSE
19 41 (0.78%) AWS Certification
20 39 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 362 (6.88%) Data Quality
2 278 (5.28%) QA
3 148 (2.81%) GDPR
4 125 (2.37%) Accessibility
5 100 (1.90%) SLA
6 93 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 81 (1.54%) PMO
8 77 (1.46%) NIST
9 56 (1.06%) GRC
10 27 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
11 26 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.46%) WCAG
13 23 (0.44%) PCI DSS
14 18 (0.34%) COBIT
15 16 (0.30%) ISO 20022
15 16 (0.30%) NCSC
16 12 (0.23%) PSD2
17 11 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
17 11 (0.21%) HIPAA
17 11 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 394 (7.48%) Active Directory
2 325 (6.17%) Docker
3 112 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.84%) vSphere
5 40 (0.76%) VMware NSX
6 35 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
7 31 (0.59%) Hyper-V
8 27 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
9 26 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
10 22 (0.42%) Firmware
11 19 (0.36%) vCloud
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 8 (0.15%) IAG
14 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.076%) ACF2
15 4 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.076%) NFS
15 4 (0.076%) RACF
15 4 (0.076%) Snort
16 3 (0.057%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 396 (7.52%) Kubernetes
2 281 (5.34%) Terraform
3 163 (3.10%) Ansible
4 136 (2.58%) Microsoft Intune
5 106 (2.01%) Grafana
6 94 (1.79%) Prometheus
7 80 (1.52%) SCCM
8 49 (0.93%) vCenter Server
9 44 (0.84%) FortiGate
10 40 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
11 24 (0.46%) Control-M
12 21 (0.40%) Nessus
13 20 (0.38%) Argo
13 20 (0.38%) Kibana
14 18 (0.34%) Puppet
15 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
15 17 (0.32%) SCOM
16 15 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
17 14 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 14 (0.27%) WSUS
Vendors
1 988 (18.77%) Microsoft
2 356 (6.76%) Oracle
3 311 (5.91%) SAP
4 295 (5.60%) ServiceNow
5 176 (3.34%) VMware
6 150 (2.85%) Google
7 137 (2.60%) Databricks
8 123 (2.34%) Salesforce
9 121 (2.30%) Cisco
9 121 (2.30%) Splunk
10 75 (1.42%) Dell
11 74 (1.41%) Workday
12 65 (1.23%) Adobe
13 57 (1.08%) CyberArk
14 55 (1.04%) Red Hat
15 52 (0.99%) Dynatrace
15 52 (0.99%) MuleSoft
16 51 (0.97%) Citrix
17 50 (0.95%) BeyondTrust
18 45 (0.85%) F5